Guess Who Was Hanging With the Homophobes Today?

If you said it was Donald Trump that hung out with the homophobes today, give yourself a golf clap and wipe the smile off your face because nobody didn't know that, okay?  Today, after a seven hour or something like that meeting with evangelicals, at which, amongst other odd things he did was question Hillary Clinton's faith (about which, maybe I got some stuff later?); he then decided that Jerry Falwell Jr and Michele Bachmann were totally the best people he had to be his emissaries to the land of the Evangel. 

You might think it's weird as hell that this time last week he was trying to 'splain to LGBTQA folk that he was better than Clinton for them. You are exactly right. This would be weird as hell--if  you adopted the premise that Trump actually gave an overt shit about queer people before at any time that was not cancelled out by anti-queer shenanigans.

Now, I don't think he's a theocrat by nature--nope. He's just your old-fashioned "folks who are different suck" kind of hater. But he is standing at the ready to support theocrat business, select theocrat-friendly judges, and doesn't stick with queer people longer than it takes for us to grieve our dead.

I have no use in the world for this man. Not compost. Not a coastal habitat for aquatic life (to class up the destination of Luca Brasi.) That picture above? Is the smile of a man who just kissed the ass of millions of homophobes he never met, but Lord he'll respect their offerings.

Yes he will. And I am faithless and disgusted. What does it profit a man? Probably not enough to even repay his loans to his own campaign--but it is what a GOP candidate must, tooth-gritttingly, do, no?

Screw him and the party he rode in on.

The 2012 GOP Primary is *Still* With Us. Really.

It strikes me as singularly weird that I'm doing another post regarding the reverb on the 2012 GOP primary and I'm still not talking about TX Gov. Perry's post-indictment chances or the low-level Mitt Romney chatter (Reihan Salam makes a few strong points, but Charles Pierce comedically upends them) . But no, I'm back mentioning this strange little grubby palm-greasing in Ioway. Because it still has ripples, somehow.

Call me a cynic, a skeptic, and a grump, but all the same, I just saw the volte face of Sorenson from Bachmann to Paul as a kind of estimation of their comparative electable merits. Ron Paul has a more or less coherent political message, and Michele Bachmann is not a great maker of coherent statements. End of story?--nope.

Now, to be completely real, until 2012, there was no reason for me to know who the hell Kent Sorenson even is. But it looks like, if you are big in the GOP in Iowa, you kind of are a big deal in getting a presidential primary campaign started, judging from what he seemed to have got out of the deal. (Ya know, before anyone looked into it.)

What Happens to A DREAMER Deterred?

Does he get swept up
like a felon a-roam?
Or hide as if on the lam--
in his home?
Does this bill go down
in a Senate defeat
or should a Presidential veto
stomp it complete?

And what should voters
make of this load--

Could this party implode?

Never mind my doggerel, as I pause to consider that the House leadership handed over the reins to people who say things like "I hang out with border patrol agents clandestinely", and kids are loaded up with birth control pills before being set out on "rape paths", and that migrants with "calves like cantaloupes" schlep backpacks with 75 lbs of marijuana over the border. (Which I still say is an amazing weight loss boot camp concept, no? Seriously, I think Rep. Steve King has never watched a Cheech and Chong movie if he thinks this is how "grass" gets up here.) So of course, they voted to end the work permits of over a half-million jobs-having undocumented young people who have basically not known any other country, and are in fact not in any way tied to the current border crisis (leaving them to be potentially deported to countries with which they have no ties), stepped up to pay for National Guard deployments--which is just going to corral, not contain, more young migrant folks who will just be put in the system, and brushed away the compassionate option to detain the youngsters until a hearing could be held to determine a possible refugee or asylum status--which does not at all address the plight these youths are fleeing, and sends them back into possible "rape paths" and into the hands of drug cartels.

So, uh, nice going GOP reps, you have some kind of thing to go back to the constituents that voted you in with? And oh darn, you think you will have Harry Reid to blame for this bill getting shot down once the Senate comes back, and not Ted Cruz?

I don't think that's how things really stand, at all. Because in one breath, yesterday, there was a little inhalation of "The President will have to act unilaterally because we can't get our shit together". And today, the exhalation is: "The President will still have to act unilaterally, because this is the nonsense we come up with when we do get our shit together".

Guess what? Both options are not helping. Our tax money is paying for the GOP House to be less than useless, and sue Obama for doing things on his own, and then a taxpayer-funded Representative like Michele Mouth-Breathing Bachmann talks about putting a handcuff on one of his hands. While all this election-year floundering is basically called "leaving it up to the President to fix it and take blame"?

You know, some people might think this is transparently bullshit. But I suspect sadly enough that it still isn't transparent enough for regular voting people. This was a purely political and useless vote, and it will be loved by somebody(ies), nonetheless.

In Defense of Nut Picking

Although I feel I am a bit late to the game, because of the relative smallness of my blog and slowness of my traffic, I don't mind being late to a thing or two, if I think I still have a thing to add. So it goes with the nut picking argument, which as a snark-leaning blog, goes right to my meat and potatoes, if not my low-hanging fruit and especially fallen mangoes.

To give a quick summary of the original hypothesis--the "GOP lawmaker" configuration of lefty blogulations tends to point to extremely fringe examples of insignificant so-and-so's of the right wing that aren't necessarily impact players and aren't necessarily representative. This was countered by contentions from respected bloggers that, no, sometimes these "GOP lawmakers" who say fringe things, aren't really of the fringe, but are just crudely stating things that the party in general does represent, without saying so as crudely. In a nutshell, if you will, that's part of the reason I go a-nutpicking--when some rando from Shithouse Falls talks about whether some girls rape easily or whether birth control is for losers or whether bicycle lanes lead to world domination and the abolishment of golfing and guns, they are playing on fantasies that might just get them into office (no, I don't always think they even mean the things they say) and once in, their relative name-recognition could well grow. Next thing you know, you've got the crazy filtering upward into the US House and Senate, and once it's there, like cat pee or drunk puke, it is hard to rinse out.

I feel mean as hell pointing to Michele Bachmann as a prime example of this, but you go ahead and tell me that her upward mobility was in spite of, not because of, her nutty goodness--her "Jif-rence", if you will. Not a back-bencher at all, but the second-runner-up in the GOP 2012 Goat Rodeo was my former Senator Rick Santorum, who has a plethora of pull-quotes of unbelievable nutaliciousness. Or take, as an observation I don't make happily, the ascendancy of the deluxe mixed nuts of 2010, which included possible 2016 Goat Rodeo participant Rand Paul. Or the possible success of the nutty in the form of Paul Broun--another case where because of, not in spite of, would pertain (not according to all polls, but still). 

It is a known thing, I think, that Democrats just don't historically come out in droves for your midterm elections. There's young, minority, and women voters who might just not take the time that your mostly white and old and male (the GOP demographic trifecta) voters do. So maybe there is value in scaring the bejesus out of the otherwise not especially motivated by suggesting that the opposing party is, actually, batshit mad. Maybe they could be scared into thinking there is value in voting as if their life and ability to vote itself depended upon it. And I don't even think that is necessarily so idle a threat.

Now, I do truly wish indeed that I could count upon any Democratic candidate in any hoot or holler, even Shithouse Falls, to actually run as a Democrat and positively state a good reason for voting blue. But if pointing out the bastids is the most constructive thing I can find to do--that's my job then.

Why Mascots Don't Call Plays

I'm left with the impression of puppies bred in a nightmarish kennel where they are not only unhealthy, but have, for some unknown reason, been subjected to an experiment where they are rewarded for messing on the floor. After several generations, the result will be dogs good for nothing but producing conspicuous, noxious, ill-timed and centrally-placed messes. And they will, naturally, be conditioned to expect a reward for them.

The 2012 GOP Primary Is Still With Us, Weirdly Enough

When Michele Bachmann's 2012 presidential campaign started to take a massive dump, I was kind of sympathetic but concerned.  To my jaded eye, Michele Bachmann's campaign always looked like a form of trolling rather than a serious effort, and deep in my guts, I always thought Ron Paul, as a kind of rear-guard Goldwater winger, was also doing his part to run a presidential campaign to score points and #profit. Which is why the problems with the Bachmann campaign starting with Sorenson struck me as weird. I was interested with the allegations that Kent Sorenson was "bought" by the Bachmann campaign. But the evidence and the Bachmann campaign's own allegations suggested the obvious reason he didn't "stay bought".  Iowa did not know they had a pimp.

He got a better offer. My immediate response was that the Paul campaign looked more viable, at the time--but the current story is that maybe there were reasons.

This whole affair is making me somewhat re-evaluate my estimation of both the Bachmann and Paul campaigns' seriousness. Were these really a "straight shoot" and not "work" to make shit interesting for "Inevitable Mitt"? Did either of these candidates really think it was worth it to score points so much that they were violating campaign law in Iowa--up in the corn, feeling their oats? This makes me pre-emptively re-evaluate my estimation of Rand Paul's obvious 2016 trolling. He could be for reals.

I don't know if that scares me enough. I guess I won't know until 2016. If anyone ever wonders where I go when I am not posting, I am recalibrating my cynicism, because sometimes I believe it must be broken.

(X-posted at Rumproast.)

Michele Bachmann is Interested in Spanking, Magic Wands

Wow. Feeling that neglected, are we?

I'm not sure what she's talking about when she says that Obama gave undocumented Latin@s under 30 the right to vote, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know what she's talking about either. You know, even if she isn't going to continue to be in Congress, maybe they could keep her around as a mascot or something? Because she certainly represents why Congress is so unpopular right now. She doesn't bother to even know what's going on, but speaks very emphatically about it. All the while giving reasons for being useless as hell.

I think the nugget of wingnut truth buried in there is "We can't pass immigration reform because the bigots will blame us and the new voters won't love us." Otherwise, that was some vintage Bachmann whine, no?

Michele Bachmann Will not Run for Another Term

The announcement by Michele Bachmann that she will not be seeking re-election in 2014 has provided columnists and bloggers a fine opportunity to re-cap some of her greatest hits, and to reiterate for what must feel like the eleventy-billionth time that there is something about her that is not unlike the phosphate-rich material coating the floor of certain flying rodent-inhabited caverns. It can be fun to look at people like Michele Bachmann and wonder just how the hell they got these odd ideas, or why they are such credulous fuckwits. Deep down, however, I can't entirely laugh.

She was not only elected, but re-elected by her district, and even ran in a somewhat-serious 2012 GOP primary bid. And there were people who helped her along the way, because they believed in her. Whether she's intimating that inner-tube people will be fleeing the coasts of an America that doesn't even use dollars for currency anymore, or declaring that a health care plan designed in part by the conservative Heritage think tank is the peak of socialism, she apparently did not sound too crazy to be credible to a not-inconsiderable number of supporters.  And, her canpaign-fund investigation aside, there is still some trouble she can stir as a semi-coherent commentator.

I guess what I'm saying is, her derp is marching on....

Michele Bachmann is Literally Making Things up

I know, she has definitely been rolling lately, but this clip is a nice little window on how she does her thing:



Literally killing people? As in, when you go to a doctor, which you can afford because you have health insurance now, the doctor can say, "Sorry, according to the government I actually have to kill you." Because obviously, the government is demanding that doctors do that. Which is why Congress tried to repeal Obamacare over thirty times and every time, they kept it. Because by and large, they agree with people being literally killed by affordable medical care.

In case my snark is not transparent enough--I don't think so.

Maybe, just maybe, it literally makes no sense that vulnerable women and children would be harmed by a policy that ensures they get coverage they can afford. And maybe, since there really aren't any changes to Medicare bigger than, I dunno, eliminating the so-called "donut hole"--it doesn't literally kill seniors, either. Maybe some tweaks are needed, but overall, it's better than the status quo ante. (For Michele Bachmann, that means, the system we had before, where more people were uninsured.) And as we get to 2014 and beyond, more people are liable to realize that this kind of "Oh noes, womens and childrens to the lifeboats!" stuff doesn't hold water.

The thing of super sadz for Bachmann is, she was the Teaparty Caucus superstar. But she can't even party like it's 2009 anymore, because the Tea Party Caucus barely exists, and Bachmann's own 2012 hopes died a lip-bitingly embarassing death early in the primaries. She held onto her congressional seat--just. But who knows what tomorrow will bring?

If tomorrow's name was "Michele Bachmann", the answer would be "more crazy".  Let's just see how this works for her.

Odd Tales From The 2012 Best of the Worst: Michele Bachmann Edition

A story about a debate coach exerting unusual influence on 2012 GOP presidential primary candidate Michele Bachmann comes to us from Buzzfeed:

Michele Bachmann's high-profile debate coach, Brett O'Donnell, developed an "unnatural" and "Rasputin-like" relationship with his candidate during her failed 2012 presidential campaign, another former aide told BuzzFeed, a charge O'Donnell denies. 

Peter Waldron, an evangelical organizer who served as Iowa field coordinator for Bachmann and helped her win the Ames straw poll said O'Donnell exercised an "unusual power over Mrs. Bachmann." Waldron and other former Bachmann staffalso currently say the Congresswoman has yet to pay them for debts owned from her short-lived campaign. 

"He prohibited her husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, from sleeping in the same room with wife while on the campaign trail," Waldron said in an email to BuzzFeed. "He prohibited legendary consultants Ed Rollins and Ed Goeas from attending debate prep sessions. He told her when she could get off the bus (Waterloo event with Gov. Perry), he wrote most of the words that came out of her mouth, he wrote all of her speeches."

Maybe Those of Us on the Outside Should do Some Changing--

That, folks, was Sen. John McCain sarcastically deriding a bill intended to help veterans get jobs. It's kind of weird for him to do that.  But it isn't surprising anymore. The atmosphere in Washington is frankly abysmal:

Barring a burst of productivity in the lame-duck session in November and December, the 112th Congress is set to enter the Congressional record books as the least productive body in the post-World War II era. It had passed a mere 173 public laws as of last month. That was well below the 906 enacted from January 1947 through December 1948 by the body President Harry S. Truman referred to as the “do-nothing” Congress, and far fewer than many prior Congresses have passed in a single session.

And for that reason, when President Obama makes the case that Washington needs to be changed from the outside--I'm appreciating what he's talking about.  It's not just watching what's going on right now--it's thinking about what we could be dealing with if we, the voters, don't make some changes down there.

One of the most compelling arguments I've heard on the subject comes from Elizabeth Warren, who makes the case that keeping Sen. Scott Brown may mean getting a climate change denialist like Sen. Inhofe as head of the Environment Committee.  See, that would be a real problem. You can't say it wouldn't happen. After all, the GOP put Michele Bachmann on the House Intelligence Committee even though she's a credulous boob--they have a funny sense of humor. Or rather, disdain for whatever constitutes effective, informed, rational government.

I am reminded of this particularly by Woodward's recent book regarding last year's debt ceiling crisis, The Price of Politics. I think Woodward gets a bit wrong (I'm not the only one) regarding what the president could even do to make more happen with the great, dysfunctional mess that a desperately polarized Congress had become. But he at least does remind me clearly of what did happen.

Maybe Mitt Romney Needs Bill Kristol Advising Him...

Ordinarily, I would not recommend Bill Kristol as an adviser, but here was Mitt Romney one day ago:

Chen took refuge at the embassy after escaping house arrest. He rejected a deal to keep him safely in China and now says he wants to leave the country. Chen has said he feels abandoned by the U.S. American officials have said they didn't pressure him to leave. 

"If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it's a day of shame for the Obama administration," Romney said. "We are a place of freedom, here and around the world, and we should stand up and defend freedom wherever it is under attack." 

The State Department said this week it conveyed no implicit threats and the issue of violence never came up in its discussions with Chen. They told him that China had agreed for him to reunite with his family if he left the U.S. Embassy. 

Romney suggested U.S. officials were motivated by the politics of Chen's case. He said U.S. officials "willingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen an implicit threat to his family" and accelerated negotiations for his safety because of scheduled high-level talks in the country with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and their Chinese counterparts.

And here's what turns out to be some very sensible advice from Mr. Kristol:



And as it happens, here is the situation as it stands one day later:

The US says it expects China to allow prominent dissident Chen Guangcheng to travel abroad soon. 

The US state department said Mr Chen had been offered a fellowship at an American university, and it would allow his wife and children to accompany him. 

Earlier, Beijing said the blind activist could apply to study abroad - paving the way for a resolution to a tense diplomatic stand-off with the US.

So, basically, the outrage lasted about a week, would you say?  At the embassy for about six days, then let out, then, voila! a perfectly reasonable and legal way for him to travel abroad appears! In real terms, this situation lasted an actual day for Mitt Romney, as in, he read a thing in the paper to criticize, pronounced it a "dark day for freedom and a day of shame" and now is just kind of looking awkward and clueless. Again.

The name of the SuperPAC supporting him, Restoring Our Freedom, kind of bothered me, but now it makes sense. I was always thinking, "Well, the future hasn't happened yet, so, where did it go that it needs restoring?" But now I get it. Romney can't win on his history, and he sucks at current events. So, the future it is!

Bachmann has left the Clown Car.

Rep. Michele Bachmann's campaign will never be forgotten. It will always serve as a cautionary tale against running a campaign on the basis of "things I've read on the Internet" and "a lady outside the supermarket told me this one time."  I'd say it's been real, but I'm still not entirely sure.

The Little Wingnut that Could Comes in Number 2 in Iowa

GOP front-runner Mitt Romney only beat Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucus by eight votes. That's a pretty big deal for the un-Google-able sweater-vest afficionado, and I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with that result. My former Senator is a big favorite of this blog because he's a great snark target. He makes fresh awful all the time, whether it's vowing to annul the marriages of same-sex partners, or saying states should have the right to ban birth control, or just dozens and dozens of other horrible-sounding things.

Despite being awful in what he says and believes, Iowa has given him the gift of viability, just as surely as the campaigns of Michele Bachmann (who I thought might actually come in ahead of Perry, whose campaign has been marred by his opening his mouth and letting words come out) and Rick Perry (who will be going on the South Carolina)have basically been given the hard way to go. And since Bachmann and Perry were the other theocrat candidates, I'm guessing a lot of their supporters might just go Santorum's way, keeping his campaign going despite being low on donations and interest at first.

Also, I think he might benefit from a volatile Newt Gingrich who looks to be raring to go negative on Romney. Gingrich has a knack for the negative, and this can not help Romney's favorables.

Of course, the Santorum surge could just have been because he was the last "Not-Mitt" standing right before the caucus, so no negative attention was yet drawn to him, but I still think this makes the race interesting if only because Romney isn't going to coast to an easy nomination.

(Sorry about the horserace stuff. It's just....I don't follow sports, you know?)

Michele Bachmann was a tax professional.

I saw two interesting Bachmann-related tax stories that prompt me to remind you that Rep. Michele Bachmann was a tax professional.  So she knows everything about taxes.

For example, she knows that taxes have gone up on average families--

The Des Moines Register reports that Bachmann, speaking at a campaign appearance in Ottumwa, said “The average amount of taxes that the average family (paid) was 5 percent overall,” in 1950, as way of saying that the tax burden in America has gone through the roof.

Except for it not being true.

She also wants you all to know that she too has worked on a "flat tax" plan.  It just wouldn't be flat. 
I like how she's still keeping this race interesting.  I think that's the word.

President Obama Announces Troops out of Iraq by Year-end

President Obama announced today that all US troops would be out of Iraq for the holidays, bringing an end to a war that brought thousands of US casualties, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties, and and uncalculated and perhaps uncalculable cost in terms of treasure and reputation.

My feelings about this war had always been that that causus belli was wrongly laid, the course was wrongly set, the methods and missions were often unclear, the cost too great, and the desired outcome never stated--if there was a wrong way to do anything, I think the Bush Administration tried the wrong way of doing things. This is not a slight at all against the men and women of our armed forces and the support contract personnel who served in Iraq; my complaint is with the politicians and REMFs and war profiteers who served the people of Iraq and the people who served my country and those other members of the coalition so poorly that more was not done to minimize casualties, preserve infrastructure, maybe do a thousand things that might have prevented the many tragedies to civilians, to children, to the reputation of my country, and to prevent the images burned into my mind, and the minds of so many others who never thought this war was either right to begin with, or executed properly once engaged.  I can not look back at this last decade of war with much more than regret that the antiwar voices were not heard out, that Congress didn't seem to debate, so much as permit, and that we all seem to have been lied to in the run-up to the invasion.

I'm still bitter. And while I have conflicted and unsatisfactory feelings about how things are being left there--the point has to be our leaving. There just isn't more that can be done. It's been enough--honestly! 

And so this should be a proud announcement in my eyes, that my President has followed through on wrapping up this chapter in American warfare. And yet....and yet.....

If you drill it, it will come.

Even though MN Rep. Michele Bachmann says peculiar things from time to time, (such as her recent "joke" regarding God sending messages to Washington, D.C. via earthquakes and hurricanes, which as jokes go, is in questionable taste since the hurricane was still damaging property and killing people while she was saying it) I'd have to say that no matter how peculiar her statements can be--it's her grap of policy we should really be paying attention to.

As in, I just don't know how much grasp she has on reality, let alone ability to make policies regarding it.

Recently, she's been discussing energy policy, which is a serious topic because high energy costs drive up the prices on everything else.  She's said she would approve drilling for oil in the Everglades.   Not that anyone thinks there's any oil there, you see.  It's the principal of the thing, hippies! You can't tell her it's foolish! Only bunnyhuggers and treelovers engage in that kind of talk! (Honestly, I don't think anyone would accuse FL Rep. Allen West of being a radical environmentalist hippie.   And also, I don't understand why conservationism isn't associated with conservatism as much--I think they should bring it back.)

Of course, the "Drill here, drill now" mantra has been chanted by some for a while, and the issue of drilling in ANWR has been something of a wedge issue for decades, now.  But ANWR isn't the Everglades, and probably has oil--the Everglades?  Not so much.  But the idea of "let's be open to drilling everywhere and anywhere" just doesn't mesh with the realities of oil production

King Daddy Dogs and the Minimum Wage--This is a Serious Candidate!

I'm working on the problem I call "Taking Michele Bachmann Seriously." It's a thing I wrestle with. Sure, she's a theocrat and a homophobe, and I usually take them seriously. But her particular version of theocracy and homophobia is also wedded to such an absurd view of history and government, and she's running for such an important position, that I just can't wrap my head around how she has....serious supporters. Contributors. A valid, serious campaign. I look at it, and half expect that I should see that is was crowds populated with cardboard standees that have been hanging on her every word--or expect that some political insider will admit that her campaign was some sort of grand put-on.

For which reason, I look at ideas like this with unwarranted ambivalence. Oh, ho hum. She would abolish the EPA and the minimum wage. Like she even could without acts of Congress!!! Har de har....hmmm. Except she isn't alone on those. Both the EPA and the minimum wage have been accused of interfering with the business of "job creators" by several Republicans over the years. She's just saying it very bluntly.

And that seems to win her some points.

Speaker of Nothing

It looks like there won't be a vote on the Boehner debt ceiling bill by the House tonight, which I think translates as :"Nope, still haven't got the votes."

Wow.  It has got to suck to be John Boehner.  On one hand, he is Speaker of the House--with a pretty good size GOP majority. On the other hand, this debt ceiling business has really seemed to display a problem with either his leadership, or the party itself (or what the hell, both.)  This Congress has managed to be startlingly unproductive--and the problem has a lot to do with the House.  Let them make a symbolic vote that won't pass the Senate, like defunding NPR or stripping funding for women's health care--and they are all over it.  Ask them to do something important, and they'll just, I dunno, go look for some post offices to name.

It would be too easy to blame the scads of freshmen GOP congresspeople who came in on the Tea Party wave, but it doesn't look like they've necessarily been the biggest problem for Boehner--it's been a little bit of everybody.

Barbarians with Glitter

This video made me smile today.  Also, I think Barbarians with Glitter will be my band's name, if I ever have one. Also, reparative therapy is a sick fraud, and so are the people who practice it. That is pretty much all.