Bye Bye, Bachmann

Yes, it's Bye Bye, Bachmann!

CREDO reports, "Today, in a rambling 8 minute and 40 second video, Michele Bachmann announced that four terms in Congress was "long enough" for her.

That's right: The Tea Party's queen of crazy won't seek re-election this year. She's out. And CREDO SuperPAC activists played a big role in slamming the door shut.

This is a victory not just for reason and decency in the fight against Tea Party extremism, but also for the power of grassroots democracy.

Thanks in part to CREDO SuperPAC, Michele Bachmann won by only 4,296 votes in 2012. This year, with volunteers in her district preparing for a massive neighbor-to-neighbor campaign to drive her out of office -- powered by the early financial support of grassroots donors across the country -- she was in too weak a position to ride out ethics investigations and expect to sail easily to re-election."

Here's "poor Michele's" farewell video - we hope!  (I trust you are suitably impressed that she wants to thank God for his blessings on the USA.)

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/bachmann_defeated?amount=5&email=ulyssesrejoicing%40yahoo.com&recurring=24&refcode=ie_actblue_20130529_r_5

McCarthy and his "Ism"

Last week when I wrote about the idiot Michele Bachmann, who would be just a sad joke if she didn't influence significant numbers of voters (not to mention occupying a seat in our hallowed House of Representatives), I said I would post something about McCarthyism. 

The other day, the wondrous Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" showed Bachmann pronouncing to the world, on fair-and-balanced Fox News of course, “Literally, the decisions of our life and death, may very well be in the hands of the IRS.”

What can one say, except "WTF?"?  "Literally", Michele, the IRS doesn't have hands!  As for "our life and death", I'd be far more concerned about the Tea Party's Congress-Members endangering us, than I would the IRS.

So - back to McCarthyism....

Here's what I wrote in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s" about a man who is an eternal stain on the honor of the United States:

"The justifiable fear of the nuclear Bomb provided an opening for one of the world's great charlatans. In 1950 Joseph McCarthy, a little-known Senator from Wisconsin, gave a speech to a Republican Women's Club. He produced a piece of paper which he claimed was a list of 205 known Communists working for the State Department. He never proved the guilt of these “spies”, indeed he never made the list public. But before he was done he had ruined hundreds of lives and careers.

His House Un-American Activities Committee (“Hewack”) with its blackmailing inquisitors, rampaged through industry, Universities, even Hollywood, trampling on the Constitution and terrorising people, mainly innocent, into choosing between “naming” their friends or going to jail for Contempt of Congress. A favorite “crime” invented by the McCarthy-ites was being “prematurely anti-Fascist”, that is having opposed Hitler before the Government did! McCarthy's antics goaded playwright Arthur Miller to write “The Crucible”, about the Puritan witch trials in 17th-century Massachusetts – and the name “Witch-Hunt” is still synonymous with McCarthyism."

House INTELLIGENCE Committee?

I wasn't going to bother posting this Petition about Representative Michele Bachmann, "the Tea Party’s queen of crazy" - but then they reminded me about her ranting claims about the Ha-Ha Socialist, not to mention this corker: 

“The influence today of the Muslim Brotherhood at the highest levels, from the White House, to the Pentagon, to the FBI, even to our United States military, truly is breathless and people have to know about it.”

Yes, folks, they're "breathless" - can't you hear them panting as they come down your street, ready to steal your first-born, and defile your daughters, yelling to their evil God as they seize all the levers of power with cunning, ruthless help from their shadowy accomplices, from B.H. Obama on down?

CREDO is concerned enough about Bachmann to say, "what kind of a signal does it send that she's on the House Intelligence Committee where she has access to sensitive national security information?

"Bachmann has actually said that gay marriage is the biggest problem facing the nation, financial reform efforts equate with Mussolini-style fascism, and that President Obama is "anti-American" and "turning our country into a nation of slaves".

"Her loose association with the facts and her willingness to believe in all sorts of completely baseless conspiracy theories makes her one of the last people in Congress who should be entrusted with our nation’s secrets."

Personally, I'm not too concerned about the House Intelligence Committee and its "secrets".  We know most of the "secrets" are complete BS.  The only reason they're secret is to prevent the American people from knowing what is being done in their name.  But having an idiot like Bachmann anywhere near the decision-making process is enough to get my signature on a Petition, and CREDO make a persuasive case for their Petition, here.

Where I think the Mad Minnesotan Mama is really dangerous is in her McCarthyism.  This country has already seen what hysteria and paranoia can do to our democratic society.  At the LA Times Festival of Books I attended a panel on McCarthyism, with very cool, highly-informed speakers including KPFK and UC Irvine's Prof. Jon Wiener.  I asked the question which has always frustrated me about that ghastly time in America's shameful past:  why was there not a popular uprising against McCarthy's brazen theft of our due process and our Constitutional Rights?  The answer came back, "It was a time of fear".

Fear is the weapon of choice of the Bachmanns of the world, and it damn well works.

I'll blog soon about McCarthyism, as discussed in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s".