FBI Joins Bachmann Investigation

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) is already under investigation by the Federal Elections Commission, the Office of Congressional Ethics, and the Iowa State Senate ethics committee for possible campaign finance violations in her 2012 presidential campaign.

Now the FBI is joining the party, which means possible criminal charges and penalties.

I want to see her gone from the House as much as, well, as much as she wants to see the Kenyan Muslim Communist gone from the White House.

I don’t care if she goes to jail, I just want her out of politics forever, replaced by someone a little brighter and a lot less crazy.  That would be just about anyone who lives in her district.

 

Complaint Against Bachmann at Federal Election Commission

Peter Waldron, who was national field coordinator for Michele Bachmann’s failed 2012 presidential campaign, has filed a complaint against her at the FEC.*

He claims that she improperly used money from MichelePAC to pay fundraiser Guy Short for work on the presidential campaign.

He also claims that she hid payments to Kent Sorenson, her Iowa chairman.  As an Iowa state senator, Sorenson couldn’t legally be paid for work on a presidential campaign.

* “Ex-Bachmann aide alleges campaign finance violations,” Kevin Diaz, StarTribune

Picture Bachmann In An Orange Jumpsuit

Salon has an interesting story up*, that Michele Bachmann hasn’t paid five Iowa staffers from her failed presidential campaign because they have refused to sign an agreement prohibiting them from discussing with police or the press “unethical, immoral, or criminal activity” they saw.

There is an ongoing criminal investigation pertaining to a home schooling group’s accusations that Bachmann’s campaign stole their email list.  The group has also filed a civil law suit.  As Dick Morris will be the first to tell you (check out the self-dealing between his PAC and Newsmax to make Morris rich from selling his email list, whereby poor fools donate to Morris’ PAC, the PAC then pays Newsmax for Morris’ list and calls it “fundraising,” and Newsmax pays Morris), you can’t just steal someone’s list, you have to pay for it.

I love the image of Bachmann in an orange jumpsuit, picking up trash by the side of the road.

* “Bachmann still hasn’t paid presidential campaign staffers,” Alex Seitz-Wald

And The Feeling Is Mutual

“In private, Romney has told friends he has little interest in helping the Republican Party rebuild and re-brand itself.”

Philip Rucker, “A detached Romney tends wounds in seclusion after failed White House bid,” WaPo

Look, I can’t stand the guy, but if the GOP thinks it was just him and his 47% percent — hideous as that was — they’re even crazier than I thought. 

The seeds of Mitt’s defeat were sown in the earlier victories of extremist governors like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, John Kasich, and Bob McDonnell.  They were sown in the spectacle of the GOP debates when Mitt had to share the stage with nutjobs like Cain, Santorum, Bachmann, Perry, and Newt.  They were sown in the Senate races of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, dragging Mitt down with them as they drowned. 

Ya Can’t Win ‘Em All

Michele Bachmann was narrowly re-elected in Minnesota.

I think she makes it to the top of the to-do list in 2014.

You Ask the Wrong Question, You Get the Wrong Answer

From Paul Krugman* today:  “By the way, in saying that our prolonged slump was predictable, I’m  not saying that it was necessary.  We could and should have greatly reduced the pain by combining aggressive fiscal and monetary policies with effective relief for highly indebted homeowners:  the fact that we didn’t reflects a combination of timidity on the part of both the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, and scorched-earth opposition on the part of the G. O. P.”

This brings us back to Rick Santelli on February 21, 2009, when he famously asked, “Do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages?  This is America!  How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

The answer to that was a resounding “Hell, no!” and the start of the Tea Party,  but Santelli asked the wrong question.  He should have asked “How many of you people want to lose 30, 40, 50% of the value of your homes?  How many of you people want to lose your jobs because of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression?  How many of you people want to then lose your homes because, just like your neighbor now, you won’t be able to pay your bills?”

The truth is that because we got so obsessed with “moral hazard,” so determined not to coddle those damn “losers,” we all became losers.  If we’d loved our neighbor a little more, we would have all been better off.  Instead of lifting them up, we dragged ourselves down.

With all our politicians who constantly quote the Bible at us, where was Mike Huckabee or Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum reminding the self-righteously righteous that the rain falls equally on the good and the bad?

* “The Optimism Cure,” NYT

Mormon Taps Catholic for “Hail Mary” Pass

Nate Silver* on the desperation Mitt’s Ryan pick reflects:

“When a prudent candidate like Mitt Romney picks someone like Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate, it suggests that he felt he held a losing position against President Obama.  The theme that Mr. Romney’s campaign has emphasized for months and months — that the president has failed as an economic leader — may have persuaded 47 or 48 or 49 percent of voters to back him, he seems to have concluded.  But not 50.1 percent, and not enough for Mr. Romney to secure 270 electoral votes.

“The forecast model I developed for FiveThirtyEight…estimated as of Friday that Mr. Obama was about a 70 percent favorite to win re-election.

“Conventional wisdom suggests that you play toward the center of the electorate, while various statistical measures of Mr. Ryan peg him as being quite conservative.  Based on his Congressional voting record, for instance, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

“[A] recent analysis I performed placed Mr. Ryan 10th among 14 potential vice-presidential picks in terms of his immediate impact on the Electoral College.  If Mr. Romney wanted to make the best pick by this criterion he would have been better off choosing an alternative like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, or Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia.

“Mr. Ryan’s budget plan, which polls poorly, will obviously get much more attention.  The fate of the presidential race and the fate of the Congressional races may become more closely tied together.

“Taking risks like these is not what you do if you think you already have a winning hand.  But Mr. Romney, the turnaround artist, decided that he needed to turn around his own campaign.”

John McCain decided the same thing four years ago.  His bold move backfired, as will Mitt’s.

* “The Rationale Behind an Audacious Move,” NYT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cantor Coddles Crazies

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) desperately wants John Boehner’s job as Speaker of the House.  He is pure ambition, with no concern for truth, fairness, or decency.  To further his ambition, he’s all too happy to coddle the many crazy members of his caucus, like Michele Bachmann.

Boehner criticized Bachmann’s absurd accusations that Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin is secretly working for the Muslim Brotherhood, calling those accusations “pretty dangerous” and saying that Abedin “has a sterling character.”

But Cantor?  Asked by Charlie Rose what he thought about the Bachmann/Abedin shamefulness, Cantor took the coward’s way out, choosing popularity over patriotism, saying, “I think that her concern was about the security of the country.”

Cantor is unfit ever to be Speaker of the House, he shouldn’t be Majority Leader, and he shouldn’t even be a congressman.

 

Bachmann’s Opponent Talks Camels

Michele Bachmann’s bizarre claims that Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s top aide, is an agent for the Muslim Brotherhood are hurting her in her home district.

Jim Graves, who is running against Bachmann for Congress, said that even Republicans in the district are turning against her:  “A lot of Republicans say, ‘This is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  We just can’t afford to have this uncertainty and fear mongering and McCarthyism.'”

Uh-oh, he’s talking about camels?  I’m sure Bachmann will take that as a sign that he must be working for the Muslim Brotherhood too.

 

Here We Go Again

Another twisted bastard, 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes, massacred a bunch of people he didn’t know this morning, people enjoying the new Batman movie at a midnight screening in Aurora, Colorado, just 17 miles from where the Columbine shootings happened in 1999, although to me Columbine seems like yesterday.

As of now, there are 12 dead and 59 wounded, some of them children.

I’m assuming this insane guy lived in his own little world and wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to Obama and Mitt, but I’m also assuming Rush and Glenn Beck and the Micheles (Bachmann and Malkin) and all the whack jobs will somehow concoct a theory tying the Bane character in the movie to Bain and somehow making this senseless shooting all Obama’s fault.