![Michele Bachmann’s seat sought by even crazier person. [photo via Wikimedia Commons]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/5ad5e19dea2d4ed1f711a108f0a4f08a/tumblr_mnzmldZhwT1qfengno1_1280.jpg)
![Stories to Watch: 5/31/13. As always, hover your cursor over the links to see the headlines as a tooltip. And as long as I’m posting reminders, the majority of these stories come from the Progressive News Must-Read Superfeed [rss]. Before she announced that she wouldn’t run for reelection, Michele Bachmann paid out a $8,000 fine to the FEC for financial disclosure violations. This was a penalty she agreed to — which also included agreeing to “send a representative to an upcoming FEC training, develop a compliance manual within three months, and have an external compliance firm review reports for the next two years.” In short, it was an admission of guilt. A few weeks later, she was done. After would-be Bachmann opponent Jim Graves also dropped out of the running, Minnesota Democrats were left looking for a candidate. Minnesota Public Radio’s Bob Collins has a good piece on the Graves’ announcement — and the people he’s undoubtedly disappointed. Wonkette takes a look at the people Republicans may run instead of Bachmann and they all seem sufficiently nutty. There’s a Battle of the Sexes going on over at Fox News. The men are sexist and the women don’t like it. Erick Erick decides the smart thing to do is crank up the piggishness and just make everything a hundred times worse. You can tell he wants to be the next Andrew Breitbart, but he can’t seem to pull off the unhinged rage-aholic act — so he just comes across as a classless boob. Progressives and backers of real comprehensive immigration reform worry that the Gang of Eight is giving too much away in order to get a 70-vote superduper-majority. The idea with the 70-vote goal is to cow House Republicans and create momentum. Like House Republicans give a crap about anything other than their own (lunatic) opinions. John McCain — who always has a hardon for war — visited Syria in an attempt to embarrass Pres. Obama into becoming more deeply involved in that conflict. That hasn’t gone so well, since McCain was himself embarrassed by getting caught posing for a photo with an ethnic sectarian terrorist. “We can help the right people,” McCain said of the conflict, then got caught posing for a photo with the wrong person — all of which points to the difficulty of separating the good guys from the bad guys in this. “This should give everyone pause when it comes to ramping up support for the rebels by arming them.” says Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org. If we start arming rebels, those arms could help spur ethnic cleansing. McCain’s office said he had no idea these people were anti-Shiite sectarian kidnappers, which is really the whole problem in the first place. Here’s a real shocker: rightwing media is running wild with a completely bullshit story about the former IRS commissioner and White House visitor logs. After voters decriminalized marijuana, police in Washington state are having to retrain police dogs to ignore pot. If a Wisconsin Republican tells you they’re against big, intrusive government, go ahead and laugh in their face — for hours. Oprah uses her Harvard commencement speech to push for stronger background checks. A sense of foreboding was no doubt felt at NRA HQ. Finally, the Illinois House adjourns without passing marriage equality legislation. The heartbreaking part: when the bill’s sponsor Rep. Greg Harris said the vote would have to wait until Novemeber, the “short speech was interrupted by shouts of protest from same-sex couples who came to Springfield in hopes of witnessing history.” Apparently, some who said they supported the bill suddenly wanted to delay it, leaving Harris and many Illinois couples high and dry. [cartoon via USA Today]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/76c1a37895b0683fd47b37b30bf8fdf1/tumblr_mnox8cHg901qfengno1_1280.jpg)
Stories to Watch: 5/31/13.
As always, hover your cursor over the links to see the headlines as a tooltip. And as long as I’m posting reminders, the majority of these stories come from the Progressive News Must-Read Superfeed [rss].
Before she announced that she wouldn’t run for reelection, Michele Bachmann paid out a $8,000 fine to the FEC for financial disclosure violations. This was a penalty she agreed to — which also included agreeing to “send a representative to an upcoming FEC training, develop a compliance manual within three months, and have an external compliance firm review reports for the next two years.” In short, it was an admission of guilt. A few weeks later, she was done.
After would-be Bachmann opponent Jim Graves also dropped out of the running, Minnesota Democrats were left looking for a candidate. Minnesota Public Radio’s Bob Collins has a good piece on the Graves’ announcement — and the people he’s undoubtedly disappointed.
Wonkette takes a look at the people Republicans may run instead of Bachmann and they all seem sufficiently nutty.
There’s a Battle of the Sexes going on over at Fox News. The men are sexist and the women don’t like it. Erick Erick decides the smart thing to do is crank up the piggishness and just make everything a hundred times worse. You can tell he wants to be the next Andrew Breitbart, but he can’t seem to pull off the unhinged rage-aholic act — so he just comes across as a classless boob.
Progressives and backers of real comprehensive immigration reform worry that the Gang of Eight is giving too much away in order to get a 70-vote superduper-majority. The idea with the 70-vote goal is to cow House Republicans and create momentum. Like House Republicans give a crap about anything other than their own (lunatic) opinions.
John McCain — who always has a hardon for war — visited Syria in an attempt to embarrass Pres. Obama into becoming more deeply involved in that conflict. That hasn’t gone so well, since McCain was himself embarrassed by getting caught posing for a photo with an ethnic sectarian terrorist. “We can help the right people,” McCain said of the conflict, then got caught posing for a photo with the wrong person — all of which points to the difficulty of separating the good guys from the bad guys in this. “This should give everyone pause when it comes to ramping up support for the rebels by arming them.” says Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org. If we start arming rebels, those arms could help spur ethnic cleansing. McCain’s office said he had no idea these people were anti-Shiite sectarian kidnappers, which is really the whole problem in the first place.
Here’s a real shocker: rightwing media is running wild with a completely bullshit story about the former IRS commissioner and White House visitor logs.
After voters decriminalized marijuana, police in Washington state are having to retrain police dogs to ignore pot.
If a Wisconsin Republican tells you they’re against big, intrusive government, go ahead and laugh in their face — for hours.
Oprah uses her Harvard commencement speech to push for stronger background checks. A sense of foreboding was no doubt felt at NRA HQ.
Finally, the Illinois House adjourns without passing marriage equality legislation. The heartbreaking part: when the bill’s sponsor Rep. Greg Harris said the vote would have to wait until Novemeber, the “short speech was interrupted by shouts of protest from same-sex couples who came to Springfield in hopes of witnessing history.” Apparently, some who said they supported the bill suddenly wanted to delay it, leaving Harris and many Illinois couples high and dry.
[cartoon via USA Today]
Basically, after all that’s gone on, and with Michele Bachmann now stepping down, I’ve been talking to my friends and family and frankly, the feeling is, ‘Mission Accomplished.’ She wasn’t representing the people of the 6th District appropriately, and now she won’t be representing them. There’s no way anyone could run and win who would be worse than Michele Bachmann. So we accomplished that task.
Would-be Michele Bachmann opponent Jim Graves, announcing he is likewise pulling out of the race.
He’s basically putting a spin on the fact that he believes the seat was winnable only so long as Bachmann was the Republican candidate. For anyone else, gerrymandering will probably keep the seat from being competitive a little while longer.
![Political obits for Bachmann seem to all boil down to two points. She’s a crazy person. She’s a bullshit artist. [photo via Wikimedia Commons]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/c9e90ca1cffa57908fc3f5b301fa809a/tumblr_mnknlih8Vj1qfengno1_1280.jpg)
Political obits for Bachmann seem to all boil down to two points.
- She’s a crazy person.
- She’s a bullshit artist.
Michele Bachmann Calls It Quits. Here Are the Craziest Things She's Ever Said.
The tea-party firebrand won’t run again. Thanks for the memories.OMG that Melissa Etheridge quote.
(via realworldnews)
![Bachmann’s Career Dies as it Lived — Running Scared from Any Hint of Accountability. During her presidential run, soon-to-be former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann developed a reputation for having a rocky relationship with the press. It wasn’t so much the media’s fault, as it was Shelly’s.
Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News (Aug., 2011): CNN weekend anchor Don Lemon says that Marcus Bachmann, the husband of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, and two members of her campaign staff pushed him into a golf cart during a campaign stop at the Iowa state fair in Des Moines before Bachmann’s victory in Saturday’s straw poll. “She came out, after speaking for just a couple minutes,” Lemon said on CNN. “There were other reporters and cameras there. And I asked her very respectful questions: ‘How do you think you did in the debate last night?’ and ‘How do you think you’re going to end up in the Ames Straw Poll?’ And her two campaign aides started elbowing me.” Lemon continued: “I told them, asked them not to elbow me. And then her husband Marcus started doing the same thing. And then he elbowed me into the cart. And I said, ‘You just pushed me into the cart.’ And he goes, ‘No, you did it yourself.’”
The entire incident struck Lemon as odd, since he was just doing general reporting. “We weren’t asking any ‘gotcha’ questions,” he said. The same story covers a similar incident with ABC’s Brian Ross, who was “manhandled” by Bachmann security after asking a question about Bachmann’s tendency toward migraine headaches. “I was never closer than 10 or 12 feet to her,” Ross said later. “The people around her recognized me and came up and identified themselves as with the staff said they knew who I was. And the blocking was all about me. Other cameraman, other reporters were allowed to get close.” See, Ross is scary because he’s ABC’s investigative reporter. More recently, Bachmann was almost literally chased around the capitol by CNN’s Dana Bash. Bash wasn’t trying to get a comment on the FEC probe into Bachmann’s presidential finances, but was simply trying to get her to clarify a false statement about Pres. Obama blowing taxpayer money on a lavish lifestyle. In case you haven’t gotten the point yet, Michele Bachmann is not a courageous individual. When the going gets tough, Bachmann gets going — and by “gets going,” I mean “takes off running.” So it’s less than surprising that Shelly would dodge her electorate as well. Facing a strong headwind in her reelection bid and a challenger who nearly beat her the last time around, Bachmann did what she always does when faced with a tough fight — laced up her running shoes. “This serves to show that even Rep. Bachmann is hearing that Minnesota’s 6th is ready for a new, business-oriented approach,” her 2012 and 2014 opponent Jim Graves said “As recent polling indicates, our message is resonating with the people of the 6th District and she recognized that. She must also have recognized that it would be an uphill battle for her going forward. People are eager to be represented by a common-sense business person who understands the economy from the inside out.” It wouldn’t surprise me if we later found out that Bachmann quit under pressure from her own party. Romney won her district with 56% in the same cycle that she nearly lost. That district is changing, but it’s still pretty red. And a different Republican might be able to win and hold onto it for another one or two terms, maybe — before the gerrymandering is undone. If there was pressure, it wouldn’t be a surprise that she gave in. Demagogues are people who pretend to have courage, not people with actual spines. Late night talk show hosts will probably throw a wake for Shelly the Walking Punchline and a few teabagger chumps will mourn, but not many others will. If she’s remembered at all in history other than as a footnote, it will be as a prime example of a hamhanded demagogue who lied far too easily and who went to great lengths to avoid responsibility for those lies. -Wisco [photo via Wikimedia Commons]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/746d5b0292b410c0e11e82e9a771f6df/tumblr_mnki242ge01qfengno1_1280.jpg)
Bachmann’s Career Dies as it Lived — Running Scared from Any Hint of Accountability.
During her presidential run, soon-to-be former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann developed a reputation for having a rocky relationship with the press. It wasn’t so much the media’s fault, as it was Shelly’s.
Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News (Aug., 2011): CNN weekend anchor Don Lemon says that Marcus Bachmann, the husband of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, and two members of her campaign staff pushed him into a golf cart during a campaign stop at the Iowa state fair in Des Moines before Bachmann’s victory in Saturday’s straw poll.
“She came out, after speaking for just a couple minutes,” Lemon said on CNN. “There were other reporters and cameras there. And I asked her very respectful questions: ‘How do you think you did in the debate last night?’ and ‘How do you think you’re going to end up in the Ames Straw Poll?’ And her two campaign aides started elbowing me.”
Lemon continued: “I told them, asked them not to elbow me. And then her husband Marcus started doing the same thing. And then he elbowed me into the cart. And I said, ‘You just pushed me into the cart.’ And he goes, ‘No, you did it yourself.’”
The entire incident struck Lemon as odd, since he was just doing general reporting. “We weren’t asking any ‘gotcha’ questions,” he said. The same story covers a similar incident with ABC’s Brian Ross, who was “manhandled” by Bachmann security after asking a question about Bachmann’s tendency toward migraine headaches.
“I was never closer than 10 or 12 feet to her,” Ross said later. “The people around her recognized me and came up and identified themselves as with the staff said they knew who I was. And the blocking was all about me. Other cameraman, other reporters were allowed to get close.” See, Ross is scary because he’s ABC’s investigative reporter.
More recently, Bachmann was almost literally chased around the capitol by CNN’s Dana Bash. Bash wasn’t trying to get a comment on the FEC probe into Bachmann’s presidential finances, but was simply trying to get her to clarify a false statement about Pres. Obama blowing taxpayer money on a lavish lifestyle.
In case you haven’t gotten the point yet, Michele Bachmann is not a courageous individual. When the going gets tough, Bachmann gets going — and by “gets going,” I mean “takes off running.”
So it’s less than surprising that Shelly would dodge her electorate as well. Facing a strong headwind in her reelection bid and a challenger who nearly beat her the last time around, Bachmann did what she always does when faced with a tough fight — laced up her running shoes.
“This serves to show that even Rep. Bachmann is hearing that Minnesota’s 6th is ready for a new, business-oriented approach,” her 2012 and 2014 opponent Jim Graves said “As recent polling indicates, our message is resonating with the people of the 6th District and she recognized that. She must also have recognized that it would be an uphill battle for her going forward. People are eager to be represented by a common-sense business person who understands the economy from the inside out.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if we later found out that Bachmann quit under pressure from her own party. Romney won her district with 56% in the same cycle that she nearly lost. That district is changing, but it’s still pretty red. And a different Republican might be able to win and hold onto it for another one or two terms, maybe — before the gerrymandering is undone. If there was pressure, it wouldn’t be a surprise that she gave in. Demagogues are people who pretend to have courage, not people with actual spines.
Late night talk show hosts will probably throw a wake for Shelly the Walking Punchline and a few teabagger chumps will mourn, but not many others will. If she’s remembered at all in history other than as a footnote, it will be as a prime example of a hamhanded demagogue who lied far too easily and who went to great lengths to avoid responsibility for those lies.
-Wisco
[photo via Wikimedia Commons]
![Facing tough reelection fight, FEC probe, Bachmann drops out.
[photo by Gage Skidmore]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/8b531a0e0a5265ba164ddbbb6c223ce2/tumblr_mnkck6BX0L1qfengno1_1280.jpg)
Is Bachmann facing her electoral doom?
Politico: Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann may be the congresswoman with nine lives. But 2014 could be the gravest threat to her political career yet.
The bomb-throwing conservative and onetime Republican presidential candidate is girding for what promises to be a ferocious reelection contest. Awaiting Bachmann is a serious Democratic opponent who has the full backing of his national party and a suburban Twin Cities electorate that six months ago nearly tossed her out of office.The most glaring problem for Bachmann, though, may be a swirl of investigations into her campaign finances. The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating whether her campaign concealed payments to an Iowa state senator who did work for her 2012 presidential bid. (A state ethics law bars senators from doing paid campaign work.)
And late last week, Minnpost.com reported that the FBI would be joining the investigation and interviewing a former Bachmann chief of staff.
It’s easy to dismiss Bachmann’s tough fight as a consequence of her legal and ethical troubles. But the fact is that Shelly barely won her race against hotel exec Jim Graves the last time around. Politico reminds us that Graves came “within 5,000 votes — 1.2 percentage points — of unseating her in 2012.”
Like other Republican house seats, Bachmann’s is gerrymandered. And that barely made the difference last time. This time, probably not. It’s the old demographics problem coming back again — Bachmann positively repels anyone other than GOP base voters and they’re becoming more and more of a minority as time goes on. Even without her scandals, Bachmann would likely do even worse this cycle, regardless of how conservative-leaning her district is drawn.
At a certain point, even electoral shenanigans will not save the GOP as a whole, as it may not save Michele Bachmann now. The influence of the Dreaded Progressive Menace is creeping into even the reddest districts and very little, if anything, can be done to stop it.
It’s time for Bachmann and her party to adapt or die. Unfortunately for them, that’s the process of evolution and they don’t believe in that.
When there’s ejaculation into a vagina, there’s a barrier there — as in your packet it states there — of a cellular tissue that doesn’t allow the sperm that has an enzyme at the head of it to penetrate the blood flow. It is designed to go to the egg, that enzyme is meant to burn the outside membrane of the egg cell, go inside the egg and then deposit …
When ejaculation occurs inside of a colon, it’s highly absorbent material, the cells do not have a barrier for the sperm and those enzyme get into the blood flow. When those enzymes enter into the blood flow and a continued and prolonged environment to that happens — these enzymes into blood flow — it causes what we know as AIDS.
AIDS, of course, brings upon common diseases, colds and things.
“Concerned Minnesotan and father and husband” Mike Frey, testifying before the Minnesota House Civil Law Committee in opposition to a marriage equality bill. By all accounts, he was completely serious and not at all hammered out of his gourd.
Today’s adventure in rightwing anti-science.
Another day, another American mass shooting
Because a society saturated with guns is just so fucking safe.
