Other than Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann is perhaps the most “colorful” candidate among the Republican candidates for President.  Initially, Bachmann was a registered Democrat who supported Jimmy Carter in 1976.  She and her husband even worked on his campaign.  Bachmann apparently became disillusioned with Carter’s liberal approach to public policy including his support for legalized abortion and in the 1980 presidential election, she worked on Ronald Reagan’s campaign.  Even then, she didn’t appear to know what she wanted or what she even stood.

In 1993, Bachmann was one of several parents who started the K-12 New Heights Charter School in Stillwater.  This publicly funded school’s charter required that it be non-sectarian in all programs and practices, but the school soon developed a strong Christian orientation.  After parents of students at the school complained, the superintendent of schools warned Bachmann that the school was in violation of state law.  Bachmann soon resigned and the Christian orientation was removed from the curriculum allowing the school to keep its charter.  Bachmann began speaking against state-mandated educational standards and requirements that ultimately began her political career.

Bachmann strongly criticized Minnesota’s School to Work policies.  School-to-work transition is a phrase that refers to on the job training, apprenticeships, cooperative education agreements or other programs designed to prepare students to enter the job market.  In fact, several Federal agencies were major supporters of these programs.  In a 1999 column, Bachmann wrote: “School-to-Work alters the basic mission and purpose of K-12 academic education away from traditional broad-based academic studies geared toward maximizing intellectual achievement of the individual. Instead, School-to-Work utilizes the school day to promote children’s acquisition of workplace skills, viewing children as trainees for increased economic productivity.”  In November 1999, she and four other Republicans were candidates, as the “Slate of Five”, in an election for the school board of Stillwater.  Would you believe that all five of the lost.

Bachmann first came to my attention On October 17, 2008, when she gave an interview on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews in support of the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain.  During that interview she criticized Obama for his association with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, saying “…usually we associate with people who have similar ideas to us, and it seems that it calls into question what Barack Obama’s true beliefs, and values, and thoughts are…I am very concerned that he [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views.” She noted the terrorist bombings done by Bill Ayers and his associations with Obama, saying that “Bill Ayers is not someone the average American wants to see their president have an association with.”  Matthews responded with, “Why is it of concern? What is wrong with it? When asked by Matthews: “How many Congress people, members of Congress fit into that Anti-American crowd you describe,” Bachmann responded “You’d have to ask them Chris, I’m focusing on Barack Obama and the people he’s associated with”. Matthews followed up by asking “But he’s a Senator from the State of Illinois, he’s one of the members of Congress you suspect of being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti-American? You’ve already suspected Barack Obama, is he alone or are there others?” Bachmann answered, “What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look … I wish they would … I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out are they pro-America, or anti-America. I think people would love to see an expose like that.”  The five Democratic members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation issued a joint statement in which they questioned Bachmann’s ability to “work in a bipartisan way to put the interests of our country first in this time of crisis”. Former Secretary of State Colin Power and former Minnesota Governor Republican Arne Carlson said that her comments had influenced their decisions to endorse Obama for president.

PART II TOMORROW

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Limbaugh has an extensive history of making racially charged comments, for example:

• On February 1, 2007, Limbaugh responded to a Reuters report about a University of Chicago study that found that “a majority of young blacks feel alienated from today’s government” by asserting, “Why would that be? The government’s been taking care of them their whole lives.”

• On June 4, 2009, Limbaugh said, “This has been the argument the Reverend Jackson has proffered throughout my life — that it’s impossible for minorities to be racist because they don’t have any power. Well, president of the United States. We’re talking now about a Supreme Court justice. The days of them not having any power are over, and they are angry. And they want to use their power as a means of retribution. That’s what Obama’s about, gang. He’s angry; he’s going to cut this country down to size. He’s going to make it pay for all the cultural mistakes that it has made — its mistreatment of minorities. I know exactly what’s going on here.”

• In 2003, Limbaugh resigned from his job as an ESPN commentator after saying that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb hasn’t “been that good from the get-go” and “got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve,” because “[t]he media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.” After the Eagles reached Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005, Limbaugh returned to making racial comments about McNabb, saying, “There’s no question McNabb has improved and I’m happy to see it,” but that “when the defense … was propping the Eagles up,” the media “were still giving McNabb credit — because there’s this social hope.”

• On January 19, 2007, Limbaugh stated: “Look it, let me put it to you this way. The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There I said it.”

• After Limbaugh asserted that Colin Powell should leave the Republican Party because of his support for Obama, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that “[i]t’s not up to Rush Limbaugh to decide who ought to be in the Republican Party.” Limbaugh responded on his May 18, 2009, show that all Democrats “had to do was nominate an African-American and [they’ve] got Colin Powell.”

• On August 21, 2007, Limbaugh claimed that Democrats “want to get us out of Iraq, but they can’t wait to get us into Darfur.” He continued: “There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur? It’s black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they’re in trouble.” A caller responded, “The black population,” to which Limbaugh said, “Right.”

• On May 21, 2008, Limbaugh said that “one of the objectives of the feminazis over the last 20, 25 years has been to dominate the public education system so as to remove the competitive nature of boys. You know, there’s a crisis of young man-boy education in the schools. And they did this on purpose, to eliminate male competition in the work force. This is part of feminazi grand plan.” Limbaugh then said, “They forgot affirmative action for black guys. And because of that, every bit of their plan has gone up in smoke now, because they — if — they had to come out in favor of affirmative action for black guys, and that’s — see, this is one of the things that really irritates the women. And there are women all over this country fit to be tied — trust me on this. … [L]iberals eventually are going to be devoured by their own policies. And it has happened here. Because Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate.” He concluded, “So, it’s just — they just forgot that one thing: affirmative action for black guys. And if they had remembered to oppose that, then they wouldn’t face the situation they face today.”

Given all of the hate and racially charged comments made by Limbaugh over the years, I was “shocked” to learn that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in February 2007.  The nomination went out under the letterhead of Limbaugh’s lawyer at the Landmark foundation, a rightwing nonprofit where Limbaugh serves as an unpaid adviser. (Landmark’s donors include relatives of Richard Melon Scaife, the Pittsburgh heir and newspaper publisher who funded the Arkansas Project, a smear campaign against the Clintons that served as the prototype for what we now know as Swiftboating.)  Mark Levin, Landmark’s President, who signed the nomination, justified it by stating, among other things, “Rush Limbaugh is the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today,” explained Levin. “Everyday he gives voice to the values of democratic governance, individual opportunity and the just, equal application of the rule of law — and it is fitting that the Nobel Committee recognize the power of these ideals to build a truly peaceful world for future generations.”  “We are offering this nomination for Mr. Limbaugh’s nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all mankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin.”  Makes you want to throw up.  Well, needless to say, Rush did not get the award; Al Gore did.

Limbaugh is also  critical of feminism, saying that “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”  He also popularized the term “feminazi”, referring to about two dozen feminists “to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur.”

Limbaugh supports capital punishment, saying “the only thing cruel about the death penalty is last-minute stays.”

On the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, Limbaugh said, “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation… And we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day [referring to the U.S. Military service members]. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release?”

Limbaugh has asserted that African-Americans, in contrast with other minority groups, are “left behind” socially because they have been systematically trained from a young age to hate America through a widespread movement headed by figures such as Jeremiah Wright, Williams Ayers and Barack and Michelle Obama.

James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times quoted Limbaugh as saying after the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States that the Democrats will “take your 401(k) and put it in the Social Security Trust Fund.”

In July 2008, Limbaugh signed an 8-year, $400 million contract extension with Clear Channel Communications, Inc. is an American Media conglomerate company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.  Limbaugh began his career in radio as a teenager in 1967 in his hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, using the name Rusty Sharpe. Limbaugh graduated from Cape Girardeau, Missouri Central High School, in 1969   Because of his parents’ desire to see him attend college, he enrolled in Southeast Missouri State University but left the school after two semesters and one summer. According to his mother, “he flunked everything”, and “he just didn’t seem interested in anything except radio.”

Limbaugh crossed the line again when he claimed that the man who murdered a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, in June 2009, James Von Brunn, was “a leftist”. Limbaugh alleged that the views Von Brunn had acquired were the direct result of exposure to propaganda “of the left” and people like those “around Obama”.

Von Brunn is an 88year old white supremacist who expressed hate for the president and for “Jews”. He has reportedly professed a belief in the United States being a “white” nation. He appears to be dangerously obsessed with the idea that he is at war with a government intent on taking his guns away.  Limbaugh’s “willingness to defame and slander public figures associated with the Democratic Party, his willingness to make statements alleging dangerous affiliations that are close to incitement to violence, his willingness to slander the president as a racist who associates with terrorists, is now comprehensively demonstrated. We know Rush tells despicable lies on a daily basis. The task thinking people or citizens interested in civility have before them now is figuring out why Limbaugh is so full of hate and anger,” according to J. E. Robertson, Editor-in-Chief of Casavaria Publishing.  I agree with Mr. Robertson’s assessment.

Limbaugh’s ratings have fallen sharply in recent months according to a recent report by Arbitron.  He still has the top-rated radio talk show in the country, but his audience has dropped by 33 percent since October 2011, primarily, I believe, because of his hate-filled and racist rhetoric.  He has also lost a number of advertisers, but that doesn’t seem to bother him.  Will Rush Limbaugh continue his hate-filled, racially tinged rhetoric during the 2012 election cycle, you can count on it.

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One of the most controversial Right Wing Radio Commentators is Rush Limbaugh and I believe that he is the de facto head of the Republican Party.  Not only does he consistently spew racist comments during his radio program but also appears to have considerable influence on the operation of the Republican Party.  For example, on Wednesday, August 31, 2011, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley called House Speaker John Boehner and asked that a joint session of Congress be assembled the following Wednesday night.  And, according to the White House, Boehner said “okay” to Daley’s request for the Wednesday evening date.  Then things quickly unraveled.  Apparently not everyone was as upbeat as Boehner with the notion that a Democratic president was going to step on a Republican debate.  Shortly after Daley’s telephone call, the White House tweeted the news about the joint session and then “Rush Limbaugh beat Boehner up.”  This is what Limbaugh said on his talk show:  “What he oughta do is say ‘no’ and offer September 6th, September the 8th, September the 9th, September the 10th…whatever, but he doesn’t get September the 7th. He should do this. It’s very simple. He says to the president, ‘you did not consult me before you publicly issued the date. You were obviously trying to disrupt the plans at the Reagan Library. You’re going to have to learn that if you really want to work together as you repeatedly claim, Mr. President, I’m gonna show you how it’s done. Here are the dates that you can have.”   Boehner was so terrified that Limbaugh called him out that he did exactly what Rush told him to do.

Limbaugh claims that he is not a racist but here are some verified statements that he has made.  You be the judge as to whether or not they are racially tinged:

• After Obama’s inauguration, Limbaugh said during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News that “[r]acism in this country is the exclusive province of the left. We’re witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We’re being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles. Bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president. We’ve got to accept this. The racism that everybody thinks exists on our side of the aisle has been on full display throughout their primary campaign. So I think they’ve done a great job, the media has, of covering up his deficiencies.”

• On September 15, 2009, Limbaugh said “It’s Obama’s America, is it not? Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. I mean, you put your kids on a school bus, you expect — you expect safety. But in Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on.’ And of course everybody says, ‘Oh, the white kid deserved it. He was born a racist, he’s white.’ Newsweek magazine told us this. We know that white students are destroying civility on buses. White students destroying civility in classrooms all over America. White congressmen destroying civility in the House of Representatives. We can redistribute students while we redistribute their parents’ wealth. I mean, we can just redistribute everything. Just return the white students to their rightful place, their own bus, with bars on the windows and armed guards. They’re racist. They get what they deserve. Newsweek magazine told us this — post-racial America. I mean, I wonder if Obama’s going to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”

• After reading extensively from an American Thinker column smearing Obama, Limbaugh said on June 26, 2009, that Obama is “more African in his roots than he is American” and is “behaving like an African colonial despot.”

• On January 24, 2007, Limbaugh referred to Senator Obama and actress Halle Berry as “Halfrican-American[s],” stating that “Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: Halfrican-American actress Halle Berry.” Limbaugh then said: ” ‘As a Halfrican-American, I am honored to have Ms. Berry’s support, as well as the support of other Halfrican Americans,’ Obama said.” Limbaugh then conceded that Obama “didn’t say it.”

• On March 21, 2008, Limbaugh said of Obama’s handling of the controversy surrounding remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “It is clear that Senator Obama has disowned his white half, that he’s decided he’s got to go all in on the black side.” Limbaugh had earlier said: “[Y]ou know, opening these race wounds like this, taking us back 30, 40 years, making it look like no progress has been made — what Barack Obama has done — I’m going to say something here that might offend — or not offend — but might make some uncomfortable. But it is clear to me that there has been a major transformation in Senator Obama.”

• On May 26, 2009, Limbaugh said then-Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a “reverse racist” and that liberals are wrong to assert that “minorities cannot be racists” because Obama is the “greatest living example of a reverse racist and now he’s appointed one.” On his May 29 show, Limbaugh compared Sotomayor’s nomination to nominating David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan member, and said the way to “get promoted in the Barack Obama administration” is “by hating white people.”

• On August 24, 2009, Limbaugh said he “finally figured out why it is Obama’s pushing so hard on this health care bill.” He asserted: “He just wants us to have the same health care and plan that he had in Kenya. And look, you know, economic anxiety is necessary if you want to become the next black FDR, which is — well, the black FDR. That’s what he wants. He wants to be the black FDR, the next FDR, and FDR fed off of economic anxiety.”

• On March 19, 2007, Limbaugh highlighted a Los Angeles Times op-ed that described Obama as “running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the ‘Magic Negro’ ” — a term used by critics of pop culture to describe certain benevolent African-American characters. Limbaugh stated: “The term ‘Magic Negro’ has been thrown into the political presidential race in the mix for 2008. And the term ‘Magic Negro,’ as applied to Barack Obama has been done by an LA Times columnist, David Ehrenstein.” Limbaugh later asserted: “I’m going to keep referring to him as that, because I want to make a bet that by the end of this week I will own that term,” adding, “If I refer to Obama the rest of the day as the ‘Magic Negro,’ there will be a number of people in the drive-by media and on left-wing blogs who will credit me for coming up with it and ignore the LA Times did it, simply because they can’t be critical of the LA Times, but they can, obviously, be critical of talk radio.” Limbaugh continued to refer to Obama as the “Magic Negro” throughout the broadcast — 27 times, to be exact — and at one point sang “Barack, the Magic Negro” to the tune of  “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” Limbaugh defended his use of the song, stating, “Well, that’s what we always do here. We do parodies and satires on the idiocy and phoniness of the left.”

• On April 14, 2009, Limbaugh suggested the “correct” way to look at a situation in which Obama sent the military to retrieve American hostages from Somali pirates was that “if only President Obama had known that the three Somali community organizers were actually young, Black Muslim teenagers, I’m sure he wouldn’t have given the order to shoot.”

• Referring to GOP ads comparing Obama to Britney Spears during the presidential campaign, on August 20, 2008, Limbaugh said: “It’s — you know it’s just — it’s just we can’t hit the girl. I don’t care how far feminism’s saying, you can’t hit the girl, and you can’t — you can’t criticize the little black man-child. You just can’t do it, ’cause it’s just not right, It’s not fair. He’s such a victim.” The previous day, Limbaugh had said that “it is striking how unqualified Obama is and, and how this whole thing came about with, within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh went on to say, “I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them.”

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