He's going there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081018/ap_o n_el_pr/mccain

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Michelle Bachman Must Be Wondering What She Stepped In Last Night.

Last night when I posted the video of Chris Matthews' amazing interchange with Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachman, I thought that this was one of the scariest things I's heard lately uttered by a politician in public.

Imagine a statement that called up the ghost of the late Senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy, with his attacks on anti-Americans during the height of the 50s Red Scare. That, of course, was a highlight of my childhood and one of the first times that television played such an important role in spreading propaganda via television (the House UnAmerican Activities Committee - HUAC - joined McCarthy in this mudbath, which has been well documented in film and story).

Bachman implied to Matthews that congressional Liberalism was the equivalent of anti-Americanism, and that the media should start an investigation of just that concern. When Matthews asked her who in Congress she would single out as anti-American, she evaded the issue... but she made it clear that Obama fit this mold.

Now, the strange thing is that, in her debate with a Democratic opponent only a few days ago, Bachman tried to separate herself from Bush and the Republicans and made this statement about Obama:

If the presidency would somehow go to Barack Obama, I would welcome him to the 6th District as well. As a matter of fact, I would put my hand on his shoulder and give him a kiss if he wanted to.

So kissing anti-Americans must be OK.

The voters in Minnesota must be shaking their heads in wonder this morning. A petition has gone up on the web to censure Bachman, which, as I last looked, had over 10,000 signatures already. And the HuffPo has noted that:"a Democratic campaign official emailed that Bachmann's Democratic opponent has raised at least $23,000 online since the Hardball segment aired."

And we move onward into November.

Under The LobsterScope

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My first specific political memory centered around the duck-and -cover, hide-under-our-desks, exercises that were a regular feature of my early school life from age 5 on. I knew enough about nuclear war to be terrified. We lived one mile away from an air force base, and I used to go out to the backyard, look up at the planes, and try to determine if they were American or Russian. What I thought I could do about it, I don't remember. I even checked a book out of the library on aircraft identification. When I heard Joseph Stalin died when I was 7, I remember asking if that meant no one would drop atom bombs on us.

In 1954, when I was 9, I had a severe case of the measles and my Grandma Nolan came to help nurse me.  My eyes hurt so much I had to stay in a darkened room and couldn't read. Grandma was listening to the Joseph McCarthy army hearings. Hatred of McCarthy's voice might have shaped my entire political development. In 1956, just turning eleven, I fell madly in love with Jack Kennedy as he made an unsuccessful bid for the vice presidential nomination. A good catholic schoolgirl, I was initially attracted by his Catholicism; ten minutes later I was smitten by his intelligence, wit, and charm. I was luckier than his other women. Loving Jack Kennedy was good for me.. From 1956 to 1963, I read everything I could about Kennedy, politics,  and American History. I read the newspaper from cover to cover daily.  

When I was 15 I did volunteer work for his presidential campaign. In high school we had political debates to imitate the famous Kennedy/Nixon debates, and I represented Kennedy. What he believed in, I believed in. Gradually I moved to the left of his pragmatic liberalism. Kennedy was responsible for my decision to major in political science in college and graduate school. Kennedy's assassination, occurring in the fall of my freshman year in college, devastated me. I felt like there had been a death in my immediate family. I quickly transferred my political allegiance to Bobby Kennedy.

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