Mr. Magoo (R-AL) Can't Remember Who's On His "List" Of 17 Socialists In The House-- But He Knows There's One In The Senate-- And Unveils The Name

When we first brought up Alabama-based corporatist Spencer Bachus a few weeks ago, we mentioned that, although he is firmly entrenched in one of the deepest red and most politically backward congressional districts in America-- AL-06, which has been carefully gerrymandered to avoid Africa-America neighborhoods of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa and gave 78% of its vote to Bush in 2004 and 76% to McCain last year-- Bachus is the #1 Republican recipient of legalized bribes from the FIRE (finance/insurance/real estate) sector. Why would they give him $3,789,474, far, far more than the average member of the House? From his perch as the ranking Republican on the Financial Services Committee, charged with overseeing the regulation of those industries, he has led a largely successful battle to make sure there would be no effective regulation whatsoever, not of the banksters and not of insurance and real estate crooks who have cost the taxpayers over a trillion dollars as a direct result of Bachus and his fellow advocates of unbridled "free' markets-- free to plunder the public.

Still, $3,789,474 is an awful lot of loot for one congressman. Was he forced to solicit so much money shady lobbyists and drooling avaricious banksters and usurers because of the tough nature of how competitive his re-election bids have been? Actually, not. Bachus didn't have an opponent in 2008. Nor in 2006. He didn't have one in 2004 and in 2002 and 2000 there were just a couple of Libertarians-- Terry Reagin and Holden McAllister who each managed to draw a small handful of votes after spending so little money that neither was required to file a report with the FEC. And it doesn't look like Bachus, no matter how badly he represents average working families back in Alabama, has anything to fear in the future either. His politically dysfunction district was just rated by Cook to be even less competitive than it has been. The PVI of this Limbaugh-worshipping suburban district went from an already prohibitive R+25 in 2008 to a whopping R+29, tied with Mac Thornberry's trashy TX-13 as the least competitive reactionary district in America-- beating out Nathan Deal's KKK bastion in GA-09. So what does Bachus do with all the millions of dollars in bribes he gets from the special interests?

Well... we know he doesn't use it to hire good researchers. Last week, channeling a bizarro amalgam of one fascist and one neo-fascist-- Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and Michele Bachmann (R-MN)-- Bachus was running around central Alabama claiming he has "a list" of 17 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who are... SOCIALISTS! He may well have believed no one outside of a bunch of yahoos at a GOP meeting in Jefferson County would have ever heard of his demagoguery but it leaked out to the press and he was forced to answer the question: who are the 17 House members he claims are on his list? Successfully drawing attention away from his shameful-- and starring-- role in the financial meltdown, Bachus finally pointed to his former House colleague-- voters have since promoted him to the U.S. Senate because of the outstanding job he did in countering extremists and shills like Bachus: Bernie Sanders.

Oddly, yesterday's Washington Post pointed out that the only "socialist" Bachus could name is someone whose anti-credit card rip-off bill he once signed onto as a co-sponsor.

Sanders, who considers himself a Democratic Socialist (not affiliated with the Socialist Party) declined through his spokesman to comment on Bachus's once warm embrace.

"What with the recession and all the unpleasantness on Wall Street, I don't want to gang up on the capitalists," Sanders' communications director, Michael Briggs, said wryly.

We're still awaiting comment from Bachus's office.

Doug Thornell, a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says of Bachus's socialist counting hobby: "With all the challenges we face, it's stunning this is what Republicans are talking about. They sound like a broken record of GOP low points [by Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann] from the 2008 campaign."