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The Untold History of John Quincy Adams

Michele Bachmann acknowledged Tuesday that she misspoke when she claimed yesterday that actor John Wayne was from her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. But the 2012 GOP hopeful refused to dial back on another one of her notable gaffes: Her claim that the nation's Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly to end slavery."
In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, the Minnesota congresswoman insisted she was right on the slavery claim and pointed to the career of John Quincy Adams, the nation's sixth president who was not yet nine years old when the Declaration of Independence was drafted with the help of his father, John Adams.
Bachmann insisted John Quincy Adams, who later worked to end slavery, should be considered a "Founding Father."
"He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father's secretary," Bachmann told ABC. "He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery."
But Stephanopoulos interjected, insisting that the younger Adams had never been considered one of the Founding Fathers.
"Well, John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy but he was actively involved," Bachmann replied.

A little historical research reveals that not only was John Quincy Adams "absolutely part of the revolutionary era," he is, in fact, Michele Bachmann's grandfather. Here are a few more surprising historical facts about America's favorite Founding Child:

After introducing the telegraph to Native American tribes in Minnesota, John Adams settled with his family in Iowa where they founded the University of Iowa and established the Iowa primaries. At the age of nine, a precocious John Quincy Adams, already an accomplished flutist and gifted baseball player, made significant improvements to Jefferson's muddled and rambling first draft of the Constitution, which J.Q. then signed in extra-large block letters so Pope Anastasius IV could easily read it without his contact lenses.
After the Constitutional Convention, J.Q. traveled to Vermont, where he was instrumental in helping cheesemaker and patriot Paul Revere fire guns and ring bells in order to warn the Spanish not to tread on the battleship Maine.
Having successfully liberated the peoples of Arizona and Hawaii from Spain, J.Q. set his sights on finally ending slavery as Jesus had told him to do during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. After Admiral Nelson fired on Fort Apache, J.Q. led the first all-Christian Navy SEAL team - which included Sgt. Alvin York, most famous for being Michele Bachmann's other grandfather - into the Washington Beltway, where they easily defeated the liberal elites who were desperately trying to preserve slavery.
Following the Civil War, J.Q. changed the course of science and history by suggesting to Albert Einstein the addition of the "m" to his famous equation. After delivering the first atomic bomb to Hiroshima as the pilot of the B-29 christened "The Gipper," J.Q. led the quiet life of a retiree and gentleman factory farmer in rural Indiana, and died peacefully in his sleep in 1973. 

Dick Cheney Undecided on Heart Transplant. Dick Cheney has a heart?

Cheney's heart receives its daily feeding of baby bunny blood.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that he hasn't yet decided whether to seek a heart transplant. Cheney, widely expected to become the first real-life Darth Vader, told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that his health is improving thanks to a battery operated device that helps his heart pump blood.

Cheney's statements are surprising: A highly-placed source, speaking on the condition of anonymity (Scooter Libby), told totallyunspooled in 2006 that Cheney's shriveled, blackened heart was being kept in a beaker in a top-secret government lab at Fort Detrick where it receives daily feedings of fresh baby bunny blood.

We were sure our anonymous source was credible, but then we found out he nearly went to prison for perjury, so we decided to contact some of our other, unindicted highly-placed anonymous sources. It turns out that an undisclosed Halliburton subsidiary (the CIA) has arranged for Cheney to receive a heart from a Romanian orphan, and Cheney is waiting for his physician to clear him for travel so he can fly to Romania to personally rip the orphan's heart from his chest. 

Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 billion...

...Skype immediately crashes.

The Annotated 10 Most Important Things Newt Gingrich Has Ever Said

    Chris Menning at Buzzfeed has posted a list of sage and insightful observations by scholar, raconteur, and philosopher-king Newt Gingrich, who announced his 2012 presidential bid Tuesday.
     Gingrich has the advantage of name recognition and being an colossal ass, so he's definitely a contender for the GOP nomination, but with a field of contenders that already includes Rick Santorum and Ron Paul and will likely include Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Donald Trump (!), Gingrich will have to play the full-lunatic press right from the tip-off if he wants to out-crazy the crazies.
     Since we at totallyunspooled are innately generous and helpful, we put together an annotated version of the list for those of you who don't speak batshit:

•"The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument."

Because you can’t be “tainted” by money if you’re only in it for the money.

•"I raised so much money over the years, from so many different people that … I don't owe anyone."

Besides, I already paid those people back in pork.

 •"I love the environment, but I'm cheap on the environment."

I also cheated on the environment when it was in the hospital with cancer.

•"I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics."

Fortunately, none of us believes that Boy Scout horseshit anyway so we don’t need the encouragement.

•"I'm not a natural leader."

But I am a natural hypocrite, which is much better.

•"The fact is, we can afford a fairly ignorant presidency now."

Which actually makes me waaay overqualified.

•"In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins."

For example, “black people can’t resist fried chicken and watermelon” is one that rings true for me.

•"We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."

Yo, peep this shit: Crackers ain’t even tryin’a hear that ghetto joint. You gotta holla back that ofay ish if you wanna get yo’ benjamins! Ain’t no thug-ass gangsta fidda stack no chips, you feel me? Aight.  

•"It may just be because I get homesick, but I have concluded Washington's cherry blossoms are just plain overrated."

I really miss the strange fruit back home in Georgia.

•"It's going to be a bummer if Mars turns out to be like us."

And it’s going to be absolutely apocalyptic if Mars turns out to be like me.

Osama bin...Lonely?

Oh, these things are so awkward.
Um, my name is Osama bin Laden, but  my friends just call me "Holy Sheik Warrior," or just "O-Dogg."
Gosh, I'm not sure what to say. I haven't done anything like this since I met my seventh wife. I guess I'll start with my family. I had fifty-three brothers and sisters, so, you know, I grew up in a big family. My dad had a small construction business and made a pretty good living building barracks for the Saudi Arabian army, and castles and stuff in Mecca.
I had a pretty typical childhood. My parents got a divorce when I was young, and my mother remarried. My stepfather was a great guy. He was a letter carrier, and he did beheadings for the Saudi royal family on the weekends, you know, for fun. Um, I went to university and studied various things. What I really loved was football, or, I guess, "soccer," if you happen to be an American infidel from The Great Satan. Ha ha. But, uh, a good friend of mine from Kuwait, Khalid, uh, maybe you've heard of him, Khalid Mohammed - of course "Mohammed," all my friends are named "Mohammed." Ha ha. Anyway, he accidentally kicked me in the knee while he was trying to score, and, uh, there went my pro football career.
So, um, after that I decided to join the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, because one of my uncles said he could get me a job with them, so I figured I'd give it a try. Oh, this is so- I'm sure this is really boring. Long story short, I did pretty well with them, and eventually I ended up in, uh, more of a corporate role, management and long-term planning, that kind of thing. More recently, though, I've been semi-retired. I don't get out much, just kind of putter around the house.
Hmm, what else? I'm pretty tall, and I have a longish beard, but I guess you can see that from the video - duh! Ha ha. I've been thinking about shaving, though, because of th-, well, just to change my "look," I guess. Maybe get some highlights or something.
Um, I used to like to travel, but I don't get to do that anymore. Some friends of mine who work for the government in Paki- I mean, uh, some friends of mine built me a really nice little house. It's in a really safe neighborhood, and a lot of my, well, you might say a lot of my co-workers live close by and the schools are good. It would be nice if there was a Starbucks nearby, or maybe a bomb factory or something. Ha ha ha.
Umm, I like reading, making videos...jihad, you know, the usual stuff. I'd really like to find a woman wh--
Hold on.... There's a ton of racket going on outside. Lots of shouting and, it sounds like a helicopter or something. I guess I'd better go take a look. I'll finish this in just a minute.
Be right back.

John Yoo, Armchair Commando

    In an op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, former Bush legal counsel, torture memo writer, and all-around tough guy John Yoo chastised President Obama for killing Osama bin Laden.
    Yoo, Jack Bauer Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, claims that finding bin Laden's suburban hideout represents a vindication of Bush Administration policy, but by failing to capture bin Laden alive Obama squandered "one of the most valuable intelligence opportunities since the beginning of the war."
    Yoo, whose combat experience includes both memo writing and the Yale Law Journal, also argues that Obama's reluctance to torture detainees "may have dissuaded Mr. Obama from sending a more robust force [perhaps one the size of that which surrounded Tora Bora in 2001?] to attempt a capture," and that "[s]pecial forces units using nonlethal weaponry might have taken bin Laden alive, as with other senior al Qaeda leaders before him."
     So, in summary:

• Osama bin Laden, who was not found, captured, or killed during the Bush Administration, was only found during the Obama Administration because of intelligence gathered during the Bush Administration which did not lead to bin Laden being found, captured, or killed.
• Once found, bin Laden - the most-wanted fugitive in the entire world and the man responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11 and even more deaths across the globe - was killed because President Obama is too squeamish order torture. 
• The members of the team who risked their lives in the assault on bin Laden's compound - and took fire during the mission - should been issued Tasers for their confrontation with the world's most notorious terrorist.

    No word yet on whether John Yoo has volunteered to accompany Navy SEALs on future operations.

Department of Human Resources and Death to America

Al Qaeda issued a statement Friday acknowledging the death of Osama bin Laden, portions of which are shown here. After careful examination of the statement, our team of highly-trained intelligence analysts here at totallyunspooled has reached two conclusions:
1. That's a really weird font choice.
2. Al Qaeda may be facing a recruiting crisis.

The totallyunspooled Guide to Right-Wing Symbolism

Department of Incomparable Comparisons

Dispatches From the Culture Wars details Michelle Bachmann's comparison of similar non-analogous phenomena.