First story is about Bachmann and me: I have another Bachmann comic coming out in print which you can get for free, if you can get a hold of a copy of the Minneapolis City Pages. It's in their 3rd Annual Comix Issue. The theme this year was "Minnesota Nice," so naturally I thought of Michele and her performance on the home foreclosures in her district...foreclosing families' homes, more and more homes...year after year after year, Bachmann election after Bachmann election...
Next, the Washington Independent says that LaRouche kooks are providing research for Bachmann/Palin/GOP charges of "death panels" and such...
(continued)
...The LaRouche cultists oppose Obama’s plan because they think he’s trying to euthanize old people and the infirm. They oppose it for one of the reasons that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) oppose it, and they’re providing a lot of the "research" for this smear...
...It means something that deranged political activists are showing up to these rallies and mouthing some of the same rhetoric as conservatives...
http://washingtonindependent.com/...
Tarryl Clark in the HuffPo:
Tarryl Clark comes out swinging against Bachmann in this Huffington Post interview.
"For many in Minnesota, when Sarah Palin came on the scene it seemed like she was Alaska's Michelle Bachmann," Clark told the Huffington Post. "They seem to share some similarities."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Never mind the different ways that the HuffPo spells Michele's name. The point here is that Clark is not going to pull a Tinklenberg and waste time on ads that don't pay off.
And that's good, because the money from around the country will come in from day one, if she mounts an aggressive campaign that goes after Bachmann--surely one of the worst congressional reps in the country in terms of performance for her district. Can you imagine that? Tens of thousands of Americans from all around the country who will give Clark money, just to go after a crazy right wing demagogue. (They never gave me any money for doing it.)
As for Clark's Palin/Bachmann comparison, she's not the first celebrity to do that. Last year I was listening to the local evangelical radio station KKMS' live coverage of the GOP convention from Minneapolis (yes, that's right: a supposedly non-partisan evangelical radio station devoted to witnessing for Christ, broadcasting live coverage of the GOP convention--interviewing GOP candidates and supporters to "get the message out.") Bachmann was interviewed by radio hosts Jeff Schell and Lee Michaels, both slavering Bachmann fans. These two told her that Sarah Palin was indeed being called "the Michele Bachmann of Alaska," and Bachmann tittered coyly, flattered by the comparison.
Bachmann on Sean Hannity, the You Tube video. It's embedded below. Two Putt Tommy put it up earlier, but here's some Bachmann background that I think you should know:
Hannity is doing his usual cross talk act with Bachmann here, he's crazy about her. It's their mutual agreement and admiration society interview, this time about how the "angry town hall meeting" strategy is working to kill health care reform this summer.
Interesting moments here include Bachmann's claim that "we" are holding town hall meetings. That occurs at about 5:10 in the time code of the You Tube video, below. Interesting, because Bachmann herself does not "do" live town hall meetings anymore.
What she does instead are "tele-town hall" meetings. These are kind of like conservative talk radio. Bachmann takes questions over the phone; the questions are prescreened by Bachmann staffers--no live, unscreened questions from upset constituents as shown on the YouTube video of Bachmann on the Hannity show. She doesn't want to answer live questions at a public meeting with constituents who are upset with her performance for her district. And you can't blame her; more than half of the people in Bachmann's GOP/conservative district voted against her and for other candidates in the last two congressional elections.
I've participated in these "tele-town hall meetings." Somehow she never seems to get to a question from a constituent waiting on the line. Other Bachmann constituents with critical questions report a similar experience.
The public events that Bachmann does do, these days are something she calls "forums" (though local meeting continue to count them as town hall meetings.) A "Bachmann forum" differs from the town hall meetings she says Republicans hold, in that no live questions from the audience are taken by Bachmann. For example, at her "forum" on climate change, she introduced a lawyer taking money from the energy lobby as an expert on climate change and then sat back and let him deliver a presentation to the audience.
Minnesota Public Radio includes the next Bachmann public event on its list of "town hall meetings":
"Minn. delegation's town hall meeting schedule,"
by Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio
August 14, 2009
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/...
...but if you read reeeal carefully, you see that what Michele is announcing is not a town hall meeting. It is instead another one of her "forums"--which in the past has meant "no, I'm NOT going to be taking any un-screened questions live from constituents I don't know, thank you very much." The reason she gets away with this nonsense is that the local media keep reporting these one-way speeches by Bachmann and her guest as "town hall meetings."
Over at Dump Bachmann, a "Bachmann Bulletin" is quoted, announcing this "forum" as follows:
Health Care Reform Public Forum
(with Bachmann's special guest)
Congressman Michael Burgess, M.D.
Thursday, August 27th
Doors open at 1:45 pm
Forum runs 2:45 pm to 4:00 pm
Oak-Land Junior High School
820 Manning Avenue North, Lake Elmo
http://dumpbachmann.blogspot.com/...
Bachmann's guest, Congressman Burgess, was John McCain's go-to guy on health care issue. And what does he think about public health care? Well, he voted no, on adding 2 to 4 million children to SCHIP eligibility. He voted no, on requiring negotiated prescription prices for Medicare part D.
He kinda thinks that Americans should "go it alone" when it comes to health care, and he has a rating of "zero" from the American Public Health Association (the APHA, the oldest and largest organization of public health professionals in the world.) So he and Bachmann should get along just fine.
Back to the YouTube video of Bachmann on Hannity. The other interesting point there is a Freudian slip by Hannity. At about 5:36 in the video: Hannity (speaking of the angry town hall meeting strategy) says:
"If the government option has now been dropped, if they've dropped the death panels, if they've dropped the "rat on your neighbor" provision on the government website, and now they're not going to mass email people--isn't that evidence that those grandmothers that are showing up, and those veterans that are showing up, and those stay-at-home moms that are showing up, that those angry mobsters--that they've had a really profound effect, this August?"
Ouch! "Angry mobsters" battling health care reform at town hall meetings? Hannity subconciously "let the mask slip" there, for a second.
Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo points to another golden moment in the interview, and comments:
"It's interesting, a lot of members of Congress may have forgotten what their Constitution says," said Bachmann. "But again, it is not within our power as members of Congress, it's not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution for us to design and create a national takeover of health care. Nor is it within our ability to be able to delegate that responsibility to the executive."
So if Bachmann thinks federal activity in health care is illegal under the constitution, should Medicare be abolished immediately?
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Here's the video again:
(cross posted from Minnesota Progressive Project.)