Bred in conservative evangelical talk radio reality, Bachmann is used to a political climate in which even her most obvious lies can pass unchallenged.
So she sometimes prefers to "forget" that people who live in the real world will occasionally fact check her. That explains her claims about the turnout for the Glenn Beck rally in Washington DC. Here's Bachmann on the Laura Ingraham show:
"Unofficially, off the record, we talked to one of the guys from the National Park Police who told us he thought it was 1.6 million. There had to be over a million people there.Unofficially, off the record, we talked to one of the guys from the National Park Police who told us he thought it was 1.6 million. There had to be over a million people there. People were packed in from the Washington Monument all the way to the Lincoln Memorial."
But along comes this University of Arizona professor who's in the business of estimating crowd sizes from photographs. According to him, Bachmann "somewhere between 1 million and 1.6 million" estimate is--well, according to him it's ridiculous.
(continued)
It caught the reporters and the professional political media by surprise--but you guys, the ones who regularly read my Bachmann stuff here--*you* weren't that surprised, were you?
I'm referring to this:
Beck's marriage of politics and religion raising questions
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
A few weeks before organizing a massive rally on the Mall that had the feel of a religious revival, Glenn Beck sought the blessing of some of the country's most prominent conservative Christian leaders.
The Fox talk show host wanted their support as he shifted from political commentary to a more spiritual message, he told the group of about 20...
If you read these things I've been posting on Bachmann for the past five or six years--you already have an idea about who some of names in "the group of about 20" that Beck went to for support.
For five or six years now, I've been telling readers that the rise of Michele Bachmann and her proto-fascist garbage was facilitated by a religious right that has already been organized as "a de facto third party" in American politics.
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Read the story at the link below. It's an object lesson in why we have a nut, bigot and liar representing Minnesotans and other Americans in Congress.
This time it's Dennis Lien of the St. Paul Pioneer Press who's passing off a promotional piece as "journalism."
This is what Tarryl Clark is up against: she's not just up against the national right, the evangelical conservative right, the talk radio and Fox right--she's up against the local press, the big papers.
Michele Bachmann is the biggest news story in Minnesota and one of the most controversial figures in national politics. Knowing that, Lien and the PiPress run this:
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How do you get a grab of a truly offensive Republican YouTube video, so it doesn't disappear from history?
The reason I'm asking:
Here's the kind of discourse that Republicans in (Minnesota's State Senate) District 56 are interested in: The party website is now running a video about how "hot" Republican women are compared to "Democrat [sic] women." To the strains of Tom Jones' "She's a Lady," the video runs through a series of photos of GOP women in bikinis, evening gowns and, in Sarah Palin's case, Spandex. Then the Dems: women like Rosie O'Donnell, Janet Reno (pictured), Nancy Pelosi and Madeleine Albright - set to the song, "Who Let The Dogs Out?"
The stupidest story spin around the news cycle today was the "Dora the Explorer is an illegal immigrant" guy wasn't a real Rand Paul supporter" expose.
I don't want to go through the whole megillah again; there's a link the video below if you want to see the interview that's outraged the tea party. The short form is: a broadcast reporter, microphone in hand at an event centering around public presentation and performance of political parody--confronted a guy IN A TIN FOIL HAT with the charge that he wasn't a REAL Rand Paul supporter.
The reporter was outraged at this attempt by an attendee at political parody event to pass himself off as a Rand Paul supporter--insisting that the man's imposture was a SERIOUS attempt to deceive the public, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE MAN WAS WEARING A TIN FOIL HAT at the time the reporter was talking to him... (yes, I know I'm shouting, but I really think that the fact the man was wearing THE TIN FOIL HAT and attending a event that highlighted political satire should have tipped off the broadcast reporter as to the fact that the man in front of him was not a real Ron Paul supporter.)
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I know
that you know
the parallel universe exists.
Sorry to go all William Carlos Williams on you there for a second. But I want to make it clear that "I know, you already know" that a parallel universe of disinformation and false historical premises and twilight realities has already been constructed for Americans who call themselves "conservatives."
But what I want to know is: are you looking inside that parallel universe? Regularly? You should be, because about twenty-five to twenty-seven per cent of American voters choose to live there.
I know you know about Glenn Beck, and I know you know about Michele Bachmann. But are you aware of the extent of the vast support network that exists, beyond those high-profile demagogues?
(CONTINUED)
Well--according to Bachmann's Dem opponent Tarryl Clark--this is a real possibility. From Ben Smith at Politico, the text of a fund raising email:
Bachmann said she would run for president if she felt called to it, and said in another interview that it's not what she's doing "right now" - leaving the door wide open. She remarked recently to FOX News that her supporters want her to run for president. And Bachmann's multiple trips to Iowa prompted Politico to report:
"Bachmann has been receiving a little attention in conservative circles as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. And like so many other Republicans seeking a national profile, an early trip to Iowa, with its first-in-the-nation caucus, provides an opportunity to test-drive her presidential appeal."
Right wing violence. We're still waiting for the self-appointed spokespeople of the right to condemn it, but they won't even cover it. Bachmann mentioned, along with many others. Bill Press, for the HuffPo:
...the ugly stuff we hear daily from hate merchants Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and others is not only offensive. It's dangerous. Because there are too many nuts out there who hear ugly words as an invitation to commit ugly acts. Violent talk can lead to violent actions, and too often does.
Case in point. According to U.S. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer, threats of violence against Members of Congress and their families soared 300 percent in the first six months of 2010. "I voted for you," said one called to North Carolina Congressman Heath Shuler. "If you vote for that stimulus package, I'm gonna kill you. Simple as that." Other members were threatened for voting for health care reform.
News of this series of Bachmann statements (made during the course of a single interview) was published yesterday. I suppose that by tomorrow morning you will be able to find headlines about these statements in news outlets all over the country.
But we need a copy of this particular Bachmann grand slam for the archives here, so...
Michele Bachmann, from an audio recording of an interview given to an attendee of the GOP Youth Convention, July 22:
Transcript follows...
INTERVIEWER: I may be putting the cart before the horse here, but assuming the Republicans win the House back this next cycle: how do you feel about the chances for a little oversight and a little accountability now that the Republicans would have the subpoena power, how aggressive do you--
BACHMANN: Oh, I think that's all we should do...I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it's very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people's patience is about this big...
...So we have to make sure that we do what the people want us to do because one thing that you should is that the most dramatic story that's happened in the last 18 months is that the federal government - before 18 months ago, the private economy was 100 percent held in private hands. But today 65 percent of the economy is now held in government's hands - either in direct ownership or in control we're talking about. So we got to unravel that and we got to get the private sector back to being private and the government back to being government.
...This is the year - this is it. All of our chips are on November. If we don't get it back and then starve the beast - the House, we have the power of the purse - so we can starve ObamaCare. We don't have to fund any of these programs and that's exactly what we need to do - defund all of this nonsense and then unwind it.
So: you got that? The Republican agenda next year, as Bachmann sees it: take back Congress, defund Obamacare in order to kill it, reverse "the government takeover of 65 percent of the economy that started when the Obama administration came into office"--and devote the entire focus of the United States Congress to a never-ending investigation of Republican political opponents.
These are the priorities: nothing in there about cleaning up the oil spill, nothing in that agenda about the war in Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the war on terror around the world, nothing in there about controlling energy prices, nothing in that agenda about the economy and job creation. Instead: all investigations of Republican political opposition, all the time...the kind of government you see from corrupted "republics" in Central and South America and various failed democracies throughout the world.
Proto-fascism; in this case using the power of law and government to demonize, harass and stop any significant political opposition.
You think she's "just" a nut because she adopts this stand publicly? She's not "just" a nut: as of July 22 forty other members of Congress have signed up to join her Tea Party Caucus (that's up five from the total listed two days ago.) A British newspaper just identified her as the queen of the American right; she's got more money than any other member of Congress for re-election--and that money is being sent in in small amounts by people from all over the country who agree with her.
The agenda she's talking about is nuts, and she is nuts (as I've always maintained)-- but if you think that a nut must be irrelevant in politics simply by virtue of the fact that he/she is a nut: I would direct you to the history books to check out that opinion. Don't tell me that that can't happen here--it's happening here. She's announcing that it's happening here.
This will hurt her, because it will send money into the Tarryl Clark coffers. But it will help her as much as it will hurt her, because she is advocating what tens of millions of Americans believe should happen. They will be proud of her for advocating what they want. Bachmann represents them, and she has the support of a national conservative evangelical machine that is so powerful that it is able to veto Republican presidential candidacies.
If she wants, she can back up on the statements, she can evade or change the subject when she's asked about the statements in follow-up--but it doesn't matter: her supporters and mentors know that she means it. They know that this is how Michele Bachmann would change American government if she and her mentors and supporters are ever given the chance to do so.
What can I say; this is the story, this is why I devoted all these years to covering the career of this particular politician and the political movement that mentored her. It's horrible and fascinating. McCarthy on a pedestal, McCarthy sober and successful, McCarthy proceeding under the banner of Christ, nationally popular and on the rise...
My colleague the Big E wrote a post describing the fracas surrounding Bachmann's announcement yesterday: her attempt to release the names of the members of Congress who'd agreed to join her new "Tea Party Caucus."
As the E pointed out: there was some confusion about which congressmen had actually agreed to join her caucus. It turned out that some of them had not, even though she was reporting that they had.
And so it went, all day yesterday: names were deleted from the Bachmann website, then added: then the entire list was deleted for a while, and then some more names were added as Bachmann obtained the permissions she had claimed to have had. Other names were stricken from the list.
Last night I got the latest Bachmann allegations about which congressional representatives have joined her. The list appears below the jump, as do other aspects of this story.
(CONTINUED)
First, a photo dated May 8, 2010 from a Tax Cut Rally held at the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. Bachmann appeared as a scheduled speaker at the rally, which is hosted annually by right wing radio personality Jason Lewis:
President Obama, depicted as a chimpanzee.
Fast forward to yesterday, July 15, 2010. Bachmann announces her plan to give the Tea Party a permanent policy making presence on Capitol Hill.
(CONTINUED)
Tom Horner (the Independence Party's candidate for governor in Minnesota) and GOP nominee Tom Emmer have been at each others' throats this summer. Emmer's GOP sponsored a complaint against Horner regarding polling data but it was thrown out of court; Horner has charged Emmer's plan to nullify federal laws in Minnesota is a plan to "destroy government."
This is relevant here because (as last remark about nullification might tell you): Emmer is a Bachmann fan Republican, the tea party sort. If Emmer wins, that's the ideology that will proceed from the highest political office in Minnesota.
Emmer's GOP considers Horner a sell-out (i.e. moderate) Republican who joined the Independence Party in order to take moderate Republican votes away from Emmer.
Horner explains his position:
"I have been watching the Republican Party devolve with the rise of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin," Horner said. "There are issues of leadership in the willingness to pander to the extreme right wing."
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-BP) threatened suicide again at an event in Colorado. She was a guest speaker at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver. She spoke mostly about one of her most constant topics, the government takeover of everything.
"'We are determined to live free or not at all. And we are resolved that posterity shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into the world,'" Bachmann read from founding father John Jay , ending her reading with the statement, "We will talk a little bit about what has transpired in the last 18 months and would we count what has transpired into turning our country into a nation of slaves."
(Colorado Independent)
The last time she threatened suicide was when she urged fellow conservatives to "slit their wrists in a blood pact" to prevent health care reform from passing. In Colorado.
Why does she get so suicidal when she goes to Colorado?
"Shaping up to be the most expensive race in the country?" (See the link below.) How can can that be? Some of you have probably seen Michele Bachmann's Sixth District of Minnesota.
There's nothing "sexy" about this district, in and of itself. It's mostly white as vanilla ice cream, full of hard working Minnesotans and their families, small towns north and east of the Twin Cities...suburban sprawl spreading to create exurbs where there were farms (just twenty years ago)...
...but you can still drive past a lot of pretty farms. And this fall many of them will be sporting Bachmann signs...
(CONTINUED)
Tired of the "suffocating clutches of socialism?" Then why not join Michele Bachmann and Anne Coulter at their five-star accomodations in "Miami's storied Doral Golf Resort and Spa" this September?
Enjoy a Doral "Reveal Peel" Facial Treatment with Anne while you brainstorm ways to stop the federal government from crucifying you, the taxpayer. Or chill as massive muscular masseuses give you and Michele a damn good rubdown while she explains the threat that affordable public access to health care represents to American freedom.
But be careful not to miss your tee time! Don't keep featured celebs Tom Tancredo, "Bible expositor" Chuck Missler and "heroine of the ACORN sting" Hannah Giles waiting. Your foursome can spend quality time warning each other of the coming apocalypse engineered by the far left Dem cabal that's taken over America as you challenge the long fairways, undulating greens, a deep Bermuda rough and a unique assortment of water hazards.
(CONTINUE)
