As regular MPP readers know, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) loves herself some conspiracy theories. She reliably has a new one each month. This time, President Obama is giving out judgeships to bribe Democrats and she wants an investigation. Here's what she had to say on Larry King Live last night:
BACHMANN: Because today, the president offered a judgeship to the brother of a member of Congress. Tonight, the president has that same member of Congress at the White House, pressuring him to change his vote on health care. We need to have an - an independent investigation into this matter, because we've seen the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase the union loophole. And now, the big question is, is the White House trading health care votes for judgeships? This is a pretty serious issue, Larry. ...If you offer a judgeship to a brother of a member of Congress and the same night you have that member at the White House, where the president's twisting his arm to ask that member of Congress to switch his vote on health care?
(Think Progress)
I know you'll be shocked, but this is a lie. Let's examine how Bachmann came to believe in this latest conspiracy theory.
I always enjoy posting here at Minnesota Progressive Project. Please see my following response to President Barack Obama. I'd love to hear what you think. Imagine having a governor who fights to put in single-payer healthcare! Imagine the example that Minnesota could provide for the other 49 states?
And that's funny, because ever since the Dems got it through, the GOP and Fox News (is there a difference?) have been telling Americans that it wasn't gonna work.
Fastest quarter of growth since 2003. Thank you, President Obama and the Dem majority, it took courage to spend to stave off a depression and bring back economic growth. From USA Today:
Obama gets good economic news
08:43 AM
By Mark Wilson, Getty Images
President Obama has some good economic news to bring with him to Baltimore later this morning -- the economy grew by 5.7% from October through December of 2009.
It's the fastest quarter of growth since 2003; it's also the second straight quarter of growth, signaling the end of the recent recession.
Jeez, I am so glad to be breaking some good news this week. If next week's unemployment figures reflect the growth this quarter, we'll be able to turn Reagan's old joke against the Republicans:
If you get invited to a costume party, just put a little egg on your face and go as a conservative.
Conservative tweeps (Twitter users) were abuzz with excitement yesterday. Their hero, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was going to stage some sort of protest in relation to President Obama's state of the union speech. It got me wondering.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is gearing up for another demonstration at the Capitol building tomorrow, protesting in advance of President Obama's State of the Union address -- and to mark this occasion, she's been rolling out a "Declaration of Health Care Independence."
(Talking Points Memo)
Will she use this as an opportunity to urge her fellow knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers to revolution again? Possibly. We'll be watching for any new conspiracy theories, but she tends to stick to already debunked lies when she has a major spotlight. She usually unveils her latest insane theory when she thinks no "libruls" are listening/watching.
Twenty-five "Minnesotans for Peace" (including myself) are setting off today for Washington D.C. where we plan to exercise our First Amendment right to "Peaceable Assembly" (before the Supreme Court and the corporations take that right away). We will also exercise our throwing arms a little, too, as we deliver our message in less conventional ways along with other Creative Voices for Non-Violence. We may even take a cue from Muntazer al-Zaidi and throw our peace shoes at the White House!
Of course we'll also be busy with more conventional meetings with our elected congresspersons and Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, pleading with them to take more active roles. (It does not appear that Congress has even declared war, as the Constitution requires.) We'll each be carrying tombstones with the names of Minnesotans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've dripped red paint to look like blood and hand-stenciled our group t-shirts. We also sent the following letter to President Obama last week asking for a meeting with him as there is only so much one can say on a shoe and under international law, it's incumbent on all citizens to do what they can to stop torture and other war crimes. At the very least, we will try to be near where Obama gives his State of the Union speech so we can represent the views of the majority of average citizens who want the wars and the war crimes to end.
January 15, 2010
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama:
On January 26 and 27, over 20 Minnesotans will be traveling to Washington D.C. to participate in the Peaceable Assembly campaign, a national campaign to demand alternatives to U.S. militarism.
We are requesting a meeting with you or a designated staff person as we vigil at the White House on Tuesday, January 26 between 10:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. We ask that you or your designate contact us to arrange this meeting. As citizens, we have the right to speak to our elected officials, including those making these decisions at the highest level.
Your request to spend a record $708 billion for Defense Department funds next year, as well as another $33 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is unconscionable and unacceptable. We call on your administration to 1) cut off funding for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and 2) carry out a prompt end to U.S. combat engagement, and an orderly, prompt withdrawal of all U.S. forces and bases from these countries. -Peace and security in the region will not be gained through a military solution. Former Minnesotan Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, reports that $1,000,000 (the cost to put one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for a year) would fund the opening of 20 to 30 schools providing education for thousands of Afghani students.
Please meet with us while we are in Washington in order to explain your exit strategy, which must include a plan to provide aid and reconstruction of these countries. Your request to spend nearly $1 trillion on war, death, and destruction is not going to bring peace and prosperity to anyone - in the United States or abroad.
We are suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and spending those funds on war will further damage our economy. It's outrageous to waste so much of our national wealth on war when so many other needs are pressing.
Thank you for your prompt response. You may contact our delegation through: Marie & John Braun (address and contact info) Minneapolis, MN 55412.
Sincerely,
Marie Braun Mary Percich Coleen Rowley
John Braun Angelo Percich Delia Jurek
Diane Haugesag John Schmid Rebecca Kramer
George Pridmore Mickey Patterson Steve Clemens
Ward Brennen Vicki Andrews Joe Palen
Maxine McNamara Mel Thorson Bill Habedank
Grace Kamrath Sue Ann Martinson Audrey Wesley
Duane Kamrath Ann Turner Robert Palmer
We've witnessed how easy it was to start the wars and how very difficult it is to end them. Heaven only knows how many meetings with elected leaders, these last eight years, how many millions of letters, postcards and e-mails have been sent! We've worn out our shoes marching for peace! We've stood in summer and winter with banners and signs over highways and on bridges. We've even snowblogged for peace. We supported political campaigns promising hope and change and we even voted thinking it might help. There's probably a creative limit to what one can do with old shoes and snow, and we, the people, are not so foolish as to believe that we can compete with the big money of the profit-driven military industrial complex or other special interests for war but we remember these words of (former Minnesota cub reporter) Molly Ivins and we must try.
"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous... We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it now!"
Well, most of us have slept on the news that Martha Coakley lost Ted Kennedy's Senate seat to a nobody with an (R) after his name.
As ericf says in a decidedly Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy way, Don't panic. The real Senate Democratic Conference is still at around 55 members, if you remove names like Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, and Baucus, who will take every chance they get to run away from their party rather than dancing with the ones who brung'em. That's a far superior scenario to the alternative. And let's face it, in a presidential year, in Massachusetts, trying to hold onto Ted Kennedy's seat, Scott Brown is screwed as long as Massachusetts Dems don't nominate a Coakley-esque political buffoon again (fool me once, etc).
The next move in the national dialog belongs to President Barack Obama. In case you haven't heard, there's this State of the Union thing, where the President basically gets the bully pulpit to himself for a night, and our President has a choice: does he continue trying to build bridges to nowhere, where the Party of No will bite the hand he offers him and America continues losing confidence in his abilities, or does he return to the ideas and positions that got him elected, clean house in the West Wing, and make America believe again?
Those two paths have names: Jimmy Carter and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
...at least the Majority Leader didn'tcall Obama a "power-hungry arrogant black man."
Something to keep in mind if any local Republicans get uppity about Sen. Reid's comment. Or, as Joan Walsh put it,
Meanwhile, Steele and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl are shrieking "double standard," comparing Reid's comments to the stunning 2002 musings of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who had to resign after he said the country would have been better off if it had elected Dixiecrat segregationist Strom Thurmond president in 1948. Oh sure: One guy is talking, perhaps inelegantly, about why he's wholeheartedly supporting our first black president; the other is wishing the country had elected a racist. That's exactly the same thing!
(Yesterday, I did my seventh year of candle vigil for peace. I am committed for life, no matter what happens. Yet everywhere I hear the anger and disappointment of the unfulfilled expectations of President Obama. - promoted by Grace Kelly)
Patience became the 2009 mantra of the gay rights movement, which generally supports Democrats. Many activists believe that in his heart Obama supports their flagship issues: the ability to serve openly in the armed forces, to be protected from employment in the workplace, and the right to marry (even though he's on record as favouring civil unions over marriage). But they've received almost nothing for their troubles. What the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community has learned this year is that the president is ultimately a pragmatist. Although his very presence in the White House is the stuff of culture wars, Obama himself is reluctant to wade into one. Moreover, if socially divisive policies have the potential to compromise his legislative agenda, Obama has proven that he simply won't pursue them. Expect this tension to become more acute as the 2010 elections loom-and for gay rights to be shunted aside again. The last thing this pragmatist president will do is hand election-year ammunition to an already energised conservative base that's venomously opposed to gay marriage.
Indeed!
The GLBT dream sheet from the 2008 election has been burnt shortly after it was revealed that HRC Chair Joe Solmonese threw the GLBT agenda under the proverbial bus shortly after Obama's inauguration. In fact, by April 2009, even the GLBT community's "patron saint" Barney Frank (D-MA) was alluding to a repeal of DADT in 2010 as a piece of burnt toast offered to the starving family dog.
Minnesota's foremost proponent of torture, Robert Delahunty may get off the hook. The University of Saint Thomas Law School professor may get off the hook because his collaborator on the infamous torture memo, John Yoo, may get off the hook as well. This memo was critical in the Bush Administration's rationalization that the Geneva conventions against torture didn't apply to people capture in the War on Terror.
The Holder Justice Department has filed a sweeping amicus brief in the Padilla v. Yoo case before the Ninth Circuit, seeking to make absolute the immunity granted Justice Department lawyers who counsel torture, disappearings, and other crimes against humanity. The case was brought by Jose Padilla, who claims that he was tortured as the direct result of memoranda written by Yoo, now a law professor at Berkeley. At this stage, the case does not address the factual basis of Padilla's claims, but documents that have been declassified by the Department of Justice make it clear that the charges have a firm basis in fact. Here's the portion of the opinion authored by a lifelong Republican, Bush-appointed judge that the Justice Department found so objectionable:
"Like any other government official, government lawyers are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct...."
The Holder Justice Department insists that they are absolutely not responsible, and that they are free to act according to a far lower standard of conduct than that which governs Americans generally. Indeed, this has emerged as a sort of ignoble mantra for the Justice Department, uniting both the Bush and Obama administrations.
(Harper's)
This is yet another instance of where Hope and Change meet the same ol' same old. Keith Olbermann discussed this on Countdown tonight with Jonathan Turley.
Last evening's unpermitted march organized by area young people was extremely successful in garnering area media attention (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) just as the press conference at MayDay Bookstore was the night before and hopefully the rally being organized by "Youth Against War and Racism" and the Iraq Peace Action Coalition will be on Saturday. (Please come! 1 pm at Hiawatha and Lake, Minneapolis.)
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty might want to focus his reported interest in the White House a little more at home for right now.
Forty-six percent (46%) of Minnesota voters say they would not vote for Pawlenty if he wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state.
These numbers track Pawlenty's performance in his previous two statewide races -- strong enough to consolidate the Republican base and GOP-leaning voters, but never strong enough to appeal to enough moderate and independent voters to get a majority. Pawlenty is a skilled politician, but in recent weeks has shown his scorched-earth base-politics approach off for RNC figures, and that approach does not play well in statewide or national elections.
Especially when there's little to no chance of a third-party spoiler to help him into office. Oh, and in case we forgot, the GOP nominee will face the task of flipping several Obama states in order to thread the needle for a win.
This is one case where failing upward just ain't gonna happen.
Calling Fox News out for what it really is -- the PR wing of the Republican media machine -- is obviously and exactly like wanting to destroy the Brookings Institute. Or sending "plumbers" into the Watergate building. Or instituting the "Southern Strategy" of emphasizing dog-whistle racism in political campaigns to turn out white non-hippie votes.
...When he drops into Minnesota for a visit, that is.
1.) Do you think Minnesota's system, in which HMOs are required to be non-profit organizations, is a good one?
2.) If no, do you have an explanation for that position?
3.) If yes why are you proposing an "Interstate Health Insurance Compact" that would deny Minnesota its constitutionally guaranteed right to regulate commerce within its own borders and essentially drive the non-profit HMO system into the ditch?
4.) Have any of your advisors noted how many jobs in Minnesota would be lost if your IHIC proposal made the health insurance industry just like the credit card industry, in which one or two states have all the industry's jobs because they are willing to bend over backward the furthest to satisfy the industry's demands?
5.) Can you provide examples of insurance providers in other states which are doing a significantly better job of providing affordable coverage while not undermining their policy-holders' health through refusal of coverage for pre-existing conditions and the like?
6.) Are you aware that John McCain proposed a similar idea during the 2008 presidential election and was defeated by a huge margin both in the Electoral College and in the national popular vote?
7.) Do you care about Minnesota and its leadership among the several states on issues from education to health insurance reform, or is opposition to President Obama's agenda -- a popular agenda, mind you -- so important to your presidential ambitions that you just don't care about the other stuff anymore?
Okay, #7 is a bit loaded, I can admit that much. Let's face it though, Pawlenty's proposals have nothing to do with actually building a meaningful reform of America's current sick care system and everything to do with demonstrating to the GOP base that he has something to say in opposition to President Obama's agenda.
Today Organizing for America, the political arm of President Obama, set a goal of making 100,000 calls to Congress for the President's Plan for Healthcare Reform. That includes a public health insurance option. Well it's only 3:54 CT right now and already 171,215 have called their members of Congress.
This is unprecedented. More than any "tea party" or protests or ads this is what members of Congress will look at when they are thinking about how to vote on a public option and how to vote on healthcare reform. If you haven't yet, call both of your Senators as well as your representative. If they are already strongly behind healthcare reform and a public option thank them for it (for example, when you call Franken). If they still need a little nudging tell your personal story about why healthcare is important to you and urge them to back real healthcare reform that includes a strong public option.
That will give you the numbers for our representatives in Congress and will let you report how the calls went so calls can be tracked.
And let us know in the comments if you've made a call. Anyone called one of our "moderates" like Rep. Peterson to see where he is standing now? Let us know.
