Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is at it again. She repeated her stance that she would abolish social security and medicare if given the chance. ThinkProgress has the details:
Speaking to a small group of conference attendees and ThinkProgress during lunch on Saturday, Bachmann outlined how the Republican Party and its 2012 nominee must address the national debt. Bachmann referenced Glenn Beck, who falsely warned about a $107 trillion in supposed "unfunded liabilities" from Social Security and Medicare. She then called for a "reorganization" of entitlements where people "already in the system" would continue to receive benefits, but "everybody else" would be weaned off:
BACHMANN: Is the country too big to fail? No, the country can fail. We can, we're not invincible. And we're so close now to being at that point because the thing is, as Glenn Beck said last night, it is true. The $107 trillion that he put on the board. We're $14 trillion in debt, but that doesn't include the unfunded massive liabilities. That's $107 trillion, and that's for Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. You add up all those unfunded net liabilities, and all the traps that could go wrong we're on the hook for, and what it means is what we have to do is a reorganization of all of that, Social Security and all. We have to do it simply because we can't let the contract remain as they are because the older people are going to lose. So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don't have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off. And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can't do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.
Rep. Michele Bachmman (R-MN) has got ideas on how to save America from Obamacare. She's going to stop those death panels and socialists from ruining America. She's apparently going to announce her very own Bachmann-care! Unfortunately, her secret plans of how to save America were leaked.
It appears that Bachmann-care won't cover anyone without health insurance or ... actually ... do much of anything at all except score her political points with the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who will likely mistake this for policy.
A GOP source passes along an embargoed copy of Michele Bachmann's "Declaration of Health Care Independence" - an alternative blueprint for health care that is supposed to shed the party of its "party of no" label by giving voters an option.
The declaration was circulated to GOP staffers with the prohibition, "PLEASE DO NOT SEND THIS TO ANYONE. The document is to be embargoed until after the press conference on Wednesday. Let me know if you any questions!"
The document turns out to be less than specific - mostly a litany of Bachmann's favorite pledges to fight socialized medicine and uphold the Constitution.
It makes no mention of goals articulated by many in Republican leadership, including health care portability, removal of coverage caps and scrapping coverage denial based on pre-existing conditions.
It does contain a vow to hit Democrats on three wedge issues by coaxing signees to back abortion bans, blocking benefits to undocumented immigrants and a prohibition on the public option.
(Politico)
Detailed examination of her silliness after the break.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had quite a year. In 2009, she stepped even further to the forefront of the conservative movement. She appeared frequently on Fox News and right wing radio and often headlined conservative rallies. She was nominated for Lie of the Year and featured on Keith Olbermann's World's Worst Person segment 10 times. The only people Olbermann featured more frequently were nationally-known figures like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly.
While there were many candidates for her most astounding moment, the jaw dropper was her behavior at a anti-healthcare reform rally in Colorado. She thought nobody would be paying attention as she was so far from DC and her home district.
"This cannot pass," the Minnesota Republican told a crowd at a Denver gathering sponsored by the Independence Institute. "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass."
So join me at the intersection of Bizarro Blvd and False Witness Lane for an in-depth review of 2009 for Michele Bachmann.
I guess I've not been paying attention for longer than I thought. Way back on Dec. 16th, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) referenced the "Charge of the Light Brigade" regarding her and her fellow teabaggers efforts to oppose healthcare reform. If she'd only paid better attention during history class. Or maybe this is a freudian slip?
Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) continued ethical lapses are getting noticed. Bachmann had used her House website to promote her rally against healthcare reform. Now Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) want an investigation into this lapse.
Watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has requested an investigation into whether Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) broke House rules in organizing an anti-health care reform rally on November 5.
In a letter sent to the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), CREW contends that Bachmann violated House rules by using her official member's website to garner "grassroots lobbying" for the health care protest in question.
The Members' Handbook specifies: The content of a Member's Website... [may] not include grassroots lobbying or solicit support for a Member's position." CREW argues that Bachmann broke this rule.
(Huffington Post)
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) may have gotten herself into even more ethical trouble. In her efforts to promote her healthcare protest that occurred last week, she used her official House website to promote it.
Did a rally geared at saving government resources actually misuse them?
Could be, at least technically. Rep. Michele Bachmann's House home-page shout-out to tea party types for her Nov. 5 rally on the West Front steps may have violated the letter of the administration committee's rules on the use of official, taxpayer-funded websites.
(Politico)
So we can add misusing her House website to promote a mob rally, to using her House mail account to send mail to people in Colorado (Congresscritters can only use House mail accounts to mail to constituents), to misusing her House website to link to townhall.com (a far right website), to promising to break the law (a violation of House rules) by refusing to participate in the census.
This was mentioned on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight and hopefully an investigation into her multiple ethics violations will be forthcoming.
I knew that there was at least some hope once Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert took notice of Michele Bachmann.
Here is the Daily Show segment on the passage health care bill, which features the Bachmann anti-health care bill rally on the steps of the Capitol and the humongous sign there depicting the body of Jews murdered during the Holocaust. And there's also footage of Michele in Congress wearing an Hawaiian "lei" while denouncing health care, explaining that the person who made the lei also created our freedom. And there is a little baby that appears on the floor of Congress to denounce health care reform, too.
This is one of the signs displayed at Bachmann's rally against health care. Congressman John Kline told a radio audience that about one hundred members of the Republican Conference in Congress appeared in person in outside the Capitol to support the demonstrators.
So: do lawmakers like Bachmann and her Republican colleagues have a responsibility to condemn the hate signs they see at these events? Or do they sign on to the hatred and encourage it when they fail to condemn it or even distance themselves from it?
Here's Democrat Steve Israel, Bachmann's congressional colleague from New York:
The St. Petersburg Times' award winning site PoliticiFact researches and analyzes statements from politicians. They then rank them on a Truth-O-Meter scale from "true" to "mostly true" to "half true" to "barely true" to "false" and finally "pants on fire." Every statement from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) gets either "false" or "pants on fire."
Michele Bachmann
Page 92 of the House health care bill "says specifically that people can't purchase private health insurance after a date certain."
Ezekiel Emanuel, one of President Obama's key health care advisers, "says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled."
Ha ha. Just kidding. I was thinking of what Louis XVI wrote in his diary on the day that the Bastille fell:
"Riens."
"Riens," by the way, means "nothing."
So: the first reports I've seen today (I just got up) say that the mob in Washington numbers about two thousand. As we know here, you can't trust trad media reports on crowd turnout. But even assuming that two thousand is a good approximation--that's not a good turnout to represent a revolt.
(continued)
Ah, come on--one more quick Bachmann story before we go to the elections.
Just 44 minutes ago, more false witness from America's most notorious evangelical conservative:
PolitiFact: In recent statement, Bachmann's pants are 'on fire'
Last update: November 3, 2009 - 5:31 PM
By Baird Helgeson
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel show last month that the House health care bill prohibits people from buying private health insurance after a certain date.
(But according to Politifact:)
"Bachmann isn't just guilty of misinterpreting the language from one page of the bill. She's taken that misinterpretation to a ridiculous extreme -- the claim that no private insurance could be sold after a certain date...That ignores the central tenet of a plan that's been discussed for months -- that the plan would rely on a marketplace of private insurance."
...
(Politifact) reviewed seven of Bachmann's statements in the past year. It found three of her statements to be false and four got a rating of "pants on fire."
So she's seven and O as this week, just like my beloved New Orleans Saints. Truly astonishing. Seven high profile claims by Bachmann evaluated; seven high profile claims exposed as lies.
And this is the rising star of the Republican Party: a role model for other politicians, according to conservatives!
On October 30, Rep. Michele Bachmann appeared on national television (the "Hannity" program) and urged Americans to come to D.C. and enter the halls of Congress. She told viewers that the current health care reform battle was a liberty v. tyranny moment, and that they should appear in Congress, in person, to get in the faces of her congressional colleagues.
I ran a poll on the Kos after she made that announcement. Only about 115 Kossacks participated, but the overwhelming majority of those polled said that she wouldn't get her mob; it would be a washout.
But now we're starting to see a little action in support of Michele. (continued)
Last night on the Sean Hannity Show, Michele Bachmann asked Americans to join her on a march into the United States Capitol to protest the proposed health care reform bill. That's right, and open invitation to a national audience to show up on the Capitol steps, on Thursday at "high noon," Washington D.C. time. Michele hopes that a mob will invade the halls of Congress and make their opposition known to her elected colleagues. (You can see the video below, in the post.)
This would be a big score for Michele personally, if a large number of the tea baggers and the town hall meeting screechers take her up on this invitation. Very good video, from Michele's point of view--because she's nuts and thrives on proto-fascism.
Now there are some issues here. First of all--we (you, me, Michele) live in a representative democracy. There are instances in which Americans opposed to a government policy show up at the capitol to protest that policy. But here we have an elected official going on television to organize a mob of her own in order to influence the course of legislation by intimidating her colleagues.
In the proto-fascist universe of this elected official, it's okay to do that--to organize a mob to intimidate your colleagues in office into doing your will.
(Keep reading after the jump and watch the video, this is good stuff, classic crazy extremist Bachmann...continued)
It's not really news, except that one of Bachmann's TownHall press releases got cross-posted to the Hill...
...which means that someone at the Hill thinks that mindless conservative BS needs to be considered seriously by Hill readers...
...which is news, I guess.
Bachmann has been telling Americans that they have to "slash their wrists" to fight Dem health care reform. And in the Hill piece she hotly denies that Republicans have offered no alternative. (continued)
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) went off on a rant against former Senators Bob Dole and Bill Frist today on Laura Ingraham's radio show. Bachmann lives in an over-simplified black/white, good/evil world and seems incapable of understanding anything that doesn't easily fit into her worldview. For example, it doesn't make any sense in her small world that a Republican would want healthcare reform.
Dole and Frist aren't ready to slit their wrists in any pacts with Bachmann to oppose any kind of healthcare reform. This makes her very, very confused. Since they don't agree with her completely, they must be bad and/or wrong.
INGRAHAM: Of course. God bless Bob Dole he just came on our show, I have great respect for the man. And also for Frist. But Frist presided over a pretty disastrous situation in the Senate.
BACHMANN: They lost.
INGRAHAM: They lost. And Bob Dole lost how many times on a national level? I guess I've lost count. [...] That Republican ideology and that Republican outlook has been a losing outlook. That's why President Obama wants more of us to be like them.
BACHMANN: Because we want a pro-freedom agenda. And he's trying to throw people around who he believes will increase a non-pro-freedom agenda.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had quite a year. In 2009, she stepped even further to the forefront of the conservative movement. She appeared frequently on Fox News and right wing radio and often headlined conservative rallies. She was nominated for Lie of the Year and featured on Keith Olbermann's World's Worst Person segment 10 times. The only people Olbermann featured more frequently were nationally-known figures like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly.
