"Bachmann's concept of Christian love brims with hate"

NYT's Frank Bruni on GOP House member, and former Republican presidential hopeful, Michele Bachmann:

Bachmann’s concept of Christian love brims with hate, and she has a deep satchel of stones to throw. From what kind of messiah did she learn that?

I know many progressive, big-hearted Christians who rise to that challenge, and it’s wrong for a single Christian label — without asterisk or annotation — to be attached both to them and to the likes of Bachmann.

So maybe it’s time for annotations. Most of us distinguish, rightly, between Muslim extremists and other followers of Islam. Perhaps we should start noting the difference between Christians of real compassion and those of exclusionary spite.

Bachmann’s on to something: dangerous fundamentalists have indeed set up camp deep inside the capital. She can find one in her office. She need only look in the mirror.

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Wash Post editorial on Michele Bachmann's loony racist attack on Hillary staffer

Washington Post:

TO CONSPIRACY theorists like Rep. ­Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the Obama administration’s approach to the Arab world is the product not of considered diplomacy but of wicked “influence operations,” traceable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agents. Exhibit A among those agents with murky “ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood, Ms. Bachmann warns darkly, is Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Ms. Bachmann’s accusations are in the squalid tradition of McCarthyism and other shameful chapters of our history in which politicians have slandered their rivals as un-American, allied with enemy forces or guilty by association with shadowy forces. Her tactics are no less ugly than those of her predecessors.

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Bachmann endorses Romney right after she says he can't beat Obama

Oops.

I do like how, Bachmann also says that you have to have a candidate like Ronald Reagan in order to win. (You mean, someone who raised taxes 11 times, and who supported gay rights before running for president?) Why? Why has everyone accepted the lie that the only true Republican is a conservative Republican? Why isn't the only true Republican a moderate Republican, or a liberal Republican? It doesn't even make sense to suggest that the guy on the fringe of the party is the "real" representative of the party. She's one representative of one wing of the party, sure. But "the" representative? I don't think so. Read the rest of this post...

Dear God, what a photo of Bachmann in the Post

I was going to write about the story, but then saw the photo accompanying the story.  Dear God.  She looks like someone threw water on her and took her broom.  (Or maybe...)

The Post article is quite good on its own. You see, Michele Bachmann recently opined that gay people can already marry in America since they can marry straight people.  Putting aside the question of why Bachmann is such an expert on straight women marrying gay men, the Post's Alexandra Petri has the perfect response - do read it.

PS Of course, Bachmann, as usual, is wrong about her facts.  Gay people can already legally wed in parts of America, including Iowa, where she gave the incorrect answer that only opposite-sex marriages are legal in America. Read the rest of this post...

"President" Bachmann vows to close non-existent US embassy in Iran

When people wonder why the political class is such a failure, look no further than the Tea Party's "leader" in Congress.

In light of the British Foreign Ministry pulling all U.K. nationals out of the British embassy in Tehran after students stormed the building in protest, GOP presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann told a crowd in Waverly, Iowa, today that she would close the U.S. embassy in Iran.

One small, tiny note: The U.S. hasn’t had an embassy in Tehran since 1980. Following the Iranian Hostage Crisis, where 52 Americans were held for 444 days, the United States cut all diplomatic ties.

According to reports, Bachmann applauded the U.K.’s move, adding, “That’s exactly what I would do [if I were president]. We wouldn’t have an embassy in Iran. I wouldn’t allow that to be there."

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OWS protesters interrupt Michele Bachmann during speech, she leaves

OWS photo via Shutterstock

This is pretty wild. She didn't know what to do. Finally the cop suggested she leave.

I will say, that human megaphone thing, neat idea in principle, kind of creepy in practice. Though in this case it has its desired effect to get attention, get your message heard, and make the video far more interesting for cable news. Read the rest of this post...

Bachmann: The Founding Fathers chose to have the NYSE in NYC rather than DC

Bachmann quoted today by MSNBC's First Read:

"You see, there's a reason our Founding Fathers decided to establish our political capital in a different city than our financial capital, because it's time for us to reaffirm the wisdom of that decision by getting Washington D.C., out of free markets. And I'm running for president of the United States because I understand the difference between free markets and a Bernie Madoff style of government."

Personally, I blame George Washington for Internet porn, even though most experts blame Jefferson.

Okay I just googled it.  Even when her dates aren't that off she's flat out wrong. The NYSE was established in the early 1800s in NYC.  So, age wise, it's possible that one of the Founding Fathers had a hand in all of this 35 years after the Revolutionary War.  But according to the history of the NYSE, there's no such mention.

The origin of the NYSE can be traced to May 17, 1792, when the Buttonwood Agreement was signed by 24 stock brokers outside of 68 Wall Street in New York under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street.[8] On March 8, 1817, the organization drafted a constitution and renamed itself the "New York Stock & Exchange Board." Anthony Stockholm was elected the Exchange's first president.

Then we look to the history of our nation's capital and the capitol building.

Before 1791, the federal government had no permanent site. The early Congresses met in eight different cities: Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton, and New York City. The subject of a permanent capital for the government of the United States was first raised by Congress in 1783; it was ultimately addressed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution (1787), which gave the Congress legislative authority over "such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of Particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States. ..."

So at the time of the Founding Fathers we had no set city where Congress met. It wasn't until 1787 that they picked DC for the Congress. And it wasn't until 1800 that they moved the capital to DC.  And if you really get into the details, then the origin of the NYSE can be traced back to 1792, after DC was already chosen as the capital.  But the folks who founded the stock exchange were all stock brokers - there doesn't appear to be a political hand in all of this.

The real question is whether the Founding Fathers intentionally chose DC as our capital because they wanted to have it separate than our financial capital.  And there's a great explanation here of the back and forth in choosing the capital, and none of it has anything to do with making the financial capital a different place. Read the rest of this post...

Bachmann, Perry, Romney, Cain all supported Democrats in previous elections

Interesting find from Ryan Lizza:

Bachmann voted 4 Carter in 76, Perry supported (& voted 4?) Gore in 88, Romney voted 4 Tsongas in 92 & Cain voted 4 Clinton in 92.

That is interesting, particularly since Bachmann criticized Perry at a recent GOP debate for having supported Gore in 88, and she voted for Carter. I can't believe Perry wasn't prepared for that. And that Bachmann was dumb enough to criticize Perry for something she herself had done. Read the rest of this post...

Bachman owed departed NH staff a months wages.

Looks like the Bachmann campaign is in its crash and burn phase.

How can a candidate claim to be looking out for the interests of the country when they can't even be bothered to pay their own staff? Maybe I have can still hope that Bachmann, Paul and Perry manage to get enough delegates to force a brokered convention on the GOP. Read the rest of this post...

What was up with Michele Bachmann’s jacket at the GOP debate?

As Joe My God reports, Twitter was abuzz with folks trying to get a handle on Michele Bachmann's weird white paramilitary jacket at last night's GOP debate.  WafflesAtNoon has assembled some of the best tweets about it, here are a few:

JeffLassiter
Michele Bachmann looks like she’s running for President of the Love Boat in that jacket

TheDCVince
Ok, I admit it. Bachmann definitely borrowed Gaddafi’s winter jacketfor tonight’s debate.

JoeMyGod
I can’t hear Bachmann over the loud jacket from JCPenny’s Lady Dictator line.

3x1minus1
I just really wish @andersoncooper would ask Bachmann “WHAT is UP with that JACKET?”

KYColChad
Nice jacket, Bachmann, but you left your twirling baton and the rest of the band back at the hotel.

MikeDrucker
Michele Bachmann looks like she’s running for Space Emperor.

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Video: Michele Bachmann bad lip-sync

Funny as hell (once you get beyond the incredibly annoying background music).

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Bachmann thanks caller for saying he’d vote for serial killer over Obama

Add it to the list of things a Democratic presidential candidate would never get away with. Read the rest of this post...

Bachmann: Obama did not do enough to preserve dictatorships in the Middle East

Bachmann and her ilk are pretty disgusting people. But her latest argument is truly revolting. Bachmann thinks that Obama did too little to save the dictatorship of Mubarak. According to the National Review:

In a speech to about 400 Republicans gathered for the state party’s fall convention here, the three-term Minnesota congresswoman blamed President Obama for “the hostilities of the Arab spring” and expressed regret that “we saw (Egyptian) President (Hosni) Mubarak fall while President Obama sat on his hands.”

Just what is so special about Israel that the populations of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, a total of over 100 million people should have to live under brutal dictatorships just in case democracy might be a threat? Margaret Thatcher believed the opposite, pointing out to Gorbachev that two democracies had never gone to war against each other.

The US has a long history of backing dictatorships in the region and the current government of Iran is a direct product of that policy. Back in 1953 Iran had a democratically elected government. That was too much of a threat as far as the Dulles brothers were concerned and so they arranged a coup to eliminate the democratic government and install the Shah as a dictator, the first CIA organized coup.

Propping up crumbling dictators like Bachmann urges is a fool's bet. Carter did not make a mistake in refusing to save the Shah, that was never an option. The mistake Carter and Ford made was not cutting their losses and openly abandoning the Shah when it became clear that he had lost popular support. Read the rest of this post...

Second City takes on Michele Bachmann

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Bachmann again talks up drilling for oil in Everglades

Putting aside the significant potential for damage to the Everglades, do people like Bachmann ever think about the money the Everglades generates today for tourism? One oil spill and it's gone. It's the same with other delicate environments where extremists like her want to drill. The US gets a lot more out of not drilling than it could ever get from drilling and then dealing with a spill. Read the rest of this post...

Bachmann says people are worried about the rise of the Soviet Union

Which disappeared over 20 years ago. Read the rest of this post...

Michele Bachmann claimed she was a doctor, she’s not

That's just bizarre on many levels. Who goes around calling themselves "Doctor" when they're not an MD or a PhD? Again, it's just kind of weird. From Mother Jones:

And one more thing—lest you think she doesn't have the brains to do battle with Obama, she rattles off her degrees: "I'm not only a lawyer, I have a post-doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary," she told Fox News' Chris Wallace in June. "I work in serious scholarship."

Post doc? Not quite. She got an LL.M. Which means you go for another year of school after you get your law degree, in order to specialize in some field. Big deal. It certainly doesn't permit you to call yourself a "doctor," and every lawyer knows it. But that didn't stop Bachmann.

But there was one resume item that was missing: a Ph.D. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Bachmann traveled the state as an education activist, she went by "Dr. Michele Bachmann," even though she had never obtained nor sought the advanced degree that's a prerequisite for the title.

She ran all over the state telling people she was a doctor because she had an LLM. That's seriously messed up.

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Do Bachmann and Perry think non-believers should be put to death?

Bachmann and Perry both have ties to Dominionism, a fringe far-right Christian movement.  Since they both believe that they have the right to impose their religion on the rest of us via legislative fiat, perhaps it's time we learned more about their rather odd, and extreme, version of "Christianity."  From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

I didn't take Christian Reconstruction as a political philosophy seriously until I met an actual Theonomist (follower of God's Law) in the real world.

"Oscar" was in his early 20s, as was I, when we met. He was a Jewish convert to Christianity, so he was always on the defensive. As a young believer, he fell in with a mob of Theonomists in San Diego before moving to Pennsylvania for college. The primacy of the Old Testament in Christian Reconstructionist thought appealed to his sense of cultural identification.

Since I knew he was from a family of Holocaust survivors, I asked him what he thought of the mandate that all non-Christians would have to convert or die. Oscar said that if his relatives refused to become Christians or submit to forced exile, then they would suffer the civil penalty for practicing idolatry. He would carry out the execution himself if called upon to do so by the Christian state.

Oscar was the first self-consciously Christian fascist I ever met, but he wasn't the last. Eventually, the movement, which was scorned by many leaders of the Religious Right for being "too crazy," went underground as its leaders died or fought among themselves.

Today, two of the leading Republican presidential candidates, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, reportedly have ties to the Dominionist movement. The press has got to get up to speed on the movement's ideas before either a President Bachmann or a President Perry are in a position to drag Jesus feet first out of heaven.

It's time we stopped treating these nuts as just another religion.  They're not.  And what's worse, like the Mormons, and the religious right in general, they're trying to impose their religion on the rest of us by legislate fiat (or in the case of the Mormons, by creepily baptizing our dead against our will). Read the rest of this post...

Bachmann skipped Iowa family reunion she told everyone she went to

So that's a two-fer. Lying to the voters, pretending to care about your Iowa family in order to get votes, and not really caring about those family values you claim to want to legislate for the rest of us. Kinda sleazy. Maybe she is qualified for federal office. Read the rest of this post...

Michele Bachman is worried that the Renaissance really screwed things up

From the LA Times:

It's the Renaissance, stupid.

The economy is not what ails us today. No, what ails Americans is what Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and their artistic spawn have wrought in the culture, starting 500 years ago. The Renaissance has dragged us all down.

Tea party queen and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is convinced that America is sinking into tyranny. Why? In a remarkable profile of the candidate appearing in the Aug. 15 issue of the New Yorker magazine, the artistic flowering of the Italian Renaissance takes a beating for having done away with the god-fearing Dark Ages.

Yes, America was a happier place in the Middle Ages. Read the rest of this post...