“As both CNN staffers tried to question Bachmann, Lemon said he was pushed by two members of Bachmann’s staff,” reports CNN. “Lemon also said that Marcus Bachmann, the congresswoman’s husband, pushed him.”
Marcus Bachman, the husband of GOP frontrunner Rep. Michele Bachmann, elbowed and pushed CNN anchor Don Lemon during a campaign event in Iowa on Saturday.
Marcus Bachmann has been at the center of a scandal that erupted last month after an undercover investigation revealed that his Christian psychology clinic provided so-called ex-gay “reparative therapy,” despite his assertions that it did not.
Here’s a right-wing blogger from the idiocrat website, RedState.com, hyperventilating with joy over the news that Bush clone Rick Perry is running for president:
Of registered voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is endorsed by the tea party next year, according to Gallup. Just 23 percent said they would be more likely, while 30 percent said it would make no difference and 5 percent had no opinion.
So I took a fair amount of heat for suggesting that Michele Bachmann might not want to wear a plunging neckline that exposes lots of her chestal area while working crowds. You know, all that leaning forward to shake hands, pinch baby cheeks, and squeeze the shoulders of wheelchair users and what-not.
But we are now entering unimagined territory. A FOOT-LONG CORN DOG? Really, Michele Bachmann? And we are supposed to gaze at this action shot and simply say, “Huh. Looks like a good corn dog. That’s all I see.”
O.K., I’ll try to only see a corn dog and not see a person with a serious lack of imagination about how a foot-long corn dog being inserted into a woman’s open mouth while she reaches to grasp it with two hands might look. I will also try not to see a person who should never, ever, ever be president.
A lot of people aren’t happy with the state of American government right now and many blame Pres. Obama. On our team, we say that he should be more aggressive, more assertive, more…something.
But the only ideas we came up to win the debt ceiling battle were things that would have fueled the claims of birthers and others that his presidency is illegitimate – things like having the Treasury forge a magic coin that would cover the difference or use the Constitution’s 14th Amendment in a way unsupported by precedent and that would have ensured an impeachment drive from Republicans.
The absence of practical solutions was painfully clear on a recent segment of the Diane Rehm Show that focused on riots in England and related European economic problems. Kenneth Lieberthal of The Brookings Institution and former Clinton administration National Security Council member expressed progressives’ frustrations well but ran out of steam when reminded of Republican realities. So did Scheherazade Rehman, professor of International Business/Finance and International Affairs at George Washington University. Even a caller to the show resorted to the classic political candidate’s move of answering the question you prefer to be asked.
All three fell to Rehm’s query: “What can President Obama do?”
Mitt Romeny, pretty boy rich guy Mormon Republican presidential candidate, explaining to an Iowa State Fair goer why corporate profits shouldn’t be taxed to help pay for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Romney was the recent recipient of $1 million from a donor who incorporated in order to avoid being personally identified, made the gift, then unincorporated. Such moves are legal under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Andrew Sullivan, the Dish at the Daily Beast: “The winners tonight were the Fox interviewers, Baier and Wallace, who pulled no punches in this battle and asked some very tart and tough questions of the various candidates. I think Bachmann is the current front-runner in Iowa and the debate tonight will cement her status. T-Paw was better; Romney came across as even shiftier than usual; Huntsman let his nerves get the better of him; Ron Paul’s freshness has waned; Herman Cain was hopeless; Gingrich was very very angry; and Santorum is so exercized about Iran he even wandered into a defense of gays! Awesome.”
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones: “I thought tonight’s debate was much closer than the last one. I didn’t really see any clear winners or losers … I’m obviously not the target audience for these folks, so it hardly matters what I thought about them. Still, what’s so striking about this group is that aside from Ron Paul there’s just hardly any real daylight between them. The questioners tried mightily to provoke some arguments, and they did manage to get a few small ones going over relative minutia, but for the most part they’re still just trying to out-tea party each other.”
David Weigel at Slate: “It wasn’t the stiffest of competitions, but this was the best, most clarifying debate between the Republican candidates.”On Bachmann’s performance: “The best thing that happened to her was the question about whether she’d be ‘submissive’ to her husband if she was president. The boos lasted for an uncomfortably long time; she gamely, sarcastically thanked Byron York for the question. It was yet another moment for her to prove that the media treats her unfairly. And since it was the only question on social issues that was directed to her, she missed, one more time, a chance to respond to the damaging ‘ex-gay clinic’ story.”
The Caucus at the New York Times: “As they tried to blame President Obama for the nation’s lowered credit rating, the Republican presidential candidates who squared off Thursday night in Iowa made several misleading, incomplete or simply false claims…Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota repeated her assertion that ‘we should not have increased the debt ceiling .. In the last two months, I was leading on the issue of not increasing the debt ceiling,’ she said. ‘That turned out to be the right answer.’ The ratings agency that lowered the credit rating, Standard & Poor’s …lamented in its report on the downgrade that ‘the statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.’ It was Republicans in Congress who made it a bargaining chip.
Politifact: “Bachmann said raising the debt ceiling gave Obama a “blank check.” PolitiFact Virginia checked that when Eric Cantor said it about a debt ceiling plan from Harry Reid and found it False.”
Tina Korbe at Hot Air: “In general, I prefer to reward action over inaction and I respect the willingness of these candidates to “put themselves out there” tonight, but I have to agree with the cliche: Rick Perry was the real winner tonight.”
Ed Morrissey also at Hot Air: “I tweeted that [‘Rick Perry was the real winner tonight’] as the debate ended, Tina, and Chuck Todd followed it by predicting that sentiment would be the trite, cliche tweet of the night — but I think it was true to some extent. As the gloves came off between Pawlenty and Bachmann, then Santorum and Paul, and all night between Newt Gingrich and the same Fox News that employs him, it seemed that the entire debate ran off the rails.”
The tea party had a big success in early August when it fomented a fake debt ceiling crisis and then used that crisis to take the U.S. economy hostage. By threatening to force the United States into default and trigger a worldwide economic depression, they were able to force the president to accept budget that he and everyone else knows will further stall the recovery.
The biggest obstacle against enacting either of these innovative, politically aggressive ideas that they are probably a little too bold and in-your-face for Pres. Obama’s tastes.
There is little doubt now what the extreme right is up to. They want the economy to fail for the sole purpose of weakening the Obama presidency in order to help elect Mitt Romney next year. Then, they seem to be suggesting, Republicans will “fix” the economy presumably by cutting the corporate tax rate to zero and privatizing the federal government. That way they can finish the job Republicans started during the George Bush presidency of turning the United States’ assets and resources over to their masters, corporate oligarch like the Koch brothers et al.
The best way to fix the economy is to create jobs. There are 14 million Americans who are unemployed right now — that we know of. By putting them back to work, consumer spending will rise, demand for new goods and services will increase and the tax coffers will be replenished and we can start to pay down the national debt.
But the tea party and its poodles in the Republican congressional leadership have made it clear they will do everything in their power to stop job creation.
This is a nasty situation, and it has caused a lot of regular Americans to feel hopeless about the government’s ability to kickstart the economy. (And talk about the tail wagging the dog. While the 62 members of the Tea Party caucus represent 14 percent of the House, just 4 percent of Americans say they are active members of the tea party, according a new CBS/New York Times poll.)
However, in just the past few days, two new political solutions for spurring job growth have been proposed by members of the fourth estate. The ideas are similar in that they are both designed to force tea party Republicans to vote against infrascture projects in their own districts. In one case, the idea would be to force tea partyists like Michele Bachmann to vote against public works projects she herself has requested.
Sam Stein at Huffington Post, Aug. 10, 2011: “A Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Huffington Post with three separate federal agencies reveals that on at least 16 separate occasions, [Tea Party Caucus Chairwoman Michele] Bachmann petitioned the federal government for direct financial help or aid. A large chunk of those requests were for funds set aside through President Obama’s stimulus program, which Bachmann once labeled “fantasy economics.” Bachmann made two more of those requests to the Environmental Protection Agency, an institution that she has suggested she would eliminate if she were in the White House … Combined with previous revelations that Bachmann personally relied on a federally subsidized home loan while her husband’s business benefited from Medicaid payments, it appears that one of the tea party’s most cherished members has demonstrated that the government does, in fact, play a constructive role — at least in her life and district.
Sam Stein, Huffington Post, July 5, 2011: “Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio). On March 8, the freshman Republican co-signed a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration requesting that the Department of Transportation fund a project to improve a runway at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. The cost of the improvement: $4.365 million. Less than a month later, on the floor of the House, he declared that ‘our nation is broke. The federal government has maxed out its credit card.'”
Blogging Blue, July 6, 2011: “[Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn.] spoke directly with Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about federal funding for the Cates Landing port project after funding for the project was imperiled by House Republicans who wanted to cut transportation spending as a way of cutting overall government spending. Following his conversation with Secretary LaHood, Rep. Fincher wrote a follow-up letter seeking assistance in “obligating” the $13 million federal grant for the Cates Landing port project.”
New York Times, July 19, 2011: “An examination of spending bills, news releases and communications with federal agencies obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that nearly two dozen freshmen have sought money for projects that could ultimately cost billions of dollars, while calling for less spending and banning pork projects.” Republican hypocrites on spending include Reps. Tim Scott, S.C.; Jon Runyan, N.J.; Sean P. Duffy, Wisconsin; Michele Bachmann and Steven M. Palazzo, Miss.
Quad-City Times in July: “[Tea party favorite Rep. Bobby Schilling, R-Ill.,] has been critical of the stimulus law, which was enacted before he was elected. But he said Friday more of the money should have been devoted to infrastructure projects. “If the government would have taken a lot bigger chunk of that money and put it into infrastructure, we’d be doing a lot better today,” he said.
Airport Business, March 17, 2011: “[Tea Party Caucus member] Congressman Allen West (FL-22) announces today the award of a $21 million dollar Federal grant to the Fort Lauderdale -Hollywood International Airport to be used towards the construction of a much needed, second commercial runway. The runway project will generate at least 11,000 jobs and be complete in the fall of 2014 with an estimated budget of $791 million.”
DCCC.org, autumn 2010: “[Right-wing extremist Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.,] signed a letter to Secretary LaHood, along with 14 other members of the North Carolina Congressional Delegation, requesting funds from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant in order to ‘reroute and construct a new bridge over the Yadkin River on Interstate 85,’ saying the existing bridge has ‘far exceeded its design lifespan.'”
Steve Benen, Washington Monthly, Feb. 16, 2010: “Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the stimulus “misses the mark on all counts,” but encouraged the Labor Department to invest stimulus money in his district, highlighting a project he said would create 1,000 jobs. Reps. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) and Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), both right-wing opponents of the recovery efforts, did the same thing.”
Right-wing Korean cult-owned Washington Times, February 9, 2010: “[Tea Party Caucus member] Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican who became famous after yelling, “You lie,” during Mr. Obama’s addresses to Congress in September, voted against the stimulus. Nonetheless, Mr. Wilson elbowed his way into the rush for federal stimulus cash in a letter he sent to Mr. Vilsack on behalf of a foundation seeking funding. “
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
“If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”
“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”
“The U.S. State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas during President Donald Trump’s administration so far,” Fox News reports.
President Donald Trump is asking for $1,500,000 million for the military for next year. That’s close to $600 billion (adjusted for inflation) more than we were spending on the military in fiscal year 2025, before Trump took office, Alternet reports. This increase is huge by any measure. It comes to around $4,600 per household. It is around 8% of the total budget.
A new Emerson College survey of likely 2026 voters finds the Democrats with an 11-point advantage over the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, leading 53% to 42%. President Trump holds a 39% job approval rating, consistent with the past two months, whereas his disapproval increased another point, to 57%.
A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.
Wall Street Journal: “Around 40% of voters in the 2024 election said the economy was their top issue, far outstripping any other matter. And those voters favored Donald Trump by 60% to 38%. Many say they were moved by his pledges to tame inflation, rebuild U.S. infrastructure, cut red tape and trim government waste. … About a year and a half later, more voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy than approve, 61% to 35%, an average of polls by the Cook Political Report found this month.”
A lot of people aren’t happy with the state of American government right now and many blame Pres. Obama. On our team, we say that he should be more aggressive, more assertive, more…something. 
