Max Blumenthal wrote a great piece in Tuesday’s Daily Beast (now repost all over the net) about Minnesota Cong. Michelle Bachman How a Minnesota congresswoman became a poster child for the GOP crack-up.
Who?
That’s just what I said when the National Council for Adoption announced that Bachman would be a keynote lunch speaker at its annual conference in Washington last month. (Go here and click on link to “conference” in the right sidebar. This is a pdf link with no dedicated URL).
I quickly looked her up. Outside of having impeccable credentials as a fundamentalist GOP nut job, I learned that she’d sponsored the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, to repeal the nationwide phase-out of conventional lightbulbs by 2012.
I was impressed.
I honestly don’t remember much of what Bachmann said at the NCFA lunch. Her subject was mostly foster care, which she is apparently qualified to speak on since she was a foster parent of 23 (mostly teenage) girls, as well as popping out a few kids of her own. According to her Wiki profile she believes that the troubles that her foster charges had were the fault of the public schools:
I began to realize as I studied aspects of their assignments that these attitudes and behaviors could be traced to their curriculum.
I guess abuse, neglect, family break-ups, home-hopping, and dysfunctional foster mothers don’t count.
OK, I lied. I do remember one thing about Bachman’s lunch talk: frequent references to her biological children as “biologicals” and the disturbing images that danced in my head when she spoke several times of “launching her biologicals” (into adult lives, more or less).
I filed Michelle Bachman away as just another whack job on the taxpayer dole. In my other work I meet a lot of those people.
But then Blumenthal’s blog hit!
Though the piece has nothing to do with adoption, it’s important to know that this is the type of adoption and foster care advocate that somebody at NuNCFA likes and thinks is OK to let in the door. Maybe they’re channeling Dr. Pierce.
Here’s a few snippets:
Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota, is now notorious for an incident on the October 17 edition of Hardball. Bachmann told Chris Matthews she was “concerned” that Obama “may have anti-American views,” and linked him to a Who’s Who of leftist agitators, from William Ayers to Saul Alinsky to Ward Churchill. “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?” Bachmann said…
…In 2005, while serving in the Minnesota state senate, Bachmann crept surreptitiously to the perimeter of a protest against a bill banning same-sex marriage. She ducked behind a bush, and for several minutes, Bachmann and a staffer observed the rally like spies. When a demonstrator approached the half-hidden Bachmann with a camera in hand, she scurried away, jumped in an SUV, and bolted from the scene…
…. During a St. Cloud Times podcast in early 2007, Bachmann claimed exclusive knowledge of a secret Iranian plan to partition half of Iraq. After meeting Gov. Sarah Palin last summer in Alaska, Bachmann declared that “warmth” from a pipeline running through Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would make the area a “meeting ground and ‘coffee klatch’ for the caribou.” Just months later, during a House hearing on the mortgage foreclosure crisis engulfing her district, Bachmann read aloud from an editorial blaming “blacks and other minorities” for causing the epidemic…
And, then there was the time angry lesbians attacked her in the bathroom!
Dump Michelle Bachmann, the definitive dishy Michelle Bachman cite, writes that the Congresswoman is so far out there that she may be tanking the campaign of incumbent Senator and NCFA Adoption Hall of Famer Norm Coleman who’s in a tight race against Democratic challenger Al Franken.
On Sunday, on the same local morning TV news show during which Bachmann reiterated her comments about Barack Obama, Coleman tried to distance himself from them.
Coleman rejected Bachmann’s view on Obama’s anti-Americanism and said, “I would not label his views as anti-American.”
But distancing himself from her isn’t so easy after he’s been appearing by her side at McCain/Palin events throughout the state.
I’m currently reading “The Black Swan” – which is a theory about the impact of the highly improbable.
While it relates more to stock market moves, assassinations, and natural disasters, I think it’s also relevant to public figures.
What are the odds that a specific someone would commit political suicide by getting caught on tape making ridiculous comments (Bachmann, George Allen, Robin Hayes, Liz Dole), stealing campaign signs (Johnson County, KS), bribery/corruption, or being involved in sexual scandals (Spitzer and too many others to count).
Powerful figures – but it’s all gone in a heartbeat.
My 93-year-old mother-in-law commented that the “American political system is a massive train wreck.” Mom, you are still as sharp as a tack.
Any person who thinks ‘Intelligent Design’ should be part of a school’s science curriculum is batshit crazy.
Cro-Magnon Kippa
I kind of like her theory about her foster children and why they have issues. 😉 That’s a new one I hadn’t heard before.
Representative Bachmann is an empbarrassment to those of us who live in Minnesota, although not in her district. For the record, she represents the most heavily Republican district in the state and the most drastically distorted district, to boot. It weaves around like a snake, avoiding pockets of Democrats like hot rocks.
I’m glad someone else is aware of her light-bulb campaign. Initially, she said she offered it because she thought people should have the right to choose whether to use incandescent bulbs or more energy efficient flourescent bulbs. While a small thing, I see the point. Since being mocked for the bill, she’s tried to cast it as an evironmental bill, pointing to the presence of mercury in flourescents.
Yes, she’s a nut job. The good news is, she may have to settle for one term. Her opponent (a former member of Jesse Ventura’s administation) has raked in more than a million since her Hardball appearance. The race is a dead heat, as is Norm (“There is no opportunity too pass up”) Coleman’s race with funny-man(?) Al Franken.
And they say the Midwest is boring!
J.
I hope Bachmann stays in Minnesota. We sure don’t need her in Illinois. God pity the “biologicals” that she launched – hate to think what she might have done to the other children.