Tagged: Michele Bachmann

Posted: August 15, 2012 at 6:36 pm

Baucus Took $40,000 from Koch Brothers

I just learned this a few days ago, but Koch industries is listed as one Max Baucus’s largest donors. The company is listed as having contributed $40,000 to Baucus since 2005. That puts him in an exclusive club: with Paul Ryan, Michelle Bachmann, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Eric Cantor–who have all taken more than $30,000 from the Kochs during the last four campaign cycles.

And it’s eight times what the Koch’s have given to Denny Rehberg, according to FEC reports.

This is a highly disturbing state of affairs and Baucus should promptly return the money. The Koch brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to persuade the American public that climate change is a hoax. Generally, they fund much of the racist and inciteful enterprise known as the Tea Party, from grassroots (or astroturf) organizing to TV ads. They also bankroll anti-union candidates in dozens of states, including major support for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

When the 2012 election is over, the Kochs, whose combined fortune is estimated to be as high as $50 billion (exceeded only by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett), will have spent at least a billion dollars to try to oust Obama and Biden and other democrats across the nation.

These two gentlemen, who inherited their chemical and paper products company from their father (they make Brawny paper towels and Dixie cups, so shop for some alternatives), have stated that their political activity stems from a few core beliefs. According to a New Yorker profile, they believe that taxes are too high, that corporations are regulated too heavily, and that too much money is spent on the poor and the needy.

Posted: January 3, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Presidential Candidates Get A Favor from Rehberg

The Hill has a running list up of which members of Congress are endorsing which presidential candidate. As of this posting, the tallies stood at Romney – 61, Perry-13, Gingrich-8, Paul-3, Cain-1 Bachman-1, Santorum-0.

Montana Congressman Rehberg is not on the list.

To be sure, Rehberg’s absence could simply be explained by his fear to make a choice this early. But given that we already heard his de facto endorsement of Bachmann in February of 2011, it may be that he was asked by the campaigns to do them a solid and stay out. After all, Rehberg has been at the center of Congress’s failure and brinksmanship throughout the budget debate. As David Weigel theorizes in Slate, the brinkmanship and failure to accomplish anything is tanking the popularity of House Republicans:

there has been a rarely-admitted fatigue with the Republican House, and its inability to get anything done unless there’s last-minute stop-the-clock brinkmanship…it started to mean that you were part of Washington machinery that was creaking and belching acrid smoke.

Posted: November 8, 2011 at 7:44 pm

Location, Location, Location

Besides Ken Miller and a few Republican staffers, Congressman Rehberg had a pretty sparse turnout for his recent “Liberate Main Street” astroturf tour. What gives?

After decades as a politician, perhaps Congressman Rehberg knows more big shots in Washington D.C. than actual Main Street Montanans. Maybe if he had held his rally inside the Beltway, Rehberg could have found someone to stand up for his effort to stand up for Wall Street CEOs.

Here are some guesses on who would have attended Rehberg’s rallies if he had held them in D.C.:

David Bossie, Citizens United CEO, who supports unlimited corporate cash in elections, and Dennis Rehberg.
His “long-time friends” in Big Oil might have gone, since they celebrate oil spill anniversaries with Congressman Rehberg.
Convicted felon, Rehberg pal, and Abramoff lobbyist Kevin Ring probably would have wanted to go, but he’s in prison.
Michele Bachmann, who is riding a wave of downward momentum on the campaign trail having received Rehberg’s endorsement.

Posted: September 17, 2011 at 8:52 am

Dumb Dumbos

There are many flavors of Republican Dumb. There is Minnesota Republican dumb, meaning Michelle Bachmann.

There is Texas Dumb, meaning George W. and Rick Perry. There is Alaska dumb, a form of Republican Dumb in which the politician actually is proud to be stupid and ignorant. There is Montana dumb, which is when a politician doesn’t appear to expend much effort at informing himself (learning what the minimum wage is, for example) because it interferes with drinking.

Of course not all GOP presidential candidates are stupid, but then again, those that are intelligent, informed and mature of intellect, like a Mitt Romney, will probably not be nominated. Ignorance is something that is flaunted proudly by right-wing politicians, and something that Tea party voters are drawn to. In short, Dumb appears to have recently become almost a prerequisite for advancement in the GOP.

And by the way, there is also Indiana Dumb, which is the original flavor of GOP dumb, given to us by Dan Quayle.

Dan Quayle is the guy who couldn’t spell potato, and who couldn’t come up with an answer, during a vice presidential debate, when asked what he’d do if America were attacked by a foreign enemy. Quayle wrote in his memoir that his failure to be able to spell potato was the fault of a campaign aide, who handed him a flash card (for Quayle to officiate a student spelling bee) that accidentally misspelled the word “p o t a t o e”.

Funny enough, this month, twenty years after that campaign gaffe by Quayle which no doubt got the aide fired, that same campaign aide was hired as the campaign manager by Michelle Bachmann.

The aide is smart: he wants to work for the winner, and so he thus chose to work for a stupid candidate. The odds are with him.

Posted: August 26, 2011 at 6:22 am

GOP Unpopularity Reaches Naked Judy Martz Levels

Just 22% approve of the job performance of Republican congressional leaders according to a new Pew Research Center poll, down from 33% two weeks ago. Those are some low numbers. Low enough to be comparable to the extremely unpopular Judy Martz, Montana’s most recent Republican Governor. Martz nose-dived to an approval rating of 20% and decided not to run for re-election.

Even though Judy Martz was the most unpopular Governor in Montana history, Republicans seem drawn to the Judy Martz model of candidate. After all, TEA Party Congressman Dennis Rehberg has already publicly voiced his support for Michele Bachmann at a Republican dinner earlier this year.

Here’s the video:

Not sure why his handlers were quick to try to spin him back from that statement. Perhaps they’re Ron Paul supporters.

We do know that Bachmann and Martz share many traits beyond just stupidity and nut-job politics. Like Judy Martz, who often refused to talk to reporters and demanded they submit questions in writing in advance, Bachmann has begun avoiding reporters who she believes will ask hard questions. Both Republicans are known for their outrageous public gaffes, their belief in forcing their fundamentalist religious views on others, and their insistence on wearing nude pantyhose with sandals.

This kind of thing must appeal to GOP men. Bachmann has been compared to Sarah Palin, while Martz is rumored to be featured on the wall Great Northern Town Center in Helena, as a nude bordello dancer, below, in what is known in political circles as “the Naked Judy Martz Mural.” The full mural can be viewed here.

closeup — The figure on the left is rumored to be Martz.

The women are not exact clones, however. At least we have no knowledge of Bachmann covering up a homicide. And when a T-Paw aide called Bachmann “sexy,” she said she took it as a compliment.

Martz, not so much. When the mural appeared, the Governor made her top aide drive her down to see it and declared it wasn’t her:

“I’m a very modest person, no one would ever see me like that. My husband doesn’t ever see me like that.”

Posted: July 14, 2011 at 5:57 pm

Political Quick Hits

TEA Party Cancelled Due to Lack of Turnout

In spite of promised appearances by both Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, the national TEA Party rally planned for this fall has been cancelled due to lack of interest. So much for the Bachmann buzz. Roll Call has the story.

Right Wing Re-education Camp Opening in the Flathead

Attorney Tim Baldwin (son of former Constitution Party presidential candidate and far right activist Chuck Baldwin) wants to haul your kids in for re-education. To do it, he’s opening the Baldwin Institute of Education in Kalispell, Montana, which will begin classes for grades 8-12 in the fall of this year. Baldwin made the announcement on the TEA Party blog, PolyMontana.

Baldwin says

BIE will give students mentored instruction similar to the way our nation’s founders were taught.

Presumably that means quill pens and beatings for misspelled words.

You’re supposed to go to the Baldwin Institute of Education to register. Currently, the website appears to be defunct, but that’s probably planned as they didn’t have websites in colonial times.

Japanese Dream

Rick Hill’s campaign donors can remain assured that their money continues to be well spent-–to allow Rick Hill to criss-cross Montana in the finest of Japanese automotive luxury.

According to the most recent campaign finance reports Hill filed recently, he has continued every month to send a payment of $329 to the American Honda Finance Corporation since the apparent Japanese luxury car purchase with campaign donations was first reported here.

Posted: June 30, 2011 at 7:15 am

More Embarrassing Wiki-Moments for Republicans

For a party that loves to put itself on the highest pedestal of morality it sure has attracted a lot of dishonest and deceptive politicians and followers. It appears that attempting to alter or hide the facts of history through Wikipedia is a becoming a major Republican past time.

Unfortunately for Republicans, its not just Wikipedia’s credibility they are damaging, it is their own.

GOP Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, the candidate who (as of this week) is leading among religious conservative voters and Montana Republicans according to the latest polling, was campaigning in Iowa a couple of days ago when she:

told a Fox News reporter that she was proud to be in the town where John Wayne was from, because she embodies his ideals. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that the actor John Wayne was not from Waterloo, but serial killer John Wayne Gacy was.

That’s when Republicans sprang into action to change John Wayne’s birthplace (in Wikipedia) to the Iowa town where John Wayne Gacy was born. History of course remained unchanged.

But that’s not all, Bachmann’s lack of facts spurred a second round of furious editing this week when she claimed that:

the nation’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams, was a “founding father,” even though he was just a child when his father, the nation’s second president, signed the Declaration of Independence.

Republicans immediately altered the Quincy Adams’s Wikipedia entry was changed to call him a “founding father.”

Posted: February 6, 2011 at 10:21 am

UPDATED:The Message of the Montana GOP’s Big Night

Anyone else find it odd that the party that hosts a dinner named after President Lincoln would be sponsoring so many “nullification” bills?

This party basically believes that when it comes to federal law, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to follow it. So what’s the deal?

As former Republican Secretary of State Bob Brown wrote recently on this topic:

“A system in which state laws have supremacy over national laws is a confederation, not a union…”

The statement makes the Montana GOP’s focus all start to make sense, as this is exactly what the Civil War was about. Even new GOP-TEA Legislator Derek Skees says the Civil War was about “states’ rights.” We don’t like what they have to say, we are no longer a part of it.

Like it had for the southerners during the civil war, “states’ rights” has as clear, more sinister meaning to the right wing base. Since nobody takes the Klan seriously above ground anymore, as it is so repulsive, all the racism of a certain wing of the GOP has all gone underground, and is trotted out through code words.

The Montana GOP dinner’s other namesake, Reagan, GOP “hero,” used to go down in the south during the 1980 primary and rile up the states about states’ rights, which he knew was pure racial code:

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Any of this sound familiar to those of you following the actions of Republicans in the Montana legislature? States’ rights, racial stuff, birtherism, restricting voting rights, and even votes against the King Holiday.

Plus anyone who has been around Denny Rehberg after he’s had a few drinks knows what he has to say about people who aren’t of his ilk. Anyone who has been in the state long enough has heard the stories.

Last night, Rehberg had no desire to talk about his record, a shockingly lame list of “accomplishments.” Out of four bills he passed, three were the naming of two post offices and a federal building. Not exactly the material of an inspiring message.

So he brings out the queen “states’ rights” tea-bagger, Michele Bachmann, to send a different message for him. And that message is coming through, loud and clear.

UPDATE: Guess what topic Rehberg has selected for his address to the Montana Legislature? “States’ rights,” of course.