Tag: Michele Bachmann

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Michele Bachmann’s “choots-pah” fail

Like many of her GOP colleagues, Rep. Michele Bachmann has positioned herself as a staunch defender of Israel and friend of Jews everywhere against President Obama’s supposed lack of Jewish support.

But she ran into some trouble while trying to trying to show off her Yiddish skills on Fox News last night, pronouncing the word “Chutzpah” — meaning audacity — as “choot-spa.”

As with “Chanukah,” the “ch” should be pronounced as an “h” sound, but apparently Bachmann missed that lesson in pandering school.

ROTFL….

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CNN on Michele Bachmann’s clinic

CNN coverage on Michele Bachmann’s family business that practices reparative or “conversion” therapy to help gays “pray away the gay.”

In addition to denying the clinic uses reparative therapy, Bachmann’s clinic has received over $100,000 annually in the past few years through Medicaid, while at the same time she has said government should stay out of medical care.

This also comes on the heels of questions of a Bachmann family farm receiving nearly $260,000 in farm subsidies from the government while criticizing subsidies to farmers.

It seems there’s a lot of “say one thing, do another” in the Bachmann world.

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Michele Bachmann pivots on answering questions about her family business

Michele Bachmann – who seems to be turning out to be Palin 2.0 – refuses to answer questions about her husband’s anti-gay counseling services in Minneapolis. Twice she pivots and changes the direction of the interview despite direct questions about reports coming out that her husband’s center practices “reparative therapy” or conversion therapy that promises to ‘cure’ folks of homosexuality.

From Wikipedia: The American Psychological Association defines conversion therapy as therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation.

The American Psychiatric Association states that conversion therapy is a type of psychiatric treatment “based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation.”

Psychologist Douglas Haldeman writes that conversion therapy comprises efforts by mental health professionals and pastoral care providers to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality by techniques including aversive treatments, such as “the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals,” and “nausea-inducing drugs…administered simultaneously with the presentation of homoerotic stimuli,” masturbatory reconditioning, visualization, social skills training, psychoanalytic therapy, and spiritual interventions, such as “prayer and group support and pressure.”

Mainstream American medical and scientific organizations have expressed concern over conversion therapy and consider it potentially harmful. The advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating inaccurate views about sexual orientation. The ethics guidelines of major mental health organizations in the United States recommend that ethical practitioners refrain from practicing conversion therapy (American Psychiatric Association) or from referring patients to those who do (American Counseling Association).

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Santorum Loses Again

From the Advocate: Rep. Michele Bachmann can claim she was the first to actually sign a document pledging her faithfulness to a list of homophobic beliefs, but Rick Santorum was a close second.

The Family Leader, which invented the pledge as a litmus test for its endorsement, clarified that although Santorum signed the document on Friday, he was the first to make contact after “The Marriage Vow” was announced on Thursday.

It seems Bachmann must have beaten him to the fax machine with her signed copy. The results of the photo finish were reported by the Des Moines Register.

The two were racing to profess their belief that gay men are a public health risk, that gay parents are inferior to straight parents, and that homosexuality is a choice. Those are a few of the boldly inaccurate arguments made by the pledge for banning gay marriage with a constitutional amendment at the federal level.

Santorum has long held claim to the socially conservative vote, but Bachmann has been outshining him in polls in Iowa and elsewhere. For example, the well respected Des Moines Register poll taken of likely caucus goers in late June found 22% support Bachmann while just 4% went for Santorum.

The Family Leader’s endorsement could be coveted since it’s a powerful force in the state, having successfully campaigned to unseat three Iowa Supreme Court justices who legalized gay marriage there.

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Bachmann signs Family Leader’s pro-marriage pledge

Michele Bachmann became the first presidential candidate to sign a 14-point pledge put forth by The Family Leader, a Christian group run by evangelical conservative and former three-time Iowa gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats.

The pledge is entitled, “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family.”

Presidential candidates who sign the pledge must agree to personal fidelity to his or her spouse, the appointment of “faithful constitutionalists” as judges, opposition to any redefinition of marriage, and prompt reform of uneconomic and anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy and divorce law.

The pledge asks candidates to promote a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, protect women and “the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” (children) from pornography, reject Sharia Islam and 11 other equally Christian points.

In addition, candidates are asked to recognize that “robust childrearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.” Which I guess means they support a healthy, busy and unprotected sex life.

Drew Ivers, Iowa campaign chairman for Ron Paul’s campaign, said the congressman has concerns about the pledge because it calls for a federal marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “He is very strong pro-traditional marriage, but he doesn’t want the government to dictate and define traditional marriage. That should be between a man and a woman and the church if they choose to have a church wedding.”

You have to laugh at the irony of a “strict Constitutionalist” like Bachmann supporting banning pornography which is considered free speech under the First Amendment.

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The other Bachmann – husband Marcus Bachmann…

Marcus Bachmann, the husband of GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), said in a radio interview unearthed by ThinkProgress that “barbarians need to be educated” when asked how parents should deal with their homosexual children.

“They need to be disciplined,” he said last year on Point of View Radio Talk Show. “Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature.”

“And let’s face it: what is our culture, what is our public education system doing today?” he continued. “They are giving full, wide-open doors to children, not only giving encouragement to think it but to encourage action steps.

That’s why when we understand what truly is the percentage of homosexuals in this country, it is small. But by these open doors, I can see and we are experiencing, that it is starting to increase.”

Marcus runs a Christian-based counseling center in Minnesota.

Politico reported Michele Bachmann attacked President Barack Obama in Charleston on Wednesday for not defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman.

“The president refuses to stand for marriage,” she said. “One thing we need to recognize in this country is that the family is the fundamental unit of government.”
(via rawstory.com)

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Michele Bachmann and inconvenient facts

Today, on ABC’s Good Morning America, Michele Bachmann defended her statement that the “Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery” (they didn’t) by insisting that John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father (he wasn’t). After host George Stephanopoulos pointed out that John Quincy Adams — the son of John Adams — did fight against slavery “decades later,” Bachmann stood by her historical interpretation.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Quincy Adams was a nine-year-old boy.

In addition, Bachmann reiterated her long-held belief that a federally mandated minimum wage is a job-killing federal regulation that may need to be abolished.

In 2005, Bachmann told the Minnesota state Senate that abolishing the minimum wage could “wipe out unemployment completely.”

When Stephanopoulos asked her for evidence to back up that claim today, Bachmann struggled to find an answer, initially dodging the question before finally referring to the minimum wage as a regulation that is “inhibiting job growth” and saying it needed to be examined:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me try this one more time. So you’re saying the minimum wage is one of those regulations you’d take a look at? You’d try to eliminate it?

BACHMANN: Well, what I’m saying is I think we need to look at all regulations. Whatever ones are inhibiting job growth, that’s what we need to look at.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And the minimum wage is one of them?

BACHMANN: All regulations, George. I think every department, we have just too much expansion of government, and what we need to do is tamp that down so the American people can keep more of what they make.

Recent statistics show that wages are stagnant and the majority of jobs that are being added are low-wage jobs. But the workers in those jobs making the minimum wage would actually need an increase in the wage to match the buying power of the minimum wage in 1968.

In other inaccuracies, earlier this year, Bachmann told a group of local New Hampshire Republicans, “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.” However, the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in Massachusetts, not the Granite State.

Ironically, she told CNN on Tuesday morning, “I’m introducing myself now to the American people so that they can know that I have a strong academic scholarly background, more important I have a real life background.”

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Michele Bachmann compares herself to serial killer

From Gawker: Kicking off her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, Michele Bachmann explained the geographic significance to Fox News:

“Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.”

This is problematic, the Washington Times explains, because “beloved movie star” John Wayne is not from Bachmann’s hometown of Waterloo. John Wayne Gacy, the “killer clown” who raped and murdered 33 teenage boys in the ’70s, is from Waterloo. Beloved movie star John Wayne is from Winterset, Iowa.