Some of you may have already seen this clip, it was originally posted over at Fire Dog Lake, but in case you missed it, here is Al Franken taking on the for-profit health care industry:
Hey, it’s time once again to sort out a couple of loose public wingnuts to see just which one is looser and nuttier. Yep, it’s the return of The Stonecipher Report’s popular (and oh-so-sarcastic) feature: WHO IS CRAZIER???
We use this fun feature to occasionally take a look at a couple of semi-outrageous, at-least-somewhat-connected figures in the public eye, comparing and contrasting them, their words, and their behavior until we can determine just which one of them is the nuttier, more insane, and just plain crazier individual. As you would expect, we’ll be plucking examples from the world of politics…but also from media, pop culture, sports – whatever floats to the surface of obvious madness. Party labels, network, publication, or team affiliations, or even poll or box office numbers won’t necessarily matter – if they seem unhinged, we’ll call them on it…
So, for the latest fun-fest with this sharpened-rhetorical-daggers-ready feature, let’s take a current look at a pair of prominent female GOP politicians (past and present public officeholders) and try to determine just WHO IS CRAZIER – Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann???
In case you haven't tuned into FOX News or logged onto their website recently, you may not be aware that a number of conservatives in this country are planning a tax day "tea party" - supposedly inspired by the Boston Tea Party.
The modern day tea partiers have spent a fair amount of time encouraging their supporters to "tea bag" public officials who have supported the federal stimulus plan. I'm not real sure what these guys mean by tea bagging, but watch Rachel Maddow of MSNBC try to explain it with a straight face.
Some quick notes from around the nation this Friday afternoon:
The Minnesota Recount
So far, the recount in Minnesota has been good to Al Franken. With 46% of the vote now recounted, Norm Coleman's razor-thin lead has shrunk from 215 votes to 136 votes.
Minnesota Public Radio has posted pictures of many of the contested ballots along with explanations for why they were contested and with polls allowing you to decide who the ballot should count for.
It is amazing, funny and terrifying to see just how difficult it was for some voters to simply fill in a bubble...yet another case to eliminate low-information voters from the equation. What may be even more frightening however, are the some of the arguments that both campaigns made in their contesting of the ballots.
For the record The Stonecipher Prediction is that when all the recounting is finally done, all the legal challenges are over and we finally have a winner, it will be Al Franken.
Palin Being Palin
Honestly, this woman can't do anything right. To her credit, Sarah Palin actually gets through this brief interview without saying anything extraordinarily stupid - which is quite an accomplishment for the Governor of Alaska, but, well...just watch the video:
Yikes.
Is there ever a moment when this woman is aware of her surroundings? It's a good thing there aren't too many traffic signals up there in Wasilla.
Dingell Loses His Chairmanship
The Detroit Free Press has said "By any conservative estimate, Dingell's power has likely been worth billions of dollars in projects, programs and aid to the state."
Rep. John Dingell, the Democrat from Ford, GM and Chrysler...I mean from Michigan, has been a key ally to the Big Three Automakers in Detroit and his position as chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee has helped enable the Big Three to continue their disastrous, greedy and short-sighted policies.
In a somewhat surprising move, however, Democrats voted 137 - 122 to strip John Dingell of his chairmanship and replace him with California Congressman and key Nancy Pelosi ally, Henry Waxman.
The loss of Dingell is yet another blow to the Big Three, but it's a win for people who enjoy breathing.
Eight years ago I was certain that I would never see another politician as incoherent and incompetent as George W. Bush.
Eight weeks ago the GOP proved me wrong and I became convinced that never again would I see a politician as dumb as Sarah Palin.
Well, eight days ago, the Republican Party once again proved me wrong, when freshman Minnesota Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, appeared on MSNBC's 'Hardball' with Chris Matthews and did her best Joe McCarthy impression - calling for a widespread investigation into members of Congress who, she thinks, may be anti-American.
Had Rep. Bachmann's McCarthyist outburst been the first incident of it's kind, maybe it could have been explained away with the old she-does-so-many-interviews excuse, in which her campaign would have explained that she does hundreds and hundreds of interviews and she never goofs up like she did in this particular case and it is just a shame that her unfortunate remarks came at a time when she had such a large audience.
If no pattern had existed, true, maybe the national media would still be all over her for the ignorance and stupidity she displayed on 'Hardball', but the voters in Minnesota's 6th District may have given her a break. After all, they have watched Michele Bachmann for two years now and have a pretty good sense of who the real Michele is.
Sadly for Michele Bachmann and the Republican Party, a pattern does exist, and many Minnesotans who live in her district seem to finally be picking up on it.
But the truly amazing thing here is not that Tinklenberg has closed such a big gap in such a short period of time, it's that Michele Bachmann ever had any lead at all, let alone a 13-point lead at one point in this race.
Before Chris Matthews exposed Rep. Bachmann as a McCarthyist at heart, the people of Minnesota's 6th District seemed to be giving her a pass on all of the controversy, inflammatory remarks and astounding ignorance that marked Bachmann's first term as a Congresswoman - not to mention her fanatical love of George W. Bush.
So what made the people of MN-06 wait so long to finally reject Michele Bachmann?
My theory: it was the three-strikes-and-you're-out policy.
Of course, Bachmann has made far more than three gaffes in her short political career, but last Friday's 'Hardball' rounded out what I'll refer to as "Bachmann's Big Three" - three comments that stand out as monuments to stupidity. Why don't we go through them chronologically here?
One - "Not all cultures are equal" - Sadly, this one isn't taken out of context - it is actually worse than it sounds.
When answering a question about the riots in France during a debate in her 2006 run for Congress, Candidate Bachmann launched into a bizarre, meandering, fictional tale about French Muslim youths involved in some sort of jihad that almost destroyed French culture simply because they couldn't assimilate or stop watching al Jazeera on French cable television, which was "encouraging and prompting" them to riot.
During the middle of this strange story, Bachmann brought up what she broadly referred to as a "movement afoot" and that part of that movement is "this whole philosophical idea of multi-cultural diversity, which on the face, sounds wonderful...but guess what?" she continues "not all cultures are equal."
A few moments later she mentions "not that Muslims are bad, but they're not assimilating."
Now that is some racist, ignorant stuff. But the people of MN-06 decided to let it slide and gave her an 8-point victory, sending her to Congress and giving the Republican Party a rare 2006 victory in an open seated race.
Two - "There is already an agreement made. [Iran is] going to get half of Iraq." - This gem popped out of the mouth of Michele Bachmann in February of 2007 when she gave an interview to a reporter from the St. Cloud Times.
At one point during the interview, Rep. Bachmann explained to the reporter that Iran wanted the U.S. out of Iraq. "You know why?" she asked him and then answered "...because they already decided that they are going to partition Iraq".
The Congresswoman was unable to offer any explanation as to where she obtained this information, but a few days later she apparently realized that making stuff up is much harder to do when you're actually in Congress than when you're simply running for Congress. So she released a statement which claimed her words had been misconstrued. You can check out the statement here- the three paragraphs read like a solid C+ 8th grade paper.
Three - "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?" -So here we are, back to the comment that kicked this piece off in the first place. But since it's getting late and this post is getting long, I'll just let you take a look at Bachmann's comments for yourself:
So there it was, strike three. Michele Bachmann's Congressional career is over.
Some might think it is a little premature to call Bachmann the loser at this point. The SurveyUSA poll only showed a 3-point lead for Tinklenberg, it's within the margin of error.
Well, the thing is, that poll was taken after Bachmann's third strike but before the RNCC decided to pull all of their money out of Bachmann's race and before the effect of Tinklenberg's new money could truly be felt.
This race only has one direction to move over the next ten days, and that's towards Elwyn Tinklenberg, the next Congressman from Minnesota's 6th.
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