Liveblog: Bachmann’s State of the Union response

Watching for the LULZ!

Paul Ryan is a Stepford Congressman.

Frightening. But not threatening.

She sounds like a lot of my neighbors, and, though they are really nice people, they are not quaified to represent me on our township board, let alone the US House of Representatives, let alone the presidency.

There’s a camera there and she’s not looking at it. I’m astounded.

G.I. is a noun used to describe members of the U.S. armed forces or items of their equipment. The term is now used as an initialism of “Government Issue” – straight from wikipedia. Don’t make things up.

From your beloved Wikipedia, Tom:

“The letters ‘G.I.’ were used to denote equipment made from galvanized iron, such as metal trash cans, in U.S. Army inventories and supply records.”

Now, get the stick out of your a$s, will ya?

9:51 pm: Bush signed the $700 billion bailout after asking Congress to authorize it, not Obama, as Bachmann suggests.

The TARP went to the banks, of course, and should not be confused with Obama’s $800 billion “stimulus” slush fund.

10:07 pm: She appears to blame the light bulb bill on Obama, but that was signed into law by Bush in 2007.

No, she uses the light bulb bill as an example of big, intrusive government.

And I agree with the others. “G.I.” doesn’t imply army, it implies armed forces. Perhaps you’re thinking of the common mistake media types make by calling marines and sailors “soldiers.” That always bugs me. Soldiers implies army.

Yes, Michele. Let’s force EVERY American to buy health insurance from the state with the most lax standards & worst repayment rates. Let’s make the health insurance market exactly like the credit market; we know how well THAT turned out.

If we are going to make something national, it needs stringent national standards – not a hodgepodge of state standards that encourages the providers to base out of the states that obligate them the least and shift the most burden to their customers.

For those who are wondering what I’m talking about: In the US, credit card companies used to be required to have a branch in every state and that branch would administrate credit cards in that state & be required to follow that state’s rules and regulations, including usury laws. In the 1990s, during a fit of Republican credit “reform” that included putting MASSIVE requirements on student debt that gave lenders powers the Mafia would envy, they decided that it would be great to let people take out a credit card from ANYWHERE in the country – this meant that the branches of all credit-card issuing banks would end up closing except for the ones in the states with the most lax (AZ) or nonexistent (SD) usury laws – allowing those companies to bilk consumers freely and giving the consumers little recourse because (a) their actions were legal in that state and (b) even if they weren’t, the consumer would have to travel to another state for an extended period of time to resolve the issue.

Well Katie, like credit cards are a matter of consumer choice, it’s not required that you obtain one, republicans wouldn’t FORCE people to buy anything, including health insurance.

Dennis – not having a credit card also doesn’t put a massive burden on others who are part of the system to carry your freeloading ass.

Rep. Bachmann maybe a nice person, but she is no leader. It surprises me that this Tea Party movement wasn’t started when Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy where first implemented, when Bush era policies where implemented to deregulated Wall Street, when the surplus left by the Clinton administration where squandered. Only after a black president was placed in office now we have a so called “Movement”. She blundered her knowledge of slavery when the constitution was written, seems to forget policies written before Obama’s election. We need smart, educated, or at least knowledgable people in office. What a joke. No real change for the people. I can see now the same type of people prob. elected her.

Actually, Katie, the credit card problem arose earlier than the 1990′s when the US Supreme Court ruled that federal banks in states without usury laws could sell credit cards in states with usury laws and these banks needn’t follow the state’s usury laws.

Dennis, as usual, is wrong that access to credit is a matter of choice. Banks are a public utility. People have a right to credit on reasonable, not price gouging terms. Usury limits interest to a reasonable level. We can thank our one party system for the financial deregulation that allows usury and loan sharking to constitute the norm in this country.

“I can see now the same type of people prob. elected her.”

Yeah, they used to be called feminists.

jonerik, people don’t have a right to credit any more than people have a right to buy a house. The lender gets to decide who gets loaned money.

Dennis, if you read my comment more carefully, you’ll understand I did not say people have a right to credit. I said they have a right to credit on reasonable, not price gouging terms. If we had a government in this country that cared a little about the human beings who live in it, we would not have the ridiculous “financial reforms” that brought about preemption of state usury laws starting in the late 1970′s and onward. Notice I am not being partisan here because the problems started under Pres. Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress. That Congress and President and succeeding ones have done nothing to reinstate and strengthen usury laws or to reciify the terrible decision of the Supreme Court preempting state usury laws by national banks located in deregulated states.

Dennis- Feminists most certainly did not elect Michelle Bachmann. Feminists would run the other way from her. Feminists value intelligence and knowledge- all of which Bachmann is not. She is a total idiot. Just watch the following clip as she demonstrates she is not only an idiot but doesn’t even know some of the most important parts of history. She has absolutely no business being in the US Congress with so little knowledge about the US. I guess going to Oral Roberts University doesn’t teach much about things that are not in the bible- like American history.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/41261376#41261376

Perhaps someone who lives in Bachmann’s district could explain to the rest of the country why you persist in sending this incompeten­t idiot back to the Congress? Do you appreciate the fact that she makes you look idiotic, reckless & uneducated right along side her? The rest of the country has to figure you must be, to vote her in again. She says so much that is beyond stupid, she regularly lies & displays her complete lack of knowledge & inability to speak truth- why do you re-elect her? When she claimed the 2010 Census was going to be used to put Americans in concentrat­ion camps- did you not ask yourself why she would say such outrageous things? Are you, her constituen­ts, so unaware as to not know your own history? That this country has been doing Census since 1790? That Bachmann should have realized what one would think was the most important fact about the Census for someone who sits in the House of Representa­tives- that the number of Representa­tives that a state has is based on the US Census that is completed every 10 years? How I wish she would have encouraged people in her district to not participat­e her right out of a job! I am outraged- at her stupidity & at you- the residents of her district that care so little about these United States that you would continue to put someone who is unfit for office back in for another term. Unfortunat­ely, you grievous errors hurt us all. That woman does not just vote on legislatio­n that affects you- it affects us all. She is a danger to the very freedom she purports to believe in. She doesn’t even know the facts about freedom and who had it and who didn’t. She has no cloue and yet you repeatedly inflict her on this country and on the rest of us. Shame on you.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/41261376#41261376

youmustbejoking–excellent!

I’ve heard it mentioned several times that the DFL and the GOP here are more sharply divided than in almost any other state. Minneapolis and St. Paul are, like Austin, San Francisco or NYC, bastions of progressivism. Education, the arts and innovate business are heavily concentrated in the Twin Cities metro.

Removed from the metro area ‘clustering effect’ of high concentrations of people and ideas, is the rest of the state. There you’re much, much more likely to find a megachurch than a university, or a Bible study club than an art gallery.

MN’s retrograde cultural backwater was empowered this last election. But through their ignorance and anti-intellectualism they’re already planting the seeds of their dis-election.

Re Dennis

With Dennis’ comment: “Well Katie, like credit cards are a matter of consumer choice, it’s not required that you obtain one, republicans wouldn’t FORCE people to buy anything, including health insurance”, you just revealed why it is that the thinking part of the population regards the teabaggers as farcical, mindless and ignorant.

Consider these two scenarios:

A: The government restricts credit card companies from gouging consumers with high interest rates, curtails their ability to endlessly compound fees on late payments, bars them from obfuscating language in cardholder agreements, mandates consumer-friendly dispute resolution procedures, etc.

B: The government leaves the picture entirely, allowing credit card companies to do whatever the hell they want (they have total freedom–yay!) apply interest rates of 500% or higher; add exorbitant fees; charge fees for any reason, including insufficiently high usage of the card; etc.

Which restriction of freedom would the rationally self-interested person want? The government restriction of the freedom of the credit card company to screw you, or the restriction of the freedom of the government to prevent the credit card company from screwing you?

This is a no-brainer, but then again, when we’re dealing with the tea party we can’t make any assumptions about the effective use of brains.

What explains Dennis’ inability to make economic decision in his own best interest? I think it has to do with a common lapse in critical thinking ability. Dennis seems unable to comprehend without hand-holding that “force” and “freedom” in this context is a classic zero sum game. In other words, the credit card company’s gain in freedom doesn’t logically entail a gain in economic freedom for the credit card user. It usually means a direct loss of economic freedom for the credit card user.

This example applies across a wide range of tea party positions. Cries of “get the government off my back” very often translate in the real world to letting corporations shift cost and risk onto consumers and away from their bottom lines. Tea partiers like Dennis seem incapable of understanding this.

Bachmann is not a nice person with all her rants and plain outlandish crap that she proposes not fit for office that is for sure.

What Eric means of course, is that most people are too stupid to make their own economic decisions and need the government to take care of them.

People who are self-reliant and would rather make their own choices in the marketplace lack “critical thinking” skills. Got it.

Dennis,

You wrote: “People who are self-reliant…”

There’s no contradiction between being self-reliant and having government regulation. (If you were thinking critically, you’d acknowledge this elementary truism–but alas, you’re not.) In fact, increased government involvement in the economy–sometimes–allows more self-reliance. For instance, Europeans countries typically have higher rates of self-employment than do US citizens.

How could this be, asks the clueless American? Well, for one, in many European countries you don’t have to worry about destroying yourself financially with health care costs like many people do here.

“People who…make their own choices in the marketplace”

Ironically, when it comes to credit card companies, the less democratic control we have over them (i.e., the less self-reliance, self-determination), the less choice you have.

Under-regulation of the credit card companies means:

-Less ability to make an informed choice on account of intentionally over-complex card holder agreements.
-Fewer chances to make choices that are economically beneficial to the individual or small business owner. If you can’t get bank credit, you might use your credit card. But if the credit card companies are all allowed to, and actually are, charge ridiculous interest rates, you might very well decide not to start a business or to make less ambitious plans (which might mean hiring fewer people, e.g.).

Dennis–are you capable of actually engaging in a reasoning process, or do you simply bandy about your little unexamined catch phrases like “self-reliant” and “choice”, without even for a second considering their various meanings and contexts?

Bachmann’s theme of ‘they are coming to get you’ continued in this speech as she repeated the totally debunked ’16,500 federal agents ready to enforce the Affordable Care Act’ myth. Nice fear mongering, but not everyone is that gullible.

My God!! How much make-up is she wearing?? I’m surprised she can even hold her head up.. She looks like cross between a News Anchor and a Raccoon.. The Spackling Knife industry must LOVE her…

As a member of a family from MN I am embarrassed by M. Bachmann. How can Minnesotan’s elect such an idiot! People that listen to her must be even more dumb.