In addition to Bachmann, the ads are targeting Republican Reps. John Boehner of Ohio, Denny Rehberg of Montana, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, as well as Democrat Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania.

“Stain,” as the ad is titled, “highlights the cash from Big Oil and other special interests taken by Members who voted against the American Clean Energy & Security Act, a comprehensive clean energy and climate plan that will put America back in control of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet,” according to a statement from the Sierra Club.

Here’s the full ad:

Both complaints involved Bachmann’s Nov. 5 rally against health-care reform in front of the U.S. Capitol.

Israel, of New York, used YouTube to voice his displeasure with prominent protest signs at the Bachmann event depicting Holocaust victims. A statement Bachmann released this week contains an apology of a sort.

On his TV show, Stewart took Hannity to task for inserting footage from another, larger rally into scenes from Bachmann’s event. Here’s Stewart’s take on Hannity’s sort-of apology.

Media Matters has a rundown of Fox’s past video trickery.

Here is Hannity’s original Fox News segment about Bachmann’s rally:

Update: On Wednesday’s show, Hannity acknowledged that Fox used the wrong footage.

Photo: Graham Moomaw, The Washington Independent

The Minnesota Independent’s sister site, the Washington Independent, was on the scene Thursday for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House Call” protest against health care reform at the U.S. Capitol.

Here is a video of the rally by TWI’s Graham Moomaw:

Update: This video clip by Moomaw features interviews with protesters:

And here is a slideshow of photos by Moomaw from the event:

The crowd’s chant of “Kill the Bill” was also heard in August from a more confined but no less riled group of protesters at U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum’s St. Paul office (MnIndy video post).

Ariana Huffington, for one, saw T-Paw’s comment on the “Morning Joe” show as a return to party-limiting “litmus tests” based on the “language of deviation.”

Pawlenty’s remark came at the 4:00 mark in this “Morning Joe” video clip:

Immediate criticism came from “Morning Joe” commenters:

Pawlenty, who has been on MSNBC before (notably “The Rachel Maddow Show”), didn’t commit a blunder on the scale of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s comments about Barack Obama and others in Congress harboring “anti-American views.”

But in the course of the discussion, Pawlenty was moved off his initial line — “Within the Republican Party, there is a range of issue positions and philosophies we can all hold, but you gotta stay generally within the guardrails” — to the phrase that caused the commotion: “range of behavior.”

Image: PiM/YouTube

State Rep. Paul Thissen may be seeking the DFL Party’s gubernatorial endorsement, but he sounded down on the whole party thing in a karaoke duet with his wife, Karen Wilson, over the insistent synth tones of Prince’s “1999.”

It was just one of the Candidate Karaoke acts at an Urban Embassy event last Friday that Politics in Minnesota has preserved for eternity on YouTube.

“Parties weren’t meant to last,” sang Thissen in his best basso.

Later in the video, Thissen switches to spoken word and knocks the very decade to which “1999″ belongs:

Too often our party, the Democrats, look to the past. They look back to the ’70s and the ’80s for solutions. But Minnesota is very different than it was in the ’70s and ’80s. I think we need a governor that’s going to look 2015 and 2020 and 2025.

Which really doesn’t seem in the spirit of Prince’s message:

Yeah, they say two thousand zero zero party over
Oops out of time
So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999

Hi-Caliber. Image: YouTube

While Rep. Michele Bachmann doesn’t get a shout-out as a “hero” in rightwing rapper Hi-Caliber’s new video (that distinction goes to Joe “You Lie” Wilson, yo), our fair state does merit a mention — as the place where President Obama was “hiding” — in plain sight — during the 9/12 “tea party” march on Washington.

After the jump, Hi-Caliber’s video, “Patriotic People,” in which the “only MC to rock on Capitol Hill” busts rhymes like “Schumer” and “tumor” and “Minnesota” and “votah” (er, “voter”).

Via Crooks & Liars.

Will got credit (and teasing) from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann for his revelation, but back in 2007 the Star Tribune’s Kim Ode included it as a fun fact at the end of her own fawning profile of Bachmann.

A year ago Bachmann got this greeting from Carlson when she appeared on “Fox & Friends”:

Congresswoman Bachmann joins us live now from St. Paul. Good morning to you! I feel like I can call you Michele, because — as people may or may not remember — you were my babysitter growing up! Good to see you again. And look at where you are now!

The two women are 10 years apart in age, if Wikipedia is to be believed. Will has Bachmann as a Humphrey Democrat in those days, while Carlson has waxed nostalgic about a pre-politically correct childhood.

Whatever their differences then, Bachmann and Carlson have by now converged on a kind of kooky, just-say-it conservatism that seems to work like catnip on cable-TV viewers of either political camp.

But what people can’t see is the sometimes fraught, sometimes idolatrous relationship of babysitter and babysat, as perhaps best expressed in Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes comics, and folksinger Dar Williams tear-jerker, “The Babysitter’s Here.”

Photo: governor.state.mn.us

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman caps off the long version of his new TV ad by quoting hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s advice to skate to where the puck will be. It’s a quote Gov. Pawlenty has been using for years, as Brian Bakst of the Associated Press notes. Indeed, it’s a favorite among consultants, businessmen and politicians, including former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. But Gretzky wasn’t the first to say it, and in any case it’s of dubious value as advice, according to people who know their way around a rink. 

Here’s how Coleman rephrases Gretzky’s maxim (at the 3:54 mark):

I really feel like the mayor of the City of St. Paul has to be a leader of all the people. We need to look to the future. We need to think about where the puck is going to be.

Pawlenty has been using the quote at least since his first year as governor. He found global meaning from Gretzky’s words in 2003, according to the University of St. Thomas Aquin (pdf):

Pawlenty compared the progress of Minnesota to his favorite hockey player, Wayne Gretzky. Pawlenty said Gretzky attributed his success to the fact that he didn’t care where the puck was; it was where the puck was going that mattered. “It’s a great metaphor for the times we live in,” he said. “We’re living in a world with enormous change, and it’s an exciting time.”

St. Paul’s other mayor named Coleman, Norm, said Gretzky’s wisdom could help the nation defeat terrorism. He cited them in 2006 to open two days of hearings as chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on investigations:

In the words of the hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, a good hockey player plays where the puck is; a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. In other words, we cannot safeguard a post-9/11 America by simply using pre-9/11 methods. If we think that terrorists are not plotting their next move, then we are mistaken.

Given how frequently Gretzky’s words are repeated, it’s surprising a key fact about them is often overlooked: they’re actually his father’s, according to an extensive 2000 investigation by Fast Company magazine’s Consultant Debunking Unit.

Walter Gretzky’s original version: “Go to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

Fast Company probed further, asking the elder Gretzky whether the adage is actually advice he’d give to pros, or the movers-and-shakers who like to cite it.

“Mama mia, no!” Walter says. “That advice is strictly for little kids. It’s just simple basics, like the ABCs. You have to know the alphabet before you can write. And naturally, going to where the puck is going is something that pros take for granted — or they wouldn’t be playing professionally.

The younger Gretzky wouldn’t give Fast Company the time of day, but his idol Gordie Howe took a swipe at the quote:

It’s not really the greatest piece of advice I’ve ever heard. Besides, sometimes you don’t want to be where the puck is going. One time, I was anticipating a pass from [Ted] ‘Teeder’ Kennedy and was leaning over to get in the way of it, when Kennedy, following through, swung his stick in my eye. I had double vision for two months and had to sit out the rest of the season.

A clear-eyed look at the saying by the late Herb Brooks, who coached Minnesota’s Golden Gophers and North Stars, resulted in a similar conclusion:

You’d have to be a real idiot to skate to where the puck used to be. On the other hand, if everyone skated to where the puck is going, you’d have one big train wreck. Sometimes your job on the ice is to take the pressure off of the guy who’s headed for the puck by drawing players away. And sometimes you want to skate to where the puck is, not to where it’s going. When you shoot the puck into the zone, it’s up for grabs — and you have to chase it.

Photo: Johnny Northside

Minneapolis mayoral candidate Al Flowers heckled Mayor R.T. Rybak at length yesterday as Rybak delivered a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for new KMOJ-FM studios in North Minneapolis.

In videos from the event, Flowers demands that Rybak debate his challengers, Rybak carries on with his rousing address, and James Everett, another mayoral candidate, stands by attentively.

The Independent Business News Network’s video has all that, as well as City Council Member Don Samuels speaking to the crowd about progress on the North Side as a kind of exorcism.

This shorter video clip, from a different angle, is from the Johnny Northside blog: