Rep. Michele Bachmann was on a tear: In one of her most fiery stump speeches to date, the tea party leader told a South Carolina audience that the tax code was a “weapon of mass destruction,” that President Obama is “babying” terrorists, that the rich pay too much in taxes, that social issues like marriage and abortion cannot be put on the “back burner,” and that Fox News’ Glenn Beck can solve America’s budget deficit.

Bachmann spoke to a group of about 200 Spartanburg Republicans on Saturday evening. She was in Columbia earlier in the day and had to cancel a Friday visit with Rock Hill Republicans due to a late-night vote in the House.

“We are looking at a time of bubbles,” Bachmann said, referring to the housing and tech bubbles. She said that Americans are witnessing a “government bubble.”

“If Obama is allowed to continue what I call his ‘reign of error’ for another second term, we will be at $21 trillion in debt,” she said. “We are talking Greece territory in the greatest country in the world. We are talking Greece.”

She added, “When you add it all up — I’m a former federal tax lawyer — when you add up the tax burden on today’s kids — and I believe this is a low estimate — they are looking at in their peak years, at having 70 percent of their income to pay their tax bill.”

That’s a claim that Bachmann made at CPAC earlier this month when she claimed an even higher number — 75 percent, and according to the Washington Post, it simply isn’t true.

“The bottom line, when you ‘get out your calculator’ and add all this up: total taxes of about 25 percent, rather than the 75 percent in Bachmann’s telling,” wrote the Washington Post, which used tax experts to assist in its calculations of federal, state and local taxes. “We presented this math to Bachmann’s spokesman and are still waiting for a response.”

Bachmann blasted entitlement spending and urged reform in Social Security. “The problem is our health care welfare spending which is out of control,” she said. “The good news is we can solve this problem. It needs to be a market based approach.”

She offered up a somewhat non-traditional solution: “We need to simply tell people the facts, like Glenn Beck, with that chalkboard, that man can explain anything. I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this.”

Bachmann also said there’s a business bubble because the U.S. has the “highest corporate income tax rate in the world.”

It is the tax code she blames for the “business bubble.” She said, “We need to get rid of the blood-sucking tax code. It’s got to go, just scrap the current tax code,” adding that it is “a weapon of mass destruction.”

She also said that the rich pay the most in taxes. “Don’t let people tell you that those dirty rich people don’t pay their taxes: The top 1 percent pay 40 percentof all income taxes, the top 5 percent pay 60 percent, the top 10 percent pay 80 percent,” she said. “So we need a radically new system.”

In addition to the government bubble and the business bubble, Bachmann spoke of the education bubble, decrying $44 billion in Pell grants for low-income students.

She also talked about the “family bubble.”

“The family is on a bubble right now. The rate of cohabitating couples in one year increased 13 percent,” she said. “The family is the ultimate first form and first unit in government and society.”

She added, “The bureaucrats now hate our values; there’s a war on marriage, a war on family, a war on fertility all while funding and promoting abortion.”

Bachmann continued, “We don’t need political correctness because most fundamentally I believe the building block of the family is what the government needs to do right now and support two-parent families as the foundation of our economic and social policy.”

She said for that reason, social issues need to be a priority. “We can’t put the so called social issues on the back burner while we are solving our economic challenges because the family is the solution to those challenges.”

Yet another bubble Bachmann sees is the “national security bubble,” and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the ban on gay and lesbian servicemembers repealed by the U.S. Senate in December, is one of those things that is creating the bubble.

“President Obama is applying a politically correct standard to the United States military that cannot be tolerated in our country,” she said, adding that Obama is babying jihadists.

“Our Peace Prize-winning president is very busy bowing these days to kings,” she said. “He is bending down to dictators, and he is brown-nosing the elites that are in Europe, and he’s babying the jihadists who are following Sharia-compliant terrorism.”

She continued, “He is callow and confused and inconsistent in his response to the Egyptian crisis and to the terrorist threats.”

“He’s accomplishing something no one thought was possible; he’s making Jimmy Carter look like a Rambo tough guy.”

She also called on Wisconsin school boards to consider firing the teachers who called in sick to protest a bill that eliminate some collective bargaining for state employees.

“I want to give a shout out to Scott Walker up in Wisconsin,” she said to hearty applause. She derided teachers for “calling in sick on work time, showing up to protest and they bring the kids they are supposed to be teaching.”

She added, “At minimum, they shouldn’t get paid for that time. Those school boards need to make a decision whether or not they get fired.”

She closed the speech by saying she was all in for 2012.

“And so now it’s for us. We decide. Do we go on? Or does the bubble burst? And I’ve made my decision. That’s why I’m here in South Carolina. Because I say the dream goes on,” she said. “And I’ve made a decision that I am all in to preserve the liberties to the latest generation. This dream doesn’t die with us. This dream goes on to the next generation. We have too much invested in that generation, because we are the indispensable nation of the world.”

Bachmann concluded, “So it is our time and it’s about 2012 and I’m in, and so I ask you tonight, are you in for 2012?”

Photo: Simon Stromberg

Rep. Michele Bachmann has become a late addition to a rally the night before Glenn Beck’s controversial Restoring Honor rally on Saturday. Black leaders have criticized Beck for planning the rally at the same time and location that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago. Beck says it is just coincidence, but the outrage by black leaders has in turn prompted outrage from tea partiers.

The Defending the American Dream Summit, hosted by Americans for Prosperity, will be held along with a weekend of Tea Party activities. Bachmann, who has spoken at the event in the past, is one of few politicians speaking at the event, which includes Sarah Palin.

“When we heard about Glenn Beck, it was puzzling,” said Sharpton. “Because if you read Dr. King’s speech, it just doesn’t gel with what Mr. Beck or Mrs. Palin are representing.”

The controversy over the event resulted in a radio show by Bradlee Dean and Jake McMillian of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, a ministry that Bachmann raises funds for annually. Dean said, “I know more about the civil rights issue than most black folks.”

Bachmann said that she and her fellow “patriots” are pushing back against Democrats and health care reform:

“[W]e reject what they want, this centralized government approach, and what we want is no backroom deals, no political favoritism, no doing a bill behind closed doors. You read the thing before you actually vote on it. Some very simple things: don’t add to the crushing debt, don’t add to the state crushing debt.”

Listen:

Bachmann spoke Tuesday on Glenn Beck’s radio program.

Her comments are apparently proof that truth doesn’t travel upstream. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa spent much of 2009 propagating the death panel concept, but by year’s end had disowned it. From a Dec. 10 communique (pdf):

Some commentators took my comments and twisted them and even quoted me as saying the House health care reform bill would establish death panels, and this was incorrect. I said no such thing.

Bachmann apparently didn’t get that memo.

A statistic from Michele Bachmann made Glenn Beck go, “Whoa!” on his radio show Wednesday morning: The federal government owns or controls 30 percent of private wealth in America. Beck exclaimed that the stat was new to him and even to his aghast studio crew. Where’d she get that? Bachmann (again) cited as her source an unnamed Arizona State University professor. The Minnesota Independent found the prof and asked him where he got the number.

It wasn’t through Nobel Prize–level methods, Prof. William Boyes told MnIndy by email:

I simply added up how much of GDP [gross domestic product] was govt run or govt controlled.  I gave an approximation that is pretty conservative. I suspect the actual number is more like 40%; if health care goes through then it will rise to over 50%.

Bachmann seems to have got the stat from this July 7 Washington Times paraphrase:

William Boyes, an economics professor at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, estimates that the government now owns or controls businesses that generate about one-third of U.S. economic activity.

The congresswoman added “According to” and quote marks and posted that sentence at her Townhall.com blog the next day. She has continued to cite it since, though usually without Boyes’ name attached.

Commentating like Cokie

Over the airwaves, Bachmann has company. Pundit Cokie Roberts said this on the Oct. 4 edition of ABC-TV’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”:

You know, right now, 40 percent, 40 percent of GDP is state, local, or federal money. I mean, that’s an incredible number. So that, you know, adding more [government spending] to that, I think, is going to … distort things even more. And the public is so concerned about it.

That inspired Politifact to try to nail down how much of the nation’s GDP really is in government hands. The answer turns out to be tricky: It depends on whether you count the payments such as Social Security that the government transfers among citizens.

Such transfers aren’t really government “spending,” though they may be what Bachmann and Boyes mean by “control,” even if the way the funds are spent isn’t in government. If transfer payments aren’t included in the figure, government spending is less than 20 percent of GDP. But by including transfer payments and adding in local government spending, Politifact rated Roberts’ figure “mostly true.”

Politifact bemoans that government statistics on its role in the economy simply haven’t kept pace with government responses to the recession such as stimulus spending, corporate bailouts and other programs. Boyes’ napkin-math is pretty much all we have at the moment.

Asked if the figure could be found in any published research, Boyes said “not that I know of” and recommended visiting the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation websites for more information.

Coalescing against the Constitution

On another topic on Beck’s radio show, Bachmann couldn’t seem to make up her mind. She praised Beck for “the September 12th 9/12 movement you instigated,” but also said, “People aren’t crazy. They haven’t been ginned up by talk show hosts.”

(Beck returned the favor by recommending listeners visit her website and make a donation.)

Bachmann said the 9/12 movement is a “huge tent” for people devoted to the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, repeating an image she conjures up often of those documents being the fabric of the tent.

Then it got kinda confusing: ”The very parchment of those documents is the tent that we are coalescing against,” Bachmann said.

Image: YouTube

Back in fall 2006, before Glenn Beck was the household name he is today, he tried out a rhetorical tactic he’s now known for. He famously asked Rep. Keith Ellison, because the freshman legislator is Muslim, to “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” Critics of Beck have commemorated the Fox host’s propensity for challenging those he opposes to prove a negative (“prove you didn’t do _____”) in a satirical website, “Did Glenn Beck Kill and Rape a Young Girl in 1990?” Now, in a case that revisits the Ellison story, Beck is appealing to the international body that assigns internet domain names to shut the site down.

As Ed Brayton (who writes for our sister site in Michigan) reports on his blog, Beck lodged a complaint (pdf) with the World Intellectual Property Organization charging that the satirical site’s domain name should be canceled because it is “plainly libelous, patently false, not authorized by Mercury or Beck, and is likely to cause confusion for consumers.”

But Brayton asks:

“Why would he do that rather than file, say, a libel suit? Because he knows he would lose a libel suit. He is a public figure and the site is clearly satirical. …[I]t is virtually impossible to win such a suit.”

In his response to the complaint (pdf), Marc Randazza, the attorney representing site owner Isaac Eiland-Hall, states that the WIPO’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy isn’t to be used for defamation cases and that the site is clearly political satire, can’t be confused as an official Beck site and seeks no profit from its communication. Further, he gives the lineage of the site’s premise:

The meme is a parody of from [sic] Glenn Beck’s own argumentation style mated with a  Gilbert Gottfried routine performed during the Comedy Central Roast of  “comedian” Bob Saget.  During Gottfried’s speech, he kept repeating (in his trademark nasally voice) that there were rumors that Bob Saget had  raped and killed a girl in 1990…

…The humor equation is simple: (Outrageous Accusation) + (Celebrity) + (Question Why the Celebrity Does Not Deny the Accusation) = (Confirmation of the Falsity of the Accusation + Laughter)

Then, the attorney references Beck’s Ellison interview, concluding, “Quite simply, Beck’s shtick is simply a cheap imitation of Gilbert Gottfried, sans the humor.”

Randazza’s response brief is entertainingly written, contextualizing the site as being akin to internet memes like “Mr. Spock Ate My Balls” and “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US,” and challenging Beck’s assertion that the satirical site’s name might confuse Beck fans:

We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion.  We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent’s website wondering “where did all the race baiting content go?”  We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent’s website shut down.  He wants it shut down because Respondent’s website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck’s very rhetorical style.  Beck’s skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down.  Beck is represented by a learned and respected legal team.  Accordingly, it is beyond doubt that his counsel advised him that under the First Amendment to the United States’ Constitution, no action in a U.S. Court would be successful.  See, e.g., Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988).  Accordingly, Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent’s constitutional rights.

Photo: MnIndy

Former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman was once a daily news staple but has largely fallen into civilian obscurity since bowing out of his recount battle with now-Sen. Al Franken. Now he’s back in the news and the blogs, and for reasons other than his health or gubernatorial ambitions.  

Coleman is, naturally, a central player in the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ series of stories looking back at the Coleman-Franken fracas.

Coleman also reportedly sent out an email in support of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann that seemingly takes a GPS approach to gay-baiting (Manhattan, Vermont and San Francisco, oh my!).

And his name gets invoked in a mudfest between rightwing bloggers David Frum and David Horowitz over whether Glenn Beck is an albatross for the GOP. (By the way, it turns out Coleman lost to Franken because of Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley.)

Photos: bachmann.house.gov, oberstar.org

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s talk of stopping health care reform by fasting, praying and wrist-slitting has prompted not only lefty pundits but a top Democratic colleague to question what’s going on between her ears. Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, remarked Tuesday: “I don’t think God’s talking to her anymore. I think she’s hearing other voices.”

Bachmann said in 2006 that she was running for Congress on God’s recommendation (video), and last month said she would run for president if she “felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do.”

It wasn’t a one-off gag line for Oberstar, who earlier called Bachmann “a sweet woman” but had this advice for elderly health care reform advocates in Duluth who were planning to visit her: ”Tell her that there are voices other than God that are informing her.” [Via Tom Elko]

It wasn’t immediately clear whether one of those voices is that of Rep. Ron Paul, who has Bachmann’s ear on financial policy and will appear with her at a town hall in her district this month.

Oberstar’s comments are of the sort more commonly heard from cable TV yakkers like Ed Schultz, whose show featured her “psycho talk” two days in a row, and Dan Savage, who linked God-inspired politics to hate rhetoric of the worst sort:

When you have a party that claims to speak for God or says God is on its side, the rhetoric heats up and the anger heats up, because it’s not just a battle about ideas and positions and what’s good for the country and bad for the country. It’s a battle about what God wants and what God doesn’t want. And it’s easier to demagogue about your enemies and to despise them and to dehumanize them in this really personal and vicious way. And the religious right is fomenting this kind of hatred in this country at our peril. I really do think that the Michele Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and consciously, or subconsciously, trying to get — I’m just going to say it — trying to get the president killed. This kind of rhetoric — this paranoid style on the religious right, from Birchers to birthers — doesn’t usually end well. And somebody’s got to put the brakes on it. Unfortunately in the Republican Party, there’s no adults left in the room. There are only the Michele Bachmanns and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs running the show.

Here’s MSNBC video of Savage (via City Pages) and Schultz (via our sister site the Colorado Independent):

That’s the conclusion of Eric Ostermeier, who blogs at Smart Politics for the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Ostermeier counted Bachmann’s appearances on cable shows since she took office in 2007. That first year: zero appearances. Over the past year: 43 appearances.

So by Ostermeier’s reckoning, Bachmann is on national TV every nine days. At that rate, you can set your Tivo for next Thursday and have a good shot at catching the representative from Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District.

And at that rate, isn’t Bachmann proving she could handle her own weekly show, a la Huckabee?

By the way, Ostermeier confirms what you may suspect: Bachmann is increasingly leaning toward right-leaning networks like Fox. She hasn’t, for example, shown her face on MSNBC since Oct. 17, 2008, the day she told Chris Matthews of her suspicions about colleagues in Congress harboring “anti-American” beliefs.

Her latest appearance, as of this writing, was Tuesday, when she told Fox News host Sean Hannity that reforming the nation’s health care system is unconstitutional.

All that airtime is not an accident; it’s by design. Bachmann has mobilized an exceptionally large squadron of public-relations staffers to pursue “an aggressive plan” for more media exposure. Among other benefits, Ostermeier figures that strategy is reaping Bachmann campaign-fundraising rewards.

March 31: Jonah Goldberg on auto bailout: “You can call it corporatism, you can call it socialism, you can call it fascism, what it is not is liberal democratic capitalism.”

March 30: Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano says General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner’s resignation is “an absolute power grab and it’s the road to fascism”, “this is Mussolini on the Potomac.”

March 11: Lee Rodgers claims Obama “clearly is more sympathetic with the long-term goals of world communism, and let’s be blunt about it, Muslim terrorists, than with any legitimate American goals.”

Feb. 6: Glenn Beck on “The O’Reilly Factor”: “We are really truly stepping beyond socialism and starting to look at fascism”; compares proposals to Nazi Germany.

Jan. 27: Numerous media figures equate Pelosi’s defense of family planning provision in recovery package to China’s “one-child policy,” eugenics, Nazism.