“It was really a beautiful sight to behold,” Bachmann said of the often boisterous forums held throughout August. “This was not something that was generated or created by any political party because the people who come to these town halls aren’t necessarily Republicans, they are Democrats and independents.”

She continued, “In fact, the woman who took Barney Frank to task in his town hall, and she held up a picture of Obama as Hitler, she was a Democrat, so this isn’t just Democrat, Republican, independent.”

“This is about people saying ‘I don’t want the government to control my health care.’”

As the Washington Independent’s David Weigel noted last week, the woman with the Obama-Hitler poster was a member of the Lyndon LaRouche movement. Across the country LaRouche supporters are bringing Nazi imagery to town halls to oppose health care reform for many of the same (often misinformed) reasons Bachmann opposes health care reform.

“The LaRouche cultists oppose Obama’s plan because they think he’s trying to euthanize old people and the infirm,” writes Weigel. “They oppose it for one of the reasons that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) oppose it, and they’re providing a lot of the ‘research’ for this smear.”

While Bachmann appears to be trying to tie Democrats to the Obama-Hitler protest signs, she forgets that the people carrying those signs are on her side.

LaRouche, who has run for president as a Democrat since 1976, hasn’t had the support of the party.

Conor Clarke of Atlantic Monthly explains: “LaRouche (whom I interviewed and profiled for the New Republic a few years ago, and who really doesn’t like me) has never been recognized by the Democratic Party, which won’t let him seat delegates at its conventions and has cited his ‘explicitly racist and anti-Semitic’ views as a reason for the ban.”

Photo: WDCpix

Minnesota’s members of the House of Representatives are back in their home districts gauging how constituents feel about federal issues. That feedback will also include town hall meetings for a number of Congress members including Reps. Tim Walz, Collin Peterson and Michele Bachmann. Will Minnesota’s town halls get as rowdy as ones around the nation? Time will tell. Here’s what Minnesota’s Congressional delegation was up to this week.

Rep. Tim Walz toured the new Veterans Administration Community-Based Outpatient Clinic in Rochester on Monday. “This is one small part of paying back a debt that can never be paid to our veterans,” he said.

Walz hosted a kitchen-table listening session on Wednesday with constituents who have experienced severe hardships under the current health care system. “To kill health care reform is to condemn more people to the stories we just heard,” he told the media following the meeting.

Also on Wednesday, Walz joined Sen. Al Franken for a tour of St. Cloud’s VA Medical Center and held a private meeting with VA officials.

Walz has planned a two-hour town hall meeting for Thursday, Aug. 20, at Mankato East High School. Doors will open at 5:30 pm.

Rep. John Kline has been railing against No Child Left Behind in the wake of school performance numbers being released this week. “While its overall goal of ensuring children are not systematically left behind in our nation’s schools is right on target, the heavy-handed involvement of the federal government in administering the program has tied the hands of local schools and districts and prevented them from making the targeted decisions necessary to address their specific challenges,” said Kline.

Kline does not have a town hall meeting scheduled but has told the media that he is meeting with chambers of commerce and will host an education roundtable. He is also planning a telephone town hall meeting.

Rep. Erik Paulsen will be hosting a telephone town hall meeting and a get-together with various interest groups in the district.

Rep. Betty McCollum held a health care town hall in July. The Strib reports that she’s considering hosting another.

Rep. Keith Ellison, on a tour of Africa, is talking with leaders, activists and non-governmental organizations about genocide, HIV, malaria, poverty, violence against women and a host of other issues impacting the continent. On Twitter Thursday, he said he couldn’t wait to get home. “Niarobi: Mpls next. Praises! Not that I don’t love Africa. Khartoum, Darfur, Juba, Niarobi, Kisumu, Dadaab, but there’s no place like home.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann will hold a health care town hall meeting on the 27th, but details are still in the works.

Rep. Collin Peterson has scheduled a series of town hall meetings — three so far. On is on Friday in Willmar at 2 p.m. at the Kandiyohi County Health and Human Services Building. The other is Monday in Bemidji.

Rep. James Oberstar chastised states this week that have been slow in implementing their stimulus projects. “Unfortunately, a few states have fallen far behind in putting their Recovery Act highway formula funds to work. Florida has been the slowest state in utilizing its funding allocation, while Hawaii and South Carolina rank 50th and 49th respectively.”

Officials in Florida have shot back saying their projects are more complicated.

Oberstar will be touring transportation projects around the state funded by the stimulus package.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar was in New Hampshire on Monday to promote tourism. Klobuchar also addressed the growing problem of cell phones in prisons. “Inmates should not be allowed to continue to commit crimes once they are locked up. We need to stop prisoners from using smuggled cell phones to continue their illegal activities.”

Klobuchar has also been working on a 20-year-old murder case involving a Minnesota woman who was killed in New York.

Minnesota’s senior senator is renewing her fight for a passenger’s bill of rights following the Continental “nightmare flight” last Friday in Rochester, in which passengers were planebound for six hours. “I think it is long overdue. Time and time again we keep being told, ‘Oh, it’s going to be OK,  you don’t need any minimum standards for passengers,’ and then something like this happens,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar has no town halls scheduled but will tour more then 20 Minnesota counties in the next few weeks.

Sen. Al Franken was part of a dairy farmers forum on Wednesday. While the forum was open to the public, organizers noted that the meeting would stay on topic. Franken also toured the VA in St. Cloud with Rep. Tim Walz on Wednesday.

Franken toured the Natural Resources Research Institute in Duluth on Thursday to talk about Great Lakes restoration projects.

Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh told the Park Rapids Enterprise that Franken will be traveling the state in coming weeks. “He’s hosting a couple of roundtables to hear from key constituencies on the health care reform debate, meeting with leaders in the agriculture community, touring the Mayo Clinic and other Minnesota businesses and institutions, and, of course, the State Fair.”

Piehowski has vowed to reject blogs who are too harsh and to lay down the law on irresponsible blogging:

Now, being a blogger with a worldwide audience also comes with a lot of responsibility. We’ve all heard at least one story about a blogger who has misled, misrepresented or flat-out lied on their blog.

Simply put, there’s a lot of garbage in the blogosphere and I won’t hesitate to call out a Minnesotan who blogs recklessly.

The people-powered media revolution is knocking at our door, friends. It’s time to peak between the curtains.

That, of course, led to harsh criticism from bloggers. A Blue Stem Prairie’s Ollie Ox:

MinnPost has hired a blog nanny to watch over those of us who presumed to set up blogs without asking permission. Yes, gentle readers, the Blog Cabin is here to award gold stars to those nice people who fit the rules of high-quality journalism and to take naughty posters out to the blog woodshed.

In the upcoming weeks we’ll find out which Minnesota bloggers make the cut and which ones will be shamed into blogger obscurity.

Last week, WCCO aired a report on local anarchists that said they “hope to cause chaos” and are “a group bent on destruction.” The station superimposed images of property destruction while discussing the group’s plans. That group is the RNC Welcoming Committee, an umbrella group of anarchists and anti-authoritarians organizing resistance to the Republican National Convention.

WCCO is not alone. In July, Fox News accused the anarchists of setting up a “red sector” devoted to clashing with police, a charge the group denies. The Star Tribune’s Katherine Kersten has devoted three columns to whipping Twin Citians into a frenzy over anarchists. In July, the Pioneer Press recounted the destructive World Trade Organization protests of 1999 and stated that “a group of Twin Cities anarchists now is making similar threats against the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.”

While local anarchists organizing actions at the RNC are loathe to speak to the news media, they have done extensive interviews with local community-based media. Their message and clarifications have fallen on very few ears. Here’s what they have to say about the media, their plans and anarchism as a philosophy. None of the members of the RNC Welcoming Committee use their real names in media appearances.

“We are not as scary”

“We’ve been painted in that bad light, being compared to terrorist attacks on the Xcel Energy Center, or chemical weapons or other forms of violence that we are criticized for,” RNC Welcoming Committee member Bara Cade told Eric Angell on Our World in Depth a program on the local cable access network MTN. “It’s important for people to know we are not as scary as people make us out to be.”

Barry Cade, another member of the Welcoming Committee, said, “Our tactics are not terroristic. If anything I would call them empowering.”

They do intend to prevent delegates from reaching the convention by blockading transportation routes — often with street theater, including a planned dance party by queer group Bash Back!, and even the possibility of piling stuffed teddy bears at an intersection.

“All that means is you are going to stay in an intersection or a place and not leave when the police ask them to leave,” said Emma, one of three members of the Welcoming Committee (also present: Harold and Tony), speaking to KFAI, a local community radio station. “Essentially, anything that will stop or slow down traffic — in this case, the traffic of the delegates — could be considered a blockade.”

Tony chimed in, “Even something such as driving slowly.”

Emma says the plan is to “engage in nonviolent civil disobedience peacefully preventing the delegates access the Xcel Center.”

That nonviolence has been a debate within the anarchist communities organizing against the RNC.

“We definitely don’t have property destruction in our strategy,” Barry told Angell. “It’s not part of it, but we do know there are people who follow the philosophy that … some property supports violence, and enables violence to happen.” He cited the examples of weapons manufacturers or companies that support war.

“There really is an open debate about it. We are just glad this debate can happen and that people can be a part of that debate,” he said.

Bara added: “We don’t want to say that we condone property violence or that we support it, but we also don’t want to say we are against it as well.”

Cooperation and community

Public perception of anarchism is that violence is part of the philosophy or that anarchist philosophy depends on a lack of authority that would force communities to descend into chaos. Those perceptions are at the heart of misconceptions of the movement.

“Anarchism is easily the most understood pol theory in America today, so much so that newspapers use the silly phrase ‘self-described anarchists,’” Harold told KFAI.

Indeed they do. Virtually every media outlet describes the Welcoming Committee as “self-described.” The Pioneer Press has done so three times, the Star Tribune four times, and I used the phrase at the Minnesota Independent (then Minnesota Monitor) last fall.

Harold said the misunderstanding leads many to equate anarchism with violence. “The media says direct action is synonymous with violence, that anarchism is the philosophy with the end goal of chaos and disorder.”

Instead, it’s about sustainability, consensus building, decentralization and community aid. And each anarchist has their own ideas.

“I think the key issue is people taking control of their own lives rather than offering up their compliance by being satisfied by giving someone else control of it,” said Barry. “A lot of people out there who don’t know what an anarchist is might be an anarchist themselves. If they look into it a bit, it’s more about creating an environment and community where cooperation is essentially what keeps a community running, not coercion.”

So, for example, instead of the Internal Revenue Service forcing payment of taxes, people would contribute what’s needed of their own volition. Law and order are the responsibility of every member of the community, not authorities.

“Anarchy is based on mutual aid,” said Bara. “It’s very community based, knowing who your neighbors are. … Anarchy doesn’t mean chaos in the streets, breaking windows, all these misconceptions. A lot of what we do is community based. Everyone on an equal level with one another.”

Said Barry, “It isn’t about creating something big but making things smaller, making communities smaller. Revolution should be the byproduct.”

A message on the two-party system

But with that feel-good message, why disrupt the RNC?

“The RNC used to be for nominating the candidate,” said Harold. “It’s essentially a huge dog-and pony-show sponsored by some of the worst corporations you could think of… where lobbyists pay for access to high-level politicians.”

The two-party system, a hierarchical structure, is antithetical to the philosophy of anarchism, they say. It imposes the will of the majority on everyone else instead of a consensus process that takes everyone’s needs into account.

That’s why the anarchists are acting. “Direct action has been a part of just about any effective political movement throughout history,” said Harold. “We don’t think the political elite will stop if we ask nicely.

Whether the media’s frenzied speculation of mass violence and property destruction will be realized remains to be seen, but the Welcoming Committee is adamant that it’s not part of their plan. But delegates and police can expect some major traffic hassles as the RNC gets into full swing in a matter of days.

“It’s a huge forum to say what we want,” he said.

The RNC Welcoming Committee’s interview with KFAI (MP3)

The RNC Welcoming Committee’s interview on Eric Angell’s Our World in Depth:

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, who received support from 35 percent of voters, immediately conceded and the party faithful endorsed Franken by acclamation. The strong show of support from delegates comes as Franken’s campaign has battled weeks of bad press over his tax problems and questions about his past writings. Attorney Mike Ciresi, who dropped out of the race in March, has repeatedly stated that he is considering re-entering the contest.

Franken wasted no time taking on Coleman. “On issue after issue he hasn’t brought people together to get things done,” Franken said of the incumbent in his victory speech. “He’s sold people out to get ahead.”

Franken vowed to work tirelessly to win back the senate seat that was previously held by Paul Wellstone. “I’m not a perfect person and I’m not going to attempt to have all the answers,” Franken told the convention. “But I’ll tell the truth. I will keep my spine. And I will work for you.”

Nelson-Pallmeyer gave a fiery speech that emphasized hope and idealism, repeatedly invoking Paul Wellstone. “We never change the world by saying what can’t be done,” he told the delegates. “We change the world by saying what needs to be done.”

Franken’s speech was slightly more somber. He addressed the controversies that have swirled around his campaign regarding his past writings. “I’ve had some tough conversations in the last week,” he acknowledged, noting that he was  a comedy writer for 35 years. “I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren’t funny. Some of them were inappropriate. Some of them were downright offensive.”

Franken then pivoted to more comfortable turf: knocking off the Republican incumbent. “I’m going to stand up to Norm Coleman in a way that he’s never been stood up to before because that’s what I’ve done and that’s what I’m good at,” Franken promised.

We’ll now find out if he’ll get the chance.

Among the primary gripes about Al Franken’s candidacy in the long lead up to the DFL convention has been that he’s not particularly impressive on the stump. For someone who’s spent his life in the entertainmbent business he can be surprisingly stiff and rambling.

“When it comes to debates he is very, very poor,” says delegate Barb Olsen, for example, who started out a Franken supporter, but was won over by Nelson-Pallmeyer at an early debate. “That’s going to be needed in the general election agiainst Norm Coleman.”

Franken had a final opportunity to change that perception in an hour-long Q & A session before balloting begins for the DFL endorsement. Given that his support is undoubtedly a bit soft following weeks of negative media coverage, it was also a potentially treacherous event.

Unfortunately for Franken, Nelson-Pallmeyer is no stodgy academic. He’s a dynamic speaker who throws out plenty of red meat for the DFL faithful.

The freewheeling debate touched on Iraq, immigration, health care, and economic issues. Franken gave a particularly strong answer when asked why he’s a Democrat. He mentioned that his father was a staunch Republican until the civil rights movement. But after witnessing protesters being assaulted by firehoses in Alabama his perspective changed. “My dad said that is wrong,” Franken recalls. “No jew can be for that.”

Nelson-Pallmeyer used the question to criticize the Democratic party for its feeble conduct in the run-up to the Iraq war. “If Democrats had stood up to the politics of fear we would not be in Iraq today,” he stated.

The college professor also sought to differentiate himself from Franken on health-care issues, arguing that we need a national, single-payer health care plan. “It’s not enough to say you are for universal health care,” he said. “I love my mom and apple pie too, but how do we get there?”

Franken countered by saying he wants to get to universal health care as quickly as possible, no matter what the system. “You don’t have to be sick to know that our healthcare system is broken,” he stated.

Immediately after the debate, the Franken campaign announced a minor boon for his candidacy: the endorsement of the DFL Feminist Caucus. “Al very strongly demonstrated an understanding of our issues and we know he’ll represent us in Washington,” said caucus member Jackie Stevenson in a statement. Given recent criticism from female DFL legislators about some of Franken’s past writings, this could prove influential with some delegates.

Klobuchar stated that she found some of Franken’s past writings “entirely inappropriate” and believes that he should have addressed the issue directly as soon as it surfaced.

“He needs to take this on upfront and more directly,” she said. “And from what I’ve heard that is what he’s doing. I think that’s a good thing. We will be heading in tomorrow where I understand he’s going to be addressing it in a more public way.”

Klobuchar also said she still believes Franken can defeat the GOP incumbent. “The polls show him very close, so of course he can beat Norm Coleman.”

“Our goal is to end the Bush administration and not allow a third term for George W. Bush,” Dean said to thunderous applause. “We honor John McCain’s service to America, but he has served enough.”

Dean drew the biggest ovation of his speech for condemning the Bush administration’s Iraq policies. “Anybody who believes that the American people want to stay in Iraq for another 100 years under any circumstances is badly out of touch with what the American people want,” he said.

The former Vermont governor repeatedly linked McCain and Bush, at one point referring to them as “two peas in a pod.”

Dean repeated the DNC’s announcement this week that it will no longer accept donations from lobbyists or political action committees to bring it in line with the rules governing the Obama campaign. “The American people will set the priorities in the Obama administration, not special interests,” he said.

Dean also went out of his way to give a shout-out to the candidate that Obama finally defeated this week. “You have not heard the last of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” he declared.

The DNC chairman directed his harshest words at freshman Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann. “That’s not a right wing lunatic district,” he said of the 6th Congressional District. “That’s average hardworking Americans.”

After the speech was over, Dean was immediately whisked away and did not talk with reporters.

“I listened to Al Franken for all the years that he was on Air America,” says Olsen, a veteran Democratic Party activist. “I was an incredible fan and think he’s done wonderful things for progressive politics.”

Before heading south to the Twin Cities, Olsen stopped off at Northern Waters Smokehaus to purchase some smoked whitefish for Franken, a delicacy that she knew he craved. She packed it on ice and made the 150-mile drive to Augsburg.

Olsen parked herself in the front row of the forum, which featured all four candidates who were then seeking the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) endorsement. With the pungent smell of smoked whitefish emanating from beneath her chair, she fully expected to be wowed by Franken.

But Olsen quickly found herself gravitating to another candidate on the “Progressive Promise” panel. “I was just completely taken aback by this gentleman,” she recalls. “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I really didn’t know anything about him. Whenever Al stood up I really wanted to feel the same about his answers, but I didn’t.”

At the close of the forum, Olsen found herself with a dilemma. “I kept thinking ‘Oh now what am I going to do with this fish?’” she recalls.

Ultimately Olsen handed over the gift to Franken as originally intended, but her political allegiance went to the other candidate on the panel who had captivated her that day, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. The University of St. Thomas professor and liberal activist is now Franken’s last remaining contender for the DFL endorsement.

Continued: Click “Read more”Since attorney Mike Ciresi dropped out of the race in March, the conventional wisdom has been that Franken is the de facto DFL nominee to face off against incumbent Norm Coleman in one of the most anticipated 2008 Senate races in the country. With a staggering $10 million raised and nearly across-the-board support from organized labor and other party kingmakers, Franken’s campaign has generally been regarded as an unstoppable political force. National pundits like the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza and the Atlantic Monthly’s Mark Ambinder typically don’t deem Nelson-Pallmeyer’s modestly funded, grassroots candidacy worth a mention. He has been dismissed as an afterthought, a liberal gadfly with zero hope of actually securing party backing.

But as Franken’s campaign has been repeatedly tripped up by controversies — his failure to properly pay $70,000 in income taxes and penalties in 17 states, a 2000 sex fantasy article he wrote for Playboy and a proposed 1995 Saturday Night Live skit that joked about rape — Nelson-Pallmeyer’s upstart campaign has won the allegiance of many DFL delegates. With the DFL state convention taking place in Rochester this weekend, it’s an open question which candidate will ultimately emerge with the party’s endorsement. The recent indications that Ciresi is seriously weighing a revival of his candidacy and may run against the DFL nominee in the primary election only further undermines the once-seeming inevitability of Franken’s campaign.

Nelson-Pallmeyer’s supporters, while studiously avoiding any mention of Franken’s troubles, are optimistic that they can pull off a stunning upset at Saturday’s endorsement vote. “We’re feeling very, very excited about walking into the convention this weekend in Rochester,” says Chris McNellis, Nelson-Pallmeyer’s campaign manager. “It’s getting more and more competitive every day. We continue to pick up new delegates.”

While such pie-in-the-sky optimism is a hallmark of longshot political contenders, there are indications that Nelson-Pallmeyer will be more than an afterthought at the convention. Earlier this week Franken picked up the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore, but Nelson-Pallmeyer  countered with a much-lower profile vow of support that could ultimately prove more persuasive to the party’s 1,400 delegates.

Ben Goldfarb, a respected political strategist who served as campaign manager for Amy Klobuchar’s successful 2006 Senate run, sent out a letter to delegates laying out why he believes Nelson-Pallmeyer has a legitimate shot at unseating Coleman. Goldfarb argued that the challenger presents a stark contrast to the incumbent that will be easy to convey to voters, that Minnesotans have a long history of backing unorthodox candidates, and that as the DFL-endorsee, Nelson-Pallmeyer will ultimately be able to raise sufficient funds to run a viable campaign. “But as you make your decision on Saturday, I hope you think first about which candidate you believe in most, which candidate speaks to your hopes,” Goldfarb concluded. “And with confidence that he can indeed win this fall, I hope you cast your ballot for Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer for Senate.”

To spring such an upset, Nelson-Pallmeyer will need to win over more voters like Terry Gydesen. A veteran photographer, Gydesen cut her teeth covering the insurgent senate run of Paul Wellstone in 1990. She initially met Franken at a Weisman Art Museum party in 2003 to celebrate the release of her book, Twelve Years and Thirteen Days: Remembering Paul and Sheila Wellstone. The comedian was in town to hawk a book and agreed to make an appearance. “It threw the event into the stratosphere,” Gydesen recalls. “Every square inch of that museum was packed.”

This connection with Franken led the photographer to initially believe that she’d support his campaign when she decided to become a DFL delegate for the first time. Gydesen placed a Franken bumper sticker on her car. She caucused uncommitted at her local party convention, however, hoping to stay on good terms with both candidates and document the campaign.

Watching the two candidates over a course of months, she grew increasingly uneasy with the direction of the Franken campaign, particularly the lack of a campaign manager guiding the effort. “I was horrified by that,” she says.

The breaking point for Gydesen came at the 4th Congressional District convention in April. She was baffled by the Franken camp’s decision to fight a proposed question-and-answer session with the two candidates. In talking with Franken, Gydesen was also distressed by how unenthusiastic the candidate seemed. “Oh my god, he looks exhausted,” she recalls thinking. “I just looked at him and thought, ‘If you’re this tired now and we’re not even in the general election yet, what’s it going to be like when Norm Coleman’s hammering on him?’ “

In the meantime Gydesen was becoming a Nelson-Pallmeyer believer. His stark liberalism and chaotic campaign headquarters reminded her of Wellstone in 1990. “The media and really the party has told us that it’s going to be a race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman,” she says. “But I have to go with my heart. Who is the person that’s most aligned with my values and I think has the best chance of beating Norm because of those values?”

Gydesen acknowledges that she may have drank way too much Kool-Aid, but she fully believes that Nelson-Pallmeyer will walk away from the convention as the DFL endorsee. “I’m quite certain it’s going to be Jack,” she says. “I’ve talked to a lot of people. I think people are rightfully concerned about whether Al can win.”

Betty Tisel is another convert. She backed Keith Ellison over Nelson-Pallmeyer in his previous run for Congress two years ago. But she’s now devoting countless hours to his Senate run, charged with keeping tabs on the allegiances of the 1,400 DFL delegates.

“I have watched the positions shift from strong Franken to leaning Franken to undecided to Jack,” Tisel says. She’s confident that Nelson-Pallmeyer will at the very least force Franken to a second ballot before he can secure support from the 60 percent of delegates needed for endorsement. “I have a giant sombrero that I’m going to have to eat if there’s not two ballots,” she laughs.

At Nelson-Pallmeyer’s campaign headquarters in Minneapolis, there is, in Tisel’s words, a “little dorky brass bell” that campaign workers ring each time the candidate has secured the commitment of another delegate. “That bell has been ringing more and more,” she says. “It’s like slugging down a can of one of those power drinks. It just really makes us feel confident.”