LTE: Why Does Minnesota Keep Electing Michele Bachmann

Published in the Stillwater Gazette:

Why do you keep electing Bachmann?
Published: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 12:46 PM CDT
I live in one of the "red" states (Idaho) in the U.S., but I cannot understand how the people of Minnesota can continually elect an obstructionist, racist, fear-mongering, lying, unintelligent, borderline traitor like Michele Bachmann to federal office. Please, someone write in and explain. I'm baffled. I'm 63 and have never seen anyone like her. She is a lulu!

J.C. Friend,
Garden City, Idaho

Michele Bachmann is an embarrassment to all of us in Minnesota.

A Relaxing Friday

It's friday again and that means the start of a weekend. I'm still in the recovery mode because of long flight from Germany to here. My body clock is not yet normal and still have sleep deficits. After seeing Adeth this morning, my daughters and me decided to just pamper ourselves.



Thats what i like here most in the Philippines, pampering is more cheaper

A Relaxing Friday

It's friday again and that means the start of a weekend. I'm still in the recovery mode because of long flight from Germany to here. My body clock is not yet normal and still have sleep deficits. After seeing Adeth this morning, my daughters and me decided to just pamper ourselves.



Thats what i like here most in the Philippines, pampering is more cheaper

Will Bachmann Continue to Support Expansion of Offshore Oil Drilling?

CBS News:

Environmental experts say the damage caused by the oil spill unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may equal or even eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off the southern coast of Alaska, the worst oil spill in U.S. history and one of the worst environmental disasters in decades.

And will the taxpayer end up with the bill to clean up the mess?

Today the Coast Guard set fire to parts of an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico to prevent the Deepwater Horizon rig's spill from drifting closer to Louisiana. A Slate Explainer points out that the oil recovered from the leaking oil well (at a rate of 42,000 gallons per day 5,000 barrels per day) off of the Louisiana coast can still be used. But one question that has yet to be answered* (and in fairness, to be asked): does BP still owe royalties to taxpayers for any of their natural resources that have been spilled and/or burned? Does it matter that BP opposed stricter safety rules for offshore drilling? Or that Food and Water Watch has raised concerns about the potential for a similar disaster, based on the allegations of "a whistleblower and former company contractor" that another platform "has been operating without a large percentage of the engineer-approved documents needed for it to operate safely"?

The Associated Press reports that industry officials have said that replacing the Deepwater Horizon will cost $700 million, and that BP is paying $6 million a day to contain the spill, and there are predictions that the cost of the disaster could easily exceed $1 billion. We don't yet know what the costs will be taxpayers. The Interior Department and Homeland Security Department announced a full investigation into the Deepwater Horizon rig incident yesterday.

Let's take a little trip down memory lane with Michele Bachmann:

A Minnesota congresswoman says the United States is the only country that has made it illegal to access its own energy.

House Republicans are continuing their revolt against Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her decision to adjourn the House without a vote on offshore oil drilling to lower gas prices. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich plans to join House Republicans in the Capitol this morning to join the protest.

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) says it has not escaped Democrats what the cost of gasoline and loss of jobs are doing to the country.

"This is their agenda," Bachmann states bluntly. "I know it is hard to believe, it's hard to fathom -- but this is 'mission accomplished' for them," she asserts. "They want Americans to take transit and move to the inner cities. They want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take light rail to their government jobs. That's their vision for America."

Bachmann predicts gasoline will rise above $5 a gallon if Barack Obama is elected president.

And then there were these photo ops:

Bachmann headed to the Gulf
Posted at 6:42 AM on July 26, 2008 by Tom Scheck (0 Comments)

No, not the Persian Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico. GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann's office says she'll visit an offshore oil rig:

Monday, July 28th, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is continuing her tour of American energy sources that if tapped could bring down the price of gas. Travelling by helicopter from New Orleans, Bachmann will tour a deep sea oil rig to learn firsthand how quickly and safely additional energy could be tapped if Congress lifted the ban on American offshore exploration. Most of America's offshore reserves - 88 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - are currently off-limits, and Bachmann has backed legislation to lift that ban. The tour will be guided by U.S. Mineral and Management Services.

Bachmann, who is calling for increased drilling, is making the trip just a week after she visited the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. She has been advocate for drilling in that area as well.

Happy to be Back Home

We did sleep till 12 pm for our first day in the Philippines. It's understandable because we arrived close to midnight. The first thing that we did was filling our stomach for brunch at Flavours of China together with my eldest daughter & grandkids.



Food shopping at SM Sta Rosa


Meeting Omel's family

Happy to be Back Home

We did sleep till 12 pm for our first day in the Philippines. It's understandable because we arrived close to midnight. The first thing that we did was filling our stomach for brunch at Flavours of China together with my eldest daughter & grandkids.



Food shopping at SM Sta Rosa


Meeting Omel's family

Where Is Michele Bachmann And Her "Titanium Spine" On This One?

Politico:

Even the normally outspoken Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) was subdued. “You know I haven’t even really been following it to tell the truth,” she told POLITICO when asked about the law.

When asked about immigration more generally, she said: “People have a right to feel that they can be safe and protected in their own homes and on their own land, and that idea of the federal government doing its job to secure the city for the American people is something that’s been lagging.”

It seems like anti-immigrant activist, Dare2sayit needs to make some calls to Bachmann's office on this issue.

What is Michele Bachmann afraid of? She has no problem with inflamed rhetoric about immigration when speaking to her base on talk radio.

Here's the perfect ad for Michele Bachmann:



Just substitute Michele Bachmann for Vernon Robinson and you have the Bachmann Agenda down pat.

Here's another ad with a similar theme:



UPDATE: Bachmann dodges the question on Fox about whether she supports the Arizona law.

Artist's Talk

1-9 encaustic on paper 12 x12 L Pressman


Last Wednesday was the reception for the show "Illusive Balance: Transcendental Pattern & Layered Surface" with Marsha Goldberg, Nicole Ianuzelli, and Debra Ramsay. For the event, each artist was asked to do a seven minute talk.

In the past few years, I have done just a bit of public speaking. I recently did a Power Point on my work at a workshop and was part of a panel discussion. It is fun but a challenge. It is not necessarily my favorite thing to do. I knew about it for months and had it on the back burner until the day, suddenly, was a week away.

I tried doing the talk to myself while driving a few times. I did a few, lie-in-bed, toss-and-turn, practice runs. I called a friend and had a discussion about what I might say but ended up saying "Oh, forget it. I will figure it out." I brought out my trusty little tape player and spoke for maybe 6 minutes. It didn't sound too bad, particularly after I did it a few more times and stopped in each one because I lost my train of thought. That's when I decided it would be great if I could just play the tape and lip sync it. That was quickly squelched by a few friends.

So I kept practicing. The night before the talk I did another version into the tape player as I was driving to work. I played it back before I went in and it was a bunch of um eh, um,um ,um. OMG.!!! Awful. I went into the restaurant where I wait tables and told my pals my predicament. They just laughed and made fun of me all night. I did realize that I have learned some skills while waiting on tables. I can talk to strangers and I can make them believe whatever it is I need them to believe at the time. It a performance every night. "Have the Halibut. You will love it." Recommending expensive bottles of wine is the same deal. A little bit of knowledge and a whole lot of confidence goes a long way. A sense of humor and humility is a winning combo. I am going to try to bottle that for the future.

I went home that night and decided to get up in the morning and try to write the talk down. By this time I had a plan. An outline, a beginning, middle and end. In the morning I picked up Debra Ramsay from the train and came back to my house. We both did our talks for each other and then off we went to the show. The show looked great. I met some old and new friends. We all did our talks. All went well. I didn't talk too fast, not a whole lot of ums, no sweat dripping down my forehead, saw a tear in my friend's eye, and drew a few laughs. Most importantly, I had this sense that is OK to do what I do. That may sound strange but I can spend way too much time thinking about what I do , why I do it, where I do or don't fit in.....blah blah blah. All that noise can interfere with the actual work.

I think the last line of my talk was " My intuition is smarter than my brain. When I enter the studio I try to park my intellect outside the studio door. The intellect is for a later date."

(You have no I idea how difficult this was to write. I have been in my bathrobe for days. Thanks for reading it!!)



Transparent Thinking 24 x 24 wax and oil (left) LPressman Element of Air 24 x24 wax and oil (right) LPressman

The catalog can be found here soon. The show runs through June 7, 2010

Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ Gallery Hours M-F 9am - 4:30 pm; Weekends by Appointment

Tarryl Clark On Bachmann "She'll Still Be on Fox News After I Defeat Her"

Tarryl Clark speaks with Mike McIntee of The Uptake at the DFL convention last weekend.



UPDATE: Also from The Uptake:

DFL endorsed congressional candidate Tarryl Clark addresses the DFL convention in Duluth about her campaign against Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

Bachmann: "Do we really want the dollar's value intermingled with that of Zimbabwe?"

Bachmann was the keynote speaker last night at the Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner hosted by the Frederick County Republican Central Committee. Frederick County is not in the 6th CD... it's in Maryland.

FredrickNewsPost.com:

She said Obama has been spending the country into a "debtor's prison," and that the national debt accumulation under his presidency is more than all of the spending of all other presidents combined.

She also criticized calls for a new international currency, rather than the U.S. dollar remaining as the international reserve currency.

"Do we really want the dollar's value intermingled with that of Zimbabwe?" she asked. "Well at the rate that Barack Obama's going, our currency will be worth about as much as Zimbabwe's if we don't get a hold on it."

Some more quotes from the video (Bachmann starts about 5 minutes):

"Only God gives liberty, freedom and only God gives the right to happiness. Which isn't just a license for hedonism. Pursuit of happiness means the right to your labor."

"We are unwilling to let this cabal of radicals pull the rug of freedom out from under us in our lifetime."

"You can't go because you have to write bigger checks"

Floh Markt in Offenburg

A flea market or flohmarkt is a type of bazaar where inexpensive or secondhand goods are sold or bartered. The flea market vendors may range from a family that is renting a table for the first time to sell a few unwanted household items to a commercial operation including a large variety of used merchandise.



Last saturday, there's a small flea market in Offenburg Markplatz. The weather was very nice and its really good for vendors, rare finders and antique collectors.



Now, its ice cream time!!!

Floh Markt in Offenburg

A flea market or flohmarkt is a type of bazaar where inexpensive or secondhand goods are sold or bartered. The flea market vendors may range from a family that is renting a table for the first time to sell a few unwanted household items to a commercial operation including a large variety of used merchandise.



Last saturday, there's a small flea market in Offenburg Markplatz. The weather was very nice and its really good for vendors, rare finders and antique collectors.



Now, its ice cream time!!!

Michele Bachmann Rips Mitt Romney on Jason Lewis

Castle Dining with the Luetzigs

Last Saturday, we decided to have dinner at Schloss Staufenberg in Durbach, one of the main attraction here in the Ortenau. Their specialties are flammenkuchen, salads and different cheeses. The castle is situated in the mountain, the Luetzigs walked their way up there and we go there by car.

Castle Dining with the Luetzigs

Last Saturday, we decided to have dinner at Schloss Staufenberg in Durbach, one of the main attraction here in the Ortenau. Their specialties are flammenkuchen, salads and different cheeses. The castle is situated in the mountain, the Luetzigs walked their way up there and we go there by car.