Michele Bachmann: Hey, There's a Can of Worms. You Know What I'll Do? I Think I'll Open This Here Can of Worms Up.

Stop blaming me. I didn't start with the sharp elbows.

But if it's going to be that kind of campaign, then it's going to be that kind of campaign.

Again, to quote the Bard of Long Island, We didn't start the fire.

Byran Preston plays a little Spot the Crony Capitalist, and discovers...

[quoting another source, emphasis added:]Meanwhile, Bachman has taken somewhere north of $140,000 from pharmaceutical companies. Those donors include Abbott Labs, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Bayer. Yet, not a dollar of all that pharma money, from such a wide range of the world’s largest drugmakers, came from Merck. Might Bachmann be going after Merck on behalf of that company’s competitors who also happen to be Bachmann donors?

Why bold GlaxoSmithKline? Because they make the only other viable HPV vaccine on the market, Cervarix.

Ah-ha! Maybe it's only Merck, then, that is selling Retard In A Needle.

But this Cervarix? Fine, fine product.

If you'd like protection against cancer, ask for Cervarix by name. Not the other one, you know, the one [Content Warning For Edgy Humor But Frankly Doctor Bachmann Has Injected This Whole Hot-Button Emotional Meme Into the Debate] that's actually a state-coerced hypodermic lobotomy.

You know when you've gone too far and too fringe?

When Ron Paul says you've gone too far and too fringe.

“We are pretty pissed off about it,” says one confidant. “She messed up, making it harder for other candidates to speak up. Taking on Perry on this front, with serious arguments, could have been a long and very successful line of attack. She went a step too far and embarrassed the field. She polluted the issue.”

Eh, she's an idiot in the first place.

And so is Ron Paul, who cites Al Qaeda as a credible source as to why the kill us (because we're attacking them; it's our fault, you see), but ignores Al Qaeda saying the attacks are motivated by the ultimate goal of a World Caliphate and complete Submission to Islam the world over.

Funny how he only takes Al Qaeda at their word in some cases. Conveniently enough, like the left, he credits their statements when they support his peace-at-any-cost philosophy, but ignores their statements -- won't even acknowledge them -- when those statements suggest that merely giving Israel to the terrorists will not buy them off.

"I Think She Can Get Away With That In Congress. I Don't Think That You Can As President." Bachmann has long had a problem with confusing statements that would be politically helpful to her as statements that are, in fact, actually accurate.

It’s a problem, former top staffers for the Minnesota congresswoman told POLITICO, that’s plagued her since she first arrived in Congress in 2007.

Three former senior aides to Bachmann painted a picture of a shoot-from-the-lip member who cavalierly makes assertions without knowing the facts — and would occasionally make them up to suit her needs.

The issue was serious enough, according to the accounts of two former staffers in Bachmann’s House office, that when new senior aides arrived to work for her, they were warned: Fact-check everything she says.

Upon entering Congress, she demanded a staffer get General Peter Pace on the phone. She was told it would probably not be possible for a very junior, just-sworn-in Congresswoman to speak directly to a guy with a lot on his plate. No call was placed.

But that didn't stop her from getting what she wanted -- the ability to say she'd spoken with General Pace.

But that didn’t stop Bachmann from going on a radio program and telling listeners that she did. “I just spoke with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Bachmann told the radio host, according to a staff member familiar with the conversation.

And there were other "misstatements."

In a recorded interview with the St. Cloud Times, she said the U.S. had agreed to partition Iraq and turn part of it over to Iran. “They are going to get half of Iraq and that is going to be a terrorist safe haven zone,” she said at the time.

Bachmann’s comments were picked up by the popular Drudge Report website, and she was forced to issue a statement of quasi-apology: “I’m sorry if my words have been misconstrued.”

Yeah, this is why I don't believe there even was some hysterical woman that just so happened to buttonhole her about her daughter's alleged mental-retardation-by-inocculation just when Michele Bachmann was in need of such an anecdote.

I think she just lied.

Or she read it on the internet and then decided to... switch the story up a bit to better suit her needs.

"I read it on the internet" is supposed to be an ironic statement of skepticism, not a life-motto.

Thanks to JeffB.

posted by Ace at 06:46 PM

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