Something about Michele Bachmann’s video has been bugging me (and Matt Lewis too) ever since I posted it earlier today. Aside from the irresponsible lunacy of issuing a blanket opposition to “any governor or president who mandates a family’s healthcare choices and violates the rights of parents on these issues” and scaremongering about a vaccine known to be safe, there’s a word she should use in the video but never does. See if you can spot it:
“Whether its Obamacare or Perrycare I oppose any governor or president who mandates a family’s healthcare choices and violates the rights of parents on these issues – especially if the decision-making process occurs behind closed doors, bypassing legislative action, and favors campaign contributors over families.”
Which GOP candidate has had his state-run health care program linked with ObamaCare? Not Perry, since Texas doesn’t have anything like ObamaCare. No, that would be Mitt Romney. But Bachmann doesn’t use “RomneyCare.” Why? Has she allowed herself to become a stalking horse for Romney? If so, on what grounds?
And then there’s the crony capitalist problem. Bachmann has taken a lot of money from pharma companies. One company stands out.
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.
If it’s fair to levy the “crony capitalism” charge at Perry, then it’s fair to levy the exact same charge at Bachmann, especially after her attacks on Perry.
Oh, I suppose this will earn met another juvenile “stupid x3 attack” hit. So be it.
For the record, I know the “crony capitalism” charge doesn’t apply to Perry and I don’t believe it applies to Bachmann. The stalking horse possibility is definitely in play, though.
Thanks for ruining PJM with your politics of personal destruction, pal. Just like a leftist but against our own side.
If Perry isn’t man enough to defend himself from Bachmann’s pathetic hits, then God help us all.
Bryan “Olbermann” Preston lol
“The politics of personal destruction”? Wasn’t that precisely what Bachmann was engaging in when she spouted that idiotic nonsense that Gardesil caused “mental retardation.” She was out to get Perry at any cost and revealed herself to be a selfish vindictive idiot. The sooner she drops out the better. What a disgrace to the Republican Party. She makes me cringe with embarrassment.
The “She was out to get Perry” thing is called Bachmann trying to beat him out for the nomination. Politics ain’t beanbag.
I don’t approve of what she did. But PJM’s week-lomg jihad against Bachmann is over-the-top and straight from the dem’s playbook. Save the nuclear attacks for the real enemy.
If Perry can’t defend himself from Bachmann’s pathetic assaults without the aid of all the boy bloggers who’ve gone into into hysterical overdrive (see RedState, AoS, etc.), then maybe he’s not the right candidate.
“If Perry can’t defend himself from Bachmann’s pathetic assaults without the aid of all the boy bloggers who’ve gone into into hysterical overdrive (see RedState, AoS, etc.), then maybe he’s not the right candidate.”
What an absurd, sexist comment. How do you even know I’m a boy? And for that matter, how do you know I even support Perry? (Actually, I don’t. I prefer Romney.) But in this case it’s Bachmann, not Perry, who shot herself in the leg. As others have written, she’s finished. From here on in her whole campaign is a waste of her money and our time.
Vaccines in general, and Gardasil in particular, do NOT cause mental retardation, autism, or any other developmental disability. That lie has been thoroughly debunked.
This paranoia about vaccines has caused many panic-stricken parents to refuse to allow their children to be immunized against any diseases at all. And it isn’t just a problem in America. Refusal to immunize has led to a resurgence of deadly childhood diseases in various parts of the world where those diseases had supposedly been eliminated or reduced to negligible levels. Anybody who spreads this paranoia, and thereby causes children to do without the vaccines they need, has blood on his or her hands.
Ah, so it’s “settled science”, just like AGW so we need to listen to the experts and stop thinking for ourselves on this? hahahahaplop.
Seems to me an old, old book had something to say about situations like this.
Michele sowed the “crony capitalism” charge… now she’s reaping it.
My sympathy knows quite definite bounds.
Bachmann is done. Stick a fork in her. She is not out to defend America from Obama, she is ready to say anything to get his job.
I shudder to think of her as CIC.
Chris Wallace was right, she is a flake. And to think that I took the time to complain to Fox News on her behalf.
Groan
If you can’t apply ‘Crony Capitalism” here then it does not exist..maybe not on Obama scale of billions..get real..stop apologizing for them all..Let them ALL EXPLAIN..
Dude. You’re starting to sound like chuck Johnson. You really don’t want to end up like Chuck Johnson.
Michelle Bachman has been making a fool of herself over and over. As an old soldier might say “Michelle has crapped in her messkit”. She’s done as she seems more interested in defeating Perry than defeating Obama.
Bryan has made clear that he’s a proud Texan and GOP guy, so it’s fair that he might be biased.
So then…
Did Merck refuse to support her candidacy because of some previous Gardasil opposition or did she turn down their offer to contribute? Is this now some kind of Operation Payback or is it just maybe a crony candidacy?
I only know that this entire list of drug companies have certainly triggered alarming and debilitating or deadly side-effects in hundreds or even thousands of innocent children who had no choice. Some of the profits from that horrible stuff went to Michelle Bachmann for President.
So it seems that candidate Bachmann Gardasil Overdrive has now opened a can of worms and not the can of whoop-ass she initially thought she was opening. Check the label – and expiration date – next time Michelle!
Yes, she is a stalking horse for Romney. I loved the big wet one she planted on him when she walked out in that last debate, it was precious. We have warned her, the boys will throw her under the bus, I don’t know what she was promised but it aint going to happen. I love how a certain person has opened that can of worms don’t you
grrr !
Hmmmm, I see its pile-on-Michele here lately. Pajamas Media might do better to go after some of the foolish Neo-Con ideas that some of their writers are still obsessed with.
Bachmann ain’t perfect, but she’d still be a whole lot better than our Scoundrel-in-Chief. And unlike some here, I don’t require slickness in a candidate.
Nope. Everything some people claim is wrong with Palin actually is what’s wrong with Bachmann.
Bryan, We get it, you’re want Bachmann out and Perry to be the nominee; but try to stay on the hinge will you? Throwing wild accusations – what if’s – out of the blue may not be beneath you, but it’s beneath pajamas media (or should be). The “crony capitalism” accusations against Perry don’t all sprout from his ties with Merck like children from the head of Zeus.
Perry created the government-financed Texas Emerging Technology Fund, basically a government venture capital operation, after he lost Boeing to South Carolina. That’s not exactly an embrace of the free market. In his September 11 editorial, George Will asks Perry, “How [does he] square this form of industrial policy — government picking winners — with governmental minimalism?” For that matter, Bryan, how do you?
This.
Mr. Preston, I am sick and tired of your shameless partisanship. This was way out of bounds. Please quit shilling for Perry at PJM. I’ve said this before.
The fact is, Bachmann’s attack was a fair ball. Perry is really open to this charge. It is how business is conducted in Texas, and you know it. It is a good ol’ boy State.
The fact is, Perry is a lousy candidate. Like Bush before him, there is a certain amount of cronyism. There is also an ignorance of things outside Texas. Perry came to the debates unprepared and got his butt kicked. If it were not for his record on jobs, we would not consider this Bush clone at all. LBJ sucked, both Bushes sucked, and Perry will suck, too. He will be just like Bush… more conservative, but with the same big-government and crony instincts. It’s like a disease in Texas.
Ya know, there’s a really good way to punish PJM for publishing Mr. Preston.
Hit them in the wallet.
That is, don’t give them page views, which translate into dollars for PJM.
Every time you come here, you’re just reinforcing that Bryan is making them money.
Perry apologized. Bachmann seems constitutionally incapable of admitting error and she makes up stuff to fit her narrative, just like the current occupant of the White House. I don’t care if she’s right about some things, she’s got a serious personality disorder – extreme narcissism. Again just like our Commander-In-Chief. Aren’t you all tired of that? It makes me sick.
Well said, Carol. Bachmann is dangerous and out of control. The idea of her in the presidency scares me not quite as much as Obama, but almost. Also, she is an almost certain loser. If Republicans want to commit suicide, they should nominate Bachmann. She is going to have trouble being reelected to Congress the way she is going.
And we did not land on the moon and 9/11 was an inside job.
Bryan brings up an interesting point. Romneycare is the obvious alternative, but she invents something out of whole cloth to avoid criticising Romney, & takes on his chief rival. It’s not just here – she’s been avoiding Romney altogether lately. And with her limited experience (& thus fund-raisning), how does it stack up comparatively to Perry in pharmaceuticals?
Legitimate questions.
She goes after Perry, because they fight for the same demographic. Romney will get the moderates.
She did not make this up from whole cloth. This has been leveled before at Perry, just not so effectively. She whacked him good with this.
It is also important that this be done. Perry has to go through the fire of the primaries, or he’ll get clobbered in the general. He must be vetted. Bachmann does us all a great service in this. I do not want this issue to be an October Surprise next year, if Perry is the candidate.
And no, it is not a fair question. Bachmann, like every politician, gets money from various sources, but there is no evidence whatsoever that she has traded political favors for such.
Perry came out with his grotesque executive order soon after talking with Merck, a company from whom he has received regular support over the years. It is the problem of his over-reach, and the timing in relation to dealing with Merck. Obama does this all the time, meeting with some donor, then suddenly, they get some political backdoor deal. Like Solyndra.
Yes, Bachmann talks out her backside at times, because she does not know enough, and she dares not say so when she should. She is not ready, of course, but this is fair game.
If Palin does not get in, I will find myself supporting Cain, I guess. (sigh) Not happy about any of these 2nd-tier candidates, which they all are. (Palin is the best of this 2nd-tier lot.) People are jumping aboard the Perry train, sensing inevitability, but he will peak soon and decline. Won’t seem so inevitable then.
Okay, lemme get this straight.
Bachmann gets money from pharma sources. This is OK.
Perry gets money from pharma sources. This is apparently not OK.
Double-standard much?
Perry got money from pharma sources-okay.
Perry got money from pharma sources and then made that “pharma source’s” vaccine mandatory unless parents jumped through hoops, a vaccine which looks dangerous to me and many many other parents-okay with you but not me.
This happened in quite a few states, so parents in quite a few states are teed off about this; it’s bigger than just what happened in Texas. I don’t know about Michele Bachmann’s donors but she’s not who I support (Cain) so it doesn’t matter as much to me. She raised a valid question in a less than ideal way.
Not a double-standard. It’s not that you get money from them. It’s what and when you do something for them. If the money gives them access to you, then you meet on an issue, then you, as Governor, unilaterally and recklessly run out and trample on people’s freedom on that donor’s behalf, rather than working through the legislature, then you, Perry, are a crony capitalist.
Please show me where Bachmann has truly done anything like this.
It’s not the receipt of contributions. In politics, money equals speech, and everyone should be allowed to promote the candidate they like and whom they think would be good for America. It would be wrong for a candidate to tell someone they cannot contribute, because they are politically out of favor. However, the other extreme of selling your office for “donations” is corrupt. It is evil. It is somewhat less evil than extorting said “donations”, but evil, nonetheless.
You losers deserve what you get. She’s not in it for an ego trip. I’m about done with you. With as many people smoking dope, marking up their bodies like the funny papers, then running to the unemployment office for the free cheese, the new America doesn’t fit me. I thought the pendulum might be about to swing back with the Tea Party emergence but there aren’t enough of them. You establishment freaks can pontificate about how smart you are until the bank breaks. I’ll watch the decline and fall from afar. Better learn to defend yourself cause I won’t be helping you.
Well said, Cliff. I’m with you. If America elects another establishment figure next year, whether its Obama or a Republican, then America deserves to to fall. And we’ve fallen an awful long ways already due to voter stupidity and selfishness.
Reading the recent hateful comments against Bachmann reminds me of school, when a bully would pick on the awkward kid, and some of the other kids would loudly go along with the bully to be on the winning side.
I’ve watched Bachmann’s video, have read her comments and followed along with this issue. She makes some valid points about the dangers of government interference. She’s not perfect–which candidate ever was–but she doesn’t deserve the vitriol that we’ve been seeing.
To be honest, the only perfect candidate I know is me. The only perfect candidate for Egil is probably Egil. She’s the closest we’ve had to perfect since 1984. Reading these pop culture punks try to cut her down just makes me want to puke. At least it’ll all even up in the next life. Press on.
As I told Mr. Malone, you’re just telling PJM that Bryan is making them money by coming here… because your page views are making them money.
Wanna hurt them? Stop coming here.
You’re right. I am taking a week off from pajamas media starting today. Next time they run a hit piece (even a lame one like this) it’s two weeks.
K, we’ll see you in January 2013 or so, cause I don’t think they’ll stop running pieces on all the candidates.
hokay, the universities have research and investment funds. the teacher’s retirement system has a fund for backing winners. there are angel investor networks. the cities have funds for hunting business. but the state government can’t have a wine’ n’dine fund. It’s not like they can do that out of pocket on their government pay- it’s notoriously low pay for state reps in texas.
obama is using his bully pulpit to block a factory. texas was using it to lure factories. can you spot the difference?
I’m for Perry. Texas is big, diverse, modern, and people have jobs. That would be completely different than the rest of the country. Don’t ya’ll want jobs, energy, cheap gasoline, high-paying industrial jobs, flourishing factories, service jobs, decent agricultural policies? Someone who really likes babies? and women? and high school football? And a strong, decent military?
Haven’t you noticed, more military people die under Democrats? And babies? And innocent people?
Bachmann might be Republican, but she hasn’t run anything. Perry- has a history that you can debate. She doesn’t. There’s nothing there. That would be voting for Bambi, like you were a Democrat. That’s what they do. We vote for someone who has proven skills. Man up. Please.
“Bachmann might be Republican, but she hasn’t run anything.”
She and her husband have a small business which employs 50 people. They built it. So, yes, she has run something, and she has personally created jobs.
Is that sufficient executive experience for the Presidency? No, but do not toss out such casual dismissals.
There isn’t PerryCare. There is RomneyCare. Under RomneyCare, stay at home mothers- friends of mine- acquaintances on bulletin boards- mothers!- had to choose- who got to keep their very expensive healthcare. They chose their husband- he worked, and couldn’t get injured or sick- they chose their children- so precious- and they did without, and prayed they never got sick. This meant- no physicals, no pap smears, no going to the doctor for a cold that might be a flu- this meant not going skiing with the family- who can pay for a broken leg?- this meant not volunteering at school b/c a sick kid might cough on you and give you something- it had happened to friends. So, less volunteering, less happy family holidays, longer, lingering illnesses.
The man brought back the 18th century novel lifestyle- that would be- mysterious illnesses, only over the counter remedies, or relying on homeopathy- lingering side- effects- swollen joints, possibly damaged hearts, weakness that lasted until summer- for mothers. B/c he wanted everyone to drink some poisoned koolaid.
I will never, ever, ever vote for Romney. I have been yelling my head off about O’care. Anybody who carries water for him has chosen to endanger me and my friends’ lives.
Actually, Perry does in fact have a crony capitalism problem that Bachmann does not have. He actively made changes to how government works for a company that was paying for his reelection campaign. It does not matter what his motives were in this either, whether it was pay for play or he was fully sold on the merits of drug. His motives are not the underlying issue here. What is at issue here is that a company is able to buy time with the government official to sell a product and that the government official bought the product. In a state as large as Texas, there are probably a million people who would love to get the attention that the drug company got with the governor, but they did not have the tens of thousands of dollars available to get them the time of day with him to sell their ideas. For those tens of thousands of dollars, they stood to reap the rewards of hundreds of million to billions in sales. What is the price of the vaccine? $250 times the number of girls in school today and the rate of births each year thereafter?
That is pretty much the dictionary idea of what crony capitalism is.
On your argument about Michele Bachmann, your only evidence is lack of evidence. You did not even show that these drug companies so much as had a minute of face to face time with the Representative. Go out and do some work, and see if they had meetings, and what the meetings were about.
“He actively made changes to how government works for a company that was paying for his reelection campaign.”
Not only has that not been proved, it hasn;t been credibly alleged.
What other Texas pols got money from Merck? Amswer that and you’ll see Bachmann has nothing.
The odd thing about the current situation is that the best-case scenario for the Republicans is that the primaries wind up deadlocked. If that happens, we could rewrite the narrative completely. Picture this: the convention is deadlocked because the voters could not get firmly behind any one candidate, and Ron Paul controls 10% of the delegates- 10% that will not swing to any other candidate, nor could Paul possibly pull enough delegates from other candidates to get the nomination himself. After several rounds of voting determine that the outcome is unresolvable, one of the delegates proposes a solution: Draft Mike Huckabee. The narrative then becomes: The reluctant candidate runs not to advance his own career or for his own power, but because no one else is fit for the job.
With only two months between the convention and the election, the Obama campaign will be thrown for a loop- they wouldn’t have researched how to face Huckabee since May 2011.
“Draft Mike Huckabee.”
Big government, so-con, nanny stater Huckabee? Then I’d vote for Obama–because unlike Huckabee, he’d be a liberal who didn’t get anything out of what he wanted.
There could be no greater disaster for the GOP than their nominating Huckabee, or Romney, or the like–and that sort then wins.
Republicans Have Missed Opportunity to take on Big Pharma who backs Obama
When looking at crony capitalism one should remember that Obamacaere includes a deal cut with big Pharma. Ignored were $500 billion in saving over 10 years just by eliminating Prescription Drug Advertising according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Who needs advertising to tell us what our Doctor should prescrible for us. Also ignored were Pattent Law changes that could save another $40 billion. Both Bachman & Perry and Obama have heavy Big Pharma backing. Where are the Republican healthcare cost savings proposals from Presuidential candidates that can save an equal amont as these rather modest suggestions by the New England Journal of Medicine, former Governor Pelenty and maybe if you read between the lines Mitt Romney.
I might be more inclined to listen to what you say if your post wasn’t riddled with misspellings:
* Pattent
* Presuidential
* amont
* Pelenty
And if you didn’t seem to miss the fact that Mr. Pawlenty (not Pelenty) has dropped out of the race…
And if your statement wasn’t so at odds with reality.
According to OpenSecrets.org (not going to give individual links cause I don’t want this post sent to the spam bin), some big names have accepted money from the pharmaceutical industry:
Romney $98,900
Bachmann $10,200
Santorum $6,250
So, I guess by your logic, we can’t trust Romney, Bachmann, or Santorum. Who does that leave of the officially announced candidates?
Cain.
Bachmann is not the first seeming up-and-comer early on in the primary to flame out horribly:
Ed Muskie and the “crying” incident
Gary Hart, Donna Rice and the “Monkey Business”
Howard Beale…er, Dean and “YEAAAAAHH!”
But Bachmann doesn’t use “RomneyCare.” Why? Has she allowed herself to become a stalking horse for Romney? If so, on what grounds?~~~~~
Perhaps it’s a back room deal between her and Romney. I’m just musing here, but maybe they’re banking on Romney winning the nomination (and then very possibly the White House), and she gets a nod for what? The VP slot perhaps? Would it be fair to assume she wouldn’t get the nod from Perry in the same event?
Thanks for bringing up her donations from Pharma, I was hoping to see that come out. She received much more than the paltry amount Perry received from Merck. And Merck can afford to donate a whole lot more.