This is Where I Defend Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann is at it again, it appears.  And I’m not talking about her “unusual” alternate State of the Union rebuttal, nor am I talking about her nails-on-a-chalkboard partisan shriek during that rebuttal.  I’m talking about the fact that her presence alone has the effect of keeping women maligned in mainstream politics.

Let’s take a step back here.  Bachmann is the leader of the congressional Tea Party caucus and has apparently stepped into the vacuum left by the other darling of the hard right Sarah Palin.  But unlike Palin who is principally a media presence, Bachmann is an actual elected representative.  And the Tea Party is her natural constituency.  She’s ambitious and determined to make herself a national leader and has plenty of backers who believe she can do just that.

But despite her hard-right pedigree and her ambition both the mainstream media and the Republican leadership dismiss Bachmann as a “bobblehead” who makes “unusual” decisions.  She’s often referred to as “crazy” and “dumb” by the left.  But Michele Bachmann is not crazy.  And she’s not dumb.

Instead, she’s everything we want an elected official to be--to a certain degree.  She’s loyal to her constituents and eager to climb the ranks in Washington.  She shows a degree of media savvy that Speaker Boehner could sure use.  But for whatever reason we, the collective political public, seems unable or unwilling to applaud her for these efforts and instead attack her personally.

Why?  Because she’s a woman.  I'll go ahead and duck while some of you throw tomatoes now.

Why not talk about the insanity of her positions as opposed to the insanity of her character?  Let’s talk about the factual misstatements she makes (and there are plenty) and demand she answer to them rather than dismiss her as “stupid.”  Hell, let’s start simple and just make sure Politico consistently spells her name correctly.  Let’s start with the basic assumption that the woman is smart enough to get elected and to stay there which means, at a fundamental level, even Michele Bachmann demands some respect.

Make no mistake about it, the positions this woman holds are dangerous and the policies she endorses are draconian.  But that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with just how quickly Bachmann is dismissed and how disposable she’s been treated by her own party.  Would Boehner been so blase so “whatever” had Tom Tancredo delivered remarks in addition to Paul Ryan?  Would Chris Matthews call him a “balloon head despite the fact that Tancredo has made a pretty damn good living off of playing fast and loose with historical fact?”  I don’t think so.  And I’m not the only one.

In case, you missed it last night, this is the enhanced State of the Union by President Obama.

How is it enhanced? It contains facts, figures, details, information, data, sources, resources, etc. and last night, was open for live discussion.

New Time This Week, MOMocrats Weekly Blog Talk Radio Show: MOMochat at **2 pm ** PT/5 pm ET

Special time for just this week!

Come join us 2 pm PT/5 pm ET on Wednesday, January 26, on Blog Talk Radio as we talk with the author and former head of Planned Parenthood, Gloria Feldt! She's written a new book called NO EXCUSES: 9 WAYS WOMEN CAN CHANGE HOW WE THINK ABOUT POWER.

She was also head of Planned Parenthood for several years, and has been an activist on behalf of women's electoral empowerment her whole life. Take a look at a preview of her book:

 

 

Leave questions in the comments or in the Blog Talk Radio chat that runs concurrent to the live-streamed show!

 

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

MOMocrats Live Chat: State of the Union 2011

Please join our live coverage of the president's State of the Union speech tonight at 9 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. CT / 6 p.m. PT. 

Mean, Violent, Theatening People And the Ones Who Egg Them On Suck

Since when did a 78 year old professor at City University of New York represent such a threat to the republic that her ideas must be pummeled daily by Glenn Beck and violent threats aimed at her?

Never mind that [Professor Frances Fox] Piven’s radical plan to help poor people was published 45 years ago, when Mr. Beck was a toddler. Anonymous visitors to his Web site have called for her death, and some, she said, have contacted her directly via e-mail.

In response, a liberal nonprofit group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote to the chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, on Thursday to ask him to put a stop to Mr. Beck’s “false accusations” about Ms. Piven.

“Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response,” the group wrote.

Fox News disagrees. Joel Cheatwood, a senior vice president, said Friday that Mr. Beck would not be ordered to stop talking about Ms. Piven on television. He said Mr. Beck had quoted her accurately and had never threatened her.

“ ‘The Glenn Beck Program,’ probably above and beyond any on television, has denounced violence repeatedly,” Mr. Cheatwood said.

Mean people suck

All of you reading can now repeat after me... Well, duh...

But seriously. Set aside all the blamecasting that's gone on over the past five days and think about what Michelle Obama is saying here in her open letter to all parents:

As parents, an event like this hits home especially hard.  It makes our hearts ache for those who lost loved ones.  It makes us want to hug our own families a little tighter.  And it makes us think about what an event like this says about the world we live in – and the world in which our children will grow up.

In the days and weeks ahead, as we struggle with these issues ourselves, many of us will find that our children are struggling with them as well.  The questions my daughters have asked are the same ones that many of your children will have – and they don’t lend themselves to easy answers.  But they will provide an opportunity for us as parents to teach some valuable lessons – about the character of our country, about the values we hold dear, and about finding hope at a time when it seems far away.

We can teach our children that here in America, we embrace each other, and support each other, in times of crisis.  And we can help them do that in their own small way – whether it’s by sending a letter, or saying a prayer, or just keeping the victims and their families in their thoughts.

We can teach them the value of tolerance – the practice of assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us.  We can teach them to give others the benefit of the doubt, particularly those with whom they disagree. 

Call me crazy, but haven't we all had thoughts like this, no matter whether liberal or conservative? Wasn't your first instinct when you heard about that sweet little NINE-YEAR OLD girl to grab your kids and pull them tight to you? Your grandkids? Your siblings? Those whom you love?

It was mine. In fact, when I first heard about Christina Green I put that information away in a safe place and walled it up, because I had to write about the ongoing news and analysis, and so I pretended that she was just a name and not someone's daughter and not a little light in her home and not a child who was full of light and love and believed she lived a blessed life. An old soul in a young body could not -- COULD NOT -- be taken from us and so I simply walled it up and let her hide in a back corner. Because I wasn't ready to face the fact that it could just as easily have been my daughter. Or my husband. Or my neighbor.

The Shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the Language of Violence

Before the horrendous assassination attempt on Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the shooting of 20 people, leaving six of them dead, Giffords knew that she had been specially marked by by her opponents.  Tea Party conservatives wanted her out of office, even though she is a conservative Democrat, and weren't afraid to use thinly-veiled calls for violence against her to achieve their goal.

Her opponent in her 2010 Congressional race staged an event to "target" her by offering voters a chance to shoot an M16. Her Tucson office had been vandalized after her vote on the health care bill in March of last year, as had other Congressional offices.  And Sarah Palin advocated for getting her out of office -- her PAC site posting a map of the country with a graphic of the cross-hairs of a gun-sight on each of the offices she wanted her chosen candidates to win, one of those being Giffords'.  The Sarah Palin PAC site has taken down the map, but you can see it at her Facebook Fan Page.  Spokespeople for Palin now are claiming that the marks on the map were not intended to be cross-hairs -- you be the judge.  It would certainly be consistent with her continuing theme of calling on conservatives to "reload."

Palin certainly isn't the only extreme conservative who's felt that it's appropriate political gamesmanship to use slightly veiled language of violence to promote political agendas.

Go Read It: Homophobic Congresswoman Foxx to Head the House Subcommittee on Higher Education

Please read this and take action on the petition that's linked inside this post:

Virginia Foxx, Republican Congresswoman from North Carolina CD-5 and outspoken opponent of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, will be chair the House Subcommittee on Higher Education. Her office announced this on January 4, 2011.

She called Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard's terribly violent death at the hands of two homophobic men "a hoax." Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, happened to be in the audience at the House of Representatives that day to hear the cruel remark during debate on the bill. Only after public pressure did Foxx apologize and say it was a "poor choice of words."

TAKE ACTION: Sign the petition now demanding that she step down!

[read the rest of the post here]

Who opposes a Hate Crimes Prevention Act? That person might well as say, It's ok to commit a crime against someone different than you and not go punished. In the case of the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr, they were the kinds of gruesome deaths no human should visit on another, the kind that make you grieve that humans are capable of such savagery toward one another.

But Congresswoman Foxx's offenses aren't limited to toxic beliefs--she actively opposes every single initiative that President Obama has proposed or signed into law that would enable young people greater, affordable access to a college education. She even opposes his goal to have 5 million more college graduates than we currently have in the next decade.

Read about her record cozying up to ripoff for-profit colleges and protecting bankster-middlemen who skim profit off student loans to college students (something President Obama has now stopped by allowing students to get college loans directly from the Department of Education). Then sign the petition to have her removed from influencing higher education policy.

Cynematic is a proud graduate of many fine public schools and passionately believes an excellent education is one of the greatest gifts this country has to give to her people. She created K12NewsNetwork.com to empower women's voices in education policy and write about education and social justice.