Pathetic People #3: Michele Bachmann

Crossposted at Dailykos.com

By now we have all heard of, if not seen clips, of the really pathetic person of the hour, Michele Bachmann. Her words reached the heigths of idiocy last Friday on the Tweety show, and Tweety played her like a Stradivarius.

I have to give Tweety some credit, he seems to be doing better. Not KO or RM material yet, but I can watch his show now without getting puked off at him. But that is beside the point.

For those of you having trouble putting a face to the name, here is a picture of her and family from here official campaign site (sorry, I choose not to link to it):

First, she is not from Minnesota, but rather is from Iowa, even she grew up, for the most part, in Minnesota. Interestingly, her parents divorced when she was rather small, and she lived with her dad with her brothers. Now, if you go to the Wikipedia entry for her, something contradictory appears. In one sentence it indicates that she “became financially independent” at age 13, then just after that it says that she worked her way through college in part by “…cleaning fish at her uncle’s resort in Alaska”. Hmmmmmmm, ultra conservative woman with five children with an Alaska connection. And it gets better. What I have not been able to find is what “financially independent at age 13″ means. Did she run away from or get thrown out of home? Did she get an inheritance? (If so, did she pay the “death tax”)? Obviously she was not loaded or she would not have been cleaning fish to pay her way through college. If anyone out there knows, please respond with a comment.

Not being one to depend on Wikipedia as a sole source, I rooted around a bit. By the way, the Wikipedia entry on her seems to be very carefully crafted to put her in the best light. I strongly suspect that her operatives have scrubbed it, but that is just my opinion.

According to her campaign website, she was graduated from Winona State University in Minnesota, and obtained a law degree from the Coburn School of Law. Now, the Coburn School of law is (well, actually was) the legal school for Oral Roberts University. It no longer exists. I guess the house remodelings cost too much to support a law school, too. Her site goes on to say that she received “…a degree in tax law from the College of William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law”. That is not shabby.

Still using her official “reelect me” site, she has the usual views expected for a wingnut, so there is nothing really to report that catches the eye. Taxes, drill-drill-drill everywhere, fight-them-over-there-so-we-do-not-have-to-here, and protect our borders from the menace of brown people.

Far more disturbing are her really wingnut views. Minimum wage increase? Pffff! Intelligent design! Sure! Right to choose? Of course, you can choose whatever hospital you want to deliver your unwanted, horribly afflicted, result of rape and incest child, as long as your private insurance can pay for it. Same sex marriage? Sure, as long as it is one man and one woman.

I like to keep these posts rather short, just give enough information to allow the reader some background next time he or she sees the pathetic person on the TeeVee or reads about them here or elsewhere. There are lots of diaries about her recent escapades, so I will not go into those.

I will add that she and her husband “fasted and prayed” for three days before she decided to run for the US House. Nothing makes for better important decisions that a big case of hypoglycemia. This woman is unhinged, and with some luck will also be unseated.

Oh, by the way, she left her job as an IRS prosecutor for a while to raise the five natural and 23 foster children that she and spousy had. Spousy, by the way, has a counseling degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University and runs a Christian counseling center. It must do pretty well to support 28 children.

Any comments and additional information are welcome. With the political season winding down in a couple of weeks, I suspect that there will be fewer pathetic people, but when I see one that I believe to be noteworthy, I will post about her or him. Any suggestion for additional pathetic people is welcome.

Warmest regards,

Doc

Tags: Dailykos.com, House of Representatives, Michele Bachmann, Pathetic People, Wingnut