SPARKY SAYS LET SKEWER ONE OF THE PUPPETS A TOUCH - FIRST HERE'S SOMEONE WHO THINKS SHE'S ONE OF THE EVIL ELITES ...

Michele Bachmann

The Honorable Michele Bachmann
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota's 6th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2007
Preceded by	Mark Kennedy
Member of the Minnesota State Senate from the 56th District
In office January 3, 2001 – January 7, 2003
Preceded by	Gary W. Ladig
Succeeded by	Brian LeClair
Member of the Minnesota State Senate from the 52nd District
In office January 7, 2003 – January 2, 2007
Preceded by	Satveer Chaudhary
Succeeded by	Ray Vandeveer
Born	April 6, 1956 (1956-04-06) (age 53) Waterloo, Iowa
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Marcus Bachmann
Residence	Stillwater, Minnesota
Alma mater	Winona State University[1] Oral Roberts University[1] College of William & Mary Law School[1]
Occupation	Attorney
Religion	Lutheran - WELS

Michele Marie Amble Bachmann (born April 6, 1956)^[2] is the United States Representative of Minnesota's 6^th congressional district and member of the Republican Party. She is the third woman, and first Republican woman, to represent Minnesota in Congress. The 6th congressional district includes the northernmost suburbs of the Twin Cities along with St. Cloud. ...

Article linked to Wikipedia above
==========================

Yasha Levine: Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.

Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008. This has provided her with a second government-subsidized income to go with her job as a government-paid congresswoman who makes $174,000 per year (in addition to having top-notch government medical benefits). “If she has an interest in a farm getting federal subsidy payments, she is benefiting from them,” Sandra Schubert, director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, told Gannett News Service in 2007, when the subsidies to Bachmann were first publicly disclosed.

But Bachmann isn’t the only welfare recipient on Capitol Hill. As it turns out, there is a filthy-rich class of absentee farmers—both in and out of Congress—who demand free-market rules by day and collect their government welfare checks in the mail at night, payments that subsidize businesses that otherwise would fail. Over the past couple of decades, welfare for the super-wealthy seems to be the only kind of welfare our society tolerates.

In the 11 years for which the Environmental Working Group has compiled data, the federal government paid out a total of $178 billion to American farmers. We’re not talking about the Joads here. The bulk of subsidies go to the wealthy, not small farmers, as Ken Cook, the group’s president, explained to the Central Valley (Calif.) Business Times:

American taxpayers have been writing farm subsidy checks to wealthy absentee land owners, state prison systems, universities, public corporations, and very large, well-heeled farm business operations without the government so much as asking the beneficiaries if they need our money. ... Even if you live smack in the middle of a big city, type in a ZIP code and you’ll find farm subsidy recipients.

Chuck Grassley, the longtime Republican senator from Iowa who warns his constituents of Obama’s “trend toward socialism,” has seen his family collect $1 million in federal handouts over an 11-year period, with Grassley’s son receiving $699,248 and the senator himself pocketing $238,974. Even Grassley’s grandson is learning to ride through life on training wheels, snagging $5,964 in 2005 and $2,363 in 2006. In the Grassley family they learn early how to enjoy other people’s money.

Sen. Grassley railed against government intervention in the health care market, telling The Washington Times, “Whenever the government does more ... that’s a movement toward socialism.” As the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, he ought to know, especially because the government has done more for him and his kin than for Americans struggling with high medical bills and mortgages. Even the free-market think tank the Heritage Foundation criticized Grassley on his deep connections to farming interests and his stubborn lack of transparency.

Then there’s Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., whose family has been on the government take for at least the past 11 years, pocketing some $500,000. The senator recently held a “prayercast” with Michele Bachmann to beseech God to kill health care reform as soon as possible because it would bring an evil socialist spirit into America. Like Bachmann, Brownback has a fierce belief in God, the free market and a two-year limit on all welfare benefits—unless it’s welfare to rich Republicans who don’t need it.

Not surprisingly, Blue Dog Democrats are on board with this welfare-for-the-rich thing. Max Baucus, the fiscally conservative Democratic senator from Montana who did his best to sabotage the health care reform process before it ever began, collected $250,000 in taxpayer subsidies to his family’s farm while fighting to keep Americans at the mercy of free-market health insurance. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, another Democrat, also helped hold the line against so-called socialized medicine for Americans who need assistance, even though her family farm business follows the socialized subsidy playbook to a T. The Lincolns pocketed $715,000 in farm subsidies over a 10-year period, and the senator even admitted to using $10,000 of it as petty cash in 2007. Democratic Rep. Stephanie Sandlin of South Dakota stayed true to her conservative free-market roots by voting against the public option. Meanwhile, her daddy, Lars Herseth, a former South Dakota legislator, collected a welfare jackpot of $844,725 paid out between 1995 and 2006.

That’s just the way the game is played these days. Republicans and conservative Democrats bitch and moan about the allegedly Marxist underpinnings of universal health care and do everything they can to deny struggling Americans access to social services. Meanwhile, many of them profit off taxpayers in a massive welfare program.

Farm subsidies have become so corrupt that payments sometimes go to dead people for years. Federal farm subsidies, which were originally meant to help struggling farmers survive, are now little more than taxpayer robbery, taking taxpayer wealth from working Americans and sending it to the have-mores. According to 11 years’ worth of Environmental Working Group data that tracks $200 billion in subsidies, the wealthiest 10 percent of “farmers” have collected 75 percent of the money. That’s exactly the kind of socialism that Rep. Bachmann and her elite ilk like.

==========================

Michele Bachmann's Farm Received Over $250,000 in Federal Subsidies

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has made herself a prominent face in the Republican Party in 2009, delivering incendiary speeches at Tea Party protests against taxes, bailouts, and other forms of government intervention. Last week, she hosted a rally in Washington against health care reform, which she opposes as a "government takeover."



But according to a report by the liberal political Web site Truthdig, Bachmann is not so vociferous about her distaste for "socialized" industry when it comes to her family farm in Minnesota, which accepted over a quarter of a million dollars in federal agriculture subsidies from 1995 to 2006. Most of the subsidies went to dairy and corn, which are heavily price-controlled. Bachmann's personal profit from the farm has ranged from $2,000 some years to $50,000 in 2008, according to tax documents.

Self-described "true" conservatives, like those Bachmann has led this year, are known to viciously oppose farm subsidies, which pay farmers to grow unnecessary crops that are often discarded.

Bachmann is not the only Republican to decry government benefits as socialism, but still accept federal subsidies for themselves. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley's family has collected nearly $1 million in federal handouts over an 11-year period, including $699,248 for his son and $238,974 for himself. The senator is so deeply tied to government-planned farming interests that the free-market Heritage Foundation has criticized him.

"Whenever the government does more, that's a movement toward socialism," Grassley told the Washington Times in a statement opposing what he called government intervention in health care.
==========================
Michele Bachmann Compares Tea Partiers to Doomed 'Light Brigade'

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), speaking at a "Code Red" rally against health care reform Tuesday in Washington, compared the Tea Party movement to a famous battle of the Crimean War, Talking Points Memo reports.

"It's the charge of the light brigade!" Bachmann shouted, referring to the brigade immortalized in Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade." The only problem is that the poem describes a disastrous, badly orchestrated charge by the British cavalry in the Battle of Balaclava. It became a symbol of loyalty and courage in the face of certain defeat, particularly after being described by Tennyson. The poem's ominous tone makes a lovely ode to fallen British soldiers, but is an unlikely battle cry for conservative protesters:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."

Video: Bachmann Invokes "Charge of the Light Brigade" at Rally

==========================
Anyone who praises Ronald Reagan is a tool at best and a professionally selfish asshat at the possible worst. I just have this image of domestic terrorist Andrew Joseph Stack III as a EST graduate who would justify killing crippled 3rd world blind babies to satiate his greed.

Quoting Whitechapel's "Sword Rampage Burglar":

“Palin's support for McCain in the AZ primary is going to come back to haunt her. Nobody on the hard right is buying it, they all hate McCain with a passion, and it makes her look like a cheap political hack. McCain earned his reputation as a "maverick", such as it was, largely for ... his occasional willingness to cut deals with the Democrats. Palin can't keep trying to play both wings of the Republican party.

The fight I'm seeing shaping up after the primaries is the Liz Cheney crowd - the Nixonian, neo-conservative, internationalist pro-fat-cat crowd - versus the "peasants with pitchforks" crowd that used to be represented by Pat Buchanan. The Tea Party movement right now is floundering amorphously between the two, and the upcoming fight over immigration reform is going to split that right open.

That's going to be the real three-ring political circus. If you thought the protests and insanity the Tea Party bunch generated over health care was something to watch, just wait. The Republicans are going to crack right apart, as the rich folks who want their domestic servants and cheap fruit pickers split one way, and the Know-Nothings split the other.

==========================

Let's be clear the obscure reference to Archie comics being a hint of ultra rich elites who profit off of our misery. Thus Boston Brahmin were no doubt involved in the Opium Tea Trade. These people use and discard folks like the Bushes as disposable toadies who do the 'dirty work' - shame the smarter among the Bush Crime Clan are only loyal to money.

“ Clippers were built for seasonal trades such as tea, where an early cargo was more valuable, or for passenger routes. The small, fast ships were ideally suited to low-volume, high-profit goods, such as spices, tea, people, and mail. The values could be spectacular. The Challenger returned from Shanghai with "the most valuable cargo of tea and silk ever to be laden in one bottom". (Codewords for opium) ...

==================================
Pardon the ramble - am sick thanks to the colds preschoolers toss around.