Liberal in the Land of Conservative

I just called Bob Olson’s office to find out what they specifically thought scape-goated “an entire class of people.” Christopher Truscott said that bringing up the English only drivers license test was playing politics. I reminded him that that isn’t the same as scape-goating. Here’s the definition for scape-goat:

a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.

If Olson’s campaign thinks that that’s a politically motivated statement, then that’s what they should say. For them to say that she tried scape-goating people with that statement is over the top. Mr. Truscott said that there was a hint of politicking to the statement, which I rebutted by saying that it’s a political issue that couldn’t be extricated from a political context.

Frankly, this statement was all about tying Rep. Bachmann with Mr. O’Reilly on immigration. It’s obvious that Olson’s campaign wants to cast Mr. O’Reilly as a big, bad boogeyman & Rep. Bachmann as his lackey.

The sad part is that a vast majority of people agree with Mr. O’Reilly’s & Rep. Bachmann’s position on immigration.

Olson: Bachmann's Fear-Mongering Fails Minnesota

For Immediate Release

Contact: Christopher Truscott

chris@bobolson.org

612.423.2582

ANOKA—Bob Olson, a DFL candidate in the 6^th Congressional District, released the following statement regarding Rep. Michele Bachmann's Wednesday night appearance on the O'Reilly Factor:

"In the wake of the tragic accident in Cottonwood, Minnesotans had a right to expect smart and compassionate leadership from those in power. That Michele Bachmann chose instead to go on the O'Reilly Factor and play along with O'Reilly's fear mongering is absolutely disgusting.

"It's true that we need comprehensive immigration reform, but it's important to remember, as John McCain reminded us recently, that we're all children of God. This serious debate must be handled in a manner consistent with the human decency that has defined our great state for 150 years.

"Countless number of lives were forever changed after that crash. Instead of scape-goating an entire class of people, it's time Mrs. Bachmann demonstrate leadership worthy of her office and the people of Minnesota."

Book Description
Do you find yourself in a troubled marriage? Do you dare to believe God's word and trust in His spirit? Refurbish your relationship into a thriving marriage by applying God's principles. God understands that it's hard, let him save your marriage.

If you read this book, you need to be very careful and should also read other books on spiritual abuse. This book is very close to being cultish, this is my strong warning. Be alert if your church leader requests you read this book without also recommending others, as this book could easily be used to justify spiritual abuse.

His basic point is that taking offense is the bait of satan to lure you to do wrong things. There is some truth in this, one's offended ego can be used to try to justify sin. But there is also great danger in this teaching, in that it seems to teach that if one is EVER offended, it is your fault. For example, this book teaches that if I am offended by this book, (and I am) then it is my fault and I need to repent.

Jesus got offended sometimes and we should also. One reason I am offended by this book is that it can easily be used to "guilt" people who have done nothing wrong.

Bachmann on O'Reilly Wed. night

Posted: 2/27/2008 at 3:29 PM

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., will be on the O'Reilly Factor interview show on Fox News sometime during the show's airing Wednesday night at 7 p.m., according to her campaign office.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann will appear on Fox News' the O'Reilly Factor to discuss how our broken immigration system led to last week's Minnesota school bus crash in which four young kids died.

The show re-airs at 11 p.m.

Bachmann wrote a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials this week about the crash, asking them to determine "how federal and local law enforcement can ensure such a thing never happens again."

Among men 18 to 40, the population most likely to be in institutions because of criminal activity, the report found that in California, U.S.-born men were institutionalized 10 times more often than foreign-born men (4.2 percent vs. 0.42 percent).

Among other findings in the report, non-citizen men from Mexico 18 to 40 -- a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally -- are more than eight times less likely than U.S.-born men in the same age group to be in a correctional institution (0.48 percent vs. 4.2 percent).

Chriminies, Olson was a rockstar on the Transit tax bill. And what does he get, (IR) he paid his debt and can legally serve. And he does a hell of a lot better than any one of those 6 with his arms teid behind his back. But nope, these 6 get their slap on the wrist with no real reprimands.

The mission of House Public Information Services is to provide credible and timely nonpartisan services that inform the general public of legislative actions, educate the public about the legislative process and encourage public participation in the Minnesota Legislature.

Dear ********,

February 26th is El Tinklenberg's birthday. The campaign team would like to give El a night off from campaigning so he can spend the evening with his wife Terri. But we need your help!

For the last 4 months, El has been working overtime to lay the groundwork for a winning campaign. Much of that time has been spent on the phone raising funds and support to ensure that we can effectively deliver our message and defeat Michele Bachmann this fall. To reach our quarterly financial goal, El needs to raise $1,000 per half hour of phone time.

You can help give El a much-needed birthday break: for every $1,000 donated by 5 PM on February 26th , we will give El 30 extra minutes to spend with Terri on his birthday. If you'd like to include a birthday greeting, or a message thanking El for his work, we will make sure to deliver it in person.

We appreciate your help in giving El a great birthday present!

Thanks,

Michael Guest
Finance/Political Director
Tinklenberg for Congress

Paid for by Tinklenberg for Congress. Contributions are not tax deductible.

9298 Central Avenue
Suite 204
Blaine, MN 55434

Senator Clark outlined Governor Pawlenty's transportation "plan". It's simply a red pen. Pawlenty wants to bond for roads and bridges in need of great repair. Despite the fact that the state will be seeing possibly a billion dollar deficit, Pawlenty's "plans" are all revenue neutral, result in no increases in taxes.

That's not a plan.

I'll try to get some You Tubes up later today from the SD 19 "Breakfast of Champions" event in Buffalo yesterday. Both Bob and Elwyn delivered remarks yesterday.

Olson's speech had substance. Elwyn delivered a great speech, but he said nothing. Other than a few "Yes we can" chants from Elwyn, it was well delivered but devoid of any ideas or solutions.

My sense is that Elwyn thinks he has the endorsement sealed up. Labor was in full force for Elwyn in Buffalo yesterday. He'll obviously secure the labor vote, but what will progressives do? Will this be a repeat of 2006 where progressives support Olson and labor supports Tinklenberg, with the progressive voter winning out?

Dear Fellow DFLer:

Thank you for volunteering to become a delegate to your local party convention. You've taken the first big step toward ending Michele Bachmann's political career!

I'd like to invite you to call me directly at (763) 210-2009 so we can discuss the issues most important to you. You can also e-mail me at bob@bobolson.org or visit my campaign Web site, www.bobolson.org, for more information.

I'm running for Congress because I know we need to do more than simply change parties in power in Washington. We need to fundamentally transform the way business is done. Replacing one career politician with another isn't good enough if we want to break the stranglehold lobbyists and special interests have on our political process.

If we really want to end the Iraq War, provide health care coverage for every man, woman and child in America, break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil and deliver for working families, we need to do something bold and different.

I opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. I knew that the biggest threat was Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein, and couldn't believe that so many members of Congress—Democrats and Republicans—were willing to believe President Bush and Vice President Cheney. As your congressman, I will work to end this wasteful war, not fund it.

Today 47 million Americans, and 9 million children, are uninsured. Ending this national tragedy requires a commitment to wage the good fight, not compromise with the special interests and lobbyists who have perpetuated this sin for decades. As your congressman, I will never vote for health care legislation that leaves millions of our fellow citizens behind.

As the founder of the American Sustainable Energy Council, I know we can end our dangerous reliance on Middle Eastern oil. By implementing the renewable energy technologies available in Minnesota and across the Midwest, we can dramatically improve our environment, create good new jobs and end our no-win alliances with anti-American dictators in places like Saudi Arabia. As your congressman, I will never put the financial interests of the Middle East ahead of what's right for Minnesota and America.

Over the course of this campaign, I've met too many people who are falling behind even though they're working hard and doing all the right things. I've also seen this in my work as a tax attorney and as the owner of St. Stephen State Bank. It's time to stand up and fight for working families. Michele Bachmann has done a great job representing ExxonMobil and Wall Street. As your congressman, I will introduce a Working Families Bill of Rights and spend everyday of my term advocating for those Mrs. Bachmann has forgotten.

The road ahead will be difficult, but doing great things is never easy. If we stand together and fight hard between now and Nov. 4, we can end Michele Bachmann's extremist brand of politics once and for all!

Thank you so much for all you have done to make this campaign a success so far. Please let me know if you have any questions. Again, you can call me directly at (763) 210-2009, e-mail me at bob@bobolson.org or visit my campaign Web site, www.bobolson.org, for more information.

I look forward to working with you and for you.

I call for the United States to announce immediately its intention to end the occupation of Iraq, with the goal of withdrawing all US troops (and all private contractors) in a period of approximately six months.

The Bush administration never had an exit strategy for Iraq because it does not plan on leaving. The Bush administration invaded and occupies Iraq in pursuit of two principle goals: to establish permanent military bases and to control Iraq’s vast oil supplies. Responsibly ending the occupation depends on rejecting these goals.

Most Iraqis oppose the US occupation and will never agree to the United States having permanent military bases or controlling Iraqi oil. The Bush administration’s recent escalation (surge) does nothing to address Iraqi grievances. We are no closer to a political resolution of conflicts that separate Iraqi factions and the reasons Iraqis are hostile to US forces continue to fester.

Ending the occupation is the essential first step to reconciliation within Iraq. The United Nations, international community and Iraq’s neighbors could help promote Iraq stability and reconciliation but they will not help the United States establish permanent military bases or control Iraqi oil. Their assistance depends on ending the US occupation.

We have a moral and fiscal responsibility to help reconstruct Iraq, to help the more than 4 million Iraqi refugees created by the war and to fully support returning US veterans.

All of our hopes and dreams are held hostage to the Iraq war. The $12 billion per month we spend on the war not only hurts Iraqis, it also cripples domestic efforts to address pressing environmental, health, education and other needs at home. It is shameful that the Bush administration demands hundreds of billions of dollars to continue an unnecessary war while refusing to adequately fund programs for returning vets or health care programs for uninsured US children.

I say it’s time to leave Iraq. Our troops have served magnificently, but even General Petraeus has stated that military action alone cannot fix Iraq.

It’s been clear for years that this war was a mistake, and that mistake after mistake has been made in the conduct of it. And in my books, on my radio show, and all over this country, I’ve been speaking out for years about this sad, tragic mess. Now it’s time for all of us to come to terms with the truth about the situation there.

• There is no reason to believe that the Maliki government is able, or even willing, to meet the political benchmarks necessary to make progress in Iraq: devising a fair plan to share oil revenues among ethnic groups, reversing the disastrous de-Baathification and putting Sunnis back to work, engaging and eliminating sectarian death squads, and starting a reconciliation process to defuse sectarian tensions.
• Conversely, there is every reason to believe that the Maliki government just wants us to stay there so that they can consolidate their power. Our troops should not be there to make that happen.
• The best way to convince the Iraqi government that we’re leaving is to actually start leaving. I support immediately beginning the process of bringing our troops home. Our withdrawal should not be precipitous, and we should have a national conversation about the best way to complete our disengagement – we should put more thought into how we get out than we did into how we got in. But we should start now.
• At the same time, we should be convening a regional conference including Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt to come up with a long-term plan for Iraq and ensure that a regional conflict does not arise. Jordan and Syria have over a million Iraqi refugees. Nobody wants Iraq to devolve into utter chaos. It’s inconceivable that the Bush administration hasn’t roused itself to initiate regional diplomacy.

As your U.S. Senator I will:

• Never send American troops to war unless there is a clear and present danger to our national interests.
• Never send American troops to war without a plan and without sufficient equipment and force to win the peace.
• Vote to rescind the original war resolution bill.
• Support a surge in diplomacy and an international peace conference covering Iraq and the Middle East.
• Support a withdrawal plan that gets us our combat troops out within 8 months.
• Support a plan to redeploy our troops into training functions and on to the borders of Iraq to interdict people who are coming in from either Iran or Syria.
• Require Iraqis to stand-up and defend their own country in this civil war and meet economic and political benchmarks calibrated to our troop redeployment.
• Direct our troops to combat terrorism and seek out al-Qaeda.
• End our involvement in a war that does nothing to stabilize the Middle East.

Letter: Residents in 6th District deserve new leadership
By Pat Welter, Waite Park

Published: February 23. 2008 12:30AM - Last updated: February 23. 2008 2:05AM

The other day I received an automated call from U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann inviting me to participate in her town hall meeting.

The word "participate" is used loosely. I could stay on the line and listen to Bachmann respond to prerecorded questions and I could prerecord a question of my own, which was then screened before it was used. The notion of give and take, of dialogue, of real discussion in a real meeting was totally absent. I came to the conclusion that Bachmann's town hall meetings are a showy sham.

I was reminded of this when I read Times Writers Group member Karen Cyson's Feb. 15 column, "Bachmann's mailer costs us."

Her point is similar. The glossy, full color mailing she received from Bachmann using taxpayer dollars was also a showy sham for Bachmann's own propaganda purposes.

I, too, received several such mailings from Bachmann. The focus was on affordable health care for families, Medicare and children's health care. With the glitzy photography, the glossy paper and the nice, flowery language, the mailings looked good until I found out that they were another sham.

According to Project Vote Smart, Bachmann voted against appropriations for the Departments of Health and Human Services three times, against the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act and the State Children's Health Insurance Program four times, and against the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act.

Her actions speak louder than her showy words. We in the 6th District deserve better. It's time for a change.

"Personally, I don't see the problem with this. I think he showed remarkable restraint in that he didn't bust out laughing at the ludicrous idea that we should adopt a failed Canadian system of healthcare."