Home / MicheleBachmann
Showing posts with label MicheleBachmann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MicheleBachmann. Show all posts
Candidates signing the "Marriage Vow"

Candidates signing the "Marriage Vow"

Given all the controversy over Michele Bachmann's signing of the "Marriage Vow," I thought that it might be useful to actually read the original text.

 Personal fidelity to my spouse.
 Respect for the marital bonds of others.
 Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.
 Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
 Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
 Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
 Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
 Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as
between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
 Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children –
from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution,
infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
 Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel,
especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
 Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
 Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial
health and security.
 Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA‟s $14.3 trillion
public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
 Fierce defense of the First Amendment‟s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the
intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.


The Washington Post for example claims:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is the first presidential candidate to sign a pledge written by a socially- conservative advocacy group in Iowa that, among other things, endorses the view that homosexuality is a choice rather than a biological trait. . . .


Yet, I can't find anything in the pledge that makes that claim. But take this statement in the accompanying document: "No peer-reviewed empirical science or rational demonstration has ever definitively proven, nor even has shown an overwhelming probability, that homosexual preference or behavior is irresistible as a function of genetic determinism or other forms of fatalism." But it is a long way from saying that existing evidence doesn't prove something and saying that there is no relationship. In any case, I think that the key point here is "irresistible" and you could even have a genetic predisposition towards something, even a strong disposition, but that is not the same as saying that it is "irresistible."
Michele Bachmann takes lead in new Zogby poll

Michele Bachmann takes lead in new Zogby poll

Rep. Michele Bachmann now leads the field of Republican presidential candidates in a new Zogby poll of Republican primary voters. Bachmann is at 24 percent. Cain and Romney are at 15 percent each.
Bachmann's chances in Iowa

Bachmann's chances in Iowa

This is from today's WSJ Political Diary.

"Bachmann is going to surprise a lot of people here," [Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad] said, adding that Mr. Pawlenty seems to have the strongest organization in the state and that former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain has also impressed a lot of Iowans. The governor said that he's heard continuing rumors about Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Perry of Texas possibly entering the race.

Comparing Canadian and US unemployment rates during the recession and recovery


The striking feature of this diagram is how the Canadian and US unemployment rates moved so incredibly similarly until after Obama's $830 billion "Stimulus" was passed.
Sources: for Canada and the US.

UPDATE3: Welcome to those from Talking Point Memo, though TPM has made multiple incorrect claims. While TPM cites Bachmann's tweet, Eric Kleefeld doesn't mention fails to mention her Facebook post. Tweets limit posts to 140 characters, Bachmann's was 138, not much extra to into extra details or even longer words such as "small" or "little" instead of "no." It is true that Bachmann's tweet said Canada had "no stimulus," but her simultaneous Facebook post was much more complete: "Consider Canada, whose unemployment equaled America's at the bill's passage. Now, without massive gov't intervention, the Canadian unemployment rate is a full 20% less than ours." There was nothing wrong with that Facebook post, but mentioning it would have made TPM's article a lot less compelling. (Note that the "Markie Marxist sez" shown in the picture below is from the first comment on my post.)



UPDATE1: What I have pointed out is that Obama's "Stimulus" was three times bigger on a per capita basis than the Canadian stimulus, and Obama raised marginal income tax rates while Canada has cut marginal tax rates. For a discussion on the massive difference in size and composition of the conservative minority Canadian government and the liberal/Keynesian/Obama US stimulus program see this here.

TPM's claim about relatively strict banking regulations in Canada is wrong on two counts. 1) Most importantly, it doesn't explain the sharp difference in unemployment rates between Canada and the US right after the Obama "Stimulus." Before the Stimulus, the unemployment rates were moving together very closely. After the Stimulus, the US rates rose much higher than the Canadian rate. 2) It is factually wrong anyway. Canada simply didn't have the crazy types of government regulations that the US has had that forced banks to make loans that they didn't want to make (see here for some examples).

UPDATE2: I could rewrite what I have already put up about the banking regulations in Canada, but TPM readers just keep repeating what they read on that website without any recognition that it is nonsensical. Even if the claim about regulations were true (and it isn't), it can't explain why the changes in unemployment in the two countries were identical right up until Obama's Stimulus and then the unemployment rate diverged dramatically.
Very nice article on Michele Bachmann in the WSJ

Very nice article on Michele Bachmann in the WSJ

You can read the article here.

Ms. Bachmann is best known for her conservative activism on issues like abortion, but what I want to talk about today is economics. When I ask who she reads on the subject, she responds that she admires the late Milton Friedman as well as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. "I'm also an Art Laffer fiend—we're very close," she adds. "And [Ludwig] von Mises. I love von Mises," getting excited and rattling off some of his classics like "Human Action" and "Bureaucracy." "When I go on vacation and I lay on the beach, I bring von Mises."

As we rush from her first-floor digs in the Cannon House Office Building to the House floor so she can vote, I ask for her explanation of the 2008 financial meltdown. "There were a lot of bad actors involved, but it started with the Community Reinvestment Act under Jimmy Carter and then the enhanced amendments that Bill Clinton made to force, in effect, banks to make loans to people who lacked creditworthiness. If you want to come down to a bottom line of 'How did we get in the mess?' I think it was a reduction in standards."

She continues: "Nobody wanted to say, 'No.' The implicit and then the explicit guarantees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sopping up the losses. Being on the Financial Services Committee, I can assure you, all roads lead to Freddie and Fannie."

Ms. Bachmann voted against the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) "both times," she boasts, and she has no regrets . . . .
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)