Startribune's half-assed attempt to correct Bachmann's remarks

Can't find it on line, but caught this at the bottom of OP 2 today in the Startribune

TO OUR READERS

In an April 7 opinion piece Rep. Michele Bachmann wrote that the average American household would see its annual energy bill increase by $3,128 if President Obama's cap-and-trade policies were adopted. Bachmann cited an analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a letter and a follow up to Rep John Boehner, R-Ohio, MIT senior lecturer John Reilly said the figure, which was distributed by the National Republican Congressional Committee, is inaccurate.

To read the Bachmann commentary, Boehner's explanation of the $3,128 estimate and Reilly's letters addressing the topic go to startribune.com/opinion.

Actually, in Reilly's letter, he calls the Republican spin on cap-and-trade "misleading".

misleading

adjective
designed to deceive or mislead either deliberately or inadvertently;
"the deceptive calm in the eye of the storm"; "deliberately deceptive packaging"; "a misleading similarity"; "statistics can be presented in ways that are misleading"; "shoddy business practices"

Bachmann, Boehner, and the rest of the GOP clan have set out to deliberately distort the impact of Obama's energy policy by fear mongering.

Meanwhile, a more local paper has had enough of Bachmann's antics.

Witness comments she made to out-of-state media about a proposal to expand AmeriCorps: “The real concern is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward ... It is a dream come true for people who want to transform our country from a free-market economy to a centralized, government-planned economy.”

Re-education camps? Really? This is vintage Bachmann. She provides no details, no proof, nothing of substance. At best, it’s extremism. Really, it’s more fear-mongering.

Making matters worse is that when confronted about her own words, she responds in themes ranging from “I misspoke” to “blame the media” or even silence. (Think “I know how the Iran war will end” and her four-day lag last fall between questioning the patriotism of her peers, only to explain it as “I was trapped” by those evil partisan talk shows. Never mind that it was her 20something appearance.)

This board has never been a supporter of Bachmann, but it was willing to treat her tactics and outlandish statements as errors in judgment and/or a need to get noticed. Sadly, we’ve had enough.

Two straight years of her consistently spewing misleading snippets about important issues yet never stepping beyond those statements to find realistic solutions make it clear she is all about extremism and cares nothing about crafting viable public policy.

Kudos to the St Cloud Times for taking on Bachmann and her lies!