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Friday, November 06, 2009

Fear and loathing at a Republican rally. Live impressions by one who survived service in Balkan combat areas. Only a handful of rabid zealots, but ---

The Sixth District's "Blue Man in a Red District" blogger, Hal Kimball, and his wife were in DC yesterday, and he posted a few brief stream of consciousness thoughts on what he saw. Hal served in the Balkans, in armor not infantry, but with that as a background - his impressions are clearly of a revulsion that had to have permeated things to raise such strong thoughts in one who has seen a war zone situation -- the impressions are quoted in the sequence posted:

Landed in DC! We now have an hour to get our bags, get to the hotel, and to Bachmanns Capitol event!
Posted by Blue man at Thursday, November 05, 2009

At the capitol south metro stop...theres not enough hand sanitizer anywhere to clean this level of crazy up....
Posted by Blue man at Thursday, November 05, 2009

This rally ia absolutely nuts. Bachmann, Jon Voight, Cliff Claven and now Mike Pence. WHOLE LOT OF CRAZY HERE...wow!
Posted by Blue man at Thursday, November 05, 2009

Steve King says he can see Americans as far as the eye can see....um.....I see maybe 5000 here. Thats what the Capitol Police dude said...
Posted by Blue man at Thursday, November 05, 2009

"lets thank Michele Bachmann for her leadership"

crazy meter is pegged.

no amount of showers will rid me of the dirty feeling i have now
Posted by Blue man at Thursday, November 05, 2009

Should 5000 ticked off and crazy folks keep 48 millon that need help from getting it?
Posted by Blue man at Thursday, November 05, 2009




No time stamping on the posts, but the sequence is clear. And that last post pretty much nails things into a frame, gives a perspective. A handful of crackpots, vs. millions facing true hardship. And we know on which side of that divide Michele Bachmann stands. She and Fox made that clear in advance.

So. Venom aplenty, but a very, very, very low turnout that must have been disappointing to Michele Bachmann and the tubthumpers she's used at FOX, but one suggesting that the real truth in things is that the teabaggers and their thing earlier sapped the interest of the short attention span knuckle draggers that otherwise would have been there mixing it up with Michele Bachmann and her ilk. Bless them for their inability to retain much of anything over a few weeks' span, never mind history, in their untidy little thought zones. They let the loud lady's expectations fall short. Too bad. Too very, very bad, that it should happen to the likes of our Sixth Congressional District fact-manufacturer, Michele Bachmann.

.......................

That Bachmann-GOP garbage, and the most unfortunate shootings at Fort Hood, real news of a sad kind but unlike the manufactured hate mongering Kimball witnessed.

For coverage of that, Aubrey Immelman, here, has a lengthy analysis including a repost of MSNBC coverage, here; also NY Times coverage, this link.

............................

Well - Ms. Bachmann, the fact is that another crazy, this one not wanting to leave long standing ongoing stateside military duty for an Afghanistan tour stole your headline thunder.

A small possible suggestion of how to court yet another headline is offered in the best of intent and bipartisan spirit, as is your due, in the following post, below.

_______UPDATE________
Dumpbachmann has an interesting "official" DNC Dem's response to the mischief of Bachmann and others; it is short and worth having a look. It rings very true to me.

The DB post includes a reader's comment linking over to Think Progress exposing the entire thing as pure astroturf, (lobbyists reportedly paid and promoted to stage the thing). For all we know lobbyists probably wrote the scripts too and it had not a hint of real grassroots except for the few at the dancing end of the strings with the lobbyists hands on the working, behind the curtain end.

Very noteworthy, Think Progress reported the crowd as 4000. Blue Man was off at estimating it at 125% of the Think Progress number. Either way, a sorry showing by a handful of nuts.

_______SECOND UPDATE________
image source, here

Which one's Michele? Which end of the strings is hers?

Another DB comment finding things about the dog and pony show extremely offensive, this link.

Is there anything there to disagree with? It hangs together as true, for all I have seen of Michele Bachmann.