North of MPLS

“Last week, virtually every Senate Republican voted against that tax cut. Now, I know many Republicans have sworn an oath never to raise taxes as long as they live. How could it be that the only time there’s a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle-class families? How can you fight tooth and nail to protect high-end tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, and yet barely lift a finger to prevent taxes going up for 160 million Americans who really need the help? It doesn’t make sense.”

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory… Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

“‘I’m a mom. And I’m a mom of three children.’ [Editor’s note: Bachmann has five children; three are girls.]”

“We can’t get true financial reform until we constrain Wall Street’s vast reservoir of money from corrupting our democracy. In fact, we can’t get much reform anywhere — health care, energy, defense, etc. — without limiting the effects of big money in politics. (That’s why I agreed to become chair of an organization called “Common Cause,” a citizen’s group dedicated to getting money out of politics.)”

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We’ve got a real problem, and I’m tired of Republicans and Democrats, who either — Republicans who want to burn the place to the ground, or Democrats — with all due respect — who wanna offer a plan that gets (their party) through the end of the second term of their presidency, and then screws me and my kids when it’s over!

…We have to deal wit the extraction that is afoot. It is the reason the financial markets are behaving the way they’re behaving — that is a mathematical fact! This is not some opinion! This is a mathematical fact: tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America! Democrats aren’t doing it; Republicans aren’t doing it. An entire, integrated financial system, trading system, taxing system, that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on an entire country right now! And we’re sitting here, arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the President (until) 2017, or burn the place to the ground — BOTH of which are reckless and irresponsible and stupid.

…The fact of the matter is that there is a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem: that the United States of America is being extracted (from): it’s being extracted through banking, it’s being extracted through trade, and it’s being extracted through taxation. And there’s not a single politician who has stepped forward… to deal with this.

I would like (President Obama) to go to the people of the United States of America and say ‘People of the Unites States of America: your Congress is bought. Your Congress is incapable of making legislation on healthcare, banking, trade or taxes because if they do it, they will lose their political funding, and they won’t do it. But I’m the President of the United States, and I won’t have a country that is run by a bought Congress!’

“Dean did show up to deliver the opening prayer at the Minnesota House wearing a white track suit, and on Wednesday he arrived at his own press conference to announce said $50 million lawsuit wearing a black Minnesota Twins jersey. In fairness, it was a button-down.”