Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Independent reports:

“The DCCC is after me again!” read a fund-raising e-mail Rep. Michele Bachmann sent to supporters Monday afternoon.

It’s the first time Bachmann has acknowledged — at least implicitly — the uproar her comments on KTLK two weeks ago caused among progressive, and even a few conservative, blogs and media outlets (“Bachmann lashes out at critics,” Feb. 24, 2009).

Full text of Bachmann’s fund-raising e-mail:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is after me again — mailing nationwide to raise $50,000 by Wednesday to use against me and other principled Members of Congress who are standing up to runaway spending in Washington.

DCCC Attacks Bachmann

The text of their email — sent to thousands of their liberal supporters — and signed by one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political masterminds — is reprinted for you below.

Contribute Now and Show Them You Won’t Be Silenced!

They just don’t get it, do they?

President Obama wasn’t in office a full month before he pushed through Congress a $792-billion spending bill cleverly packaged as a so-called “economic stimulus package.” But, the facts are startlingly clear: This was about spending on liberal policy agenda items, not about stimulating the economy.

From the Los Angeles Times to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), respected news sources and independent analysts said that the money they were spending would come long after the economic recovery has begun; that the bill’s priorities were skewed in favor of programs that have little to no stimulative value.

Commentators across the nation pointed to provisions of the bill that literally stripped away restrictions that Congress passed only months earlier to keep ACORN from getting billions in federal funding.

And, Republicans offered alternatives to redirect spending to shovel-ready transportation projects that are proven to create jobs and to small business and family tax relief with a history of getting an economy going. Our alternative would have created twice the jobs at half the cost.

The Democrats rejected these commonsense proposals and pushed through their profligate spending. And, as a result, government spending on this recession has reached $9.7 trillion in the last year, placing an incredible burden not only on today’s taxpayers, but on taxpayers for generations.

The Democrats claim they just want the “rich to pay their fair share.” But, we all know their definition of rich includes more and more middle class Americans each year. Just ask any struggling family farmer who worries about the cost of the death tax. Or ask any middle class family that suddenly realizes it has to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

The Democrats’ wealth redistribution scheme can’t continue on this runaway path. Sooner or later, they’ll be coming after you too.

And, because I dare to say so, they’re targeting all their resources to defeat me. They’ll stop at nothing to take your voice away in Congress.

Please send what you can today. I need you to show them that we will not be silenced. Click here to make a secure donation:

I want to help, Michele!

Thank you for your generous support and your prayers.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

——

The story was also reported by Bob Collins on “News Cut” at MPR:

There’s a seemingly endless political loop playing. Rep. Michele Bachmann says something controversial on one of her national media appearances. The Democrats send out a news release pointing out her statements and asking for cash. Rep. Bachmann counters with a fundraising e-mail letter (“Bachmann: ‘Democrats … will be coming after you, too’,” Feb. 23, 2009).

In response, reader Izzy Stone commented as follows:

Don’t you find it curious that not one single local MSM outlet has done a story on Bachmann’s latest round of lies? It’s all been simply linking to what blogs have uncovered. Not one media outlet — including MPR — has engaged Bachmann in a discussion or interview about her falsehoods. Not one single political reporter has written a story asking Bachmann about the lies she put out on a local radio station — lies that have been repeatedly disproven by bloggers everywhere, as well as by Keith Olbermann. The Strib ran an unedited press release from Bachmann’s office that went unchallenged. That was in the Bloghouse — again, reporting on what blogs reported. There was no interview with Bachmann.

Everyone wrings their hands as newspapers and other traditional media go down the tubes. Everyone wonders “Who will do original reporting?” if all we have left are blogs. Well, this is a perfect example of “Who needs the MSM?” They have been MIA on this story — like virtually every other story on Bachmann — while first local blogs, then national blogs, then the national media (MSNBC) picked up this story and ran with it. Eventually, when the story goes viral and becomes too big nationally to ignore, the local media offers up a link to the weeks-old story on the blogs.

It’s no longer blogs linking to original reporting of newspapers, because there is none when it comes to Bachmann. It’s newspapers linking to blogs because that’s the only place you’ll find original local reporting when it comes to Minnesota’s most dishonest member of Congress.

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Bill Prendergast responds in a comment to the DB blog post “Why Did the Legacy Media Fail to Cover Michele Bachmann’s Latest Controversy?“

The commenter quoted in this Dump Bachmann article makes the point that Bob Collins and other local media regularly fail to make.

Yeah, there’s an “endless loop” like Collins reports. MB says something outrageous (by that he means, “patently false”), yeah the out of state media report it, yeah the Democrats try to raise funds on the basis of the fact that she’s a liar and a nut. The part of “the loop” that Collins failed to report is the part where “local Minnesota media fail to report Bachmann’s lies and smears to Minnesotans” (unless the national, out-of-state media “go first.”)

That’s the commenter’s point, and it’s become one of the most important parts of the Michele Bachmann story. Why won’t local professional media, with their wide access to the print and broadcast audiences — do regular reports on the lies of a local politician who regularly lies?

That’s been the problem with MB’s career for *eight years.* It’s not as if the lies are hard to track down; she broadcasts them on talk radio. It’s not as if “it’s not news”; a politician caught red-handed lying about any important matter is always news — all the more so when the politician is representing *our* state in national government.

I ask the same question I’ve been asking for years now: why can’t the Star Tribune, the Pioneer Press, the St. Cloud Times do the same thing that we do here at Dump Bachmann nearly every day? Expose the obvious, broadcasted lies that are the foundation of this notorious nut’s career? She’s *hurt* the people of Minnesota since she’s been in office — planting conspiracy theories, hatemongering, holding up the state’s bonding bill, representing the banks instead of the families facing foreclosures in her district, smearing people as if that were the goal of politics.

Somebody tell me, finally — *why* are the local professional journalists, editors and publishers afraid to publish what is obviously a major news story? A *nationally recognized* Minnesota news story, now that Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and CNN have exposed her time and time again as a nut and a liar?

Bill Prendergast | 02.26.09 – 12:18 am

Cross-posted on “Bachmann Watch” at St. Cloud Times Online.

——

Update

The St. Cloud State University Chronicle has published a stinging editorial:

Why Michele Bachmann, Can’t You Just Keep Your Mouth Shut?

University Chronicle
February 23, 2009

Why does it have to happen again and again? Believe it or not readers, we loathe writing about the woman in our editorials. But we consider it our job, nay, our unavoidable patriotic duty to provide commentary whenever our most remarkably daft representative lets her toxic speech contaminate the airwaves and bring utter humiliation upon the inhabitants of Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

On this occasion, Bachmann was on KTLK’s morning radio program The Chris Baker Show when she made several unacceptable statements.

Among the things she said:

• $5 billion in the stimulus bill will be going to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) who she said is “under federal indictment for voter fraud.”
• The stimulus bill contains provisions that say “your doctor will no longer be able to make your health care decisions with you.”
• Democrat districts will be getting most of the money from the Republican funded districts; “the have-nots will be Republican districts that are left pouring money into Washington, D.C., to be redistributed out to the Democrat districts, which will suck up all of the money.”

All of these statements are completely false.

Her most recent oral exhibition that became national news is nowhere near as offensive as previous statements, such as her McCarthyesque accusations about Barack Obama and other members of Congress being “un-American.” To provide a list of all of her offenses would too lengthy to print, and pointless since her lunacy is well documented.

Bachmann is now viewed by many across the nation and in the news media as a blathering clown, known for the same type comedic shtick that popularized Paris Hilton in “The Simple Life,” whose remarkably ignorant statements once provided a temporary moment of bliss in our stressful lives. One wonders whether just as with Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson, Bachmann is in fact mentally ill or just in desperate need of attention.

Of course, all of her slanderous prattle would be fine, indeed funny, if Bachmann were elected Supreme Jester of Minnesota’s 6th District. However, Michele Bachmann is an elected representative in the United States Congress where her duties involve important matters of legislation that do not entail, contrary to her repeated actions, acting like a circus animal.

Possibly the hardest thing to comprehend surrounding Bachmann is how she was still re-elected after her recurrent demonstrations of ineptitude that plagued both her first congressional term and her reelection campaign. What this says about voters in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District is hardly flattering.