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Reward! $11,000 For Proof Of Bachmann’s HPV-Caused “Mental Retardation” Claim

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Bioethicists have joined together to offer a reward of $11,000 to anyone who can prove the child Michele Bachmann mentioned repeatedly on television this week actually became “mentally retarded” from the HPV vaccine. One of the scientists is from Bachmann’s home state of Minnesota.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reports:

Steven Miles, a U of M bioethics professor, said that he’ll give $1,000 if the medical records of the woman from Bachmann’s story are released and can be viewed by a medical professional.

His offer was upped by his former boss from the University of Minnesota, Art Caplan, who is now director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics. Caplan said he would match Miles’ challenge and offered $10,000 for proof of the HPV vaccine victim.

“These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public health harm,” Miles said of why he made the offer. “The woman, assuming she exists, put this claim into the public domain and it’s an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed.”

After attacking Texas Gov. Rick Perry over his vaccination executive order at Monday’s debate — which scored Bachmann points from debate pundits — the Minnesota Republican said a woman had told her that the HPV vaccine had caused her daughter’s mental retardation. Bachmann repeated the story on NBC’s “Today” the next morning.

“There’s a woman that came up crying to me tonight after the debate,” Bachman told Fox News. “She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She said her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine.”

The comment has sparked widespread criticism from the medical community, which has said Bachmann was stoking unfounded fears similar to claims made about vaccines and Autism. The Centers for Disease Control website makes no mention of mental illness in its “adverse events” report on the HPV vaccine.

Bachmann somewhat walked back her comments Tuesday on Sean Hannity’s radio show, where she said she had “no idea” if the HPV vaccine was linked to mental illness. “I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist, I’m not a physician,” Bachmann said. “All I was doing is reporting what this woman told me last night at the debate.”

Last night, Anderson Cooper called Bachmann’s claims “incredibly irresponsible,” and said, “Bachmann is spreading an all-​out falsehood here.”

Crooks And Liars offers this sobering thought:

Bachmann has an imaginary friend. The Iowa Straw Poll winner has a made-up crying mother straw man. I think Bachmann actually meant to say “autism” and instead said mental retardation (not the same thing). There’s been an autism-is-caused-by-vaccines myth for a decade. The “doctor” who did that debunked and bogus study has since lost his license. While last year 10 infants in California have since lost their lives in a whooping cough epidemic as a result of his “work.”

Words are powerful, and when irresponsible politicians, especially ones like Michele Bachmann — who has time and time again positioned herself as a professional mother — lie, or merely repeat something they heard that turnd out to be false, they literally end up contributing to the deaths of children.

Via The New York Times in June:

“We had our five biological children that God gave to us, and then he called us to take foster children into our home,” Mrs. Bachmann told a Christian audience in 2006. “We thought we were going to take unwed mothers in,” she continued, adding, “We took 23 foster children into our home, and raised them, and launched them off into the world.”

…

The Bachmanns were licensed by the state from 1992 to 2000 to handle up to three foster children at a time; the last child arrived in 1998. They began by offering short-term care for girls with eating disorders who were treated through a program at the University of Minnesota, said George Hendrickson, the chief executive of PATH Minnesota, the private agency that handled the placements.

Yes, professional mom Michele Bachmann, whose husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann is a medical professional, thinks it’s OK to blindly repeat stories some unknown woman supposedly told her, and scare parents all across America. Excellent example of Christian love at work.

Gail Collins in yesterday’s New York Times wrote,

About the vaccine. It’s been proved to be effective in reducing cervical cancer in sexually active women, and it apparently works best if you begin the shots around age 12. The intense opposition from the social right appears to be based on the idea that once the kids had the shots they’d be more likely to have sex. Or, in the convoluted and creepy words of Rick Santorum: “Unless Texas has a very progressive way of communicating diseases in their school by way of their curriculum, then there is no government purpose served for having little girls inoculated at the force and compulsion of the government.”

Then, Bachmann tossed in another argument: vaccines are dangerous. “I had a mother last night come up to me … she told me her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter,” Bachmann told one TV interviewer after another.

O.K., hold the phone.

Let’s presume that Bachmann is being accurate, and that the woman in question was not someone she heard about from a friend of a friend’s cousin in Xenia, Ohio. What would you expect a candidate for president of the United States to do after such an encounter? Take a name? Investigate the case? Would a contender for the White House — or even the Zoning Board of Appeals — just blurt out something they heard from a stranger that could discourage parents from accepting vaccinations that could save their children’s lives?

The Bachmann campaign did not respond to my questions about who the woman was or what the candidate did to check out the information. So I guess maybe, yeah.

Joe.My.God. says, “We’re guessing this prize will go unclaimed.”

I guess maybe, yeah.

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News

Trump Campaign Furious Walz Using Trump’s Own ‘Reckless, Dangerous Rhetoric’ Against Him

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9 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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The Trump campaign lashed out at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Monday after the Democratic vice presidential nominee quoted the Republican presidential candidate who repeatedly over the weekend has been saying he would like to use the U.S. military against American citizens.

As NCRM reported, the Republican presidential nominee said he thinks the U.S. Armed Forces should be used against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday. But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

READ MORE: MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

Then, on Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

Trump War Room, the official social media account of the Trump campaign, posted video of Walz on Monday speaking with supporters.

“Donald Trump over the weekend was talking about using the U.S. Army against people who disagree with him,” Walz had said. “Just so you’re clear about that, that’s you. That’s what he’s talking about. This is not some mythical thing out there. He called it the ‘enemy within.'”

The Trump War Room social media account wrote: “Tim Walz peddles a disgusting lie that President Trump will use the U.S. Army against his political opponents: ‘That’s you, that’s what he’s talking about.’ This is reckless, dangerous rhetoric,” the campaign stated. “Tim should be ASHAMED of himself.”

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See the videos below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

 

 

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News

MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

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10 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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The right wing freakout is in full force after Fox News announced Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down for an interview with then network’s chief political anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.

It will be the Democratic presidential nominee’s first official Fox News interview, after entering the race in July, less than three months ago.

“While Trump became the first major presidential nominee to back out of the traditional pre-election ’60 Minutes’ interview, Kamala Harris has agreed to sit down with Fox News for an interview this week,” noted Zeteo News’ Justin Baragona.

“Harris has upped her media appearances recently, having sat down with Stephen Colbert, 60 Minutes‘ Bill Whitaker and Howard Stern, among other personalities,” Deadline reports. “But she’s also been urged by some supporters to make an appearance on Fox News, populated by voices on the right, even though Baier is on the network’s news side. With an average of 2.3 million viewers, Special Report has ranked among the most watched cable news programs.”

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Trump recently did pull out of a previously agreed-to interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” and has refused to do any more debates with Harris after losing the first one on ABC News. Before that debate Trump had suggested a condition of him participating in the ABC debate would be Harris had to agree to two others, which she did. Next week she will appear in a CNN town hall, which originally was to be a debate until Trump pulled out.

“As of today, it has been **one month** since Trump’s been interviewed by a mainstream media outlet,” noted Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams, “as he has backed out of 60 Minutes and refuses to debate again.”

“Meanwhile Harris is willing to even go on Fox,” he added.

During the 2024 campaign Trump has done virtually no interviews with mainstream media outlets, avoiding The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and MSNBC. He did sit down with NBC News’s “Meet the Press” for Kristen Welker’s first interview as the show’s new moderator last year in September.

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The Nation’s John Nichols commented that Trump is “running scared.”

Trump supporters “swarmed all over Fox’s Bret Baier today like he was a Capitol Police Officer on J6 after he posted on Twitter that he will be interviewing Kamala Harris this Wednesday,” MeidasTouch News reports. “Baier received 2,200 comments on his tweet announcing the interview in just the first hour after he posted it.”

“Most of the MAGA comments to Baier follow a consistent theme – that they lost all faith in Baier after his tough interview embarrassed Trump last year, and that they expect him to go into this interview with guns blazing to win back their favor. They also mentioned some of the previous Harris interview conspiracies – that her earrings were airpods where she was getting the answers, that she was given the questions ahead of time, that Baier and Fox called the 2020 election too early for Biden, etc.,” MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski reported.

Journalist Mike Rothschild, who has written books on right wing conspiracy theories, observed: “This is smart from the VP. She has nothing to lose by appearing on the news arm of Fox News (as opposed to the screeching infotainment arm) and if she breaks through to a fraction of their viewership, it’s worth it. It’s almost like the Harris campaign knows what it’s doing.”

The news Harris will appear on Fox News comes on the heels of one of that outlet’s former top hosts, Geraldo Rivera, denouncing Donald Trump and endorsing the Vice President’s run for President.

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OPINION

‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

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13 hours ago

on

October 14, 2024

By

After a weekend of speeches dehumanizing immigrants and threatening to use the U.S. military on Americans who oppose him, Donald Trump in a 1 AM dead of night post lashed out at his Democratic presidential opponent in what some are saying was projection.

“I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform at 1:12 AM. “Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her. Even 60 Minutes and CBS, in order to protect Lyin’ Kamala, illegally and unscrupulously replaced an answer she had given, which was totally ‘bonkers,’ with another answer that had nothing to do with the question asked. Also, she is slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions. We just went through almost four years of that, we shouldn’t have to do it again!”

Late Monday morning Trump posted the same message on the social media site X. He also recently called Vice President Harris “retarded,” according to The New York Times.

“So, let me get this straight,” noted Zeteo News media columnist Justin Baragona. “The 78-year-old GOP presidential nominee, who has been showing serious signs of age-related decline, refuses to release his medical records — but he is now demanding his much younger opponent take a cognitive test?”

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SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile observed, “Trump is furious that Harris is saying Trump’s ‘staff’ won’t let him do 60 Minutes or release his medical records.”

“Claiming Harris is ‘slow and lethargic’ is a heavy lift even for this pathological liar and his MAGA mob.”

The Harris campaign mocked Trump in response.

“Trump posts at 1:12am that VP Harris must take a cognitive test,” wrote campaign spokesperson Ian Sams. “As he refuses to release his medical records, sit with 60 Minutes, or debate her again— instead retreating solely to rambling rallies where he’s increasingly making no sense.”

“Is he okay?”

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

Republican Voters Against Trump, a project of the Republican Accountability PAC declared, “It’s always projection with Trump.”

Before Trump’s post on Saturday, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin told viewers: “For Trump and his party, the strategy in this final stretch to the election is about one thing and one thing only: projection.”

“Everything Trump and his party accuse Democrats of doing ultimately ends up being a cynical projection of themselves, from defending democracy to free speech, reproductive rights, and free and fair elections.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

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