20 July 2011 Unacceptable behavior Unacceptable candidate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/michele-bachmanns-handlers-rough-up-reporter/2011/03/03/gIQA1cFKOI_blog.html        

“Michele Bachmann’s handlers get rough with reporter

By Greg Sargent

            “This morning, the Daily Caller published a story I was inclined to leave to others: Michele Bachmann suffers from severe migraines.

          “But now the Bachmann camp has suddenly invited a whole lot more scrutiny to the story. At an event today, ABC News reporter Brian Ross tried to ask her about her condition, and according to another reporter on the scene, Time’s Michael Crowley, Bachmann’s handlers got pretty rough and aggressive with Ross:…

          “Afterward, I asked Ross — a hard-nosed pro who nevertheless seemed slightly shaken — whether he’d ever been treated so roughly. “A few times,” he told me. “Mostly by mafia people.”

Cassi Creek:

            We are barely into the 2012 campaign process.  Already private information is surfacing about Michelle Bachmann’s medical history.  Migraines are not uncommon in American women.  A history of migraines is not, taken alone, disqualifying in my perception.  Migraines are both treatable, and to some extent, preventable.  Medication regimens to minimize these headaches are effective and not overly expensive. 

            However, if they are so severe as to prevent carrying out one’s job; if they are so severe as to require restricted medications that affect one’s judgment, they become more serious.  If they require in-patient therapy, they are of a more serious nature and may well disqualify one from running for office. 

            Most migraine sufferers are never offered any option of in-patient care to eliminate their symptoms.  Offering in-patient care for Rep Bachmann must have required a major coding effort in order to get the admission past the insurance company that covers Bachmann’s health care.  Obviously, this demonstration of a two-tiered healthcare delivery system does not bother Bachmann.  She is demonstrating the mechanism of rationing used by the U.S, to provide healthcare for its citizens; rationing by affordability.   If one has the money, one gets care.  If one has even more money &/or a position of political power, one gets even more care.  If one lacks money, one is shuffled to the end of the line. Insurance company bureaucrats follow their orders and reject requests for delivery of care, admissions, medications, etc.  Bachmann may be all right with such a delivery system.  I’m not. 

            I’m also not all right with someone who requires heavy-duty analgesia, who is unable to show up at work because of migraines, occupying the Oval Office.   There is no end to the amount of stress the POTUS is subjected to, and stress is a major trigger for migraines. 

            I’m equally unhappy with Bachmann’s handlers behaving like black-shirts, roughing up members of the press, or anyone they may choose to deny access to Bachmann.  She is not due secret service protection yet.  If she has hired armed bodyguards, their presence and armed status may not be legal in all locations.  Physical assault, such as described above, is illegal in all states.  Her handlers should be replaced.  They seem to be rather like Palin’s handlers, sure that the law does not apply to them, or their candidate. 

            We seem to be ready to pick up where we left off in 2008, inciting the teavangelist mobs to promise of violence from the stage.  Unacceptable behavior Unacceptable candidate!