a michelle bachmann presidency

see also:

"a rick perry presidency"
"a herman cain presidency"
"a mitt romney presidency"
"a rick santorum presidency"
"a newt gingrich presidency"

a question for sharron angle

from seneca doane @ daily kos:

i'm tired of beating around the bush arguing about evidence of whether jared loughner was or wasn't motivated to assassinate rep. gabrielle giffords last saturday by far-right-wing craziness. of course the republicans can disavow him — his being "crazy" and a "lone wolf" and all — as quickly as they like.

my interest is: can they disavow his actions — categorically? is what he did fundamentally wrong, in their eyes? or did he just choose the wrong target? the wrong time? the wrong place — what with all those people around? they're sorry, they're sorry, they're incensed at being presented as in some way sympathetic to these actions — but why?

if you want to keep a rifle in your house in case the oppressive government comes after you, then i think i understand what you mean by a "second amendment remedy." but we're not talking about home defense here; we're talking about guns in public, about shows of force. what i want to hear from republicans (and others who favor the NRA line) is: why in their opinion was what jared loughner did not a legitimate appeal to a "second amendment remedy"?

that's a question i'd love to see answered.

is it because "it's polling poorly"?

due to work, i've missed full coverage for the past two days of the festering counter-reaction to this weekend's righteous rejection of the rhetoric of death, so maybe others have already started asking this pointed question: why is what jared loughlin did wrong?

it's not because it's murder. a "second amendment remedy" will inherently involve murder — or at least killing someone, under an attenuated theory of self-defense. it's not even because bystanders were killed as well — these things happen in a revolution. had he shot rep. giffords and then threw down his gun, does anyone want to say that their reaction would be otherwise? (let him or her speak up, if so. i'd like to be forewarned.)

in fact, the problem with "second amendment remedies" is that this is what they look like.

here, listen to sharron angle:

you know, our founding fathers, they put that second amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. and in fact thomas jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.

i hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those second amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? i'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take harry reid out.

well, wasn't jared loughner fighting against a "tyrannical government," as represented by rep. gabrielle giffords — who at a similar 2007 event had had the temerity to reply to his question about the government's using language for mind control by replying to him in spanish?

don't we get to decide for ourselves what constitutes "tyranny," under this theory? surely we don't have to wait for the government to say "we're officially tyrannical now, so as a matter of constitutional law it's ok to start shooting at us."

well, jared loughner was more convinced that the government was tyrannical than most of us will ever be convinced of anything! so, why was his acting on that belief illegitimate, second amendment supporters from the republican and tea parties? because we disagreed with his judgment?

did he look around and say "my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?" well, he probably didn't say "my goodness." but let me ask you, those of you who think that this wasn't "political" — do you think he would have shot gabrielle giffords and all these others if she had lost rather than won this past election by 1% of the vote? do you think he would have gone to find her at her old family tire store and shot her there? i highly doubt it (and not just because they sold it to goodyear.)

"i'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take harry reid out," is what sharron angle said — and the first thing loughner thought he needed to do was to take gabrielle giffords out.

isn't this what it's all about, fans of violent rhetoric? in what sense was his action not legitimate — by the standards of what those who blather about being "armed and dangerous" and who shoot up pictures rather than people and who pointedly remark about murder as a conceivable alternative to political victory?

please explain! please do explain — the children are listening. i'm sure they'd like to understand the distinction.

i don't have to explain why i think what he did was morally repulsive. i don't talk about "second amendment remedies" because i know that when we enter the arena in which logic and civility are no longer the means to victory, i've lost my advantage. i'll fight in the gutter if dragged into the gutter, but the gutter is not where i want to be.

is the real problem that republicans and tea partiers have with jared loughner is that he, unlike them, turned out not to be a poseur? that he actually went and did something that was only supposed to be threatened?

if so, then they need to do a better job of explaining "the rules" to those whom they influence with this sort of talk.

so in the meantime, if no one has already had the chance to do so, i'd really like to see someone ask sharron angle and sarah palin and michele bachmann and whoever else why jared loughner's "second amendment remedy" — his attempt, frankly, to overturn the results of an election with the bullet when the ballot didn't work — is illegitimate.

i don't even want to hear it — assuming they'll have a coherent answer — for my own benefit. but i sure would like the alienated 22-year-olds — who are watching jared loughner, head like a clenched fist, in the wake of this massacre and silently thinking "well, he sure went and did it. he had the courage of what he believed, what i say i believe" — to hear it.

explain to them, please why — believing in second amendment remedies in a political culture such as ours, as opposed to that of nazi germany or communist czechoslovakia or such — why what jared loughner did was wrong.

i know what i think it was wrong, but those sorts of kids won't listen to me.

they'll listen to you, maybe. so please, sharron angle and others, explain why this "second amendment remedy" was wrong.

the only constant in their universe

mark levin:	there is a road to tyranny, and i believe we're headed on that road ...
glenn beck:	fascism is coming!
unidentified:	intimidation is yet another part of the slow erosion of our liberties.
mark levin:	they want the population to surrender their liberties to the government ...
yaron brook:	you're in very dangerous water to the freedoms that exist in this country.
glenn beck:	and controlling your life ... !
michelle bachman:	i believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service ... and the real concern is that there are provisions for what i would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward ...
sean hannity:	keep it up, congresswoman, you're doing a great job, and, uh, i have no doubt that they will keep attacking you 'cause you're so effective. thank you for being with us. we appreciate it.
michelle bachman:	thank you, we're gonna fight for our freedom!
sean hannity:	absolutely — against tyranny!

since the great summer of our malcontents a great many pixels have been spent on the unimpeded descent of the republican party into self-perpetuated paranoia and terror.

most of us readily recognize their screeching obstructionism as a coldly calculated form of aversion therapy designed to induce a reflexive nausea in the voting public at the very mention of each and every word and deed of their new liberal overlords. but that's just their election strategy for 2010. as i pointed out in "not just obama", republican hostility can be traced to their long-standing and wholehearted denial of legitimacy and fitness to any leaders not proudly swearing fealty to so-called "conservative principles" even patron saint ronaldus magnus could not uphold.

upon further reflection, i think the paranoia in particular erupts from a place fundamentally ingrained within the conservative psyche. an all-encompassing paranoia is the inevitable response to the acceptance of conservatism as an outlook on life or philosophy.

what is the essence of conservatism at its core, when stripped of the emperor's clothes? it is a dedication to the preservation of the status quo against the forces of change. and what is the only constant in the universe, as the saying goes? that's right, it's change, which i guess makes paranoia the only constant in the republican universe. who wouldn't be crippled by dread with the very laws of the universe arrayed against them?

thus conservatives struggle, in a futile battle they can never ever win. on their side, a homogeneous, aging, shrinking, increasingly unpleasant and disconnected and ultimately dying base that is less interested in recruiting fresh troops than in purging its few remaining heretics. across the battlefield, a younger, diverse, tolerant and growing army untainted by bitter memories of the cold war of the 50's or the culture wars of the 60's, 70's and 80's, for whom the terms liberal, far left, socialist, marxist and communist don't trigger a pavlovian release of the contents of their bladders. for conservatives, time will never be on their side.

bachmann, 1: census bureau, -1

the AP is reporting that bill sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time census field worker and occasional teacher, was found hung to death in kentucky with the word "fed" was scrawled on the dead man's chest. investigators are still trying to determine the motive, but "law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is 'an apparent homicide.'" "our job is to determine if there was foul play involved — and that's part of the investigation — and if there was foul play involved, whether that is related to his employment as a census worker," said FBI spokesman david beyer.

since i'm not working this case, i can freely say that it's a pretty damn obvious foul play was involved, and that his job had something to do with it, as well as who's responsible:

michelle bachmann (r-mn), june 26:

if we look at american history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the census bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations, at the request of president roosevelt, and that’s how the japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. i’m not saying that’s what the administration is planning to do. but i am saying that private, personal information that was given to the census bureau in the 1940s was used against americans to round them up.

it appears bachmann has been threatening to launch her own personal war on the census bureau ...

mission accomplished.

losing ≠ tyranny

mark levin:	there is a road to tyranny, and i believe we're headed on that road ...
glenn beck:	fascism is coming!
unidentified:	intimidation is yet another part of the slow erosion of our liberties.
mark levin:	they want the population to surrender their liberties to the government ...
yaron brook:	you're in very dangerous water to the freedoms that exist in this country.
glenn beck:	and controlling your life ... !
michelle bachman:	i believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service ... and the real concern is that there are provisions for what i would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward ...
sean hannity:	keep it up, congresswoman, you're doing a great job, and, uh, i have no doubt that they will keep attacking you 'cause you're so effective. thank you for being with us. we appreciate it.
michelle bachman:	thank you, we're gonna fight for our freedom!
sean hannity:	absolutely — against tyranny!

jon stewart:

yes, tyranny! a.k.a. our democratically elected president. it — y'know what, guys? meet — meet me at camera three very quickly ... ... i think you might be confusing tyranny ... with losing! and i feel for you because, uh ... i've been there. a few times in fact. and one of them was a bit of a nail-biter. but see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he's probably going to do things you disagree with. he could cut taxes on the wealthy, remove government's oversight capability, uhh ... invade a country that you though should not be invaded, but ... that's not tyranny! that's democracy. see, now you're in the minority. it's supposed to taste like a shit taco! and by the way, if i remember correctly, when disagreement was expressed about that president's actions when y'all were in power, i believe the response was: "why do you hate america?!" "watch what you say!" "love it or leave it!" "suck on my truck nuts!"