Via The Wonk Room, we learn that Michele Bachmann—who is now being touted as a Republican Presidential candiate in 2012—was told by God to introduce a bill in the Minnesota legislature to make marriage legal only between a man and a woman. After hearing in 2003 that Massachusetts courts had allowed same-sex marriage, a distraught Bachmann asked her Lord for advice. God answered her as she went for a walk. She recounts that fateful stroll to a radio station:
Part of her answer:
BACHMANN: When that happened, I heard the news on my local Christian radio station in Minneapolis, St. Paul and I was devastated. And I took a walk and I just went to prayer and I said Lord, what would you have me do in the Minnesota state senate? And just through prayer I knew that I was to introduce the marriage amendment in Minnesota.
Her amendment failed. Clearly God isn’t omnipotent.
But I pray to mine: O Ceiling Cat, please keep us from having this woman as our President.
Hooray, let’s all vote in the guy who not only hears voices in his head but actually does what they tell him to do too!
Better still let’s cut out the middle man and elect the voice in his head instead, or god…..although I am not sure I’d want to vote god into power!
That is a brilliant idea! Run god as a candidate.
If a benefactor could be found, an entire campaign, replete with debate appearances, could be set up. For ONCE, let’s hear all these brilliant ideas of governance from antiquity straight from the horse’s mouth…
One second, if God started the universe 6,000 years ago, I think that means the almighty is not a natural born, American citizen.
So, we’ve got birthers now. Would we have born-againers?
But he is omnipresent, which means he was in America when the constitution was ratified, so he is allowed to run under the “born before 178-somethingish and living in America clause”.
It’d be interesting, for certain. Presumably, he’d have to take the Oath of Office on the Washington Mall? Would he place his hand on the Bible?
That’s the great thing about gods from a politician’s perspective. You can lean on them for their (perceived) strength, but they never actually show up to contradict whatever it is you’re saying in their names.
It’s like having a figurehead monarchy, only far better.
Cheers,
b&
We should, but the voices in her head weren’t born in the United States. The Birthers would have a hay day.
Well, heck, all we need is another virgin birth here in the US & presto–a US birth certificate.
Apparently God told other state senators something different. I wonder if they also “went to prayer”?
Yeeaaas . . . prayer, revelation . . . it came to me in a dream! And who is anyone to dispute me? For I am me! I said it and therefore it must be true!
Please, please God, make Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann Republican candidates for president and vice president (I don’t care in which order).
Be careful what you ask for. Germans tried that the better part of a century ago, and the “unelectable” radical fringe candidate actually won….
b&
I just don’t think the people in the middle, like my Minnesotan parents, are going to go that direction. OTOH, you are correct, Hitler was elected by an otherwise reasonable people.
As I recall, the National Socialists were always a minority party, with about as much popular support as the Tea Partiers enjoy today.
Your Minnesotan parents may well be irrelevant to the discussion.
Besides, what makes you think the official tally will read anything other than what the Koch Brothers pay Diebold to print on the receipts?
Cheers,
b&
You are a much deeper cynic than I am. Friggin’ awesome.
Yeah, I’m expecting some nasty times ahead, comparable to what we went through not quite a century ago. Probably worse; the transition away from a petroleum-based economy is going to be especially painful.
But I’m also quite optimistic about the longer-term prospects. In a few decades at most, we won’t be using significant amounts of fossil fuels for the simple reason that we won’t be able to afford to. So-called alternative energy sources, especially those that use the Sun, the Moon, or the Earth as the energy source (solar / wind, tides, and geothermal respectively) have larger up-front capital expenses, but are far cheaper over the long term — especially once one factors in the cost of pollution. It’s the difference between eating your seed corn and responsible farming.
The political upheaval we’re experiencing now is a symptom of the financial ruin we’ve made for ourselves, and our financial woes are the result of a drunken oil-fueled orgy. Once the hangover wears off, we should be able to sober up, dust ourselves off, and take off again with more energy resources than most can imagine today.
That’s assuming we don’t first bomb ourselves back into the stone age, of course….
Cheers,
b&
Have you just Godwinned this thread?
Hell, the R’s tried running an anti-intellectual bumpkin in 2000.
It is amazing what this woman can get away with. She got reelected after voting against SCHIP. At her home distrcit people typically have very large families and many are working class or low middle class, meaning they would be harmed directly by her vote. And they reelected her.
Those same constituents of hers want to make sure she keeps government out of their Medicare. No, really.
The 50% of the population with below-average intelligence is hurting, along with most of the other half. Everybody wants the pain to go away.
There is an element of the super-rich that is just fine with the status quo, thankyouverymuch, that is willing to shamelessly exploit the rest of us in order to maintain their parasitic lifestyles of grandeur and power. People like Murdoch and the Koch Brothers are quite happy to tell unabashed barefaced lies that depict a fantasy world the underprivileged think they want to believe in. The Tea Partiers are as unwilling to see through the lies as they are unable and thus are being manipulated into doing the worst possible things for their own self-interests…which “just happen” to be the best possible things for the near term for the parasites.
What’s especially unfortunate is that the parasites don’t realize that they’re also acting against their own long-term interests. They think they can weather the storm they’re brewing, but history shows that tyrants very rarely die of old age in their beds.
Cheers,
b&
I want to point out again (ad nauseum I’m sure) what I consider the most salient political stroke since WWII: How the GOP has convinced the lower class and lower-middle class to vote against their own economic interests by using: God, Guns, Gays, and Blacks.
Look at the current COP agenda!
It used to be commies of course, but they lost credibility. The conservatives in Australia got themeselves elected for decades on the strength of “reds under the bed”.
They vote for her in the 6th District because she Stands Up For America!
I did some door-to-door stuff for her opponent in 2008, and was amazed at the defiance of her supporters especially after she proposed smoking out the Anti-Americans in Congress on the Chris Matthews show.
But look on the bright side: she has prompted several atheists to start praying.
Of course, you’re all praying to the wrong gods, but it’s a step in the right direction, right?
On the other bright side, she is causing comedians everywhere to reach for their pens.
God told Michele to do just what she would have wanted to do anyway. Praise the Lord, it’s a miracle!
She’s not the only candidate who prays to and gets answers from god. Nor is she the only YEC candidate. WTF?
Channeling my inner Minnesotan tells me that if she were my neighbor, I’d probably think she’s a decent enough person, but I’d draw the line at voting for her. As a Chicagoan, I’m not that charitable to flakes.
Yeah, T-Paw is a YEC, too. What’s the deal with YEC politicians here in MN?
On second though, Pawlenty may be the “more sophisticated” old earth intelligent design enthusiast.
It’s nice she’s attuned to the voice of her invisible sky friend over the voices of her constituency. The wierd thing though, there’s likely no record that this god voted for her.
In a normal society, people who hear voices get psych treatment. Why do we allow people to get away with saying “God told me to do…”?
Okay, here goes nothin’…
Some day I’ll learn to embed pictures
It did make your “here goes nothing” humorously apt, though.
I am disappointed that you after all are a food chain bigot and worship Ceiling Cat over the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Pastafarians are the only religious proposing solutions to global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming
Don’t forget that George W Bush said that God told him to go to war with Iraq
Wouldn’t surprise me, that god of his is an evil bastard who loves war and death.
You shouldn’t let a religious revelation influence your civil legislation, at least not in America. We separated those two organizations for a reason. Some religions don’t view homosexuality as a sin. Those religions are of equal value to our society. You can’t legislate morality and you certainly shouldn’t base legislative morality on a singular religion. my two cents
I live a mere 100-feet from Ms. Bachmann’s district. What a fine piece of geography those 100 feet are!
MB is a prize nit-wit; but, as Greg Laden has pointed out, she fits the 6th Congressional District in MN. (Pass me my gun and my beer, I think I see a brown person coming!)
Luckily, I think Ceiling Cat has endowed MB with insufficient wits to pass muster in a presidential campaign. See? intercessory prayer does work!
Which God did she talk to, I wonder. It could not be the the God of the St. James Version of the bible. Especially the New Test; the translation controlled by James, because it is ironic that this is the Bible that one of her ilk usually like to go by yet they ignore the fact that in his own written words, James was homosexual. I wonder if she knows James was Bisexual, eight children, but he said, Jesus had his John, the diciple that Jesus loved, and I have my George.(Besides other FAVORITES in his Court!)
If god or the flying spaghetti monster hates gays.. why did he make so many of them?
This tidbit of MB spewing thinly veiled anti gay sentiment to fellow theists, would be funny if it were intended to be perceived as such. Sadly, there are those who seriously worship such an obviously- fictional, petty tyrant.