"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."
-- Michele Bachmann in today's St. Petersburg Times
In case you need don't have your Batshit-to-English dictionary handy, Bachmann is basically saying that the recent natural disasters in the mid-Atlantic states are God's way of telling Washington that he and his chosen people have had enough of big government. It seems like a waste to state the incredibly obvious, but sometimes the facts are still just mind-boggling: This woman is considered a serious contender to become the person the Republicans nominate for President of the United States.
Really, just let this sink in for a moment: the Republican candidates getting the most exposure and traction right now are a woman who thinks God is a Tea Partier who's punishing us for having a government he doesn't like, a guy who doesn't believe in evolution or the likelihood of man-made global climate change and who insists that the science behind both is somehow untrustworthy, a ranting old man who thinks America should return to the way it was in 1900, and a corporate-raiding multi-millionaire who jokes that he can understand what working-class Americans are suffering through because he, too, is unemployed.
This isn't a campaign season -- it's a Kids in the Hall sketch.
Update: In the interest of fairness, Bachmann's campaign is playing up the fact that her comments seem to have been a joke. I'm actually all for humor and I've given a pass to people who've made somewhat "controversial" jokes before so I'm not going to slam Bachmann too hard if that was her intention. I also don't want to be one of those humorless assholes who says that there are certain things you can't joke about; while I think that as a presidential candidate -- given that a hurricane was bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard and, yes, killing people at the time -- it probably wasn't the best crack to make and she certainly wasn't the person who should've been making it, she's entitled to try to be funny once in a while. That said, I'm not the only person who read the above quote, without seeing any accompanying video, and thoroughly believed Bachmann capable of being dead serious about a belief like that.
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