Michele Bachmann Stimulates Minnesota

Who: Steve Benen
What: "How about a Bachmann-inspired stimulus?", Washington Monthly
When: August 10, 2011

Nothing to see here, folks. Go on about your business.

In public, Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann spends much of her time railing against government spending. In private, Bachmann spends quite a bit of time requesting government spending.

A Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Huffington Post with three separate federal agencies reveals that on at least 16 separate occasions, Bachmann petitioned the federal government for direct financial help or aid. A large chunk of those requests were for funds set aside through President Obama's stimulus program, which Bachmann once labeled "fantasy economics." Bachmann made two more of those requests to the Environmental Protection Agency, an institution that she has suggested she would eliminate if she were in the White House. Taken as a whole, the letters underscore what Bachmann's critics describe as a glaring distance between her campaign oratory and her actual conduct as a lawmaker. Combined with previous revelations that Bachmann personally relied on a federally subsidized home loan while her husband's business benefited from Medicaid payments, it appears that one of the Tea Party's most cherished members has demonstrated that the government does, in fact, play a constructive role — at least in her life and district ....

.... What's more, the phenomenon certainly isn't limited to Bachmann — all kinds of right-wing lawmakers who swear public investments are fundamentally evil, including plenty of this year's radical freshman class, have spent a fair amount of time pleading for more public investment in their states and districts, insisting the spending would be good for the economy ....

If Only ....

Who: Pat Garofalo
What: "Boehner Claims S&P Downgrade Happened Because Democrats Blocked The GOP's Attempt To Eliminate Medicare", ThinkProgress
When: August 10, 2011

If only those dirty, lowdown Democrats would have let the GOP destroy Medicare ....

Ever since the credit rating agency S&P downgraded U.S. credit to AA+ on Friday night, Republicans have desperately trying to pin the blame on President Obama, even though, as National Journal put it, "it's hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans." S&P called out the GOP for using the debt ceiling as a political football and for its flat refusal to consider new revenue as part of any plan to reduce long-term deficits.

Earlier this week Rep. Allen West (R-FL) claimed that the S&P downgrade "has nothing to do with increasing revenues," while some Republicans have said that passing a Balanced Budget Amendment would have prevented the downgrade, both of which S&P disagreed with. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday jumped into the same pool, saying that the downgrade could have been avoided if only Democrats had embraced the House Republican budget and its plan to eliminate Medicare:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed President Obama and the Democrats Tuesday for the recent downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, saying that if Democrats had joined with Republicans in passing the GOP budget, which the House passed in April, "it's unlikely anyone would be talking about the United States being downgraded today." [...] "S&P said in its own report Friday that entitlement reform is the key to long-term financial stability. We passed a budget through the House in April that includes entitlement reform, and cuts more than $6 trillion. The Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama have prevented most of those reforms from happening. And that's why we have a downgrade, Boehner said in an excerpt of his prepared remarks obtained by The Hill. [...] "The President and the Democratic leadership in Washington are trying to blame the tea party, because they know this downgrade is on [the Democrats]. When we took the bold step of proposing entitlement reforms, they reacted not by embracing them and joining us, but by demonizing those proposals for political gain," Boehner said.

Brevik? Hitler? Geller? Can anyone tell them apart? (Oh, right. Hitler was occasionally coherent.)

Who: Charles Johnson
What: "Perfect Timing: Pamela Geller's New WND Book Echoes Oslo Terrorist's Book", Little Green Footballs
When: August 2, 2011

In the wake of each new isolated incident, the American right wing continues its desperate scramble for cover. After years of telling us how movies and television and books and music can transform normal people into complete psychopaths, American conservatives now want to convince us that there is no possible way the incendiary rhetoric of the right wing could possibly ever contribute in any way whatsoever to a political atrocity.

And then they all take a breath, and the right wing opens its mouth again. Charles Johnson checks in from the Little Green Football front:

With impeccable timing, today Pamela Geller is hyping the release of her new book, published by the far right’s craziest pseudo-news and Birther site, World Net Daily: Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance ....

.... It's impossible to miss the similarity to another book: the manifesto of Oslo mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, with the same themes, the same over-the-top paranoia, the same mindless hatred, bigotry, and conspiracy theorizing.

In the synopsis at Amazon, if you substituted "Anders Breivik" for "Pamela Geller," and "Norway" for "America," it would describe Breivik’s book exactly.

It is worth noting that Norwegian right-wing mass murderer Anders Brevik cited Geller twelve times in his manifesto.

And Geller, for her part, allegedly posted on her blog in 2007 an email from Brevik himself. She denies it, and has also apparently scrubbed the original post of violent rhetoric ("We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.") Still, though, her update is incredible insofar as it attacks Muslims and leftist shills for connecting her to Brevik, despite the fact that the very same addendum expressing sympathy with the shooter as her motivation for reposting the note: "After the monstrous massacre in Norway on July 22,2011, I re-ran this post as evidence of the deteriorating conditions in Norway. Clearly it had been decaying for sometime ...."

In defense of Geller specifically, and the right wing in general, one might plausibly argue that there is no way they can be so stupid. And on its face, that point seems to carry weight. But this is also the same right that thinks music can turn children into mass murderers. How can they possibly argue with a straight face that violent rhetoric normalized in the political culture has absolutely no effect on the mentally ill?

The point there, of course, being that they should either ditch the influence argument entirely, or admit their contribution to the state of things.

In the case of Geller's latest book, which Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic compares to Nazi anti-Semitism, perhaps the question of Geller's credibility in anything depends on whether we look at her actions in the context of a string of isolated incidents, or a sum effect of interrelated processes.