Via TPM, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Nuthouse) appeared on Townhall's First Team radio show this weekend to in no uncertain terms incite listeners to revolution over what the right is calling Obama's "cap and tax" proposal.
First she likened DC to enemy territory, saying:
"I'm a foreign correspondent on enemy lines and I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington."
And then she called for an uprising:
Bachmann also spoke out against the cap-and-trade proposals currently making their way through Washington, and how she'll be distributing information against it at an upcoming event in the district. "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back," said Bachmann. "Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing. And the people - we the people - are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country."
Eric Kleefeld generously gives Bachmann the benefit of the doubt and calls the revolution "figurative" but this is extremely dangerous language for a sitting member of congress to be using. And can you imagine if a Democrat had used a similar analogy to refer to Washington? For me, this is comparable to the sort of frenzy McCain and Palin were creating at their campaign rallies last year except Bachmann is being far less subtle.
The revolution Bachmann is trying to incite here is along the same lines as the "We Surround Them" farce Glen Beck recently launched on Fox News. Their point (if I can try to get inside their heads for a minute -- scary) is that President Obama's agenda -- which was ratified by a strong majority of the nation in November, by the way -- is a threat to "our economic freedom." This is the same shit Bachmann was spewing on Hardball shortly before the election, you'll recall, calling Obama socialist and wanting members of congress to name names because they see an government empowered to advance the people's agenda as a threat to freedom. Riiiiight. A government that wiretaps its citizens without a warrant, renders innocent people to foreign countries to be tortured and incarcerates people without any due process, however, that's all good, no threat to freedom there.
Update [2009-3-23 19:5:13 by Todd Beeton]:More about Obama's cap and trade plan:
As a candidate, Barack Obama said he'd tackle climate change by imposing caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. Now, as President, he's doing exactly that. He proposes reducing U.S. emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below by 2050. And he'd raise $646 billion from 2012 to 2019 by auctioning the rights to emit such gases—in effect putting a price on carbon emissions. With Congress also serious about the climate, business knows the battle has been joined for real and is trying to shape a compromise bill likely to emerge this year. "We are now playing with live bullets," says the Environmental Defense Fund's Mark Brownstein, who works with a group of companies that supports the plan.
Oooooh, scary!
Opponents insist energy companies will pass on higher costs to consumers; proponents argue consumers will come out ahead in the end.
The Obama team points out that its cap-and-trade plan returns much of the money raised by permit sales to consumers nationwide in the form of lower taxes, so many people come out ahead. And the Environmental Defense Fund has created a map of 1,200 alternative energy or energy-efficiency companies in key manufacturing states that stand to benefit from the climate plan. While the Midwest will bear a higher cost from reducing carbon emissions, the region will also benefit from the most new jobs, the EDF argues.
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