What Does She Have to Do?

To convince everyone that she is completely incompetent? Better yet, that she is bottom-line a horrible human being.

Congresswoman Bachmann is not insinuating, nor hinting, she is out-right saying that Hurricane Irene and the East Coast quake are punishments and messages from God that the US government should cut spending.

Wait... what?

That's right, Timmy, your puppy drowned last weekend in the Hurricane, not because daddy forgot to bring him in, but because God wanted to let our government know that he is concerned about the debt to GDP ratio. Because God is pretty big on the performance of economic aggregates. There's a whole chapter on it in Second Opinions. It's right next to the passage that warns of secular Kenyan Islamists.

Just to take a bit further: God killed 25 people (so far) because government spending is just way out of proportion to the Biblical mandates. Don't tell me I'm being silly, that is exactly what she is saying. Should we rewind?

"I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of 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."

This is also assuming that the will of the American people as she is interpreting it, is equal to the will of God. You know what else was the "will of the American people" in the South back in the 50s and 60s? The will of good, Godly, church-going, voting white people? Even the Mormons now reject that God is racist, so maybe the typical voter is not a good gauge of what the creator of the universe is intending. Maybe we should go further back to slavery, because that was Biblical and supported very heavily by certain state governments.

And you know what, let's just stop a second here, because her idea of government in Christianity is a bit skewed.
1) There is no democracy in the Bible, not as a government form, and certainly not implemented by God. In fact monarchy seemed to be the favorite, with David being the benevolent dictator "after God's own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14). Not exactly the contemporary Republican view of "small government."
2) okay before you hit "comment" and school me on Acts, yeah I know: Acts 2:42-47. Everybody gets together, shares their stuff, eats, drinks, and is merry. That's hardly a government. It's a fellowship, its a church. Not a government. But if we want to go that way, then everyone piles on their wealth into a big pot and shares it. This is closer to facism or socialism than to good old modern day American "capitalism". Read a few chapters later, and we find that the punishment paid for not sharing with the other children was death.

These are not the acts of a an "invisible hand" kind of God. In fact the self-interested actions of individuals in that case led to death, and not the overall beneficial societal outcome (the butcher and the baker better not set the wrong price, or they will die). So what makes the Congresswoman believe that God's message (if it is indeed that) is a message for smaller government? For people holding back more? Perhaps God wants more government spending! Over 9% unemployment, people losing money, people losing job-attached insurance, the suffering of God's children, while the wealthiest control a huge amount of our macroeconomic spending power. Does this sound similar to what you're reading in Acts 2? Wouldn't a redistributive and powerful government be more Biblical? God did after all appoint kings; something that Americans across this hemisphere spent many years, many lives, and many wars trying to throw out. Maybe God wants us to return to a monarchy?

But she also should probably stop cutting her hair so short, and in fact cover it up if she really wants to get Biblical. (1 Corinthians 11: 3-9)

Or maybe a hurricane is just a tragedy, and an earthquake is just a disaster. Maybe all the good, upright, and charitable parts of us come out during these tragedies and the faithful, spurred on by their belief in a loving deity, run to meet the needs of the suffering (as they did and have done many times). Maybe God's message is to help and love one another with our short time on this world to the best of our abilities when disaster strikes.

The point here is that Congresswomann Bachmann is a hateful, vile, stupid, selfish, dung heap of human wreckage. How dare she use the deaths of 25 people for political fodder, how dare she spread her warped messages, and how dare the people of Iowa honestly support this slug of a human. Shame on her, shame on the state of Minnesota for electing her, and shame on anyone who supports her.

UPDATE: The report is that she said this as "a joke". So which is worse: that she would seriously believe that 25 deaths were a message from God about government spending, or that she would use these people's deaths as a joke?

I am willing to bet the Congresswoman was not joking. The "joke" aspect doesn't change a thing: this is not something that should have been said in any context.