I have a confession to make. I am utterly overwhelmed by the scope of the stakes in next week’s election. I’ve been coping by narrowing my focus to local issues, where I feel as though I can make some difference. I have, maybe, but there’s so much more out there that needs attention.

For example, there are two statewide propositions, one in Michigan and one in California, that need attention. One is the product of those who would make everyone else bear the burden of their narrow views of morality. One is an attempt to block this thoughtless, moralistic behavior.

Over at denialism blog, PalMD is disecting the case against Michigan’s Proposition 2. Proposition 2 deals with human embryonic stem cell research. It would exempt Michigan from the kind of state-by-state battling that’s marked the abortion debate by keeping anyone from passing laws that are more restrictive than the federal laws. Needless to say, some people aren’t happy about this.

Every Sunday—early in the afternoon—anti-Prop 2 signs pop up like crocuses in March. Religious groups are making the usual arguments equating HESCs with little homunculi who are being murdered in the name of Science. But just in case going to church and hearing your pastor telling you how to vote is too subtle, there is the horrible, horrible beast—the Michigan Man-Cow.

Go take a peek at the horrid monster.

DrugMonkey is trying to find the rationale behind California’s Proposition 8, but he’s only finding rationalizations.

You will recall from your history books that even slavery and women’s suffrage issues were surrounded by (crap) rationalizations. The argument was not “just because”. And now, most Americans find the argument that other people should be chattel because of the shade of their skin or their place of origin wrong. Most Americans think that women are quite capable of voting in a way that will not RUINZ! our country. We have, as a population, shed many, many of our bigotries and mis-beliefs in the name of equality, democracy and civil rights. We look back and often sneer at those wrongheaded and ignorant views of past generations.

Well, I’m sneering at the H8rs right about now. What on earth is wrong with you people?

What, indeed. I’ve been married eleven years, but I’m surrounded by friends who have been in stable, committed, productive relationships years longer than that. Together, they’ve raised kids, renovated run-down city housing, created art, supported charities with money and time, worked through tough spots that have led to divorce in other couples. They’ve been an inspiration to so many of my generation, raised as we were by parents who didn’t choose mates wisely or manage to stay together. They showed us that we could.

About half of them are married. The other half have never had that opportunity, not legally. That this opportunity is held just out of their reach by the shape of a couple of chromosomes is beyond ridiculous.

DrugMonkey is right. It’s all about the h8, which is no basis for politics. Or much of anything else, for that matter.

Welcome to the fifth edition of the Replace Michele Bachmann Blog Carnival: The Fallout Edition.

I’d like to start with a very special thank you to Representative Bachmann herself. After Bachmann’s comments on Hardball, traffic to all editions of our humble carnival multiplied unbelievably. My blog has seen record traffic for the last week and a half.

Thanks, Michele, we couldn’t have done this without you!

While this is the Fallout Edition of the carnival, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind the new Bachmann watchers that she existed before her Hardball appearance and that divisiveness is nothing new for her. Just one day before she became infamous, Bachmann used the issue of immigration to divide her constituents at a debate in St. Cloud.

“Without having some sort of a barrier at the border, we’re going to continue to have the kind of problems that we’ve had with Olga Franco that we saw most recently in the tragic death of four children in the accident,” Bachmann said, referring to an illegal immigrant whose minivan struck a school bus in Cottonwood, Minn. “These are preventable and we need to do that with sealing America’s borders.”

Dump Michele Bachmann has this and some other choice quotes. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can watch that whole piece of the debate below.

Video bonus: Watch Tinklenberg almost do a spit take when Bachmann directly contradicts him on what his border security policy is. Note the laughter from the audience when he restates his position after she’s done.

Note also her total absorption in the papers in front of her. This was not long before Hardball. Was she cramming for the final she blew so spectacularly?

She recognized the importance of immigration for farming in the past, but now she only wants to let in a few highly-skilled technical people. Thanks to Liberal in the Land of Conservative for the video. The whole debate is here.

How does Bachmann want to stop the icky immigrants from getting into her country? The Minnesota Monitor provides the answer. She wants us to be like one of the most militarized nations on the planet, one under a constant terrorism threat:

…the argument that fences don’t work doesn’t hold water. Look at Israel and Palestine. Fences work…

Of course, this isn’t Bachmann’s first foray into the issue of immigration. On the Issues has the text of a bill she co-sponsored to make English the official language of the U.S.

Throughout the history of the United States, the common thread binding individuals of differing backgrounds has been the English language.

Hmm. Don’t anyone tell the Cajuns. Personally, I thought it had something to do with the values espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the rights guaranteed in the Constitution. I guess that’s what I get for being one of those educated elites.

Now if Bachmann had wanted to educate herself about immigration before talking, she could have easily found this out: While there is a cost to the crime that is committed by illegal immigrants, there is no indication that that cost is a measure of anything more than increased population size. In fact, illegal immigrants may commit less crime per capita than citizens.

But Bachmann’s not interested in facts. This is just a dividing tactic, a way to scare her constituents. If it were a major security issue for Bachmann, one of her first acts in office would almost certainly not have been voting against implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations on cargo inspections.

Now, onto what Bachmann’s been up to since last week. Turns out, keeping track of where she stands on what she said, why she said it, and whether she meant it has been rather difficult. Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars does an admirable job of noting all the twists and turns, along with the dodging and weaving.

First, she claimed she never said it. But she then did a 180 and re-asserted Obama’s views were anti-American. Then, after her Democratic rival Elwyn Tinklenberg raised $1.4 million from Americans disgusted by her neo-McCarthyism, she tried to fundraise off her outrage at Matthews and liberal blogs for twisting her words.

John Nichols at The Nation takes a closer look at one of Bachmann’s favorite excuses for her “misunderstood” behavior: she’s just an outsider under attack by the elites. He’s particularly skeptical of her previous comparison of herself to Paul Wellstone, Minnesota’s most beloved senator.

It was an easy comparison to make, as Wellstone was not around to defend himself.

And Bachmann continues to abuse the privilege by suggesting that she serves and speaks as a Minnesota “outsider” in the Wellstone tradition

Speaking of Wellstone, Todd Beeton at MyDD examines how Bachmann’s Hardball performance may hurt Norm Coleman, who’s locked in a very tight race to hang on to the Senate seat left vacant by Wellstone’s death six years ago.

And Coleman seems to know this. On Sunday, on the same local morning TV news show during which Bachmann reiterated her comments about Barack Obama, Coleman tried to distance himself from them.

But distancing himself from her isn’t so easy after he’s been appearing by her side at McCain/Palin events throughout the state.

Of course, one doesn’t have to have loved Wellstone to hate what Bachmann has chosen to stand for. Seth Coulter Walls at the Huffington Post reports on the bipartisan rejection of Bachmann’s stance.

“Republicans who have never voted Democratic in their lives are sending me money because those kind of comments [made by Bachmann] are intolerable to them,” Tinklenberg told the Huffington Post, adding that many of the donations have come with notes attesting to this fact. “That makes me feel good — that they’re rejecting this across the board. It’s no longer a partisan thing, and it shows they’re understanding finally we are all Americans, and we all need to come together to move forward and the issues we’re facing. … And it’s certainly been reflected in the fundraising.”

It’s been reflected in Bachmann’s fundraising too. Her campaign is being coy about the amount raised since Bachmann spouted off, claiming “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” The Minnesota Independent checks on the amounts that can be verified and finds less than $30,000 in itemized contributions.

But a spokesperson for at least one of Bachmann’s contributors — Schwan Food PAC of Marshall, MN — tells Minnesota Independent his company isn’t happy with
the congresswoman’s comments and indicates they will almost certainly be taken into account before making future contributions to her.

Demonstrating even further the scope of people repudiating Bachmann, A Christmas Story presents an open letter to her, including a stunning list of the people Bachmann has offended and injured.

I am just a working stiff, who wants to make life better for my family. I enjoy helping other people along the way, too. I care about life in my district, I care about life in my township, I care about life in my state. And I care about life in our country. Our district cannot boast about the things we once could declare as successful outcomes to the whole of the district.

Even the mainstream media, which has been remarkably “balanced” in its coverage of Bachmann’s extremism, is starting to question the congresswoman’s judgment. Ken Avidor at Daily Kos notes a local newspaper that is finally examining the Bachmann-Vennes-Petters “pardongate” in depth.

Dump Bachmann blog, the Minnesota Independent and other “new media” have been on this story for weeks… now the MSM has begun to write about Bachmann’s pardon request for Petters associate Frank Vennes Jr..

There’s one very important thing that we should all remember in the middle of the ever-so-satisfying Bachmann hating. She isn’t doing this alone. (She’s merely been the most inept at it.) Michele Bachmann gave one of the first speeches at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. She hasn’t made as many television appearances as she has because Larry King really wants to spend his time talking to a first-term congresswoman from the Midwest.

Or, as Andrea Langworthy put it:

While McCain’s had Sarah Palin doing his dirty work, bad-mouthing Obama, he’s been able to keep his hands clean and not be blamed for mud-slinging. The practice dates all way back to the Garden of Eden. Eve wasn’t the only one to take a bite of the apple but she certainly is the one who gets the most blame. The McCain camp sends Eve, Sarah “Pit Bull” Palin, from state to state to say biting things about Obama. Then, when asked about it by David Letterman, McCain just squirms in his chair and says, “There are a million words said in a campaign … it’s part of the political scene.”

Now, Bachmann has given into the temptation of spreading falsehoods. Fortunately, many people in our nation did not take McCain’s stance after she appeared on Hardball.

Greg Laden also looks at the responsibility for Bachmann’s act, with the tale of a brick and its consquences.

You see, all I was doing, as a dumb four year old kid, was taking what I sensed around me, but did not understand, to the next step. But the next step was too far. I took an issue that was probably small, or at least, already settled, misunderstood it, dressed it up in my mind, extended it’s life and expanded its import, and then went and made a brick bomb and threw it at someone.

And although that’s a rather somber place to stop, here is where we end the fifth Replace Michele Bachmann Blog Carnival. You’ll note that this edition doesn’t contain any goofy stories about the congresswoman. It doesn’t contain any funny pictures of the much-Googled (seriously) “Michele Bachmann Eyes,” or as a friend of mine snarkily calls that sort of thing, “the wide eyes of calm.”

We only have one more week until the election. The time to be amused by Bachmann’s cluelessness is over. It’s time to give up the ironic detachment and recognize just how angry we should be, and are, that someone like Bachmann–in fact, several people like Bachmann, just less silly–has been chosen to represent her district, her state, and her nation. It’s time to, well, I’ll just give Greg the last word here, since I think he said it best.

There are too many close calls for you or me to be comfortable. There are only two weeks left. You must now abandon other activities, put down the rake, turn off the TV, cancel the trip to the cabin, forget about organizing your stamp collection for a while!

Find a Democrat running for office. Give this Democrat fifty bucks … a cheap price to save your ass from another four years of creeping oppression. Volunteer to work for the candidate. Phone bank, door knock, clean the damn kitchen in the campaign office while other people are phone banking. Whatever, just do something!

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

Alan Greenspan testified before Congress today and said the one thing that every other libertarian has avoided saying to this point. This financial crisis is the direct result of the failure of his philosophy.

I’d like to give him credit for his honesty, for his willingness to examine his own beliefs critically, but all I can really do is wonder how he’s managed to stay so naive for so long.

Sure, the ideas that corporations behave like psychopaths and that CEOs are successful psychopaths are relatively new. However, any student of history can easily find examples of antisocial tendencies on the part of companies and of unchecked power that has had deleterious effects on trade. The credit scandal is nothing like unprecedented behavior.How does someone as bright as Greenspan has generally been considered to be miss this?

How does he miss the evidence of his fellow libertarians? Has he always been considered necessary by the people in power? Has he only ever seen the shark’s smile and not its teeth?

Has he not met the libertarians of my generation–the arrogant tech boys who don’t understand the amount of infrastructure necessary for them to do the one thing they know, the sheltered suburbanites dreaming of chaos, the recipients of public educations who consider themselves self-made, the swaggering idiots who think a piddly handgun will stop a determined crowd? Has he never seen the people attracted to his ideas?

What I’m saying to you is yes, I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact…A flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.

A flaw. One. And he still doesn’t know how significant it is. Mr. Greenspan, the varieties and vagaries of human nature are pretty fundamental. The flaw is the model.

We listened to this man for how long?

Update: If you want to know more about “the libertarians of my generation,” Chris has a great post and a book recommendation up at denialism blog.

Modified slightly from the discussion here.

This is my country and the regressive yahoos can take it from me when they pry it, etc. Especially since they don’t have a clue what to do with it except strip it of every unique thing it’s accomplished.

I’m not calling for optimism out of naivety. I know what the problems are. I know how bad our situation is. I also know the country is not going to stay the same. Countries never do. My choices are to give up on it and watch it move in the wrong direction, steered there by the underlying issues that have gotten us where we are, knowing I gave up, or to work to fix those problems and push the country in the direction I want it to go.

That’s it. No more choices.

Despair is a luxury we can’t afford right now. I know it’s been a long time since it’s appeared that there was anything to look forward to. I know you may be tired and dispirited. I’d buy you a beer and let you cry in it if I could.

But then I would remind you that there is work to be done. While we’ve been pushing for a long time, for the first time in almost that long, there are signs that the pushing can get something moving.

How long has it been since you’ve seen a majority of the electorate turn up its noses at negative advertising? How long has it been since most of the people you know don’t automatically associate free-market capitalism with prosperity and an aggressive military strategy with security? How long has it been since you’ve seen someone turn to a wonk who speaks in multisyllables for reassurance? How long has it been since you’ve seen people perk up at a call to their own responsibility?

We have an opportunity that I haven’t seen in my lifetime, but it won’t do us any good if we collapse at the critical point. There’s still fight left in the idiots who got us to this place. We have to find the fight in ourselves to keep them from winning.

Or, in the immortal words of Booger, “Buck up, little camper. We’ll beat that slope together.”

Yes.

I ran into another one yesterday. You know them, the ones who say, “Obama isn’t perfect, you know. He’s just not that different from McCain. I mean, I’ll vote for him, but really….”

The next one gets swatted. Hard.

Aside from the fact that anyone with a brain can tell that there are big differences between Obama and McCain–of policy, of personality, of integrity–this statement is totally wrong in one thing. It reeks of cynicism.

This last one didn’t think so. He said, “Don’t confuse realism with cynicism StephanieZ. I do think there’s a legitimate case to be made for picking the lesser of two evils in swing states, but as Chomsky notes one should do so without any illusions.”

The lesser of two evils? If that isn’t cynicism, what is it? It’s certainly not realism.

How is it evil to suggest that more people should have access to affordable health care? How is it evil to say we need to understand the racial divide as a first step to closing it? How is it evil to suggest that our policies abroad are hurtful to the world and need to be changed? How is it evil to say that those who have profited from the last eight years need to help pay for them?

“But he’s not perfect,” I hear. Excuse me, but duh. Of course he isn’t perfect. Neither is the situation he’ll step into in January. Far from it.

Obama isn’t perfect. He’s progress.

Obama and his policies are progress that we desperately need right now. Every moderate to liberal politician we send to D.C. with him is forward motion. Each step we take in pushing those politicians to enact his platform is one step out of the mire.

That’s right. This doesn’t end with the election. We all still have plenty of work to do after that happens. We have to demand the changes we’ve been promised. Some of us will have to suck it up and pay our share where we haven’t been. We have to tell each other that hatred is unacceptable. We have to fight the lies that will be told.

We have to fight the cynicism.

This last piece is critical. We’ve been wandering deeper into the mire for far too long. It will take us years to get out. We’ll get tired. We’ll find it all too easy to say that another hard-fought step toward the edge still puts us in the muck, so what’s the difference? We’ll have all the realism we can handle.

It’s even possible that we’ll forget what the dry land beyond the edge looks like, but we can never dismiss it as an illusion. That way lies cynicism–and the realism of the mire.

…#4 is up at Greg Laden’s Blog. He rightly titles this edition, “We Told You So,” and makes an admission:

A few weeks ago, Stephanie Zvan and I hatched a plot, I mean developed an action plan, to provide a weekly carnival of posts regarding Michele Bachmann. We quickly asked Radio Talk Show Host Mike Haubrich if he would join us in this effort, and he agreed.

Yep, the three of us, along with many local bloggers, including the tireless Dump Michele Bachmann blog, have been working to spread the news about just how atrocious Bachmann really is.

This week, without our help, she showed the world. The new edition of the carnival reflects all the attention it’s bought her. To highlight a few of my favorites:

Brian Lambert reminds us that Bachmann’s words on Hardball are neither isolated nor a fluke:

But Bachmann and her kind — Sarah Palin, the Rovians running McCain’s campaign, Sean Hannity, nine out of ten “personalities” on talk radio and nearly 100% of their listeners — don’t understand anything beyond the buzzwords, slogans, kill-phrases and hollow paeans to patriotism they hear on the radio and at CPAC conferences. More to the point, their reckless indifference to reality is now strikingly obvious to the general public.

Tangled Up in Blue Guy has had quite enough:

I am an American. I am proud to be an American and I am fucking sick if this goddamned attitude by these holier-than-thou ultra-right radical Republicans attacking the patriotism of those of us that actually think that this country should live up to our stated ideals.

The Vine faces the dilemma that all sane people do when looking at Bachmann:

Of course, common sense tells me that she’s such an obvious idiot that no one would listen to her, but then reality kicks me in the face and reminds me that, for some inexplicable reason, a bunch of people actually voted for her. WTF were they thinking?

The Minnesota Independent truly sums up the carnival’s theme:

Following Rep. Michele Bachmann’s appearance with Chris Matthews yesterday, America is learning what many in Minnesota already knew, which is that putting Bachmann in front of a live microphone is like handing an excitable 15-year-old a bottle of gin and a loaded gun. The only question is when something unspeakable is going to happen.

And much, much more.

You’ve seen it, of course. U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann on Hardball. Just in case you haven’t, just in case you usually feel Matthews is too obnoxious to watch, I’m going to post it again here, because this may be the most important video of this election season. I ask that you watch it.

It’s tempting, seeing this, hearing this, to dismiss Bachmann as a crazy. She makes it easy, as she always does, with the startlingly wide eyes and the smiles at inappropriate times and the words. Oh, the words.

But dismissing her would be a mistake. Bachmann isn’t trying to scuttle her campaign. She isn’t quite insane. She’s so wrong on so many counts that it’s painful to think about, but she knows what she wants and she’s doing what she thinks she needs to get it.

What does Bachmann want? She wants what her church wants, as evidenced by her pastor’s endorsement. She believes that God has guided her life, not generally, but very specifically to this point. She wants to make the prosperity gospel an American reality. She wants the few who believe like her to see proof that they believe correctly. The only way for them to have this proof (to replace their faith) is to end up the ones on top.

With that in mind, Bachmann’s positions suddenly make more…well, they look more consistent. She wants to take steps like drilling in ANWR to make the country more financially independent but supports the Bush plan to bring American-style (read Christian) democracy to a Muslim country. This isn’t a conflict between isolationism and interventionism. It’s keeping the money here to reward those who are sending others to fight heresy abroad.

She’s a pro-lifer, because her church tells her she must be, but is happy to leave the health of everyone else in the hands of God. God will also provide, apparently, for transportation projects in Bachmann’s district–if he so chooses. Bachmann won’t. She’s not interested in sharing, even with her constituents. For everything else, her votes make up a litany of denial.

It’s with this litany that the point of Bachmann’s Hardball appearance starts to become clear. Matthews didn’t push her into saying anything she didn’t believe. He merely asked enough questions that she did what she’s been dying to do since the Republicans made her one of the voices of their party in September. She went off script and said what she really thinks.

Liberals, with their concern for more than the rich and the fundamentalist Christian, with their willingness to tax the chosen people, really are betraying America. They may be betraying only the America that exists in Bachmann’s head, in her pastor’s head, in the heads of those that follow the prosperity gospel, but this is still a betrayal.

They’ll do whatever needs to be done to stop them. Investigation, sanction, slander, more? That’s just fine. This isn’t a class war that Bachmann and the others are fighting, after all. It’s a religious war–in America.

And it doesn’t get much more anti-American than that.

Michele Bachmann may have done in her congressional campaign last night. Want proof? ActBlue, a site that raises money for Democratic campaigns, had about $4,000 in receipt for her challenger, El Tinklenberg, before Bachmann’s appearance yesterday. They now have $141,000. Oops, I mean $142,000.

You can literally watch the money coming in–for a campaign that raised $1M in the first nine months of the year. Just click refresh. Or you can make it go up yourself.

$144,000. Whee!

Riffing off the discussion of racist arguments here and on Greg’s blog, DrugMonkey asked why ScienceBlogs looks so unlike the rest of the world. Shortly thereafter, Isis the Scientist took a bunch of us to task for advocating for diversity because it would make us feel better. (Utterly incomplete summaries of both posts. Read them and the comments.)

The conversation between Isis and her readers developed into a discussion of bottom-up versus top-down policies to increase diversity in science. After thinking about the matter further, I have to disagree with the dear Dr., and not just over the question of whether I’m “adorable.” I want diversity yesterday, and I’m not willing to wait until we get candidates who meet the same qualifications as the current crop of scientists.

Setting aside the social justice issues as givens, I have two very selfish reasons for wanting the inside of science to look the same as the world outside.

1. It will increase the general trust in science.
2. It will produce better science.

I’ve been in (probably far too) many discussions about the image problems of science. You know the refrain: “Those arrogant, irrelevant, condescending elitists? Why should I listen to them?” You’ll keep hearing it as long as science looks and sounds like “them” instead of “us.” As long as science doesn’t look like them, people won’t believe it’s working fully in their interest. And they’ll be right.

As long as science doesn’t include some group, it will fail to ask questions of vital importance to that group. Remember how the health of middle-class white men was once assumed to be the same thing as general human health? Nor is it over. What do decision-making and communication studies using undergraduate subjects really tell us about everyone else? Even when they’re replicated more broadly, how does the fact that they’re tailored for this group affect the results?

The best way to fix both problems is to make sure that the inside of science looks as much like the outside world as we can make it. I want everyone on the inside, all the insides.

I want men and women and the transgendered in there. I want people of all ethnic backgrounds. I want immigrants, native-born and aboriginals. I want parents and the childless and the child-free. I want the inspired and the plodders. I want people who came to science as a second or third career and those who have never once wanted to do anything else. I want the specialists and the bumblebees flitting from discipline to discipline.

I want workaholics and part-timers and hobbyists. I want people of all sorts of sexualities. I want grand theorists and precision techs. I want introverts and glad-handers. I want the poor and the economically privileged. I want administrators and people who want to play in the dirt. I want believers and skeptics. I want those whose personal ambition drives them to compete and those who view science as a community endeavor.

I want the followers and the feather-smoothers and the punks and the gadflies. I want gamblers and people who take only solid odds. I want city kids and farm kids and suburbanites. I want popularizers and people who qualify their jargon for precision’s sake. I want the disgustingly healthy and the disabled. I want the organized and those who will put ideas together because they pick up two seemingly unrelated papers when a stack tumbles to the floor.

I want everyone. I want people I don’t know I want.

The problem with having a limited outlook is that we don’t–we can’t–know what it is that we don’t know. None of us can know who will ask different questions than we do, important questions. None of us can know how different the world looks from even a slightly different angle, what connections others can see that we can’t. We need this information.

In science–in any endeavor that requires thinking–diversity is not just a nice idea. It’s a qualification in its own right. And it’s the one qualification that can’t be fostered without reaching outside.