Michelle Bachmann

OK, I swore I wasn't going to get political on here when I decided to take this little endeavor on. Two things ensured that I wouldn't be able to keep to that promise:
1. You can't have politics that don't involve STOOPID and
2. I fought the sucking force of the political vortex and lost.
This being what it is, I will just go into my rant. The President of the United States gave his State of the Union address last night at 9 o'clock PM Eastern time of which I caught roughly 75% of it. One of the first things I noticed was that the seating arrangement had changed markedly from previous SOTU addresses. Other than dampening any visible disapproval by the Republicans, I fail to see what purpose this served. As per usual and having just come off what has been touted as one of the most moving speeches in presidential history in regards to the Arizona shooting, I think Mr. Obama was on fire, oratorically speaking. He obviously has deep concerns about where we stand as a nation in comparison to other nations in the way of technology and it's availability in this country, which I can agree is a problem. I can only imagine what the people in the 'high plains' have been doing without wi-fi and places to get it, such as Starbucks. This can only lead to some farmer being acres away from the nearest outhouse on his tractor when he gets his explosive diarrhea attack from the latte he was drinking while looking up irrigation techniques on 'them internets'. On a serious note, I am a college student who employs the use of a remote control in some of my classrooms in order to take quizzes and be immediately scored, thereby saving the professors a lot of work and us students tons of nerves shot in anticipation of our grade. It is only right and fair that students get to learn in a uniform manner across the country. But then of course, I have as of yet to see someone refused employment because at their college, they weren't given the opportunity to become proficient in the use of a remote control. But enough about my own conjecture.
For every presidential action, there is usually an equal and opposite critical reaction from the opposing party after every SOTU. This year, we were 'blessed' with two. First came the televised rebuttal from Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a Republican from Wisconsin. Outside of his highly entertaining accent, he spent what I felt was equal time criticizing the POTUS's spending to date and stressing the need for less spending and a decreased federal government. Ryan did a fine job at admitting that Mr. Obama inherited a huge shit sandwich and allocating blame for said sandwich across the past four or five Presidential administrations (with no noteworthy credit being given to George W. Bush). At a minimum and whether or not I agree with everything that Mr. Paul said, at least it was well-founded and highly likely equally as well researched.
Then there was the second rebuttal from Michelle Bachmann - a tea-party representative from..... Oh, I don't know...... The seventh circle of Hell. I can understand the POTUS needing an entire hour to speak because, well, he's the President. He addressed a great number of issues, all of which probably had some degree of thought and research behind them. Mr. Paul didn't get an hour - he maybe got ten or fifteen minutes because his role in that time was to give a reaction to the POTUS's speech and address what he felt were valid talking points, which are limited in number due to his role and responsibilities in the federal government. Following along so far? Then we have Michelle Bachmann, also from Minnesota who fancies herself a Tea-partier/Conservative/Republican or any hybrid of those three terms. (Incidentally, I don't consider any district of Minnesota or the state in its entirety to be the seventh circle of Hell.) As I have already alluded to the amount of time a public figure uses to speak being directly correlated to the number of topics needed to be covered and the amount of thought and research put behind each topic, Michelle Bachmann prattled on for three to five minutes on the outset. The vast majority of her droning was little more than parroting on about how the United States needs smaller government and lower taxes. She managed somehow to conjure up the photograph of the Marines at Mount Suribachi raising the flag and claimed they did so with smaller government and lower taxes in mind because after all, THAT'S what America stands for. I think I'm going to be violently and copiously sick. I would sooner trust my children with razor blades and napalm than I would trust this woman to be in any position of any serious responsibility. My fourth-grade daughter could have put together a more informed and coherent presentation on the color of an orange than this woman can about what our country needs. Bachmann's response to the SOTU was not televised on any station of serious merit and I believe might even have been confined to the internet. That was probably a good thing, though I imagine it might have done a bit more good if her response was televised for the widest distribution possible. Michelle Bachmann is clear proof that our educational systems are in desperate need of revamping. Ignorance like Bachmann's is not solely the product of happenstance - this took cultivation. Perhaps her parents could have mover her swing set another foot or two away from the power lines when she was growing up, and who knew that lead was not a benevolent heavy metal to ingest when she was a child? I sincerely believe that when Michelle Bachmann affiliated with the tea party, she honestly thought there would be cake and a table stacked with presents. For a woman who advocates strict adherence to the Constitution, I would think she would show at least a little intellectual curiosity and actually read it (or at least have it explained to her by a competent scholar.) To put an individual with ignorance of this magnitude in a position of public trust is like putting Lance Armstrong on a Big Wheel. You expect performance but should probably brace for disappointment.