I don’t know about you, but I’ve contracted Bach-mania. It attacks the brain stem, and the only cure is the electrifying charisma of Michele Bachman. Or, you know, October. For now, though, with a mere 16 months left in the campaign season, Mm-Bach is tied with Mitt Romney for President of Theoretical Future America. It’s possible I meant to type “Theocratical Felcher America,” but we’ll get to that in a second. First, I went to continue the nascent and ugly trend of Combat! blog quoting Combat! blog. Remember yesterday, when we were talking about her segment on Face the Nation, and I was like:

…large portions of this interview are not about getting caught lying, at least not yet.

Wasn’t that clever? It seemed like a cheap shot at the time—possibly even lazy—but it turns out it was a genius laser telescope peering 24 hours into the future. According to this depressingly non-surprising article in PolitiFact, Michele Bachmann defended herself against allegations of untruthfulness Sunday by lying her ass off.

That whole thing about the skyrocketing federal limousine budget? That was Barely True, says PF, as was Bachmann’s contention that the Affordable Care Act would cost 800,000 jobs. Although this second misdirection lacks the je ne sais quoi of the image of Barack Obama bankrupting the country renting limousines, it is in its way more insidious. It turns out that the CBO report Bachmann cited was estimating the number of people who were staying in their current jobs only to get health insurance. PolitiFact’s explanation is well-crafted enough to quote at length:

There could be the equivalent of 800,000 fewer workers, thanks to the federal health care law, according to the CBO, but not because employers wouldn’t hire them. It’s primarily because people now working just to retain health insurance would either reduce their hours or leave the job market altogether. Under the new law, these workers wouldn’t need to have jobs to find affordable health care coverage.

At the risk of sounding Stalinesque, we’re not talking about 800,000 people losing their jobs so much as being freed from them. And as a self-employed person who currently pays several percentage points of his income to buy health catastrophe insurance that doesn’t cover checkups and applies a $38,000 deductible to his only known medical condition,* let me personally thank Anti-Tax Crusader Michele Bachmann for trying to preserve that. We have to stop this Obamacare thing before people like me start buying homes.

But you’re not interested in Anti-Tax Crusader Michele Bachmann. You prefer Glimmering Soldier of Christ Michele Bachmann, and because the lamestream media forces such people to hide their light under a bushel, you’re on the lookout for phrases that subtly reveal her truth. Over at the Daily Beast, “The Other Kind Of” Michelle Goldman observes the frequency with which Mm-Bach says “we are the head and not the tail.” She used it in her criticism of Obama’s Libya policy, and she used it in Sunday’s interview with Bob Schieffer to explain why the US should have the best economy in, like, the world.

It turns out it’s from Deuteronomy 28:13: “The Lord will make you the head and not the tail.” Among people who either keep an eye out for dominionist cabals or develop elaborate paranoid delusions, it’s considered a dog whistle. The quote is frequently used by evangelicals to express the idea that the United States, as a/the Christian nation, is destined to lead the world. A few days after saying it in the GOP debate, Bachmann used it again at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. She’s also used it to discuss oil and gas prices, and here she is using it to explain how much better things will be once Obama stops “robbing the nation of its golden future.”

I’m not saying a golden future doesn’t sound good. It’s possible, though, that the pathologically mendacious Christian dominionist who keeps appearing on TV wearing progressively larger quantities of eye makeup isn’t the one to get us there. Now seems like a good time to say that I still consider Michele Bachmann a fundamentally humorous person. I think she is too crazy to be President, and I think that the American people who did not vote in Iowa’s Republican straw poll will recognize that. It is a little chilling, though, to note that Mm-Bach is currently the GOP’s best hope. We’ve come such a long way since 2008, and yet we have put so little behind us.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fRxO_Yx99I&feature=related

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