Student who challenged Michele Bachmann to a debate gets threats, tea party scoffs

To Amy and her father – I want to give you my full support. I live in MN although not in Bachmann’s district. The amount of misinformation the spews from this woman’s mouth is very disturbing. Her supporters are not the least bit concerned with facts. Amy, I encourage you to fulfill your passion for politics. When my optimism wanes, it is stories like yours that build it up again. You go, girl!!!

The Tea Party is composed largely of aggressive, feeble minded, authoritarian crap-cakes. Is it any surprise that they respond with such vitriol to child who dares challenge their equally feeble minded demi-goddess?

 What kind of solution is that? Because the assholes are out there, she needs to lock herself up? How ’bout we lock up the assholes instead? (metaphorically speaking). Those were threats.  Legally, that’s quite possibly assault. 

No. Just no.  If she cages herself, they win.  It’s a tactic called silencing, and it has been used against activists for years.  She needs to stand loud and proud and denounce her attackers and call them out for what they are. And Michele Bachman needs to denounce them as well.  And the newspapers and blogs and other places where these threats are being posted needs to pull them. That’s how civil society works.

Threats are not free speech in any society.

 @WayneMyers – just remember that every person here who’s posted insults at your daughter is an illiterate idiot who has their heads shoved up Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity’s bums, and if Bachmann (sounds like a Nazi to me) is anything like Arizona governor Jan “Asshat” Brewer, who actually had her people post a picture of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with a target stamped on it, she NEEDS to be impeached and prosecuted.

by the way, ‘uponthings’ seems to think that 16 year olds can’t form their own opinions.
Maybe not in HIS family.
In mine, I started watching convention coverage at age 11 in 1968.
I have been UP ON THINGS ever since.

 As a fiscal conservative and someone who looks at things from a realistic viewpoint. The Tea Party as we see it today is NOT what it was intended to be. It has become an angry mob of disgruntled social conservatives who do not really believe in freedom or liberty. Believe me, I have been to Tea Party rallies and talked to some of them. They have no clue on what is killing this country (wars, Federal Reserve, corporate controlled politicians, military industrial complex) they have become a bunch of blind, FOX watching idiots and it is sad to see. The original Tea Party movement promoted freedom and liberty for all with small government being the issue. It was a Libertarian movement started by Ron Paul supporters. Then FOX latched onto it and made it something it was NOT intended to be. FOX has supported big government neoconservatives and social conservatives. And in my opinion, social conservatism is just another form of fascism. Bachmann couldn’t debate her way out of a paper bag and I guess her supporters feel threatened by a 16 year old girl who is probably ten times smarter than her.  SAD day in America.

These threats remind me of the politics of Germany in the 1930′s. If you spoke out aganist the state or a certain party you were singled out and destroyed. The GOP and Tea Party speak of family values yet threaten familys with laws that hurt familys.    A quote that was made in 1933 that fits todays times. “The merger of the State and Corporations is the definition of Fascism”. The quote was made by Adolf Hitler  

 The Republican Party has transformed itself into the party of pure authoritarianism with a special emphasis on destroying any example of independent thought,  and it has become focused on delivering swift retribution for whomever dares not toe the party line.  There is no room for growth.  There is only room for rehashing the same failed policies by repackaging them and promoting them as new and unique ideas.  Anything that doesn’t grow, dies.  It can be either a slow, or a quick ,death, and I’m beginning to think that after the election of Obama, the party has chosen the quick route.  

I’m a retired high school teacher, and I love to see kids like Amy Myers excel because kids like these are our future.  I also have a strong aversion to seeing grown behind folks attacking a kid because he/she is young but alert enough to notice when politicians’ knowledge and behavior don’t match their rhetoric.  She was right to call Bachmann out for the uninformed individual she is.  When I read about Amy’s challenge to Bachmann, my heart sang, and I was filled with pride as if she were my own child.  I taught civics, world history, economics, and U.S. History for over 30 years, and I am always offended when republicans distort our history, tell lies about our economy and economic policy, and  abuse their power as members of Congress.  If Bachmann is so formidable and so knowledgeable, taking Amy on should be a cakewalk, and she shouldn’t need anyone affiliated with the GOP to run interference for her.  She can put up or shut up.  If she doesn’t respond to Amy’s challenge and continues to allow her nut brigade to harass her, she is  just another money-making blowhard know nothing carrying water for the  Republican Party.    

As a feminist and liberal who has been on the web a long time, none of it surprises me. Sickens me, yes, but surprises me, no.  I wish the best of everything to Amy and her father.

 I read the comments and they made me angry and sick. 

The comments on the Courier Post story are equally vile; blaming the father or the girl for daring to express a liberal opinion, suggesting he/she is lying about the whole thing, suggesting she should have just shut up and not tried to correct Bachmann, etc… This is not surprising; the Courier Post is a right-wing newspaper that almost exclusively endorses Republicans for local office and the comments section on the articles is a cesspool of right-wing hate. Then again I’ve found that comments sections on newspapers, whether they’re liberal or conservative, tend to devolve into right-wing echo chambers where reasonable people are afraid to enter.