A whackjob conspiracy theory for the ages:

A Republican state Senate candidate in Iowa has decided to bow out of the race and become a U.S. senator of an alternative form of government.

In a letter released Friday, Randi Shannon informs supporters of her new position as “U.S. Senator in the Republic of the United States of America.” You see, according to Shannon, the U.S. government has been acting unlawfully as the “‘official government,’ which clearly it is not!”

In a letter that thanked “my fellow Ron Paul for President Supporters, My Fellow Members of Liberty, My Friends who home school as did I, the many Pro-Life Members who have been so supportive of my candidacy over these past few months,” Ms. Shannon explains that the Original Republic for The United States of America, formed in 1787, was “abandoned” during the Civil War. Then in 1871 the 41st Congress replaced it by the UNITED STATES CORPORATION, the name of which apparently must always be typed in ALL CAPS. Perhaps this confuses the black helicopter pilots.

Anyway, a group dedicate to restoring the constitutional government of the Republic for the united States of America — and it’s “for,” not “of,” and they always lowercase “united,” which must Mean Something — organized in 2010, and this group has reconstituted the legitimate government:

On July 21, 2010 “We the People” of the de jure government proclaimed worldwide and made our “Declaration of Sovereignty for the Republic for the united States of America” to The Hague (a.k.a. the International Court of Justice), the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the United Nations (UN). On September 23, 2010, the first session of congress was convened by the united free Republics of the re-inhabited united States of America. The seating of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the Republic government were successfully established. This was completed by more than the required two-thirds majority vote of “We the People” on the land of the independent Republics. Delegates from more than 42 free Republics (States) attended, and officers for all three branches of our government have been officially sworn into office, lawfully electing interim President James Timothy Turner and interim Vice President Charles Eugene Wright, along with other established cabinet members with a presiding majority vote of 94% approval. Thus, the Republic government is officially re-inhabited and staffed for the first time since 1868 by the will of “We the People”.

How they did this without “We the People” even knowing about it is not explained.

The de facto UNITED STATES CORPORATION was unlawfully established by the forty-first congress in 1871 by deceptive means and without proper consent from “We the People”. The American people were placed under involuntary servitude by a “Legal” system of laws that have continually violated the “Constitution for the united States of America”, “Bill of Rights” and the “Declaration of Independence”. The corporate constitution was changed from the original form, wherein Amendments were unlawfully added and removed without the people’s consent. Since 1871, the abuses of this corporation upon both the international community as well as the American people are inestimable and unconscionable. De facto Congress has repeatedly violated their Oaths of Office, fiduciary responsibilities, and in many cases, committed treasonous acts against “We the People” of the united States of America and the world.

We humbly come forward apologizing for the numerous atrocities we have unknowingly allowed the U.S. CORPORATION to carry out upon the international community. It is our mission to establish the American image of truth, honesty, integrity and honor around the world. Our plan is to rebuild our economy and support other economies around the world, fulfilling humanitarian needs. We will allow our military to withdraw from unnecessary conflicts around the world and promote world peace and prosperity. We intend to follow God the Creator’s command to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the sick, irrespective of creed, religion or race. There is no law against these things.

We are calling on the support of all Nations around the world to help us end the tyranny that has been perpetrated by the unlawful actions of the UNITED STATES corporate government. We shall achieve this goal PEACEFULLY AND LAWFULLY, with boldness, integrity and truth, so help us God.

Not enough tinfoil in the world. Although what I really want to know is if the official FLAG of the united States — “united” must never be capitalized, remember, unless it is in ALL CAPS — has a gold fringe on it or not. Inquiring minds, etc.

BTW, the 1871 act that set up the UNITED STATES CORPORATION was the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, which established DC as federal territory. Seriously. The act (read here, scroll down a bit to start) established the District of Columbia as a “body corporate for municipal purposes.” I regret I don’t have time this morning to read the act all the way through, but as far as I got I see that it spends a lot of time outlining the form of government for the District of Columbia. I didn’t get to the part where the federal government was re-organized.

Maybe one of you can find the part about the UNITED STATES CORPORATION, although you may need to wrap yourself in duct tape and recite the Magna Carta backwards to do so. Otherwise it might be invisible.

Hey, she said it.

… in the interview, Malkin slammed President Obama’s supporters. “Romney types, of course, are the ones who sign the front of the paycheck, and the Obama types are the one who have spent their entire lives signing the back of them,” she said.

If you watch the video at Steve M’s, it is striking to me that MM and the other Fox “friends” are not even responding to what President Obama actually said.

I don’t know if everyone who lost power in last week’s storms has had power restored, but many people were cut off from electricity for seven or eight days, at least. David Frum wrote last week,

While you enjoy your air conditioning, you might want to take a minute to consider: Why do Americans tolerate such outages?

Outages are not inevitable. The German power grid has outages at an average rate of 21 minutes per year.

The winds may howl. The trees may fall. But in Germany, the lights stay on.

I’m no expert on how Germany handles its power grid, but from what I could sniff out online the government regulates it all pretty tightly.

Mark Steyn is in Scotland bemoaning America’s dysfunctional utility companies but blaming government, not the companies, for the outages.

America is seizing up before our eyes, and the action necessary to reverse the sclerosis is stymied at every turn by rapacious unions, government micro-regulators, dependency-spreading social engineers, and crony capitalists who know how to weave their way through the bureaucracy.

But I’d be willing to bet that the UK and Germany and most of Europe regulates its energy infrastructure a lot more than the U.S. does. I know that Germany has much bigger and stronger unions. Somehow that never registers in a rightie brain. It also doesn’t register that “free markets” might be the problem, not the solution. Steyn writes,

America’s dysfunctional utility companies have a zillion explanations for this, but years ago I rode through the outskirts of D.C. with a Dutch tourist who marveled at the men digging up the sidewalk in densely populated neighborhoods to bury the new cable-TV wires while the sagging electric lines overhead continued to string their way from pole to pole dodging tree branches across town.

Steyn, genius, explain why Comcast would bother to bury Pepco electric company’s cable? Maybe in The Netherlands the government steps in and regulates that all the cables are buried together, but not here.

Private utility companies say they don’t bury cable because it’s too expensive, btw.

See also the Angry Black Lady.

I had thought this was going to be a big rally day for the baggers. I haven’t heard of any rallies.

Movement Conservatism in One Graphic

I realize most of us would look on the circling bus episode and think, “WTF?” It looks silly and desperate. But Josh Marshall nails this — what looks like a pointless, juvenile stunt to most people speaks to the very heart and soul of movement conservatism. Because, basically, all movement conservatism amounts to any more is a great acting-out of juvenile rebellion. And the children are eating it up.

For example, from Facebook, pulled from Buzzfeed —

your kidding me, Guerilla tactics, the dumycrats invented this. You know the more Romney fights back, the more I’m coming around to supporting him, ive always said why don’t republicans play by the same rules that the dumycrats use, and finally somebody is doing it.

I have no idea when this meathead thinks Democrats did anything like this, but then juveniles do have a distorted view of the grownup world. Ultimately, it won’t matter whether Romney’s policy proposals are true to “movement conservatism” or not, any more than was the case with George W. Bush. Deep down, all the children really want is someone to be their proxy middle finger, waved at the world.

I don’t have the energy to go through all the ways I disagree with “Liberals Are Ruining America. I Know Because I Am One.” Short version: Blame liberals for the ascension of right-wing crazies. From his experience as a guest punching bag on Hannity’s show, the author concluded,

This, to be blunt, is the tragic flaw of the modern liberal. We choose to see ourselves as innocent victims of an escalating right-wing fanaticism. But too often we serve as willing accomplices to this escalation and to the resulting degradation of our civic discourse. We do this, without even meaning to, by consuming conservative folly as mass entertainment.

This is something like clap-for-Tinkerbelle in reverse. If we stop enabling righties by paying attention to them, they’ll go away.

I would like to say that I don’t feel personally victimized by escalating right-wing fanaticism. Most of the time I feel more like a helpless bystander watching barbarians sack my country.

Later, the author writes,

But the real problem isn’t Limbaugh. He’s just a businessman who is paid to reduce complex cultural issues to ad hominem assaults. The real problem is that liberals, both on an institutional and a personal level, have chosen to treat for-profit propaganda as news.

Um, no, nitwit. Most of us are the ones who have been saying for years that Faux Nooz and Limbaugh and the rest of the rightie media echo chamber is propaganda masquerading as news. The ones who treat it as real news are (a) the rest of the media, and (b) the mouth-breathing baggers, racists, and reactionaries who are regular consumers of the for-profit propaganda.

See also Ed Kilgore, Ryan Cooper, Erik Loomis, and the Booman.