Let's say you want to be a member of the Iowa Senate, but you decide that actually running for the seat is expensive and tedious, and you realize that even if you win, you're mostly going to be voting on a lot of boring local issues, probably involving corn. Wouldn't it be more fun to go straight to national office, maybe the Senate? But a candidacy in that arena costs even MORE time and money, and even if you won, you'd still have to think about corn. Subsidies, probably. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just BE a U.S. Senator without all the trouble of "winning an election"? Well, meet Randi Shannon! She was running for Iowa's 34th District senate seat, but on July 4 announced that she had "accepted the position of U.S. Senator in The Republic of The United States of America," a pretend club of PatrioLoons who are taking America back from the illegitimate "UNITED STATES CORPORATION" (you have to type that in all-caps, because all-caps things are magically different legal entities from their lowercase counterparts).
It will undoubtedly come as a shock to many to learn that Ms. Shannon is a Ron Paul supporter and a home-schooling advocate. She also opposes children being vaccinated.
But she is participating in a rich tradition of Homegrown Grass-Roots American Prairie Lunacy! Long before there was a Tea Party, even before there was a Ron Paul, there were the tax protesters, those loveable nuts with their bizarre legal theories, strange interpretations of the Constitution and U.S. history, and their amusing penchant for mimeographing badly typed manifestoes, getting convicted of tax fraud, and occasionally hiding out in compounds until they and everyone in their entire tragic family are shot to death in futile gunfights with jackbooted federal thugs. Ms. Shannon's July 4 letter explains, with the perfectly lucid-seeming tone of the average psychopathic axe murderer when speaking to neurotypical people, what REALLY HAPPENED to U.S. America:
Let me now announce to everyone in Iowa, I have become aware of the existence of the Original Republic for The United States of America. “We the People” re-inhabited our lawful de jure (de jur [sic] -- “by right of lawful establishment”) government on March 30th, 2010. This is The Republic founded in 1787 and then abandoned during The Civil War in the 1860s.
It was then replaced in 1871 by the UNITED STATES CORPORATION. (de facto -- without law). This Unlawful Corporate Democracy, established by the forty-first congress, has been acting as though it is the "official government" which clearly it is not! In point of fact, it is the reason why “We the People” Instead of Experiencing Freedom and Prosperity, suffer under the weight of Oppressive Statutes and an Out of Control, Monstrous National Debt which is Robbing Us and All Future Generations of Americans of Our Treasure and Our Legacy for which Our Founding Fathers’ so Valiantly Fought and Died.
And Remember This! Where the de jure Republic of The United States of America exists the de facto UNITED STATES CORPORATION, having no standing, must go away!
So there! GO AWAY, you fake old government, because "We The People" no longer believe in you! Raw Story describes Shannon's statement as "riddled with curious capitalization meant to emphasize the government’s foibles," but we think it more likely that, apart from the bizarro magic belief that all-caps words denote legal fictions, this isn't satire, it's Just Really Incompetent Writing, with maybe a side helping of Trying to Sound Olde-Timey and Important Like The Declaration of Independence.
Ms. Shannon also has a Facebook Page with an unreadable satirical graphic, and a link to an unwatchable video that explains that there are actually TWO Americas, but not the way John Edwards meant it (Spoiler alert: Turns out that the 1871 law establishing a government for the District of Columbia is what did it). She warns that anyone who tries any funny stuff on her Facebook page "just might get bumped for a month off FB or banned permanently-account CLOSED. TRY ME PLEASE..."
[ RawStory ]
Doesn't she have to submit to hubby, though?
Can we open sweatshops there?