"Won't somebody please think of the children!?"

The Helen Lovejoys on the right have been working for a long time to dredge up the worst instincts from the bottoms of Americans' souls when it comes to the Obama administration. For example, an expansion of Americorps, which Obama advocated during his campaign,has drawn flies in "real America" for kinda-sorta seeming like a scary paramilitary movement on the rise.

Granted, the loony left plays these scaremongering games, too--remember Naomi Wolf's coup talk during the month or so before the election? Yikes!

But this time, elected officials like Michelle Bachmann--a member of the House of Representatives--has gone around making public accusations that her colleagues are engaged in un-American activities and want to send young Americans to re-education camps.

Bachmann is not Michael Savage. Not your crazy uncle.  She is an elected official.

Those of you who aren't familiar with the Godwinian lawbreaking that's transpired with the Obama-as-Sinister-Pied-Piper idea should see for yourself what the words "Obama," "Hitler," and "Youth" bring you in a Google search.

But to most of you, this is all old news.  And to some of you--particularly those most critical of Obama--you must be quite tired of hearing about the lunatic fringe all the time, particularly when it is all too easy for Obama supporters to make a tidy dichotomy between virtuously faithful support [read: uncritical following or "Kool-Aid chugging"] and the "bad guys."  Let no one make this mistake!  Obama's BMs stink just like yours, and he's done plenty wrong so far as President.  That's one thing we should be able to agree with the right-wing crazies on: Obama is not a Morgan Freeman character.  There, I said it.

Some folks on the right, however, react a little differently to this, according to a article in this morning's NY Times.  While we fax our representatives, the right has decided to answer the alleged Obama Youth with its own juvenile Heimwehr.

Some choice snippets:

"This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl," said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff's deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run.

[...]

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns -- known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets -- in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range. "I like shooting them," Cathy said. "I like the sound they make. It gets me excited."

[...]

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. "If we're looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like," he said, "then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don't know, would you call that politically incorrect?"