She’s not getting any smarter, people. Just more well-polished.
This is why I love the internets. It has such — such — sticktoitiveness.
[Click the links for sources. I’m not the only person marveling at this woman’s unintelligence, especially today.]It’s going to be a long angry road to the Republican primary. Gird your loins.
You’re welcome.
It’s almost scotch-thirty, innit?
[images via Buzzfeed]
[Posted with apologies to ruemara — I really am working on a post on Florida voter suppression. It’s just that this Bachmann stuff is low-hanging and very tempting fruit…. -ABLxx]
Villago Delenda Est
Umm….the Swine Flu thing happened during the Ford Administration. I remember this quite distinctly, and it was something of a bust, as a matter of fact.
Michelle, you’re a pioneer of sorts. A dumb brunette.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
So that’s what a gallon of Botox straight to the forehead looks like.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Also, don’t forget her public makeout session with W.
http://crooksandliars.com/2007/01/24/rep-michele-bachmann-hearts-bush
trollhattan
Thanks ABL, my Christmas card shopping needs are filled, and it’s only June.
Can we squeeze in one about Obama’s reeducation camps(tm)?
Turgidson
You filled out a top ten without even touching the “FDR’s Hoot-Smalley tariff caused the Great Depression” routine. Wow, she’s even more hilarious than I thought.
Spaghetti Lee
Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann caught reading, apologizes immediately.
Violet
There’s just no way she’s starbursting the over-50 white guys who starburst for Palin. No way. She’s attractive enough, in a crazy kind of way, but she does not do the starbursts through the TV thing that Palin does.
EndOfTheWorld
Those quotes are a buffet of stupid and evil, but I’m actually going to agree with Michelle on the first quote. Not all cultures are equal. (And I don’t think anyone actually advocates teaching this).
A culture where basic healthcare is denied to millions and people are routinely bankrupted by medical bills is inferior to one where that does not happen.
A culture where being the wrong race, sex, or sexual orientation can get you killed and your basic freedoms denied is inferior to a culture where virtues like tolerance and empathy (like Jesus and many others taught) are the standard.
A culture where women are circumcised is inferior to a culture that forbids the practice.
So yeah, I agree with Michelle’s first statement. But I think we have very different standards.
freelancer
It is now.
Villago Delenda Est
I can’t imagine anyone saying “homosexuality is normal and you should try it.”
She’s still operating under the delusion that people have concious choices about their sexuality, when there are plenty of gays out there who have said, repeatedly, that they didn’t choose to be a member of a despised, persecuted minority.
But this is Michelle talking…the one who doesn’t quite get that carbon dioxide is what we exhale, because it’s a waste product of our bodies.
Tuffy
Not all cultures are equal. That’s not controversial if you’re not a retard.
But if you’re dumb as ABL, I suppose stoning adulteresses is just as valid as our system.
TD
@EndOfTheWorld
Bingo
Matt Mangels
I think #1 is an example of “even a broken clock…” I mean are you going to tell me that a culture that practices female circumcision is morally equal to Western culture? Far be it from me to suggest that Western Culture is the superior culture, but at least we have some standards.
Warren Terra
Re quote #10, I seem to recall that in 2008 every living American Nobel-winning scientist signed a letter endorsing Obama – even the 2008 recipients, whose names had just been announced in the first week of October.
karen marie
@Villago Delenda Est: I have a very hard time believing that out of the 28 children Bachmann “raised” there is not a single one that is gay. It’s easy to believe, however, that she filled them with enough self-loathing that they can’t pry themselves out of the closet.
jpmeyer
I read a comment, I think at Marginal Revolution, that went something like this:
“Michelle Bachmann is clearly lying when she says that she reads Mises while sitting on the beach. Not because she is too stupid to read Mises, although she is, but rather because nobody has ever read Mises while sitting on the beach.”
Xecky Gilchrist
@Tuffy: But if you’re dumb as ABL, I suppose stoning adulteresses is just as valid as our system.
oooo! Nice strawman!
NoPublic
@Matt Mangels:
You mean to tell me that a culture that practices male circumcision is morally equal to one which does not?
If you pick one measuring stick you can make any culture look better than any other (trains running on time and the like).
It’s either incorrect or a tautology and in either case it’s silly.
Trurl
Vera Farmiga can play her in the Lifetime movie.
geisha gurl
nice. thanks.
remember this from Misha Batshit?
MR. MATTHEWS: Well, he’s a United States senator from Illinois. He’s one of the people you suspect as being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti- American? You’ve already suspected Barack Obama. Is he alone, or are there others? How many do you suspect of your colleagues as being anti-American?
REP. BACHMANN: What I would say — what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.
Cris
But let me just say this: even if homosexuality was a conscious choice, the cultural reactionaries would still be wrong to demonize and criminalize it.
Brachiator
@Matt Mangels:
The point, of course, is that Bachmann and her ilk believe that Real American(tm)Culture, Conservative style, is superior to every other culture that has existed or will exist, especially the parts that would bash nonwhites, gays and women who believe that they are something other than a walking baby incubator.
General Stuck
Couple of tidbits in the good news for liberal department, or should be at least.
And my apologies, if this comment caused anyone to feel even a little hopeful.
boatboy_srq
@Villago Delenda Est:
I can. But only as a retort to either of two converse statements: either a) “Homosexuality is deviant and disgusting,” said by a serial heteromonogamist opposed to gay marriage, or b) “Heterosexuality is normal and you should try it,” said by just about anyone.
As for the quotes:
On #5: there’s a medical condition known as Persistent Vegetative State. It does NOT imply physical illness beyond the inability of the brain to function. Still and all, I can’t help think Terri Schaivo had more functioning neurons than Ms. Bachmann…
On #8: As I recall, we fought a war not ALL that long ago, about the logical extension of that very subject: that paying (for) labor once just wasn’t enough.
Allen
Quote 6, regarding CO2 not being harmful should be good news to the residents 1,700 residents near Lake Nyos (Cameroon, Africa) who are dead due CO2 should be good news, they are not really dead, thanks to wannabe airhead in chief.
Cris
The big trouble with #1 is that it lacks context. The five words cited here aren’t really controversial. But look at the whole passage:
At a minimum, she’s setting up a strawman: “multiculturalism,” that bogeyman of the right, isn’t about setting up other cultures as “equal,” it’s about getting past the traditional view that they’re inferior and treating them with some respect. It’s much like the chauvinist right’s mischaracterization of feminism, claiming that it’s about erasing the distinctions between the sexes.
But to take it even further in context, she said that in reference to 2005 protests in France, and was clearly intimating that this was part of a culture war between Islam and the West.
“Not all cultures are equal” isn’t wrong on its face, but it’s a reasonable shorthand for the sort of cultural chauvinism that Bachmann and her faction advocate.
Citizen_X
@Tuffy:
Ah, then you agree with me that the Book of Leviticus is a near-Neolithic crock, and we should not be basing our society on it, right?
Edit: But that’s no excuse for insulting our fair ABL.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
The irony is that the first Christians, like many other groups, exactly chose to be a member of a despised, persecuted minority, and yet Bachmann and her ilk want to target people in the name of religion and society.
What you choose can be just as dangerous, and just as deeply held, as who you are. In fact, I would argue that at some level, what you choose is who you are. I was born right handed, but this is absolutely trivial. I am a furious agnostic, and have shocked some people who see this as a naughty, defiant choice, as though being religious is the default condition for all human beings.
I believe the evidence that suggests that being gay is not just a choice. But this is irrelevant. Gay people don’t choose to be a member of a despised, persecuted minority. Gay people are citizens, just like all other citizens, and who they choose to love and how they live their lives is not subject to review or approval or debate about validity.
El Cid
What’s the deal with the first sentences which are blue but aren’t links? Is that emphasis?
Chris
@Cris:
The problem with this multiculturalism vs not-all-cultures-are-equal bullshit is that cultures are complicated and multifaceted things. Take, for example, the two cultures of Mexico and the United States in 1836. The United States was a democracy with legally elected and constitutionally restrained leaders, while Mexico was a military dictatorship. But, on the other hand, the United States practiced human slavery, and Mexico didn’t. Which was the superior culture?
PS
@Citizen_X: Hey, ABL ain’t fair! She’s, y’know, B.
What she’s really not, is dumb. Not dumb at all. Unlike, ahem, certain folks.
Cassidy
@Matt Mangels:
Smarts bombs over suicide vests isn’t much of a standards.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Yep.
I’ve heard them argue a million times, according to this model, that it’s fine and not bigoted to attack Muslims, because although you can’t choose your race, you can choose your culture.
According to this model, while it was bad for the KKK to go after black people, it was perfectly legit and nonprejudiced to do the same to Catholics and Jews. (They really should go shout that theory at their buddies in the Catholic League and AIPAC, that’ll go over well…)
El Cid
It’s a very odd thing that people so easily turn to discuss very specific questions about ‘a culture’ as though it really were an object, and not an agglomeration used as a sometimes useful descriptive term, or even as an attempt to prescribe behavior from ‘within’ some group.
Is Culture X which does A not better than Culture Y which does not do A?
Which is the more relevant level of analysis? Is the practice of A an organic development of some group of people known as Culture X? Or are there significant variables within ‘Culture X’ which determine the practice of A?
If a variety of elements within Culture X change the practice or frequency or strength of practice of A, is it still Culture X?
When something like ‘culture’ begins to be reified into an organism which has static and clearly bounded features and behaviors, it’s time to examine such arguments as vectors of pseudoscience and impressionistic anthropology.
PS
@El Cid: It’s a very odd thing that people so easily turn to discuss very specific questions about ‘a culture’ as though it really were an object
It is the way of our people.
Ed Marshall
@El Cid:
They are supposed to be tagged headline 4, but it looks the same way on my browser (linux mint/chrome).
Frank W.
Bachmann makes me sad and angry. How did someone so flat-out goofy and ill-informed rise to this point of power? What’s wrong with people that someone like her is taken seriously? Scotch-thirty, indeed!
Villago Delenda Est
@Cris:
Well, yes.
Because if they had their way, every sexual activity aside from coitus for reproduction ONLY would be a hanging offense.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X:
I’m reminded in a line from classic Star Trek where Sulu makes a statement (about Uhura) being a ‘fair maiden’.
Uhura’s response was “Neither!”
MAJeff
I hadn’t heard this one before. When Melissa Ethridge was diagnosed with breast cancer, Minnesota’s favorite mendacious lunatic had this to say:
ABL
@Tuffy: oh goody gumdrops. a brand new troll.
::rubs hands together::
Citizen_X
@PS:
@Villago Delenda Est: I meant not this meaning:
but this one:
metalgirl
@General Stuck: Awesome news — thanks for sharing! Thanks for the advanced apology :)
catclub
@Matt Mangels: As Gandhi said when asked his opinion of western civilization, he said he thought it would be a very good thing to try.
PS
@Citizen_X: True, dat. I’ve seen a picture.
joel hanes
It is the way of our people.
I so miss Andy Kaufman.
ding
Xboxershorts
@Villago Delenda Est:
But she WAS HOT!!!!! And Smart!
El Cid
@PS: You’re a true griot.
Triassic Sands
A while back I did a little research about Bachmann’s past. One thing of interest to me was her educational background.
She received a BA from Winona State, which US News ranks 49th among midwestern region schools. Not exactly elite status.
Then, Bachman headed off to Oral Roberts University for her law degree. Oral Roberts University doesn’t appear among the first 191 national universities and its law school isn’t ranked either. It’s probably safe to say that Oral Roberts U. isn’t an elite law school. (I joked to a friend that they had ten courses to take to get a law degree at Oral Roberts — one for each Commandment.)
But, this is where things get weird. Bachmann continued her law education and from Oral Roberts she went to the College of William and Mary Law School, which ranks 27th in the latest US News rankings. That makes William and Mary an elite school with a very respectable reputation.
So, how the hell did Bachmann, whom everyone here considers to be a dolt (and I concur), get from Winona State and Oral Roberts to the College of William and Mary? How did someone so obviously loony manage to get a Master of Laws degree from an excellent law school?
I think this points strongly to a big difference between Palin and Bachmann. Palin is an idiot, with no chance of ever presenting herself as an intelligent, learned individual. Her innate stupidity makes her seem crazy.
Bachmann, on the other hand, is crazy and her lunacy probably arises chiefly out of her being a religious nut. She has a reasonable amount of intelligence, but her nuttiness makes her seem stupid.
Palin — stupidity makes her look and sound crazy.
Bachmann — her craziness makes her look and sound stupid.
Mnemosyne
@Triassic Sands:
It’s like the Condi Conundrum that came up yesterday — how could someone who was so brilliant academically be such a friggin’ idiot in everything else? I’m guessing it’s something similar with Bachmann — she’s able to perform well in an academic setting, but she’s unable to actually apply anything she’s learned to the real world.
Town
Don’t forget when she blamed the economic meltdown on minorities back in ’08.
Chris
@ding:
Love her use of the word “suburbanites,” it conjures an image of wealth and comfort that… doesn’t really mesh up with reality. In France, the suburbs are where the low-income ghettoes are at – essentially their version of the American “inner city.” But her average supporter doesn’t know that, and I’ll bet she’s counting on it. (“Lazy dune coons: heck, in France, left wing welfare gives them a suburbanite living arrangement! And if you elect Democrats, that’s what’ll happen here too! Is that fair, now?”)
I love how quickly they change their tune to “we love Western Europe, it’s such a beautiful thing!” the minute there are nonwhite skulls to crack. The rest of the time, it’s Soshulism this, surrender monkeys that. But when there are hajjis to go after, all of a sudden, hey! We like you! Let us help!
Marc McKenzie
@General Stuck:
Thanks, General, for these.
Kozmo
I am convinced that that she is a lesbian. Anybody that obsessed with teh gay is hiding in a closet of lies. It seems that, on the right, the more rabid the hater the more likely it is that they are what they espouse to hate.