Bachmann on the HPV vaccine (via):
Bachmann made an even more extreme claim on Fox News, saying that a mom in the audience told her that after receiving the vaccine her daughter became “retarded.” Bachmann repeated the claim this morning on “Today,” adding, “This is the very real concern and people have to draw their own conclusions.”
I’m skeptical that this issue will hurt Perry that much in any case. I don’t think that the Republican base is quite crazy enough to believe anti-vaccination conspiracy theories in large numbers. Maybe I’m wrong. (I get that there are legitimate reasons to criticize his HPV vaccine executive order, but I think those legitimate reasons have any less traction than the crazy reasons.)
TooManyJens
…I’m just going to assume she made that up out of whole cloth. The alternative — that somebody actually believes the HPV vaccine made her adolescent daughter “retarded” and uses that term to describe their own child — is too appalling to contemplate.
Thoughtcrime
Sally Sheeran was in the audience?
Trentrunner
Bachmann just enjoys putting “innocent 12-year-old girls” and “injection” in the same sentence.
JPL
From MSNBC.com
Fact Check: No evidence to suggest HPV vaccine causes ‘mental retardation’By Domenico Montanaro, Political Reporter, NBC News
There is also no evidence that becoming a Republican causes mental retardation but????????????????
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Oh yeah? You wanna put some money on that?
I had wingnut friends who were “anti-vaccination” back in the late 90s. It’s just part of the wingnut portfolio.
JGabriel
Sounds like “projection” to me.
.
NCSteve
If there is one lesson we should have learned by now, after the last twenty five years, it’s that any statement that begins with “I don’t think that the Republican base is quite crazy enough to believe . . .” is automatically guaranteed to be wrong.
John PM
I assume that Sarah Palin will be asking Bachman for an apology for using the word retarded, as she has with others who have used the word.
It is obvious that Bachman is wrong about the HPV vaccine making girls retarded. Everyone knows that vaccines make kids autistic. Thank you, Jenny McCarthy!
Morzer
@John PM:
Wasn’t that Sarah Palin’s mom in the audience?
Martin
I have conclusive evidence that 100% of 10 year-old girls that received Gardasil vaccinations went on to become sexually active within 15 years.
The evidence that the vaccine causes sluttiness is incontrovertible.
Steve
I do not think anti-vaccine craziness is particularly partisan. There are those religious conservatives who are against the HPV vaccine because it “encourages promiscuity,” but that is a separate issue. Plenty of crunchy left-wing types don’t like vaccines.
Cris (without an H)
As Amanda Marcotte has frequently pointed out, anti-vax has a lot of adherents on the left as well.
Jenny
I watched MorningBlow today, and ALL of the consverative elites were freaking out over Parry’s position on social security.
Of course they’re mad that Parry is saying in public what they all say in private.
Mike Murphy called Parry a “chimp” and Scarbourgh was beside himself.
Good Times
Villago Delenda Est
Given that Bachmann is definitely socially and scientifically retarded, why are we surprised.
She is a vile theofascist creature.
The opposition to HPV vaccine has everything to do with it removing a punishment for having sex from girls and young women. Concerns about health are a fig leaf. It’s about vindictive, cruel punishment.
Cat Lady
That whole article, and the whole Perry/Bachmann discussion about HPV is retarded. It’s so retarded it’s hard to unpack which part of it is the most retarded, but I’m going to go with Michelle Bachmann saying she has three children when she really meant to say she has three daughters for starters. It goes south from there.
JGabriel
@TooManyJens:
We’re talking about the same audiences that applauded and shouted Yeah! at the prospect of letting an uninsured 30 y.o. die, and, in the previous debate, applauded Rick Perry’s 234 (and counting) Texas executions.
They’re already in too appalling to contemplate territory, Jen.
.
Morzer
One piece of good news for the day, which I would have posted in an open thread, had there been one….
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/elizabeth-warren-officially-launching-senate-campaign-against-scott-brown.php
Anoniminous
I’m willing for the TeaJihadists to stop vaccinating their children and grandchildren. In fact …
Vazuhnatin’ done be gov’mint plot TO KILL YORE KIDZ or make um stoopid. And yaz dunnah wantz stoopid kidz now, does ya?
When their rug rats start dropping dead from diphtheria, typhoid, or smallpox they might get the hint the Universe is a big old place and it takes more than a double digit IQ to grasp it.
Jenny
Ratings for the debate plummeted.
Wednesday’s debate had 6.1 million viewers. Yesterday’s debate only had 3.3 million viewers.
Morzer
@Cris (without an H):
Including Bill Maher and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., alas.
TooManyJens
@JGabriel: Yeah, but toward her OWN KID. I know, I know, wingnuts do appalling things to their kids all the time, especially if they’re pregnant or gay, but… I have a daughter. It hurts to think of what might be going on in that household, and how screwed up that poor girl’s situation is (WHATEVER the hell it is), if this story is true.
Morzer
@Jenny:
Perhaps the Teabagger Soylent Green Production Line (sponsored by Koch Industries) really is working at last?
Big Baby DougJ
@Steve:
I don’t think it’s partisan either, nor do I think it is that widespread.
mikefromArlington
“Maybe I’m wrong.”
Considering half the base were birthers and 3/4ths of them believe the other conspiracy that dinosaurs and humans roamed the garden of Eden together, thisone doesnt seem that far fetched.
Alex S.
Oh, good job, Michele… you raise a good point about the corruption of Rick Perry and then you immediately destroy it with your own paranoia.
Jenny
@Morzer:
I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon. Rank and file liberal blogghers love Elizabeth Warren. But the more lefty firebag segment of the blogosphere is really cool to her.
Cat Lady
@Jenny:
The same hos who were slobbering Paul Ryan’s knob a few scant weeks ago, I bet, with absolutely no irony or insight. That set needs to be nuked from space.
Politically Lost
In this instance, I believe that you may be wrong. Anti-vax sentiment is strong in the ill informed and belligerently ignorant. So few Bachmann/Perry type teahadists will understand the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and will not be able to resist such easy demagoguery.
I fear that soon we will see Fox and Friends making the same argument and not long after that it will be, “every one knows that …”
MikeJ
@Jenny: She supports the Kenyan usurper, ergo, she’s evil.
Thoughtcrime
@Morzer:
Why yes… …yes she was! https://balloon-juice.com/2011/09/13/more-vaccination-bullshit/#comment-2774981
kdaug
Never really understood the downside to idiots rejecting vaccines – seems like a self-selecting Darwin Award nominating process. Sucks for the subjected kids, but as long as your kid has immunity, what’s the problem?
TooManyJens
@Jenny:
Of course they are. Anytime someone is in a position where acts and not just words are going to be judged, it’s not possible to be pure enough for the firebaggers. So the more Warren (love her!) steps out from academia and gets involved with politics, the more they’ll hate her.
grandpajohn
Idiots like Bachmann don’t realize that going batshit crazy with insane rhetoric and made up shit is overkill that will destroy any effectiveness that she might have had from the original statements and charges
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, gawd, save us…Ron Paul is running another money bomb promotion.
Head for the hills!
Quicksand
Kids? Nah.
But I do think the HPV vaccine makes presidential candidates retarded.
TooManyJens
@kdaug: My problem is, among other things, that I give a shit about other people besides my own family. Besides, not everyone can get vaccinated, so it’s important to maintain herd immunity.
I realize you were probably just snarking, but what the hell, it’s fun to say “herd immunity.”
JGabriel
There’s now an Atlas Shrugged iPad app (via AV Club). Ayn Rand is orgasming in her grave.
Now, next time some libtard commie (i.e., you, dear reader) tries to tell your dad that “Krugman was right,” he can shout, “No, that unAmerican Timesian soshulist traitor was wrong, and I’ve got the proof right here!” while waving his iPad in your face.
.
Cris (without an H)
Nicely put. This describes well why it’s not a partisan delusion. It tends to take hold with people who have embraced a reflexive paranoid anti-authoritarianism.
Vaccination is especially flexible because it suggests both government mandates (public health) and corporate profits (pharmaceutical companies), so it can panic the Glenn Beck and the Art Bell crowds alike.
peach flavored shampoo
No need to post this in a dead thread below, but in response to the Flying While Brown incident….it looks like we have yet another today.
No word on their skin tone, but its not a stretch to believe it’s not white. Also, 3 passangers….again. Looks like the paranoia runs deep in this country.
Han's Big Snark Solo
I don’t get it. Was Bachmann against immunization because it makes young people retarded? Wouldn’t that make it FAR more likely that the kids given the injections would vote for Republicans when they grew up?
Why would she be against that?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
After my first vote for the liberal party here, I got laid for the first time.
This is the very real concern and people have to draw their own conclusions.
Thoughtcrime
@Jenny:
With plummeting ratings like this, the GOP should be cancelled for the Fall 2012 season.
Morzer
@kdaug:
It’s generally considered a bad thing to expose the populace to infectious diseases like e.g. TB, and one can’t be sure that one’s children will be considerate enough to delay encountering the disease until after they have been vaccinated. Also, medical costs will effectively rise for everyone if the unvaccinated catch said diseases and require treatment. A number of diseases have begun turning up among the population again almost certainly because of the anti-vaccination crankery – diseases that we thought had been pretty much eradicated:
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/06/vaccines-california-whooping-cough-epidemic
Face
@peach flavored shampoo: I’ve noticed that whenever TSA/Homeland Security/airlines do something ridiculous, they always use the exact same phrase “out of an abundance of caution”, in an effort to immunize themselves from criticism. “Look, we’re not crazy, we’re cautious!”
Where does this lead? Could they suddenly deny all Muslims boarding tickets, “out of an abundance of caution”? Where is the line drawn between caution and insanity?
Cris (without an H)
@peach flavored shampoo: What’s so dead about the pertinent thread? It’s still on the front page, for goonies sake.
grandpajohn
@Alex S.: Well you know that morons gotta do what morons do. overkill and paranoia are instinctive traits of wingnuts.
Spaghetti Lee
I think it might be too scientific an issue to become a rallying cry for the Republican base, especially with the sort of cross-pollination of antivax stuff on the right and the left, and the fact that Perry did it for a different reason (i.e. Merck paid him to, as I recall). I think the wingnut reaction will be something like “Science? Enh. Let’s get back to talking about keep the gummint out of my medicare.”
4tehlulz
Bachmann/McCarthy 2012
maus
@TooManyJens:
Ever visited the Huffington Post? The “biggest liberal blog” pushes that angle.
@Spaghetti Lee:
Ahem, climate change? Evolution?
Morzer
@4tehlulz:
Jenny or Joe?
Spaghetti Lee
@JGabriel:
One thing (among many) that’s always kind of weirded me out about objectivists is how much of a lifestyle brand it is, like a brand of clothes (apparently brand names trip up the spam filter) or whatever. Own the books. Buy the movies. Buy the merchandise that comes with the movies. Download the app. Wear a WWJGD bracelet. It really is like being part of a club, with all the stupid loyalty tests and trinkets that come with. I can’t think of any other political movement that has this combination of clannishness, full-throttle political insanity, yet also completely lightweight commercialism. It’s just weird.
TooManyJens
@maus: I installed a site-blocking extension for Firefox specifically for the purpose of never again even accidentally clicking on a HuffPo link. Their wholehearted embrace of quackery is one of the biggest reasons why.
Anoniminous
@Thoughtcrime:
They should have gone with the Survivor concept.
At the end of each debate (sic) the live and TV-viewing audience has fifteen minutes to vote who they want off the stage. That person is then dragged outside and (1) torn to pieces and eaten by zombie Rayguns or (2) they are strapped to a stone altar and the priests rip open his, or her, chest and offer their still beating heart to the Invisible Hand of the Market.
I’d watch.
trollhattan
@Morzer:
My parents could only describe whooping cough to we young’ins because nobody knew of a case anywhere among kids our age. Now that I have a kid in grade school it’s pitchfork and torch time if other parents want to slide around the requirement and enroll their kids without the vaccine. I drink their freedom milkshake.
That infants are dying of it here in California is unthinkable.
Thoughtcrime
@Morzer:
Charlie.
Dummy and Dummier.
TooManyJens
@trollhattan: There’s a case of whooping cough in my daughter’s day care right now. Of course, she’s had her vaccinations, but my husband and I are not amused.
The worst thing is, I suspect the child who has it may not have been able to get vaccinated due to allergy issues. If so, she’s one of those people whose only protection is for everyone else to get vaccinated — and someone didn’t, probably for some damn fool reason.
Gina
Vaccines can be dangerous. The gardisil vaccine has been shown recently to have side effects. Do some research.
The issue here is that this guy who wants to be president mandated that 11 and 12 yr old get an unnecesary vaccine. Essentially telling parents that the government knows better about how to take care of your kids. What will he want to mandate as president? We need less government in our lives not more. He seems to want more.
The Dangerman
Bachmann is an idiot. The scandal isn’t vaccinating 12 year olds; the scandal is taking money from the drug maker involved. She should quit thinking about the nasty and think about the money trail.
Spaghetti Lee
@maus:
I guess. It would be pretty easy to wrap it up in the whole fluoride in the water mythos. But if it does become an issue, I don’t think some Bachmann-Perry slapfight will be what makes it take off. Republicans usually don’t attack their own, and I don’t see them releasing the hounds on Perry. He’s one of them.
Martin
@TooManyJens:
Liberal fascism is no joke.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Anoniminous:
Goes right along with my POTUS announcing a “don’t hit yourself on the head with a hammer” initiative and FLOTUS introducing “don’t drink drain cleaner” to the Move It campaign. That should thin out the herd before 2012 rolls around.
Jager
Was there paranoia about polio vaccine?
Thoughtcrime
@Anoniminous:
I’m having flashbacks of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It even has child slavery. Very Republican.
kindness
@TooManyJens: It isn’t that HuffPo supports quakery in itself. Arriana supports money, page clicks. That’s all. They are the same as Entertainment Tonight.
Shade Tail
@kdaug:
I’m not the first to point this out in the thread, but I care about other kids also, not just my own. No kid should have to suffer for having parents too fucking stupid to do the right thing.
Aside from that, even us smart folk who get vaccinations are safer when there are fewer vectors for the disease. Also, there are people who legitimately can’t be vaccinated, usually because they are allergic to said vaccine, and others for whom the vaccine doesn’t work. The fewer disease vectors there are around us, the safer we all are. See the “herd immunity” point TooManyJens mentioned.
TooManyJens
@kindness: Hence my absolute denial of page clicks to them, even for the occasional worthwhile article. I’m much happier now that I never click on a bit.ly link or whatever and accidentally end up there.
Thoughtcrime
@Spaghetti Lee:
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Samara Morgan
@JGabriel: actual words.
“mental retardation”
she’s not the only one.
trollhattan
@TooManyJens:
Ugh. I understand it’s healthier to drink water I’ve taken from the river by the bucket than to use that spooky stuff out of the tap (insert Brawndo joke, here).
Someone I work with had pertussis sweep her family, hitting two of three kids and her husband. The kids had all been vaccinated, so go figure. They were sick for two months and the husband, half a year. And there’s no bloody treatment if you catch a full-on bout. Evidently the worst part is you can’t really ever sleep.
Cris (without an H)
I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jenny:
Oof! If I were CNN, I’d be smarting.
Linda Featheringill
I had whooping cough. Of course, this was back in the Stone Age. But it took a good 6 weeks out of my life. I was 14 years old and really quite healthy. And even after the coughing left, I was skinny and weak for another 6 months.
Bad disease. I can see how it could kill fragile people.
jimbo123
soooo…who gave MOM the vaccine?
trollhattan
@Cris (without an H):
Now, now Colonel Kurtz, don’t scare the locals.
SiubhanDuinne
@Morzer:
Nice.
Martin
@kindness: And how does that differ from Fox News and our criticism of them? Aren’t they just in it for the HoverRound and Depends ads?
Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: I had CNN on when the debate started and as soon as I saw the words ‘Tea Party’ scroll across the background I started swatting at the remote control like I was trying to put out a fire.
Ash Can
@Gina: I did some research, and your claims are clearly and completely false. I only hope you have no daughters of your own.
Morzer
@Gina:
People who cannot even spell GardAsil correctly don’t inspire much confidence when they proceed to discuss the research they did on it.
How about less ignorance and dishonesty?
daveX99
I am surprised that nobody noticed the performance art/social experiment funtimes that present themselves here:
Michele Bachmann is completely willing to spout batshit-crazy-conspiracy nonsense as long as it fits her required narrative AND IS FED TO HER BY A MEMBER OF HER AUDIENCE.
(assuming that it WAS a member of the audience, and not one of the many shrieking voices caged within her own head…)
I would like to beg somebody to see if they can seed her mind with the next level of crazy by going to one of her upcoming gigs and posing as a wingnut and spoonfeeding something insane to her. Just for fun!
Let’s see if it ends up on TV!
MattR
@daveX99: A brilliant idea hampered only by the potential danger that Republicans will embrace that wacky idea en masse. I mean we might find it humorous at first when Bachmann embraces the idea that cats are using mind control to get people to vote Democratic, but when Republicans go on a cat killing spree it won’t be so funny.
iriedc
Brithers
Climate Deniers
Truthers
Anti-vaxxers
So many idiots, and yet so little time to give them the contempt the deserve…
Morzer
@MattR:
Cats are not using mind-control. I am an autonomous being. I will now open the tin of tuna and present the fine food on a suitable plate to the noble feline overlord who is justifiably impatient. Cats are not using mind-control. I am an autonomous being……
handy
@iriedc:
Don’t get the Flouride-In-The-Waterers
MattR
@Morzer: It was much better than Cats.
Elie
I have no problem with those who choose not to vaccinate themselves and put themselves and their own at risk. Its their choice to die if they die
I have all sorts of problems with unvaccinated folks who will spread disease to others. I think that should be a criminal offense — just like manslaughter.
Elie
@Linda Featheringill:
It is a very very bad disease for particularly infants and young children.
Diphtheria, typhoid and polio are also horrible. We think of measles as benign, but neurological complications are not infrequent such as paralysis, sensory and cognitive problems. Even old Mumps could sterilize men and women –forever killing the ability to make eggs and sperm.
To me this is the natural outgrowth of a couple of decades of anti government propaganda. Sooner or later you get to the point that you can’t trust government for anything. Next steps after that, you can’t trust anyone with ANY authority… Remember our hard wiring is to regress to small bands constantly at war with each other. Some of us just cannot get our hands off earlier parts of that old evolutionary tree.
chopper
vaccines make you retarded? so how many fuckin vaccines did bachmann get as a child, a hundred?
les
@kdaug:
The problem with just letting anti-vaxers weed themselves out of the population is they can’t keep it to themselves. Once we all get below “herd immunity” status, everyone is at heightened risk. And some folks, for medical reasons, can’t do vaccines; they don’t work uniformly; etc. Too bad.
kdaug
@TooManyJens:
Yeah, I was. The biggest problem is mutation in a population that is exposed… suddenly our vaccines don’t work against the new strain.
daveX99
@MattR:
Hmmm.
Damn. You are of course correct.
What if we feed them something that would actually be useful, but they wouldn’t recognize it as such? If we tell them Obama is for X (and has a secret, UN plan to implement X, using BLACK (heh) helicopters…), then they have to go for Y, right?
Cacti
So Michelle must have been vaccinated about 100 times then, right?
JCT
The “sickening” part of all of this complete quackery that idiot Michele is spewing is that childhood vaccination rivals the development of antibiotics as one of the great medical advances of the past 75 years.
Bear in mind, that herd immunity is profoundly important — it is very possible to have incomplete immunity (or “outgrow it” for want of a better term) and thus all of these unvaccinated kids can wreak havoc.
They really do want to take us “back”.
Fucking assholes, one and all.
Elie
@chopper:
As always, there is sometimes a little truth in every lie
Since many vaccines mimic having a mild form of the disease to spur the immune system to make antibodies, on rare occasions the vaccinated person can actually get the disease severely enough to have some of its complications. Those can include neurological effects that impair intelligence, memory, etc — therefore the person seems “retarded”…or better term, cognitively impacted.
Thing is, you are much more likely to get that as a result of the actual disease if you do not get vaccinated…
Cacti
@JCT:
Liar!
Polio and small pox went away with a combination of prayer and essential oils.
Elie
@JCT:
She, or her reps, are “dumb” like foxes…
The goal here is not to stop vaccinations per se, but to continue to sow mistrust of government. Its just ploughing that same field from another direction. Keeps their peeps nervous and paranoid — which feeds the follow on stories that support the rationale for futher restricting government.
JCT
@Elie: I don’t know, I still think old Michele is a “special” case — TPM has a nice report detailing her crazy-ass pronouncements going back years.
I think she is a bit of a lunatic. And an intolerant asshole.
Elie
@JCT:
Yes, that too. You can be a lunatic and a successful politican — for a time. Lots of examples of that.
All of these jokers are like a pack of wolves (hate to disparage wolves), but each keeps the attack going — government is always the problem, no matter what. On a conscious level, most people can push it off. But for people who are already scared, already low information, paranoia is easily stimulated and amplified. She is just reading off that script.
HyperIon
@kdaug:
Here in the PacNW there have been a bunch of babies who have died of whooping cough evidently contracted while in a doc’s waiting room with non-vaccinated kids. The vaccine is not given to babies until they are 2 months old.
Lojasmo
@Gina:
I smell the stench of paultard.
HyperIon
@Jager: Was there paranoia about polio vaccine?
No, because kids were get crippled and dying at an alarming rate.
Bubblegum Tate
@Cacti:
Essential oils? That’s pure witchcraft! The only cure is prayer and more prayer!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@kdaug:
Couple of issues, which I’m sure someone has already addressed. The first is there is a small population that can’t get vaccinated due to age (infants, pre-vax age kids),a compromised immune system or actual allergies (rare but they happen), who will be at great risk from unvaccinated kids. It also crews with the herd immunity, the oversimplified version of which is that the disease incidence is lowered because so many people are vaccinated. Lower that number and incidence goes up, which is dangerous. See pertussis, as an example.
AxelFoley
@Jenny:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Greg Joseph
Doug, If the women’s daughter contracted became re-tarded because of the vacine, wouldn’t she have brought on some type of litigation?
DMcK
Keep in mind, we’re talking about people who transport themselves into a frothing rage over freakin’ light bulbs.