Michele Bachmann’s Dumbfounding Wisdumb

Spread the love

i-1f7a778115a929080b2b4a6def8dbe30-Michele_Bachmann_05.jpg

“Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.

Spread the love

16 thoughts on “Michele Bachmann’s Dumbfounding Wisdumb

  1. Someone should tell her that Navy uses CO2 scrubbers on their submarines. I’m sure they will be happy to know they nolonger need to waste taxpayer money on them, since it’s a completely harmless gas.

    I have to wonder how much of this is a deliberate redherring, and how much is the result the Republican’s intellectual version of “Human Centipede”.

  2. Oh, just tie a plastic bag around her head; it’s the cheapest demonstration. The last I heard, most fire fatalities died of the carbon dioxide (not the carbon monoxide, and yes we can tell the difference). All the ‘material safety data sheets’ on CO2 also contradict the dumb cow.

  3. i’m sure she knows thats total b.s.,what makes her and those of her ilk so reprehensible is that they repeat whatever crazy/hate message that comes down from “the boss” and there is no knowing what message will come down that is so full of crazy/hate that it results in —i can’t think of a word that fits so i’ll just say..re-run of the worse of the 50’s–

  4. I hear that water is basically essential to life, so we wasted a bunch of money on flood control. Fucking government doesn’t even know basic science.

  5. scidog @ # 5:

    i’m sure she knows thats total b.s.

    I don’t think so, actually – I think what’s happening is more of a process of faulty reception/shoddy reproduction of information, happening repeatedly as some piece of information travels through wingnuttia.

    For Bachman, there simply is no difference in meaning between “there is no study conclusively linking atmospheric concentration of CO2 to global warming” (which is wrong, anyway, but probably what she was told to spread) and “there is no study showing that CO2 is a harmful gas”. Likewise, there is no difference for her between “the precise words ‘separation of Church and State’ do not appear in the Constitution” and “there is no ‘separation of Church and State’ in the Constitution”.

    And I don’t think it’s really stupidity that makes Bachman and her ilk unable to perceive these not-even-so-subtle differences, it’s more of an intellectual sloth brought about by authoritarian beliefs – after all, if you already now what the ‘right’ conclusion is from authority, why would you bother to think deeply about the steps leading there?

  6. She’s confusing toxicity and thermodynamics. I must admit to being unable to decide if anyone could really be that dumb and still hold public office. But if she really isn’t that dumb, then she really is that evil and I have a hard time grasping that as well. I guess it’s hard for people in different world views to understand each other, yet I have the nagging feeling that unless I could understand, it will be hard to effectively counter whatever’s going on with Cons.

  7. I feel certain she must know that CO2 is not something you want to be breathing a lot of, and that what she means is that there’s no evidence CO2 is harmful to the environment. Still not true, but slightly less insane. The main problem, as I see it, is the sloppy language and the fact that the vast majority of Americans not only excuse dangerously sloppy language but frequently don’t even notice it. Politicians smarter than Bachmann exploit this routinely; it’s how they managed to answer difficult questions without actually taking a position and while causing most of the audience to nod sagely at how good the answer was, despite a near-complete lack of content.

    As bad as the state of our science education is, it distresses me that we’ve obviously let our *English* education slip as well. It’s bad enough that we can’t recognize things that violate basic science; pretty soon we won’t even be able to talk to one another in any meaningful way anymore. Precise language is mandatory for expressing complex ideas; that’s what’s going to kill us as a world competitor, I suspect.

  8. When a relative of hers learned about anthropogenic global warming from your truly in a lecture class at The U, she responded with legislation to restrict what professors at the U could say about global warming.

    I don’t care what she knows and does not know. I care what she does and does not do.

  9. Fortunately you have already gotten a lot of good responses which is good because I am laughing too hard: so much to tell her I don’t know where to start. Maybe with some Dilbert cartoons?

  10. Okay, so she is deeply stupid. A deeply stuuuuupid U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 6th congressional district.

    Unfortunately,if we take this further….what does that say about the voters of the 6th congressional district of Minnesota?

  11. And I don’t think it’s really stupidity that makes Bachman and her ilk unable to perceive these not-even-so-subtle differences, it’s more of an intellectual sloth brought about by authoritarian beliefs

    I’ve often wondered what role literacy plays in this sort of thing… Not that I’m saying Bachmann’s illiterate, but poor literacy seems naturally related to a difficulty in grasping complex topics and subtle distinctions. (Also Biblical Literalism – I don’t think you can be both highly literate and a Biblical Literalist, as highly literate people realise that reading is itself an unavoidably interpretative process.)

Leave a Reply to Dunc Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *