http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/151439/psycho_talk%3A_the_32_craziest_things_gop_presidential_contender_michele_bachmann_has_said/
Here are 32 really, really stupid things Bachmann said in public. If you think she is a serious candidate for prez, then I fear for you. I also fear for the country.
Not to mention plenty of terrorists still running around.
Oh, she’s serious all right. Not because she isn’t a wacko: she is. 100% Grade A Certified Wack-O.
She’ll be a serious candidate because of her handlers, because she’s savvy enough to tone down the crazy when she needs to, and because a strong percentage of the country gets their news entirely from Fox “News” and don’t think she’s crazy. At least, not entirely. “But at least she ain’t a fuckin’ n------ socialist Muslim atheist!”
I think Obama (whom I still support) will clobber her, should she get nominated. But it won’t be a sure thing.
I actually looked at the supposed “crazy” things she said.
Ummm. not really.
Let’s take this one. Gasp. She doesn’t believe in Darwinism.
Where do we say that a cell became a blade of grass, which became a starfish, which became a cat, which became a donkey, which became a human being? There’s a real lack of evidence from change from actual species to a different type of species. That’s where it’s difficult to prove."
Guess what, fellas, most Americans don’t believe in Darwinism. About half of them believe in the bible version, talking snakes and all. A fairly large percentage believe that life changed, but God guided the process.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publib.htm
another example of her “nutty” beliefs, that Obama might use the Census Bureau information to round people up, because FDR did that during WWII. Okay, well, I was a census worker in 2010. I had a few people who firmly believed that they shouldn’t give information for that reason.
You see, this is the thing. There are two ways you can approach the GOP nomination.
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Hope the most far right radical character gets in, because that person will be easy for “the One” to beat.
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Hope that the GOP (the vast majority of whose voters are actually pretty moderate, judging by the fact Dole beat Buchanan, McCain beat Huckabee, etc.) nominates someone reasonable so that in case Obama continues to flounder, you can have someone you can live with.
Because the Republicans will almost without a doubt retain the house, and in the senate, the Democrats are defending 23 seats against the Republicans 10. Gaining the Senate might be a strong possibility.
Put a wingnut in the whitehouse with the strong support of the party base, and America might look like the Republic of Gilead… (Let’s see if anyone gets the literary reference.)
So because there are other crazy people out there, she must not be THAT crazy? Evolution is real science. Global warming is real science. If you don’t accept either, you’re either willfully ignorant or just plain stupid.
Not only will Obama mop the floor with Bachmann, the Democrats retake the House and increase their majority in the Senate, thanks to the Ryan kill Medicare plan which virtually every Republican signed off on. Nancy Pelosi might as well have the Speaker’s gavel surgically attached to her hand.
I personally accept evolution as true. Most Americans don’t. The real problem as I see it is that Christianity and Darwinism are mutually exclusive. You either believe God has a plan for humanity, or we are just a bunch of random apes that figured out how to make computers.
Human nature is such that the former view will always be more popular, no matter how much “science” you present for the latter.
(I’m on the fence about global warming. Are you guys still calling it that, or did you switch to climate change to explain away those severe winters.)
You’re living in a fantasy world, guy.
First, let’s look at the House- The Dems have to retake 25 seats to win. But you have redistricting, and most of the state legislatures and governorships are in Republican hands now. So, yeah, the IL legistlature can use the census to eliminate a Republican seat, but the Texas Legislature will create two new ones.
For the Senate, the Democrats are defending six vacancies and 23 seats.
And for Obama-
9.1% unemployment
$4.00/gallon gasoline
1.4 Trillion dollar budget deficit
Three unpopular wars
A massively unpopular health care bill
It’s like the Chinese Water Torture… drip, drip, drip.
RR seems to be conflating two different arguments. Is Bachmann crazy? Oh yes indeed. Do enough Americans believe the same sort of irrational crap to constitute a real voter base for her campaign? Sadly, very likely. So she’s nuts but Obama can’t assume that most people will recognize this without being shown this in very simple terms.
This is where the Democrats often fail against this sort of candidate - they assume voters are all sensible people when surprisingly few are. Taking Bachmann for granted is a dangerous strategy.
ETA: And could we stop calling it “Darwinism”? Evolutionary science moved beyond Darwin a long time ago, in the same way that psychiatry is a long way past Freud and physics a long way past Newton. It’s not a cult of Darwin.
So rather than support the candidate whom he knows to be making sense, **RR **supports (push come to shove) the candidate he knows to be spouting absolute nonsense because many Americans are as foolish and empty-headed as that candidate?
Face it, RR, your position is blindly ideological and hateful–Dems bad, Obama bad, no matter what they say or do, and the Republicans can do no wrong. Going forward, that is. This is the new Republican strategy–they know that Bush did an awful job, but they also know that there’s no gain to be had in defending the awful Bush did, so they now claim to oppose HIM and some of HIS policies so they appear reasonable to Independent voters or Conservative Dems (but start discussing specific Bush policies and their loyalty begins to show). In reality, it’s all a pose. There is no chance that this “recovering” republican will ever support a Democratic politician or policy. They just think there may be some electoral gain in throwing Bush under the bus now that he is ineligble to run for another term. Repeal the 22nd Amendment, and these guys will all be for Bush and his disastrous policies all over again.
Gyrate- I use the term Darwinism as a philosophy. It is incompatable with Christianity.
Christianity- God made you in his own image, he sent his own son down to die for your sins, if you believe in him, when you die, you will go to a paradise where you will be reunited with all your lost loved ones and childhood dogs. (okay, I made that last part about the dogs up.)
Darwinism- You evolved from an ape, there’s nothing all that special about you, and when you die, you cease to be.
Now, you might call it crazy, but most people would find the FORMER belief to be greatly more desirable, no matter how many old bones you dig up proving the latter belief.
And, heck, Even Obama has to pretend he believes in Jesus. (He probably doesn’t.)
You see, if this becomes an argument over religion, Bachmann’s views (sincerely held) are probably more mainstream than whatever Obama believes. And let’s be honest, if Reverand Wright comes up as a topic, it’s not like he can throw granny under the bus again.
What exactly are you basing this on? He doesn’t go on and on about it but he’s said he believes in Jesus and he went to church for a couple of decades. I see no reason to assume he’s lying about this.
Many churches have come to grips with and accept evolution. Many faithful Christians accept evolution. I think we’ve gotten past this one long ago, those who refuse to accept it aren’t likely Democratic voters anyway.
My position is both parties are pretty worthless. I don’t vote for parties anymore, I vote for the candidate I consider the most competetant whose ideas I agree with the most.
Last election, I voted for the Democrat for Governor (Pat Quinn) and Attorney General (Lisa Madigan). I voted against the Secretary of State (Democrat Jesse White) because his office is a pain to deal with. I voted for Mark Kirk for Senate because Ginoulius (sp) is a crook. I voted for Pete Roskam because he’s a good guy.
For state Treasurer, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Judy Baar Topinka, so I wrote in “Jack Ryan”. (I write in Jack Ryan whenever I find both candidates unacceptable. I started this in the 2004 Senate Race when Topinka sandbagged Ryan over BS and brought in Ambassador Crazy T. Batshit to be our nominee.)
Now your position is that because Obama is smart, I should blindly support him over Bachmann.
Well, you know what, Jimmy Carter was a nuclear physicist. So by any definintion, he was “smart”. He was also the WORST president of my lifetime. (Again, it’s a title Obama is working very hard to wrest from him.)
At the end of the day, it comes down to the Ronald Reagan question. Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Right now, I’d have to say, “No.” I was doing VASTLY better in 2007 than I am doign in 2011.
If Obama can change that answer to a Yes in the next 16 months, I might vote for him.
But if he’s going to run on the “but, but, but Bush” platform, well, good luck with that.
Do you really want to talk about the Church he went to for a couple of decades?
Do you REALLY want to go there? I don’t think you want to go there.
He joined that church because the churches in the Chicago black community hold a lot of political power, not because he got a little Jesus into his soul. I think he even admitted this in his autobiography.
I would go back and look at those polls I cited.
The ones that say 50% believe the bible version and about a quarter believe the “Guided evolution” theory.
Trust me, Democrats avoid this one like the plague. They let the ACLU and the courts handle it, because no one wants to run on the “You evolved from an ape!” platform.
We spent several months talking about that in 2008 and at the end, Obama was elected president. I don’t think it’s going to be an issue in 2012.
He wrote that he joined the church to get better connected to the community and experienced a religious conversion later on.
Of course, plenty of people find no inherent conflict between Christianity and evolution, and happily subscribe to both. And I doubt that Charles Darwin ever said anything to the effect of “there’s nothing all that special about you, and when you die, you cease to be.”
The poll that Recovering Republican is looking at when he says “about half of them believe in the bible version, talking snakes and all,” appears to be of self-selected respondents to a question asked by Fox News, in 1999. (There is no methodology or basal data given.) Here is a more recent survey by a more reputable organization, in which 39% of respondents affirmed that they “believe in evolution,” 25% said they do not, and 36% had “no opinion either way.” And Gallup provides breakdowns by education, church attendance, and age. While sober and scientifically-minded readers here may still find the results somewhat dismaying, it’s certainly not as bad as RR suggests; the strong showing for “believe in evolution” among the youngest age set could be taken as a good sign for the future.
Nobody says you evolved from an ape. Humans and apes have a common ancestor.
Seriously, you seem to have an issue with Obama which causes you to put lenses and filters in front of everything so that it looks bad for Obama. Still, more people approve than disapprove of Obama. More people blame Bush than Obama for the economic downturn. More people blame the Republicans than Obama for the budget impasse. You might do well to be a bit more objective in your analysis rather than bending every fact to meet your “Obama is a poopyhead” mantra.
I’m glad we have someone here who can tell us who should be allowed to vote, and who shouldn’t be.
Unlike you, I believe that everyone I disagree with has a fundamental right to vote, that I wouldn’t dream of interfering with. All of Pat Robertson’s and Glenn Beck’s and Rush Limbaugh’s followers, all of the poor misguided souls who take their cues on how to vote from a pastor who knows less about politics than a paramecium - I may not like the way they vote one little bit, but if someone tried to take the vote away from them, I’d be among the first to jump into the fray to defend their right to vote.
I’m a small-d democrat, more than anything else. If there’s anything I’m unalterably against, it’s the notion of elites pulling the strings of our democracy, whether those elites are billionaires with unlimited money to influence people’s views, or op-ed columnists on the pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Who gives a flying fuck?
No, actually. Never in the history of this country has such a thing been expected - to support your President on everything in a time of war, whether it had to do with the war or not.
In fact, we have a Constitutional right to express our opposition to a war while it’s going on. When Clinton had our military intervene in the Balkans, many Republicans in Congress and elsewhere availed themselves of this right, and by God, it is a right. (And needless to say, they were opposing Clinton on practically everything else at the same time. That, too, was their right. It’s the way things work in a healthy democracy.)
Maybe not, but McCain would have been two and a half years older on January 20, 2009 than Ronald Reagan had been on January 20, 1981. And we know that Reagan was already going senile while in office. So it’s not like it couldn’t have happened to Sen. Get-Off-My-Lawn, too.
Not to mention, while it’s true that no President has died in office since 1963, the set of Presidents who have been 72 or older on taking office is…empty. No conclusions can be based on the properties of an empty set - that’s basic mathematics.
Hey, as long as the decision isn’t being made by those hoity-toity elitists like Obama…
Ah, nice assumption from someone who clearly didn’t read Obama’s book. Recall that he wrote the book long before he made any attempt to seek political office. He starts going to church because it was the best place to find people who might want to put real effort (and resources) into improving the community. The goal was community, not political office at that time in his life. However, that he finds real faith is quite clear. Indeed, it’s clear from his book that Obama is by any definition a born-again Christian. At the altar, confessing his sins, accepting Jesus kind of born-again. You can doubt the veracity of the book, but that is what he describes.
Using the term “Darwinism” is just fucking stupid. If you cared about credibility, you would not use it. Also, you fuck up even the most basic understanding of evolution when you say “man evolved from apes.” Um, no. Humans and apes share a common ancestor. “Man evolved from apes” has always been a straw-man. You appear to know a lot about using those, though.