It takes a special kind of woman to trump Sarah Palin in dumb quotes, and Michele Bachmann is that woman. And to make matters more frightening, Bachmann’s actually pinky-swear serious about running for President. Usually these Top Ten articles are fairly simple to write, as they follow the same formula: moron says dumb things, I copy and paste dumb things and add a funny quip here and there. I’ve written articles on Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter, and both articles have been wildly popular. The Glenn Beck piece alone has put me into a higher tax bracket. But this piece is different. Michele Bachmann considers herself a serious contender for leader of the free world in two short years, giving us humans very little time to prepare for the disaster she’d be. And while compiling the quotes, I kept telling myself, “Nah, she can never get elected.” But then I remembered George W. Bush. He was elected — twice! So anything is possible. So buyer beware. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Here are Michele Bachmann’s top ten dumbest quotations, which also coincidentally happen to be the top ten reasons President Obama hopes she gets the Republican nomination.
1. “The farm is my father-in-law’s farm. It’s not my husband and my farm. It’s my father-in-law’s farm. And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm.”
I’m starting out with a softball. Though this may be a stupid quotation, technically she’s not even lying. She her and husband have never gotten a penny from her father-in-law’s farm. According to their own personal financial disclosures, they’ve gotten 13,750,000 of them. That equals $137,500 for those readers out there who were home schooled. The farm also received $259,331 from 1995-2010 in federal crop and disaster subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group. So when she rails against entitlement programs, remember that she’s received a quarter of a million dollars because of them. Source
2. “If you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery.”
Ironically, she made this erroneous claim about America on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Illustrating that she and Sarah Palin must have taken the same History class in Junior High School, Bachmann initially insisted that our nation’s Founding Fathers devoted themselves to ending slavery. Sarah Palin may have flubbed when she insisted that Paul Revere’s famous Midnight Ride warned the British that the British were coming. But Bachmann’s mixed up her military history, unaware that the Revolutionary War was fought to declare our Independence from Britain and the Civil War was fought 84 years later over the divisive issue of slavery. But what’s 84 years in the grand scheme of things? She backed up her statement by insisting that one of the Founding Father’s sons, John Quincy Adams was committed to ending slavery but even he was not president until 1825, nearly 50 years after our Fathers founded anything. And historians disagree that he did much to discourage slavery during his term in office. For all of you nit pickers out there, slavery was not officially ended until the presidential term of Abe Lincoln, in 1863. At least Sarah Palin got the war right.
3. “Well what I want them to know is, just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, that’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.”
This is one of Bachmann’s recent flubs. She, of course, confused the actor John Wayne with the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. John Wayne, aka the Duke was from Winterset, Iowa, almost three hours away from Waterloo. Gacy, who was convicted of killing 33 men and boys, resided in Waterloo before his murderous crime spree. Easy mistake, after all. Who doesn’t confuse Grover Cleveland the President with Grover Cleveland Alexander, the baseball player? Or Alexander Graham Bell the telephone inventor with graham crackers, the tasty snack? Or Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of JFK with a Harvey Wallbanger, a cocktail of vodka, orange juice, and a splash of Galliano? Bachites insist we miss the point she was making about having the same sense of spirit as John Wayne from Waterloo. To which I say, hide your kids, America!
4. Numerical errors — too many to count or quote.
I’ve bundled a bunch of quotes or else this article will be longer than War and Peace. Here is just a sampling. When talking to the Tea Party Express after Obama’s State of the Union, Bachmann claimed that the bank bailout (passed under Bush) cost taxpayers $700 billion. In reality, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it cost us $19 billion. A difference of: $681 billion. Nevermmind the fact that the bailout actually worked, and almost all of the money given to the biggest banks have been paid back with interest. Bachmann should be crediting Bush with the success instead of blaming Obama for the failure.
“Now we have the federal government — taking over ownership or control of 51 percent of the American economy,” she claimed in 2009. But according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, total government expenditures were only 20.6 percent of gross domestic product. A difference of 30.4%.
Speaker Pelosi, who has been busy sticking the taxpayer for a $100,000 bar tab for alcohol on the military jets that she is flying.” In reality, $100,000 is the bar and food and baggage and sundries tab for nine trips that had between 11 and 85 official participants each, with Pelosi contributing very little because she doesn’t even drink. A difference of approximately $95,000.
“It’s ironic and sad that the president released all of the oil from the strategic oil reserve,” she wept on Face the Nation just recently. In reality, President Obama released 30 million barrels out of 727 million in the reserve. A difference of 697 million.
No wonder Michele Bachmann wants to be President. She’d be terrible on the Price is Right. Would someone please show her how to work the calculator on her smart phone?
5. “Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers,” Bachmann said in 2004 about singer Melissa Etheridge. “This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.”
Perhaps Bachmann has an opportunity to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering from that mental disease of homophobia? Since Melissa Etheridge is now a survivor of breast cancer, we can only assume that God’s quite all right with lesbianism. Or else she’d be burning in the boughs of the 7th circle of hell about now, right? Despite this heartless quote, Bachmann never seemed like such a flaming homophobe until she campaigned to outlaw same sex marriage in Minnesota despite there already being a state law prohibiting same sex marriage. Rumor has it that if she’s elected President, Michele Bachmann will end the Vietnam War.
6. “If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”
Michele Bachmann had this revelation in 2005, during a Jobs, Energy and Community Development Committee testimony. It’s such marvelous logic I’m going to keep it going: If we got rid of houses, we could wipe out homelessness. And if we closed all the Taco Bells, illegal immigration would vanish. And if we quit funding Planned Parenthood, there’d be no more abortions. That is until all the unwanted kids grow up, build houses, Taco Bells, and Abortion Clinics, and demand a minimum wage, and then we’re all screwed.
7. As misguided as Michele Bachmann is in social policy and budget matters, she still manages to amaze the general public with her ignorance of natural science. While homosexuality is, in Bachmann’s world view, harmful and unnatural despite the fact that it runs rampant throughout the animal kingdom, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are natural and unharmful, despite the fact that the excess of carbon in our atmosphere is contributing to countless disturbances on our planet, ranging from warmer temperatures, more intense weather, melting icecaps, rising flood waters, and air pollution. “Carbon dioxide is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide,” she said on the House floor. “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful,” she’s repeated. “But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” Oh, except for this one and this one, particularly citing black carbon. And this one. And countless others. But maybe Bachmann is onto something. The dinosaurs, after all, had less carbon dioxide in their atmosphere and they all died off anyway. Wait, does Bachmann even believe in dinosaurs? Aren’t they just another scientific myth like global warming invented by secular intellectuals to upend Christianity?
8. “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it’s an interesting coincidence,” she said in 2009.
I think it’s an interesting coincidence that there have been more suicides in the state of Minnesota since she’s been elected as a representative. Nevermind the fact that the first swine flu epidemic occurred in 1976, and Jimmy Carter didn’t become President until 1977. Oh well, she only missed the historical record by a year this time. Small steps, Michele.
9. “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?”
Since when is it “pro-America” to be a homophobic bigot, science denying ignoramus? When did Americanism become synonymous with slave labor and financial deception? Okay, better question: Who dug up Joe McCarthy and put him in a dress?
10. But by far the most frightening quotation she’s ever made is when she warned us at the GOP debate in New Hampshire, “I filed — my paperwork to seek the office of the presidency of the United States today.”
Be afraid, America. Be very afraid.
