...that even the folks who really fund the Republican Party won't back her. I hope readers in civilized countries realize how bizarre this is. To be sure, France and Italy and Germany and England have their racists and crypto-fascists contending for office; but in the United States, we have candidates for the Presidency who are not qualified to do anything that affects more than their immediate household. And all that stands between humanity at large and these quasi-persons is the unwillingness of the plutocrats to actually back them. So, for example:
“This is the nail in the coffin in her campaign. Because you can be a cable television darling by saying provocative things, but you can’t be president of the United States.”
Not yet. "Anywhere out of this world," said Baudelaire.
UPDATE: Several readers sent this piece: Penn bioethicist Art Caplan's offer of $10,000 for evidence that the vaccine causes cognitive defects.
ANOTHER: Longtime reader Roger Albin, the Anne B. Young Collegiate Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, writes:
Caplan, unfortunately, shows himself to be almost as ignorant as Bachmann. All vaccines can cause autoimmune reactions that result in severe brain injuries. This is exceedingly rare and the benefits of this vaccine definitely outweigh the risks by a large margin but these unfortunate events happen. The story Bachmann related probably isn't true but it could be true and it's virtually inevitable that a complication like this will occur if enough people are vaccinated with Gardasil. How many - a million, ten million? Impossible to say. The Federal government runs a fund to compensate people for such injuries. Caplan has spent much of his career in academic medical centers and should know better. At a minimum, he should have asked someone really expert before offering this bet.
So I guess it turns out that crazy Bachmann is a deontologist, while everyone else is a utilitarian! Another nail in the deonological coffin?
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