Monday, April 20, 2009

Straw Man of the Month

Here is one of the top Republicans in the country, House Minority Leader John (It's Not Pronounced Like You Think) Boehner, on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" yesterday:

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical.

Did Villager Stephanopoulos challenge Boehner's claim that the EPA (or anyone else allowed to use pointy scissors) has ever said carbon dioxide is a carcinogen? You have to ask?

See what Boehner just did there? He gave the wingnuts another erroneous reason to buy into the GLOBAL WARMING IS A LIEBRUL CONSPIRACY meme. They're already at it in the Power Line forums:

Boehner slammed the EPA real good today for their silly claim that CO2 is a dangerous carginogen.

[...]

Do those Obama EPA moonbats even have a grasp of science? I guess we’re all going to get cancer if we stand next to each other. CO2 does not cause cancer, and someone at the EPA needs to get fired. Carbon dioxide is not dangerous! It comes right out of our mouths!!

Note how the possibility that Boehner might be a bonehead never occurred to this wingnut. It is instead taken as gospel that the "Obama EPA moonbats" said this.

Of course, I can't be sure this was calculated on Boehner's part. He might, after all, really be that stupid.

(h/t: Attaturk | pic. source)

3 comments:

Righteous Bubba said...

The important part is the rest of the quote where he suggests he exhales cow farts.

bjkeefe said...

Heh. Yeah, that does add weight to the "he's really that stupid" hypothesis.

I left it out because I didn't want to distract readers from the point that bugged me the most, though.

John Evo said...

yeah, he's "really that stupid" and, unfortunately, so are many who will listen to him and repeat it.

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