Michele Bachmann Doesn't Believe Her Own Words. Why Should We Believe Them?

      Michele Bachmann is the Barack Obama of the 2012 presidential election cycle. The comparison goes to something more basic than their thin biographies, though their thin biographies are nonetheless worth a look.

     They were both trained to be lawyers. Both had unimpressive records in state senates before going to Washington. Obama served in the Illinois state from 1997 through 2004; Bachmann served in the Minnesota state senate from 2000 through 2006. Neither accomplished anything worth mentioning. Obama served as a U.S. senator from 2005 through 2008; Bachmann has been in the House since 2007. Neither accomplished anything worth mentioning. Both of them drew favorable national attention to themselves based solely on their words—words of hope and change that people wanted to hear and believe.

     Here’s where we get down to brass tacks. We know now, if we didn’t know it before now, that the words that got Barack Obama elected were lies. Unlike Michele Bachmann, Mr. Obama at least offered concrete policies and plans even if he didn’t believe his own words. Michele Bachmann offers nothing but words. Does Michele Bachmann believe her own words? If Michele Bachmann’s words are all she’s offering the American people as a reason for electing her President of the United States, then it’s worth checking to see if she believes them herself.

     One advantage we have as a lie detector is that Bachmann has been in Washington for less than four years. She hasn’t had as much time to perfect the art of faking sincerity.

     At least as early as 1978, and up to the present, behavioral psychologists have researched and written peer reviewed articles validating body language and face language. (For samples of articles or abstracts in social science citation index (SSCI) journals, see here, here, and here.) Experienced congressmen know very well that opponents (such as I) sometimes look for signs of lying, and experienced congressmen usually know how to disguise their lying more effectively than Michelle Bachmann does.

     Let me stress here that this is not a parlor game in which “X” always signals “Y” or something like that. Psychology and the human mind are more complex than that.  (In fact, not all liars signal their deceit in the same ways.)

     To give one example of unconscious signaling, when a person makes a statement and shakes his head “no” while saying it, there may be one of several reasons for the unconscious gesture. He may be lying. He may be ambivalent about what he’s saying.  He may be expressing his objection to something.

     When Michele Bachmann uses words such as no or not, or other words of protest, she understandably shakes her head “no.” When she says something positive, she often shakes her head “yes.” These gestures indicate that she believes what she’s saying. On the other hand, when she says something self serving, with a positive ring to it, and shakes her head “no,” that’s a good sign that she’s lying. Sometimes we can’t be sure.
     If you're skeptical of the concept, that's good.  You should be skeptical.  Here's an experiment you can try.  Say out loud, "I love my wife," or something else you strongly believe; and shake your head "no" as you say it.  It doesn't feel natural, does it?  That's because nobody shakes his head "no" when he's expressing a positive belief.

     I think that that’s enough theory. Let’s get down to facts. Watch Michele Bachmann in the following videos and draw your own conclusions. We’ll begin with a recent interview (here):

Interview  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUpVeOoWXQY

     Throughout the interview, she nods and shakes her head, but pay careful attention to her head shakes beginning with the 20-second mark and proceeding to the 7 minute, 53-second mark:

20-second mark: “I wish him [Pawlenty] well; I have great respect for the governor….”

1:00: [Says that self-identified people of all political stripes come up to her and say they support her and will vote for here.]

1:20: [on job creation] “I’ve been there, and I’ve done that.”

1:33: “They want someone who’s going to go to Washington [starts head shaking] and represents their values.” [She believes the part about the people wanting to send someone to Washington, but she starts shaking her head at the suggestion that she—Michele Bachmann—will represent their values.]

1:51: “They really want someone they can trust [begins head shaking here] that they believe in.”

3:25: “I will fight for what people care about.”

4:45: “We actually changed our entire educational system in Minnesota.” [In this statement, she’s taking full credit for what the whole legislature did.]

5:20: “No nation has ever been in debt to the levels that we are.” [Fact: The U.S was more deeply in debt as a portion of the GDP just after World War II.]

7:53: “I ascribe dignity and honor to all people no matter who they are….”

     (If you clicked on the link above, did you notice the key question she was avoiding in that interview?  How would she reduce the deficit?  Her only specific suggestion was to continue making Social Security payments to those now receiving them but to deny payments to retiring baby boomers and later retirees.  She didn't mention an obvious means of saving of trillions of dollars: End America's illegal wars of aggression and profiteering that were started under false pretenses.)

Bachmann for Congress: Israel

(Beginning at .57 mark: “I know that these are the views of people in my district.”

http://www.youtube.com/user/BachmannforCongress?blend=22&ob=5

Bachmann for Congress: Israel (update)

8-second mark: “The overwhelming majority of Americans understand that our alliance with Israel is critical for both of our nations at all times.”

18-second mark: “…in the face of growing uncertainty…” [stopped shaking her head when she mentions “instability throughout the Arab world.”]

30-second mark: “rising dangers”

48-second mark: “The President is the most powerful man in the world….[head stops shaking here] When it comes to Israel and Israel’s importance to America, his [Obama’s] positions are shared [begins head shaking again] by a tiny minority.”

Referring to Israelis and Americans: “We share the same values and [head begins shaking] the same aspirations.”

Congressman Michele Bachmann's update on the potential shutdown

http://www.youtube.com/user/BachmannforCongress?blend=22&ob=5#p/a/u/3/FnAlaK4qYI8

14-second mark: “I was a very strong voice in Washington, DC, about a month ago."

     If Michele Bachmann is going to follow in Barack Obama’s footsteps with no record of accomplishment, little experience, and only words of hope and change, and she doesn’t believe her own words, why should we believe them? If we want to support a candidate who doesn’t carry water for the Establishment elite, and really believes what he says, whom should we support? A virtual novice whom the Establishment elite give favorable attention at every turn, such as Michele Bachmann; or someone with a proven track record whom the Establishment elite studiously ignore? Think about it.
     After you've thought about it, maybe you and your friends might like to make a game of it.  How many of her lies can you and your friends detect in a single video clip?

Sometimes They Lie

After I had written a series of articles called “How News Reporting Really Works.” I’m a systems thinker. The idea of the series was to explain, systemically, how news reporters often get their stories and even their facts wrong. As a result, I was accused of giving the news media too much credit for honesty.
Actually, I wasn’t. I’m quite aware that some reporters deliberately slant the news to make lies look like facts and make speculation look like news. At the time, I had two reasons for not mentioning it: 1.) You already knew it, and 2.) It doesn’t take an entire article to say, “Sometimes they lie.”
A couple of days ago, I electronically copied the top half dozen web sites regarding, “Tea Party Movement.” For reasons of my own, I wanted to compare key words. Two of the top half dozen sites were Manhattan-based mainstream media (MSM) slanted against the Tea Partiers.
The one for Forbes magazine featured the porcine face and equally porcine opinions of Bruce Bartlett, and it was called “The Misinformed Tea Party Movement.” The kicker read, “For an antitax (sic) group, they don’t know much about taxes.” (For a journalist, he doesn’t know much about spelling or getting his facts straight.) Like King George III, Porcus Ignorantiam (We’ll call him PI for short) failed to realize that the Tea Parties are more about representation than about taxes.
PI based his conclusion on a survey he pulled on 57 of the several hundred people attending a Tea Party rally. Click here to see his survey questions. (If you’re an English grammar or composition teacher and have a weak heart, I caution you not to see how he phrased the questions. Likewise, if you’ve ever had experience conducting surveys, please consider the state of your health before clicking the link.)
Not even one of the survey questions is a reliable means of measuring people’s understanding of the issues of concern to them. Some of the questions are open to broad interpretation; thus, they’re open to widely disparate conclusions even by experts.
How’s this for a survey idea: Get 57 shameless propagandists who have been cloistered in the offices of magazines far from mainstream America. Place each one’s feet into a tub of wet cement until the cement hardens. Drop them into the ocean with a pen and pad for writing underwater. Then start asking them questions about their situation.
The questions may include the following: How much longer can a person hold his breath on land than he can in 100 feet of water? By percentage, what’s the carbon dioxide level in your brain? When sea salt comes into contact with the carbolic acid in your stomach, are the chances of your vomiting more, less, or about the same? How many swollen or ruptured capillaries are in your eyeballs at this moment?
If they’re not able to answer those questions, shall we conclude that they’re ignorant of their situation? May we thus conclude that they’re not really drowning?
Surely, Bruce Bartlett deserves the Ananias Award for Dishonest Reporting. (Oink! Oink!)
One of the sites (no longer in the top six, so I can’t locate it) said that the Tea Partiers are not populists. His creative line of reasoning read like a Monty Python script: Most populists identify themselves as mainstream conservatives (whatever that means). The article’s writer identifies Tea Partiers as to the right of (whatever that means) mainstream conservatives. Since they’re to the right of mainstream conservatives, they’re not populists.
Excuse me, but didn’t he say that most populists identify themselves as mainstream conservatives? Doesn’t that mean that some populists are not mainstream conservatives? Even if we excuse the writer’s ignorance of political theory and history, and even if we excuse his careless labeling, his entire argument hinged on a single point that he managed to get wrong.
Newsweek magazine went so far as to condemn Tea Partiers for their populism. Isn’t it amazing how MSM, with all their informational resources, can’t get their stories straight yet accuse millions of average Americans of being ignorant?

You may remember the CNN reporter who recently badgered Tea Party demonstrators in Chicago. She suggested that residents of Illinois shouldn’t complain about the so-called “Stimulus Package,” since a lot of the money went to Illinois. Check out the You Tube clip here.
Here’s a little experiment you may like to try—on second thought, you’d better not. Steal her purse, hop a flight to her home state, and max out all her credit cards. Then ask her how wonderful she feels about the money being spent in her home state. She deserves the Cujo Award for Most Obnoxious Bitch.
Many years ago, as I walked along an abandoned causeway in Sparrow Swamp, I suddenly found myself surrounded by hundreds of rattlesnakes. I had to calmly and carefully make my way about 100 yards along the causeway until I reached safer ground. I had to remind myself that they were probably more afraid of me than I was of them.
Tea Partiers, you have my sympathy. When you find yourself besieged by MSM reporters, stay calm and be careful. They’re probably more scared of you than you are of them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be making those strange noises at you. You’re not doing what you’re doing to convince MSM; you’re doing it for the people reading their rags and watching MSM’s antics on television. You're doing it for all of us.

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