Going Full Barton

After connecting yesterday's apology and last year's twit regarding "baffling" Nobel Laureate and Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, to the same person, some facebook friends and I have been engaged in an ongoing discussion regarding the Gulf disaster and Joe Barton. One friend, when the talk turned to suggestions that we nuke the well (I haven't mentioned this before; for the record, I'm agin' it.), commented, "OMG! So that's what they mean by controlling it with 'boom!'" HAH!

The same person coined the phrase "Going full Barton" for a mind-bogglingly stupid statement. I and others approve. Here are some other examples:(Source)

• "I'll have to confess, Mr. Chairman, that I am also a video game player. I have worked my way up to Civilization IV. I haven't yet been able to beat it but I at least understand the fundamentals of it." (Source)
• "I cannot imagine any objective finding that CO₂ is a pollutant," he said. "If that's true, God is a polluter." (Source)
• "...if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued to the opposite effect I want to apologize for that misconstrued misconstruction." (Source)
• Global warming? People can find shade when it's hot:
  
  
• "Adapting is a common way for people to adapt to their environment."
• “It’s odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn’t cause cancer, doesn’t cause asthma… there’s nobody that’s ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning.”

Note on the above: there's an interesting description of CO2 poisoning here, and also, tell the victims of the Lake Nyos disaster about what a harmless gas it is. That said, CFC's are chemically inert and non-poisonous; that is utterly irrelevant with respect to their effects in the atmosphere.

• “And something that the Democrat sponsors do not point out, a lot of the CO2 that is created in the United States is naturally created. You can’t regulate God. Not even the Democratic majority in the US Congress can regulate God.”

Apparently, you can't regulate stupid either. But I can create a new label for it: please give a warm welcome to "Going Full Barton." I've been considering "idiots" or "morans" for some time, but I think this is even better.

Followup Saturday, June 19: Time has a list of eight Barton gaffes, some of which I mentioned above, some of which are new to me. Sample:

7. When talking about climate change on C-Span in March 2007, Barton attempts to discount climate-change studies by explaining that temperature is determined by cloud shape. But his discussion of the various shapes — "tall clouds or skinny clouds, short clouds, fat clouds, high clouds, low clouds" — comes off as more Sesame Street than science.

Hat tip to Tracy for the link.