When such people get elected and put in charge of running our country, our states, our cities, we no longer have much chance of dealing viably with the problems that confront us.
Consider the problem of global warming. In spite of the deniers, every reputable scientist in the world agrees it is a fact, it is to some degree caused by humans, and it is a major threat to the continuation of civilization on earth. Or, consider how the fundamentalist/conservatives have made evolution a problem. Evolution is not a problem. It is the theory upon which all of biology and most other scientific endeavors are based upon. It is as real as the theory of gravity! Consider environmental protection which is an absolute necessity if we are to survive. But conservatives/fundamentalists don't see it as a problem because as one senator from Oklahoma said, god would never allow his creation to be undermined. I guess this gentleman forgot the mythical Biblical tale of Noah.
Reviewing various news sources over the past few days has turned up many wingnuts screwing with our nation and the world; fools who prance about while mouthing inane and insane predictions and predilections.
Phil Jensen is one of these fools; a Republican Senator from South Dakota. He thinks it is a good thing to allow for-profit businesses to be able to deny service to LBGT persons and/or blacks. It's all about the "free market." To this dipshit, the free-market is the most important thing. But he's so unhinged that in 2011 he tried to amend South Dakota's "justifiable homicide" laws to allow for the murder of doctors who perform abortions. This is what it means to be "pro-life" in his pathetic, sick mind.
Several states, including Florida, mandate drug testing for welfare recipients. Of course, in Florida, the governor (at least originally) had ties to the company that would do the testing. Republicans in several state legislatures around the country are excited about the possibilities of drug testing in their states even though studies have shown that it is basically a waste of money. Very few people have tested positive. Florida has tossed hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars down the toilet pursuing this nonsense.
If we're going to test welfare recipients, then lets test them all. We should drug test all governors and state legislators because every single one of them depend upon the federal government for money to run their states. Texas actually gets back more money from the feds than they send to Washington in taxes. Governors and state legislators are big-time "welfare recipients"!
Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, has bashed and broken the unions in his state and has crippled the state's public education system and would like nothing more than to deplete the state pension fund because public employees, everyone knows, are free-loaders who don't deserve a pension. This is the man who knew nothing about that recent infamous bridge closure. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Forty-five percent of uninsured Republicans say they'd rather pay a fine than buy health care under the Affordable Care Act. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. But Republicans these days have reached a level of stupidity that is mind-boggling.
Since 2007, the number of homeless students in this country has increased by 72%. As Paul Ryan would say, "No big deal. Their parents are lazy and don't want to work."
In the past five years, the number of Republicans who believe in evolution has declined by 26%. In other words, these Republicans deny the basic facts as to how life was created on earth in favor of some ancient mythologies devised by ignorant desert nomads 3,000 years ago!
The NSA had a "terrorist" list which involved 17,836 phone lines which were monitored daily from 2006 to 2009. Eleven percent of those lines met the agency's "reasonable ... suspicion of terrorism." The NSA can't even follow its own rules! Just know that all of your emails and most of your phone calls are being scanned by Big Brother!
Ted Cruz, the religious fundamentalist ultra-conservative myth-believing moron from Texas has been in Iowa recently testing the waters for a possible presidential run in 2016. And to think that when I first read about this guy, I thought he was such a loser that not even Texans would vote for him.
It appears Florida's governor, Rick Scott, might be fined $82 million for violating campaign finance law. He's also under fire for a $500,000 check he received from the huge sugar company Florida Crystals. Wait, it appears there was no such check although it was was reported in 2013. It has gone missing from state records. Now ain't that something?
Fourteen billion years ago the universe was formed in an explosion known as the Big Bang. What came immediately after that has been a mystery to astronomers until now. They have discovered evidence "that a split-second later [after the Big Bang], the expansion of the cosmos began with a powerful jump-start."
"It's just amazing," said Lawrence Krauss (a theoretical physicist) from Arizona State University. "You can see back to the beginning of time."
Meanwhile, Ken Ham, of the Creation Museum, insists, "No, no, no. My piddly-ass little god did it all in six days 6,000 years ago. The answers are all in Genesis. In fact, god got so tired creating the universe that he had to rest on the 7th day after he started!
Much of Europe and Asia are using high-speed trains that travel about 350km an hour. We are using trains that move at the same speed they did in 1950. Slow.
Talk about spoiling your own nest. Research indicates that 77% of the world's fish stocks have either disappeared or are in trouble. More troubling, perhaps, is the fact that 90% of our large fish have been removed from the oceans. It's not just that we're overfishing, we also waste fish. One-quarter of our yearly marine catch is thrown overboard, dead!
CNN - Don Lemon suggested that maybe God had something to do with the missing Malaysian Airlines flight. Which god, I wonder. Might have been Zeus?
Wage theft at Amazon. Amazon is increasing coming under fire for not being a very nice company. Workers are claiming that they are forced to "work" an extra 25 minutes per day in order to go through a screening process for which they are not paid. They've sued and the case is heading to the Supreme Court (the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the workers). This case might end up involving some 500,000 people working in 50 Amazon warehouses.
Paul Ryan, that intellectual giant from Wisconsin, said that "inner city" men are too lazy to work. It's the "culture," he explained - not their race. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Pat Robertson. Just when you think this old SOB is dead, he pops up to spout more creepy nonsense. Horror movies, says Robertson, can lead to demon possession. What does that even mean? What demons? And all this, claims Pat, is because folks involved in the entertainment biz are "very susceptible to Satanic influences."
Oh, the myth of it all.
Jim Brown. He's running for Congress from Arizona, the state where the heat shrinks the brains of Republicans down to the size of a wrinkled little pea! "Basically," says Brown, "slave owners took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling along."
Yeah, slavery was good for the poor blacks. Plus even god approves of slavery. It's in the Bible! And if it was good for bizness, the Republicans love it.
Austin Ruse, who headed up the conservative Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, said that "the hard left [whatever that is], human-hating people that run modern universities, should all be taken out and shot." What? Yep. I do believe he's since lost his job. Shoot!
Eddy Lepp grew marijuana in northern California which he handed out to anyone who needed it. He was arrested and given a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. He is currently serving that sentence in the federal prison in Colorado where the sale of marijuana is legal. Oh, the irony of it all!
Israel's Supreme Court says movie theaters must close on Shabbat. Israel is a "free" country, but it is under the thumb of the ultra -orthodox in many instances.
Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz (not known for her powers of perception) has possibly solved the mystery of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. It is, thinks Ms. Lotz, just a preview of what we might expect of the "Rapture." Yep. The Rapture, when millions of Christians will just disappear from the world.
There's some inconsistencies here. Why would god make this flight disappear? Were all the people on board fundamentalist Christians? Oh, the mythology of it all. Actually, it's eerie to think that there are people like Ms. Lotz out there teaching other people how to think.
Dr. Jim Garrow. I don't know who this clown is but he is convinced that Obama plans to destroy the world before he leaves office. It's part of Obama's muslim identify thing and is his "jihad." Why Obama would want to destroy the world is not clear, but Garrow is certain that Obama blew up the Malaysian plane as part of his evil plan.
I've save the best for last. Or the craziest. Susanne Atanus. From Illinois. She's an Illinois congressional candidate and even though more sane Republicans were calling on her to withdraw, she won the primary!
Here's what she said in a recent interview:
"'I'm a conservative Republican and I believe in God first.' She said she believes God controls the weather and has put tornadoes and diseases such as autism and dementia on earth as punishment for gay rights and legalized abortions.
"'God is angry. We are provoking him with abortions and same-sex marriage and civil unions. Same-sex activity is going to increase AIDS. If it's in our military it will weaken our military. We need to respect God.'"
Considering the number of fools in our political system, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. But too soon, I'm afraid, we'll be on the verge of tears as these numbskulls and their god drive us further from reality and real solutions to our problems.