THESE PEOPLE ARE IN CHARGE OF OUR COUNTRY?

All one has to do is google Crazy Congressmen to see the amazing things that our elected 'leaders' say and do.  To be sure, there are crazies on both sides of the aisle, but the trend certainly is toward Republicans.  I am particularly interested in folks who do not understand science and thus make claims that are simply nonsensical - unfortunately many of these folks have a significant influence on both the public understanding of science as well as public policy regarding science. 

From Take Down the Tea Party 10 site - number one is Michele Bachmann who thinks natural disasters are a warning sign from God about government spending – but she claims there “isn’t even one study” that carbon pollution is dangerous. Bachmann implied that Democrats could be the cause of the swine flu, and said the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation, while repeatedly voting to restrict access to birth control and to deny women life-saving medical care. And she recently instigated an anti-Muslim witch hunt on Capitol Hill that threatens to take Congress back to the McCarthy era.  Bachmann has worked to put Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block, but she and her husband operate a “Christian counseling clinic” which has received more than $137,000 in federal Medicaid funds while practicing controversial and medically-unsound ex-gay conversion therapy. And of course, she says that “[gay marriage] is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation, in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that.”  The other nine on the site as equally as scary as Bachmann.

And here is a must-visit site to read about the Congressional members of the Science Committee who simply do not understand science.  The committee includes infamous members such as Todd Akin a Republican Representative from Missouri, who says that a woman who is “legitimately raped” cannot become pregnant – according to science. “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  And my "favorite" anti-science Congressman Paul Broun, Republican Representative from Georgia who fervently declared that "evolution, embryology and the big bang theory are lies from the pit of hell."  And he knows that the earth is but a few thousand years old because that's what the bible says.  So much for science on the science committee.

 

Although this is not directly science-related, I was struck by this blog post addressing how some of our Congressional leaders approach world affairs:

 

Earlier this year [2012], a prominent Member of Congress asked to meet with me in Washington, D.C. I thought the topic was going to be the possible coming war between Israel and Iran. Instead, the official asked, “What are your thoughts on Isaiah 17?” For much of the next hour, therefore, we discussed the coming judgment of Damascus according to Bible prophecy, and how this scenario could possibly unfold in the coming years in relation to other Bible prophecies and current geopolitical trends in the Middle East.