Thursday, March 07, 2013

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.

12 comments:

Bizzy Brain said...

Not many of your blogs leave me speechless, but this one has - for now. Lol!

hoosierdaddy said...

Bizzy - wishing you a speedy recovery! On second thought..... :-)

S3 said...

Doc, your brain must be very clean today.

Phil L. said...

What's next? A tribute to Hugo Chavez?

Douglas E said...

S3 & Phil - stop beating around the bush. Do you really believe anything that these folks claim about science? It's not so bad that they are wrong - the real problem is that they speak their nonsense from positions of authority.

ps - some of these folks are as batshit crazy as Hugo :-)

Bizzy Brain said...

I get the point that scientific illiterates should not serve on the Science Committee, but what rendered me speechless was the information source, the ‘Take Down the Tea Party Ten’ website. You source a leftist organization that hates conservatives and conservatism. But that’s okay. They are in good company. Representative Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) had this to say about the Tea Party in 2011, “and as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to hell.”

Here’s what else Maxine Waters had to say a few days ago. “We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost.” You know what that statement means? It means that Maxine Waters is a total and completely incompetent idiot. Yet she is one of those running (ruining?) the country. She is living proof the country is dying of stupidity.

So whose vote is more scary? That of a representative who believes the Bible is the unerring word of God? Or a hate-filled, radical leftist moron?

Douglas E said...

Bizzy - like I said, the crazies are on both sides of the aisle, and the only reason that I gave the Take Down site was because of the good summaries of the anti-science types that have great influence over science. So just stick to the science - with which you seem to agree!! These folks just happen to be Tea Party types - hmmm wonder if there is a trend here. As you and I both agree, politicians are scum, and some are more and some are less.

Bizzy Brain said...

Didn't want to give you too much of a hard time, DE, but couldn't let you off the hook completely. Lol!
I have become immune to the blatherings and lies of the political class. Both Bachman and Waters will continue to be re-elected for now.

Bizzy Brain said...

Not much more to think of on the subject so thought I would use this forum to pass along a couple of aphorisms:

"To corrupt the individual, it suffices to teach him to call his personal desires rights and the rights of others abuses."

"The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another's goods, but the one who defends his own. Instead of demanding the repression of envy, the left demands that we suppress the object which arouses it."

Douglas E said...

BB - aphorisms are supposed to short and concise - as in "all politicians are scum." :-)

BB said...

The last one may not meet the test of brevity as I combined two aphorisms into one.

Anonymous said...

Hi Douglas. The phenomenon seems to be global.
http://bible.cc/ephesians/4-18.htm

Jyrki