Bachmann is a Freaking Comedian!

HAHAHAHA, Bachmann says HPV vaccine causes retardation. She is so funny...Wait! An influential person making stupidly false claims about an important vaccine, that isn't funny, it's utterly insane. She didn't even bother to visit the Center for Disease Control's website which, ooh I don't know, actually CONTAINS RESEARCH DONE BY MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS AND NOT SOME CRAZY CRYING LADY YOU PASS ON THE STREET.


Here it is. Took me 2 mins.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm


Now your telling me a presidential candidate went on, what I am guessing, is the most watched morning news show and made false claims about a very important subject that would have taken 2 mins to clarify?

Rick Perry, the Republicans' Messiah?

I'm going to start a compilation of Rick Perry shit here.


By Kathleen Parker

August 26

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rick-perry-the-republicans-messiah/20

11/08/26/gIQAGnY5gJ_story.html?hpid=z2

Rick Perry's rapid lead over previous Republican front- runner Mitt Romney was predictable. But it is not a good sign for Republicans hoping to reclaim the White House and further highlights the crucial battle within GOP circles: Who is the godliest of us all?

That's the mirror-mirror question for Republicans.

Forget charisma, charm, intelligence, knowledge and that nuisance, "foreign policy experience." The race of the moment concerns which candidate is the truest believer.

This was always a tough hurdle for Romney, whose Mormonism is reflexively distrusted by Southern evangelicals. Even so, in the absence of a better candidate, Romney had a fighting chance to win his party's support. Then came Perry.

Talk about a perfect-storm, composite candidate. Combine Elmer Gantry's nose for converts, Ronald Reagan's folksy confidence and Sarah Palin's disdain for the elites - and that dog hunts.

Perry doesn't just believe, he evangelizes. He summons prayer meetings. He reads scripture while callers are on hold. Not incidentally, he's a successful governor.

Perhaps most important, he's a wall-scaling fundraiser whose instincts make him a force of nature in the political landscape.

If you're Romney, Perry is a nightmare that's still there in the morning. If you're Barack Obama, maybe not so much?

Perry's political instincts were in evidence when he timed his entrance into the race just as everybody else was trying to grab straws in the Iowa poll. If life is high school in adult relief, Perry is the guy who shows up in a truck with a winch and pulls the car out of the ditch while those other guys are looking for a jack.

Whether you like his politics or not, he emits a pheromonal can-do-ness. Apparently, plenty of Republicans do like his politics, which has much to do with the very devil-may-care attitude that eventually will become Perry's cross to bear. Gallup's recent polling shows him not just passing Romney, but dusting him. Among Republican voters, 29 percent now swear their allegiance to the Texas governor, almost double the 17 percent for Romney.

Huddled around the exhaust pipe are, you got it, the jack handlers: Ron Paul (13 percent) and Michele Bachmann (10 percent), followed by Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman in the single digits.

Perry's campaign strategy is to talk only about jobs- jobs-jobs, no matter what the question. That's both smart and necessary, but jobs-jobs-jobs isn't the money trinity with his base. Perry already hit that station with his prayer rally and various dog whistles to the

congregation: He's not sure anyone knows how old Earth is, evolution is just a "theory" and global warming isn't man-made.

That we are yet again debating evolutionary theory and Earth's origins - and that candidates now have to declare where they stand on established science - should be a signal that we are slip-sliding toward governance by emotion rather than reason. But it's important to understand what's undergirding the debate. It has little to do with a given candidate's policy and everything to do with whether he or she believes in God.

If we are descended of some blend of apes, then we can't have been created in God's image. If we establish Earth's age at 4.5 billion years, then we contradict the biblical view that God created the world just 6,500 years ago. And finally, if we say that climate change is partly the result of man's actions, then God can't be the One who punishes man's sins with floods, droughts, earthquakes and hurricanes. If He wants the climate to change, then He will so ordain, and we'll pray more.

Perry knows he has to make clear that God is his wingman. And this conviction seems not only to be sincere, but also to be relatively noncontroversial in the GOP's church - and perhaps beyond. He understands that his base cares more that the president is clear on his ranking in the planetary order than whether he can schmooze with European leaders or, heaven forbid, the media. And this is why Perry could easily steal the nomination from Romney.

And also why he probably can't win a national election, in which large swaths of the electorate would prefer that their president keep his religion close and be respectful of knowledge that has evolved from thousands of years of human struggle against superstition and the kind of literal-mindedness that leads straight to the dark ages.

Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, but Perry makes you think they are.

Dawkins on Perry -

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today's Republican party is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today's Republican Party 'in spite of' is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory.

Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Bastrop High Gets A Letter In The Mail

www.bastropenterprise.com/archive/x2085346315/file
So yeah, I was waiting for this letter to be sent. I really feel for the kid who got this ball rolling, and I hope he sues the pants off the school district for being a bunch of ignorant jebus-twats thinking they are the only people in the world.

Oh, here is a Christian explaining why everyone should be against ritual prayer in schools.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46828
"I would say in love to my Christian brothers and sisters, before you yearn for the imposition of prayer and similar rituals in your public schools, you might consider attending a football game at Wahiawa High School. Because unless you're ready to endure the unwilling exposure of yourself and your children to those beliefs and practices that your own faith forswears, you have no right to insist that others sit in silence and complicity while you do the same to them."

Childish Critical Thinking

(picture from Klepsacovic's site)

I find myself of the opinion that we should all be more critical, than less, of children. This also means paying more attention to what they say. All too often I see adults pretty much just shaking their heads all the silly things their children say.
Responding to, "Mommy I wanna fly on the lawn mower when daddy gets home," with something like, "Thats nice honey," as a reply. This could amount to some lazyness or being too indulgent.

When what should be happening is a critical analysis and breakdown of the statement. In this case, lawnmowers don't fly and you might get asked why. Be prepared to give and explanation of your answers to their questions. "Because I said so," is a bullshit answer (I heard this the other day at lunch). Its very surprising how much a 2 or 3 year-old can understand, and even more so at 5 or 6 if critical thinking is taught from the very point they can put together more than one word.

Now, I'm not saying that we should never let our children imagine crazy shit. But, we are not helping them along in their educational development by letting them completely immerse themselves in bull-crap.

Not that I know anything about raising children... I just had this one my mind after browsing some blogs this morning. And a quick google check gave me tons of sites dedicated to this stuff.