Talking about the Tea Party

On November 13^th, 2013, I posted this picture on my Facebook page:

 

Is it hyperbolic? Of course it is. And did I mean it seriously? Of course I did, to a point. And it really aggravated some people. Which was, after all, my intention.

People wanted to know why I was equating ‘Baggers with mass-murderers and/or white supremacists. My initial glib response was, “Well, if the sheet fits…” but then I realized that I would be better served by not using words like “racist” to describe them. Not because I don’t think there are racists in the Tea Party—there are plenty—but because the word “racist” simply isn’t a large enough descriptor to capture all of the group’s vile nonsense.

Therefore, I am going with the word bigot.

Moving right along, I want to make quick rebuttals to the various accusations made against me, on Facebook and otherwise, and to the various defenses trotted out by ‘Bagger apologists, while also offering some general facts about their tawdry, horrifically anti-American, little “movement.”

Anti-Intellect

The Tea Party is anti-intellect. Many members seem actually to be proud of not knowing things. America’s Founders, men with whom the ‘Baggers are wont to compare themselves, were serious people with serious credentials. They taught themselves other languages. The ‘Baggers are hostile even to the idea of Americans speaking anything other than English, and scared shitless of people who do. The Founders were scientists, and enthusiastic about science. The ‘Baggers are hostile to science, about which I will explain more below. The Founders were voracious readers on all subjects, and committed to the life of the mind. The ‘Baggers, as is quite obvious, do not read. Their favorite president, the gleefully ignorant G.W. Bush, apparently read only two books ever: the Bible (aka, The Child’s Book of Christian Mythology), and My Pet Goat, (of the two, My Pet Goat is the better guide to good governance…), and Ted Cruz cannot even successfully navigate the tricky literary landscapes of Dr. Seuss.

The Power of the Guv’ment

I’ve been told that the Tea Party is about limiting the power of the Federal Government, or, in the words of the degenerate Grover Norquist, to make government so small he can “drown it in the bath tub.” Republicans were trotting out this silliness long before the ‘Baggers started waving their misspelled signs. Generally it is a catch-all excuse for being against any legislation they do not like, which is, generally, any legislation than might help their countrymen. ‘Baggers do not like helping people, because helping people might make them appear weak, and is therefore an affront to their already tenuous mental health.

In truth, the ‘Baggers are against government of the kind they hate, and rabidly in favor of the kind they like, and they want more of it. Lots, lots, lots more. To wit:

• Establishing Christianity as the national religion. Rand Paul, Rick “I’m a Christocrat” Scarborough, and Michele Bachmann, among others, have harped on this subject many times. North Carolina tried to enact state-level legislation to that effect this year. The whole idea is about as unconstitutional as it gets, and so will go nowhere, but it remains a fine example of the ‘Baggers having no problem with the government controlling the lives of citizens.

• Voter registration laws. This is sweeping legislation in numerous (Southern) states aimed at stopping a non-existent problem. There have been exactly three—count ‘em—three documented cases of the type of voter fraud that so exercises the ‘Baggers. So, what possible point could they be making? Well, since those restrictive, draconian laws largely effect liberals and minorities… When the Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act, claiming it was no longer needed, it took less than 48 hours for those Southern states to enact legislation aimed at disenfranchising minorities.

• District gerrymandering. Hey, too many congressional districts filling up with brown people? Well, we gotta fix that, by god! Let’s just redraw the district lines and split those minority voting blocs, thereby effectively silencing those pesky slackers! That’s teach them to vote against us! District gerrymandering has taken place in Virginia, Michigan, Texas (of course), North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, with others in process.

• Elimination of TORT laws. (A bone for their corporate leash holders.) This isn’t taking away governmental power. It’s taking away citizen power.

• Allowing taxpayer money to fund religious schools and other religious activities. Again, totally unconstitutional, but this one is gaining unfortunate headway.

• Cutting veterans benefits, as Bush did in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Apparently the ‘Baggers have more use for dead soldiers than wounded ones. I mean, who doesn’t like a parade?

• Legislating against gay marriage. This one is on its way down in a massive fireball, thanks to progressive states like California and New York, but that didn’t stop the aforementioned ‘Bagger stalwart, Rick Scarborough from proposing a “class action suit against homosexuality.” This somehow leaves the realm of simply bigotry and enters the world of weapons-grade stupidity.

• Stomping on female reproductive rights. Do I even need to enumerate this ghastly stuff? Get over your bigoted terror of lady parts, people! What are you, twelve??

Then, finally, there’s the whole “god’s law” business. ‘Baggers across the country are on the record stating that America should be governed by god’s law. Again, totally unconstitutional, but that doesn’t stop them from gibbering about it every chance they get.

Hey, guys, god’s “law” has had its day on the world stage. We call that era the Dark Ages. And, god’s “law” is what currently holds sway all over the Middle East, and we all know what a tolerant, successful and intellectually vibrant place that is. And while we’re on the subject, is there any way a government could be a larger, more oppressive, nanny state than by turning its control over to an Invisible Man in the Sky and his oh-so rational earthly lickspittles?

‘Baggers, stop pretending you are in favor of smaller government. You aren’t.

Anti-Science

Those of you who know me, know that I am a logical positivist and a philosophical materialist to my core. I love and respect science because science works. Because it makes use of testable facts. Because it explains the natural world and our place in it better than religion ever has, can, or will.

And the ‘Baggers have no use for it whatsoever.

• “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”—Christine O’Donnell.

• They refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change, absurdly claiming that the tens of thousands of scientists studying the problem world-wide are all part of some sweeping left-wing conspiracy to undermine…something-or-other, they are never very clear on this point. Like their ideological brethren on the postmodern left, they think science is “politics in white coats.”

• They make up horrific nonsense that sounds “sciency” to bolster their need for larger and more oppressive government crackdowns on the rights of Americans. Fetuses feel pain at eight weeks. If a woman is “legitimately” raped, she can’t get pregnant.

• They want creation “science” presented alongside evolution in public schools, screaming “Teach the controversy!” You know why no one is teaching the controversy? Because there isn’t one.

I could go on and on here, but it makes me too sad. And, yes, before you ‘Baggers start whining, I am fully aware that many liberal Americans are woefully ignorant about science, and that also makes me sad. And I am also aware of the recent study which claimed to demonstrate that ‘Baggers are slightly more scientifically literate than liberals. However, the protocols of the study were a bit wobbly, and, like all good science (statistical analysis is a science) we must await replication before drawing conclusions. Personally, if it turns out to be true that ‘Baggers know some science, I think that would be awesome, but I do not think it would do a thing to alter their preposterous blather on the subject.

St. Ronald the Addle-Minded

Oh, how the ‘Baggers love Ronald Reagan! To hear them talk, he was the next best thing to Jaysus!! For decades now I’ve been listening to friends, family members, and pundits shout St. Ronald’s name from the rooftops, but without ever saying what the guy did to make him so super-duper special. I’ve done a bit of reading on Reagan, and have come up with some bullet points that I think qualify as his major achievements:

• He owed everything he got in life to labor unions (specifically SAG, Equity and IATSE) then became president and turned on unions like a rabid dog.

• He was a turncoat and a rat, spilling his trembling guts to the scumbags running the HUAC hearings.

• Despite a reputation as a tax cutter, he raised taxes nine times, effectively eviscerating the American middle class.

• After famously stating that trees cause air pollution (gotta love that conservative commitment to science), he set about selling off the country’s natural treasures to the highest bidder, and gutting environmental protections.

•  He honored dead Nazis at the Bitburg concentration camp.

•  He unleashed a wave of torture and murder in Central America, under the guise of combatting communists, funding the scheme by illegally dealing WMDs to Iran. And he only got away with it because he was too senile to remember issuing the orders in the first place.

• He cheated on his wife, divorced her to marry his mistress, then blithered on for two terms about “family values.”

• He invented a war history for himself, wherein he didn’t spend his entire enlistment on a Hollywood backlot (which is what he did), but instead liberated camps and fought in major battles.

• And, he was a completely talentless actor. Bonzo had more emotional depth.

Did I miss anything?

Oh yeah. Where was my brain? He ended the Cold War, right?

Well, no. No he didn’t. As has been well documented, the Soviet Union collapsed because Siegfried and Roy were playing Caesar’s Palace at the time.

The Cold War was ended by Mikhail Gorbachev, the Afghan mujahedeen, and Trofim Lysenko. Never heard of Trofim Lysenko? That’s why you think Reagan did more than just stand around and watch while the Soviet Union fell apart under the weight of its own oppressive bullshit, because you haven’t read your history.

Government Shutdown

Theodore Roosevelt was an interesting cat. Politically, he occupied a niche that no other president had occupied before (except for Abraham Lincoln, to an extent) or has occupied since. Conservatives have a hard time dealing with Teddy. On one hand, he was a rough-and-tumble man of action—a soldier, a hunter, a fighter. But on the other hand, he wanted to return the Republican party to what it had been under Lincoln—a progressive government that helped every American citizen, regardless of color or religion, get a “Square Deal.” When he failed to get certain legislation passed, he had this to say about political compromise (and I’m paraphrasing): If you are stranded on a desert island and all you have is a chisel, a saw and a screwdriver, then you put those tools to use building the best raft you can.

Confronted with the Affordable Care Act, Ted Cruz and the rest of the borderline-treasonous ‘Baggers instead did the following: they sat on their asses in the shade while their betters built a raft, then when it was done they complained about the design, and when nobody listened to them, they shot holes in the raft in an attempt to drown its occupants. Even Grover Norquist said the ‘Baggers were acting stupidly, and when a guy like Norquist calls you stupid, man, you got a whole lotta stupid goin’ on.

In ‘Baggerland, compromise is weakness, and weakness is, I dunno, socialism or something, a word they love to throw around, unfortunately without knowing its definition.

The End

In closing, do I think all ‘Baggers are racists? No, I do not. Do I think they are all bigots? No, I do not. Do I think they support bigoted and oppressive governmental policies?

Yes, I do.

Cheers.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, during the Second Age of Man, there was a calm, misty kingdom called Lithium. It was ruled by the wise and fair King Crestor and his lovely, dreamy-eyed queen, Lunesta. It was a time of peace in Lithium; the war against the proud bandit-lord Norval from the desert wastes of Valsartan, having finally reached an accord beneficial to both sides.

To seal the treaties, both leaders, King Crestor and Lord Norval, were to offer their eldest children up for marriage, each to those of the other. From Crestor: his two lovely and stimulating daughters, the Princess Viagra and the Princess Cialis. And from Norval: his twin, emotionally complex sons, Narol and Nardil.

The wedding of the four children and the two great Houses was destined to be the event of the Age. The lords and ladies of every land were invited. The epic poets of Thorazine were summoned for command performances, as were the legendary musicians and acrobats of Xanax, and the famed horsemen of the Orencia Steppes, and the mystic healer-priests of OxyContin would be on hand to deliver the union painlessly to the gods.

Unbeknownst to all, however, the evil necromancer Symbyax had set her loathsome eyes upon King Crestor’s daughters, Viagra and Cialis. Symbyax hated the daughters for their rare beauty and royal ways, and was intent upon bringing them under her thrall and giving them as name-day presents to her vile and ogrelike son, Paxil, who would probably treat them horribly before eating them.

Symbyax traveled from her congealment of fetid huts in the Midol Swamps, all the way to King Crestor’s castle in Lithium, and secreted herself in the storage cellars beneath the kitchens where the wedding feast was being prepared by 100 cooks and 2000 assistants. She carried on her person a small clay bottle filled with an unhealthy looking greenish-purple liquid. The necromancer skulked in the cellars for two days and a night before she recognized her chance to set her scheme in motion.

A fat, sweaty serving boy called Enbrel had been sent down to the cellars to fetch a barrel of Halcion berries, a wedding gift from the Sea Lords of Zoloft who lived across the Qvar Sea. Being a fat, sweaty, and altogether stupid boy, Enbrel decided to snoop about the place first to see if there might be some sweets he could put in his face. Sadly, however, he found only a foul and gangrenous necromancer, who pounced upon his fat, sweaty body like a hawk on a potato and dragged him into the shadows. Symbyax used dark sorcery to enter Enbrel’s brain, where she planted thoughts that were not the boy’s own; thoughts of poison, and pain, and death, and of running out of Fritos.

Sometime later, Enbrel returned to the kitchens. He waddled over to one of the vast cauldrons of soup that hung suspended over the even more vaster fire pit, removed the small clay bottle from inside his breaches, and upended the greenish-purple liquid into the soup, soup that he knew to be a favorite of both Princess Viagra and Princess Cialis. Enbrel then waddled hurriedly from the kitchens and into the stables, where he greedily ate horse apples until some stable boys found him and beat him up.

Symbyax continued lurking in the cellars, waiting for the wedding feast to begin. As soon as Cialis and Viagra ate the soup, they would be drawn to the cellars and Symbyax would have them.

The ceremony had concluded. And now, the two happy couples, their royal parents, and approximately six gazillion guests were packed inside the Grand Hall, attacking platters of food, guzzling ale and wine, singing, cheering, and otherwise whooping it up. Upon the dais at the far end of the cavernous Hall, the newly minted wives and husbands looked goo-goo eyes at each other, suspending that rather revolting activity only at the arrival of the soup course. Cialis and Viagra sat erect in anticipation.

They sniffed at the soup in their bowls. They smiled. The lifted the bowls to their lips. And they—

“Do not DRINK!!” a voice bellowed from the crowd.

Every head turned in the direction of the bellower. He was a crinkly little fellow, with wispy hair and food in his beard. Even so, a hush fall over the Hall, for this man was none other than the legendary Psilocybin, the greatest wizard and poker player of the Age.

“What is it?” asked King Crestor, who knew better than to doubt the ancient magician.

“That soup,” said Psilocybin in lofty tones, before pausing for dramatic effect. “That soup is tainted!”

(Insert gasps here.)

Psilocybin went on to explain how he had discovered the evil witch Symbyax when he had gone to the kitchen cellars for a spiritual consultation with a serving maid named Tamiflu. He had forced Symbyax to explain her presence, and after a lengthy magical duel had gotten the information out of her. The rotten old bat was now firmly imprisoned in an ectoplasmic jail.

The hordes of revelers in the Hall cheered. Psilocybin took a few bows. The two happy couples skipped the soup course and went right on to the fish. Rejoicing filled the land.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Until the next set of double-blind trials.

Cheers.

Lambasting Liberal Looniness

I get criticized from time to time over the contents of this blog—bad language, dissing religion, mixed metaphors, behaving like an all-around asshole, you name it. One of the biggies, though, is that my conservative friends (yes, I have them) like to hit me with the “liberal bias” complaint. It would be easy for me to simply say: “Hey, I’m a liberal, the fuck do you expect?” but that answer seems lacking in, I dunno, consilience or something.

So, in the spirit of debunking myths, I’m gonna take a poke at some popular fallacies that are favorites among liberals. 

Except for me, of course. Cuz I’m spesh-ul.

El Nino

A number of years ago I went to hear Michael Moore speak. Now, I like Mr. Moore, not as much as some people do, but enough. He gets a little iffy with me when he gets a little iffy with his facts. That night at the University of Denver, Moore opened his talk with an extended diatribe against all things conservative, some of it on target. But then he really wandered off into the Land of the Fluffyheads, when he suggested that climatologists, and scientists at NOAA, were taking racist pot-shots at Mexicans by naming a troublesome, recurring weather pattern El Niño. The audience, made up mostly of college students, cheered and clapped their approval. I wasn’t one of them, however, for a couple of reasons. First, I was at least a decade older than the majority of the crowd. And, Second, I had spent less of my time looking for ways to demonstrate my unimpeachable moral bona fides, and more time doing wacky stuff like reading books. And it was in one of those pesky books that I had previously learned the origins of the term El Niño.

Contrary to Moore’s weird idea (where he found it, apart from up his butt, I haven’t a clue), the term was first coined by Peruvian sailors, and appears in historical documents dating back to 1892. The Peruvians who first described the phenomena to Spaniards and other Europeans explained that, since the effect occurred most often around Christmas, they had named it El Niño, which means “the boy,” and is a reference to Christ.

The El Niño effect is characterized by ocean currents with dangerously high temperatures that can spread around the Pacific and cause freakish and frightening damage to ocean life, tidal estuaries, and inland agricultural production. And not one of those things is the fault of a single Mexican.

I know, I know, proclaiming one’s moral superiority is such a freakin’ rush, dude! But get your facts straight first, otherwise your morality looks an awful lot like vacuous gibberish.

Osama bin Underrated

Returning again to one my favorite themes of late, I have a couple of quick points to make about the late psychopath, Osama bin Laden, both “facts” that liberals continue to spout about him, and which are simply not true.

As it happens, the first one was another favorite of Michael Moore’s, one he still tosses around the punditverse with gloating abandon. Not, mind you, that he was, or is, the only disseminator of this fiction. The story goes like this: Osama bin Laden couldn’t possibly have been hiding anywhere in Afghanistan, at any point after 9/11, because he was on kidney dialysis.

I’ve looked around a bit in an effort to find the birthplace of this thing, but it seems to have leapt into the conversation from several sources at once, and has gotten a huge amount of airplay over the years. The single piece of “evidence” cited by adherents is that bin Laden was known to drink a lot of water. Yes, dialysis patients often require serious amounts of H20, but there is another, simpler, explanation for bin Laden’s above-normal intake. See, when he was in Afghanistan in the 1980s, helping (sort of) the Afghan mujahedeen bitch-slap the Soviets, his encampment was hit several times by chemical weapons. He inhaled the gas, which does all sorts of nasty things to the human body, one of the biggies being a thorough frying of the victim’s throat and vocal chords. Bin Laden rarely spoke above a whisper. Not because he was being mysterious, but because he couldn’t, and he drank lots of water to sooth his throat, as well as to keep his body hydrated, chronic dehydration being another side-effect of damage by chemical weapons.

And if that’s not enough to get rid of the dialysis myth, consider the following. Bin Laden was an enthusiastic athlete. He played volleyball (which is an image I cannot get out of my brain), was a mountain climber, and he was an avid horseman, sometimes riding 50 miles or more on his outings. No one in need of dialysis is going to do these things, at least not with the vigorous regularity bin Laden did them.

The second bin Laden myth I want to talk about runs this way: America got what it deserved, because bin Laden was trained by the CIA.

Again, nope, so sorry, hate to disappoint, need a cookie…?

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the primary resistance they encountered, and which would eventually drive them out, was the Afghan mujahedeen, with special stress on the word Afghan. These were the fighters the CIA assisted with training and weapons, turning Afghanistan into another proxy conflict between the two Cold War powers. The anti-Soviet combatants that no party involved in the clash wanted much to do with, not even the native Afghans, were the Arab insurgents, many from Saudi Arabia (and including a much younger bin Laden), who showed up to “lend a hand,” but generally didn’t do much except get in the way and antagonize their Afghan hosts.

In numerous interviews conducted after the departure of the Soviet soldiers, Afghani mujahedeen spoke in detail, and unflatteringly, about the Arab mujahedeen. The Arab interlopers, it seems, looked upon their Afghani brethren as uneducated, incompetent, bumpkins, and set about constructing their own camps, plotting their own raids, hording their own money and weaponry, and refusing to interact with, or accept assistance from, the hated CIA. Then, after spending lots of cash to accomplish next to nothing, and after being repeatedly bombed and gassed, the Arabs packed up their stuff and hightailed it out of there.

Osama bin Laden was not “trained” by the CIA. More than likely, the first representative of the American government bin Laden ever saw in the flesh was the SEAL Team soldier who blew his god-poisoned brains out last year. It was a really short meeting.

Ciao

Hope you enjoyed.

Remember, if you like this, repost it. If you like it, become a follower.

If you hate it, well, I don’t really care, but do all the above stuff anyway.

Cheers.

Misinformation Inoculation

Once upon a time, America was a scientific nation. We led the world in science education, scientific research, applied scientific discovery, and patents. We were home to 247 Nobel Prize winners (64 in Chemistry, 88 in Physics and 95 in Medicine). We all but completely eradicated polio and small pox. We put computers in most homes, revolutionized the world with the microchip, and made possible a little thing called the Internet. We were instrumental in decoding the human genome. We launched the first communications satellite. We put astronauts on the Moon and took close-up pictures of Mars. We had a reputation. We had scientific street-cred. We led the world in something that truly mattered.

We don’t anymore.

Increasingly, Americans distrust scientists and their findings, largely, in my opinion, due to their massive ignorance of scientific subjects. (The country’s infantile obsession with mythology is also a factor—we’re Number One on the planet for belief in angels—but I don’t have the time or the patience to get into that right now.) There is a level of scientific illiteracy in this country that continues to deepen and amaze. Some reports indicate that the nation ranks 34^th in science education, world-wide. This means we lag behind every other economically advanced state, and enjoy the company of countries like Serbia, Uruguay and Tunisia. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of those countries, or countries like them, apart—yes—from the fact that their citizens are somewhat more scientifically ignorant than we are.

Perfect case in point: the nonsensical state of affairs surrounding the non-link between childhood vaccinations and autism. A recent poll conducted by Public Policy Polling suggested that 21 percent of Americans believe that vaccinations cause autism in children. Because of this uninformed hysteria, up to ten percent of American parents are refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated, according to the Journal of Pediatrics, citing a study published on March 29^th, 2013. By not vaccinating their kids, and leaving them vulnerable to, among other life-threatening ailments, rubella, pertussis and measles, these parents are acting irresponsibly to a degree that should be labeled what it is—child abuse.

The nonsense began in 1998 when the medical journal Lancet published a study by Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London. Wakefield, et al, claimed that there was a direct link between vaccines and autism. It should be remarked that their study involved a grand total of 12 children. Even so, it triggered a global freak-out that has continued unabated, especially after noted American scientists Jenny McCarthy and Donald Trump put their storied minds, and ignorant mouths, to work hyping the study to anyone who cared to aim a camera at them. When asked how she came by her special knowledge on the subject, McCarthy famously responded that she had attended the “University of Google.”

Since the Wakefield results were published, numerous scientists (including those famously slapdash nitwits at the Centers for Disease Control) have conducted dozens of studies, as well as detailed reviews of the original Lancet data, and concluded—unanimously—that there is not one iota of evidence linking vaccines to autism. Their findings, or lack thereof, unfortunately did little to debunk the myth, and even though most of Wakefield’s coauthors had their names removed from the paper, and Lancet officially retracted the study, the myth remains, tick-like, firmly the American psyche.

In 2011, the British investigative reporter Brian Deer put what should have been the final ten-penny in the myth’s coffin. Deer went back to square one, interviewing all of the original participants in the Wakefield study, and compared their medical records with those that accompanied the Wakefield data. And what do you know! It seems that Dr. Wakefield not only interpreted some of his data incorrectly, but…wait for it…he invented most of it. In short: he lied. (Follow this link to Deer’s article.) In the aftermath of Deer’s piece, the BMJ (British Medical Journal) had this to say:

Deer unearthed clear evidence of falsification. He found that not one of the 12 cases reported in the 1998 Lancet paper was free of misrepresentation or undisclosed alteration, and that in no single case could the medical records be fully reconciled with the descriptions, diagnoses, or histories published in the journal.

The BMJ concluded by defining Wakefield’s work for what it was. Fraud.

Lamentably, too many parents read Deer’s article, or overviews in other publications, shook their heads, and kept right on thinking junk thought. It comes down to one question. Who are you going to believe, Jenny McCarthy and Donald Trump, or a bunch of “eggheads” who’ve done nothing with their lives but apply their education, intelligence and care to studying the issue? And not to put too fine a point on it, but your answer says a great deal about your level of education, as well as your overall credulity.

The world is dangerous enough without parents intentionally putting their kids in harm’s way. Anecdotes are not facts, no matter what you learned at the U. of Google.

Cheers.