Go ahead and talk about the Republican debate

I don’t want to talk about it — I despise the whole field — but everyone is emailing me about it, and I was even talking to my mother on the phone tonight and she asked me about it (I said I wouldn’t watch those weasels unless they were in a crotch-kicking contest). I’ll let this thread open up for a free-for-all discussion of the cacophony.

All I’ve heard so far is that a) they avoided talking about Bush, preferring to measure themselves against Reagan (Reagan was almost as great an incompetent as the current resident, so they’re obviously aiming low), and b) when they were asked about evolution, a goodly subset of them were so stupid that they said they didn’t believe it. Too bad this debate wasn’t merged with that quiz show, so some stern harridan could have announced, “You are the weakest link!” and pulled a lever that would have catapulted them into a shark tank or something entertaining.

So who are the Republican anti-science goons? Huckabee, Brownback, and … ?

Watch the response at Crooks and Liars. The foolish three are Huckabee, Brownback, and Tancredo.

Mitt Romney flaunts his taste

Romney was asked to name his favorite novel, and what does he say? Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard — that monstrous lump of pulp with the absurd Mary Sue plot. Admittedly, it wasn’t as bad as the Eye of Argon, but still … maybe it’s just that someone who can swallow the goofy mythology of the Mormon church is a little more open to the goofy mythology of the Church of Scientology founder (or ghost-writer). I would have at least expected him to have slightly higher literary standards, though.

Deliberate and calculated lies

Atrios has links and videos of the Tillman hearings on misinformation from the battlefield; Tillman, you may recall, was the soldier who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan a few years ago. Jessica Lynch also gives an accurate account of her story. The common theme is that our government lied to us, intentionally distorting the facts to achieve propaganda goals. These are ugly stories of a government with no regard for the truth, except in how it can be twisted to support failed policies.

Why is this administration still in office again?

What are you doing, Al?

Al Gore is generally a good guy, and I think his message on global warming is an important one. He’s still traveling around, giving his slideshow that we’ve seen in An Inconvenient Truth, but apparently he has added some new material — and these aren’t slides that make me very happy.

The slide I found particularly interesting/shocking/sad, was his new(?) slide containing a graph of human population growth over the past couple hundred-thousand years. It started off good. He pointed at the beginning of the graph, showing the population of humans on Earth from 200,000 years ago, and referred to the “rise of humans.”

Cool beans. So he believes that Homo sapiens evolved from other hominid ancestors, right? Nope. In the very same breath, he then continued to explain that according to his religious beliefs, this “rise of humans” was God’s creation of mankind — apparently 200,000 years ago. His graph then changed to include the caption “Adam & Eve” above this starting point.

Wha…?

He might as well have shown the chart of global temperature vs. number of pirates — it’s nonsense that completely undercuts the serious of the science he’s discussing.

It’s strange how this one little slide makes me far less enthusiastic about the prospect of another Gore run for the presidency. Even if he doesn’t actually believe in a literal creation event for mankind, he’s not above pandering to the ignorant.

What the F…?

Let’s support the troops! I always thought those stupid yellow ribbon magnets that people stuck on their cars were insulting in their triviality, but I did not know how low we could sink in the insipidity of token nods to those who are making sacrifices in the services. Mike Dunford received some helpful email from the military:

Effective immediately, the word “Families” will be capitalized in all Army correspondence. Please ensure wide dissemination of this change. Thanks for your continued efforts to do all you can to provide steadfast support to our Army Families.

There’s an “F” word on the tip of my tongue that would be appropriate here…