hypocaffeinemia

An interesting trend has emerged from the far right, convinced that the country has gone to hell in three short months. Or rather, cognitively dissonant of the fact the right got us to where we currently are.

Rick “Good Hair” Perry, Texas Governor:

Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that,” Perry said. “My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.”

Chuck Norris, Black-belted buffoon:

That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.

Glen Beck, Spastic hysteric:

“Does the state have any right anymore? And I know, because I’ve heard it from all of the conservative, uh, you know, uh, the historians and scholars and everything else, but you can’t convince me that the founding fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. And if a state says, ‘I don’t want to go there because that’s suicide,’ they have a right to back out. They have a right. People have a right to not commit economic suicide.

“I believe it was Davy Crockett, that as he was standing there in the well of the Senate and they were all yelling and screaming at him, he said — he looked them right square in the eye and said, ‘Hey, you know what? You can all go to hell. I’m going to Texas.’ About time somebody says that again.

“You’re telling me that states can’t say ‘Washington, we’re not going to commit suicide with you’”?

Now, during the looong eight years Bush was president, any and all criticism of the direction of the country was met by the very same bunch as “anti-American”. Dare I say, however, that actively advocating for states to secede is, by definition, anti-American.

Clearly thinking of the Children

Link

Here’s the quote from the douchebag State Senator representing Colorado Springs:

“This stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part and I just can’t go there. We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly. I’m not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.

. . .

What I’m hoping is that yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that. The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years … begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.

He is against opt-out HIV testing of pregnant women. For those not in the know, with detection and proper treatment mother-to-infant transmission can be brought down to less than 1%. He hopes that more kids will grow up with AIDS to set an example to others about the negative effects of promiscuity.

My thought: if he wants to set an example to society regarding AIDS and promiscuity, he should volunteer himself. Perhaps the people of Colorado can vote on that.

Nerd point: Taken with a Canon 5D MarkII

As of 11am this morning (Central Time is the One True Time), Barack Obama is our president. This is an amazing day– not only have barriers been shattered, Bush is finally out of office. I don’t hate Bush– I pity him. I think he’s just a cog in a corrupt political system. However, that’s all beside the point. Obama is here, and while he is no savior, he is fresh blood and fresh attitude– attitude which seems to rub off on all of us. I wish him well in his– nay– our quest to better this society. We certainly have our work cut out for us.

By the way, I give him mad props for consistently throughout both his campaign and now his inauguration acknowledging that non-believers exist in the fabric of America.

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President .

The old rancher said, ‘Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle.’

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.

The old rancher said, ‘When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post turtle.’

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain. ‘You know she didn’t get up there by herself, she dang well doesn’t belong up there, she doesn’t know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumbass put her up there to begin with.

Why is it that the same people who are most vocally pro-life are also the same people who oppose decent sex education and access to birth control? I can’t wrap my mind around this clearly contradictory point of view.

I’m not a big fan of abortion myself, but then I suspect most people aren’t– even the pro-choice crowd. I would argue that there is an extremely limited time and place for it and having competent practitioners at least keeps those that would do it regardless from dying of septicemia or other amateur complications, but I think most rational people are in favor of doing what we can to reduce the abortion rate.

Which is why the right’s stance makes absolutely no sense at all: They may state they are admantly against abortion, but their views on birth control and sex education increase the pregnancy rate. It’s not hard to extrapolate that more pregnancies equals more abortions.

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Let’s face it: McCain’s old. He’s the oldest dude ever to run for president. As a result, there is a statistically very real chance that Palin, his VP choice, may have to fill in at some point should he become elected.

If We, The People, are to be okay with this possibility, we need to trust that Palin has decent decision-making chops. In my opinion, she doesn’t. Reasons after the jump.

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In case you’ve been living without internet, tv, radio, or telephones up until now, you’ve no doubt heard about first-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s selection as McCain’s VEEP. It’s hard to find details on where she stands on various subjects as she’s a relative unknown in the national circuit. However, the good folks at Afarensis did a little investigating back in 2006 when she was running for governor.

What they found, unfortunately, is that the potential vice president is a tried and true creationist:

“Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.”

Sarah, I’ll support teaching creationism in public school science classes the day you support teaching evolutionary biology in Sunday school classes.

I stand firm that creationists aren’t fit to hold any position higher than assistant manager at Burger King; especially not a position a heartbeat away from President of the United States (Note: I don’t even want to know McCain’s position on this).

From CNN, an adviser to Senator McCain just released this piece of absolute lunacy:

“The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured.”

The reason, he contends, no one should be labeled “uninsured” is because everyone has the right to a medical exam and stabilizing treatment under EMTALA.

Emergency rooms are emergency rooms, people! Despite the fact ERs routinely see all sorts of non-emergent cases, they are not properly equipped or staffed to deliver high-quality care for non-emergencies. Instead, what happens is patients without insurance can’t receive the treatment they need to maintain relatively stable medical situations, and instead wait until it becomes an emergency situation.

Even if we ignore the ethical argument, you have to be economically daft not to realize that simply telling everybody to go to the ER when their uncontrolled diabetes leads into renal failure or their unmonitored hypertension strokes them out isn’t cost-effective in any way, shape, or form for the taxpayers.

So lately McCain and his cronies have been beating their “Obama is an out of touch elitist” drum loudly, featuring some fairly prominent attack ads against the O.

The irony of this is that McCain recently joked that the line which separates the poor from the rich is five million dollars. He topped off this massive “gaffe” (more like “highlighting his lack of perspective”) by providing this answer when asked by a reporter how many houses he owns:

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,”

The guy doesn’t even know how many houses he owns, and yet he’s running ads admonishing Obama for being elitist?

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During his weekend interview with Rev. Rick Warren, Sen. John McCain said that if he were president he would have never nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter or John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/18/just_asking.html

That just about says it all right there.
(Read the link for some lovely irony to boot)