Here are a few of the things that make me want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head. (H/T to Juanita Jean and the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Parlor).
Furious parents and citizens of Oklahoma took to the streets early Thursday, protesting against Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos. Protesters allege the show is blatantly promoting an anti-Creationist agenda and is ‘standing against the Judeo-Christian moors and values of the Saddleback Township community and others nationwide.”
The fact that they can’t spell “mores” is the least of it…The fact that they can’t tell the difference between science and religion is infinitely depressing.
And another “Christian” heard from, this time from Virginia.
Virginia GOP state delegate and congressional candidate Bob Marshall is standing by his claim that disabled children are God’s punishment for women who have an abortion. “Nature takes its vengeance on subsequent children,” Marshall said in 2010. “It’s a special punishment, Christians would suggest.”
I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, the kind of God who would get back at “sinful” women by punishing innocent children really doesn’t seem worth worshipping…
Impressively crazy as those entrants are, South Carolina isn’t about to give up its hopes of winning the All-batshit competition.
On Thursday, a Senate committee in South Carolina voted to expand the state’s so-called “Stand Your Ground” law to approve the use of deadly force to protect a fetus. The proposal would grant pregnant women protection from prosecution if they were defending their “unborn children,” defined as “the offspring of human beings from conception until birth.”
At least they didn’t vote to arm each fetus. They must be libruls…
South Carolina’s legislature is also having a heated debate over a proposal–triggered by a third-grader who is clearly more scientifically literate than many S.C. lawmakers–to name the wooly mammoth the “State Fossil.”
Sen. Kevin Bryant, a pharmacist and self-described born-again Christian who has compared President Obama with Osama bin Laden, voted to sustain a veto by Governor Nikki Haley of funding for a rape crisis center, and called climate change a “hoax,” proposed amending the bill to include three verses from the Book of Genesis detailing God’s creation of the Earth and its living inhabitants—including mammoths.
The proposal has subsequently been bogged down as legislators debate the additional language.
Meanwhile, Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports that the Louisiana legislature wants to pass a law making the King James Version of the Bible the official state book, and Miami-Dade County in Florida is closing all the bathrooms in polling places. And then there’s this.
And Indiana Governor Mike Pence really thinks he could be President.
We’re doomed. Really.
So now we know why Sarah Palin has a disabled child…
Quick thinking, Wilson. Here is a personal situation that may be connected to Palin’s “death squad” mind-set. My daughter-in-law’s 88 year old grandmother was notified last week that her Medicaid has been discontinued. Pence refusing federal funds to expand Medicaid it evidently starting by defunding the elderly. And the state of Indiana’s health care system stopped accepting applications and responding to ALL applicants for health care coverage through ACA and the available Indiana system – if this isn’t “death squad” activity I don’t know what is. Sheila’s aforementioned GOP state actions are in the southern states – Indiana is south of Canada so apparently we qualify as a southern state in governing.
Sad. Batshit crazy indeed. And the richest people in the world a funding their political future. If these nuts can take over the US Senate, We are screwed indeed. If ONLY it were warmer in Canada, eh?
I’m learning the new words of my national anthem. Let’ see. “O Canada. Our Home and native land…”. Good words and the song is a lot better. In fact they sing a much better song there.
By the way, Patmcc, you need to check out the newest IPCC Climate Change report and the predicted state of affairs. The U,S, will become an arid, hot place that may not even support much life, and Canada will become warmer and even more pleasant. As long as some folks are talking about “God’s judgment”, sometimes there is no need for fire and brimstone when a civilization brings it on itself and ignores the warnings of climate scientists. Stupid is as stupid does. I say this: Pack up your stuff while the lines are short and trucks are available.
JoAnn, an 88-year old woman would NEVER qualify for Medicaid, in Indiana or anywhere else. Medicare covers everyone over age 65. States don’t administer Medicare, just Medicaid, and the ACA (O’Care) only expanded the latter (but of course not in Indiana). If she was disqualified it could only be because Medicare determined she’s not 65 or she’s dead (and that has happened I’m sure).
As for the batshit crazies, what I find MOST frustrating is that they aren’t the least bit fazed by their own clueless HYPOCRISY. I say clueless because normally hypocrisy requires an intent to deceive with information that is known to be false. But that’s not the case with these people. What I’m getting at is that on the ONE hand, they want to run every detail of my life (and even more details if I were a woman) in some future desired theocratic state, but on the OTHER hand, they justify this in the name of FREEDOM!
My mantra is Freedom OF Religion Equals Freedom FROM Religion.
And they’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
The story on Oklahoma is apparently a hoax.
Patrick; per the Indiana Department of Insurance:
“Some individuals who have low income qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare. These individuals are referred to as “Dual Individuals”. Medicaid helps pay premiums for Medicaid beneficiaries who are aged or disabled and have low incomes. This is extra financial support for Medicare Premiums or other out-of-pocket expenses. In Indiana there are four categories of dual eligibles.”
My friend has qualified for this assistance for 23 years; until Indiana refused previously accepted federal funds to expand Medicaid. This was done – it was reported by the media – to prevent Medicaid funds being given to Planned Parenthod Clinics who do not meet Repubicans religious qualifications. Cutting off the elderly leaves more for newer qualified Medicaid recipients due to the current economy – brought about by the GOP in their frenzy to repeal/defund Obamacare and ignore all other issues.
If the Oklahoma story is a hoax, its utter believability is telling. You can’t satirize people who are walking, talking–albeit clueless–satires.
Just another day in the xian insanity and Holy Week no less!
Oh Sheila, I love your blog postings for their truth-telling and responsive accuracy. Despite the fact that they tell me what a lot of crazy people are in this country and I have no hope that the American people will wake up and vote out the crazies, I still love to read them. Maybe that indicates that I am crazy in a different way. Keep up the crusade!
There is a glimmer in Tennessee today . . . HB2409 (open carry gun law) actually failed in the House; although, it had already passed the Senate under SB2424. Stay tuned!
Wing-nuttery? We have Marsha Blackburn. Bat-shittery? We have most of the rest of our legislature. Ahhhh, if they only had a brain . . . even ONE brain to be shared among them would do!
Hoax or no, I hope the Volunteer State doesn’t get wind of the ideas reportedly floating in on the West Wind (“O Wind, if winter comes. . .”) concerning Neil deGrasse Tyson’s brilliant work, “Cosmos”. If you haven’t seen it, put that powerful item on your must-see list.
Thank you, Sheila, for helping us to deal with our frustrations with the great unwashed and unlearned. We will always have them with us.
Helen; one woman’s jaundice is another woman’s crusade. Sheila is a mentor to all of us who read her blog, even if we disagree we always learn from them. Her head-on way of approaching issues and always – always – direct way of communicating information and her view, is one reason I voted for her in her long-ago GOP days. She is a person whose word we can trust to be the truth; and we can trust that her truths are well researched before sharing them. Thanks, Sheila. This blog is a great way to vent and we never know who is reading our comments or if our veiws are given considertion.
How can people make definitive statements concerning a subject upon which they have little or no knowledge? Re: Medicaid. (And they vote!)
From our standpoint, we see these emotional and zealous reactions and are stunned by much of them because, in part, we know enough about these topics to know that they don’t know much, while we have learned that “education is proceeding from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty”, but uncertainly doesn’t mean that we know anything but that we are uncertain. Maybe that keeps us from being dangerous to others.
It’s significant that people are usually fascinated and ambivalent about both religion and science, and when you combine the two, it’s often an explosive combination. From my perspective, I don’t think many of these people understand how to approach and understand either scripture or science, aside from in a very concrete sense, but the important thing is that they think that they know enough to make definitive statements and that they seem willing, in effect, to go to the stake for them. It’s an explosive combination, literally. I wonder how many areas do each one of us believe that we know enough to make definitive statements and to make judgments, but later discover that we knew relatively little. A little knowledge is dangerous, especially when don’t understand that we know so little about so many things yet may be perfectly willing to go to that stake. There are some things we can learn from these people, as deluded as they are.