republican idiots in charge of science policy

this country is so screwed. and right wingers want to elect more people like this:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/the-crackpot-caucus/?smid=tw-share

"On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom."

Let’s take a quick tour of the crazies in the House. Their war on critical thinking explains a lot about why the United States is laughed at on the global stage, and why no real solutions to our problems emerge from that broken legislative body.





We’re currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept. But to Republicans in Congress, it’s all a big hoax. The chairman of a subcommittee that oversees issues related to climate change, Representative John Shimkus of Illinois is — you guessed it — a climate-change denier.

At a 2009 hearing, Shimkus said not to worry about a fatally dyspeptic planet: the biblical signs have yet to properly align. “The earth will end only when God declares it to be over,” he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length. It’s worth repeating: This guy is the chairman.

On the same committee is an oil-company tool and 27-year veteran of Congress, Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas. You may remember Barton as the politician who apologized to the head of BP in 2010 after the government dared to insist that the company pay for those whose livelihoods were ruined by the gulf oil spill.

Barton cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines. Careful, he warned, “wind is God’s way of balancing heat.” Clean energy, he said, “would slow the winds down” and thus could make it hotter. You never know.

“You can’t regulate God!” Barton barked at the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming.

The Catholic Church long ago made its peace with evolution, but the same cannot be said of House Republicans. Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of the House, is an evolution denier, apparently because he can’t see the indent where his ancestors’ monkey tail used to be. “Where’s the missing link?” he said in 2011. “I just want to know what it is.” He serves on a committee that oversees education.

In his party, Kingston is in the mainstream. A Gallup poll in June found that 58 percent of Republicans believe God created humans in the present form just within the last 10,000 years — a wealth of anthropological evidence to the contrary.

Another Georgia congressman, Paul Broun, introduced the so-called personhood legislation in the House — backed by Akin and Representative Paul Ryan — that would have given a fertilized egg the same constitutional protections as a fully developed human being.

Broun is on the same science, space and technology committee that Akin is. Yes, science is part of their purview.

Where do they get this stuff? The Bible, yes, but much of the misinformation and the fables that inform Republican politicians comes from hearsay, often amplified by their media wing.

 

This guy is a Democrat:

Committee assignments: Armed Services, Judiciary

Top that you dumb fuck!

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con·ser·va·tive (kn-sûrv-tv)
adj.
1. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.


The problem is that science deals with new knowledge. Conservatives don't do new. They would rather refer to an absurd Bronze age collection of myths and half-truths than to modern science.

Plus science does not offer personal salvation or heaven.

 

Yep it's all in the graph

but that doesn't explain why people would vote for somebody so stupid.

 

I don't think he literally thinks the island may capsize. It was a figure of speech and he was trying to be dramatic/humorous. But yes, there are stupid dems also, but nothing from the left compares in shear idiocy and volume to the stuff coming from the right side. The problem is that many voters on the right don't know how stupid it is because they are also ignorant. Thus they agree that evolution and GW are hoax's for example, and they may also think God would never allow GW to hurt the earth as Senator Inhoff of OK does.

 

nice try, but no he was completely dead pan serious.


This guy makes biden look like Marilyn vos Savant

I have to give the Admiral kudos for not tearing this idiot a new one in front of the nation ( I certainly would have).

 

How does the presence of an inarticulate dim black democratic congressman vitiate the impact of a group of white congressman who promote antedeluvian myth based belief systems?

 

He's not inarticulate , as matter of fact he conveys his stupendous idiocy quite well.