Idiocy worn on the sleeve.

For a long time, many people in the atheist community, myself included, have been denouncing many members of the Republican party, and especially of the extremist Tea Party nutjobs as being anti-intellectual.  It isn't exactly rare to hear them lie about science and particularly evolution.  It isn't rare to have them support the teaching of creationism in a science class.  It isn't rare for them to rewrite history to claim that Reagan brought income taxes to their lowest level ever or that the "Hoot-Smalley" tariff was created by liberals.  So often, they get on the backs of some of us for being too "elitist"...  as if that's a bad thing.  Is it necessarily wrong for people to want the best of the best that the country has to offer...  the most eminently competent individuals to be the ones in the seats of power?  If I'm to elect a person who is to represent the needs of the greater good, wouldn't it be a decent idea to actually have someone there who is better equipped than Joe Six-pack to do the job?  I don't particularly care if the guy is such an asshole that I'd not dare make small talk with him over beers.  Elitism isn't just not bad; it's in every way the correct attitude to have when it comes to picking your leader.  Oh wait... that's an elitist thing to say, isn't it?  Big fat hairy deal.  Roll over and die if you think the laws of the land need to be decided upon by someone with no greater brain-power than the average person.

So, there have been a number of  Republican debates already, all of which showcased various brands of insane stupidity...  and a few pro-stupidity.  Then Rick Perry dropped this gem.

Link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZYQ9IYeOlU

If Only I had a Nuclear Arsenal...

...  I'd nuke every last ultra-conservative district.

After seeing the sorts of things that people had to say in the recent Republican debate, it is pretty well clear that if this is what conservatives really want out of the leader of the nation, then there is no place for them on this Earth.

Mitt Romney was leading the party for quite some time, and while I have my problems with him and his magic underpants, he is, in an odd way, more centrist than the liberal-by-affiliation-only Barack Obama.  Romney is willing to be anything and take on any sort of role in order to gain and hold onto the presidency.  If the populace swings conservative, he'll play conservative...  if he needs to be liberal, he'll be liberal.  If he's in a crowd which wants gay marriage, he's in support of it.  Another day, he'll be in a crowd which is anti-abortion, and he'll talk endlessly about the sacredness of any "potential life"...  while also remembering for another day that he's technically murdering thousands of "potential lives" every time he scratches his nose.  Well, simply put, he's the epitome of the phony politician.

The Creation School of Economics

It's often easy to point out the vile and twisted evils of fundamentalism and theocracy in the Middle East.  After all, these are places where the law is decided in accordance with the ~1400-year old dictates of an illiterate pedophile warrior charlatan who fooled an entire culture into believing he had some sort of connection to the divine.  Yet for all that I can say to condemn every Islamic nation ever to be conceived, it's hard to ignore theocratic nutbars a little closer to home.

Prior to living in the generally liberal environment that is Silicon Valley, I'd worked and lived in Texas for a little over 2.5 years, about half of which was in Houston and about 1 year in Dallas.  While my brief experiences of San Antonio and Austin both showed some promise for the state as far as having the semblance of brain power within the populace, I did find that my longer time in Houston and Dallas both demonstrated that the state of Texas can be quite the hotbed of religious lunacy and uneducated idiocy.  This is the place where I had an employer who believed that octagons have five sides, and threatened to fire anybody who disagreed... too bad he couldn't fire every dictionary ever made.  This is the place where I came across an activist group who petitioned the schools to remove heliocentrism from school science education and replace it with the "Biblically correct" geocentric model.  Thankfully, it kind of fell apart when they started to try and blame 9/11 on Stephen Hawking (slight exaggeration, but not far off).

Well, the state's current serving governor, Rick Perry, does not disappoint.  He brings forth further examples of how reprehensible right-wing reactionaries would love to conceive a nation on the proposition that a separation of church and state is illegal and causes gay angel rape and baby-eating.