"Thought" du jour - 12 August 2011

"The weight of the science indicates that if there's any human behaviour involved, it's a modest amount." - Tim Pawlenty

Pawlenty is speaking about climate change. Like many Americans who clearly skipped high school science, Pawlenty isn't convinced that anthropogenic climate change is real, and he appears to be genuinely sincere in his ignorance, given that he also has a soft spot for teaching intelligent design in public schools as if it were on an equal scientific footing with evolution. Alas, sincerity in the service of stupidity is not a virtue.

Sadly, Pawlenty isn't some outlier in the Republican Party on this issue. Indeed, he represents what passes for the "mainstream" within the Party these days. Rather than tell the truth to the American people, they continue to peddle what the oil industry lobbyists pay them to say - that there's nothing to worry about. I could quote scientific report after scientific report that shows Pawlenty is about as wrong as you can be on  this, but I figured I'd let one of wittiest political pundits provide some perspective.

Bill Maher, the floor is yours.

His best line?

"These people are so stupid, they make me question evolution."

None of the evidence makes any difference to Tim Pawlenty and the other Republicans, of course, a fact which should make a difference to the American people, who need honest leaders who tell them the truth, even when it's an inconvenient truth.

Paul Kimball

"Thought" du jour - 11 August 2011

“With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis and people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God's help. That's why I'm calling on Americans to pray and fast like Jesus did and as God called the Israelites to do in the Book of Joel.” - Rick Perry

Rick Perry isn't officially in the race for the Republican nomination, but the odds are that he's going to run. Even if he doesn't, he remains representative of what used to be called the "evangelical wing" of the Republican Party, but which can more resembles the "Ayatollah wing", because they're so far too the religious right as to make the old "evangelical wing" look almost quaint by comparison.

I heartily recommend "Army of God" in the most recent edition of the Texas Observer about Perry, his views, and his ties to the far right "end times" movement within American Christianity, which has been growing over the past decade or so, and which has influence in all aspects of American public life, perhaps most worryingly in the military.

I don't know about you, but this incipient American Taliban is the last group I want to be conducting foreign policy (the Crusades) or domestic policy (the Inquisition). In a worst case scenario, one is even forced to wonder if it's safe to let them  have control of the nuclear launch codes, lest they decide that perhaps the End Times need a helping hand to get going. After all, we're told to worry that religious extremists might control nuclear weapons in places like Pakistan. Perhaps we should be just as worried about them controlling nuclear weapons in the United States of America.

Paul Kimball

"Thought" du jour - 10 August 2011

"The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire." - Rick Santorum

So much for the idea of the freedom of the individual. Never forget that the modern Republican Party equates "freedom" simply with the ability to earn more money (and they don't really mean a lot of money - just enough to afford an HD television and a couple of weeks of vacation at some consumerist Nirvana every year; in other words, just enough to keep you from really questioning the inequitable nature of the system that they want to maintain for their paymasters), as opposed to... well, everything else that makes us human - and yet somehow they've managed to convince a lot of Americans that it's the Democrats who want to control their lives.

There's a word for the kind of political philosophy that the Republican Party way of "thinking" represents, and the society to which it will inevitably lead. It's called Fascism.

Paul Kimball

"Thought" du jour - 9 August 2011

''If we took away the minimum wage - if conceivably it was gone - we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.'' - Michelle Bachmann

Thus do we begin a week of choice quotes from the leading contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, just so that we can all remember who they really are, and what they really represent.

Paul Kimball