As usual, Neil DeGrasse Tyson puts it far more eloquently than I could in a momentary burst. I hold forth that the Tea Party is not only a pack of traitors, but they are short-sighted, worthless for the future of any country, much less ours.
Tyson sums it up very well.
…that two of the three remaining GOP presidential hopefuls are Dominionists.
As in Christian Dominion believers. Now just in case you don’t know what this is, allow me a moment to give you a little background.
The Christian Dominion movement thoroughly believes that no government should ever be run by a non-Christian, and that there is no room for non-Christians in the country. Got that? If you’re a Jew, an Atheist, a Muslim, a Wiccan, whatever, according to the Dominionists, you don’t belong. Gays and Lesbians, transgenders? You’re an abomination to them. Take a wild guess what that means.
Oh, and Catholics? You’re gone, too, because you’re not Real Christians, remember?
What did I mean by “gone”? I meant gone. As in booted out of the country at best, exterminated at worst. Think I exaggerate? Think again. These are people who believe that faith, not works, determines entry into heaven. And as batshit-crazy as “entry into heaven” might sound to you, to these people it is bigger than life and death to them. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the power of crazy here.
Inter-racial marriage? Guess what, Jesus didn’t like that so much. Leave it to yourself to figure out whether you’re in an inter-racial marriage, because the definition of it is probably going to be subject to whatever whim of the day your preacher feels is right.
Adulterers, or women who aren’t virgins on your wedding day? Stone you to death at the door of your father’s house. No shit.
Because these people believe that the laws of the Old Testament still apply. Not the ceremonial ones, but the moral ones. And according to them Jesus isn’t coming back until a much greater percentage of the world is Christian. There’s only one way that tide is going to turn, folks, and it isn’t Christianity suddenly becoming a smart choice to a lot more people.
Now let’s face it – these dumb asses have a long way to go before they’ll be able to tear down the laws we already have in place in the United States that are designed to protect us from dipshit religions like theirs. However, for eight years conservatives ignored G.W. Bush breaking dozens of laws that violated the Church-State boundary, sent thousands of our soldiers off to die needlessly, killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims (which, apparently to the die-hard Christians, don’t count – doubly don’t count because they were brown and far away), robbed our treasury to hand out to their bestest buddies, and basically fucked everyone for what appears to be decades.
But here’s the kicker – as big a dumbass as Bush was, he wasn’t a literally suicidal dumbass. He was pretty self-involved, and as a sociopath, self-interest came first.
Christian Dominionists look forward to the end of the world. They want to die and go meet Jesus. Do you really understand that? You don’t have to agree with it, you just have to understand that this is their world-view.
Now, the big question: do you ever, in your worst hate-filled rage-against-the-world days, ever want someone who is both that dumb and that batshit insane to have launch codes to the second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world?
Allow me to give you a little clip of Sam Harris, who can sum this up for you:
Article can be found here.
It was particularly interesting to me to see that a few other people have begun to see the similarities between the tactics of climate-change deniers and the creationist evolution-deniers. Their tactics are pretty simple: can’t win on facts, so switch to public relations and legal action.
That is generally the time to recognize which side has lost – when one goes trumpeting about, screaming their heads off on Fox News…which, coincidentally, puts them in the camp focused on lying to the public for their own gain…hmm…could be a connection there? Hmm?
Point of note: when you see someone trying to drum up a story along the lines of “it’s a conspiracy so scientists will rake in riches!” Think again. Few scientists enrich themselves off research. They make a reasonable living, that’s about it. Some make really cool discoveries and then go start companies that produce products based on those discoveries. But the big clue: scientists get paid regardless of the outcomes of their research. And often, if they stumble onto something that overturns a majority-held opinion, there’s a Nobel prize with a substantial cash award waiting for them.
And I guaran-freaking-tee you that anyone who overturned anthropomorphic climate change, or evolution, would have a few of those lined up on their mantle. If there was a “there” there, you’d see papers in the thousands churning out.
But…there aren’t. Surprisingly enough, because there’s no there there.
Just in case anyone forgot what that means, here’s a snapshot from Superman – ca. 1952:
Pun fully intended – a while back it was theorized that the Earth’s magnetic field might serve as a trap for antiprotons, which would be created either in the sun and expelled on the solar wind, or created by cosmic rays banging away at atmospheric atoms.
Well, theory no more, observers have seen traces of the annihilation of those particles! (Warning – hard science on the other end of that link, so if you’re not big on physics, get a kleenex, that one might make your nose bleed.) Seems we have a fairly sizable collection several hundred kilometers up, hanging around, just waiting for us to build the Enterprise ).
National Geographic has really cool tool you can use to “create your own solar system” – it’s a lot harder than it looks!
You start with a star, and add planets (hint: the little tag attached to your planet gives it a starting direction towards the tag, and a relative velocity proportional to the distance the tag is from the planet – think of it like a rubber ‘leash’). Press “play” and see how long it lasts.
Unfortunately, there’s a catch: occasional planet-sized wanderers sail in from outside of view (much like comets and rogue asteroids do in our own solar system) and crash into your planets, destroying the smaller ones if they hit them. As well, planets that pass too close to one another relative to their sizes can either collide or swing one or the other out of the system.
Very cool – give it a try! None of my little planets live past about 40,000 years, but I’ve got a lone giant still cruising in a stable orbit after almost 200,000 …still waiting to see if something kills it ).
The Abstruse Goose does a really nice job of bringing perspective to ancestors – two thumbs up from me!
Sorry about the width, it’s a little large for my format.
…why Teabaggers in general should just be prohibited from participating in any form of government:
They are dishonest fools.
Fools – because they buy into the whole creationism line of bullshit. As if it wasn’t among the stupidest forms of theology around (which is kinda like saying “the most shitty-smelling pig in the sty”), it doesn’t belong in public schools.
Dishonest – because after getting elected on grounds of “fiscal conservatism” they go off and destroy the country’s economy, while simultaneously trying to get government money – our money – spent on their own personal religion. Hey, teabaggers: how’s it feel to be a lying sack of bullshit? Constitutionalists? Huh? Remember that old First Amendment thing?
This is just one instance of an ongoing theme with the teabaggers – one that continues to get repeated, but rarely discussed in the media. They claim a shroud of virtue, but underneath it’s the same unwashed hypocrisy and criminality that went on before under the name “Republican.” The ‘Tea Party’ is the worst of everything we called Republican, trying to frame itself as a legitimate political party.
No. Not going to happen. The Tea Party deserves no legitimacy, and to claim it does is to willfully ignore that at its heart, it is a corrupt, criminal, terrorist-sponsoring organization.
I mean, we knew they were traitors from the get-go, seeing as their goal is to destroy the United States government. We knew they were dumb as a bag of hammers from the first signs we saw at their rallies. We knew they were dangerous, walking around with loaded weapons during those same rallies. We know now that they are murderers, given that they’ve attempted numerous terrorist attacks since 2008, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress.
So, someone tell me this – why aren’t we arresting the Tea Party members en masse, freezing their funds, and shutting down this terrorist organization?
The following is strictly geek humor, but holy crap, it’s great geek humor.
Nosh: 404 from Firespotter Labs on Vimeo.
…but still worth watching. Ed Schultz points out the rapidly growing tear in our middle-class fabric:
