Being ignernt was good enough for my daddy

It shouldn't be a surprise that Texas Teapublicans (i.e. the entire Republican Party) prefer ignorance - they've given us Duhbya and Rick Perry, not to mention a host of dismal ignoramus dinosaurs. From their state party platform (PDF):

American Identity Patriotism and Loyalty – We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive. We favor strengthening our common American identity and loyalty instead of political correctness that nurtures alienation among racial and ethnic groups.

Only white conservatives are allowed to nurture racial and ethnic alienation.

Controversial Theories – We support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories. We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced. 

We all know their standard is not the truth but the bible and the oil industry.

Early Childhood Development – We believe that parents are best suited to train their children in their early development and oppose mandatory pre-school and Kindergarten. We urge Congress to repeal government-sponsored programs that deal with early childhood development.

That last sentence is the repeal of Head Start. They believe their faith-based constituents need more time to turn their children into credulous followers.

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

They're not interested in a populace that can think, hell no. Too much ridiculous bullshit in their platform to subject it to the scrutiny of critical thinking.

It's an extremist document, and not just on education. In 22 pages, there are possibly four things I agree with, other than a few completely mom-and-apple-pie items.

(h/t Education Week)

Rick Perry as Pontius Pilate

Not that Todd Willingham was Jesus, but he was murdered by the state of Texas after Gov. Rick Perry refused to reconsider debunked evidence and the conviction it led to.

Some of the harshest criticism in Baird's writing is directed at Perry. The governor's role in refusing to postpone Willingham's execution was closely examined by The Huffington Post during his presidential campaign.

"By 2004 there was no doubt that every single indication of arson had been debunked by the scientific community," Baird wrote. "This fact was staring Governor Perry in the face; nevertheless, he refused to grant a reprieve."

Perry has stood by decision when questioned previously about Willingham. His office didn't flinch from the latest criticism.

"Nothing the Austin court could have done would change the fact that Todd Willingham was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers for murdering his three daughters," said a statement from his spokeswoman Lucy Nashed. "He had full access to every level of the appeals process, and his conviction was reviewed and upheld by multiple levels of state and federal courts. ... The governor reviewed all of the facts of the case and agreed with the jury, and state and federal courts that Willingham was guilty."

The forms were obeyed - such as they are in Texas - so putting an innocent man to death is peachy. The Republican Party...

Conservative standards and standard-bearers

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War on Rick Perry

They don't call us satyrists for nuthin'.

Bring it on, bitches

The worst aspect of this is... Wait, how can I pick any single feature of this colon-load of pandering, resentment-filled ugliness as worst?

Perry appeals to the common sense of grievance fundamentalists have that they are persecuted when you disagree with them, when you won't let them force feed their Christianity (subspecies estupidus estupendum) to your children. This imaginary grievance is the fundies' perverse attempt to be Christ-like martyrs. From the comfort of their armchairs.

Perry whips the gays (no buggering in foxholes on his watch!), kisses some military ass, and makes the bullshit claim that children can't pray in schools. Again, keep your stupid beliefs away from my kids. It's bad enough that you've inculcated stupidity in your own offspring. If America is going to compete globally, someone here has to know something about science. You want your children to pray (for rain, maybe?), get them into the pews every Sunday instead of trying to bring the pews into the classroom.

"...Obama's war on religion..." I'm Rick Perry, and I'm a delusional fundamentalist asswipe. He said it! Between the lines...

Don't worry, Rick, in a real war on religion, you'd be fine. You'd be far too useful for showing how dangerous religion and pandering to it can be. Why is it that you and your mouth-breathing followers think that sectarian beliefs should be a matter for majority vote?

The reality of this ad is that Perry is not the anti-Mitt, so he's angling to be the anti-Newt. He - or his political consultant - think Perry's biggest opening is with Fox-viewing fundies without two ideas to rub together. It's probably canny political positioning. Even that fact that liberals like me hate this ad is all good for Perry. The adverse attention from us will help him circle the wagons with the fundies.

But that's all good for us too. Perry may title his ad "Strong," but he's a very weak national general election candidate. The longer he survives the Republican primaries, the better for us.

So...



Rick Perry. Suck. On. This.

A stimulus Perry can believe it

Click image for full Garry Trudeau/Doonesbury cartoon.

Frank Langella theory of executive authority

Rick Perry (R-Duhbya was a genious) believes - if he could only get elected President - he could unilaterally abrogate standing law. Can we go ahead and make Texas governors ineligible to be President? By Perry's hazy, ignorant idea of the Constitution, Barack Obama could make that happen with the stroke of a pen.

This moron doesn't believe in law. He believes in power, wingnut power.

If only this were hyperbole

The Republican Party has a fetish for crazy.  Hunter nails it on DailyKos:

Make no mistake here, I haven't ever forgiven you for Bush. Listening to that dimwit speak for five minutes should have convinced you what a mistake it would be to let that barely functioning manchild play with the entire free world like it was his personal Jenga game, and his first few public appearances were when you and I parted ways for-freaking-ever. But Perry, now? Rick Perry, who is the dumber version of George Bush? The less principled version? The less eloquent version? If that's who your leading pundits wanted in the race, if that's the be-all, end-all conservative savior (emphasis on the end-all, I guess), then who is it going to be after eight more years? A goddamn vase full of geraniums?

It makes you look bad. It makes you look dumb. It makes you look like, well, like a party so thoroughly detached from their mental capacities that they would actually look up to a guy like Rick Perry as being their brain trust.

I could have quoted any of a dozen other paragraphs. (But not geraniums - too gay - instead a barn full of tobacco.)

Ron Burgundy without his earpiece

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Karl Rove on an earwig to Duhbya is now even more plausible. But Rick Perry doesn't have Rove.

Turn back the clock

I do agree that the status quo is unacceptable. But if we switch to this guy, we only increase the peril we're already in as a nation, a society, a civilization, a people.

Where they keep the money

From the New York Times:

The Republican presidential contenders regard global warming as a hoax or, at best, underplay its importance. The most vocal denier is Rick Perry, the Texas governor and longtime friend of the oil industry, who insists that climate change is an unproven theory created by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”

What never seems to occur to the numbskulls of the right as they pander to their ignoramus base is that climate scientists are smart people, not just highly educated people. If these scientists were really conniving world wide for a couple hundred thou a year, wouldn't they whore out to interests with a little more money than the government? Wouldn't you, if you had a Ph.D. just lying around waiting to be monetized, think about getting paid maybe a mill instead? As long as it's going to be dirty money, why not hit up the American Petroleum Institute? Or, the coal industry could really use a friend.

This story that Republicans tell each other tries to assuage their own knowledge that they in fact are the bought and paid for assholes, not the climate scientists. It's another false equivalence. Industry's in the global warming fight strictly for the money, so the other side - the side of reality - must be in it for the money too. Yeah, that's the ticket.

There's no explanation for wingnut credulity on this except that they want to believe it so badly that they choose to ignore its and their own stupidity.

Idiocracy, the sequel

If enough idiot voters once again form a majority in 2012 and elect this weak echo of Duhbya, I'm seriously going to get to work on that exit strategy. Belize, I think, or Costa Rica. I had a little Spanish in high school decades ago.

(h/t mistermix on Balloon Juice)

Could Rick Perry do for America what he did for Texas?

Total effing boatloads of government jobs:

Over the last few years, government jobs have been awfully consequential in Texas: 47% of all government jobs added in the US between 2007 and 2010 were added in Texas.

I'm for it.

This ain't Israel in 4 B.C.

No time for fundamentalist imperryalism:

God said He would not be present at Perry’s much-talked-about Christian day of prayer on Aug. 6, calling the governor’s use of his public office to endorse a religion both “irresponsible” and a violation of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, those who claim god talks to them hear their own desires as the voice of god.

No enemies to the right

On the national scene, there are no Republican moderates. Oh, sure, Colin Powell, but how many divisions does he have?

In Texas, of course, the Republican primary for governor is a contest between a hard-line conservative and an out-and-out frothing wingnut.

There is nothing useful to be gained from negotiating with these people.

Sooner the better?

Just another pr-, uh, brick in the wall...

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.