Dumbfuckery du Jour

I walked out on the political blogs today.  I'd been busy bemoaning the fact that the new science blog collective Scientopia doesn't have any geobloggers on board just yet, finding out Neil Gaiman ended up on EW's 20 Classic Opening Lines in Books, and various and sundry else.  Then I tore myself away from all that and tried to focus on the day's pollyticks.  I got through Political Animal, but felt the gears grinding.  When I got to Think Progress, I fled.  Somehow, a trip to the grocery store seemed far preferable to killing another neuron with more Con stupidity.  And I really bloody hate going to the grocery store.

Afterward, since the sun had decided to once again shine on Seattle, I tried to settle in on the porch with a book on Yellowstone's geology and the cat.  Alas, the neighbors were busy proving to the world that they had a healthy sex life, and the results of other neighbors' healthy sex lives were busy screeching on the teeter-totter, so that plan failed as well. 

Now here we are, and all I want to do is sit quietly contemplating What Do I Really Want Out of Life?  But I simultaneously want to search the woods behind my house for a large stick and then use it to smartly whack some extraordinarily stupid politicians over the head.  Which means you're getting an installment of Dumbfuckery today after all.  Don't you feel fortunate?

First, the single thing in pollyticks that made me laugh today: it turns out Sarah Palin's Palm can't save her from being a damned fool:

On "Fox News Sunday" yesterday, Chris Wallace chatted for a bit with former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R) about, among other things, tax policy. Wallace noted, for example, that taxes went up during the Clinton years and the economy did really well. For that matter, Palin demands keeping all of Bush's failed tax cuts in place, but as Wallace reminded her, she doesn't say how she'd pay for them.

She replied:

"Yeah. No. This is going to result in the largest tax increase in U.S. history. And again, it's idiotic. And my palm isn't large enough to write -- to have written all my notes down on what this tax increase -- what it will result in.

"Let me just go through a couple of things that I want people to be aware of, because, you know, the spin coming from Gibbs and the White House -- you're never going to get the truth out of their messaging.

"But Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history. It's a tax increase of $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, and it will have an effect on every single American who pays an income tax. Small businesses especially will be hit hardest."

When Wallace asked what Palin had written on her palm, she explained, "$3.8 trillion, next 10 years, so I didn't say 3.7 and then get dinged, you know, by the -- by the liberals saying I didn't know what I was talking about."

That's right.  Sarah Palin's still writing notes on her palm. She can't fucking remember what she wants to talk about unless she writes it down on her palm.  And the shit she's written down on her palm is, as you will see upon visiting the above link, completely fucking wrong anyway.  There will someday be a dictionary entry for the word "pathetic" that displays a picture of Sarah Palin and uses her as the shining example.

And yet, despite her remarkable idiocy, there is another Con with ambitions to higher office who is very nearly as stupid as she is.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the wit and wisdom of Rand Paul:

In April, two miners were killed at the Dotiki Mine in Western Kentucky after the mine’s roof collapsed. The non-union mine had been cited for 840 safety violations by federal inspectors since 2009, and the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing issued 31 orders to close sections of the mine or to shut down equipment during the same period. But when asked about the incident, Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate, Rand Paul, said “maybe sometimes accidents happen.” And as it turns out, Paul doesn’t believe that the federal government has any responsibility at all to set safety standards to protect mine workers:

“The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia…“You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”

That echoey sound you just heard, like a coconut hitting a concrete floor, was my head hitting the nearest convenient solid object.

Let's parse this a bit: what Rand Paul is really saying is, "I am too ignorant and naive to become a US Senator, and if I do, I have no intention of performing my job, but I hope you're stupid enough to vote for me anyway."

No wonder the few somewhat-sane Republicans who haven't yet run screaming into the loving arms of the Democratic Party are getting disgusted enough to start calling their fellows "crazy-cons."