How Old is the Earth? 2016 GOP Candidates Refuse to Say

Image from source, Wonkette

Pandering, thy name is Republican. Well, either pandering or ignorance, I suppose some of it could be ignorance. Or blind faith (which is--I'm sorry--not a virtue). If you've got another reason why a candidate for the highest elected office in the country (and leader of the free world) would refuse to say how old the earth is, I'm open to it. I've known the answer was 4.5 billion years since freshman earth science. But these candidates have to pander to their "base," which believes strongly that the earth is 6,000-ish years old. Which is preposterous on its face.

The recipe for beer is older than that. How these people explain thing like fossil fuels, or--you know--granite forming in such a short time would be interesting. Or mind-numbing.

[Excerpt]

How Old Is The Earth? Golly Gee, Republicans Running For President *Just Don’t Know*!

. . .To understand any of these issues requires some basic familiarity with the established science behind them. Only raging morons would put someone unfamiliar with the most rudimentary tenets of an issue in charge of making decisions about that issue. (What? Really? The guy with the snowball is chair of the Environment Committee?) Only the majority party in both houses of congress would put someone unfamiliar with the most rudimentary tenets of an issue in charge of making decisions about that issue. But I repeat myself. . .

Read more at: Wonkette

Ted Cruz to Announce 2016 Presidential Run

Great. I find him to be one of the most irritating and obnoxious of any other potential candidate outside of maybe Donald Trump or Sarah Palin. He's potentially worse, since they're such obvious showboaters, and transparent bags of hot air. Ted Cruz is a panderer, and a charlatan. But he really knows his audience, and may be able to whip enough of them into a frenzy to be a problem. He carries the dubious gravitas of actually holding elected office, which Trump never has, and Palin never will again.

I find it extremely amusing that Cruz carries almost exactly the same circumstances of his parentage as President Obama does, in that one of his parents was foreign. In fact, Cruz has the added complication that he actually was born outside the country (while Obama's birth is only alleged to have been born elsewhere by certifiable crackpots). It is exponentially more amusing that the very same people who found Obama's parentage to be a Constitutional crisis, will almost certainly have no problem with Cruz. Unless their prejudices extend beyond "that black guy," to "that Cuban guy."

Rick Perry's Big Idea: A Moratorium on ALL Regulations

Why oh why couldn't it be a corn dog?
Image from source, ThinkProgress

Brilliant! Stop government regulation of everything! Does our national politics really need to be this stupid? Really?

[Excerpt]

Perry Reveals Plan For Total U.S. Anarchy: ‘Put A Moratorium On All Regulations’ 
 
Today, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) issued the first policy position of his presidential campaign by asking the White House to issue a “moratorium on regulations across this country”. . .

Under such a moratorium, the Food and Drug Administration would stop approving new drugs and preventing human experimentation. . .

Read more at: ThinkProgress

UPDATED TO ADD: Oh. Dear. GOD. 

I was only joking before! Image from Queerty

Did John McCain Make Up "Cross in the Dirt" Story?

Image from source, Raw Story

There's something a bit disquieting in the focus on religion in the current Presidential campaign. I don't see anything wrong with a candidate being religious, but I'm uncomfortable about what was essentially a contest to see who was more religious, John McCain or Barack Obama. That's pretty much what happened this weekend, at Saddleback Church with Rev. Rick Warren. More on that later.

There is another religion story, one that seemed like little short of pandering to the religious, by John McCain. In recounting a Christmas story during his captivity in Viet Nam, McCain told what is to some a heartwarming story about religious solidarity with one of his captors. Strangely though, the story is eerily familiar to a story told by a Russian novelist. Interesting. . .

[Excerpt]

Did McCain ad lift 'cross in the dirt' story from Russian novelist?

"It just sounded so fake and so contrived, so I did a little research about it," said DailyKos contributor rickrocket. The research revealed a similar story by recently departed novelist and McCain favorite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, recounting his experience in a Soviet gulag in The Gulag Archipelago, released in the United States in 1973. . .

Read more at: Raw Story