Stubborn Stupidity Reigns in Texas

The Texas legislature is considering a bill that make abortion impossible to obtain by hitting abortion providers with various bogus restrictions. Anti-abortion fanatics tend to be ignorant, stubborn jerkasses preoccupied with interfering in other people's lives. They tend to be bigots and religious creeps, the kind of vermin who comprise the "Tea Party." The Late Molly Ivins referred to Texas politics as "the laboratory of bad government." Today, Texas politics has bedome more like a toxic wate dump. Texans have often shown a stubborn adherence to bad ideas; slavery, racial segregation, and religious fundamentalism, which is retreating in the rest of the country. The average Texan is a moron who will keep shoveling the same pile of manure because he thinks there' a pony in there.

Of course many other ex-confederate states are also trying to pass abortion restrictions. Is there a connection between the two? It would be interesting to find out.

Another Reason to Hate Ayn Rand

The impact that Ayn Rand and her pseudo-philosophy of "Objectivism" have had on Right-wing thought is probably not as great as Milton Friedman or Fredrick von Hayek but several top GOPers have taken to quoting her notions. Rand, who thought that selfishness was a virtue and that wealthy capitalists were superior beings, was basically a crackpot with a large vocabulary. It now turns out that she was admirer of a notorious murdere named William Edward Hickman. Hickman kidnapped a girl 1927, then killed and dismembered her. When caught he tried to blame someone else. Hickman was convicted and executed. It turns out that Rand admired Hickman for his ruthlessness. Which goes to show how twisted her thinking was.

The PRISM problem

The PRISM program actually started in 2007 under the Bush administration. It enjoyed the support of many Repubs who now claim to be "outraged" by the surveillance. The program has been defended by its proponents as having stopped many terroritst attacks. President Obama says "You cannot have 100% security and 100% privacy and 0% inconvenience" which may be true on the surface. But the program demands that we sacrifice too much privacy for a questionnable policy. Such mass based monitoring did nothing to prevent the terrorist attack committed by the Tsarnaev brothers, for instance. In fact such free lance terrorism might become the principal threat in the future.

In the case of the Tsaranevs, it was already known that they could be terrorists, but there was a lack of thoroughness. There has been an American tendency to rely on technology alone. That has to be reconsidered.

Get Over Yourselves Already!

The right wing follies continue, with right wing groups complaining about how they were "abused" by the IRS. The thing is that all they have "suffered" are delays in applications for tax exempt status. I think these crybabies would also feel "vicitmizec" by long lines at the Post Office. These rightists have actually gotten what they wanted; an underfunded government that doesn't work very well. So shut the hell up already!