Why Support Crazy?

So I've been thinking and writing about why not to vote Republican, and at the top of my list today is that voting Republican seems to be voting for crazy. Here are some examples:

• Top of the list--the birther nonsense. Really. The Iowa GOP platform "calls for presidential candidates to 'show proof of being a ‘natural born citizen’ of the United States'" because there are many really unbelievably idiotic people who think Barack Obama is not a 'natural born' citizen. [h/t, "Political Animal.] There is ol' Sheriff Joe Arpaio sending his posse to Hawaii to take a gander at the President's official birth certificate. (But since one of the "posse" members is writing a birther conspiracy book with birther conspiracist Jerome Corsi, you can bet he won't believe what he sees. Otherwise, he won't be able to sell that book, huh?) And then there's Arizona's secretary of state blustering about keeping President Obama off Arizona's ballot in November unless Hawaiian officials send him some more proof of Obama's citizenship. Um....Hawaiian officials have already verified Barack Obama's birth certificate, idiot. Of course, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett is also a Republican and Mitt Romney's Arizona co-chair, so he has a vested interest in the birther histrionics.
• Then there's the rejection of science, which I had meant to address in a stand-along post, but I just don't have the energy to write about how stupid I think Republicans are for their know-nothingness. Recent example? The House Republican vote to eliminate the American Community Survey, a survey that "has been around in some form since 1850, either as a longer version of or a richer supplement to the basic decennial census" and that serves as the "country’s primary check for determining how well the government is doing — and in fact what the government will be doing." According to The New York Times, "[i]t is the largest (and only) data set of its kind and is used across the federal government in formulas that determine how much funding states and communities get for things like education and public health." The article describes other important uses of this survey, too. And here are the stupid comments by one Republican house member, Daniel Webster, "a first-term Republican congressman from Florida who sponsored the relevant legislation":

  “This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators..... “We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective,” he continued, “especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”

  Let's parse crazy: programs that intrude on peoples' lives--Really. Does anyone remember acid rain? Love Canal? lead poisoning? mercury poisoning? If you don't, look up those phrases in Wikipedia. Yes, the EPA affects people's lives, idiot man. Oh, and bank regulators? Have we so easily forgotten the last financial crisis which exploded during the Bush administration and the aftereffects with which we are still coping? 
  not a scientific survey, but a random survey--Really. A random survey IS a scientific survey. Who is voting for people like this?
  
  
  And don't get me started on the whole climate change denial of the Republican party. That craziness alone deserves a separate blog post. I'm just not sure I've got the patience to go there.
  
  
  These are not people I want leading my country in tough times. But evidently a lot of people think crazy is just hunky-dory.
  
  

  links

  "President Obama's Long Form Birth Certificate", at www.whitehouse.gov

  
  

  "Zombie Birtherism: The Conspiracy that doesn't Know It's Dead," Eric Lach, TPMMuckraker

  
  

  "Hawaii verifies Obama's Birth For Arizona Secretary of State"

  
  

  Left Action's Mitt Romney is a Unicorn petition
  
  "Time to Wean the Birthers"

Legislators must have better pay to resist temptation, but teachers who are "called" will work for anything

I've pretty much given up on keeping tabs on stupid comments in this election cycle, but as a teacher from a family of teachers, I just had to record this claim from Alabama State Senator (Republican) Shadrack McGill:

State Sen. Shadrack McGill defended a pay raise his predecessors in the Legislature passed, but said doubling teacher pay could lead to less-qualified educators....[snip]

McGill, R-Woodville, said a 62 percent pay raise in 2007 - passed first by a controversial voice vote and later in an override of a veto by then-Gov. Bob Riley - better rewards lawmakers and makes them less susceptible to being swayed by lobbyists....[snip]

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.

"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education's going to go up.' That's never proven to happen, guys.

"It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.

"To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK?

"And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity."

David Clemons, "McGill: Consequences to Raising Teacher Pay," Times-Journal, 1 Feb. 2012

So--legislators must have better pay in order to resist the temptation of bribery, but teachers are going to teach even if they are paid little? Who elected this man to office?