1. Freshman Texas Rep. Molly White (R-Tx). Apparently no fan of the U.S. Constitution, White left some heart-felt instructions to her staff on how to deal with Muslims visiting her Austin office for Texas Muslim Capitol Day:
"I did leave an Israeli flag on the reception desk in my office with instructions to staff to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws," she posted on Facebook. "We will see how long they stay in my office."
She’ll fit right in with today’s GOP. As with the rest of the Islam haters that inhabit the party, someone should teach her about the meaning of democracy.
2. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina). Despite abundant scientific evidence that the lack of hand washing by food service employees accounts for the vast majority of food contamination, a fact that has led to regulations requiring food service employees to wash their hands, Tillis remains unconvinced such a regulation is necessary. In a Q&A session at the Bipartisan Policy Center, he celebrated his anti-regulation bias:
“I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,’” he said, “as long as they indicate through proper disclosure, through advertising, through employment literature, or whatever else.” He went on to say: “That’s the sort of mentality that we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country,” he added. “We’re one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet.”
In Tillis’ view, restaurants should be able to opt-out of the nettlesome hand-washing regulation and instead let the free market take care of business after word spreads of unsanitary conditions. Here we have a classic expression of the expansive right-wing concept of freedom and belief in the corrective quality of the free market. Making sure businesses are free to operate under any conditions they'd like is more important than public health and safety. And so it goes.
3. Christian Minister June Griffin, a “longtime crusader for Christian values, used the occasion of giving an impassioned opening prayer for the Tennessee Senate this month calling for an end to any effort to expand Medicaid in Tennessee. I quote extensively from the prayer:
“I pray for the people of Tennessee who have been so downtrodden by the wicked courts from on high that they have been subject to tyrannical judiciary. And I pray that you would save Tennessee from the edicts of Washington DC that would go against the plain wishes of the people of Tennessee, particularly pertaining to the 9th and 10th Amendment. I pray that you would sanctify this state, that it would be holy and would be a leader among the other states. . . . . Oh lord save Tennessee for Jesus sake, and I pray that your will would be done that you would be our coverage, that we would not be forced into these edicts from Washington DC or any other quarter, but let the people know that our coverage is the same as with Moses and the children of Israel when they went through the wilderness with only the divine providence of almighty God. . . . So I pray that everywhere there are meetings, and there [is] considerations and deliberations, that you would give these men and women who have been elected, give them the backbone and the remembrance of the Tennessee Declaration of Rights, Article 1, Section 2 — we are ordered to resist arbitrary power.”
Praying for people to have no healthcare? It’s God’s will.
4. Senator Rand Paul (R- KY). The Senator and presidential aspirant had this to say about mandatory vaccinations for school-age children:
“I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines."
It’s well known that “mandatory” is not in Paul’s libertarian dictionary. Either is his contempt for scientific truth. The absurd falsehood of his claim was exposed in a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing when Elizabeth Warren asked the director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC if vaccinations could cause “profound mental disorders”, autism, allergies and auto-immune disorders, toxicity, and if kids could develop immunity to targeted diseases by eating nutritious foods or being active, among the various ridiculous claims made by opponents of mandatory vaccinations. The director answered with a loud NO to each claim. The anti-science dogma of Paul and other right-wingers would be laughable if it were not so dangerous to human health and safety. This time it will be our children who will suffer.
5. Montana State Representative, David Moore (R-Missoula). Moore doesn’t like the “indecent” way some people dress in public, so he introduced House Bill 365, which seeks to expand the indecent exposure law already on the books to include any nipple exposure, including men’s, and any garment that “gives the appearance or simulates” a person’s buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple.”
He said tight-fitting beige clothing could be considered indecent exposure under his proposal. He also thinks yoga pants should be illegal.
“Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway,” Moore said after his committee hearing.
6. Jason Rapert (Arkansas State Senator). Bible-pumping ALEC member Rapert offered this dilly about how to solve our ISIS problem:
“With ISIS spreading all over the Middle East and Africa and Islamic extremists carrying out violence in Europe, the United Kingdom and even the United States, I wonder why the civilized world just sits by when we have weapons that could wipe out the barbarians where they are concentrated? I believe it is time to annihilate the strongholds and pursue the rest till we have them all captured or killed. A strategically placed nuclear weapon should save the lives of our soldiers and quickly turn things around. It is time for the insanity to be stopped. I imagine a nicely placed intercontinental nuclear weapon would shut them up for awhile. I cannot understand why our president won’t stand up—wait, I forgot that he doesn’t acknowledge the Islamic terrorists.”
The gross ignorance displayed in the above statement is beyond belief.
7. Mississippi State Rep. Gene Alday. Firmly establishing his racist bona fides, in reference to African-Americans in his hometown of Walls, Alday told a newspaper reporter he comes
"from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks.' They don't work." He also said that when he went to the emergency room one time, "I liked to died. I laid in there for hours because they (blacks) were in there being treated for gunshots."
No response necessary.
8. Former NY City Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. At a 21 Club dinner that included GOP Koch acolyte and presidential hopeful Scott Walker, Guliani ramped up right-wing absurdity in criticizing President Obama. He declared:
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
Not only was he vicious, but is usual incoherent, as he went on to say:
“What country has left so many young men and women dead abroad to save other countries without taking land? This is not the colonial empire that somehow he has in his hand. I’ve never felt that from him. I felt that from [George] W [Bush]. I felt that from [Bill] Clinton. I felt that from every American president, including ones I disagreed with, including [Jimmy] Carter. I don’t feel that from President Obama.”
Say what? We were supposed to "take land" in Iraq? Are we supposed to "carry around a small piece of land," like Woody Allen's father in Love and Death? Or, maybe he’s just being honest for a change in identifying American imperial goals.
9. Sarah Palin. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), Palin responded to an Obama spokesperson who said the U.S. couldn’t kill its way to victory in the Mideast.
"Oh, the naive Obama State Department. They say we can't kill our way out of war. Really? Tell that to the Nazis. Oh wait, you can't. They're dead. We killed 'em."
Brilliant!
And the Winner is:
I would have selected Rudy Giuliani, a long overdue candidate, but his comment about taking land rings too true to neocon thinking it lessens the overall absurdity of his comment. So this month’s winner is: Arkansas State Senator Jason Rapert. Dropping a nuclear weapon on “the barbarians where they are concentrated,” yea, that will protect our soldiers. What an idiot!
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