“Why under the *sun* do we have people like *that* in the government?”

That title is a direct quote from The Commander from back in the good old days of 2006. I was a free-wheelin’ gal in those days other than the community college classes that I knew would kick my you-know-what if I didn’t keep up with them. But I was relatively unscheduled that year and I drove up to the Yooperland on Thursday, October 5th (I know the date only from my blahg). That was the year that a certain congressman from Florida was caught sending sexually suggestive instant messages to teenage male congressional pages. We discussed that and other polly-tickal stuff that afternoon and if you click here you can get a taste of what an 86-year-old formerly republican woman thought about the polly-tickal scene back then.

About the last time I heard The Comm make an actual political comment was the Saturday morning before the c. diff infection that lead to her death last February. When you are really sick, you are oblivious to anything but your own comfort. I called her that Saturday morning and we actually had a coherent conversation and when I told her that Rick Santorum seemed to be doing well as a republican candidate and explained that he was an anti-choice Christian conservative, she expressed disgust at a level that only a nonagenarian can get away with.

She didn’t live long enough to be able to express an opinion about Todd Akin but I would’ve loved to have heard it. This morning, I opened up Twitter (which I use mainly as a news aggregator these days, since everybody is on facebook) and here was Charles Darwin running for election. That is, 4000 voters wrote Charles Darwin’s name in as a protest vote to Paul Broun, who, despite his medical school education (SCIENCE anyone?), believes that the earth was created 9,000 years ago, among other things. He ran unopposed and won. But 4,000 votes for “Charles Darwin”?

He is on the HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE! ALONG WITH TODD AKIN!!! Why under the sun DO these people get elected and WHY UNDER THE SUN DO THEY GET APPOINTED TO THE HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE??? Who checks these people’s credentials? Hmmm?

P.S. The people I have ranted about are all republicans but I’m sure that there are also plenty of democrats who do not pass the sniff test.

3 Responses to ““Why under the *sun* do we have people like *that* in the government?””

  1. Tonya Watkins Says:

    The one that slays me is Michele Bachmann on the (get this:) INTELLIGENCE Committee. (And the idiots re-elected her!)

  2. Margaret Says:

    I don’t get it either and it makes me feel like either the world has gone crazy, or I have…maybe a bit of both?

  3. DogMomster Says:

    I know a certain geologist whose brain hits the WTF??? switch when someone tries to suggest that the Earth’s age can be measured in the 1000’s of years. Last I’d heard were the bunch who thought it was 6000 years old. And you mention a sect that believes 9000 years old… that’s a 50% improvement, but still MANY orders of magnitude in error!

    Then I saw snippets where anti-science folks of the Republican slant are being put into the Science Committees in DC… sigh.