Five Before Chaos

Interesting and unsurprising poll out of Texas. Apparently, there’s a whole lotta stupid down there:

Did humans live at the same time as the dinosaurs? Three in ten Texas voters agree with that statement; 41 percent disagree, and 30 percent don’t know.38 percent said human beings developed over millions of years with God guiding the process and another 12 percent said that development happened without God having any part of the process. Another 38 percent agreed with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago.

..and more of the typical religiously driven ignorance. What’s really scary is how much influence Texas has over the nation’s textbooks, but that’s another story.

Now,don’t take me pointing this out as some sort of defense of Democrats, but in this poll, the acceptance of stupid ideas are much more prevalent by Republicans:

Has life on earth always existed in its present form? Republicans are more likely to agree (29 percent) than Democrats (16 percent). They’re less likely to believe that life evolved over time with no guidance from God (8 percent to 24 percent). Democrats are slightly less inclined to believe in evolution with a “guiding hand from God” (50 percent to 55 percent).

Republicans are less likely to believe that humans developed from earlier species of animals; 26 percent agree, while 60 percent disagree. Among Democrats in the survey, 46 percent agree that humans evolved from earlier species; 42 percent disagree. Perry’s voters were most hostile to this premise — 67 percent disagree.

Everytime I think we’re moving towards a more sane, rational society (admiteddly, almost never), polls like this come out and completely put that notion to rest.

UPDATE- this nails it:

… of America is a Stupid, Stupid Country (no, it’s nothing about the teabagging convention), exhibit #2857629 by Jacob Weisberg at Slate, Down With the People:

At the root of this kind of self-contradiction is our historical, nationally characterological ambivalence about government. We want Washington and the states to fix all of our problems now. At the same time, we want government to shrink, spend less, and reduce our taxes. We dislike government in the abstract: According to CNN, 67 percent of people favor balancing the budget even when the country is in a recession or a war, which is madness. But we love government in the particular: Even larger majorities oppose the kind of spending cuts that would reduce projected deficits, let alone eliminate them. Nearly half the public wants to cancel the Obama stimulus, and a strong majority doesn’t want another round of it. But 80-plus percent of people want to extend unemployment benefits and to spend more money on roads and bridges. There’s another term for that stuff: more stimulus spending.

The usual way to describe such inconsistent demands from voters is to say that the public is an angry, populist, tea-partying mood. But a lot more people are watching American Idol than are watching Glenn Beck, and our collective illogic is mostly negligent rather than militant. The more compelling explanation is that the American public lives in Candyland, where government can tackle the big problems and get out of the way at the same time.

Indeed.

Please, please, please, someone keep this madman away from Africa.

As you’re probably well aware of by now,  AIDS in Africa is one of epidemic proportions -

About 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with H.I.V., according to Unaids. In 2007, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were there, as were two-thirds of all people living with H.I.V.

Yet Pope Benedict continues with the Catholic church’s “when monkeys fly out of my ass” strategy in terms of how to reduce the spread of AIDS:

Benedict also asserted that the Roman Catholic Church was in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope said aboard his plane to Cameroon. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

The pope said that a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.

He then went on to retract the apology to Galileo, saying he was indeed wrong in forgiving him, and the Catholic Church is once again supporting the heliocentric model of the universe. I mean, this man is an idiot, and a very dangerous one, and equally dangerous are the people that take what this idiot says seriously and as truth (I know several people like that, so I have some experience with it). Of course, he doesn’t explain how using a mechanism that blocks the virus is somehow making the problem worse, but when you have so many people who listen to what you say uncritically, no matter how ridiculous, why waste time explaining yourself when you don’t need to?

There is something else to be taken from this, that, aside from ignoring the reality that people will always have sex (in all ways, shapes, and forms), is that he’s pushing this stuff in a region of the world that has some of the worst poverty and illiteracy on the planet. If he pulled this crap here in the U.S. or in Europe, he’d get laughed at.

I’m still trying to process this whole “America loves Sarah Palin” nonsense (of course, not having yet figured out if it’s true or just another fictional media narrative). Corrupt as hell, batshit insane with the Godidiocy, secretive, serial liar, not intellectualy curious, the list goes on and on, it’s like Bush with two X chromosomes.

Now, it’s interesting when you see this movement towards Palin, it’s as though people don’t care about all the dirt. They just buy into the whole “hockey mom” nonsense and the fact that she’s able to read a teleprompter. As many have said, it’s about the issues, and the GOP is once agian determined to talk about anything but. Problem is, the “character” they want us to talk about is a completely fictional one. We have an unhinged PTSD old fart and his God-crazy sleazebag running mate, and they’re painted as paragons of virtue and honor. And many Americans, in their soundbite-celeb culture are really too stupid to figure it out. Or just don’t care. Voting is still, unfortunately, an emotional, not intellectual, exercise for most Americans.

Obama, like the last few Dems, still doesn’t seem to have caught on to the fact that just pointing out McCain/Palin’s lies just won’t cut the mustard. There’s just a huge faction of braindead idiots that, when they hear something enough, they believe it to be true. Rememeber that whole Saddam/9-11 crap years after the fact? I don’t know what the change in tactic has to be, but it needs to be quick, effective, and ruthless. You can piss and whine about Dem capitulation, similarities in some positions, etc, but the fact of the matter is that many Americans simply couldn’t give two shits about “issues”.  Given that fact, how do we proceed? What does one do when “talking about the issues” doesn’t matter?

So, sticking with that theme here today, a tiny linkdump full of lamentations about the crazy animal that may fuck it all up for us yet again.. the dumb American voter…

Rick Shenkman, author of “Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter”, seems to be getting a lot of ink lately. He had a WaPo piece this last weekend, “5 Myths About those Civic-minded, Deeply Informed Voters” Although they seem to parade anti-intellectualism as a virtue,  cons aren’t the only dumb ones. That much should be obvious.

More Shenkman at MoJo, with Citizen Stupid:

The optimists point to surveys indicating that about half the country can describe some differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties. But if they do not know the difference between liberals and conservatives, as surveys indicate, how can they possibly say in any meaningful way how the parties differ? And if they do not know this, what else do they not know?

Plenty, it turns out. Even though they are awash in news, Americans generally do not seem to absorb what it is that they are reading and hearing and watching. Americans cannot even name the leaders of their own government. Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Fewer than half of Americans could tell you her name during the length of her entire tenure. William Rehnquist was chief justice of the Supreme Court. Just 40% of Americans ever knew his name (and only 30% could tell you that he was a conservative). Going into the First Gulf War, just 15% could identify Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense. In 2007, in the fifth year of the Iraq War, only 21% could name the secretary of defense, Robert Gates. Most Americans cannot name their own member of Congress or their senators.

Finally, David Knowles points out to a new book that reminds us that American voters are as dumb as ever.

Meh. Wake me when it’s over.