Why does Teresa Nielsen Hayden hate America?

She’s full of advice for terrrarists on state of matter. Now in addition to confiscating our toothpaste, the security people at the airport are going to make us pee into a chromatograph before they let us on the plane.

Let’s just end the slow, lingering buildup and cut straight to the final requirement. Before we can fly, make us all strip naked, take a diuretic and laxative and purge ourselves, and then shackle us to our seats before takeoff.

Turning gold into straw

Hold it. In the recent terrorist arrests, the British were able to do their job while supporting the rule of law, and the US pressured them to rush the arrests for political gain?

It’s amazing how this administration is so good at turning even great successes into spotlights into their own incompetence and corruption. David Neiwert’s new substitute teacher does a fine job of exploring the psyche of the Republican clown show—coasting by on dogma, authority, and a black & white view of the world seems to work well for getting elected, but man, it sucks as a way to run a country.

Minnesota’s pet wacko

What do you do with a local politician who claims that public education is her #1 issue, while accepting money from supporters of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State? That’s our Michele Bachmann, claiming to be a supporter of education while endorsed by people who say this:

I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.

Take a look at the people who favor completely gutting public school education at the Separation of School and State site, too: D. James Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, Tom Monaghan—it’s like a chorus line of the freaky religious right. And our little Michele fits right in with them.

Rapture Insanity Watch

I keep waiting for the padded ambulance to roll up and men in white coats to leap out, shoot these bozos with a trank gun, wrap them up in a straight jacket, and go howling off to the nearest sanitarium, but no…instead, they get invitations to appear on cable news and babble about the apocalypse. And it’s not just the airhead news media…

…Rosenberg is just one of several conservative media figures who have identified and expounded upon the purported signs of the Apocalypse to be found in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. During his appearance on Live From…, Rosenberg claimed that he had been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill, and the CIA to discuss the Rapture and the Middle East, and noted—several times—that the apocalyptic events described in his novels keep coming true.

What’s really frightening is that these people don’t exhibit an ounce of critical thinking, and these ridiculous attitudes are endemic in the people who run our country. I’m waiting for some smart, pragmatic, sensible guy in government or the press to stand up and truncate that famous quote: “You have done enough. Have you no sense?”

(via Atrios)