Politics Tuesday – Silliness abounds

Never Trust a Monkey – Brak

Last week I was astonished at the percentage of people who still think it should be illegal to be gay. This week I’m perplexed at public opinion on evolution. Via Political Wire, a Gallup survey says that only 28% of people believe in evolution.

28%!!!!!

To be fair, the other 72% don’t all think evolution is wrong – a lot of folks want to find a middle ground (God created evolution), but here’s their conclusion:

  • 24% of Americans believe that both the theory of evolution and the theory of creationism are probably or definitely true
  • 41% believe that creationism is true, and that evolution is false
  • 28% believe that evolution is true, but that creationism is false
  • 3% either believe that both are false or have no opinion about at least one of the theories

That still leaves almost 150 million people who think the earth is about 10,000 years old. Come on America.

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Fighting in a Sack – The Shins

More ridiculousness.

I saw a number of headlines over the past week about interest in creating a “gay bomb” designed to make enemy troops become overwhelmingly attracted to each other, thus undermining their fighting ability, but I wrote them off as some elaborate joke. Perhaps some sly comment on the absurdity of continuing to hang onto Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (kudos to the Democrats for making a strong statement that people should be free to serve regardless of sexual orientation, by the way). But it turns out to be completely serious.

“The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another,” Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

It’s one of those things that’s both depressing and intensely funny at the same time. I suppose we can take comfort from the fact that the idea got nixed in the planning stages.

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Not much comment about the news that the Supreme Court is going to finally hear a case on the ridiculous sentencing disparity for possession of crack and cocaine except to “it’s about damn time” and lets hope Kennedy manages to stumble into the right decision this time.

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A solid quote from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “I’ve learned one thing in listening to all the debates and reading about all these people running for office, and the one fact I’ve learned, I can’t get out of my mind, is that Rudy Giuliani has been married more times than Mitt Romney’s been hunting.”

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Finally, Scooter Libby gets 30 months. My prediction is that Bush pardons him and eviscerates whatever remaining legitimacy he had left.

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