Power Failure, A Nation Gone Medieval

This blog was off the grid for some 14 hours between late Tuesday evening and Thursday as a result of violent thunderstorms that rolled through Illinois cutting power for 280,000 utility company customers. It was a major disruption, but nothing compared to the depredations suffered by red state populations — because that’s just the way violent weather patterns roll in the U.S. — as a result of monster storms, tornados, flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires caused by climate change.

And yet those people, the Teabaggers, who insist as an article of faith that global warming does not exist, will continue to vote anti-science politicians into office and seek answers to scientific questions about the true nature of our planet in a book of fairy tales called the Bible. They build creationist theme parks glorifying anti-science with taxpayer dollars and construct scale models of Noah’s Ark — which may yet come in handy when sea levels rise to engulf coastal communities and cities — puzzling over where the dinosaurs were placed. It always comes down to a vision or a voice or a dream: When this dude's name is an anagram for you-know-who, are delusions of grandeur that far behind? It's downright scary, though, when politicians running for president stake their claim to reality on a vision or a voice in their head.

Here’s Chris Matthews being sane, for one segment of his schizoid show, when he stands against the worst of his colleagues in the Idiot Punditocracy:

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer speculated whether Gore would primary challenge President Obama. How stupid is that? If anything, Al Gore has not only refocused our attention on the critically important issue of climate change, but has reminded us that there is a progressive alternative to corporate-controlled media represented by CNN and MSNBC. And that is Gore’s CURRENT TV, now home to Keith Olbermann and Countdown. As Keith says in his signoff, “thank you for helping us preserve freedom of news.”

Here, in Worst Persons, the reborn segment of the show that was considered too (inconvenient? Edgy? Inflammatory?) whatever … intolerable for the MSNBC suits, Keith skewers Rick Santorum (whom idiot pundit Chuckie Todd calls a “social conservative”) for insane views that are widely held in the Republican/Tea Party.

Por otro ejemplo, John McCain typifies how totally insane the Republican/Tea Party has become. Gramps is a disgraceful caricature of his former self, back when he believed in science and actually proposed carbon tax legislation. But that was before he saw the light. The Gramps McCain of today panders shamelessly to the ignorant rabble, blaming illegal immigrants for starting the wildfires in Arizona, then doubling down when every state authority denied this was the case. In fact, wildfires are just another destructive by-product of climate change coming, as they do, on the heels of extreme periods of drought that wreak havoc with crop cycles and turn the arid land into a huge tinderbox.

The cycle of anti-science/history/civics ignorance is great for end-of-times Bible thumpers and Glenn Beck et al, who has made human-caused destruction of the planet a hugely profitable enterprise for himself. According to Beck, it’s all part of God’s plan, so the more chaos the merrier. Just keep sending him and your favorite preachers your Social Security checks to help them better insulate themselves from the consequences of what they are actively promoting when the shit hits the fan.

Never fear, Teabaggers. They have a plan for you, too. Once Beck and Limbaugh et al get their tax cut bonus distributions and your personal contributions, as Wall Street bankers hunger lustily over what’s left of the Social Security trust fund, you’ll get your very own ax cut — a trickle-down voucher to fatten the pockets of the health insurance companies and reward those that find ways to give you the least health coverage for the most poached Medicare paycheck contributions. (It's our money set aside to fund our health care and Social Security retirement; They are not entitlements. So why does the Idiot Punditocracy including that *%$@ Luke Russert insist on calling them "entitlement benefits"?!)

So much for your private health system at work over that evil socialist system — Medicare — one that has given seniors full, quality health care and a dignified life in retirement at much lower cost than the for-profit market ever could by any measure or metric.

Who would be insane enough to want something like that socialist Medicare, right?