Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. What’s up in your corner of Delaware?
Conservatives can be deeply weird. Bryan Fisher from the American Family Association hates bears. Seriously.
Which is why Fischer, who is the “Director of Issues Analysis” for the conservative Christian group the American Family Association, wrote a blog post today called “A hot dog on two legs – time for open season on Yellowstone grizzlies,” in which he refers to Grizzly Bears as a “curse” and says that “it’s time” for the grizzlies to go.
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He references a November 6 article in the Los Angeles Times about the high death toll of bears in the Yellowstone region this year, which the article says is the worst on record. Fischer’s point is that the piece “exudes far more compassion for live bears than dead people,” since the two people who died from grizzly attacks only warrant a fifth-paragraph mention.
“One human being is worth more than an infinite number of grizzly bears,” Fischer writes. “Another way to put it is that there is no number of live grizzlies worth one dead human being. If it’s a choice between grizzlies and humans, the grizzlies have to go. And it’s time.”
He continues: “Of course there is a simple answer: shoot these man-eaters on sight.”
Bryan Fisher proves that Poe’s Law is true. Fundamentalists are almost impossible to parody.
Poe’s Law points out that it is hard to tell parodies of fundamentalism (or, more generally, any crackpot theory) from the real thing, since they both seem equally insane. Conversely, real fundamentalism can easily be mistaken for a parody of fundamentalism.
This is pretty cool. How did you do? I won $81 while spending $1040 over 10 years.
Sigh. One of the outcomes of the new Congress is some of the new committee chairs are going to change. Meet the new House Energy committee chair, John Shimkus. He has some, uh, interesting ideas about climate science.
Juan Cole does us the unpleasant service of bringing back to life the comments of John Shimkus, R-Ill., a year and a half ago.
Shimkus starts by quoting Genesis 8, Verses 21 and 22, in which God makes Noah a promise.
Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though all inclinations of his heart are evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.
As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.
Shimkus continues: “I believe that is the infallible word of god, and that’s the way it is going to be for his creation… The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”
I’m glad that John Shimkus can sleep at night, faithful that that God’s word is “infallible, unchanging, perfect.” But for those of us who are less confident in humanity’s ability to keep from massively screwing up, the thought that the Bible will be determining government energy policy is massively ulcer-inducing.
Phew! I feel so much better now. I have no idea why I was worried.
