The first time Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said that the GOP needed to “stop being the stupid party” — in an interview with Politico last fall, a few days after the presidential election — I got an e-mail from Zack Kopplin.
I had just written that Jindal was an intriguing potential face of the GOP: young, smart, Indian-American, with Southern roots and a background in health care wonkery. Kopplin, a 19-year-old college student from Baton Rouge, wanted to remind me that Jindal had signed the Louisiana Science Education Act, the Orwellian-named law that permits creationism to be taught in Louisiana public schools.
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I wish people would be as offended by left wing indoctrination in the public schools as they are on topics like intelligent design. There are so many left wing theories that are taught as fact, that parents have to correct many of the dogmas that are ingrained. Global Warming, is the one that comes to min the most. Some schools have even shown the facutally challenged Al Gore movie, and treated it as scholarly. Perhaps the schools ought to be more careful, and disallow all belief systems from class. Intelligent design is a belief, as is man made global warming. Neither belong in the class room.
Equating intelligent design with global warming. Brilliant. Who is facutally challenged?
There is one big difference here - intelligent design is a belief, as you point out. Global warming is a scientific phenomenon that has the backing of the VAST majority of the scientific community. Not even close to the same thing.
This is a classic case of simply changing the messenger not the message. Jindal's moribund, ultra conservative position here runs parallel to his tax reform policy which transfers much of the onus back to the middle and lower classes from the wealthy -- although he obfuscates this by emphasizing use of the sales tax for his "progressive" reforms while proposing to eliminate state and corporate income taxes. The consensus amongst tax analysts and economists is that this will place an undue burden on the lower and middle classes that have to spend the majority of their income to get by, thereby making it regressive, rather than progressive. Nothing new with this guy.
Jindal's push to increase Louisiana's sales tax and eliminate the state income tax was part of a budget proposal that included vast cuts to the safety net, including elimination of hopsice care for Medicaid recipients. Withion a few days, in response to hue and cry, that cut was eliminated. But tghat's just thre tip of the iceberg.
The Republicans OWN the mouth breather/holy roller/snakechucker vote, baby!
Jindal, who announced yesterday he will give rich residents a pass by eliminating the income tax, and jack up the sales tax to make up for it. To those of you who don't feel a need to contribute to society, you were born 100 years too late.
Jindal can always take a play from Mitt's playbook. Change his position on creationism. Shake the Etcha-Sketch when he needs to.
Creationism vs Global warming. Mythology vs. science. I say, choose the science., richmond 10. And pleez youse spelchek.
richmond 12 not 10. Typing wif me fisks again.
Poor Jindal -- spitting in the wind. The Republican party will remain stupid, since they are the party of the ignorant, the bigoted, and the God-besotted. The party long ago sold its soul to the Tea Party and they're not going to change. They'll merely become more marginalized. Coco Chanel said it best: a sinner can reform, but stupid is forever.
http://www.investors.com/editorial-cartoons/michael-ramirez/642287
Speaking of idiots....
To quote a famous American regarding Governor Jindal's statement, "You can NOT be serious!" John McEnroe. The Dover, PA 134 page decision in 2005 in effect declaring that creationism and intelligent design were not science was written by a Republican appointee. "A six-week trial over the issue yielded “overwhelming evidence” establishing that intelligent design “is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory,” said Jones, a Republican and a churchgoer appointed to the federal bench three years ago." (From the Internet - U.S. District Judge John E. Jones.). Brown University should recall Governor Jindal's degree or at less the Head of the Life Sciences Department should make a statement regarding Jindal's glowing example of being a major player in the "Stupid Party."
They would have never sent the pizza guy gainst Obama and they won't send Jindal - he's way too brown.
Richmond, you've got to be kidding. Global warming is at least an actual theory.
Joanna, I criticized The Beyonce column. Kudos today.
I wonder what's worse, teaching ID in schools (which doesn't cost taxpayers anything) or sinking billions into Head Start, despite no evidence at all that the program works. Or should I say, a lot of evidence that it doesn't work. Of course, the left has its hobby horses and the right has theirs. It's just that the left's always seem to cost me more dough.
actually there have been plenty of studies showing that Head Start does work.
For the public employee unions you mean. Yes, it works wonders for them.
why arent liberal ideas treated same way? why is global warming taken as fact based from al gore. what caused the great ice age and global warming after that? the earth has been changing temperature for millions of years, way before all gore and the prius. mankind thinks he controls everything but he does not. as for evolution, most people believe it yet there are many things in life that can not be explained and how life formed on earth and our universe, out of nothing, is one of them...
actually there are theories on how life formed; and while the earth has had climate change in the past (often accompanied by ecological disasters for the life forms then), the point of the global warming theory is that mankind is vastly speeding up and changing the natural evolution of global climate, in ways which may be disasterous for current civilization.
I respectfully submit that man is a natural result of evolution, what we do therefore is not unnatural (except for Gore, he may be an alien). So, if we are in fact causing the planet to warm up more quickly than it would if we were not here: 1) we would not know it, because we would not exist 2) Anything we do is a natural result of our existence.
Most of nature is an example of conversions. Bees make honey. Trees feed off minerals, etc, grow, die, become humus. We just do very advanced conversions, like plastics, sulfur emmissions, etc.
To say what we are doing is "unnatural" is, well, naturally wrong. :)
Deepak Chopra is a medical doctor and as such a scientist. Further, he is probably one of the most well read and educated humans currently on the planet. A human being of genuine and true intellectual depth. I saw him interviewed recently on the whole topic and theory of intelligent design, which is essentially a creationism theory. He recounted a forum he was invited to in which he was ganged up on by a bunch of the negative whining atheist who are currently popular. He essentially stated to these folks that, I don't know how anyone could possibly look at the miracle's that are our human bodies and machines, all the living things of beauty that exist on our planet and the endless vastness of the universe and not conclude that some superior force was involved in the creation of all. Before you all start clapping in unison like a bunch of trained seals, I think you should open your minds,hearts and spirits, as the great intellects have always done and will always do and question this miracle that is life on earth and in the universe.
Deepak would probably take offense to the manner in which you layed this out. While he does in fact view the universe and life as quite a miracle he has always held that what you might call god or an overarching controlling entity is something beyond his ken. As the Buddha would say, "Why do you ask about something you don't need to know. You have enough to learn right here, right now." Not a direct quote but close enough.
After a couple of drinks, in private, with a confidant or two, I think Deepak might state it as I did. Deepak Chopra implied, in his very polite and public way, that he was offended by the whining negative atheist ganging up on him at the forum he was invited to and their small minded and limited view of life and the universe. I think Thomas Aquinas said it best, God is unknowable. Insofar as the Buddha is concerned, I deeply respect his philosophy, but we should all as individuals pursue and question the things we are interested in.
The Agent was right: We are all viruses. (The Matrix) The earth has a fever because of us. Take two aspirin and call the Enterprise in the morning.
"tim" Deepak would indeed dislike the whining atheist but for the same reason he has a very Buddhist viewpoint of the univers. An atheist makes the very same leap of faith that any religious fundamentalist makes. He takes atheism on faith, there is nothing to prove the position anymore then there is anything to prove the religious position. So why debate what you can't know, except as an interesting intellectual exercise. That doesn't mean you can't be spiritual it just means you have to be honest about what you truly know.
"tim" Just to clarify Deepak is not a Buddhist but he does have a very heavily influenced Buddhist world view.
I hear you loud and clear attaturk, well written and insightful. We are all sentient beings that are given a window of time on this earth, we are all capable of all kinds of great, good, not so good and downright evil things, all of us, whether we believe in this, that or nothing at all. The question of whether or not there are other planes of existence, dimensions of time, space and consciousness is quite frankly irrelevant, as the Buddha has pointed out. If we all just do our best to try and get it right, as best we can, each day, with whatever we have in the tank, I am confident Deepak Chopra, Buddha, Jesus and just about everybody would agree that this would be a life well lived.