Isn't It Moronic?

Caution - Snark Ahead...

I feel happy, I feel {thunk}

Two stories are resonating with me, and the first one happened this morning on NPR. Lawrence Reynolds, an inmate on Ohio's Death Row, tried to kill himself less then a day before his scheduled execution, didn't succeed, and they had to wait until he was healthy (or at least conscious) before they could kill him.

Humanely.

They already postponed his execution once, as the previous drug cocktail was shown to leave the person a little too conscious that they were dying while they were dying. How you can tell this I have no idea - they hook up an EEG and watch as your brain waves go from active to really pissed off to just off?

So there's your dose of irony for the day. It's so nice that we're spreading freedom and the American Way around the globe, and this is but one example of American democracy, one we share with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Communist China.

As Texas Goes, So Goes The Nation - Right Off A F**KING Cliff

Texas is the largest market for school textbooks, so once the Texas State Board of Education decides what schoolbooks Texas schoolchildren should have, it pretty much sets in stone what schoolbook publishers can print, because doing different books for different states is expensive. And guess what - the Texas State Board of Education is stocked with a bunch of stupid f**ks that want to rewrite history in their own thought process.

Thomas Jefferson is apparently a little too liberal to be allowed in. He was the one advocating for no state-sponsored religion. As philosophers that one could say were the formative influences of the great American experiment, they are now going to put in St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and William Blackstone. I'm sure you've heard of the first two, but you may not know what they really think, and I'd only heard of Blackstone - I've no idea what he thinks at all. So let's look 'em up, shall we?

St. Thomas Aquinas
Basically, believed that heretics should be seperated from both the church (excommunication) and from their mortal bodies (execution). This would probably include most modern people. On the other hand, he argued against price-gouging, which would make him a lousy capitalist. A Catholic saint.

John Calvin
I read of Calvinistic tendencies in Sarah Vowell's wonderful book, The Wordy Shipmates, an epic essay on the thoughts, actions, and indiosyncracies of the Puritans who got here first-ish. One story she recounts is a woman so frazzled by her inability to discern whether or not she was a sinner, she killed all her children to be certain. Calvin was a great believer in maximizing self-control (he didn't think much of sex, apparently). And though he spoke well of Jews who happened to appear in the Bible, he didn't like any he'd met personally. At all. An anti-Catholic.

William Blackstone
A famous judge and jurist, who's influence ranges from Abraham Lincoln to Perry Mason, and is thought to be responsible for the phrase "Pursuit of Happiness". Jefferson didn't like him. To me that's almost enough to disqualify him. Another anti-Catholic.

Lots of other nonsense, such as emphasis on the Republican resurgence in politics during the 80s and 90s, but all mentions of the bad old days of the 60s would be relegated to being, well, the bad old days of the sixties. Any good public law that was passed at that time would be brought up only to show why it was a bad idea (Medicare, Affirmative Action, Title IX, etc.). How wonderful Joe McCarthy was. The deletion of words like "imperialism" and "capitalism" and the addition of "expansionism" and "free enterprise". Like, we "expanded right over all those Native Americans." I guess...

Remember Stephen Colbert's extraordinary speech at the Washington Correspondents' Dinner? Where he pointed out that reality has a well-known Liberal bias?

Interesting. The folks who are quite well known for their hatred of Communism are doing exactly what the Communists have been known for: rewriting history to favor your own political perspective. And you thought the Supreme Soviet was dead.

It's just moved to the Texas Board of Education.