Microcosm

Everyone knows that abstinence education doesn't work, right? Or at least doctors must know. And if not them, certainly people in the party of former half-term governors of Alaska with out-of wedlock grandkids. Right?

Honest to gods, I can't understand why any halfway normal person (and I suppose I just answered my own question) can vote for a single Republican at any level, even if the politician in question were that theoretical thoughtful one, the kind of which legends speak, and about which, in the future, stories will be told, in whispers, around campfires fed by the rotting timbers of buildings long gone. Because a vote for any of them is a vote for this guy. Who happens to be, among other things, a doctor.

Texas has the third highest rate of HIV infections in the country, but that didn’t stop lawmakers from passing an amendment that defunds HIV/STD prevention programs Tuesday. The amendment to the House budget proposal—offered by Rep. Stuart Spitzer (R-Kaufman)—diverts $3 million over the next biennium to abstinence-only sexual education programs. 

House Democrats fought against the amendment in a debate that rapidly devolved into awkward farce, with Rep. Spitzer revealing details of his own sexual history as proof of the effectiveness of abstinence. For those keeping tabs at home, he was a virgin until marrying his wife at age 29, although he declined to answer a question from Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) on whether she was the first person he propositioned. “Decorum,” shouted state Rep. Jason Isaac (R-Dripping Springs).

How much stupid can be piled in front of one's face before one starts to think today's Republican party, at all levels, on all issues, has gone fking insane? That denial of reality is their starting point, from which things predictably and demonstrably go from bad to worse. That the party places certain religious-based beliefs above all else, and, on that basis, will do and say pretty much anything, no matter how dangerous, even to themselves and their kids.

It's beyond mystifying. It's incomprehensible, and while it slowly drives me crazy, it's rapidly running our country to ruin on the rails of Republican radical refusalism.

[Image source]