I Have Bad News and Worse News. Which Do You Want to Hear First?
Well, I’m not giving you a choice. You get to hear both damn near simultaneously.
I have told you about Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen, who is just one Margarita short of hallelujahing herself into public nudity. We met her here back when she was trying to force people to go to church on Sunday morning — any church they wanted just so long it was Baptist.
Well, she’s back in the news, the bad news.
An Arizona lawmaker who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old is the new chairwoman of the state Senate committee that oversees education-related legislation.
She also believes that the government is regulating the weather through chew-trails, and that the earth is 6,000 years old.
They put her in charge of education.
The worse news?
Pundits are predicting that Arizona education will become like Texas education and I live in Texas and people are laughing at me.
Who wants to bet Arizona’s about to head down the same, sorry road as Texas? You have to feel bad for the students who are about to receive a sub-standard education thanks to elected leaders who thinks public schools are part of some liberal conspiracy.
Same sorry road as Texas?
That hurts, y’all.
Thanks to Alan for the heads up.
Politics is horrible. The longer you are in office, the higher the chance you can break something — really bad.
1Molly Ivins said it best: When they baptised her they didn’t hold her under long enough.
2Good heavens…….no other profound words…….speechless.
3JJ – Merry Christmas and in this piece you wrote “chew trails” when I am pretty sure you meant “chem trails” which, even here in Oregon is a favorite fear of the tin foil hat crowd. As an elementary teacher (mostly retired but still subbing) this is a very depressing story indeed. Make these people go away!!!
4As a dad with kids and kid-in-law teaching and grandkids in public school, “same sorry road as Texas” education does not make me happy
5I just don’t understand how so many folks can simply be so damned stupid!!
6Texas, your road is becoming a crowded highway with what Snotty Wanker has done to Wisconsin, Kansas under Koch, and now Arizona putting the finishing touches to their Jan Brewer years.
Crazy Town wants to go national. The infamous brothers Dan and Farris Wilkes are convening the crazies to support Daffy Cr-ooze, Jr. for P-Resident.
7Thank God for Mississippi.
8Actually, JJ and Mark, “chew trails” pretty much sums up all of the republican rhetoric. Sort of like what happens to your best shoes and furniture with a small, unhousebroken dog on the loose. And after the “chew trails” we get the other republican effluvia, pee all over the place, and turds.
9Not surprised. She is from the same fractured gene pool that has always considered public education to be a work of the devil. Education is OK by them if you pay for it or do it all at home and teach only what they believe. This especially aimed at keeping women illiterate and powerless. And anyone who isn’t rich. We just gotta keep fighting this kind of evil!
10What don’t they get about freedom? Forcing people to believe what they tell them is brainwashing not education, not freedom. I’d like to know where she got her degrees if any, so that bastion of learning can either be humiliated or denounce her.
11In a country that put Inhofe in charge of the Senate science committee, any idiocy is possible.
Plug in my usual remark about Caligula making his horse Incitatus a consul: the horse couldn’t help leaving manure on the Senate floor.
I just get tired and tempted to say, Let the people who allow this kind of stupidity to taint their kids’ education just go to hell, but it’s not fair on the kids.
12Ralph Wiggam: HA! I bet you never thought Mississippi would look like a shining star in the education department! PKM is certainly right — that road is becoming a crowded highway!
Why are these people so proud of being stupid? I remember when being well-educated was desirable — shows how hold I am!
13My wife nailed it with her two comments:
141:Oh, so she’s going to be In charge of creating factories foe building Republicans
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and
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‘Ignorance in, Idiots out.’
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(Sometimes I wish she didn’t have this hang up about writing for the net. If she would, it would almst make up for having to put up with my endless screeds.)
maryelle, she may be a high school graduate, or not. But there are no higher education mentions in any of the bios for her. This special snowflake is from Snowflake, AZ which was founded by LDS pioneers Snow and Flake. That’s far enough from Phoenix, ie. civilization, that old Sylvia may be more FLDS than LDS. FLDS is the Warren Jeffs splinter of special snowflakes.
15Guess I am a throwback, too. Cannot fathom those who wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.
16Just as a side comment–a few months ago we happened to stop at a turnout along the Columbia Gorge. Walked down to read the historical markers and was gobsmacked to see that one had been vandalized. Can only believe it was someone of Sylvia Allen’s ilk, since they had carefully scratched out in several places the reference to the number of millions of years ago that the gorge was carved out. Can’t even keep their ignorance to themselves!
This reminds me of when I was living in Nacogdoches, 50 years ago, and got in a newspaper fight with the head of the local school board when he found I was teaching evilution up at the university. The editor of the paper kept egging us on, as the controversy was selling more papers. Finally the head of the school board challenged me to a public debate on the topic, and I was about to take him up on it until I found out that he was lining up Garner Ted Armstrong as my debate opponent. At that time I remembered the advice about “never debate a fool in public; the public might not know who is the fool”.
17Hollyanna, that’s how you can identify ignorant religious bigots: they don’t want to know, and they don’t want you to know either. If they could, they’d do things like blow up the Buddha statues and destroy the ruins of Palmyra, because they’re kin to the Taliban and ISIS in their shriveled little hearts.
18After the remarks about education in Mississippi, all y’all (that’s the plural of “y’all”) may be right. Last election we had on the ballot an initiative to actually FULLY FUND public schools.
It was actively campaigned against (by the usual suspects) and was voted down.
Yep, now we have our choices – underfunded public schools, fancy-schmancy expensive private schools, fundie-religious schools, and that there home-schoolin’.
We don’t have to have a race to the bottom… I think we’re already there…
19I’ll tell you what, Minnesota, the brainiac state, does even better when the competition Does Not dumb itself down. (Yes, MN is my state, but my old one, South Dakota, looks up to Mississippi. That’s the absolute depths of patheticness.)
20Lorinda Pike, I believe “y’all” is plural and “all y’all” is the Second Person Plural Emphatic. (grew up in PA but family on both sides from VA)
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