Mark Twain, who had covered Congress as a reporter, once quipped:
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.*
Our friend and correspondent Jim Kessler writes of a run-in he had with the staff of Congressman Peter King (Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee):
Rep. Peter T. King: Are "idiot" and "congressman" redundant?
A day or two ago Congressman King said that we owed the knowledge of who/where the courier that we used to get to bin Laden to Bush’s waterboarding.
And because I’m a general pain in the ass to Republicans I called his office and asked the person who answered if he was standing by that statement. She said yes. So then I asked “So…that means the Bush
administration knew how to get to bin Laden for years and didn’t do so? Does that mean we can prosecute them for knowingly endangering the country?” Her response was, and I kid you not, “I don’t think you
passed geometery class.”
My response was “What does math have to do with this?”
Her response: “Geometery isn’t math.”
My response was: “Yes it is. Go ask a math professor. Perhaps next time before you try and act condescending to someone by acting like you’re smarter then them you should actually make sure you’re smarter then them rather then being stupidly arrogant?”
That’s when she hung up on me.
I’m considering writing an editorial to whatever paper is in King’s district where I point out that his staff apparently hasn’t passed high school level math.
I’m not reassured that Congressmen don’t appear to have gotten a lot smarter in the more than 150 years since Twain reported on them.
* Attributed to Twain, supposedly in a writing, A Biography. I haven’t confirmed where it is, though I’m pretty sure he actually said it.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
I knowingly and of sound mind would ask as a.bonified Citizen of the United States of America request that our President “Barrack Hussein Obama ” step down from
"Bonified" genius
(That’s it. No end to the sentence, no end to the clause. No period.)
And this one, which makes me happy we didn’t have this toilet when our kids were toddlers, and at war with each other, or just happy to study hydraulics with frequent flushes, frequently with stuff that shouldn’t be flushed:
Click image to test Kohler toilets [Update, August 2012: Alas, Kohler seems to have deactivated the interactive site.] [BUT, see update below.]
Kohler, clearly, had someone with Sen. Paul’s, er, um, problem, in mind!
So, Rand Paul no longer has a reason to be full of s—. It’s time he vote to endorse saving energy, as appliance and lightbulb manufacturers have done. Why is Paul so opposed to American business anyway?
Update: The Trophy Wife™ suggested somebody stage a showdown, or flush off between Jo the Plumber and Sen. Rand Paul. Jo the Plumber could see how well the Republican budget whacks flush away . . . “H.R. 1: Flushes cleanly! 382 pages gone! Appropriately disposed of! What do you want to flush next?”
Perhaps someone adept at editing flash videos could make that happen . . .
Update, May 2020: Fortunately, Kohler did a video of their interactive ad, and that still exists. I admit I enjoyed pointing to odd objects in the game, which Jo the Plumber then dutifully flushed. Video gives you an idea of what the toilet can handle, enough to handle Rand Paul and Donald Trump together, probably.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
In Concord, New Hampshire, on March 11 and 12, 2011, apparently testing to see whether that little state has bad enough education standards before announcing a presidential bid, Michelle Bachmann butchered history and geography once again, according to the conservative Minnesota Independent:
“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” she said, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” an ode to the lives lost at the start of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
How many bites at the apple does stupid get? Has Ed Brayton picked up on this yet?
New American did its damnedest to explain it away as a slip of the tongue — either assuming Bachmann is too reckless not to use prepared remarks for her first foray into New Hampshire (maybe a more serious indictment), or not paying attention to her written remarks (Was it just one more in a long string of really stupid slips of the tongue? Loose tongues sink as many ships as loose lips . . .); in another article New American falsely claimed a worldwide ban on DDT, falsely claiming the ban killed 30 million kids, and said that it disrupted food growing in America, though food crops hadn’t been sprayed with DDT for nearly a decade when its use was banned on agricultural crops in the U.S. alone. Accuracy isn’t in that animal
I don’t get the idea that Ham is sad about it, though, do you?
Destroying a child’s natural curiosity about science and the world around them damages them for life. In the U.S., we are fighting trends that show kids in 4th grade are as scientifically adept as the other best students in the world; by 8th grade their affinity for science has begun to fade, and by 12th grade, U.S. students rank far below many other industrialized nations in science achievement. Ken Ham’s story is one reason why that happens.
Isn’t crushing a child’s intelligence a form of child abuse?
“Over 1 million people a year die because of the massive populations of misquotes.”
I preserve it here just because it gives me a smile; here is the sentence above with what I presume is a typographical error that carries great humor, in its natural habitat:
While there is a a discussion going on whether DDT should be used or not in America, it is undeniable that It should be used in 3rd world countries like in Africa to stop the spread of Malaria. Over 1 million people a year die because of the massive populations of misquotes. No doubt that this number could be lowered dramatically. Not only is DDT a type of pesticide, it is a pest repellent, meaning that even if the bug has grown immunity to the pesticide, it will invariably avoid area’s where DDT is sprayed. To use it to a maximum effect, it would be a good idea to spray it on 1 wall inside a home. That’s all that is required to stop the malaria epidemic in Africa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delata38 (talk • contribs) 14:48, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
I have no idea who Delata38 is, and hope she or he is not offended at my preservation of the typo. The error may have been caused by an over-enthusiastic autocorrect function, and no fault of the author at all. The statement may be completely correct in a few other contexts, something that should give all journalists pause and cause to strive harder for greater accuracy.
George Washington signed the law authorizing the first U.S. census on March 1, 1790. [True]
[Satire, below?]
I presume, then, that the post-Boston, Tea Party dates from the protests of the census beginning on March 2, 1790. “Nothing but what the founders intended in the Constitution,” was the muddled battle cry of the early Tea Partiers.
Editorials pointed out that Washington himself had presided at the Constitutional Convention, but Tea Partiers would have none of it. “If the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for the ‘new King George,’ they yelled in New York City, outside Washington’s home. “Patrick Henry didn’t throw tea in Baltimore Harbor so some tyrant could ask us how many are in our family!”
Washington denied that the capital’s move to Philadelphia later that year had anything to do with the protests.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
The Anarcho-Libertarianism advocated by the Tea Party and much of the modern GOP is far, far more dangerous. You see, say what you will about the Fascists…but they make the trains run on time. Under the Anarcho-Libertarians, there either ARE no trains…or they operate when and where the privatized rail companies please…and without such pesky intrusions or encumbrances like safety checks. Who needs safe tracks anyway? Let the buyer beware, right? Sure…the market will solve everything. If one trainload of passengers (or toxic waste) derails…not to worry! The free market fairies will sprinkle their magic free market dust all over the wreckage and next time…it won’t happen. Probably. Maybe. Well…what do you expect? We can’t have gub’mint involved, can we?
And of course, the screaming irony here behind trains and fascism and anarcho-conservatism and Scott Walker is that he queered the deal on high speed rail to begin with. Who needs thousands of new jobs in this humming economy?
Yeah, I know. I am all over the place on this one. But I really do agree with you. Equating Governor Walker with a stupid and evil form of governance like fascism is just plain wrong.
It’s geek humor for Presidents Day. I think it’s geek humor. Computational Complexity analyzed the story attributed to Abraham Lincoln, about the moral of asking how many legs a dog has, if you call a tail “a leg.”
Amazing five-legged dog, image by Esther Derby.com
All I know is what I see in this photo and caption I got in an e-mail from Science Blogs:
An Efe pygmy prepares poison arrows for hunting monkeys on Greg Laden's Blog. {No, really, that was the caption.}
As Groucho Marx would have explained, how they got on Greg Laden’s blog, I’ll never know. (Does anyone have a few spare commas they can send over the Science Blogs?)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 