just some more bullshit

Hola amigos. I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but sometimes, life just gets in the way of making a blog that nobody will ever read.

I have about 6 posts in draft form, where I dropped a link into a new post, intending to comment later, but never got around to it. But today I wanted to drop in and comment about the huge swings in the polls that have been going on lately (with the exception of Mitt Romney, who, as always, is just kind of there).

Because I've been in the process of moving, and was without tv or internet for like 10 days, I didn't get to see either of the recent GOP candidate debates, but apparently Rick Perry was not a top-flight performer, and Herman Cain came out the winner. The subsequent bump in the polls seems to be sticking, too. What's also interesting is the drubbing Michele Bachmann has taken since she seemed to sign on to the anti-vaccine lunacy that has taken hold of some of our nation's hotter celebrities. 

Before we go further, though, yes, I know the vaccines against which Bachmann injected herself is not the same as the one that is alleged to cause autism. But I do think it's interesting that Bachmann took a huge hit from the right for her comments. The linked post rightly points out the difference in media treatment when someone like Bachmann makes such a stupid claim, and when somebody like, oh say, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. does. I think the reaction, and the subsequent drop in her polls numbers, give lie to the anyways absurd claim that Republican's are somehow "anti-science." It's dangerous and bad politics to crow loudly about how one party is "anti-science," while the other throws away billions on bullshit technology to little political consequences. Again, as the PowerLine post says, Bachmann rightly points out some serious political and constitutional problems with Perry's mandating vaccination, but one can certain make those points without wandering off into McCarthyism.

But I also wanted to comment on Cain's surge. First, I want to say that I hate this kind of rhetoric, whether it comes from the left or the right. Nobody is brainwashed here, ok? Not people who vote Republican, and not people who vote Democrat. And second, I think it takes a very, very special kind of stupid to argue that political gains by a black candidate somehow prove that that candidate's constituency is racist, though, but that's a whole nother post.