Pages

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Theater of the Absurd

The US Congress


Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) displays a new zenith of sarcasm as he responds to the utterly risible Upton-Inhofe bill the GOP is muscling through the US House of Representatives:



Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people and our planet.

However, I won't physically rise, because I'm worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about the room.

I won't call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Instead, I'll embody Newton's third law of motion and be an equal and opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will reduce America's importation of foreign oil.

This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in the Senate. It will be a legislative Schrodinger's cat killed by the quantum mechanics of the legislative process!

Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a rejection of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in the chair's amendment pile.
As Brad Johnson writes at Grist, "don't give them ideas." They're evidently dangerous enough already. David Roberts provides much needed sanity in rebuttal of some of the madness used in an attempt to justify this latest attempt to repeal science by legislative fiat.

No comments:

Post a Comment