Recently someone posted a story about how one of their GOP state reps said something stupid about how bike riders make more CO2 than Cars. This prompted a lot of "look how stupid they are" comments and such.
Mr. Tom Smith, songwriter/singer drew my attention to this.
My thoughts are as follows
My main concern is that making fun of stupid things said by just the GOP reps opens you up to having to defend the stupid things said by Dems. (Yes, they do say dumb things too: Maxine Waters, (D, CA) announcing that “sequestration” was going to cost the U.S. economy 170 million jobs. Opps, 170 million… there are only 135 million jobs in the U.S.)
One of the complaints by the Tea Party types is that the "rational" ones get ignored by the media and only the nuts get coverage. Having been to several anti-war protests under Bush, there were quite a few nuts on the left that would give even rabid TP'ers a run for their money.
Do we really want the media using dumb comments to paint those who believe one side or the other as how they all are? All this would do is divide people even more and make it harder to sit down and be rational about issues.
Is the CO2 produced by a person riding a bike more than driving a car the same distance? No, here is the math. Lets set that aside and discuss the real issue: the new tax put on one product over another. What is the tax for, will it cover the cost of what it is for, is it a fair tax, will it do what is wanted, what other ideas would be better?
But we can't have that discussion because everyone wants to paint the GOP as stupid fools who can't think so just point and laugh at them and any other GOP member. We all know that laughing at others makes them change their minds and become receptive to information. Right?