Science slaps Republican ignorance upside the head

Republican embrace of creation theory over empirically-determined scientific knowledge leads to serious stumbles along the campaign trail. The GOP strategy for fixing the nation's dearly beloved safety network raises voter eyebrows because their methodology defies easily verifiable biology.

Face it, people make babies, babies grow older, some take care of their parents and later some elders are cared for their kids. The Romney/Paul message to seniors is "We're cutting the social fabric down to a tiny voucher just not for you." Now that's all well and good until scientific realities remind you that many of those seniors have children for whose futures they have concerns. And then you have that moment when those children realize that Mitt's talking about them.

"Stop it, this is hard." Mitt muffs the math on healthcare.

Another area that eludes the education averse right wing is mathematics - that lynchpin of all things scientific. Seniors 65 and older comprise 17 percent of all active voters; alas, this is dwarfed by the 83 percent of the 18-64 age group. Therefore, pandering reassuringly to a smaller group of voters, while waving off younger groups with vague generalities, explains why the electorate, as it wakes with a pounding hangover after indulging too heavily in the sweet Romney party juice, is feeling morning after remorse and returning to the Obama fold.

As any man with a fleet of cars and whose wife flits between two Caddys must know, preventive maintenance, such as keeping tires inflated, belts fresh and parts lubed, prevents a major, expensive repair job down the road. Such maintenance programs are designed by researchers and scientists employed by car manufacturers to ensure product longevity to their customers. No rightly-thinking person decides to run their car into the ground and take it in for service only after disaster strikes.

Yet, that's exactly what Romney thinks should happen to his fellow human beings. No preventative care .. just hang in until the ambulance arrives. Take a listen to Mitt Romney lay out this medical concept on 60 Minutes Sept. 23:

Romney On Governments Responsibility To Provide Healthcare For Uninsured

"We do provide care for people who don’t have insurance, people—we—if someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care."

Considering this level of healthcare is less than he'd give one of his elevator-pampered cars, the most remarkable part of the statement is that this is the general proposition the Republican party is offering Americans through their "you're on your own" platform. They lack the realization, through an animus for all things elite and intellectual and sciency, that things and people break if they aren't maintained properly.

This aversion to education (as endorsed by rousing applause from Conservatives after Rick Santorum proudly announced that "smart people" will never be with us) leads to some hilarity along the trail of wreckage Romney likes to call his campaign. Trying to mimic the emotions of a human husband whose wife experiences a blaze aboard her airplane, the Romneybot offers this science-free nugget:

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous.