Up next in our series on new Texas Republican Party Chairwoman Cathie Adams: her anti-science views and peculiar anti-government paranoia, even when it comes to bipartisan, common-sense measures dealing with public health and children.
”Did you evolve from an ape or were you created by God? This is NOT a rhetorical question. Your child or grandchild WILL be taught according to what you choose now.”
— October 13, 2003, e-mail to Texas Eagle Forum activists during debate over how evolution was presented in new science textbooks the State Board of Education was considering at the time
“Tell your children they are ‘gifts’ from God,’ not ‘curses to the earth’ because they breathe out CO2, which radical environmentalists claim causes global warming.”
— “Global ‘Climate Stock Exchange’ Would Redistribute Wealth,” Torch, January 1999
“Since the Tower of Babel, kings and dictators have tried to unite the world. Wars were fought over the land of Israel, the land between the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, because whoever ruled Israel controlled the world’s markets. The Crusades abused religion in order to plunder peoples and nations. The Nazis claimed superior racial order to justify their massacre of millions and pillage countries. Global warming is simply a new paradigm for the same objective.”
— “Global ‘Climate Stock Exchange’ Would Redistribute Wealth,” Torch (TEF’s newsletter), January 1999
“State vaccine tracking registries being promoted in the name of protecting the public health are simply a smokescreen for the creation of yet another big brother government-operated system that will further invade our privacy and take away endangered liberties.”
— March 23, 2003, e-mail to TEF activists opposing bipartisan legislation — later passed and signed into law — that strengthened the state’s ability to track immunization rates for children across Texas. (Supporters noted that the tracking system helps protect children who do not consistently see the same health care providers from “over immunization.”)
As my dog says frequently: “Hyuh?????
“[W]hoever ruled Israel controlled the world’s markets.”
The rest is pure Palinesque word salad, but this one is serious. In fact, here’s a challenge: come up with any way of spinning it so that it does not represent anti-Semitism of the truly vilest kind, on a “Protocols” level. (I don’t have time right now to write a half-page on the inaccuracies involved, and why it was fought over so frequently – maybe later. But the statement as given could only imply the ‘moneygrubbing hidden masters of the Universe’ of THE ETERNAL JEW and other pieces of classic anti-Semitism. It makes no sense otherwise, unless someone can win my challenge.)
I expect to be doing my best to see this line passed on.
As Astro would say, “Ruh-Roh, Reorge…”
Those wacky apocalyptic anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-education,anti-public health, anti-law and order Republicans!!!
About the only things left are math and toilet paper.
Wait just a “cotton-pickin’ minute! Cathie Adams complains: “….big brother government-operated system that will further invade our privacy and take away endangered liberties.”
Um, you mean like a woman’s right to choose?
Cathie, I thought a woman’s right to choose is where you DO want “big brother government-operated system that will further invade our privacy and take away endangered liberties.”
Prup:
I am no Cathie Adams or Sarah Palin fan, but I think she was referring to the strategic geographic location of Judea in ancient times, which placed it at the approximate crossroads of the oriental trade routes that supplied the civilzations in the Med. area—in the same way that Chicago was the nation’s largest and most important railroad hub in the late 19th century. The Romans were mighty keen on keeping that hunk of coastal desert for some reason, and they were willing to endure a lot to do it. I do not have time to go research the accuracy or particulars of that, but it appears to be what she was saying.
Hell’s jingle bells, I knew she was nuts, but now you tell me she’s an anti-vaxxer too? Wow. Alas, I think she’s so crazy the few sane Repubs left are going to get rid of her. Personally, I wish she’d stay in her position — it would put us that much closer to turning Texas blue.
Charles, it’s an interesting argument, but there are a few problems with it. First, it is much more sophisticated reasoning than I’d expect Cathie Cuckoo to be capable of. Second, it just isn’t likely.
Think about it, what two things would a ‘Chicago’ have, would any equivalent crossroads have ? A large number of ‘Millionaires’ and a large, unruly group of transient (Gentile) traders constantly passing through. But there is no evidence of this in Jerusalem, not in the Bible, not, iirc, in Josephus, not in Morton Scott Enslin’s CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS . (I’m an atheist, but religions fascinate me without tempting me, so I read a lot in the field.) It was a reasonably prosperous capital of a small province, much richer since Herod’s great rule, but no more.
Nor, if they were ‘kept out of the Holy City’ was there another city that gained the ‘trade benefit.’ There was no other major city that was ‘built on trade.’
Most telling, even if you argue that the Jews of the time were much more interested in their religion than in trade — which was true — isn’t it obvious that, were your thesis true, after the destruction of the Temple, Judea would have become a thriving, important part of the Empire? But it didn’t.
The reasons Rome fought so hard to keep it was their fear of a revival of Persia, which had ruled it for a much longer time, whose religion was so similar to Judaism the there was much crossover between the two, and whose language (Aramaic is a variant of Persian) the common people spoke.
I too was puzzled over her claim that “whoever controlled Israel controlled the world’s markets.” Ms. Adams may have been referring to the Israeli port city of Jaffa (Yaffa), one of the oldest port cities in the world. Jaffa has been inhabited since 7500 BCE and boasts a natural harbor which has been used since the Bronze Age. Jaffa has been an important trade center and an important strategic military history for centuries. It is mentioned four times in the Bible. But to say whoever controlled it controlled the world’s markets is an overstatement to say the least.
Yet another example of the ignorance of religious conservatives.