The Republican Field: A Couple of Highlights for Today

I'm generally avoiding election news, since the election is a year away (well, yeah, there was an election yesterday some places, but the news on that is post mortems, at this point, which I may or may not comment on). But sometimes you just can't resist, especially when you get candidates who are not long on brains or sense trying to appeal to a constituency that is even more impoverished in those areas.

For example, it's recently been discovered that Ben Carson has a theory on the pyramids:

“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said. “Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.”

In the Old Testament, Joseph, one of the 12 sons of Jacob, is sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers. He eventually rose to become a top aide to the Egyptian pharaoh, advising him of a dream vision he had of coming years of famine in the ancient kingdom. Joseph’s sage advice of the coming famine (and directions to store gain) helped the Egyptians survive the famine.

Carson said the design of the pyramids made clear they were for grain storage.

“And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons. And various of scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how—’ you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.”

I am nearly speechless at this -- just forget all the mummies and grave offerings and commemorative inscriptions inside the pyramids. And I want to meet these "scientists" who claim the pyramids were built by aliens.

And we can always count on Rick Santorum (google it!) for something completely incoherent:

Talking with Newsmax, a right wing website, Santorum was asked about HERO and a case involving a transgender girl being barred from using the girl's locker room at school. . . .

"I don’t know why children at that age — why this is even an issue, the idea that we are introducing this type of real dangerous confusion for young people at this early age. Do we really care about what we’re doing to millions of children who don’t have gender confusion and basically introducing the subject and saying, ‘maybe you should, maybe this is something you should start thinking about at age seven’?," a rambling Santorum asked.

"I mean this is really dangerous and it’s going too far because it is having an impact on not just folks who may be in a difficult situation at an early age but many who would never have been in that situation but now are being confronted with it."

WTF? Now, any rational person would figure that children who do not have "gender confusion" (whatever that is) would not be worried about it. Santorum, of course, figures that any mention of such a thing is going to impel children to try it out. (And just who, pray tell, is telling them to start thinking about it at age seven? With the implication, of course, that whoever it is is saying, "try it, you'll like it.")

I suspect that what we're seeing here is the result of a Catholic education on someone with limited intellectual capacities to begin with.

And these people are presenting themselves as presidential material. And in Carson's case, at least, people are buying it.

I fear for the future.