Only in America: Pinellas County, Fla., will stop adding fluoride to its drinking water after complaints by anti-government activists. Dentists protested the decision, arguing that fluoridation has dramatically lowered tooth-decay rates across the U.S., but Tea Party activists said it was part of a plot by “the world government to keep people stupid.”
More from our collection of strange revelations about the nation
Today’s news in the Tea Party’s quest to be wrong about everything.
The tea party movement took flight in 2009 in opposition to big government programs on the national stage, but its influence has since trickled down to local governments to affect the most basic of services — right down to the water that pours from your tap.
“What you see is the rise of the new conservatism,” said Todd Pressman, who lobbies county government. “I think it’s the tea party, but it’s also the mood shifting across the country. … The tea party is the tip of the sword.”
A blast of conservatism in 2010 helped elect Commissioner Norm Roche, who put fluoride elimination on the agenda this year. Then the tea party’s brand of hands-off government helped persuade Commissioner John Morroni to change his stance from 2003 and join a 4-3 vote Tuesday against fluoride.
Most American medical groups strongly advocate adding fluoride to drinking water to improve dental health, particularly for needy children. A majority of U.S. communities provide fluoridated water.
It is all starting to make sense to me now. See below:
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk… ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I… no, no. I don’t, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen… tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first… become… well, develop this theory?
General Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh… I… I… first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue… a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I… I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh… women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh… I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.
General Jack D. Ripper: But I… I do deny them my essence.
(via moorewr)
Is “Occupy Wall Street” the next Tea Party…for the Left?
“The Tea Party, too, started in incoherence and blind rage, disconnected from other conservative activism, and featuring an unappealing, self-indulgent cast of characters who, like the young activists on Wall Street, represented only a tiny faction of the people they claimed to speak for. ”
-Mark Schmitt. “Why Did Liberals Embrace ‘Occupy Wall Street’? (Hint: They’re Obsessed With the Tea Party.)”
Photo courtesy of MSNBC and Conservative Daily News.
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Andrew Breitbart, speaking to a Tea Party crowd in Lexington, Ma.
(via brooklynmutt)
(via brooklynmutt)
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Newly-(special) elected Congressman BOB TURNER (R- New York), in remarks made before he is sworn in later this morning. Turner is being willfully ignorant of the political movement that he is aligned with — and its Congressional members.
(via CBS Radio News)
(Source: inothernews)
— Andre Carson, Indiana Democrat:Tea Party pols would like to see black people ‘hanging on a tree’ (via brooklynmutt)
(via brooklynmutt)
This is my new favorite headline.
Constituent: “What I’m here to do is ask you for your apology.”
McCain: “What apology is in order?”
Constituent: “Because that was very clumsy of you”
McCain: “Was there anything wrong with what I said?”
Constituent: “Are you saying you’re not apologizing?”
McCain: “I don’t know what to apologize for.”
Heard in the back: “For calling tea partiers hobbits!”
McCain: “What I said was true. It’s unrealistic and unfair to the American people to tell them that we have to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution before we would act. If anyone misunderstood that than of course I would apologize. … But it’s not my fault if they misunderstood. … I am sorry if I was misunderstood. But I am not sorry for what I said. Why should I if it was a fact?”
So they have hairy feet and eat too much? I think he should apologize to Hobbits.
“What makes America look unreliable isn’t budget math, it’s politics. And please, let’s not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided — specifically, they’re caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.”
The problem is representative democracy and it must end.
(via technipol)
