A New Approach (Before Anybody Walks Away)

I've been trying, for the longest, to get Glenn Reynolds to see the wisdom of The Macho Response to politics, but he still wants to play like I'm crazy, or so naive, I can't understand it on his level.

Well, maybe this'll show him:

"CARSON CITY — Surging Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has had to defend her support of a prison program that her opponents linked to Scientology. Trying to head off that theme, Angle has eliminated from her campaign website mention of prominent members of the church, whom she worked with on other legislative efforts.

Angle has removed the claim that she, along with actresses Kelly Preston and Jenna Elfman, approached Sen. John Ensign to sponsor legislation prohibiting school employees from requiring students to take psychotropic drugs, such as anti-depressants.

Preston and Elfman are high-profile members of the Church of Scientology, which does not believe in the use of psychiatric drugs.

The apparent scrubbing of her website of the potentially controversial issue — critics of Scientology call it a cult — comes as Angle gains ground in the Republican primary, which has narrowed to a three-way race to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid."

Isn't that special? Openly tie a politician to their cultish endeavors and - BAM! - you get a response. And that response is, invariably, to hide and lie.

Not-cool.

Actually - it seems to me - an angry grassroots political movement, determined to take the country back, could use that.

Seems to me, if one wanted to purify the American political scene (as the Tea Party seems intent on doing) this would be like shooting fish in a barrel; much easier than the way it's being done now.

For instance: want to get rid of a powerful Democratic senator, like Tom Harkin? Then tie him directly to his NewAge quackery, his NewAge fruitcake friends, and NCCAM. It ain't hard to do - Harkin's been at it for over a decade.

Here, I'll let the late, great Martin Gardner supply some ammo, from all the way back in 2001:

"Elizabeth Targ is now the acting director of the Complementary Medicine Research Institute (CMRI). It is part of the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), in turn part of the University of California School of Medicine. Her institute is devoted to investigating such alternative forms of healing as acupuncture, acupressure, remote healing, therapeutic touch, herbal remedies, meditation, yoga, chi gong, guided imagery, and prayer. The institute’s literature does not mention homeopathy, reflexology, iridology, urine therapy, magnet therapy, and other extreme forms of alternative healing. Apparently they are too outlandish to merit investigation.

The NIH, through its National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), has provided funding for Ms. Targ to conduct a three-year study of distant healing on 150 HIV patients. The funding for the first year alone is $243,228, with a starting date of July 1, 2000. The NCCAM has also funded a four-year project to study the effect of distant healing on persons with a brain tumor called glioblastoma. The starting date was September 18, 2000, with a first-year grant of $202,596. Both studies, Ms. Targ said, will be double blind. It looks as though Ms. Targ, over the next few years, will be receiving more than two million dollars of government funds for her research on remote healing, the cash coming from our taxes."

That's money this quack (now deceased) got from one of our most nutty senators, all because Harkin thought bee pollen cured his asthma.

Not only that, but he's now spent almost a billion of our tax dollars on this foolishness.

I'd think, with the Taxed Enough Already crowd, that would make this weirdo ripe for the picking.

If that's not enough, how about Harkin's bullshit guidelines regarding herbal supplements - which he drew up with Utah's Republican senator, Orrin Hatch?

Both politicians were told, when they first drew the guidelines up, the rules weren't strong enough, and the manufacturers were crooks who would break the guidelines with impunity - but without penalty - which they've been doing with abandon. Now we read:

"Hatch said existing regulations, many of which he helped write, are adequate to handle any rogue supplement companies that want to make claims they cannot back up with science. The senator said the problem is that the FDA doesn't have enough resources to implement dietary-supplement laws or to aggressively pursue wrongdoers.

On Tuesday, Hatch introduced his latest dietary-supplement bill, which would boost FDA funding in this area and require the agency to provide Congress with an annual report about the progress made. The bill is co-sponsored by Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin."

Yea, yea. Sure, sure.

Does anyone in the Tea Party think - with exposure of the fact these two creeps are taking billions of our tax dollars and giving them to cranks and criminals to rip us off - the American people need these two foxes guarding the political henhouse any longer? I don't.

And there's tons of woo-woo out there to use against them.

I'm talking about the kinds of nonsense that, when grilled precisely, it's impossible for them to have a responsible explanation - so they're gone - without months of rallying or even waiting for an election.

Like Gandhi said of the British, they'll,...just,...leave.

Or am I so crazy, and naive, I'm not ready for politics in the big leagues?