11 Imaginary Republican Enemies That Could Give Bigfoot A Run For Its Money
The Huffington Post
|
By
Nick Wing
Posted: 12/05/2013 8:45 am EST | Updated: 12/05/2013 8:48 am EST
There is no hard evidence that Bigfoot exists, but that hasn't kept cable television networks from feeding the American public
shows happy to pretend
it does. Same goes for Megalodon, a gargantuan prehistoric shark that
the Discovery Channel claimed was still alive in a Shark Week
"documentary," despite the fact that all scientific evidence suggests it
has been extinct for more than a million years.
In this way, some Republicans have become the cable TV execs of
lawmaking. From in-person voter fraud to fetus snacks, conservative
politicians around the nation have aggressively pushed legislation
focusing on things that don't really exist, at least not in the way they
want you to believe they do. Like shows that promise to find Bigfoot
(but never quite do), or "Megalodon: The Monster Shark That Lives" (but
not really), the GOP's offerings might be laughable, if not for their
far more serious consequences.
Below, 11 Republican enemies that are about as real as Bigfoot:
1. Devious election thieves
Supporters of controversial GOP-backed voter-identification measures
that have cropped up around the nation regularly claim that such laws
are needed to protect the integrity of elections, which they suggest is
under constant attack by an onslaught of people attempting to commit
voter fraud.
Nobody denies that protecting elections is important, but voter-ID
laws claim to do so by focusing on a largely nonexistent threat.
In-person voter fraud, which could be deterred by forcing voters to show
various forms of identification, just isn't an issue. Since 2000, there
have only been
10 recorded cases of voter impersonation. With
3,313 Bigfoot sightings in 92 years, you're far more likely to spot a Sasquatch than witness in-person voter fraud.
The name's Harry Henderson and I'm here to vote Democratic.
2. Gay couples trying to ruin your straight marriage
Allowing same-sex couples to get married does exactly nothing to the
bonds formed by straight nuptials. And if, against all odds, gay
marriage somehow does ruin your marriage, we hate to break it to you,
but you and your spouse's problems extended far beyond a shared desire
to deny marriage equality to gay people.
"All your beaus are belong to us."
3. Creeping Sharia
Wait. Did you hear that? Oh sure, it
could have been nothing
-- but it also could have been Islamic fundamentalists seeking to
implement their religious laws in an effort to slowly seize control of
the nation from the inside!
I'm crazy?!?! Crazy like a fox!
This increasingly institutionalized brand of Islamophobia has come
into favor in the past five years, manifesting itself in a variety of
ways around the political arena. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has
been a vocal proponent of this paranoid crusade, warning against what
she's painted as a
dangerous Muslim influence in the Obama administration and
local court systems
around the nation. Republican lawmakers have also sought to address
this supposed threat -- of which there has yet to be any evidence --
with legislation designed to prevent religious law (read: Sharia) from
being considered in court.
With all of this in mind, perhaps it's fitting that Bachmann often
sounds like someone trying to explain their alleged Bigfoot sighting.
4. Taxpayer-funded abortions
Under the Hyde Amendment, taxpayer dollars can't go toward abortion
services, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the
mother. Despite its illegality under federal law, the term
"taxpayer-funded abortion" has been tossed around by anti-abortion
activists for years, frequently under the guise that these procedures
are a regular occurrence that must be stopped.
Taxpayer-funded abortions don't exist, however, and
some have argued
that millions of women are at risk because of the refusal to allow
these services to be covered by public insurance plans. In many states,
conservatives have enacted additional harsh restrictions on abortion coverage in private insurance plans as well. In the
most extreme cases,
women aren't able get abortion coverage through either public or
private health insurance plans, even in cases of rape or incest.
While some insurance plans offered through certain federal or state
exchanges do cover abortions, that part of the insurance is covered by a
separate rider, making the plans compliant with the Hyde Amendment.
5. ACORN
ACORN was a community anti-poverty organization tasked with
registering voters and lobbying for affordable health care and housing.
We use the word "was" because it doesn't exist anymore. It folded in
2010 after being targeted by a GOP-led assault launched in response to a
heavily edited, but nonetheless devastating, undercover-investigation
documentary by conservative provocateur James O'Keefe, who posed as a
pimp for the project.
This is how real pimps dress, right?
The fact that ACORN is defunct hasn't gotten it removed from the
GOP's list of enemies. House Republicans have voted to defund the
already defunded organization
more than 10 times
since it disbanded. The threat ACORN poses to society is quite
literally imaginary, but some people apparently didn't get the memo.
6. "The War on Christmas"
It's that time of year again, when
conservatives and
Fox News -- and
especially Sarah Palin
-- are getting ready to pounce on any suggestion that politically
correct liberals might be encroaching on your freedom to loudly
celebrate consumerist Christmas without giving a shit about other
religions, or the separation of church and state.
This is what Santa thinks about your holiday!
Texas launched a preemptive strike in this "war" earlier this year, when Gov. Rick Perry (R)
signed the "Merry Christmas" bill.
The measure allows public school teachers to use holiday-specific
greetings and imagery in their classrooms, as long as the winter
displays include more than one religion or secular symbols.
While teachers groups panned the effort as a waste of time designed
to address a nonexistent problem, other states sought to build on the
momentum with legislation of their own.
Tennessee and
Alabama have both considered similar bills, though neither has made it very far.
7. Pop-Tart gun control
When 7-year-old Maryland boy Josh Welch got suspended from school for
two days after chewing his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun earlier
this year, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) knew he had to act.
You call that a gun?
Stockman responded by introducing the Student Protection Act, a bill
that sounded hard to disagree with. It was designed block federal funds
for any school that enforced rules punishing students who played with
imaginary weapons. Welch's punishment was surely idiotic, but was it
really the type of isolated idiocy that needed to be fixed with federal
legislation?
No. No, it wasn't.
8. Drug-addled takers
Republicans
across the nation and
in Congress
have championed legislation that would require applicants for welfare,
food stamps and unemployment benefits to submit to drug testing. While
the public would rather
see the lawmakers themselves get drug tested,
the legislative push against people on government programs is seemingly
operating on the assumption that most of them are just a bunch of lazy,
drug-abusing moochers.
This is how Republicans want you to see welfare recipients.
Interestingly enough, however, the legislators themselves haven't
really tried to make that argument, and when they have, they've largely
turned to
anecdotal evidence and hearsay in the absence of concrete studies that suggest people on public assistance are actually more prone to drug abuse.
In 2012, a study of Florida's welfare drug testing program, since
used as a model for a number of other states, found that it had been a
failure. Only 2.6 percent of the state's welfare applicants
failed their tests,
most commonly because of marijuana use. Because the state was required
to pay for all of the passed tests, it ended up netting a loss of
$118,140 on the initiative. In Utah, a similar program
caught only 12 drug users.
Proponents argued that more had dropped out of the application process,
likely because they were drug users who were afraid they'd fail the
test.
While people who use drugs while on public assistance aren't entirely
a figment of Republican imaginations, there isn't a reason to believe
there is the sort of epidemic that many complain about. They, like
Bigfoot, have become a bogeyman that serves as more of a perceived
threat than a real one.
9. Socialist Muslim Obama and his Kenyan birthplace
President Barack Obama
was born in Honolulu, which, for anyone that might still be confused, is a part of the United States.
Speak American, ya damn islands!
During Obama's first term, Republicans across the nation were giddy
to jab the nation's first black president with suggestions that he was a
foreigner and therefore illegitimate. Republican state
lawmakers in a number of states pushed initiatives
determined to force any candidate (read: Obama) to provide "an original
long-form birth certificate" to get on the ballot. Obama eventually
released his, a ridiculous move that did very little to get his critics
to take off their tinfoil hats.
And if the deliberate refusal to accept Obama as an American isn't
enough, Republicans have gone the extra mile to insist that Obama is a
secret Muslim. For many, the president's religion doesn't really matter,
but according to his own words and practices, Obama is a Christian.
That hasn't convinced all Republicans, however, as polling has showed
that
around a third of those on the right are still convinced Obama practices Islam. And for those who still
maintain that he's some sort of Socialist, we encourage you to
consult real Socialists.
10. Fetus snacks
In 2012, a GOP state lawmaker in Oklahoma
introduced legislation
designed to ban aborted human fetuses in food. It would have been a
pretty sensible idea, if there had actually been any evidence of fetuses
being included in food in the first place. He said he'd based the bill
on an article he'd read online and apparently misinterpreted. The
misguided legislation thankfully went nowhere.
11. Human-animal hybrids
A few years back, Republicans concerned that scientists were keen on creating half-men-half-monkeys pushed a number of
state laws banning human-animal hybrids.
The laws enacted broad restrictions on scientific research, most forms
of which weren't being practiced anywhere, much less in the United
States. While some forms of DNA mixing have been used in various
stem-cell experiments for therapeutic purposes, the apparent fear of a
full-fledged hybrid monster of any sort was never real.
Cable TV is also fond of pretending that human-animal hybrids exist. Animal Planet
released a pair of fake mermaid documentaries
earlier this year, deliberately misleading viewers into believing that
there was actually any evidence whatsoever of the mythical creatures'
existence. There wasn't, but that didn't stop the network from pulling
in huge viewership numbers.
And hey, why let the truth get in the way of a good piece of bullshit?
