Quote of the day: The electric Kool-Aid corn-dog test

I'm a week late getting to this, so Brother Pierce gets a compensatory two-fer.

First, on the uselessness – nay, counterproductivity – of continuing to indulge Iowa in its fantasies of self-importance in our presidential election system:

There are a couple of hundred reasons why it is stupid to give the Iowa caucuses the pride of place in our presidential nominating pageant that they has come to enjoy. These run from embarrassing corn-dog photos, to the even dumber Iowa Straw Poll, which now may be mercifully chloroformed so that the elderly white folks on the buses can go to the Indian casinos where they belong, to the fact that occasionally we don't even know who won the damn things until long after it has ceased to matter.

But the primary reason for this is that the Iowa Republican party is Jesus-mad and bugfck insane

And, as proof of the above, witness the governor of Iowa, currently seeking easy re-election, who still felt compelled to hump the leg of his whackjob base by announcing his new-found conviction that the Prime Mover and All Father, who is not mentioned in the Constitution, nevertheless oversaw its establishment.

Put simply, public officials should not be doing this. They should not be participating under the color of their office in religious activities, no matter how allegedly "nonpartisan" or "nondenominational" those events are. They should keep how and when and to whom they pray to themselves. They should self-censor on this issue, and they should tell their constituents honestly why they are doing so. They certainly shouldn't have to trot their personal religious beliefs out for public display on public property just so they can get themselves re-elected again.

That's the bubble culture in which the Hobby Lobby decision makes sense