Right-Wing Nut-Jobs: One in every family

It's funny. When I first met Chris's brother, Jason, he seemed to be a pretty cool dude who just wanted to relax, enjoy life, and smoke and/or drink himself to death. Another word would be a 1990's style hippie who used plastic coke bottles for ashtrays (that image will stay with me for a long time).

Of course, things are a little different now. He has started to blog, and for the sake of not contributing to the already high stress levels of my friends, I shan't be linking to his blog – but tear yourselves apart trying to find it if you are that interested (or email me, and I'll forward you the link).

It appears that Jason has had an epiphany in his life, that all of his problems were caused by the lefty, liberal college professors that brainwashed him into his hippie-esque lifestyle that I met all those years ago. Now, GWB (“dub-ya”) can do no harm, and is the best thing to have happened to America in a long time (can you say, conversion therapy?).

In one of his latest posts, he refers to the issue of AIDS. In his post he makes the observation:

You can research this on your own (I did it way too much in college) and you will find that a majority of the governments of sub-saharan Africa just will not discuss AIDS openly, especially about contraceptive devices such as condoms that could prevent the rapid spread of the disease.

I actually agree with this. This is one of the major problems in dealing with the pandemic, yet it's not just sub-saharan Africa. I find it odd that he does not refer to the new push for abstinence at a federal level, and how that has failed consistently over the years as an effective method for controlling ANY disease (face it, as long as high school kids think oral sex is not sex, but kissing is — we will continue have this problem). Look at the statistics on new cases of HIV/AIDS, and of the new infections each year (approx. 40,000). The CDC suggests that at least half of these new infections are occuring in people under the age of 25 (about 14K males, about 6K females). Get it through your head, the sub-saharan countries are not the only ones that don't talk about sex.

The UNAIDS 2004 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic stated that “[t]he report finds that infections are on the rise in the United States and Western Europe” (UNAIDS). Scary that in one of the world's most developed countries, HIV/AIDS infections are on the rise, and at least half of them are amongst people under 25.

One of the attacks that is made by Jason, is the decision of the Clinton Foundation to fund two HIV/AIDS initiatives that are directed at sub-saharan African countries. He makes the observation that “Yes, yes, I know that in this instance the discussion is about children who were born infected. I feel horrible for them, but their numbers will only continue to grow until somebodies take responsibility for their actions.” I guess if he had spent time studying to read, rather than filling coke bottles with a variety of substances, he might have read that the foundation is funding one of the initiatives so they can be used as models by other countries to – in fact – help themselves. The program is a duplication of the very successful strategy that was undertaken in Haiti. Side note, I'm also sure that he has never made a contribution to the Clinton Foundation, and I'm guessing he isn't even on their direct marketing program, so I'm doubting there is any chance that he has been asked to part with any of his paycheck.

:: breathing ::

Reading his blog, provides an opportunity (to me) to see irony at its best. Early on in his blog, he claims that the lefty, liberal professors filled his brain with crap, and now he sees the light. It's ironic that the light just happens to be right wing vitriol filling his brain with crap.