And by “best” I don’t mean “best President” or “best to allow Democrats to win”. 
I mean seriously, which of this huge list of losers candidates do you think would have the best chance to actually win the election?
“None of the above” is not an accepted answer!
By the way, every one of these people on the list below has declared themselves as a candidate, and they’re not the only ones. There’s like a dozen more, mostly businessmen and Christian religious leaders.
I chose Scott Walker. While I can’t stand his politics, he doesn’t seem as crazy as the others, and he also is not a Bush. Of course, it is way too early to make any sort of prediction, but it’s still fun to speculate.
“I’m not a scientist” is what Republicans use as an excuse to be stupid about science they don’t like for political reasons only, and this ad ridiculing them is absolutely perfect. You must watch.
Of course, the only time they use that excuse is to deny climate change or evolution. When it comes to abortion and the question of when life begins, not one of them ever refuses to take a position there, claiming they are “not a scientist.”
Cudos to the Clinton campaign for this ad.
80% of the food you ate today was genetically modified.
This scares people who don’t understand what that means — they go screaming about “Frankenfoods,” much like Ogg the caveman in his widely-shared blog piece “Fire bad.” 
This doesn’t mean that all genetically modified products are good, though. When people talk about the dangers of Monsanto’s “Round-Up”, they’re correct. But what makes Round-Up bad isn’t the fact that it uses GMO technology — it’s the fact that the stuff is dangerous and possibly cancerous. The process by which it is made isn’t the bad thing.
So when people want to ban GMOs, I ask if they similarly want to ban chemical laboratories. After all, chemistry produces deadly poisons, too.
GMOs have produced great benefits to our society. Millions of lives have been saved by the development of plants that can grow better and feed more people. Norman Bourlag won a Nobel Peace Prize for his research into this, and said that GMO technology is merely a new way of doing what he had done traditionally — that if the technology was available when he did his research, he would have reached the same result quicker and cheaper. And his comments have come true — more discoveries are being made every day that help feed people.
The fact is that GMOs are safe. The vast majority of scientists say so. I’m not talking “four out of five dentist” numbers, I mean in the 90% range. Like the kind of numbers we see for scientists who say climate change is real.
And that’s what bugs me — many of the strongest advocates for banning GMOs are my fellow liberals. You know, the ones who complain when conservatives deny science and won’t accept evolution or global warming despite the overwhelming consensus of scientists. Then these same liberals ignore the scientists when they overwhelmingly say something that challenges their own biases. (Ironically, some of these same liberals also ignore science concerning vaccines, too.)
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a different standard for yourself than the one you demand on others.
“OK, wise guy,” people say to me, usually accompanied by a sneer, “So why would you object to labeling GMO foods to let people make up their own minds about what is in it?” The answer is because people don’t know. Seriously, I blogged a while ago about a study wherein 80% of the population wanted to label food containing DNA. DNA! DNA, that is in every damned thing we eat every day (except salt)!
Labeling GMOs says to people “This is dangerous. Clearly, or we wouldn’t be labeling it as such.” That is the exact wrong message to send. It’s not true.
And whether something has GMO technology is completely irrelevant to the product. We don’t label food that has been modified in other ways, because it doesn’t matter how it was modified. The process isn’t the problem.
Stopping dangerous foods and chemicals that can harm us is definitely something we should be doing. Labeling the process by which those things are made shows a great misunderstanding of science.
John McCain is “not a war hero,” Trump said. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
“Outrageous!” shouted Republican candidates who had no problem with Trump calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. “Terrible!” said GOP operates who never questioned Trump’s insistence that Obama wasn’t born in America.
They all agreed: “Why, we can’t have one of our candidates saying politicians who are great war heroes don’t deserve our respect!”
Well, unless it’s multiple purple-heart winner John Kerry. We can call him a coward and anti-American and get people to say he didn’t earn those awards and never really was injured even though the evidence clearly shows otherwise.
Oh, and Representative Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs in Iraq. We can insult her all we want and say she’s not a ‘true hero.’
And let’s not forget Max Cleland, the former Senator who lost three limbs in Vietnam, who Republicans declared was no war hero either.
Those examples are completely different from McCain’s situation. Completely different!
All those people are Democrats!
Objectively, things keep improving. Seriously.
Crime is down. Life expectancy is up. Accidents are down.
Computers are doing more. Medical science is saving lives that would have been lost only ten years ago.
The air and water is cleaner. Our food is safer. Products we buy are safer.
More countries are democracies than ever before. People have more rights than ever before.
Graduation rates are up. Teenage pregnancies are down.
Things are better.
You’d never know this from watching the news, though, for two main reasons:
First, the news stations and the internet sites need you to watch so they blow everything out of proportion to get you to pay attention.
Second, news that never would have gotten attention outside of your local area now is known everywhere. That makes it look like there is something terrible happening every day and gosh darn it, I don’t remember that happening when I was younger! Clearly, things have gotten worse. No, you’re just more aware of it now.
It’s like reports about police brutality. Every day, there is another one, but I’m pretty sure this has always been going on and we’re just hearing about it more now, especially since everyone carries around a portable movie camera in their phones these days.
This is not to say everything is improving. Anti-science movements have censored schoolbooks and brought back diseases that had been practically eliminated. Gun deaths have increased thanks to the lessening of gun control. Income inequality is at the highest it has been since the Great Depression. Forest fires, storms and temperatures are more extreme and deadly thanks to climate change.
But when you sit back and wonder why there seems to be so much bad news these days, remember: There really isn’t. It just seems that way.
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