Democrats Gonna Fight Talk Radio Asshole Trump Nominated To Do 'Science.' GOOD!

Clovis Man libelz!

Senate Democrats are planning to put up a fight against the nomination of Sam Clovis, the non-scientist radio talk show host Doanld Trump wants to be the chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Yes, you read that right: Donald Trump picked a guy with no science background at all to be the USDA's top scientist. Fortunately, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz issued a statement Wednesday asking Trump to withdraw the Clovis nomination or face a serious fight to stop the nomination, because for chrissake, couldn't you at least pretend that a science job should be filled with a scientist? (Answer: Trump doesn't like science unless it blows stuff up.) Said the statement:

If President Trump refuses to withdraw Mr. Clovis, we will vehemently oppose his nomination and urge our colleagues from both parties to come together and summarily reject him as well.

How is Sam Clovis's nomination bad for science and America? Let us count the ways:

Uno: Clovis doesn't think climate change is a thing, not really. In a2014 interview with Iowa Public Radio, when Clovis was running for the U.S. Senate, he rejected the findings of climate science, because despite his lack of science training, he knows good science when he sees it:

I am extremely skeptical. I have looked at the science and I have enough of a science background to know when I’m being boofed. And a lot of the science is junk science. It’s not proven; I don’t think there’s any substantive information available to me that doesn’t raise as many questions as it does answers. So I’m a skeptic.

After all, maybe it's sunspots! ( It isn't, fer fuckssakes, you moron.) His full answer is worth checking if you want to fill your Climate Denial Bingo card at a single go. Can't imagine why a head scientist for the Agriculture Department would need to have a position on climate change. Growing seasons and regional conditions will certainly stay unchanged as long as we ignore liberal propaganda.

Deux: Well,of course he's a birther, and wondered whether Barack Obama got special treatment for being black, because the man was just such a mystery, as he explored in a 2012 blog post:   

What do we really know about the current president [...?]

[He] was directly influenced by a devout communist and pedophile in the personage of Frank Marshall Davis. How profound that influence might have been is certainly open for speculation, but it is clear that the Obama who went on to Occidental (how he got in is a mystery, as are his admittances to Columbia and Harvard) was a young man who was well on his way to crafting the illusion that was quite different from his real life.

For over a decade, Obama allowed his publisher to carry a biography that had him born in Kenya. Only after beginning his pursuit of public office did he “correct” the entry [...] Could it be that the first African-American president is being given a pass because he is Black? How incredibly racist is that? The logical conclusion is that because he is Black, he cannot help himself.

Clovis also feared Barack Obama sought to be a dictator who would "enslave all who are not part of his regime," but that just makes him a mainstream Republican, circa 2012.

Now, to be sure, the USDA probably doesn't do a heck of a lot of science involving the birthplace or college transcripts of Barack Obama, but it's also pretty clear from that conspiracy-theory crap that we're not looking at a nominee who has a steel trap scientific mind. But if the job ever requires Clovis to to copy-paste crazy ideas from WorldNetDaily, he's golden.

Drei: let's just stir in a bit more bigotry while we're at it: Clovis alsowhitesplained on the radio that Eric Holder was "a racist black” and that then-Labor Secretary Tom Perez was a "Racist Latino," and for all we know he also thought Twilight Sparkle was a "racist lavender unicorn."

Oh, but why stop with race? Clovis also has jolly thoughts on The Gays, and took to the radio to explain that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause doesn't apply to gays and lesbians, that homosexuality is totally a choice, and that legal protections for gay people would lead to a slippery slope, no doubt one made from a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter:

If we protect LGBT behavior, what other behaviors are we going to protect? Are we going to protect pedophilia? Are we going to protect polyamorous marriage relationships? Are we going to protect people who have fetishes? What's the logical extension of this?

Again, while those views are reprehensible, they really have nothing to do with the job of being the chief scientist at USDA. The problem is, Clovis's career as a far-right radio talker appears to be his sole qualification for the job, since he certainly doesn't have any science background. But at least he believes in Jesus, which is probably all he needs to do a terrific job sciencing for USDA. He'll probably discover that food stamps actually make people poor, which is the kind of science the Trump administration can really get behind.

While Senate Dems can't block Clovis by themselves with just 48 votes, it's just possible they might manage to convince three Republicans to oppose him, since he's about as deplorable as they come, and Donald Trump seems to be intent on driving Republicans away anyway. Maybe. We'll have to see whether Republican "moderates" are willing to actually insist on the radical notion that science should be done by scientists.

Oh, that. Yeah, we're doomed.

At least it's your OPEN THREAD.

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[ HuffPo / http: //www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/kfile-sam-clovis-lgbt-comments/index.html/ CNN ]