Mike Beard, GOP idiot:
Mike Beard, a Republican state representative from Minnesota, recently argued that coal mining should resume in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, in part because he believes God has created an earth that will provide unlimited natural resources.
“God is not capricious. He’s given us a creation that is dynamically stable,” Beard told MinnPost. “We are not going to run out of anything.”
Beard is currently in the midst of drafting legislation that would overturn Minnesota’s moratorium on coal-fired power plants, an effort that he backs due to his religious belief that God will provide limitless resources while ensuring that humans don’t destroy the planet trying to get them.
*blink’s twice*
I don’t understand how these people can even get dressed in the morning with this level of logic…
*headdesks*
(Religious belief influencing politics? Say it isn’t so!)
I just… How can he…? uhh…
*headdesks again*
This man remembers how to breath in and out… How?
Breath comes in, breath goes out. You can’t explain that.
Personally, I love the buzzwords.
“Dynamically stable?” Seriously?
Someone should take this guy on a field trip to West Virginia’s *former* mountains, so caused by coal miners ripping the tops off of them and dumping them into valleys, to get at the coal.
Dynamically stable, my ass.
Already said what I wanted to say.
http://www.cynical-c.com/2011/02/18/gop-lawmaker-claims-god-will-provide-unlimited-natural-resources/#comment-1177101
I was going to click the link to comments, but then I read the post and completely forgot what I was going to do. I spent about a minute just staring shell-shocked at the stupid, trying to comprehend that this is real and this man actually has control over people’s livelihood.
I hate to suggest copying right out of Chris’s playbook, but a sorbet kitten does tend to help with these symptoms.
Hey, isn’t MIchelle Bachman from Minnesota?
What’s up with you folks electing mush-for-brains politicians?? Seriously. I would like to know how this happens.
Ya, but they have PZ Myers too. Minnesota is a strange place. I have some family there, and they fall into the same polar opposites. Either atheist liberals or religious conservatives. None are in between and never shall the twain sit at the same table and agree on the color of the sky.
He is right. They don’t seem to run out of the moron supply. If I had that particular moron as my representative, I would however run out of patience with this lunatics asylum world where one must obey beings that cannot be seen.
Remember the Jim Henson studio TV show Dinosaurs? They did an episode on how they was no such thing as running out of resources. “There will always be ‘more.’ That’s what ‘more’ means.”
Case closed!
That show was awesome. All hail the great potato!
Oh, totally! That was great satire.
Joke’s on us in the end though, because the resource in short supply was tasty humans, as I’m sure you remember! Unlike us the dinos were foresighted and so didn’t run out of humans, and the rest is prehistory.
Seemingly, there will always be “more” of us.
What is this I don’t even….
I mean, even if I grant that God has some awesome plan that involves an infinite supply of fuel, that still doesn’t mean we won’t run out of coal. Maybe we’re supposed to use a different resource.
Though to be honest, we aren’t going to “run out” of coal anytime soon. We may be running out of oil, but certainly not coal–at least not in this century. But there are many other good reasons to stop burning it.
God made it quite clear what the infinite resources are.
Wind.
Sun.
Nuff said.
You missed one – Religious Right Bullshit. Pity we can’t run power stations on THAT.
I’m still holding out for cat-tied-to-buttered-toast power. It’s bound to work.
We shouldn’t play with rules we don’t understand, it could rip off the veil of reality.
And don’t forget tides – if we can ever figure how THEY work…
What America needs to do is, stop all current science research and stuff the next year fully investigating whether or no Gods actually exist. Ask the public to present evidence for their gods and let it be fully examined in the public eye. Publish the results in all the media fulling explaining how they where attained. This should, once and for all, answer the question of whether or not gods actually exist. Okay, beat on me now.
Sounds like a recipe for losing a year of science research for no reason. Those who are open to such evidence already have it available, and those who aren’t already ignore it or refuse to understand it.
Yep. That probably would help Europe to get out of the crisis. Let it be two years, just in case.
*facepalm* then *sigh* WTF!!?????
Did God forget to provide for Easter Island when they ran out of resources? Or does God only replenish the earth for Christians?
Of COURSE only for Christians – otherwise you might as well be…well, atheist.
Time to hire this guy a proctologist, ’cause it appears that he’s lost his head.
F***ing coal mines, HOW DO THEY WORK?
I’d like to know which coal corporation is financing Mr. Beard’s religion.
Sometimes stupidity is so ever present you begin to think it’s a conspiracy.
Sometimes people with money sit down with people who run for office. The effect is the same, so who cares whether it’s stupidity or not?
When I was in grammar school around 1950 we were being taught about natural resources, and the teacher told us that there was enough iron ore in northern Minnesota to supply all the steel the country would need for 100 years. It is now 60 years later, and the mines have been shut down for what? 40 years? When is God going to make more iron ore so the iron range can get back to business?
The problem is that optimistic (i.e. stupid) people always project at current usage rates; they don’t project rates of growth or, importantly, changes in rates of growth.
Isn’t the main problem that the United States off shored much of its steel industry…reducing the demand for domestic iron ore?
Please don’t think that just because these people entertain crazy ideas that they are stupid or incompetent. Even though they are delusional, they still are personable and persuasive; they make the right promises, get elected and do God’s will, or at least what that tinnitus in their head tells them it is God. Beard has done us a favor by coming out into the daylight; most of these nuts hide their weirdness and pretend to be normal. Like rats, for everyone you see, there are a hundred hiding. I grew up and spent most of life in Minnesota. It is the land of 10,000 lakes, loons, and, unfortunately, loonies. Also remember that Minnesota elected Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress.