When one is obliged to come up with four or five items a day under the rubric “Dangerous Minds,” the Republican party are the proverbial fish in a barrel. Low(brow) hanging fruit. There are never slow news days with so many craven GOP idiots in Washington. Apparently there is some kind of “Bizarro World” reverse Republican IQ litmus test that you have to pass—or fail, depending on how you look at it—to be a member these days.

Of course it’s always been bad—and there are many, many deeply dumb Democrats to be sure, stupidity is unavoidable in U.S politics—but I’d have to say that the current crop of GOP politicians is the most imbecilic I can recall during my lifetime. Is there a dumber member of the Senate than Rand Paul of Kentucky? (James Inhofe came immediately to mind, I must admit…)

Witness the “universal healthcare is slavery” comments made at a Senate hearing yesterday by the dimwitted senator named after the author of Atlas Shrugged. They’re… special!.

Via Raw Story:

“With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies,” the senator said. “It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.”

“It means you believe in slavery,” Paul added. “It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”

“Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.”

“I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care,” Paul continued. “You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.”

As Max Read pointed observed at Gawker:

In Rand Paul’s America, there will be no slaves, except for the people working to pay off their medical bills.

This guy actually believes this shit!! Breath-taking, ain’t it? Why would a poor state like Kentucky elect a man like this? Uh, don’t answer that….nevermind!

More from Raw Story:

Self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of the Subcommittee on Retirement and Aging, responded to Paul’s rant by asking witness Dana Kraus, a family physician at a federally qualified health center, if she considered herself “a slave.”

“I love my job,” she answered. “I chose to work there. I do not consider myself a slave. Thank you.”

Sanders and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced federal single payer legislation Tuesday that would ensure that states implement Medicare-like systems for all residents.

Have a look at the trailer for the Denzel Washington film John Q. Rand Paul needs to strapped to a chair like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange with his eyelids pinned back and forced to watch this film until he melts into a puddle of his own pathetic stupidity.
 

 
You really have to hear it coming out of his mouth. The man is completely insane… and stupid:
 

 
Seriously, Kentucky, what the fuck? Even for a Republican, he’s an idiot!

If I was Jack Conway, I’d approve this ad, too!

 
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal. Republican extremist Rand Paul—who, natch, has had Sarah Palin fundraising for him—is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the same group who are supporting Nevada’s batshit crazy GOP Senate nominee, Sharron Angle, who seems to believe that abortion causes breast cancer and that Medicare is “immoral” and “evil” (but letting elderly people is what Christ would have wanted???)

Excerpted from “Rand Paul part of AAPS doctors’ group airing unusual views”:

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul belongs to a conservative doctors’ group that, among other things, has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, based in Tucson, Ariz., advocates conservative and free-market solutions on health care and a variety of other political issues.

But it also uses its medical journal and Website as forums for unorthodox medical views.

Maybe their blog is where Sharron Angle got her information for her comments about “autism” (I added the quotation marks, watch the video and see why. What galls me about this woman is how proud of herself she seems! She is PROUD of being ignorant. You can’t top that, she’s on a suicide mission!):
 

 
Group promoting Angle event: Medicare “evil” and “immoral,” Obama is a “covert hypnotist” and HIV may not cause AIDS (Las Vegas Sun)

Via Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, who is doing some very important work

 
It’s been fascinating—and fun—watching Republican Tea party favorite, Rand Paul implode this past week. In my never so humble opinion he’s a straight up nut job—no wonder the teabaggers love him so much—who’s a card carrying member of the tin foil hat brigade. Did you see the stuff about him warning against the “NAFTA Superhighway” and the “Amero” on TPM? When someone starts talking about the fucking Amero, trust me, it’s time to get off the bus and wait for the next one! (He even warned of a Hitler-style dictatorship coming to America at a speech at a “machine gun shoot” last year)

But aside from the culturally unsophisticated Paul bringing the funny, which as I say, I enjoyed very much, one of the commenters about him on YouTube got me noticing how ready the media is to rip this guy apart. The poster wrote some typical “They’re just trying to tear a brave man down” BS. Well, brave or not—I think Rand Paul is an absolute moron—the guy did have a point: The media IS trying to tear Rand Paul down. This is not a conspiracy, it’s an easily observable fact. It’s not just about him saying some dumb shit and then it dies down, the members of the media actively want his blood. Look at the video below from Meet the Press. The sharks are circling Rand Paul.

I’d argue that this is an entirely appropriate reaction to a guy who espouses the brand of dangerous horseshit Paul does. This is a case, right before our very eyes, where the media—and I remind you that the media is made of human beings with opinions and feelings, I work at the LA Times myself—is acting like white blood cells trying to rid the body politic of a cancer.

A cancer named Rand Paul. Fuck this guy!