The stage is set for two years of “The Agony and the Misery”

The curtain has just gone up on Act I of “The Agony and the Misery: Two Years of a Republican Controlled Congress,” and we already find two major characters stepping into positions of power from which they plan to wreak havoc upon reason and science.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been named chair of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, which oversees NASA. Despite the scientific consensus, Ted doesn’t believe in man-made global warning, so he’s obviously the perfect person for the job.

Fellow southerner Marc Rubio of Florida will chair the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, fisheries and Coast Guard, which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration. Marc is also a global warming denier, and is skeptical that the Earth has been around more than 6,000 years.

So the plot is set in motion. Anti-science, pre-Enlightenment Ministers of Evil have gained control of the government agencies they would love to destroy. Will the powers of darkness prevail? Will a champion of science step forward to battle the purveyors of ignorance and superstition? Can America survive two years of this asinine nonsense?

Stay tuned.

Ready for a good Halloween scare? Republicans set to control both houses of Congress.

Forget ISIS. Forget ebola. The scariest headline of the day comes from the Huffington Post: “GOP Set to Seize the Senate?” or as Salon aptly puts it, “America’s Looming Freak Show.”

This situation is like those milliseconds before a car accident where you know the impact is inevitable but you can’t do a thing about it. After all of the gridlock, the government shutdowns, the partisan grandstanding, the anti-science, anti-logic rantings, the racist attacks on Obama, American voters seem hell-bent on doing it all again.

Any country that has a system that allows this to happen is seriously broken. Thanks to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Supreme Court decisions, the corporate media, and the Koch’s, conservative billionaires and companies are simply buying Congress for themselves. Democracy is for suckers.

How does all of this square with the fact that in poll after poll, the American people repeatedly rate Congress lower than Satan and rabid dogs. I DON’T KNOW! I have no idea why the polls tell us one thing and the people who actually vote tell us something completely different. And I don’t watch mainstream news shows much, but the evidence indicates they are doing a very bad job of providing their viewers with solid information on which they can make their voting decisions. And people are lazy. Many of them will make their choices based on who had the nastiest attack ad or who looks better draped in an American flag.

I know that compared to other political blogs, my readership is small, but I implore any Democrats who find themselves here to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. It matters. Having Republicans in control of both houses of Congress will be a godsend for Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and the late night shows, but it will be a nightmare for the rest of us.