Congress Seeks to Kill High-Speed Rail. WH-WH-WHAT?

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Okay, I just have to ask, the current congressional members not the most backward-thinking blockheads ever to hold public office?  Is this the kind of legislative leadership that Republican voters had in mind when they voted  in these fools?  Oh, yes... I forgot, the environment means nothing to this constituency.  They likely applauded after the first act delivered by this congress, i.e., turning back the clock on compostable utensils, plates and cups by re-introducing plastics in the House cafeteria.  Wow- way to go!  Just keep filling the planet with Styrofoam!  Way to lead by example!  “They bend when exposed to hot soup!” they say.  That’s odd; I’ve been using (and re-using) the mine for three years with no problem!  "But what about the straws?" they plead.  Who drinks hot coffee through a straw?!  Perhaps it's the toxins from the plastics, leeching into their food that is responsible.  Hey, while you're whittling away at progress, why not roll back the schedule ban on energy-sucking incandescent lights?!  Oh, that's right!  You were working on that over the summer!  Now they want to kill high speed rail.  Idiots!  Do they not understand the number of jobs- permanent jobs at that- which could be created?  What about the money that could help revive rural America via tourist revenue?  And they call the other folks across the aisle “job killers”?!  No, let’s just put $4/gal fossil fuel in our cars and drive cross country!  Have these people never been to a developed country other than their own or are they simply too prideful to take lessons from others?  The beneficiary in each of these efforts is big oil.  The same material that goes into making plastics, tops off our gas tanks.  We, the American people, are the losers.  Wake up!  And no, climate change is not a hoax you imbeciles!!!!!   

And When Knowledge is Replaced with Ignorance...

The crises occurring within the Muslim world glares into the face of a tradition twisted by a century and a half of neglect and hubris.  The vacuum triggered by the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate ushered in what has become an era of unprecedented degradation to a system of law rooted in 1400 years of scholarship and consensus.  The magisterium class in Islam, despite its often nonlinear approach, upheld the established methods of evaluation and ruling, has been largely replaced by haphazard individuals who openly disdain the legitimacy of the recognized schools of legal thought.  Interestingly, those largely responsible for the destruction of the caliphate were, and in many quarters continue to be, in collaboration with those forces generally hostile to Islam, while simultaneously, deriving legal opinions from fringe elements that exist within Western ideologies.  This has resulted in a climate of anti-intellectualism and contempt for those striving to maintain the classical institution of teaching and learning established by contemporaries of the Prophet (عليه السلام‎), ultimately culminating in a loss of direction for those seeking his path and the continued decay of the ummah itself.