Sometimes the blogger's work is done for him.

One of two things is happening with what I'm about to describe. Either the extremist elements of the Republican Party are a rich seam of material for Joe Blogger, or they're in fact supreme self-satirists, taking us all for a ride and having a quiet laugh when they read what's said about them. I can't help but think that such a sophisticated sense of humour is probably beyond people like those in what follows, though.

Both these stories are new news to me, so forgive me if I'm late to some internet party that everybody else is already enjoying, by the way. Our first comedian to step up to the mic is Congressman Paul Broun who, on September 27th made this speech to the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman's Banquet. It's only a minute extracted from the whole thing, but it may be worth pointing out that the Congressman sits on the House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology. That's Science, Space and Technology, just in case I didn't emphasise that sufficiently. Go and have a quick listen. I'll wait here...

Heard what Congressman Broun had to say? Yep - you heard it correctly. Evolution and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of hell...". It's all coming right out of Satan's gob, through his obvious agents like Steven Hawking, Einstein et al, with the specific intention of depriving what would otherwise be God-fearing people their place in heaven. It may be worth repeating - that's the House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Mr Broun should be congratulated for inveigling his way into a den of what's very obviously minions of Mephistopheles. Know your enemy, Congressman.

Anyway, who's next? Oh yes. Charlie Fuqua, Republican candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives. A man with some excellent form behind him, having already called for the expulsion of Muslims from the US and described slavery as a 'blessing in disguise', he really is almost living up to my imagined pronunciation of his surname. The bulk of the Republican Party having swiftly distanced themselves from him on that one clearly has not discouraged the man, though, and more power to his elbow for going the extra mile in the name of extremist lunacy with his latest endorsement of the death penalty for 'rebellious' children. Marvellous. He is, of course, being a Christian fundamentalist, strongly pro-life. So a clump of cells is sacrosanct from the moment of conception, the preservation of which beyond the choice even of the mother, but once born the child, should it turn out a bit naughty, is fair game.

These would be funny if they were not quite so genuinely held beliefs, and, more worryingly, shared by what I hope is a small but vocal number of other people. It's that, and the fact that the Republican Party itself has sought to condemn outbursts like these from extremist nutcases, that convinces me these are not engaging in some great joke at everybody else's expense. They're just dangerous, fundamentalist loons who happen to be in politics.

Edit: Added Thursday October 11th.

Today's Republican 'Loon of the Day' award winner is Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard, with his "some girls rape easy" comment. He seems to be a man who doesn't know, once he's opened up a nice hole for himself, when to stop digging. Here's what he had to say. Twice.

Romney shows true Republican colours

Mitt Romney's comments (here) on marriage, addressing a congregation of the converted (to say the least) as part of what is evidently a pitch to the Christian right voters in the States, shows both him and his party up for what they are.

It's a worrying sign that the same sort of people who want creationism taught in schools as fact, and who distrust atheists more vehemently than any other minority group in the US, according to an oft-quoted University of Minnesota study, still carry this much sway in the thinking of the patrician class of such a world power.

This man could be President, if the strength of feeling that this group evidently harbour against him can be used by the Republicans and translated into votes. Obama's support for free health care, and his modernist views on what marriage is, clearly strike a deep chord of discontent with these people. To parts of the outside world, and certainly to me, his attitudes merely seem human and contemporary, but this evidently marks him out as a socialist; sees him regarded as the worst kind of anti-American scum in some eyes in the country over which he presides.

It already looks absolutely imperative that Obama wins the Presidential election because, if Romney is to be the one standing against him and comes through to win, we could have another George W Bush on our hands. Remember him? The creationist loon who said, and I quote, at Chicago's O'Hare airport in 1987, "...I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

So he dismissed some of his own countryment, regardless of their feelings for the US. We must all hope we never have another of his kind in the Oval Office, but Romney makes me fear it could be all too soon that we have exactly that.