A Republican's universal approach to global warming

The goofy level of global warming criticism  has found a new, and still more bizarre,   rationale in the deductive logic of a Kentucky state senator.    Republican Majority Whip Brandon Smith  says the myth of climate change caused by humans can be refuted by the fact that the planet Mars has no coal mines.

Sharing his perceived wisdom at a hearing on proposed EPA restrictions on the release of greenhouse gases by coal mines, Smith said environmentalists are sniffing down the wrong shaft in search of polluters. In his words:

"I think that in academia, we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly  as it is here.  Nobody will dispute  that.  Yet there are no coal mines on Mars, there's no factories on Mars that I'm aware of.  So I think what we're looking at is something much greater than what we're going to do."

His spacey  research is overwhelming.

Surely Senator Paul jests. Not.

Let's see.  There was Mad King George.  And Mad King Ludwig.  That's pretty tough company  for Sen. Rand Paul, but the Kentucky Republican is getting closer to making it a threesome.

Paul added another  claim to his bogeyman  behavior in the Senate this week by strangely linking federal flood insurance to the abortion issue. He warned that he would block a bill extending FEMA's flood insurance program for five more years unless the Senate  voted on a  measure declaring that life begins at the moment of conception - the so-called personhood concept.

Surely, he jests.   Surely,  he doesn't.  And his timing is awful, coming just as flooding caused by  Tropical Storm Debby was driving tens of thousands of Floridians from their homes.  Paul says he's "just trying to get  a vote for the people who elected me". Kentucky, the Beautiful.

Mad Senator Paul?  I'm getting used to the idea.

Zombies hiding in the blue grass?

WE ARE PATIENTLY waiting for the Associated Press to update its report on the hacker who invaded an electronic traffic sign along Interstate 71-75 in Kentucky to warn motorists of zombies down the road. It sounds silly, but considering the odd things that have happened in Ohio's neighboring state, it kinda makes you wonder whether the hacker wasn't kidding. Look at it this way: It's the same state where the voters have sent such luminaries as Jim Bunning, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell to the U.S. Senate and boasts of having nearly 5 million barrels of bourbon in storage. Isn't it reasonable to assume that the state also is friendly territory for partying zombies on the prowl for a night out?

Next: "My (6,000 year) Old Kentucky Home."

PERHAPS INSPIRED by the two dinosaurs that will be serving as its two U.S. senators in January, Kentucky has officially announced that it will spend $150 million on a vast theme park that will, among other things, insist that the planet is only 6,000 years old. It's not a new idea among the creationists, but now an entire state will try to reap the economic benefits of such logic with an emphasis on how religious education can be fun. If all goes well, it could turn out to be sort of a Serengeti with a Biblical message.

To complete the circle, Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, (which doesn't mean that much in the Bluegrass State) glowed that the new tourist attraction will be spread across 800 acres at the site of the existing Creation Museum, which already boasts of a 12-toot topiary dinosaur. More to come as the planners suggest the project has Jurassic Park in mind with a lot of other roaming creatures, benign or otherwise.

To this end consider Ark Encounter, a tourist knockoff of the USS Constitution parked all these years in Boston Harbor. Visitors, it says here, will encounter a 500-foot wooden replica of Noah's animal rights pride and joy. There will be live creatures, dwarf giraffes and maybe even another dinosaur if any are left at the movie lot.

So I'm not one to argue with the governor's optimism over a project that will open in 2014 and is expected to draw 1.6 million creationists and curiosity seekers a year. "Make no mistake about it, this is a huge deal," the Louisville-Courier Journal quoted him. You bet. Of Biblical proportions.

Oh, the financing. The collaborative developers are the for-profit Ark Encounters and a non-profit outfit called Answers in Genesis. With the governor as their cheerleader, they hope to get a lot of tax incentives that will come out taxpayer pockets. Beshear is already being challenged for wanting to stir state money into a religious pot, but he wants you to know that he is a Christian as well as a public servant.

Did I mention that the park will also have a live animal shows and a Tower of Babel, as if the daily reports from Capitol Hill aren't enough?

Unimpressed by the scope of this prayerful idea, the Courier-Journal editorialized that the governor needs a vacation. It worried that the state's chief executive is suffering from the sort of fatigue that would have him ballyhoo the theme park in the first place. It sinfully concluded that Kentucky needs an updated state motto: "Kentucky - Unbridled Laughingstock."

Whew! I'm glad that I'm not the only one who feels that way.