I didn’t catch this Daily Show video when it first aired in October, 2011. Well worth watching:

On a more serious note, this dysfunctional thinking by many conservatives is coming under increasing scrutiny. This is both good and bad news, however. It is becoming ever clearer that though many conservatives tend to have serious blind spots with at least some scientific findings (but not all–not, for instance the science that we use to develop new weapons), all of us are susceptible to gross distortions. Chris Mooney has written a new book that focuses on Republican lapses. Here’s an excerpt from a spin-off article from The Atlantic:

Why is the American political system so irrational? Why is it that, even though a lot less partisanship and a lot more compromise would be good for the country, nobody can seem to get us there? The good news is that science is starting to figure this out. The bad news is that it seems to be fundamentally rooted in who we are — creatures who can detect bad and emotional reasoning when others are guilty of doing it, but not so much when we’re doing it ourselves.