If Parody Isn’t Dead, It’s Certainly Endangered:

Yesterday I mocked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s pandering to the anti-vaccination movement. Later that same day, Republican, Kentucky Senator, Presidential aspirant, dangerous charlatan, and follower of Aqua Buddha Rand Paul went a step further by saying that vaccinations should be a parent’s choice and that vaccinations could lead to mental disorders. If you thought that was the bottom of the barrel when it comes to bat-shit Republican political grandstanding in service of deregulating everything in this country that isn’t a woman’s reproductive system, then clearly you must be new here.

While Paul and Christie were busy arguing for policies to reduce the herd immunity of the American populace, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis was working on setting back health and sanitation in this country by about a century. During a question and answer session on Monday, Tillis reminded the audience that he favors allowing restaurants to opt out of requiring their employees to wash their hands after using the restrooms, because nothing screams FREEDOM quite like contracting dysentery. At the rate that these guys are going, sometime in mid-March some Republican official somewhere is going to start publicly advocating bloodletting as a key aspect of their proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act.