Encyclopedia of American Loons

WhatDoesItMean.com is a website devoted to conspiracy theories and rants of such levels of quality that it is often the target even of other conspiracy nutters. And yes, it also sports the delectable web design that characterizes that particular type of website. Now, most of the stuff published on the website consists of links to “news” published elsewhere, but also – and most famously – the rabidly insane column by Sorcha Faal.

Who? Well, until 2004 the website was run by David Booth (still the owner of the website), but in 2005 it was suddenly claimed to be run by a “Russian scientist” named Sorcha Faal, though none of the details like workplace or academic affiliations could be verified. Besides, the name is not remotely Russian but Gaelic, and indeed: By 2009 someone had evidently informed Faal of that, and the site was accordingly claiming that “Sorcha Faal” was the title of the head of the “Order of Sorcha Faal”. It has been, uh, speculated that Sorcha Faal may be … hold your hats … David Booth himself. It’s not A. True Ott.

In any case, Sorcha Faal gives you the goods (“American Rebel Forces Attack Gas Pipelines, Explode Trains As US Civil War Nears,” “Obama Plan To Destroy Gulf Of Mexico Like Ukraine Horrifies Russia,” “Obama Gay Love Affair With Top US Republican Senator Shocks Russia,” “Obama-Monsanto Mass Genocide Plot Stuns Scientists,” “Americans Celebrate Last Year As Free People”) based primariy on what’s currently popular on the more extreme conspiracy forums, InfoWars, Richard Hoagland’s homepage and so on (including the ravings of Amitakh Stanford), sometimes backed up by (non-corroborated) quotes from high-level Russian sources. The reports sometimes get reposted on forums like as Above Top Secret and Godlike Productions, where even regular posters will call it out as bullshit.

Diagnosis: No seriously, even for batshit insane, incoherent conspiracy theories, this is stunningly crazy. Probably pretty harmless, though.

And still they come. Now, we have encountered SANEVax before, but to sum up: SANEVax is an anti-vaccine group specializing in stupid misunderstandings and lunatic conspiracies about Gardasil, often by way of toxin gambits. Leslie Botha is their Vice-President of Public Relations. She also has a radio show (and website) called Holy Hormones Honey!, which is … not a place to turn to for medical advice. The show is an outlet for anti-vaccine propaganda and “complementary and alternative medicine” quackery. The pitch? Well, here she claims that “[i]f one does the quick math, it becomes obvious that nearly 10% of the women who received the Gardasil vaccination experienced an adverse reaction,” based on 7802 reports of [possibly] adverse reactions out of eight million vaccines given. It is not an isolated math slip incident. And Botha’s medical information is not better than her math. She has even promoted Andrew Moulden and appeared with Mike Adams on the Alex Jones show. Heck, she has even been involved in the Shaken Baby Syndrome denialist movement.

Diagnosis: Oh, there are plenty of these, and Botha is a standard case: utterly confident in her own delusions, and completely uninterested in anything that would go against the conclusions she has intuited her way into. And of course: completely, insanely wrong.

There are a few creationists with backgrounds in science, and they tend to be milked by the movement for what they’re (perceived to be) worth; never mind that the scientific disciplines in which they have their backgrounds are irrelevant to any discussion of evolution. Their existence also demonstrates that you can (at least some places) get a science degree without the faintest clue about how science or evidence works. Edward Boudreaux is a case in point. Boudreaux is a theoretical chemist, Professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of New Orleans, Louisiana, and an “adjunct professor of chemistry” at the ICR. As such he has written a number of creationist tracts with a particular focus on the supposed impossibility of abiogenesis. The claims made there have yet to be widely applauded or recognized for their contributions to or understanding of the science. I don’t think it is necessary to go into his claims in detail – you probably know them already without reading his tracts – but he clearly doesn’t even have a minimal understanding of evolution: “Such characteristics (clear evidence of complex design imparting tailor-made functions) defy the probability that any random evolutionary process could account for such unique specificity in design,” says Boudreaux; the cue, of course, is “random evolutionary process,” which – as anyone who understands evolution would know – doesn’t exactly suggest any profound understanding and is arguably a contradiction in terms.

Boudreaux is probably most famous for his contributions to Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987. Indeed, his testimony was cited several times in the ruling, strongly suggesting that it didn’t exactly help the anti-science side. He is also a signatory to the CMI list of scientists today who accept the Biblical account of creation.

Diagnosis: Yep, completely predictable. Might he be a plant trying to make creationists look silly?

There are the creationists, then there are the young earth creationists – and then there are the hysterically looney, and fumingly, medievally fanatic crazis on the fringes that even young earth creationists feel uncomfortable hanging around. Gerardus Bouw is a legend among the latter. For Bouw the prime target is not the evils of Darwinism, but the evils of Copernicanism, the hideously heretic belief that the earth orbits the sun.

Bouw is the author of a book, Geocentricity, on the topic (pushed for instance by former Bible Science Association director, Rev. Walter Lang, on the website of The Genesis Institute), which seems to build on his article “Why Geocentricity?” which appeared in the Baptist Bulletin sometime around 1985. His case is perhaps best summed up by his argument to the effect that those who assert that “the earth moves and turns” ... [are] motivated by “a spirit of bitterness, contradiction, and faultfinding;” and being possessed by the devil, they aim “to pervert the order of nature.” Well, it is not so much an argument as an assertion, but there you go. And then there is “God, in His Word, consistently teaches geocentricity,” but other conclusions could be drawn from that observation.

What about scientific evidence to the contrary? “The only way we can know for certain whether or not geocentricity is true would be to leave the universe, take a look around outside the universe, and then come back in to tell us what is really happening in that larger scope. Since God is infinitely greater than the universe, and so extends beyond the universe, what God says must present the ultimate case ...” No, he doesn’t quite understand how scientific hypothesis testing works, but that is – I suppose – not the main problem with that argument. At least he admits that “I would not be a geocentrist if it were not for the Scriptures,” which suggests that part of him is aware that his scientific case is … tortured.

To those with absolutely no background in science, Bouw’s rants may conceivable sound like they’re onto something. From his article The Biblical Firmament: “The firmament is an extremely dense medium that rules all physics in the universe. Compared to the firmament, the universe of atoms is nothing. We will show that the firmament is identical to the Planck medium that has been known to physics for over a century. We shall also show that the firmament is the light-bearing medium commonly called the ether, and that the luminiferous ether is redundant and unnecessary.” To emphasize, the science background you need to see through it is pretty superficial.

At present Bouw seems to be the leader of the Association of Biblical Astronomy, a group of likeminded fanatics. He also seems to be Alan O’Reilly’s go-to person for scientific information, and Matt Wykoff has apparently learned much of his science from Bouw’s ramblings.

Diagnosis: At least his ilk seems to bug the creationists, and they do put the Intelligent Design creationists’ teach-the-controversy argument in perspective. There isn’t really much else positive to say about him – he isn’t even particularly entertaining. Even Bouw rejects a flat earth, however, so there is, apparently, a crystal sphere of fringe nuttery even beyond his.

Janet Boynes is an ex-gay activist and close ally of Michele Bachmann (they have described each other as “friends”); she has been called “the Religious Right’s ‘ex-gay’ du jour,” she is embraced by hate groups like the Family Research Council, and is touted by Marcus Bachmann in his fundamentalist “counseling clinics”. Boynes has made a career promoting her ex-gay autobiography and other ex-gay propaganda through her ministry (the vice president of which is Barb Anderson of the Minnesota Family Council, perhaps most famous for leading the 2012 ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota’s constitution) and an ex-gay front group known as the National Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus. And, of course, her whole ex-gay career is built on rather dubious foundations – there is (if it needed mentioning) no evidence of the efficacy of ex-gay therapies, and Boynes’s story is certainly not such evidence.

Predictably, Boynes is a fanatic opponent of marriage equality. In particular, “[n]o one should be promoting Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) behaviors. They are not born that way. There is no scientific evidence that proves they are. None,” says Boynes, and will never see that the premise is, even if true, irrelevant to the conclusion. In her book and elsewhere she frequently compares homosexuality to polygamy, pedophilia, incest, and bestiality, lamenting for instance how the school system is trying to get kids “hooked” on homosexuality, but the issue is of course larger and more epic than insignificant human tendencies toward sin; according to Boynes the struggle to defeat gay rights is a spiritual battle against the demonic forces of evil, and Satan is the one who is really actively trying to stop her ex-gay activism through his minions and worshippers in the gay communities: “There’s a spiritual conflict that is waging war around all of us and it’s a battle between forces, you’ve got good and evil and you’ve got light and darkness.” Thus works the mind of a raging fundie bigot. And never one to go for false modesty, she has declared that she is “a threat” to Satan.

Apparently Boynes has some trouble seeing why many gays would want marriage equality – why don’t they just “leave [the church] alone because we’re not out there bothering them?” asks Boynes, suggesting that she has deeply misunderstood something fundamental – and instead of the obvious, directly opposite (and true) answer has concluded that they want marriage equality “because they’re not comfortable with their own skin, they’re not comfortable with who they are.” This column for Charisma magazine doesn’t suggest much by way of awareness either.

Like many crazy dingbat anti-gay activists Boynes has convinced herself that marriage equality is an attempt to send people “back to slavery”, but she is unable to spell out the whys and hows in any coherent manner.

Diagnosis: Stupid and evil.

It beggars belief (well, not really), but Donald Boys was once an Indiana lawmaker. Currently, he is a columnist for Barbwire, Matt Barber’s website for people who seem to be too extreme, hateful and hysterically insane for Alan Keyes’s Renew America. As with most of Barbwire’s columnists, Boys has an unhealthy obsession with sex, especially male sex, and he has even lobbied the Indiana Congress to recriminalize sodomy. According to Boys “sodomy should be a crime again to give police officials authority to stop the cruising in city parks, sex in public restrooms, and discourage molesting of little boys” – Boys is apparently unaware that the latter is already illegal and discouraged, even in states that recognize gay marriage. And furthermore, homosexuals want much more than to be left alone: “They want respectability. They want to move into a house in the suburbs, park matching Volvos in the driveway and be accepted as normal people.” Yes, they want to be treated as people. Which to people like Boys is apparently preposterous: “[T]hat won’t happen as long as Christians live in this state,” said Boys. As expected, Boys has received some criticism, which apparently left him non-plussed; for the crime of sodomy he “only suggested 12 years in prison as had been the law for many years,” no more. Clearly criticizing him is an example of persecution of those with different beliefs and values.

Apparently “President Obama committed political suicide when he climbed in bed with the homosexual crowd (figuratively, I hope).” The polls don’t suggest that, so what does Boys have in mind when he says that “now it is official, and that could be dangerous for Obama and America” if not public opinion? But of course: “God is not pleased and it is a dangerous thing to displease a sovereign, holy God! Look at Sodom!” Ah yes, Boys’s buddy is gonna beat up Obama and those who disagree with him.

Here is Donald Boys on Michael Sam’s kiss. Predictable; but it is worth noticing that Boys never said that “anyone with a modicum of decency stop watching ESPN and NFL games” when NFL players beat up their girlfriends on camera, murder, rape, drive drunk and so on. Priorities, people. “The homosexual leaders are the most vile, vicious, and vitriolic people in the world.” You can’t think of anyone worse, can you?

It is worth noting that Boys rose to (a modicum of) fame not for his views on homosexuals, but for imploring the Bush administration to nuke Mecca and Medina, mostly because he didn’t discern sufficient lamenting and resentment over terrorist acts in the images television chose to broadcast from Arabic countries after 9/11.

He doesn’t like evolution either. Evolution “denies science,” as he carefully explained in his lecture “A Christian Apologist Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up! A Revealing Lecture Exposing New Atheists and Their Agenda.” Even the title reveals rather clearly that Boys doesn’t have the faintest idea about evolution. Or science. But that should hardly surprise anyone at this point.

Diagnosis: Persistently wrong Bryan Fischer wannabe. Completely out of touch with reality or humanity, but probably of limited influence.

It’s become rare, but it still happens: Sometimes we come across something so perfectly, abysmally offensive to reason, truth, beauty, and humanity that it manages to take us aback. Such is the website of Michael Bradley. Bradley seems to fancy himself an expert on neanderthals, and has even written one or more self-published books on the topic. Basically, he thinks there are two types of human: the noble and handsome Cro Magnon people, and the short, stocky, hairy people with receding foreheads that arose in what he calls the “Toxic Lozenge”; the latter group, the Neanderthals – although “people deriving from this Toxic Lozenge in ancient times may not be exactly human and certainly seem to be incompatible with the values and attitudes of ‘ordinary humanity’” – being the ancestors of Jews and other Semitic people, who are characterized by crude and ugly appearances and inferior value systems.

What about the Neanderthal genome sequencing that showed that Europeans and Asians have an infusion of Neanderthal genes on the order of about 4%? Bradley has a different interpretation. Yes, 4 % of the human genome is Neanderthal. But 4 % of the human population is also roughly the population of the Middle East. “What if this Neanderthal DNA is concentrated in the Caucasus Middle East, where this 2010 study admits that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons (or ‘Early Modern Humans’) met and interbred?” asks Bradley, and subsequently assumes that he has proven that the Neanderthal genes are concentrated in the Middle East, where people are ugly and responsible for all sorts of violence and degenerate cultural traits. “Basically, I estimate that about seventy percent of the present crisis on this planet can be fairly attributed to the machinations of Neanderthal-Semitic elements of the human population against the Cro-Magnon majority of the human population.”

And from there the conclusions just come rolling out: 9/11 was a Jewish plot, as is Obamacare and Hillary Rodham Clinton; and the Jews control Hollywood. In response, Bradley calls for all non-Semitic peoples of the world to unite “to severely limit Semitic activities before they put an end to us and everything else on the planet. I offer the following banner, emblem and symbol …” The symbol he offers is a swastika. And he suggests … Mel Gibson as the charismatic leader of the movement. And the war is of cosmic proportions, because there are UFOs and Roswell and Atlantis are involved. And so it goes.

Diagnosis: And yes, there is quite a number of these out there, which is both horrifying and fascinating.

Walter Bradley is a professor (retired) of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M (something of a creationist hub, apparently) and Baylor Universities, Fellow of the Discovery Institute, and a pretty central figure in the creationist movement, for instance in virtue of his 1984 book The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (with Charles Thaxton and Roger L. Olson), which is generally recognized as one of the books that started the Intelligent Design movement. In the book the authors attack and reject science as well as all natural theories for the origin of life on earth, predictably ending up claiming that the Christian God did it. It didn’t make a huge splash in scientific communities, but as always with these people their battles aren’t intended to be fought among experts but in public opinion (not convinced? Here’s another “telling example”). An example of the scientific bankruptcy of the book is here.

It is hardly Bradley’s only outreach effort on behalf of science denial. He has witnessed for the anti-science side before the Texas Board of Education during certain board members’ efforts to introduce religion and science denialin Texas public schools, and is on the selection committee for the Trotter Prize, which rewards work on intelligent design creationism. And heck, Bradley was even one of the original strategists behind the Wedge strategy for reforming American culture in line with evangelical principles. Dishonesty is a sin only for nonbelievers, remember.

Bradley is of course also a signatory to the Discovery Institute petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.

Diagnosis: Bradley is actually known for being comparatively upfront and fair in his presentations on intelligent design. His background story suggests that this description doesn’t apply to his long term strategies.

Given that Jeff Bradstreet recently died, under what seems to be tragic circumstances, we were unsure whether it was proper to post this already semi-prepared entry. We decided to go ahead – after all, Bradstreet’s claims still carry some weight in certain parts of the antivaxx communities, and ought to be exposed in the name of public good.

James Jeffrey Bradstreet was an (alternative) autism researcher and former Christian preacher who also ran the International Child Development Resource Center in Melbourne, Florida. Bradstreet did possess a medical degree an seems to have done some real research, though apparently he never quite understood that thing about proper protocols for hypothesis testing and the importance of using, you know, evidence to back up claims – he was, after all, currently also an adjunct professor of child development and neuroscience at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Arizona. That’s not an institution where claims are evaluated according to their foundations in evidence or reality.

His research on autism accordingly sought to blame vaccines. The fact that the hypothesis is as falsified as any scientific hypothesis can be apparently didn’t deter him. He didn’t even take the hint when his results were published in the legendary pseudo-journal Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (which is, needless to say, not indexed by PubMed). His research did not impress the Institute of Medicine.

Not deterred by falsification, Bradstreet went on to treat at least one autistic child with chelation therapy for an extended period of time – despite obvious lack of efficacy, obvious adverse effects, and the fact that the treatment was unwarranted even by Bradstreet’s own standards(tests showed that the kid’s mercury levels were normal). In addition to chelation, Bradstreet also promoted the use of intravenous immunoglobulin as an autism treatment (a treatment popularized in particular perhaps by Dan Rossignol, another autism crackpot), Gc-MAF (with which he claimed to have treated 600 children with), and stem cell therapy (“case reports have built an argument for supporting the reversibility of autism using immunological interventions” – in other words: despite a complete lack of actual evidence).

On the grounds that he possessed genuine credentials, Bradstreet was involved in the autism omnibus trial – both in treating several of the patients and as an expert witness (he has also testified before Congress in connection with some of Dan Burton’s many anti-vaccine efforts). The courts were not impressed with Bradstreet’s diagnoses and treatment regimes, but we doubt that ever deterred him. At least he continued to participate at the annual quackfest Autism One.

Diagnosis: One of the central characters in the anti-vaccine movement. After all, Bradstreet had credentials. That he rather obviously failed to understand much of the stuff he was supposed to learn in obtaining those credentials is apparently of little importance to his fans.

Yet another WND columnist, and Maj. Gen. Pat Brady is as clueless and loony as they come. Brady, of course, knows nothing about the Constitution and history, so it should surprise no one that he says a lot of stupid shit about both with complete confidence. A case in point is his argument that there is “overwhelming constitutional evidence” that flag burning should be illegal (what does “overwhelming constitutional evidence” even mean, you might ask, and you can be sure not to get a coherent answer from Brady). The separation of church and state, however, is a “constitutional fraud,” according to Brady, who is – again – as blithely oblivious to everything related to law, history and the Constituion as he is confident in his opinions. The fact that judges disagree with him he attributes to “judicial insanity”.

Nor does he like gays (surprise). Indeed, Brady will, he says, no longer recommend people to enlist in the military because of too much gay “dancing and romancing”. All thanks to Obama’s “insanity”.

Diagnosis: Yup, Maj. Gen. Brady is gonna show you insanity, all right.

Young-earth creationists with genuine credentials in any relevant discipline are rare, but Leonard Brand does have a PhD in biology from Cornell (from 1970). Currently Brand, a Seventh-Day Adventist, is the Chair Professor of Loma Linda University Department of Earth and Biological Sciences, which is not a place you would go to learn anything about Earth and Biological Sciences. And Brand really wants to be taken seriously, despite the complete bankruptcy of his views from a scientific standpoint, and has long been an advocate of “respectful dialogue” on what he thinks is a creation–evolution controversy. At least he has – in fairness – challenged fellow creationists to use caution when making scientific claims, but that is frankly not enough to escape a “deranged lunacy” tag from us.

As a “researcher” Brand is mostly known for his attempts to find evidence for the Flood. So for instance, Brand (with Thu Tang, Andrew Snelling and Steven Austin) has proposed that fossil tracks in the Grand Canyon’s Coconino Sandstone point to underwater deposition rather than desert wind deposition of dry sand, a hypothesis that has, to put it mildly, been criticized (“refuted” is more accurate) by scientists with a more rigorous approach to the data. Nonetheless, and quite predictably, Brand left out all criticism, objections and refutations in his book Faith, Reason and Earth History. Dishonesty is a sin only for those who don’t stand with Jesus, remember.

In other words, though Brand takes a less confrontational approach than many other young earth creationists, and may superficially appear to respect scientific investigations and empirical evidence somewhat more, there is little to distinguish him from the rest. It’s the same denialism, dishonesty and motivated reasoning as always – it’s just the presentation that has changed (somewhat) for what appears to be strategic reasons. It is noteworthy that those who praise Brand for his integrity and respect for science are his fellow young earth creationists. Brand himself? “The difference between a creationist and an evolutionist isn’t a difference in the scientific data, but a difference in philosophy – a difference in the presuppositions …” Yup. That gambit (covered in a bit more detail here); hint: presuppositions are testable as much as anything else, but Brand is completely unwilling to test his). Here is a discussion of a recent attempt to use that particularly gambit.

And Brand has been in the game for a long time. Together with Ariel Roth he defended “teaching the controversy” in public schools before the California State Board of Education in the early seventies (stating that students in California schools should be allowed to hear both theories and to make up their own minds.) His most recent book is Beginnings (2007), where he states that “[i]n my approach, I retain the scientific method of observation and experimentation, but I also allow study of Scripture to open my eyes to things that I might otherwise overlook and to suggest new hypotheses to test. This approach is not just a theory; some of us have been using it for years with success.” “Success” refers, of course, not to successful scientific investigations, but to outreach strategies. Well, Brand claims that it refers to scientific investigations, and as evidence he cites … the Coconino Sandstone fossil tracks again, completely oblivious to the fact that his interpretations of these tracks have been refuted a thousand times. So much for an honest approach to science.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church seems to have recognized Brand as something of a leader in matters of science and origins, and he served on the SDA church’s science council (now, that’san Orwellian committee if there ever was one) for almost 30 years. As such, he has also written a book (with Australian Don S. McMahon) defending Ellen White’s writings on health. Needless to say, sayingthat they advocate a scientifically rigorous approach doesn’t automatically make the approach they advocate scientifically rigorous, and the book is riddled with pseudoscience and godbotting.

Diagnosis: Denialist dingbat, who harbors not the faintest trace of respect for methodological rigor, evidence, accountability or reason. As compromising and honest about science as Kent Hovind, really, though admittedly somewhat better at cushioning and camouflaging his message.

Gregory J. “Greg” Brannon is, in fact, an MD, but being an MD does not mean that you have been given training in reasoning or in assessing evidence, and Brannon is a striking illustration of that. He is unfortunately also a political activist, and ran (as a Republican) in the 2014 United States Senate election in North Carolina against Kay Hagan, though he lost the primary.

As a political activist Brannon is notably the former leader of Founder’s Truth, a hysterically lunatic gathering of nuts promoting a variety of conspiracy theories revolving around various sorts of technology leading to government control. Blog posts on the group’s site also claim that:

- The Aurora movie theater massacre was an inside job orchestrated by “psyop pros” in order to tighten the government’s grasp on the population.

- That the TSA might force people to wear bracelets that would “deliver an electric shock if they got out of line”.

- That corporations are scheming to plant microchips in our brains.

- That light rail systems in American cities are part of a nefarious UN plot.

- That the fluoridation of water is “unethical and criminal” and claims about some “secret police murder and cover-up.”

And just to emphasize: These appear to be Brannon’s own views – not only those of his associates. Brannon himself has for instance appeared on Alex Jones’s show railing against Agenda 21 (“this scam of Agenda 21, this scam of humans are poisoning the earth, is a scam […] They are using that to control you, to control me, to control life”), Obamacare (part of a global conspiracy), the National Defense Authorization Act, and the global conspiracy to make him sick through vaccinations. Oh, yes – he is anti-vaccine; and he has evidence: “I remember vividly,” says Brannon, “I was a resident-in-training and I got my flu vaccine like I always did … three weeks later, I had a high fever … bottom-line, I was bleeding blood, and I got a kidney disease I still have today.” Do you need any more? Yes, he admitted that “I can’t say what I have came from that,” but “there’s a lot of correlation that does in a lot of the literature I’ve done.” Precisely. As for the UN itself, it is apparently a scam to control life, and democratic debate over issues is a form of socialism.

In the Senate primary run Brannon was endorsed by e.g. Mike Lee and Rand Paul. During the campaign Brannon also claimed that food stamps are a form of slavery, a claim that could, I suppose, be defended, but not in the sense that Brannon intended it. As for U.S. property taxes, Brannon called them “American central planning” and cited the Holocaust and Soviet Union as other examples of central planning – you do the math. Nor does he believe in public schools, but he does believe that “democracy means minorities get crushed” and that the U.S. is a Marxist country (no, distinctions are not his strong suit) – property taxes, for instance, make us “indentured servants” to the government and are comparable to the Communist Manifesto (yes, those pesky distinctions again). He has accordingly been somewhat critical of Obama, claiming that Obama wants a socialist dictatorship police state (though Obama is a fascist, looking to China as an example – Obama wants “us to be a merger of government and big business … it’s called fascism … President Obama is not a socialist,” and coherence is apparently a liberal conspiracy) – evidence? Brannon disagrees on policy issues; therefore Obama is evil. His claim that it “would be much better” if we had state militias instead of a U.S. Army may have made even some of his political allies concerned.

Though he doesn’t care for democracy – or the Supreme Court (which he thinks “has zero power of enforcement” and is only good for making opinions “and that’s all it’s for”) – he does care for the Second Amendment, which he thinks extends to owning a nuclear weapon (think about the poor local militias).

Diagnosis: Yes, people like this actually get votes in elections, and yes, it should render you speechless. Perhaps it’s time for these groups to just cut to the chase and run the real Alex Jones as their candidate?

Dave Brat is probably best known as the guy who beat Eric Cantor in the 2014 Virginia primaries. He is currently the Representative serving Virginia's 7th congressional district, and has emerged as an impressive loon.

Brat is an economist and a libertarian. He is also a religious fundamentalist, and has arrived at a kind of synthesis between these positions – according to Brat’s version of biblical economics, God really is, literally, the invisible hand of the market; the invisible hand should accordingly be worshipped as God, and the free market is a religious decree on par with anything else you can find in the Bible. That also means, of course, that economic growth and prosperity is best facilitated by true, fanatic believers: Though he does, as an economist, admit that savings rates, human capital accumulation and so on may drive economic growth, the larger factor really is “the Protestant religious establishment;” that this is the fundamental force of economic growth is something other, professional economists may tend to ignore. And just like Christ was a transformer of culture, capitalism is the key to world transformation; a transformation that, according to Brat, can be achieved when capitalism and Christianity merge; if people follow the gospel, and as a consequence behave more morally [basic, poor assumption there], then the markets will improve. Conversely, Christians and their churches need to adopt capitalism as part of their creed. We’ll give Dave Brat credit for adopting a uniquely Americantype of crazy. That he got himself elected is less hilarious.

As a politician, he’d had ample opportunity to explain how these ideas translate into political positions. For instance, after having been called out by PolitiFact on some comments about Obamacare, Brat defended himself by pointing to Korea; Obamacare would move America away from capitalism, and to illustrate the dangers of such policies: “Look at North Korea and South Korea. It’s the same culture, it’s the same people, look at a map at night, one of the countries is not lit, there’s no lights, and the bottom free-market country, all Koreans, is lit up. So you make your bet on which country you want to be, you want to go free market.” At least the argument illustrates Brat’s troubled relationship with the phenomenon of distinctions.

Brat has also argued that allowing DREAMers in the military will mean “the decline of Western civilization”. Why think that? Well, remember that “part of the reason Rome fell was because they started hiring the barbarians in.” He’d earlier argued that the DREAM ACT would, along with church-state separation, threaten the “pillars” of American success. In that regard, Brat contrasted the DREAM Act with the teachings of Martin Luther King, whom Brat said “had a true dream of a better day for all of us under the law.” This, he explained (or whatever you want to call what he was trying to do), was because King “came out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” And that brought Brat to lament how “the faith doesn’t get discussed in school anymore,” that “there’s hardly any free markets left” before concluding that “the rule of law is under threat, it’s called the ‘DREAM Act’,” and it’s an Orwellian plan to undermine American success. Case closed – well, almost: Brat’s real target was the separation between church and state, which he disagrees with, arguing that “[I]f you want a total separation of church and state, get rid of law and get rid of love, because that’s in the tradition.” Yes, it’s a glittering example of a word salad the likes of which we have barely seen from a politician since Sarah Palin’s heyday.

In an April 2015 interview Brat claimed that ISIS has set up a base in Texas: “In our country it looks like we have an ISIS center in Texas now ... You can’t make up what a terrible problem this is.” After being called out for the stratospheric levels of idiocy involved in that claim, Brat’s office said that he had really meant to say Mexico, not Texas. They also cited the conservative group Judicial Watch as their source, which is a move sufficient to merit inclusion in our Encyclopedia on its own. Judicial Watch, on their side (Tom Fitton, in particular), declined to provide any substantiation for its report, but did claim that the FBI, Texas Department of Public Safety and Customs and Border Protection were lying, and were meeting Mexican authorities to formulate a strategy to conceal the ISIS camps from the media, citing unnamed sources. Brat, on his side, claimed that “the political parties are just blind to [letting ISIS into the country] because the money, it causes blinders on their eyes. They can’t see reality clearly.” He neglected to elaborate on which politicians were bought and who exactly it was that bought them.

Diagnosis: One of the most insane, delusional and frightening people alive in the US today, no less.

Rick Brattin

A.k.a. The Rick and Andy Show

Another year, another slew of creationist efforts to get creationism taught in public schools through state legislation – usually under the guise of “teach the controversy”, which does not refer to an actual controversy among those who know anything about the subject, of course. In Missouri, 2013, for instance, the most significant attempt was through House Bill 291, sponsored by Rick Brattin, a high school graduate who operates Brattin Drywall Company, and Andrew Koenig, who owns a paint company and who has a license to sell health and life insurance. They had also sponsored a previous creationist bill.

Andrew Koenig

The bill started out defining evolution in one paragraph – as common descent– and without mention of anything specific concerning mechanisms or evidence but instead stating that evolution denies “operation of any intelligence, supernatural event, God or theistic figure”. That paragraph is followed by 12 paragraphs defining Intelligent Design, primarily by pointing to biological processes and phenomena and claiming that they are the result of intelligence – with scant discussion of, you know, scientific status or research programs – concluding that “course textbooks [should] contain approximately an equal number of pages of relevant material teaching each viewpoint.” They did require that all the Intelligent Design claims be backed up by evidence, which makes the requirements contradictory (no they wouldn’t know). However, in line with Discotute guidelines, they asserted that “[i]f biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’s biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course.”

Of course, no textbook is going to meet that requirement. But Brattin and Koenig have a solution: They will put together a committee that will provide supplemental material on creationism of equal weight to the textbooks, to be written by a select team of “nine individuals who are knowledgeable of science and intelligent design and reside in Missouri.” Now, all experts on the field would know that Intelligent Design is bunk, but somehow we suspect that Brattin & Koenig didn’t have experts on biology in mind when they mention “individuals who are knowledgeable”. They did, for the record, try a similar bill in 2012 (discussed here).

The bill didn’t meet with much success, so they tried again in 2014, this time requiring that “[a]ny school district or charter school which provides instruction relating to the theory of evolution by natural selection shall be required to have a policy on parental notification and a mechanism where a parent can choose to remove the student from any part of the district’s or school’s instruction on evolution.” It is notable that geocentric parents or holocaust denying parents don’t get the same opportunity. They also submitted this one. Neither worked out for them.

As a solo stunt, Brattin submitted one of the strangest anti-evolution bills ever in 2013, one that basically asserted that nature is really complex (including the noteworthy claim that amino acids are “recurring discrete symbols”), so evolution cannot be true, therefore God.

Koenig went solo in 2015 with House Bill 486, which would confer “academic freedom to teach scientific evidence regarding evolution” to teachers, thereby encouraging science teachers with, uh, idiosyncratic opinions to teach anything they please without responsible educational authorities intervening. Once again, the bill specifically cited “the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution” as controversial. And once again, the bill died a sorry death.

Diagnosis: Feeble clowns who apparently decided to use their voters’ trust in them to devote their time to combat science, evidence, truth and reason in truly quixotic ways. Apparently, that hasn’t shaken some of the voters’ confidence in these two, a situation that fails to paint a very flattering image of (certain groups of) Missouri voters.

Fundie wingnuts have been promoting a Starbucks boycott ever since the company announced its support for a marriage equality law in its home state Washington, so Robert Breaud’s complaints are nothing new, but rather entirely predictable. Breaud is an ex-gay activist, and his warning to Starbucks was that they need to prepare for a divine reckoning after Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz rebuffed the head of the Corporate Morality Action Center, saying that Schultz has taken a “Christ-hating position” and is “helping to destroy young people’s lives.”

Breaud is, however, most famous for his hit song “It’s Not OK To Be Gay,” which you can experience here.

Diagnosis: An angry and evil little man.

A.k.a. The Intellectual Conservative

Honorable mention to James Brewship for his self-published book Heaven’s Tablet, a novel whose press release was titled: “The Beginning of God: Explosive New Novel Describes God’s Origin, Challenges Darwin” (it was issued by PRWeb, which “gets your news straight to the search engines that everyone uses, like Google, Yahoo and Bing”). He’ll get a separate entry once his ideas have succeeded in overturning the oppressive scientific establishment.

Thomas Brewton may not be a household name yet, either, but his use of the word “intellectual” to describe himself is sufficiently provocative to earn him an entry. Brewton is a creationist, and he rejects the theory of evolution because, well, primarily because he has no idea how it is supposed to work. According to Brewton “[i]n Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis, and in the many variants since 1859, the fundamental thrust, indeed the starting point for Darwin himself, was to disprove what he called the ‘damnable doctrine’ of God as the Creator of the cosmos and of life on earth,” which is demonstrably false but rather telling. “All events, for the evolutionists, are attributable to material causes, without the intervention of a Creator existing before and outside the universe,” he continues, which has nothing to do with the theory of evolution, but which does predict what his main strategy is going to be: confuse evolution and abiogenesis. And, indeed: “For evolution to stand on its own two feet, Darwinians must be able to explain how life was created by purely material factors. This they singularly fail to do. And without a materialistic beginning of life, there can be no purely materialistic, Darwinian evolution of life forms.” Which is, once again, absolute, utter nonsense. Nor does he really have any idea about actual research into abiogenesis, of course. According to Brewton “[e]very theory attempting to explain the origin of life has collided with contradictory facts in chemistry and geology,” which is … wait for it … not correct.

Diagnosis: You’d think we’d grown accustomed by now, but this really is the kind of intellectual bankruptcy that still manages to annoy us.

James Frederick Bridenstine, the US Representative for Oklahoma’s 1st congressional district, is apparently one of the up-and-coming Tea Party politicians, and a true loon. Among his most notable accomplishments is the Weather Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013, which was introduced in response to several 2013 Oklahoma tornadoes as a means to secure that measures were taken to reduce the disastrous impact of tornadoes in Oklahoma without looking like any sort of support for climate change research. In fact, Bridenstine claimed that 30 times more money was being spent on climate change research than on weather forecasting and warning, a claim that is so obviously and demonstrably misleading that it cannot possibly have been made in good faith. Of course, Bridenstine blamed the situation on Obama, despite the rather obvious fact that the budget was set by Congress, but we suspect that very many politician would have done the same in his situation.

Now, the wording of the aforementioned bill is not particularly surprising. Bridenstine has repeatedly said that he believes anthropogenic climate change is a myth, despite consensus from 97 percent of the scientific community. Specifically, Bridenstine has saidtemperature increases have coincided more with “solar activity” than the human-driven increase in heat-trapping gases emitted into the atmosphere, a hypothesis that has been refuted so many times that it has started to resemble standard creationist talking points.

Of course, denialism and conspiracy theories rarely come in isolation, and Bridenstine has also argued for instance that Common Core is a plot by the federal government to “indoctrinate” students and breed “socialism” – indeed, a deliberate attempt by the federal government to “control opinions” and weaken American exceptionalism. And then there is this.

Diagnosis: Stock delusional conspiracy theorist who’s apparently been elected to Congress instead of being left to ferment over at whale.to where he belongs.

As we have had ample opportunity to see, lunacy is no hindrance to being elected as a US representative. But with regard to lunacy, Congress is nothing compared to what you find in state legislatures. Georgia, for instance, was for a dozen years (until 2008) plagued by the barely coherent stupidity of Benjamin D. Bridges, Sr. (10th district).

In 2007, for instance, Bridges, who has no science background, was criticized for circulating a memo condemning evolution and heliocentrism in the Georgia legislature. The memo claimed that “[i]ndisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion …This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.” No, not the faintest trace of an even cursory understanding of evolution, but the memo did direct readers to the website of Marshal Hall’s young Earth creationist Fair Education Foundation, which claims the Earth is not rotating or orbiting the Sun and denies the existence of any stars or exoplanets outside the solar system (it also directed the reader to Gerardus Bouw’s website). Marshall Hall, by the way, was the husband of Bridges’ longtime campaign manager, Bonnie Hall.

Bridges did claim that he had nothing to do with the memo, but Hall stated that she had Bridges’s approval, and in any case Bridges confimed that he did not necessarily disagree with its claims: “I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory,” said Bridges. The memo was later circulated in the Texas legislature by their resident congressional idiot Warren Chisum.

Indeed, Bridges himself used the same sources for his own 2006 bill, HB 179, which would outlaw the teaching of evolution because evolution is a Kabbalah-based religion: “Included here is documentation which confirms that ‘evolution science’ is NOT ‘secular science’ as the Courts have viewed it to be, but is, in fact, an alternate religious ‘creation scenario’ which is derived concept for concept from the Kabbala, a mystic, anti-Christ ‘holy book’ of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism.” What’s that evidence? Glad you asked: “Nechunya ben HaKana, a 1st century Kabbalist asserted that if you know how to use the 42 letter name for God you could decipher a lengthy time between the creation of the universe and man. He estimated the age of the Universe at 15.3 billion years, some 2000 years ago, the very age modern astrophysics have just arrived at;” off by just 1.6 billion years, which I suppose is nothing to people who believe that the Earth is 6000 years anyways. But what does it have to do with evolution? Oh, you know: evolution, Big Bang, communism, LGBT rights, gun control, people who disagree with him … it’s all the same conspiracy, and it is targeted at good Christians like Bridges.

In any case, the source of the “evidence” is a collection of ridiculously absurd claims by kabbala loons who claim that modern science has confirmed their moronic religious speculations and hence that science is actually a kabbala religion. Bridges’s advisors apparently took them seriously. Note that not even Answers in Genesis wants to associate with people who think that science (including heliocentrism) is a Jewish conspiracy.

It wasn’t Bridges’s first time campaigning on pseudoscientific grounds. Also in 1999 and 2005 did he introduce legislation to have non-existent evidence against evolution being taught in public schools. In 2005, Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education testified against his bill, causing Bridges to remark that he could have gotten “experts” as well, if he’d known that GCISE was going to be there. It would actually have been fun to see him bring in his “experts” to testify.

Diagnosis: Ok, so he’s not really in a position of power anymore. He is still a fine example of the level of crazy you can achieve without becoming unelectable.

Josephine Briggs is the Director of the Nactional Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM; currently the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)), former senator Tom Harkin’s heavily subsidized heartchild devoted to studying woo. Now, at least in its infancy NCCAM applied rigorous scientific methods to their studies, which of course meant that little or no actual support for altmed quackery would be forthcoming. Harkin and others were predictably disappointed, and over the years the NCCAM appears, perhaps as a result of political pressure, to have adopted more “flexible approaches” – as one of the original Board Members, Barrie Cassileth, put it, “The degree to which nonsense has trickled down to every aspect of this office is astonishing ... It’s the only place where opinions are counted as equal to data.”

Although some of the previous directors of NCCAM have been pretty rigorous, with Briggs the political sponsors seem to have found the kind of leader they wanted all along. And Briggs appears to have no more than a half-hearted intention of letting reality determine NCCAM’s recommendations. For instance, one great thing about doing research on woo is that one can ignore the base-rate fallacy and credulously push any false positive one wants, and Briggs seems intent on trying that one.

Briggs’s favorite trick, however, is the false balance gambit, and she seems genuinely unaware of what the problem with that gambit from a critical-thinking related point of view might be. So, for instance, although she has been willing to listen to scientists and evidence, she also listens to homeopaths (and promotes a balanced assessment of their claims). It was apparently in response to a meeting with scientists that she produced a post on the NCCAM blog entitled “Listening to Differing Voices”, in which she distinguished between CAM advocates, on the one hand, and skeptics who reflexively dismiss CAM and want to eliminate it, on the other, “open-mindedly” concluding that hers is the only reasonable position between them, and pointing out that: “As I’ve stated before, our position is that science must remain neutral, and we should be strictly objective. There are compelling reasons to explore many CAM modalities, and the science should speak for itself.” The problem, of course, is that the science does, indeed, speak for itself, and has decisevly refuted the very hypotheses Briggs wishes to take seriously. Indeed, her responseto data seems to have become reflexive: the continued refutation of altmed claims continue to be met with Briggs’s calls for“rebooting” the debate and a “nuanced and balanced” conversation.

And, heck, there is a good argument to be made that she is utterly incompetent at what she is trying to do – if by “what she is trying to do” we mean trying to determine whether treatments work rather than making savvy political moves (as in this, since this) Here, for instance, she discovers Bayesian probability and fails so miserably that it would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so sad because she is actually in a position of power and influence.

Indeed, Briggs has lent her imprimatur, along with those of the NIH and the federal government, to the formal celebration of quackery titled the “25th Anniversary Convention of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians.” Moreover Briggs nominated Jane Guiltinan, former President of the AANP and Dean of Naturopathic Medicine for Bastyr University, to membership of the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NACCAM). Guiltinan, according to herself, “emphasizes the concepts of treating the cause of a problem, supporting the body’s own healing process and encouraging patients to create their own wellness even in the face of serious illness. Dr. Guiltinan uses nutrition, plant medicine and homeopathy [!] in her practice and believes that air, water, food, touch, love and laughter are some of the most powerful healing agents.” The NCCAM has previously nominated homeopath Brian M.Berman to their advisory committee.

Antivaxx sentiments are widespread in the altmed community, and one would think that NCCAM – if it were a responsible organization – would help defuse the antivaxx myths. Briggs has officially agreed to do this, but the NCCAM has abundantly failed to follow up on that promise.

Diagnosis: It could be argued that Briggs may not qualify as an outright loon, and that as a director of NCCAM she is put in something of an awkward position, but she is certainly a great facilitator of and legitimizer of quackery; given her position the only respectable stance would have been a staunch defense of reality, critical thinking and evidence. By hedging on those points she is really causing a lot of harm.

Addendum: Oh, the hell: Josephine Briggs is an advocate for anti-science and a loon. Her series – published as a supplement Science, no less – “The Art and Science of Traditional Medicine Part 1: TCM Today—A Case for Integration” (with contributions from a number of powerful quacks and pseudoscientists such as Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO and Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of Science) is so fundamentally dishonest that we cannot give her the benefit of doubt anymore. It is, however, worth quoting the goal of the series (a series of issues, in fact):

“… we present a series of articles making a case for the integration of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) into modern medical practice. From the new WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy to the application of systems biology in studying TCM, we aim to highlight the potential for creating an integrated, network-based health care system. The next two issues will cover herbal genomics and highlight the importance of quality control, standardization, regulation, and safety for traditional therapies. An overview of indigenous medicines in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, and the Americas will also be provided.”

Notice what’s missing? That’s right. They will not consider the evidence or scientific foundation for TCM. Apparently that doesn’t matter. TCM is popular, and that’s enough, ostensible becuase if people want to use TCM then it works for them and we all create our own realities and energy flows and vibrations and so on and so forth.

Josephine Briggs is a disgrace to her profession, to decency and to civilization.

Ah, the state legislatures. (Yes, again). This time it’s South Carolina’s turn, since that’s where you find Lee Bright, representing the 12^th district (Spartanburg and Greenville) since 2008. In fact, Bright enjoyed a career as a village idiot even before he got elected – more precisely as the resident village idiot on the Spartanburg School District Six Board from 1999 to 2008. As a school board member, Bright called for teaching creationism in school science classes instead of evolution, explaining that “they’re teaching evolution right now in school, and it’s only a theory.” No, he didn’t even bother to try the deceptive approaches recommended by the Discovery Institute.

As a state senator Bright is just a little bit more extreme on most issues than your crazy uncle, leading to posturing events that usually ends in him submitting quixotic bills just to prove a point to his constituencies, presumably (as well as to move the overton window, perhaps). As an outspoken opponent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, for instance, Bright sponsored a bill that would criminalize the act. (Yes, Bright is a proponent of the unconstitutional idea of state nullification). It’s all a fight against tyranny, you know, and Bright later warned that the IRS “Brown Shirts” might start enforcing Obamacare with semiautomatic rifles, adding that FEMA is a scam and disaster relief is much more efficiently managed through private donations.

In 2013 Bright announced that he’d seek the nomination for US Senate (against Republican Lindsey Graham; his competitorsBill Connor and Nancy Mace deserve separate entries), on a platform not only asserting that income tax is something out of Nazi Germany and opposition to women with nice nails and pocketbooks getting food assistance (able-bodied food stamp recipients “shouldn’t eat” and the social safety net is “the role of the church”), but – it seems– on refighting the civil war (“If the Tenth Amendment won’t protect the Second, we might have to use the Second to protect the Tenth”). It’s all Lincoln’s fault, really, that Bright is no longer able to enjoy genuine liberty – in particular, Lincoln’s Revenue Act of 1862 “was when government started becoming God and taking over this country.”

He has also warned his fans that Justices Kagan and Sotomayor might want to dissolve the states, and that Obama wants to be king and that Americans today are in fact under “the chains of slavery.” Indeed, he reassured them that in a conflict President Obama wouldn’t send troops to South Carolina because armed forces from the state would turn against him. “I’ve talked to plenty of soldiers,” said Bright. In 2015, after landing a spot as one of three state co-chairs of Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, Bright assured his followers that he was ready to stave off Obama’s invasion of South Carolina.

His opposition to immigration is of course based on the idea that “a lot of these folks from terrorist nations are coming in on student visas,” and that the Muslim Brotherhood may be behind the “invasion” going on at the southern border, and he has promised to oppose the “indoctrination” of the “homosexual agenda.” In fact, Bright has taken up what he seems to think is an urgent and desperate fight against the the scourge of gay “recruitment” that apparently has become a major problem in South Carolina – Bright (and fellow state senator Mike Fair) is deeply worried for instance that the “homosexual agenda” has “seized the educational establishment” and has gone on “full march in our institutions of higher ed and we’ve gone from education to indoctrination.” Keep in mind that this is the guy who would prohibit teaching evolution in public schools in favor of creationism.

Of course, like most of these people, Bright claims to revere the constitution, but has apparently never read it. Nullification is one thing, but Bright also argues that federal judges who disagree with him should be impeached.

Here is Bright on marriage equality, the Confederate flag and possession by the devil. It’s strikingly unhinged, even for Lee Bright.

Diagnosis: Hysterical moron, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from winning a political race, it seems. Dangerous.

#1399: David Booth

#1400: Leslie Botha

#1401: Edward Boudreaux

#1402: Gerardus Bouw

#1403: Janet Boynes

#1404: Donald Boys

#1405: Michael Bradley

#1406: Walter Bradley

#1407: Jeff Bradstreet

#1408: Patrick Brady

#1409: Leonard Brand

#1410: Greg Brannon

#1411: Dave Brat

#1412: Rick Brattin & Andrew Koenig

#1413: Robert Breaud

#1414: Thomas Brewton

#1415: Jim Bridenstine

#1416: Ben Bridges

#1417: Josephine Briggs(?)

#1418: Lee Bright