Mike "Christian Sharia" Pence is Scarier than Donald Trump

For months now rational Americans have been both bewildered and amused that the pigheaded adolescent rebellion of GOP leaders during the Obama administration led to a presidential nominee who is, to say the least, well out of his depth.

At first, no one really believed that this blowhard businessman might actually ascend to the Whitehouse. People aren't that silly, are they?

Then, sometime mid-summer, a dangerous and sinister alliance took place.

After a series of private meetings and secret deals, Donald Trump sold his soul to the evangelical right.

Suddenly, a man who had never shown anything even remotely resembling Christian virtues was being praised as a "Baby Christian" who was going to lead America into righteousness. Evangelist leaders called upon their faithful to fall out into the streets and campaign to put their new savior in control. This large and active voting block might actually have the chops to elect a man who is totally unqualified to be the leader of the free world. It was a huge boon for Trumpkin, but that kind of political asset doesn't come cheap.

The billionaire had to offer up something big to get those "religious" leaders to lie for him. He had to give them something with real political power, so ....

He gave them the vice presidency.

Remember, Trump famously doesn't want to run the country. When attempting to lure John Kasich into considering the VP position, Donald Trump Jr. assured Kasich that he could have control of both domestic and foreign policy, while the Donald was busy making America great.

Trump was probably quite happy to promise the real reigns of leadership to someone else, so he didn't have to, you know, actually learn stuff (which is ever so much harder than just making stuff up).

It wasn't long before the evangelists, er, I mean, Trump, announced the GOP VP candidate: Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Mike Pence was a very clever choice to be the power behind Trump's throne.

To the uninformed observer, Pence seems uninteresting and bland.

Not true. Don't believe it.

Pence is no Uncle Joe.

His record as governor indicates that he is willing to completely undermine the core values of a free country in order to impose his own vision of theocratic control.

While Donald Trump is a bumbling political idiot, Mike Pence is actively against the people and possibilities that we need to help America to have a strong future. His career has been built on hateful exclusion, not intelligent inclusion.

Here are some things that every voter should know about Mike Pence:

- Science and invention helped build America, but Mike Pence is 100% anti-science. He chooses not to accept the preponderance of evidence that supports anthropomorphic climate change, and he thinks schools should be required to teach Christian "creationism" mythology alongside evolution in science classrooms.

- Mike Pence is anti-environment. As governor, he has vetoed every piece of environmental regulation that has crossed his desk. He doesn't want the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, and he does want to open up pretty much every part of our country to oil and coal companies. No more wildlands under Pence. He is one of those irresponsible extremists who think that God gave us the world so we could just use it up, and when it is all used up the second coming will occur. There is no Biblical basis for this belief.

- Females make up more than half of the American population, but Mike Pence is anti-woman. He has said the Disney movie "Mulan," which was based on a centuries old Chinese poem, was the work of a "mischievous liberal" trying to groom young children to accept women in combat. "Despite her delicate features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan's ingenuity and courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis," he wrote on his radio show's website.

- He obsessively pursues a personal vendetta to take Title X funding away from Planned Parenthood because Planned Parenthood provides abortion services. Title X money CANNOT be used for abortions. Abortions are paid for by the recipient or through private, tagged donations. Taking away Title X will not impact abortion services, but it would leave thousands of women without access to cancer screenings or birth control.

- Speaking of birth control, Mike Pence once again revealed his historical ignorance in saying that condoms are "modern" and "liberal." He thinks all women should be pregnant unless they can't afford a baby, in which case they should abstain from sex, even if they are married. That's right: sex is only for procreation in PenceWorld. If you can't afford the diapers, then hubby should be sleeping on the couch.

- Mike Pence is also anti-gay, to the point of denial. He doesn't want the government to pay for cancer screenings, but he does want the government to pay for abusive "conversion therapy" programs that systematically undermine the victim's self-esteem, and then indoctrinate them into robotic gender-appropriate behaviors. He has signed into law a bill that allows discrimination against LGTBQ customers based on religious belief.

- As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence was personally responsible for an outbreak of AIDS when he refused to allow clean needle exchanges for drug addicts. Instead, he asked people to pray for the addicts.

- Mike Pence is racist. He thinks there is "too much talk" about institutional racism in law enforcement because "police officers are human beings." His solution is unity through "faith." The Indiana governor has tried to prevent Syrian refugees from settling in his state because the "pose a threat to safety of residents." Pence argued that his policy was based on fear, not race, so it wasn't discriminatory. A Federal Appeals Court dismissed his racist arguments on October 3, 2016.

- A Federal Court also had to block his bizarre anti-abortion law that required burial or cremation for fetuses, whether miscarried or aborted, no matter how far along the pregnancy had progressed.

- Mike Pence is pro-birth, but not pro-life. He once funneled $3.5M dollars from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families into programs that counsel against abortion. He wants those women to have those babies, but he doesn't care if the kids starve or live on the streets afterward.

- Mike Pence has refused to comply with federal guidelines aimed at reducing prison rape.

When you add it all together, you can see that the most dangerous part of the Trump-Pence ticket is not the leering orange face at the top, but that calculating quiet man who will be leading the charge from behind.

Mike Pence is basically against anyone who is not white, conservative, Christian, and male.

There is one other interesting thing to know about the GOP's Vice-Presidential nominee:

When Mike Pence was a young lawyer on the rise, he challenged a longtime Democratic congressman for a seat in a Republican-leaning Indiana district. He seemed to have it in the bag until voters were stunned to learn that he had been using political donations to pay personal expenses including the mortgage on his house, his credit card bill, groceries, golf tournament fees, and car payments for his wife.

I guess he does have something in common with Donald Trump, after all!