Sarah Palin, scientist
Ok, forget the promise. I can’t stop blogging about Palin. And the reason is that I just cannot understand why anyone would vote for this person. It is a mystery to me and I really would like to figure it out. So, readers please help. The best explanation I have to date is that Republicans who vote on social issues, like those exemplified here, don’t care about her qualifications.. they only care about her stance on social issues. Using this frame the GOP could nominate anyone (literally) who was congruent with their social interests and folks would vote for them. Remarkable.
But in any event, today’s brilliance from Palin is about fruit-flies. She gave a policy speech (why does the RNC let her do that?) on autism and made some interesting claims:
For many parents of children with disabilities, the most valuable thing of all is information. Early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference.
So far so good. Then she goes on to talk about the money used for such research:
Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.
The problem, of course, is that fruit flies have been used in autism research. Very effectively, too, I might add:
[S]cientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for..nerve cell connections to form and function correctly.
The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.
So once again we have Palin speaking on a subject that she knows nothing about and making erroneous claims. Can’t we do better than this? Don’t we want someone in the VP slot with more intelligence than this?
Do we really want “Joe Six Pack” in office if Joe is an idiot?
Watch the thing here:
October 25th, 2008 11:06
I understand completely why McCain chose Palin and did not have to know her before he chose her. Its all about getting a profit share for the federal government from the oil in Alaska to help pay off the federal deficit. If you look up on the internet under “Alaska oil federal government” -you will find a ton of issues dealing with the fights the federal government has had in getting any profit sharing from Alaska. Palin such a pageant narcissistic person actually thought “but they are calling me” when in fact it has everything to do with finally gaining leverage in Alaska for profit sharing of oil to the United States federal government. McCain had nothing to lose at his age to make a risky choice and hopefully get the oil profit sharing. Because a younger Mccain would have neverr chosen Sarah Palin. She is his puppet.
October 25th, 2008 13:11
You have said yourself the v.p. means nothing. People vote for the presidential candidate, or against the other one, not for the v.p.
October 25th, 2008 13:45
To me, that is true. But there are Americans out there saying they will vote for the ticket *because of* Palin. Those people, in particular, I do not understand.