These people clearly can not be trusted with governance in the nation’s highest office. They’re too stupid or they hire people that are too stupid and either way, they’re fucked.

She vowed – as she has many times — that if she and running mate John McCain are elected, they will nix such fat that’s tacked onto budget bills by lawmakers eager to win points back home– projects that “really don’t make a whole lot of sense” and have “little or nothing to do with the public good. . . things like fruit fly research in Paris, France.”

“I kid you not,” she declared with a chuckle.

First of all, these retards continue to act as if France is anything but a major ally of the US. The US won our revolutionary war due to France. Shut the fuck up with this France bullshit.

But far more importantly, anyone with any knowledge of biology can tell you the important role that the fruit fly has played. The research she is denigrating here is highly useful:

One problem: the research she chose to highlight as a waste of cash just happens to have borne some, well, fruit. And for special needs kids, no less. Among such projects: a 2007 University of North Carolina study that researchers said might be key to better understanding the root of autism spectrum disorders.

The quotes are from Scientific American which goes on to list McCain’s own desperate attempts to paint other scientific research and science education as wasteful.

I’m anti-pork. I think earmarks are a stupid way to do things. We should fix that system, no question about it. But it is un-fucking-believable that Palin/McCain choose to attack those few and inexpensive earmarks that actually make sense. Palin lobbied for the bridge to nowhere, for Christ’s sake. She should shut her mouth before she prematurely ends her career. Oh wait, Republicans celebrate ignorance and stupidity, she’s gonna be a superstar!

Sorry, I’m venting a bit, but the desperate weenies who are clinging to God, guns and John McCain annoy me.

The folks at Effect Measure have a great post on the war on science and they make a very tangible point:

The attack on the science has two components. The first is the most obvious: to use what appear to be scientific arguments to cast doubt on what the scientific community deems valid arguments about climate change. But the second may be the most important: to do it in a way that casts aspersions on all kinds of scientific argument. The attackers don’t care if they are accused of political or economic bias in making their own scientific arguments because one of their objectives is to establish a covert narrative that says science is always biased and tainted by political corruption. The aim is to destroy the moral authority of science, not its factual basis. They then erect a new standard based on economic promise and the virtues of “progress” and modernity.

I’ve said before that scientists tend to be liberals. It’s just a fact, just like big business guys tend to be conservatives. I don’t think either side needs to apologize for this. But the Right Wing hates this because science does hold a special place in our debates. You can’t argue about issues like climate change, embryonic stem cell research or natural selection without involving science and the fact that all the scientists are on the Left makes it seem, to some, that “science” is just a political tactic to win debates. The above quoted paragraph makes quite clear how the Right Wing has chosen to fight this: just claim that all science is biased!

I interviewed a particle physicist lately (which I will soon post over at Slacker Astronomy) and he said, and I quote, “I don’t believe anything.”. He has trained himself as a scientist to not believe things — he either knows or he doesn’t know and “knowing” involves a file cabinet full of data and research. He has purged himself of belief because it is a liability as a scientist.

So, I’m sorry, you sad little Righties. Science is not a tactic and when your beliefs are in opposition with science your beliefs needs to be modified.