Believe it or not, Sarah Palin gave a "policy" speech on Friday in support of (and in support of full government funding of) the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
In her speech, Palin stressed that “the most valuable thing of all is information” and t
hat “[e]arly identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference.” However, she also criticized certain “pet projects,” such as fruit-fly (Drosophila melanogaster) research, that are funded through earmarks and that, according to her, are utterly pointless:
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.
No, she kids us not. In her view, such research is a joke and, needless to say, shouldn’t be funded. It’s all a big waste, government largesse at its worst!
Oh, Sarah! please do some reading before you open your mouth...
The Drosophila was used in research to show that genes are passed on by the way of chromosomes for which Thomas Hunt Morgan was awarded a Nobel prize in 1933. And the same fly is being used for research into autism at the University of North Carolina in America. And this denouncement was in the same speech outlining aid for special needs children! Let's stop doing research to help these kids just because we use a fruit fly as a model organism.
In Slate.com yesterday, the entertaining and often spot-on Chris Hitchens, concludes an opinion piece with these words:
Text taken from and modified from here and here.This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just “people of faith” but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.
2 comments:
Alll of the "Obama" signs in front of houses on our street were removed last Friday night.. A sign that read: "Unstable/Unable" survived - the vandals were too simpleminded to comprehend the message.
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