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McCain Picks Gov. Palin As Running Mate
Many readers have written to tell us about McCain's choice of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his VP choice. "Palin, 44, a self-described 'hockey mom,' is a conservative first-term governor of Alaska with strong anti-abortion views, a record of reform and fiscal conservatism and an outsider's perspective on Washington. [...] If elected, Palin would be the first woman US vice president, adding another historic element to a presidential race that has been filled with firsts. Obama, 47, is the first black nominee of a major US political party. The choice of a vice president rarely has a major impact on the presidential race. Palin will meet Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a debate in October."
I think this is a great pick. The Democrats seem to want to attack Palin on experience but, in the minds of many, every attack/criticism they make against Palin will be silently re-asked by viewers about the Democrats' presidential pick.
Democrats are in a catch-22. Great political move by McCain. And Palin's speech in Dayton was excellent and motivating and inspirational, far more than what I heard from Obama last night at the DNC convention.
"when they shamelessly pander to the stupid lobby?
--"
You mean like anybody that has pandered to the anti-nuclear lobby?
Guess what they all do.
And I have not problem with creationism being taught as long as it is taught as science. So every bad fact they have can be pointed out.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Just a little something I read about the government not being allowed to outlaw or advance any particular religion. And, yeah, any form of ID? Yup, that's a religious belief, not a scientific one.
And for strict biblical literalists, teaching a heliocentric model of the solar system is going against their religion. Are we supposed to teach geocentrism in public schools, as well?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
In addition to that, she's also pretty rabidly pro-life. This is, among other things, a definite carrot toward the more religiously-oriented part of the conservative base - you know, the part that doesn't thing McCain is conservative enough (in the fundamentalist sense) for them...
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
What's sad is that when Democrats run women, it's looked at as somehow genuine but when Republicans run a woman it's looked at as pandering.
Because when people talk about presenting "both" sides of an issue, they usually don't mean the "informed" and "uninformed" sides.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Hey, the stupid lobby isn't just giving to one side or the other. I'm just trying to point out that they are garnering more and more political clout every year and I for one am getting tired of it.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
They all pander to the stupid lobby, it's their biggest constituency. So really, you should be asking "How can anyone take any candidate seriously?" The answer is, you can't unless you're stupid.
Look at Obama for instance. He couldn't even wait until he was nominated to betray his stated principles and vote for immunity for telecom's who illegally tapped phones. If you expect him, or any other candidate to remain true to his campaign promises, you're part of that stupid lobby.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I've heard a few people comment that she should hold her own against Biden, who has a tendancy to talk over people. While this may be acceptable against a man, albeit rude, against a woman, all she has to do is start tapping her foot or give some other indication that her speaking time is being infringed and it really makes Biden look bad. "The man" holding her down, etc.
Good contrast in beliefs, senatorial v. executive experience, should be interesting! I really didn't know who I wanted as VP but hearing her speak this morning, I think she can be solid.
I think you overestimate how much the people will care.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Are you saying she should have? I thought it was all about the "woman's right to choose" with the abortion crowd.
Somehow you're COMPLETELY overlooking the Hillary/Obama race, and I'm honestly shocked you don't see it.
Hillary/Obama race was often summed up as: First woman or First black man?
You don't remember that?? Because, at least in my neck of the woods, there are still many who wish it had gone the other way. Many who would rather give the woman thing a go first...
Now McCain gets to tap into that vibe, and probably shore up at least a few of those voters that would have preferred Hillary over Obama. They didn't really WANT to vote McCain before, but they would have just for the woman factor, and because they have some kind of irrational hatred for Obama. Now they've been handed a reason to want to vote for him, too.
In short, my grandmother who has voted Democrat for the last 50 or 60 years will now almost certainly vote Republican.
Genius, really.
Science is only concerned with verifiable facts. So to Science, the creation story of any culture is dismissed because it is un-verifiable. It's faith. Science is a rigorous logical structure which is impartial. I'm not saying that the scientists practicing it are always impartial, I'm saying the system itself with the big capital "S" is. To acheive that impartiality it cannot simply assume belief and faith as the same as verifiable fact.
So saying that Science is ignoring evidence is really a question of semantics. It's not so much that it's not evidence, it's just inadmissable.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Where's the justice in firing a police commander who protects a thug? Are you serious?
Far too many police departments protect bad cops. I say, kudos to Palin for cleaning house.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is the type of shit that pisses me off. Very, very few of us "blacks" are 100% African anymore. Being black in America is not a position to which one ascends, it is a position to which we have been assigned due to not being white. If you removed all the blacks who have any Anglo heritage from the US you would be left with immigrants fresh from some African country. I can't even find the words to express how sad ignorant statements like these make me.
that's my word, holla...
You don't remember that?? Because, at least in my neck of the woods, there are still many who wish it had gone the other way. Many who would rather give the woman thing a go first...
Because they've outgrown misogyny but not racism?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
That's because it is? How concerned have you ever seen the Republican party over women's rights? Hell, they have a hard time caring about anything other than wealthy, property owner rights.
That is all.
Any discussion on Creationism needs this David Brin quote:
I find it truly stunning how many people can shrug off stuff like this, preferring instead a tiny, cramped cosmos just 6,000 years old, scheduled to end any-time-now in a scripted stage show. An ancient and immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a majestic Creator. Our brains, capable of exploring His universe, picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much more than cowering in a corner, praying that some of our neighbors will go to hell... - David Brin
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahjlNLo_3TFE&refer=home
She did not fire that cop for the right reasons. She fired him for the wrong reasons. And you should not encourage that.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I think he's senile now.
if you subscribe to the Bush doctrine on torture (as McCain now does), then McCain himself was never "tortured" at the Hanoi Hilton and the anti-American statements he made to his captors are, in fact, truthful and accurate intelligence.
from a comment on a story in the Wash Post.
The ethical scandal is that she then got the commissioner fired for not doing as she wished. *That* is the big problem... she is, just like the current executive, intolerant of people who are not yes-men.
I, for one, do not want another my-way-or-the-highway executive, because no person is infallible.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Errr, no, she was already vetted during the primary...how much more is needed. The only thing they'd want to know would who contributed to Bill's presidential library. Only the bloviating media ever thought she was in the running for VP.
Teaching creationism in schools != teaching creationism as science. Your argument is a red herring. It's not relevant because She has specifically stated that she believes ID/creationism should be taught alongside evolution as a viable alternative theory to explain the origin of species. This is not acceptable because ID is not science. We have been through this REPEATEDLY, and the public and our elected officials STILL don't get it, which is precisely what the ID proponents are banking on. They are relying on the public's ignorance of what it means to do science to blur the line of scientific legitimacy. By all means, go ahead and teach ID in its historical context. But it has absolutely NO place in the science classroom, except perhaps as a brief exercise in discussing what is, and is not, science.
>Both sides of the abortion debate are wrong.
One of the most sensible things ever said about the whole matter. (especially on /.) I said one of the other most sensible things about abortion, when talking to a pro-life friend:"
"Do you want to forbid abortion, or do you want to stop it?"
Abortion isn't a hobby, people don't do it for fun. I don't even think people do it lightly - I think most people feel that they are forced into it by circumstances. (Whether or not those feelings are "valid" or not is a different matter.)
But I think things can be done to address the underlying circumstances that cause people to feel that they need an abortion, and perhaps one of the foremost is to instill in girls the self-esteem that can help in postponing sexual activity. I once heard, "The most important give a father can give his daughter is to love her mother." Model a healthy relationship. We're talking *real* family values, not the fake tripe generally peddled by politicians.
My biggest fear about overturning Roe v Wade is that people will feel that the job is done, and even start dismantling the things that are in place now, like counseling, adoption assistance, etc. Oh boy, we've written a rule! That'll stop it! Then self-righteous heads will plop back down into the sand.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Distrust asside, when you do not come from a mystic background it is honestly baffling how anyone could confuse science and pseudoscience. It isn't even that creationism needs to be disproved, it is that it is seen as starting off with the burden of proof just like any other mythology. There doesn't have to be 'anything wrong' with it, but it has completely failed to put forward anything 'right'.
It is an interesting philosophical argument, but we end up confused why people want to teach mythology in biology classes.
Some people EARN the grief they get and it has squat to do
with whatever "oppressed monority group" they would like to
have themselves associated with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes, because prior to abortion, girls never had sex...
Oh wait, they did, it's just that prior to the Suffrage Movement, people had no problem marrying off their fourteen year old daughters when they got knocked up, and then just screwing with the math a bit so the product of all that teenage lust looked like it was popped out of the vagina a few months later than it really was.
That's what I so detest about Fundementalists, they live in this fantasy land that never was. Kids have been fucking for tens of thousands of years (even longer, if you extend "kid" to apply to our more ancient ancestral teenage pregnancy cases). They like to make believe that there was this mythical Christian population that existed prior to 1965 that was virginal and liked sock-hops with chaperones and always got home at 9pm after a real swell time at Pop's.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
She doesn't toe the party line firmly. She angers many members of the Republican party. She called them out for corruption, and is especially unpopular with GOP members like Stevens (series of tubes) in Alaska.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
That has nothing to do with her being a woman.
it has a lot to do with her being a general snob and/or jackass. :-)
To quote a blogger on National Review, if this person with all of her credentials and history had been a man, would she have gotten nominated? If you think that this pick didn't have anything to do with trying to pander to disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters, then I've got a bridge to nowhere in Alaska to sell you.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Are you saying she should have? I thought it was all about the "woman's right to choose" with the abortion crowd.
Seriously. Choosing to have a child with Down's Syndrome is brave and not something any pro-choice advocate should have a problem with. They might suspect that she was pressured into it by her community/party/husband/church, but that'd be a concern, not a reason to condemn the decision.
No. The problem pro-choice women will have with Palin isn't that she chose not to abort a baby with Down's. The problem they will have is that she would like to deny them the opportunity to choose in the same situation.
The enemies of Democracy are
There's no clear win for McCain with her. She takes the experience argument off the table. She accentuates McCain's age. She won't deliver any more states in the election. She'll raise focus on the Ted Stevens indictment. She has her own ethics problems. She won't bring in the Hillary delusionals when they find out she's pro-life. The only thing she does is excite the shriveling GOP base for a couple weeks.
Biden will wipe the floor with her at the VP debate.
She angered Big Oil in Alaska, maybe she was forced on McCain to get rid of her. If McCain is elected and doesn't complete his term, she might be very malleable to the hidden hands in Washington, which are much stronger than those in Alaska.
She only said the "not part of the curriculum" and "no litmus test" stuff after there was a backlash against her mentioning it in the debates. During the debate, her exact wording was: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."
Do you honestly think that we should be teaching creationism in science class?
Maybe, but I can barely make out what you're saying because your horse is too high.
That depends. How much of the scientific method was used on the creation experiments? How much was used on the ones in the textbook? In some cases, creationists do the scientific method better.
Really? I've never seen that. Can you present any paper (suitable for education or not) that presents creationism as a testable hypothesis, or better yet as a tested theory?
Personally, I don't care if the source is alien chasers or whoever. If they have a repeatable scientific experiment, regardless of whether it is damaging to some tenet of evolution or the big bang or whatever, I want it taught! Anything else is censorship of the truth, and holds back the progression of scientific understanding.
So here's the thing, not all theories are equally supported. Things like gravity and evolution have centuries of testing and support and huge amounts of known science are built upon them. They're staples of science and as such have earned a place in the basic curriculum. Even if someone comes up with a creation hypothesis and tests it with an experiment that is repeated, that doesn't bring it the level of credibility of the more tested theories.
Just last year there was a theory that there was an extrasolar planet similar in size to the earth because of a peculiar observed dimming of the star. They tested it with more observations and it seemed to hold up as a theory and was peer reviewed and repeated. Then a few months ago a counter theory appeared that it was not a planet causing the dimming and they predicted some other characteristics if it was more closely observed. Those predictions proved true and we have a new best theory to fit the data. This happens all the time. No one teaches these brand new theories in undergraduate education because they aren't the basic theories we know with great likelihood won't be outdated in another few years.
It isn't censorship to not teach either the theory about the planet I mentioned or creationism because they aren't well accepted and proven science. It is especially not censorship to not teach such unproven theories when they are championed by religious cults desperate to try to promote their religious beliefs in public schools in violation of the separation of church and state. For a creationism theory to earn a place in the basic curriculum it first needs to be proper, testable science, then it needs to build up a large supporting body of evidence such that it is not a theory of the month and we have a good and rational expectation that it is the best theory to understand the truth (or at least close to alternative theories in the amount of supporting evidence and testing).
Most pundits seem to be focused on Palin's being a woman, but I see her as a way for McCain to reach out to the libertarian crowd. One commentator described her as the "libertarian VP candidate," or at least the closest thing to a libertarian that we're likely to see on a major-party ticket:
I'm not seeing it. I'm not a libertarian, but I do agree with a good number of their ideals and have voted for their candidates in the past. I don't know a lot about Palin, but my quick research did not really shout "libertarian."
In short, I see her pretty well aligned with the mainstream Republicans. I think her lack of history and relative obscurity is going to be a big asset since it lets people speculate and engage in a lot of wishful thinking. The libertarians would like her to be aligned with their position, or at least more aligned than other candidates because it provides hope. In reality, she seems more like a VP who would have little power under the assertive McCain and who is no more aligned with the libertarians than and of the other presidential or vice-presidential nominees.
You see, you can argue about Creationism. You can make very good philosophical arguments for and against Creationism in all its forms -- Intelligent Design being one of them. And you can make very good philosophical and scientific arguments for and against Evolution.
What is clear, however, is that Evolution is a scientific theory. Creationism isn't.
In other words: Right or wrong, Evolution is science. Creationism isn't. That's not an opinion, it's a fact -- by definition, "I think the Earth is six thousand years old because an old book told me so" is not science.
The only place Creationism has in a science classroom is as an object lesson of something that is not science.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My concept is that a giant turtle named George barfed up the universe last Tuesday (including all your memories of stuff existing before that).
I demand my concept be discussed in elementary schools, so we can have a healthy debate and students can make up their own minds. You won't dare suggest I be censored, will you?
So you're saying that the number two spot doesn't matter? That she wasn't hired to actually do anything on the job. To say that it doesn't matter that Palin is less experienced is to say that the VP is a position with no meaning and no sway, so it doesn't matter if experience doesn't matter. It's an admission that Palin was put on the ticket for one reason - not because of her strengths, not because of what she brings to the White House, only because she's a woman. We don't expect her to actually do anything, so it's okay that she has no experience.
I repeat - if McCain, the older man with bouts with disease should fall ill to old age, then this woman becomes president. Not number two, but number one. McCain has come out and said that this woman with almost no experience is actually experienced enough to be understudy to the most powerful position in the land. McCain is either short-sighted of having delusion of immortality.
And that doesn't matter? That doesn't matter that the "Experience is Everything!" campaign just decided that experience doesn't mean squat for the NUMBER TWO POSITION in the country?! Can you imagine Palin inheriting the number one spot? Is that something that the experience-loving McCain fans would be able to handle?
Yes, we know. We know Obama is running for president. We know he's inexperienced. You keep saying that. You were saying it last month, last week, yesterday, you kept saying it. So why, why now, have you given us the least bit of ability to say it about McCain?! Why would you do that? We know what you think of Obama - why would you give us the chance to change what people think about McCain?!
This whole thing just absolutely boggles my mind! I do not for the slightest moment understand the least bit of logic behind it!
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Too bad these people can't see that they'd eliminate a lot more abortions by supporting sex education and contraception then by pushing for absolute prohibition.
"Now, how many of the voters in your state/local area support this barfing turtle thing?"
If a majority of voters in my town vote to make 2+2 equal 5, you would support changing the math textbooks? Do you think those voters would be right because they had the majority; or is it that having the majority makes it proper to intentionally misinform children?
Now see, this is exactly what she was advocating--introduce both concepts and encourage healthy debate.
I disagree. She advocated teaching both "theories" which strongly implies them being placed on similar standing. A discussion of what constitutes a scientific theory does have a place in the classroom, but the topic of evolution versus creationism is probably one of the worst topics to use since their are so many religious people with a vested interest in skewing the facts and hence convincing children that the latter is the truth, and in the process undermining the lesson about what the scientific method is and how it works. A less controversial example, such as the theory of gravity versus the theory of directional falling would better illustrate the subject and be less likely to be undermined by religious "leaders".
Debate requires constant research, exploration, and effort. This strengthens the mind and carries us forward.
This assumes the people are interested in logical debate instead of emotional considerations and pushing their religious beliefs. I don't think that is a safe assumption with teachers today. Schools have a limited amount of time, so they should teach the scientific method using non controversial examples and preferably real, hands on experiments, and they should teach the fundamental and well supported theories like evolution, gravity, relativity, atomic models, etc. They should not bring in unsupported hypothesis which happen to be the subject of huge misinformation campaigns. Right now a significant portion of our populace doesn't even know what the theory of evolution is and it is a complex concept for children, yet you think we should be using it as an example for teaching the scientific method at the same time? I think we should concentrate on making sure kids know what the theory is and how it works and if they want to debate the topic later in life at least they won't do so from a completely uninformed perspective.
Your point is ridiculous. Regardless of whether evolution is taught beside it, creationism does not belong in a fucking classroom.
Do you honestly think that we should be teaching creationism in science class?
I think that should be what we ask our local school board candidates, not our Vice Presidential Candidates.
The Gospel according to lolcat
You are incorrect. Being primarily a figurehead in a town of 8000 people is far different than being in the Senate of one of the largest states in the country.
There is a familiarity that is developed with crafting and moving legislation, building support, representing a constituency - all things that Palin would have only learned a short while ago.
I'm not offended if you're trying - hard- to justify the choice. But use arguments that make sense, not ones that expose your ignorance.
go get it