Sarah Palin Turkey Interview

Sarah Palin is a retard. Proof: she conducts an interview with local media right in front of a farmer slaughtering turkeys. *Warning*-Graphic turkey slaughter action.

Sarah Palin Disney Movie Trailer!

Remember what Matt Damon said about Palin's story being like a bad Disney movie? Well someone made a trailer for that bad movie.

One more week...

There is a great post over at MudFlats.

The Sarah Palin fairy tale...

I <3 Fruit Flies

Yesterday Sarah Palin visted Bass Pro Shops headquarters, nestled in the heart of Springfield, Missouri. Filled with statues of dead deer and growling grizzly bears, it is the literal meca of hunters and outdoor enthusiasts everywhere.

Considering Springfield’s position as a college town, it is reasonable to note that Palin choose not to speak at an academic arena, when there were five highschools, the state university, the private university, and several smaller religious colleges around.

Reading the transcript of the event you begin to understand why she might not go over well with a crowd that follows world events and follows the scientific literature.

As every politician is doing right now, Sarah Palin spent time talking about the budget, where we could cut spending. And she starts talking about pet projects. You know, the pet projects that have "little or nothing to do with the public good".

And you have to ask yourself, where does all that money go? It goes to projects
sometimes having little or nothing to do with the public good, things like fruit
fly research in Paris, France. And I kid you not.

Wait.... fruit fly research in France? That doesn't sound like something American tax dollars should be going to, right? Yet the scientificy-political-sort-of-blogs are getting pretty riled up.

The assumption is that the reference was aimed towards olive fruit fly research based in France. The bill came from a democratic senator out in California. California grows olives, and is being torn apart by a plague of the little critters. According to University of California’s Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program the fruit flies “poses a severe economic threat for the state’s commercial olive growers. The olive fruit fly is considered the most devastating insect pest of olives in the Mediterranean region, where it has occurred for over 2000 years.”


So… democratic representative Mike Thompson directed $742,764 to research on the prevention of infestation. Preventative research that could save an entire agricultural base, considering that 100% profit losses are visible in some table growers, while oil manufactures can suffer 80% losses.

If she was attacking the methodology of the allotment of funds, it would be reasonable. That is not what she is doing. She is attacking the science. “It goes to projects sometimes having little or nothing to do with the public good, things like fruit fly research in Paris, France.” She does not understand how scientific research can have anything to do with the public good.

The focus of the research was on the species Bactrocera [Thanks, anonymous poster, for the information on the fruit fly subspecies, and correcting my attempt to lump them all together]. There is something even scarier underlying this message, however. It is Palin’s complete intolerance for the idea that scientific research is invaluable to our future as a society.

It is especially odd that she would show such intolerance for fruit fly research, considering the importance of fruit fly research in our understanding of human genetic variables. Drosophila... one of the most useful animals for laboratory testing out there... is a subspecies of the fruit fly. Their short lifespan, mapped genomes, and propensity to breed like mad are all things scientists love.

Moments before Palin attacked the funding of fruit fly research aimed at Bactrocera, she spoke about her quest to understand the purpose behind Trig, and her sister's struggles with an autistic son.

“Every child is beautiful before God and dear to Him for their own sake and my
sister Heather who has an autistic teenage son she and I we know that we have
been so blessed with the large and strong family that helps us out, but not
everyone is lucky enough to have that strong network of support and their
experiences then point the way to a better policy in the care of children with
special needs. In a McCain-Palin administration we’ll put the educational
choices for special needs children in the right hands. The hands of parents.”

The odd thing about this overlay of comments is that highly promising leads on the genetic mutations leading to many diseases is coming from drosophila fruit flies. This research survives off government grants, is starting to lead us to a better understanding of many diseases. Diseases like.... you know it is coming... autism. I have an idea. Perhaps her problem isn’t with pork barrel spending. (I mean... Palin doesn't exactly have a history of avoiding pet-projects.)

Perhaps the problem is that Palin is so backwoods-evangelical-nutcase-crazy that she thinks we should all be on our knees instead of out spending our days in laboratories doing research. Perhaps she thinks that God will protect us, so there is no reason to attempt to prevent global warming. With the impending resurrection, do we really need to worry about a pest infestation on of California’s major agricultural crops? We need to be praying for the ill, not actively pursue scientific answers. Actually, lets throw another quote in the fray...

"When I learned that Trig would have special needs I to be honest with you I had
to prepare my heart and I had to do a lot of praying and asking for
understanding and for strength and to see purpose... "

You know what? Prayer, as a placebo, may help the parents but it isn't going to do as much good as the scientific research. Period.

We need to be pouring funding into scientific preventative research.Palin's complete disrespect for science, for our understanding of the human genome, our understanding of evolution, our understanding of genetics, is astounding. If Palin had the best interest of those children, of our entire culture, at heart, she would be pumping money into the research. She would be pumping funds into the scientific community, filling the universities with grants.

Instead she has shielded herself into a cocoon of idealogical fluff. She can't imagine that fruit fly research can have any real world impact. She stands next to McCain as he mutters about the useless "three million dollar overhead projecters". She ignores the National Academy of Science when it openly criticizes her states barbaric practices.

She is bad news for science, bad news for research, and bad news for special needs children. Just because she is able to get up there and rally a crowd doesn't mean she has the credentials to lead our country, or steer us in the right direction.

Watch the clip... Get pissed. Vote against this loon.
[Thanks, again, anonymous poster!]

Sarah Palin was on SNL last night

And she was...okay. I give her props for making fun of herself, but that surely doesn't make it any better than she is dumber than a rock.

I fear that people will think her being on SNL was beneficial for her campaign and that they will wrongly think she is super hip and cool for being on the show.

She didn't really do much other than her usual shit. The cast definitely had to carry her.

I don't know. Crap.

Why I Will Never Get Married, Part One

Would you allow your husband to name your baby girl Sarah McCain Palin and live?

I certainly wouldn't.

Funny, Yet Frightening

Ever wondered what Palin's Oval Office would look like? Well, now you know. *shudder*

Wanda Sykes on Sarah Palin

YAY!

Just to keep with the Sarah Palin theme...

We have all heard how Palin attempted to ban several books in her hometown.

This is a bit scarier...

In her acceptance speech she quoted a man named Westbrook Pegler on small town values.

What she forgot to mention is that Pegler is a racist facist writer and past presidential contender.

During his run for office in 1965 he said that he hoped "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his [Robert F. Kennedy's] spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says a few words about Palin's choice of quotations on his blog.

This Blog Would Be Dead Without Sarah Palin

The idea of her being VP or President is so absurd that we just have to talk about it. I almost wish we, the America people, were being punked. That's almost what it feels like. A bad practical joke show, like the ones on TBS or USA. I normally don't like practical jokes, but I would accept this one with open arms.

Anyways, Tina Fey came back to SNL this weekend to do a completely spot on impression of Sarah Palin. The rest of SNL sucked, but this is great. Check it out.

*This is a new video from before, since NBC pulled all YouTube videos but they're cool enough to post their own stuff. Thanks NBC!



And while we're at it, this next vid makes me feel better. It's women in Alaska protesting Sarah Palin. Just drive-by shots, but you can read some signs.

DRILL, DRILL, DRILL!!!

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for 'The Vagina Monologues', wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

DRILL, DRILL, DRILL

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drown and starved polar bears around their necks.

I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds,
deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity. Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list.The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered.

The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth. Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be. I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected, then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC,
'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

Pink=Awesome!

For a while now, I've been a closeted Pink lover. Her music is pretty darned good, but today I learned something that made me fall even more completely in love:

She spoke out about Palin! YAY!

A fun quote:

"This woman hates women," the singer said. "She is not a feminist. She is not the woman that's going to come behind Hillary Clinton and do anything that Hillary Clinton would've been capable of ... I can't imagine overturning Roe vs. Wade. She's not of this time. The woman terrifies me."

It excites me that so many celebrities are speaking out for this election...maybe I wasn't really paying attention to the past ones, but I feel as if they are finally using the weird power they have over the populace for good. Woot.

Continuing the Palin Hating

I recently found a blog entirely dedicated to women speaking out against Palin's nomination for VP.


And all I can say is...hells yes!

Matt Damon Rips Sarah Palin

This is amazing. I didn't like Matt Damon until he was in The Departed, and I still wasn't sure about him until I heard him talk here about the thought of Sarah Palin being president. He equates her candidacy to "a bad disney movie", calls the idea of her being president absurd and says that if she thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago and then he needs to know that, because she could have the nuclear codes.

It's only 2 minutes, watch it. Really.

Palin makes my head hurt.

I don't pay much attention anymore to what the republicans have to say about my kind.

I fit into basically every box they hate... my politics, my religion, my sexuality, my version of womanhood... they basically hate it all.

So when Palin and McCain began commenting on "Community Organizers", I actually shrugged it off.

Ok. So they got the last category I thought was safe. They caught me. I try to help my community, to make the world a better place from the ground up.

But listening to this clip from Jay Smooth over at Ill Doctrine reminded me how outraged we all should be.

The implication that "Community Organizers" are useless should infuriate us, and only act to strengthen our resolve that grassroots organizations and volunteer efforts are the path towards change. For Palin to shrug off the efforts of American citizens as useless shows what she truely thinks of the people she claims to serve and support.