A Palin Bash

On Fri, 1 May 2009 14:35:27 -0700 (PDT), flanier <...@gmail.com

Now that my reputation is secure (at least in the opinion of one VIP
chew here) of a "limp-wristed milquetoast moron" I guess I can indulge
myself in a bit of Palin bashing.

Poor Sara, a while ago she mentioned fruit flies in her speech on
government help for disabled children. (Time flies like an arrow-fruit
flies like Obama!) Her proposal was to fully fund the Individuals with
Disabilites Education Act (IDEA), using revenue saved from foolish
legislative "earmarks." Palin asked, "And where does a lot of that
earmark money end up? . . . It goes to projects having little or
nothing to do with the public good -- things like fruit fly research
in Paris, France . . ." You have to hear the speech to get the full
flavor of the scorn. (Am I the only one who hears subtle gay-bashing
in "fruit" and "Paris, France?")

The highlight for me is Palin's incuriosity. Handed this text,
wouldn't the ordinary high school graduate ask what the project
studied? Much of the seminal research in genetics was done in
Drosophila melanogaster models. The press has been all over Palin
because some of the latest findings in the neurobiology of autism -
via investigations at the University of North Carolina - has involved
fruit flies, although it turns out that the "Paris, France" earmark
was probably for studies by American scientists at an American
research facility (in France) dedicated to the study of pests that
harm olive trees, such as those grown by California farmers.

The problem is the ignorance. In the age of the genome project, who
thinks it's odd to study fruit flies? And then, there's the deception.
John McCain has repeatedly voted against full Federal funding for
IDEA. And more big-picture deception because earmarks make up such a
small part of the Federal budget and contribute so little to the
deficit: tens of millions of dollars when we're approving rescue
packages in the hundreds of billions.

Then, too, Alaskans enjoy the highest per-capita benefit from
earmarks, based in part on Palin's requests to former Senator Ted
Stevens. And of course the subtext of the fund-IDEA speech was a big
shout-out to the anti-abortion, anti-science, fundamentalist
conservative base. Really, Palin's engaged in the big lie in the
service of know-nothing ideology which continues unabated here in the
posts of the usual suspects (you know who thet are).

This is really not much different from the loons here who insist
there's nothing wrong with 'splashing a liitle water ' in the face of
a terrorist and other defenses of the indefensible but, hey, they'll
be in the dustbin of history or the toilet of alt.radio.talk.dr-laura
and the sooner flushed, the better..