Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Sometimes, you don't even have to go looking...

I swear, I was only trying to get to my email!

Gov. Jindal Follow-up: What Is 'Volcano Monitoring'?

"After President Obama's speech on the economy last night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal criticized government spending in the stimulus bill, citing examples including "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'"
The rest of the article goes on - for about the next 700 words - about how Important "Volcano Monitoring" is and how Expensive volcano eruptions are and How Many Lives could be saved by watching volcanic activity - before following the obligatory flow into:


Jindal's comment comes at a time when President Obama has pledged to return science to the White House, an effort widely applauded by scientists who felt shunned by the previous administration.

Then - just in case that whole exercise in
"These-Are-Not-The-Droids-You're-Looking-For/All-Hail-The-One" were not quite enough, the author went ahead and took the obligatory "Sarah-Palin-Is-Stupid-And-Evil" shot:


The criticism of government funding of scientific research was similar to remarks made last fall during the presidential campaign by vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who was dismissive of fruit fly research.

...linking to
an article by another author who - not missing the opportunity to toss off the phrase "Biblical Creationism" - goes into some detail about how "$211,000 (the amount the USDA dedicated to the France-based research - MD) is a paltry sum to help safeguard the nascent California olive industry, a potential $85 million market"

...and how that's the reason that Palin's-Christianist-Opposition-To-Science-Is-Stupid-And-Wrong.

Now, I don't know how "similar" Jindal & Palin's "criticisms" were - but the function and intent of these two responses are certainly identical:



To Misdirect and Obscure the Matter at Hand.


Just in case either of these "Writers" should go looking to see who has linked to their articles - I'm going to type this next part veerrrryy slowly, so no one has to try to read too fast:

Andrea:
Bobby Jindal wasn't saying "Science Is Bad" - He was saying 'Volcano-Watching isn't going to stimulate the economy and so has no place in "Stimulus-Spending".

Christopher:
Sarah Palin wasn't saying "Science Is Bad" (any more that she was commenting on Noah's '600-year-old eyesight') - She was saying 'The $85MM Olive Market should be paying for their own pest-studies... Not the Government'

What is it with the "Science-Based" intellectual-dishonesty?

You'd think that people who make their livings writing about science/medicine would be a little more enamored of ... I dunno... facts.

Seriously, I'm about to start lobbying for a mandatory post-script inclusion to such hack-propaganda pieces:

"His name is Barack Obama, and I pray he approves of this message."

Ugh.

- MuscleDaddy

2 comments:

  1. "What is it with the "Science-Based" intellectual-dishonesty?"

    You expect them to be honest now?? They didn't bother with that through the election or the last eight years so why would they start now?

    I think the best thing to do is make every bill stand on it's own. No earmarks, no combined bills. You want money, then it has to stand on it's own feet without being combined with something else.

    That would do two things. It would slow the rush to spend money and would make it so that not so many spending bill can make it through either.

    ReplyDelete
  2. But, lies worked so well! Look at global warming. The man that Al Gore got his information from was just trounced by his former supervisor for not doing his own experiments correctly. He altered the models they used to further his own agenda. Are ALL democraps liars? I don't know for sure. But, alot of them seem to be. I mean, we learn the scientific method in elementary school. Now that they wear big boy pants, suddenly it's time to deviate. You can read the story at Wattsupwiththat.com.

    ReplyDelete

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