Sarah Palin displays her maverickiness once again, attacking pet projects that take away money from her personal pet project, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). She attacked what she considers pointless research:

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. (full speech)

Palin, of course, has a vested interest in IDEA, as she has an infant son with Down syndrome, and a nephew with autism. However, it appears someone forgot to tell her that fruit fly research has vastly increased our knowledge of genetics, birth defects, and now autism:

Now scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for these nerve cell connections to form and function correctly.

The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.

Furthermore, the specific research she was referring to was, in fact, for the public good.

The studies, actually carried out at a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) laboratory near Montpellier, 750 kilometers south of Paris, may help protect California olive trees from a serious pest […]

California had been blissfully free of major olive pests until the olive fruit fly turned up near Los Angeles in 1998. Today, it’s a “huge economic problem” around the state, says entomologist Frank Zalom of the University of California, Davis.

Being a maverick can be a good thing, but not when you’re as ignorant as Sarah Palin.

(thanks Jamie)

It’s your socialist or mine.

Is emanating from the Justice department:

Justice has also failed to enter the fray in Ohio. As many as 200,000 new voter registrations in that state are suspect, yet Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is refusing to follow the 2002 Help America Vote Act that requires her to verify these registrations. The Ohio Republican Party sued Mrs. Brunner, but the Supreme Court said the GOP lacked standing. Justice does have standing — it is charged with upholding that law — but has ignored the fight. The Justice excuse is that it isn’t appropriate to file litigation so close to Election Day.

Yet that hasn’t stopped the Civil Rights Division this month from filing a lawsuit against Waller County, Texas, to correct alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act; a lawsuit against Vermont for failing to report accurately on overseas ballots; and an amicus brief in a case filed by a civil-rights group that is suing to stop the Georgia Secretary of State from complying with voter verification rules. Justice’s election suits always seem to side with liberal priorities.

It doesn’t help Justice’s credibility that attorneys charged with supervising voting issues are avowed Barack Obama supporters. According to Federal Election Commission data, James Walsh, an attorney in the Civil Rights Division, has donated at least $300 to Mr. Obama. His boss, Mark Kappelhoff, has given $2,250 — nearly the maximum. John Russ, also in Civil Rights, gave at least $600 to Mr. Obama.

Replacing curriculum focused on journalism or law for ’social justice’ is having a dramatic impact on the ability of several of democracy’s most important institutions to operate properly. I’m anxious for this terrible disease of ’social justice’ to finally be eradicated and put to rest like communism was in the last century.

Whats wrong with everyone getting a basic set of right enumerated in a constitution? Why is that so bad? Why is it so preferable to ideologically indoctrinate large swaths of our professional society into this absurd notion that the state should be given the power to remedy all social ill. Journalism and law are lousy with the fetid pungent stench of social justice and our democracy suffers as result of it.

Here is a map showing the endorsements paper’s have given to either candidate. Notice how many more line up for left that the right.

Jeff, over at Portfolio.com posts about some comments recently made about Barack’s advantage in campaign funding:

Kerrey, who’s now president of The New School, claimed that “the big unreported story” of the election cycle “is the tremendous spending advantage Obama’s got. If everything else is equal, and it’s not equal in this race, but if everything else is equal, McCain hasn’t got a chance.”

Asked why he thinks the story isn’t getting adequate coverage, he responded, “There’s a liberal bias. There’s a preference for Obama and it’s getting underreported as a result.”

Does this excessive amount of money bother Darwin? Is it so troublesome that he is unwilling to support the campaign more likely to be influenced by money than any of the other candidates. Seems to me that if he is as worried about undue influence by financing politician’s campaigns he would be wise to avoid voting for Barack. In fact I’m willing to bet only the libertarian candidate would not be vulnerable to such influence. Will Darwin vote for Bar in November to prevent companies from influencing politics with their money?

Stay tuned to find out.

I look forward to the extensive coverage this interview will generate like the Palin interview did.

Are you joking, is this a joke?

No doubt that answer will be played over and over again like the Palin quotes about what papers she reads and what she thinks of the Bush Doctrine.

Rob Bluey passes on an email he received:

In a local restaurant my server had on a “Obama 08″ tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference–just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need–the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I’ve decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

Is it fair to expect my readers that support Barrack to treat servers and homeless in the same capacity?

It’s because she has executive experience.

More on Wasilla:

A few months I argued with a friend (guess who) about oil’s rapid rise to $147 a barrel. He said demand from India and China was causing the price increase, I said a speculative bubble. Now that the price has dropped to $61 a barrel, I’d say the bubble has popped and we are now approaching the actual value of petroleum. An investment banker friend of mine confirmed my suspicions during a discussion of the price elasticity of gasoline. When asked about the cause of the recent rise and fall in the price of gasoline he answered:  

Speculation. Prices became detached from supply and demand fundamentals. The “invisible hand” pushed prices back down to equal the new lower demand. The lowered demand though is indeed a function of lowered quantity demand (def some endogeneity), which was itself a function of higher prices, and the higher price was really a function of the commodity markets, which had become disconnected from s&d and was being pushed up by speculators and the persistent supply-side fears. So there was stable supply but demand was driven by higher prices than what the equilibrium would have predicted. Quant. Supply > quant. Demand caused prices to go down. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen demand-side pulls have an effect. Take away is that because consumers weren’t 0% inelastic, supply and demand reached a new equilibrium that resulted in lowered prices. If we were 0% elastic, than even if there was a disconnect from s&d equilibrium, we’d still demand the same amount. We didn’t witness that. People stopped driving.   

(Note: this is Zoe’s boyfriend, and he sounds like a textbook)

Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Todd attempts to explain why many on the left think Sarah in not very intelligent.

My sense is that Hoven is on the right track. Some thoughtful people simply have a tendency to confuse intelligence with the ability to be glib, or more precisely, to bs. And I think that is much of what it comes down to–if Palin doesn’t know the answer to a question, she just isn’t that good at making something up.

People on the left have a tendency to confuse bullshit with intelligence. They call it nuance. The problem is that nuance makes you look like a weak leader which is why conservatives have dominated presidential elections.

The flip side is that often times an important detail is in the nuance. Conservatives oftentimes make miss it.