Palin Claims Dinosaurs And People Coexisted
I suppose Gov. Palin isn't as absurd as she could be. A lot of creationists deny the existence of dinosaurs entirely, or say that they were some kind of monsters talked about in the Bible (and thus proves its credibility). Either way, Palin clearly has no respect for science or reason. This is almost 2009, it's time to stop thinking in the stone age. This article is from the Huffington Post:
Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago, about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct, the teacher said.Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time." When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks."
The idea of a "young Earth", that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on, is a popular strain of creationism.
Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based "intelligent design" to be taught along with evolution in Alaska's schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say.
Popularity: 27% [?]
The Choice of Gov. Sarah Palin
After all this time, I'm still confused as to why McCain has chosen Gov. Palin as his VP pick. I think it's kind of funny how McCain's whole campaign against Obama is about how inexperienced he is, yet he turns around and picks a woman who's only been a governor for a year and a half? Before that she was just some mayor of some obscure town? She only has a bachelor's in journalism.
Qualifications?
Clearly, she is not qualified for vice president. She can't hold a candle to Obama, Biden OR McCain. These are politicians who know what they are doing although they are quite diverse from each other. It seems to me that McCain realizes that Americans are stupid and they will vote for him now just because his running mate is a woman. I mean, only an idiot votes based on gender or race, while the intelligent vote based on merits, views, credibility, policies, intelligence and so forth. I think Obama made a much wiser move in picking Biden who has way more experience than himself and completes the gaps in Obama's resume, particularly in foreign policy.
Who is She Anyways?
It seems that Obama is trying to actually form a team that has the ambition and qualifications for presidency, thinking he'll get the votes from the people that actually care about politics (because the politically savvy are his main critics), where as McCain is thinking he'll get votes from everybody else who will vote for him just because Palin is a woman, or because she's the poster girl to the conservative right, as if the conservative right would ever vote for Obama in the first place. I have given myself plenty of time to digest all of this since it was announced that she was picked. I'm disappointed that McCain would actually go there and pick some governer with 0 experience like this election is a popularity contest of something. I mean, what if McCain was elected and his died a year later, which isn't exactly unreasonable to assume, and then Palin takes over?
The Consequences
People thought Bush tore this country up a lot. Imagine what somebody like Gov. Palin would do. This is a woman who is ultra conservative, who if she had it her way, she would ban gay marriage entirely, ban abortion entirely (except when the mother is in danger). She would ban books like The God Delusion just because they talked against her religion. She would gladly and openly have Creation taught in place of Evolution in classrooms, which is completely absurd and disrespectful to what science is all about. How do you ban books anyways? What right does anyone have to ban any form of knowledge from the public? Gov. Sarah Palin is not what freedom is about! America needs to step outside of this way of traditional thinking. She appears to be a roadblock in civil rights. What does she know about the economy anyways? She obviously doesn't listen to what the people want. Instead she caters to the religious right and so-called "family values". It's complete nonsense. I really like McCain and respect him a lot for thinking outside his party and abandoning them on certain values. McCain is capable of representing what the American people as a whole want out of a president and so does Obama. So up until the announcement, I had a hard time figuring out for who I should vote for.
Well, I think Obama's and McCain's choices of running mates might be the swing for my vote that I was looking for to help me decide. Obama clearly made the wiser choice.
On a further note, I found a really good video of Matt Damon talking about Palin, I couldn't have said it better.
Popularity: 27% [?]