Sarah Palin is all for teaching evolution as an accepted principle:
Ron Paul doesn’t accept evolution as a theory.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
The words do not have to be perfect.
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.
Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…
There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.
The revolution will be supervised.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
You cannot shame the shameless.
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!
Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.
Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.
The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.
Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!
Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.
Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.
He really is that stupid.
Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.
Everything is totally normal and fine!!!
Let me file that under fuck it.
You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / You tell me that it’s evolution
jk
OT
US News and World Report hands Fox News and Rush Limbaugh a story that they will exploit from now until election day
Obama Says Race a Key Component in Tea Party Protests
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/03/02/obama-says-race-a-key-component-in-tea-party-protests
Comrade Mary
I can’t listen to Palin. I just can’t. Can someone summarize what she says?
joe from Lowell
@Comrade Mary: Evolution should be taught as an accepted scientific principle in school. I see the hand of God in Creation, but that’s not science. My father was a science teacher, and science class should teach science.
The Ancient Randonneur (formerly known as The Grand Panjandrum)
@Comrade Mary: Hell just froze over because she said something I agree with: Evolution should be accepted as a scientific principle and taught in high school. She says science should be taught in science class.
Comrade Mary
Thanks, Joe [and TARFKATGP]. Well, I have to give her points for that.
Cat Lady
That tricky Katie Couric and her lamestream media gotcha questions. That must have been before all the goopers went full metal retard the day after the election.
GregB
How can Palin see the hand? I thought it was invisible?
The Moar You Know
@jk: I hope they try. The Teabagger movement is about nothing else but the unforgivable offense of a black man occupying the White House, and there is no sane person that would even try to deny that.
Pococurante
@GregB: She has supervision. That’s also how she sees Russia from her front porch.
KG
@GregB: wrong hand
Less Popular Tim
@The Ancient Randonneur (formerly known as The Grand Panjandrum):
Holy crap. She sounded almost…reasonable. I don’t remember seeing her talk without thinking how cringe-inducingly stupid she sounded.
I’m an atheist, but if I had political aspirations that’s pretty much the exact answer I’d have to give…
Phil65
@Comrade Mary: Well, I have to give her points for that.
Hold on a second. Did she say it recently? If so, we have to give her time to backpeddle.
freelancer
OT –
And I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free,
And I won’t forget the men (the Christian ones, that is)
who died,
who gave that right to me,
And I proudly stand up next to you
(Wait, you’re not a Muslim are you?!)
And defend ‘er still today,
Cause there ain’t no doubt, I love this land
God (Hear that, Sharia pigs? God! Not Allah!) Bless the USA!
Vomit.
SRW1
@joe from Lowell:
I wonder whether in Sarah’s mind that answer still stands. The rightspeak window among conservatives has evolved (pun intended)a bit over the last two years.
S. cerevisiae
And yet she doesn’t accept climate change even as the permafrost in her home state melts and villages are sliding into the sea. She should have paid more attention to dad.
WoodyNYC
I was curious to see if the Ron Paul clip indicated that he really didn’t accept the truth of evolution, but it’s obvious that he is attempting to hedge: ” it’s a … it’s a theory”. But he ends up saying he doesn’t believe in it. Lying and pandering as usual.
Ash Can
@joe from Lowell:
@The Ancient Randonneur (formerly known as The Grand Panjandrum):
Holy freakin’…I mean, that’s…intelligent. And sensible. And correct.
Break out the boots and snowblower, Satan, you’re getting hit with the big one.
Just Some Fuckhead
@freelancer: I know I’m not supposed to but I always put my hand over my heart when I hear that song.
The Moar You Know
Ron Paul is a master of situational ethics. People often say that Klondike Barbie is a master grifter, and her fans mindless automatons, but she’s got nothing on Paul and his flying army of howler monkeys that sing his dubious praises to the skies anytime His Holy Name is mentioned.
Rosalita
@Comrade Mary:
Me neither… and the bumpit hair and hooker makeup make her difficult to look at also too.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I always pop a stiffie.
Which is usually a problem since it’s mainly played at High School sporting events in TX.
CoffeeTim
Just out of curiosity, does anyone here think Sarah or Ron could accurately describe the difference between a hypothesis and a theory in science? It often seems to me that they and the folks they are appealing to think they are indeed the same thing.
JPL
@jk: The article is written today but references events that happened months or years ago. This paragraph has no quotes…
Can’t believe that someone from USNews would write such a sloppy article…I’m shocked..lol
stuckinred
@freelancer: This from a fucker that never put on a uniform but is going to “defend her STILL today”.
licensed to kill time
Sarah Palin said something vaguely reasonable? Well, hoop-diddly-dee, by golly gum, gee williker schnitzel, color me polka dot.
I care not one single centavo for her opinion, but maybe it’ll cause some ‘bagger heads to go ‘splody. That would be entertaining.
Morbo
Your CPAC straw poll winner, ladies and gentlemen!
Davis X. Machina
@jk: IANAL, but I believe the truth of the assertion is an airtight defense against libel.
Dave
Does Palin realize that one moment of clarity could cause her trouble in the primaries if she runs? It’s like Mittens and his mandate problem.
Redshift
@CoffeeTim: Ron, maybe, Sarah, of course not. People much smarter than they in the “manufacturing doubt” industry came up with the idea of “hey, scientists use the word ‘theory’ to describe established fact, but regular people use it to mean something unproven — we can run a whole line of BS based on that!”
Cris
The YouTube video is from Katie Courik’s interview with her, during the 2008 campaign.
Redshift
@JPL: I remember when that actually happened. It created a small uproar then, which was drowned out by the ongoing overall screaming of the teabaggers. Pretty lame to try to re-create a controversy in a quieter moment, but it’s not like they haven’t done that before.
Cris
Hey, defense comes in many forms. Like blogging. Especially blogging.
freelancer
@stuckinred:
David Cross ripped him a new one right after the Iraq Invasion.
Redshift
OT: VA TPers (along with their corporate masters) are trying to get the governor to veto a mandate that insurance cover autism treatment, passed with a significant bipartisan majority, because they’ve been conditioned to hate anything called a “mandate.”
But remember, conservatives sincerely believe a federal mandate is unconstitutional, and that’s why they oppose health care reform. /Villager
Bonus quote from the so-called small business lobbyist:
Translation: “Get it right — don’t paint us as heartless bastards who want to screw kids with autism; we’re heartless bastards who want to screw everybody!”
Special.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Corner Stone: For the longest time here in Texas you could tell when the fireworks were going to end when that song started.
Redshift
@freelancer: Way back at the Salt Lake Olympics, we were unlucky enough to be on a train with a group of drunk Muricans who decided to show all those furriners how great we were by singing patriotic songs (including that one.)
They went from one to the next pretty quickly, because, to the amusement of everyone present, they didn’t actually know more than the first couple of lines of any of them.
cleek
she may have believed it then. but as of 2009, she didn’t.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Redshift:
It is amazing sometimes, how changing just one brushstroke makes the portrait seem so much more true to life. Notice how the eyes now follow you as you move about the room.
madmatt
Trust me Ron, anybody who has met your son has had second thoughts on evolution.
Breezeblock
Ah, this is better…
suzanne
Nope.
Svensker
@freelancer:
One of my friend’s kids just enlisted because they don’t have the money for him to go to college any other way. She’s hoping he won’t have to die for that decision.
Probably if there were more tax cuts for the rich this wouldn’t have had to happen.
Paul in KY
One of my senators (the other being Mitch the Bitch) makes Sarah! seem intelligent & thoughtful. I’ll be drinking tonight.
Not that I need much of a reason, but Jeebus Christ we elected this maroon here in KY!
Edit: Just figured out that was Paul the Senior. I’m still fucked because we have Junior.
jk
@JPL: @Davis X. Machina:
I thought US News and World Report had gone out of business. This article amounts to pouring gasoline on a fire. I agree with Obama’s statements cited in the article, but I don’t see anything good coming out of Ken Walsh reporting this anecdote.
JPL
Sarah’s theories have evolved over time. Her statement was so 2008.
Bubblegum Tate
If Palin hasn’t already walked back her comments, I’m quite sure she will.
suzanne
@Redshift:
Heh. I remember having a conversation with my mother a few years ago in which she was shocked to learn that I don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance and hadn’t done so for many years. She asked me why, and I said that I didn’t believe in pledging allegiance to any material object, much less a piece of cloth. She replied, “What are you talking about? When you say the Pledge, you don’t pledge allegiance to the actual flag… Oh. Wait. Okay, I see your point. Wow. Now that I’m actually thinking about the words, that’s kind of fucked.”
David Koch
That Sarah Palin is a piece of ass.
Davis X. Machina
@jk: USNRW is a non-player, and there are no persuadeables on this topic anyways.
It’s a Kinsley gaffe.
jk
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. Palin is a coward and a quitter who doesn’t have the guts to run for President. She left her job as governor with her tail between her legs because she couldn’t handle a few ethics complaints.
David Hunt
I don’t understand why everyone is so shocked about Sarah Palin saying something like that. Note she didn’t say she believed it. She said that it should be taught in Science Class…for public schools. The Deltas and Epsilons get this stuff that makes it easier for them to accept the Social Darwinism line that’s being fed to them by all the Alphas who went to private school where they’re taught the truth that they’re on top because God loves them more…and has since the days they were riding dinosaurs.
GregB
Dame Drudge is also pouring gasoline on the fire. He is frontpaging and highlighting every crime that involves and African-American.
He is grossly fanning the flames of race-hatred jsut as he did when he ran the bogus backwards B face-carving story in the primary.
With Limbaugh chiming in with his union workers are cockroaches meme, I say we are getting close to Radio Hutu territory.
Redshirt
@SRW1: It would be fascinating to see the exact same question poised to Sister Sarah today. I’d bet money she’d completely contradict herself from 2008, but we’d have to test it to be sure.
I’m sure this topic will come up in the Circus of 2012, and it is a very useful barometer for the wingularity – current forecast: pressure still rising.
JGabriel
@Phil65:
Said it in the 2008 interview with Couric, and, yes, Palin backpedaled (or maybe backfilled is more accurate). From Going Rogue via Marc Ambinder:
.
jk
@Davis X. Machina:
I hope the race baiting can be kept to a minimum in the Republican primaries and general election but I’m not optimistic about it.
Culture of Truth
To be fair if you hang around Republicans long enough you begin to have your doubts.
El Cid
Fox blames Obama for oil industry subsidies he proposed ending and which Republicans protect.
Those money-wasting subsidies Obama’s proposing in his budget? Assuming Jed Lewison is correct:
On the plus side, Fox News is criticizing oil company subsidies.
JPL
@jk: Plumline has an article about Obama’a remarks or lack there of up now. link
El Cid
@JGabriel: FWIW.
As much as the guided-evolution notion is preferable to the creationist view (I don’t think it gets in the way of scientific research or teaching, or don’t recall cases), it is interesting that only 16% believe in an evolutionary process not controlled by magic.
Jeff from Cleveland Hts
OT: Have you guys seen this video of Tea Partiers hating on Muslims? I don’t think I’ve ever been so disgusted with my fellow Americans:
Citizen_X
@CoffeeTim:
Not hypothesis; they think scientific speculation and theory are the same thing.
jk
@JPL:
Thanks for the link.
Svensker
@freelancer:
My God. That actually made me cry, tears of rage and shame. And people from Congress actually showed up — that Congresswoman saying she hoped her Marine son would kill lots of Muslims? How the hell is this different than Germany in the late 30s?
Redshirt
@Svensker: More Propaganda Channels.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Is the point of this to show that Palin is more reasonable than Paul on this question? Because they aren’t answering the same question.
Palin’s position is that humans were created by God who subsequently directed “microevolution”. She also supports teaching “both sides” in school. It’s impossible to tell from Paul’s rambling answer if that is also his position, but what he said is not inconsistent with it.
Citizen_X
@freelancer: Holy crap, that video is depressing/enraging. Screaming at families with little kids. Yelling “Go back home” at native American citizens. I look at that and think, “Wow, so that’s what the pro-segregation crowds in the 50s must have been like.”
Racist, POS thugs. That’s all I have to say.
The Moar You Know
@Svensker: Germany didn’t have the world’s largest economy, the worlds most powerful army, or nukes.
Master of Karate and Friendship
I should care about Sarah Palin’s views on science because. . . ?
freelancer
@Svensker:
I try really hard to avoid going Godwin, but their disgusting chants reminded me of the scene in Schindler’s List when the Polish Jews were ordered out of their homes and into the gettos and the little girl is screaming at them on the street as they walk by, “Goodbye, JEWS! Goodbye, JEWS!…”
So sickening.
Omnes Omnibus
@Master of Karate and Friendship: Because you can use it for firebagging.
jk
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Neither you nor any voter should care about Palin’s views on anything because she’s not running for President. Discussion of Palin is simply a sideshow that distracts from more important issues. Anyone who was paying the slightest attention during the 2008 Presidential Campaign knows that Palin’s psyche is far too fragile for her to handle another Presidential Campaign.
Triassic Sands
What Paul meant to say was:
cleek
@jk:
100x this
Villago Delenda Est
Evolution IS a theory. Just as gravity IS a theory.
Let’s test the theory of gravity by chucking Rand Paul’s ass out of a helicopter, and see how real it is!
El Cid
@Villago Delenda Est: Of course, they think “theory” means the same as “hypothesis” or “guess”.
JGabriel
Gallup via El Cid:
I don’t know if the picture is as bad as the poll draws. Specifically, I suspect that the 38% who believe God “guided evolution” includes a large segment more properly categorized as believing that God set up the parameters by which evolution could occur without “guiding” it — which is a distinction the poll doesn’t appear to make.
But it’s a distinction that Darwin seems to have propagated himself, whether he believed in it or just thought it an acceptably ameliorative concept to ease the acceptance of natural selection. From the final paragraphs of The Origin of Species:
I should add: I believe evolution to be purely random.
With that said, as an agnostic, I don’t have a real argument with people who believe in some kind of unmoving deity who set the whole shebang of physics and universe in motion, and stayed out of the way ever since. Given the choice between saying “God guided evolution” or “It’s all random”, such people might choose the the “guided” answer, even if they believe it was all random (or foreordained but unguided) once the initial parameters were set.
So, without a “God set it in motion, and left it alone ever since” option, the poll might be misleading in its conclusions.
And don’t try to put me in the position of defending that belief. I don’t share it and have no interest in defending it. I just know that a lot of people do share it, and the poll is incomplete without including it as an option.
.
Ash Can
@El Cid:
That’s actually a pretty high percentage given that atheism runs at only 6%-9% of the nation.
ETA: And what JGabriel said about the actual wording of the poll question(s), and how the notion of “control” was expressed or understood in the polling process.
JGabriel
@JGabriel (Me):
For the sake of accuracy, “purely random” should probably be some formulation like “unguided by anything but random mutations and the selective pressures of the local environment”.
.
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
I can go along with that. Although mutations that prove to have some utility tend to be reinforced through the natural selection process.
One of the things Richard Dawkins talks about in several of his books is that a lot of people have problems getting their heads around the timescale issues of evolution. While we can observe it in human scale time in some species (bacteria and viruses, in particular) for humans themselves the times scales are much larger. Jared Diamond touches on time scale issues in Collapse, where people wouldn’t put two and two together as the trees are felled on Easter Island, for example, because they personally didn’t observe the change, and there were no records kept to provide a baseline for comparison.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@JGabriel:
I don’t have a real argument against it either, other than its pointlessness. If you look at deities as a conceptual idea, a deity that has no interactions with the human world is something of an absurdity. Deities have personal characteristics; mysterious forces that have no personal characteristics are called something else, e.g. gravity. And there’s no point in having personal characteristics if you don’t interact with persons.
In my opinion Deism would be more properly called something else. If you think something initiated the chain of events resulting in our present universe, but you have no idea if it has personal characteristics and don’t think it’s existence has any consequences for you as an individual, call it something other than “God”, which is commonly accepted as the proper name for a Deity.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
Good point about Deism, but I think that the Deists adopted that particular idea so as to soften the blow a bit.
The thing about “personal gods” is that they are intimately involved with the non-immortals beneath them, to the extent that Zeus used to go around having sex with anything that moved, just about, in every possible disguise in order to gratify his all too human desires. The Greek gods were humans with the ability to toss lightning around, basically…with every last frailty of humans. Even the god of Abraham shows these tendencies, particularly with his self-confessed jealousy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
@Villago Delenda Est: We could be an experiment and be subject to observation but not interference. Look for something to be published in one of the more prestigious deity journals sometime down the road.
JGabriel
@Villago Delenda Est:
That Zeus was a strange dude. I mean, what could have possibly led him to believe that being sexually assaulted by a swan would be turn on for Leda?
I mean, he’s got one of the all time great pick-up lines available to him: “I’m a god. Wanna fuck?” So why screw around with all the swan folderol? Is it just a fetish for feathers?
.
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel: Leda was well known as a freak within the hipper circles in Sparta.
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
“Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!”
Cris
BOOOORN IN THE YOU ESS AY
vtr
Evolution’s just a theory. Like the atomic theory. Even though it’s only a theory, the bombs explode.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@jk: All true.
licensed to kill time
I’d like to thank JGabriel, Villago Delenda Est, Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Omnes Omnibus for taking a pointless Palin thread and turning it into a fascinating discussion about Deism. With funny bits!
(this is not snark, I really mean it)
That’s what I love about this place. Smart folks abound, and you never know where the thread will go.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@Paul in KY: You have baby Doc Paul but we’ve got Kasich in the governor’s mansion, so sadly, I admit that KY is ahead of Ohio.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@David Koch, David Kochavich:
fixt
celticdragonchick
@joe from Lowell:
One of the few coherent and intelligent things I have heard from her.
Chuck Butcher
YOu’ve got to stop and think about the part where St Ronnie is too liberal to fit today and yet was where he was. This puts some perspective on the “moderates” who think St Ronnie is a model. In fact what it says about the public in general is pretty scary.
Chuck Butcher
@Ash Can:
So you’re proposing what? Atheism has exactly what to do with the issue? You’re puzzled that the absolutism of atheism doesn’t match an understanding of science? I’m damned confused about where it is you’re trying to go.
JGabriel
@licensed to kill time: Aw, shucks. Thank you.
Matthew
@Chuck Butcher: Many atheists think atheists have a monopoly on intelligence, just like many Christians think that Christians (or Christians of a certain kind) have a monopoly on righteousness. To be fair, with the religious types who dominate the debate in this country it’s an easy mistake to make.
Matthew
@Matthew: For the atheists, I mean. Does the edit function actually work?
JGabriel
@Matthew:
Belated, but: Only if you right-click on the “Click to Edit” link, and choose “Open Link In New Tab”.
.
Matthew
@JGabriel: Thanks!
Paul in KY
@Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q): I’m so sorry that POS got in there in Ohio. We have a nominally Democratic governor down here (Steve Beshear) who is running for re-election against the state version of Mitch McConnell (David Williams) & certified ‘good ole boy ™’ Richie Farmer. Hopefully, having Williams on top will doom that ticket.
Ash Can
@Chuck Butcher: El Cid cited a statistic of 16% of survey respondents believing that evolution took place with no guidance or influence or involvement of a supreme being, and this struck him as being a low number. I was curious about how that statistic matched up with the percentage of non-believers in the nation, so I found a survey addressing that, which indicated that 9% of Americans don’t believe in “God,” and 6% don’t believe in any kind of spiritual force “out there” at all. Within this context, that 16% number appeared high, rather than low. There are plenty of factors that could be influencing this discrepancy, of course, but I wouldn’t have expected the percentages to be that different myself, and I was kind of surprised that they were. End of story.
Meg
From Going Rogue
Also in Oct 2006 governor race, Palin is the only candidate to suggest creationism should be discussed in schools.