The Problems with Palin

We should have seen this coming. To stay in this race, McCain has to counter Obama's charisma and youth. By picking a VP who is young, female, and farther to the right, he dusts off his campaign and makes his ticket attractive to a much broader range of voters - including apostate democrats who are bitter about not being able to elect Hillary.

Sarah Palin is the Governor of Alaska. At the moment, there are three particular things about her which make me shudder at the thought of her in the executive branch.

1. Abortion

Governor Palin is against abortion. It's disappointing enough when women fight against their own rights over their own bodies. It's even more disappointing when those women back up their arguments using an antiquated Christian faith which, even if it wasn't a bunch of idle superstition, has nothing to say on the subject of fetuses.

But Governor Palin has taken her Christian pro-life position beyond mere theory. When her pre-natal testing revealed that her son-to-be had Downs Syndrome, she chose to give birth to a retarded baby.

This is a woman who knowingly rolled the dice with her baby's mental health. She got pregnant in her early forties, which, as she must have known, carries with it a massively increased risk of handicapped offspring. And then, when it was clear that the baby would indeed lead a mentally stunted life, she chose to have it, rather than commit the sensible, humane "sin" of aborting it. This earned her major street cred with the pro-life crowd. Personally, I find it vile.

2. Creationism

Regarding creationism and evolution in schools, Palin said in a 2006 interview:

"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Does she also advocate teaching alchemy alongside chemistry? What about the Copernican model of the universe - should students decide for themselves whether it makes more sense than the data our satellites and telescopes have gathered?

Debate is indeed an essential aspect of education, but presenting creationism alongside evolution may lead the credulous to believe that both are acceptable in the scientific community. Educators should indeed teach students about creationism, but only to hold it up as an example of what science isn't.

So far, Palin has kept silent on whether she thinks her personal religious views lean towards creationism, and whether they conflict with the theory of evolution. Surely her beliefs will be sounded exhaustively in the next two months, so we'll find out whether she's actually crazy or just supports tolerating craziness in the classroom.

3. Oil

Palin's husband Todd is an employee of BP, and Palin herself supports opening the Alaskan wilderness to oil development. But it should be clear by now that America's addiction to oil is something to be overcome, not nurtured.


All this being said, we must remember an important fact about the McCain/Palin ticket: McCain is not exactly in his prime. He's 72 years old and has a history of health problems. Were they to get elected, there is a significant chance that Palin would have to step up herself as president.

This throws into relief the good news about Palin: experience. In choosing Palin, the Republicans have disarmed themselves in the experience debate: surely they can no longer attack Obama on experience when their own VP is even younger and has no experience outside of a sparsely populated, noncontiguous state!

Tubes

For the past two years, Jon Stewart and others have continued to mock Senator Ted Stevens's comment that the internet is a "series of tubes". I had always assumed that this comment was, to at least some extent, taken out of context. But here's the transcript from 2006:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
(See Wired, 30 June 2006, Your Own Personal Internet for full transcript.)

So this must be why Senator Stevens is being indicted! He filed his tax return electronically, and his report of those hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of gifts just got clogged in the tubes! By the time he got ahold of a good ePlumber, it was too late.

Medals: Not Just For Kids

In these 2008 Olympics, we've seen:

Dara Torres, 41 years old, win silver for the US in the women's 50m freestyle;

Oksana Chusovitina, a 33-year-old gymnast (!), win silver for Germany at the vault;

Jason Lezak, 32, serve as the anchor to two gold-medal swimming relays for Phelps & Co.; and

Misty May and Kerri Walsh, 31 and 30, respectively, continue their indomitable reign over the sport of beach volleyball.

Congratulations to all athletes, but especially these ones for winning against competitors ten, fifteen, or even twenty years younger than themselves. Their successes are a refreshing contrast to the Chinese "women's" gymnastics team, whose members probably have yet to lose all of their baby teeth.

McAthletes Do Not Exist

It is a sick joke that McDonald's is an 'official sponsor' of the Olympic Games. Sponsoring the Olympics and promoting nationwide obesity should be mutually exclusive.

And as if bringing those disgusting arches into proximity with the Olympic rings isn't blasphemous enough, they made a commercial implying that Olympic hopefuls enjoy the "food" sold at McDonald's. Among the athletes featured in the spot are a female sprinter with washboard abs and a petite blond gymnast who bears a resemblance to silver medalist (and real athlete) Shawn Johnson.

What audacity. I realize that this is worth many millions of dollars to NBC, but it's so nauseating. World-class sprinters and gymnasts consuming processed, artery-clogging McCrap? This is a fantasy world that can only be made possible by the vile, subhuman wretches constituting the McDonald's marketing division.

The Olympics are a celebration of athleticism, competition, diversity, and all-around human excellence. McDonald's is a corporation that sells shockingly unhealthy conglomerations of meat, corn syrup, and white flour mislabeled as food. The Olympics provide role models for kids; McDonald's shamelessly baits children with toys and playgrounds in order to gain access to their parent's wallets, unconcerned that the next generation is growing up fat and unhealthy.

Show some real Olympic spirit: boycott McDonald's.

USA! USA!

New York Times: How Lezak Won Gold in 4x100-Meter Relay

Incredible.

"Cheesus"

People are so desperate to find meaning in their lives that they even seek it in their snack foods. Every few months, a news story appears about some yokel seeing the face of Christ in a slice of French toast, or image of the Virgin Mary in a tortilla. Most recently, the son of God's divine image has graced a Missouri woman's Cheeto.

Fox News: "Cheesus?": Woman Finds Jesus In Bag of Cheetos

"I looked at that and I thought, oh my, that looks like Jesus on the cross, it was just like wow," she says.

The pastor of Kirkwood United Methodist Church does not see anything theologically special about the Cheeto but thinks some good could come from it. Pastor David Bennett says "If people can find Jesus, somehow, in each of us like she's found in this object,that would be a wonderful thing."

Kelly doesn't plan to sell the Cheeto and will keep it in a safe deposit box.

"It was just like wow." We're clearly dealing with a woman of exceptional intelligence. At least the pastor does "not see anything theologically special" about the malformed cheese curl, but he does think that genuine meaning can be extracted from it. I, too, would like to discover my Lord and Savior; where should I begin my spiritual search? The Bible? The Frito-Lay line of snack foods? The #4 meal at my local Taco Bell?

If God, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary wanted to appear to you, why would they choose junk food as their vehicle of manifestation? Wouldn't a cloud, a mighty wave, or a burning bush be a tad more awe-inspiring? Or is the Holy Trinity operating on a low budget these days?

More importantly, the people who "find" divine images in their food don't seem to be concerned about what message their deity is sending. It seems enough for them that the image is there. But in the Bible, God doesn't appear to people without having something he needs to communicate. So what's the message here? It's ambiguous at best - it could be anything from "I am the Lord thy God" to "Cheetos: Endorsed Commercially by Chester Cheetah, and Spiritually by Jesus Christ."

Interesting, isn't it, that harebrained delusions are so similar to religious revelations that people mistake the former for the latter?