Friday, August 29, 2008

Science political


Since everyone else is caught up in the political hooplah, I thought I would link to this article on SEFORA.

In short:

McCain = No increase in basic science research funding (which has declined for 2-5 years, depending on which agency your are talking about)
Obama = Double the amount of funding

Add to that the quote from the McCain camp in the article, which appear to imply that they don't know that scientists have to compete for funding already, and I think I know who has his act together...

Oh, and that little plea for the disgruntled Hillary supporters, Palin? Yeah, she supports teaching creationism in science classes (as does McCain).

From their sites:

From barackobama.com
Improve America’s Competitiveness
- Invest in the Sciences: Barack Obama supports doubling federal funding for basic research, changing the posture of our federal government from being one of the most anti-science administrations in American history to one that embraces science and technology.
From johnmccain.com, ummm... hmmm... tech section?
oh here... R&D tax cuts! Oh, wait that's for industry. Lucky big pharma!
ah here... Risk and innovation exemptions! Ah, that's just so failed industry projects won't hurt those big corps either.
hmmm... Protect inventors section? No, that's just RIAA/MPAA international enforcement. (In fairness Biden is a technological d-bag, but at least he uses a computer - McCain admits he doesn't).

If you're into autism or space research, you're lucky. Those are the only areas where funding for science is needed, apparently. Hey, I'm sure he wants more funding for military spending, since he is a veteran. I'm sure those 20 hours of combat service were pure Hell, but they probably taught him that more funding for ways of reducing military costs was needed. Even with that ranking of 894 out of 899 at Annapolis, I'm betting he was smart enough to come to that conclusion by the time he lost that 5th plane. (I'm all for supporting people in the military, but if the guy's gonna run on his military experience, he should have at least not sucked at being a soldier. He deserves sympathy for being captured and what he went through, not praise.)

So, if you needed more incentive than the fact that during their respective conventions Obama sounded like a leader and McCain sounded like your crazy, demented grandpa, there ya go.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well.

If I could look past Obama's empty suit, vacuous rhetoric of promise everything to everyone to get elected. Or if I could look past his horrid personal associations. Or if I could look past his empty experience. Or his aweful tax policy. Or his naive foreign policy proposals. Or his no compromise government-solves-all-problems leftist agenda.

...then maybe I'd get to his support of science.

But I can't.

So I'm voting for McCain.

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