Palin Trashes Science
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| Sat, 10-25-2008 - 4:57pm |
In her first policy speech she trashes autism research in France involving fruit flies. Sounds reasonable if you don't know anything about autism, or research.
Here is the truth:
1. The research was in the United States, not France. Can you please get your facts right Palin?
2. Fruit flies, like rats, are standard fare in basic research. Trashing research because fruit flies are involved is really dumb.
3. The research in question actually has shown great promise in discovering the causes of autism.
Here it all is in a revealing segment: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#27367248
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/24/palin-fruit-flies/
Palin is so uninformed it's ridiculous. And by the way, this is like the umpteenth thing she and McCain have said would be exempt from their "across the board" spending freeze.
PS It's a hoot that she says Republicans are for kids with special needs. She should know that Bush basically screwed us on that front by delaying embryonic stem cell research for 8 years. Bush and the Republicans held up the research on religious grounds. All the while Rove was running around calling the religious right "nuts." As David Kuo, the former faith based advisor to the White House who became disgusted with the Republicans and quit revealed, these people are just hypocrites.

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((((You could be right, given that some of the campaign staff plan to blame her if McCain loses.)))))
Although I do not know, I would make a wild guess that this is a joint research project, something that is common.
ETA: Never mind! Having read the rest of the thread I see that it is not even joint research, it is US research that is simply carried out abroad.
Also, to Melanie: The research Palin talked about has to do with olives apparently, which is relevant to US agriculture. The clip simply pointed out that fruitfly research had also been used to research autism. Fruitfly research is used to research many different things, thanks to certain characteristics of fruitflies. That is what the reporter was trying to point out, i.e. that fruitfly research is far from ridiculous, whether it is done in Paris, France or in North Carolina, to find the causes of autism or to find a cure for agricultural pests/diseases.
Edited 10/26/2008 6:25 am ET by sild
Edited 10/26/2008 3:20 pm ET by janetheteacher
((((Name calling, at least when I was raised in NC, wasn't considered ladylike. Maybe times have changed down there in the 'Southern Part of Heaven' or maybe it's just part of the republican strategy? Could explain why Palin keeps calling people 'terrorist' or un-American. Sad really. )))))
Not only is SP unaware of how fruit fly research can benefit students with special needs, she is unaware of the problems of general education in this country. On special needs education she says we need to fully fund IDEA and help parents of special needs children to send their kids to the school of their choice--public, private or religious. That's one good reason to vote Democratic if you believe in the separation of church and state.
The education of disabled students and, when they reach adulthood, their integration into the community has come a long way since I was a kid. We all remember how different "they" were back when we were in elementary school 40-50 years ago. Now we see "them" in regular jobs in our communities; back then "they" were stuck in some special work facility making Christmas ornaments. And we no longer look at them as quite so different, in fact sometimes we can't tell the difference between them and us; sometimes we even realize that we ARE them--that we have similar disabilities, just not quite as severe. While I agree there's much more we can do to help special needs students,I'd say our public education system has made great progress over the past 40 years.
Forget about special needs students for a moment, and consider that one out of three minority students does not graduate from high school. NCLB regulations are expected to be tightened because of that. Yet Bush has requested LESS for education than is authorized, and actually proposed to cut education funding in 2008. No Child Left Behind has been underfunded for years, and with many state economies in recession, federal funding is needed more than ever. McCain said he will freeze spending.
We will never be able to fully fund both IDEA and NCLB. Now is not the time to be talking about using gov't money to pay for education in private and/or religious schools. Now is not the time to elect McCain/Palin.
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"Under the plan, federal money would be used to help parents send their children to a public, private or religious school of their choice, according to the campaign.
Palin also proposed expanding funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was signed into law in 1975 but has never been fully funded. The McCain campaign estimates that fully funding the program would cost an additional $45 billion over five years, money that Palin said could be found by cutting federal pork barrel spending...."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/24/campaign.wrap/index.html
About "No Child Left Behind":
"Organizations have particularly criticized the unwillingness of the federal government to fully fund the act. Noting that appropriations bills always originate in the House of Representatives, it is true that neither the Senate nor the White House has even requested federal funding up to the authorized levels for several of the act’s main provisions. For example, President Bush requested only $13.3 of a possible $22.75 billion in 2006. President Bush's 2008 budget allots $61 billion for the Education Department, cutting funding by $1.3 billion from last year. 44 out of 50 states would receive reductions in federal funding if the budget passes as is. Specifically, funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology Program (EETT) has continued to drop while the demand for technology in schools has increased (Technology and Learning, 2006).
Republicans in Congress have viewed these authorized levels as spending caps, not spending promises. Some opponents argue that these funding shortfalls mean that schools faced with the system of escalating penalties for failing to meet testing targets are denied the resources necessary to remedy problems detected by testing.
Federal funding is claimed to be particularly important because declining tax revenues at the state level have sometimes led governors and legislatures to make deep cuts in state education budgets."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act
Report: Kids less likely to graduate than parents
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 23, 2008; 6:33 PM
WASHINGTON -- Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy group.
More than half the states have graduation targets that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust says in a report released Thursday.
The numbers are dismal: One in four kids is dropping out of school, a rate that hasn't budged for at least five years.
"The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash, author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and poor children. "And that is going to have a dramatic impact on our ability to compete," she said.
In fact, the United States is now the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than their parents to earn a diploma, the report said, citing data compiled by the international Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
High schools are required to meet graduation targets every year as part of the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.
But those targets are set by states, not by the federal government. And most states allow schools to graduate low percentages of students by saying that any progress, or even the status quo in some cases, is acceptable.
Now the federal government is poised to raise the bar on graduation rates. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is expected to issue new rules next week that will force states to use the common tracking system and will judge schools not only on graduation rates but on the percentage of black and Hispanic students who graduate, too.
Among minority students, more than one in three students drops out of school.
Spellings proposed the new rules earlier this year. Final rules may differ somewhat, but Spellings said earlier that states would be required in most cases to count graduates as students who leave high school on time and with a regular diploma.
Critics have worried that by judging test scores more heavily and graduation less so, No Child Left Behind encouraged schools to push weak students out.
Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said the dropout problem is driven by "dropout factories," schools in poor communities where kids face challenges inside and outside the classroom.
He said the government could make a big dent in the dropout problem by plowing more money _ and firm guidance on how to spend it _ into those schools.
More resources are desperately needed, said Mel Riddle, who retired in July as principle of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va.
"The world's changed; we have to change to meet those demands," said Riddle, now an official of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "To think we can do it in the same way, with the same resources, is not realistic."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102301227_3.html?sub=AR
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http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/october/meet_the_new_health_.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTBYQlQ7yM
Soupyduck, no sorry that is part of Olbermann's video.
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