Tag: god bless the land of the free

Trump has indicated little respect for the findings of science. He has openly repeated the long and frequently debunked suggestion that vaccines can induce autism. He’s said that the climate consensus generated by the international scientific community is little more than a plot by the Chinese to hamper other economies. His science policy plans, where they exist, completely reflect this disdain. For energy, he plans to do the exact opposite of what would be required to address climate change by lifting restrictions on the production of shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal, and he plans to seek a wholesale culling of federal regulation regardless of whether there’s a scientific basis for the rules. He has also said that wind farms are “disgusting looking” and claimed they’re “bad for people’s health” which there is no evidence for. 

The new Vice President also has some questionable views on science. It could be said that Mike Pence’s conservative and religious views have coloured his perceptions of science. In 2009, he wrote that embryonic stem cell research is “obsolete” and has claimed that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. He’s a proponent of guy conversion therapy (cure the gay away), which is ineffective and illegal in several states. He also believes that creationism is a legitimate scientific theory. 

It’s now being murmured that Ben Carson, the man who shattered the stereotype that brain surgeons were intelligent, has been put forward as Education Secretary. Carson is a young Earth creationist and adheres to the idea that the Earth is somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old, and that evolutionary biology is essentially hocus pocus. He is on record stating that the Big Bang is a fairy tale. He has previously spoken out against free college education, and also once claimed that the Biblical figure Joseph built Egypt’s Great Pyramids in order to store grain and is under the impression that scientists believe that aliens built them.

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There will be a review on that date to see if things have gotten saner.

Hillary Clinton will become the second presidential nominee to win the popular vote yet lose the electoral college – and thus the White House – in the past five US presidential elections. It would be the fifth time in the nation’s history that such a split has occurred and may be a boon to advocates of reform of the two-century-old system. Other dubious winners include Al Gore (George W Bush, 2000), Grover Cleveland (Benjamin Harrison, 1888), Samuel Tilden (Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876) and Andrew Jackson (John Quincy Adams, 1824).