The big news of the day is Sarah Palin’s new video on the Giffords tragedy. While I don’t think she is responsible in any direct way, I do think she needs to tone down her rhetoric and spiteful comments. The crosshairs of a gun sight, the reload; yes they are not only completely unnecessary but quite awful. To be fair, though, she’s not the only one with heated words. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh continue to be acidic forces on the right. And we can’t forget Sharron Angle’s second amendment remedies and Carl Paladino’s take him out. Who knows? They may be back.

Palin did have crosshairs over Giffords district, targeting specifically her. This was later scrubbed clean from Sarah Palin’s site. Doth she protest too much? She may not be directly responsible but she sure is acting like a guilty party.

She is swirling through a downward spiral. She can’t seem to be honest or engage in a bit of common sense. Instead of using this opportunity to tone it down or speak to the crazies to be less crazy, she rants about how words regarding her words are the most violent. WTF?!

Now, as if that weren’t low enough, she compares herself to that of Jewish discrimination. I remember when the Pope tried that.

Blood libel (also blood accusation) refers to a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, almost always Jews[citation needed], murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays. Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration–been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.

The libels typically allege that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos for Passover. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically blood libel claims have often been made to account for otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases, the alleged victim of human sacrifice has become venerated as a martyr, a holy figure around whom a martyr cult might arise. A few of these have been even canonized as saints, like Gavriil Belostoksky. [Read more]

As Noam Neusner (former speechwriter for President George W. Bush) says, “I would have advised against using it — the term is historically unique and refers specifically to false charges of ritual murder”. Not to mention Giffords is Jewish. Oopsies.

Since there are so few Jews left, who cares? Is what I imagine Palin could be thinking. Either that or complete ignorance and stupidity in what she said, honestly not realizing due to some bad information an advisor gave her. So which is it? Doesn’t really matter because willful ignorance is no better than in incoherent stupidity. Ignorance isn’t so bad- but willingly staying ignorant? If Palin refuses to apologize or make a statement about her ‘past’ ignorance, then she will always be a blissful boob. It may sound good, but it’s not. ;) I realize that I’m being totally unrealistic in expecting this from her. But I can dream, can’t I? Sigh.

…it didn’t seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place “in Paris, France” and winding up with a folksy “I kid you not.”

To explain exactly why such research is important, he continues:

It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly.

As I see it, it comes down to more than a difference of opinion of political or religious matters. A war on science will only through us deep into the New Dark Ages. The denying of the importance of scientific research should be the quintessential pivot point where we ask ourselves, Really, why? Unfortunately, there are some who just do not understand.

Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also says that she doesn’t think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a “premillenial dispensationalist”—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.

I suppose if the world is ending, what’s the point of doing anything anyway? How utterly depressing!

Since I have nothing else to say on the matter, I will leave you with a demotivational poster I made exposing Palin’s hypocritical views on “life”.