Science!

From the Rolling Stone:

Obama Overturns War on Science

3/9/09

It’s getting lost in the buzz-worthy reversal on stem cells, but I think the bigger news of the day is Obama’s rejection of the Bush administration’s war on science:

I am also signing a Presidential Memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making. To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisors based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That is how we will harness the power of science to achieve our goals – to preserve our environment and protect our national security; to create the jobs of the future, and live longer, healthier lives.
...

Some years ago -- during the depths of the Dubya Administration and through absolutely no fault of my own -- I was asked pretty-please to attend the BIO International Convention which, for the first time, was being held in Chicago.

So I went, and although I have thoroughly suppressed everything I learned about bioinformatics, I still have a lovely tote to show for it.

The highlight was a keynote by Bill Clinton held in one of the McCormick Place's cavernous, sit-down-lunch-for-12,000 halls. For over an hour, Clinton banished the smirkingly anti-intellectual pall of the Dumbass Dauphin and spoke compellingly and without notes (in complete sentences yet!) about how being smarter makes us safer. How using technology to do good -- like bringing clean water to Africa -- also redounded to our geopolitical benefit. Because if people like and respect us, they're less likely to hate and kill us.

And other suchlike subversive, crazy notions.

The lowlight was undoubtedly Neal Cavuto's speech some time later, given, as I recall, the same hall. It was as vicious, petty and vengeful a verbal sniping as you could imagine. Two of the more remarkable moments that I remember vividly were his snarling out to the pharmaceutical reps gathered there that filthy Liberals wanted to "piss in their hair", and his urging them to "withhold medication" from Liberals to teach us a lesson.

Yes, it really was that bad (everything was taped by a bank of a dozen cameras, but thus far my attempts to score a video of his unhinged tirade has been unsuccessful.) Shit, even the hardcore, capitalist VC-types were creeped out by his gratuitous, over-the-top hate-mongering in the middle of a fucking trade show. But, hey, this is what happens when you give a True Wingnut Believer a microphone and a captive audience.

The other, more low-grade source of unpleasantness was completely understandable: the widespread-if-diplomatically-expressed astonishment by scientists, engineers, educators and investors from all over the planet that America had fallen so damned fast from a proud and profitable beacon of innovation and scientific advancement to a country governed by aggressively ignorant, toe-picking meat-sticks and big-haired, Bible-thumping inbreds.

More than almost any other question, "WTF happened to you people?" was the one I heard asked most often. Asked incredulously. Pityingly. Asked in myriad different ways, in many different forums and in different guises.

As much as America's reckless, neocon wars for oil and empire have driven away our traditional foreign policy allies, America's rapid collapse into a provincial Loutocracy of braying, boastful, paranoid yahoos has driven away our traditional philosophical and cultural allies.

They watched as the public dialogue in the United States sank into a sewer of xenophobia and Conservative-media-fueled rage where the worst thing a human being could possibly be was French, gay, muslim, Liberal and/or Darwin.

They asked for American help and leadership, and instead we offered them the Chimperor and his murderous Regent.

Now, at long last, we have a different answer for those friends and allies who watched in horror as the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind; now we can tell them that it was only a temporary madness. That we will never, ever let anything like the Age of Dubya happen again.

Now we can credibly ask the world community for their good will and support in confronting several of the most serious problems to face human civilization in our lifetimes, without them fearing that The Worst President In History would piss it all away.

That's all to the good.

The downside is, of course, now that the science has been liberated from the intellectual Gitmo into which the Bush Administration had banished it, Conservatives are as free as anyone else to go back into the lab,

To perhaps finally realize their dream of a perfect Palin/Jindal hybrid.

With big Reagan titties that lactate tax cuts and freedom.

But I suppose all progress comes at a price.