Fox News is Whining again...

The folks over at Fox News are carrying on about a supposed injustice done to Sara Palin by Newsweek Magazine. Seems that the latest cover shows a close up of the Governor's face. Exposure on the Cover of Time or Newsweek is usually considered to be a good thing. But the commentators over at Fox report that the photo is unflattering allegedly because it was not touched up. See  Cover Girl. 

Of course the Republican News Network..I mean Fox ought to know all about retouching photos. According to Media Matters, Fox has done a little retouching of it's own on several of it's opponents with very unflattering results. Well as Fox might say: "you decide":

Actual and Fox Retouched photos from Media Matters:

Somehow I don't think this is the type of touch up job Fox had in mind for Governor Palin. 

See also this article from the NYTimes.

I can't find a good image of Newsweek's cover but here is a link to Newsweek's coverstory about Palin.

Reading the article leads me to wonder if all the whining about the cover is designed to distract people from reading the article which asks:

Are there many politically attuned people in America now who can honestly say the same thing of Sarah Palin? That they can effortlessly envision President Palin in the Oval Office, ready on day one to manage a market meltdown or a terror attack? Whether one agrees or disagrees with his politics, there is no arguing that McCain is qualified to be president of the United States. But there is plenty of argument about Palin's qualifications. Why should we apply a different standard to the vice president who would stand to succeed him?

Why indeed. Personally while I am a registered Democrat and a liberal, I confess that I was actually willing to "kick the tires" and give Senator McCain a chance to convince me-and this in spite of the the fact that he seems to have abandoned his natural pragmatic non-ideological approach to politics. But his choice of the glib, naive Palin-a book censoring creationist to boot- closed out McCaine as a serious candidate in my mind. Too bad because I really do sympathize with McCain's professed desire to shake things up. Palin was just the wrong way to do it.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama has proven an able campaigner-clearly quite capable of doing the top job. And while Biden doesn't have Palin's energy he is a scrapper and far and away more qualified than Palin.

For the record I was a Richardson supporter.

Well there goes McCain...

I see that John McCain has picked Alaska's governor Palin as his running mate. Intriguing choice since McCain likes to position himself as a maverick. But science wise the choice is a bit flaky, Palin seems to have bought into the beguiling argument that schools should teach both creationism and evolution. She is quoted here in the Anchorage Daily News:

"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Later on in the same interview she did back track a bit and qualified her remarks saying:

"I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

Of course the state Republican platform according to the same article says that:

"We support giving Creation Science equal representation with other theories of the origin of life. If evolution is taught, it should be presented as only a theory."

And that merely echos the common misunderstanding people have about the meaning of the word theory in science.

Clearly though regardless of what she thinks about creationism and its cheap suit version intelligent design, she doesn't understand much about science. Too bad because I honestly felt this was an election where I could "kick the tires" to choose between two great tickets. But John McCain certainly hasn't helped himself here among moderates and certainly hasn't boosted my opinion of his science policy. If he wanted to go the conservative evangelical route he should picked Huckabee.

To give Palin her due she doesn't seem to have the sort of skepticsm about climate change that one might expect. But then again considering how rapidly Arctic climate regimes are being altered by global warming, she probably wouldn't be able to survive politically unless she supported programs to help her state cope with warming.