Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Obama's Taking Questions

You can vote for the questions you'd like Obama to answer here.

My questions so far:

Science:
Are you committed to understanding and facing that which is true, no matter how unpleasant? Will you measure your confidence in the truth of various claims rationally --that is, using tests of corroboration, falsification, logic, and parsimony?

Health care:
Will you stop the anti-science lie of 'alternative medicine'? Any treatment proven effective with appropriate controls is simply 'medicine'. When the public can't appreciate basic rules of evidence, democracy dies. So help America to wise up!

Foreign policy:
Will you prove America's commitment to the rule of law? Will you allow the prisoners at Guantanamo the basic legal due process afforded to anyone accused of a crime in a civilized society? Their testimony will hurt us, but we will survive.

Snark (I'm not brave enough to actually type this in):
Will someone tally up the unfounded assertions and batshit notions nested among these questions at change.org? The list may help us understand why things are as they are.

2 comments:

  1. Do we know Obamas position on evolution? The few things I have seen have been somewhat non commital

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  2. Good question. I'm guessing he's a both-are-true type --i.e., God created everything AND evolution is true.

    I don't mind him throwing a bone or two to the fundies so long as they are crap bones of no significance -e.g., Rick Warren says the prayer on innauguration day.

    The alt.med crowd are cozy with the democrats and health care reform is an Obama priority. So right now I'm more worried about pseudomedicine than creationism.

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