There he... goes... again

In case you missed the Civil Forum featuring John McCain and Barack Obama, here's a transcript.

In this forum, McCain implicitly declared reason #452 as to why he shouldn't get our vote this upcoming Nov. Apparently, he thinks scientific research is bad. Notice that in his response to the question of how McCain defines rich and how that relates to his philosophy on taxes, Mcain eventually came to government spending and this:

And, my friend, it was not taxes that mattered in America in the last several years. It was spending. Spending got completely out of control. We spent money in way that mortgaged our kids' futures.

My friends, we spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Now I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue...

... but the point is, it was $3 million of your money. It was your money. And, you know, we laugh about it, but we cry - and we should cry because the Congress is supposed to be careful stewards of your tax dollars.

From this, and the context it was taken from, we can deduce McCain's argument to be this:

1. Taxes come from the public.
2. The government should spend these taxes on useful things.
3. Scientific research, namely bear DNA, is not useful.
4. The government spent $3 million on bear DNA research.
5. Therefore, the government is wasting your money.

Is McCain serious? The government shouldn't fund scientific research? Of course you may say I'm being a bit harsh, bear DNA can't possibly be the most important thing ever... And I will give McCain some credit, he is for funding space research. And he does support research into new technologies.

But to McCain, these are examples of research that have beneficial effects in mind. That is why he believes something such as bear DNA is superfluous research which only wastes tax dollars. Nevermind the fact that bear DNA will most likely have something to add to the enterprise of biology, which could in turn provide us with some potential medical benefits, if not at least add to our knowledge. What would he have said about the Keeling Curve had he the chance? Would he assume that superfluous also ("Why waste money to send balloons over the ocean!!?") Most scientific discoveries don't have some benefit relevant to whichever country in mind, but most benefits from science come from pure research.

Not to mention, $3 million is very little compared to what else the government spends. It's only one penny ($0.01) from each citizen (or less given that we reached the 300,000,000 mark a few years ago.) What about the funds for the Iraq war, which are in the billions?

So here we have a spavined man who doesn't understand science very well, and he wants to be president of the world's scientific leader. Does anyone feel as if this is a prescription for disaster?