What a busy day for Sarah Palin. Besides giving a deposition on her role in troopergate (see: ethics, abuse of power), and dropping a hockey puck in St. Louis, she also managed to screw up her first policy speech. Via Think Progress:
For many parents of children with disabilities, the most valuable thing of all is information. Early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference.
Palin claimed that the amount that Congress spends on earmarks "is more than the shortfall to fully fund IDEA." She then ridiculed some of the projects — such as "fruit fly research" — saying they have little or no value:
Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? [...] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.
Damn those earmarks! Wasting good money on fruit fly research:
[S]cientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for..nerve cell connections to form and function correctly.
The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.
Oh. Never mind.
Seriously, can the McCain campaign do anything right? Or, was this a little payback for the alleged dissension between McCain and Palin loyalists within the campaign?