Apparently some science folks, thinking that science and technology is vaguely important to the future of our nation, submitted 20 questions to the candidates, and got replies from Clinton, Trump, and Stein (Johnson is either still writing his or is ignoring it). The replies are interesting, Hillary’s are well organized, pointing to specific things her administration will do. Stein’s are more (IMHO) ideologically driven, but she does offer her plans.
Trump…even on points where I am in agreement with what he says, he offers no specifics and is depending on the "market’ to solve several issues.
Now of course, most of these were probably composed by staffers, vetted (one hopes) by the candidates, and sent in for the candidates own purposes. That said, they are at least something besides the incessant drumming on health and who is lying or not.
I’ll say that since Trumpy Wumpy’s answers don’t point to himself and his products, he didn’t write any of the answers. Remember, he gets the BEST people. :rolleyes:
Hillary thought George Bush Jr. understood WMDs. Critical thinking is not one of her skills. Trump thinks you can make deals with science. Who is this Stein again? Oh yeah, who cares what she thinks.
Given this kind of response, maybe Johnson is following the proverbial advice, “Better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open one’s piehole and remove all doubt.”
Exactly. You and I can debate abortion or tax policy or immigration and there is no “right” answer. But, for evolution there is a right answer. Evolution happened. It is a fact. If a candidate doesn’t “believe” in evolution, this is directly akin to not “believing” that 2+2=4. Therefore, any candidate that doesn’t believe in evolution should not be put into a position with any sort of decision making power of a higher order than a church picnic.
I used to be a Republican, and the GOP candidate’s inability (or unwillingness) to believe in evolution taught me that the party, as a whole, must be wrong about a whole lot of stuff if they don’t know that 2+2=4.
Trump’s responses absolutely look like they were written by surrogates, but that’s not news. I doubt this will happen, but I would love it if one or more debate moderators chose to ask some or all of these questions during the debates, so we could see how closely Clinton and Trump’s responses match the prepared responses.
I noticed that Trump’s response on climate change tiptoed as close as possible to reflecting his actual position of “climate change is a hoax” without actually saying it. I want a debate moderator to ask Trump about climate change so very badly. Of course, then I’d probably just get depressed over how few voters were turned off by his response.
No, Hillary, along with the majority of the country, believed Bush when he led about what he would do with the authority he was asking for. Not sure if you are fit out against Stein, but she is worse than Trump, since she is a doctor and is pandering to the anti-vaxxers and other leftwing nut jobs.
Whew, I’m glad someone finally asked Trump what he thought about immigration.
The questions in general seem pretty uninspired. Especially given that the questions were written down and so the Candidates and their staffs had time to develop answers, I wish they’d taken the time to come up with some questions which weren’t just variations of the same topics that are constantly being discussed by the candidates, just with a vague science theme.
What an awful site design. Clearly no loving God would ever intelligently design such an eyesore! And yes, we get that Johnson didn’t respond, so must we repeat it every section? Do I really need to see their faces on each question? Maybe it’s better on mobile? Nope, now the heads are small, but the text is hard to read.
Very illuminating look at [del]what the candidates think[/del] what their campaigns answered for them. Clinton answers look like they were written by committee, whereas Trump per yuuuzhe doesn’t actually answer the question.
As for evolution, I don’t think any of the candidates disbelieve it, but you won’t get Trump giving a direct answer. That question is always more interesting to ask during the primaries.
Can someone clarify what #2 is asking? I can’t ever remember getting congressional approval for research. NIH as a whole or NASA, sure, but not individual projects which are very diverse.
Clinton: 50% clean energy by 2026 - ok, lofty but feasible.
Stein: 100% renewable by 2030 - uhh… no.
Because these were questions from scientists. All but a tiny number of them know that evolution is an established fact, and there’s no reasonable question about it.
That’d be like asking the candidates their position on gravity!
Maybe not individual projects, but there is certainly Congressional-level allocation to categories of research within agencies. And, of course, there can be Congressional prohibitions on specific areas of research, or funding with political mandate strings attached.