This just astounds me.  It really does.  One of the people in the running to be vice president of the United States of America believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old and dinosaurs and man co-existed.  I’m sorry, but this is the person who is only “one 70 year old man’s heartbeat” from getting her hands on the nuclear codes and the reigns of the worlds most important, and already faltering, economy.  I can’t quite put into words how scary this is.

Thankfully this is being covered by some prominent news outlets like the Huffington Post, but really this needs to get out into the mainstream media.  People need to know.  Unfortunately, this won’t happen because of the fear within the mainstream media outlets of alienating some viewers.  In the words of Matt Damon (yes, that Matt Damon):

“Do the actuary tables and there’s a one out of three chance, if not more, that McCain doesn’t survive his first term and it’ll be President Palin… It’s like a really bad Disney movie. The hockey mom, you know, ‘oh, I’m just a hockey mom’… and she’s facing down President Putin… It’s totally absurd… it’s a really terrifying possibility… I need to know if she really think that dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. I want to know that, I really do. Because she’s gonna have the nuclear codes.”  From HP.  Video here.

The source of this story is a teacher who spoke to Palin just after she was elected Mayor of Wasilla in 1998.  The really worrying part of the discussion Palin had with Philip Munger, the teacher in question, was this:

“…she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks…”

This was in response to Munger pushing her in the clear empirical evidence available, specifically prehistoric fossils and tracks that can be dated back far further than 6,000 years.

The question we need to ask is this.  Is Palin dellusional, an idiot or both?  And that really shouldn’t be a question you’re asking about anyone in politics, let alone someone vying for one of the most powerful positions in the world.