It is exquisitely interesting that Bush now faces out-and-out opposition from Congress on a relatively recondite matter -- stem cell research. Rather like the resistance Bush has met to his Social Security ideas and also his promotion of five Supreme Court candidates, I rather think that this stem cell issue is a surrogate for much deeper worries that both Democratic and Republican politicians have about matters which are of more immediate importance -- increasing budget deficit, increasing trade deficit and disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It really doesn't matter overmuch whether stem cell research is allowed by the Federal government, or by Governor Schwarzenegger's California, or by universities or by private firms. It's going to be of tremendous importance in the coming years and it will continue come what may, even if Bush vetoes the proposed Stem Cell Research Bill. But what the House was actually saying to Bush in voting 238 to 194 in favour of Federal support was: "Wake up! Don't continue to be persuaded by your anti-scientific Southern Baptists and other backwoodsmen. By resisting stem cell research, you're showing the rest of the world that you and your administration are not very intelligent or farseeing."
President Bush is, in fact, in deep trouble on all sorts of issues and this is being reflected in a serious decline in his overall approval rating -- now down to 43% in a recent Pew Research Center poll. On the economy in particular, support is now down to 35%. Only as recently as a couple of decades ago this would already be regarded as dangerous terrority for Bush. Today, however, with far fewer ordinary people engaged in practical politics at local and state level, a 35% support is just about sustainable.
However, if the 35% falls any lower then it starts to enter the territory of the 25% or so of the population highly-educated opinion moulders who really do care about the future of America -- and can do something about it. Already the Republican worms in Congress are beginning to turn. If Bush's standing deteriorates any further then demands for appropriate chastisement will arise from several other quarters -- such as academia and multinational business -- which have so far been largely quiescent about Bush's performance.
About 18 months ago I seem to remember writing that Bush ought to have been impeached over the invasion of Iraq. I'm beginning to think that the deterioration in the American economy and the general gross incompetence of this administration will cause the Iraq issue to be raised as a surrogate method of impeachment. After all, it is quite clear now from the evidence that pretexts were found for the invasion, so the ammunition is to hand. But the real issue will be the economy and Bush's lack of vision for America.
Keith Hudson
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HOUSE APPROVES A STEM CELL RESEARCH BILL OPPOSED BY BUSH
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Washington -- The House passed a bill on Tuesday to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, defying a veto threat from President Bush, who appeared at the White House with babies and toddlers born of test-tube embryos and warned the measure "would take us across a critical ethical line."
The vote, 238 to 194 with 50 Republicans in favor, fell far short of the two-thirds majority required to overturn a presidential veto, setting up a possible showdown between Congress and Mr. Bush, who has never exercised his veto power. An identical bill has broad bipartisan support in the Senate; moments after the House vote, the Senate sponsors wrote to the Republican leader, Bill Frist, urging him to put it on the agenda.
The House action is the first vote on embryonic stem cell research since August 2001, when Mr. Bush opened the door to taxpayer financing for the studies, but only with strict limits. The new bill permits the government to pay for studies involving human embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics, so long as couples conceiving the embryos certified that they had made a decision to discard them.
"The White House cannot ignore this vote," said the bill's chief Republican backer, Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, adding, "I'm elated."
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New York Times -- 25 May 2005
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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