My last message for three weeks.
At 09:34 28/05/2005 -0700, you wrote:
Keith,
The issue is not whether stem cell research is to be permitted but whether our taxes will support the research. Researchers can do what they wish they just wont get money from the Feds.
Not quite. As I wrote before, it doesn't really matter whether the Fed supports the research or not. The point is that Bush's refusal shows that he's vulnerable to fundamentalist pressure.
Arnold didnt allow stem cell research he allocated $3 billion of our money to it. (I voted against it.)
He was persuaded of it. He pushed it. Same thing really.
I can see Bushs point which is valid. That embryos will be deliberately created so they can be extracted for research.
Calling them embryos is really emotive talk. Call them blastocytes instead -- that is at the stage when there are about 100 totally undifferentiated cells (that is, fundamental stem cells) -- that is, weeks and weeks before the faintest sign of any sort of nervous impusle is apparent.
Rather like Chinese were supposedly deliberately sent to prison so their vital organs could be harvested.
If true (which it possibly is) it's a totally different situation!
Whether Bush is sincere or is politically grandstanding on this issue may be resolved if Congress goes over his head. If he is bitter he is sincere. If he is grateful to Congress (however expressed) then he is playing to his support and his opposition is a political antic.
I regard Bush as being so far below the norm for any politician anywhere near his position, and so much the product of Karl Rove (or anybody else who has the loudest voice in the White House) that I don't ascribe any motive to Bush himself. And, once more, I'm still score when you said that I was influenced in my view of Bush from the BBC and Independent. I did not enjoy it whether you were being serious or just trying to pull my leg. Everything you say about Bush suggests that you were not being whimsical. You still avoid the fact that the vast majority of perceptive observers (at least over here) arrive at the same conclusion as myself when looking at him a few times on TV in an interview setting -- when Bush can hardly frame a complete sentence without a script -- and can only reply in set-piece phrases (and repeatedly, too, in the same interview, so he's abviously had to be coached with a limited number of phrases). This is a man who is totally lost when dealing with any concept or problem above the simplest. When the history books are written Americans will laugh at this absurd travesty of a President. I much recommend that you look at Kissinger's book "Diplomacy" and read what he writes about Reagan! Reagan was a Nobel Prize winner in comparison with Bush Junior.
Keith
Harry
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Henry George School of Social Science
of Los Angeles
Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042
818 352-4141
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 1:12 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Bush enters dangerous territory
743. Bush enters dangerous territory
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
<<<<
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."
....
New York Times -- 25 May 2005
>>>>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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