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Fri 21 Jul, 2006 06:52 pm
Patti Davis, Republican, daughter of Ronald Reagan nails the smirk with her article in Newweek. Hypocrisy Exposed once again.
..........The veto comes as no surprise; that battle line was drawn years ago. But it's hard to believe that the 70 percent of Americans who support stem-cell research really care what Bush does. I'm not suggesting they won't notice, or be bothered?-even annoyed. I'm certainly not suggesting that federal funding couldn't move research along at a faster pace. But caring is an emotion of a deeper kind. When we truly care about another's opinion, it's because we value that person and hold in some esteem their judgments and pronouncements. It also might mean we believe that individual can influence the tide of the future with their opinions.
This is a president who has no currency left with the majority of Americans who, polls have shown, do not trust him. We won't totally shrug off his intransigence, but we won't waste too much time mulling over his reasons either. Why? Because we don't care.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said, about the impending veto, that President Bush "thinks murder is wrong." But apparently, the destruction of fertilized eggs?-flushed away as if they're useless?-doesn't count as murder. Only using those fertilized eggs for valuable scientific research that could eventually save people's lives counts as murder in this president's mind. No one in this administration, with all their wordplay and posturing, has been able to dance around that stunning lack of logic.
We are being asked to believe that this president's opposition to embryonic stem-cell research has deep moral, religious and ethical roots. As we heard, the word "murder" is tossed around freely.
Yet this is a president who led us into a war with a patchwork quilt of lies. Thousands of American soldiers have died. Thousands more have returned horribly wounded, and we don't even know yet what toll posttraumatic stress disorder will take on those who obeyed their commander in chief and went to fight in Iraq. We may never know the complete death toll of Iraqi citizens, but we certainly know that some were raped and brutally executed. There have been many beheadings, sometimes of Americans who simply went to Iraq to help the people there, not to fight. Let us please not forget 26-year-old Nick Berg who was beheaded in May 2004. Where is President Bush's grief over all those deaths? He directs his moral outrage instead to the idea of using fertilized eggs, that would otherwise be destroyed, for potentially life-saving scientific research. He tells us it's because he cares so deeply about life.
Where was his care in the aftermath of Katrina? This president, when he finally did touch down in Louisiana, made a smirking remark about the good times he used to have in New Orleans. As if alluding to his hard-partying past was appropriate while people were suffering and dying in the Superdome, while bodies were lying bloated in the streets.
We won't care about this veto because we don't really believe this president cares about us. Stem-cell research is going to go forward, obviously without this administration's help. People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have shown us that there is some serious money in this country and there are dedicated, humane citizens willing to put their money where their beliefs are. If anything, President Bush's veto of the stem-cell bill may galvanize people even more.
The future of this scientific research doesn't rest in the world of politics, but rather in the committed hearts of people who long to see diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes, possibly even Alzheimer's, become treatable conditions. People who believe that the day will come when victims of spinal cord injuries will stand up from their wheelchairs and walk again. People who trust the scientists who are working so passionately on what will be, and already is, the next frontier of medicine.
No president can veto the will of people's hearts.
Davis, the daughter of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, is a writer based in Los Angeles
It's heartwarming to know that there are still some Republicans who can recognize truth and honesty.
More voices of sanity, many from solid conservatives. What is wrong with this core group of radical repuglican conservatives, eh Tico, MM, Finn, McG, ...?
Quote:
A Plea for Basic Sanity: No To A Neo-Con Ressentiment
Gideon Rachman, writing in the FT (subscription required):
So what conclusion should be drawn, now that all these splendid examples of transatlantic co-operation have run into difficulties? The uninspiring truth is that foreign policy is difficult. Just because military force and US leadership have run into trouble in Iraq, does not mean that diplomacy and multilateralism are going to succeed elsewhere. Pre-September 11 2001, Mr. Bush was all too aware of this. In his first presidential election campaign, he called for a "humble" foreign policy that was realistic about America's ability to change the world and warned against the idea that "our military is the answer to every difficult foreign policy situation". The current array of crises may encourage Mr Bush to relearn that lesson.
http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2006/07/post_33.html
With a Holy Land Like This World Has, Who Needs Hell?
With a Holy Land Like This World Has, Who Needs Hell?
Rusty - 07/21/2006
Fires everywhere? Check. Misery? Check. Screams of agony? Check. Hatred reigns supreme? Check. No hope for salvation? Check.
Put your Bibles and Qu'rans and Torahs away, Christians and Muslims and Jews, what you need to learn about life and death and judgment is all around you. The scribbling of self-appointed prophets is not going to save you from the madness of your leaders. Going to a church, mosque, or synagogue to pray is not going to save you from their lunacy. Your own ignorance, apathy, and selfishness have elevated them to power, and now you are reaping what you have sown.
I have news for you, Hell is not awaiting the wicked at the hour of their death, it's taking a fiery road trip through that Holy Land you all keep talking about. Hell is here on earth, raging among us, and you are the ones who invited it to drop in and say hello. Your intolerance and self-righteousness have beckoned it, and it's leaving its flaming footprints all over that sacred Holy Land soil you say you cherish so much.
So congratulations! Gather your fellow believers together, do some channel-surfing, and behold your handiwork. Israeli missiles are raining down on Lebanon. Hezbollah missiles are raining down on Israel. Beirut is burning. Gaza is burning. Haifa is burning. Nazareth is back in the news. Death has been elected president of Iraq and is doing a heckuva job. The Rapture is on the way, sponsored by The Republican National Committee and free to anyone who can pay $1000 a plate to eat chicken and potato salad with George W. Bush and his lovely wife Laura.
Yup. That love and forgiveness Christianity and Islam and Judaism praise so highly is blossoming everywhere from New Orleans to Pyongyang, but especially in Bush's patented Eden of Democracy, nestled there in the Cradle of Civilization where Babylon used to be until Jehovah smote it back to the Stone Age to show all those Babylonian homosexuals who was in charge and who wasn't.
Where was I? Oh yes, love and forgiveness. Well, they're blossoming in the heart of every believer in God or Allah or Yahweh, except perhaps among the Sunnis in sunny Iraq, who hate the Shi'ites, the Kurds, the Zionists, and the Christians. Not that the Shi'ites have been slouches in the love and forgiveness department, they are loving and forgiving Sunnis every chance they get, usually with a bullet at point blank range and an all expenses paid free trip to the nearest Baghdad morgue.
I would be remiss if I forget Allah's special ambassador of good will on earth, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who hates everybody. The Holocaust? Never happened. Nuke program? What nuke program? He doesn't need a nuke program. Don't ask him about that, he's busy plotting to wipe Israel off the face of the earth with the WMD's Saddam smuggled to Bashir Asad, who sent them off to Teheran lickity split because Syrian Sunnis love Iranian Shi'ites almost as much as they love Jews.
What has brought such peace and tranquil splendor to the "Holy Land" here at the dawn of the Third Millennium? The deep religious faith, comprehensive stragedies, and uniter not divider skills of George W. Bush, that's what. Revered and adored and voted for by America's own devout Christians, he has unleashed Hell on us all on their behalf and with their blessing.
Catching large mouth bass in his lake, neck-rubbing heads-of-state, and screwing Condi in the back of limousines are just hobbies for The Decider, his destiny is to lead the world into Armageddon so Jesus will come back to earth and wipe it out with fire and earthquakes and floods and pestilence. Of course Burning Bush, Inc. can't SAY that, it might upset the liberals and homosexuals and activist judges and Negroes and college professors and feminists and environmentalist whackos who don't understand the Holy Scriptures.
According to these proclaimers of God's love for his earthly children, we deserve the eternal damnation about to befall us, because we don't love God and are filled with demonic anger at God's Messenger and his faithful disciples in the Republican Party. We are Acolytes of Satan and must be prepared to gnash our teeth, etc, because it's God's will that Joe Lieberman is a ******* liar, and Karl Rove is a traitor, and Richard Bruce Cheney is batshit insane, and that the Israelis have been unleashed by the Lord to bomb the living daylights out of Lebanon so the armies of Gog and Magog will see the fires and know how to get to Armageddon for their big showdown with The Lamb and his legions of holy angels.
Then again, it might be God's will that the Netroots slays the RePug Goliath with a slingshot on Election Day, reclaims the land of our fathers, heals the afflicted, and ensures the blessings of peace and justice unto the seventh generation or at least 2099, whichever comes first.
Grab your slingshots everyone, let's nail Goliath right between the eyes, watch him go down, and bury him in a toxic waste dump somewhere in Texas.
Ooops.........posted this in the wrong place but I think I will leave it as parts fit right in with the rest of the question about the rabid right.
Makes one wonder how many opponents of stem cell research will, in the future, run to their doctors and ask them save their worthless hypocritical arses using techniques gained from stem cell research.
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