An Act of Political Suicide

No doubt you all the biggest news of yesterday, July 19th. 2006, a date that will live in political infamy. It's the day George Bush vetoed the embryonic stem cell research bill. I am told that the override in the house failed by just four votes. This obviously will no longer be the situation after the November election. I find Bush's termonology annoying. He speaks of forty thousand embryos being "destroyed". No, congress wants to SAVE them from destruction by opening them up for use by research. The "lines" of cells in use now are growing more inadequate with each passing day. Bush surrounds himself with "snow flake" children. This is obviously a cheap political shot. Nobody is saying some of these 40,000 can't be used for people who want babies. I agree that the adoption market is tight. But that's not our fault that the rich would rather throw out an embryo than donate it to a needy couple. Bush is choosing to ignore the pain and suffering of all those suffering from various deseases from spinal injuries, to muscular dystrophy, to Alsheimers, and so many others. Of course we know how the Jesus of KFI is in love with pain and suffering as evidenced by so many of his comments. I guess you could summarize his position as "If I can't or won't heal a person, nobody can heal them". There are those who believe deseases are caused by God for a reason and if God had meant for them to be whole he would have made them whole. This is the same line of reasoning for everything from penicillon to the invention of the airplane. Granny often said "If the Lord had meant us to fly he would have given us wings". Why do we have a president with one foot in the Dark Ages? The church has consistently resisted and dragged its feet every time progress was about to be made. The botton line is Bush's vetoing of the stem cell research bill is an act of political suicide. He's going to lose in November even more seats than he was going to lose anyhow. The odds now are increased that the Democrats will regain both houses of Congress, and then President Bush is going to do some major league sweating when they start having all those long needed investigations. I guess you can admire someone who acts on "moral principles" even if the act is utterly stupid. The President has sent a message to all those suffering out there of just what he thinks of them. People like Rush Limbaugh say there's no future in stem cell research anyhow. He course there have already been major breakthroughs like with those paralyzed rats. Rush doesn't have all that high of a record for telling the truth. George Bush had a choice yesterday and he made the wrong one. He could have redeemed himself yesterday. Instead he threw it all away. What if Nixon had cut off funding for NASA in 1969 and we never landed on the moon? Nixon would not be associated with that feat whenever it did occur. Swartzenegger at least is thinking about the future. I'm going to vote for Swartzenegger in November. His democratic opponent is toast. I don't make electoral decisions based on party.

I've had time to think about this whole Lebanon invasion thing. It's like someone using bug spray to try and cure a cancer attack. What Isrial is doing is pointless. These terrorist organizations have a life of their own and no matter what you do they will survive. It was Isrial who started the conflict. Millions of Palistinians have suffered. Now they are evacuating Americans from Lebanon. Isrial has in less than two weeks destroyed Lebanon, after they have been in a rebuilding process for over a decade. Why punish Lebanon and its people for something an underground terrorist organization does? Isrial isn't winning friends and influencing people, except in a bad way. Who is going to feel sympathetic tword them now? If anything Isrial is tending to validate many of the things Moslems have been saying about them. To me that just isn't smart. George Bush is not intervening for a cease fire, and I agree it's not really our problem. I would just like to know what Isrial hopes to accomplish. There was a guy on the Al Frankin show with what seemed like an enlightened analisys of the problem and also a visionary peace plan. It seems we should work tword Peace. I think if Clinton were still President now more would be getting done. Some people have said, "The US has the power to Nuke both Domascus and Teharan". Is that what we should do? I don't think so. Hez Ballah will run out of rockets at some point and I guess the problem will be solved then. But the damage done to Isrial's P R will not go away in the hearts of many Palistinians.

1967 is a year with so many dates that stand out in my mind. On this day July 20th. my brother and some other people drove to Vennice and muscle beach and attended the TV broadcast of the show "Groovy". There's a scene when they're playing "Bluebird" and we were playing with a beach ball- - I'm pretty sure I'm in. My brother hung a white tassle making it look like he was a HS graduate even though he was only a Sophamore, and the tassle wasn't even from our school. In the year 1967 we were all getting our first taste of Ronald Reagan and his simotanious draconian cuts in govt. servaces and jobs, and also a doubling of the state income tax. For the next forty years we would be forever told that we had to "make cuts" and "less is more", and if we didn't the govt. would go bankrupt. I like Swartzenegger's speech last January because for the first time in decades the governor actually sounded like a democrat.

I guess I'll close with a little object lesson from Days of our Lives. Philip Kariacus illustrates the point that if you're going to give ultamatums you better make sure you can live with the answer. There is a strange scenarion where Philip's wife, Belle is carrying her ex boyfriend, Sean's sperm and having his baby, because of a lab mix-up. The marriage was always rather bogus and Philip didn't so much as win Belle's love but took advantage of a situation where Sean was temporarily out of comission- to steal Belle from Sean, and now he's paying the price if Belle calls his bluff and gives him a divorce, and I hope she does. The situation is a bit analigus to Christian preachers who try and make value judgements on your life when you yourself are quite content with your own decisions. The worst they can threaten you with- - besides Eternal Damnation- - - is that- - - I guess that's it. They can't threaten you. They are people who are fundamentally in a weak position trying to act strong. I have predicted that by the year 2061 the United States will have turned its back on Christianity. I think something will happen that year that will clinch the deal- if it wasn't already fate accomple before this. The more cosmically aware the people of the United States become, the more bogus Christianity will look.

CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT A CONTIENCE

John Dean's book is number two on the New York Times bestseller list, and he has already knocked off Anne Coulter. Nixon was a "green" compared to the Bush adminestration. Dick Chaney was in the Ford Adminestration and Dean says he was instramental in losing the 1976 for Ford. Chaney was a horrible manager for Haloburten and has actually been more productive for them as Vice President than he was as an employee. Chaney has his own "shaddow government" now. John Dean was originally inspired to write his latest book because of Barry Goldwater, who had a change of heart in his later days. John Dean is still friends with Barry's son. Goldwater says he was influence to vote against the 1964 Civil Rights law because of two people. One was a young Arizona law student named William Requist, and the other one was Robert Bork from Yale. Apparently Goldwater wasn't very studious in his younger days and was left to run the store in Phoenix while his brother went to College. Goldwater "didn't have a rascist bone in his body" according to John Dean and had integrated his store and done other local integration and had voted for other Civil Rights bills. I've heard that Michal Medved is still against the 1964 civil rights bill. Apparently he has adopted the Larry Elder line of "letting the market place dictate policy" and eventually the market place would dictate that Blacks should be allowed equal public accomidation in hotels in resturants. What is wrong with this theory is that Blacks would never be economically successful enough to DICTATE to the market place if they didn't have a college education or receive other govt. help to put them where they are today. We'd still be in a racest world where the Black man is being kept down. This sort of world is just fine for people like Michal Medved and Larry Elder. John Dean has pointed out that "Conservative" really isn't the right word for the Bush adminestration. He thinks perhaps the term "reactionary" is. "Authoritarian" is pretty close to it. This adminestration is certainly against the sort of libertarianism that Barry Goldwater stood for. I have not bought John Deans book yet or his prior book, "Worse than Watergate". It's a good idea to be learned and read because a lot of the people who run the country now don't read books and they aren't lawyers and don't have a philosophical foundation for their beliefs.