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Adrienne:

I know it may sound a bit “corney,” but when it comes to politics, I’ve always thought my Dad said it shortest, sweetest and best:

“Politics is like a pendulum—it swings too far to the left, you have to push it back towards the right a bit to get it to center; it swings too far to the right, you have to push it back towards the left...”

My Dad was a registered Republican for almost thirty years---he is now a registered Democrat

Bravo!

I’m a registered Republican. I voted for ole G.W. I can say this...I’m more likely to vote Democratic or to not vote at all the next time around because of the wedges far-righters are causing within the Republican party. This article has some truth in it.

Since when is it ok to value a frozen embryo over the life of a living human being? It isn’t. Since when is it ok to not allow women to have access to EC and prevent an estimated 800,000 abortions per year (repubs should support this measure). It isn’t. With each day that goes by, I become more and more uncomfortable in my own skin for voting Republican.

I always let the lady have the last word. 

Thank you for your thoughts.

Susan Estrich defends Hillary well in her book. Liberals will go for her and so will moderates.Anwway, all our potential candidates are wiser than the supply-side crowd- the Spencer-Randites.

In comment #14868, Collin Brendemuehl asks:

“And who exactly has been forced into pregnancy?”

Per CBS News, June 9, 2005:

“Some 25,000 women become pregnant from rape each year.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/09/eveningnews/ printable700791.shtml

In response to morgan -lynn lamberth #15374

I agree run Hillary even my Democratic brother won’t vote for her.

As a matter fo fact she voted for the war which she now says is wrong.

People will see through that.

As to taking over congress… I’d vote Democratic if the D’s would run someone with the credentials of an Olympia Snow....I don’t see anyone, do you?

Glad to see another of my favorite writers appear on Truthdig.  Thanks
Ellen for restoring some of my hope in humanity.

I do not know about rapid change, but people like minimum wage increases and stem-cell research .Hillary has proposals which even Lawrence Kudlow likes . Her husband’s ratings are forever now sky high. And poor George ! More people intend to vote Democratic than otherwise this fall. With our take over of the House this fall, Sconyers will initiate investigations of Cheney-Bush . Gee, maybe people want change!

Reasons Republicans continue winning;

The opposition (as below) is rude and cowardly speaking of folks who fail to agree with current Democratic dogma as “loonies” usually faceless on the internet, often using “nick” or phony names.

Folks don’t like rapid change.  One of the reasons GWB numbers down is he has co-opted the fiscally conservative party for his own selfish ends.  Presidents usually think of how history will view their time, and what is best for the Country Bush is not a fiscal conservative, his very expensive wars, and costly useless drug program are witness to that.
Democrats have a history of enacting and trying to enact rapid change. Unfortunately, the R’s are catching up.

I could continue, but I don’t read long posts, so I’m sure no one else wants to read long posts by me.

Try a bit of courtesy, an intelligent dialogue is possible even on the internet.

Oh, and I’m a SARGENT Republican.  Ask Ellen Goodman what that means.  She will remember when Frank Sargent closed Massachusetts reform schools, and as a Republican, changed lives for the better.  No politician in my lifetime has been a better example of the best.

The best response to Warren Greer’s contribution comes from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”:

Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great,
If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate,

... and so on.

We have an admistration full of chickenhawks who believe that the lower classes should breed cannon fodder so that the upper class folks can have “other priorities”. When anyone reminds them of that, they cry “Class warfare!!!”.

The war began long ago. The fact that the chickenhawk aggressors never had the balls to declare it makes it, like so many others, no less of a war.

A modest proposal:  Every human egg lost through menstruation is the death of a potential human child; likewise, every non-vaginal ejaculation of human sperm is the death of millions of potential
human babies.  A law must be enacted to preserve this source to repopulate the globe after the nuclear war which will soon be visited on us.
We must institute the death penalty for masturbators and wet-dreamers, unless they get to the sperm banks in time to preserve the precious
substance they produce for the ova-banks. 
FOR THE LIVES OF THE POTENTIAL HUMAN EMBRYOS!
STOP THE POTENTIAL SLAUGHTER! 
FERTILIZE ALL OVA!
(ABOVE REFERS TO WHITE ANGLO-SAXON PROTESTANT SPERM AND OVA ONLY.  THOSE OTHERS ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH BABIES.)

Goodman knows her loonies! I look forward to reading Hirschman’s views on the conservative adversion to progress in his book that Peter Beinart recommends in yesterday’s New Republic on-line newsletter.  . The loons actually support supply-side ‘ reckonomics’! How they claim lies when they do not understand matters . Bukko can vouchsafe that. And to think the president i s one of them ! He vetoed a good bill, but never had vetoed a big spending Republican one. It just shows that a loon can be an MBA . I support all of our Democratic candidates for president over the loony Republican ones. Legalizing homosexual marriages would be family- building. Minimum wage increases support the family . Guest worker programs support the family. Stem cell research would support the family .Democrats want to support the family whereas most Republicans want to curtail efforts to support the family . We are the values people! American values for American families.We progressive secularists support real values , based on what is good for humans, other animals and the enviornment,not those of men of yore. Fr. Griggs rests in his Socratic ignorance and humble naturalism.

Funny, none of this sounds “Republican” to this 1970’s “Sargent Republican” (Massachusetts)

I thought I was a Republican, but the party took a turn somewhere and I went sailing straight ahead.

I voted (catch the ED at the end of vote) Republican because they WERE fiscally restrained.  Now-a-days no one can spend like current Republicans. 

I need a new party....one less involved in social issues and more involved in fiscal sanity.

To: Mad as Hell

You are right that it is about power and control. Take a look at the looney right’s view of education. Their beliefs are so illogical you wonder how could they possibly advocate some of the beliefs they espouse.

Then you realize, it has nothing to do with how to make education better. It has to do with control and power. They are hell bent on taking over the educational system of the United States, and it all started with Bush’s brain child on education, “No Child Left Behind” and it’s being furthered by their school voucher program.

And these are only two areas in a subversive, sickening program to take over the U.S. and as much of the rest of the world as they can get their hands on. To the neocons and looney right, we are no different than the innocent Lebanese or Iraqis civilians. We are cattle and thus a commodity to control or slaughter according to how advantageous it is to them.

They are no different than the Islamic extremists they purport to fight in that they use religion to gain power and fool the people.

Sorry, if you’re conservative, you’re by definition insane. Conservatism stems from irrational paranoia and fear, and should be treated with the only known successful method- Severe emotional or physical pain.

Conservatives can never be allowed to govern anything again. After all, no one has ever died from too much empathy by liberals, but conservatives kill them by the tens of thousands with their fear.

This issue isn’t about “pro-life” or any other “values.” In fact, the 400,000 or so frozen embryos which will never find a uterus will be destroyed—that’s right, chucked in the garbage—and this does not seem to bother Mr. Bush and his misogynistic supporters in the least. 

Of course it bothers the prolife movement.
But this is the process of paying for it with tax dollars.

Furthermore, they have no trouble with the idea of creating all those embryos in vitro even with the knowledge that all but the few selected for implantation must then be either kept in a freezer indefinitely or destroyed—so much for the “playing God” and “Nazi-like eugenetics” arguments

Why do you say that we’ve not problem with the situation?  It is experimentation on human beings.  It’s not Nazi-like.  It is utilitarian.
And that’s just as evil.

(I wonder, if there was a blackout and the freezer shut down, would this constitute a sort of mini-holocaust?  If someone turned the freezer off, would they be a murderer?).  No, they have no trouble with in vitro fertilization procedures because they are done to get women pregnant—apparently the least threatening, and therefore the preferred, state of human female existence to these people.

(bold emphasis mine)

And who exactly has been forced into pregnancy?
Sheesh.  Get real.

Collin

http://www.evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

Collin:

You’re right - it IS about “corporate welfare” --namely, making sure that the major drug companies continue to make obscene amounts of money indefinitely by selling drugs to “manage” chronic diseases and congenital conditions.  Of course, most of the stem cell research is guaged towards finding actual CURES for many of these conditions—something which, I have no doubt, would leave the most stoic pharmacuetical CEO cowering in fear and unable to sleep at night.
Now it’s actually starting to make some sense—this is just another in a long line of examples of Mr. Bush’s governance-as-proxy to big business.

If Bush claims to have vetoed it because he is “against murder,” why does he not lift a finger to prevent funding for stem-cell research, federal AND private? Could it be that he does not want to alienate the corporations who seek to make a future profit off stem cell technology?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/22/31217/6628

Exactly! I’m amazed so few seem to have made that connection. Samm Simpson, a gutsy lady who has to courage to challenge our powerful and entrenched (38 years in office, mostly unopposed) Republican congressman CW Bill Young in this fall’s election, made that point in her letter to the St. Petersburg Times. They have yet to publish it. Here’s how she put it…

Subject: Grown Embyros are Collateral Damage

Our President thinks that embryonic stem cell research crosses a “moral line.” His Press Secretary, Tony Snow, explains; “The simple answer is [the President] thinks murder’s wrong.”

A study done by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Sept. of 2004 reported that the The United States invasion in Iraq caused the deaths of 100,000 innocents. This didn’t include our decimation of Fallujah or our use of white phosphorus, a banned chemical weapon. The numbers of dead are difficult to track. Some say 250,000. . . 6000 in the last two months.

Is this crossing a moral line, Mr. President?

Where is your “moral” leadership as the Middle East once again explodes with yet more “collateral damage?”

Do you really think murder is wrong, Mr. President?

“I do not see them as irrational at all.
In face *we* are the ones taking the rational step of protecting life rather than treating it as a commodity.

http://www.evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com “

Do you do ANYTHING to prevent the NEED for abortions other than counsel"abstinence"?  Are you one of those ignorant people who worked hard to prevent Plan B from being OTC?  Did you read the story of the Washington lawyer, who, took ONE chance with her husband, then couldn’t get Plan B because her doctors and pharmacists were “morally opposed” to it?  So rather than prevent the pregnancy, she got pregnant and had an abortion. That abortion would NEVER have happened if a) Plan B was OTC (it is NOT an abortion pill) and b) pharmacists were REQUIRED to fill scripts, and c) doctors HAD to provide the best care for their patients.

Are you willing to see prophylactics distributed to HS kids?  Do you think denying them prevents them having sex?  Get real! Teens have been having sex for millenia--now we can, at least, make it safe.

Are you working to make adoptions in America easier (have you TRIED adopting a child)?  Have YOU adopted a child? Are you working to make sure adoptions are permanent so if after 4 years the birth mom gets “buyer’s remorse” she can’t shatter a family because she “wants her baby back”? Are you working to make sure that families get babies on their merit, not the color of their and the baby’s skin? One of OUR kids is adopted, so I know of what I speak.

Is THAT a logical pro-Life approach? No. It’s an anti-sex approach.

I WANT to prevent abortions.  Not by making them illegal--but by preventing the unwanted pregnancies.

I also see this as nonsense that frozen embryos are the same as living, breathing human beings.  That’s like saying an acorn is the same as an oak tree.  The whole argument from the WH down to the one I quoted (and the one who claimed I “sneered” when all HE did was sneer) is illogical.

People who have difficulty getting pregnant can now turn to medical science.  Eggs are harvested from the mother, sperm from the father, and are fertilized and frozen.  Since the harvesting of eggs is VERY painful and a risk, they try to harvest extras BECAUSE THE IMPLANTING PROCEDURE FREQUENTLY FAILS. Got that? The procedure to implant the eggs FAILS FREQUENTLY.  So when it succeeds, or when the couple gives up, these frozen embryos are in limbo.

What Mad King George has said is: It’s better for them to be discarded (which most of them will be) than to use them for new lines of stem cell research. I don’t understand that. 

ALL you have to do is give first dibs on any frozen embryos to families who need donated embryos to get pregnant, the rest THAT WOULD BE DISCARDED (that means destroyed and killed) would go for research where they can do major good.

I’m sick of the anti-abortion and anti-sex crowd claiming to be “Pro-Life”. They are no such thing (most advocate capital punishment, too). I stand by my assertion that these people are mostly hypocrites who really just want to make sure nobody has sex unless THEY say it’s OK.

I am TRULY Pro-Life. AND Pro-Choice.

There are too many babies in the world. Many are girls who grow up in orphanages because the market tends to go for white males.

You think “market” is a crass word? Well, that crassness derives from the desires of the customers - it’s not my invention. These “snowflake” children are, by and large, from fetuses of people who are rich enough to afford the procedure, and so, they are likely to develop into a superior product.

What a beautiful choice! Yes, I meant that sarcastically.

But remember, every choice has its downside (read “The War Prayer” by Mark Twain). Those unselected children who were, by and large, born naturally languish in orphanages and are turned out on the street to become what? The terrorists of the next generation? More ignorant voters-soldiers-laborers-dispossed, starving wretches?

It’s a small world and it’ll get a hell of a lot smaller and more dangerous unless people learn the value of controlling birthrate.

Especially since the stem cells are mere 1-8 cell zygote and blastocyst parts.

Rosemary Molloy on 7/20 at 3:22 am

exaclty! I also think that…

“You might as well use these instead of throwing it away”

Bush is just so backwards he actually think he is doing god’s good work. All he is doing is regressing our society.

We need to kick him and the other loonies out of office and get some progressive president/gov’t. in there before the earth is populated by more morons like GWB!

I do not see them as irrational at all.
In face *we* are the ones taking the rational step of protecting life rather than treating it as a commodity.

http://www.evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

Hospitals start in-vitro programs because they are big money makers. Inherent in those programs are questions of discarding embryos and selective abortions. There’s no religious motivation behind those programs and to listen to Bush tell us that pitching the unused embryos is more moral than allowing the parents to donate them for research is pathetic. I’m not Catholic but I believe the Catholic church calling in-vitro programs not in keeping with Catholic beliefs to be a better alternative than Bush stating that part of the program is okay but the natural offshoot is not. What’s not being reported is that most of the stem cell lines that Bush arbitrarily called “moral"(as of a certain time and date) are contaminated and not fit for research

The real truth about the issue about using fertilized embryos is not that you are destroying a life, what life, it takes that embeyo being implanted and the part that is not mentioned that this process does not always happen, how do I know my daughter tried it, finally she had the child she wanted by old fashioned sex, such a dirty thing noadays, you know trying to have children is that somewhere along the way, you can get used to this thing SEX and maybe after the childbearing years you might still like SEX.

Margaret, Portland Oregon

The human race has a sad history.  We love to kill our own, whether in a war or in a laboratory.  We don’t want to admit our own depravity, no matter how evident it is.  (with due regards to G K Chesterton)

It is science that biologically, genetically, the unborn are human.  If we want progress at the expense of human life & dignity, then there’s not much left to hold onto.  It’s here that religious (esp. evangelical Christian) voices count the most.  Without them we lose our humanity to utilitarianism.

Let’s not obfuscate the issue here:  It’s not about progress; it is about funding. It’s corporate welfare gone awry, whether it’s the pharmaceutical companies or the research hospitals, there’s money to be had.

Let’s keep our heads above water on this one.

http://evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

Neither Ms. Goodman, nor those who have commented on her editorial to now, have advanced the discussion one whit, as the whole exchange so far has been argument by sneer.  I judge that “Mad as Hell” is truly just that.

Everyone, including Ms.Goodman, see the Loony Right-Wing-nuts as irrational and illogical.

I believe they are irrational, but not illogical.

They aren’t interested in life, especially not the un-born.  That’s a sham, a cover, a phony.  If they were, they would all be pushing for revising the adoption laws, and flooding the courts with their own adoptions requests.  Of course, they are not. 

If they were interested in preserving life, they would be working with the sex education programs to prevent conception and pregancy so there wouldn’t be abortions. Of course, they are not.

Why? Why? Why?  Is it THAT hard to understand? They are not interested in life, they are interested in SEX! They want to control us through one of our most basic and fundamental drives: The drive to be close and intimate with another human being, through sex.

If you are intimate with someone else, regularly and without fear of procreating, you might actually TALK to that person, communicate, form a true love alliance.  Such an alliance is stronger than that influence on your life than any reverend, priest, rabbi, or mullah, and THAT my friends is what they want to prevent!

It’s really all about power and control. It’s the same old battle that Henry II had with Thomas Beckett. It’s the same battle that led some friar to phony-up “Constantine’s Testament”, supposedly leaving his empire to the Church.

So you terrify people with hellfire and damnation, and you grab ‘em by their MOST intimate parts by trying to convince them if they use them for ANYTHING but priest-approved procreation, they are gonna burn in hell.

And, you empty their wallets and live high on the hog yourself.  Every see Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson looking like they needed a buck?  There’s your answer!

It is really unnerving how the “loony right” as Ellen Goodman mentioned can be so willfully ignorant to the issue of stem cell research and many (if not most) other issues and be able to still hold extensive power. I thought there were some checks to this jingoism. I believe that these culture wars that the right/far right are purporting and agitating is essentially a nonexistent menace that many of them have conjured up, however, the complaints are plentiful, pointing out their lunacy yet besides the occasional outspoken blurb in congress this is mostly occurring unchecked.

It’s arguable that this machismo decisive persona that the executive love to imitate has yet to benefit anything, let alone apply the will of the American people. Hope there is a way around this, if not, have mercy.

This issue isn’t about “pro-life” or any other “values.” In fact, the 400,000 or so frozen embryos which will never find a uterus will be destroyed—that’s right, chucked in the garbage—and this does not seem to bother Mr. Bush and his misogynistic supporters in the least.  Furthermore, they have no trouble with the idea of creating all those embryos in vitro even with the knowledge that all but the few selected for implantation must then be either kept in a freezer indefinitely or destroyed—so much for the “playing God” and “Nazi-like eugenetics” arguments (I wonder, if there was a blackout and the freezer shut down, would this constitute a sort of mini-holocaust?  If someone turned the freezer off, would they be a murderer?).  No, they have no trouble with in vitro fertilization procedures because they are done to get women pregnant—apparently the least threatening, and therefore the preferred, state of human female existence to these people.

How in the HELL can Bush veto this based on his horror of “the taking of innocent human life” and continue to head up the slaughter in Iraq?