I watched Michael J, Fox on tv and thought to myself, What guts this young man has! Then I watched Rush's sorry exahabition, mocking Michael J Fox. In my own case, today was like some other days, I started off ok, took two of my grandchildren to lunch and was getting around pretty good. After we retutned home, " I hit the wall" and had to rest. One of the side lights of the cancer I have been battling for seven years is advanced degenerative bone diaese. After i woke up, the grinding pain was with me and I was again reminded of how important this research is.
The Republicans in Congress stole over 100 billion (that "B" as in bully boys) of the tax payers money in just two years, and Bush did not veto a sinle piece of this legislation. Instead, he used his first and only veto, to stop this research. There is such a thing of setting bad "Karma" in motion, all these currupt people in this administration are going to reap what they have planted.

Why do Democrats in the Senate stay with Joe Lieberman and betray the CT Democratic party election? I've sent every Democratic Senator this article that calls them on their betrayal and failure to lend support to Ned Lamont. No money from any of the Dem re-election committees - none for Lamont. No rallies in CT except from Kerry & Kennedy, and Edwards & Clark. Grassroots progressives all over the country are watching this race and we won't forget how little the Dem senators care about the CT voters and Dem Party. Like Joe, they just don't get loyalty to the team and the respect for the rules.

"It is this willingness to say or do whatever is necessary to hold on to his U.S. Senate seat, damn the consequences to what he claimed to believe last year or even last week, that makes Lieberman, a smarmy, power-hungry little yapping poodle of a politician, the perfect poster-boy for the amoral might-makes-right culture that currently animates our political system."
http://www.alternet.org/story/43428/

Joe Lieberman's Endless Hypocrisy By Cliff Schecter, AlterNet. Posted October 30, 2006.

Amazing and appalling to hear opponents of this legislation say over and over again, "This kind of research shows no promise."

And "We should be spending our money on treatments that show more promise."

Why would we even be talking about it if it showed no promise?

Would scientists competing for limited research funds be working on stem cells if it showed no promise?

Do people like Fox think its worth their precious/dwindling time to go on the air in support of something that shows no promise?

Yet they repeat this mantra over and over, in the hopes that the ill-informed will eventually believe them.

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We were told it was for WMDs.

We were told the war would be short.

We were told Al Qaeda had training camps in Iraq.

We were told it would decrease the terrorist threat.

We were told it would stabilize Israeli-Palestinian relations.

We were told it would cost "something less than $50 billion."

We were told things would be better than they were under Saddam.

We were told we would be welcomed like liberators by the oppressed Iraqis.

We were told we would be supported by a "coalition of the willing".

We were told major combat operations were over, "mission accomplished".

We were told if we didn't support the war we were un-patriotic fools who didn't deserve to live in America.

We were told things were improving in Iraq.

We were told the insurgency was mostly non-Iraqis.

We were told Iraq would be a shining beacon of Democracy in the middle-east.

Bush. Cheney. Rumsfeld. They tell it like it ain't.

Americans will take a lot of malfeasance, but they get super-pissed when some lard-ass like Limbaugh casts aspersions on Marty McFly.

Hey, whatever it takes.

I actually have something to offer to this debate, being a biochemist by training. I don't troll for readers on other sites, but I did write a post last week that puts Missouri Amendment 2 and stem cell research into plain language. It can be found here if anyone is interested.

Thanks for the writeup. We left immediately afterwards, so we missed the meet and greet. Just finished my own write-up of the event here for anyone who is interested.

Thanks for the write-up. We left as soon as the speeches were over, so didn't see any of the "meet and greet".

Just finished writing up the event here for anyone who is interested.

Sorry. My first post went away and then, for no reason I can figure, decided to reappear.

Look, I already know that my comments are going to generate a virtual avalanche of abusive responses. None the less, I simply cannot let BlueGirlRedState's comments go unchallenged. Especially since she informs us that she is trained as a biochemist.

I followed your link to the location where you suggested that arguments for Missouri Amendment 2 were put into plain language. I was hoping that I might find an argument base upon hard science and objectivity, and was disappointed to find only the usual fare; an emotionally charged, pragmatic argument with incomplete and misleading science thrown in for effect.

Let's at least look at the objective side of your argument. What you have described here...

In SCNT, eggs are extracted and the nucleus is removed from the egg with a very tiny glass pipette. The same procedure is used to remove the nucleus of a source cell, and the nucleus is injected into the vacated (enucleated) egg cell. If we say just the right magic words in the perfect pitch and cadence, this cell will begin to replicate. At five days, we have a blastocyst of stem cells, and we can harvest those undiferentiated cells. Remember that word. It is going to be revisited a bit down the page.

... is in fact, cloning... exactly. In this process, the genetic information contained in the human source cell is being cloned. The use of the term blastocyst—to imply that this human embryo is something else—is a typical ploy in this argument. Zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus... these are simply terms we have designated to refer to human development in it's earliest stages. They are no different than infant, child, adolescent, adult, geriatric, etc... except that because the average person is less familiar with these terms, they contain far less emotional content.

The use of the term undifferentiated, has recently come into vogue. The argument being that because these cells have not differentiated themselves into the myriad of cells within our bodies having distinct specificity; blood, nerve, muscle, bone, etc, etc... this somehow disqualifies our recognizing and acknowledging this blastocyst, as the distinct, living, human organism that it already is. On objective analysis by any independent genetics lab, it will be determined without hesitation or reservation, that these embryonic stem cells came from a distinct, living, human.

So, start tapping away at your keyboards in a frenzied attempt to refute this statement... good luck. Just in case you can't, don't worry, you can always call me a blithering, extreme right wing, religious fanatic! Although this always causes me to laugh out loud—understanding that religion plays no role in this objective, scientific debate—you always seem to be able to rally around this battle cry just the same. I can hear the self congratulatory high fives and tickle fights already!

Democrats! Wake up! This is a human rights issue! Own it!

Dear Jonhn,

I'm not going to call you a right wing conservative nutbag but you are wrong. Regardless of what the science is, many defective fertilized eggs are destroyed every year in vitro fertilization clinics every year. These eggs could be used to fight dehabilitating ailments (parkinsons, paralysis, alzheimers) but instead you think it's okay to just throw them out. That is a pro-death argument. If you're going to come back and say well then in-vitro fertilization should be outlawed. Try telling that to a couple who biologically can't have children but wants to have them desperately. Somehow I doubt your self righteous hardy exterior has the guts to or would be that crass.

Cheers,
Randy

Randy, no one is calling for the outlawing of in-vitro fertilization. This technique has been a miracle for thousands of couples trying to conceive. However, this procedure needs to be conducted in a more ethical manner with less consideration for cost efficiencies and more consideration for the fact that these embryos—that are so cavalierly being created in bulk—are distinct, living, humans. Can this procedure be performed so that only the number of embryos intended for actual use, are created?

If our country followed your notion that science and objectivity don't matter and that they should take a back seat to personal wants and pure pragmatism, we'd still have slavery in this country.

By the way Randy, you and many others have a very unattractive tendency to start labeling people when logic no longer supports your rationale. If you want to label me as self righteous, if you feel that doing so gives you some sort of political sway with your buddies, have at it.

In the mean time, grab an eighth grade biology text and a copy of our Constitution's Bill of Rights and try to get your head wrapped around the real issue that we're talking about here; a person's fundamental right to their life as guaranteed in the 14th amendment.