BUSH-LEAGUED ONCE AGAIN

" ' We'll get through this,' Daley (one stem cell researcher) says. 'But it's terribly frustrating having to move at a crawl when the science is so exciting—and when other nations are flying ahead.' In May, Daley learned with a pang that Korean scientists had discovered how to create patient-specific embryonic stem cells— exactly the kind of breakthrough work that he and Lensch [another researcher in the field] want to do in trying to understand genetic blood diseases. 'No disrespect to them,' Lensch says, 'but I couldn't help thinking that we could have done that.' He sighs. 'I really do think that we could've done that if we'd had the chance.' "

In an article in the recent TECHNOLOGY REVIEW (Sept. 2005) author Charles Mann details how Bush's ignorance and backwardness about stem cell research has allowed America to slip down the scale as a world class leader in science and technology. Not only has he put us behind Korean scientists, but Bush's brain drag is making stem cell research daily more expensive and is also creating a chaotic situation which makes the research potentially even more immoral (if morality is his goal).

Charles C. Mann's just published book is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus....


SPEAKING OF KILLER COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM

Yet again, someone comes up to me in a Safeway parking lot and hands me a flier asking me to attend a "benefit concert" for someone I don't know. Twenty-five dollars. The someone's a cancer patient named Ron. Frequently, too, I see these appeals in newspapers and at checkout stands in markets, coffee shops, on telephone polls, everywhere. Tied to this trend, I read in my local paper that 200 jobs are going to have to be cut down at the old whipping boy, the Mental Health Center, because of budget shortfalls. Screw 'em, their patients are only the mentally ill. How serious can that be?

If Bush and cronies get any more compassionate, we'll be watching people dying in our streets like in some African nations. Hey, reply the neocons and Bush, we need the money to keep bombing the bejesus out of those Iraqis, don't we? Why cure when a killing is near at hand? Just ask Haliburton.


PAT RUBBERTONGUE. WILL HE GET OUT OF THIS?

Maybe Pat's glib-tongued slip is why conservatives, Christians and Republicans can do to the poor, the middle class and the sick what they do do so well.

If one waits long enough, fundamentalists of all religions, Pope’s and all, always show their fascist roots. Know your history, and you’ll agree. Recently, Christian Protestant fundamentalist Pat Robertson showed his fascist roots when he called on our American government to assassinate Venezuela's elected president, Chavez, because Chavez has the nerve to think differently than Republican fundamentalists like Robertson. Chavez wants to establish free clinics for the poor of his country. Imagine that! Evidently Pat’s Bible-created paranoia (read the paranoid psalms) tells him that anyone who thinks differently than he does is an enemy who must be killed. Speaking of terrorists, Pat—it takes one to know one.
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"Either this wallpaper goes or I do." —Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)

[Or was that riposte the extent of librarian Laura Bush's most biting political comment to her husband? Speaking of libraries, our libraries are facing closures and more cuts because of Republican Tim Eyeman's (I-man/me generation) tax cut initiatives in Washington State. Hey, who needs libraries. People might get informed and then what'll happen?