A moral boundary

I've been remiss in my attention to this site (once again) for far too long. I won't bore you with the details. But, with everything that's happened in he news over the past week, it's hard to decide where to begin.

Let's start close to home, with George "Science is the Devil" Bush's first and only veto during his five and a half year reign of ignorance. That this pandering imbecile could so disingenuously dismiss the expansion of embryonic stem-cell research to include those hundreds of thousands of blastocysts destined for the trash bin as something crossing "a moral boundary" - and do so as the President of the United States, no less - is simply the last straw for me in a basket already bursting at the seams with examples of Bush's utter unfitness to run this nation.

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," the President pompously announced last Wednesday. Of course, he and his disciples have had no problem with "the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding political benefits for others" in Afghanistan and Iraq. Between 30,000 and 100,000 I've heard. No one's certain, since apparently brown-skinned Muslim life isn't "innocent" enough to warrant an accurate American count.

And then there's that "taking of innocent human life in the hope of avoiding competent government assistance for others" that this President demonstrated so vividly after Katrina. It's still hard to understand why he wasn't at least censured - if not criminally tried - for figuratively fiddling while New Orleanians died of dehydration and exposure on national TV. "Crossing moral boundaries" anyone?

Not to mention Bush's "taking of innocent human life in the hope of peddling war propaganda to others." I'm talking about almost 3,000 American dead, our sons and daughters and spouses and friends in uniform sent thousands of miles from home to be slaughtered in a military action based on lies and political opportunism. In fact, when you think about it, this Administration's "culture of life" clearly is concerned only with the unborn (a definition which includes clumps of undefined cells), and cares little about fully-formed human beings who exist merely as cannon fodder and collateral damage.

The Salt Lake Tribune had an excellent, critical editorial on Friday that's worth the read. Excerpts:

Bush says these "human embryos" are not "spare parts" and should be treated as human life. However, millions of viable human embryos each year produced via normal conception fail to implant and never develop further. Does this mean America is suffering a veritable holocaust of innocent human life annihilated?

Culturally we do not mourn the deaths of these millions of embryos as we would the death of a child because we know that these embryos are not people...

Bluntly, President Bush's veto will save no embryos, but it may well delay the development of treatments that could save the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

As a boy, I used to dream excitedly about the new millennium I'd be lucky enough to see during my lifetime. A world of scientific breakthrough, alternative energy sources, space exploration, social equity, and incredible medical advances.

Of course, this modern society would be made possible by a forward-thinking nation, led by a succession of educated, visionary individuals with a belief in the importance of science and rational thought. After all, those were the type of individuals who would ascend to the Presidency of the United States, supported by an informed citizenry which shared an equally fervent belief in intelligence and scientific fact.

But instead, the 21st Century has seen only the erosion of America's scientific leadership position under the "guidance" of our Moron in Chief. The "reasoning" he and his minions have championed in their opposition to stem-cell research is the worst type of sensationalistic misdirection. It is, like so many other policies and rationales of this White House, a lie, and its supporters nothing more than liars.

And it is, in and of itself, a clear sign of Bush's total lack of qualification to call himself the "leader of the free world." As I've said repeatedly at this site, this Administration must be removed for the survival of our nation. Two more days is too long for America to entrust its future to the hypocritical "moral boundaries" of this man. Two more years is simply unconscionable.