Better open up a health savings account ASAP before it’s too late! (sarcasm.)

“Bingo” is not an argument. “Bingo” doesn’t say anything, doesn’t prove anything, doesn’t do anything except make it appear that you have nothing intelligent to say. “No, no, you dumb, me smart, so you wrong!” If I missed something, what was it? What part of a blatant, unfounded character attack is right just because you don’t like that person? What did I miss? Why am I wrong?

“Bad mistake” was meant as not just a mistake, which is by nature “bad”, but a bad mistake, which would then be “bad, bad”, or “worse” or something. And why would you insult Bush for trying to be civil? Have you ever been to a business meeting or conference? It’s usually considered rude to just up and leave. If I didn’t know the etiquette for a given meeting, I’d try to hold it until a break too. But I guess some of us still just use some part of the cave nobody’s standing on (hopefully), so such a concept might be foreign.

I couldn’t care less, since I wasn’t directly addressing them. (Maybe not everything has to do specifically with MichaelS?)

Maybe I missed something

Bingo.

Seriously people, he [the Shrub] is a human being. He makes mistakes, just like all of you.

Yeah, I send soldiers to their deaths in a meaningless war all the time. And I have to ask to go to the potty during a UN session. I’m surprised he didn’t just do it in his diapers.

Maybe he makes too many mistakes

Wait for it…

and maybe his mistakes are bad ones

No, they’re all good mistakes. Really, they are. *eyeroll*

This was fun.

How so?

Research at universities is largely carried out with outside funding. The government agencies are some of the large suppliers of those funds.

Now a research lab needs many parts. Equipment, buildings staff etc. These are paid for in part by the same funds that pay for the research itself.

Now if a department gets 50% of its research grants from the federal, then the lab technicians, the beakers, and the cleaners will – all things being equal – be 50% funded by the federal government.

This means that even the 50% of the research that is privately funded cannot be in stem cells! Even though the researchers themselves are 100% funded by a private grant, they would be using equipment, buildings, cleaners etc that was federally funded, and this is prohibited.

For an institution to do stem cell research they would have to set up totally separate facilities for the private research, which would in many cases be prohibitively expensive!

That the Republicans are anti-science, anti-sense, lying despicable pieces of excrement has now been proven beyond reasonable doubt a thousand times over & in just about every case where they open their mouths.

Why are they still in power? Why are they still damaging your nation more every day?

Is Amercia too liberal & tolerant – are you so peace-lving, generous and weak-minded as as to NOT actually DO something to kick these neo-Fascist nasties out ASAP!

Why have the Democrats NOT long since impeached “Mad Pres” George Bush II -an impeachment to swiftly be followed by crimes against humanity, war crimes & treason charges over the damage he’s done to three or four nations specifically (USA, Iraq, Afghanistan) & the world in general???

Come on people! Show some spine & rreally stop this nutter befroe he blows us all up! Please!

Oh , and for the record, Hitler too was a science-hating, superstitious, misogynist bigot – more the sort of person like your stereotypical Republican rather than the stereotypical scientist or “Liberal” ..

Summary :

Stem cell research – of course we should have it.

Embryoes human -no more than eggs &sperm cells or inothers words NOT at all.

Abortion – absolutely yes – for some people it should be retroactive & compulsory!

Death penalty -yep, there’s a (limited) place for it to remove tehvery worst, unquestionably guilty criminals from ever posing athreat tosociety or harming it again.

And, yes, this is my opinion based on what I consider very good reasons.

Feel free to disagree. Feel free to tell me you disagree &persuade me otherwise or try that.

But do NOT _ force_ your own opinions of morality or reality on me!

Because to use your Good TextBook (albeit in extreme need of scientific & logical editing revision!) : you ‘Do unto others’ – & would you have me do that unto you?

Uh .. Original posting Fellow who thought that based on, I’m sure great personal experience & deep understanding of the female mind, if you _do_ know any women like that could you introduce me?

Some Dame said :

“In spite of what you may think, we women don’t spring from bed every morning, eager to greet a new day in the hopes that we get pregnant so we can horrifically murder the fetus because it’s an inconvenience in our fast-paced, slutty lives of drugs and fun.”

Really? Reeeeally … & truly …????

Darn it! What a pity!!!

Insufficient information to decide.

1, What’s the fair (or black) market value of the embryos.

2. Does the baby (or its parents) owe me money?

There’s a fire in a stem cell research lab. You run in and see a baby on the floor about to be burned, and on the other side of the room is a jar with ten frozen embryos in it. You can only save one, the baby or the jar. What do you do?

>>> nd why shouldn’t Dr. Mengele have experimented
>>> on all those Jews?After all, they were going to be
>>> destroyed anyway.

Flat out: these Nazi analogies, based on the concept that embryo=human, are the products of broken intellects.

I’m sorry, but I tire of civil debate on topics like this. This is nonsense. It is madness. It is insanity. And the kid gloves treatment given to the religious robots has resulted in their gaining extreme political power up to the level of the White House. I will suffer fools no more.

>>> I have a hard time understanding why some people
>>> speak out so harshly against other people’s beliefs

Well, some of us tire of those kind, caring, forgiving religious folks comparing us to Nazis. A lot of them ant to turn the USA into a theocracy. They make no secret of this, and openly declare it.

But there is some indication they are doomed:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html

Mr. Snow is wrong in so many ways it IS funny. With every war tax payers have supported killing humans. The CIA will release documents this week ripe with tax funded political tinkering (assassinations). Tax payers cover every execution. All of this death and murder is done in the name of keeping America free and saving the lives of ‘mericans and in the best interest of ‘merica.

Say there is one epic choice that could be decided by the American populace:
A. Thousands of American lives saved through the use of 6 lab controlled embryonic cells. These cells taken in exchange for the elimination of war, assassinations, and executions.
B. Thousands of American lives saved through war, assassinations and executions made in the best interest of America. These lives on our soil and abroad will be taken in place of the 6 lab controlled embryonic cells.

Okay, sure, yes. The choices are an over simplification and assumes a world super power could stop tax funded killing (they can’t), but it does break things down to the hot topics found in the partisan debate between lib’rals and repub’icans. I think I know what the majority of people would choose given the above options. Ideally there is something useful to be found in the middle ground but moderates being the new “activist evil” (judges, etc.), I don’t think a compromise will be struck any time soon.

My conclusions… tentative and unscientific, I know…
1. My friends in America are stuck with a murderous fool for a President;
2. Science, once again, has been detoured by mindless argument from outside to the effect that unprovable and irrelevant religious nutters have a right to determine the future of the world in general and scientific endeavour in particular; and
3. This contribution is already too long. Hope it’s not cr_p.

Great site, BA. Keep up the work. The world needs more rationalists and humanists and fewer bigots. And seeking knowledge of how the universe works is one great place to start.

As far as we were concerned it was the Evil empire against the Crazy Empire.

And it was here in America that the acronym ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ was coined … and certain politicians seriously argued that in order for MAD to work, it was necessary to ‘act a little crazy’ in order to make credible the threat that one was willing to order nuclear retaliation (Mutual MADness?).

For eveyone else that believes there are ethical lines that must be drawn to guide scientific research to prevent the eventual breakdown of the human race, the debate seems to be entirely focused around embryonic stem cell research and federal funding. What about adult stem cell research? There has not been a lot of discussion about the current treatment of 74 different injuries/diseases with adult stem cells. The wife of a friend is receiving treatment of an aggressive form of cancer by harvesting her adult stem cells, wiping out her bone marrow, then implanting new marrow using her own stem cells. The trials in Brazil that “cured” recently diganosed type 1 diabetics using their own adult stem cells. All of this research and treatments, which are currently funded under a Bush excutive order with taxpayer dollars, are free of all the debate over ethics and the harvesting of embryos.

I have a hard time understanding why some people speak out so harshly against other people’s beliefs when there are good alternatives that are much more advanced in the research and are already coming to market. You should be asking yourselves is this more about your hatred of one man or the belief in unlimited scientific research. Deal with your anger in otherways than name calling shouting down people with different ideas and beliefs.

And, of course, I answered to the OP by stating that nowhere does Bush say anything that I can say is definately, or even probably, a lie. Naturally, that part received no response, even though it was the main piece.

Maybe I missed something, in which case I’m waiting to be shown what I missed, but the entire argument that Bush is lying is in the statement: “The bill would provide funding for additional research to use embryos which were going to be discarded anyway.” This is a strawman argument. Nowhere did Bush say they weren’t going to be discarded–he merely said the bill would support that act. He did also specify that this was the first time, but even if he’s wrong, that doesn’t make him a liar unless he knew it wasn’t the first time. Furthermore, even if he knew that, he may have forgotten, or maybe it just came out of his mouth and he decided it was true enough to not correct it–the main point was that the bill would directly support the destruction of embryos, which is far more important to him than whether we’ve done it before. Seriously people, he is a human being. He makes mistakes, just like all of you.

Maybe he makes too many mistakes, and maybe his mistakes are bad ones, and maybe they’re the kind of mistakes the President of the United States shouldn’t be constantly making. But that is beside the point of whether he deliberately, willfully said something that he knew was false in this particular case.

And I would think Phil Plait, of all people, would understand such basic things. I would also think he would realize that there are people who truly, honestly believe things that are in complete opposition to what other people truly, honestly believe. Maybe they’re stupid to believe that, but regardless of how stupid they are, it doesn’t make them an outright liar.

I’ve heard these view expressed time and again from women who have had abortions. It’s okay for them. They don’t regret theirs – but they have the gall to tell me that it’s not right for me (for the record I’ve never been pregnant).

I spoke to a nurse from a women’s clinic who told me that she sometimes felt rage against confidentiality for women who’ve had an abortion, because so many pro-life activists have them. Secretly. Legally, and because legally, safely. And because they’re rich, they could have them illegally and safely. “Morals” are for the rest of us.

Then they go back right out there and protest abortion. Sometimes at the very same clinic. Or a pro-life activist comes into the clinic and says, “My daughter deserves to have an abortion because otherwise her life will be ruined.” Well, it’s legal – nothing that the clinic can do about SLIMEY HYPOCRITES!

There’s no point in arguing about abortion because the phony “pro-lifers” really have no intention of ever repealing Roe v. Wade anyway. Only the really stupid, true-believing, dumb-as-rocks political suicide-leaning ultra moral morons want that. It would be a disaster for the “pro-life” lobby and they know it. All their funding would dry up besides! The possibly sincere (or bogus) views of someone like MichaelS notwithstanding, this is all pretense and fund-raising, and some people are living really well off of this “movement.”

Few of those people give a tuppeny damn about dead Iraqi children and the ones I’ve met don’t even pretend to. No one gets the death penalty for bombing a house full of Afghani children just to (not) kill one Al-Qaeda henchman and then lying about it. Even the wife of a murdered pastor who ran away to the beach afterward doesn’t merit the death penalty in these people’s eyes.

You think it’s only fair to hold both parties to the pregnancy accountable for the pregnancy. I concur. But both parties includes the girl too. You can’t call for equality then make it all the guy’s fault. You didn’t explicitly say that, but when you whine and moan about me holding girls as being equally responsible that’s what I gather your position to be.

A real-world example of an abortion case I’d hold the girl accountable for but not the guy: my friend got his ex-girlfriend pregnant, then she called him to say she was pregnant and getting an abortion. He argued against it and said he would raise the child alone if she didn’t want it, but she got an abortion anyway and he was helpless to do anything about it. In my mind, he was accountable for the child, but not for the abortion. In a case where the guy pressed for the abortion, or agreed to it, I would hold him also accountable. But ultimately the women has the final say, so she is always accountable (short of cases where the guy beats the woman to the point of miscarriage).

Now, I would like to back down slightly from my initial position: I made the implication that a girl is undisciplined if she gets pregnant then gets an abortion of convenience (for those of you still so short-sighted and focused on your “men are sexist” agenda that you have already forgotten, I was not absolving the guy who helped, merely omitting him because *it’s irrelevant to the point*). The reality is that such a girl (and any guy who agrees) probably doesn’t consider abortion to be immoral, so there’s no reason to avoid it for moral reasons. As such, there’s no reason in her (or his) mind to avoid sex to avoid a potential abortion, so calling her (and him) undisciplined is inaccurate at best.

However, I tend to think the majority of people (girls and guys, and in this case probably especially the guys) who operate that way probably decided “I will have sex” first, then made up their mind that abortion was OK because otherwise it would ruin their fun, rather than coming to the independant conclusion that abortion was OK, which then (and only then) made it OK to have sex without worrying about getting pregnant. Much like creationists decide the bible is true, then look for proof that supports it rather than finding proof of a 6000 year-old Earth then coming to the conclusion that the bible is accurate. Note that this is just speculation on my part, unlike my statement “. . . the vast majority of abortions are a matter of convenience”, which was based on observational and anecdotal evidence of all the people I’ve met who had abortions.

Katsu said:
“. . .considering you seem to think we women are so villainous that we consider pregnancy a lark that can be terminated at any time just because we feel like it.

Abortion is not something women do for fun; it’s a difficult decision, and something that is not without health risks. To imply otherwise shows a profound disrespect for women as human beings, and a breathtaking lack of empathy.”

Sorry, but if you think that a great many women (and men) don’t think like that you need to get out more and see the pitiful world we live in. I have heard, on many occasions, “don’t worry about getting me pregnant; I can just get an abortion”. Many girls are more worried that people will think they’re sluts than they are about killing a potential baby. And this is most decidedly *not* me being sexist; this is what I have witnessed, firsthand. And I’m not saying all, or even most, girls are like that. But most girls don’t get abortions either; since we’re discussing the subset of women who get abortions, the state of mind of the average person changes dramatically from the entire set of female humans.

And I had to laugh at “With attitudes like yours, I am unsurprised.” The reason I don’t have 10 kids from 4 different moms is obviously because I couldn’t get a girl to have sex with me. Right. Or, maybe it’s because I don’t chase after everything that moves because I have the presence of mind to think of the consequences beforehand, and the discipline to supress my urges when they could get me into trouble.

Now, I will digress from the “abortion is the same as the death penalty”, because as the BA points out, this was not part of his post. I never claimed the BA thought this, and I only mentioned it because I saw it several times throughout the comments and had recently heard that ludicrous argument from a co-worker. Oh wait, I already digressed from that because certain people decided to start the even more irrelevant argument that I am sexist. Which is something I am most definately not, unless you consider it sexist to hold women to the same standards as men are held to. Well, that’s not completely true; I do tend to hold men more accountable than women because I’ve sub-consciously retained some of that old-fashioned stupidity I learned when I was a kid.

Finally, I am not taking a personal stand on either side of any of these debates (stem cells, abortion or the death penalty). I was merely making the on-topic point that no matter how right or wrong stem cell research may be, Bush did not appear to be telling any lies, and the off-topic point that murdering innocent babies so you can have some fun (which is what pro-life people believe is happening) is not the same as executing a vile, evil criminal because he’s, well, a vile, evil criminal.

I was not equating destroying embryos with the death penalty, although it does appear that others here have. Nor does it mean that I am saying they are on equal footing; they are not. I won’t be drawn into a death penalty argument, because it is entirely different than the argument here. Also note that I have not mentioned abortion here either, which is again a different argument, with far more nuance then embryonic stem cells.

They were the first to enjoy commercial air travel, too. And televisions. And cars. And houses not built out of sticks and mud. Lord Ugg of the Lion Clan probably had the biggest, bestest cave in all the Rift Valley.

New things start out expensive, that’s all. Things really do trickle down.

Trying to make it into a class warfare argument is just ideological zerothink. Unfortunately, ideological zerothink is what passes for 99.9% of “debate” these days.

You could just as easily say the rich subsidize the productizationand mainstreaming of new technologies.