Saturday, December 01, 2007

Why George Bush will be remembered as the Great President he is (Iraq Included)

Word for word from the Anchoress (because i could not have said it better):

When Republicans complain to me about how George W. Bush has “betrayed” them or “let them down,” I try to re-iterate things he has done, positions he has taken, that they tend to forget. Like his refusal to submit his nation to the International Criminal Court and his refusal to hog-tie us to the very unworkable Kyoto Treaty that the press likes to pretend enjoyed huge support in Congress (they rejected it unanimously). And I always remind them that in August of 2001, he drew a line in the sand on Embryonic Stem Cell Research and said, “no, we’re not publicly funding it.”

Bush’s stance that initially won him favorable responses from such advocates as diabetic Mary Tyler Moore. Bush’s well-thought out position was actually pretty well received - before the machines of distortion got to chew on things a bit.

MARY TYLER MOORE, ACTRESS: Well, I am so pleased with the thought and care that he put into making this decision. And I think it is a good one. I was not aware — or when I say “I” I should say the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation — was not aware that there are, in fact, 60 embryos waiting. But if there are, that is good. That is better than 6 or 7 or 8, which would have really posed a problem.

I welcome the forming of this council that he spoke about. And I hope that the JDFR will be able to work with him, with the council, on making sure that the guidelines are pure and straight.

LARRY KING: So you are giving this a thumbs up?

MOORE: I am.

KING: Christopher Reeve on the phone. I know you have shared with Mary And appeared with her on occasion discussing this. What is your thought?

CHRISTOPHER REEVE, ACTOR: A little bit more mixed, Larry. I feel that nobody really knew that there were 60 stem cells available. And I don’t know that these lines have been examined to know how well they would work or what condition they are in. And I think that that is something that should have been done.

However, I think it is a step in the right direction. I’m grateful for that to the president.

I remember the speech clearly - and I remember being really proud of the way the president walked a moral tightrope and kept his balance; you can link to the video here. Man, he’s aged. It is hard to consent to being the most hated man in the world for nearly a decade. As I’ve said elsewhere, when you make yourself an offering to God and others, you can expect to be used and used up.

It’s going to take a long time for all the good things Bush has done to be recognized - it may take generations. And those of you - and I’m talking to you folk on the hard right who have decided that because Bush is not “perfectly in line” with you, he cannot have been a good and effective president, those of you who have forgotten the “good” you have received and will thus be unlikely to receive another - will miss this guy when he’s out of office. That’s all I have to say about that.

On the Embryonic Stem Cell controversy, Charles Krauthammer sums it up:

“If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”– James A. Thomson

A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.

Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush’s stem cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president — so vilified for a moral stance — been so thoroughly vindicated.

Why? Precisely because he took a moral stance. Precisely because, as Thomson puts it, Bush was made “a little bit uncomfortable” by the implications of embryonic experimentation. Precisely because he therefore decided that some moral line had to be drawn.

In doing so, he invited unrelenting demagoguery by an unholy trinity of Democratic politicians, research scientists and patient advocates who insisted that anyone who would put any restriction on the destruction of human embryos could be acting only for reasons of cynical politics rooted in dogmatic religiosity — a “moral ayatollah,” as Sen. Tom Harkin so scornfully put it.
[…]
History will look at Bush’s 2001 speech and be surprised how balanced and measured it was, how much respect it gave to the other side. Read it. Here was a presidential policy pronouncement that so finely and fairly drew out the case for both sides that until the final few minutes of his speech, you had no idea where the policy would end up.

Bush finally ended up doing nothing to hamper private research into embryonic stem cells and pledging federal monies to support the study of existing stem cell lines — but refusing federal monies for research on stem cell lines produced by newly destroyed embryos.
[…]
That Holy Grail has now been achieved. Largely because of the genius of Thomson and Yamanaka. And also because of the astonishing good fortune that nature requires only four injected genes to turn an ordinary adult skin cell into a magical stem cell that can become bone or brain or heart or liver.

But for one more reason as well. Because the moral disquiet that James Thomson always felt — and that George Bush forced the country to confront — helped lead him and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells. Providence then saw to it that the technique be so elegant and beautiful that scientific reasons alone will now incline even the most willful researchers to leave the human embryo alone.

Please read all of Dr. Krauthammer’s piece, and then avail yourself of the 2001 speech which, in the wake of 9/11 a bare month later, pretty much everyone has forgotten. Hysteria, distortion, name-calling, paranoid (and false) “chill winds” aside, this president has gotten more right than wrong, and he deserves to be recognized for it.

Embryonic Stem Cells, it must be remembered produced nightmarish results in the lab, and never had a successful application.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

When will the traitor commies on the left come to grips with the known facts that Iraq started the war on terror when they helped Osama get the airplane from Saddam that he shot the bombs into the empire state building with on 9-11. Of course there is a civil war. Clinton saw to it that all the guns RR and Bush 41 was sending to help defeat the terrorists were funneled into the UN so they could steal the oil for food money. And now they want to get Supreme Court judges to overthrow Christmas and Easter. Our boys fought for their freedom and now they use it to protest they very same government that freed them from the socialist Clinton but we have to keep our guard up because his communist lesbian wife Hillary is going to be the president someday and turn us into Russians. It boils my blood to see a god fearing man like Tom Delay get charges with such nonsense. The Democrats invented money laundering to begin with…DOESN”T ANYONE REMEMBER IRAN CONTRA???? If RR had not stopped the ayatollah from invading Poland, Jimmy carter might still be president and we would all be eating peanut butter sandwiches morning noon and night! All they do is complain, complain, complain and not offer one solution. So what if our boys are blowing of a little steam by waterboarding those filthy Irackees to within an inch of their lives…we are there to liberate them and look at the thanks we get. We should use the WMD we found on the whole country… lousy bunch of terrorist. And OOOOOHHH what’s the big deal about Yellow cake in Africa??? At least they now have cake to eat what do they want …3 kinds of fruit too? Maybe we would be better off is good ole Strom Thurman was Commander in Chief. At least he had some backbone and knew how to handle the Negro problem. Did you see them there begging for food and water like they were back in Africa? Hurricane my ass, And the moonbat queers are getting uppity these days too. Why can’t we just make them slaves? I hear they can cook and they do dress nicer than the old slaves, heck slavery is in the bible.

But I digress, what I was going on about…

oh yeah…terrorists. I read in the Washington Times that the Ketchup Queen and OBL a website devoted to funneling money to Hillary so she can make fake news videos so we don’t even know that it is fake news. There aught to be a law against this kind of covert communist propaganda. That’s why BJ Clinton got a job fixing the Tsunami. So he could travel around the world undercover and talk to commies and such. They hate America so much that they will they stop at nothing to bring her down. Oh the blame America first crackpots burn me up. Did you know that Barak Obama is Osama’s third cousin? How do you think he got all the money to get elected? Check out on FreeRepublic.com, it’s all there. I have a bad feeling about that Clinton News Network guy coming over to our FOX channel. I sent an E-Mail to John Gibson to keep his eye on that guy. I just don’t trust him. I think that Carl Cameron fella needs his own show. He has a way of telling us just what the President is thinking that even Brit Hume must be jealous of. I wonder how he gets all that great inside info.

But I digress, what was I talking about….

oh yeah….judges…Clinton got every single judge into the senate without and trouble at all, but ooooohhh now that the tables are turned and we are in charge the moonbats have blocked every single one of President Bush’s nominees…every single one. What is going on here??? Bush won in a landslide….twice…they think that in a democracy the losers have a say in what goes on??? What is the matter with the moonbats??? Bush has political capitol and he is going to spend it and by that I mean he has earned it by working hard and it is hard work so what’s the big deal if he takes a weekend off now and again. It’s not like he is taking a month or two off in a row. A man needs to get back to nature and cut stuff up with a chain saw to keep his manhood intact if you know what I mean. Kinda get away from the ole ball and chain, loosen up, kick back and do some drinking without the women folk always straightening things up when you don’t want them straighten up.

But I digress, what was I talking about…

oh yeah, golfing trips…seems to me that a golfing trip is just like going to a ranch to cut stuff up. I never cared for the game myself. Seems kinda foolish to me hitting a little ball with a stick. Football is my game. I like the action. I once scored 5 touchdowns in one game. Still hold the county record on that one. Kinda makes me feel close to one of my biggest heroes…Bill O’Rielly. Did you know that he has a national punting record? I read it on the back of my souvenir super bowl program. How about that!

But I digress, what was I talking about…

oh yeah…pinko commie hippies now don’t want war. I love war. There is nothing like it in the world. If this President was smart he would have the US in every war. War teaches kids about the world. Heck someday we are going to run the world so what better way to teach kids about it than send them off to kill the terrorist who live there. It is better to fight them in their home than here. We have enough trouble with the tree huggers stopping Exxon from getting enough oil so we can drive around without spending an arm and a leg for gas. What do the polar bears need oil for? We can just build a fence to keep them back in the forest so we can get our oil. Stupid tree huggers think the world is getting hot. Damn right it’s getting hot. It’s all the forest fires burning all those good trees we could cut down and to build jails to put all the damn tree huggers in. Clinton stopped all loggers and oil drillers from doing their jobs and then he raised their taxes. But ohhhhh Hiltlery was going to “create” a commie doctor system where everyone had to wait for months to see them and even then the drugs would come from Canada. If she gets to be president, girls who get raped by their dads will be forced to have abortions. Where that is in the constitution???…oh don’t get me started on the constitution….


Everyone knows that George Washington was the country’s first father but did you know that he was the first Christian too? Probably not because the commie liberal media is too scared to tell you the truth. Washington was right when he tried to put Jesus into the bill of rights but because Franklin was a Jew and swore he’d tell the French so Washington left it out. That’s how we got that big statue in Jew York. And that’s another thing, why are so many people up there democrats? Don’t they know that is where the country started? It just blows my mind as to why they switched from being true American Republicans like all our founding fathers to become commie loving liberal bastards. It’s like they have no sense of history or anything. America started in the Northeast and they should be forced to vote republican. Wouldn’t it be great if someone could hack into the vote machines and just change a few of their pinko votes so we could win? Maybe now that we have control over the courts too, if they ever tried to sue us we could just have the supreme court tell them no…our guy won…go back and marry some queers you commies. That would be great.

Oh man…I have to go… Hanty and Coulter are on TV talking about how ungrateful the blacks are now that we got them out of that flood prone hell hole of New Orleans and into formaldehyde trailers in Utah. Those 2 guys are true patriots.

Gene said...

BRR, I knew you were the sane side of RBB. I have not read such sound reason for a long time.

By the way, good stuff. Well done. You should post it verbatim on "Say Anything". Or if you want, with your permission I will.

Heads will explode.

Anonymous said...

and so I will

Anonymous said...

I will have to wait for just the right post though

those boys are so funny

Gene said...

I could post it as a rant, something I do on the reader blog section.

Or, give you attribution. I think the boys (and girls) would enjoy hearing from you.

But, it's your call.

Anonymous said...

Gene, I have never posted a readers blog

How is it done?

Gene said...

just go to the right side of the say anything website, click right under taking back North Dakota. It says

Get a reader blog, just click and follow directions.

It will be fun to have you there from time to time, Sparkie Arbuckle gets lonely.

You will get lots of heat, 2H9 is kind of mean, but we all get along, even the left leaners.

Anonymous said...

Sumpin jus not hapnen

I click wheres I a should click en I git nothing


I will a try a nuther day


See ya