The Death President

First they changed the name of the Estate Tax to the Death Tax, then they invaded Iraq and so far have killed over 2,500 American soldiers and countless Iraqis (today’s paper is estimating 3,000 in June and an average of 100 per day.) And now today the President vetoes Stem Cell legislation that amazingly passed both houses of Congress, although apparently just missing the number needed to override Bush’s veto. A large majority of Americans favor research on stem cells. But a small group, many of whom believe Jonah was swallowed by a whale and survived, are intent on foisting their beliefs on everyone else. While they love to claim they are pro-life, they really have no interest in anything past birth. This country, once the leading scientific center of the entire world, is quickly becoming a laughing stock as we disregard potential cures for many disabling diseases in order to safeguard embryos that will be destroyed anyway. Bush wraps himself in morality stating that if the proposed law passed "American taxpayers would for the first time be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos." Of course he proposed the exact same thing five years ago and created a program that does just that although it is now close to useless as the number of cell lines is tainted and barely useful. There are approximately 400,000 frozen embryos stored in US fertility clinics, most of which will be discarded once the couples that created them no longer need them. Bush and Senator Brownback surrounded themselves with a few families that had adopted embryos implying that this was the moral path to be followed. So far 128 adoptions have occurred. I’m waiting breathlessly for the deluge of conservative right-to-lifers clamoring to adopt the remaining 399,872.

Those same conservatives are busy criticizing Bush for his failure to respond to Iran, North Korea, Hamas, and Hezbollah with force and strength. What they conveniently forget is that they cheered and pushed Bush into Iraq, squandering our resources and leaving us in this helpless position. But if they can’t kill more people in the Axis of Evil, they can at least kill more Americans