We can only hope, we can only hope....

Of course they won't say what they don't believe in. What they believe in depends on who is voting them in.

I disagree with you Aklim.

I think that there people in politics who truly believe what they say, or b elieve in what they say, regardless of what the voters are doing or saying.

For example, regardless of what the most erudite, wise and well-educated writers here may wish to believe, George Bush and company actually believe what they say and he/tehy act upon their beliefs.

If Bush had the voters in mind, or his popularity to think about, he would have claimed victory after Afghanistan and never bothered with Iraq.

Same thing is true for Ronald Reagan.

On the other hand, there are politicos like Bill Clinton, who are more adept at riding the waves of public opinion. Like a good surfer, they know how to pick the right wave, climb on the board and ride it to the beach (sorry about the surfing analogy, my duaghter went surfing today and I tagged along to go bike riding along the beach).

I never cared for Bill Clinton because, among other things, because he has no guiding principles, except whatever works for him. Remember when Clinton developed a reputation for being more Republican than the Republicans themselves?

there's this article http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5648/1223 and there was another one in JAMA not to long ago showing success using adult stem cells. Would you share what medical treatments are available using embryonic stem cells?

Why are you singling out Rove in this subject, Clinton signed the Dickey Amendment in 1995 prohibiting use of appropriated funds to create human embryos for research purposes.

Regardless, why would you single out 1 of 3 sources of stem cells as the only or the best source of future treatments? Especially when more success has been shown in the other two sources.

Rhetoric may at times have truth to it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled thread

Gotta love it when science shines a light on partisan politics.

Rove is the favorite boogey man of the knee-jerk, always anti-Bush liberal idealogues. What would they do w/o him?

Perhaps so. However, just because more success has been shown in the other 2 sources doesn't mean success won't be shown here. It might mean we haven't found it yet and not that it isn't there. We should explore it and see where it leads freely without the church getting involved in it.

Whoa, that's a relief. Thank god we've got no internal rot here...

You think you're just taking my analogy one step further, fleshing out the metaphor as it were.

Feels more like mixing metaphors to me because you're using it differently. My point is there are so many of them and they've been emerging from warfare for so long that no matter how you kill them, they will come back. You're going with thinking you can ramp up the force and then you'll kill them for sure.

Doesn't say much to me, sorry.

It's definitly a touchy subject and one worthy of it's own thread. Whatever side you are on you must admit that it is morally offensive to many, many people to use an live embryo for medical treatment.

It's akin to having two equal tracts of land one is an indian burial ground the other isn't. Why build on the burial ground when the other is fine? Or I guess it would be 3 tracts of land rather than two.

So, lets move the conversation here.

I guess I meant that there's not a damn thing your military can do for you if a significant portion of your country is overly self-critical or non-caring about the country or feels that traditionally the enemy of the country does a better job than the their country, i.e. lack of pride and respect (yet no one wants to move to the other country for some reason????).

No I'm talking internal rot like people being so in love with pleasure that they eat too much, too sugary, and too stupidly while collecting an amazing array of labor saving devices, many of which society will then have to devote money and land in order to get rid of to make room for the new labor saving devices. Oh man, obesity is in, fat is where it's at!

Friends, can't walk any more cause you've been a couch potato for so long that you're damn near an invalid?? We - el - ell, just give us a call at the Scooter Store (r) and we'll fix it so taxpayers will buy you your very own full time MOTORIZED WHEEL CHAIR. And for the rest of you, do you really want to do all that walking while playing golf? Try any one of our fine line of golf-carts. Going to the Beach? Hey there, Tab Hunter, be a hit with the ladies on your new Jet Ski. Why bother actually swimming in that pristine lake when you can be skimming across its surface at to 45 mph!! That's right!! You don't want to miss out on that!

I sort of stopped following the news and now I'm a bit lost. Is the fighting slowly starting to cease or is it getting worse?

While I agree with you to some extent I'm a big fan of many labour saving devices. I think the things you mention tend to let people forget what the value is in our country and the importance and relative rarity of freedom.

Dude get some oxygen or something because you're about to hyperventilate. My family's here. If I move to another country, I reduce my opportunities to see them drastically. Besides, I don't want to move. It's a dumb and way over-used challenge anyway.

You seem to think that action is always better than inaction. In Falujah, oh boy, we wiped out insurgents -- yeah and we also gained about 100K new sworn enemies for life, people many of whom had been more or less on the fence about hositility towards America.

You're not critical enough. You're wedded to the proud ceremony of the ranks and the unshakable certainty that you're doing the utterly right thing. Apparently incapable of considering that American military might could be used to disadvantage.

Some are definitely advantageous. Primitive people's joints wore out at 40 because of the non-stop hard work. We need to find a better balance. Some people do quite well with it, many others don't. I know when I've lived in a setting where I could replace a lot of driving with walking or biking instead, my health benefitted. And that's to say nothing of the reduced use of fossil fuels.