Charles Pierce on the Stem Cell veto: It's Personal

[Elidor]

IT'S PERSONAL. It just so happens that I have a couple of really ugly-ass dogs in this fight over embryonic stem-cell research. Not many political issues are personal with me, but this one deeply is. I have watched slow death from neurological disease once too often in my life to be anything but furious when Sam Brownback, a United States senator to the everlasting embarrassment of that body, pulls out a child's drawing of an embryo with a smiley-face in order to argue his position. Or when Tony Snow, that towering public fake, starts getting glib about "murder," as though there isn't enough blood lapping at the ankles of everyone in this White House to float a barge. Or when Snow's boss, that tough-talkin', crumb-spittin', neck-rubbin' international buckaroo, uses the first veto of his presidential career and then hides behind children while maundering incoherently about a "moral line" as though he'd recognize one if he fell over it. Is there any doubt that, if this guy got Parkinson's Disease, he'd eat those little buggers out of the petri dish with a spoon, probably dribbling some of them on Tony Blair in the process? Sorry, Ez. I don't give a damn how tactically brilliant this may be. I look at this action and this is what I know -- that millions of Americans will die horrible deaths and the government of the United States doesn't give a good goddamn about them. Period. And, no, Senator Obama, I don't have to respect the deeply held beliefs of anyone who condemns their fellow human beings to miserable suffering on the basis of anthropomorphized blastocysts in the service of an anthropomorphized god. Were it in my power, I'd run all those former embryos out of government until they grew the hell up.

--Charles P. Pierce

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_887.html#003590

What he said. :thumbsup:

[SlipperySlope]

1. Bush was abused as a stem cell

And he's never forgotten it. Poor f*cking baby.

[DanCa]

2. Awesome post.

I know how he feels.

[wiley]

3. Sorry. But I'm still in a Schiavo caused by the radioactive irony of it .

I can't feel anything, my brain is dead and I have zero feelings and emotions, and God would like that the aholes using me as a political prop would let me run the course of the life that he intended for me. For a President and his demented whacko extremist right wing criminally insane Republican religious terrorists to claim any moral authority and even dare utter the words "the sanctity of human life, even according to a politically convenient amalgamated version of a religion aptly designated Chritianity 3.0 (The Republican hate,oppression,rationalization and redistricting manual - included on CD and accessible through daily radio broadcasts)is irony and hypocrisy of nuclear, cancerous proportions. Imagine if all the labels on frozen sperm and eggs were misplaced and they couldn't distinguish the race or ethnic backgroun of the donors accurately. I think we'd see massive power outages in every location where fertilized eggs and emryonic cells are stored.

Back off Obama. He's hardly the one, or even one of those Senators who didn't vote for this legislation. You can respect someone's deeply held religious beliefs and still work actively to minimize or eliminate their ability to terrorize the populace with them. Groups of real Christians and people of faith are trying to do just that. It's also still legal for now to communicate with someone whose religious convictions are suspect or spurious that they are deeply misinformed about the true nature and teachings of Christ and what God actually wants them to do.

[whometense]

4. Charlie Pierce is

a national treasure.

Any post by him makes my day; this one is among the best rants ever on this subject.

[Elidor]

5. Indeed. I'd never heard of him before I saw some of his comments

On Eric Alterman's Altercation blog. And he is consistently great, as a writer and a thinker.

[Tracer]

6. I used to know Charlie Pierce ...

... and I'll never forget the night he asked me for a ride home from work. Totallllllllly out of my way and I said no. He begged and begged and I finally gave in. When I pulled up to his house, he turned around and put me in a hammer-lock --- I had to literally fight him off.

Believe me, I never gave him the slightest reason to think that I was remotely interested in him.

[Elidor]

7. Disturbing to know

The very same Chalres P. Pierce? It's gonna be hard to get that image out of my mind when reading his stuff.