Culture of Life!

The president (the Culture Of Life President) has said he'll veto the stem cell research bill currently being passed by the congress. He's against the destruction of life to preserve life (Unless of course it's foreigners lives). Along with the other right-to-lifers, or rather the manipulators who believe they can get people to give them money and power if they piously proclaim a love of life, the president seems to think its not okay to generate stem cells from human ova to cure disease and save lives. But it is okay to simply destroy the ovum.
Now, in case 1, the ovum, and the cells created from it, continue to live, participating in the life of the person they assist in continuing to live. In case 2, the ovum is discarded. Dies. Is dead.

This is the Culture of Life!

Is it the intent of the Culture-Of-Lifers to define the killing of an ovum (a "potential" life) as murder? Consider that women are born with something in the neighborhood of 68,000 or so oocytes, of which some number will become fertile ova. Of those, some number between zero and 60 will become living humans. Note: 60 is the number of children Hecuba legendarily bore Priam. Thus Homer's reference to "Hecuba's o'erteemed womb". I personally think 60 is an unrealistic number of children for any one woman to give birth to. Especially since of that number only one survived the fall of Troy. I guess because the Grecians didn't believe in the president's Culture Of LIfe. All the rest of the eggs will be discarded. Will the normal monthly menstrual process of discarding an unfertilized ovum become an act of murder? Or is it an act of murder to allow the ovum to die rather than to save it, culture it, and use it to save a life? Which is it Mr. President Bush?
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if letting sperm cells to die rather than making each-and-every-one into a living being is also murder. If so, then certainly men are far more murderous than women could possibly be. Lets face it, Onan wasn't the only one.

The Frist For President Option

Well now we're getting to witness a bigtime dispute in the Senate. I think this is something we see more often in the junior side of the congress, but it's always nice to know that the Hon. Sen's can mix it up too.
The stuff I'm seeing in the news tells me, unsurprisingly, that there's little interest in considering the difference (a major one, to me) between when the president nominates someone to serve in the administration and when he nominates someone to serve in the judiciary. These are, or used to be, two separate-but-equal branches of the U.S. Govt. I think there are some among our leaders who don't get that. Or, there are some among our leaders who like to make noise and light and smoke and hope we don't look behind the curtain. But then, the Hon. Tom DeLay is probably not yet evolved as far as most of us. He's certainly no argument for Intelligent Design. There, I finally got a chance to use that one.
So, I have to agree with those who say that the president has the right to appoint his own "employees". They're really our employees, but he's the manager, after a fashion, of our executive branch. I have come to the point where I pretty much assume that anyone the current president nominates is probably unfit for the position, but then that's my opinion of the manager of the executive branch as well. As a sort of philosophical/social/governing principle, the presidents direct employees should be his to choose unless they're well on the road to being certifiable (in the bad sense). Case in point: John Bolton. Not yet certifiable, as far as I can tell. I suspect he's just a few quarts of Kentucky Mash away from rehab, but 'til then, let the president inflict the guy on the UN. His prerogative.
About the judicial branch. The independent judiciary that causes Fox "News" people and others of that ilk to foam at the mouth: the appointees ought not to be the president's to appoint in the same sense as the executive appointees. I even considered advocating getting the judges to appoint the judges. That, I suspect would be replacing like with like pretty much forever. Eventually the judicial branch would be pretty much a fossil. Instead of being populated with, it sometimes seems, fossils. So, let us not tinker with the original modus. Let the president and the senate do the appointing. I think though, that the two other branches, executive and legislative, should be co-equal in staffing the judicial branch.
As to how the senate should rule itself in vetting presidential nominees, I confess I have no clue whatsoever. My preference would be that everybody is always approved by consensus. Actually, by consensus among us all: president, congress, court, and even us day laborers. That won't happen, so let's admit that we need to have a representative system of governance. Let the representatives represent. Wish they'd do a quieter job of it.
A little less posturing, and a little more governing, guys!

Happy Birthday To Me!

This blog is one year old!

Some numbers in the news indicate that there are some seven million bloggers (thus, some seven million blogs) in what has cleverly been called "Blogspace". Maybe 7.1 million since I started writing this. Given the nature of folk, especially of geeks, that probably means there are some millions of orphan blogs - weblogs that got started, then abandoned. All in all, this is probably a good thing. Since I started posting here, I find myself embroiled in isssues of coherence. I am prone to interrupt my plain old ordinary thinking and begin trying to structure my thoughts in blogspeak. I think this is not a good thing. This morning, as I was beginning the day, I realized I'd been posting here for a year, and immediately thought about how I could say something about how I'd been posting for a year. Talking about talking. Thinking about thinking. Much in the way that, when holding a camera, one changes from being a viewer of scenes to being in a sense a servant of one's camera, looking for photographic capturability (or words to that effect).
I have a funny feeling that bloggers (not necessarily writers, but bloggers at least) end up somehow feeling impelled to go global with their thoughts. Say something cosmic. At least for me, I wind up adding more and more sidebars to whatever original topic I started with. Mixing my metaphors, so to speak.

And I'm not alone. Check out this site:

Mickey Kaus' commentary

Micky Kaus is probably Blogger One in blogspace. He even has his URL on Drudge Report. Though, if Matt Drudge considers himself to be a blogger, perhaps he is Blogger1. Or, perhaps we have already progressed to metaBlogging. I don't know. Here, you see, I've fallen into my own mixed metaphor.
So, while my blog has not yet become an orphan - Happy Birthday To Me!