Stem Cell Success?

Although too early to tell, the possibilities for Stem Cell research seem endless and new breakthroughs are already starting to pop up. In South Korea, stem cell therapy may have resulted in a paralyzed woman being able to walk again,

Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, had been bedridden since damaging her back in an accident two decades ago.

Last week her eyes glistened with tears as she walked again with the help of a walking frame at a press conference where South Korea researchers went public for the first time with the results of their stem-cell therapy.

Although there is still caution to verify the results, it appears that the stem cells are the leading cause for the miraculous recovery. Once verified, this could lead to a dramatic increase in stem cell funding around the U.S., as other states follow in the steps of California.

Full Article at Yahoo.

Guantanamo at Republican National Convention?

This is pretty crazy. At the RNC in New York this summer, there were swarms of protesters taking to the street to voice their opposition and approximately 2,000 of them were arrested. But unlike the usual procedure of letting those arrested contact lawyers or family, the police basically detained them for a number of days without any way of contacting the outside world. A lawsuit on behalf of the protestors has been filed.

The federal lawsuit claims protesters and bystanders alike were rounded up in mass arrests without cause; were kept without access to their lawyers or families at an old bus depot used as a temporary detention center; and were exposed for days to cruel and inhuman conditions.

Although the police are denying it, if the allegations turn out to be true, this would be a huge tragedy and more evidence of our civil liberties being supressed. Personally though, I am not sure that the greater population will ever show their true outrage over acts like this one, even though some people on the right agree with how terrible things have become.

More at Yahoo News.

Anger Over Budget Provision Unites Parties

As the Senate neared passing an omnibus spending bill before the end of this year's session, a very interesting provision was found to have been slipped in at the last minute. The provision, if passed, would have allowed for the Chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to examine the tax returns of any American, something completely unheard of since the days of Hoover and the Red Scare. After passing the House, Senate Democrats examined the bill and found the provision, singling it out on the floor on Saturday. Senators on both sides were enraged at such an abuse of power. Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, expressed his outrage, "I have no earthly idea how it got in there. Nobody is going to defend this." The provision was supposedly added by a staff worker of Alaska Republican Ted Stevens.

More at CNN.

EDIT: The NY Times is reporting that Republican Representative Ernest Istook of Oklahoma was responsible for slipping in the provision.

Recount in NH Going Fine

Thus far, a recount in New Hampshire, sponsored by Independent Candidate Ralph Nader, has shown no voting irregularities. According to Wired Magazine, the disputed optical-scan machines have shown no deviation from the paper ballots they produce.

The recount of five wards, or voting precincts, went slower than expected. As a result, officials finished counting only two wards and half of two others by the end of Thursday. Counting will resume next week, but officials expect the outcome will match original vote tallies.

It is time for all of us to completely move on.

Full Article at Wired

GOP No Longer Fiscally Conservative

In a measure to further confuse Americans about their values, House Republicans narrowly passed a debt-limit hike, raising the borrowing limit to $8.18 trillion, an $800 billion increase. The vote was 208-204, an incredibly close margin considering the House has the Republicans well in the majority. A few Republicans couldn't help but dissent from the fiscal irresponsibility of their colleagues,

"Let's not use our elderly as political pawns in trade for a seven-second sound bite back home," said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.

It is just amazing to see such a huge number, $8.18 trillion, which represents about 70% of our GDP. The federal debt has grown by a whopping $2.4 trillion under Bush's reign and will certainly continue to grow for at least the next ten years. Even more amazing is to know that the Republicans are complete sheep in this matter, doing anything their president will say regardless of the fiscal sanity that they previously championed. Where is the Balanced Budget Amendment now?

In the Senate, the bill had passed with a 52-44 vote, once again along party lines.

Full Article Here.

Guess who?

Yep it is official: We are in some deep... trouble.

Full Article at ABC News.

CIA becoming Bush's Gestapo

As if John Ashcroft telling judges to not interfere with President Bush's decisions during the war was not enough, now the same is being said to the CIA. Under pressure from the White House, the CIA is about to undergo a systematic restructuring to insure that no nay-sayers to the president are in the Intelligence Body.

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers thought to have been disloyal to President Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the war in Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Once again, what the hell is going on in our country? Shouldn't the CIA be full of people that do their job and report on the failures and successes of the administration?

What is interesting, is that the president is using the excuse of intelligence failure over the leadup to the War in Iraq as a reason to completely weed out the dissenting elements in the CIA. He doesn't seem to understand that the dissenters were probably the ones behind-the-scenes questioning the intelligence in the first play. Some of them probably believed there was no "slam dunk" case of WMDs.

However, Arizona Senator John McCain has agreed with the shake-up, calling the agency a "rogue agent" and one that must be dissent-free. Unfortunately, it seems that the Democrats have chosen not to fight this battle.

Full Article at the Houston Chronicle.

More Resignations

Today, Secretary of State Colin Powell and three others have resigned from the Bush Cabinet. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, and Education Secretary Rod Paige will join Powell in leaving the White House. This brings to the total to 6 Cabinet Members leaving, a pretty significant number.

Speculation is that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will take over Powell's post as Secretary of State. That is possibly the worst news I have heard since the election. Going from Powell, a respectable guy who just had a tough time these last four years with certain White House policies, to Rice, an ultra neo-conservative who will do whatever Rumsfeld wants, will make this administration even more fluid as a right-wing machine.

Full Article Here.

Ashcroft to Judges: Don't Do Your Job

Before Attorney General John Ashcroft formally leaves his post, he is making sure to leave a legacy of lawlessness and idiocy. Here is what he had to say about judges questioning the president during a time of war,

The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war,

To add to this rather odd, but all too common, stance of looking at law, Ashcroft also had this to say about the courts.

Courts are not equipped to execute the law. They are not accountable to the people,

Dare I say... WOW. Courts shouldn't be executing the law, since they don't know what public opinion polls say? I always thought that the law should be independent of the sways of people's perceptions and accountable to the Constitution. Silly me.

Full article here.

African-American Politicians on the Rise

There is a great article in the Washington Monthly detailing the rise of a few black politicians, but mainly talking about the great hope of the Democrats: Obama Barack. The article talks a bit about his incredible speech at the Democratic National Convention, and how he lived up to all his expectations. But the author also details what seems to set him apart from other black politicians, his frankness.

Like Wilder, Powell, and Ford, Obama has crafted a way of signaling his political independence: He tells people what they don't want to hear. At fundraisers on Chicago's lavish North Side, he tells his wealthy supporters that he'll hike their taxes. At union halls, he tells the workers that the drain of jobs to India and China is inevitable, and that there's nothing he can do to prevent it. To inner-city, he says that parents need to turn off their televisions and teach their kids some discipline.

Obama, unlike so many in the past, is a true leader; his ideology doesn't seem to be binding, but rather liberating, something that allows him to reach out to those incredibly different with the same ease as those startingly similar. Keep your eye on this guy.

More at the Washington Monthly.

Post Your Remorse

Want to say sorry to the world about the election? Go ahead.
Sorry Everybody.

And then once you do that, take a look at the Center for Progressive Leadership, our long-term solution to winning back our country. Let people know, because we will win again.

Reduce Dependency on Foreign Oil... By Drilling?

Here is another issue that I cannot simply understand. Why would we try to reduce our dependency on foreign oil by simply supplementing our dependence with a cheap injection into the market? Why wouldn't we look towards new technologies that promise hopes of cleaner air, water, renewability, and most importantly, jobs for Americans all around the nation? This is a really disheartening issue, especially with the reinvigorated Republicans and with Bush imagining that the election gave him a mandate on environmental issues.

Republicans in the House and Senate said this week they plan to push for Alaska refuge drilling legislation early next year, and they predict success, given the 55-44-1 GOP Senate majority in the next Congress. Democrats and some environmental activists say continued protection of the refuge has never been as much in doubt.

But wait, there is much more.

Bush is also expected in his second term to renew his call for action by Congress on a broader, largely pro-production, energy agenda — from easing rules for oil and gas drilling on federal land in the Rocky Mountains to expanding clean-coal technology and improving the reliability of the electricity grid.

New tax incentives to spur construction of next-generation nuclear power plants also will be back on the table after Democrats and some moderate Republicans scuttled it last year.

Now, the cleaner coal is a pretty good idea, but it seems like we are just expanding all of our other policies without thinking about the environmental costs whatsoever. This will be an incredible battle in the Senate, but I just hope that the Democrats have the spines to resist these irresponsible policies. Otherwise, we will seriously put ourselves into even deeper peril in the future for some short-term relief at the pump.

Full Article on Bush's Energy Policy.

Interpretations

There are certainly a lot of contentious issues that bring out fierce debates between the right and the left, but an important one is Global Warming. Now, empirical evidence clearly supports the idea that there is climatic change going on. However, like most facts, it is interpreted by people in dramatically different ways. Here are some excerpts from a fairly objective article on Arctic Warming.

Fact

Arctic temperatures are rising at almost twice the global average and could leap 4-7 Celsius (7-13 Fahrenheit) by 2100, roughly twice the global average projected by U.N. reports. Siberia and Alaska have already warmed by 2-3 C since the 1950s.

Opinion

Possible benefits like more productive fisheries, easier access to oil and gas deposits or trans-Arctic shipping routes would be outweighed by threats to indigenous peoples and the habitats of animals and plants.

I also looked at a different article on Junkscience.com, a Fox News affiliate, about Global Warming. Of course, I couldn't really find that many facts in this article, but here are some interesting tidbits.

Fact

After a four-year-long campaign, the RAN pressured Citigroup to restrict its lending practices in the developing world, including: not lending to projects that might adversely impact natural habitats; banning logging in tropical forests; avoiding investment in fossil fuel energy projects; and reporting greenhouse gas emissions from power projects in its lending portfolio.

Opinion

And, sadly, the environmental activists seem to be doing their best to make sure that poor countries stay poor.

Second Opinion

Global warming may or may not be occurring. Humans may or may not be playing a role in any ongoing climate change. What is certain is that poor countries need economic development and environmental activists are blocking their way.

I just found it really interesting to see how facts can be twisted in any which way, and how often people aren't even concerned with making honest arguments. To persuade people, we must always present the cold-hard facts and make sure to keep our opinion in line with these facts. Only then can we actually influence others.

Why 66 Lost

Proposition 66, the effort to reform Three-Strikes in California, was set for an easy victory...until a little last-minute intervention by our past governors and current Governator made the measure the most important issue on the ballot. The fight was an epitomy of politics and values.

The LA Times details the epic story of Proposition 66, from certain success to bitter defeat.

Florida Messed Up Again?

Well, Florida seems to be up to its old tricks again. Just days after the election, controversy is sweeping across the Internet as bloggers and political minds alike look at some of Florida's results with a weary eye.

The controversy has erupted over a number of predominantly Democratic counties, where the vote total went dramatically for Bush. For example, in Baker County, where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by almost three to one, the vote total was 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush. Now it is certainly possible that many of these Democrats are likely part of the Old-Time Democrats (Dixiecrats), but the numbers are simply startling. More troubling is the fact that these trends continue in a number of Democratic counties.

But there is one thing that all of these odd-ball counties have in common: they all used optical sensors in voting. I am not all that familiar with the technology, but the difference between touch screen and optical sensor counties is very suspicious.

Much more at Common Dreams.

Dick Morris skeptical

Famed Political Consultant, Dick Morris has expressed a good deal of doubt over the results in Tuesday's elections. A veteran of hundreds of campaigns, Morris makes it clear that exit polls are almost always correct, and that Tuesday's election was somehow screwed up.

To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here.

He concludes by saying,

This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play.

Full article at The Hill.

Future of Bush Cabinet in Doubt

Nobody is quite sure who will leave, but it is possible that at least a few people in the president's cabinet will go sometime within the next few months. As mentioned in a previous post, Ashcroft is still a likely target, as health concerns have dogged him for the past year. Similarly, his job has been exhausting, helping out in the "War on Terror" while also having to constantly defend the Patriot Act from its many critics.
Another possible cut from the cabinet is Colin Powell. Respected by Democrats and Republicans alike, Powell is known as an outsider in the administration as he is one of the few not binded to a specific ideology and he as voiced some criticism of the Iraq War and its failures. Overall, it might serve Bush to find a more loyal Secretary of State.
Third, people keep talking about Rumsfeld being forced out. With the prison scandals and the recent Al Qaqaa explosives story, the Secretary of Defence has been dodging story after story of his missteps. But, it is unlikely that Bush would replace Rumsfeld until there is some resolution in Iraq.

Capital

Today, George W. Bush learned a new word: Capital. We are all very pleased with his progress and will keep you informed of future successes. He is the cutest thing in the world.

Ashcroft Out?

According to conservative blogger Matt Drudge at the Drudge Report,

Attorney General John Ashcroft 'plans to submit his resignation to Bush in the next several days'...

I don't think that we could get somebody worse than Ashcroft as Attorney General, so this is great news in an otherwise disparaging time. More to come soon...

I AM SORRY

I am very sorry everybody. This has been a pretty bad day in the history of the country and certainly one of the worst of my life. But not just because of the presidency of course, we also went deeper down in the Senate and House, even losing Daschle's seat. However, Kerry's loss will certainly sting the longest.

The future is now in the hands of activists, as the Progressives have no majority in our national government. In California though, we are still lucky to have clear and outright majorities in both houses, giving hope that we can lead the nation in the right direction. But, we also saw Proposition 66, the Three Strikes Revision, fail to make it to 50% after some last minute campaigning by Arnold et all.

A second piece of hope is newly elected Senator Barack Obama. The skinny kid with a funny name, he will undoubtedly be a future Democratic nominee for president, probably in 2012 or 2016. Third, we saw the emergence of John Edwards, a man that we could see much more from in the coming years. If he was the Presidential Nominee, I doubt this posting would be so disheartening. I can only dream now...

Nonetheless, we will have to pick up the pieces soon and rebuild for the future. Hope still exists, and the president will likely continue his divisive policies that will infuriate many. By 2006, we must be strong and organized. And seriously, the youth has to vote.

Transcript of Osama Video

Just in case anybody wanted to know what he said, here is the link. I obviously do believe that he is a mad man, but I also believe in freedom of information, so if you like, read what he has to say. I am just making it available, this is not an endorsement, but I think that by reading, maybe we can all learn something about what drives a person to such unjustifiable deeds.

And boy is he dressed nicely for someone that should be trapped in caves...