Well Don’t Just Bitch — Do Something

A story at Bloomberg.Com reports that according to new polls Bush’s approval rating among 18-24-year-olds is at about 20 percent, which may dash Republican hopes of attracting new voters to the party. And why not? It’s this age group that’s most vulnerable to the administration’s aggressive brand of foreign policy.

I’ve always been of the opinion though that if you don’t vote you relinquish your right to complain. And I don’t think people in that age group flock to the polls on Election Day. Which to me doesn’t make sense, since they have so much more of their future left than those of us who never miss a national election.

My bet is that Howard Dean, who chairs the Democratic Party, is pondering ways to get those young voters to the polls this November. And he would be right to include that in the Democratic strategy. These young adults have to be thinking about more than just the imminent threat of being drafted — which is something they may face before too long, if the military continues to struggle to meet its recruitment goals. There are other key issues that they’ll face a lot longer than I will — the effects of global warming, the broken health-care system, the crumbling infrastructure, job insecurity… the list is long.

These young people will have an opportunity to do something about it come November — some for the first time. And as far as I’m concerned, if they don’t get out and vote, they may as well not bother responding to polls anymore.

Much Ado About Stem Cells

Congress just passed a bill that would allow federal funding of stem-cell research, but not quite by a margin wide enough to override the president’s veto — which, by the way, was his first veto since his administration took office. You may wonder why the president used his veto power for the first time on a bill that seems to hold such great hope for cures of some of the most heart-breaking diseases and illnesses. Well, in his simple mind, the answer is simple. Research would require the destruction of a human embryo, and a human embryo is life. At the veto ceremony, he was surrounded by children who as embryos had been adopted and ultimately born. Not present were the countless frozen embryos that will never be adopted, that will instead be discarded.

Perhaps the president didn’t think of this when he made his politically charged decision. Perhaps he thinks when these unwanted frozen embryos are discarded they will reside eternally in some paradise somewhere. Probably not though. In all likelihood, when these embryos are discarded, they will thaw and decompose rapidly. That’s right — they will die. Not only will they fail to develop into a fully formed human beings after nine months, they will not save a single life nor help cure an incurable condition. They will not heal the chronically ill or repair a single permanently damaged person. These unwanted embryos will simply go to waste — condemned to eternal uselessness by a president who believes he understands the meaning of life.

So stick to your guns, Mr. President. Let these unwanted, unneeded frozen embryos die in vain. Think of them as you think of the thousands of young men and women you’ve sent to Iraq, also to die in vain.

Chaos

Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Terrorists attack a Saudi refinery. But don’t be surprised if the Administration finds a political silver lining in the cloud over the Middle East. As events spiral out of control, that master of the deviant spin, Karl Rove, might come up with the idea that opposition to the war has emboldened the insurgents.

Sadly, the presidential election is over two years off. If you voted for George Bush, you chose the wrong man. He leaves behind a presidential legacy that’s worse than his miserable record as a private citizen.

A Greener Bush?

George Bush surprised everyone when he talked about alternate sources of energy in his State of the Union address last month. He surprised me when he mentioned sawgrass as a source for the production of ethanol — surprised me because I’d just heard a story about sawgrass on Living On Earth a few days before. According to insiders, though, the paragraphs about independence from oil were inserted at the last minute. A coincidence? Or is someone at the White House listening to NPR. Naturally most listening to the speech were startled by what can only be described as a turn-around by a very conservative Republican president, since it’s been Republicans who’ve been the obstacle to almost every environmental reform since Jimmy Carter left office.

I doubt if many people recall that it was Carter who tried to get the ball rolling toward the kind of energy independence Bush mentioned in that speech. It was in 1979 that Carter made legislative recommendations to Congress for a new solar strategy that would pave the way toward energy independence. “By the end of this century,” he said, “I want our Nation to derive 20 percent of all the energy we use from the sun — direct solar energy in radiation and also renewable forms of energy derived more indirectly from the sun.” Symbolic of his belief in solar power, Carter had a solar water heater installed on the White House roof. After Ronald Reagan took over occupancy of the White House, he had the water heater removed, ostensibly because it wasn’t cost efficient. Whether or not it was is immaterial — it was a symbol, an example for the rest of us. The example Reagan set when he removed the device was a bad one, and it solidified the anti-environmental attitude that has dominated Republican thinking since.