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Sunday, July 23, 2006

 

Tap Dancing in Skis

I've started DVRing the Sunday morning talk shows, because I so rarely have the chance to sit down and watch them when they're on. So it wasn't until about an hour ago that I got to watch presidential Chief of Staff Josh Bolten avoid saying anything of substance when Tim Russert pressed him about Bush's indefensible position on stem cell research.

It was truly appalling. Russert played a tape of Tony Snow telling the White House press corps that the president believes, unequivocally, that destroying embryos for the purpose of stem cell research is murder. Then Russert pressed Bolten on the issue, pointing out that Snow is the official spokesman for Bush and asking if that is, in fact what the president believes. That would make sense, seeing as how the official spokesman said it and given that the president used his very first veto to once again keep the scientists working on stem cells from receiving adequate funding.

But no, it appears that, even though he's very publicly come out against stem cell research, Bush is also for it, in some weird, apparently indefinable way.

Bolten: It'’s a very delicate and difficult balance that the, that the president has tried to strike here between the, the needs and desires of science and the morals and ethics that, that our government leaders are, are charged to, to try to sustain. On the one hand, the president recognizes that embryonic stem cell research has, has promise, unfulfilled as yet, but a, but a great deal of promise. On the other hand, the president believes, as, as do millions and millions of Americans, that that fertilized embryo is a human life that deserves protection.
He then went on to talk about the kids that appeared in that ghastly fucking photo op last week, the "snowflake children," which is just such a nauseating term. "They're the Daffodil Kids!" "They're the Lollipop Guild!" "They're the Li'l Rays of Fucking Sunshine!" He pointed out that none of these kids would be alive if mean ol' scientists had been allowed to smash apart the embryos they came from in order to harvest stem cells. Russert asked if Bolten was suggesting that every single embryo that's sitting frozen in a fertility clinic would be adopted as long as they weren't used for research, instead of being tossed in the clinic's incinerator with the coffee grounds. blah


BOLTEN: No. They'’re not likely to be, and that'’s, that'’s, that'’s very sad for this country.
And instead of conceding the point that these embryos are just fucking going to waste when they could be used to potentially save lives around the fucking world, this stuttering assbag defended Karl Rove's completely unfounded assertion that adult stem cells have shown much more promise than embryonic ones. He stuck to his fucking talking points like glue, repeating over and over that it's a "very, very difficult balance" between science and morality and trying to put forth how much the president has "struggled" with this issue. I'm frankly amazed that he could say all this shit with a straight face or without being struck down by fucking lightning.

Is it just that Bush is physiologically incapable of changing his mind on an issue? Is that why he's stuck to his rusty and misfiring guns on a topic on which so many Republicans and Democrats agree? Or is this yet another example of blatantly playing to his base, trying to make sure that the folks who thump their bible the hardest come out in November to stop Satan's hordes from experimentin' on babies and allowin' fags to marry (and then helping keep Republicans in charge of congress while they're there)?

My money's on that last one.

Comments:
I love Meet The Press. Have done for ages. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Russert came equipped with a thought bubble.

To me, Bolten sounds as though he has been taking lessons from Cheney. Watching that interview was just as frustrating as watching a Cheney interview.
 
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