What's the Matter With… Everyone Who Doesn't Agree With Me?

Among my favorite post-election op-ed formulae: The "I regret that voters are too stupid to vote correctly" boilerplate. Last night was pure confusion, if you're listening to the losers. Voters were "duped" by Missouri's "deceptive amendment 2," the stem-cell funding amendment supported by a "suspiciously" shaky Michael J. Fox. (Expect "human egg traffickers" to sweep in and start exploiting the dumbest among them--young women--at any moment.) Says Director of The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) C. Ben Mitchell: "This is no triumph for science, it is a victory for dishonesty and confusion--a new Tower of Babel--where words have no meaning."

We'll take that as a promise, then, that CBHD will stop with the press releases. Also among the regrettably stupid: American women. Women may think they've made gains--an abortion ban in flames, a woman speaker, gains in both houses, four women positioned to lead House panels --but Carrie Lukas reminds us that women, who vote because they like "caring, nurturing" candidates, (aren't they cute, those lady voters!) "should be careful what they wish for." Did they know, for instance, that Nancy Pelosi is against the Patriot Act?

My guess is that in San Francisco, even the women knew this. Being a libertarian, it's hard to sympathize with people who simply cannot conceive of a universe in which their opinions are not the majority. A suggestion: Get over it.

Comments

[wingnutx]

"Being a libertarian, it's hard to sympathize with people who simply cannot conceive of a universe in which their opinions are not the majority."

that's a keeper.

[z]

That loser point of view is indeed universal. Democrats still cannot comprehend why working class people vote for republicans instead of their pocketbook and the dems. It's an axium of progressive thought that socialist economics are good for the little people, and the little people just need to be properly informed, 100 years of failed socialism be damned.

[stubby]

As a part time, freelance, opportunistically only when I feel like it sort of Republican, I have to say I'm disappointed in the fact that last night's election took place. I mean, Gore Vidal and Michael Moore and some guy in Vanity Fair and the seasoned politicos of Kosland have been telling me for 6 years now that I am living in Bushitler's facist totalitarian theocracy and that all dissent is oppressed and I thought - swell! No more elections! Heil Bush! Heil Rove! So why do I awake this morning to a Democrat controlled Congress? And why are there not dozens of major media stories about election fraud? WHERE ARE THE JACKBOOTS?

It's almost like I'm living in a functioning democracy and Karl Rove does not, in fact, run the country. I'm just flummoxed. Flummoxed, I tell ya.

[jb]

Ugh, she misspelled "reining in." Just for that the Republicans should lose.

[Aresen]

"The whole world's crazy but me and thee, and I'm beginning to have doubts about thee." [Walt Kelly: 'Pogo' - I think - If anyone has better info, please correct.]

[wingnutx]

I too am disappointed that there were no cancelled elections and martial law after being warned of this 3 elections in a row.

I should have cut/psted some of those "this is the last election ever" comments for posterity.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

I have always suggested that as a rule Americans get just about the kind of government that they want. It isn't a moral, just, ethical, or efficient government, but it's what they want.

In a just society you wouldn't have to agree with me but you wouldn't be able to vote that disagreement into law every two years either. There's a whole bunch of stuff that nobody has any right to vote about in the first place. That is what's stupid.

[2333]

Hack, thy name is Carrie Lukas. Maybe American woman - assuming its useful in anyway to lump them all together - just didn't want American sons and daughers killed anymore in Iraq. She can stuff the min. wage up her rear, or at least concede that Bush should, for the second time in his administration, veto a bill.

[Evan!]

Talk about a death knell. I personally think it's fun to watch these formerly-smug-and-mad-with-power asshats twist and squirm and scream as they crash and burn...a la the T-1000 in the pool of molten iron.

[Evan!]

2333---

Good luck getting Bush to veto that bill. Min Wage is one of those things that most people in this country think is a unequivocal good, and that when you raise the min wage, you're just stickin' it to the fat cats in their penthouses. It seems to be one area where the vast majority of the country willingly blocks out everything they learned in econ 101.

Should Bush veto this bill, he'll just cement his reputation as hating "the little guy" while beholden to the corporate fatcats. While none of this should stop someone from vetoing such a stupid bill, it probably will.

[martin]

LOL stubby, good one!
Be patient, give it some time. Let them all drift more toward each other and pretty soon their agendas will meld, become indistinguishable and then..... we can all vote and nothing changes. See, no jackboots needed.

If elections were all that defined Democracy, the USSR would have been one.

[Lost_In_Translation]

martin,

so just like T-1000 being blown up in the truck, eventually the pieces will coalesce and he'll once again starting plodding towards our destruction.

(How many Terminator references will be made in this thread before someone then says "And this is why you nerds are marginalized)

[tchiers]

"Did they know, for instance, that Nancy Pelosi is against the Patriot Act?"

She's so against it, in fact, that she voted for it before she voted against it.

[Stevo Darkly]

Actually, the ballot language for Missouri Amendment 2 was deceptive, as was the language of the amendment itself.

The ballot said the amendment would "ban human cloning," as does the language at the beginning of the amendment. However, about midway through, the amendment language defines "cloning" as taking an already-created clone (specifically, a cloned human blastocyst created by somatic cell transfer) and implanting it in a woman's uterus.

It was like offering a ballot measure on adoption of the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution with: "The amendment would guarantee the right of the people to keep and bear arms." Only, imagine this: Buried in the text of the amendment and not explained in the ballot would be: "Definitions: 'Arms' for the purpose of this amendment shall be defined as meaning 'a single-shot rifle no less than six feet long, with no more than one allowed per household.' "

Annoying.

[jenl1625]

But Stevo, there is a difference between a) having a daughter, and then creating a second daughter who is a clone of the first, b) having a daughter who develops some sort of disease, cloning her cells, and using cloned cells to cure her, and c) taking cells that will be used in experiments and cloning them a few times so that clones of the same cells can be given different treatments to find out which treatment works best.

I think most people who want to "ban human cloning" are talking about banning a), and this ban sounds like it would do it without preventing b) and c). The opposition's problem is that the cells used in c) may have come from an embryo that could (had it been implanted in a person) have survived to birth. Rather than honestly argue over whether these cells are more important than the people (current or future) who might live longer or better lives as a result of that experiment, they prefer to argue that it is "misleading" to say that a "ban on human clones" only bans clones of humans rather than clones of human *cells*.

[Stevo Darkly]

Oh fuck. I just spend 45 minutes composing a 10-paragraph reply to jenl1625, and I hit "submit comment" and I got a blank screen. The fucking server squirrels are back.

jen, the crux of my disappeared post is this: The controversy is about creating a blastocyst so you can obtain embryonic stem cells from it. A blastocyst is what is created naturally when a sperm and an egg come together and begin developing into an individual. Therefore, some people don't agree with your statement that when you use somatic cell transfer cloning to create a blastocyst with a full complement of human genes, you have only cloned human "cells" -- they see that you have created, by cloning, a new human individual.

That is the central controversy about Missouri Amendment 2. It's a big controversy with strong feelings on both sides, and I think it's an issue where smart people of good will can disagree.

However, the campaigners for Amendment 2, rather than even attempt to marshall arguments that the blastocysts used in the research are not human indviduals, chose to evade this crucial point of debate entirely, through deceptive language.

They knew it isn't implantation that the opponents would object to -- pro-lifers LOVE it when blastocysts get implanted. They only get upset when blastocysts get treated as mere resources or get dumped in the trash.

So the pro-2s said, "Oh, you don't have to worry about whether we are cloning human individuals to use as raw materials for medical experiments -- the amendment will forbid cloning, period! (Just don't read the fine print and look at our own very extra-special definition of what we mean by 'cloning,' because in fact it constitutionally enshrines the only application of cloning you are actually worried about.)"

In my view, anyone who takes such extraordinary measures to evade an open and honest debate on the central controversy has conceded that they could not win such a debate if one took place. That = sneakiness, and I hate to see such tactics succeed. It will only be further emulated if other slimy people see it as the way to win.

And this liar's triumph is now a fixture of our state constitution. To me, that says the pro-2s wanted to make the measure harder to alter or repeal than an ordinary law -- as if they feared their deception would eventually be found out and attempts would be made to fix or reverse it.

On top of that, BTW, I find the amendment's language about funding to be very unclear. I believe the ballot said the measure wouldn't have an impact on public funds. However, the amendment itself seems to say that the state can't "discourage" stem cell research by refusing to fund it. As far as I can figure, that means stem cell researchers in Missouri now have a constitutional right to mandatory public funding.

So not only did the ballot try to trick voters into voting for the opposite of what the ballot described, its passage will require taxpayers to pay for things that roughly half of them morally object to. Yuck.

(This is a partial replacement of my disappeared post. Sorry, the original version was better.)

[jenl1625]

Stevo,

Okay - I see what you're getting at - Shouldn't have jumped to the assumption I did. Seems like a major part of the problem is that everybody wants to argue issues in soundbites - something nice in 15 or 30 seconds that people are likely to bite onto - rather than actually discussing the issues. (And I should have known better than to argue from the soundbite . . . . Sorry!)

[joe]

Evan!,

You mean, it's too bad the voters weren't smart enough to agree with you about the mimimumn wage?

FWIW, I'm pretty sure Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, and Dr. Duncan Black took Econ 101.

[Stevo Darkly]

jenl1625, if you're reading this, thanks. This was probably the only civil and honest discussion of MO Amendment 2 EVAR.

Anyway, I will now begin the long, slow process of Getting Over It.