The first time I heard this song was watching a glory Iraq war video about US military operations in Ramadi and Sadr city.

Ironic.

dupe?

>> ^Aniatario:
I have no idea why but watching this video just made me laugh. It's insane! What the hell is that wall going to accomplish? and how many lives are going to be lost just to put the damn thing up?


The answer is Two, two soldiers have died while trying to put that wall up, and 15% of that company has been injured. Articles about the Wall here.

Sad thing is some concrete contractor is laughing. During the Bush Admin prices for everything, all over the world have soared, yet oil companies like Exxon are now earning $1,300 a second. Is George Bush a failed oil man? Not anymore, I bet he's the "coolest" Oil Man in Texas these days. Once he's out the White House he is off to Paraguay to live on his 10,000 acre ranch.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Greetings-from-Sadr-City

Well said, peretz.

I may have raised the abortion angle in post #62 or #65, but the artificial insemination angle of posts 72-77 was just too juicy to pass up, so I dropped it.

DavidM

I would point you to
http://stemcells.nih.gov/ for information that is more critical and thorough. Christian bioethics advocacy groups have their pluses and are easier to Google, but the stemcellresearch.org site is a bit undernourished on critical analysis.

Has your tax money been earmarked for the drug companies? I am pretty bitter that my taxes have gone to pay for (now unused) barbed wire fences in Sadr City, Iraq and single-source contracting with Halliburton. But such is a big Fed. It is the fairly minimal individual cost of being a citizen of a great (new AP ranking #7) and affluent nation.

I do hate the libertarian or NIMBY argument that you advance against government sponsored scientific research. To wholly privatize something like stem cell research, you would invite two substantial problems into the field:

1) Intellectual property issues - A lawyer's feast for bottomfeeders like me to be sure, but these issues won't help patients.

2) Profit - Research would be driven by profit alone which would cut off many avenues and possibly limit the pool of persons who ultimately benefit.

Public-Private competition (as was found with the human genome project) is probably the most beneficial state of affairs.