Shame! Shame!

I was born in the United States. I have lived here all of my life that, by now, has been quite a long time. I have always been very proud to be an American. I have never, until just now, had any reason to feel ashamed of my citizenship. The House and the Senate have made me realize that I should be ashamed. They voted overwhelmingly to support Israel's attack on Lebanon. In other words, to be blunt, they voted to support Israel's blatant war crimes. I guess once you are guilty of war crimes, aiding and abetting further war crimes doesn't make much difference. It's like murder, once you are guilty of one murder it doesn't much matter if you murder again. We need billboards all across the U.S. that say, "stop us before we do it again." But it's too late for that. We are complicit in terrible war crimes and every day the Israel juggernaught continues to kill innocent Lebanese and Gaza citizens we become more complicit. Let me say it again: killing innocent civilians, including children, is clearly a war crime. Destroying a country by bombing its infrastructure is a war crime. There is no doubt about this. It is just a matter of fact. The suffering that Israel has imposed on Gaza and now Lebanon is inexcusable. Now they have actually invaded Lebanon again, instead of just bombing them back to the stone age. The Lebanese, like the Palestinians, are virtually helpless, certainly no match for the billions of dollars worth of American munitions and military hardware we have given Israel year after year. And what a marvelous system it is: we give them billions of dollars of taxpayer money which they then turn around and give to American corporations for all their military supplies. In other words, we change taxpayer money into corporate profits. Any wonder we support this illegal war unconditionally? The truly sad thing is, there is probably no way to stop this, certainly not as long as Bush/Cheney reign, and quite likely not ever.

Well, Bush finally lost his veto virginity. As you must have heard he vetoed funding for stem cell research even though both the House and the Senate voted for it, and even though the American public overwhelmingly is in favor of it. According to Tony Snow, Bush vetoed it because he "doesn't approve of murder." That is, he doesn't want scientists to use surplus embryos to try to find cures for diseases, because that would be "murdering them." So what he apparently wants to do with the some 400,000 surplus embryos that exist is continue to "discard" them. What does discard them mean? What do they do with them when they discard them? Are they given a proper burial? Does someone say a few words over them? Is there a cemetery devoted to discarded embryos? Or are they just tossed out in the garbage? They certainly aren't brought to term and then adopted (except for a tiny, tiny, number of so-called "snowflake babies"). Is there any provision for saving all these lives through adoptions? Apparently not. Perhaps instead of spending a lot of money on going into space we could build a gigantic artificial womb where all these embryos are brought to term. Then we could create some enormous orphanages to look after them. Then when they become mature adults we could provide them with decent jobs. Even better, we could just train them to work for Wal Mart and McDonalds, or maybe pick strawberries and apples. The possibilities are endless. In the meanwhile Bush can be commended for keeping science in its place (back in the 18th century). Someone said you get the government you deserve. I don't think we deserved this any more than we deserved Iraq and eternal war. Oh, I forgot, things are going well in Iraq and the Middle East.