Monday, August 16, 2004

national review sucks

the original journal was just going to say, "Rich Lowry is an asshole" and that was it. but apparently i kept on writing...
-------this wasn't a well written journal, it's long, not cohesive and i apologize. i didn't even want to write it, but not doing so just made me sick. the political situation is just in the shit hole.-------
i was trying to stay away from watching and writing about politics for a while (i don't know when the hell i started getting interested at all to tell you the first place... the things an election year fires you up to do) BUT.

i was having a pretty good night of watching the jaguars play their first preseason game when i started flipping channels. somehow i landed on C-Span, that was a bad idea. Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review was speaking to the "young america's foundation". you know the drill, Rich stands at the podium and University students from across the U.S. throw questions at him. now i firmly believe that regardless of if you are liberal or conservative you should at the very least be civil and do some research if you intend to blast the opposition, but watching the 20 minutes of this Q&A session made me cringe. this was also the first time that i ever heard conservatives use a mentality of "anyone but kerry". i realize that if you are trying to get across an agenda there will be a fair amount of spin involved, but you are talking to your constituents for god's sake, you don't need to make every argument one sided and every freaking question was like the kids were trying to pat themselves on the back and get Rick Lowry to pat them on the head for how smart and what good conservatives they were.

The first thing that i heard was a girl pose the question about why the liberal slanted media keeps pushing for embryonic stem cells as opposed to adult stem cells and why we hard headed liberals are just out to abort fetuses and burn villages. (ok so i made up that last part). Rich Lowry starts off by calling Ron Reagans speech at the DNC shameful. He said that the only reason that Ron was up there was because his dad had died. I ask you, what's wrong with that? Ron Reagan never thought about using science to help his dad and other people who have incurable disease until his dad had alzhymers and died, but he was made aware about it and now he's being pro-active and trying to do something about it. He's not trying to bring Ted Williams back to life or something. Why try and make a room full of "america's future" see a man as a self motivated asshole? his response to the stem cell question had no science or logic backing it up aside from that the decision for embryonic stem cells is pure politics and the furthering of an anti-pro-life agenda. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

not to get into a big argument, but the man really needs to look at science. If science was able to harvest stem cells from adult humans stem cells that are able to change into AS MANY different kinds as embryonic ones, I would avoid the whole ideological debate and go with adult stem cells. but this isn't the case. there is currently no magic adult stem cell. currently you have to go digging and sucking out a portion of your hip bone bone marrow, from your blood, or from your umbilical chord and even those don't have a whole lot of possibilities. but look at the alternative, i really think that the biggest problem with bush's stem cell policy is that he has limited funding so much that it is very difficult to compare the advantages and viability differences between the two sources of stem cells. i have no idea how to get around this because people who feel very strongly about pro-life just isn't going to allow that out of pure ethics. you can call it stupid, a lack of separation of church and state hindering science or you can call it a staunch stance of ideology, but there is no way to argue to millions of americans that you aren't killing babies (even if they are still blastocysts that are just a pile of cells floating around). now if this was his answer in some way shape or form, i would have had a lot of more respect for him. but it wasn't. he makes it as if the conservatives take the moral high ground and liberals are always trying to do something underhanded and shake the core values of america and blow up the world.

the next question was about hilary clinton. apparently there is a big conspiracy in the left where the clintons are secretly wishing that john kerry lose the election to protect the viability of hilary's running for president in 2008. true or not, lowry has stated concretely that this is the Clintons' mission, to regain and hold power, the endure four more years of Bush for their own agenda. sure Hilary may want to run, but do we really think that democrats who have turned 2003-2004 into one of the biggest political protests seen in years are just going to hope for a Bush victory out of self interest? i think that's far fetched. big accusation to make. good thing no one watches C-Span.

the next question was attacking the Mccain compaign finance reform bill. move-on.org and george soros are psychos and the "liberal hate machine" and it was a sneaky but succesful trick by the democrats to get a supposedly not-affiliated organization to run ads and raise money for kerry. maybe so, but doesn't seem like it's a one sided issue when most of the endorsed by GW bush ads are "kerry sucks, kick him in the balls" and you have the Swiftboat veterans for truth. how can these people go on tv and act so morally superior to the rest of the world?
politics has gotten increasingly stupid. both sides everything is character assasination, who really cares about the issues and the people they are supposed to help? all people want to do is talk buzz words and hot topics these days without knowing a glimmer of what they are talking about. "bush is stupid", "kerry is a flip flopper", "bush doesn't hide his faith", "kerry is unpatriotic and lied about his purple hearts", "kerry only got shot in the butt, wussy". the biggest thing i have been dissapointed in the bush campaign has been their focus on why john kerry is the wrong choice for president. i haven't ever seen a why bush is right for president. it seems they are running their own, "anyone but kerry" campaign. you should have seen the miffed faces when Lowry was talking about how he has been very critical of Bush and how he doesn't think he has been conservative enough.

hmmmm other highlights... the comments about libertarians. how lowry thinks that libertarians aren't serious about their own issues and how they should just concede some things and be republican. apparently he doesn't believe in the viability of anything but the two party system. you might call that... conservative.

rich lowry... thanks for being a douche.

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