Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. A court decision today pretty much prevented the use of federal funding for any embryonic stem cell research, contrary to one of Obama's first executive orders. This includes cells from already-dead embryos. As policy, I don't like this. But I don't have an opinion about the correctness of the judge's decision, not knowing enough about the particulars of the law in question or the reasoning behind the decision. Ever notice how closely people's reactions to court decisions, especially Supreme Court decisions, follow their politics? Face it, folks, the constitution doesn't mandate everything you love and proscribe everything you hate.


2. Do you really want to keep a gay guy's partner of 30 years from getting social security death benefits? Really? On the other hand, Do we really want to regard those two guys as just an incidentally infertile couple?


3. If you think that abortion should be illegal except in the case of incest or rape, you can't at the same time believe that an embryo is a human person like the rest of us out in the world. Try this as a thought experiment: You are a monster if you kill your four year old because she causes you too much stress--unless the stress results from her father being also her grandfather. In that case, go ahead and drown her and chuck her in the dumpster.
If the outcome is horrible and the reasoning is logical, then the premises are horrible as well. Not that it's personally a problem for me, given that I don't hold with the premises in the first place.


4. You think you have not an iota of racism? that your believing that Obama is a Muslim Nazi has nothing to do with his being black, or Halfrican-American or whatever? Think of this: If you're white, how many black people live in the neighborhood you most recently moved from and how many live in the neighborhood you live in now? My guess is that how much more vitriolic and unreasonable the hatred of Obama is than the already unreasonable and vitriolic hatred of Bill Clinton was is a pretty good measure of the proportion of racism in the mix.