Although Ronald Reagan is officially gone at the age of 93, I think we all know that he’s been mentally gone for years. And I think it was incredibly gutsy of Nancy Reagan–a woman whom I didn’t have much of an opinion of before–to come out publicly and stump for Stem Cell Research, which must have had the Bushites çráppìņg a brick. Reagan is/was practically the patron saint of the GOP, and Mrs. Patron Saint stepped up to the plate and waved the banner for scientific advancement that’s currently being washed up on the shoals of theological dogma.
With Mrs. Reagan no longer in the position of caretaker to her husband who, as she delicately and sorrowfully put it, had long ago embarked on a twilight journey where she could not follow (or something to that effect), I’m hoping she barnstorms the country and manages to turn around Neocon thinking about the incredible benefits of stem cell research.
PAD
• 
Re: No more USS Saratoga
“Actually, Chuck, the shift is much more subtle. Traditionally battleships were named for states, cruisers for cities, destroyers for people, carriers for battles (hence the USS Saratoga you mentioned) and submarines for fish. Following World War II the naming system was changed. Ballistic missile submarines are named for states (Ohio Class), attack submarines for cities (Los Angeles Class), cruisers for battles (Ticonderoga Class), and both carriers and destroyers for people (Nimitz and Arleigh Burke Classes… you might do better complaining about the Navy naming everything after retired CNOs). It’s the fish that get shafted, not the historic names.”
There have always been exceptions to the rules:
Carriers were named RANGER, WASP, HORNET, CABOT, etc.
The original SSBN (ballistic missile Subs) were the 21 for freedom named after great people (Alexander Hamilton, Kamehameha, Simon Bolivar, George Washington, Daniel Boone, etc.)
The shift to name subs after cities and states came in the 80s with the decline of cruisers and battleships and Admiral Hyman Rickover, the head of the nuclear Navy, stated that “Fish don’t Vote” as his reason for that change. (and one of the Los Angeles Class is named after Rickover)
Arleigh Burke was a natural name for a destroyer class because that was where the Admiral earned his fame. He led Destroyer squadrons in World War II.
Naming of Carriers is now purely political (Vinson was an influential member of Congress, Stinson was a Senator from Miss., Reagan and Bush were Republican Presidents). As are some other decisions – the next class of destroyers was to be named after Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, but the Bush Administration cancelled that because Zumwalt was a dedicated Democrat.
I mean, what the hëll CAN one do?
Well, speaking up in defense of yourself and those who are being stepped on doesn’t hurt.
You have these religious zealots that want to blame 9/11 on gays and such (I think everybody can take a guess at who I’m talking about), yet there aren’t alot of people speaking out against him from within his own religion.
The gays have to speak for themselves. It’s almost a silent approval, in a way.
If you know a person hates you and you know the reason, and the reason is a defect in the haters logic…go on with your life, there are plenty of better people to spend time on.
Sorry, can’t ignore Bush and those like him when they’re in charge of how soon this planet gets blown to bits. 🙂
originally posted by Mitch Evans:
“That’s a cool story. And it’s why I think highly of Rosa Parks. One doesn’t have to be militant to have a huge impact. In fact I’d say that being militant is taking the easy way out and only serves ones ego.”
It’s worth keeping in mind that Rosa Parks was a dedicated long-time civil rights activist at the time she sat down on that bus.
If by “militant” you mean “advocating violence,” then she was not a militant. If by “militant” you mean “extremely committed to a cause, to the extent your detractors think you are too partisan and extreme,” then she was a militant.
In the 1950s and early 1960s a favorite line of “moderates” on the civil rights issue was to condemn the “extremists” on both sides — i.e. to condemn the KKK one hand and to condemn Martin Luther King, the Freedom Riders, the sit-in folks, etc., on the other.
In the 1960s a more violent wing of the civil rights movement emerged, and that’s what people think of now when they think of militants. But Rosa Parks was considered (and condemned as) a militant in her day.
Sometimes militancy isn’t such a bad thing.
(Wish I could play music in this post. I’d play the Judy Collins song, “It Isn’t Nice”.
It isn’t nice to go to prison.
It isn’t nice to go to jail.
There are nicer ways to do things,
But the nice ways always fail.
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice.
You told us once, you told us twice.
But if that’s freedom’s price
We don’t mind.)
I love the Rosa parks story.Its refreshing to hear someone who is not into overstating what she
did.
Kind of Zen in its simplicity .Agree with other posters that not all acts of importance have to be radical or premeditated 🙂
Nova Land:
“If by “militant” you mean “advocating violence,” then she was not a militant. If by “militant” you mean “extremely committed to a cause, to the extent your detractors think you are too partisan and extreme,” then she was a militant.”
I did, in fact, mean ‘advocating violence.’ Don’t get me wrong, though. Violence does have it’s place, specifically the defense of myself and others against an agressor. As long as it’s tempered by the apropriate force rule I have no problem with violence. Violence for it’s own sake, on the other hand, is nothing more than an ego boost for those who lack creativity.
Once again it seems that I was not explicit enough in my posting. My apologies.
Salutations,
Mitch
I’m a couple days late and way down the page, but I’ve gotta comment.
Don’t expect too much from stem cell research. It amazes me how naive the researchers are being, even with negative evidence accumulating.
Stem cells, being completely or partly undifferentiated (the recent article was wrong – reproductive embryos are only good for a few stem cell applications), don’t tend to set off rejection in the donor. But the whole point is that they will eventually differentiate to replace damaged or dead cells, and at that point they will be someone else’s cells stuck among the donor’s, and they will be rejected – and steps to prevent that present their own massive difficulties.
I don’t like science censorship on moral / religious grounds (but those who hold the purse strings often make these kinds of judgments), but the eggs in this basket probably won’t make much of an omelet.
Or I’m wrong. Whatever.
Craig,
A lot of Christians do speak out on these things. Maybe you don’t hear them, but they do.
In fact, although I’m not actively involved in organized religion anymore, you can count me as one of them.
Do you know who Benny Hinn is? If not, he’s sort of like Jerry Falwell.
Anyway, there was a discussion going on about Leonardo Dicaprio and what path his career would take (this is RIGHT after “Titanic”, when he was red-hot).
Somebody in the group made a stupid )and irrelevant) comment about Dicaprio being gay. Benny Hinn then got involved, and said that if that were true Dicaprio would burn in hëll just like all gays.
When I took exception, and said that hëll is for the “Hitlers of the world”, he responded that “gays are just as bad as the Hitlers of the world”.
Nearly all the group backed me, and I still don’t know if he realizes how much he hurt his cause that day.
Benny Hinn is a charlatan who creates elaborate stage shows built around him “laying hands” on carefully selected “sick” people in his audience and healing them. His opinion on any subject is completely useless.
Derek,
how do you know that? have you been to any of his crusades? how do you know those people aren’t really sick?
I know because I don’t believe in people with superpowers just like I don’t believe in Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, fairy tales or that pro wrestling is real.
I also saw a Dateline episode where they exposed certain people who claimed to be cured of certain diseases like Lou Gehrigs by Benny Hinn to have never been ill to begin with. They also showed how he keeps the really sick in the back where they are unable to get close to the stage when he calls for sick people to let him lay hands while his staff picks the lucky recipients of Benny’s magic touch.
Further, in the Gospels and Acts, when Christ and His disciples healed the sick, did they ask first for the sick to believe, or did they use the curing as a means of persuasion?
If you’re healing people miraculously, it shouldn’t matter what they believe. You’re not supposed to be using the power of *their* faith; you’re supposed to be using the power of *your* faith.
“Truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, ‘Move hence to yonder place’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible to you.” (Matt. 17:20)
Note that He said nothing about the *mountain’s* faith in anything at all.
Benny Hinn, on the other hand, demands that anyone he “heals” first profess faith in Christ, and then be healed *through that faith.* This tells me that, whether the healing be true or no, Hinn himself is a charlatan, doing nothing for these people, yet taking their “donations” anyway.
Let’s use the people on Death Row for to supply us with organs for transplants. If they’re going to die anyway, let’s make their lives count for something. And they have a chance to help save the lives of many to atone for the ones they took..
“Let’s use the people on Death Row for to supply us with organs for transplants. If they’re going to die anyway, let’s make their lives count for something. And they have a chance to help save the lives of many to atone for the ones they took..”
See “Niven, Larry” – in particular, “The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton” (collection) and “A Gift From Earth” (novel).
It’s not just Christians that carry “AIDS Kills Fágš Dead” signs. A decade or so there was a semi-famous heavy metal singer (hardly a public avower of Christianity) wore a T-shirt with that saying in an MTV interview.
He later apologized for it. Not out of Christian regret or guilt, but something like “My grandma died of cancer, and I wouldn’t want to see a shirt that said ‘Cancer Kills Grandmas Dead.'”
A jerk is a jerk, regardless of faith. We should all point out jerky comments. But I’ll admit that jerks are moderately more likely to listen to their same peer group (other Christians, etc) than anyone else.
DEE,
I have NO respect for you. Go away. If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is PAD blog..Not yours. He’s free to express his view HIS way. If you don
Hi, Peter!
> “Moral question: If sacrificing a new born child’s life would save 100 people, would it be worth it?”
>Depends. Does the child grow up to be Hitler? And are the 100 people liberals or conservatives?
Hmm. Isn’t the impossibility (for us) of such knowledge related to what drove Captain Marvel around the bend?
Cheers,
Michael
James,
President Reagan was also ” a Christian whipped, bible thumper” as you so eloquently put it. He never hid the fact he was. Reagan just happened to be more popular then our current President. So please try to leave the religion aspect out of it.
& as has been mentioned before, just in case you missed it, Dee has beeen shrouded. Let it go. & as has also been mentioned before Bush is for stem cell reasearch.
If you want a satanic, budhist, atheist, or muslim president in the white house please vote for one. Oh wait, there aren’t any.
There are already nearly 200 replies to this, so I had to skip a lot for time. Apologies if I’m repeating anything.
I don’t agree with the circular logic of the GOP on embryonic stem cell research. Harvesting ESCs is murder to the beliefs espoused – so fertility clinics must be guilty of murder too: a large number of the fertalized embryos are just thrown away unused.
They also want to hinder other potential research: scientists found a way to get past the potential moral quagmire by using therapeutic cloning of cells, so the GOP decided _therapeutic_ cloning meant _reproductive_ cloning (copying needed cells as opposed to creating full humans) so they nixed THAT.
Adult stem cells have not been proven effective. It will take about a decade of research before they can determine their benefits. ESC would still take some time, maybe not that much.
I’m a living example of people who may be helped by the research: I’m one of the over 4 million people worldwide with multiple sclerosis. After almost 9 years, I’m still not as affected as some – but research might help people like Annette Funicello and Richard Prior to walk again, or Montel Williams not to have constant agony.
One of the last message posters said we shouldn’t bring religion into this, but that’s exactly what the President did. He took advice from his most devoutly religious Catholic voters and the Pope to make his decision in 2001. I’m like Peter (Jewish) so I don’t ascribe to the sane beliefs. The only moral view in this is: do you choose a technology that may help millions, or do you choose to follow religious beliefs and allow all those people to suffer?
In my opinion, Dubya made the wrong choice.
Oh wait, there aren’t any.
But that’s not the point, is it?
It shouldn’t matter what your religious preferences are becuase they shouldn’t influence your job as President in the way it has for Reagan and Bush Jr.
Unlike some, I could care less about the candidate’s religion unless they sit there and “I’m working for God”, which is what Bush has done.
Speaking of Reagan, I was curious what the etiquette is about putting a flag at half staff when it’s a large flag on a relatively short (say 20 feet at most) flagpole. Last week I noticed that a business had a flag on such a flagpole at full height; and wondered if it hadn’t been lowered because doing so would’ve let the bottom of the flag touch the ground, or simply because they chose not to.
So, if a flagpole is less than a certain height, is the procedure to not lower the flag, because it would then touch the ground?
Rick
Peter said: “I’m hoping she barnstorms the country and manages to turn around Neocon thinking about the incredible benefits of stem cell research.”
It amazes me how the term “neocon” has been so misused and abused. Do you honestly think Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol (and son Bill), Doug Feith, Richard Perle, and other foreign policy “neocons” have given more than a second’s thought to stem cell research. (Bush’s main man on the issue of bioethics is University of Chicago prof Leon Kass is an ethicist and religious scholar who focuses not a bit in the neocon foreign policy sphere.)
Stem cell researh simply isn’t a “neocon” issue. Neo-conservatism is essentially the assumption of American exceptionalism in the world, based on both our ideas and power, and the judicious but assertive use of our power to spread our ideas. Reasonable minds can agree or disagree about the rightness of Neoconservative principles (and indeed about the primary assumption of American exceptionalism) and can certainly debate whether it is being employed correctly at both the strategic and tactical levels (I would argue that Iraq was the wrong choice at this time, for example, in our ongoing was against Islamic terrorists, but Wolfowitz et. al. saw Iraq as the perfect place to ignite democracy in that part of the world). But the way the term “neocon” gets used as a pejorative from both the right (e.g. Pat Buchanan) and left is lazy and prejudicial and has very little to do with what neoconservatism is actually about.
Posted by jsstag at June 14, 2004 12:20 PM
Just to throw another log on the whole presidential religiousness discussion, did anyone else perceive in Ron Reagan Jr.’s eulogy a slight dig at the current president? When Reagan Jr. said:
“Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.”
I couldn’t help think that the distinction he was drawing was to the current president. I’ll leave it to historians to determine how appropriate that distinction is, but I thought it a subtle way to address the issue in a eulogy.
Rick Keating writes:
Speaking of Reagan, I was curious what the etiquette is about putting a flag at half staff when it’s a large flag on a relatively short (say 20 feet at most) flagpole. Last week I noticed that a business had a flag on such a flagpole at full height; and wondered if it hadn’t been lowered because doing so would’ve let the bottom of the flag touch the ground, or simply because they chose not to.
So, if a flagpole is less than a certain height, is the procedure to not lower the flag, because it would then touch the ground?
There’s a great site for flag regulations at http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagetiq.html.
There doesn’t appear to be anything specifically there about not half-masting a flag if it’s too large, but there are guidelines therea about how large your flag should be depending on the the size of your pole. If you follow those guidelines (e.g. a 5 foot by 8 foot flag should be used for a 25 foot flagpole) it seems that you’d be able to half-mast a flag without excessive worry about it touching the ground.
So it may be the case that that business is flying too large a flag, or (as you guess) that they simply chose not to participate.