Everyone should know by now that the Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives (and, possibly, the Senate) and cut the Republican’s advantage in the Senate down to one seat. I haven’t written much about the elections this season, mostly because I’ve felt disconnected from them. Moving left me even more cut off from my local elections than I otherwise would have been, and the only big election I really cared about was written in stone. The people here in West Virginia practically worship Robert Byrd, and my vote against him wouldn’t have done much*. All of this has led to my being less interested in the elections this year, and so, yesterday, I missed my first opportunity to vote since I’ve been eligible (to the best of my memory).

Anyway, reading about the elections this morning got me wondering exactly what this means.

A few days ago, Peter David wrote a post suggesting that, with Saddam’s conviction, our job in Iraq was “done”, and that we should just leave Iraq. I rarely agree with Peter on any of his political posts, but I’ve never disagreed with a post of his as strongly as I did that one, but I’ve put off writing a rebuttal for various reasons.

I fear that cutting and running will be the direct result of this Democratic win, and that it will make Iraq into exactly what many Democrats have been calling it for quite some time — a redux of Vietnam. I worry that leaving Iraq now would Peter’s prediction come true:

The only other job that remains is to get the Iraqis to stop killing each other. Here’s a news flash: Not going to happen. They’re going to keep killing each other over differences that go back since God-knows-when, and our presence is not going to deter that. The only presence that deterred it at all was Saddam’s, and the way he deterred it was through means so fierce and brutal that he was judged guilty of crimes against humanity. Now he will die but the killing will continue. And with him as a martyr, it will likely intensify. In the meantime there are people in charge of Iraq now who are our allies, but ten years from now, I will not be remotely surprised if they or someone else are using the exact same tactics that Saddam used to try and keep order. I don’t think we’ll ever know whether Saddam shaped the circumstances or if the circumstances shaped him. But we sure know that perfectly decent, upstanding service men and women were thrust into a situation where they had to keep order in a prison and they turned almost overnight into people whose actions were unrecognizable to their loved ones. So don’t tell me that Iraq won’t see the return of executions and secret death camps within the next few years, and then what? We start carpet bombing again?

Emphasis mine.

Of course there is always the chance that the prediction will come true in the future, that the democratically elected government would collapse and that power-hungry dictators who would have no qualms about using tactics similar to Saddam’s would come into power — there’s a chance of that in every country, after all — but leaving now would guarantee that will happen, because the government we’ve helped to establish isn’t yet strong enough to have more than even the slimmest chance of surviving.

But I Digress.

Other than the possibility of a premature withdrawal from Iraq (where failure will certainly be blamed on the Republicans even if the resulting chaos is a direct result of a Democrat-initiated pullout), I mostly see the results of this election as a good thing. I would’ve been happier if Byrd had been voted out, because he’s an embarrassment to the state of West Virginia (even if many of her people don’t realize it), but a divided government will get less done, and that’s a good thing.

Besides, there’s always the possibility (though it’s sadly a thin one) that we could get some decent compromises out of this, like the one that Dafydd ab Hugh suggests:

Here’s a thought: offer to dramatically increase funding for adult stem-cell research, placental stem-cell research, and even embryonic stem-cell research where the stem cells are extracted non-destructively… in exchange for new Integral Fast or Pebble-Bed nuclear reactors to start weaning us off oil and reduce our carbon output: I’ll bet a lot of Democrats in Congress would find that an offer they cannot refuse.

I still don’t like the idea of embryonic stem cell research (or government-funded research in general), but the rest of that would be a great deal for the country, so as long as the embryonic stem cells are harvested non-destructively, why not?

My biggest fear, in the end, is not that Democrats will push through some of their more idiotic and/or evil platforms. Having a Republican president and enough Republicans in Congress to help defend his vetoes make that unlikely. The problem is that the Democrats are not the party that Kim du Toit calls the “Stupid Party”, and for good reason. My biggest fear is that Democrats will take a lesson from Hillary Clinton and pretend to be moderates or even conservatives. Two years of that might be enough to cause Americans to forget some of the Democratic Party’s more unpalatable stances on the issues, and if they treat the next two years as a very long campaign for winning more seats in Congress as well as the Presidency, making promises that they don’t intend to keep (by passing laws that they intend to simply repeal in two years), we could find ourselves with a Democratic congress and a Democratic president, which would spell disaster.

What’s worse is that those of us who lean conservative or libertarian don’t have the same options that liberals do. They threatened to run to France and/or Canada, and if they’d done so, they would’ve found a government more to their liking. Every single country that we could conceivably run to in the event of a major national disaster (read: “Long-term Democratic control of the government”**) is even more liberal.

* I suppose that, as a registered Democrat (a status that makes less and less sense given my utter disinterest in most local elections), I could’ve pulled a play from “my” party’s playbook, but not even the combined votes of all of my dead relatives would’ve saved Raese’s campaign.

** Don’t imagine for a second that long-term Democratic control of the government isn’t a national disaster in the making — just look at what they’ve done to West Virginia.

I swear, Heroes just continues to pick up steam. It’s still moving slowly, but each week just gets me more and more drawn in… and each week, the previews leave me screaming for more.

When I first heard about the researchers who’ve managed to grow a liver from stem cells, I found the news encouraging, and didn’t really consider it much beyond that.

Yesterday, I saw a post about it in a typically liberal-leaning forum that I occasionally visit. It started out generally positive, talking about the breakthrough that this represents for patients with liver disease, and then, in the very last sentence, the tone of the post changed. After praising the British researchers, the post concluded by attacking the United States for prohibiting this kind of research using stem cells.

I have a few problems with that.

First: I know that “Umbilical cord” and “Embryonic” are big words and all, but they mean something, and equating “stem cells from umbilical cords” (which, incidentally, describes the stem cells used in this experiment) with “stem cells from aborted embryos” (not the sort used in this experiment) is fundamentally dishonest.

No one, to my knowledge has any objection whatsoever to using umbilical cord stem cells to try to cure diseases. On the other hand, many people have objections to using stem cells from aborted embryos, and despite the arguments from those who would have you believe that embryonic stem cells are a miracle cure, those objections are not primarily religious in nature.

Second: The United States government does not prohibit stem cell research, even on embryonic stem cells. It simply doesn’t fund it, which is something else entirely.

I find this kind of funny. Many conservatives seem to believe that if something isn’t prohibited, it’s encouraged (that’s why they try to pass laws against what they see as immoral acts — they don’t want to encourage it), and they’re rightly criticized for it. Liberals, at least in the case of stem cell research, seem to be stuck on the idea that if something isn’t encouraged, then it’s prohibited.

Third: The researchers in question were working with scientists from NASA, a fact that would pretty much lay waste to the idea that the United States government is somehow preventing this sort of research, wouldn’t it?

Fourth (and finally): I don’t honestly care what the British government does, but the United States government should not be using

… I mean, tax money… to fund this sort of research at all. I know I’m in a minority in that belief, but I think it’s worth putting out there.

In conclusion, I think it’s regretable that people would take a promising breakthrough like this and use it to slander the United States government.

From Peter David’s weblog, a report about what’s crossed his desk lately:

5) Finishing proofreading “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #14.” As to what’s coming up in that issue, two words: Ben Reilly. I will say no more than that (okay, Deb Whitman and the Vulture). But…Ben Reilly.

Is it just me, or did the wagon just hit a really rough patch of road? I’m having trouble staying on.

I was chatting to a friend of mine last night when she suddenly said, “What the **** did John Kerry say?!”

After she had (I assume) read more about it, she complained about it being a very good example about why it’s a stupid idea for politicians to go “off script.”

Until that discussion, I had planned not to say anything about it, primarily because other people, like Dafydd ab Hugh, had already covered the topic more thoroughly than I would have.

Just for the record, here’s the pertinent part of Kerry’s quote:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

In his follow-up post, Dafydd links to John Kerry’s website’s multimedia section, where you can view the offending speech (“John Kerry Speaks a Rally in Pasadena“).

The way I see it, there are a few different ways that Kerry could have made this gaffe:

1. Kerry misread, misskimmed, misremembered, or otherwise messed up his prepared speech. He was supposed to be telling a “non political” joke about the President (which seems akin to telling a “nonreligious” joke about the Pope’s religious declarations, but whatever), and flubbed it, leading to an unintentional insult against the troops. [This seemed to be the take of the friend I was talking with, and she didn't seem interested in discussing which of the two sub-possibilities was most likely] This one has two sub-possibilities:
• Kerry didn’t mean to say what he said, and he certainly didn’t believe it [This is the position Kerry wants us to believe], or
• Kerry didn’t mean to say what he said, but he absolutely meant what he said. [This "Freudian slip" theory is my personal take on the situation, but I could be sold on #2]
2. He said exactly what he meant to say, (more or less) as it was scripted, and now he’s backpedaling because of the backlash. [This seems to be Dafydd's final conclusion in his second post]

In the end, I think that this incident, especially if one considers the non-apologies that’ve come from Kerry (and sources close to him) since, proves one thing. No matter how bad Bush’s administration might be, it’s important to remember that the alternative was likely to be worse.