What happened yesterday was a tragedy for science and technology that will probably set back cures. Sadly I'm not too sure an override is feasible in the House, yes I think it can be done in the Senate, but we need a 51 vote swing in the House and if you know how House districts are created you know how unlikely it is. We'll never get enough traction on the stem cell issue alone to shift 51 seats, most House seats are in districts that are overwhelmingly tilted in the favor of one party, most years scarcely more than a dozen House seats are even slightly competitve. The only way to fix the problem is to vote for different state legislatures to redraw the House member boundries, but that is easier said than done because the state legislatures draw their own boundries so most members of state legislatures answer only to themselves.
The only thing that can cause a massive shift in the 2006 elections will be a a gigantic scandal, and Iraq isn't going to cut it, it didn't work in 2002 and it didn't work in 2004 when it was used as a campaigning tactic and if the Democrats use it again it will fail once again in 2006. Short of a massive scandal, the one thing that might work is for Democrats to ignore foreign policy and create a massive vision for domestic policy similar to the Republican's successful "Contract with America" in 1994. Naturally stem cell research would be a plank, as would be a minimum wage hike and some sort of way of getting some medical coverage to the people without any. Unfortunately I'm not too optimistic about this happening, we'll know they are serious when they run Michael Moore (who is the other side of the same coin that Ann Coulter is on) out of the party on a rail.
Now enough about being negative, let's look at the positive, it appears that a strong enough majority of the legislature supports stem cell reserach that a ban is pretty unlikely, this is a giant step forward, just a few years ago we weren't so certain about that. Now that we can feel pretty safe that we wont be stopped by the government, we can move ahead and make these cures happen privately. Remember, we don't NEED Uncle Sam to be successful, but we do need him to not ban what we're doing. Now don't get me wrong, the veto was a tragedy for mankind, but with all tragedies, there is a rule, and that is that somebody somewhere always benefits from a tragedy. The worst imaginable thing possible will always produce a winner somewhere. Naturally undertakers and wheelchair salesmen are a winner from the veto, but I also think that Geron will be a winner for two reasons. 1. Less competition, 2. Less likelihood of the federal goverment monkeying around with Geron's patents. Does this make the veto right, absolutely not, but I insist on trying to think of the positives, it is the only way to avoid going crazy in this crazy world.
AI
