Due to the subjective nature of ethics, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Anyway, they’ve solved the ethical dilemma: they can revert skin cells back into their stem cell state.

Something that never would have happened if Bush hadn’t held firm on banning federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

The only possible ethical dilemma has to do with human cloning: the creation of egg and sperm cells, which could simply be banned. They haven’t been able to create viable sperm cells anyway, so it’s a non-issue at this point.

There really needs to be more education about this. The real ethical problem is how many more opportunities we’ll miss for scientific advancement that could benefit the human race and cure disease or ease the suffering of millions. I mean, is it just me, or does religion seem innately opposed to making people’s lives better?

Besides, if they have to put off the next shuttle, it’s not like the would or even can cancel the current program.

One more thing: Stem Cells = scientific research. Space Exploration = scientific research. Apples and apples. Providing funding for one and not the other is a double standard, plain and simple.

And, if you’d note any of my previous political posts, you would see I am, as a rule, not critical of Mr. Obama. In this case, I found an issue that is important (Human Space Exploration) to me in which someone (in this case, Mr. Obama) took a position that I disagreed with.

Anyway, if you’re going to apply that standard to space exploration, you need to apply it to embryonic stem cell research as well. No offense or anything, but with all the extrapolation, it just looks like any excuse to paint him in a negative light will do.

No grey area, no “this part is bad, but this other part is good.” It’s either all good or all bad, and I don’t understand it. The world isn’t black and white.

Personally, I’ve never been proven to me that George W. ducked out of anything. Flying fighter jets even during peacetime is not an activity for cowards.

The real chicken shits are the ones went off to Canada.

Yeah, like hiding in the National Guard, and then going AWOL even from THAT, to avoid real duty.

Vonster, honored though I may be, when the hell did I become king?

By the way, he didn’t quote the entirety of his plan. You can read the plan itself at the link I posted up above.

Which parts did you disagree with/think are out of whack?

Try harder.

And I don’t read the Daily Kos, Vonster. In fact, the only reason I know it exists is because you’ve pointed it out over and over. It’s free advertising for them, but I still don’t read it. news.google.com and a few magazine/newspaper subscriptions do it for me, with the occasional TV thrown in for good measure.

He should have gotten a story from KOS, huh?

You still crack me up Reno.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

Among the things the article DID get right is Obama’s desire to “trim” NASA’s budget. I don’t agree with this. I also think shuttle missions or mission delays should be at the discretion of NASA, not the president. If anything, he should be cutting the over-bloated military budget. ~700 billion dollars a year is pretty damn excessive. There’s no excuse for it.

Spending $18b on math and science education, however, doesn’t go far enough in my opinion. He’s right–other countries are leaving us behind. Part of it has to do with funding, sure. Part of it comes from fundamentalist brainwashing that convinces people science is evil and seeks to destroy their beliefs. But the majority of it, in my opinion, comes from the attitude, complacency and laziness of society. Also, urban schools are in the gutter for a plethora of ADDRESSABLE, FIXABLE reasons. If you ask me, we ought to be taking $100 billion of the military’s budget and putting it into education, not a paltry $18 billion. To complement this, we ought to have a specialized Job Corps for kids who just don’t want to be there, so they’ll at least have SOME kind of skill to get them by.

Anyway, nobody believes Obama is out to destroy NASA, like you make it sound. I’d recommend a reliable news source next time, Anon.