THIRD PELOSI BILL PASSES OVERWHELMINGLY-- LET THERE BE STEM CELL RESEARCH

Speaker Pelosi is on a roll. Her First 100 Hours Agenda is sailing through Congress with wide bipartisan support. Today the House overwhelmingly "approved a bill that would loosen the restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research imposed by President Bush in 2001, inaugurating the second such assault on the administration's stem cell policy in as many years. Thirty-seven Republicans joined 216 Democrats to pass the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which would allow federal funding of research on stem cells from embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics.

George Bipartisan Bush has already declared he will veto the bill, which lacks 37 votes to override a presidential veto. Hopefully the Speaker will make it clear that in the 2008 congressional elections 37 more Republicans (and reactionary Democrats-- 16 joined the GOP for the day) need to be defeated by voters who would like to see cures for dozens of serious diseases and conditions that plague mankind. You know I'm no Rahm Emanuel fan (to put it mildly) but the corrupt and cynical operator came up with a great proposal today: that those voting against the bill "waive their right to access the cures that would come from the work." Unfortunately he was only joking.

The Senate is expected to pass the same bill, possibly with a veto-proof majority. If the Democrats hadn't elected a reactionary to the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat, it would be a veto-proof majority. The 16 Democrats who voted against the bill are mostly right-of-center dogs, like Lincoln Davis (TN), Jim Marshall (GA), Gene Taylor (MS-- who actually votes more frequently with Republicans than with Democrats), Mike McIntyre (NC), Collin Peterson (MN), Alan Mollohan (WV), Bart Stupak (MI), Rahm Emanuel's Heath Shuler (NC), Joe Donnelly (IN), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Nick Rahall (WV), and Jerry Costello (IL). Moderates Marcy Kaptur (OH), Daniel Lipinski (IL), Charles Wilson (OH), and James Oberstar (MN) also voted against the bill.

On the Republican side Boehner, Blunt and Howdy Doody were able to hold most of their primitivist coalition together. 37 Republicans joined with the Democrats today, mostly Californians (although die-hard fanatics and kooks like John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, Daniel Lungren, Devin Nunes, John Campbell, Wally Herger, Elton Gallegly, Edward Royce and Kevin McCarthy voted no). In the end 158 Republicans voted no. Interestingly 54% of male members voted yes and 80% of female members voted yes. Among the women voting no, are the most extremist and hate-filled Republicans in the country, infamous wingnuts like Mean Jean Schmidt (OH), Barbara Cubin (WY), Marilyn Musgrave (CO), Virginia Foxx (NC), Michele Bachmann (MN), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Sue Myrick (NC), Thelma Drake (VA), and Cathy McMorris (WA).

Tomorrow, Speaker Pelosi will try to overturn Republican legislation that has kept the government from negotiating for fair prices for prescription drugs for the elderly and impoverished. It is also expected to win overwhelmingly-- although not with the help of Republican Jack Kingston (KKK-GA)-- who has his own idea of what poor people need to do to escape poverty. After crying that the Democrats were "hurting" families by forcing congressmen to work 5 days a week ("Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families"), Kingston suggests that poor people work longer hours and stop trying to get the minimum wage increased. He said if poor people got married and worked longer hours "they would be out of poverty. It's an economic fact." As with almost everything he says, he's wrong about this too. The annual salary for full-time workers earning the federal minimum wage still leaves a family of 3 about $6,000 into the poverty threshold." Kingston is a clown and typical of the kinds of people who make up the disruptive amd obstructionist Republican minority in the House. It's hard to believe that the good folks in Waycross and southeast Georgia want this turd to represent them in Congress.