Bush Loses Frist

Well, it's been a warm week here in Rochester, NY. I saw a dog chasing a cat - both of them were walking!

And it's been warm in Washington, too. Bill Frist, the senate majority leader, has made a smart about-face and hopped on the stem cell research bandwagon. GWB has said he'll veto any bill that authorizes federal funding of new stem cell lines...this is going to be interesting!

As a semi-trained economist, I know that the potential value of patentable stem cell research products could be billions upon billions of dollars. Consequently, every other country with the technical expertise to work on embryonic stem cells is doing it as quickly as possible in order to capture their share of the cash and prestige. GWB's religion-based position is futile in terms of having any impact on the long term outcomes, except that it will make it harder for the U.S. to be a leader in the technology. Although George may know something about oil, but he seems to have forgotten a lot of what he learned (?) in his Harvard MBA courses.

Dr. Frist, still busy wiping egg off his face from the Terri Schaivo debacle, correctly figured out that being wrong on two major health-related issues would doom his presidential hopes for 2008. Now all we need is quick action in both houses to get federal money moving in the right direction...but "quick" is reserved only for critical legislation like sheltering gun manufacturers from secondary liability lawsuits. The people come in second again....

Afterthought... The U.S. is now waging a "struggle against extremism" rather than a "war on terror". If you can't win a war the best thing to do is rename it. The "war on terror" will be much harder to forget than the "war on drugs" and the "war on poverty", so the best strategy is to rename it. Hindsight... how much better off would we be if GWB had been forced to take Tony Blair's advice on Iraq instead of vice versa?

So, another nice warm day in Rochester. Let's take advantage of the today that God has made, have some fun, do some good, and see how Tiger and Vijay duke it out at Warwick Hills!