To be fair, if anyone knows what it's like to have the shakes because he's off his medication, it's Rush Limbaugh!

But there's the sad irony. Rush is too ignorant to realize that the shakes experienced by those beset with Parkinsons' are due to *taking* medication. Without the meds, these folks grow increasingly immobile.

Rush Limbaugh is an uninformed, crass fool. And y'know, I'm all for free speech but sometimes I think certain people should have to pay the rest of us if we have to be subjected to their vacuous ramblings.

We're NOT subjected to the vacuous ramblings unless we want to be. Were it not for every website and news channel repeating the ramblings of Limbaugh, I might not ever have heard it. I don't think it's right...and as I understand Limbaugh gave a backhanded apology, but the point of the post is that Limbaugh has disenfranchised a certain demographic because of his insult to celebrity status. Has our country devolved to the point where we vote based on the best acting in a sitcom? If so, whomever the cast of "Lost" or "Grey's Anatomy" is shilling for...I'll vote for them.

Fair enough comment Aaron. I will not remove my tongue from my cheek.

Oops meant to say "now remove." In all seriousness, we do hope that people base their voting and political decisions on careful research on the issues. Unfortunately, that is not usually the case. Charisma and that celebrity it-factor go a long way in elections.

I'll agree that Aaron makes a reasonable point about celebrity and politics, but I think it worth observing that politics is and always has been essentially a popularity contest. As such, the line between a popular person and a celebrity is pretty thin. Schwarzenegger, Reagan, Sonny Bono, and plenty of other folks have used their celebrity to enter the political circus and examples go back through American history to George Washington, the war hero who became our first President.

Given this context, I think it odd that Aaron seems to suggest we have devolved as a country when we give greater attention to a popular voice over a lesser known voice.

St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, Jeff Suppan, agreed to appear in a commercial voicing his opposition to stem-cell research and that commercial aired last night during the World Series while Suppan was pitching. It's not just a handful of actors, Aaron, it's anyone who might have an additional edge to influence listeners because they are known to us.

I'm not saying it's right. As a baseball fan, I found it offensive that Suppan would agree to this while he was appearing in the game, and I am rooting for the Cards to win this year. But I do think it's just politics as usual.

Yeah. Another liberal cause that each family in America can contribute another $1 to Washington in their taxes, just so Washington can give 27 cents of it to the people who do the actual research (while paying out the other 73 cents to all of the bureaucrats from D.C. all the way down to the smallest gov't entity in which each research facility resides).

Modern liberals tend to have thoughts along the lines of "if only we'd cut back on the military spending." You don't consider the fact that what the federal gov't is actually mandated to do in the Constitution is only about 6% to 8% (including the military) of the overall budget.

Just think... if the Feds were to govern according to the limits set out in the Constitution then there would be a hell of a lot more cash flowing into each of our favorite causes. States would have more money, schools would (by the way, how much of the Dept of Education's $56 Billion budget actually makes its way to your children's class room?) have much more money -- and autonomy and most of all, WE could decide where and how our own money is best spent.

Frankly, I'm just damned tired of having less money to spend on my own mother because so many of you won't take the responsibility of caring for your own and so require me to pay into Social Security (yeah! what an oxymoron that one is).

Got a favorite cause? How about dipping into your own pocket rather than demanding that the Feds dip into everyone else's?

Your brother is sick? Well help him out from your own resources. Or seek charity from charitable organizations. But don't go demanding that Congress do something about it (i.e. come and take more of my money under threat of law).

Too stupid to plan for your own retirement? Hit up your own families to pitch in for your survival. Don't steal it from me through Washington, D.C.

In other words... grow up and become responsible adults.

Hmmm...I am a Republican and a staunch advocate of smaller government. But Shayne seems to ignore that the 'stealing' is coming from the Republican Congress and the 'neo cons' currently in the White House. Don't complain about the Dems Shayne. The real traitors are those Republicans who forgot it meant to be just that.

NotShayne... You seem to think I'm a Republican. Don't feel badly, most of my friends do as well. Although I am indeed very conservative fiscally and a staunce Constitutionalist, I am very libertarian in my societal/moral outlook. I am, a liberal but only in the classical sense. (Modern liberals are NOT classical liberals.)

Although I am voting Republican for national elections this cycle (and believe me, I'm walking into the booth with one huge grain of salt) I am voting much more independently on local issues and candidates.

George Bush is far from the top of the list of my favorite Presidents, but he was the very best choice out of the field we had in both elections. I shudder to think the trouble we'd be in by now had Gore had won the first or Kerry the second. Both of whom are solid appeasers - a policy which has a distinct 100% failure rate to date.

NotShayne,

An aside: I put in hundreds of hours of volunteer work to help with the hugely succesful "Contract with America" campaign. Then watched, with utter dismay, as most of the Republican Congressional freshmen who ran on that ticket became assimilated by the senior Republicans in office. The poor bastards who stuck to Newt's principles were marginalized and even shut out of funding for re-election campaigns -- again, by the senior (and obviously already thoughroly corrupted) members of their own party.

None were more dissappointed and dismayed than I.

+Shayne

Shayne

Asking gov't to stop blocking research is not the same as asking gov't to fund research. The issue here is not lobbying the gov't to pay for stem-cell research, it's to allow it to go forward. What you seem to be objecting to here is not even the issue under discussion, although it's obviously clearly related. Who hoodwinked you into thinking that funding was the issue, Karl Rove perhaps, the Master of Deception?

And for the record, I agree with you that funding is a legitimate issue, especially with our huge national debt (thanks to George). But that's simply another topic altogether.

In upbraiding Michael J. Fox for not taking his medication, wasn't HeadRush Limbag actually schilling for the big pharmaceutical companies? After all, they couldn't ask for a better spokesman, he being a veritable walking drugstore himself.

Big Pharma can't buy this kind of publicity, and is a bigger bonanza for them than the Medicare prescription giveaway.