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Guest
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OT Michael J. Fox Is Not Infallible
Rush calls it like it is....
Michael J. Fox Is Not Infallible;
He's Just the Latest Victim Used by the Democrat
October 24, 2006
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the big issues in the Missouri Senate race -- as you
know, we touched on it yesterday -- is the Michael J. Fox commercial
which is entirely misleading and which is in itself an attack ad, and
it is filled with disinformation about embryonic stem cell research
and how Jim Talent wants to criminalize it. Embryonic stem cell
research -- and, by the way, Fox is doing similar commercials in
Maryland now for Ben Cardin against Michael Steele. But embryonic stem
cell research is currently legal and completely unrestricted in both
Maryland and Missouri and in the vast majority of other states. It's
largely personal and institutional ethics that keep scientists from
cloning research.
The debate we're having is almost always about governmental funding or
radical measures like the one currently on the ballot in Missouri,
which is Amendment 2, which would write a right to cloning into the
state constitution of Missouri, and it's one of these cleverly worded
things that makes you: if you vote yes, you're voting no, and
vice-versa. So we'll talk more about the Michael Fox situation
because, as I knew yesterday, the Drive-By Media, including things
like Inside Edition, are all panting (panting) to make something out
of this that isn't. We will address that, but Michael J. Fox entered
the political arena long ago. He became a US citizen in 2000.
He's from Canada. He was active in the Kerry campaign in 2004 and he's
entered the political arena again with this series of commercials for
Ben Cardin in Maryland and Claire McCaskill in Missouri. One of the
tactics the Democrats have -- and they've used this consistently. They
bring forth people who they think are victims for the purposes of
exploiting them, and when you bring forth -- for example, if you're
talking about embryonic stem cell research, and you want to convey the
notion that the Republicans are opposed to it, and in effect they're
for people having Parkinson's Disease. Make no mistake that's what the
intent is.
Then you bring forth a person who's suffering the disease, and you
illustrate the disease and the ravages and the suffering on TV to
create sympathy and infallibility, because you're not supposed to be
able to attack somebody or criticize somebody in any way or in any
regard if they suffer from the disease. It's considered cold-hearted
and cruel. What's happening here is that Michael Fox has entered the
political arena with his attack, which includes false information
about Senator Talent and Michael Steele in Maryland. That's fair game,
and I am not going to follow the script that says we're not allowed to
comment on the things said by participants, "victims," what have you,
that the Democrats put forth as infallible in the middle of a
political campaign.
I would argue that Mr. Fox is damaging what has traditionally been a
bipartisan effort at addressing and curing illnesses, and that is the
primary point here. Democrats are politicizing diseases and illnesses.
The Breck Girl, John Edwards, promising, if John Kerry is elected,
that Christopher Reeve and others with spinal paralysis would walk,
when there's no such is evidence that any research into embryonic stem
cells will create any immediate cure toward anything. It is
irresponsible to mislead victims of people suffering from these
horrible diseases in such a fashion. But that's exactly what has
happened.
That's what the Democrats are doing, politicizing diseases and
illnesses, damaging what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort at
addressing and curing illnesses, and the same time they claim if you
don't embrace their political and cultural agenda, then you're for
Parkinson's disease, and you are for spinal paralysis. It's no
different than the way they do it in the environmental movement. They
talk about dirty water and dirty air, and if you oppose the
environmentalists, why, you must be for dirty water and dirty air! You
don't want clean water and clean air, and this is a script that they
have written for years. Senate Democrats used to parade victims of
various diseases or social concerns or poverty up before congressional
committees and let them testify, and they were infallible. You
couldn't criticize them.
It was the same thing with the Jersey Girls after 9/11, and in the
period of time when the 9/11 commission was meeting publicly. Victims
are infallible. Whatever they say cannot be challenged. I don't follow
the script anymore. Now, in terms of Michael J. Fox, I did some
research today, and I found his book that was published. It's "Lucky
Man," 2002, but he admits in the book that before Senate subcommittee
on appropriations I think in 1999, September of 1999, he did not take
his medication for the purposes of having the ravages and the horrors
of Parkinson's disease illustrated, which was what he has done in the
commercials that are running for Claire McCaskill and Jim Talent. So
when you insert yourself into the political arena this way, to expect
insulation and absolution and to expect yourself not to have what you
say criticized in the manner in which you're trying to sway opinion is
a little bit I think above the fray. I mean, to think that you're
immune from any sort of criticism, it's worked in the past for
Democrats, but it doesn't work here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me explain to you, ladies and gentlemen, what's going on in
my home state that has made this whole stem cell debate so
controversial there, and it is typical of the Democrats in this
country and the left who can only succeed by misleading. Here's the
history in Missouri. For four years, legislators in Missouri have
tried to pass a simple ban on human cloning, something that
neighboring states to Missouri have done. It's a one-page piece of
legislation, a one-page bill. It has never passed. It says that
"somatic cell nuclear transfer," that's cloning, "will be a crime in
Missouri. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the scientific term for
cloning, the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep.
"The other side makes hysterical claims that this bill would
criminalize embryonic stem cell research and put patients in jail, and
both claims are utterly false. Today in Missouri, there is a
constitutional amendment called Amendment 2, and it calls itself the
'Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.' McCaskill favors it.
Senator Talent opposes it. Amendment 2 is misleading in that it
appears to put stem cell research in the Constitution and to ban human
cloning, but the fine print creates a right to do somatic cell nuclear
transfer, cloning, which is the scientific term for cloning, the same
method used to clone Dolly the sheep." Now, The Amendment 2 proponents
are using Michael J. Fox and trotting out other people with sick
relatives to try to convince Missourians that there will be no cures
for their diseases without Amendment 2, which is a cloning amendment
that has nothing to do with stem cell research.
The truth is, all stem cell research is legal today in Missouri. Jim
Talent does not seek to criminalize it, as Michael J. Fox asserts in
his television commercial. Stem cell research is legal today in
Missouri, it is happening at universities across the state. The truth
is Amendment 2 would put human cloning in the Constitution. Now, the
Michael J. Fox ad says that Talent wants to criminalize research, and
this is false. It is already legal and it's already happening. Senator
Talent and other opponents of Amendment 2 are not touching stem cell
research in any way. What they want to do is stop human cloning from
becoming a new right in the Missouri Constitution, and so they have
named the pro-cloning bill the stem cell research and cures initiative
so that people will go to the polls on November the 7th and think
they're voting for stem cell research, which is already legal.
Michael J. Fox is participating in this disinformation campaign.
Folks, I don't care what anybody says, it is unseemly, it is
exploitative, and it is downright mean to mislead people who suffer
from incurable diseases at the moment or horrible diseases, that there
is a cure around the corner if only, if only Republicans could be
defeated. There has been a tradition in this country of bipartisan
efforts to cure all of these diseases or to come up with vaccinations
for them, but never mind that, we're in the process here now of
damaging what has traditionally been this bipartisan effort in
addressing and curing illnesses by politicizing them. We're now
politicizing diseases and illnesses.
The Democrats politicized spinal paralysis and spinal injuries in the
2004 campaign, and now they are politicizing Parkinson's disease, and
they've done that, and it's all about stem cell research, and of
course embryonic stem cell research. Any bit of information or
research that shows progress in either of these areas that does not
involve stem cell, embryonic stem cell research, is rejected by the
left. Now, why is this? What is so damned important about embryonic
stem cell research? Why not adult stem cells? Why not research on
umbilical cord blood cells that can be extracted from the blood in the
umbilical cord? Because you can't take abortion out of this mix.
Just because it's not being talked about in this campaign, do not be
lulled and fooled into thinking that abortion does not remain the
sacrament of the Democratic Party and its religion. It is the thing
that they will never once compromise on, and they think that anything
that stands in the way of embryonic stem cell research is going to be
an obstacle to having abortions, and the converse is true. If you can
open up the field of embryonic stem cell research and just go out and
get an embryo, what do you have to do to get an embryo? I've heard
some Democrats say, "Well, an embryo is not fertilized, is it?" How
little they know. Of course it's fertilized, and you have to kill it,
and of course that advances the notion I told you long ago, folks.
If you leave it up to these liberals, you're going to end up with a
culture where they are going to decide who lives and who dies based on
the convenience and personal preferences of theirs. We're already
eliminating kids in the womb. We're eliminating the elderly because
they're an inconvenience, and now we want to eliminate the embryos and
fetuses because we might be able to cure disease even though there's
no evidence whatsoever for it. So for people to say that it is unfair
to criticize things said by people who enter this arena just because
they suffer from a certain disease, that may be the Democrats' script
for all these years, but it is not a script I'm going to follow
anymore.
Again, Michael J. Fox is saying that Jim Talent, a Republican
incumbent Senator wants to criminalize research. It is false. Talent
and other opponents of Amendment 2 in Missouri are not touching stem
cell research in any way. What they want to do is stop human cloning
from becoming a new right in the Missouri Constitution. Missourians
against human cloning are up against a $30 million spin campaign. It's
an unheard of amount of money. It breaks all records for statewide
campaigns in the history of Missouri. And their main spin is that the
somatic cell nuclear transfer isn't cloning. But the National Academy
of Sciences and so forth and other organizations say that it is. It is
more deception from the left designed to trap you into voting for
something that actually isn't on the ballot at all.
RUSH: All right, people are asking for the cite, that's c-i-t-e. This
would be Michael J. Fox, an excerpt from his book "Lucky Man" June 1,
2002. Here is what he writes regarding his appearance before a Senate
appropriations subcommittee hearing in Washington on September 28th,
1999: "I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the
subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion
demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease and the
urgency we as a community were feeling be seen as well as heard. For
people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the
transformation must have been startling," as it was for me when I saw
the commercial he was running in Missouri, because I had never seen
him that way before, ever, and I got numerous e-mails from people
saying he had said that he does this: goes off the medication to
illustrate the ravages of the disease to people and so it's in his own
book, that he admits doing this.
Now, Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online has a story on their
website today: "Doc Hollywood on the Campaign Trail; What Michael J.
Fox learned while on Spin City," and in it she quotes Princeton
professor Robert P. George, who sits on the president's bioethics
commission, and he says this: "I have great sympathy for Mr. Fox and
other victims of Parkinson's and similarly horrible diseases. I
understand how desperately he hopes for a cure for what afflicts him
and so many others. I have seen members of my own family suffer, and I
too want to hasten the day when the great engine of science conquers
the diseases that cause so much suffering. But the fact that Mr. Fox
is a victim is not a license for him to mislead or manipulate the
public.
"The truth — the whole truth — must be told. Those politicians who,
for political gain, have run these ads in which the truth is distorted
and people are misled deserve the most severe of reprimands. Win or
lose, they have brought upon themselves disgrace." That, ladies and
gentlemen, is my whole point: "that Mr. Fox is a victim is not a
license for him to mislead or manipulate the public. The truth -- the
whole truth -- must be told. Those politicians who for political gain
have run these ads in which the truth is distorted and people are
misled deserve the most severe of reprimands. Win or lose, they have
brought upon themselves disgrace." That, ladies and gentlemen, is my
whole point. "Mr. Fox is a victim is not a license for him to mislead
or manipulate the public. The truth -- the whole truth -- must be
told. Those politicians who for political gain have run these ads in
which the truth is distorted and people are misled deserve the most
severe of reprimands. Win or lose, they have brought upon themselves
disgrace."
That is happening to Claire McCaskill in Missouri today. Ben Cardin in
Maryland are both disgracing themselves by exploiting the suffering of
this disease in the effort to politicize it and to make it appear to
voters in their states, Missouri and Maryland, that voters for --
well, let's put it this way: Making it appear that their opponents,
Jim Talent in Missouri and Michael Steele in Maryland, are for
Parkinson's disease because they are opposed to research which would
cure it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I can't emphasize
this enough. Embryonic stem cell research in Missouri is legal, and it
is ongoing, and nobody wants to criminalize it. To the phones we go.
This is Carol is it San Diego. You're up first today. It's nice to
have you with us.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos from the left coast.
RUSH: Thank you. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: I called because I saw on, I believe it was Fox News. Dr.
Rosenfeld has a show. I think it's on Sunday.
RUSH: That would be Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld, yes.
CALLER: That's him, and he was talking about a cure that they're
coming up with for Parkinson's disease that has nothing to do with
stem cells, it has to do with a virus that is going to be injected in
the brain, a harmless virus. The body produces whatever it is that the
Parkinson's disease people are missing. The brain would actually
produce this, and the disease would disappear.
RUSH: This is the hope. Now, wait, this is the hope. I have a story
here that I think is along the lines of what Carol is talking about.
It is a UPI story from October the 11th, 13 days ago. "Researches at
Rush University Medical Center, Chicago..." and I am not making this
up, ladies and gentlemen. "Researchers at Rush University Medical
Center in Chicago have said a new Parkinson's disease treatment
reduced symptoms by 40 percent. However, researchers said the test
only involved 12 patients and may have been affected by the placebo
effect, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday. Further tests of the
gene therapy method could solidify the treatment as the first known to
slow, halt or possibly reverse damage done by the progressive disease.
"Treatments are currently available to relieve symptoms of the
illness, but do not stop the disease from progressing. The procedure
features two nickel-size holes drilled into the top of a patient's
head by a brain surgeon. A virus..." She's right. "A virus containing
the desired gene is then inserted into the brain using a needle, and
the virus carries the gene to the brain cells. The cells are then
instructed by the gene to produce a protein that protects and
regenerates cells that make dopamine." Dopamine is what's missing in
Parkinson disease sufferers. Now get this. Here's the clincher: "The
results were announced at a meeting of the American Neurological
Association in Chicago. The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's
Research has donated $1.9 million for a follow-up study."
So the Michael J. Fox Foundation currently, with its namesake, doing
commercials misleading Missourians and Marylanders on the effects of
stem cell research and the idea that Republicans want to criminalize
this research and stop and prevent a cure for Parkinson's disease has
actually funded a follow-up study to this virus research that involves
gene therapy. Do I need to say more? They're still not sure about this
but it shows promising results, far more promising than anything that
has come from embryonic stem cell research to date, ladies and
gentlemen. Now, this has to be known by Mr. Fox since his foundation
donated $1.9 million for a follow-up study on this and yet he still is
producing these commercials. Now, who do you want to blame, you want
to blame Fox or do you want to blame the candidates for running them?
Robert George, the professor at Princeton, blames the candidates.
They're the ones who are disgraced by exploiting and using the
sufferers of this disease to politicize the illness and for political
gain. Jane, Lees Summit, Missouri, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Primo dittos to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, thank you very much.
CALLER: I count it a privilege to talk to you. I wanted to call
regarding this embryonic stem cell research as a person who has brain
cancer, type one diabetes, taking four shots a day, had rheumatoid
arthritis, two broken bones in my leg that have not healed in six
years --
RUSH: Why, is that because of diabetes?
CALLER: Right. Right, and so I'm in a wheelchair. So I have a vested
interest in this. But I see this stem cell research as being another
gambling issue in Missouri. They say one thing, but they do another.
They talk about creating a cure, but what they really want to do is
clone, and I am totally against the cloning, and I see Claire
McCaskill as just being another deceptive liberal.
RUSH: No question about it. There's no other way to categorize this.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, not to beat a dead horse, but repetition
is the best way people learn. Amendment 2 on the ballot in Missouri,
it calls itself the stem cell research and cures initiative. It has
nothing to do with that. It is a cloning initiative. The way they're
getting away with this is that the scientific name for cloning is
"somatic cell nuclear transfer" The syllables all run together for
people that pay average amounts of attention. It's a pro-cloning bill,
calling itself the stem cell research and cures initiative, and this
is what makes this commercial by Michael J. Fox so all the more
misleading. He's actually trying to tell voters in this commercial
that Claire McCaskill is running that Jim Talent "opposes stem cell
research" and Jim Talent wants to "criminalize" it. So does Michael
Steele in Maryland.
Thus they want people who suffer these diseases to continue to, when
in fact the Amendment 2 is not even about stem cell research. It's
about cloning! The bill has failed to become law for four years. For
four years, legislators have tried to pass a ban on human cloning, and
the bill has never passed, and so they're trying to write a cloning
amendment to the US Constitution, and they're making everybody think
that the cloning amendment is nothing more than stem cell research.
They're preying on people's ignorance, they're creating false hope for
people who suffer from these diseases that this vote for Amendment 2
will lead to a cure for what they have, no different than what John
Edwards was doing in 2004 when promising that if John Kerry is elected
we'll do the work necessary and Christopher Reeve will be walking
soon. So Jane, how many people do you run into in Missouri that are
confused about this?
CALLER: Oh, probably every third person. I have a fairly large group
of friends, and we have talked about it incessantly, and it's just,
you know, everybody is confused and --
RUSH: Well, that's the idea.
CALLER: Right, and to me, if liberals are for it, then I'm against it.
RUSH: Yeah. (laughing) You and I on the same page.
CALLER: Right, and I see this as a whole cottage industry growing up
to harvest women's eggs and taking advantage of young women who are in
a financial crisis, harvesting their eggs and then at some point they
will find out that they've sacrificed their fertility.
RUSH: Yeah. There is an upside to this.
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: The only upside is that liberals will be continuing to abort
themselves, which will weaken their political strength in the future
-- which, you know, makes this a tough call on the political side.
Morally and ethically, of course, it's simple.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Jane, great call, I'm glad you took the time to get through.
CALLER: Thank you very much sir.
RUSH: All the best.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Steve in Kankakee, Illinois. You're next, sir. It's great to
have you with us.
CALLER: Yeah. Rush, mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Vietnam veteran and retired police officer. I just wanted to
call on how the Democrats are -- with their sympathy vote, they
recruited Tammy Duckworth to run for Henry Hyde's seat in DuPage
County, and I think this is just another example of them going --
RUSH: Tell people out there in Rio Linda who Tammy Duckworth is.
CALLER: Well, Tammy Duckworth is the veteran of the Iraq war, and she
lost two legs while in combat, and when she came back, they,
Democrats, now they've recruited her to run against Peter Roskam for
Henry Hyde's seat in DuPage County up around Elmhurst.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, I know it's the fear thing -- or the sympathy thing
-- but I actually think it's something else out there, Steve, and I
think it's not new. There's nothing new in the Democratic Party
playbook. This is nothing but fear. The Michael J. Fox ads in Missouri
and Maryland play on people's fears. The attempt to come up with a
cure for spinal paralysis is nothing but an attempt to play on
people's fears. Throughout my political awareness, my adult years, I
have listened to Democrats say that the election of Republicans will
lead to the end of Social Security; that people will be kicked out of
their homes, that their money will be snatched in any number of ways;
that senior citizens will be eating dog food as opposed to getting
prescriptions because the Republicans are going to fix it so they
don't have enough money to do both.
This is quite common, but fear is something that everybody battles
through every day. Everybody fears something multiple times a day. If
you're a Social Security recipient, and that's all you've got, and a
trusted Democrat politician comes along and tells you that the
Republicans are going to take it away from you, you may not be able to
take the chance that they're lying to you. Take a look at NAACP ads in
2000 and 2004. We had radio ads suggesting (in St. Louis, by the way)
that Bush was responsible for black churches burning. We had a
television ad, the James Byrd ad, a lynching ad that Bush didn't do
anything about James Byrd being dragged behind the bumper of a
fast-moving automobile down a dirt road.
These are frequent and common appearances. So the Tammy Duckworth
situation, there may be a little difference here, but, you know,
Democrats, in addition to Tammy Duckworth, have gone out and recruited
eight Iraq war veterans -- and none of them are doing well. Some of
them didn't even survive their primary. Within a week of Bush taking
office in 2000, he was responsible for leaving arsenic in the water
that was going to poison everybody! Forty-three to 53 million
Americans don't have health insurance and cannot go to the doctor, and
they're just one breath away, one inhale away from getting a fatal
disease. So this is unseemly stuff, and it's playing not so much on
sympathy but on fear.
You take people are horrible diseases, like Michael J. Fox has,
Parkinson's disease or something else that gets progressively worse
over time -- Alzheimer's, you name it, cancer that is not curable --
to exploit these diseases and to try to convince voters that there is
a political party who doesn't want the cure to ever happen, that they
want people to get sick and they want people to die. It's no different
than saying they're going to take all your money away by cutting your
Social Security and kick you out of your house. I'll never forget,
1985, '86, working at -- '84, actually, in Sacramento, Ronald Reagan
was responsible for AIDS.
Ronald Reagan and the Republicans wanted AIDS victims to die -- and
you know why? Because Reagan never uttered the word! Reagan never
talked about AIDS. You go look at the federal budgets, the outlays on
AIDS research, and you'll see the lie put to that myth. Now, this is a
common Democrat tactic. It is very common to lie and misname ballot
initiatives to convince people they're voting for just the opposite of
what they think they're voting for. This is how Democrats operate.
Ladies and gentlemen, learn it; love it; live it: Democrats cannot
look you in the eye and say here's what we're for and convince you to
vote for it. They have to trick you, they have to lie to you, they
have to try to fool you or mislead you while camouflaging themselves,
and this latest tactic of the Michael J. Fox commercial in Missouri
and Maryland is just the latest incarnation.
END TRANSCRIPT
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Scott in Florida
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