Polish PM: More Gays Bad for Society

Polish PM: More Gays Bad for Society

"Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland," Kaczynski told reporters hours after the vote.

"However, if we're talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools, I fully agree with those who feel this way," he said. "Such propaganda should not be in schools; it definitely doesn't serve youth well."

"It's not in the interest of any society to increase the number of homosexuals—that's obvious."

So spoke the Polish prime minister, and very right he is, too.

Although this AP story focuses on the controversy such remarks have engendered between Poland, an EU member, and EU politicians and bureaucrats, there is another dimension to this issue.

Europe, as the home of Western Christendom, is nearing its own death. Even with immigration included, the population of Europe as a whole is falling and is expected to decline substantially over the next generation or more.

Combine with this the fact that much of the recent immigration and that which can be expected in the near future, both legal and illegal, is from non-Christian populations - Muslims from nearly every country from Morocco to Indonesia, and Hindus from India and the Indian diaspora in former British colonies - and the result is that Europe, where even Christian religious affiliation has been in long-term decline, may cease to hold onto a Christian culture.

For those who believe all cultures are equal, this may not matter. But for those who believe, as I do, that without Christian influence some key Western values - like equality before the law, the status of women and religious toleration - may cease to be supported, this is a very troubling development.

The Polish government is to be saluted for its sensitivity to this issue.

NOTE: The US birthrate is 14.0 births per thousand. Only three countries in Europe exceed this - Islamic Albania (15.1) and Azerbaijan (20.7) and Catholic Ireland (14.4). [Source: TIME Almanc 2007] Of the 30 countries and regions with the lowest numbers of births per female - ranging from 1.13 in Bulgaria to 1.54 in Sweden - 26 are in Europe. Poland ranked #22 with 1.37 births per female; no wonder the prime minister is worried. [Source: CIA Factbook 2004 as reported in a post on physicsforum.] France has the highest rate (1.9) in the EU, and the US rate has recently gone from 1.8 to 2.0 due largely to more teen pregnancies. In industrialized countries with long life expectancies and low infant and child mortality, a rate of 2.1 births per female is generally accepted as the minimum replacement level. [Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Zero Population Growth, etc.]

Just a thought

Does anyone out there know what the connection is between devotion to the game of chess and religious heresy?

I've never understood it myself. I guess any obsession can interfere with due piety, but why chess in particular? And is the auto da fe the best way to deal with it in this day and age?

Well, just something we can all think about the next time the holidays roll around and everyone starts singing: "Chess nuts roasting on an open fire."

What have we done to our young people?

My Way News - Many Campus Threats After VTech Shooting:

In Michigan, police said they arrested a former Kalamazoo Valley Community College student who posted Internet messages praising the Virginia Tech shooting. Officials closed the college's two campuses through the weekend.

The 26-year-old man 'said his intent was just to evoke a response from other people,' sheriff's Lt. Terry VanStreain said. 'He got a response from us, I guarantee you that.'

From idle internet chatter like this case of a 26-year old former community college student in Michigan to a fake bomb in the locker of a middle school student in Colorado to three loaded guns brought to school by a high school student in the state of Washington, this AP story describes ten incidents since the tragedy at Virginia Tech at the start of this week.

This is not good news, although when you consider how many schools there are in this country and how many young people are either certifiably mental or "Jackass" wannabees, the total could easily be higher.

It is also not surprising. Research has shown that youth suicides tend to occur in clusters with one kid snapping and, as the news of that event is spread by the news media, others who have been on the brink step over the line.

And, it is not primarily a matter of gun control. Germany has tighter gun control laws than the US and lacks our "cult of the gun" and frontier mythos. Yet, as Bild noted in an editorial this week, even Germany has had school shootings. In Japan a few years ago, a man murdered several people at an elementary school armed only with a kitchen knife. And, don't forget the Iranian student who celebrated his graduation from UNC-CH by driving a rented car into a crowd of pedestrians and, only by a miracle, did not kill any of the nine people he struck with it.

What we ought to be asking is what are we doing to our children and young adults? Incidents of this sort were rare when gun laws were lax.

In some parts of the country it was once common for young hunters to bring their rifles to school during hunting season so they could get in a bit of hunting right after the end of the school day.

There must have been some incidents that haven't made it into the history books. My own paternal grandfather had to disarm a student with a handgun in a class he was teaching almost a century ago. But such occurrences must have been rare.

What has changed? Church and Sunday School attendance are likely down. Schools have adopted values clarification and cultural relativism that have undermined respect for traditional values. Progressive ideas on parenting and schooling have made discipline almost a thing of the past. The popular culture is now aimed primarily at young people and is saturated with violence and immorality of every description. The War on Drugs has turned many American cities into armed camps where the sound of gunfire hardly attracts any notice unless it is very close by. Crisis mongering over environmental and other concerns has led a few to action but more to the paralysis of despair. And there is the rampant drug abuse, both illegal narcotics and dangerous prescription drugs with known side effects including violent outbursts and suicidal ideation.

All of these influences have, for many young people, undermined any sense of hope and confidence in a better future awaiting the rising younger generations.

Poisoned pet food scandal grows more serious

ABC News: Officials: Pet Food Poison
May Have Been Intentional:

April 19, 2007 — For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

It was bad enough when this incident appeared to be a quality control problem. Now it seems it may been a product of greed and contempt for the foreigners who were buying this material.

Adulteration of the product with melamine, known to Americans of my generation as the plastic from which ugly but nearly unbreakable Melmac (TM) dinnerware was made when we were kids, may have been an intentional effort to fool pet food industry buyers that the product had a higher protein content than was the case.

But, the scandal grows worse still:

Some of the tainted pet food has apparently made it into feed for hogs. Federal agencies are trying to determine if it was actually fed to animals and whether it may have reached the human food supply.

It will be interesting to see if we ever get a believable story from the Red Chinese about how this could happen. And watch for US government officials to begin making excuses on their behalf and refusing to take serious punitive actions.

The arrogance of power

N.J. Gov.'s SUV Went 91 Mph Before Crash:
"TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The SUV carrying Gov. Jon S. Corzine was traveling about 91 mph moments before it crashed, Superintendent of State Police Col. Rick Fuentes said Tuesday."

I truly wish Gov. John Corzine (D-NJ) a full and speedy recovery. But one has to ask why the governor was riding in the front seat, why he was not wearing his seatbelt, and why his state police driver was going over 90 miles per hour (over 25 mph over the posted limit) with his emergency lightss flashing? I guess the whole world is supposed to get out of the way when royalty is in a hurry.

A senior majoring in English who can't write in that language

Virginia Killer's Violent Writings - April 17, 2007:
"APRIL 17--The college student responsible for yesterday's Virginia Tech slaughter was referred last year to counseling after professors became concerned about the violent nature of his writings, as evidenced in a one-act play obtained by The Smoking Gun."

Read the murderer's one-act play at The Smoking Gun - in addition to being deeply disturbing, it is barely literate. And this was a junior year composition from a 22-year old who had lived in the US since the age of eight, so almost his entire education had been in English in American schools. This is a sad commentary on the state of education.

Virginia Tech may well have lower standards in English than some other universities because its strengths in science and engineering attract disproportionate numbers of foreign, especially Asian, students.

Stalemate on immigration reform possible

Immigration Debate Sours for Illegals:

"Privately, senators in both parties and strategists on the issue say he [Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)] has faded from the forefront of immigration negotiations—leaving his staff to track them and a confidant, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to mediate—while he waits for the right moment to weigh in."

I'm not certain I'm reading this as intended, but what I take this comment and others regarding McCain to mean in the context of this article is that McCain would prefer to keep a low profile on immigration while he is trying to get the GOP nomination; but, if a deal does emerge during this session of Congress, he will take credit for it.

No doubt, McCain sees that a compromise along the lines emerging in the current debate on the Hill might peel away some support from the opposition to illegal immigration making it less damaging for him to get back in front of the parade. Moreover, putting himself out front might help him in a few open primary states and in the general election if he wins the nomination.

So much for the brave "maverick" McCain.

Meanwhile, it is interesting that a new Congress with a Democrat majority in each house is now considering legislation more restrictive than last year. Of course, the new proposals are still far from satisfactory to critics of unrestricted immigration like myself.

I suspect, as the article mentions, that many Democrats would prefer to have no bill at all. This would save them from some criticism from the left that would accuse them of caving in to the GOP. It would also give them a stronger issue to use to keep a lock on the Hispanic vote in 2008.

The $64 question is this - How can the Democrats keep their hold on the Black vote and support more immigration when immigration has been the cause of Black unemployment rising even as the national unemployment rate has been dropping?

I'll say it again, unrestricted immigration does greater danger to the Black and Native American communities than to White Americans.

A remarkable success using patients' own stem cells

Diabetics cured in stem-cell treatment advance-Life & Style-Health-TimesOnline :

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

It appears that the MSM can't bring themselves to report on a medical miracle without getting in a sly and misleading dig at W.

How can a responsible journalistic enterprise claim that embryonic stem cell research is opposed by Bush when his budgets have included massive funding for research using existing stem cell lines?

How can such a news organization characterize embryonic stem cells as merely the "most versatile" type without mentioning the fact that it is precisely that versatility which has proven to be so problematic that no therapeutic success has been achieved by their use despite billions of dollars in both government and privately funded research around the world?

This truly astounding success in treating Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes - most patients off insulin for three years and counting - actually bolsters the case made by many critics of embryonic stem cell research. It is yet another success in the use of non-embryonic stem cells. Based on the track record, a strong case could be made that government funding in the US should concentrate exclusively on non-embryonic stem cells - cells harvested from the patient's own blood, bone marrow, nose, fat, etc.

The therapy, known as autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, has already shown benefits to individuals with a range of auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and lupus.

In this clinical trial, patients with very recent diagnoses had stem cells harvested from their own blood. They then underwent a course of chemotherapy to disable their white blood cells which were attacking the pancreatic beta cells which produce insulin. Finally, their stem cells were returned to their bloodstream where they went to work rebuilding an immune system that was no longer prone to attack their own beta cells.

These successes with autologous transplantation mentioned above, and others like the work with nasal stem cells in repair of central nervous system injuries, demonstrate the value of non-embryonic stem cell research. Money, especially government money, ought to flow toward success, not failure.

The usual suspects in another orgy of pious self-promotion

Australia hosts Live Earth gig - Music - Entertainment - theage.com.au:

"Proceeds will create a foundation to combat climate change led by The Alliance for Climate Protection, chaired by former US vice president Al Gore."

From the Material Girl (Madonna) to the Great Gasbag (Al Gore) the usual suspects will gather for a series of concerts in seven venues on July 7, 2007. The organizers have announced sites in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North and South America. They say they are working on the remaining continent Antartica. Someone needs to remind them that, global warming or no, July is midwinter in Anartica and non-governmental travel is virtually impossible in that region except in summer.

Algiers rocked by terror bombings

Bombs in Algiers kill 17 - World - theage.com.au:

"Attacks have also risen since the main guerrilla group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), adopted a new name in January and deepened its ties to al Qaeda."

Two bombs on the same day, the first such attacks in the capital city of Algeria since the 1990s and with a combined casualty toll of nearly 100, have raised fears of a return to the days when Islamic fundamentalist violence routinely rocked the cities as well as the countryside.

One of the blasts did substantial damage to the prime minister's offices. Just a reminder, and one seems to be needed in certain quarters (the Democrat Party, for example), that it doesn't take the US or Israel to bring out the worst in the "religion of peace." Salafist, for those who don't keep a scorecard on such things, is a sect within the Sunni branch of Islam.

Anti-Americanism in Italy decried

Corriere.it:

" Some say that anti-Americanism is an over-abused and even intimidating term, but for what other democracy, if not for our trouble-torn emotional relationship with the United States, is it so easy to confuse government with state, the –passing – policies of an administration with the – permanent – existence of a nation, or a president’s international policy with the rationale of an enduring alliance? "

An interesting opinion essay by Pierluigi Battista in Corriere della Sera of Milano.

Chinese find Italian investment no jewel

Corriere.it:

It’s true that it has received machinery capable of processing dozens of tons of gold every year but has yet to start up production.It’s true that after twenty-two years, it has yet to turn out a single necklace and that inquiries into past management teams have led to charges of fraud ...

A cautionary tale of what can happen, and all too often does, when the government tries to make good things happen. In this case it was the Italian federal government trying to spur economic activity and create jobs in a part of the impoverished south hit by an earthquake in 1980. Beginning around 1985, they poured over 13 million euros into a jewelry factory that underwent numerous changes of ownership but never managed to produce anything. But, this is not a peculiarly Italian story, when I worked in the Nixon administration I saw the records of similar debacles here in the US.

Meanwhile, the years slipped by but the factory’s gates remained shut. The young workers stipulated by the government were never hired and the machinery remained silent.And the Chinese, led by the Beijing Art & Craft consortium initially set up by fifty-eight companies, failed to make what the documents proclaimed as “Beijing’s most important investment in Europe”.

And after all this, the Chinese can't figure out why the Italians are not more grateful. Go figure!

Barack Hussein Obama and the politics of race

Obama's silence on Imus alarms some blacks - The Boston Globe:

"But with Obama battling other Democrats -- most notably Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York -- for the support of black voters, the candidate's reticence on the Imus issue set off alarms yesterday among some black activists who are anxious to see him more forcefully push for racial justice."

Obama is not an Irish name or a Polish one, but there must be days when the Illinois senator must wish it were. Almost any change at all would make his life less complicated. Obama did not become a US senator from Illinois by being "the black candidate." That is a strategy that only works at lower levels - city and county offices, state legislatures, or the US House of Representatives.

There is no state where such a strategy will lead to victory for a statewide office and it certainly won't work running for president. It won't even come close to winning the Democrat nomination as Shirley Chisholm (1972), Jesse Jackson (1984 and 1988) and Al Sharpton (2004) have amply demonstrated.

Look at the record of black politicians who have succeeded in races for state-wide offices. The late US Senator Ed Brook of Massachusetts, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell of Ohio, Lieutenant Governor Mike Steele of Maryland had to build broad coalitions in states that were either heavily Democratic or highly competitive - states where being black and Republican were not enough to secure an election.

Doug Wilder did not get elected governor in Virginia merely be being the black candidate or even the Democrat; he did it by being the business-friendly Democrat who happened to be black. Harold Ford Jr. made his race for US senator in Tennessee competitive by being a Democrat with strong political experience, not primarily as a black candidate.

No doubt, Sen. Obama knows this history well. His own career is just the most recent example.

Obama knows that even 100 percent support from the black community can't guarantee much more than winning the primaries in South Carolina and a few other states where black votes are the principal voting group in the Democrat Party. He needs lots of white votes (more white votes than black votes), Hispanic votes, Asian votes - the votes of all sorts of Democrats to get the nomination and to do so in a way that he is positioned to make a competitive run for the presidency.

So, Obama has been walking a tightrope, trying to work black voters away from his primary rivals while not alienating the white constituency he needs to break free from the pack and actually win the prize. The Imus flap is just the latest pothole in the road to victory, there will likely be others. And they pose a different and greater challenge for Barack Obama than they do for Hilary Clinton or John Edwards.

Another cops and schoolchildren controvesy

wcbstv.com - 13-Year-Old Arrested In School For Writing On Desk:

"CBS 2 contacted both the NYPD and the Board of Education for a response. The police say the arrests followed a request by the school's principal. The Board of Education said the matter is under investigation, adding that graffiti was found on several desks."

There are certainly circumstances where children as young as the 13-year old girl at the center of this story, and even younger, may need to be arrested. And even some circumstances in which they may properly be placed in restraints although not technically under arrest on any criminal charge. I don't know how they do things in New York, but this sounds like the sort of matter that might well be handled by writing a citation and sending the defendants on their way.

Making some allowances for the usual defects in news stories, the quote above raises two questions. The first is: What do the police mean when they say they took action at the request of the principal? Does this reply indicate that whether or not to initiate proceedings via arrest was a matter of discretion and, if so, why did police defer to the principal to make that call? Are there other classes of non-police officials that have such power over police officers in determining how they carry out their duties?

The second question is: What does the Board of Education mean when they say this case is "under investigation"? Do they mean that they (through the authority they grant to the principal) ordered arrests to be made before they were in possession of the relevant facts? That doesn't sound like a responsible way to exercise such power.

Underwater surfing, only in the land down under

Australian to live underwater for two weeks:

"Lloyd Godson, 29, believes he can survive inside his airtight steel box by growing algae to produce oxygen and to eat, and by riding a stationary bike to generate electricity."

One wonders what practical effect success in this experiment might have. Would we all be expected to inhabit a 10x12-foot room at the bottom of a lake?

NASA already covered this ground a decade ago and it hasn't yet proven to have enhanced our lives. After all those billions and all we have to show for it is Tang. You'd think they could have given us something useful like a fleet of missile platforms in orbit over our enemies or a four-star resort on Mars - Club Red, anyone?

Mr. Godson is taking his computer, complete with internet connection with him. Too bad they don't give us his email address so we could keep in touch during his ordeal in service of mankind.

Some uncommon good sense about AGW and Kyoto controls

A CEO With A Spine - April 3, 2007 - The New York Sun:

"Some wealthy elitists in our country," he told the audience, "who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns."

Hats off to Bob Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation for having the courage to speak out for the best interests of the American people. I guess it takes the kind of man who actually mined coal for a living and had the courage to mortgage his home to start a company that has grown to employ 3,000 people to have that kind of courage.

I also want to salute the author of this piece in The New York Sun, Alicia Colon, for concluding her article with this comment about on the Kyoto CO2 control regime:

The irony is that these caps and controls will do little to affect climate. Timothy Ball, a renowned environmental consultant, testified before the committee that global warming is more likely to be caused by sun spots rather than human activity. Mr. Murray's passion for saving the "little guy" is truly admirable. Too bad that fervor is completely absent in Congress.

Jim Gilmore for President

 

Exclusive Interview With Gov. Jim Gilmore by Human Events - HUMAN EVENTS :

"I’m already a conservative and always have been. My record’s as clear as crystal and I’m not going to shift now so that I can get elected President. I am the real thing and that’s what I am …and I don’t think it costs much money to do that."

So said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore in his recent interview with the editors of Human Events, the leading national conservative weekly newspaper.

The interview goes into particular depth on two issues of interest to most conservatives - taxes and protection of the unborn - as well as broader philosphical concerns. He also comments on the three currently leading candidates for the GOP nomination - US Sen. John McCain, former mayor Rudy Giuliani and former governor Mitt Romney. There is no doubt that Jim Gilmore is the real conservative in that field.

In the couse of the interview, he mentions that his membership in the Republican Party dates back to 1967. That was when I first met Jim Gilmore. We both entered the University of Virginia that year, both joined the University Republican Club, and both were appointed dorm captains. We worked on Republican campaigns in the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County and attended senior party, Young Republican and College Republican meetings and conventions all over Virginia.

I knew Jim Gilmore then, and later, as a man of great intellect, sound conservative principles, enormous energy and ambition. Now, ambition is one of those qualitites that is neither a virtue nor a vice per se but can be judged only in relation to the objects toward which it is directed. Jim put that ambition to work in pursuit of those sound conservative principles I mentioned.

In 1971, when Jim took his degree on time (I was always more interested in other things than studying and took a longer route to my BA), he wouldn't settle for a second-tier law school and enlisted in the US Army where he was trained in intelligence and served as a non-commissioned officer. When he returned from army service in Germany in 1974 he realized his dream of admittance to the law school at the University of Virginia. But because he came in late, he had not been able to arrange for housing and he lived at the Young Republican House at UVa.

I was in residence at the YR House myself to complete my last year of study. Another roommate was a first-year law student who had just taken his BA at the University, Bill Hurd. Seeking quieter quarters where they could study, the three of us shared apartments each of the next two years. So, during three years of living together, I got to know Jim very well indeed. This was also the period when Jim was courting his future wife, the lovely Roxane, and I had the great privilege of being a member of the wedding.

Although I have only seen Jim a few times in the intervening years (the last, I think, was in 1988) my respect for him is undiminished. I will do whatever is in my poor power to assist his campaign for the Republican nomination and, I hope, the presidency itself in 2008.

You can learn more about Jim Gilmore by visiting his campaign website.

Cherry Blossom Festival on the National Mall

 

The Cherry Blossom Festival is underway in DC, see the festival page at the Natinal Park Service (NPS) website for further information. Peak blossom time should be the middle of this week. The festival is Washington's biggest tourist event drawing about a million visitors each spring.

The photo above from the NPS is of a kwanzan cherry, the deeper pink of the dominant types on display at the National Mall. The trees, over 3,000 of them, were a gift of the Japanese government in 1912.

No embryos were harmed in this stem cell experiment

British team grows human heart valve from stem cells | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:
"A British research team led by the world's leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years."

Read the article and you find that Prof. Yacoub's team in London is using stem cells from bone marrow. As I have commented elsehere, the furor over embyonic stem cell research has more to do with keeping the murder of babies via abortion legal than with the needs of medical research. Stem cells from umbilical cords an placentas are readily available from the constant stream of medical waste, as are stem cells from adults which can be harvested without harm from fat, including bone marrow. In all the real world research I have ever seen, such sources yield better results. Stem cells from embryos tend to produce unstable results.

The article notes that growing a heart valve from the patients own stem cells might take a month producing a perfect tisssue match, but that tissue banking might serve the needs of most patients in producing close, but not perfect, matches.

My readers may recall Dr. Lima in Portugal (December 6, 2004) who has been getting results in repairing damaged nerves by using the patients own nerve stem cells from their noses. Similar work is underway in China and elsewhere.