Politics? What politics?

This morning CNN gave a platform to a woman named Monica Gabrielle who was criticizing the Bush Administration's dealings with 9/11.

Fair enough - she's a citizen. But so am I, and I'm not on CNN, so why should she be? Does she have any particular expertise to add?

No, she's just a 9/11 widow. I wouldn't trade places with her, but then I don't think that her loss in itself confers any relevant expertise in solving associated security or other problems. In fact, the type of questions she was asking were counterproductive inasmuch as they were phrased as attacks on the Bush Administration.

So I looked her up. Ah, here she is:9/11 widows Seek Apology from Limbaugh Over Slanderous Claims.

Slanderous? According to their post, Rush said (emphases added):

Here, listen to this montage in case you missed it on Friday, and understand that these family members are actually part of the Democratic Party machine, as they do this.

VOICE I: I think for someone like President Bush who has not cooperated with this commission, who has stonewalled this commission.

VOICE II: This president and his administration blocked the creation of the commission, have stonewalled the commission.

VOICE I: If this was realistic from the morning of September 11th, it would show President Bush before a group of school children listening to them read, while the twin towers were burning.

VOICE II: If he wants to show a picture of 9-11 depicting what he was doing, it should be a picture of him sitting and reading in a classroom to school children. That's where he was on 9-11.

VOICE I: And we need to find out why 3,000 people were murdered on his watch.

VOICE II: Well, you know, this happened on his watch.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to hear some original thoughts from any of these people, but I don't think that the Democrats trust them to speak originally.

END TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: The two unnamed voices are those of Monica Gabrielle and Kristen Brietweiser.

Now I'll grant that if someone accused me of sounding like a Democrat I'd feel slandered. But look at the above and notice the similarities - I have a hard time believing that two people who hadn't rehearsed or compared notes would have come up with statements that were so close.

Especially the school children bit - now all of a sudden a President interested in education and meeting school children on their turf, and these women would present it as a bad thing. That's too far-fetched not to be contrived. It makes about as much sense to blame her for her husband's death - if she would have jumped his bones that morning for a nice long session he wouldn't have been at work yet when the plane hit.

I didn't record her statements, but you can find some examples of questions she wanted to ask here on Randi Rhodes' website (remember Randi Rhodes? She's the one on Air America who wanted President Bush's family to take him for a ride).

The questions are doozies, on par with "do you still beat your wife?". #1 was "Why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?" I'll answer that one when you tell me why people were bitching so much about the additional restrictions on airline passengers *after* 9/11.

How about this one? "2. On the morning of 9/11, who was in charge while you were away from the National Military Command Center? Were you informed or consulted about all decisions made in your absence? " Yeah, as if it would have made any difference. But suppose he had been there, he had information in time, and he had scrambled fighters to divert or shoot down 4 civilian airliners so the buildings would be spared. It would have been the right decision - the plane passengers were goners anyway, and but for the last plane, anyplace where they crashed would probably have had a lower population density than what they did hit. Would she have applauded such a decision?

Or this: "5. Please explain why no one in our government has yet been held accountable for the failures leading up to and on 9/11." Well, Clinton, Gore and Jamie Gorelick were already out of the govt by then. I wonder if she's equally curious about why Gorelick is on the 9/11 commission?

I could go on, but I'll close with this one, which says more about where she's coming from than any other: "For Vice President Cheney....5. Please describe any discussions/negotiations between the Taliban and either public or private agents before Sept. 11 regarding Bin Laden and/or rights to pass a pipeline through Afghanistan, or any other subject pertaining to Afghanistan. " That one ought to be a guaranteed conversation stopper for anyone with the IQ of a lobotomized pissant. Nope, no Democrats here.

Enough of this crap. It's depressing enough to know that partisan idiots like this exist, much less that CNN would give them a platform to distribute their militant ignorance.

Mona Charen: Are children of gay parents worse off?

She writes of studies of kids raised by gays, noting that the gay partners studied tended to be highly nonrepresentative.

Then came this:

As Biblarz and Stacey observe, the majority of children raised in gay families turn out to be heterosexual in adulthood (bearing in mind the limitations of the research)."

I would certainly hope so, considering that they're a *huge* majority the rest of the time. The intent of the statement seems to be to reassure, but in fact it leaves room to mask a strong preference for becoming gay compared to kids raised in traditional families.

There's still much more to be done. And in a saner society this research would be done before anything so revolutionary as "gay marriage" was introduced.

Could it be a fake?

It *must* be - Michael Moore has larger breasts than that.

Stolen from Glenn Reynolds.

"You want us to do WHAT?"

I heard a story about a guy who prayed every day to win the lottery. Then one day a deep unearthly voice said "How about meeting me halfway and buying a ticket?"

These two had a similar problem. I would like to have seen their faces when the doctor told them what the problem was.

UPDATE: Those spoilsports at Snopes are at it again...

Chutzpah

I suppose this has something to do with the nonsense at Abu Ghraib - it seems that certain foreign forces operating in Afghanistan avoid taking prisoners so they won't have to turn them over to the US.

What's galling is that it's those wonderful guys who gave us Auschwitz et al - the Germans. Pictures were taken inside their prisons/concentration camps too - I wonder which ones the Iraqis would have preferred to be in?

Does a germ make you gay?

It's an interesting theory from this article, which was referenced in a Corner post by unrepentant homophobe John Derbyshire.

That Sarin IED

Blaster has some terrific background starting here and on down the page.

I liked this part:"The Iraqis had a small number of bastardized binary munitions in which some unfortunate individual was to pour one ingredient into the other from a Jerry can prior to use – an action few soldiers were willing to perform."

Flagrant link theft from Glenn Reynolds.

Neener neener

Extension of unemployment benefits lost by one vote.

John Kerry was away from the Senate, no doubt defending the little guy.

Or maybe he was claiming that during his Air National Guard days (a distinction he shares with potential Kerry running mate Dick Gephardt) President George W. Bush was AWOL?

Of course Karl Rove engineering the whole thing...

Rolling over?

IMO Glenn Reynolds makes too much of this, as if resignation and apathy were the same as positive support for "gay marriage".

And there's the incredibly insightful analysis, such as "it doesn't affect me". One might have said the same about slavery and countless other things. That's not reasoning, that's apathy, and IMO that's not to be encouraged in an electorate by anyone who would call himself a democrat.

As for resignation, that's what "gay marriage" supporters are counting on. They don't want us to ask questions about what will happen to children brought up in an environment when you marry boys or girls equally. (maybe nothing, but shouldn't we have a better idea before we try something so radical?)There hasn't been such a marketing coup since the tobacco companies got the military to include cigarettes in rations.

I remember an issue that reminds me a lot of this one. I was a kid, and it seemed outrageous that there were limits on how a lawyer could advertise. That seemed unfair to me - why not?

Well, now we see. Dante wisely put the sowers of discord near the bottom of the eighth circle of hell, but we put them on our phone books and TVs. With countless lawyers egging them on is it any surprise that we're buried in litigation? But hey, it sounded unfair and "it didn't affect me".

And if anyone thinks this will be the end of gay demands, they're crazy. This isn't about marriage, this is about getting 100% parity with heterosexuality, to the point where eventually anything that favors or encourages heterosexuality will be considered a civil rights issue.

Just wait...

What do liposuctionists do with the stuff they suck out? They could be missing an opportunity.

I posted about stem cells just a bit ago, but there's something else from Smith's article I wanted to note: "Cells from human fat have proven to be true adult stem cells that look to be useful in regenerative medicine. Indeed, it appears that 62 percent of human fat cells "could be reprogrammed into turning into at least two other different cell types," according to Duke University researchers."

If this is true, I'm guessing that we'll never have a problem coming up with enough stem cells.

Stem cells - more of the same

Wesley J. Smith on Stem-Cell Research on National Review Online:

"'We have to use our limited resources efficiently. Money spent on embryonic-stem-cell research and human cloning is money that cannot be spent on [investigating] adult stem cells.' If Kelly is right, increasing funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, especially if it comes at the expense of adult experiments, could actually delay the cures that so many suffering patients hope desperately to receive from developing cellular therapies."

That's right - it's the embryonic stem cell backers who are causing problems with research. They would have us believe that their way is the only way, as in this reference which does not acknowledge the existence of adult (non-embryonic) stem cells.

Yet as noted in the link, it's the adult stem cells that are showing all the successes:

Adult-stem-cell and related therapeutic approaches are in current clinical trials or use for the treatment of cancers, autoimmune diseases, anemias, bone and cartilage deformities, corneal scarring, stroke, and skin grafts. Researchers have successfully restored some eye functions by extracting stem cells from human eyes, growing them in culture, and transplanting them into mice. Human trials are showing similar successes. Optimistic researchers hope that the technique could provide a cure for blindness within five years. Cells from human fat have proven to be true adult stem cells that look to be useful in regenerative medicine. Indeed, it appears that 62 percent of human fat cells "could be reprogrammed into turning into at least two other different cell types," according to Duke University researchers.

The thrust of the research now seems indisputable: While certainly not yet a sure thing, and noting that much work remains to be done in animal and controlled human studies, barring unforeseen problems adult-stem-cell and related therapies may be potent sources of new and efficacious medical treatments in the years to come. Just as significantly, these therapies are likely to be available far sooner than embryonic-stem-cell treatments, since adult and related therapies do not appear to cause tumors, would not be rejected, and do not have to be maintained indefinitely in vitro, because they would come from patients' own bodies.

Now look at this:here:

The doctors thought that this woman might benefit from receiving stem cells from her daughter. The idea was that the mother's body would tolerate or accept the daughter's stem cells and the daughter's stem cells would see the mother's tumor as "foreign" and fight it.

Within three days after stem cells from the daughter’s blood were transfused into the mother, the mother’s symptoms started to get better. Within one month, her activities improved and her tumors “showed striking decreases,” according to the report.

Within seven months she had regained all of her lost weight and had a normal lifestyle. Her cancer has remained in regression for over one year, according to the authors. There is also evidence that the daughter’s cells are still present in her mother’s body.

The stem cells in question are adult stem cells inasmuch as the woman's daughter is not an embryo. But the article doesn't say so, and IMO embryonic stem cell backers do what they can to blur this very important distinction.

Well, maybe the embryonic research might offer still more opportunities. Really? The record is mostly one of failures, and scary ones at that. From Smith:

In animal studies, embryonic-stem-cell treatments have been found to cause tumors. In one mouse study involving an attempt to treat Parkinson's-type symptoms, more than 20 percent of the mice died from brain tumors — this despite researchers reducing the number of cells administered from the usual 100,000 to 1,000.

Just read it all.

Why can't the press acknowledge that 1) there are other forms of stem cells, and 2) the kind they're pushing has a record of failure?

Genital Warts/HPV

I don't know how many times I've been a scold about condom failures or inadequacies, but apparently the word isn't getting around. So let's try this again, focusing on human papilloma virus (HPV), aka condyloma acuminata or "genital warts". Here are a few bullets:

• In the United States, HPV is considered to be the most common sexually transmitted disease (STD). Some studies estimate that the majority of the sexually active population is exposed to at least one or more types of HPV - although most do not develop symptoms. Because HPV is so common and prevalent, a person does not need have to have a lot of sexual partners to come into contact with this virus.
• This type of wart is sexually transmitted. It is highly contagious. The incubation period - the amount of time between contact with a person who has condyloma and the time you notice condyloma - typically ranges from three weeks to eight months, with an average of three months. Condyloma may, however, appear years after a person has been exposed.
• Some people apparently can have the virus, not show any signs of condyloma and still transmit the virus to a partner, who may develop condyloma. Since HPV can have such a long incubation period, it is often not possible to determine how you contracted it.
• Some strains of HPV seem to be related to the occurrence of genital cancer, especially cancer of the cervix. Therefore, if you have condyloma, it should be thoroughly evaluated and treated.
• Although condyloma can be treated and cured, the causative virus, HPV cannot. It is possible to transmit HPV even after all the condyloma are gone.
• Limiting the number of sexual partners you have will help prevent transmission of HPV and other sexually transmitted infections. It is controversial whether condom use can prevent HPV transmission. Condoms cover only the penis; HPV may be found elsewhere on the sexual organs (i.e. scrotal sac, anus). The female condom may be more helpful.

Did you get that last one? If condoms were 100% effective they wouldn't necessarily help, and the more adventurous you get the more ways you can get it.

So let's boil this down - it's common, once you have it you can transmit it forever, there's more than one strain so you can always get it again, you can't always tell if you have it (much less if your partner does), if condoms were 100% effective they couldn't stop it, and it can cause cancer. That's right, sweetie - you might be more likely to get cancer from those smelly hippies you hooked up with at the protest than from the nuke plant or waste dump you were protesting.

(I'm not a physician, but you guys out there shouldn't be too cocky. Women might have to deal with cervical cancer, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit to find a connection between HPV and prostate cancers. I'm guessing that that isn't really high-priority research - there aren't many men's health pressure groups out there that I know of.)

Want a source for the above information and more? OK, but be aware that it contains pictures of the condition at the bottom of the page, which I'm guessing are NSFW. Thus warned, look here. Also, there's the American Social Health Association's site here, which covers many other topics besides.