WUI (Writing under the influence)

Two more examples. First from AP. A suicide bomber kills 47 in Iraq. None of them is American. Yet AP titles the story: "47 die in attacks on U.S.-led crackdown." AP and Reuters together with NYT and many other liberal media outlets are America haters. Everything bad that happens in the world is America's fault. Whenever something good happens, it is either attributed to some lefty forces or, if that would be a blatant lie, the story is never told.
Second example comes from one of the Oregon lefty bloggers (via Orbusmax.)

Unfortunately, if we look at our short history we can see a valid case being made that we are in the running for the title of dumbest nation on the planet. Maybe ever.

As it happened before, somebody I didn't know called me after my guest column was published to thank me for saying what he had thought for a long time. We talked briefly, then exchanged some e-mails. We may even start attending the monthly meetings of the Washington County Republicans.

Just after my column was published I started noticing similar columns popping up so I started saving them. This is the first batch.

The first column is not really about America haters but about haters of Christianity. However, there can't be America and the West without Christianity so I think the column is appropriate.

We live in an age when modernists regard religion with something approaching panic. It is like the Devil’s attitude to Holy Water. There was a comic example of Christianophobia in The Sunday Times yesterday. Michael Portillo, who used himself to be seen in Brompton Oratory, was hyperventilating at the idea of David Cameron going to church. “I worry,” he wrote, “because men of power who take instruction from unseen forces are essentially fanatics . . . I would be more reassured to hear that the Tory leader goes to church because that is what it takes to get a child into the best of state schools, not because he is a believer.”

This editorial from WSJ is a good example of free-market haters. There can't be America without free markets and that include free markets of ideas and association.

The House of Representatives has scheduled a vote as early as today on a bill that strips 140 million U.S. workers of the right to decide in private whether to unionize. Naturally, it's called the Employee Free Choice Act.

Big Labor has been agitating to ease union-formation requirements for more than a decade. And prior to last year's election, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME and their allies made it clear to Democrats that this vote would be the most important return they expected on their investment in a Nancy Pelosi Speakership. This is payback day.

The union claim is that employers are engaging in rampant unfair labor practices to prevent employees from exercising their right to organize. But data from the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections, show no rise in such activities. The reality is that union membership has been in decline for decades, and labor leaders are desperate to rig the rules in order to reverse the trend. In the 1950s, 35% of private-sector workers were unionized. By the early 1980s the number had fallen to 20%, and today it stands at just 7.4%.

The reason for this decline isn't illegal management meddling in organizing efforts. The problem is that unions haven't been able to persuade the workers themselves. Our own, longstanding position is that when a company is organized it is almost always the company's fault. But workers of all classes and skills can also read the news and understand that unions no longer provide job security, if they ever did. The most heavily unionized industries--such as airlines and Detroit carmakers--are typically those that are financially beleaguered and shedding jobs. Workers know that unions often provide short-term wage gains at the cost of longer-term job insecurity.

Next, is this editorial from WSJ that shows the hate toward our brave men in armed forces. There can't be America without brave men.

Amid the mad jumble that makes the news in our time, the White House on Monday held a ceremony for a Medal of Honor recipient. His name is Bruce Crandall. Mr. Crandall is 74 now, and earned his medal as a major, flying a Huey helicopter in 1965 in the Vietnam War.

The Medal of Honor is conferred only for bravery in combat. It is a military medal, and it is still generally regarded as the highest public tribute this nation can bestow. It is also very rare.

Still, the Medal of Honor does not occupy the place in the nation's cultural life that it once did. This has much to do with the ambivalent place of the military in our angry politics.

In the House debate just ended on a "non-binding" resolution to thwart the sending of more troops to Iraq, its most noted element was the Democratic formulation to "support the troops" but oppose the war. We will hear more of this when the members of the Senate debate their own symbolic resolution.

It's one thing to believe that the thread from islamo-fascists is overblown. It is quite another to support them.

The turmoil began Wednesday when a column by Mike S. Adams on conservative townhall.com, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, was posted on the Drudge Report, a collection of news stories from throughout the world.

``All we want is to get Allah's pleasure,'' the jihadist Web site reads. ``We will write `Jihad' across our foreheads, and the stars. The angels will carry our message through the world.''

Adams accused Pino of ``drawing a paycheck from the people of the State of Ohio while trying to launch a jihad against people like me.''

One recent posting on the Web site was, Crusaders Can't Take Anymore in Afghanistan, Adams said.

Pino is a specialist in Latin America and has a doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles.

He joined Kent State in 1992 and a few years ago received tenure -- in essence, lifetime employment -- for his research and writings. At Kent, he has taught courses such as The '60s + A Third-World View and Comparative Third-World Revolutions.

He is no stranger to controversy.

Last year he was the target of an Internet petition that labeled him a ``walking, talking time bomb'' and sought to get him fired with comments like, ``Remove this traitor from our educational system'' and ``Get this murderer out of the country!''

In a 2005 letter to the student-run Kent Stater, Pino responded to students who questioned why Muslims were burning American flags.

``You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of drugs, gambling, the sex trade, spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past, such as AIDS, and turns women into commodities for sale,'' he wrote.

``The ill done to the Muslim nations must be requited. The Muslim child does not cry alone; the Muslim woman does not cry alone; and the Muslim man is already at your gates.''

In fact, lefty university professors are a special category of America haters. With one or two notable examples in our own Pacific University here in Forest Grove.
Al Gore is in a special category of capitalism haters in name of the man-made global warming religion.
Al Gore is also a representative of another America hating group. These are the people who in name of fairness want to squash the free market of ideas by re-introducing so called fairness doctrine. The following is but a small part of his infamous speech at the Media Conference in October 2005:

As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

So just when the market of ideas becomes bigger and embraces the ideas of the majority of Americans, Al Gore calls them hate-mongers. Maybe he meant people who hate America haters. In that case, he was right.

That's it for now. Unfortunately for this great country there is more to come.

This article in WSJ is more charitable than I would be. It will be interesting to wait another 10 years and see which direction the EU will choose. Or maybe the EU will divide into two parts: the new and the old, the pro-American and the anti-American, the free-market and the nanny-state. And lastly, the moral and the anti-moral Europe.

Sixth-graders decide that humans aren't to blame

Humans don’t cause global warming, a jury of sixth graders at Trail Ridge Middle School concluded Thursday after hearing opposing arguments from their peers.

This is exactly was I teach my children and I'm relieved to see I'm not alone.

Proposed School Law in Poland Would Institutionalize Bias Against Gays, Says Amnesty International

A bill that seeks to punish the "promotion" of homosexual behavior in Poland's schools violates international human rights standards and would create an official climate of bias against gays and lesbians, Amnesty International said today.

The human rights organization said the measure would institutionalize discrimination against gays in Poland's school system and deprive students of their rights to free expression and free association.

They did it. They surrendered. What's worse, the worst Pole working for the worst administration may have contributed to the surrender. He wants to do everything in his power to prevent Bush from winning where the administration he worked for failed so miserably.

The House's $124 billion spending bill would fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and require that combat troops leave Iraq by fall of 2008, and possibly sooner if the Iraqi government does not make progress on its political and security commitments.

But several hurdles remained. Several anti-war liberals were expected to join Republicans in opposing the measure because they say it continues to bankroll an immoral war. And if the bill does scrape by in the House, it may sink in the Senate, where many Democrats have resisted firm timetables on the war.

On top of that, Bush has vowed to veto such a restrictive measure if it ever reaches his desk.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., continued Wednesday to press party members to back the bill, unsure whether she had enough votes to pass it. In a closed-door meeting, former President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, tried to convince party skeptics that the bill was their best chance at ending the war.

Bydlę.

The vote of the Democrat house is perfectly described by WSJ as a vote that betrayed the cynicism of the Democrat position on the war:

"Today is an historic day," Ms. Pelosi said on the House floor. "The new Congress will vote to end the war in Iraq." But of course the bill does nothing of the sort. If she truly wanted to end the war, the Speaker and her fellow Democrats could simply have used their power of the purse to refuse to fund it. But that would have meant taking some responsibility for what happens in Iraq, which is the last thing Democrats want to do. So they have passed a bill that funds the war while claiming it ends the war.
The bill's "benchmarks" and deadlines certainly have nothing to do with achieving victory in Iraq, or assisting General David Petraeus's campaign to secure Baghdad. They are all about the war inside the Democratic Caucus. On the one hand, they appease the antiwar left by pretending to declare the war illegal if certain goals aren't met by Iraqis or U.S. forces. But on the other, they allow "moderates" from swing districts to claim they are nonetheless "supporting the troops." Acts of Congress don't get much more cynical than that.

This is not to say the vote won't do considerable harm. It will be noted by our enemies in Iraq and will encourage them to inflict more casualties to further sour American support. It will make it harder for Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to disarm Shiite militias, who can point to the vote and say the Americans will soon be leaving. And most disgraceful, it will send a message to U.S. troops that they can fight on--albeit without much chance of success and without Congressional support.
The lengths that Democratic leaders had to go to win their "triumph" betrayed its cynicism. To get her narrow majority of 218 votes, Ms. Pelosi and Appropriations Chairman David Obey had to load it up like a farm bill: $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers, $283 million for dairy farmers--all told, some $20 billion in vote-buying earmarks of the kind Democrats campaigned against last year.

Even at that price, they could win over a mere two Republicans: antiwar Members Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland and Walter Jones of North Carolina. We hope GOP primary voters note those votes well. Given how the war hurt so many Republicans last November, this GOP solidarity is notable and a credit to the minority leadership.

President Bush was quick to denounce the vote yesterday, promising a veto. And we hope he keeps it up. By bowing to their antiwar left, Democrats are once again showing that they can't be trusted on national security. The President should drive that message home until Congress gives him a clean war bill that gives our troops the money to fight our enemies without having to take orders from MoveOn.org.

Speaking of MoveOn.org, about two-dozen members of the anti-war "movement" in Forest Grove protested the war last Monday in the down-town area. I didn't see them for some reason. Oh, I know, I have a job. In any case, these are proabbly the people I described in my latest guest column in FGNT.

Poland joined the EU for the money. The price it's paying may be too high. First, the strict abortion laws in Poland are criticized and just a few days ago the European Court of Human Rights has awarded a Polish woman 25,000 euros ($33,000; £16,000) in damages after she was refused an abortion. Two thoughts. First, John Edwards wouldn't be running for President today if $33,000 were enough in the US for a similar case. Second, looking at the picture of the woman, one appreciates the magic properties of Polish vodka. To be fair, Poland's abortion laws are also attacked from within.

More than 1,200 people staged a march in Warsaw on Sunday to support abortion rights and try to stop a change to Poland's Constitution.

The marchers called for changes to Poland's restrictive abortion laws. They are also opposed to a proposed amendment which would place the words "right to life from the moment of conception" in the Constitution.

Abortion is only allowed in Poland in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother's life or irreversible malformation of the fetus. Breaking the law carries a two-year jail term.

Last week, a Parliamentary commission came out in favor of a proposal by the ultra-Catholic League of Polish Families (LPR) to have "right to life from the moment of conception" written into the Constitution, which would prevent any liberalization of the abortion law in the future.

Then, Polish politicians are criticized and even reprimended for voicing what used to be a statement of fact.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski gave deputy PM and leader of the junior coalition partner LPR Roman Giertych a public reprimand on Monday for Giertych's comments on abortion and homosexuality while on an official visit to Germany.

In Heidelburg, Giertych, who is also Education Minister, said that abortion should be banned in Europe and railed against "homosexual propaganda."

PM Kaczynski said that Giertych "went too far" and was given a reprimand for representing his own views as the position of the Polish Government.

The Kaczynski brothers are also criticized because they decided to finally do what most Poles have wanted since 1989: put all Communists in jail.

Almost 18 years after Poland broke away from Soviet domination, the country's ruling Kaczynski twins are clamping down on former communists, who they say have too much influence on Polish society.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, 57, is preparing a bill that would make public the names of people who spied for the secret services. His brother Lech Kaczynski, Poland's president, has signed a law that will ban people who collaborated with the secret services from working as judges or taking top positions in state-owned companies.

The Kaczynskis say Poland needs these laws to complete its transition to democratic government. Critics say the brothers are conducting a witch hunt to deflect attention from more important issues such as Poland's unemployment rate, the highest in the European Union.

Oh, yes, there are always more important things that should be taken care of. Like bashing Bush, for example.
Nobody (in his right mind) defends fascists today. Why anybody would defend communists is beyond me. When I went to Poland last year I saw T-shirts with Che Guevara’s face on them being sold very publicly. Luckily there were no Hitler T-shirts yet for sale but maybe it's just a matter of time.
But Giertych wasn't very scared when he was "reprimanded" maybe because that reprimand was done with a nod and a wink. A few weeks later, he went back to fulfill the promises his party made before the last year's elections.

The Polish government is to ban discussions on homosexuality in schools and educational institutions across the country, with teachers facing the sack, fines or imprisonment.
Poland's education minister, Roman Giertych, has said he hopes to introduce a similar ban across the entire EU.

Mr Giertych, the leader of the ultra-conservative League of Polish Families, a junior coalition partner in the government of prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said the aim of the proposed law would be to "prohibit the promotion of homosexuality and other deviance".

All of this may be too late. Only 18 years after the Communism was abolished, Poland is following its old-European masters in non reproducing.

The EU's statistical office, Eurostat, is reporting that Poland has the lowest birthrate of the 27 countries in the EU.

In 2005, the Polish birthrate was 1.24 children per woman. The EU average is 1.51 children. To replace the current population, women need to give birth to about 2.1 children. In other words, population growth throughout Europe is negative. Only immigration prevents populations from declining more.

Low birthrates are a more acute problem in Eastern Europe - Slovakia (1.25 children), Slovenia (1.26 children), Czech Republic (1.28 children) - than in Western Europe where Ireland and France have higher birthrates - 1.88 and 1.92, respectively.

A friend of mine who immigrated from Poland last year told me that people looked at him as if he were from another planet when his third child was born. I didn't believe him. Now I do. What the hell is wrong with Poles?
Something is wrong and the government is trying to do something about it.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski proposed a costly new program of tax exemptions and benefits for working mothers aimed at increasing Poland's birth rate, which is the lowest in Europe, by 2014.

"This is a pro-birth policy intended to ensure that we continue on as a nation," Kaczynski said at a news conference.

He acknowledged that it is a "costly policy."

The total cost of the Government's pro-family program will stand at PLN 17.38 bln in 2008-2014, the Labour Ministry informed on its website www.rodzina.gov.pl.

The costs: in 2008 - PLN 964 mln, in 2009 - PLN 1.13 bln, in 2010 - PLN 2.13 bln, PLN 2.44 bln in 2011, PLN 3.26 bln in 2012, PLN 3.32 bln in 2013, and PLN 4.14 bln in 2014.

About PLN 8.73 bln of the total program cost will be related to tax breaks for taxpayers with children.

The cost of tje prolongation of maternity leave will be growing gradually from PLN 150 mln annually in 2008 to PLN 600 mln in 2014. The total cost in 2008-2014 will stand at PLN 2.4 bln.

Exemptions from Labour Fund premium payments will cost PLN 3.81 bln in 2008-2014, with cost growing from PLN 170 mln in 2008 to PLN 720 mln in 2014.

Other costs related to pension and disability premiums will stand at PLN 1.85 bln by 2014, with the cost growing from PLN 74 mln annually in 2008 to PLN 432 mln in 2014.

Other minor sections of the program will cost some PLN 588 mln by 2014.

Similar programs already exist in some Scandinavian countries and even Russians are contemplating similar measures. I only hope it's not too late. Otherwise, in 50 years they will all speak Arabic.

Lastly, Poland can't build any highways without old-Europe's approval. With the help of local losers who after Communism collapsed turned from red to green, the European Commission is taking Poland to Europe's top court to prevent the construction of a highway that would run across an area protected under EU habitat laws.
Maybe it doesn't matter because in 50 years there will not be many people driving anyway.
The longer story on the disputed highway can be found here.

Unless we convert to nuclear energy, there is not much else we can do.

Though several wind power projects are being developed throughout the Northwest, wind power alone will be unable to meet the region's future power needs, according to a report released Wednesday by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and Bonneville Power Administration.


Event those dumb Poles know it.

WARSAW -(Dow Jones)- Poland asked the European Union for a 2008-2012 annual quota of carbon dioxide emissions of at least 240.8 million metric tons, the Environment Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

The ministry said that any annual quota lower than the mentioned 240.8 million tons will curb Poland's economic growth.

Last week, the ministry said that it expected the E.U. will cut the CO2 emissions quota from a requested 284 million tons a year to 210 million tons.

Poland called for the European Commission to consider the fact that between 1988 and 2004 the country reduced its CO2 emissions by 32% to 386.4 million tons, chiefly due to slower growth and was well ahead of the Kyoto Protocol requirement that called for 5% emission cuts by 2012.

OK, I take it back. They are dumb enough to have gotten involved in that Kyoto scheme in the first place.

Let's hope they are still smart enough to allow the US to build the anti-missile shield.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried met with Polish Defence Minister Aleksander Szczyglo in Warsaw to discuss placing an anti-missile defense shield on the territory of Poland, Ministry spokesman Jaroslaw Rybak said.

Rybak told the AFP news service that, "It was a working meeting. The discussion covered the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq and aspects of the deployment of parts of the anti-missile shield in Europe...The meeting was held at the request of the American side."

The U.S. wants to place anti-ballistic missile interceptors in Poland and install a radar system in the Czech Republic. The system is designed to stop missiles from what Washington calls "rogue states" like Iran.

Russia has vehemently protested the plan, seeing it as a threat and a shift in the balance of power in Europe.

Several EU countries, notably Germany, are not keen on the plan either and have asked Washington to address Moscow's concerns.

Maybe he doesn't know what slavery was like. But he looked old enough to have lived through the fight for civil rights. And he says homosexual marriage is not a civil right.

...and stop taking from us?

For every $1 it received from the Oregon Legislature in 2004 and 2005, the University of Oregon returned $20 to the state's economy, according to an economic impact report.

In fact, nobody will conduct a poll that would ask how Poles feel about Germans; it wouldn't be pretty for Germans. Germans don't like Poland for the same reason that like the French and don't like Americans. So in my book, everything is just the way it should be.

Surprisingly, France got the most positive votes as 40% of the Germans responding to the poll said they liked the French.

What is surprising to me that the Warsaw Voice is surprised that one bunch of appeasers like another bunch of appeasers.

What is also surprising is the following comment:

There are many reasons for the poor showing of Poland, but Germans' view of Poles really started to change after Poland joined the Iraq War effort.

We haven't liked Germans forever and they didn't like us at least since the WWII. So this comment is more anti-American than anything else.

I like Romney. I don't like him because he is necessarily the perfect candidate but because the others are less then perfect.

However, if Thompson decides to run he may be the perfect conservative. One thing we have in common is that he like me doesn't think Gandhi was half the hero liberals make him out to be. In fact, Gandhi may perfectly represent the Democrat part of today.

The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country. When American’s think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

Gandhi probably wouldn't approve, but I can live with that.

Because they know that freedom is more precious than life. The West used to know that too.

Poor minority students do well in private schools and some Democrats can't resist the idea of freeing them all from the teacher unions' plantations.

"If income (GDP per capita) would grow in the US at two percent per year and in the EU at three percent per year, meaning a one percent higher growth of the EU, the EU would catch up with the US around 2045."

Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Eurochambres)

After Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions for wrecking American government-run schools, it was time for Bill Gates to add his two cents. He wasn't as direct as Jobs. But by saying US can't produce enough engineers and need to loosen immigration rules to allow more educated people, he implied US schools are worthless and we allow too many uneducated immigrants. His testimony again exposed certain Democrat senators as anti-competition. Senator Kennedy (is this the best Massachusetts can come up with?) was concerned about countries whence these best and brightest would come. Maybe those countries should be more concerned about creating more competitive environment for their hardest working and most talented people. Globalization should work both ways. No wonder Kennedy and other Democrats protect teacher and other public employees' unions.

My family has been subscribing to Sports Illustrated for Kids for a long while now. But this piece on so called man-made global warming will force me to rethink my budget priorities.

Just a few days after a Russian scientist pointed yet again that Mars is going through the same climate cycle as the Earth does, SI prints this:

Global warming is not coming; it is here. Greenhouse gases -- most notably carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and gas -- are trapping solar heat that once escaped from the Earth's atmosphere. As temperatures around the globe increase, oceans are warming, fields are drying up, snow is melting, more rain is falling, and sea levels are rising.

No mention that this is a disputed theory, that many scientists from many reputable research institutes have serious doubts about this theory. I guess Keith Olbermann may not be just aberation.

A black man who thinks that the slavery was a real injustice told me today not to be afraid of being called homophobe for defending the marriage. I didn't need his encouragemnt. It is good to know however that somebody who knows what real injustice is agrees with you on what injustice is not.

About this time 20 years ago I was transferring from a holding cell with bunk beds to one of many rooms in the camp barracks where other 3 to 4 "inmates" slept. This was also when I sent a postcard that would change my life.

Things may change, of course, but at this point Mitt Romney is my guy. I remember in 2000 many people thought that McCain was every body's favorite until Bush played dirty. I liked Bush from the very beginning. And I was right. For the most part. So just in case Romney wins Republican primaries over the seemingly favorite Giuliani and the media starts spreading lies that Giuliani was somehow denied his chance because of Romney's dirty tricks, I want to go on the record and say that Romney should be Republicans' favorite and he should win.