Happy Birthday Robert Burns

We're going to a Robert Burns birthday party tonight. He was born on January 25, 1759 and after his death on July 21, 1796, Burns admirers have been celebrating each year at or around his birth date with "Burns Suppers". We're fortunate in that one of Columbus' finest host and hostess have invited us to enjoy a Burns Supper at their home.

My husband and I both have surnames that travelled with invaders to Britain during the Norman invasion in 1066, which means our origins were French, then into Scotland, but with so much mixing and matching over the centuries, especially in the British Isles, who knows really? We are both 8th or 9th generation Americans, with families that originally settled in Pennsylvania after getting off the boat before the Revolution, then traveling further west and south in the next generations and intermarrying with boatloads of Germans, some of whom kept their language for almost 100 years. Lots of Presbyterians in our family trees. . . his more recently than mine.

Churches in Scotland are celebrating according to Christianity today.

Churches join Burns celebrations by Anne Thomas Posted: Sunday, January 25, 2009 Around 10,000 people are expected to gather in the Scottish town of Dumfries on Sunday to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of national bard Robert Burns. According to Scotland on Sunday, the crowds will be carrying several thousand handmade lanterns through the town, past Burns’ house and the place of his burial at St Michael's Churchyard, before gathering at the River Nith to see the torching of a 15m wooden model of Tam O’Shanter atop his horse. Church groups, Scouts, Brownies, Boys Brigades, Guides and other community groups have been running lantern workshops over the last few months for members of the public to come and make their own lanterns for the procession, reports Scotland on Sunday. Two specially commissioned stained glass windows, one of Burns and the other of his wife Jean Armour, will be unveiled at St Michael’s Church earlier in the day. The occasion will also see the unveiling of a life-sized bust of Burns, gifted to the church by the World Burns Federation. Although Burns was born in a small stone cottage in Alloway, he spent much of his life in Dumfries and died there in 1796 at the age of 38. His most famous works include Tam O’Shanter, Auld Lang Syne, and My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose. Burns Suppers, held each year on or around the bard’s birthday, are taking place around the world this weekend to commemorate the bard’s life and works, continuing on a tradition of more than 200 years. A special evening service will be held in his honour in Westminster Abbey in London, where a white marble bust of Burns is positioned on the wall of Poets’ Corner. The service, held in association with the Burns Club of London, will be led by the Rev Graeme Napier and include recitations of Burns’ verse as well as solo performances from the canon of his songs.

Update on menu:

New jobs? Don't count on it

Can't imagine that anyone is surprised that the "stimulus" is a political grab for power; here's point 6 of Jan. 24's Morning Bell from the Heritage Foundation.

"While President Obama has said the stimulus could create as many as 3 million jobs, Speaker Pelosi said yesterday that 4 million jobs will be created or saved. Yet, when pressed by Congressman Camp (R-MI) this week, Tax Committee Staffer Thomas Barthold could only shrug and admit that they had no estimates that any jobs or economic growth would be created by this legislation. [There's a video of this, but I haven't been able to view it.]

Some legislators are beginning to catch on to the left's game. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says he opposes the Medicaid bailout "because some governors would use the money to mask poor decisions in other portions of their budgets." Rep. Heath Shuler (D-TN) claims "he is concerned about returning fiscal responsibility to Washington" and says the stimulus bill "can’t be the pet projects of the House and Senate."

It's time to wake up. This stimulus bill is nothing but the permanent implementation of the pet projects of the House and Senate. And that is exactly why Speaker Pelosi doesn't want you to know what's in it, and certainly doesn't want it to be debated. "We're on our timetable." she said unapologetically yesterday. There is nothing temporary about any of the spending increases in this bill. They are all designed to make the American people more dependent on the federal government. And there is nothing stimulating about that. Let's hope they get on the timetable of the American people before it is too late."

It was a much kinder, gentler inauguration than the last two

Comments a James Taranto reader: "The Mall was a lot friendlier this week than during the past two inaugurations, so I did an anecdotal survey. Turns out most of my conservative friends who went to the last two Bush inaugurations (and are still in D.C.) also went to Obama's inauguration and were there chanting for the new president too. Because my friends were there cheering and decked out in red, white and blue (which liberals can now be seen wearing again), everyone thought they fit right in.
Contrast that to 2001, when they had to tolerate screaming liberals protesting Bush's "selection" by the Supreme Court's "partisan decision to place him in the White House," and 2005, when they had to put up with the CodePink and MoveOn.org protests.

When you cast it in that light, of course the atmosphere this week was nicer! Of course there were fewer people being divisive!"

So it was the polite, well behaved conservatives who made the Mall in Washington a pleasant place to be on January 20. Amazing! How different than the treatment of Bush.

Move along folks, no Obama cells were used

The headlines in the Dispatch certainly have an Obamarvelous ring, "U.S. OKs testing stem-cell use in paraplegics." But as I've noted many times, there was no restriction on stem cell research in the U.S., only on new lines using government money to harvest the embryos from the cottage industry of womb gardens.

Geron Corp. of Menlo Park still has to jump through the hoops of safety and efficacy of our federal government to launch the injection of stem cells into humans instead of lab animals (where they have more hoops due to animal rightists who care more about animals than embryos or fetuses of the human variety).

Dr. Thomas Okarma (total compensation about $2,500,000) says Obama's election has nothing to do with this stem cell research--the project has always been eligible for federal funding. Still, the company has spent at least $100 million of its own money, and I'm sure that if they are successful, they plan to recoup every penny. The study involves people treated within 14 days of their injury. Story in the WSJ.

Here's a little Obamadvance info for you on stem cells:

"Obama recently promised to lift former President Bush's ban on stem cell research. If signed into law, this controversial area of science will present the law community with a new challenge. Intellectual property lawyer Kent Cheng, a partner in the firm of Cohen Pontani Lieberman & Pavane, told Forbes that the ban lifting would provide more government funding to stem cell research. He added that this would give the government more control over who owns patents and would help bring products to market faster than if they were controlled by a corporation." Forbes

Sort of sounds like dual standards, doesn't it? Never let it be said that biopharm could benefit from its years of research. But it will mean full employment for lawyers, both private and federal.

The Rebel side of Heaven

He's good enough to make it without the bathroom images, but I guess that draws in the middle school crowd. His real name is Sean Scolnick from Pennsylvania--sounds like a few Irish and Serb coal miners in his family tree. (Yes, coal was good enough for the nation's immigrants, but today isn't green enough.) Now he's Langhorne Slim, and I saw him at Eamonn Fitzgerald's blog. Click and listen; you won't be sorry.



Not to over-spiritualize his song, but we're all rebels, all sinners, so in a way, we're all going to the Rebel side of Heaven, but only if our ticket was paid for by someone else. I just liked his music.

If Congress approves Timothy Geithner

they prove what a phony President Obama is (I prayed for him this morning; did you?*). They won't need to wait 100 days, which is around the time we would expect to find out he has feet of clay in that mouth with a golden tongue. There aren't enough Republicans to stop this ridiculous slap in the face of honest Americans who struggle with that bizarre tome called the tax code every April, or quarterly the way this financial wizard nominated for the Obama cabinet refused to do, people who spend hundreds of dollars and even more hours wrestling with obscure phrases and filling in little lines, "if line 457d is less than the sum of P and Q of line 560, then go back and refigure line 30z and start over."

If they approve tax cheat Geithner, Congress confirms that nothing Obama has said about "change" is true, except that he will continue to push the envelop on ethics and morality, not just in matters of life and death of fetuses and embryos, but in matters of personal behavior.

* Heavenly father, be the father he never had. Lay your hand on him and guide him into righteousness, respect and obedience to your holy word, into a knowledge of history and a new found humility. Protect him, his family, staff and our nation from the terrorists within and outside our country's borders. In the holy name of Jesus, Amen.

Some of us meekly comply, others just cheat their way to the top.

Today's new word is SELFSAME

Whether this is British English, or just old fashioned, I rarely come across SELFSAME unless reading something old--in this case, G. Campbell Morgan, a famous expository preacher in England over 100 years ago. As long as I don't stumble while reading, I'd just move on. This time I stopped.

"In the early Bible history the throne is unnamed, but it is always there. In the early movements chronicled for us I find men in relation to the throne, submissive, at peace; in rebellion against the throne, disturbed. The throne of God is everywhere. I come at last to the point where the chosen people make their great mistake, and I hear God's explanation of it, "They have rejected me, that I should not be King over them." I come further on until I find this SELFSAME chosen people in the midst of circumstances full of terror. . . "

My big dining room dictionary has several pages for "self" as a noun, adjective, pre-fix, suffix, and a list of hundreds of words, both hyphenated and joined thereof, from self-abandon to self-wrought. SELFSAME seems to mean "exactly the same," or "precisely the same"--probably with a touch of irony or criticism in Morgan's voice, since these 10 volumes (The Westminster Pulpit) are taken from his sermons preached over a 13 year period at Westminster Chapel in London. 2,500 people were showing up to hear him preach on Sunday, so Friday night Bible classes were added and week after week, with notebooks and Bibles in hand, 1,500-1,700 people would show up on Friday night from throughout London.

SELF is one of those very busy, horrid little English words that must give second language people fits. You can say, "payable to self," in correspondence or on a check, or you can make a dress with a "self belt," although few women are sewing dresses these days, and if they are, they are probably using elastic, not the same fabric to cover a stiff material for a belt. You can say, "my own dear self" and your native born neighbor will know what you mean (although you'd sound a bit quaint), but your neighbor born in Turkey might think you somewhat egotistical to be speaking so lavishly. Then there is "self-rising flour," which really isn't because baking powder has been added to it, so there's some cheating going on, just as in "self-made man" because no one is. God was always there, from conception to life outside the womb, to self-diapering stage at the end and all the stages inbetween.

Another January 20 insult from Obama

"We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost."

President Bush saved our country from the ethical morass of harvesting human embryos for stem cell research. The breakthrough of 2008 might have never come if government money had been used for embryo farming and more demands for embryos. Under Obama, we can be assured of far less respect for human life and fewer ethical concerns at the beginning and at the end, especially with his promise of FOCA.

Scientific Breakthroughs, December 30, 2008 at America.gov reporting Science, magazine article.

"In a triumph of molecular magic, scientists took skin cells from adults suffering from a range of genetic diseases and transformed them into stem cells that could be used to test potential treatments or replace damaged cells in patients.

In its December 19, 2008 issue, Science magazine, one of the world’s most prominent scientific journals, hailed this and related advances as the breakthrough of the year, first on a list of the top 10 scientific advances of 2008.

“When Science's writers and editors set out to pick this year's biggest advances, we looked for research that answers major questions about how the universe works and that paves the way for future discoveries,” deputy news editor Robert Coontz said in a December 18 statement. “Our top choice, cellular reprogramming, opened a new field of biology almost overnight and holds out hope of life-saving medical advances.”
Before scientists developed methods to reprogram cells, isolating stem cells from people required harvesting them from human embryos, an ethically controversial procedure. Several countries, including the United States, restricted the technique, thereby hampering stem cell research. [This is incorrect--the research was never restricted--only the government funding beyond certain cell lines. Private research was always an option for any company wanting to put up the money and the USA produced far more research and papers on stem cell research even with limited cell lines than any other country.]

Normally, a mature cell maintains its identity for life — skin cells do not transform into brain cells, muscle cells do not become liver cells. In 2006, researchers turned on four genes in cells from a mouse’s tail and found that the cells had been “reprogrammed” into stem cells — immature cells that have the potential to mature into a variety of different cell types.

Cultured in a dish, stem cells can be incubated with chemical cocktails to coax them to mature into different cell types, including those found in the liver, muscle and brain.

This year’s breakthrough in cellular reprogramming allows researchers to generate new stem cell lines from people with genetic diseases."

President Bush's malaria initiative

If you click on the link to the White House to learn about President Bush’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), a U.S. government initiative designed to cut malaria deaths in half in target countries in sub-Saharan Africa, you'll get the Obama White House and no information--or it is buried in another topic. It was announced on June 30, 2005, when President Bush pledged to increase U.S. funding of malaria prevention and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa by more than $1.2 billion over 5 years. The five years isn't up yet, so there's no telling where the money went. All White House links were changed by January 20, 2009, so if you linked there for information or data or speeches, I doubt that the links are archived. Worldwide, malaria causes around 350 to 500 million illnesses and more than one million deaths annually, but it is particularly devastating in Africa, where it kills an African child every 30 seconds.

Environmentalists in their eagerness to save bird eggs based on the tales (Silent Spring) of a non-scientist, have killed more Africans than Atlantic slave trade. Bush's efforts can't undo the hasty removal of DDT before an alternative could be found, but they can help. The money, our money, provides for technical and programmatic strategies, training and supervision of health workers, laboratories, communications, monitoring and evaluation, and surveillance systems as well as house spraying and bed nets. Of course, killing the mosquito eggs would have been better and cheaper, but lives will be saved--eventually.

In Africa, at least one million children under-5 die each year from malaria. The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), a five-year, $1.2 billion program, announced by President George W. Bush in June 2005, aims to cut malaria deaths by 50 percent in 15 of the hardest-hit African countries. Photo gallery

I doubt that this link will be available long. Laura Bush's efforts for malaria victims are still on America.gov, but will probably disappear. Each first lady choses her own defining activity. Remember Lady Bird's beautification projects--and billboards just got larger? Digital history is very iffy--regardless of who's in power. It takes a long time to burn a library, but digital archives can be wiped out with a computer stroke. And even paper archives can be stuffed into socks and stolen. I wonder if President Bush will ever get the credit he deserves? Or if the program will be continued?

The War against Universal Pre-School

has already been lost, so don't even enlist. I was browsing some articles on the internet, and the other side is so well-funded that if you care about anything else in life, you'll need to rethink your priorities. I'm not even going to give you the links. Trust me on this one, or do your own google work.

When "Head Start" got going about 50 years ago for poor families it created an image that some kids might get ahead of others if you just did the right things early enough. Teach some colors, how to paste and draw, some social skills, and perhaps it won't matter that mom's on drugs, or dad deserted the family. So middle-class parents (like me) rushed to the challenge--and they put their kids in programs too, thus moving them ahead of the low-income kids who didn't have an enriched home environment, good health care and nutrition, college educated parents, and a father in the home. Or--and I'm just guessing here--that's the excuse for Head Start children (government pre-schools) not making up the difference when they are matched to middle-class and wealthy kids who attended private pre-schools PLUS had all the family advantages. I know my children attended pre-school in the 1970s, but I'm sure no one had heard of it in the 1940s, or if they did they called it grandma's house or babysitting. I taught them to read and count because I think their pre-school emphasized social skills, sitting still for story time, and not throwing fire trucks at each other.

Speaking of which. Today I was putting away exercise equipment in a room full of pre-pre-schoolers (under age 3) and their parents. I noticed a foster child, and not because he was black, but because he was the only one not using the toys "appropriately"--he was throwing them across the room (had a great arm, too). The other toddlers just worked and played around him very intent on whatever they'd chosen--sandbox skills, riding tricycles, crawling through tunnels, sitting on daddy's lap, etc. When I was using the rest room, the little one in the next stall asked her mommy if she could watch me. And mommy was there to explain manners and rest room behavior. Not all little girls get that sort of one-on-one discussion with their mothers about using public toilets--toilet paper, hand washing, manners, etc. The difference between what I saw and day-care is that there were probably two children for every adult, and it only lasts 2 hours--the parents, not paid aides, were doing the supervising.

Back to the war you missed. The education system is salivating--it enlisted years ago in this war and is extremely well trained to combat any argument you may have. Pre-schools have a patch work of standards by city and state for buildings, curricula, teachers, aides, safety, play time, unions--I mean, can you see the economic opportunities here for colleges of education, the building trades, the regulatory agencies? My head just swims with visions of dollars in chubby little fists. Convincing people that a child's mind and behavior are completely malleable with just 20-30 hours a week away from mom, grandma and the hood, and that the payback to the government will be enormous when they don't go to prison, shouldn't be any more difficult than convincing them we control the climate. If we just spend enough money. . . Whoopee. It's worth a chunk of that stimulus, right? After all, stingy old Bush was only spending $7 billion a year on pre-schoolers--Obama and the teachers unions who supported him can do better than that.

So what if the research is totally shaky and biased? (No research denying the value of universal pre-school will ever see the light of day in peer reviewed education journals which are totally dependent on federal money from the editors' salaries to the grants for research to the professors' tenure track requirements to the library subscriptions to the license for digitizing the information in huge databanks).

Although the little squirts do have to be born first before we enroll them in pre-school. Maybe that's the angle we should take? Pit FOCA and the feminists against the universal early childhood education movement.

The closing of Gitmo

Oh, weren't they jubilant yesterday. The War on Terror is over--with a stroke of the pen. Now we're safe again--the rest of the Muslim world will fall at the feet of a convert to Christianity. Let them build high security prisons in the districts of Murtha and Pelosi, Pennsylvania and California, and park the terrorists there. Wait, make that just California. Western Pennsylvania is too close to Ohio. They shouldn't be put in U.S. prisons, military or general population, because they are so dangerous, both to the prison staff and the other prisoners. Plus, do you really want them recruiting among the prison population? Well, sure, some of you do, but what about the nearly 48% who didn't vote for Obama or only voted for his color and not his policies?

We used to visit prisoners in the old Ohio Penitentiary in downtown Columbus (now torn down). Even good old boys from southern Ohio can make weapons out of anything. Imagine what an al-Qaeda boy could do.

Louis Pepe is sounding the alarm because his attacker used the same type of container to blind him with a mixture of Tabasco sauce and pepper before plunging a sharpened comb through his eye into his brain.

"I thought for sure, after what happened to me, they wouldn't allow them to have the same things," Pepe said from a wheelchair in his Brooklyn apartment.

Michelle Malkin says: "King of Pork John Murtha, the 19-term Democratic congressman from western Pennsylvania, now wants to welcome a flood of Guantanamo Bay jihadis into his district. I don’t want to hear a single word of protestation from the constituents who put this money-grubbing, security-undermining fool back into office. As you vote, so shall you reap." Link

Every profession wants a piece of the bailout and stimulus plan

The building industry is just one of them, but never you mind, peek under the covers of your own profession and you'll find a group thrusting and sweating with a calculator trying to figure out how they can rape the tax payer.

"To revitalize the building sector, which accounts for about one in every 10 dollars of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, the AIA has developed the Rebuild and Renew Plan, which details its recommendations for the allocation of funds in President Obama’s economic recovery plan. The AIA is calling on the new administration and Congress to create policies that ensure these monies are spent on the planning, design, and construction of energy-efficient, sustainable buildings and healthy communities that are advantageous for both the environment and economy." AIArchitect This Week, 1-26-09

Hellooo out there! Did no one study American History? FDR lead us through a full decade of the Great Depression (yes, it began under Hoover, who like Bush also tried tinkling on the economy to get it to bloom). The poor and low income suffered the most under FDR's plans because the percentage of tax burden on the creators of wealth falls most heavily on the poor. Under FDR Americans began a slide into government nannyism that continues to this day, in thought, word and deed. Boomers have never known anything else than Uncle Sam as a cruel step-father and/or sugar daddy. Forgive us, Lord, may we not be lead into the temptation of hand-outs, bail-outs, and more welfare for business, banks, and farmers than we already have.

745 Euros is a lot of dollars!

But the book, either e-copy or print copy, The World Medical Markets Fact Book 2008, will answer

- Which country spends most on medical devices in terms of per capita GDP?
- Which medical markets are growing the fastest?
- How does the Brazilian market compare with Mexico and Argentina in terms of total health expenditure?
- What demographic development is affecting the market in Latvia and Estonia?
- What will the per capita spend on medical devices be in 2013 in South Korea and Thailand?

And it's already a year out of date (published May 2008). I guess information really doesn't want to be free. At least not if there is medical grant money going to libraries and research companies. Maybe some of the stimulus money?

In the new era of hope and change

will liberals be more generous and sacrificial? I thought some of the campaign and inaugural remarks were insulting. I'm not ashamed of my country; I'm not looking forward to the government redistributing more of my income. But that seems to be the theme. Conservatives have always been more generous than liberals, so when I read this stuff "new era of responsibility," or "change has come to America," "expanding and improving volunteer opportunities," and "call upon all of our citizens to serve one another" I wonder if he missed d'Tocqueville in history class. I doubt that he has a clue what is going on beyond the beltway.

In May of last year, the Gallup polling organization asked 1,200 American adults about their giving patterns. People who called themselves "conservative" or "very conservative" made up 42% of the population surveyed, but gave 56% of the total charitable donations. In contrast, "liberal" or "very liberal" respondents were 29% of those polled but gave just 7% of donations.

These disparities were not due to differences in income. People who said they were "very conservative" gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; "conservatives" gave 3.6%; "moderates" gave 3%; "liberals" gave 1.5%; and "very liberal" folks gave 1.2%.

Full article by Arthur C. Brooks. We all saw the pittance that Joe Biden and Al Gore gave to charity, and the Obamas only stepped up to the collection plate when he started running for office. We've been tithing our income for over 30 years (yes, even when we were Democrats), and it's embarrassing that we give more than world leaders at a fraction of the income--not percentage, but actual dollars.

And the hype about how "finally" things are going to get done. Wow--has Oprah and her buddies in the media looked at how the Bush administration threw money at social problems? It was my main complaint about his years in office--he not only outspent the Democrats but there were fried chittlins and little oversight on everything being handed out, particularly to non-profits and faith-based groups, which only weakened them. If Barney Frank had help bringing down the housing industry, it was from all the grants given to ineffective groups that were profligate spenders bleating about the right of the low-income worker to an overpriced mortgage they couldn't afford. And now those same groups have their hands out asking for money to run foreclosure counseling programs.

Starting on the bookshelves

Recorded here. For me, it's like drowning kittens.

Today's new word is PELLUCID

It's a synonym for transparent, another word I thought I knew. But English is such a fluid language, full of hope and change. Transparent comes from the Latin word trans meaning through, and parere, to appear, so it has the sense of "appear through." It means sheer, clear, limpid or diaphanous. There is something there, but you can see beyond. Those of you my age may remember that in the 1950s, completely transparent, sheer nylon dresses and blouses were in fashion. Yes, if your grandmother or mother complains about today's revealing short skirts or skimpy, dipping sweater tops showing cleavage created by padded, push-up bras, pull out that old photo album and take a look at what we were wearing in 1953. The idea was to wear lacy, sexy slips or camisoles underneath. Some girls didn't get the message, so instead you might see a rather dirty bra or unshaven armpits under the sheer yellow, pink or white outfit. Not a pretty sight.

And that's what Obama's transparency is--not a pretty sight. Pellucid when used figuratively, means clear to the understanding. And I think it is clear what is happening. He has promised transparency in government. In the vetting of his appointees, it was learned that his choice for Treasury was a tax cheat. He'd been caught once already, paid a fine and back taxes, and then continued with the same behavior. Seems he didn't understand the concept of filing quarterly on estimated income, something we learned how to do as soon as my husband became a sole practitioner. He'd also "misstepped" on paying a domestic servant whose visa had expired. Now transparently contrite, he still thinks he is the man to help the rest of us with our money. So does our President. That's transparency--know ahead of time you've appointed a guy with loosey-goosey ethics so you're not caught off-guard later.

Then there's Mrs. Senator Clinton. Everyone knows the problems with her husband, a type-A bored loose canon, how he still wants to be president, and how he's accepted money from some pretty shady people for his post-presidential years. But to deny her the Secretary of State position, her prize for being decent and not making a fuss, the cost of bringing the PUMAs into the party tent again, would just be silly. But it is transparent.

According to "English Vocabulary Builder" (1937), 7% of grammar school students thought "transparent" meant to conceal, just the opposite of its meaning. Obviously, they were ahead of their time and that misunderstanding caught on. 18% of adults at that time had no idea what "pellucid" meant (and I certainly have never used it), which comes from the same root as Lucifer, lucere.

Pray for the President

During George Bush's time in office, I received e-mails from a group that prayed for him. I don't know if Obama will have a similar arrangement, but I will certainly be praying for him. St. Paul tells Christians to do this, and if you remember the years immediately after the crucifixion, those were not easy times either for Jews or their off-shoot "cults." In some ways, praying for Obama will be easier; for me it's his views on the sanctity of life. If I know nothing else about what's going on in Washington or which head of state he is meeting with, or what terrorists are planning for him, this I know--he needs to respect the unborn who are the future of our country. There are times when knowing how or what to pray for are difficult, so people just don't pray. As if they should know the mind of God! I know two things for sure--all this is in God's hands, and he already knows the outcome. But we are also told to pray for our leaders. I also know from scripture, specifically Psalm 139, that God cares deeply about each little one in the womb, whether he's the product of a tryst between a rebellious 17 year old involved with a married man, or she's missing a chromosome or has a serious physical problem, or even if the parents sincerely believe they can't handle the economic impact of a third or fourth child. Killing the child is never the best choice. So that will be my prayer for President Obama--that he will become an advocate for the weakest and most helpless in our society, that he will liberate women by encouraging their mothers to give birth to them, that he will find the solutions to society's problems by raising up a generation from pre-birth to old age who will find them.

Clown or an elder past his prime?

James Taranto wasn't too upset by Joseph Lowry's imitation of a once respected pastor and civil rights leader. I thought it quite disrespectful of the occasion we were being told was beyond fabulous and historic and insulting of all races. Taranto compared him to the "All in the Family" TV show of the 70s--Lowry is a victim of his era, apparently. Isn't that infantilizing him? Did people laugh because they thought he was funny or because they were embarrassed for him?

"One of the striking things about watching "All in the Family" more than 35 years later is that Archie Bunker turns out to be the most sympathetic character. When he argues with his liberal son-in-law, he's right about half the time and wrong about half the time, but you forgive the latter because he was a product of his times. On the other hand, the earnest self-righteousness of the son-in-law is grating, even when he is right on the merits.

So if Joseph Lowery wants to spend his dotage clowning around in a bigoted way, we can afford to indulge him. There's no reason to be meatheads about it.

Yes, definitely infantilizing. "Oh, just pay no attention to him . . . he's old. . . used to be SOMEBODY though. Time to change his diaper."

Taranto also noticed world opinion hasn't changed much. . . "Bloomberg sends a team of reporters to places ruled by anti-American regimes--Gaza, Iran, Venezuela--and also to Pakistan, to get reaction to President Obama's inauguration. Surprise, surprise, the quotes it collects are still anti-American." I noticed also that there were riots in Seoul, a military build up in China against Tibet, an Irish tycoon committed suicide, the Japanese have downgraded their economy, someone died of bird flu, the UN is still totally ineffective no matter where it tries to intervene, and housing industry new builds are still tanking. Good Golly Miss Molly nuttin' changed.

Hope for a change in the heart of the President

WASHINGTON, January 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "As the country marks the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that imposed abortion on the United States, as well as the inauguration of the most outspokenly pro-abortion president in American history, pro-life advocates in some 118 cities across 41 states - plus four Canadian provinces and even Australia - have great hope," said Shawn Carney, spring campaign director for 40 Days for Life. "They're all preparing to participate in simultaneous 40 Days for Life campaigns from February 25 through April 5."

40 Days for Life consists of 40 days of prayer and fasting for an end to abortion, 40days of constant, peaceful vigil outside abortion centers and Planned Parenthood offices and 40 days of active pro-life community outreach. The list of cities is posted online at: http://www.40daysforlife.com/location.html

According to the CDC, since 1973, the year of the Supreme Court Decision Roe vs. Wade, 13 million (13,000,000) African American lives have been lost to abortion. The CDC reports that of the approximately 4000 abortions that are performed daily in the United States, 1452 of them are performed on African American women and their pre-born children. This means that although African Americans represent only 12% of the population of the United States, they account for 35% of the abortions performed in this country. National Black Catholic Congress

President Obama, when he was an Illinois Senator, made it clear he found no problem with this late term abortion method, although many pro-choice Democrats draw the line here. This is why Christians must pray every day for this man who is turning a blind eye to the deaths of millions of American babies of all races, but especially black babies. If he'd been conceived in the 70s instead of the 60s, to be killed before birth would have also been his fate.

Dilation and extraction (also known as D&X or partial-birth abortion): Used well into the third trimester (as late as 32 weeks old).

The abortionist reaches into the mother's womb, grabs the baby's feet with a forceps and pulls the baby out of the mother, except for the head. The abortionist then jams a pair of scissors into the back of the baby's head and spreads the scissors apart to make a hole in the baby's skull. The abortionist removes the scissors and sticks a suction tube into the skull to suck the baby's brain out. The baby's head is crushed and the abortionist pulls the baby's body out the rest of the way.

When you voted for pro-choice candidates at any level, but especially at the powerful executive level where he is not only a world leader but an example and mentor to young people, this is what you are voted for.

Three Word Wednesday

Today's words are Cadence, Humble, Resolve.

He was full of resolve
To be ever so humble;
then facing the truth
his cadence did stumble.