Of Course Ronald Reagan Addressed AIDS Before March 1987

This post accuses me of perpetuating a myth about Ronald Reagan’s statement about AIDS. It basically accuses me of repeating Deroy Murdock’s error which was just mindblowing — he was off by two days on a statement that Reagan made about AIDS. Rather than the statement being part of the State of the Union address, it was made two days later on Feb. 6, 1986.

But when Reagan made that statement (or the pointless issue of whether or not he actually made the statement as a speech or just issued a written message) is really irrelevant, because he mentioned AIDS during a September 17, 1985 press conference. Here’s the relevant part from the transcript from the New York Times of the press conference,

AIDS Research

Q. Mr. President, the nation’s best-known AIDS scientist says the time has come now to boost existing research into what he called a minor moon shot program to attack this AIDS epidemic that has struck fear into the nation’s health workers and even in schoolchildren. Would you support a massive Government research program against AIDS like the one that President Nixon launched against cancer?

A. I have been supporting it for more than four years now. It’s been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last four years and including what we have in the budget for ’86 it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS, in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing.

And we have $100 billion, or $100 million in the budget this year; it’ll be $126 million next year. So this is a top priority with us. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this, and the need to find an answer.

Q. If I could follow up, sir. The scientist who talked about this, who does work for the Government is in the National Cancer Institute, he was referring to your program and the increase that you propose as being not nearly enough at this stage to go forward and really attack the problem.

A. I think with our budgetary restraints and all it seems to me that $126 million in a single year for research has got to be something of a vital contribution.

Source:

Transcript of Ronald Reagan Press Conference. New York Times, September 18, 1985.

KNOW Small Hypocrisy

The latest issue of the newsletter for local anti-war protesters Kalamazoo Non-Violent Opponents shows that the group has no problem speaking out of both sides of its collective mouth. Principles, apparently, are for right wing nutcases.

In its online newsletter, KNOW has suddenly discovered freedom of speech,

Dear friends,

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY CALL! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO DO THIS!
THE RIGHT TO QUESTION AND DISSENT IS UNDER ASSAULT EVERYWHERE–INCLUDING HERE IN KALAMAZOO.

As most of you know, the Sisters of St. Joseph have cooperated with KNOW and PAX CHRISTI to put the “silhouettes” display on their property, atop the stone wall at the corner of Gull Road and Nazareth Road. The Sunday blessing of the sign and the ceremony–with songs, prayers, petitions, readings from the Bible and the Koran–was attended by about 150 people and was very moving. If you have not been out there to see the sign, take a trip. It’s very visible as you come into town on Gull Road, and very visible from Nazareth Road, particularly as you go east.

The aftermath has been unpleasant.

Here’s a Tuesday message from Sister Janet:

First of all, let me thank you for your participation in getting the sign up and for being here on Sunday. Second, as expected, we and Borgess are getting all negative phone calls regarding the sign and even a threat to burn it down. We need to change this around.

Obviously a threat to burn down the display is crossing the line and such threats should be prosecuted. Calling to ask the display to be taken down, however, is simply other people expressing their own right to free speech, not some grand conspiracy against dissent.

But what I really find amusing about this episode is KNOW’s sudden infatuation with preserving free speech. After all this is the same group that back in October urged people to “do all we can to re-elect Don Cooney” to the city commission. One of Don Cooney’s major goals as city commissioner is the shutting down of nude dancing within the city of Kalamazoo because that speech damages families and dehumanizes women.

Of course, KNOW is correct — free speech is under attack everywhere, including Kalamazoo. And KNOW is part of that attack with its wholehearted support of pro-censorship politicians in Kalamazoo.

Are Other People’s Ideas Worth Reading?

Robert Cringely has an meandering essay about blogging which includes the following,

I give credit to Dave Winer of Userland Software for inventing web logging, and I think the idea then was to publish, to share your thoughts with everyone else. But most people’s thoughts aren’t really worth sharing. Most web logs are little more than lists of annotated bookmarks and the value of those bookmarks can probably be best derived through a web aggregator, in which case people would be writing not to be read but to be counted, which isn’t nearly as much fun.

A lot of this comes down to production values, which is a subject those in the web log world tend to ignore because it is to their advantage to do so. There is a lot of bad television, but its packaging is such that we still seem to sit through the shows. Network TV spends perhaps $500,000 on an hour. How much do you spend on each web log entry? No wonder most web logs are so boring.

I disagree with Cringley both about blogging and about television.

I don’t know whether or not most people’s thoughts are worth reading, because most people frankly are not blogging. Most people still give me strange looks when I mention blogging.

Of the subset of technologically adept people who are blogging, I find most blogs to be pretty darn interesting. In fact the problem with blogging is the same as with television, IMO — the problem isn’t a dearth of quality content but rather so much quality content that it’s impossible to read or view even a small percentage of it. Aggregators help with the blog side, but since TV remains real time there will never be enough time to see all of the quality TV ever produced, even if you restrict viewing to pre-recorded network shows.

I imagine, for example, that Jim Roepcke’s weblog is the sort that I enjoy but that Cringley would probably find to be boring. Jim posts fairly regularly and mixes in occasional posts about current events, sports, his home rennovation project and his family. Jim and I are on opposite sides of most issues (including hockey which I never watch), but I find his blog and Jim’s ideas very interesting and worthwhile to consider.

I end up reading a lot of blogs published by friends, associates, co-workers and occasional enemies. One of the things that I think Cringely is wrong about is in assuming that great ideas only emerge from Great Thinkers (TM). As James Surowiecki notes in his book The Wisdom of Crowds, however, sometimes a group is much smarter than the smartest individual in that group.

I enjoy and tend to learn a lot more from the various and wide ranging opinions of what people write in their blogs than I do from reading elite opinion makers. I don’t understand at all Cringely’s trumpeting of the high production values of bad television — that’s precisely the problem. I much prefer to read the opinion of some blogger who may have poor grammar but an excellent take on some issue rather than the elite opinion columnist who is a wonderful wordsmith but whose opinion comes from some liberal or conservative template so predictable that I could have probably written the opinion piece for them based on their past views.

The Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism

One of the more bizarre trends in America and Europe of late is the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism, which had been widely discredited after the revelations of where it lead to in Nazi Germany, seems to be making a comeback in the West.

For example, Muslim extremist Fawaz Damra is currently on trial in Ohio accused of lying on his immigration forms in an effort to hide a past that includes ties to alleged terrorists. Prosecutors have videotapes of Damra giving fundraising speeches for the Islamic Jihad in the 1990s in which he apparently yells out calls for the destruction of the Jews.

In his defense, Damra is employing one Scott Alexander who is associate professor of Islam and director of the Catholic-Muslim Studies program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Alexander’s job is to convince the court that when Damra called for the destruction of the Jews, he didn’t really mean it. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported,

“The rhetoric is principally used by political and religious leaders to galvanize resistance to what Palestinian Arabs consider to be the patent persecution of their people by Jewish immigrants to the Middle East,” Alexander said in a report filed in federal court.

“As unquestionably hate-filled and thus morally reprehensible as such language is, when Palestinians refer to Jews as ‘descended from apes and swine’ or encourage support for those who ‘kill Jews,’ they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor.”

What a disgusting line of reasoning which, of course, could easily be employed by a variety of racists extremists who generally view themselves as victims and persecuted by the groups they rail against.

The judge in the case still has to decide if a jury will hear Alexander’s twisted view on anti-Semitism, so there’s still hope this sort of nonsense won’t find its way into American courts.

Source:

Damra didn’t promote violence, defense expert says at hearing. John Caniglia, Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 8, 2004.

PETA Targets Children — And Lies Again

Despite Ingrid Newkirk’s assertions that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals does not target children, the animal rights group recently launched a campaign — “Chickens are Friends, Not Food” — aimed at elementary school-aged children.

According to the Associated Press, PETA’s vegan campaign coordinator Matt Rice sent letters to 120 principles of schools across the South wanting to show a PETA produced film, “The Secret Lives of Chickens” and hand out PETA trading cards trying to convince children not to eat chicken. Not surprisingly, according to Rice, “Not one principal responded to our letters.”

Well, maybe if Rice could go through a single interview without an abject lie. He told the Associated Press this whopper,

We would never use shock tactics with children. Children are so naturally empathetic to animals that we focus on showing chickens as intelligent with distinctive personalities, just like pet cats and dogs.

So when PETA promised to distribute Bloody Crown Meals to children at Burger King and Unhappy Meals at McDonald’s, those weren’t shock tactics? Here’s what PETA itself said about the Bloody Crown Meals,

Kids lured to Burger King by the free toy crown bestowed on young burger buyers will have plenty of food for thought when they receive PETA’s new promotional handout: a “blood-soaked” crown with golden points impaling pigs and cows. Below each skewered animal are factoids about how animals suffer on Burger King’s factory farms and a slogan that asks, “How Much Cruelty Can You Stomach?” The PETA crowns make their debut in Los Angeles on May 8 and then will appear at Burger Kings across the country.

Not to mention that last December PETA said it would distribute Your Mommy Kills Animals comic books to children whose parents were wearing fur. Again, here’s what PETA itself said about its plans to give the comic books away outside of holiday performances of The Nutcracker,

PETA activists – including cuddly, costumed raccoons and foxes – are making guest appearances outside performances of The Nutcracker across the country this holiday season with a cheeky message of compassion. As children arrive to see the “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy,” some will be unaware that their mothers are already starring in a real-life horror story! PETA will be there to greet any fur-clad moms and their children with their newest anti-fur leaflet-PETA Comics presents…”Your Mommy Kills Animals!”</p?

Kids will see the bloody truth behind their momsÂ’ pretentious pelts. Accompanied by graphic photographs of skinned carcasses and animals languishing on fur farms, children will read: “Lots of wonderful foxes, raccoons, and other animals are kept by mean farmers who squish them into cages so small that they can hardly move. They never get to play or swim or have fun. All they can do is cry-just so your greedy mommy can have that fur coat to show off in when she walks the streets.”

Like everyone else at PETA, Matt Rice is first and foremost an opportunistic liar.

Source:

PETA’s latest message aimed at youngsters. Lynda Edwards, Associated Press, June 2, 2004.

Study of Genetic Differences Between Dog Breeds Will Aid in Mapping Genes that Cause Disease

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in May published the results of their genetic analysis of 85 breeds of dog.

In a press release announcing the findings, Fred Hutchinson researcher Elaine Ostrander said,

There are more than 400 breeds of dog, and each is an isolated breeding population. What this means is that each dog breed is like a little Iceland — an isolated breeding population that allows us to simplify a complicated genetic problem.

Although there may be just as many genes for a given disease in dogs as there are in humans, being able to search for them in a single breed allows us to find the one or two genes responsible for that disease in that population much more easily.

Based on the genetic analysis, the researchers sorted the various breeds into four groups of similar genetic varieties that presumably share common ancestors. Since most of the breeds are only a few centuries old, the differences in size and appearance are likely due to a very small number of genes. Since some of these breeds are far more susceptible than others to certain types of diseases, such as cancer, it is possible that researchers will only have to examine a relatively small number of genes to find markers for that apparent genetic predisposition to specific diseases. As Ostrander put it,

This study helps us understand the genetic relationships between the breeds, a finding that will facilitate our efforts to map disease genes and genes for what are known as complex traits, which result from the interaction of multiple genes. This analysis provides us with the blueprint.

Source:

Many scientists belive the dog genome holds information that will benefit human health. Press Release, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, May 20, 2004.