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When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia. Mark Steyn
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July 27, 2009

The Obamas will conspicuously consume on Martha's Vineyard

The news is depressing. Michelle Malkin writes that the economy, even according to the NYT, is in very critical condition. But Obama isn't letting it get him down:

What’s a flailing president to do?

Go golfing and lease a $20 million farm on Martha’s Vineyard.

Apparently Camp David, which would provide quiet family time at a much lower cost for the country, is chopped liver for the Obamas. And that European vacation (cost undisclosed) enjoyed by Michelle and the children doesn't count -- it was way back in June.

Here are some stunning details on the fabulous August vacation and the Henry Louis Gates connection from Mary at Freedom Eden.

The Obamas are paying $35-50,000 a week!

Good Lord, that's expensive.

I can't help but think of how much money the Obamas used to donate to charity before he had his eyes on national office and the White House.

From the
Los Angeles Times:

The Obamas have only recently dug deeply into their own pockets to support charitable causes. In 2002, the year before Obama launched his U.S. Senate campaign, the couple reported income of $259,394 and $1,050 in deductions for gifts to charity, below the national average of $1,872.
The Obamas were rich in 2002, according to Obama's own standards; yet their charitable giving was BELOW the national average.

$35-50,000 a week for a vacation spot. ONE WEEK!

And I thought rooms in the Wisconsin Dells were expensive.

Of course, the Obamas will only be paying for 1/3 of the bill. The Secret Service will pay for another third and the White House entourage will pick up the final third.

Woo hoo! Taxpayers like me get to pay for 2/3 of the lease.

Remember, we all have to sacrifice. Obama says so.

It's obvious that Mary wants to deprive the hard-working president of much needed decompression and family time. She doesn't realize that vacations are a human right.

Comments welcome.

Cross-posted in the Green Room.

Linked by Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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July 24, 2009

Obama doesn't know much about history

Pat Austin has written a great post on Obama's weak knowledge of history, and generously offers a constructive solution. It's sad that Obama has apparently lacked the intellectual curiosity and appetite for historical knowledge that would have driven him to educate himself and would have better prepared him for the challenges he now faces as the leader of the free world.

Add the following to Pat's pile of evidence of our president's ignorance. This is from a January column by Charles Krauthammer, who has about a zillion times the smarts and education of Obama:

[Obama insists] on the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."

Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr. Krauthammer gives several more examples. Truly, Obama doesn't know much about history, even of events that happened during his lifetime. But he's still propped up by the msm as an uber-educated super-genius.

Comments welcome.

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July 23, 2009

He's unbelievable

Literally. Even the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the love-sick Tom Shales admit that Obama misrepresents, falsifies, and, in Shales' case, spreads propaganda on healthcare reform.

Now, after Reid and Pelosi have thrown in their respective towels (for now) on destroying our medical system, Obama pretends that it's all good, that this isn't a massive setback or an embarrassment for him.

He's so disconnected from the truth that he can say, "You haven’t seen me out there blaming the Republicans," just a few minutes after saying this:

I understand how easy it is for this town to become consumed in the game of politics – to turn every issue into running tally of who’s up and who’s down. I’ve heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it’s better politics to “go for the kill.” Another Republican Senator said that defeating health reform is about “breaking” me. [HotAir]
It's reached the point where we have no expectation that he'll tell the truth at any time, on any subject. His lying is so commonplace that it's hardly worth mentioning anymore.

But this is jaw-dropping:



Well, that last bit is true: he is the president.

Read the intelligent commentary at Hot Air while I recover from this breathtaking arrogance.

*Update: Wish I had seen this post by Pat Austin sooner, and not just because she linked to mine. She goes through what she could bear of Wednesday's press conference and filters out Obama's bigger lies and misleading statements. Excerpt:
Certainly we all saw and heard somewhat different things in that speech last night, but what I saw, and what breaks my heart, was the President of the United States on national television lying to the American people. Intentionally. Over and over and over. I saw him slander American medical professionals. I saw him attempt to lead us into his dark cavern of primitive health care with his talk of centralized records and bureaucracies and Orwellian decision making.

For the moment, ignore the silly opening where he boasts of the success of the stimulus, repeats the "saved or created" mantra and bashes the successful and the wealthy.
Creating-or-saving never gets old! Nor does Bush-blaming, which I also counted at least three times.

Comments welcome.
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Prognosis under Dr. Obama: poor

Obama's not a doctor but he's playing one, and badly, as he pushes his agenda.

On generics, Obama sounds as though he was born yesterday:

“If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?”
Brilliant! [slapping head] I'm almost embarrassed for him. Those of us living real lives and raising families have been substituting generic for brand name drugs to save money for decades. Really, has he no life experience? Has he never taken his kids to the doctor or filled a prescription?

Dr. Obama has prescribed painkillers for cardiac arrhythmia and Benadryl for tonsillitis -- or is it strep? -- get Axelrod to culture that kid's throat, stat! No, wait! -- is that test really necessary? And do we really want to waste an antibiotic on someone so small and unproductive? Please go back to the waiting room while we check with our ethicists and medical professionals.

Dr. O has rejected all those crazy tubes and "stuff" (this isn't from the press conference):
We know we spend a huge amount of money that last year of life. More and more people are gonna say, I don't want people poking tubes, and, you know, uh, doing all sorts of...stuff. The most important thing we can do on end-of-life care right now: to encourage people to look at hospices as a...legitimate option.
Hospice certainly has its place. But Obama's simplistic formulation -- tubes, bad; hospice, good -- doesn't bode well for the patient under ObamaCare.

Last night, on all the major networks, he broadly slandered the medical profession as unethical and greedy:
So if they're looking and you come in and you've got a bad sore throat or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, "You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out.
His socialist heart doesn't trust anyone who makes a profit; only the government's motives are pure. Does the AMA feel any regrets now, the morning after?

I linked to this above but don't want you to miss this from Jack Fowler on the Corner:
Here’s the (incredibly long) section of the House Dem health-care bill that requires “Older Americans” (not for long!) to get counseled every five years. Up for play are matters such as “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.” Must admit there’s nothing in here about soylent green, but I’m betting some Oregon lawmaker will add that language in conference. Anyway I’m hoping some of NRO’s health-care experts will delve into this language and explain whether or not it’s a blatant set-up for a slippery slope to euthanasia.
Click over there to read the long section from the bill on this mandated counseling for the elderly. This is designed to undermine "I want to live" as the default option.

Related post here.
Comments welcome.
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July 22, 2009

Salesman-in-Chief

Via Pundit, Byron York has put his finger on it. Obama is a salesman, and he's giving us the high-pressure sales pitch.

But the public understands that he wants to rush, rush, rush, and voters told the RNC researchers that they were tired of the pressure. “Repeatedly,” the Republican strategist says, “we’d hear, ‘Wait a second. We had to do the stimulus in the dead of night, we had to do cap and trade without anybody reading the bill, we had to move quickly on a multitrillion-dollar budget without any serious public debate, and now we’ve got to get health care done in two weeks?’ ”

Republicans believe there’s a real chance Obama will make his own situation worse by pushing too hard. People have heard this sort of thing before. Anyone who’s bought a car, a TV or an insurance policy knows the feeling when a salesman amps up the pressure to close the deal. You need to buy this today, sign the papers right now, don’t wait another minute. When that happens, the smart customer backs off a little: Why is this guy trying to rush me into this? Behind all the focus groups and the message, that’s the simple version of what is happening now, with Obama in the role of the salesman and the American people as the smart customer.

Exactly. Just this morning a commenter referred to Obama as a pitchman. Wary consumers are uncomfortable with all the pressure. And when the salesman starts to sweat a little and gives off that desperate Willy Loman vibe, we just want him to go away.

That seems to be what's happening. Look at the Gallup numbers from yesterday:

Whoa: Gallup offers a bit of a game-changer as Obama gets ready for a health-care-heavy prime-time news conference tomorrow night: "As the debate over healthcare reform intensifies, the latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds that more Americans disapprove (50%) than approve (44%) of the way U.S. President Barack Obama is handling healthcare policy. There is a tremendous partisan gap in these views, with 74% of Democrats but only 11% of Republicans approving. Independents are more likely to disapprove than to approve of Obama's work on healthcare," with 40 percent approving, 55 percent disapproving.

He's in dramatically worse shape across the board in Gallup's latest numbers, with his approval on the economy at 47 percent (49 percent disapprove!), taxes at 45 percent (48 percent disapprove!), and the deficit at 41 percent (55 percent disapprove!).

Ouch. But the salesman is relentless and needs to hear no over and over and over again. So keep bugging your representatives. Hannity has all the phone numbers here.

*Update: Double ouch. Americans trust themselves more than Obama on economic issues. This is indeed good news, though you have to wonder about the sorry 29% who trust Obama more.

Related: Polls: America doesn't want what Obama is selling

Comments welcome.

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July 21, 2009

Obama v America on health care reform

Obama is becoming frustrated, starting to sound whiny and angry. Asked about the polls that show Americans do not want him to mess with their health care, he replied, "It means what we're doing is hard."

And he assures us that "it's not about me."

He's hiding economic numbers that might hamper the bill's chances.

"He insists his health-care plan won't add to our nation's deficit, despite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office saying exactly the opposite," DeMint added. "And today we learn that the president is refusing to release a critical report on the state of our economy, which contains facts essential to this debate. What is he hiding?"
He's made the equivalent of a 911 call to lib bloggers to go on the attack. Don Surber points out:
This is the first time in his political life that he has faced serious pushback. His poll numbers have normalized for a president. U.S. government approved health care is about as popular today as it was 15 years ago when a Democratic Congress said no.
He's planning a prime-time press conference for Wednesday night. It's hard to imagine that he'll allow any pointed questions about factual material in the bill. Denying its probable effects is one thing, but lying about its actual content is another. But he continues to do so. Real reporters, all two or three of them, would like to call him on that. So it will likely be another staged affair with planted friendly questioners.

The process has been exposed as a corrupt one:
"Most people there had an agenda; they wanted the ear of a senator, and they got it," said Aaron Roland, a San Francisco health-care activist who paid half price to attend the gathering. "Money gets you in the door. The only thing the other side can do is march around and protest outside."

As his committee has taken center stage in the battle over health-care reform, Chairman Baucus (D-Mont.) has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate.

Top health executives and lobbyists have continued to flock to the senator's often extravagant fundraising events in recent months. During a Senate break in late June, for example, Baucus held his 10th annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500. Later this month comes "Camp Baucus," a "trip for the whole family" that adds horseback riding and hiking to the list of activities.

To avoid any appearance of favoritism, his aides say, Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from health-care political action committees after June 1. But the policy does not apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who continued to make donations, disclosure records show.

Obama is going to apply some pressure to the Blue Dogs today. Will a combination of threats and bribes have its usual effect?

Thank goodness Nancy Pelosi has figured out how to pay for it all:
Pelosi also told POLITICO she will push to “drain” more savings from the medical industry — hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and health insurers — than they have given up under current health-reform agreements with the Senate and White House.

Asked whether she believes the industry players will wind up contributing more to the package, Pelosi replied: “I don’t know. I know they can, to the extent that the special interests are willing to cooperate. ... They could do much better. ... Frankly, I think all the money [to pay for health reform] could be drained from the system, if they were willing to do that.”
h/t: Pundit

Meanwhile, US governors are less than thrilled with what ObamaCare will mean to their budgets:
Democratic and Republican governors meeting this weekend in Biloxi, Miss., said they fear the reform legislation would dump huge costs on the states at a time their coffers are running dry under the pressures of the recessionary economy.
And the Mayo Clinic gives ObamaCare an unequivocal thumbs down:

The Mayo Clinic said there are some positive elements of the bill, but overall "the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher quality, more affordable health care for patients."

"In fact, it will do the opposite," clinic officials said, because the proposals aren't patient-focused or results-oriented. "The real losers will be the citizens of the United States."

From a town meeting in Maryland, an unemployed man asks Sen. Ben Cardin, a proponent of ObamaCare, this question:
Perhaps the most controversial, came from Robert Broadus of Clinton, Maryland, an audience member who had lost his job and replaced it with one that paid him far less money.

"I decided not to get the health insurance. That's working out for me because I'm able to save that extra money and give it to my family members and use it on myself. Senator Cardin, I want to know are you going to tell me an individual...that I have to buy health care or else you're going to fine me 25 hundred dollars every year I don't get it? Our founding fathers assured us we have a Bill of Rights and I want to see you uphold that," Broadus said in an increasingly emotional voice and to scattered applause.
Cardin's response came in the form of an attack:
"You don't pay. You are part of the population that shifts its costs over to a person who does pay, and they're paying for you," Cardin said.
Or maybe the man does pay. People often make arrangements with hospitals to set up payment schedules. And - go figure - hospitals have a different set of fees for the uninsured.

But Cardin and company don't think individuals should be able to make their own decisions based on what's best for them and their families.

Gateway Pundit reports on another health care forum. This one, in Missouri, didn't go so well for the socialized medicine proponents. Watch this must-see video from the meeting. Attendees laughed out loud and asked the best question of all: "If it's so good why doesn't Congress have to be on it?"

Bingo. But Obama doesn't want to hear this or any other questions because the time for talk is through.

Comments welcome.
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July 20, 2009

CNN's Costello destroyed by car dealer

This is fabulous. Carol Costello of CNN planned to embarrass some inbred neanderthal from the sticks and instead was herself embarrassed by his superior knowledge and ability to articulate it. Score one for the old school American male (no AK-47 required). Please see Suzanna Logan for great commentary.



The story looked like a CNN dream come true, complete with knuckle-dragging, flag-waving, yahoos giving away machine guns with trucks. Maybe CNN should have pre-screened Mr. Muller, or put some actual thought into the gun issue. Costello is so frozen in her pc mindset that she can't contend with the most common-sense argument for gun ownership: self-defense.

Comments welcome.
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July 19, 2009

On the roots of the population control movement

*Update: I've bumped this to include a link to this follow-up-post by RS McCain (wish I had time to comment but I'm busy all day today), and to give more of you a chance to see the must-see photo below which illustrates a favorite literary quote: "Babys is great stuff Al."*

7/17/09
RS McCain has written a must-read on the origins of John Holdren's anti-people philosophy. Though Obama's science czar wrote Ecoscience in 1977, and though his proposals to spike the water supply with sterilizing drugs and force abortions on the 'unfit' strike us as outlandish, his ideas are strictly relevant to the culture of death we live in today and to the threatened government takeover of our health care.

Tragically for humanity, population control advocates such as Holdren have been hugely successful. Evidence of that success can be found in the millions of legal abortions since Roe v Wade, in the 90% abortion rate of Down syndrome babies, in the growth of the assisted suicide movement, and so on.

McCain points out the veritable brainwashing two generations have undergone since the 1960's on the issue of "overpopulation." Read the whole thing.

Excerpts:

The population control movement, which generated the anti-baby hysteria that Ehrlich and Holdren promoted in their books, was largely the brainchild of John D. Rockefeller III. Rockefeller funded much of the movement himself and through a number of family trusts and foundations, and he encouraged other foundations (Ford, Scaife, Carnegie) to do the same.

Rockefeller promoted the population control movement through many means, but just to give you an example, between 1959 and 1964 one organization alone, the Population Council, got more than $5 million from the Rockefellers, $8.4 million from the Ford Foundation and $2.1 million from Scaife. So that’s $15 million in five years, back when a million dollars was a lot of money.

Mr. McCain quotes the vile Ted Turner at length, and explains:
People like Turner think they're "the smart ones," and love to recite environmental nonsense, global warming idiocies and pro-choice talking points as if these were indisputable facts. The neo-Malthusian agenda (which I discussed in "Forbidding To Marry" in April) is advanced by people who don't even realize they're advancing an agenda at all.

"It's science!" these people declare, dismissing skeptics as "ignorant," when in fact the real ignorance is on their part -- environmentalists and pro-choicers often don't know the real history of their own movement.
The mention of Ted Turner is enough to ruin one's breakfast. Time for a palate-cleanser:


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July 18, 2009

Beyond rationing: controlling more than "health"

First we'll talk about rationing. But government-run health care will open the door for more than bureaucratic control over who gets the pace-makers and the Alzheimer's drugs.

Rationing will be necessary

Obama's vision of a reformed health care system necessarily includes rationing. He has half-acknowledged the need for a decision-making board --

Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.
He dodged the question during the ABC ObamaDay marathon. But, as in the UK, there will of necessity be a group that will make the judgments on whose lives and well-being are worth investing in.

Imagining your own or a loved one's fate in the hands of bureaucrats and "experts" is horrifying. Read this WSJ article about NICE, the UK board that decides who is and who is not worthy of particular drugs and treatments. They've made some very bad medical decisions because their decisions are based on cost and "there is a limited pot of money." Examples: rationing of medicine to treat macular degeneration, which causes blindness, to one in five, and for only one eye, because "When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients." The board ruled to refuse treatment of early Alzheimer's with Aricept though the drug is most effective when taken at the onset of dementia. The article gives more examples of the board going against best medical practice.

Controlling a lot more than "health"

The control of our medical system can have effects that extend even further than our own pathetic little lives and deaths.

Every area of life can be made to fit under the umbrella of a government-controlled medical system. If it isn't about our physical health, it's about our environment, which impacts our health, or about preventive medicine. And nothing is more open-ended than the concept of "mental health."

All of the following are related to physical or mental health: abortion, disabilities, Down syndrome, overpopulation, poverty, welfare, immigration, gay marriage, sex education, public schools, ADD, end of life issues, global warming, pollution, nutrition, farming, technology, manufacturing, automobiles, smoking, guns, stem cells, cloning, vaccines, prenatal screening, genetics research. You can probably think of dozens more.

A talk show caller speculated that the government might decide that it's in our interest to mandate the search-and-destroy prenatal testing that pro-life women now opt-out of, because it will be more cost-effective than letting flawed children be born and live expensive, low-quality lives. Or that post-delivery tube-tying the hospitals so generously offer new mothers might not be so optional. That extra baby might be harmful to someone's mental health -- the child's, the sibling's, the mother's or father's, the annoyed neighbor's, or the harrassed teacher's. Or the child might just be a liablility to the environment, which is critical to the health of all of us.

If that last example strikes you as crazy, and I hope it is, how about something more mundane, like the government requiring a rowdy seven year-old boy to take Ritalin against his parents' will. Or nutrition police raiding little Destiny's Jonas Brothers lunch box of anything "unhealthy." Or a ban on war-zone smoking or used children's books and clothing.

Government-run medicine has so much potential for control that it almost makes Cap & Trade redundant. (That light bulb, furnace, or wood stove that is so bad for The Planet could be banned as being "unhealthy," because what's good for The Planet is good for us.) It's a blank check for our liberty.

More thoughts along these lines from the Motor City.

Comments welcome.
Linked by Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)
Cross-posted in the Green Room.

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July 10, 2009

The end of men, part II: The Mancession

From Derek Thompson:

What's a mancession, you ask? . . . It's a recession that hurts men much more than women, and we are allegedly in the worst mancession in recent history. Eighty percent of job losses in the last two years were among men, said AEI scholar Christina Hoff Summers, and it could get worse.
Read on for the grisly details. It's bad. And women's groups are partly to blame. From the above-mentioned Summers (via Glenn Reynolds):

Last November, President-elect Obama addressed the devastation in the construction and manufacturing industries by proposing an ambitious New Deal-like program to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. He called for a two-year "shovel ready" stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams and made reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy the goal of the legislation that would become the recovery act.

Women's groups were appalled. Grids? Dams? Opinion pieces immediately appeared in major newspapers with titles like "Where are the New Jobs for Women?" and "The Macho Stimulus Plan." A group of "notable feminist economists" circulated a petition that quickly garnered more than 600 signatures, calling on the president-elect to add projects in health, child care, education, and social services and to "institute apprenticeships" to train women for "at least one third" of the infrastructure jobs. At the same time, more than 1,000 feminist historians signed an open letter urging Obama not to favor a "heavily male-dominated field" like construction: "We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges."

[groan]

Summers continues:

Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women’s groups has made it all but impossible. . . . Our incoming president did what many sensible men do when confronted by a chorus of female complaint: He changed his plan.

More about the "macho stimulus plan" and how the feminists fought it:

At the suggestion of a staffer to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, NOW president Kim Gandy canvassed for a female equivalent of the "testosterone-laden 'shovel-ready' " terminology. ("Apron-ready" was broached but rejected.) Christina Romer, the highly regarded economist President Obama chose to chair his Council of Economic Advisers, would later say of her entrance on the political stage, "The very first email I got . . . was from a women's group saying 'We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.' "

[groan] Much more so read the rest.

Do you ever get the idea that women are ruining the world?

Paired with the news of the coming redundancy of men, it may be that Mark Steyn is right (more or less); we're entering the Age of the Woman.

But remember: even in the era of manufactured sperm, mad scientists say that at least one man will still be necessary.


Related posts here and here.

Comments welcome.

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July 8, 2009

"The end of men"

Once we would have called them mad scientists:

Scientists have created human sperm in the laboratory for the first time. The extraordinary development, which until a few years ago belonged in the realms of science fiction, raises hopes that infertile men may one day be able to father their own biological children.

The sperm were created in a test tube, from stem cells derived from a five-day-old male embryo. The advance raises ethical questions over the safety of the procedure and the threat it poses to the future role of men. It was also challenged by experts who claimed the sperm-like cells produced in the experiment were not genuine sperm.

If the finding is confirmed, a single male embryo could, in theory, yield a stem-cell line which when stored could provide an unlimited supply of sperm. Once the stem-cell line was established, there would be no further reproductive need for men. In a briefing on the research, the scientists at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute, led by Professor Karim Nayernia, raise the question of whether their discovery means "the end of men".

Men! Can't live with them, can't live without them.

They point out that the stem cells from which the sperm were made could only be derived from a male embryo – one containing a Y (male) chromosome – so at least one male would be required.

At least one male would be required. Take comfort in that, fellas.

"However, researchers believe that the issue does need to be debated and legislated for," they said. "As work progresses and results improve at Newcastle and elsewhere it may, in theory, be possible to develop sperm from embryonic stem cell lines which have been stored."

The mad scientists would prefer that we don't interfere with their delvings into the bizarre and unnatural.

Professor Nayernia said: "In theory it would be possible [to dispense with men], but only if you want to produce a population all the same size and shape [because they have the same male genetic origin]. Personally I cannot see human reproduction as purely a biological process. It has human, emotional, psychological, social and ethical aspects, too. We are doing this research to help infertile men, not to replace a reproductive procedure."

I think he's saying that, speaking as just one mad scientist, mad science probably won't entirely do away with making babies the old-fashioned way.

Call me crazy, but who's to say our society won't want to produce matching people? We're very comfortable with mass-produced, slickly-packaged, identical products. Applying this to humans wouldn't be that much of a stretch, especially in the case of a perceived 'superior' product. It's not difficult to imagine elites opting for the Lexus of manufactured sperm. Eventually, perhaps, the mad scientists could find a way to slightly alter the sperm, just to give it the cache of customization. A special birthmark or something. Yes, a female egg, with its own genetic material, is still necessary for human production, but the mad scientists are working on that problem, too.

Read the rest. Not all mad scientists agree that test-tube sperm are real sperm. And note that the claim at the top, about "rais[ing] hopes that infertile men may one day be able to father their own biological children," appears to be unfounded. Unless I'm missing something, the sperm made in the lab wouldn't come from the male seeking fertility treatment.

Q: How long before we hear about breakthroughs in human/animal reproduction? Science has been entirely stripped of morality.

H/t: Andy McCarthy

Cross-posted in the Green Room.

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