Rotary is ready. NATO and gay pride. Letters from liberals.

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I left the Rotary here in Kyiv six years ago with mixed feelings. The English speaking club to which I belonged simply refused to enforce its bylaws. The local clubs, the members of which I respected, conducted meetings in Ukrainian.  I was not surprised to find that the Ukrainian clubs are well organized to provide relief here in Kyiv. You can write me and I will put you in touch with some members who speak English. I have asked them to send a blurb I can include in this blog to let you know what they are doing.

I have offered them the kind of support I can do from home – preparing accounting reports to ensure donors that the funds are being well used, writing and proofreading in English, and using desktop software for publishing, graphics and the like.

It appears that heads are starting to roll in Russia. Though you would not know it from reading my friends on the Unz Review, who seem dedicated to remaining on the wrong side of history on this issue. It is becoming blatantly obvious in Russia that this is a screwup of catastrophic proportions.  The Unz folks have allowed one truth, that the neocons in the United States provoked this, to obscure another – that Putin is a dangerous, unprincipled autocrat who is as out of touch with reality as the czars of old.

Here's an article from the Brookings Institute on the connection between NATO and gay pride. They are indeed related. The United States Embassy flies the rainbow flag. USAID has plastered the Ukrainian Metro with advertisements for HIV testing showing pictures of handsome guys holding hands. They are on the sloppy side of a slippery slope. It is not a binary issue.

As an infant in Berkeley my babysitters included some gays. In high school we suspected, and in college we knew who they were. San Francisco had a huge gay quarter even in the 50s – the drag cabaret Finocchio's was famous for its chorus line of female impersonators. I worked with gays throughout my career, including my business partner.

But there must be limits. I disapproved of Allen Ginsberg's North American Man Boy Love Association of pederasts in the same way I disapproved of lecherous old professors seducing coeds. Grown men will take advantage of inexperienced boys. I know – they tried to tempt me from time to time.

When, 25 years ago as a parent, I learned that the Montgomery County Public Schools were almost advocating that kids try homosexuality as a part of accepting it, I rejected that curriculum. They are still trying. It is not surprising, but to me not at all normal, that 25% of the incoming freshman at prestigious Brown and Harvard universities call themselves LGBTQ.

People ask how I would feel if my children came to me and told me they were gay. If it was their own decision I would accept it. If somebody talked them into it I would be extremely mad at that person. If my government was talking them into it I would pick another government. In fact, they did and I did.

It did not bother me 30 years ago that some of the playmates of my first family appeared to be incipient homosexuals. Let them turn out as they will. I am happy to note, however, that none of my Ukrainian children's friends fall in that category. It is not a topic of discussion, nor should it be. A healthy society is one that reproduces itself. You have to have acceptance and compassion where it turns out otherwise, without losing sight of the need to form adults who will invest their time and resources in raising the next generation.

Ukraine has just proven that it does not need NATO. Despite the fact that some women have performed well as soldiers, we cannot lose sight of the fact that it is masculine men who have carried the battle. We survive as societies, not gangs of individuals. I am raising my children to be part of a successful society. We don't need distractions like gay pride and NATO.

Interesting how liberals evangelize by calling people who don't agree with them idiots. One of them forwarded this to me yesterday in an attempt to convince me of the idiocy of my ways, avoiding the vaccination:

    You could not be more right in that covid is still surprising
    us.  Covid is going to put a strain on our healthcare system long after
     the pandemic is over.  Last night I came across a large scale recent
     study done at the VA where more than 150,000 patients who
    had covid were followed for a year.  Evidently covid is just as much
    a vascular disease as a pulmonary disease.  There appears to be
    significant vascular damage caused by the inflammatory response to
    the original covid infection.  The study found a 72% increase in
    heart disease and 53% increase in stroke with a high degree of
    confidence of 95% CI.  This increase in heart disease is close to the
    increase of heart disease due to smoking.  For any anti-vaxxer who
    might respond to this e-mail put those facts "in your pipe and smoke
     it."  In spite of these increasing overwhelming facts it still
    amazes me how anti-vaxxers are still spreading misinformation
    about either the effectiveness or dangers of covid vaccines or
    how covid is no worse than the flu.  I no longer waste my time
    arguing with these idiots.  I am also attaching a pdf of the original
    scientific article.  It is quite a dense read requiring a basic knowledge
    of statistics.
    COVID-19 takes serious toll on heart health—a full year after recovery | Science | AAAS

    COVID Patients at Risk for 20 Cardiovascular Diseases (webmd.com)

Here is my reaction.  I'm willing to believe that Covid is both a vascular and pulmonary disease.  I do not want it. What this writer seems to ignore is that

1)    There are many and well documented adverse effects to the vaccinations.  The cure appears worse than the disease.
2)    Vaccinations do not prevent either infection or transmission
3)    Claims that vaccination reduces the severity of the disease are poorly supported by clinical data.
4)    I know of no studies to show that the long-term effects of Covid are less pronounced among people who caught the disease despite being vaccinated.
5)    Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are very effective in preventing and curing the disease. They have almost no side effects.

I expect you who forwarded this piece are reading this response from an idiot who has yet to catch the disease. Please let me know how I am mistaken in the five points above. When you are through with that, I invite you to answer Steve Kirsch. Or even more formidable, this devastating assessment of the pharmaceutical industry in general.

With regard to Covid, here is Ed Dowd with a video on the number of excess deaths since the rollout of the vaccines. About 66,000 estimated.  He makes a pretty good case that the problem is not the disease, it's the innoculations to prevent it.

On the topic of liberals, one of you graciously had the Washington Post invite me behind their paywall for a movie and an article on bio weapons. Let me say, cattily, that these are not weapons grade articles. The piece I included from Alex Berenson does a lot better job of justifying the laboratories than these. Moreover, even though watching is free, all of the pop ups are annoying. Here is the screen refuting Tucker Carlson. Poor Tucker. The Washington Post is so busy shaking its tin cup in your face you cannot see Tucker's face.  They have an awful lot of fact checkers to feed. There is a lot of white space on the screen – apparently they don't have local advertisers here in Ukraine.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong, the women are good looking, and the children are begging daddy to walk to the store and buy some milk – they had it yesterday – and some candy, which they seem to have all the time.