What the U.S. does have are journalists who don't do research or ask questions. They have agendas and biases.
Thursday, May 26, 2022
No, we don't have the most frequent mass shootings
What the U.S. does have are journalists who don't do research or ask questions. They have agendas and biases.
Biden is a pathological liar
He’s a pathological liar, and that was known about him before he was elected.
https://the4pm.com/biden-told-2-egregious-lies-this-week-the-mainstream-media-barely-noticed/
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/30/joe-biden-is-a-pathological-liar/
Biden lies again about the Second Amendment
"It does sound bizarre because it is factually and legally untrue. I have received calls from media for years about this claim and it does not improve by repetition. Even the Washington Post has declared Biden’s understanding of the Second Amendment to be false.
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/05/26/president-biden-repeats-false-claim-about-the-second-amendment/
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
More safety for the schools to repel intruders
School safety is the same way. Although the President wants to make this a political issue to satisfy his base, it should be a safety issue. The President should be comforting and consoling not ramping up hatred. He continues to belittle the police even after we've seen such bravery yesterday. Even as all the data show minorities are more likely to be the aggressor in racial crimes. Children are much safer at school than anywhere else--we learned that during Covid when hunger, mental health issues, and on-line frustration and bullying increased because of school closings. However, young men like Salvador Ramos who are mentally ill are still dangerous, just as black ice on bridges is as dangerous as 55 years ago.
Arm the teachers. Train the staff. The Robb school had a lot of safety protections, but the fence was extremely weak. I really have no idea about schools in my own community, but I intend to ask. I hope all schools and churches and other soft targets continue to recognize that they are targets for hate and evil. It's not the 1950s or 1960s.
Although social media can shut down a president, it also allows dangerous and out of control people to post their intentions. At least they should be allowed to alert authorities in the community. And have you noticed the media is not focuses on Ramos' ethnicity?
Cookie supreme recipe and how-to
Cookie dough made into delicious muffin treat with Rice Krispies and chocolate sauce.
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Eighty three federal programs to help the low-income, poor, and single mothers
If you're tired of the old saw that pro-lifers don't care for children, only the fetuses, then you need to tell your accusers the truth. Welfare, under any name, has always been bipartisan, with Republicans often dumping more money on the programs than Democrats. EITC, for instance, was a Nixon plan, and until Obama, GW Bush was the biggest welfare spender. Many of the Covid supplemental programs were Trump's and continued by Biden. Republicans give more in their private lives, and when in government, they can't pass up a chance to be the do-gooder. The exception was Obamacare--which could not garner a single Republican vote because it was just BAD and horribly expensive.
Right now we have 83 means tested programs for the low income, poor, and single mothers. You really need to click on some of these and see what is involved. There are 27 programs just for single moms--everything from housing, to food, to medical care, to education. There were special supplements to these programs for Covid. Democrats didn't do this, Congress did, and it's been many years building. What HAS failed is Biden's sub-section of Build Back Better, called the American Families Plan. He's really flogging that dead horse--he makes it sound like we're pikers.
However, it will keep more people in poverty than just about anything they've dreamed up in DC. Uncle Sam is not a good step-father. Very few children of married parents ever live in poverty. The low income person will never be able to get ahead because it is too expensive to take a good job or a promotion. A $10/hour raise could cost them hundreds. They will pay a higher tax rate for a promotion than the wealthiest CEO in the country just by losing thousands in gov't benefits.
https://singlemotherguide.com/federal-welfare-programs/?
If you are married with 3 kids earning $57,414 (social worker, school teacher, pastor, retail manager, etc) instead of you paying taxes on it, the gov't will give you $6,728 (EITC).
If you've got a student loan Covid has paused your loan payments and set your interest rate to 0% starting March 13, 2020. This payment pause, also known as the administrative forbearance, will end Aug. 31, 2022. I'm guessing that will be renewed and renewed until we are stuck with complete loan forgiveness. I'd like to be proven wrong, but look who's in the WH.
A 3-person household which got $200 in SNAP, gets $458 as a covid supplement to bring it up to the $658 maximum benefit. No, SNAP doesn't mean you can eat on that amount, the S stands for supplement so you can afford healthier meals, not more chips and pop.
Women eligible for WIC get over $700, plus extra for fruits and vegetables. There is a formula shortage because the WIC program uses/buys 50% of the formula in the U.S. and the gov't really messed up on the supply chain.
Section 502 Direct Loan Program for rural low-income Americans to get decent housing. Special supplements for Covid with payment moratorium.
And on and on. You'll be amazed how generous you are. Because the government has no money except YOUR money.
Words matter, less is more
The Lord's Prayer has 56 words.
Gettysburg Address has 268 words.
The Declaration of Independence has 1458
The U.S. Constitution has 4,543 words, including the signatures, unamended
Right to Try Act (2018) 5 pages
Report from the National School Board Association's investigation about its letter to Biden suggesting parents could be terrorists is 55 pages.
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA ) of 2009 is 407 pages.
Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was 2,700 pages at time of pages, not including 20,000 pages of regulations (this number is debated) which followed.
I can't find the number of pages in the "American Families Plan," which is a subset of pages/words of Build Back Better, but it's $1.8 trillion for starters.
Archbishop Cordileone and Whoopi Goldlberg just doing their job
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251305/archbishop-cordileone-nancy-pelosi-communion-abortion
https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/23/whoopi-goldberg-archbishop-cordileone-nancy-pelosi-communion/
Monday, May 23, 2022
How Biden's American Families Plan hurts the low income
Consider a household that receives benefits from only two welfare programs, with one tapering off at 20 cents for each added dollar earned and another tapering off at 40 cents for each added dollar earned. Those cuts create an implicit tax rate of 60 percent, which means the worker has only 40 cents in additional spendable income for each added dollar earned. This implicit tax rate can be expected to affect work incentives in much the same way that a federal income tax rate does.
To further illustrate, consider a real-life, low-income single mother of two children in Forsyth County, North Carolina earning $10 an hour in a full-time job, which means she has a monthly earned income of $1,600 (or $19,200 annually). Suppose the single mother receives monthly benefits from five welfare programs: $425 in food stamps, $1,471 in subsidized childcare, $370 in housing subsidies, $180 in WIC benefits, and $493 in an earned income tax credit (EITC). Her monthly welfare benefits will total $2,939 (or $35,271 a year).
Now, suppose the single mother takes a new job paying $15 an hour, a 50 percent increase. Her monthly earned income will rise by $800 to $2,400 (with her annual income rising to $28,800 a year, an annual earnings increase of $9,600). However, she will face decreases in four out of her five monthly benefit streams, with each benefit reduction based on the same $800-increase in earnings (a problem known among welfare researchers as the “cumulative stacked effect”). The single mother will lose $231 in food stamps, $80 in childcare benefits, $216 in housing benefits, and $166 in EITC. Her total decrease in monthly benefits will reach $694 (which means her annual benefit total will drop by $8,328).4 Her implicit tax rate on her added monthly earnings of $800 is 87 percent—more than two times the highest explicit marginal tax rate proposed for the rich. (The details of our calculations are in a table we have appended to the end of this article.)
In addition, the single mother will be required to pay an added $185 a month in federal and state income taxes on her added earned monthly income of $800, which is an explicit tax rate of 23 percent. Adding the 87 percent implicit tax rate to the 23 percent explicit tax rate leads to an overall tax rate of 110 percent. Her raise has left her $79 per month poorer in lost wages and benefits—surely a strong disincentive for her to take the higher paying job.5
But the total (implicit plus explicit) marginal tax rate on poor and low-income workers can be worse, and actually spikes to 1,400 percent at an earned income of around $43,000 (which is known as the “welfare cliff”).6 However, studies in different areas of the country show that the total marginal tax rate on poor and low-income workers within an annual earned-income range of $15,000 to $80,000 moves between 28 and 53 percent for full-time workers earning up to an annual earnings of $24,000 (or $12.50 an hour). The implicit tax rate for workers earning between $24,000 and $40,000 jumps to 90 percent.7"
New Film for churches about abortion
Tracy Robinson, the producer and director of a new pro-life film shares her conversion story and why she felt compelled to create a documentary that dives deep into the abortion debate. Many women sitting the the pews of believing churches are choosing abortions, and many churches never speak out, or their leadership is not informed. Robinson had formerly been a "pro-choice" Christians, but
"a presentation on the topic of abortion at a church in 2016 changed her mind. The topic of the presentation was the case against abortion, she said.
“In less than two hours the message just clarified for me the true humanity of the unborn child, from the moment of conception and the whole reality of what abortion does really struck me,” Robinson said.
She continued, “and so I immediately felt compelled to make a documentary because I knew there were so many people in my shoes — young adults, who had never heard the message before clearly.”
Baby Formula mess
Women, Infants, Children (WIC): For the purpose of this program, about half the baby formulas produced in the United States are purchased by state governments with federal money.
“The production of baby formulas is a very regulated industry. In early 2022, the Food and Drug Administration forced the closure of a factory of Abbot Laboratories (producer of Similac) in Michigan. Abbot is the dominant American producer of baby formulas, partly because it is the monopolistic distributor chosen by most state governments. A germ had been discovered in the factory, but not in the products. Some 98% of all the baby formulas consumed in the United States are produced domestically, thanks to a customs tariff of 17.5%, not to mention the regulatory requirements. Industry concentration is a typical result of regulation and protectionism." https://www.econlib.org/how-londoners-survive-without-a-food-czar/
[In other words, it is completely government controlled and 50% is purchased by the government for WIC and it’s free for those families.]
This is called “central planning” and is a feature of Communist/Socialist countries with large bureaucracies that apparently have poor math skills. Women who usually got free formula through WIC are now having to buy it, making a shortage for those who always purchased formula. If you like central planning instead of free market and competition with minimal regulation and fewer monopolies, just keeping voting for Democrats.
The House Squad says Israel doesn't have a right to exist--Listen up America!
The resolution, authored by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, was submitted nearly two weeks after Israel celebrated its independence day and one day after the anniversary of the Jewish state’s 1948 war of independence.
The measure demands the US “commemorate the Nakba through official recognition and remembrance,” while claiming that the word also refers to “an ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day through the establishment and expansion of approximately 300 illegal settlements and outposts in the occupied Palestinian West Bank in which approximately 674,000 Israelis reside as of 2020.” " https://nypost.com/2022/05/17/squad-members-introduce-resolution-calling-israel-founding-catastrophe/
Sunday, May 22, 2022
It was 1922, 100 years ago
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for Year 1922:
The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
Fuel for cars was sold in drug stores only.
Only 14 percent of homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of homes had a telephone.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
The average US wage in 1922 was 22 cents per hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year.
A dentist earned $2,500 per year.
A veterinarian between $1,500 and 4,000 per year.
And a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at home
Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead,
they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned
in the press
AND in the government as "substandard."
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women washed their hair once a month. and, used Borax or egg
yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed law prohibiting poor people from entering into their
country for any reason.
The Five leading causes of death were:
1 Pneumonia and influenza
2 Tuberculosis
3 Diarrhea
4 heart disease
5 Stroke
The American flag had 48 stars ...
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was only 30.
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.
There was neither a Mother's Day nor Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write And, only 6 percent
of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were available over the counter at
local drugstores. Back then pharmacists said: "Heroin clears the
complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach, bowels,
and is a perfect guardian of health!" (Shocking?)
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or
domestic help...
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A.
I am now going to forward this to someone else without typing it
myself. From there, it will be sent to others all over WORLD all in a
matter of seconds! It is impossible to imagine what it may be like in
another 100 years.
Never mind 100 years.......just 5 more years"
The Biden Crime Family---they are finally reporting
Conservatives knew this in 2020. What happened to our free press?
Premiered May 18, 2022 Almost every week, new incriminating evidence is mined from Hunter’s wild laptop. And the proof is mounting that President Biden is lying about his knowledge of his family’s crooked deal-making. Everyone knows Hunter Biden is a seriously degenerate guy. Anyone who has handled his infamous laptop needs a tetanus shot. The salacious stuff on the laptop is sad and pathetic for sure, but that stuff is NOT what is most relevant to the United States. Glenn exposes how the laptop is REALLY about Joe Biden, his abuse of power as vice president, and his ongoing denials now as president. Now that the 2020 election has passed and their man is in office, the mainstream media have suddenly decided to admit Hunter’s laptop is not Russian disinformation after all. No one has done more research into the Biden family corruption than journalist and best-selling author Peter Schweizer. He has researched the depths of Hunter’s laptop and found more than racy photos. “These aren’t HUNTER’S business deals,” Peter says, “they benefit the WHOLE family.” And he has the emails to prove it. But the mainstream media still insist President Biden is as pure as his thinning white hair in all of this. As Glenn reveals tonight, he is not. But will anyone in the Biden family see jail time? Americans are fed up with two sets of rules – one for regular citizens and one for the ruling elites.Saturday, May 21, 2022
Pelosi gets a 100% rating from NARAL
In the press conference following their conversation, she argued that all males—implicitly placing the pope and male Congressional members on the same plane—should refrain from interfering with abortions: “I love the pope. I have the highest regard for the pope…. But I don’t think that a lot of guys should be calling the shots.”
In a May 2022 interview with The Seattle Times, she confirmed that she believes her own judgment trumps the Church when it comes to abortion:
The very idea that they would be telling women the size, timing or whatever of their family, the personal nature of this is so appalling, and I say that as a devout Catholic…. They say to me, “Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the Pope.” Yes I do. Are you stupid? . . .In 2021, Speaker Pelosi brought to the House floor and voted for the “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which codifies the right to abort a baby up until the moment of birth for any reason.
While delivering remarks to the House in support of WHPA, she condemned political forces that “don’t want in vitro fertilization” and “stand in the way of reproductive health and guidance in terms of family planning, birth control and the rest,” calling all efforts to limit such evils an “intrusion into the privacy of a family’s life.”
Additionally, Speaker Pelosi cited her Catholic faith as she voiced her support of this radical bill that directly contradicts Catholic moral teaching. She told the House of Representatives:
I come to this as a Catholic mother of five in six years and one week and with the joy that all that meant to us. But with the recognition that it was my husband and I – our decision. It was our decision. And we should not, in this body or in that Court, be making decisions for the women in America." https://catholicvote.org/public-scandal/
She may be many things, but she's not a Catholic anything.
TGIF: Conspiracy Theories, mostly from Democrats
“All the news you need to know from the chaotic week that was.
By Nellie Bowles from Common Sense by Bari Weiss
Three shootings in one week: On Saturday, in Buffalo, New York, a young white man traveled to a black neighborhood to shoot up a grocery store, killing 10 people and wounding 3. On Sunday, in Laguna Woods, California, a Chinese man went to a Taiwanese church with a gun, killing one and critically injuring four. In Dallas, a young black man went to a Korean spa, shooting three.
In a single week, three mass shootings. Each appears to have been driven by specific racial hate—against black Americans, against Taiwanese, and against Koreans.
Although the Buffalo shooter seemed to latch on to many deranged theories of both left and right wing varieties, his primary fixation was on the notion of a great replacement. This is a conspiracy that the Jews are bringing people of color into Western countries to overtake the white population and transform the character of the country. Remember how the white supremacists with the tiki torches in Charlottesville shouted “Jews will not replace us!” This was their ideology as well. It was also at least part of what motivated the Tree of Life shooter in Pittsburgh.
These shooters are all motivated by racist beliefs. Likely they are also mentally ill. (In the case of the Buffalo shooter, there were various red flags.) But somehow—and appallingly—this murderer has been cast as a . . . normal Republican. Here’s a Rolling Stone op-ed on it: “The Buffalo shooter isn’t a ‘lone wolf.’ He’s a mainstream Republican.” And after it emerged that the parishioners in the Taiwanese church tied up their shooter, Eric Swalwell, the congressman from California, wrote: “I’m sorry House GOP that the parishioners hogtied your boy.”
This is a shockingly dark way to perceive half the country. We’ve long been the country of bowling alone, and you don’t need more reminders of falling church and community organization membership or of how few friends the average American man has now. Believing that half the country is a mentally ill murderous cult isn’t going to help.”
Really? An 18 year old with mental problems known to all around him has a political/voting record? And Rolling Stone calls that "mainstream." Evil stuff. Especially with no mention of the blood bath in Chicago every week-end. And wasn't it Swalwell who was "sleeping with the enemy." Seemed to think he was attractive to a hot chick.
Friday, May 20, 2022
Two friends--joke sent by friend Robin Hall (our Scotland trip)
Two guys grow up together, but after college one moves to Georgia and the other to Texas. They agree to meet every ten years in Florida to play golf and catch up with each other.
At age 32 they meet, finish their round of golf and head for lunch.
"Where you wanna go?" "Hooters." "Why Hooters?" "They have those servers
with the big boobs, the tight shorts and the gorgeous legs." "You're
on."
At age 42, they meet and play golf again. "Where you wanna go for
lunch?"
"Hooters." "Again? Why?" "They have cold beer, big screen TVs, and side
action on the games." "OK."
At age 52 they meet and play again. "So, where you wanna go for lunch?"
"Hooters.
"Why?" "The food is pretty good and there's plenty of parking." "OK."
At age 62 they meet again. After a round of golf, one says, "Where you
wanna go?"
"Hooters." "Why?" "Wings are half price and the food isn't too spicy."
"Good choice"
At age 72 they meet again. Once again, after a round of golf, one says,
"Where shall we go for lunch?" "Hooters." "Why?" "They have six
handicapped parking spaces right by the door and they have senior
discounts." "Great choice"
At age 82 they meet and play again. "Where should we go for lunch?"
"Hooters." "Why?" "Because we've never been there before."
“Okay, let’s give it a try."
Ten ways Biden is creating inflation at the pump and endangering us all
https://youtu.be/DmyNtzOJLPU May 2022
1. Cancelled Keystone
2. Halted new old and gas leases
3. Killed off shore leasing programs
4. Nominated hostile, far-left activists
5. Invalidated Gulf shore lease 257
6. Pressured financial markets to abandon fossil fuel projects
7. Cut onshore permitting
8. Burdensome rules for greenhouse gas reporting
9. ESG for retirement savings investments
10. Begging Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia to produce more oil
And others:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/15/fuel-inflation-oil-gas-energy-transition-climate-change-biden/ November 2021
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/biden-energy-policies-inflation-oil-gas February 2022
And while Biden and MSM blame GOP or Tucker Carlson, for coddling Russia, it is in fact Russia who is funding the anti-fossil fuel cabal. For decades. "In 2017, congressional investigators found that a money trail linked Russia to millions of dollars funding U.S. nonprofits to work against U.S. shale gas in order to influence the U.S. energy market. Specifically, investigators found that NRDC, Sierra Club, and Climate Action Network were all found to have received millions of dollars of funding in grants from a shady San Francisco-based company called “Sea Change” that a money trail linked back to the Russians. Indeed, it is an open secret that Russians have funded anti-fracking and anti-natural gas propaganda in America for decades, as environmental groups funded the campaigns of Democrats and pressured them to ban fossil fuels." https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/01/stop-letting-environmental-groups-funded-by-russia-dictate-americas-energy-policy/Divorce statistics from divorce lawyers
I was looking for an update on some 2005 divorce statistics from my blog and came across a website for divorce lawyers and these interesting tidbits. These three professions have the highest rate of divorce, dancers (43), bartenders (38.4) and massage therapists (38.2). These three professions have the lowest rate, clergy (5.61), optometrists (4.01) and agricultural engineers (1.78).
The groups with the most divorces are downscale adults (adults making less than $20,000 (annually) (39 percent), Baby Boomers (38 percent), those aligned with a non-Christian faith (38 percent), African-Americans (36 percent), and people who consider themselves to be liberal on social and political matters (37 percent).
Among the population segments with the lowest likelihood of having been divorced subsequent to marriage are Catholics (28 percent), evangelicals (26 percent), upscale adults (adults making more than $75000 annually) (22 percent), Asians (20 percent) and those who deem themselves to be conservative on social and political matters (28%).
A lot of other statistics that might surprise you--or not. https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/
Who paid federal income tax in 2021--about 40%
Who pays no income tax
"The share of households that paid no federal income tax hovered in the low- to mid-40s until the pandemic. In 2020, it increased to more than 60 percent. This was due in part to massive COVID-19-related job losses and a related decline in incomes. In addition, the three rounds of Economic Impact Payments (stimulus checks) in 2020-2021 were structured as refundable tax credits. And Congress increased the Child Tax Credit for the vast majority of parents. Combined, all this substantially reduced the income tax liability of more than a hundred million households and temporarily turned many from payers of small amounts of federal income tax to non-payers.The share of those not paying federal income tax remained very high in 2021, at about 57 percent. But the economy recovered, federal assistance ended, and the number of non-income tax payers is falling sharply. TPC estimates that only about 42 percent won’t pay federal income tax this year and the share will fall slowly but steadily to the high 30s by the end of this decade.
It also is important to note that many of these households do pay other federal taxes, including payroll and excise taxes. For example, fewer than 17 percent of households will pay neither income nor payroll taxes this year—many of them lower-income older adults. And nearly everyone pays some state or local taxes, including sales taxes."
This is from a rant about a plan to make everyone have some skin in the game. It would raise taxes for those in the middle (the most wealthy already pay more than their "fair share."
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/scotts-skin-game-plan-could-raise-taxes-100-billion-2022-mostly-low-and-moderate-income