Joe on gender, race and color

I think we can figure out what Biden was saying in Philadelphia a week after the debate: "By the way, I'm proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman... to serve with a black president. Proud to be involved of the first black woman on the Supreme Court. There's so much that we can do because, look...we're the United States of America." (Try to diagram that sentence!)

Even though he claims in the interview at WURD to be a black woman and to be involved with a black woman (who couldn't define what a woman is), we know he is not a black lesbian. It's just good old Uncle Joe, the guy half of the electorate said they wanted back in 2020 to bring the country together.

But really folks, is it smart to be proud about another person's ethnicity and political decisions and skills? That's what he seems to be saying--Harris and Obama are nothing without me--I'm the big cheese. They only matter because of their skin color. I'm surprised he didn't tell the black radio hosts he only agreed to the interview because they are black. Back in 2020 when Harris was running for president in the primaries she called Democrats racists, and he seems to prove it.

Hysteria in Academe--ASA meeting

Before they sign up to attend the American Sociological Association 2023 meeting in Philadelphia please be aware that:

Before we can talk about sociology, power, and inequality, we must acknowledge our presence on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Lenapehoking, both diasporic and descendant of Lenape communities. The American Sociological Association (ASA), acknowledges that academic institutions, indeed the nation-state itself, was founded upon and continues to enact exclusions and erasures of Indigenous Peoples. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle ongoing legacies of settler colonialism, and to recognize the hundreds of Indigenous Nations who continue to resist, live, and uphold their sacred relations across their lands. We also pay our respect to Indigenous elders past, present, and future and to those who have stewarded this land throughout the generations.

That takes care of the guilt and shame, now let's look at the propaganda.

Translation for propaganda from academics:

"Attacks on public education"= denying porn to 1st graders
"racial justice" = racist attacks on whites and Asians are OK
"future of Democracy" = seeking more government control

It appears to be who can be more woke than the other organizations. This is a few of the meeting topics.

"As the discussions over attacks on public education, racial justice, and the future of democracy continue to dominate the American conversation, thousands of sociologists whose work provides insights on these and other vital topics will meet at the American Sociological Association’s 118th Annual Meeting, August 17-21, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Approximately 600 sessions featuring over 3,000 research papers are open to the press.

From race and racism to mental health, from climate control and environmental policy issues to artificial intelligence, sociologists are investigating and reporting on the most sensitive problems confronting American society. This year’s theme, “The Educative Power of Sociology,” shows how sociology’s educative power exists within its ability to convey knowledge and research critically, and to even offer solutions and interventions to social problems, from classrooms to boardrooms, individuals and families to communities, institutions to nation-states, and social movements to social change and justice. Given the diverse range of topics that will be covered, the ASA Annual Meeting will provide a wealth of information for journalists assigned to nearly any beat.

Session highlights include:

Attacks on Public Education and Strategies of Resistance to Protect the Public Sphere. This session is focused on the broad attacks on public schooling, including the push to privatize public education, attack anti-racist curricula, and expand charter schools or create separate school districts. Panelists will discuss different strategies of attacking public education playing out as part of the general critique of public institutions and actors along with strategies of resistance and efforts to protect a robust public sphere.
Participants: Amanda Evelyn Lewis, Noliwe Rooks, Jack Schneider, Julian Vasquez Heilig, and John B. Diamond

White Rage, White Apathy, White Zeal: Understanding White Responses to Calls for Racial Justice. White Americans have responded to calls for racial justice in myriad, emotionally embodied ways. What shapes white people’s racialized responses to demands for racial justice, such as those arising from the Movement for Black Lives? Why do some white people become invested in fighting against critical race theory, while the majority remain practically indifferent? Finally, what compels some white people to “show up for racial justice,” in mind, body and spirit? This panel speaks to these questions.
Participants: Jennifer C. Mueller, Kim Ebert, Amanda Evelyn Lewis, Sarah H. Diefendorf, and Biko Mandela Gray

The Future of Democracy: A Conversation on the Supreme Court, Education, Civil Rights, and Society with Tressie McMillan Cottom and Melissa Murray, moderated by Dan Hirschman (live streaming available). Legal scholar, MSNBC contributor, and former interim dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, Melissa Murray, and sociologist Tressie Cottom will dialogue about the implications for society and research of the recent Supreme Court decisions on higher education, reproductive choice, civil rights and liberties and LGBTQ+ equality.
Participants: Prudence L. Carter, Daniel Hirschman, Tressie Cottom, and Melissa Murray, New York University Law School"

Received via e-mail July 19, 2023

What’s happening with Philadelphia’s foster care?

The City of Philadelphia is attacking the Catholics--THIS time—because it doesn’t recognize marriage between/among homosexuals. Therefore it must lose its grant funding for children’s foster care.  But in fact, federal, state and local government social services sub-contract to many different religious groups, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Muslim. The problem is, you have to dance with the one who brought you. And many do.  Churches often have to compromise their beliefs, morals and values in order to get the money—to collaborate--or to even get insurance for their staff members. Remember when Obama went after the nuns who cared for the elderly and poor because they didn't provide birth control for staff? And Chick-fil-a because it didn't cover abortifacients?  I believe it was Massachusetts that planned to penalize churches that didn’t “integrate” the bathrooms because the building might be used for secular or public purposes. http://newbostonpost.com/2016/12/19/not-so-fast-massachusetts-ag-office-says-churches-not-always-exempt-from-bathroom-bill/

All Christians are commanded to do good works--some see it as part of salvation, others see it as an outcome of salvation, but Jesus made it clear--if you have no good works, you don't recognize him as savior (Matt. 25) and he won't see you as his flock. There are no goats in heaven. At one time in the U.S., virtually all community services were handled by the churches and community organizations, but gradually the government became more socialist and began copying and co-opting them (like the Peace Corps which was built on the Anabaptist volunteer model) and then doling out funding for the churches to do what Christ commanded. Gradually, churches lost their mission, and began competing for the government dollar instead of hearts.

Not accepting the grant money isn't always the solution. The government also controls the licensing and regulations for social services and all the HR regulations for staff, internships, codes, building, etc. Also, some of these agencies that the government attacks for not recognizing homosexuals as adoption candidates or fostering (it is after all supposed to be about the children) also run food panties, clothing and material outlets for the poor, settle refugees and immigrants, run job training programs, prison ministries, summer camps, disaster relief, etc., and the government can consider those "contaminated" and pull those grants, too.

So the holier than thou accusations about gay couples are really just an all out attack on Christians. Even those Christian organizations who have no problem with gay couples, just might draw the line at polygamy, incest or someone who choses another of the 32 genders.

Monday Memories--Medical Library Association, May 1998

May 22-28, 1998, I was in Philadelphia for the Medical Library Association annual meeting.  We had beautiful weather--I think it rained only one day.  I arrived on Friday, got settled, registered and went out to eat with two of my roommates, Carolyn and Gretchen, and a few librarians from California.  On Saturday I did a morning "historic" tour which was very interesting.  Pennsylvania is next door to Ohio, but our histories are very different, since they were a "commonwealth" long before the union was formed.  We toured Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, a shell of a house where Ben Franklin lived, and a print shop and Betsy Ross's home.  By Saturday afternoon I found my friend Jerry Stuenkel from Detroit who later lived and worked on St. Maartin's Island in the Caribbean and now lives in Florida.  We went to the grand opening "birthday party" of MLA (it was 100 years old that year) and then to the opening of the exhibits.  The party had "mummers" which I guess is a big thing in Philadelphia--guys dressed up in wild costumes (reminds me of Mardi Gras) and playing instruments and dancing

On Sunday, Majors (book distributors) sponsored their walk through the city and a breakfast.  They give us all matching T-shirts.  Jerry and I walked with a retired librarian named Priscilla who was 80 years old and didn't look a day over 65.   After the walk I changed clothes and went to a lovely Catholic church about a block from the hotel with Gretchen.  The priest and the cantor were just outstanding and the building was beautifully restored with lots of soaring arches and stained glass windows.  Catholics now sing hymns to Protestant tunes, but at about half the tempo.  They need to pep it up a little.  The sermon was on Christian Unity, and as I shook the priest's hand as I was leaving I told him I was Lutheran, and hoped some day we might be able to take communion together.  He laughed and said that sort of unity would be nice.

I met Jerry and her friend Patty who is a hospital librarian in Detroit (so young and cute you just want to hate her, but she was too sweet) for lunch and then we went to the first plenary session (outside speakers), a program on electronic journals and then to an art museum where Patty had tickets from an exhibitor for dinner.  We ate and looked at paintings--most of which were 18th or 19th century art relating to Pennsylvania history in some way--and then walked back to the Marriot.

Monday was our big day--our Veterinary Medical Library Section had a breakfast hosted by CAB (British indexing company), then we went to the University of Pennsylvania campus for a program on a canine genetic disorders database.  After lunch we had our business meeting, and then our program, for which I was one of the speakers.  I had practiced my speech many times, and feel it went quite well.  Most people seemed to remember two points, which is pretty good.  Also, every one got a copy of the full speech, so they can always read it.  Then for dinner we went to a lovely Chinese restaurant.  Tuesday was the second plenary session and I attended a meeting on evidence based medicine (hard to explain, but it means you diagnose based on what has been found to be sound practice in published studies).  Then Jerry and I said our good-byes for another year or two (she was not at the 1996 or 1997 meetings) and I helped Kathrine of Texas A & M put up our poster exhibit of our section's history.  About 3 p.m. I left for the airport and got picked up by Bob about 6 p.m.

(The notes for this memory were from a letter to my college roommate and childhood friend, JoElla, whose married name is the same as my grandmother's, and I also discussed some genealogy because her husband's grandmother and my grandmother called each other "cousin" in their letters and I had mailed a batch of them to her.)

Gosnell; the untold story of America's most prolific serial killer

 
Yesterday hearings began on Ohio Right to Life's Unborn Child Dignity Act (S.B. 28), legislation which would require the humane burial or cremation of unborn children following an abortion. When police finally raided the clinic of abortionist Kermit Gosnell (for an unreported death plus drug charges), a Philadelphia "doctor" with primarily minority clients, they didn't expect a house of horrors. The smell and filth was beyond anything these long time investigators had ever experienced. A filthy, flea-infested, cat and human excrement covered clinic with expired drugs, broken unsanitary equipment and instruments, post abortion women sitting in filthy chairs covered with blood stained blankets moaning in pain with untrained, unlicensed staff to help them. Because the toilets didn't work (fetal remains and vomit clogged them) the women urinated on the walls. Gosnell kept jars of baby feet in storage and fetal remains in trash bags in closets and the basement. Some fetal parts he took to his summer home in NJ to feed to clams, which he then brought back to the clinic to feed his (illegal) sea turtles.

Yes, unborn children deserve better than this.

 During the initial investigation Gosnell had to complete an abortion that had already been started (her 4th). Upon finishing the abortion he came back to his office and ate his lunch in front of the stunned police officers without removing his blood stained, torn gloves and gown, and when a piece of food fell on the floor he just picked it up with his chop sticks and ate it. He bragged that his cat had killed over 200 mice. His clinic was licensed and inspected by the Health Dept. This is what Democrats like Hillary Clinton mean when they preach "safe, legal and rare." I might add expensive to that mantra. The investigators found the bill for the woman who died, $830.00.

Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. Gosnell; the untold story of America's most prolific serial killer. Regnery Publishing, 2017.

Don't take this book on your lunch break! 

Symbols of the United States and Democrats

  





Lots of symbolism in the meme if a proud Hillary in front of an American flag and the Wells Fargo arena surrounded by a fence.

Philadelphia, home of the first American government after our revolution, with a Liberty Bell holding the place of this century in the 2016 Democrat convention. Historic symbolism. The first major party to select a former president's wife to be its candidate.  Some fine day, a woman may actually do it on her own.  Do Bernie's supporters even know about our American Revolution, separating us from a monarchy across the ocean, or the issue of taxes without representation, or how brief and clear our Constitution is with religious freedom, free speech and gun ownership?

I see a photo (?) of a flag behind Hillary--still haven't seen any real American flags on the stage with the speakers--Elizabeth Warren's stage was practically nude for her speech. It was rumored that they rushed in with flags after it made the rounds of social media that there weren't any, but so far, I haven't seen them. The hosting arena is named for a huge bank, Wells Fargo, which had a $25 billion bail out in 2008 (repaid it). It usually hosts sporting events and celebrities, but even with segregated restrooms and fences and ID requirements for delegates, no one is threatening to boycott Pennsylvania--I guess that's just for southern, Republican states.