Late for church twice in one day!

We have a prayer team that meets with the pastors at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning. This is perfect for me--I'm an early riser. It's about 6 minutes from my garage, to the parking lot, to the sanctuary. However, today I was to drive my husband's car to church so he can pick it up at midnight when he returns from a mission week in Haiti. I jumped (literally since it sits higher than my van) in his SUV which I hadn't driven in about 6 months, and had to find the seat lever to adjust for my short legs, the seat belt, key hole and garage door opener in the dark. Then I had to relearn a stick shift. In the parking lot I had to find the little switch (again in the dark) that lets you remove the key. I was late for prayer!

Then at 7:30 after prayer I went into the church library to read, because first service doesn't start until 8:15. I was reading about 18th and 19th century ethnic Lutherans in the USA (didn't get along, didn't like each others' music or liturgy and once they learned English they started getting cosy with Episcopalians and Reformed), when a woman who also used to live in Mt. Morris, IL came in and sat down. So as women do, we got to chatting, and before I knew it, it was 8:25 and I was late for church--again!

Our church has 9 services at 3 locations (Lytham Rd., Upper Arlington; Mill Run, Hilliard; Hilltop, Columbus) to which you can be late. Check out UALC.

Good politics is bad history and bad economics

It's a toss up. The demeaning and foot shuffling dance of the United States abroad by Biden-Obama, or Obama's negative rhetoric at home to completely gut the spirit of the American people. What is he up to? Certainly there's no hope, no change in the constant barrage of negativism we've heard since November 4. He gets his stimulus package through duplicity and lies, and before it even gets to his desk tells us it won't work and there will be more! I don't know if a positive attitude helps cancer patients, but if I had stage one cancer, I certainly wouldn't be encouraged by being knocked to the floor with the stats and treatment regimen for stage four.

[Obama’s] fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.

Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82. Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe'

If she pays her taxes can she join the cabinet?

"2001 Stanford Law Grad Cristina Schultz (now Cristina Warthen after her marriage to David Warthen, co-founder of the online search engine Ask Jeeves, now known as Ask.com) was indicted in San Jose federal court yesterday for allegedly failing to pay taxes on $133,717 she earned as a prostitute in 2003. From the Information (United States v. Warthen, No. CR-08-682) . . .see link TaxProfBlog. Now her husband has filed for divorce. Surely he knew! Two California newspapers I checked have pulled the story, but they had been copied into blogs.

Another Bridge to Nowhere

"Muzzammil Hassan came to America from Pakistan 25 years ago. He became a successful banker in Buffalo, New York, near the famed Niagara Falls. While he and his wife were happy to be in the United States, they were upset by the negative perceptions of Muslims, and particularly how this perception might affect their children. That is how they came up with the idea of Bridges TV. Mr. Hassan's wife challenged him to start it." VOA 2004

Thursday he beheaded his wife, Aasiya. Buffalo News.

The killing apparently occurred some time late Thursday afternoon. Detectives still are looking for the murder weapon.

"Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible," Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said today.

Authorities say Aasiya Hassan recently had filed for divorce from her husband.

"She had an order of protection that had him out of the home as of Friday the 6th [of February]," Benz said.

Muzzammil Hassan was arraigned before Village Justice Deborah Chimes and sent to the Erie County Holding Center.

Clinton's legacy--welfare reform of 1996

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was more successful than anyone hoped. Even Democrats acknowledged it while in the next breath noting it didn't end poverty or illegitimacy or hang the moon. The new Obama plan will undo most of what's left of it. The old programs and expenses crept back over the years under new names and acronyms without the stigma of welfare--SCHIP, EITC, TANF expanded child care, more money for school feeding programs. I think even food stamps got a new name.

We "imported" more poor people through the sieve of our borders and broadened the definition of poverty. Too many well paid jobs depend on the poor--poverty will never go away. Although the welfare case loads went down, it's still really tough for a single mom with limited education and few skills to compete economically with two income, college educated married couples. Do the math. It's easy for her children to slip back into "let the government take care of me" mentality ala Henrietta the Homeless in Florida. Even so, my 1996 letter to Ellen Goodman, the columnist, who was extremely negative then about the Act, shows Democrats differed. At that time I was still a Democrat, therefore my criticism of her column is a criticism of the programs I myself had supported and even then viewed as failures. (I supported the PRWORA, however, with reservations about where former welfare recipients would work.)

You may have a point, childhood or children, have indeed become expendable. But wasn't it we, the Democrats, who put that all in place long before the welfare reform? Who is it that first made unborn children less than human--when we undercut (chopped up might be a better term) the weakest and most vulnerable in our society at the rate of a million a year? We made an inconvenient pregnancy a tragedy and labeled it the "right to choose." Did we really think that this concept wouldn't start creeping up the age charts? And remember when we liberals thought the mentally ill and retarded should be out on the streets enjoying all those civil rights the rest of us have and we closed all their safe havens? And what about the tax structure that clobbers families with children and makes it more advantageous for men and women to just live together? And who was it that made it more financially viable for a woman to be married to Uncle Sam than to a man? Who was it that made being totally unproductive an entitlement? Wasn't it you and me?

I'm older than you, Ms. Goodman, and I remember when the "War on Poverty" began. I've seen 30+ years of billions of dollars being thrown at a problem, dollars that often go to pay the salaries of social workers, government bureaucrats and careerist do-gooders just so we can feel like we're doing something. I myself once worked for the JTPA--and I worked very hard, but I fear most of the money didn't really make it to the people who needed the help. Many have left poverty behind and for that I am grateful--but I doubt that public assistance helped as much as their families' assistance, or their churches' assistance, or the tremendous economic growth of the 1980s, the years we Democrats love to lie about. The problem with poverty graph lines and figures is it doesn't show what happens to individuals. Even with the horrors of welfare, my guess is the chances of moving up are still far better in the USA than anywhere else in the world.

Frankly, I'm concerned about where these folks currently on welfare are going to find this "work opportunity." Do I really want someone who has never had a parental example of working for a living serving my food, plumbing my pipes or inserting my IVs? Can you think of any jobs for someone trained in a 6 or 8 week program who dropped out of high school or doesn't have transportation? We all know that initially it will be more expensive to put people to work than to let them live on subsistence.

We encouraged women to get abortions; we encouraged them to go to work leaving the childcare to poor women; we encouraged them to ignore marriage vows. We shouldn't be surprised if the children are "sold and eaten."

And to think I remained a Democrat for another four years! The Democrats are now Socialists and the Republicans are now what the Democrats were in the 1970s and 1980s. Anyone for a new party?

Yummy cupcakes and other good things

Alisha and Angie have a cupcake business. If I lived near them in Utah, I would certainly buy a box for Valentines Day. But since I'm in Ohio, I'll just browse their interesting, delicious website and admire their plan to have their own business.

Soapbox Jill is a rare breed. She's a conservative librarian! Way outnumbered, but blogging anyway. She's also a mom, a Christian, a poet and a writer.

Mike and Judy are on the road with their RV (in Texas right now), but live in Michigan. They are both very good writers with an observant eye, and Mike was the president of my high school class and I've known him since . . . well, I can't remember when I didn't know him, but it's a long time.

Bookish is the title of Deborah's current blog. She's also a conservative librarian, so go visit and say HI. She's tried a few times to quit blogging, but she was born to blog.

Billoblog is my go to blog for things medical and technical. I "met" him over 10 years ago on line and just keep bumping into him. I think he's a pathologist. He can really dissect what's in the President's plan for us. It's sort of like making sausage--you probably don't want to know.

Karen Hall is a Catholic soccer mom of four who writes at Some Have Hats, and doesn't pull any punches. I like her style, even if I don't always understand the issues.

I've told you this before, but if you need to know anything about food allergies go visit Janeen's family blog. She also posts recipes and current news stories about food safety, etc. Her two boys both have food allergies. We never had those problems, but I just like her blog.

Two information/news sources I've recently added to my links are Black Informant, for news specifically of interest to African Americans, and Cybercast News Service, which picks up some of the news services like AP and Reuters, but is not as biased as what we usually get from the bootlickin' fanny wipin' journalists who will probably soon be out of a job because how many clones in an echo chamber does one president need?

Bush spent a lot, now it's my turn

What is this? Anything you can do I can do better? Obama says not to criticize him for his outrageous spending package because Bush spent too much getting us into trouble. So he spends more.

The Bush administration is certainly vulnerable to the charge that it spent way too much. Unfortunately for the always-campaigning President Obama, however, this is not a valid response to the question of whether he should spend more now. Link.

Bush lost a lot of support among Republicans for his profligate spending on domestic problems, especially those passed with "bi-partisan efforts." Republicans totally pulled away from him on the illegal alien issue. The difference here is the more Obama spends, the more the Democrats love him.

So this plan is the worst of all worlds — unless you are a once-closet socialist trained in the grand academic tradition of Chicago street organizing who finally sees an opportunity to "come out" and work your wonders on the poster nation for greedy and decadent capitalism, the United States of America. It involves incomprehensible spending in aggravation of an already dangerous national debt load; a possible net retardant effect on economic recovery; greater government control over the economy, with a consequent diminution of our liberties; and a necessary reduction of essential government services. Link

Australian bush fires

Australia is a continent--it's huge. All of Europe would fit within its borders with room to spare, and it's about the size of the U.S. without Alaska. So it's hard to generalize what's happening, since parts of that country are flooding, others having fires. Our hearts go out to all who've lost family and property in the terrible fires. Americans and Australians share Ireland as, if not our mother, at least a motherly aunt. Possibly 300 have lost their lives and 7,000 have been displaced. But we all know global warming will be blamed for either extreme--fires or flood--because, well, there's never been temperature extremes before right? It's only humans that are the problem. The little greens will blame people for wanting to live away from the city in areas with lots of trees (only movie stars and politicians should be allowed to do this) and the big greens will blame lack of action in capitalist countries to shut down production and let their people all return to 19th century levels of poverty.

I'm guessing that the most fire prone areas of Australia have regulations like ours in the SW U.S., with the best intentions, but aggrevating the fire and loss of life problems. When we were in Arizona and southern California in 2006 our guides were able to show us huge stretches of ugly tender-box forests, where neither the state or private owners were allowed to remove diseased, dead and trash vegetation. Some of the regulations are not even well-intentioned. They are intended to keep people from living there because it would be too dangerous and the "greenies" don't want the habitat desturbed.

This is Americana?

While flitting around this morning cleaning, I decided to listen to on some music, so turned on the cable to "Americana." My husband has been in Haiti for a construction and teaching short term mission, so I thought it might be nice to have things tidy when he got home. Americana seems to be an offspring of country and western, but 21st century. What ever happened to "somebody done me wrong" songs, or "honky tonk women," or "who left the chewing gum on the bedpost overnight?" This stuff is so pop-psych I almost can't take it. When did country go to college?

Obama Democrats by the numbers

I can't vouch for all of them. I knew about Chris Dodd and Tom Daschle. But that Maxine Waters benefiting from the TARP bank thing had completely slipped past me. But the last one is sure big, isn't it? Why does anyone in today's global economy, who claims to have lived abroad and experienced other cultures, who attended over-priced Ivy League colleges, think you can stop trade only on one end? What were they teaching in the 1980s?

"$1,646,000,000,000 ($1.646 trillion):

the approximate amount of annual United States exports endangered by the "Stimulus" package, which provides a "Buy American" stricture. According to international trade experts, a "US-EU trade war looms", which could result in a worldwide economic depression reminiscent of that touched off by the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act."

Obviously, the days of the "rich Republicans" are long gone.

Update: If the protectionism has been "softened" in this package, apparently Europe didn't get the news. FT Weekend "Berlin fears repeat of 1930s mistakes," and this from Forbes on the 13th:

ROME, Feb 13 (Reuters) - G7 finance ministers converged on Rome to discuss the economic crisis amid warnings from Germany and Britain on Friday that the world could revert to the dark days of the 1930s if governments resorted to protectionism.

And not a word about married parents

The number one reason for children growing up in poverty is their parents: unmarried young mothers who didn't finish their education. A child whose mother didn't have her first child until she was out of her teens, who finished high school, and got married before she started a family has a very small chance of growing up in poverty. But here's what Obama said he would do--and none of this is original to him--we've been goosing this problem with government money (and good salaries for the bureaucrats in the programs) since the 1930s when social workers decided Uncle Sam could be a step-father to millions, thus keeping them in poverty and on the rolls for the Democrats for a life time.

"My anti-poverty plan will significantly improve opportunities for millions of poor children and their parents by strengthening the economy for working Americans and providing additional resources to programs that have proven to be effective in reducing poverty. For example, my plan will expand the EITC, which is considered one of the most effective pro-work anti-poverty programs to date, to 5.8 million more Americans. Additionally, my EITC plan will increase EITC benefits for another 6.2 million Americans. I will also extend affordable, quality and portable health insurance coverage to every American and make significant investments in early childhood education to help low-income families. I will invest $1 billion over five years into transitional jobs and career pathways programs to engage more Americans into the workforce and help them succeed. I will also work to tackle chronic poverty in urban neighborhoods across American by creating Promise Neighborhoods in 20 cities to provide new hope and opportunities to residents of concentrated poverty." Spotlight on Poverty

William Galston, a Democratic strategist and former domestic affairs adviser to President Clinton is usually acknowledged as the source of the statistics on the relationship between poverty, education and marriage. But it's been confirmed many times either in research or in personal experience by people who work with the poor. Even divorce lowers a child's economic level. Only 8% of people who do all three will be poor; of those who fail to do them, 79% will be poor. The evidence that mother-only families contribute to crime is powerful. When two scholars studied data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, they found that, after holding income constant, young people in father-absent families were twice as likely to be in jail as were those in two-parent families. And their lives did not improve if their mother had acquired a stepfather for them. Fill-in dads don't improve matters any more than do fatter government checks.

Will more money in the form of EITC help? More health insurance? Vinyl siding and new windows on the home bought with a government grant? Not if marriage is left out of the poverty solution. Poor and low income women already have access to many government programs--most of which hold them hostage. I know a married mother of a school age child who doesn't work because the family would lose its EITC and SCHIP. It will also never get beyond "low income." During the year before their babies were born, 43% of unmarried mothers received welfare or food stamps, 21% received some type of housing subsidy, and 9% received another type of government transfer (unemployment insurance etc.). For women who have another child, the proportion who receive welfare or food stamps rises to 54%. (McLanahan, Sara. The Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study: Baseline National Report. Princeton, NJ: Center for Research on Child Well-being, 2003). Unmarried parents put children at risk for high rates of asthma (Harknett, Kristin. Children’s Elevated Risk of Asthma in Unmarried Families: Underlying Structural and Behavioral Mechanisms. Working Paper #2005-01-FF. Princeton, NJ: Center for Research on Child Well-being, 2005: 19-27.). In a study of INTERPOL crime statistics of 39 countries, it was found that single parenthood ratios were strongly correlated with violent crimes. (Barber, Nigel. “Single Parenthood As a Predictor of Cross-National Variation in Violent Crime.” Cross-Cultural Research 38 (November 2004): 343-358.)

Putting himself out there to the public as a married family man may be the number one thing President Obama can do bring down poverty. This he needs to say before every speech on proverty. Bring Michelle and the girls on stage and say proudly, "Here is plan A. Now for Plan B. . . "

To think they would grow up

to support and dance around the Porkulus Bill. "Some are going to live and some are going to die. . . make sure that tunnel has a door."

Governor honors long-time married volunteers

This was apparently started under Governor Taft and Strickland has continued it. No one from Columbus on the list.

First Lady Frances Strickland and the Ohio Department of Aging today honor 31 couples for their dedication to marriage and volunteerism at the tenth annual Joined Hearts in Giving celebration, held in observance of Valentine's Day at the governor's residence in Columbus. Joined Hearts in Giving honors Ohioans at least 60 years old who have been married 40 years or longer and who share a commitment to volunteerism.

"Ohio is a better place because of the efforts of these great people," said Mrs. Strickland, the event's host. "Through the hours and hard work they volunteer, they embody all that makes this state exceptional."

"The devotion of these couples is truly heart-warming," said Barbara E. Riley, director of the Ohio Department of Aging. "Their commitment to each other and their passion to help others is a model we can all take to heart."

I wasn't aware of the nomination process. I certainly would have recommended my neighbors long time volunteers at their church and the senior center, and married over 60 years.

Deja vu all over again

In 1978 I had a wonderful position in the Agricultural Library at Ohio State University working with agricultural credit and technology files. The position, like many at universities, was paid for by the State Department USAID. Essentially, it was research on what very small amounts of credit from non-profits and governments could do for families and villages in rural, third world countries. Browsing the examples that will be presented at this Fisher College of Business event next week, looks like not much has changed in 30 years. A scarf project in Bolivia and a charity in Appalachia. Well, they probably meet green goals even if they don't lift anyone out of poverty. And that's what is about these days, right? I doubt if the ACT files are still there, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel (although how would academics get promoted if they couldn't rewrite the research done 30-40 years ago?).

Students organize dialogue on battling poverty through entrepreneurship

On Feb. 20, students, the ambassador of Bangladesh, business executives, business scholars, state officials and poverty practitioners will gather at Gerlach Hall for the "Alleviating Poverty Through Entrepreneurship Summit." The day-long summit, inspired by Fisher students, will bring together poverty experts and individuals interested in this topic to create a dialogue and exchange successful strategies, ideas and practices.

“There are many entities addressing poverty utilizing different approaches, as business students we wanted to bring many views together in one forum,” said Benjamin VanBuskirk, one of the student organizers for the event. “We hope this interaction will create discussions about how theory and practice are intersecting while offering participants opportunities to learn from each other.”

The format for the summit will be panel discussions—focused on four areas, research, government, practitioners and business." Link

When the markets realized who would be the next president

So why didn't everything collapse in 1999?

In this morning's WSJ front page article about corporate default rates on high yield bonds I noticed something very peculiar in the chart. In 1999 the default rate was above 5%; in 2008 it was 4.5%. The projection--a big bold red dotted line--was for 13.9% in 2009, but we aren't yet where we were in 1999. So after the Obama Pork and Plunder (O-PAP) bill, we're still to expect defaults of businesses to continue? You mean bashing business, capitalism, free markets, nationalizing health care and parading high earners before Congress for public tongue lashing doesn't help the economy? Whudathunkit?

"A growing wave of souring corporate debt claimed another victim on Thursday as Charter Communications Inc., the nation's fourth-largest cable-TV company, said it would seek bankruptcy-court protection by April 1." Sorry, this is subscriber only

Our ever vigilant, free and independent press

"After curbing enthusiasm, Obama must ease anxiety" is the headline in today's WSJ article by Gerald F. Seib. This appeared in Capital Journal, "Capital Journal is WSJ.com’s unique site for analysis of the political and policy maneuvering in Washington in the era of Barack Obama. It features the Capital Journal columns and occasional other postings by executive Washington editor Gerald F. Seib, and will house Political Wisdom, the Journal's daily aggregation of the smartest political analysis from around the Internet. . ." What an Obama patsy. This corny mush couldn't keep a starving baby chick alive. God help us. He says the execessive enthusiasm (i.e. the bizarre hope ginned up by the candidate to win votes), needed some cold water.

If the goal was to head off irrational exuberance, it worked. More than half the country now says it expects the recession to last as long as three years. Link.

Not me. I expect Obama to exceed FDR's record and give us at least 12 years of bashing and destroying capitalism, high unemployment, and an even higher misery index. Then it will be up to whoever owns our debt, probably China, to decide what to do with us.

Barney the dog has left DC

We'll enjoy the memories of his antics. Barney the Frank is still there, marauding through the halls of Congress, looking for plunder, still misleading us into more debt. Barney Frank, the Representative from Massachusetts has done more damage to this nation than the senior senator from that state could ever have imagined.

Rep. Barney Frank asserted Thursday that the Obama administration can be more trusted than the Bush administration to ensure that banks do not misuse money they get from a $700 billion bailout fund. Chicago Tribune

Yes, good ol' Barn. He's the one who told us there was no problem with Fannie and Fred; he's the one with Chris Dodd whose oversite responsibilities got us here along with all the other Democrats and "can't we all get along" Republicans. He's the one who should be brought before Congress to do the mea culpa they are forcing on CEOs.

As my artist friend Charlie wrote, Barney is attempting to "wash his hands and those of the Democrat party of any blame for the mess, and lay total responsibility on the Bush administration and Republicans in General. The truth is that Frank and the liberal left generated the whole problem by coercing financial institutions to make loans to people who couldn't afford them and using their political clout in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to cover up the problem. (The loans were nicknamed "NINJA" loans....No Income, No Job or Assets)." Yes, I've written about that many times at this blog, and my man Bush certainly can take part of the blame. Four years ago he was praising the number of new home owners among minorities, pandering to the liberals in his own party and moderate Democrats. Owning a home isn't a "civil right," and there was a very good reason for 20% down and fixed mortgages. Once the government began demanding that banks become social workers and nannies, the scene was set for our current playbook.

If government would stay out of this, we could come out of this recession as we've come out of the last 5 or 6, without a massive Depression, but we're on our way! Wheeee! But now we have a $13 a week payback "to make work pay" for all those who believed in Hope and Change.

Here's your tax break

Don't spend it all in one place.

Q: What are some of the tax breaks in the bill?

A: It includes Obama's signature "Making Work Pay" tax credit for 95 percent of workers, though negotiators agreed to trim the credit to $400 a year instead of $500 — or $800 for married couples, cut from Obama's original proposal of $1,000. It would begin showing up in most workers' paychecks in June as an extra $13 a week in take-home pay, falling to about $8 a week next January.

There is also a $70 billion, one-year fix for the alternative minimum tax. The fix would save some 20 million mainly upper-middle-income taxpayers about $2,000 in taxes for 2009. Yahoo News

I think the decrease in the cost of gasoline in the fall added about $2,000 to the average worker's wallet, didn't it? So what will $13 a week, dropping to $8 a week do? What is that, a half pack of cigarettes a day? And their taxes on that pack are the ones paying for the new SCHIP for the middle class. A cup of coffee a day at Panera's? And now we know it's good for us. Where are all those whiners who disparaged the Bush stimulus--like Michelle Obama? Meanwhile, Geithner the tax evader is promising to throw trillions at . . . what? Does anyone know what he's talking about?

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner vowed on Tuesday to jumpstart the nation’s financial system, announcing sweeping new plans to aid struggling banks, spur lending and help beleaguered homeowners.

The program will commit as much as $2 trillion in public and private funds to spur consumer and business lending.

Geithner christened the administration’s revamped bailout program the “Financial Stability Plan,” a not-so-subtle attempt to distance the new Obama administration from the much-maligned management of the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” established in the waning days of the Bush administration. Politico

I'm not too good at math but I saw this at Soda Head: At a million dollars a day, it would take 1,000,000 days or about 2,740 years to spend one trillion. If you want to spend it in your (obviously not mine) life time you would have to spend at least 20 billion per day. Even then it would take you 50 years.

FiSP instead of TARP.

Read The Audacity of Dopes by William K. Black.

Heavy reporting

James Taranto took the USAToday writer to task for the sloppy writing on the figures for overweight military yesterday, but today he says it wasn't enough--the article was even more poorly researched with speculative (i.e. anti-war) conclusions than he thought.

To begin with, the study contains nothing--zilch--to back up Zoroya's contention that the trend "since the start of the Iraq war" is "yet another example of stress and strains of continuing combat deployments." And a close look at it gives further reason to doubt [Gregg] Zoroya's linkage of the findings to the Iraq effort.

So who's chubbing out? The women, and the elders--just like the rest of the population. The Army and the Marines, the bulk of the Iraq troops, have the lowest rates of obesity. I guess the press will need to find another way to slam the troops. The prisoners on Gitmo got fat on good food, too--which will probably all change when they are sent home to "reeducation camps" and then loosed to come back to us, slim and trim.

Today's new word--JEREMIAD

This is a noun from the name of the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, and means lamenting and denunciatory, complaint, doleful story. My goodness, haven't we been hearing a lot of jeremiads lately from the folks in Washington. The context: "[Jonathan Edwards] vision of depravity and sulphur is in the tradition of the jeremiad . . . one of the ongoing themes in American society and rhetoric. . ."

Every improvement has a consequence down the line

Our polio epidemics of the 20th century were a result of good sanitation--the flush toilet. Here’s one I wouldn’t have thought of--clean water increases poor sanitation.

"Clean Water Makes You Dirty: Water Supply and Sanitation Behavior in the Philippines"
Daniel Bennett, Assistant Professor, Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago
June 12, 2008

Improving the water supply is a common policy response to endemic diarrhea in developing countries. However, water supply interventions may inadvertently worsen community sanitation by mitigating the consequences of unsanitary behavior. Since sanitation has large health externalities, the impact of declining sanitation may overwhelm the benefit of receiving clean water. This paper shows how the expansion of municipal piped water in Metro Cebu, the Philippines has exacerbated public defecation and garbage disposal. According to estimates, a neighborhood’s complete adoption of piped water increases public defecation and garbage by 15-30 percent.

I think there’s a message here for us, but I’ll have to think about what it is. Something like "it’s not my problem any more," or “now the government will take care of me so I can do anything I want.”

Cornell McCleary, former Columbus talk show host dies

He also was a blogger. He will be missed. Story here.

A longtime critic of Mayor Michael B. Coleman, McCleary had posted comments in recent days critical of the decision to demolish Columbus City Center. McCleary had wanted the city to subsidize the relocation of businesses from poorer communities into a new center named Columbus International Unity Center.

He ran unsuccessfully for Columbus City Council as a Republican in 2001.
He hosted a radio show on 610 AM WTVN for eight years, ending in March 2006.

Urban Infrastructure Recovery Fund

Even before the Obama jobs program, there was the Bush jobs program, which pumped millions and millions into cities to "revitalize" various neighborhoods. Very few poor people benefitted, unless they worked in one of the building trades that did the work. Many of those homes are now boarded up. These were bad investments for everyone concerned. And actually, I can't even blame Bush II because this was going on for about 20 years--maybe back to Carter, but on a smaller scale. In Columbus, you might find $60,000 homes in the central city getting $200,000 worth of renovations. The roofing programs were--out the roof. But, and this is no pun intended, get a load of this one for "assley resurfacing." Either someone hacked the site, or a PIC worker typed it. Look it up in an urban dictionary. I kid you not; I've cut and pasted from this web page

The program funds several million dollars of capital improvements per year in Central City Neighborhoods. Residents propose projects based on a premise they know their neighborhood needs. Since 1992, $36 million in public roadway and public park improvements were constructed such as street paving, assley resurfacing, street lighting upgrades, street trees, curbs and sidewalks, playground equipment, and neighborhood gateways.

We will probably get to tear down our 20 year old City Center Mall and build another unsafe park! That, Mr. and Mrs. America, is just a downpayment on Mr. Obama's programs for the nation--assley covering.

Now he shows up for work

President Obama has really been testy lately, no more Mr. Hope and Happy Talk. But he's learning. He now shows up. He can't just vote "present" anymore. Today he's back in Illinois (Lincoln's birthday) talking up his 1930s jobs program. He doesn't need support from Republicans. He doesn't need "bi-partisanship" to get this killer bill through Congress. He's got all the votes he needs. He just doesn't want all the blame. Maybe that is like voting "present," come to think of it. I think San Fran Gran gets most of coaching credit.

You can read about the first assassination attempt on Lincoln here at my blog. It wasn't reported in the news until 50 years later, but a librarian saved his life. William T. Coggeshall was Lincoln's bodyguard in 1861 and later became the state librarian of Ohio.

Cancer hoax in e-mail

The latest I received was supposedly from Johns Hopkins, but they are all over the internet. There are lots of things you can do to have a healthier life, but avoiding the microwave, fast food containers, and freezing water in plastic bottles aren't those.

You can eat real food

Get up and go for a walk and breathe

Be faithful to your spouse

Stop smoking or don't start

Just those four things--without Yoga, or vitamin supplements, no vegetarian diet, no navel gazing, will do a lot to help. Even prayer if it reduces your stress level. A nice hobby. A beautiful scene. An occasional vacation that doesn't wear down your wallet. Perhaps putting your hands in dirt and growing a garden. But no modification in living would have stopped my daughter's cancer, which she survived thanks to modern medicine and alert doctors, only to almost be taken out by a DVT which had nothing at all to do with anything except flying too often and wearing high heels.

Let's put good intentions in perspective. The environmentalist movement has killed more Africans than the Atlantic slave trade ever did; over 40 million developing Americans have died in abortions; a dirty peanut plant with careless owners is taking its toll on immune compromised people who survived cancer and other problems through a living, perfectly "natural" bacteria called Salmonella Typhimurium.

Now, listen to mother and get a life.

Craig's List and Ohio Prostitution

This seems to be a problem around here. Although if these folks weren't advertising on the popular Craig's List, which snagged an OSU Nursing School adviser and former employee of the Governor, the authorities might never catch up with them.

A fourth-grade teacher at Bellefontaine’s Western Intermediate School, who was arrested Tuesday on prostitution charges, allegedly used a school computer and postings on Craigslist to set up daytime trysts with clients.

Amber R. Carter, 35, of Bellefontaine, was taken into custody around noon by deputies of the Logan County Sheriff’s Office in the parking lot of the Bellefontaine Super 8 Motel, 1117 N. Main St., without incident. She was charged with third-degree misdemeanor prostitution and fifth-degree felony unauthorized use of property.

She is now free on bond and no date for her initial court appearance had been set as of this morning.

Bellefontaine City Schools is cooperating with the sheriff’s office, Superintendent Larry Anderson, Ph.D., said this morning. “It’s really a shock,” Dr. Anderson said. “We’re pretty devastated on this. Bellefontaine Examiner

I guess it was tough explaining to the kids why the teacher had a sub.

The Christmas wreath

When I stepped outside this morning, I narrowly missed crushing some pinecones and bulbs. The Christmas wreath was in the bushes and pieces parts in the entry. Well, it was time, right? About 20 of our neighbors across the ravine are without power, according to one that I saw at Panera's this morning with her family getting breakfast. They also lost power for 5 days after Hurricane Ike roared through here in September. Being without power in Ohio in February is a bit more challenging than September. We lost power for about 30 seconds, but I heard the wind roaring most of the night.

Time to hang the spring wreath anyway.

Who bears the responsibility?

If the managers and owners of Peanut Corporation of America knew about the salmonella contamination, they are worse than pond scum and should go to jail. But what about all the workers, the ones who now say they saw the filth, the rats, the chipped paint above roasters?

Terry Jones, a janitor, remembered the peanut oil left to soak into the floor and the unrepaired roof that constantly leaked rain.

And James Griffin, a cook at the plant, recounted how his observations led to this simple rule. “I never ate the peanut butter, and I wouldn’t allow my kids to eat it.”

In interviews, these three men and another employee who worked at the now-closed plant, provided an inside glimpse into the day-to-day sanitation lapses there. AJC.com

There must have been employees up and down the line, managers, union members, illegals and legals, educated and no-so-much, who saw and didn't act because they wanted to keep their jobs. How is that different than the men testifying before Congressional leaders whose values and ethics are also screwed up?

So now a government that can't provide enough employees so the FDA can keep the plants inspected using regulations and laws long on the books is going to spend massive amounts of our money dabbling in less critical facets of our lives, like universal pre-school, light bulbs to save energy and dangerous to dispose, and rewriting marriage laws so gays don't feel left out.

"Stimulus deal forged"
That was the Columbus Dispatch headline today. Yes, forge means to form or bring into being through effort, but it also means to make with intent to defraud, to commit a forgery. And it is definitely a forgery when over half of the American people know that government doesn't create wealth--it takes wealth from producers and gives it to non-producers. This past week we were all Joe the Plumber asking questions, and we were pushed aside by Congress and ridiculed in the press. A forgery has definitely taken place.

I am an Iris What Flower Are You?

Today's new word is CORPORA

Corpus is the Latin word for body--of a man or animal, or all the writings or works of an author. Corps is a body of men. Corpulent means fleshy or obese. The city name Corpus Cristi means body of Christ. CORPORA is the plural of corpus. Yesterday at the coffee shop I pulled a little tag from an advertisement asking for people my age to participate in a hearing study by the Psychoacoustics Lab at Ohio State. (If you're interested call 614-292-1643--they pay.) I didn't know what a Psychoacoustics Lab does, so I looked it up.

In the Psychoacoustics Laboratory we are working on projects that investigate the ability of listeners to extract information from complex, time-varying sounds. These sounds are acoustically similar to speech, music or environmental sounds, but they do not require the cognitive processing necessary to recognize or understand those sounds. We are testing our model of peripheral auditory processing, which suggests that the auditory nervous system responds to the spectral center-of-gravity, COG, of the neural activity generated by such sounds. The COG is the “balance point” for this activity. As the COG changes over time, listeners hear changes in the sounds that are often described as rising or falling pitches.

I had a lot of fun poking around in the speech lab, for instance this vowel corner. I could hardly tell the difference between the women from Ohio and Wisconsin, but western North Carolina was really different.

Anyway, I came across, "The approach taken at the SPA Labs is data-driven and the focus is on constructing large corpora of speech which would provide conclusive answers to the questions asked." At first I thought it was just a collection of data, but I learned that this phrase is very specific to speech research--refers to a collection of recorded utterances used as a basis for language analysis.

Orvieto

We were hanging an art show today (Jan Kotch, Worthington) at the UALC Mill Run Church, and one of the paintings was of Positano. I mentioned we were in Italy last summer. "Would you go back," a fellow artist asked. In a minute. Here's an artist workshop in Orvieto in 2010.

Here's the artist's story. Amazing what faith, love and talent can do for you.

This and that from January 1982

While doing some laundry, I continued to go through an old box of letters and found one from early January 1982 updating our parents and siblings on what we'd done over the holidays. It's not particularly interesting, but it does have a familiar ring with weather and economy stories.

THE BRUCE TIMES NO. 12 JANUARY 1982

No matter what part of the country you are in the weather seems to be the topic--California with mudslides, Chicago area with -26, Florida with freezes, and Ohio with -50 chill factor. We had another 5 inches of snow today and it was quite wet, so I had to spend about 45 minutes shoveling the drive-way before I could get the car in.

I had an interesting free lance reseearch job this past week getting material for a medical illustrator on health insurance. I browsed the title, "The Hospital that Ate Chicago." The state of Ohio has the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the nation, and it has now been predicted that we will have a billion dollar deficit, and most of it will be from the education budget.

It has really been gloom and doom at work [Ohio State University], and it is virtually assured now that I will be out of work very soon. They are predicting as high as 20% cuts in OSU's budget, which would virtually paralyze the university. Someone was recalling that during the Depression, you had to bring your own toilet paper because the university couldn't buy any. Today we were told all purchasing would stop--including paper products and line charges for the computer.

I've applied for a job at Chem Abstracts as a Russian cataloguer. Two weeks ago I wouldn't have considered it.

No health czar, no hearings, no choice

We've got it anyway. SCHIP protecting "children," who are adults, and electronic records snooping to make sure our doctors won't be able to give us too much help or quality care. On this one issue alone, the Republicans should have stopped the "hear no evil, see no evil, smell no stench" routine. Obama didn't need a single Republican vote to launch his war on the economy.

"Two provisions in President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan could give the federal government the authority to oversee the medical decisions made between doctors and patients, critics warn, which could result in the rationing of health care." Story here.

I can understand why the Democrats fall in line--he's their guy. They can see what's happening, but they've invested so much of their passion and belief in a false prophet, that even when the crash of planets doesn't happen, they prepare to climb on board the spaceship ready for the next lie. But why would the Republicans be willing to accept the blame? Arlen Specter of PA, and Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of ME. RINOs helped stampede us into a recession. In case you haven't lived long enough to remember history, here's a picture of what we've had in my adult life.


The chart is from JWF, a site not known to me, but I was around then, and it looks familiar. If you disagree with the figures, take your questions to him. I recall paying 10.5% for a mortgage in 1988.

The President can pick 'em

Yes, I know his advisors are doing the selection and they are socialists, marxists and progressives, with a few Democrats huddled in a closet somewhere gasping for air as they are slowly strangled by the leftists, but I had walked through the room and caught the tail end of a news report, "Obama choses porn defender" or something like that. The media tend to get this messed up just to grab viewers, so this morning I googled "lawyer pornographer court" and up it came.

So apparently, President Obama's pick for deputy attorney general is David W. Ogden, characterized as a "porn lawyer" and a "hired gun" for the ACLU. There have been a few times in our history when the ACLU has been useful to freedom's cause, but mostly NOT. Let's assume here that you have no problem with our attorney general associating with scum, how about his reliance on foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution?

Here's his vita. Haaarvad of course.

David Ogden focuses on high-stakes disputes with complex legal and policy dimensions and serious financial implications. His clients include leading companies in the pharmaceutical, petrochemical, insurance, financial, airline, defense, automotive, media, and internet industries, as well as major trade and professional associations, nonprofit foundations, and individuals.

Successfully representing a multinational energy company in ICSID arbitration against a Latin American country concerning intellectual property rights

Obtaining summary judgment for a major US corporation declaring unenforceable in the United States, a $486 million foreign judgment

Representing two foreign air cargo carriers, who are leniency applicants, in ongoing worldwide antitrust litigation, including a US class action involving US and EU commerce and supervising defense of related class actions in Australia and Canada

Obtaining on behalf of a US based university with a foreign campus an anti-suit injunction halting foreign litigation brought against the university, preserving control over the university's foreign assets

Obtaining on behalf of a major foreign airline and successfully defending on appeal dismissal with prejudice of a purported federal court, state-law class action claiming improper retention of US and foreign taxes and fees

Representing the US subsidiary of a foreign corporation, and two US media organizations, in three separate investigations of alleged export control violations concerning China or Cuba

Representing a former US Cabinet Secretary with respect to Alien Tort Statute litigation arising from events in a Latin American nation

Representing a national insurance company with respect to an ongoing False Claims Act investigation by the US Justice Department

Persuading a state civil rights commission not to pursue discrimination charges against a national insurance company concerning homeowner's insurance premium levels, and successfully defending that victory through a series of state court appeals

Obtaining dismissal with prejudice on behalf of a major national mortgage lender of a putative nationwide discrimination class action seeking billions of dollars in damages on behalf of minority borrowers

Representing automobile dealers in an ongoing US Civil Rights Division investigation into alleged discriminatory lending practices

Sounds like a good old boy to me for the globalists, they're the ones with the money. It's a "living Constitution" as long as it helps their own wallet.

The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition

This is too much fun to miss.

Maybe if he weren't a tax cheat

we could trust him? Nah. He'd be doing Obama's bidding even if he were honest. Stocks fell again today. The markets have fallen continually since Obama became the candidate of the Dems in the summer. Why does Obama blame Bush for overspending when he's doing double triple time to out do him? Wasn't he a senator in a Democratic controlled Congress? Spending too much got us here; more spending takes us back to the 30s where FDR put us in a 10 year Depression. He's passing out lip-smackin' pork cracklins to his left wing buddies who put him in office.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner may have wanted to put an end to the never-ending credit crisis by announcing a comprehensive approach to saving the banking system, but all he succeeded in doing Tuesday was adding uncertainty. Forbes here.


"The Obama administration is scrambling to get a grip on the economy as it continues its descent, including rising unemployment, falling housing prices and mounting foreclosures. The government's solution is a one-two punch: $800 billion in economic stimulus and the financial system stability plan.

Geithner wants to reverse the damage done by the previous administration's ad-hoc reaction to the banking crisis, which he faulted Tuesday for being "inadequate" and slow."

Five most Obamaudacious comments on the stimulus

See original at Morning Bell for expansion and links for these statements.

1) No Earmarks: . . . there are billions of line-item spending elements to payoff leftist interest groups

2) 4 Million Jobs: According to the Congressional Budget Office Obama's plan could produce only 1.2 million jobs. And one in five of these jobs will be a government job.

3) Spending: the bill itself is all the proof you need the Obama and his leftist allies thoroughly love their chance to blow a trillion dollars. The Obama Trillion Dollar Debt Plan doubles the size of the Department of Education and creates 32 brand new government programs.

4) Free Lunches: Obama's Trillion Dollar Debt Plan is founded on the belief that government can provide endless free lunches to the American people.

5) Japan: "We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they did not act boldly and swiftly enough, and as a consequence they suffered what was called the “lost decade” where essentially for the entire ’90s they did not see any significant economic growth.” - This statement is audacity defined. No wonder support for Obama’s economic stimulus plan is sinking like a rock.

"In principle, more Americans say that tax cuts for individuals and businesses – rather than spending on programs and infrastructure projects – will do more right now to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Nearly half (48%) says that tax cuts will do more for the economy, while 39% views government spending as more effective." Pew Research, Feb. 9, 2009

Right, right, right, um, right, exactly, OK, right

That was the voice of the interviewer I heard off camera during a video interview of a "conversation about Vietnam and Iraq with the author and Lt. Col. Rick Welch of the U.S. Army Reserve, who is currently [no date but possibly 2007] on assignment in Baghdad."

http://sgurvis.com/sixties/60s_video.php

Sandra Gurvis who put this together to promote her book, "Where have all the flower children gone," appears to be a local writer. I wandered into her memoirs about the 1960s and the Vietnam War via a restaurant review. It gives me new respect for television interviewers, even the ones I don't care for. Filmed interviews need quality editing, lighting, background, staging, music, voice, etc. Gurvis didn't make the case why she was trying to compare the conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. She jumped in to quash his positive points about why the U.S. forces were in the middle east. Having worked for 18 months in Iraq reconciling different cultures, he was polite and patient, so his performance was more professional and informed than hers. She had no content or expertise, interjecting myths, half-truths, and hyperbole from the 60s and anti-war rhetoric that made little sense in this "conversation."

This was a good lesson. Whether interviewing or simply sharing ideas in conversation, I need to resist the urge to interject little words to let the speaker know I am listening. It actually has the opposite affect.

Health insurance for all at what cost?

"News from Kobe, Japan, brought the tragic story of a 69-year old man who was critically injured in a traffic accident while riding his bicycle. Suffering from massive head and back injuries, his condition worsened as paramedics raced him from hospital to hospital — 14 in all — and none could accept him because they had no beds, staff, specialists or equipment. He died of hemorrhagic shock by the time a hospital was found for him, three hours after the accident." Story here.

It will take awhile for the nationalized health care we're getting under the "stimulus package" to totally disintegrate, around the time Obama leaves office.

Not even a toe tapped or a finger twitched

Watch the young ladies in formal wear behind Buddy Holly (who died 50 years ago with the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens) in this 1957 video. How did they do that--standing perfectly still. Was this dance at a school for the deaf?

Our President was born in a backward time

Lucky for him. His unmarried 17 year old American mother didn't abort him--abortions were accessible but not easy in the 1960s. And his Kenyan father was old enough to have benefitted from DDT which was controlling malaria in his home country. For malaria statistics today, take a look at Kenya, and its under 50 life expectancy. Millions and millions of Africans died when DDT was removed from the market by environmentalists before there was an adequate replacement or plan. And those figures for treated bed nets don't look too promising either, do they? Less than 12% of the children under 5 are sleeping under treated materials in Kenya. And they are still blundering today with the lives of Africans. Where else but Africa can you find large pools of women at-risk-for-HIV on which to try out your iffy drug studies?

Today's new word is ANON

There was no problem understanding the context. "It is good that we should ever and anon remind our hearts of the central creeds. . ." Shakespeare and Chaucer used anon, but what does it really mean? It comes from Middle English from Old English, anoon and anan combining two little words, on and an. My dining room dictionary, the Webster's 2nd International says: in one body state or direction; straight away; soon; in a little while; presently; then. My Webster's 9th Collegiate says, soon, presently, later, after a while. There is a park in Belleville, Illinois named, Ever and Anon park, which I think is a very pleasant name for a public space.

Lifestyle modification and pseudoscience

As I've noted before, I can usually understand the opening sentences and summaries of medical articles, but I'm over my head with the details, statistics and funny upside down numbers. So when Mike Mitka wrote in the January 14 issue of JAMA that two major studies exploring the benefits of lifestyle modifications for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular events (FIT Heart and HF-ACTION) failed to demonstrate what the researchers had hoped for, I decided it was time to turn to Sandy Szwarc's JunkFood Science. Sandy's good at explaining why failed studies are still called a success and why ideology trumps science.

Me? I usually say follow the money, whether it's Congress and earmarks (pork), Al Gore and carbon credits, or the latest diet and exercise fad that lands an academic a USDA grant. I think Sandy may be saying something similar (without my politicking), but read her whole article, just to be sure.

"The preventive health movement has become a major industry, though, and the healthy eating and lifestyle ideology has been an easy one to sell. Just like alternative modalities, everyone wants to believe in a simple magical solution that can keep them well. Various dietary ideologies have come and gone through much of human history, all giving food more power than the evidence supports. But, beyond preventing deficiencies, which is easily achieved for most people by eating an unrestricted and varied diet, food is primarily sustenance, not magic. Humans around the world have eaten very differently, with no one food or way of eating itself related to longer life.

Great myths of the great Depression

If you can count, you know that 1929-1941 (or 1943 by other research) is a very long time, and that both the Hoover Administration and the Roosevelt Administration created and fine tuned the so-called Great Depression with massive government interference. And now President Obama and the Reid Pelosi gang that can't shoot straight want to do it all over again and are lying to us about capitalism and about recovery. Why does anyone, president or pauper, want to recreate the pain of the 1930s? I've pointed out this article before, but in light of Obama's lies, it's worth another look.

"Old myths never die; they just keep showing up in economics and political science textbooks. With only an occasional exception, it is there you will find what may be the twentieth century’s greatest myth: Capitalism and the free-market economy were responsible for the Great Depression, and only government intervention brought about America’s economic recovery."

500 new jobs and $60 million more in salaries and expenditures for central Ohio

If you have a weak spam filter like my osu dot edu mail box, you’re probably getting a lot of mail about “enhancement” and “enlargement.” I suppose this reflects desperate times for gullible Americans, or eager spammers who think every one with a dot edu mailbox must be 19 years old, or maybe just poor IT security at OSU. No matter how many blocks I add to the word list, they just find more creative ways to discuss sex. Once in awhile there is interesting news in the mail box from Chip and Steve, from whom I hear often. Chip Souba, Vice President and Executive Dean for Health Sciences and Steven G. Gabbe, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, OSU Medical Center. Today I learned:

"We are pleased to inform you that The Ohio State University Board of Trustees approved funds last Friday to proceed with interior design work for the final three floors of the Biomedical Research Tower (BRT). Floors 4, 5 and 6 were left as unfinished shells until the funding and research priorities for the space were identified.

This project will add approximately 72,000 usable square feet of research space to our Medical Center, which is absolutely essential to reach our goals of being a top-20 academic medical center and a top-10 cancer program nationally. It will eventually allow us to recruit as many as 42 new researchers and their staffs to Ohio State, which translates into 500 new jobs and $60 million more in salaries and expenditures for our local economy."

Now that’s the kind of expansion we can all appreciate, assuming it was not just part of another phony stimulus. And I can only hope that human embryos aren't part of that planned research--adult stem cell research is leaps and bounds ahead of embryonic, thanks to GWB holding the ethical line.

62%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

HT AmbivaBlog

Obama numbers dropping

Disapproval going up; approval going down.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index for Monday shows that 38% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Twenty-four percent (24%) Strongly Disapprove to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +14 (subtract disapproval from approval). . . Overall, 48% of voters believe that increased spending is generally bad for the economy. Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters would like the stimulus plan to include more tax cuts and less government spending.

Didn't he promise tax cuts during the campaign--95% of us were going to get them? Won't make any difference if he kills the economy, will it?

Parathyroid disease symptoms

I was listening to an interview with Fr. John Corapi about his illness, a benign parathyroid tumor. I don't see a date on this. Here are the symptoms of parathyroid problems. Sounds nasty, and difficult to diagnose. A high calcium level is one of the lab signals. Feeling old is also one of the symptoms.

Bowling and Exercise class

We had a sub in exercise class today. She really put us through our paces. I did about half. Half of the exercises at about half speed. And still I was sweating. She was kind and would yell out from the other end of the room, "I'll wait for you!" Last night I bowled--but it was Wii bowling. Have you ever played a virtual sport with a Wii? I love the sound effects. One time I "dropped the bowling ball" and the crowd all chattered and gasped. I was low scorer, but still better than the last time I bowled in real life which was in 2001 I think in California. Wii is a lot of fun and includes baseball, tennis, golf, and maybe archery, but we only did the bowling, and our hostess demonstrated tennis. There were six of us, lots of food in the near-by kitchen, including corn chips which I can't resist, and a sore shoulder when I finished. So that hot shower after class today really felt good.

What if Obama stops smoking?

And millions of others? Health care costs will increase. Yes, smokers die younger and will not require all that expensive care in their old-old years. That sounds crass, but if you ever ran the numbers on all this "healthy" eating, exercise, and no-smoking stuff, you'd find wonderful reasons to be healthy, but saving the government money isn't one of them. But also, if they stop smoking, we'll have to find other ways to pay for all the SCHIP "children" (who are adults) who don't need government health care.

On Feb. 4, President Obama signed legislation that reauthorizes and expands the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Earlier in the day, the House — on a 290-135 vote — passed the Senate version of the SCHIP legislation that expands insurance to an additional 4 million children. The new law also gives SCHIP an additional $35 billion over the next five years. The extra $35 billion in costs would be funded by a 62-cent-per-pack increase in the federal tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products. The new law removes a restriction that prevented states from enrolling middle-class children without first proving that nearly all poor children had been enrolled. Some states found it difficult to meet that criterion. Former President Bush twice vetoed similar legislation. AIS Health

Since more low-income and poor people than rich people smoke, this is an additional tax on the poor. Raising the tax doesn't cause them to stop--it just takes their discretionary money from another pot--like groceries. Another example of taxing the poor to help the middle class.

"The release of a scant one-page summary for 21 years of care brought some criticism to the Obama campaign – especially when compared to the thousands of pages of medical records released by McCain. Obama promised reporters that if there are additional health-related questions, his campaign would make that information available. “In terms of additional records, if there are particular things that people have questions about, then we’d be happy to give that information,” he said." ABC News

New York Times Lies

Today I've been going back through my blog edit page de-duping. I'm not sure how the duplicates accumulate, but they do, and hang around as "drafts." Anyway, I found one I wrote in December 2008 about lies the NY Times told about Clinton and Bush and Fannie Mae, which seems unfinished, but wasn't a dup. It wasn't clear when I read the draft if all the material was original, or if it needed to be cited and linked. So I cut the phrase "New York Times lies" and popped it into Google, and got 26,300,000 matches. My goodness. That's more research than I wanted. I looked through about 300 of them, most of which were about lies found in the NYT, but some were reports in the NYT about lies (not their own). And I came across this interesting video from 2007 by Bill O'Reilly and lies about the ratings of his show. Interesting. Don't mess with Bill. Isn't that the name of a pop tune?



The phrase may be a case of "google bombing." It took Google 4 years to stop the google bombing of George W. Bush, (if you type in a particularly negative phrase it will bring up a GWB page) and about 4 days to stop it on Barack Obama after he became president. I think that's what I heard on the radio. Maybe Obama is just more senstive about criticism. Ya Think?

Monday Memories--1976 in Southern California

My husband doesn't write many letters, so what a surprise today when I came across a real gold mine of copies of letters--maybe 10--he'd written in the 1970s. Don't remember now what I was looking for because I got so involved in reading them. Our family took at trip to California in 1976 to visit my husband's father, step-mother, brother and sister. We didn't know them too well--his parents were divorced when he was about two years old and he'd only seen them about once a decade. But we had a wonderful time, and the siblings have grown much closer over the years. (See the photos of the siblings at his sister's wedding 30 years later in 2006). But I thought this letter to his California parents was quite sweet. It's written on company letterhead in precise architectural printing at an angle across the page with his unique spelling, so I'm pretty sure I didn't have a hand in it. I'm glad he thought to make a photocopy of it.

BRUBAKER/BRANDT, INC. ARCHITECTS PLANNERS

Dad & Rosie,

Well, what can I say after a 9 day, storybook, Southern California vacation that was perfect in every detail. I could talk about the places I saw, the beauty of the land and ocean, the make-believe of Disney or ocean marine animals doing fantastic tricks. The sun filled sky and the smiles and laughter of our children watching animated bears singing and sea lions balancing balls in the water. But that would only be half of the story.

The other half was the best for me. Seeing and visiting family which I had not seen in many years. To learn to love again the family which has been on my mind many times. To see and hold a sister which has grown and matured into a lovely lady of beauty and talent. Could it really have been 16 years since I saw her last? I hope never again that long.

To see and spend a day with a brother who Norma says reminds her of me, surely she doesn't mean physically, and learn of his goals and values. Aunts and cousins which brought back memories of boyhood days at Lake Webster. What a great visit we all had that day. And of course, you Dad, for the time you shared with us at breakfast, filling our cups with coffee and love. And with you Rosie, being with you for the first time since I was eleven or so. Learning to love you and visiting with you and the pictures in your photo album.

It was the finest vacation our family ever had. Give my love to all and come our way when you can.

Dad and Rosie and our family, March 1976
And there were hand printed letters also to his brother and sister in the file. It's enough to make an old lady cry.

Talking us into a Depression

With the January jobs report, the recent recession has become one of the five worst since WWII in terms of jobs losses as a percentage of the work force (I know you may, from reading the paper and listening to Obama, think it is the worst, but it is still only the fourth or fifth worst). Let me compare the job losses and the output declines at this point in the recession for these 5 recessions:

See Coyote Blog

"I ask every business owner or manager I meet for the personal evidence they have of economic cataclysm. Is their business down? And in a surprising number of cases, I get the answer that their business is doing OK, but they are cutting back because surely the worst is soon to come, based on everything they see in the media."

What if there were a recession

and the federal government and the Fed did nothing, with Congress going home on an extended vacation. Based on what has happened in the last 8 months (and what happened 1929-1943), we'd be way ahead. The stock market has done nothing but drop since the markets woke up one day and realized Obama would be president after the Democrats met in the summer. When the congressional whiz kids decided to bail out the banks with the Ben and Hank (Fed + fed govt) dog and pony show, nothing recovered and everything got worse. The President's solution? Do more interfering. If a lot didn't work, much more might! Obama's numbers are dropping like a Bush in Iraq, and he's heading for the heartland to drum up support. Hope and Change.
Hopeless change.
Less change,
changing hope.

Was it NCLB?

Depending on your politics, education statistics are fodder for your cause. While in office President Bush was roundly criticized by both conservatives and liberals for throwing money at education, particularly NCLB. Although if you look at the grant money available from HHS, USDA, and other agencies, the money for children extended far beyond the DOE and NCLB. No president in the history of the nation has better reason to be called “the education president” than George W. Bush, based on the money spent, (or wasted, depending on your viewpoint). However, today I came across some interesting statistics.

In 1998 Georgia had the lowest overall graduation rate in the nation with 54% of students graduating, followed by Nevada, Florida, and Washington, D.C. The national rate was 71%, according to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. (Its figures differ from some government statistics which include GEDs in graduation rates). Nine years later, Georgia's graduation rate rose to an all-time high of 72.3 percent in 2006-2007, according to data released by State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox and Governor Sonny Perdue.

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research tends to be conservative/libertarian. I don’t know about the state superintendent of schools in Georgia, but I’m sure she would want to make it as positive as possible, regardless of her party. But it looks like NCLB helped some of the worst school districts in the country, which I believe was its intent. The NEA and teachers in general complained bitterly about it, and I'm sure anything good about the program will go the way of all digital information agencies of the federal government don't want you to see. As I've said many times, the archives belong to the victor, and the public libraries to the Democrats.

However, here’s another statistic I found. In 1993 Georgia began to invest more (many millions) in pre-K education which included a component for working with the mothers of the children so they could get their GED and job training. This was under Governor Zell Miller, and was funded by the state lottery. Press release 1993. If even some of the poorest children were helped by that program, it should have shown up in the 2007 graduation rates, 14 years later.

During the last three weeks, we've seen the previous administration dissed at every possibile turn by current officials, from Obama on down, and it is in very bad taste. It will be interesting to see if he is criticized for not caring about children.

Pro-Cuba, anti-Bush group petitions Obama

Artists, clowns, poets, musicians etc. want "normal" relations with Cuba. Petition here. I wonder if Cubans get anywhere petitioning their government for more freedom?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a holy and righteous God and that you love us and our President far more than we can even imagine, that your son Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and died a perfect death for us. Protect and enlighten our President. Guard him from false advisors and information, so that he in turn can lead the nation. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Page after page, lustful thinking

The AIA report on how to spend billions and billions of federal money on local and state projects to help the building and construction trades, many of which no one will want or use (transit, model schools, etc.) or will forget about as it filters through the bureaucracy pipe line for several years (block grants to communities), was supposed to include a "tax cut for businesses." I searched and searched, and finally found it on the final (9th) page.

Repeal Section 511 of P.L. 109-222, which requires federal, state and most local government agencies to levy a three-percent withholding on all government contracts, grants and other payments.

Although this provision is not slated to go into effect until 2011, many businesses are in the process of developing their plans for the next few years and are having to invest funds already in preparing accounting systems to handle the new withholding. In addition, the withholding would come into effect around the time that many economists believe that the economy will begin to recover. It makes no sense to provide economic relief to businesses on one hand and yet punish them for
performing government work with the other.

This is an unfunded mandate from 2005 which could cost some of the building trades more than their margin of profit. Certainly worthy of cutting, but I doubt that it's enough to offset the huge gorging of green the architects are craving and the banquet table loaded with pork. The building trades have been under the thumb of the federal government for at least 30-40 years--not as long as the farmers, but they've lost control of their professions. Why are all these buildings, roads and bridges in such tough shape if the government knew how to do everything better 20-30 years ago?

How many calories does a 60 minute aerobics class use?

According to this nice little widget, Fitness Partner's Activity Calculator which I found on Gekko's blog, about 318. The same as digging in the dirt for an hour, or painting the house for an hour, or cleaning gutters. I think I'll stick with the exercise class.

Fotographia

Sometimes you just get lucky when you click on "next blog." Get a load of these photographs! http://ilustranatur.blogspot.com/. João Nunes da Silva, Portugal, Fotógrafo de Natureza. Not much in the archives, but what a feast for the eyes.

Good enough to run for Congress

FEMA sent money to crooks who simply applied for it after Katrina and Rita blew through Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. But as we see in the negotiations for the packaged stimulating pork, this is a tradition in government. Yesterday's Columbus Dispatch reported that 15 Toledoans, some applying from prison and others claiming property damage in cemeteries and empty lots received FEMA money. Link.

If there were that many from northern Ohio, imagine how many there must have been who actually lived in the states affected by the storms. I think Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should check out these dipsticks for the Congressional farm club. These crooks (the Toledoans, not Reid & Pelosi) weren't thinking big, but in politics not everyone starts at or near the top. And these folks are innocent until proven guilty (the Toledoans, not Reid & Pelosi).

No brainer Book Talk

Glancing through the paper copy of OnCampus yesterday I came across "Book Talk," an interview of Tanya Erzen, author of "Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement," which received the 2008 Gustave Arlt award from the Council of Graduate Schools. Despite the intriguing title, there was no doubt in my mind that this wasn't an evangelical Christian book about gays finding freedom in the love of Christ. It would be highly unlikely that such an author could make her way through the arduous promotion and tenure process, or even get hired in a Department of Comparative Studies (religion, folklore, ethnography) at a major university if she were a conservative Christian with historic, traditional views on marriage or even a liberal Christian with traditional views like I was for 35 years.

But if I'd had any doubt, Prof. Erzen, who says she doesn't believe in censorship or banning books, said:

What book would you most want your kids to read? What would you want them NOT to read?Since my daughter already likes Dr. Seuss, she’s off to a good start, and I have books by Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L’Engle waiting for her. I hope she’ll read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States when she is older. I wouldn’t mind if she never wanted to read The Purpose Driven Life or the Left Behind series.

Lots of conservative Christians don't recommend Rick Warren's book because of its lack of a straightforward message about sin and forgiveness, but I suspect she dislikes his traditional capitalism and marriage views. No tender, inquiring mind will be damaged by reading its happy, sweet message of comfort. I'm not into dispensational theology either, or any Christian fiction for that matter, but Left Behind is no more fanciful than Bradbury.