Temperature to drop tonight

If you live in Illinois, I understand you're passing along some cold temperatures to Ohio. Thanks a bunch. Oh, this global warming. Last year the average daily temperature here in central Ohio in February was 26.2. This year it's 17.6. One year doesn't make a trend, but it's actually been getting cooler for about a decade. I need to start tracking these AGW sites--you can get all you want about the other side, the political side, just by watching the main stream media, or reading any newsy/pop source like Time, Newsweek, or Nature. It's very hard to get a research grant or get published if you have a different viewpoint.

One piece of the economy that is going great guns is "continuing education." For my husband, that means taking courses in "green" in order to stay licensed--he had a 12 hour seminar yesterday (and we think he got food poisoning as a side benefit). But architects aren't the only ones by any means. Lawyers, pharmacists, medical trades, automotive, hospitality industry, leisure industry, janitorial and cleaning trades, school teachers, building trades--they all have license requirements, and they are all having "green" pushed down their throats. Yes, it's been a real boon for the companies that offer these courses. Whether the people teaching the courses believe it, I don't know, but they couldn't make any money if they publicly denied it.

Global warming hoax news

Global Warming Hoax

Master Resource

National Center for Policy Analysis

Icecap

There never has been a scientific consensus that human activities are causing catastrophic global warming. Indeed, hardly a day goes by when some eminent scientist comes “out of the closet” so to speak and publicly rejects either the link between human actions and the recent warming trend or the idea that the global warming will result in horrific environmental or human harm. Indeed, the U.S. Senate has a minority report listing more the 650 international scientists who disagree with the all or part of the so-called consensus. Many of the scientists on this list are current or former members of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) who have broken with the IPCC over its findings or, at least, how it is presenting them. H. Sterling Burnett

Denver, CO (Feb. 18, 2009)—A new study says that a climate action plan promoted by several Western governors could prolong the economic recession, weaken already overburdened Western power grids and will deliver a temperature “benefit” of only one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius even after a century of operation. The study, commissioned by the Western Business Roundtable, found that the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade plan could “chase away tens of billions of dollars in high technology investment from the West to other regions” and would “further stress the West’s already strained electricity grid, increasing the threat of potentially catastrophic power outages.” ICECAP

We have one sensible weatherman in Columbus, Jim Ganahl.

The Can’t Fail Presidential Plan

“Suppose, as seems a distinct possibility, that the sloppily crafted, spend-to-oblivion stimulus package does precious little near-term good while causing eventual runaway inflation, a teetering dollar, huge tax increases and overall diminution of American prosperity and power. Will Barack Obama pay a political price?

Maybe not. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal fiscal policies did not end the Depression and may have done more harm than good, but he was perceived as bold and caring, a dynamic leader making the best of the situation while here and there easing pain.” Link

More money for government buildings

The government gets to the green pork trough first. According to Architectural Digest $130 billion of the bill is earmarked for construction-related spending. Glancing through the list, it looks like you'll need to live near DC, Maryland or Virginia to get any of this. I don't think we have any GSA or NIH buildings around here.

BUILDINGS: $13.4 billion
General Services Administration (GSA), energy-efficiency upgrades for federal buildings: $4.5 billion
Facilities on federal and tribal lands: $3 billion
National Institutes of Health, facilities upgrades/construction: $1.5 billion
National Science Foundation, research equipment and facilities upgrades/construction: $600 million
Department of Homeland Security, new headquarters: $450 million
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, procurement, acquisition, and facilities construction: $430 million
Department of Homeland Security, ports of entry: $420 million
National Institute of Standards and Technology, facilities construction: $360 million
Department of Agriculture, facilities: $330 million
Border stations and ports of entry: $300 million
U.S. Courthouses and other GSA buildings: $300 million
Fire stations: $210 million
State Department, Capital Investment Fund: $90 million
Smithsonian facilities: $25 million

HOUSING/HUD: $9.6 billion
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Public Housing Capital Fund: $4 billion
HUD, redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes: $2 billion
HUD, Community Development Block Grants: $1 billion
HUD, energy retrofits, "green" projects in HUD-assisted housing projects: $250 million

DEFENSE/VETERANS: $7.8 billion
Veterans Affairs, medical facilities upgrades/construction: $1.25 billion
Department of Defense (DOD), facilities upgrades/construction: $4.2 billion
DOD, military “quality of life’ projects, such as housing and child-care centers: $2.3 billion

Weren't you always told to read the fine print before you bought something on credit? When the editors put this list together, no one had yet read the bill--not even the people who voted on it. Not even the President read it. It's sort of a guess.

Can you spot the typo?

This one was a headline in OSU Today

Collaboration with Microsoft Widows Live

Oregon Democrats propose 1,900% tax increase on beer

Like the cigarette taxes that hurt the poor the most to pay for the medical care of the middle class, the state run lotteries that hit the low income the hardest that are supposed to help reduce dependency on real estate to fund schools, the reasoning here is that it will save in medical costs. For whom? I'm guessing it hurts the low income beer drinker the most. I've known a lot of alcoholics, and only one was a beer-alcoholic. I've never even tasted beer. Smells like rotten grain to me. More than likely, it will be one more case of Democrats shutting down an industry that employs people so they can create more dependency on the government with unemployment, universal health care, and the government owning and operating the beer plants. Or, if you follow the lobbyist money, you might even find some very large beer companies passing out some change to Oregon's legislators so they can put the competition out of business.

Jamie Floyd, owner of Ninkasi Brewing in Eugene, said Ninkasi paid $19,000 in taxes last year, and the increase would raise its taxes to $370,000. The tax increase brewers would assume would inevitably be passed on to their distributors, retailers and consumers, he said.

The economic recession already affects Taylor's, especially because its customer base is on a fixed income, Walker said, so the tax increase will only hurt business further.

"It can't be a positive thing for the economy," Walker said. "College kids are still going to do what they do, but (business) is down a little bit; it's not as busy as it was six months or a year ago." Daily Emerald

The President of Everything

Wouldn't it be surprising if even the press were to catch on this early in his presidency to where Obama is taking us?

"This is a presidency on steroids." That's not an assessment from a libertarian shocked by President Barack Obama's first month in office. That is the first sentence of Eugene Robinson's latest column, which goes on to list many of the ways that the Obama Administration is "managing the big chunks of the private-sector economy that are now more accurately described as semi-private at best.... He may have to become an auto executive, a banker, mortgage broker and who knows what else before this crisis is done." Who knows what else, indeed. Link to Morning Bell.

Meanwhile, a viral e-mail with a few inaccuracies but which gets it pretty close about all the tax and ethics problems which have turned up in just the first 3 weeks. Don’t know where it started but it’s been going around the internet for about a week and most points were correct, although it left out the Rezko-Blago-Burris-Obama connection--maybe was too early:

Secretary of State Clinton was bought off with her appointment and that's under a cloud due to her husband's gifts both in and out of office and laws passed while she was a Senator. Making available a donor list apparently made all the questions go away.

Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner is a tax cheat. Then when he talks, the brightest guy on the planet, next to the President, makes no sense at all.

Attorney General Eric Holder's law firm represents terrorists imprisoned in Gitmo. I've watched enough TV to know that's not right. And didn't he represent Marc Rich? If he wasn't ethical enough to be an advisor during the campaign, how can he be AG?

CIA boss Leon Panetta has zero experience. Where is the donor list for his "institute." He has no other visible means of support.

The Secretary of HHS nominee Tom Daschle withdrew under charges of cheating on his taxes. Also how many millions did he make his first two years after he left the Senate? Sort of a double standard Mr. Squeaky Clean President.

Nancy Killefer withdrew from consideration as deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget

Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis has tax problems, and she was also a pro-union lobbyist, something Obama said he didn't want in his gang cabinet.

Bill Richardson was first choice to be Commerce secretary, but the New Mexico governor withdrew amid a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors. When do we see Panetta's donors list?

Then Commerce secretary nominee Judd Gregg, a Republican, withdraws when he sees Obama’s plan for that department, particularly his interference in the Census.

Matthew Nugen, a top Obama campaign aide is joining Ogilvy Government Relations as a lobbyist. Like Daschle's, the position is technically one of "strategist." If it quacks like a duck. . .

David Plouffe, the campaign manager calling for for transparency and openness during the campaign prevented reporters from attending a speech at the National Press Club!

Rezko-Blago-Burris-Obama connection getting stronger.

And although not quite in the same category, Mr. draw down, code Pink, can't we all get along, is ordering 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan.

Update Feb. 17 from Dick Morris' column: Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. She is the wife of Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg who has received over half a million in polling contracts from the Democrats. Emmanuel is a millionaire who shouldn't need free rent.

This is a stunning list for only three four weeks in office. Where was our main stream press, our free press that hounded Bush for 8 years, finding all sorts of minuscule crimes, but that can't locate these tax cheats who now steal our taxes?

Let's ruin long term care

We've had a "long term care" policy for over 10 years. It isn't cheap, but even a month in a nursing home costs more than a year's cost for the policy. It's like any insurance--we've never gotten anything out of our auto insurance either--thank goodness--but have been buying it for almost 50 years. But Obama-Biden licking their chops over the money that's in it already? Oh no! Link.

Today's new word is MELIORIST

The book review in today's WSJ is of "Soul of a People" by David A. Taylor. The reviewer writes: "Fortunately, the Communists in the Federal Writers' Project [FDR's WPA] were in their Popular Front phase and all for the MELIORIST New Deal. . . " Meliorist comes from the Latin word melior meaning "better." Meliorism is the belief or doctrine that the world tends to become better and better. Have you seen any evidense of this? Sort of social Darwinism. The USSR, Communist China and North Korea probably collectively killed 100 million of their own citizens. Better indeed!

Today's new word is--amazing

Voice technology is certainly improving. http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal

I typed in "Today's new word is. . ." and couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, most women don't have voices this good. Then when I clicked on the same phrase in Finnish, "Marko" came up. It's called Site Pal, text to speech. Actually, I really wouldn't want it on every site I visit, but it's fun to play with.

Home made soup

As soon as I read her blog about pea soup (and said yuk) I went to the kitchen and made a big pot of broccoli soup, one of my favorites. I didn't know e-Bay had blogs, but that's where I found these wonderful tips on making money, instead of spending money, with children. She's primarily a seller, not a blogger (once a month? what's that?)

I didn't breastfeed, or make my own baby food, but in the 1960s-1970s, we lived on one income, with one car, had play groups, washed diapers and did most of the other tips that this one-income family does. Snacks at our house were sliced vegetables or fruit. Oh, and we didn't have e-Bay in those days, but we had lots of fun at garage sales, which must be falling on hard times these days with everyone selling on-line. I could give the kids a quarter and they could "shop."

I think I saw her name at a discussion on coupons (I don't believe in them--in the long run they don't save you money because they are a marketing device and lull you into the something for nothing mentality).

The IRS gives wonderful tax incentives to those who have children. We got a child tax credit of $1000 this year, plus a tax deduction worth a fair amount of money by having an extra person in the family. For my family, if we can spend less than $1500 per year on our child, we are making money. Here's how to spend less than $1500. [Note: the family of the 1960s and 1970s got a much higher percentage of income personal deduction. I think it was around $500 per person in 1961 or about 10% of our income.]

1. Breastfeed.

2. Line dry cloth diapers and reusable baby wipes (cheap dishrags or cut-up old towels make great wipes). If you think you might like to use cloth diapers, think ahead. This summer, when you go to garage sales, ask proprietors of sales that have a lot of baby items if they have cloth diapers. Many people have at least a couple that they thought weren't worth putting out. These can be gotten for $.05-$.25 each, and are usually better quality than the Gerber 12-packs regular stores sell (for about $13). Plan on at least 30 diapers. Also, read prior post about how to save on costs of laundry, because this will be important to you if you use cloth diapers.

3. Never, ever buy prepared baby food. We have a pressure cooker in which we cooked veggies or fruit (just add a tiny bit of water to the bottom, and cook for a little while, and they'll be steamed). Run the stuff through the blender and put in freezer containers (or an ice cube tray, then bag the frozen food cubes). It's not difficult at all. If you don't have a pressure cooker, just use a regular pan; however, pressure cookers can be found at garage sales, and they save energy because stuff cooks a lot faster in them. Also, we found that our son would eat anything, even pureed asparagus, if we added applesauce to it.

4. Don't buy snacks, except Cheerios. Those Gerber snacks are overpriced, even with a good sale. A large box of Cheerios doesn't cost much, and they'll last a while; moreover, they are not yummy enough that parents or siblings will be tempted by them.

5. Skip preschool. Sure, kids need some socialization. Join a church mom's group which has kids activities (Coffee Break, MOPS, etc). If you can find a group or two that meets weekly, your kid will get socialization, and you might find some new friends, too. This could save $1000/year.

6. Quit your job if someone else in your family has an income, and save money on child care. To do this, you'll need to find other ways to save money. For wonderful ideas, read "The Tightwad Gazette", by Amy Dacyczyn (available at the library). Creative ways of hanging onto the money you already do have are as good as earning more.

7. Use the library instead of buying books.

8. Use the playground instead of Chuck E. Cheese.

9. Don't buy unnecessary things (such as shoes for babies who aren't walking yet, cute little impractical outfits, etc.).

10. Anticipate baby's needs. You know he'll eventually need size 10 shoes, so don't wait to buy them until he grows out of his size 9.5's. If you wait, you'll find yourself at Wal-mart paying $6, when a $.50 used pair would be far better quality. You know he'll eventually like to have Legos, so don't wait until Christmas to buy them new. Pick them up at the garage sale where they're $1. Kids don't care if stuff is used unless you condition them to care. (You condition them to care by acting like new stuff is superior. Ever say, "It's brand new!"? Phrases like that condition them to think of used items as inferior.)

11. Hit the end of church or school 2nd Best sales. Often they'll have a bag sale, where you can fill a bag with anything you want for $1-$4. This is your opportunity to stock up on whatever you need. If you need it right away, don't be too picky, but if it's something you'll need two years from now, only take the really good or hard-to-find stuff. These sales usually occur in the spring and fall, so watch the newspaper classifieds or Craigslist.

11. When we acquire something, we make it our goal to be able to sell the item for a profit when we're done with it. For instance, we found a very nice stroller free on trash day which we used for a few years, then sold it for $12 when we were finished with it. We bought a newer, but dirty, baby carrier for $.50, cleaned it up nicely and laundered the pad, and were able to sell it for $5 when we were done with it. We trash-picked a crib, gave it a paint-job, and sold it for $40 when we were finished with it. We have routinely sold toys, and even clothes, for a profit at our garage sales. I know there are those who say you shouldn't buy a used car seat, but talk to the person you're buying it from to see if it's been in an accident, call the manufacturer to see if it's been recalled, see if it's not too old, and use your common sense. And with cribs, you have to make sure a used one meets current safety standards. That information is easy enough to find online. But generally, used things should do just fine. I'll write an email in the spring about how to hold a successful garage sale.

12. Have patience. If we feel like we need something for our child, we try to wait. Needs have a way of either going away, or being met cheaply if only one has sufficient patience. Go to those garage sales (but stay on task, don't buy a bunch of junk that will just sit around your house), see if anyone will loan you what you need, keep yours eyes open for discards on trash day--you'll be surprised at what very nice things you can get free or for pocket change.

13. Because you'll essentially be earning money on this baby, check out savings accounts for kids. Often these are better deals than the adult ones (no fees or minimum balance), and the parents' names can be on the account. Just putting the kid's name on the account helps, even if only the adults use the account.

She has some wonderful tips; but isn't old enough or experienced enough to know this frugality will make no difference at all once her children get a hold of a credit card. And btw, don't ever put your child's savings account under her/his own name and social security number. They'll know more at 25 than 18.

Congress has promised

AMTRAK schedules for the automobile industry and converter box guidance for the healthcare industry.

General Motors and Chrysler raced to save their place in the American auto industry yesterday, putting the final touches on plans to curb production, cut jobs and pare brands in hopes of securing billions of dollars in additional federal aid. WaPo Feb. 17, 2009

Embracing socialism

And Obama. I'm watching a socialist Brian Moore argue the case for socialism with a Brit subbing on Cavuto's show. No contest. What idiots. 'scuse me. That's not nice. How uninformed, ignorant, pie in the sky and stepping into the doorway to marxism. But wow, are these guys thrilled with Obama!

Air travel has never been safer, but . . .

We can count on more regulations. It is a tragedy that 50 people died in last week's crash near Buffalo, NY. And yet thousands die every year on the highways. . . many because we don't have the will to raise the legal driving age even two years. Auto collisions are the leading cause of death among teens, killing about 4,000 a year. And it isn't just teens. Any person in a car with a teen driver is in much more danger than from birds sucked into airplane engines or ice on the wings. If we did nothing else but forbid teen drivers to have passengers, thousands of lives could be saved. Do those families not grieve? Are those people less important than people who boarded a commuter plane?

"The AAA Foundation analysis shows that from 1995 through 2004 crashes involving 15, 16, and 17-year-old drivers claimed the lives of 30,917 people nationwide, of which only 11,177 (36.2%) were the teen drivers themselves. The remaining 19,740 (63.6%) included 9,847 passengers of the teen drivers, 7,477 occupants of other vehicles operated by drivers at least 18 years of age, 2,323 non-motorists. The analysis also shows that 12,413 of these fatalities occurred in single vehicle crashes involving only the vehicle operated by the teenage driver.

In 1999, 16- and 17-year-old teens driving with no passengers were involved in 1.6 accidents per 10,000 trips, yet the rate rises to 2.3 accidents with one passenger, 3.3 accidents with two passengers, and sharply rises to 6.3 accidents with three or more passengers in the car." More statistics on teen drivers here.

During the last ice storm a teenager wrecked his dad's new red sports car by slamming into the light pole at our condo entrance (it's a 35 mph street but I'm guessing from the damage he was speeding). I think the car was totaled, and it was weeks before the red pieces were cleaned up because the snow plows had buried much of the debris. I hope daddy has learned a lesson, because fortunately the boy survived without serious injuries. The car can be replaced; the child can't be. He will live to drive again--much wiser I hope.

1,073 Pages

No time to read it, yet the President had time to dawdle over signing it. Took the Mrs. out for dinner to a swanky Chicago restaurant for Valentines Day. That was nice, a good example for men everywhere, but just what was the rush for not allowing the "transparency" we were promised? Why the black hole when it comes to nationalizing so much of the economy? The Democrats, who later cried "Bush lied," knew exactly what was what going into the Iraq War--it was their intelligence and rhetoric on WMD that Bush used. And that took months of negotiating, going over Saddam's failed promises, over the intelligence, over agreements with our allies, consulting with Senators like Clinton, Kerry, Kennedy and Edwards. But for this, which is far more serious--no, no. In Iraq, we were attempting to impose a democracy on a country that had been under a dictatorship. Now we're destroying our own democracy with a petty tyrant who stamps his dainty foot and says, "Never you mind, I won the election. No time to read it. No time for representative government." Just a take over of the economy by our government with complete compliance of the "free press" and our Congress. What's the big deal? And nary a gun was even pointed to anyone's head.

What you can do with a degree in literature

Or theater. Or art history. Or psychology. First find a job to pay the rent with the government in a field that will not die--like sexually transmitted diseases, then follow the money.

Thomas E. Getzen is Professor of Risk, Insurance and Health Management at Temple University and the founder and Executive Director of iHEA, the International Health Economics Association. After receiving an undergraduate degree in literature from Yale University, he worked for the U.S.P.H.S. Centers for Disease Control Venereal Disease program in New York and Los Angeles, and then obtained an MHA degree in Medical Care Organization and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Washington. Dr. Getzen’s main research contributions have been in the areas of contracting, price indexes and forecasting of health care spending. His consulting work has included employee benefit negotiations, laboratory diagnostics, risk assessment, and capital financing for managed care. Dr. Getzen has been a visiting professor at the University of York (U.K.), the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Health and Wellbeing of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He has served on the boards of Covenant House, a local community health center in Northwest Philadelphia, MSI Inc, a venture-capital financed managed behavioral health care corporation, Catholic Health East (CHE), a multi-institutional health provider system with over 60 hospitals and nursing homes. Dr. Getzen has written more than 80 papers in the field and serves on the editorial board of the journal Health Economics.

Elderly hardest hit by Katrina

Why Mayor Nagin was never brought up on charges of criminal negligence I don't know; the people of New Orleans rewarded him with reelection. There's an interesting report In Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, December 2008 , which was probably ignored by the media because you couldn't make a racial case for the victims. New Orleans was over 65% black, but the deaths were 51% black. So who suffered the most in proportion to their population count--the elderly. That's probably not too surprising, because when you think about it, even if the warning system and the bus transportation had worked, they might have been left behind. Although I don't think Governor Jindahl left them during Hurricane Ike. This report hadn't been published yet, but someone on his staff was probably smart enough to figure it out. It's really unfortunate that in 2005 the mayor and governor performed so poorly during that disaster.

Results: We identified 971 Katrina-related deaths in Louisiana and 15 deaths among Katrina evacuees in other states. Drowning (40%), injury and trauma (25%), and heart conditions (11%) were the major causes of death among Louisiana victims. Forty-nine percent of victims were people 75 years old and older. Fifty-three percent of victims were men; 51% were black; and 42% were white. In Orleans Parish, the mortality rate among blacks was 1.7 to 4 times higher than that among whites for all people 18 years old and older. People 75 years old and older were significantly more likely to be storm victims (P < .0001).

Conclusions: Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest hurricane to strike the US Gulf Coast since 1928. Drowning was the major cause of death and people 75 years old and older were the most affected population cohort. Future disaster preparedness efforts must focus on evacuating and caring for vulnerable populations, including those in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and personal residences. Improving mortality reporting timeliness will enable response teams to provide appropriate interventions to these populations and to prepare and implement preventive measures before the next disaster.

A new roof for my son

You may remember that Hurricane Ike blew through Columbus in September. It took a large part of my son's roof. He had purchased the home from us in July, and although we had a local bank (Arlington Bank), a lawyer, a title company, and assurances from our home owner's insurance company that everything was taken care of with the bank, when he went to make a claim, he had no home owner's insurance--it was still in our name. Needless to say, we were outraged, but the bank eventually settled by giving him enough cash to get it repaired, but not replaced. And he found a new bank (he had been banking there since he was a child) and a new insurance company. Columbus and central Ohio had 60 mph winds last Thursday, and the repaired part of his roof held, but the rest of it went. He called today to say the new insurance company will replace his roof. Although I won't hold my breath. Remember, the government has sent him a letter demanding fifty cents of unpaid back taxes. If you can't find Daschle or Geithner, go after that guy in Columbus who fixes cars for a living.

He told me a funny story today. Someone called his repair shop to report that the battery had died on his remote key control and he couldn't get in his car. "Have you tried the key?" my son asked. It's funnier when he tells it.

Caterpillar employees are not fooled by Obama

Elizabeth Meinecke reports that Obama tried to cajole Illinois Republican Aaron Schock into voting for the stimulus package in front of the Caterpillar employees during his speech to hustle votes last week. Schock waited around afterwards to talk to them. No takers.

“In fact, I have received over 1,400 phone calls, e-mails and letters from Caterpillar employees alone asking me to oppose this legislation,” Schock said on the House floor Friday. “Why? Because they get it. They know this bill is not stimulus.”

Schock urged a no vote and followed through this afternoon. He’s clearly in touch with his constituents. Can Obama say the same?"

Well, Elizabeth, Obama IS in touch with his star struck fans--in a few months when they realize what he's done, the story may be a bit different. Although it's terribly hard to make a Democrat escape from the plantation. Freedom is so darn scary.

HT Soapbox Jill

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.