Be pro-life

Be pro-life. A blessing by St. Francis of Assisi. "Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and useless as when he is well and can be of service to him. And blessed is he who loves his brother as well when he is afar off as when he is by his side, and who would say nothing behind his back he might not, in love, say before his face." [A brother I am assuming in this context is a friar, but it works for us, too.]

Until I was looking for this quote, I didn't know Columbus, Ohio has a St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church. Looks like an architectural wonder and is located in Victorian Village. Could use a little help with some restoration. I think we'll have to go visit. It has a nice newsletter and a Facebook page.

 




Blessing the animals in October

The Grammys I didn't watch

No, I would never watch the Grammys, but I'm trying to watch the national news.  And even Fox has to show clips about every two minutes. I'm hitting the mute every chance I get. An industry that is built on merit, talent, fighting tooth and nail to win and entrepreneurial energy (from the eyebrow creator--like our niece Kimberly--to the theater designer to the pearls sewn on the designer dress to the lunch ladies) wants to destroy capitalism? 

The Gramophone was invented in 1877--and that's about how useful and up to date the Progressives are. Someone needs to read about the show trials in the USSR in the 1930s.

I hope everyone in northern California is safe--there is some news between the Grammy clips.  A dam is eroding. Huge hole that needs to be filled before people drown while trying to escape.  But it's more important to show a rap group insulting the president.

I'm biased and so are you, but Washington Post really is biased

Everyone has a bias--and more than one  I have them.  You have them.  But Washington Post has gone waaaay beyond bias to insane, hysterical hatred.  Since it was bought by Jeff Bezos (Amazon gay gazillionaire) it’s worth swearing off, but I do still look through the headlines to see if any of the 8-9 “news” or opinion stories in the digital version will be about anything other than Trump hatism. Nope. But one story on the 11th made me wonder if it is eating its own toxic entrails.  The “journalists” opined that perhaps all this rioting and activism about Trump’s election could possibly be good for the Democrat party--sort of like the Tea Party was good for Republicans.

1) The authors ignore that not only did President Obama’s policies, particularly the misnamed Affordable Care Act, lose the federal government for the Democrats, but he lost most state legislatures for them, too. He left the country leaderless abroad, although he personally enjoyed great popularity at home. There is no Donald J. Trump in a governor’s seat; there is no State Senator Trump in a state where Obama helped Democrats lose.  But 68% in flyover country are controlled by Republicans.

2)  And what Starbucks did the Tea Party burn down? When did the Tea Party mob bankers and businesses wearing black masks and screaming obscenities?  What March in Washington did the Tea Party ever threaten the police or leave enough trash to sink the climate change movement or dress like their own genitals? And did the entrenched Republicans in Congress ever listen to the Tea Party?

Looking back on Alan Bloom looking back

In Alan Bloom’s book, "The Closing of the American Mind” (1987)--a book that began as an essay and became a best seller--he discusses how the meaning and acts of sex and sexuality changed between the 50s and 60s and the 80s, and that the college students he knew saw a sexual arrangement as convenient, but not lasting or a commitment. “They are roommates with sex and utilities included in the rent.” (p. 106). 

With the looming strike of women (they are angry about the election of Trump and mad at the Electoral College) and the January 21 Women’s March in DC, I think he missed his mark in thinking the “rights” push was over.  It’s not over because it's never over for the Left which needs a victim, and over 50% of the population are women and 57% of the college graduates since the 90s are women.  For the Left  no matter what progress women, homosexuals or transsexuals make, there’s always a new victim to be found which can be folded into the original goal.  The push to normalize sex with children is the most recent one, as polygamy or polyandry will just be too boring and acceptable since sex with adults has lost all meaning. Relativism, Bloom said, makes students conformist and incurious. Their supposed open-mindedness closes their actual minds. And that continues as the students of the 80s are the parents and professors of today's college students.

Bloom writes about relationships in the mid-80s: “Men and women are now used to living in exactly the same way and studying exactly the same things and having exactly the same career expectations.  No man would think of ridiculing a female premed or prelaw student, or believe that these are fields not proper for women, or assert that a woman should put family before career.  The law schools and medical schools are full of women, and their numbers are beginning to approach their proportion in the general population.  . . The battle here has been won. . . They do not need the protection of NOW (p. 107)  And he goes on to note that not only do his students have nothing to learn about sex from their parents, but also believe they have nothing to learn from old literature or history  [and I would add the Bible, but he doesn’t] so when they have problems with relationships, they have nothing to go back to.

Although Bloom's book was a best seller, other academics became alarmed--he was called a racist, sexist, homophobe (although he was probably gay said a close friend after Bloom died), a Nazi--well, you know the routine.  He was practically Trump!  After 200 reviews of the book, the academics began having conferences about it!  Which makes me think, maybe I should put it back on the shelf and choose another title to withdraw.  Since I've blogged about this a year ago (at my book blog) I'm not making much progress reducing the crowded bookshelves.

Fake history as well as fake news

Shocking isn’t it how most of us were taught fake history, for me beginning in 5th grade in Forreston, Illinois?  There was no Dark Ages after Rome fell to the barbarians. In fact, those barbarians were Roman citizens enjoying a  fairly high level of culture and more likely assimilated Rome. There was no Enlightenment where suddenly the world of learning exploded.  There was no scientific revolution, only a group of secularists who denied the truths the church had taught all along. And what about that awful Spanish Inquisition? More people died from the death penalty in the first 70 years of the 20th century in the U.S. than in 350 years of the Inquisition.  To bring us up to today’s headlines, there is also no HIV Pandemic, just very risky behavior by a small segment of the population in multiple countries, mostly young, gay and bisexual males, which spreads disease and death around the world.

There were incredible advancements in technology, science, agriculture, literature and art all through the era I was taught to call “the Dark Ages.”  And without an era that had gone  “dark,” how could there be an era when the lights suddenly came on--the Enlightenment--a time when Europeans looked back and copied what the Greeks and Romans did.  How could scientists of the 18th century pat themselves on the back if they had to be standing on the shoulders of the giants of science of the middle ages? They needed the myth of a Scientific Revolution. There was slavery in ancient Rome, but it had virtually disappeared in Europe by the time of the so-called Enlightenment.  So where did it go?  Changes in technology, agriculture, war and economics made it useless.

But who can we blame for all this misinformation about darkness and slow progress? Why were we taught this? Christianity, of course, say the atheist academics, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church say the non-Catholic academics. The United States arose from the English Reformation view of world and European history, so that’s what we were taught; most of our colonies excluded Catholics owning land or building churches. That’s why the religious history books on my office shelves begin around 1517 for Lutherans and Reformed or 1600 for Baptists, or 1850 for Restorationists and 1900 for Pentecostals and Charismatics, and 10 years ago for the Rock City Church, the fastest growing Christian church in Columbus, Ohio.  That’s why we could watch five seasons of Downton Abbey without asking why aristocratic Anglicans in the 20th century were making their home in an abbey built by Catholic monks who lost their home, life’s work and probably their lives for Jesus in the 16th century.

The other day I looked through the introduction of a book of evangelical Christian literature, “Valiant for the truth,” by David Otis Fuller (c. 1961). Let me quote, “It has been said that after the close of the Apostolic Age theology fell over a cliff until restored by the great formulated creeds of the church. . . “ And that’s pretty much the mother’s milk we were all nourished with whether mother was a Lutheran, Calvinist, Mormon, Congregationalist, secularist or atheist.

Local channels promote fake news

Let your local news channels hear from you when they repeat the fake news script "Muslim ban" or "immigration ban." It's 7 countries out of 50 (and that number should raise some questions--most used to be Christian countries). It dates to 2015 when President Obama recognized the danger of trying to vet people from governments with terrorist ties (and he would have NEVER used the word Muslim). I've written to Channel 10, WBNS. They not only misuse this term, they misuse their audience with anti-administration stories.

The big boys that bring in super smart and well educated workers on legal visas are getting nervous. They must make us think the worst. Google. Amazon. AMA. Academe. They are bringing in foreign workers in every imaginable category--while American graduates struggle to pay off their college loans working as secretaries and copy editors. I'd be shocked if Google is bringing in any Somalis or Yemenis except to work in the kitchen to feed their millennial staffers organic, vegan salads. I think large universities like Ohio State would close tomorrow if their supply of foreign students all getting a full ride from their governments back home, would have their visas questioned.  This is BIG money.

http://fortune.com/2017/02/09/h1-b-silicon-valley-tech

These companies don't import steel or light bulbs or bicycles to compete with American factories, they import workers to compete with American workers. So what happens when a labor field is flooded? Wages stay flat--STEM workers' wages haven't progressed much since 2000, according to Fortune Magazine. But it probably looks pretty good to someone from India. So how is an American college grad to pay off that $30,000 debt if Silicon Valley is filled with workers from Asia and India here on H1-B visas? The college slots are also filled with foreign workers. I don't think these guys at Google and FB worry about Muslim terrorists, but they probably stay awake at night thinking about a level playing field for American IT workers. So let's call it an "immigration ban."

Comments on the "Muslim Ban" from Medpage

Don Lynch:  "I guess first I would like to say it is not a Muslim ban. If it was there are countries with a higher number of Muslims that would have been on the list. It was an attempt to get a better hold on people with ill intent for America. It has happened before. And I would be negligent if I didn't mention that The President of the United States may have better information on the currant security risk and where they are coming from then us mere mortals. ( And NO he wouldn't tell the people as it would just tip our hand on just how must information we have on the bad guys operation.) That being said, he also mentioned this was just for two months, any questionable entries would be handled on a case by case basis. Like someone coming here for emergency surgery. During this short two months he was hoping to have a handle on things after meeting with security around the globe, and his own cabinet. But that might be delayed while politics are delaying The Presidents Cabinet. This is all being done at the risk of Americans. He didn't want to act globally until he had the necessary information in hand. And now we have judges making up law the way they think it should be. So we'll all wait (with our pants down around our ankles leaning across the table) until we get in front of a judge that reacts to The Constitution of the United States, and not one that dispatches law the way he wants it to be."

I saw this response in a comment about 12 medical organizations at MedPage objecting to the travel restrictions from seven terrorist countries.  I do wonder why the U.S. is either 1) borrowing their doctors when they need them so much, or 2) training their doctors to be sent back into the meat grinder.  Of course, we can be pretty sure they won't go back.

Obama's plan to help poor children (there wasn't one)

“Among all children under 18 years in the U.S., 43 percent live in low-income families and 21 percent—approximately one in five—lives in a poor family." How did Obama let this happen? I thought everything was great! He said so! Our pension investments did fine most of his 8 years--and I know the wealthy did extremely well. How many articles did you see the last 8 years on a gap?  Do you suppose this could be why President Trump won and the rent-a-mobs now rage? And did you know that being raised in a married family reduced a child’s probability of living in poverty by about 82 percent? Nothing like a job to get Dad out of poverty. We have 123 income transfer programs to help the poor; it seems it does help--them stay poor.

Basic facts about low income children    Jiang, Y., Granja, M.R., & Koball, H. (2017). Basic Facts about Low-Income Children: Children under 3 Years, 2015. New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

 
 Obama's economic, social and foreign policies not only lost the Democrats control of the federal government, but he pretty much destroyed their chances in the state governments--Republicans are now in control of a record 67 (68 percent) of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers in the nation, more than twice the number (31) in which Democrats have a majority, according to the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Instead of doing some soul searching, kicking a few has-beens to the curb and reorganizing, Democrats continue to rage about Trump's tweets and hire rent a mobs, like trying to stop Betsy DeVos from visiting schools today.

Fair Trade Coffee

This morning I saw an ad for a coffee brand on TV that prominently promoted the "Fair Trade" label. That label now appears on a number of products from developing countries and originally was intended to get the little guy a better price for his labor. There's no evidence that has actually happened, but it has become a huge marketing campaign, and makes people (you and me and especially churches) feel better. It's a product produced in the poorest countries consumed by the richest countries--22% by the U.S. and 67% by EU. Because it's intended to help the small farmer, large corporate producers don't qualify for the label, even it they pay their farmers more, provide schools and hospitals for the community and use sustainable/organic agriculture. 

"Fair Trade USA is a nonprofit, but an unusually sustainable one. It gets most of its revenues from service fees from retailers. For every pound of Fair Trade coffee sold in the United States, retailers must pay 10 cents to Fair Trade USA. That 10 cents helps the organization promote its brand, which has led some in the coffee business to say that Fair Trade USA is primarily a marketing organization. In 2009, the nonprofit had a budget of $10 million, 70 percent of which was funded by fees. The remaining 30 percent came from philanthropic contributions, mostly from foundation grants and private donors.

People in the coffee industry find it hard to criticize FLO and Fair Trade USA, because of its mission “to empower family farmers and workers around the world, while enriching the lives of those struggling in poverty” and to create wider conditions for sustainable development, equity, and environmental responsibility.⁶ “I’m hook, line, and sinker for the Fair Trade mission,” says Shirin Moayyad, director of coffee purchasing for Peet’s Coffee & Tea Inc. “When I read [the statement], I thought, there’s nothing I disagree with here. Everything here I believe in.” Yet Moayyad has concerns about the effectiveness of the model, mostly because she does not see FLO making progress toward those goals." 

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_problem_with_fair_trade_coffee

 http://www.foodrepublic.com/2014/02/19/what-does-fair-trade-coffee-really-mean/

 https://www.organicconsumers.org/sites/default/files/What%20is%20Fair%20Trade%20Certification.pdf

 http://www.nature.org/greenliving/gogreen/everydayenvironmentalist/buy-sustainable-coffee.xml

Lincoln on slavery

In March 1860 Abraham Lincoln spoke at Yale on the campaign trail to the White House. Yale's student body was divided on the issue of slavery, an important plank in the Democrats' platform. "If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality; if it is wrong they [the Democrats] cannot justly insist upon its extension—its enlargement."

That's how I feel about legal abortion, both the federal and state laws; if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned, the issue just goes back to the states where it is still immoral even if legal. If abortion is right, then all acts and laws are wrong and have no meaning. 

However, this statement by Lincoln was a paraphrase of a writer who influenced him and many abolitionists, Leonard Bacon, a Congregational preacher and writer who wrote it in 1846. The Congregationalists are now blended into United Church of Christ which has been supporting abortion since 1971. President Obama was a UCC member, but so was Harriet Beecher Stowe (Congregationalist).

Looking forward to the defunding of Planned Parenthood

When they get around to defunding Planned Parenthood you'll hear so many lies--all of course about poor women being denied "health care." You won't hear that it is awash in money. Planned Parenthood is in the abortion business--it doesn't provide pre-natal care, it doesn't see poor woman through their pregnancies (if she escapes plan A), it doesn't provide adoption assistance, no counseling or material aid for new mothers, it doesn't do mammograms--it just collects money from poor people, pro-abortion donors and we tax payers. There are 13,540 women's clinics receiving federal support who actually do provide health care; there are 665 Planned Parenthood abortion mills. Don't panic--you can still support abortion if that is your calling.

Shape up Self

We've never been able to figure it out, but for about 3 years we've been receiving "Self" and "Shape" magazines published for the under 25 body obsessed, narcissistic female. When my husband was still teaching an exercise class (all female) he would pull out the (impossible) routines and add a few moves. Women's magazines whether Godey's in the 19th c. or Prairie Farmer in the 20th, have always been dependent on advertising, not subscriptions, so how we fell into the demographic interested in make-up, exercise, dieting, and sweaty sex really baffles me. http://wwd.com/…/conde-nast-closes-self-magazine-10715645-…/ But the marketing didn't work, and it looks like the print editions will go belly up (but a toned belly).

Presidents defend their daughters

Harry Truman didn't tweet, but he certainly knew how to defend critics of his daughter. 

"I've just read your lousy review of Margaret's concert. I've come to the conclusion that you are an 'eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.' It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you're off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work. Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below! Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you'll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry."

Ivanka Trump is obviously being blackballed. Not sure how this "justice" figures with Christians who don't want to participate in a gay wedding, except nothing on the left is logical, fair, or practical.

The power of fake news

This is the power of fake news. Democrats are more familiar with Steven Bannon than life long, powerful legislator, Chuck Schumer. Bannon was the editor of Breitbart, the on-line news source, flip side of Huffington Post. He was demonized by the left for NOT deleting the trolls and idiots who posted in comments. Now he's advising Trump and they are convinced he has more power than Schumer who's on TV beating a dead horse every day and whom they elected.

Washington Post 

 

There are 7,000 diseases on the rare disease list

 February 28 is Rare Disease day. Choose one of 7,000 and become informed or support the research. Last year the FDA allotted $23 million over 4 years, choosing 21 projects. As you can see, $23 million doesn't go far. We are supporting MPS III A (San Filippo Syndrome) because we know a sweet girl who has this. While the internet rages with politics and fake news, there are families quietly suffering and battling along. Let's help.

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today [Oct. 17, 2016] announced that it has awarded 21 new clinical trial research grants totaling more than $23 million over the next four years to boost the development of products for patients with rare diseases. These new grants were awarded to principal investigators from academia and industry with research spanning domestic and international clinical sites."

 https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/browse-by-first-letter

Rare disease day in the U.S. is February 28, 2017.  http://rarediseaseday.us/

"Rare diseases are not so rare:  there are 7,000 rare diseases disorders that combined affect 30 million Americans–1 in 10 of us–and more than half are children.

People with rare diseases have tremendous unmet needs, including misdiagnosis, a long time to finally receive a correct diagnosis, and when they do, 95% have no treatment with ZERO CURES."

Mammography and social justice

Who am I to question how medical research money is spent, but when I see this, . . . "research grants for scholars from backgrounds that are historically disadvantaged or underrepresented in research disciplines," I know I don't care about the skin color or ethnicity of the nurse or med tech who could possibly save my life. Wouldn't that money be better spent on a new drug, cutting edge technology or a cure rather than on social goals? And the same for raising yet more money through runs and walks for education and screening. Mammography is detecting more cancers, but hasn't reduced mortality.

Words, will they make a comeback?

We have a new sheriff in town.  Remember when mothers would tell their toddlers, "Use your words, not your fists."  We may regret that. Meanwhile. I think I've heard "Islamic terrorist" more in the last 2 weeks than the last 8 years.

There are over a million words in the English language, and it is global and borrows as needed. There are over 50 words just for sheep.  But in the U.S., the word police have thrown so many words at the wall, any wall, they no longer have any meaning.  Tolerance. Diversity. Privilege. Multicultural. Gender. Sex. Rape. Hunger. Poverty. Microaggression. Disparities. Justice. Fairness. Comprehensive. Invalidation. Underserved population. People of color. Traditional marriage. Hitler. Nazi. Orwell. Male. Female. . And a host of pronouns. . . (feminists killed the pronoun even before the transgender debate).  And now, all of a sudden, Democrats have discovered the Constitution, patriotism and the Bible.  Who knows where this could lead?

The Super Bowl ads

I watched only the overtime of Super Bowl LI, and thought it was pretty exciting when I caught up on what had happened 2nd half. On Monday and Tuesday it was still being debated for non-football reasons--particularly the ads, which I didn't see--also didn't see Lady GaGa. But everything seems to be political.

 "Many Americans watch the game for the ads. Audi hectored us about the phony gender wage gap. But immigration was the dominant theme, with not one, not two but three ads ...moralizing about the issue — the one from 84 Lumber being the most heavy handed. We suspect most Americans vastly prefer to be entertained by humorous and silly commercials than ads designed to shame half the population. The same goes for the sport itself. We watch to see the clash of combatants on the gridiron, not the pouty nonsense of kneeling social justice warriors. Let’s make sports (and commercials) great again." Patriot Post, Nate Jackson, Feb. 6.

I remember when TV and magazine advertising depicted adult women for years as either complete air-heads who couldn't open a box of laundry soap without a male voice-over, or as sex objects suitable only as a clothes rack or to satisfy a man (many women's magazines still do). Now the ads show men as wimps and effeminate clothes racks, or stupid, knuckle dragging beer drinkers. And now they want to preach equality, diversity and sustainability? I don't think so.

Tucker Carlson on Fox

By the time he comes on in his new time slot (9 p.m.) I'm usually asleep, but his is one of the best programs on TV. What I enjoy about Tucker is, unlike Bill O'Reilly, he respects his guests and allows them to have their say, even if you know he'll eviscerate them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqtvZM2oYrM 
Interview with Rand Paul on the Federal Reserve System.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz3RLnuk370
Travel ban analysis.  Like watching paint dry.

The New World Order and pushback against Trump

"Forget most of the complaints and accusations against Donald Trump you are hearing these days. There is a growing, ugly and violent war being waged against the Trump administration and conservatives in general. Most of that war is being orchestrated and funded by massively-financed elites of one general movement – the several decades old movement for an aggressively secular, borderless, de-populationist New World Order and world government."

LifeSite

Betsy DeVos and The Department of Education

I didn't feel strongly about DeVos--except the teachers' unions were against her and that's a pretty good clue. The two Republicans who didn't support her are well funded by teachers' unions. I do wonder about the purpose of the Department of Education except to hand out grants to their favorites and fiddle around with reports no one ever reads or follows. Now, there's been an historic attempt to block the president's choices and an historic vote to break the tie. So far, in two weeks, Democrats have just made themselves look weak and whiny. Something to remember in the 2018 vote.  Teachers' unions have done an excellent job of keeping salaries/benefits high (ca. $58/hour according to BLS) and a poor job of releasing trapped poor kids from their district schools. No wonder they are against DeVos and for all Democrat politicians. Life long politicians need life long victims.

David Keck says (on Facebook): " The reason the NEA and AFT want the Department of Education in the first place has no connection to what is best for kids. What it does is provide a permanent ear and funding stream for their lobbyists in Washington for their own agenda. And the Common Core thing is just the example that it never stops with where they are when they get this department. It always gets bigger. The fact that so many districts and states kowtow to Common Core shows that they are not just "helping" or assuring rights for kids - they are imposing a national curriculum. Yes, I know it is voluntary. So is state highway money. See if you get it if you don't cooperate with the feds' latest crime of the month, e. g. seat belts, uniform speed limits, or whatever.

Don't forget that Reagan campaigned on getting rid of the DOE. He then hired Terrell Bell from Wyoming to run it, and he initiated the "A Nation At Risk" report. I had one of Bell's minions as a professor and he was quite proud of the fact that they snookered Reagan. He said so."

http://nypost.com/2017/02/05/the-war-on-betsy-devos-is-all-about-the-teachers-unions/#.

Sharyl Attkisson: We've been played

"We’re being played. Astroturfers often disguise themselves and publish blogs, write letters to the editor, produce ads, start non-profits, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts, edit Wikipedia pages or simply post comments online to try to fool you into thinking an independent or grassroots movement is speaking. They use their partners in blogs and in the news media in an attempt to lend an air of legitimacy or impartiality to their efforts. Astroturf’s biggest accomplishment is when it crosses over into semi-trusted news organizations that unquestioningly cite or copy it.

The language of astroturfers and propagandists includes trademark inflammatory terms such as: anti, nutty, quack, crank, pseudo-science, debunking, conspiracy theory, deniers and junk science. Sometimes astroturfers claim to “debunk myths” that aren’t myths at all. They declare debates over that aren’t over. They claim that “everybody agrees” when everyone doesn’t agree. They aim to make you think you’re an outlier when you’re not." http://fullmeasure.news/

My favorite is "research shows," or "it is reported," when in fact that includes a writer or two you've never heard of. I even use it occasionally if I remember a story and am too lazy to find the link.  But I'm not being paid.  A year ago I wouldn't have called the New York Times or Washington Post "astroturfers," but in their on going fight against President Trump (because they lost so badly and were embarrassed by their sloppy reporting), they've reduced themselves to that level.

Trump proved right again. Media are silent.

Almost all the popular vote for Clinton over Trump (about 3 million) came from California. There are Democrats who think that should trump the Electoral College vote. Now one of the California state politicians, Kevin de León (D), has announced half his family and that of other Mexican heritiage Californians use false documents to survive. In short, he has just proved Donald Trump right. But oh how the press raged at Trump for suggesting that there is voter fraud. Crickets for this admission.

"I can tell you half of my family would be eligible for deportation under executive order, because if they got a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a false driver’s license prior to us passing AB60, if they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members, you know, who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification. That’s what you need to survive, to work. They are eligible for massive deportation." Kevin de Leon.

AB60 is a law that gives illegals drivers' licenses--about 800,000 were issued the first 2 years.

Springsteen and Youngstown, Ohio

Mike Huckabee reports on Springsteen and his (long forgotten) ties to Youngstown, Ohio): “Bruce Springsteen must be taking career advice from the Dixie Chicks. During a concert on foreign soil (Australia), he implied that he was embarrassed by America’s President, then sang a song suggesting it was because Trump hung up on Australia’s Prime Minister – a dubious story from an unnamed source that both parties to the phone call strongly denied.

This is hardly Bruce’s first jab at Trump. Having campaigned hard for Hillary, he’s also on record as calling Trump incompetent and a “moron,” although he did recently add a caveat that that there are “plenty of good, solid folks that voted for Donald Trump.” I’ve said this before, but if he really wants to be a voice for beleaguered working people, he should do what I do: spend time talking to them instead of celebrities, politicians and Rolling Stone writers.

I’d suggest starting with Joe Marshall Jr. He’s a retired Ohio steelworker who inspired Springsteen’s song “Youngstown,” often hailed by liberals for its sad depiction of the problems of laid-off factory workers in an outsourced-jobs world. In the last election, Marshall was a strong Trump backer. He told the New York Times that the Democrats “failed Youngstown” with overbearing regulations that drove jobs away. Springsteen said he wrote his song after reading about Marshall in a book. Might I suggest talking to Marshall, and other Trump-voting factory workers like him, face-to-face? Judging from the way Bruce fell for one of the countless anti-Trump fake news stories, it appears that he’s not making very good choices of reading material.”

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/02/03/bruce-springsteen-just-apologized-australia-trumps-behalf-best-way/

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2017/02/02/even-the-mexican-government-is-calling-out-the-ap-for-inaccurately-reporting-call-with-trump-n2280214

Yes, in our era teens all dressed a like

 
We just had prettier clothes in those days. 

Yes, definitely

Our party line was 59-L.  Gayle might remember this.  In Oakwood Hall where we both lived, the pop machine (bottles) began spitting them out with no one inserting coins.  Lots of squealing brought the crowd running. I think she was the hall monitor.

Moles, leakers and Clintonistas in the federal government

As I've puzzled over the anti-Trump reaction to an Obama order now going to the courts, I came across a number of stories of federal workers in various agencies like EPA and DoE organizing to fight Trump through encryption of files, special groups to stay in touch, archiving of files outside the agency, etc. If this is also taking place in Homeland Security (which is charged with carrying out the 2015 order restricting travel to and from 7 nations) I think a pause to clean house, not of immigrants but of federal workers, may be a good idea. Then there is the leaking (inaccurate) of Trump’s phone conversations with Australia’s leader and Mexico’s leader. Both those presidents have denied the account published by A.P. The new term is "fake news." So something is afoot. More collusion between the media (our third party) and the bureaucracy (the Democratic party)? Also, just this past week-end it was revealed that three brothers (don’t know if they were Muslims) working for Democratic Congress members as IT specialists were all fired. That is not related to immigration travel, but it could mean there are moles within both parties and within the federal bureaucracy.

 

 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/federal-workers-signal-app-234510

 

 http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/04/exclusive-house-intelligence-it-staffers-fired-in-computer-security-probe/

 

 http://ktla.com/2017/02/03/trump-administration-issues-clarification-on-travel-ban-allows-some-travelers-from-7-countries-to-enter-us-under-special-circumstances/

 

thehill.com/homenews/administration/317887-wh-to-probe-leak-of-trumps-australia-mexico-calls

Thoughts on immigration and refugees

Kuwait has travel ban for 5 Muslim countries. "In July 2016, Kuwait had foiled thee terror plots planned by the ISIS. Several pre-emptive raids inside and outside Kuwait ended in the arrests of militants which the interior ministry had said belonged to “Daesh”. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for ISIS. In July 2015, the Gulf country, home to several US military bases, suffered its first ever ISIS-claimed attack, when a blast targeting a Shia mosque killed 27 people and injured over 200."

 No one outside the Obama administration and the Trump administration, not the judges trying to second guess nor the demonstrators, know why those 7 countries were put on the Homeland Security list in 2015. It's not about Islam, or another 43 countries would be on the list. It would seem prudent to wait. That is, unless you voted for Clinton and just hate Trump.

 I see a lot of "we are all immigrants" signs on FaceBook especially from those who just weeks ago under Obama were saying "we" stole the land and enslaved Africans. But there were always rules. My immigrant ancestors had to swear allegiance to King George II of Britain before selling everything or their labor to pay for the journey, and then there was no help from the colonial government of Pennsylvania only from whomever purchased their labor or others of their faith.
 

Michael Smith had a thought of merit: "It seems to me that Trump has set up a situation where the people who oppose this Executive Order are going to have to explain in court why this condition is unconstitutional now and it wasn’t unconstitutional in 2015 when Obama signed the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 in to law. It will also have to be explained to the American people why constitutional rights are extended to non-citizens. I think the challenges may well have the effect of unveiling the true political bias of our judiciary and the feckless nature of our legislature. Trump is making good use of Alinsky's Rule 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

Veruschka and me

I saw Veruschka (popular model from 1960s, referred to as the most beautiful woman in the world) on a rerun of Dick Cavett last night. So today I looked her up. She's now 77, a few months older than I. Looks like the rest of us who were never models except she's still 6'4" and I'm still 5'5". I think the most recent photo was about 4 years old, but she didn't appear to have any botox or facial remodeling like Nancy Pelosi, nor was she wearing make-up. She says it's more important to be loving and have a lively mind.

Dear shrinking and aging Democrats

 The wall was voted on years ago, maybe 11 or so, and your team voted for it. It's about 1/3 built. Stop blaming Trump for 16 years of inaction on illegal immigration by Bush and Obama. Your team also voted to go to war during the Bush years, and expanded it through an imperial presidency during the Obama years--no president was at war longer than Obama. This is the mess you left President Trump. Let's see if he can turn your poop into fertilizer.

KURT SCHLICHTER, Townhall, Feb. 2: "So this leads us to the next Democrat lemmingfest as your dwindling contingent in the Senate prepares to go full Thelma and Louise over Judge Gorsuch. Or should I say, Soon-to-be-Justice Gorsuch, because thanks to Harry Reid, your filibuster has been filibusted. He’s getting confirmed no matter what you do. Plus, he’s a great guy who presents well and who normal people will look at and say, “Hmmm. He seems nice.” But please, don’t let something like the fact you have no chance of success and a huge chance that you will make yourself look like complete idiots deter you from your kamikaze crusade to cater to Team Soros. I want you to oppose Soon-to-be-Justice Gorsuch. Loudly. Proudly. Tone deafly. Tell yourself that, “Well, the GOP won the Senate after doing nothing but obstructing Obama, so it’s gotta work for us, too!” Just skip over how the GOP was obstructing stuff that normal people hate, while you geniuses will be obstructing stuff loved by everyone who doesn’t live within walking distance of a feminist bookstore that serves cruelty-free intersectional chai lattes. And pay no attention to the looming 2018 elections where you have 25 seats at stake. It’s all gonna work out fine! Please. Keep doing what you are doing. And we’ll keep luxuriating in that warm bath tub, which we will top off with Chuck Schumer’s tears."

300,000 Californians have moved to Texas to get away from the nonsense we hear at the Globes and Academy, so when the half time preachers get too loud for Super Bowl 51, hit the mute button. That's not what football should be about. I've never figured out what it IS about, but I know it ISN'T having an overpaid, over rated singer tell me what to believe. If Lady GaGa gets all political on us, I expect a quick approval of Gorsuch. Some blondes really are dumb, even if it comes from a bottle.

On the Mike Gallagher show this morning (he had a guest host) I heard a campaign worker for Trump who went door to door for him in blue collar neighborhoods say he thinks Colin Kaepernick put Trump in the White House. Probably hyperbole, but Kaepernick is REALLY unpopular. He's the football player adopted as an infant by white parents who gave him every advantage, and  has now decided he's a black nationalist and loves a Muslim girl.

A tribute to a great dad--our nephew Dan

 
This is a tribute to his father, written by our great nephew Caleb (on the right, back).  Others are Jake on the left (Jacob), Dan (son-in-law), and Joshua.

 "I couldn't ask for a better father. He has never been and still to this day isn't my "friend". He is a dad and he lets it be known. My father wasn't the sensitive type. He didn't come ask about your day or make you feel perfect. He did raise me, come home everyday, be faithful to my mother and we all knew the rules. He may be a hard man but I wouldn't change it. At the end of the day he would go to war for me as I would for him. I am glad i wasn't spoon fed. At least, I knew real life and not that movie fairy tale."

Of course, the Dan we know is a hugger and kidder.  He and Joan have visited us the last two summers at the Lake and came for our 50th wedding anniversary--twice! They are super special people with always more love to share.

Being sick is very boring

Most aren't old enough to remember scarlet fever, or pneumonia in the pre-penicillin days, and maybe you still have your appendix. I had all three--oh, and infected tonsils, so that's four. But that's pretty much it for 77 years and I still have all my permanent teeth and never a broken bone despite having owned a horse.  But adding up the days those 4 put me to bed in a dark room and stuck in the house doesn't equal my shingles siege of January 2017.  Today I drove the car for the first time since Jan. 6. Yesterday I walked outside a bit.  It came back for a second round and I'm back on acyclovir and still using a steroid for my eye.  As pain goes, it's nothing like cancer, heart attack or stroke.  It's about a 2 on a scale of 10, manageable with Gabapentin and Tylenol. But I'm a whiner and so bored with this.

We only have antenna TV in the guest room, so I've been watching reruns 40 years old.  My goodness, I can't believe how women were depicted in the 1970s. Laugh-In was probably the worst.  So why should we trust Hollywood celebrities in the 21st century to tell us what to think? Like Madonna and Lady GaGa?

For days after I stopped throwing up I could eat nothing but Campbell's Chicken Noodle, the old fashioned kind.  Then fried egg sandwiches with cheese sounded good, reminding me of one of the few things my Dad knew how to cook.  Then Key Lime Pie sounded pretty good.  But in general, eating hasn't been very healthy.

The Left vs. Gorsuch

I'm  challenging the middle schoolers who write for the New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, Huffington Post  and Daily Kos to read a few of Judge Gorsuch's decisions before deciding he's a fascist. Let them bask in simple and easy to understand English and to take in the flavor of making decisions on the basis of law and not opinion. Particularly, read the case about the 13 year old boy arrested for fake burps and disrupting the class. I think the juveniles writing for our major news sources would want a Judge Gorsuch on their team. I'm assisting with a link, because if you try on your own to find this information you'll get 30 - 40 referrals to New York Times and Washington Post, because of the algorithms of Google.

 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9892606330454881926&q=14-2066&hl=en&as_sdt=4,106,120

List of decisions of the 10th circuit.

Someone named Souza commented

At the Washington Post, it's difficult to find an article that isn't anti-Trump.  But sometimes there is wisdom in the comments. I thought this one had merit to respond to another commenter at "The Democrats are babbling," by Ed Rogers on February 1.

I think calling Trump names like "raging child" disqualifies you as "thoughtful" or "reasonable". Trump is wrong on much, but minimizing his success is not reasonable and thoughtful. He dismantled the republican establishment and crushed the Clinton machine. He was systematic and effective. So what everyone should do is stop responding with craziness when he intentionally does things to make you crazy. He wins when he plays you like a broken toy.

Become analytical and unbiased...if you can. There is nothing outrageous, illegal or immoral about suspending immigration from countries raging in war and terrorism or that express a hatred for American ideals. Other dem presidents have taken similar actions and it was reasonable then to...don't go crying and screaming in the streets with nonsensical signs. Instead recognize that what is unreasonable about the Trump suspension of immigration is that there was no notice and it affected green card holders with a right to be in the USA. Focus on the real issue not the fake one that seems to get the most attention. Lots of people think Garland should have gotten a vote...ok...life's not fair and if the table had been turned the dems would have done the same thing...now stop bashing a reasonable pick for the Scalia seat...and brace for the RBG seat fight...that is where the dems must bow their back....crying about this seat and becoming irrational could cause a rule change that will lose any chance to defend the RBG seat.

Salaries for librarians

I received an e-mail newsletter/update from the University of Illinois School of Information Sciences.  Lots of news about minority recruitment.  I wonder about that.  Librarianship (the old name) requires a master's degree.  With school teachers earning anywhere from $56-$60 an hour, much more than librarians, why recruit minorities?  It's possible that median salaries are listed under some other titles.  Another website listed slightly higher salaries--about $35,000, but nothing that would pay off college debt.

So I sent the school a note:

"I was reviewing “iSchool at Illinois” and what has obviously been a very successful recruitment of minority and male students. I found the microaggression workshop a bit off-putting, but then that's my age--graduate MLS in 1966. From what I've seen of them they are anti-white, anti-male and divisive. So I checked a website for salaries and see a library researcher is $27,848 annually, same as a linen room attendant and $2,000 less than a parking lot attendant/valet. There was no listing for "librarian." Do you have any current salary figures that would make recruitment of men and minorities a worthwhile effort?"

 

 

Meltdowns of the left--where to start?

There are approximately 50 predominately Muslim countries, and the restriction (put in place by Obama) is for seven who harbor terrorists. The American left/Democrats went apoplectic even though it's shorter than Obama's "bans" and is temporary. Do they want to go on record as blocking all Muslim countries? Obama sent back Cuban refugees his final week--to a Communist country. Not a peep from the left.  And oh how they wept that the temporary attorney general decided to follow her own religion and defied her boss and the law and was fired. I guess judges are not members of unions.  This could be a step to a political career--not that she wasn't political already.  

Then the students are rioting in UC Berkeley--a gay, conservative was on campus to give a speech, and if you remember the 60s, it's sort of like that. Maybe grandpa had told them stories of the good old days.  Burning and trashing buildings and pepper spraying anyone who looked like a Trump supporter. Looks like the DeVos nomination might end in a tie in which case Mike Pence gets to cast the deciding vote. Meanwhile, they are busy trashing Gorsuch as the SCOTUS pick--and he's the one to replace a conservative.  They'd better save their big guns for the next choice, which might be to replace a liberal. If you ever thought opposition to Trump was about him being a fool, a fascist and sexist, then just look at what they are doing to Gorsuch, the closest to Jesus I've ever seen in politics. He's an "originalist" and believes judges should keep their personal politics off the bench.  Oh, horror for wise Latinas! 

And media--our third opposition party. They are horrified at Spicer and Bannon making changes in how they filter and chop and drop the news.  For 16 years we've had to put up with 8 years of anti-Bush, then 8 years of anything goes for Obama.  Now there's a new sheriff in town, and he hasn't even locked them up.  But he is adding to the select pool at the press conferences, and CNN and broadcast are now being called out like Obama demeaned Fox News for years. The media completely fail in its research and analysis during the campaign. Think about your own job/career. If your company, agency or library had misled millions of people for months, would it still be respected? Would the CEO, or even you, still have a job?

Gender dysphoria

Which president has done more evil?

What did President Obama do for women and minorities that would make them burn their cities and march angrily in the streets of Washington? Do they think it will be worse with a President Trump? Obama's first term he said he believed in marriage--needed that to get elected while the unelected bureaucrats were working in the back offices on regulations to change thousands of years of history. In his second term he came out for sexually mutilating and drugging confused children with the help of their parents. He took support from Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion mill in the country. He didn't mind that probably 1/3 of the millennial generation and maybe 1/2 of Gen-x were aborted, many in very painful chemical and surgical procedures. Yet still they march against Trump who has done none of that evil. 

"Who would these people be if they had been allowed to simply exist? I can’t stop thinking about it. My generation — Generation X — is the smallest on the face of the Earth today. The Baby Boomers and Millenials are twice our size.

Between 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court required every state to legalize abortion, and 1985, the debated tail end of Generation X, the abortion rate wavered between 20 and 30 percent. The end result is 29 million fewer" http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/community/joco-913/joco-opinion/article37977546.html

The most famous accident that escaped abortion of the late boomer generation was Barack Obama, born in 1961 in Hawaii before abortion was legal (although a woman of means with connections could always get one--and his white grandmother was a bank vice president) to a teen-ager and a married foreign student father. And how did he show his gratitude for escaping the death that took millions?

http://www.jenx67.com/2015/08/pro-life-generation.html 

http://liveactionnews.org/we-all-have-a-choice-to-make-on-abortio 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/community/joco-913/joco-opinion/article37977546.html#storylink=cpy

How did I get on these lists?

 

I get about four offers a day to review a book the marketer will send me. For all I know these marketers are all the same person, just using different names--Diane, Kathy, Louise, etc. Some titles are no brainers--fantasy, or murder mysteries, or an extremely obscure soldier of the Civil War. Easy to say No. I don't take those, and once made the mistake of accepting a bio of a guy who had been on the bachelor TV program.  I've been turning everything down (I've been sick), plus I have about twelve inches of books waiting for me to open them. But today's offer looked good. It was about Justice Scalia. How timely. But as I read through the summary, I see the author was going to club the reader (and Scalia) with liberal blather, fake news, and real bias. Not surprising when I took a second look at the publisher. So I responded to the poor woman who probably makes about $5/hr doing this from her home office. 

"Thanks for the offer—this looked good until I saw that [author] thinks Scalia’s philosophy was “flawed.” Nope and No. Norma"

Currently on my table, some opened, read part through, just waiting for me to stop reading my gift books from Mother's Day and Christmas.

"Navigating the road of infertility," by Chrissie Lee Kahan and Aaron Michael Kahan. King Kahan Publishing, c2016  This is really pretty good for a privately published book, and Mrs. Kahan is a school principal who is a good writer. Although it's about their struggles with infertility, it's mainly about their challenges with the foster care system.  They were willing to adopt an older child, even with learning problems, and ran into huge road blocks. The insensitivity of the "system" especially for the needs of the child surprised me, and yet didn't.  I used to chat with an adoption lawyer at Panera's and heard some real horror stories.

"Caught in the Revolution; Petrograd, Russia, 1917--a world on the edge," by Helenn Rappoport, St. Martin's Press, NY: 2016.  I was a Russian major in college so I also had a lot of Russian and Soviet history. Many of my professors had survived WWII and were children during WWI.  In 2006 we visited St. Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad).  This is so meticulously researched it's enough to make a librarian cry.  Due for book sales this month, February 2017.

"Continental ambitions; Roman Catholics in North America," by Kevin Starr. Ignatius Press, 2016.  I was ambitious to even accept this HUGE compilation (639 p.) about an era of history and religion of which I know nothing.  Not only am I a Lutheran (church history started 500 years ago for Lutherans), but it seems to begin in the middle of a thought, "Resistance grows against the genocide and enslavement of indigenous people." That's in 1511--before Martin Luther's 95 theses.  I'm in deep water here. So there is a lot of Spanish history and I think we studies some of this in 6th grade and in my college Spanish classes.  I've gone on the internet to review some of Starr's other titles, and he's impressive--State Librarian for California and professor of history at the University of Southern California.  This is a quality book--even has color plates.

Iran fights back against Trump

Some history on the National Security Council, by Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee writes in his e-mail today about the apoplectic media reaction to the NSC:

"After Trump announced his reshaping of the National Security Council, something that every President does, the media went ballistic, until Press Secretary Sean Spicer showed them a virtually identical Obama-era presidential memo on the NSC that they hadn’t criticized at all. Part of the outrage centered on Trump not including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Director of National Intelligence in the formal NSC group, but Spicer said that's just to give them leeway to skip meetings that don't pertain to their fields. The media also blasted Trump for not including the CIA, even though they haven't been included since the DNI position was created in 2005. There was also much foaming at the mouth over Trump's including political strategist Steve Bannon, just as Obama had included David Axelrod. Critics pointed out that Bush didn’t include Karl Rove in NSC meetings. But at Instapundit, historian Austin Bay noted that Bush had military experience and Rove didn’t, while Bannon has military experience and Trump doesn’t, which would make Bannon’s advice more valuable."

But that's too logical--and based on history.  

And NPR nitpicking at the make-up. Notice the verbs. http://www.npr.org/2017/01/30/512489785/fact-check-spin-aside-trumps-national-security-council-has-a-very-big-change

 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/30/white-house-defends-national-security-reorganization-steve-bannon/97242792/

These people REALLY hate Steve Bannon!
 

 

Crickets when Obama did it.

Obama's 8 years by Mike Huckabee

"The final numbers on the eight-year Obama economy are in, and they also constitute the final nails in that shoddily-made coffin. Fourth quarter GDP growth for 2016 clocked in at a feeble 1.9%. That means Obama officially earned an inglorious place in US presidential history by presiding over eight straight years of GDP growth below 3%.

Investors Business Daily crunched the final numbers, and they are grim. While Obama and his defenders strained their backs taking bows for “saving the economy” and creating millions of jobs, the best spin you can put on their efforts is that they were “below average.” Compared to average GDP growth across US history, GDP under Obama was $2.4 trillion less than average for any other eight-year period, which reflects $19,000 less income per household. It was also about a trillion dollars less than Obama’s own predictions. Yes, we all know the excuse: he took office following an economic crisis. But the recession officially ended just five months into his tenure. On average, 7-1/2 years after a recession ends, jobs have increased by 18%. Under Obama, they’d increased by only 10.9%, representing 12 million fewer jobs than average.

There’s a lot more at the link, but you get the idea. For eight years, we heard rosy predictions and lots of praise for Obama's policies, but those didn’t match the reality experienced by Americans who were struggling with stagnant wages and slow job growth. Obama's super-regulatory, big government policies were actually restraining growth. There were many reasons why Hillary Clinton lost to Trump, but this is probably the most important. By ignoring the voters’ #1 concern - jobs and the economy -- and thinking she could win via gender identity politics, calling her opponent names and promising to continue Obama’s allegedly “popular” policies that really weren't, she made the worst rookie mistake that any politician can make: she fell for her own propaganda."

Why the rage? It's not like he has gone back on his word.

"The executive order Trump signed Friday afternoon instituted a 90-day suspension of immigrants from countries listed by the Obama administration as having a significant foreign terrorist organization presence. The reason is to give relevant agencies the breathing room to review their procedures and make sure that "adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals.

The order also suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, giving Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence time to "determine what additional procedures should be taken" to make sure that terrorists aren't slipping in under the guise of refugees — a legitimate concern. It also sets a slightly lower 50,000 cap on refugees for this year than has been in effect over the past decade."

Investors Business Daily

It would be the same if we had a President Cruz

Where was the outrage the last week of Obama's term?

During President Obama's final week in office, he did a lot that did not rile his supporters--like preparing the path for many very serious criminals (over a thousand) to be returned to the communities where they had caused chaos and grief. He OK'd millions of dollars to be sent to Palestinians to continue killing Jews and zero to Flint to fix the water system. But also he approved the killing of more than a hundred fundamentalist Muslims working with ISIS, and I don't know how many were wounded seriously, because the media doesn't report burns from exploding trucks and broken bones as bodies are tossed around or grieving families. Yet when President Trump temporarily blocks and asks for further checking for people in the countries (no killing, no pain except the wait) where Obama has been ordering bombing (seven ?), the left goes berserk without checking what's been going on. "That's not who we are," they wept. Yet Obama had us involved in more military conflicts than Bush. The reason these little people don't check is that they are puppets in a larger scheme to discredit anything Trump or the U.S. does. Marching orders. And the media are complicit.

 "Granted, Mr. Obama is leaving far fewer soldiers in harm’s way — at least 4,087 in Iraq and 9,800 in Afghanistan — than the 200,000 troops he inherited from Mr. Bush in the two countries. But Mr. Obama has also approved strikes against terrorist groups in Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, for a total of seven countries where his administration has taken military action. (NYT, May 14, 2016)"

 This month, President Barack Obama officially became the U.S. president to have been at war the longest — longer than Lyndon Johnson, longer than Abraham Lincoln and certainly longer than George W. Bush.

 http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/16/nobel-peace-prize-winning-obama-has-been-at-war-longer-than-any-other-american-president/#ixzz4XF9JHwAJ

A few people got caught in the government net of stopping immigrants, refugees and travelers from countries Obama had been bombing, but that will all be sorted out without the leftists storming airports, hiring judges and tying up traffic. That outrage is about Trump, but the same thing would have happened with a President Cruz or President Fiorina. They are much more fortunate than those Germans and Italians who were visiting relatives in the U.S. or were not yet citizens when the U.S. declared war on the Axis Powers in WWII on Dec. 11, 1941. They went to prison, some for the duration of the war.

The immigration and refugee ban--Carter, Reagan, GWBush, Obama and Trump

White House documents show that former President Barack Obama banned people at least six times, 2011-2014; President Bill Clinton issued six immigrant bans; George W. Bush six immigrant bans; and former President Ronald Reagan four. And in 1980, former President Jimmy Carter banned Iranians after Tehran seized the U.S. embassy. (Washington Examiner, June 15, 2016)  We've had a Terrorist Travel Prevention Act since 1986. It was updated in February of last year (when Trump was not the President). "Have you traveled to, or been present in, Iraq, Syria, Iran, or Sudan on or after March 1, 2011?"

It was embarrassing. This morning  I watched Martha Raddatz interviewing/interrogating Sean Spicer, the president's spokesman. If she'd looked at the history of the law (those countries were designated by Obama) she could have looked alert and awake.

After decades of maligning Americans as homophobes and racists in school textbooks, films, theater, NPR, TV and internet, a nasty nation which stole the land from gentle aboriginals who only wanted to protect the environment and enjoy each other, after ginning up rape statistics to make us the most dangerous country on the planet and lying about poverty and income gap--now the left gets all kum ba ya, decides to read a few verses in the Bible after ridiculing Christians and stabbing Jews in the back, and says, "This is not who we are." All over a 30 year law which has been used by the last 4 presidents to fight terrorism.

 Calm down, Obama supporters, liberal pastors, and hysterical teachers and librarians. President Trump is only returning things to normal. Perhaps those waiting in line for years doing it the legal way will now have an opportunity. His "order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast. Before 2016, when Obama dramatically ramped up refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms." With the media so twisted and biased, you will have a tough time remaining calm and informed, but at least you'll know more than you did the last 8 years. There was more coverage of the 12 people detained in JFK than there was of the half a million people marching for life the day before. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444370/donald-trump-refugee-executive-order-no-muslim-ban-separating-fact-hysteria

 https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international-visitors/visa-waiver-program/visa-waiver-program-improvement-and-terrorist-travel-prevention-act-faq

Illegals really do vote--it's not that difficult

"While wandering around the festivities, I noticed a table with three nice ladies in front of a "Register To Vote" sign.  Curious about its presence at a festival where the bulk of the crowd was either illegal alien day laborers or legal non-citizens, I went over to inquire.  Before I spoke, one of those nice ladies asked me if I was registered to vote.  Wanting to see where this would go, I said no, and asked how to sign up. A voter registration form was thrust in my hands.  The very first item on these forms, in Virginia and the rest of America, was "I am a citizen of the United States of America," with YES and NO blocks to check.

"Don't I need to show you some proof of citizenship?" I asked. She replied "no."  I asked her how she could verify that I wasn’t lying. Sensing she might be on a slippery slope, she called over a supervisor from the Registrar's Office and told the woman of my concern.  The official told me they never checked citizenship status because I would be penalized if I lied. Really? So I asked her how she would verify my truthfulness, or those of the dozens of new voters being registered that day.  Defensively, she replied that they checked all registrations for accuracy at the Registrar's Office when they were turned in.

I called the Registrar Monday, and asked if they do indeed verify citizenship status.  I was told that they didn't unless someone made a specific complaint against an individual applicant."

Carson's blog

An interesting week

These are exciting times. After 16 years of lying about Bush and coddling Obama, the media have found "fake news" and are alarmed. They slobbered over the Women's March last week-end and ignored the March for Life yesterday, but since it was fully covered by EWTN, C-SPAN and Fox, their cover was blown. They are in a hole and digging deeper. They've made themselves irrelevant. Snowflakes have discovered 1984, not realizing it's a novel about the government they've just escaped. And the visit from the UK Prime Minister May--what a lovely lady to counteract the vulgar, ugly Judds and Madonnas we endured last week-end. It has been a thrilling week.

Mia Love on what might have been

Choose life. First black female Republican elected to Congress speaks out on the possibilities for that unborn, female growing in her mother's womb. Outstanding speech.  Watch the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl5JmApgAnY

Abortion was legal in 1975, when Love was born, two years after the Supreme Court made it the law of the land. Friday's March for Life event drew thousands to the National Mall in protest of that high court decision, as it has each year for two generations. "Every time we kill a child through abortion, we kill potential," Love told the crowd, tears streaming down her face. "Every time we kill a child, we — all of us — suffer. We lose a little of ourselves and a lot of our future." Salt Lake Tribune

Mia Love for president.

They lied to you then; they are still lying

 
I wonder how many Democrats didn't bother to vote because the Washington Post ran thousands of anti-Trump articles so the readers decided Hillary Clinton couldn't lose?  President Trump apparently plans to open up the news conferences to those outside the "legacy media." They are the third party in the U.S. and I think he'll take them down. All it would take is some fresh air and sunlight and they will shrivel up.  President Obama has already pretty much destroyed the Democrats.

Born and adopted in 1967

Lauren Ashburn hosts EWTN evening news and has a very familiar face, having been on many network TV shows.  She's hosting one segment of the coverage of the current March for Life.  I just heard her say that she was adopted in 1967 (born on the 4th of July), and has met her birth mother and has told her, "thank you for giving me life."  Pro-life, of course.
 http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/12/prweb13109880.htm

 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2866728/bio

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-ashburn/what-i-want-for-my-birthd_b_889860.html

There's nothing wrong with the bees. Relax.

"The overall honeybee numbers in the United States have stayed steady at about 2.5 million colonies for the last two decades, dipping slightly when the mysterious “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) hit in 2006, then rebounded at a healthy clip and actually reached a 20-year high in 2014. Europe and Canada have experienced significant increases in their honeybee populations as well, and worldwide, there are 30 million more hives today than in 1961, an increase of about 60%. That means there about 1.5 trillion more bees buzzing around today than there were 50 years ago. There simply is no bee-pocalypse and never was."

 http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2016/08/24/the-buzz-seven-reasons-not-to-worry-about-the-bees/#7978928d70a8

Fake news and alternative facts

I have a huge collection of fake news and alternative facts on my living room book shelves. My favorites are the 11th, 12th, and 13th editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. They belonged to my grandfather who died in 1968, bound in black leather with sheer paper.  In fact, based on the detailed maps in the 12th, I'd say battles in France in WWI were the most important events of the 20th century. In my office I have about 40" of church history books that indicate not much ever happened before Luther. 1500 years of literature, medicine, science, architecture, agriculture, theology, etc.--just got left out. And of course, my cookbooks are filled with "facts" about coffee, chocolate, eggs, butter and micronutrients that are history but not accurate--but that could all change next week. But the most enduring fake news and alternative facts come from our media which have so disgraced themselves the last 16 years first lying about Bush then glorifying Obama to have rendered themselves obsolete.

Louder with Crowder joins the women's march

http://www.dailywire.com/news/12739/hilarious-watch-steven-crowder-infiltrate-womens-amanda-prestigiacomo#!

He interviewed the women he marched with, but most had no idea why they were there, except to protest. . . something.

No one questioned his burly frame, muscles and wig, because that might be transphobic, or something.