473 A teen-ager is a murderer, but a doctor provides a service?

Here in Ohio, a young teen-ager (15) went to jail for murdering her newborn. She says the baby was dead when born and she was frightened and put the body in a trash can.

Jill Stanek says she has talked to hospital staff who say that after “live birth abortions” the still alive, viable baby is put in a biohazard bag and smothered or drowned. This what a nurse told her:

“I saw a lot of babies born alive…. Dr. X said that was a side effect of a medication. They always said to leave the baby alone, and they would stop breathing…. Two hours was the longest I saw a baby live…. One girl was 26-27 weeks….

They put the babies in red biohazard bags when they were still moving… tied the bag up… put them in a biohazard box. The biohazard medical service would pick boxes up Monday and Thursday.

Dr. X would insert the medication and send the women home. They were told to come back the next day.

There was one incident where the woman had the baby while she was waiting at the door for the clinic to open. She got there at 7a. The clinic opened at 8a. She said the baby was born alive. The baby was now dead, and she was holding the baby in a bag. She was bleeding.

I was in the room when Dr. X gave the digoxin to stop that baby’s heartbeat beforehand. [Digoxin is a medication inserted by needle through a mother’s abdomen into a baby’s heart to cause instant cardiac arrest.]

Well, he didn’t have an ultrasound machine that day. He inserted the needle blindly. He said he’d been doing it so many years, he knew the location. But he didn’t actually know if he hit the heart.

I know this nurse Bridget. She was working there when the new doctor held a baby under water in a bucket when she told him the baby was alive. That baby was between 25-26 weeks. Bridget left two months ago because of that.

I left because I got tired of everything going on and the fact Dr. X would coach women into saying they were going to kill themselves if they didn’t abort. Then he said he had a legal right to do it past viability. He did them all the way to 40.” weeks.

Full story here.

471 New Charges Against Bush--He Lied in 1978!

Now there is a new Democratic 527 campaign to say that Bush lied about being in the Air Force, because he was in the Air National Guard. This complaint is about the wording in campaign literature from a 1978 race. Why are the Democratic 527s into this hanging chad mentality? If they are trying to establish a pattern of lies, this is really weak. Kerry’s is much stronger--the pattern, that is.

But if you look at all the papers which have been released, they say he is in the Air Force Reserves AND the Air National Guard. Kerry was in the Naval Reserve, but I’m quite sure I’ve heard him referred to as a Navy officer, and also a solider. His own website calls his records, “Naval Records.” Then if you go to Air Force online magazine and click on “Almanac,” you’ll see all the various parts of the Air Force displayed, and it includes both the Air Force Reserves and the Air National Guard.

Here’s what Jerry Killian wrote about George W. Bush upon promotion to 2nd Lt.

3. Lt Bush is a dynamic outstanding young officer. He clearly stands out as a top notch fighter interceptor pilot. Lt Bush is possessed of sound judgement, yet is a tenacious competitor and an aggressive pilot. He is mature beyond his age and experience level as evidenced by his recent participation in the unit firing deployment. During his deployment, Lt Bush delivered both primary and secondary weapons from the F-102. The tactics and procedures conformed to a test project and were, therefore, more difficult to perform. Lt Bush performed in an outstanding manner, bringing credit to himself and the unit. He also participated in a practice element deployment and practiced simulated weapons delivery on varying geometrics and tactics solutions. Lt Bush’s skills far exceed his contemporaries. He is a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership. Lt Bush is also a good follower with outstanding disciplinary traits and an impeccable military bearning. He reflects credit upon himself and the Air National Guard. Lt Bush possesses vast potential and should be promoted well ahead of his contemporaries.

Read all the Bush papers at this site.

I don’t believe John Kerry has released all his records, but there are some files about his medals (did you know he had medals?) and requests on his Kerry Edwards Page.

470 The Forgeries--Who Dunnit?

I used to write my library's newsletter in the mid-80s with an old IBM Selectric (possibly early 70s?) and was pretty good at it--had correctible type (a white ribbon) and balls for changing type fonts. It was tricky changing the font, but I learned. Reading this story about the IBM Selectric Composer which may be the only typewriter in the early 70s that could have come close to creating those forged Bush Guard memos, really brought back memories, and reminded me of how grateful I am for word processing and for the 70-80 wpm speed I learned on a typewriter. Even so, no researcher, not even a librarian, could have pulled this together so quickly before Google.

The web site of the Selectric History page has this message:

"Sorry, but due to excessive hits, this page is temporarily out of service.

Please check back after the election.

For those who want my opinion...the documents appear to be done in Word, and then copied repeatedly to make them "fuzzy". They use features that were not available on office typewriters the 1970s, specifically the combination of proportional spacing with superscript font. The IBM Executive has proportional spacing, but used fixed type bars. The Selectric has changeable type elements, but fixed spacing (some models could be selected at 10 or 12 pitch, but that's all). The Selectric Composer was not an office typewriter, but apparently did use proportional spacing. These were very expensive machines, used by printing offices, not administrative offices."

If you are too young to remember electric typewriters or had secretaries to do your typing, you would not want to use even the office model Selectric typewriter today . Photo of type balls in e-bay.

Who created and planted the forgeries? I'm leaning toward the Clinton camp as pulling a scam on CBS. The Republicans wouldn't want to put anything out there that kept up the discussion, even misinformation, about the guard service. Especially the way the media covers things--sometimes when I've heard this story on the radio, the majority of it deals not with the possible scam of CBS, but the content of the memo, even though the report claims to be about the forgery. Some commentators (Juan Williams, for instance) seem to think it is the message, not the forgery, that is important.

The Clintons have apparently successfully unloaded James Carville, a CNN employee, on the Kerry-Edwards campaign, which sets them up for all sorts of problems. Carville is married to Mary Matalin, a Bush advisor, so I suppose he could be just posing as a Kedwards supporter, but it sets the Democrats up for even more accusations of media bias than they already have. Plus, Carville regularly makes a fool of himself in front of millions as a loud mouth, news analyst (entertainer) on cable. He can make Rush Limbaugh look and sound like a mild mannered Episcopalian priest.

The Old Media has tried to disparage the bloggers who uncovered the forgeries. Jonathan Klein of CBS looks down on bloggers: "A guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." Amy Ridenour says, “Let make sure some of these jammies are pink nighties, so when people in jammies are running rings around his well-dressed ace reporters, Jonny will receive a reminder that not all bloggers are guys." Amy is on my blogroll.

469 Letters from the Guard

Letters are posted anonymously at Andrew Sullivan, who dislikes Bush intensely, because he is gay and doesn’t like Bush’s stand on marriage. The letters aren’t particularly easy to find, or read (white on navy, narrow columns, almost indistinguishable from Sullivan’s comments), otherwise I‘d just link to this. But I thought this one was interesting.

“RE: The Bush AWOL charges: I have worked fulltime for the National Guard for 20 years have been in charge of payroll documents, which are what are mainly used to chronicle reserve service. I have followed this stuff when it was exposed by the LA Times back in 2000 and I was prepared to not support Bush if the charges were proven true. I've seen copies of the records and what Dems are saying is a distortion of the record. A drilling guardsman is required to have 50 points per year to have a "good" year. His records show that he met this requirement, sometimes many times over . . .

The press approach to Kerrys service records has been the exact opposite of their approach concerning Bush's service records, which should be a big enough clue as to what the objective is here. This isn't a quest for objective truth telling. It's a naked attempt to try to lift their rather pathetic candidate out of the ditch he has dug for himself. Also, the only reason the press has any of these records is because President Bush signed a SF 180 authorizing them to access his records. John Kerry won't sign one. I wonder why?”

468 The September 11 Anniversary

September 11, 1960 

It is our 44th wedding anniversary. For our 40th, we went to Illinois and worshipped in the Church of the Brethren where we were married. At my father’s home we hosted a brunch for the dwindling group of relatives and friends who still live there. I was on vacation that September, due to retire from Ohio State on October 1 and running out the clock on my vacation time.

We laughed about what an unusual anniversary it was--we'd spent the week-end in lumber stores and paint shops helping my Dad fix up the Lustron he bought after my mother died. And I always say "we" although only my husband did the exhausting work. I just cooked and cleaned, using ingenuity since Dad thought no one would visit after Mom died and had disposed of most of the cooking utensils and had only 2 plates and flatware settings.

Yes, we thought it an odd anniversary. Little did we know that the next one, September 11, 2001, would be so different, no one would forget it. I watched the re-cap/memorial on CNN that was apparently put together for the 2002 anniversary (I‘m guessing from the copyright date). Although it brought back a lot of horrifying memories, I also saw many things I hadn’t seen before, such as recollections of the press core that was with President Bush on that day and footage of the minutes and hours immediately following the news. He definitely has a stunned look on his face as he sits with the children and you can almost see him composing words of comfort and rallying points--which he then did effortlessly before he rushed to his plane to go to an underground site for a strategy meeting. Hardly a word was different than what he says today.

As I’ve watched Al Gore implode over the last four years from a capable, honest statesman in Clinton’s shadow who won the 2000 popular vote but not the electoral vote into a bitter, hysterical enemy of the administration, I wonder if he could have possibly shown the strength, endurance and steadfastness President Bush has shown, or would he have collapsed under the weight and pressure?

467 Desk top icons

The desktop icons always seem to be either congregating when I don't want them, or disappearing when I do. Now The Illustrated Librarian refers to a site that shows what happens to them when we aren't looking. Caution--violence. Get the children out of the room. Unless they are helping you with the computer.

Club for Growth has a Kerry ad I haven't seen in Ohio, called Blowing in the Wind. CFG is a 527. Democrats have raised much more money in their 527s, but the GOP is catching up, according to this Washington Times article.

There's a photo of the source of the forgery plaguing CBS at their own site! Upper left column. Typewriter looks quite authentic.

Wonderful postcards of motels from the 1950s, arranged by state. You're sure to recognize some of them.

466 How the American Library Association responded to September 11

Greg over at Shush has taken a nostalgic stroll through American Libraries, November 2001, the house organ of American Library Association. The article is not online--for all ALA says about freedom of information, its own archives are only available for subscribers, even though many professional and commercial journals allow readers to see non-current issues.

Greg points out the paucity of information on the terrorist attacks, and the immediate launch into warnings about anti-terrorism bills being proposed in Washington.

Another anniversary piece is at Victor Davis Hanson's site:

Chechen Islamicists burn up Russian airliners and shoot schoolgirls . . . Beheaders in Iraq decapitate Americans, Pakistanis, Koreans, Japanese, and Nepalese . . . Italian humanitarians and charity workers are kidnapped by Islamicists. In the "holy" city of Najaf, religious extremists bomb innocents . . . Islamic terrorists kidnap French journalists and threaten them with execution . . . Hamas "freedom fighters" blow up buses inside Israel and call the dead children Zionists who belong in the sea . . . Islamic fascists incinerate dozens in Madrid. . . Australians in Bali are engulfed in flame by car bombers for the felony of being Western visitors in an Islamic enclave . . ." and so forth.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, it is business as usual for the ALA. Even if it kills you, no government official will ever see your library record. Especially if you are a terrorist.

Thanks Greg, for reminding so many of us why we never joined.

465 Pondering the ceilings

Some women encounter the "glass ceiling" in their professions--i.e., you can see the top, you just can't get there. Then there is the expression "hit the ceiling" meaning to loose your temper. I spend a lot of time pondering the ceilings in our condo. It took me awhile to discover that the deep hued wall colors had also been on the ceiling when the guy decorators lived here. The next two owners had lightened things up a bit, and painted the den ceiling and living room ceiling and the bedroom ceilings white. The ceiling of the dining room was still orange and the ceiling of the family room and hall were still red when we moved here in January 2002.

Today I decided to climb on a stool and try to wipe what I thought was glue from the wall paper off the ceiling of my bathroom. It is wild wallpaper, but I sort of like it. It looks like huge voluptuous folds of beige satan with red/pink tassles around the border. The cabinets are painted black and the marble is sort of beige/cream. Really, a bit decadent, but a fun place to wake up in at 5 a.m.

Well, when I steadied myself on the stool grasping the door for support, imagine my surprise when I found out that it wasn't glue at all, but the formerly red/pink ceiling color. I suppose whoever painted the ceiling white missed a few spots trying to avoid those tassles.

464 Former VVAW wants to apologize to veterans

Steven J. Pitkin appeared at the "Winter Soldier Investigation" conducted in Detroit in 1971 by former Navy Lieutenant John Kerry and his group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, but now says he never intended to testify and that his statements were coerced. . . He says that he wants to apologize to Vietnam veterans for what he did and said as a young man.

"The VVAW found me during a difficult time in my life, and I let them use me to advance their political agenda," Pitkin said. "They pressured me to tell their lies, but that's no excuse for what I did. I just want people to know the truth and to make amends as best I can. I'd hate to see the troops serving today have to go through what Vietnam veterans did."

Another group, Vietnam Veterans for the Truth, will hold a rally in Washington, DC on September 12.”

Full story is here.

463 Military deferments in the 1960s

After watching the Democrats complain about Cheney's deferments, I asked my husband if he knew how many deferments he had had during the 60s. He didn't have a clue. Most men of that era probably don't. I wonder how long it would take to dig up records of the Indianapolis draft board from 1957-1967. (I haven't researched this date, but I think after age 28, you weren't drafted, so age was also a factor. During WWI my grandfather was required to sign up for the draft at age 44.)

It is my recollection that we had to report anything that would change his classification. One time he was out of school to earn money and found out he was within 2 numbers of being called, so he re-enrolled. It was a constant roller coaster, and whether each change was a deferment, I don't know.

There were many ways to get deferments--education was the big one, and having a baby was probably next. Then they decided to defer all married men, so I assume some guys got married. There was nothing "fair" about the draft, just like taxes on the rich--there are always loop-holes for those who can afford accountants and tax lawyers and shelter their wealth in foundations. We were poor and at the bottom, so that only left an educational deferment (besides, we had married while undergraduates).

It was a very badly run war and I never met a single guy who wanted to go. "Volunteers," like Kerry, had been denied their deferments (he told the Harvard Crimson when the war was unpopular). I'm sure there were actual volunteers; I just never met any. I had a classmate who had enlisted in 1957, and went back for the Gulf War, but I think he was out when VietNam heated up.

There are many urban legends out there about Bill Clinton's deferments, but this site seems to set the record straight. The fact is, deferments were legal, and I don't recall anyone my age or 10 years younger who turned down the opportunity to defer their military service.

Democrats had no problem with Clinton’s record. The so called “new” revelations about Bush’s National Guard service don’t sound particularly startling. It has long been known that during his final year he served the minimum days. All this was vetted in 2000 by his opponents in the Republican primaries. What is clear is that he hasn’t asked anyone to elect him because of his VietNam era service.

462 Title Inflation

A young acquaintance is job hunting. She's 18 and just graduated from high school (looks about 12). So I looked through the OSU job postings on-line. No one is a file clerk, gardener or janitor anymore. There are no technicians or mechanics or waiters.

Now we have instructional aides and assistants, custodial workers, nutrition aides, patient care assistants and associates, communication coordinators and team members. We have classroom technologies specialists and restaurant servers. In one category a "worker" gets three cents more an hour than "attendant," but the job description isn't terribly informative. Only the wage scale tells me it is entry level.

Many departments have information assistants and associates. I think my field would do well to hang on to "librarian." Forget that "information specialist" and "information architect" nonsense. Stay with a term that has some class.

461 Kerry the Politician

Brendan Miniter says Kerry will lose because he isn’t a very good politician. I wouldn’t count on that. The hatred for Bush is palpable even for people who don’t particularly like or support Kerry. Here’s what Miniter wrote in the September 7 Wall Street Journal.

“Mr. Kerry's problem is much worse than having phoned it in for 20 years in the Senate. Somehow he has built a political career without ever developing the skill of connecting with people or being able to read the pulse of the electorate. In the 1980s, he opposed nearly every new weapons system the Reagan administration rolled out. In the 1990s he fought to slash intelligence funding. Both look like clear mistakes now. On Vietnam, he misread how the electorate would react to his antiwar record. Some Democrats actually argued Mr. Kerry would be popular among veterans. So Mr. Kerry thought he was giving voters what they wanted to hear when he responded to the GOP convention by getting on TV at midnight to talk about Vietnam and whine about imagined attacks on his patriotism. Democrats politely say that he's not very charismatic, but the truth is that he's like a tone-deaf musician who stumbles into a gig at Carnegie Hall and can't understand why the crowd doesn't cheer.”

Full editorial here. [Unlike the New York Times, the WSJ doesn’t try to pass of editorial opinion as “news.”]

460 The Recession and the Recovery

The Kerry Campaign posted 143 inaccuracies heard during the speeches of the four day Republican National Convention last week in New York. Unfortunately, they didn’t provide the information to refute them. Now they’ve taken the list down. With all that money in the 527s couldn’t they hire a few librarians to double check the record? Anyway, Captain’s Quarters has cached the list so I looked at them. Democrats didn’t like #65 and #66 at all.

“65. Cheney: “As President Bush and I were sworn into office, our nation was sliding into recession…” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

66. Chao: “Thanks to President Bush’s tax relief, the economy is expanding, creating more than 1.5 million new jobs in the last eleven months. Today, the national unemployment rate is lower than the average for the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

But I can show anyone who wants to look at my portfolio of mid-2000, six months before the current administration took office, when the tech sector was beginning to implode, and that same portfolio in December 2003 when it had more than recovered.

Mr. Kerry, you and your staff as you swing through Ohio are welcome at my house. I’ll dig out the files and show you. Just don’t ask me to make coffee.

459 Why we need to pay very close attention to Beslan massacre

Melanie Phillips (British) comments on the blindness of many westerners about the terrorism in Beslan that murdered and maimed and terrorized so many school children. She draws comparisons and points fingers at the ineffective Russian response to Chechen terrorists.

“When the US was repeatedly attacked by Islamic terrorism throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it merely sat on its hands, made token responses, or decided to cut and run. Osama bin Laden concluded from this that the US was weak. We know this because he said so. And so he unleashed 9/11.

But instead of learning the correct lesson that the current horrors are the result of such a failure to act, the west has succumbed to historical amnesia over those previous attacks. It is convulsed instead by hysteria over the war on Iraq, with absurd conspiracy theories about Zionists and ‘neo-conservatives’ surfacing instead almost daily in the mainstream media and driving out rational debate.”

See the complete article at A war like no other

From her bio: Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an acclaimed study of Britain’s educational and moral crisis, which provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of parents.

458 Language cleanup

Sometimes the convolutions to revise our language so that nothing offends anyone really are ridiculous. However, I am a bit surprised that a bi-partisan bill to remove “colored” when referring to race from the Ohio Revised Code insurance laws hasn’t been done before. That wasn’t even an acceptable term when I was in college over 45 years ago before all the political correctness started! H.B. 233, 125th General Assembly, Ohio. Apparently that part of the Code wasn’t looked at often.

457 Easiest recipes from Illinois

While looking up the strike at the Kable printing plant, I came across a site that has digitized some Illinois periodicals. Browsing the 2004 issue of Illinois Country Living, I came across a group of easy-prep recipes. Particularly the first one--the 3 ingredient cookie--sounded easy enough. I haven't tried any of them, but I will bookmark that page to try.

456 Steubenville and Mt. Morris

Mr. Kerry was in Steubenville, Ohio this past week. I read that protestors made up half the crowd, which wasn’t very large. Ohio gets a lot of attention from both the President and the man who would be President. I certainly hope he didn’t bring up that tired nonsense about outsourcing and manufacturing jobs. Steubenville is part of Ohio’s “rustbelt,” and it was killed by the unions in the 1970s, when they wouldn’t allow companies to eliminate jobs by improving technology, something that all companies do. First, companies just moved out of state--now they move out of the country. You wouldn’t be working at a computer right now if your department had kept all its secretaries and clerks and hadn’t forced you into learning word processing.

The effects of a strike at a printing plant in my home town in Illinois which was never satisfactorily settled (and the strikers moved on to well paid jobs in Mississippi), lingers today, 30 years later. It was the lesser paid workers and all the small businesses that depended on a flourishing company that suffered. The economic disaster caused by this strike was worse than the fire that demolished the town’s college in 1931.

“How much the community benefited from the company was demonstrated on May 10, 1974. On that day photo engravers at the company began a strike. A week later the book binders joined them on the picket line. This strike continued for six and a half years, one of the longest in northern Illinois' history. The enrollment in the Mount Morris schools declined in the strike years. Many community leaders feared Mount Morris would become a ghost town when many of the Kable employees found work elsewhere and moved away. After the strike ended, everything began to look much brighter for the community. The strike seriously depressed the community's economy.” The Kable Brothers Company

People less committed to the town's values began to move in, people who didn't care about education, churches and helping your neighbor. Bond issues failed. Now the town has lost its high school and is bussing its children to the next town, and may soon lose its elementary school, which burned down in a disastrous fire this year.

A town without a school system has no soul; a town with a greedy union has no heart.

455 What they didn't say

“Tonight I will talk about this good man and his fine record leading our country. And I may say a word or two about his opponent. I am also mindful that I have an opponent of my own. People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair. I say to them — how do you think I got the job?”

That’s good for a chuckle. But I ran a word check on the entire speech and neither Cheney nor President Bush ever said Kerry was “unfit” (alluding to the Swiftboat vets ad), nor did they question his patriotism. So why is the Washington Post (Thursday) and Kerry saying they did?

Full Text of Vice President Cheney’s speech

Full Text of President Bush’s speech

454 Boys will be boys

Friday night at the fireworks on the lakefront we had the opportunity to see families enjoying the last week-end of the summer season. We took our lawn chairs down about 8:30, but the first blast didn't go off for about 30 minutes. Looking around, I noticed three things, two timeless and the other timely.

First, little boys were running, wrestling, shouting Karate moves, ordering the other children to watch (one little guy actually said, "Now, feast your eyes on this!") and being belligerent in front of the little girls who licked their lollipops, played with little lighted worms, and quietly watched the little boys acting like chipmunks on speed.

Second, the older adults (50+) quietly conversed with each other and the group on the next blanket, or snuggled in the cooler air. They watched the children and reminisced and told stories of an earlier, but similar time.

Third, the teens and young adults, bored with the wait, pulled out their cell phones, making little spots of light throughout the crowd waiting in the dark, checking for messages, talking to people not a part of our little community, and taking digital photos of the people who were.