If her lips are moving

Whether it is about her pre-Bush belief in the threat of WMD and Saddam Hussein, or dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, or the right wing conspiracy to bring down Bill with LIES about his sex life, or her financial scare stories about all the industries she currently denounces, you can't believe her. And the media mavens let us know what they think of truth (all quotes in today's USAToday) It's just not a big deal.

AP writer Ron Fournier: "over compensating"

Boston Globe, Joan Vennochi: "selective memory syndrome"

Slate, John Dickerson: "we should stop pouncing on every little thing"

David Brooks: "The candidates are sniping and we have to endure. . ."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cynthia Tucker: "snarling and vicious smears"

Update 3-29: Peggy Noonan thinks the press and some supporters might finally be wise to her.

4735

If I were younger

I'd buy a house. The bargains right now are fabulous compared to 3 or 4 years ago when buyers were bidding up the seller's price. And 20 years ago? My goodness! We got a mortgage at 10.5% and were happy to get it. We checked at our local bank this week about some property we plan to sell, and the rates for either conventional or FHA were 5.75%. That's lower than we paid in 1962 when we bought our first home, a duplex in Champaign, Illinois. We were in the bottom quintile, the down payment was a gift from my father, he took the 2nd mortgage so we paid on two mortgages (renters paid one), and we lived on the first floor and rented the second floor. Being a landlord is a huge hassle, particularly when you are 22 years old, but that rent put us where we are today. When we sold the house on land contract upon moving to Columbus in 1967, the mortgage payment also covered our car loan. Then it turned out the bank had made an error in calculating the principle, so we got a little unexpected cash bonus when the new owner finally paid it off. Young people today have many more options, but they complain more and are less willing to sacrifice. (My parents thought the same of us because they were young adults during the Great Depression.) One option that we didn't have, which was a blessing, was that banks would not consider a wife's income in figuring what you could pay. So many people have lived to the max the last 30 years that when the economy "hits a rough patch" as it will do in cycles, they have no resources.



By the time this photo was taken, the house had been painted charcoal grey, my husband had installed a separate door for the tenants, put a wall between the stairs and our apartment, and built a wall through the upstairs kitchen to create a small second bedroom. He also remodeled our kitchen, divided our dining room so we would have two bedrooms, and built a linen closet in the bathroom. He was quite handy with a limited set of tools. The basement had a dirt floor, so on damp days it could be creepy with crawly things. There was no garage, and although that looks like grass, I think it was mainly weeds. That's my mother's car on the gravel driveway from the brick street, but eventually we bought that too.

What are you waiting for? Here's some bargains I saw in today's paper: In Chicago, on north Astor you can get a Gold Coast penthouse with 10' ceilings, living room, dining room, 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths for $1,150,000. Fabulous location. If I could choose anyplace in the world to live (and had my children near by) it would be Chicago.

In West Virginia there are some bargain homesites at New River Gorge for $60,000. The only interesting property I saw in Ohio in the WSJ was an auction for 2-3 acres near Hinkley (isn't that where the buzzards fly to?) with wooded, scenic ravines. But there are great properties all over central Ohio.

Another one under the bus?

First Granny, now Tony. Does anyone in Obama's campaign like Jews? Tony McPeak's anti-Israel, anti-Jewish "comments are worse than McCarthyism [of which he accused the Clintons]. They reflect the views of Reverend Wright and other Obama advisers who believe that Israel is just a problem to be solved, not an ally to support.

McPeak is not the only member of the Obama campaign who holds such twisted views. Others such as Robert Malley or Zbigniew Brzezinski have found themselves downgraded to "informal" advisers as their anti-Israel views are made public. Samantha Powers was dismissed for calling Hillary a monster, not for sharing McPeak's belief in the malign omnipotence of the "Israel lobby."" American Spectator

Small waist, heavy hips

We're not in great demand as movie stars or models, but I've never seen any medical studies attributing cardiovascular disease, psoriasis, breast cancer or Alzheimer's to my body shape (the classic pear). Yes, there's more bad belly news, according to the latest issue of Neurology. Large amounts of belly fat are associated with declining cognition. Just being over weight or obese nearly doubles the risk of dementia in old age, according to this study by Rachel Whitmer which looked at 6,583 who were middle age between 1964-1973. Central body fat increases the risk even more, and normal weight people with high belly fat have an elevated risk of dementia.

"What that tells you is the effect of the belly is over and above that of being overweight," Whitmer said. "One of the take-home messages is it's not just your weight but where you carry your weight in middle age that is a strong predictor of dementia."

But here's a bright spot: it's much easier to lose belly weight than those dimpled thighs or buttocks. So cut those calories and start exercising--it's the only way.

WaPo story which has been reprinted in most major newspapers.

There may be something different in this latest study, but this information also appeared 3 years in BMJ: Whitmer RA, Gunderson EP, Barrett-Connor E, Quesenberry CP Jr, Yaffe K. "Obesity in middle age and future risk of dementia: a 27 year longitudinal population based study." BMJ 2005;330:1360.

Learning to read

Everyone learns differently, and if you're lucky, when you were learning to read you had phonics. Some people have a good eye and a tin ear. Others an outstanding memory. Some will never enjoy reading no matter what method is used--it will be only utilitarian. Theories of reading have been changing for 200 years. Since I had both Dick and Jane (see and say, or repeat the words until you know them) and phonics exercises (my first grade teacher recently died at about 103 and she was a killer for phonics, punctuation and spelling), I had a good blend. Here's Jeanne Chall's summary from Learning to read (1967, rev. 1983) as reported by Dr. Diane Ravitch.

Chall said that there are two primary approaches to teaching reading: one stresses the importance of breaking the code of language; and the other stresses the meaning of language. Phonics programs had a code emphasis, and look-say programs had a meaning emphasis. The research, Chall said, unequivocally supported the use of a code emphasis for beginning readers—and she stressed “beginning readers.”

She found that the first step in learning to read in one’s native language is essentially learning a printed code for the speech we possess. The code emphasis was especially important for children of lower socioeconomic status, she said, because they were not likely to live in homes surrounded with books or with adults who could help them learn to read. Knowing the names of the letters and the sounds of the letters before learning to read, Chall said, helps children in the beginning stages regardless of which method is used. She concluded that for a beginning reader, knowledge of letters and sounds had even more influence on their reading achievement than the child’s tested IQ did.

Her report was followed by an even more interesting one about the differences in achievement of black students living and attending public school in Fairfax County (wealthy DC suburb) and those in Richmond, VA. In Richmond schools that were 99% black were outperforming the black students in schools that were 99% white. Apparently the Richmond administration had decided to stop blaming poverty and the parents for the students' poor showing and decided it was their job to teach, and to use the best methods to do that (there's not a lengthy discussion of phonics, but it was included).

Read the entire discussion here.

4731

How was your Easter?

Were you asked to be a witness to history, to what happened to Jesus, or were you asked to examine your inner life, motives and attitudes? Was it all about you, your problems, your solutions, your purpose on earth, your good moral behavior and example; was it about renewing the environment and saving the earth for the bunnies, flowers and blue skies, ending the war in the Middle East, Sudan, or Somalia, fighting AIDS or poverty? Did you get a long list of do's and don'ts, or did you get the full Gospel? Was the miracle of the resurrection explained away, with a patronizing pat on the head if you chose to believe? Were you asked to crucify those bad thoughts and roll away the stones in your life that keep you from reaching your spiritual goals, or were you asked to see and believe what happened to Jesus Christ? 1 Corinthians 15 (NIV):

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel . . .By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word . . . Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

Paul didn't preach "personal relationship," or about life's purpose, he preached Christ crucified and raised from the dead.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. . . .If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."

Can you imagine Paul enduring (2 Corinthians 11) prison, stoning, shipwrecks, hunger, thirst, bandits, and 40 lashes minus one for the sermon you heard on Easter? If you didn't hear what Paul believed on Easter Sunday, he says you are to be pitied. And if you only hear it on Easter and not the rest of the year, I'd suggest that's a pity too.

4730

Does this seem honest to you?

"Selective Service does not collect any information which would indicate whether or not you are undocumented. You want to protect yourself for future U.S. citizenship and other government benefits and programs by registering with Selective Service. Do it today."

Back during the 18th and 19th century the U.S. government used to sometimes grab the new immigrants and put them in the service before they knew what was happening. That's why you've got Irish immigrants as heroes in Mexico, because they switched sides being so disgruntled because of mistreatment as a Catholic minority. Immigrants since the Revolutionary War have always enlisted in the service as a fast track to citizenship. There were German divisions in our Civil War. In the sense that immigration wasn't as codified then as now, I think we can still say it is dishonest to promise benefits to an illegal for registering for the draft. Luring illegals (who apparently can read English) with the promise that by registering for the draft their status within the country will be secure doesn't quite seem right to me. Not right for us; not right for them. They've already violated the law. What other law violators do we want in the armed forces?

HT Where's your brain.

Selective Service site.

4729

Bad reporting on the uninsured

Jane Zhang reports on the growing number of uninsured government contract workers in today's WSJ. Unfortunately, she hangs the story on the case of a 44 year old, obese woman with MS. The woman, you find out at the end of this sad story, was working for a blind contractor as a food service worker earning $7/hour. She worked approximately 2 years before being diagnosed with MS and had no health insurance.

Under the federal Randolph-Sheppard Act, blind vendors get priority in winning certain federal contracts. In an illustration of the thicket that contract workers face, there is disagreement over what benefits blind vendors who participate in a government program that gives them preferences, are required to offer employees. The Labor Department says blind vendors must comply with the Service Contract Act and provide benefits. But the Education Department, which administers the Randolph-Sheppard program in conjunction with states, says that is decided on a case-by-case basis. The District of Columbia administrator of the program says the blind vendors aren't required to provide benefits.

Zhang builds her story of uninsured contract workers on a case where we find out (at the end) the woman gets full disability from Social Security, Medicare, and $19,000 worth of free drugs a year from the drug company. It's a matter of conjecture (one doctor's) that insurance could have done anything about the MS.

What Zhang points out, but barely, is that contract workers can receive a cash equivalent of $3.16 an hour to buy their benefits according to the McNamara-O'Hara 1965 law which covers private contractors. So what's the gripe? Well, most federal employees have outstanding perks and $5,587 (average) apparently isn't enough to purchase what they would get as full government employees. But the big problem as I see it is the workers, who are often at the low end wage scale, don't use the cash bonus to buy health insurance--they use it for rent, or clothing, or cigarettes and beer. Who knows. But given the choice, they choose not to buy health insurance. There are on-going investigations to catch and punish contractors who don't abide by the law.

There were 650 investigations of contractors by the Labor Dept in 2007, and I assume something triggered the investigation. If there are 5.4 million contract workers, how many are not getting either the insurance or the cash benefit to buy insurance? She uses only anecdotes. There's no information on which is what. This may be a serious problem--but based on the flimsy evidence she has reported, we'll need to look elsewhere for the answers.

When we find out why people who can buy health insurance either privately or through their employer but don't, then maybe we're getting somewhere. It's odd that there isn't a law as there is for car insurance putting the responsibility on the worker.

4728

New endeavor

This is probably a difficult time to start a new magazine, but I did buy one for my collection this morning and have posted it at my In the Beginning blog about premiere issues. This perky blogger is responsible for the artwork and content, I think. Its original title was Homegrown Hospitality, and it has already changed it to Home and Heart. An inside librarian joke was to create a serial with the name Title Varies*--the topic, of course, was title changes. The issue I purchased said, "display until 10/9/07" but it must have become wedged behind some others and wasn't pulled. Lucky me. The hobby angel saved it.

*A piece of history at Serials Round Table history site: "One periodical which reflects this flurry of serials activities was Title Varies which began in December 1973. Those familiar with this publication remember the infamous acronym, LUTFCSUSTC (pronounced “lootfasustic”, or “lutfasustic”, depending on who was pronouncing it) which stood for Librarians United to Fight Costly, Silly Unnecessary Title Changes. Texas serialists were a very vocal group in their contributed letters, articles, and serial title changes." One librarian wrote in Title Varies in the 1970s wondered who puts up the money for new serials (high mortality, high cost) and who subscribes (libraries) even pondered what we would do without new ones appearing all the time . . . "Imagine what would happen if all that information kept building up and had no way to disseminate itself until finally it would have to propel itself outward in random directions at high velocities, accompanied by heat, light, and noise. That would be a real information explosion." Doesn't that sound like a prediction of cyberspace?

Easter 2008

We served communion at the Sunrise service, 7 a.m. When we've done this other years, we've gone a second time with our children, but this year we told them they were on their own. So our daughter and son-in-law went to the 11 a.m. traditional service in the sanctuary and heard Pastor Dave Mann, back from Haiti for Easter week, the organ and the choir, and our son went to the 11:15 a.m. x-alt service in the fellowship hall and heard Joe Valentino, and the loud rock band, which he thought was excellent (he has a band), except he thought the drums were too loud.

Sunrise services don't seem to have the appeal they used to--at least not when Easter is this early. Counting the choir, I'm guessing we only had about 90 people--and almost no young people. When I was a teen-ager it was a big event to go to the school athletic field for a community shared service in Mt. Morris dressed in our Easter best--hat, gloves, high heels, etc., and sit and shiver on the bleachers. Even kids who didn't go any other time, would attend that service. I remember one year I over slept--must have been a junior--so when my date got to our house it was dark. We lived in a small town and people didn't lock the doors. So he let himself in, realized everyone was asleep, and walked upstairs to my bedroom and woke me up.

Here we are for Easter 1969. Bad quality polaroid, but my husband had red hair.



Easter 2007

4727

Why Democrats are anti-choice when it comes to schooling

This morning I heard a radio interview about school choice in Ohio and the nation's capital. People who support school choice--school vouchers--are usually conservatives or libertarians. Liberals, Democrats and "progressives," usually do not. On this issue they are illiberal. The reason, of course, is not quality of education--they can read the charts and scores--but the power of unions. Democrats do not support the poor and weak if the unions have anything to say about it. The guest on 91.5 FM was Virginia Ford, (D.C. Parents for School Choice) and she has done a survey for the state of Virginia and not a single federal legislator puts his/her child in the DC public schools. The teachers of the DC children don't put their own children in DC public schools. Obama's daughters go to private school; Hillary's daughter attended a private day school; Al Gore's children went to an exclusive school; Jesse Jackson's grand children, whose father claims a link to every major civil rights event since he was born, don't. If Nancy Pelosi brought her grandchildren to Washington, I'm sure she wouldn't enroll them in public school. Even suburban DC parents don't use the public schools if they can help it. Democrats control all the major cities--Cleveland, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Atlanta--and parents have to fight tooth and nail to have a choice.

All children will benefit when there is competition, was the theory behind tax supported vouchers. When schools have to be accountable and the best they can be in order to get the federal and state dollar, they will drop some of the silliness that passes for education. You may not like NCLB, but it is the result of generations of professional educators leaving the poor and minority children behind. Choice is why Catholic schools are better than the public. That's why homeschooled children with parents untrained in pedogogy do much better than publicly schooled children. Sol Stern writes:

"Public and privately funded voucher programs have liberated hundreds of thousands of poor minority children from failing public schools. The movement has also reshaped the education debate. Not only vouchers, but also charter schools, tuition tax credits, mayoral control, and other reforms are now on the table as alternatives to bureaucratic, special-interest-choked big-city school systems."

But school choice groups are struggling. They are being worn down by the powerful and well-funded unions who fear losing control. In Ohio, our former Methodist pastor Governor Ted Strickland, who ran a touchy feel-good, family values campaign to get elected, is not supportive of choice and better education for Ohio's children. The Catholic schools, the only viable alternative in many cities, will probably not survive without vouchers for the poor, according to Stern. [In my opinion, the Catholic church's pockets are deep enough in Rome from centuries of wealth building to do this without government aid, but that's another blog.]

"Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., recently announced plans to close seven of the district’s 28 remaining Catholic schools, all of which are receiving aid from federally funded tuition vouchers, unless the D.C. public school system agreed to take them over and convert them into charter schools. In Milwaukee, several Catholic schools have also closed, or face the threat of closing, despite boosting enrollments with voucher kids."

Stern says competition hasn't had the results hoped for--individual children have benefited but the systems haven't changed. I'm no math whiz, Mr. Stern, but if only 25,000 children have been able to use the voucher system and there are 50,000,000 children in the public schools, that's not exactly a fair test of market incentives! Stern says he's now leaning toward the problem of teacher training, not market forces. It's hard for me to believe 62 years after my husband and I started elementary school, me with phonics and he without, that the "experts" are still fighting that battle. I'd call throwing a child into reading without phonics is child abuse.

"Professors who dare to break with the ideological monopoly—who look to reading science or, say, embrace a core knowledge approach—won’t get tenure, or get hired in the first place. The teachers they train thus wind up indoctrinated with the same pedagogical dogma whether they attend New York University’s school of education or Humboldt State’s. Those who put their faith in the power of markets to improve schools must at least show how their theory can account for the stubborn persistence of the [Soviet style] thoughtworld."

Ironically, New York has embraced "market" forces in giving principals and teachers bonuses for improved scores, according to Stern.

"While confidently putting their seal of approval on this market system, the mayor and chancellor appear to be agnostic on what actually works in the classroom. They’ve shown no interest, for example, in two decades’ worth of scientific research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health that proves that teaching phonics and phonemic awareness is crucial to getting kids to read in the early grades. They have blithely retained a fuzzy math program, Everyday Math, despite a consensus of university math professors judging it inadequate. Indeed, Bloomberg and Klein have abjured all responsibility for curriculum and instruction and placed their bets entirely on choice, markets, and accountability."

I wonder where their children attend? Stern is able to cite one success with improved test scores, and it isn't vouchers or bonuses, it's curriculum reform and better teachers; and it's in Massachusetts.

The squeaky shoe gets the boot

The current flap isn't a security breach, unless someone wants to steal the identity of Barack Obama or John McCain. But it certainly shows the problem of the vast amounts of information that can be mishandled by employees of hospitals, libraries, schools, banks, insurance companies and all manner of federal, state, county and local government sub-contractors to which we send our personal information. My personal information has been stolen about 3 times in security breaches at Ohio State University. It's always been an error of a low level, poorly trained employee. I don't even report it on that form they suggest. Why should I trust those companies any more than Ohio State? The founder of Facebook is a billionaire because he first hacked his university's student records. And look where it got him. He's not as rich as Warren Buffet, but he's only 23 and not far off.

But what idiot would use Hillary's passport information in a training session? I sure hope they fired that mental midget. That's definitely a little peon trying to act important for all the new employees. I'm sure there are folks who want Condi micromanaging this, but it sounds as though the security flags worked as they were supposed to. It's the person who reported it to WaPo we need to be concerned about.

When I was a librarian in the agriculture library in the early 80s--and that's the stone age as far as information storage and retrieval goes--one of our student assistants who was gay thought it would be funny to run up a phony circulation record of lascivious homosexual titles on the library director's record and have them sent to his office. He was the best night time supervisor we ever had, but it wasn't hard to track it back to the terminal, time and date. Kid was a genius, but not smart. Have you seen that new book on sex by Mary Roach, "Bonk"? Another wise guy, and we don't know who it was, created a catalog record for a dummy book called, "Sex life of the cockroach," and made the previous director the author. It was probably in the catalog for about 15 years before I came across it when I worked in the Veterinary Medicine Library and got suspicious. Maybe others had seen it and thought Hugh really did write about cockroaches, or just chuckled and moved on.

Some of the student employees were way ahead of the librarians at a fraction of the salary, especially on anything dealing with computers (in those days we had a dedicated system). I don't think that has changed.

So about security breaches: always look to your lowest paid, newest, youngest employee, or the old timer who never had to sign anything because they were grandmothered in before 2001 and has had a couple of slow days with nothing to do but browse.

It must be working

Ohio State University recently upgraded it's webmail--I now have a two step process to get in. This morning I had 180 spam messages instead of the usual 10. But about 20 were in Russian.

It's Spring

Do you know where your New Year's Resolutions are? I just came across my Thursday Thirteen of 13 Resolutions. I have only been able to keep two of them--#1 and #7.

1. When I see an outrageously dressed person, brown cotton eyelet full circle skirt, gray pumps and pink bandana I will turn my head or close my eyes instead of drawing a sketch.

7. When I accidentally come across Katie Couric or another gloomy news reader, I'll just change channels.

Actually, on #1, I didn't turn my head, I did stare, but I resisted sketching. and I cheated a little on #7 too. I'm watching almost no national broadcast news.

Evaluation of diaper product

Clarity needed. I saw an ad in the paper today recruiting parents for a study. For two weeks, if they pass the interview test, they will evaluate "diaper product." Is that a new name for what we called poopy pants or is the product being evaluated a diaper?

More Ohioans dying without a verb

You probably think I have too much time on my hands, but this research project goes back about 11 years. I watch the verbs in the obituaries. In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, almost no one gets out of here with a verb of any kind, but almost everyone is "beloved." In Columbus, we are more verbal. Today seven people died without a verb; 22 passed away; 12 died; one entered eternal rest; one closed her eyes; and one went home to be with the Lord. That last gal definitely had the right idea. That's the verb I want in my obituary. Here's my poem written in 1997, on my blog 3 years ago.

The IRS

The clerk at Panera's told me this spells THEIRS.

Beijing's air quality

is so bad it is a risk for Olympic athletes. Those "energy" efficient, mercury containing light bulbs you're buying to save the environment? They're made in coal fired factories in China. That's your soot in their lungs.

Estrogen and Alzheimer's

Elderly women who took estrogen replacement were 50% less likely to develop AD later in life, if they took it during the critical period of 10 years after menopause. Taking the hormone later (65-79) may cause harm. WSJ 3-18-08.

Ireland 2.0

"Sixteen of the 41 U.S. presidents and 25% of U.S. citizens can trace their ancestral roots to Northern Ireland." Celtic Tiger 2.0 ad in WSJ on St. Patrick's Day.

Rising food prices caused by rising gasoline costs

The cost of gasoline is going up because of our current flailing, misguided, disastrous Gore-inspired bio-energy program and the bloated USDA programs to bail out US farmers. The USDA programs are older than Al Gore, so he definitely isn't to be blamed for what his senator father might have helped put in place to protect agricultural interests (he was a tobacco farmer). Dead vegetation stored in the ground for centuries with heat and pressure becomes petroleum deposits. And we aren't running out--we're just out of common sense. Corn was hugely overproduced in 2007--no place to store it, plus it took acreage normally used for wheat and soybeans. Milk was being called "white gold" in ag circles, the price went so high. How are you helping the poor by taking milk from children?

No one knows how safe the emissions from the blended gasoline from corn or grass or wood chips will be; we only know that the trade offs are more expensive food and more expensive fuel which doesn't get as good mileage as real gasoline. Even if we had let gasoline prices float to $4 or $5 a gallon, it would have been cheaper than all the food cost increases--which are causing riots in some countries. The pizza we had Wednesday evening was $2.50 higher than a year ago; my Philly Cheese on Friday at the Bucket is $2.00 higher than a year ago. It adds up.

In my Ohio county, the cost of gasoline has gone up an average of $486 per household between 2005 and 2007, according to today's Columbus Dispatch. [I plan to fill up this morning at $3.12/gal.] That means for some people with Hummers and light trucks, it's gone up much more, and others with little Hondas and Saturns, much less. I have a 6 cyl. Dodge mini-van, which gets good mileage, so I'm probably the average. For this household, if we made smart choices, we'd change our routine Friday night date, to 40 nights instead of 52 a year. Those other 12 nights maybe we'd have friends in, instead of going out--much cheaper. That's all it would take to make up the difference. Or, we could eliminate our one glass of wine from our restaurant dinner ($13 for 2 of us counting the gratuity), and have it at home ($1.50, Charles Shaw, three buck chuck). For other families, it might mean eliminating 4 packs of cigarettes a week, or a 6 pack of beer, or a large pizza or stop going to Starbucks for a latte and going to the 7-11 instead. Maybe it would be dropping broadband or HBO. But eventually, those cut backs affect the restaurant servers, and the quick-stops, and the Starbucks staff, and then those people have to start laying off employees or reducing hours, and then they can't pay their utilities, baby-sitter, etc.

The answer, of course, is to have the discipline to save in good times--some experts say have 3 months living expenses set aside for emergencies. Never were we able to do that when our children were young (one income), but we always had a savings account to cover emergencies. Tithing your income is another good discipline--keeps you from slurping up the excess each month or hitting the mall when you have nothing to do. Also, pay your bills promptly--don't live on plastic.

Rising costs for food banks

Today's newspapers are full of stories about struggling food banks and pantries. Where to even begin on that one. The examples the reporters use are quite anecdotal--guy driving a truck to work now needs $50 a day. Lost his house. Utilities unpaid.

Food banks were set up to help farmers, not the poor. Now farmers are busting a gut and ripping out fences that provide sanctuary for birds to fill up the acreage with corn or other biofuel stuff, and there's no more surplus.

"Ohio food banks have received less in federal aid in recent years. The decline is attributed to a sharp drop in excess agricultural commodities."

But the farm bill isn't jammed up over debate about nutrition programs. Much of the dispute is focused on billions in government subsidies for farmers of crops such as wheat and cotton.

[Sherrod] Brown said the subsidies are excessive and favors scaling them back by providing farmers a "safety net" during bad times. "Too many on the agricultural committee want the subsidies to continue," he said. CD story, March 20

These food banks were set up 30-40 years ago to help the poor, but in fact they functioned as a place to sell (through distributors which sold to food banks) the surplus food our farmers were growing. The government also paid farmers (called soil banks) NOT to produce. I work occasionally at a Lutheran food pantry. It is a wonderful facility, called a "choice" pantry, because the client is able to choose with the assistance of a volunteer. It has commercial freezers and refrigerators to take advantage of surplus produce, shelving for staples, seating for the clients, staff areas and offices. However, churches have made a Faustian deal--most of our members who respond to the appeals (we have a big one going on right now) don't even know that probably 95% of this is funded by the government--90% by USDA, the rest in smaller local grants, which originates with various federal agencies and is filtered down to the cities and counties. Although those of us who work there on a rotation system through various churches are volunteers, there are regular paid staff whose salaries come from the government grants. The summer lunch program our church sponsors in a suburban school district is also funded by the USDA.

I am not familiar with the restrictions about evangelizing, but I'm sure there are some if the church food pantries are doing the government's food distribution job. We used to put evangelistic literature and church magazines into the grocery bags; now it is laid out for the clients to pick up if they wish.

This blog entry is my personal opinion and does not reflect the sentiments of my fellow volunteers or church members, but I don't think what we're doing for the poor meets the Matthew 25 standards.

Interest in Rezko

There's a new website tracking only blogs and media mention of Obama and Rezko, called Rezkorama.com. The site meter isn't blocked, so I took a look at it. The site went up on March 6, and is getting about 4500 page reads a day. I must be blogging the wrong topics. Referrals indicate most come from Hugh Hewitt's Townhall blog, but some are finding it via Google. A lot of interest.

Also it's tax season, and where is Hillary's returns so we can see how much Bill profits from campaign speeches for her? Why does Michelle Obama get to mention her husband's race and how important it is in this campaign (and the only good thing that's happened in her lifetime), but the topic is off limits for Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 VP Democratic candidate? I think the Obama advisors are making a mistake by trying to hush up mention of his race by anyone but his own supporters, wife, or enemies of the USA like Latin American dictators.

"I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential candidate," Ferraro said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It had nothing to do with my qualification."

Ferraro said she has a 40-year history of opposing discrimination of all kinds, including race, and that she was outraged at criticism of her remarks by David Axelrod, Obama's chief media strategist, because he knows her and her record.(AP story)

On the other foot, the shoe hurts. Many people have been fired or forced to resign for pointing out the obvious, unless the minority is a Republican, of course.

Hell hath no fury etc.

There's a lot of free floating sympathy for Mrs. Spitzer, and none for her pompous, pimping husband, a wealthy man envious of others who earned their wealth, so he grew his fame and fat threatening and defaming them. It brings to my mind one of the episodes of "Law and Order," not all of which I remember. I think the wealthy husband who had some enemies was accused of murder--can't remember if the victim was a call girl, but prostitution was part of the story. His loyal, faithful wife stood by him through out insisting on his innocence. But in the end, it turns out she had set him up, and the final scene is a melt down and harangue in the court room as she pours out her venom as a wife not just wronged, but humiliated and tormented by his sexual perversions while she endured a loveless marriage. If Mrs. Spitzer knew her husband made special arrangements to be with a prostitute on Valentine's Day and all she got was a cheap card and a box of candy--I'm just saying--maybe she decided to blow the whistle to his enemies. Money, position and kids be damned.

I'm sure there will be more. I'm thinking up a poem just for his downfall. The news story on the front page of WSJ today was a puff piece, not unexpected since the press overlooked for so many years his other sins. You remember the drill, don't you? It's just sex. So there were shell companies. Big deal. OK, a violation of the Mann Act, and that's a felony. What's a little money laundering? Republicans are just mad because he used arm twisting threats instead of legal methods to bring CEOs down. They made too much money anyway. Selling women on the internet? Using a friend's name? Setting himself up for blackmail. What's the big deal? This has a familiar ring to it, doesn't it Hillary?

On the editorial page of WSJ Kimerbly Strassel describes how the press treated him

"What the media never acknowledged is that somewhere along the line (say, his first day in public office) Mr. Spitzer became the big guy, the titan. He had the power to trample lives and bend the rules, while also burnishing his own political fortune. He was the one who deserved as much, if not more, scrutiny as onetime New York Stock Exchange chief Dick Grasso or former American International Group CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

What makes this more embarrassing for any self-respecting journalist is that Mr. Spitzer knew all this, and played the media like a Stradivarius. He knew what sort of storyline they'd be sympathetic to, and spun it. He knew, too, that as financial journalism has become more competitive, breaking news can make a career. He doled out scoops to favored reporters, who repaid him with allegiance. News organizations that dared to criticize him were cut off. After a time, few criticized anymore."

God's plan made a hopeful beginning
But man spoiled his chances by sinning
We trust that the story
Will end in God's glory
But at present, the other side's winning
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

If your link has disappeared,

not to worry. I'm just struggling through some changes. Eventually. . . I'll get this figured out.

I much prefer coding to squeezing things into "widgets." I can't use my scroll feature; can't put my changing quote where I want it. I used so many widgets they rolled off my layout screen and I couldn't see them, although they were there. So I did it over and put all the blogrolls in one widget instead of three, two site meters in one widget instead of two, and so forth. Anyone else who changed to layout from template having that problem? Blogging used to be much easier.

The week I couldn't read

Finnish is a daunting language. In Finland, you're better off to try Swedish, their second language--at least it might sound like something you'll recognize. Here's what I wrote two years ago this July on not being able to read--I was so desperate I bought Time Magazine:

I paid 4 euros (about $5.00) for 52 pages of Time, 19 of which were photos of the World Cup. Photos I can figure out in Finnish. Five pages were devoted to bashing the "Bush Doctrine." No mention or credit for liberating the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator; no credit for identifying North Korea within months of taking office as part of the Axis of Evil; no mention that his neo-con advisors are former Democrats; or the 500 WMD that have been found; that the Iraqi people have voted in free elections. Although Bush has always acknowledged we were in for a long battle against Islamic terrorists, when he reiterates this, the MSM seems to think it is a victory for their side.

So what does Time recommend? Some Truman era reruns. They don't mention how extremely unpopular Truman was his second term--I think he was lower in the polls than Bush. Another article by Jos. S. Nye, Jr. pined nostalgically for the days of FDR and containment. Tell that one to the Estonians and the millions of other east Europeans who died in the Gulags waiting for the Americans to come and free them. Sixty years ago we sold out 40 million East Europeans to the USSR; let's not repeat that mistake by selling out the Iraqis.

Even so, it was good to be able to read again.