Obamath

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on the 31st that “President Obama has a sweeping goal for his speech Thursday in Cairo, Egypt: to begin remaking the dynamic between the United States and Muslims abroad.” By lying?

Although the number of Muslims in the US has grown a lot in recent years, it certainly is no where near “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world” as our President offered as more disinformation (propaganda) to Egyptian leaders this week.

According to Debbie Schlussel The Pew Center(a liberal think tank)--“found that only 0.6% of Americans are, in fact, Muslims, or 1.8 million out of 300,000,000 residents of America. That includes Muslim illegal aliens, too (of which there are far more than the conventional wisdom admits).”

According to Pew, 78.4% of the US are Christian, 1.7 Jews, .7 Buddist, .6 Muslim, .4 Hindu, 16.1 nothing, and the rest, various religions.

Truly, you can’t trust anything this man says, not about his own religion, his father's religion, his grandmother's religion, Rev. Wright's religion, and certainly not about the country’s.

And lookee what surfaced AFTER the campaign. My apologies to all the conservatives I said were wrong about Obama's faith. HT Deb.

Joyce Kilmer and Lucy Stone

When I was growing up, I thought Joyce Kilmer, the author of the poem Trees, was a woman.

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree. . . etc.

After all, Joyce is my name too. However, he was an American who died in WWI at the age of 31, and whose daughter died in 1917 of the after affects of polio, but which had been instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism.

Well, every morning for months I stopped on my way to the office and prayed in this Church [of the Holy Innocents] for faith. When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed daughter. Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny feet know beautiful paths. You understand this and it gives me a selfish pleasure to write it down."

Lucy Stone was a 19th century suffragist who kept her maiden name after marriage. She was involved in the big three of that century--temperance, slavery, and woman’s suffrage--all stemming from her religious beliefs. She received her degree from Oberlin here in Ohio. After a very full life of activism, Lucy Stone died on October 18, 1893 at the age of 75.

Now the reason I’m putting these two very different, talented people together is that The National Marriage Project of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in Piscatawy, NJ, is located at 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue in Lucy Stone Hall B217.

The National Marriage Project has released a study that shows what poor preparation for marriage living together is. According to the study, “since 1970 the number of Americans living together outside of marriage has increased more than 1,000 percent, with such couples now making up about ten percent of all couples.” What has resulted are weaker marriages, worse marital relationships, and children often put in danger through the impoverishment of the mother, or the abuse from her boyfriends. Try giving this to your graduating daughter. Should they live together? Here’s what the research finds:

l. Living together before marriage increases the risk of breaking up after marriage.

2. Living together outside of marriage increases the risk of domestic violence for women, and the risk of physical and sexual abuse for children.

3. Unmarried couples have lower levels of happiness and wellbeing than married couples.

The main stream bias and the Tiller murder

Today's WSJ has a tiny, 4 paragraph AP boilerplate article about the Moslem convert who Monday gunned down Army recruiters in Arkansas, killing one. Then it has a 24 paragraph article about Scott Roeder who killed abortionist George Tiller.

In 2008, according to the story, Dr. Tiller aborted 192 future American citizens, killing them during late term abortions under a Kansas law that allows for this to save the mother's mental or physical health. This murder has shocked many in the pro-life movement, some of which have devoted their lives to saving the lives of others. I've heard of no prayer vigils or remorse among the leftists who picketed V.A. hospitals or the Bush appearances, or even Laura's speaking engagements in front of ALA (librarians). Nor has there been a peep (that I can find reported) from President Obama about the death of Pvt. William Long by a home grown terrorist. Is this his way to placate Muslims? Or to encourage them?

And just as the leftist media tried to blame you and me for the deaths of President Kennedy and his brother Robert, Martin Luther King, and the school shooters, now as a conservative Christian who believes in the sanctity of life, even that of butchers like Tiller, I'm lumped together with a fanatic like Scott Roeder who acted out of his own animus and hatred for Tiller. Like the guy who killed Pvt. Long, he was being "watched."

I didn't kill Nicole Brown Simpson just because I believe in marriage, and she was married to a jealous, has-been athlete. I didn't kill Vince Foster, that Clinton aide who committed suicide in a park with an ancient gun, after he got unflattering press. I didn't send Susan Boyle to a mental health clinic just because I thought she was fabulous and she couldn't handle the adoration and the press.

George Tiller was a murderer of thousands of innocents; Scott Roeder, if he did this, is also a murderer of one.

Ad ditional nonsense

Why KIA thinks this is a good ad, I have no idea. But everytime I see it, I think of the Obamacar, our government motors car we've been condemned to buy through a combination of his driving us off a cliff through micromanaging, cap and trade and sell-outs to the unions. So, what does this say-- you can get two rodents on the exercise wheel instead of one? Is that the message? We're rats in a trap? Smaller families through selective abortions? We are going 'round and 'round? Who knows.

Rectal herpes

I write a lot of medical stuff, although not as much as I used to as I get further and further away from my former job (veterinary medicine library). Today someone visited my site looking for “rectal herpes,” so I checked to see what I’d written, and found a 2006 article about what must be one of the dumbest characters in the anals annals of medicine. Not only did he smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, but was also a user of marijuana and meth AND he was a promiscuous 31 year old gay man.

“He has AIDS, rectal discharge, pain when defecating and blood in his stool, pelvic pain, nausea, and weakness. It's the pain, not the AIDS that has sent him to the doctor this time. He has regular anal intercourse without condoms with his "usual partner" who also is HIV positive, and he has other partners.” NEJM, Jan. 19, 2006 .

He was diagnosed with AIDS as a teen-ager (12 years before) and over the course of his disease has received at various times zidovudine, lamivudine, nelfinavir, ritonavir-lopinavir, cephalexin, clarithromycin ethambutol, didanosine, stavudine, and efavirenz. In addition to AIDS he developed Kaposi's sarcoma, oral thrush, rectal herpes simplex and anal condylomas because even with all this medical treatment (or because of it) he never gave up his promiscuity. Then he was treated with acyclovir, fluconazole, and dapsone; for the current problem, he got ceftriaxone and azithromycin. Now he had lymphogranuloma venereum proctitis. A series of lab tests showed he didn’t have gonorrhea, herpes simplex, chlamydia and syphilis--all common among gay men--maybe those bacteria couldn‘t survive the chemical soup floating through his body.

I’m sure that under Obamacare, these careless, do-nothings (except for bath houses, male prostitutes and voting) will have full access to the government run pharmacies, and the elderly and poor will have fully managed and minimum care of aspirin and 7-Up.

Let them drive golf carts

One Oar in the Water, an Ohio blogger, has a good piece on golf carts. I'd been thinking the same thing. Two weeks ago when we were at Lake Erie I stopped at a produce stand. Across the street was a thinly populated Chrysler dealership. The building and out lots looked almost new. It’s not hard to imagine what the taxes from the business, real estate, and employees mean to that area. Every business up and down that high way, all through the county and on into Port Clinton are affected. This is what President Obama doesn’t seem to understand by micro managing this business--how many models, how much for advertising, imports, who can be a dealer and who can’t. Or does he? I believe he has no intention of “saving the economy,” and what he’s doing to the auto industry, and next the health care industry, all the cap and trade nonsense, is just fast tracking us into the waiting arms of the Chinese.

Has the President expressed his sorrow and advice yet?

"The suspect arrested in the fatal shooting of one soldier and the critical injury of another at a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting booth today was under investigation by the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force since his return from Yemen, ABC News has learned. The investigation was in its preliminary stages, authorities said, and was based on the suspect's travel to Yemen and his arrest there for using a Somali passport. The suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 24, had changed his name from Carlos Leon Bledsoe after converting to the Muslim faith.

Law enforcement sources said he offered no resistance when Little Rock police arrested him today. It was not known what path Muhammad, a U.S. citizen who is a recent convert to Islam, had followed to radicalization."

Just wondering. After all, President Obama is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. This was his man who was gunned down. He ran for this job, and it included being a war time commander. Does he have nothing to say? Here are his comments at the death of Dr. Tiller, the civilian, the abortion doctor, just in case you've forgotten, comments made before there was any investigation as to movtive: "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

". . . today's Democrats really are isolated from the military. Harry Truman had been an artillery captain; John Kennedy and Carter, Navy officers. But Bill Clinton did everything possible to avoid the draft, and Obama, motivated as he was to public service, never gave a thought to volunteering for the military.

Nonetheless, circumstances made Obama commander in chief of a nation fighting two wars." David Broder

Bare foot walking, pt. 2

My feet and legs felt good this morning, so I took two more walks bare foot, one in the morning and in the afternoon, then decided to look it up. Google found some interesting stuff, keeping in mind Google can find something good to say about every imaginable health cure from eating bugs to amputating limbs.

But according to my limited research, I was correct in sensing that my body aligns itself very differently in bare feet than in shoes. This very interesting article in New York Magazine contained some references, interesting snippets, and some great photoshopped pictures of feet.

The sole of your foot has over 200,000 nerve endings in it, one of the highest concentrations anywhere in the body. Our feet are designed to act as earthward antennae, helping us balance and transmitting information to us about the ground we’re walking on.

For all I know, other areas of the skin are also well endowed with nerve endings, but after a few strolls in the back yard my arches, ankles and toes were starting to feel more alive. I wouldn't call it a tickle, but they definitely had been in prison far too long.

Try this test: Take off your shoe, and put it on a tabletop. Chances are the toe tip on your shoes will bend slightly upward, so that it doesn’t touch the table’s surface. This is known as “toe spring,” and it’s a design feature built into nearly every shoe. Of course, your bare toes don’t curl upward; in fact, they’re built to grip the earth and help you balance. The purpose of toe spring, then, is to create a subtle rocker effect that allows your foot to roll into the next step. This is necessary because the shoe, by its nature, won’t allow your foot to work in the way it wants to. Normally your foot would roll very flexibly through each step, from the heel through the outside of your foot, then through the arch, before your toes give you a powerful propulsive push forward into the next step. But shoes aren’t designed to be very flexible. Sure, you can take a typical shoe in your hands and bend it in the middle, but that bend doesn’t fall where your foot wants to bend; in fact, if you bent your foot in that same place, your foot would snap in half. So to compensate for this lack of flexibility, shoes are built with toe springs to help rock you forward. You only need this help, of course, because you’re wearing shoes.

Other articles made reference to the coolness of walking bare foot, which was true if I was in the shade, but some areas of the lawn are already dry and crusty from the current heat; other articles get close to spiritual--in touch with the earth, being grounded, etc.

Another mentioned it as a natural form of reflexology, with the manipulation of joints and tendons in the foot and toes.

"[Reflexology is] A type of massage applied to the feet to compensate for the lack of barefoot-walking on uneven ground. Small rocks and roots would randomly work with your body weight, stimulating the release of static charged channels of trapped energy linked to other areas in your body. Also stagnant blood and lymph flow is discharged as the renewal of oxygen fresh blood is supplied, stimulating tissues at a cellular level. Similar to acupressure principles, reflexology works with the body’s energy flow to stimulate self-healing and maintain balance in physical function. This technique reduces pain, increases circulation and thus relaxation." Some kind of sanctuary

I don't know about energy flow, but nothing is more boring (or hot in June) than walking or running along an asphalt road, and nothing more punishing to the knees and feet than walking long distances on concrete. At least walking in the grass is low impact and fun. I had none of the usual shin splints. The real test for me will be when I put a pair of sandals on--stay tuned.

She tried to walk home from church bare foot.

Bush was a big spender

especially on social programs. He increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ. You’re thinking, well, it was 2 wars, but it wasn’t that. Some of the increase was from mandatory spending--would happen regardless, but much was discretionary. He added thousands of new programs during his eight years in office. In 2008, there were 1,816 subsidy programs in the federal budget that spread hundreds of billions of dollars annually to special interest groups. The number of subsidy programs grew by 30 percent since 2000 and by 54 percent since 1990 according to Mercatus Center at George Mason.

Then President Obama, in just four months, has made President Bush look like a stingy piker, carefully monitoring the government purse strings. According to Obama’s own ten-year deficit projections, this so-called "New Era of Responsibility" will have deficits every single year that will be bigger than the deficits of the Bush years. Mercatus analyzes Obama’s budget and concludes: “Based on his budget, the only promises the President can credibly make are high marginal rates, higher tax burdens for all, dramatic spending increases, and unprecedented and sustained levels of debt for the American people, their children, and grandchildren. Unfortunately, we know the consequences of such policies: slower growth rates, higher unemployment rates, lower standards of living, and higher levels of poverty.”

Not to mention all the segments of the economy that have been taken over in Obama's War on the Economy (O WOE) to create a socialist country.

I don't believe in the death penalty

but if I did, this man, Daniel Wilson, would be first on the list to go. Locking a woman in the trunk of her car and setting the gas tank on fire, or beating up an elderly neighbor and leaving him to die, Yup. And you know what? Because he's a white male who killed a white woman and another white male, they aren't even "hate" crimes.

Deploring violence is a one-way street

"Shortly after the murder of George Tiller, pro-life groups put out statements denouncing the crime. These statements came from all over the pro-life camp. Some were more forthright than others, it is true, but most were admirable in their categorical rejection of vigilante killings.

This morning, a U.S. Army recruiting station was attacked. One recruiter was killed, another hurt. Any statements from the antiwar Left deploring that violence? I've seen none from Code Pink, which has called U.S. servicemen "war criminals" and worse in service of a "fascist dictatorship," and whose rhetoric has, in general, been comparable to that of the less temperate branches of the pro-life movement. If you want to check International ANSWER'S press statements, you'll find nothing deploring this violence." Media Blog

To Mary Mapes and the establishment left, where are you with your outrage and condemnation today? Will the President make a statement about the murdered Army recruiter like he properly did yesterday about the abortion Dr? Will he condemn the vigilantes in Berkeley? Founding Bloggers

Governor Palin has also put out a message deploring the killing of Dr. Tiller. And she has a child most pro-abortion people wanted to die because he is has Down Syndrome (93% are killed before birth). We wait to hear a Democratic governor or the President speak out about a U.S. serviceman being killed.

It’s ironic and angering that only three weeks ago, Democrats in Congress shot down a bill to include military veterans on a bill giving them “hate crime” status and protection, but did grant it to convicted pedophiles. The Democrats felt including members of our military would be insulting to gays and minorities (but adding pedophiles would not be insulting).Vicki

The class of 57 had its dream

And that probably didn't include growing old, but we did. Our former high school, new when we graduated, is located between the town cemetery and the retirement home--so we should have had a clue. Some of us have already passed the 70 mark, some will soon, but most of the class of 1957 were born in or around 1939. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression that had been dragging on for 10 years. That was the year Hitler marched into Poland, and we were toddlers when Japan dropped bombs on Pearl Harbor. It was hard times and some of our parents might not have been thrilled by our showing up! If you look through the yearbooks of my home town at the class of 1953, it was about half the size of ours. People were cautious about the future in the 1930s. Here's a column from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that former classmate Mike and wife Judy sent me. Regina Brett’s "50 life lessons," written when she turned 50 in 2006. Can you think of 20 more to make it 70?

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
17. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.
18. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
36. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.
38. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
42. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
43. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
44. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
45. The best is yet to come.
46. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
47. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
48. If you don't ask, you don't get.
49. Yield.
50. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.


51. Here's one from the 1880s: "The husband must not see and the wife must be blind." The Gospel Messenger, December 18, 1888.
52. Less stuff means less stress
53. Naps and chocolate (dark).
54. Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.
55. "It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all." Laura Ingalls Wilder
56. When it comes to politics, keep an open mind. It will pay off in the end. Murray
57. Having more than one political party can be good but it can also be very ugly. Murray
58. "Life by the yard is hard; by the inch is a cinch." Or something like that I saw on my sister-in-law's refrigerator.
59. "I know folks all have a tizzy about it, but I like a little bourbon of an evening. It helps me sleep. I don't much care what they say about it." Lillian Carter

How could it be worse?

I just noticed at a right wing on-line site that pro-lifers fear a backlash from the President because of the murder of an abortion doctor. Murder is always wrong; whether it be the innocent unborn or the guilty perps. However, how is it going to get worse? This is already the most anti-life president in the history of the country--he's way far left of Congressional Democrats on the born alive issue. He has co-opted the most Catholic of the Catholic institutions, named for Jesus' mother, for goodness sake, to promote his pathological, twisted view born of some hatred for babies of teen mothers in difficult circumstances. He doesn't wring his hands over the murder rate of black men; or the pedophiles on the internet; or the people in the auto industry having their lives destroyed by his take-over; or the millions of African children dying due to misguided western environmentalists; or even the state of poverty of some of his own first degree relatives. This man needs to get a grip.

Monday Memories of going barefoot

I looked through my albums, but I was a poor deprived child--my mother's camera broke after the first two children, and I can't find a photo of me in bare feet. Although I'm pretty sure that like most children growing up in the 1940s, I rarely wore shoes in the summer except to go to church. Several years ago my son had a summer job mowing lawns. I was a bit concerned because he was suffering from a bad back--stenosis of the spine, I think. Anyway, after a summer of walking behind a lawnmower, he was fine. I'm not sure he was barefoot, however, he might have been.

To stay on track here, the toes on my right foot began to hurt last summer while I was wearing a pair of sandals and giving a presentation in front of the Green Gables (Lakeside) on 19th century architecture. I sort of limped home and put the sandals away. Most of the time, the foot didn't hurt as long as I didn't wear them.

Last week-end I put on a different pair and the same pain started--I think it is a nerve between the 3rd and 4th toes, but I suppose it could be on the ball of the foot. So I googled it--found a picture and pointed. I read through the stuff, book marked it, but have already forgotten what that nerve area is called. (Cousin Bill, help me out here.) But I did remember my son. So today I went outside with my CD of Luther's Small Catechism, took off my shoes and socks, and walked for about 30 minutes in the back yard. It's a very different sensation. For starters, you have to lift your foot a little higher because dragging your toes through grass is not a fun feeling. Then you have to watch for sticks and rocks. And dog poop. I wouldn't say my foot feels better, and my back hurts a little from the awkward gait, but it wasn't too bad for a childhood memory.

Reassuring China

According to today's WSJ, Timothy Geithner "is expected to try to reassure China--the largest holder of U.S. Treasurys--about its U.S. debt investments as well as the strength of the dollar." Now, the Obama team can't be blamed for China owning us--that goes back a bit. But the Chinese aren't stupid. They thought they were investing in capitalism! What a surprise! One more company, GM, taken over today and given to the unions, and the President announces it is only going to get worse. Old Timmy's going to have to really peddle fast to get out of this mess. Plus, doesn't this sound a tad tentative?

expected
to try
to reassure

Don't go phishing

If anyone claiming to be your ISP or bank or credit card company or church or bookclub or any organization/club asks you to confirm your e-mail and other identifying information, don't do it. We at the osu dot edu domain have been phished lately. They are trying to steal our identity, so don't reply. The one I got looked "phishy" simply because the sentence construction and capitalization was so odd--I hoped we weren't employing such poorly trained staff at our OIT. But another librarian got a better one and checked; this is what she was told:

A large number of Ohio State e-mail addresses have recently been recipients of phishing scam e-mails, asking for their password in order to prevent the account from being removed.

These messages are a scam, and were NOT sent by the Office of Information Technology or anyone else within The Ohio State University. **Do NOT reply to this message**.

Once again, these messages are a scam, and were NOT sent by the Office of Information Technology or anyone else within The Ohio State University. Do not reply. If you have already replied, go to our Account Management web site (https://acctmgt.service.ohio-state.edu) and change your password immediately.

Our network security team is aware of this issue, and since it was sent they have been working with the other Internet Service Providers involved to ensure the situation gets dealt with as quickly as possible.

For more information on Phishing, see:
http://buckeyesecure.osu.edu/SafeComputing/IDTPhish

Our network security team has already taken steps to disable this account and contact the user for further investigation. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

If you have any more questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us
at 8help@osu.edu or by phone at (614) 688-Help (4357).

The Poor and the Christian Church

As I've noted here numerous times, I'm really uncomfortable with Christian churches taking money from the government to meet their God-given commitments to those less fortunate, while shelving God's command to preach the Gospel because that's not allowed with USDA food distribution grants or the HUD housing rehab or the HHS neighborhood clinic. "Peace and Justice" Christians, whether liberal or conservative, Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox, need to open the Old Testament--to the Book of Job. The story of Job is a non-Israelite story. Scholars don't agree on how old the story is, or where it came from, but a casual reading shows that Job was considered a righteous and moral man by his peers and himself, a man devoted to God. Job in his own words described his close fellowship with God, his wonderful family, his blessings of wealth, and his respected position in the community (this sounds like the "health and wealth" gospel you find on Christian TV). Then disaster takes it ALL away. We see that Job is an adherent of an ancient patriarchial religion, common among many desert people--he avoids adultery, including carnal lust, even the smallest thought that would contaminate his mind; he doesn't lie or deceive and was never unfair; he was fair even to his slaves; he was a man of great charity, helping the widow and fatherless orphans; he didn't worship idols and knew that silver and gold could be idols; he didn't gloat when his enemies failed; he didn't hate the foreigner and practiced hospitality; he hadn't obtained his land by robbery; no one ever charged him with being hypocrite. He "wore righteousness as a garment."

So if this is the sum total of what Jesus came to preach, he was a few centuries late--the people already knew all this. What constituted righteousness was well known, common knowledge, just as today. So Christians need to make sure that their own "righteousness" is more than that, it must include the Gospel, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If the USDA summer lunch and snack program forbids distributing printed Bible tracts, or says you can't sing songs about Jesus or that you can't console a pregnant mother with life giving testimony about your own situation, then DON'T TAKE THE MONEY! Don't pay your church staff to go after and manage these grants. It's a deal with the Devil.

President Obama promised us in his 2008 campaign that he was going to strip religion from these programs--and even in the old days of "a thousand points of light," (Bush I slogan) Christians were restricted about what they could do or say in order to receive government grants. But we've already seen how President Obama co-opted the Catholic church in their own building on their own grounds dangling before them the prestige of having the President stand at their podium. He won't be any less harsh to Lutherans running lunch programs in neutral community buildings in Hilliard and on the Hilltop.

Government programs are rarely "temporary" and almost never go away. They just get bigger because so many staff government jobs are dependent on them. They spawn entire marketing and printing projects, distribution channels, factories to process food, conferences and workshops to keep employees informed of changes in the law (with travel to interesting cities like Las Vegas and New Orleans), warehouses and storage equipment, soup kitchens, special healthy snack creation, and all manner of cross fertilization of other projects, especially environmental, the current craze. What started 65 years ago when my grandparents were farming in Illinois and Iowa to use up agricultural surpluses to help the farmers after WWII, has run amok creating a dependency among the poor and the distributers alike. And I use the word "poor" loosely here--to qualify for food assistance, the family of 4 can earn $41,299 and add $6,959 for each additional family member.

"Ohio Foodbanks began in 1985 to develop the federally funded Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) within the state of Ohio. Working in conjunction with the Department of Education and then the Ohio Department of Agriculture and finally with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services the Ohio Foodbanks struggled through many years of programmatic development, burdensome federal bureaucratic processes, repeated threats of cuts to the TEFAP food sources, and the constant recognition that even in the best of times, the food was generally in insufficient amounts to meet the growing needs of the hungry Ohioans." So now they are a line item in the state budget guaranteeing a permanent income stream. OASHF

"TOLEDO NORTHWEST OHIO FOOD BANK
• 87% of pantries, 70% of kitchens, and 36% of shelters are run by faith-based agencies affiliated with churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious organizations.
• At the agency level, 80% of agencies with at least one pantry, kitchen, or shelter and 69% of all agencies including those only with other types of programs are faith-based. Toledo NW Ohio Food Bank, 2006"

Cross posted at Church of the Acronym.

The teleprompter on the brothers Emanuel

[Speaking about BO's speech on Wednesday in Los Angeles] "Last night's policy dinner was amazing. Big Guy compared himself to FDR, announced to the crowd in Beverly Hills that the recession was over, and then fist bumped David Geffen. In fact, Big Guy was so good that people just started writing him checks. It was funny, most people here say they weren't even aware we were in a recession.

Not so amusing was [Rahm Emanuel] Toes' brother, Ari, who showed up for the event. He's a big, foul-mouthed muckety muck out here in Hollywood. Most people in the White House didn't recognize Ari or even know Rahm had other living siblings; they just assumed Toes strangled them in their cribs.

I could tell right away they were related, when Ari claimed Big Guy's limo was in his spot in the Beverly Hills Hilton valet lot and tried to have it towed."

Here's Charlie Rose interviewing the three Emanuel brothers in June 2008.



The prompter calls him "Toes" because he used to be a ballet dancer before entering politics. Now he just runs the United States and we get to dance to his tune.

Another important job for librarians

Librarians, the most left of all professions, exceeding even the Hollywood stars who periodically appear before congress to opine (223:1 Democrat to Republican) spent a lot of time during the Bush years flapping their gums and becoming aroused at meetings over the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) that might snag a terrorist sitting innocently planning mayhem at a terminal in their library. I'm sure now that we're going to have an internet czar, that they will be equally as concerned that Obama not appoint another ethically challenged Timothy Geithner to an important post. So far, he has no details, which means it is wide open for abuse, but I know we can trust the librarians, because after all, "Knowledge is power," and librarians are certainly at the top of the ladder in pay grade, prestige and political clout.

This lovely mosaic, "Knowledge is Power," is at the Fisher College of Business which is closing its library.

A tax cheat and a cheating liar

That Timothy Geithner. What a guy. People desperately want to believe Obama knew what he was doing in appointing him chief tax cheat.

It's Over ... or Not. The deepest recession in modern memory is coming to an end, said Department of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a May 18 briefing. Geithner pointed to improvements in credit and financial markets, among other indicators, as signs that the economy was starting to come back. However, the Federal Reserve Board's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)—the body that sets the federal funds rate, or the interest rate banks charge each other for loans—downgraded its economic forecast for 2009 in the recently released minutes of its late April meeting. Almost all FOMC members downgraded their projections from the ones they made in January, and the group as a whole is now projecting the U.S.'s real gross domestic product in 2009 to decrease by 2 percentage points from 2008, to 1.3 percent. The FOMC also predicts U.S. unemployment to continue rising and increased its projection for unemployment in 2009 to be between 9.2 and 9.6 percent, up from 8.4 to 8.8 percent in earlier prognostications. The FOMC projects nationwide unemployment to remain near 8 percent through 2011, before trending back to between 4.8 and 5 percent over the longer run. The FOMC did agree with Geithner in one respect, though, saying it expects a recovery in sales and production to begin in the second half of the year."

Weekly Federal Update, May 18-22, by Ethan Butterfield, Architect Magazine On-line edition. I'm always amazed at people who can count how many years FDR drug out the Depression, and yet believe following his example will somehow not cause the same disaster.