NY RINO Scozzafava quits

She was a loser before she started. It was a mystery to me why she didn't run as a Democrat. Or weren't they having her either? Maggie thinks she wasted a huge amount of money.

HT Maggie's Notebook and Real Clear Politics.

Red grape skin may help sickle cell sufferers

"AUGUSTA, Ga. – An extract in red grape skin may be a new treatment for sickle cell disease, Medical College of Georgia researchers say. Link

The extract, resveratrol, a natural chemical typically found in red wine and various plants and fruits, has been found to induce production of fetal hemoglobin, which decreases the sickling of red blood cells and reduces the painful vascular episodes associated with the disease.

Most fetal hemoglobin production ceases after birth, but in patients where it remains the predominant form, it can result in fewer complications, says Davies Agyekum, a second-year Ph.D. student in the MCG School of Graduate Studies.

In sickle cell disease, abnormal hemoglobin causes red blood cells to sickle. The abnormal shape impedes blood's passage through vessels and can cause excruciating pain and other complications because of the blood's oxygen deficiency.

Davies is working with Dr. Steffen E. Meiler, vice chair of research for the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, on an eight-week animal study to determine if the combined anti-inflammatory and fetal hemoglobin-producing properties of resveratrol, a dietary polyphenol, can reduce the severity of sickle cell disease.

Hydroxyurea, an anti-cancer agent and the only Food and Drug Administration-approved therapeutic drug for sickle cell disease, increases fetal hemoglobin. Davies says reseveratrol-based therapy might be easier on patients.

The Ghana native recently received a three- to five-year $15,000 scholarship from the Southern Regional Education Board State Doctoral Scholars Program, a program aimed at increasing the number of minority students who earn doctoral degrees and become college and university professors."

One of the worst education stories I've read

A blogger from Detroit who has a fascination with photographing abandoned buildings came upon a middle school building abandoned in 2007. I was browsing his photos of the library (it would rip out the heart of any librarian) and then found this horror story. He could find no one who cared, so he's destroying the stash himself.

"After my first visit to the shattered middle school, I am haunted by what I found in one office: hundreds of file folders containing student psychological examinations complete with social security numbers, addresses, and parent information. I sat and thumbed through them. Many contained detailed histories of physical and sexual abuse, stories of home lives so horrifying I still can't get them out of my head: sibling rape, torture, neglect that defies belief. The detailed reports explained emotional impairments, learning disabilities. There was another box full of IEPs. The dates revealed that many of these students are still in the school system somewhere. I found several of their faces in the 2007 yearbook.

I spend the next few months trying to track down someone who cares. I send e-mails to the school's former principal, offering to go back and collect these records for her or destroy them. She never responds. I call my mom, a retired special education teacher and erstwhile administrator to determine the extent of malfeasance. Then I call the school district's legal department and leave voice mails warning them of the liability of this gross violation of student privacy. I never receive a response. I track down the school psychologist to some address in Troy. Nothing. It turns out a daily newspaper reported abandoned records like these within many of the 33 schools closed in 2007 and the district did nothing. No one is responsible. Someone else was supposed to destroy them. The company that had been paid to secure the school never did its job."

It's enough to make you homeschool, isn't it? And to cry for those poor, pitiful children that no school, no matter how good, will ever be able to save. But what excuses do the adults--the administrators of Detroit's school system have? They took the tax money to teach, test, classify and pigeon hole the children, and then abused them yet one more time. I'm ill. I'm sorry I read this.

Is Obama a Muslim?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCAffMSWSzY

Did he lie to us during the campaign? I watched this video, and although it is disturbing, it's hard to know how much has been edited out which may have explained the statements. I see what the left does to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to rile up the net wackos and extremists, watched that Congressman distort and lie about the Republican health care plans, and I'm sure it can happen with our President.

He says he is a Christian, I've heard his Christian testimony, so I'll accept him at his word. Christians aren't saved by what they do or say, but by the work of Jesus Christ on their behalf. If he IS a Muslim, as the video purports, then blacks, homosexuals and women should be the most worried. Plus it would make him a infidel for claiming he's a Christian.

What I found deeply disturbing was hearing him talk in the glowing terms about other countries, their accomplishments and culture (Muslim all) and yet he doesn't have a decent, kind, knowledgeable word to say about his own. Birthers believe he was born in Kenya; I sometimes think he was born in another century or on another planet, he's so out of touch with what it means to be an American! That obsequious, smarmy behavior in itself ought to clue the Muslim leaders and our own that something's very fishy about this guy.

Seven months ago

I didn't buy into The Obama Deception movie conspiracy theories, which was also extremely hostile toward Bush. But here's what I said on April Fools day this year, and that hasn't changed. His poll numbers are plummeting here in Ohio, both for job, economy and the war, so others are catching on to what many knew even in 2007. This misnamed "health care reform" [it's health care take-over], the clap and trade bill, the bowing and butt kissing to foreign enemies and banana republic dictators, the sneering at our history and accomplishments--it's all taking a toll in the polls.

Someone said on the film, forgotten who, that if they cataloged all his lies, the film would never end, because they continue. Yes, I'd agree with that charge, too. It is truly amazing that a man who worked as a "community organizer" for nearly a decade, and never became a tenured law professor or wrote a law article or even practiced law, but wrote 2 autobiographical books, got hired by Illinois to represent a district for which he did nothing and which is still poor, and then got elected President on the basis of his looks and ability to speechify and talk black (something he had to learn as a foreign language as an adult). Call it a conspiracy against the American people if you wish, but really, Obama simply makes us look like a bunch of vacuous fools. . .if we're so great and wonderful and good, why would we let this happen?

Take off your apron, Mom

I'm going through the photo albums, starting with the piles of extras, to select some for a special album to display at our 50th celebration next year. I thought this one was sort of funny, taken at Lakeside summer of 1984 with our friends Ron and Jane who had come up for the day from Columbus. I'm always reminding people to take off their sun glasses when being photographed, but apparently I forgot to take off my apron. We were all thinner, didn't wear glasses yet, and had more hair, and I still use that apron purchased at one of the Lakeside antique shops twenty-five years later.

A few years ago we attended Ron and Jane's 50th, a surprise party at a downtown hotel--they thought they were going out for dinner with their daughter and son-in-law who live in Ireland, and their sons who live locally. It was a great party, but we'll be doing something a bit more modest. Jane is a retired RN and Ron for years owned a painting business. Now he leads a Bible study my husband attends each week for which he produces reams of research and personal thoughts. We met them when we were all members of First Community Church back in the 1960s.

World's cutest studio

Sandy blogs at Thistle Cove Farm. A serious artist with the world's most adorable studio.

1,990 page health care reform bill--on line for 72 hours

Bob C. writes: "Why so many pages and who, in just 72 hours, could even hope to read it let alone understand it??!! If asked and told not to lie, how many in Congress could honestly tell you they had read ALL of it and UNDERSTOOD all of it??

This is a big deal folks and somehow, no matter how it turns out (this way, that way, anyway) I have a distinct feeling that a year or two from now a LOT of people (more than a simple majority) will be saying "Oh s___!! What have we done this time??" Look back at the history of such things and list the positive results from government programs like this. A small Post-it pad should do. And after the fact, how many of the negatives have EVER been corrected??"

Jack Cafferty of CNN notes the length of other important documents for comparison.

• The original draft of the 1935 Economic Security Act, which established the Social Security Administration was 64 pages
  
  
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 - forbidding discrimination based on race and sex: 8 pages
  
  
• The 19th amendment to the Constitution, giving Women the right to vote in 1920: 1 page
  
  
• The Emancipation Proclamation, with which Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863: 5 pages
  
  
• Or, if you really want to get back to basics: The Declaration of independence came in at 1 page in 1776
  
  
• And the Constitution: 4 pages long in 1787
  
  
• Health care reform, Pelosi version - almost 2,000 pages.

It's not Halloween--it's Detroit

Photo from Sweet Juniper and there are many more

Feral Detroit. What handing out entitlements and destroying the white middle class will get you. The President needs to tour some of these neighborhoods where the current mayor Dave Bing "recalls how, during the campaign, he would travel through neighborhoods where only a house or two remained occupied on each block, where weeds had reclaimed abandoned lots, and where storefronts sat empty. Today, officials estimate, the city contains an astonishing 70,000 abandoned structures—many of them houses, but also some commercial properties. In downtown Detroit alone, a local newspaper identified 48 office buildings with “no outward sign of life.” " . . .

"Though some blame Detroit’s population losses on larger economic forces, economists Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer argue in a groundbreaking paper that the city’s problems are mostly self-inflicted. (The paper, called “The Curley Effect,” gets its name from legendary Boston mayor James Curley, who favored Irish residents and pushed other groups out.) After winning election in 1973, Detroit’s first black mayor, Coleman Young, consolidated his power, driving white residents, who had voted against him, out of the city by withdrawing services from their neighborhoods. Eventually, Glaeser and Shleifer write, Detroit became “an overwhelmingly black city mired in poverty and social problems”—and shrinking fast." From City Journal, Autumn 2009.

The cash for clunkers clunk

Now the White House is going after Edmunds for telling the truth.



"A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.

Still, auto sales contributed heavily to the economy's expansion in the third quarter, adding 1.7 percentage points to the nation's gross domestic product growth. [That's a gummit lie because moving government money around is not expansion.]

The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.

The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales." Money CNN

A beautiful day in the neighborhood--75 degrees

The city workmen and contractors seem to leave early on Friday, so I was able to walk on the new, but not quite finished sidewalks into a rather high-end, snitzy snazzy neighborhood and enjoy the beautiful color, landscaping and winding streets. First I need to thank you all for the sidewalks--I'm sure they saved one or two jobs. I saw a report the other day that said we pay $32 for each person who rides on Amtrak, but that's probably a bargain compared to what you're paying per walker in my neighborhood!

I saw a lot of well off women and one man working in their yards, raking, blowing leaves, and digging around. Slim, well-dressed, tanned, mid-forties. These people are probably the ones Obama wants to tax for your new health care plan. Doctors, lawyers, businessmen, university department chairs. Although I don't think there are enough of them to cover the entire nation on the public option, his goal. Plus, they probably have kids in college, car payments, mortgage payments, workmen to keep employed around the house. Here's one home I passed--the price has been reduced to $725,000--don't know in what range it started or how long it's been on the market. It was built in 1964 (that pine tree definitely needs to go) and has obviously had all the upgrades that people want--new bathrooms (5) and gourmet kitchen. Also an in ground pool--not as common around here as California or the southwest, hot tub, irrigation system, landscape lighting, paver patio, whole house water purification system, and nearly 4500 sq. ft. Ohio only gets 37% sunshine--be outside all you can. It would be a lot cheaper to buy a membership at a private club than have your own pool.

The Green MBA

Somedays I'm just overwhelmed by the green hype. As a Christian I take stewardship and conservation very seriously. We are commanded by the Creator God to do that. The record is clear in Genesis--God created everything, including the first couple, a man and woman, and gave them two commandments: 1) Be fruitful and increase in number and 2) rule over his creation--plants and animals, oceans and air, beasts, birds and seeds. And then he declared it all good.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

You can look through any academic program at Ohio State (or any college or university near you) and see the endless moralizing, preaching and nagging about the environment, but there's no foundation--nothing about God's creation, the fall, justice, mercy or why other than self interest we should be caring for planet Earth. At the top level (very thin) it's humanism (man is in charge); dig deeper and the middle level, really thick, is Marxism (the state is in charge and a one world government would work best); but at the sludge level which is bottomless, it's pantheism (we are all one divine being, one consciousness, animals have the same worth as people).

Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business came in 24th on the list of the “Beyond Grey Pinstripes Global 100” of the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education. “The CBE equips business leaders for the 21st century with a new management paradigm—the vision and knowledge to integrate corporate profitability and social value. . . CBE is a part of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program (BSP), an organization dedicated to developing leaders for a sustainable global society [which] creates opportunities for executives and educators to explore new pathways to sustainability and values-based leadership.” Van Jones, the White House Green Jobs czar who escaped to John Podesta’s think tank when his Communist and radical ties were exposed, was one of the invited speakers at the 2008 Ideas Festival of the Institute.

Hello Agriculture, Political Science and Social Work students--I guess you’ll have to become the bankers and financiers, the investors and CEOs. It has captured all your buzz words -- global sustainability, greening the business world, building a just economy, climate change, climate justice, economic justice, emerging green economy, environmentally responsible. Now all we need is someone to make money and invest again in America.

The founder and “mother” of the CBE, Judith Samuelson, wants the White House to go much further in its plan to control executive compensation. She seems completely unaware of the extent that government interference in business has brought us where we are in this Wall Street Journal article.

Friday Family Photo--little Louis

During exercise class the instructor's little boy loves to come to my husband; he ignores the ladies. He's very well behaved and last year he just napped through the noise; now he plays with his trucks and books, and if my husband is on the floor he scoots himself over with a book.

UALC has three options for exercise--this class which meets at the Lytham campus at 9:15 on M-W-F and is a combination of weights, stretching and cardiovascular with three different instructors; a more gentle exercise group for older people at 10 on M and Th which focuses on mobility; and a killer work out at Mill Run called Boot Camp on T and Th at 9:30. I've seen them when I do the mail run on Thursdays. You don't want to mess with that instructor in a dark alley.

Sweet memories--white cake and one car

Ah, the memories I cherish of the Tremont Goodie Shop. When the children were small and we had only one car, I'd call my husband about 4:30 and suggest he swing by the Goodie Shop on the way home and pick up the 7" double layer, cream filled white cake with coconut frosting. On Saturdays we'd stand in line with our neighbors, sometimes all the way out the door and into the shopping center, for warm cinnamon bread, or frosted, melt in your mouth, sugar cookies in the shapes for the season. Some items you had to reserve ahead. On really, really special days when I was having a chocolate attack, I'd slip in and buy 2 fat chocolate eclairs, and divide them for the evening dessert for the four of us. On birthdays (3 days apart) even when our children were grown and living in their own homes, it would be a cake from the goodie shop with their names and fall decorations.

Birthdays 1996
So when the Goodie Shop closed this fall due to the recession and rising costs, it was a terrible shock. I hadn't been there in years, but it was like hearing an old friend you'd lost touch with had died.

But a former owner and volunteers from the community have come to the rescue--and the Goodie Shop is back in business!

"Just in time for Halloween, fans of the Tremont Goodie Shop can look forward to the reopening of the longtime Tremont Center establishment.

The shop, which closed just before Labor Day after 54 years in business, is scheduled to reopen on Oct. 26. Debbie Smith, who previously ran the family business for 13 years, acquired much of the shop's equipment during a Sept. 27 auction.

The Goodie Shop opened in 1955 by original owner Bill Wood, who sold the business to James Krenek (Smith's father, who passed away in 2007) in 1967. After her father retired, Smith ran the Goodie Shop from 1993 until 2006, when Smith's sister and brother-in-law, Doraine and Paul Cooper, took over.

The Coopers cited increased supply costs and declining sales due to the economy as the reason that the business closed.

A groundswell of community support has arisen since the Goodie Shop closed. Dozens of loyal customers from all over the country have posted comments on a Facebook page created by Smith's daughters, indicating how much they miss the Goodie Shop and would like for it to reopen.

Prior to the Goodie Shop's official reopening on Oct. 26, Smith plans to hold an open house at 9 a.m. on Oct. 24."

Our fading heritage

Remember to vote Tuesday, but be informed--all politics is local as the saying goes. If there's anything distressing to me about our being in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is that Bush took us into war believing they deserved democracy, and meanwhile we are destroying it in our own country through desire for entitlements, redistribution of our wealth and property in the name of marxist "social justice," and corrupt, power hungry politicians on both sides of the aisle.

“How about a few civics questions? Name the three branches of government. If you answered the executive, legislative and judicial, you are more informed than 50 percent of Americans. The Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) recently released the results of their national survey titled "Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions." The survey questions were not rocket science.

Only 21 percent of survey respondents knew that the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people." comes from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Almost 40 percent incorrectly believe the Constitution gives the president the power to declare war. Only 27 percent know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. Remarkably, close to 25 percent of Americans believe that Congress shares its foreign policy powers with the United Nations.

Among the total of 33 questions asked, others included: "Who is the commander in chief of the U S. military?” "Name two countries that were our enemies during World War II." "Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?" Of the 2,508 nationwide samples of Americans taking ISI's civic literacy test, 71 percent failed; the average score on the test was 49 percent.

More at Walter E. Williams.

Don't be offended, but. . .

I don't Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin. I rarely "exchange" links--if I like a blog, I just add the link and don't tell them. So if I haven't responded to your request--it isn't you, it's me. According to this article at CNN, people feel rejected when turned down in cyberspace. That's probably why I don't do this social networking thing--I remember junior high school girls' cliques.

CNN) -- If you harbor a bit of angst over Facebook friend requests gone unanswered, a surprise "defriending" or being deserted by your Twitter followers, you're not alone. . .

"People tend to think that these relationships are trivial and not very deep, but this is what we're moving towards, having a lot of our communications play out over the Internet," Purdue University social psychologist Kip Williams said. "That's the way it's becoming; this is how we interpret our worth. People care how many [online] friends they have."

Or, increasingly, how many Twitter followers they have. This year, a third-party service launched Qwitter, which allows Twitter users to determine who's stopped following them and which tweet may have turned them off.

Experts say rejection on social networks can hurt worse than an in-person snub because people are usually more polite face-to-face than they are online."

My blog has been "delinked" by a number of followers--usually I know the reason--and that's bad enough. Why would I want more of that? In a moment of weakness I did sign up for Classmates dot come, and now I get pestered from the website to pay money. No thanks. If there's anything that hasn't changed about me over the years of a hundred hair styles, and wide ranging political views, it's that I'm frugal. Blogger dot com is free and doesn't ask for anything from me. Not even undying friendship.

Would you call this a hate crime?

"Richmond, California (CNN) -- Investigators say as many as 20 people were involved in or stood and watched the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a California high school homecoming dance Saturday night.

Police posted a $20,000 reward Tuesday for anyone who comes to them with information that helps arrest and convict those involved in what authorities describe as a 2½-hour assault on the Richmond High School campus in suburban San Francisco."

I only ask if it's a hate crime, because we know unless she's a lesbian, it won't be called that. Singling out some forms of evil as "hate" because the victims are members of a specific, protected group is just dumb and intended to increase tensions between groups. I don't know if the victim was black, white or Hispanic (the two female friends of the victim who spoke at a news conference about it were white), but we know if she were an African American and the attackers white, it would be called a hate crime. I think the "boys" are all Hispanic and black (some have been identified and charged as adults; photos showed relatives).

Update: "As horrendous as the allegations against the young men are, there is an even greater shock in revelation that the multiple raping took place outside, in an open area, with at least a dozen onlookers and an untold number of people passing by. Because the gang rape of the 15-year-old girl outside Richmond High School wasn't just the fevered sexual attacks of young men, it was a time-consuming two-and-a-half-hour ordeal where they beat, brutalized, raped, and even robbed the victim. And not one among them bothered to call the police or inform someone in authority.

Not one.

But they did find time to go in and out of the homecoming dance, according to Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, taking place at the time and inform others, who came out and watched and/or participated as well. It was not until after the incident ended, when someone overheard others talking about it, that a phone call was made to Richmond Police that something had occurred." AC Content

Counting on igorance

Dan Kennedy in Dumb and Dumber by Choice begins by pointing out that reading is down 20% in the last 25 years and that 40 million Americans don't read, can't read or won't read, and that most of the people who voted for Obama didn't read his books in which he outlined his socialist beliefs and anti-American plans. Nor does Congress read it's own legislation before it votes.

"This past week, some clowns in Congress proposed a tax credit of up to $3,500 a year for pet owners. It was reported as something amusing by the media. But is it funny – or frightening? Doesn’t it speak to the confidence our Royalty in Washington has about the ignorance and stupidity of the peons they rule? As does Obama’s proposed $250.00 bribe to seniors, the asinine contention that they will magically take $500-billion from Medicare without cutting the benefits it delivers, the even more asinine assertion that the near trillion dollar costs of the new socialized medicine plan will be offset by savings from stopping fraud and waste in the already existent, smaller socialized health care plan. These are all the very same kind of insults to intelligence.

All these insults display the same run-amok arrogance. The same power mad abuse of authority. The same contempt for you and me. They have decided that more than enough of us are ignorant idiots, easily pacified with empty promises and a piece of candy, happy to be done with all responsibility to think, busied with funny videos on YouTube and 146-character Tweets and X-Box and ordering complicated drinks at Starbucks. They know that five times as many people watch the climactic episodes of “American Idol” than watch TV news programs, let alone read a newspaper and news magazines. They know that more people participate in fantasy football leagues on one Sunday than watch “Meet the Press” in a year of Sundays. They are certain of – and rely on – the growing ignorance of the American public."

The $8,000 fraud for beginners

And it wasn't entrapment. It's as though the government really intended the $8,000 housing credit to be so easy to steal. Not since we saw Katrina "victims" shopping at high end stores for designer purses have we seen such chaos in a government program. According to testimony:

• 19,000 filers for the $8,000 tax credit hadn't purchased a home
  
• 74,000 filers (for $500 million in credits) weren't first time buyers
  
• The refundable tax credit was even for those who don't pay any taxes
  
• Required very little documentation
  
• 53 of the criminal filers were IRS employees [following in Geithner's footsteps?]
  
• Congress plans to extend this abusive, wasteful, chaotic plan. . .because?
  
• It costs $1 billion a month, $15 billion so far this year
  
• It drives capital into homes instead of other investments which could help restore the economy
  
• It hasn't boosted sales--most of the buyers (the honest ones) would have bought a home anyway
  
• It delays housing prices returning to "normal"

See today's Wall Street Journal for confirmation.

Oh, and that IRS employee story? Broken by Fox Business channel.

Write what you know

And David Myers certainly knows about prisons--he worked in corrections for 30 years. He and his daughter Elise have authored his second title for Arcadia Press, Central Ohio's Historic Prisons. Here’s the story.

We spent a lot of time in Ohio prisons back in the 70s, following a friend around for visiting hours on Sunday afternoons when our children were small. Most recently we added a fourth to our list when we participated in a closing ceremony at Marion for Kairos.

The Myers family belongs to UALC, and is active in many arts projects and local theater, Dave having written a history of the local music scene, Columbus; the musical crossroads.