Home ownership is not a path to wealth

It might be the American dream (soured a bit recently), but it's not a path to wealth, unless you buy it with the intention of selling at a profit, or build it for others to buy, or finance the mortgage for others to pay you back, or own stock in Fannie or Fred, or rent it with someone else paying the mortgage, real estate taxes, insurance and repairs plus a percentage for your risk. Poor people aren't poor because they don't own homes, and they won't become wealthy by signing up for a government deal with no money down (you can still do that with many government programs despite what we learned in 2007-2008). In fact, you can be rich and lose it all, and will have nothing to do with your house, but everything to do with your values (lazy, rude, promiscuous), your bad habits (alcohol, drugs), your health (something you may or may not control) or your marriage (many women become instantly poor after a divorce--it's much more common than "she took me to the cleaners" story--and if she's smart, she won't accept the house in the settlement of assets).

What is a path to wealth is the life style you choose, or should choose, when you become a home owner. You're choosing neighbors, schools, playmates for the kids, distance from employment, public transportation, access to highways, parks and leisure opportunities. Don't renters do that? Not so much--their values are different. Will they be voting in the school or library bond issues, will they complain to the city or the landlord if the trash isn't picked up or the streets not cleared of snow? Like the new employee, the renter isn't "vested." He can move on--he's got his eye on a different ball.

Drive through any high-end suburban neighborhood of any city (I live in Columbus). Look at the people north of Dublin or east of Easton. Do you really think the 30 year old out there trimming the rose bushes got to a $750,000-$1,000,000 house by buying a "starter" in the city and then moving up? Really? With college loans? Car payments? If he's 30, he probably had family help, either for the house down payment or for the college tuition that got him that $150,000 job managing a business. If he's 50, he's probably moved around taking advantage of more responsibility at higher pay with each move. The house is just a symbol of values--hard work, discipline, and genes--it's not wealth building like investing, starting a business, inheritance, or honing your athletic skills and being first pick in the draft (become a millionaire at 19).

We have owned four homes as primary residences (2 in Champaign, IL and 2 in Columbus), and one as a "second home." We haven't had a mortgage in many years. But we are here, not wealthy but comfortable, because the first home we bought was a duplex, and we rented half, invested sweat equity in remodeling, were willing to live in a less than desirable neighborhood, didn't go into marriage with debts, saved when we could, lived on one income even when we had two, didn't take vacations other than visiting relatives until we'd been married 14 years, and got help from our parents.

However much your primary home appreciates, your next place will probably eat that up. You have to live somewhere. Just don't use your equity by thinking your home is a bank that won't come after you.

Isn't that dill?

"Dill" was slang in my home town for something really fabulous. Anything could be dill or dilly, but I don't think dillest was on the list. Also, just about everyone had a nickname, so "Squeaky's outfit was really dill," or "Wasn't Kitzy's party just booku (i.e., beaucoup) dill." This year the International Herb Association chose Dill as the Herb of the Year (2010).

Our first class of the third year of Lakeside's Herb Study was on fennel and was led by Jan Hilty, Master Gardener, OSU Extension, Delaware County. She owned an herbal decor and products business; she lectures on herbs and has written many articles about the uses of herbs.

Here's our Herb Study 2010 schedule--meet at the train station at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, drop in or regulars. After the meeting we go to the herb garden which is near the pavilion, for hands on and watering.

June 30: Painting a tote with fresh herbs ($3.00 for the canvas tote)

July 7: Making Herbal soaps

July 14: Making dried herb blends

July 21: Winter and summer savory

July 28: Field trip to Schedel Arboretum and Gardens in Elmore ($23 for admission, tour and box lunch)

August 4: Herbal gifts from the kitchen

August 11: Herbal brunch potluck

August 18: Borage

August 25: Folklore and magic of herbs

The Tweaksters at Lakeside

Last night we invited Wes and Sue over for rhubarb pie (purchased at the Lakeside Farmers' Market on Tuesday) and then we all walked down the street to Hoover Auditorium and enjoyed The Tweaksters. I figured it was a kids' show ("family entertainment") and it was, but thoroughly enjoyable for adults too for the athleticism of gymnastics and ballet and a media show. I stayed awake (not always a recommendation since I sometimes can doze off during a very great performance) and we were home before 10. I think one of the performers may have just walked past our cottage. Incredible bodies!

Also yesterday I attended a seminar on Willa Cather--a PBS DVD from its American Masters series. Because I studied Russian and Spanish in college, I wasn't required to study American and British literature--and it was a great loss for me. Cather died in 1947, so we didn't even notice her works in high school where American literature was a required subject. Anyway, now I'm interested and may take a peek.

Today's 10:30 seminar is on Frank Baum, the author of the Oz books. One of my fondest memories of third grade is Miss DeWall (Forreston) reading to the class after recess, "The Wizard of Oz." Later I saw the reissue of the movie, but never liked it as much as her version. Gretchen Curtiss, who manages our seminars, is going to be the presenter. Then this afternoon at 1:30 there is a seminar on Thoreau and Emerson, two of my mother's favorites. I'll probably go to that--taught by Larry Smith. He'll have a busy day, because he's also doing a lecture on the publishing process at 3:30. His novel, The Long River Home, came out in 2009.

Jake and Vienna

It's a good thing we have non-news and non-stories for non-reporters to talk about. Jake and Vienna. The break-up of a reality show shack-up? Oh please! Living together is never a good preparation for marriage, and I haven't seen a single "reporter" mention that, even when Vienna complains that she wasn't getting enough sex. Well, doh! And he says she had no ambition and complained a lot. Well, double-doh! The milk cow and the sugar daddy--all the two of them have are good looks, and even that is questionable without makeup, agents and handlers. Or, this is another way to laugh all the way to the bank as they get paid for interviews.

Those dangerous, racist tea partiers

Tim Scott, an African American and Nikki Haley, an Indian American, won in the SC primaries for Congress and Governor and are both favorites of the tea-party movement, despite the Democrats' insistence that the movement is racist. Liberals get so angry when a minority politician escapes their clutches.

Certificate templates

My husband teaches "Perspectice Drawing" at the Rhein Center at Lakeside using drawing principles (mainly one point and two point) and watercolor. At the end of the week he gives each student a certificate, but I'm the one who has to create it. Because my laptop periodically fails and wipes out everything I've saved, I sometimes lose my creations. Today I found a really neat certificate--it lets you fill in what you want to say, print it, but you can't save it. Well, there is only one person in the class (not many people here this week), so I created a "best in the class" award for her. This one had a hand holding a paint brush which was just perfect. I stopped by the class one day, and I think even with 5 or 6 in the class, she would have been "best in the class." Of course, if I must say so, he's a good teacher.

Looking through the templates, I found all sorts of interesting templates. Gardener. Writer. Most improved (wouldn't you hate to get that one?). Maybe Plays well with others, but I'm not sure.

Obepa vs. Jindal and the people of the Gulf states

We have a White House out of control that ignores the Constitution--both the original one and the "living" one filled with modifications, case law and regulations. Therefore, Bobby Jindal and other Gulf state governors should just ignore the feds (EPA, HHS, DoE, MMS, Coast Guard, etc.) and do what they can to save their people and the economy. Obama is the one who put this oil spill in military terms, brought on by government regulations and sloppy oversite. It's on his watch, and it's his guys who approved BPs plans. Jindal's going to have to have the balls of a McCrystal, and go against Obama's plan to destroy us in this energy war also. What's the worst that could happen? Fines? That would have to be cheaper than closing down his economy for years as the oil industry moves to Brazil on our tax dollar. ObEPA and ObFEMA will be no help with payouts that will be years too late to save those businesses in the leisure, construction and fishery industries.

Between Fences Museum on Main Street

The Between Fences exhibition is in the Hoover Auditorium Lobby of Lakeside, Ohio from June 20 - July 10. A friend and I spent about 30 minutes viewing it yesterday afternoon. We concluded it is quite political--leftward leaning if you get my drift. By that I don't mean the current administration. Based on the copyright, this one had a Republican Congress for funding, although the guide for discussion may be locally prepared and a more recent date.

From Teacher's Guide (c2005): "Between Fences is a Museum on Main Street project organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and brought to you by your state humanities council. Funded by the U.S. Congress Museum on Main Street is a partnership of the Smithsonian Institution and state humanities councils nationwide that serves small-town museums and citizens.

This innovative project brings rural America one-of-a-kind access to prestigious Smithsonian exhibitions and first-rate educational humanities programs. Most importantly, Museum on Main Street enables rural museums to demonstrate their enormous talents and their meaningful contributions to smalltown life."

The Guide we received was not this one--ours had much more politically charged questions like "Why are the U.S. boundaries with Canada and Mexico treated so differently? Well, doh! How many Canadians are sneaking into the U.S.? That may come; we may have to step up the patrol of that border too as many terrorists infiltrate the Canadian population and start crossing. It's been beefed up on Lake Erie since 9/11. Americans now need to show a passport to enter Canada.

But the real irony is this display is inside a gated community, completely fenced with "patroled" gates open only certain hours. It has rules about smoking and drinking (definitely an offensive fence to some); you can't dock your boat here if you're coming from a marina on Lake Erie, let alone Canada; there are rules about noise and parking (these are fences for some teen-agers); there need to be a certain number of Methodists on the board that controls the association; and so on.

As the 2010 Guide for this exhibit says: "Some fences are not physical, but cultural. Think about racial divisions and separations by income, gender, religious culture and ethnic differences. Separations can be created without actually having a 'real' fence." Yes, indeed. Think about those cultural boundaries in a simple name for a political organization like "La Raza," (The People, or The Race in Latin American Spanish; or Spanish for someone of European Christian heritage in Spain).

The good thing is that most people won't pay any attention to the questions--they'll just look at the photos and remember the Frost poem.

More bad mortgages if these guys have their way

These guys want to strengthen the Carter era legislation of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which helped create our current recession and explosion of defaults by lowering credit standards and recruiting marginally qualified buyers to be "home owners." I suspect they just want to keep their cushy jobs. Lots of money in workshops to recruit and train, and then more money on how to budget, then more on how to avoid foreclosure. Oh sure, it's House Dems who are pushing it, but whodathunkit without these guys?

http://206.130.110.176/wordpress/

"Another 'Bachelor' Falls Short of Alter"

That was a headline in my RoadRunner news page.  Altar is where people get married; alter is what you do in castration.

The hit ABC series continues its long-running tradition of bringing couples together only to see them break up shortly after 'the final rose.' Pilot Jake Pavelka's choice was a surprising one on this spring's season finale, and his relationship with tabloid regular Vienna Girardi has ended after just a few months.

The longest day

Yesterday was the first day of summer and the longest day of the year--now they'll start going the other way, and I'll be watching the sunrise move slowly to the south, until by August I'll see it over Marblehead instead of Kelley's Island.  About 9:30 there was still some daylight, and we were in our pajamas remarking that we really should have gone down to watch the sunset.  We heard a tap on the porch door and there was a good friend, in town only briefly.  If we'd been on the dock we would have missed her.  Although, maybe not.  She's a night person and I'm a morning persons--the tap could have come much later.

I took my book down to the hotel porch about 2:30 p.m. while Jim and my husband were sailing.  This is Mayfly season (good for the birds but really messy for people) and the slowest, young man I've seen in awhile was sucking them up in a vacuum cleaning louder than a leaf blower.  Or maybe he was blowing them. I don't think his mom ever taught him how to clean.  Fortunately, he wasn't very motivated and didn't continue too far down the wrap around porch with dozens of chairs.

I'm reading "Stepping heavenward; one woman's journal to Godliness" by Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss, published in 1869 which apparently is considered a "classic" and is still in print.  I found it in the church "freebie" box, in perfect, unmarked condition (2008 reprint) about a year ago. It's really quite charming, sound theologically, and since it starts in the early teen years, one is reminded that nothing much changes in 200 years. It's fiction in diary form, a genre I usually don't appreciate, but it is well paced with a lot of introspection and spiritual temperature taking.  This was not on my TBR list, but I'm enjoying it. Need to get back to Keller's "Reason for God" which is what my Columbus group is reading.

Today is Tuesday and should be the first Farmer's Market.  There are two major seminar themes this week, "Race in America" and "American writers."  This morning's offering is "I am a promise" a film made in 1994. I'm sure it will not be noted that all our biggest poverty/education problems in this country are in urban areas controlled for generations by the Democratic machine which continues to create a sense of powerlessness, anger and hopelessness in people while buying their votes.  I don't want to hear how little has changed in 16 years and how if we just threw more money at it, everything would be OK.

The afternoon wellness program is an update on radiation therapy for treatment of cancer. That sounds interesting since I'm a bit of a medical research junkie. At 1:30 someone is giving a "living simply" lecture--yawn.  Been there done that.  Tomorrow morning the Herb class will meet at the train station.  I loved where we met last year--close to the lake and the herb garden, but we must have gotten too large for that open air space. Tonight's program at Hoover is "The Singers' Club at Cleveland," featuring love songs and music from the movies.

BP plans reads like fiction? Who approved the plan? The government.

Wrong addresses, phone numbers, species names, officials' names. I encounter that it seems with every report I read on-line whether government, private or non-profit. Who was suppose to check the figures? We must have thousands of employees making big bucks at the EPA, FEMA and MMS. Are there no fact checkers?

“BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig, are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one.”

The federal government's clutch of regulatory agencies are the sister agencies of those which manage education, epidemics, national parks, homeless shelters, food purity, etc. The bigger the agency like EPA or HHS the more likely the failure. And yet, we're moving to bigger and bigger, more and more government. Why do we think that people who can't handle a huge job, could do better if we just gave them a humongous job?

Columbus Dispatch story

A magical experience?

You know how addresses stick in that little window at the top of your computer screen? The golf tournament is incredibly boring, so I turned on the computer and was flipping through that list--must be from last summer. Looked at Fat Triplets--gosh they were good. They were going great guns in October and November 2008--probably Obama fans--then trickled down to nothingness in December 2009. Total disallusionment, I'm guessing.

Then I clicked on something called steppingstonesmentalhealth and found unbelievable eastern mysticism--right here in Lakeside!

This week’s Intentional Living activity was extraordinary. I hosted a wellness retreat last weekend at Lakeside, Ohio, a chautauqua near Marblehead in western Ohio. Saturday evening we were guided in a Shamanic Drumming Journey to reclaim our magical child.

I assume this was done for Ohio Methodists based on the date. Have they somehow found the gospel of Jesus Christ lacking in spirituality and meaning so they listen to drums? Oh well, looking through her blog, she has found other interesting things to do in Ohio that don't require putting your mind in neutral or worshiping other gods.

Merkel signals G20 clash with Obama on finance

Odd, isn't it, that a German is the one who has to caution Obama. Perhaps she studied economic history and learned how long FDR dragged us down with his alphabet soup spending and the New Deal. Managed to make our Depression hang on for years, when countries that didn't throw money at it rode it out in far less time. But then, never waste a crisis, as Rahm would say. It did buy him 4 terms.

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday spending cutbacks are needed following the spate of throwing money at the global economic crisis, in a direct counter to US President Barack Obama."

Merkel signals G20 clash with Obama on finance

Happy Father's Day!

To everyone who had a great dad who was always there for you, great. And if you got a crummy one in life's father lottery, well, honor him anyway. The Bible promises you a blessing if you do. It's the only one of the Ten Commandments that comes with a promise.

Men who marry the mother of their children reverse the devastation of childhood poverty. It's worth more than a college education in family economics compared to the single mom household. On the other hand, married dads who walk out on the family, usually for another, younger version of the wife of their youth, hurt everyone involved, including his kids, friends and community.

Our children aren't with us today at our lake home, but I have a package for their dad. Two shirts and a book. Woot! One of the shirts is a style he loves; the other, not so much--but I liked it. I also got him Glenn Beck's new book, The Overton Window, of the "thriller" genre. I never read that genre, but I suppose I could grit my teeth and try it. Couldn't be worse than reading the newspaper headlines. The lefty blogs (as Glenn says, writing in their mom's basement) keep trying to harass Glenn about this book (#1 on Amazon). First they ridiculed the poem used in the promo, not realizing it was Kipling's not his; then they accused him of plagiarism, not reading his credits to the author they accused him of plagiarizing. Sigh. It would help if his critics either watched or read him, instead of making up things.

The newly relocated art store, Artists N Kahoots looks very nice in the old Cokesbury bookstore location. My husband has his own section for prints of his watercolors. It's the crafty stuff that really sells, however. He doesn't do jewelry or pottery or cheese knives or decorated mirrors, batik scarves, wind chimes, etc.

I watched the sunrise at 5:55 this morning on my walk. It wasn't spectacular like many I've seen over Lake Erie, but it's always amazing to see the pink horizon, and then POP! there it is. If sunrises don't make you feel small and sunsets make you feel peaceful, then you need a tune up with the Creator. Don't worship "mother nature" or "mother earth," talk to the real Father of us all. He's anxious to hear from you on Father's Day, or any day.

We ate at the hotel again last night.  I had my 3rd rueben of the season, but this one wasn't as good as the first two--sort of soggy and the corned beef tasted odd.  So next time I'll go for the grilled chicken salad.  But the view of the lakefront and the classic car show on the lawn was spectacular.  Saw lots of cars from the 1950s, and a few from the early 60s that I would gladly ride around in with the top down.  We're really glad the hotel dining room as reopened.  When my husband went to pay the bill he discovered I had taken a twenty from his wallet when I went out to check on the new art store.  Plus, I hadn't spent it, but it was in my slacks and I had changed clothes!  So I dug around in my purse and we came up with enough for the bill and tip. Always check your wallet before leaving the house!

Worship at the pavilion at 8:30 with Bud Cox, the former Lakeside director.  I assume Rev. Jennings had another commitment--we always enjoy his services. Then after communion looking over the lake horizon we go to the Patio Restaurant for breakfast. It's a tradition, but the frig is pretty empty so today it will be a necessity too.

Freedom and liberty and myths

Most of my years were lived out in the 20th century. I grew up in a household with a liberal mother (liberal in the classical sense of the word, not the pejorative it has become), and a conservative father who owned a small business (first he worked for Standard Oil to learn the business, then became a partner with an older man in coal which was losing out to fuel oil to have the financial backing he needed, then bought out his partner and became a sole owner). Both of my parents attended Mt. Morris College (merged with Manchester in 1932), as did my mother's parents, my father using a Polo, IL charity and his athletic skills, my mother using her parents' dwindling resources. The town Mt. Morris in which my parents lived, went to college, and supported my father's little business had a thriving printing industry at one time begun by two young brothers in the early 20th century, the Kables. It then was unionized (don't know the dates), then was bought by a larger corporation, then was struck down by a union strike in the late 1970s, from which it has never recovered. The smaller publishing and fulfillment companies which grew up around the printing industry, eventually left too, as the town voters turned down bond issues and highly qualified and educated people left for greener, freer pastures, all of which will live out that same cycle. 1) Entrepreneurial start up based on a good idea at the right time, 2) thriving growth, 3) unionism, 4) increased government regulations, 5) stagnation and strikes, 6) outsourcing to less regulated area to avoid the unions, either in the U.S. or abroad, and finally, get-out-of-town-shut-it-down.

I never heard my parents argue about politics--he voted Republican, she voted Democrat, so for 65 years they crossed out each others votes. The fact that I didn't hear it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. After all, I left home when I was 17 (went to California after graduation to work in a church program, and then in the fall went away to college). From then on I was a visitor and we talked about other things--town issues, grandchildren, grandparents, health, etc. I followed Mother's path and voted pretty much a straight Democratic ticket until the 2000 presidential election, although for local and state elections I voted for what ever name recognition the candidate had.

During my parents' lifetime and my own, however, there were vast changes in our political, economic and religious life. They lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, Korea, Vietnam and various smaller conflicts. We had just celebrated our 40th anniversary in my father's home on Sunday when 9/11 happened on Tuesday. And during their lifetime and mine, the definitions of freedom and liberty were gradually changing. It used to mean, and this was before my time, freedom from the coercion of the state, but has evolved to mean freedom from need, from want, from lack, and especially from competition to be better or the best.

My chosen career, library science, is pretty much a profession owned and controlled by the state. Yes, there are a few private companies that employ librarians, but for the most part it is top to bottom state run and regulated. Librarians like to talk about "freedom to read" and that public libraries are "the university of the people" but that's another freedom myth, one that has been subject to the redefinition of that word. Librarians, whether public or academic, vote overwhelmingly Democratic--223 to 1--in the 2004 election. That fact alone makes the profession more liberal than Hollywood, more liberal than the ACLU. This is the result of a mindset of "we know what's best for you" and it's in all levels of government from your local zoning board, to the school board, to the state department of transportation all the way up to the Oval Office. This is why I say book banning begins in the back room of the library where "acquisition" takes place, not at the point where an irate parents comes in and complains about a sex scene in a child's book. It also explains why librarians did not invent the world wide web, Google, or any of the "tools" that are now putting them in unemployment lines. Even with all that information at their finger tips, all library innovation is dependent on government grants and regulations, not competition for ideas or investors or entrepreneurship.

The redefinition of freedom is taught throughout the public school curricula and the Sunday Schools and pulpits of mainline Protestantism. As poor as Haiti is, the private school where my husband volunteers has a classical, liberal (in the true sense) curriculum that would put ours to shame. It exists even in the "required" volunteerism component now included in most schools' college-bound tracks. In many churches, the message from the pulpit is not about freedom in Christ, but that redefined freedom that the government offers us, freedom from the need to work or be sexually chaste, freedom from saving enough for a 20% down payment on a mortgage, freedom from hunger or poor housing, freedom from having to wait for a new car until you can afford it, freedom from renting, freedom from having borders or fences that keep other people out, etc.

Planned economies promise such freedoms, usually by taking from someone who has and giving it to someone who has not. That's what President Obama offers us (following a long line of 20th century presidents), offered us this past week in his martial "words of war" against not just British Petroleum, but our whole way of life based on fossil fuels. Make no mistake, planned economies, including the newer "green" cap and trade plans, the top down, dictator/czar/president knows best, always end badly. The leftists among us advising the President are urging Obama to become a dictator, a communist--even using those words (they don't even hide it with squishy "progressive" language).

With all their faults and up and down business cycles, capitalism and corporate monopolies have never put in place plans that resulted in the deaths and imprisonment of millions and millions of their "customers" in the way that the planned economies of Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, and North Korea have murdered upwards to 100,000,000 of their own citizens.

It's a really high price to pay for "freedom," don't you think?

Lie of the Day by guess who?

There are some great ones on the list. . . just a sampling.

Lie: Part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean [is] because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.
--President Obama promotes his cap and trade plan in his speech from the Oval Office.

Lie: We're not satisfied with everything we've done [in Congress]. The way to cure that is to give us more authority and more ability.
--Barney Frank tells young Democrats that giving Congress more power is the cure.


Lie: [W]e have rescued this economy.
--President Obama, saying the stimulus worked so well that we need to pass another

Lie: [Iraq] could be one of the great achievements of this administration.
--Vice President Joe Biden forgetting to blame Bush for success in Iraq

Lie: There has never been a more open process for any legislation.
--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on Congress' work on the health care bill

Laura Ingraham: Lie of the Day Archives

Murray tries to be counted

Guest blogger Murray who lives in Mt. Morris, Illinois, and The Villages, Florida, has been playing tag with the U.S. Census. He writes here about his experiences with the 2010 census.

Have you been officially counted yet? Or if you're like me maybe you just don't count. I was in Florida when I received a Census form to fill out but since I don't claim Florida as my legal residence, I didn't fill it out for that address. We have our mail forwarded from Mt. Morris so we were just silly enough to think our Illinois census would be forwarded like our other mail. That did not happen, so I called the U.S. Census Bureau and told a person there of my dilemma and she took my address and said they would mail a census form to my Illinois address. That didn't happen, so I called them again and was told that they were no longer mailing out forms so I would have to wait for someone to show up. That didn't happen, but I did find a weather beaten notice in my bushes that a Stephanie Wolfe from the census had been in the neighborhood, so I called her number. Stephanie told me she didn't think she went to our street but couldn't explain how I had a "notice of visit" with her name and number on it. Implying that maybe "that didn't happen," she said that she had already turned in her information to her supervisor so there wasn't anything she could do. She said she would give her supervisor my phone number and he would probably call me. If I didn't hear from him then I must already be counted. Hmmmm, kinda makes me wonder how that happened! Now. . . we're supposed to trust the Federal government to run Obamacare? Plus all the other programs and policies the Obama administration have doled out against the wishes of the majority of the taxpaying citizens? Why not? I mean he's doing a hellava job with the oil spill, bringing the two political parties together, balancing the budget, our southern border disaster, ridding Washington D.C. of lobbyists, controlling spending, immigration control, our foreign policy, the two wars, kicking ass and stepping on necks of CEOs, etc., etc. And to think there's more to come! Murray

TBR list for summer

Not sure I'll get that much read. I like to take a book down to the hotel porch, but I end up people watching and writing in my blog notebook. But here's what I've got so far. There would be more but Barnes and Noble doesn't assign anyone to watch Glenn Beck's Fox program and his book recommendations often go to number one over night. For instance, I asked for George Washington Sacred Fire, and it apparently is temporarily out of stock (or print, don't remember); then I asked for F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, and they didn't have any but had 11 on order (the UAPL has a waiting list of 10). But I was able to find The Overton Window, and Samuel Adams; a life. I like non-fiction, but rarely read a "thriller."

Also on my list to finish is Timothy Keller's The Reason for God, Larry Schweikart's A Patriot's History of the United States, and The Lutherans in North America.  Then I take along some recent JAMAs, which I'm starting to call Ojama due to the editorial slant and butt kissing of the editors, and the Spring and Summer issues of Watercolor and Watercolor Artist.

Day Fifty seven--Obama's been there since day one

It's day 57. "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Interior, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House, as well as the Coast Guard, have been putting out confusing and contradictory statements since the disaster began." Morning Bell. This White House didn't create the 2010 mess, but our Federal government laid the ground work many years ago by pushing the drilling into unsafe, deep waters and into untested technology. This was not the first choice of the oil companies, nor the Gulf states. The government set a $75 million limit on liability years ago after the Exxon Alaska spill, so with that kind of permission, the drilling way off shore began. We could have had help immediately with the effects of the spill and saved thousands of livelihoods, but Obama wouldn't set aside the Jones Act because of union pressures. Now almost 3 months later at the urging of other governors of Gulf states, he's considering a waiver. Perhaps Obama is trying to beat his record of last summer where he dawdled and fumbled for 90 days over troop requests for Afghanistan? After all, didn't he call this a war? He can win this war to destroy more of the economy if he just drags it out long enough. If he can cause BP to go bankrupt, he can ruin many pension plans along with all the businesses along the coast.