Morgan Stanley Feeding America ad

Today in the Wall Street Journal I saw a very clever ad sponsored by Morgan Stanley about "food insecurity."  It was a large graphic of a piece of broccoli in the shape of a brain.  The text: "One out of four children in this country struggles to get enough food for their bodies and minds to develop properly."

I think it's very nice to have corporate donors for food banks (Feeding America is the new name for Second Harvest). However, let's take a look at this 1 in 4 statistic. As of July 2009, the gross income ceiling to use a government funded food pantry (and that's virtually all of them, even the ones run by churches) was $21,659 for one person. There are probably many people in their first jobs who would qualify, but do they consider themselve "poor" or "hungry?" Then for a family of four the gross income figure is $44,099, and for a family of 6, it's almost $60,000.  Link.

So you see what's happening here, don't you? If you get a raise to $46,000 a year, you might lose certain "poverty" benefits. Maybe it's a special health program for a disabled child, or a certain housing allowance, or a tuition waiver (I haven't looked all those up because I think you need a PhD in government grants to figure out all 70 programs for the poor).

The very programs intended to help people get a toe hold on the middle class, to become independent and strong, in the long run hold them back unless they are exceptionally healthy, young and educated. And that's how voting blocks are created, serviced and maintained.

Remembering what it was like

She's older than Bookworm, who didn't even remember what Democrats did to blacks in the South, and I'm older than she, so what did we think of Republicans back in the days we were Democrats?

Read it here.

Obama's $200 million a day trip to India

This man just has no class. He's like the funny hat and smart uniform dictators they elect in Haiti.  He's totally oblivious to the messages he sends out. He has thrown his entire party under the bus. He calls over half the American population "enemies" and then he flees the country in the wake of an election he claims is a vote on his agenda!! Jon Stewart's Sanity Rally obviously had no affect on the President. This really is insane. I can see the need to take over an entire 600 room hotel, especially one that could be set up to be bombed because in Moslem countries, he's an infidel, not a Christian. Maybe he doesn't want to command an army, but a battalion of secret service, that's OK.  But $200 million a day when unemployment hovers at 10%, the food pantry lines are getting longer, and his abominable tax increases are set to kick in?

Will we see long term change for these women?

Last Tuesday I heard a very inspiring talk on our local NPR WOSU station, Ann Fisher's All Sides, with Judges Paul Herbert and Scott Van Der Karr about a court program to rescue women from prostitution. Link. They talked about drug treatment, safe housing, workshops, and Johns Schools, to go after the buyer.
Saving money, changing lives | The Columbus Dispatch

While browsing resources for women involved in prostitution, I've come across many sites that as a Christian, I wouldn't support, even if they are fighting prostitution. For instance, look what the curriculum for "Sanctuary for change" (funded in part by the HHS) provided its students, whose minds and bodies had already been abused for years!

"Women identified the following components of the curriculum as the most important piece of information that they would put into practice:

•“That I will use protection if I engage in sex ever.”
•“My learning to be assertive and living without my worrying about what others think of me. Living my life as being worthy.”
•“To be able to have an open dialogue about safe sex with a partner.”
•“My feelings are valid and I am in control of my body.”
•“Taking time out for me and safe sex.” "

I hope they don't give up showers and baths!

"Ohio State is participating in the first real-time, nationwide contest among colleges and universities to reduce electricity and water use in residence halls. Starting Monday (11/1), 40 colleges and universities are taking part in the Campus Conservation Nationals 2010, which challenges institutions to see which can conserve the most during a three-week period." OSUToday, Nov. 2, 2010

Spooky Dude--The George Soros Empire

I know a lot of Democrats personally who seem deathly afraid of Glenn Beck's influence. You know, the guy who next to Oprah has probably sent more Americans running off to the library or book store than any other modern commentator. They've never listened to or watched him, but do watch broadcast and cable shows that smear him and tell lies. They seem to be in favor of reading books and information on the web, unless it disturbs their favorite biases. These Democrats and/or "Independents" aren't afraid of Ariana Huffington, or Michael Moore or George Soros, all of whom are truly frightening in their power within the media and anti-American agenda, but they fear a man who tells you to do your own research, get down on your knees and pray with your children, and read the Constitution and founding fathers. Go figure.

But Beck IS very hard on George Soros. Beck is first and foremost an entertainer, and pretty good at cartoonish voices--he does a great imitation of the heavily accented (Hungarian) Soros. As Communists go, Soros is an extremely successful Capitalist. He couldn't have become so wealthy (richer than Bill Gates) living in a Communist country where he'd have to be active in the party to be a really good crook, but could in a free-market country, so he just tries to bring about our downfall by "buying" us. He's buying reporters for NPR, Secretaries of State offices, judgeships, advocating the legalization of marijuana to further stuptify brains, and running boycotts against those news organizations who tell the truth about him. Spooky dude, indeed!

The Soros Empire - George Soros - Fox Nation

Diversity, unity and multiculturalism

Ohio State's Board of Trustees has changed the name of the Office of Minority Affairs to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. So what do all these words mean. Let's think about crackers.

Unity is the sign that says CRACKERS above your head in the supermarket.

Diversity means there are 13 different boxes of Ritz crackers--salted, unsalted, 2 stacks, 4 stacks, mini-crackers with peanut butter, whole wheat, snowflake design, low fat, more fiber, cheese flavored, etc.

Multicultural is the section with crackers from Israel, Mexico, Canada, with different shapes and textures, sometimes in small metal boxes screen printed in bright colors.

Inclusion is everything in that aisle, including the ones that look more like cookies than crackers, animal crackers, pretzels made in a Ritz cracker shape, English biscuits, graham crackers, etc., but which the stockers just didn't know where to place.

The New Left and today's liberal progressives

This article, about why the voters are so deeply dissatisfied with Obama and his policies, plays around with terms. He left out Communists and Socialists when describing the splits in the Democratic party. There's nothing "new" about the New Left, and there's nothing progressive about a liberal. Look at any American city attempting to enact their policies and you see more poverty, more crime and more hopelessness than ever before.

Henry Olsen at AEI.

Obama Is Heckled by AIDS Protesters

It's not often I have to defend President Obama, but truly, he really didn't mean he was funding AIDS--he meant he was funding the fight against AIDS. There's a huge difference you know. Get that man off teleprompter and you just don't know what he's going to say! Many extremist groups actually believe that the USA has released the AIDS virus on innocent Africa. But twice during his speech in Bridgeport, where he was be heckled not by religion clingingRepublicans or angry Tea Partiers, but leftist radicals, he said he was funding global AIDS. Even if he had said it correctly, it was Bush's program PEPFAR that was successful beyond their wildest dreams, and Obama hasn't been able to come even close. That's what the hecklers were mad about. Their guy stinks on their one and only issue.

"Obama was interrupted by college-age hecklers demanding more funding for the global fight against AIDS. They chanted, "Keep the promise," and unfurled banners with the same message. The protesters were booed. "Excuse me! Excuse me, young people!" Obama said, trying to regain control. "These folks have been, you've been appearing at every rally we've been doing. And we're funding global AIDS, and the other side is not. So I don't know why you think this is a useful... Link

Obama Is Heckled by AIDS Protesters - NYTimes.com

However, even when Bush is acknowledged as a leader in this area, he is disparaged by the media. Obama has done next to nothing, but arouses no criticism in the press.

UALC has final vote today

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which claims a membership of 10,400 congregations and 4.6 million baptized members, accepted a task force on sexuality recommendation to remove the celebacy restriction for its gay and lesbian pastors in August 2009. This was not a vote to have gay pastors marry each other or to marry congregants--this was a vote to remove the celebacy requirement for openly gay and lesbian pastors. The old "committeed, loving relationship" routine.

This caused splits in many congregations, and not a blip in other. Under the ELCA’s rules, congregations that wish to disaffiliate themselves must take two votes passing by a two-thirds majority, with a 90-day consultation period with the local bishop scheduled between the votes. The congregation officially cuts off ties with the denomination upon passage of the second vote.

According to an Illinois paper by the end of June, 462 congregations had cast their first votes to leave the ELCA, with 312 adopting the resolution. Of these, 196 congregations have taken their second vote, with only 11 congregations opting not to leave the ELCA. Our church voted almost 92% to leave on the first vote and 95% on the second. The crowds were the largest I've ever seen in our church, outside a special musical concert.

I know members of other Lutheran congregations who will never have the opportunity to discuss it, or to vote on leaving, because either the church board or pastor won't allow it to even come up. You can have all the constitutional documents you want, you can all use the same Bible, but if no one is reading either one, it doesn't make a lot of difference.

In the ELCA homosexuals are invited to be full members, to share in the sacraments, and to be treated in all ways as heterosexuals. But let's remember the gold standard in virtually all churches is chastity and celebacy outside of marriage.

I was going through Google to see when ELCA (created in 1988) began accepting openly gay pastors, and it appears the local congregations never had a say in that. Some pastors finishing seminary simply announced shortly before ordination that they were gay, so they were told in order to have the church's blessings they'd need to be celebate. That may have been the early 90s. Maybe they (I think they were all women) didn't exactly lie when entering seminary, but they surely had their fingers crossed when the discussion of sex outside of marriage came up.

If a heterosexual, married pastor declared love for a non-spousal other, saying they have a "loving committed relationship" about which they need to be open in order to be culturally relevant for our times, and that Jesus didn't address a ménage à trois as a sin, not many congregations would swallow that line of reasoning, no matter how "normal" the sex drive is of the pastor. But give ELCA a few years, and it will be up for a vote.

21st-Century Social Media Literacies

This author writes, in part, about crap detection. I think I've found some.

Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Morgenstern needs to get out of the East coast bubble

Joe Morgenstern wrote a review of the film "Wecome to the Riley's" in last week's Wall Street Journal. He didn't particularly like it. Sounds pretty awful to me--would I pay that much and go to a theater for that or wait til it comes to the dollar theater?

But what I noticed was this line, "Doug (James Gandolfini) speaks for unspecified reasons, in a Southern accent" although the play takes place in Indianapolis.

I guess he's never lived in Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio, just a little below the center line, because a Midwestern speech pattern here (and I've lived in all three) might just sound "southern" to someone living in the northeast or New York City. We have a heavy dose of Appalachian English around here, which by the way, is the way the Scots Irish immigrants spoke English in the 17th and 18th centuries, Mr. Morgenstern. Their English just might be more pure than yours. To my ear, most of my Indianapolis relatives sound "southern," but then I grew up in northern Illinois, and still put and R in Washington.

Welcome to the Rileys, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and Monsters | Film Reviews by Joe Morgenstern - WSJ.com

A holy experience

"It killed my Dad that he worked the dirt to pay the taxes to pay the checks of teachers who told his kids that working the dirt wasn’t worthy work."

A beautiful love story.

In defense of food. You'll love this.

There is no Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic

This morning in a class at church a retired teacher commented on the gay teen suicide epidemic. I told her there were no statistics to back up this claim that gay teens are bullied and then commit suicide. "Oh yes," she said, "I've attended workshops on this." Now that I believe. However, the so called statistics are urban legends and are from a jumble of bad information. This was disproved 8 or 9 years ago. Ritch Savin-Williams says gay teens are just as psychologically healthy as other teens and just as resilient.

Just like the phony "death by abortion" statistics we got in the 1960s, these are politically based and biased for a different agenda. Even one suicide, for what ever reason, is too many, but there is no gay teen suicide epidemic. As a demographic, gay men and women are very successful, the best educated and highest paid group in our society. I suspect that as teens they were rather resilient, smart and brave. . . maybe more so than other groups. Also, they do their share of bullying, of each other, and straight teens.

Do you know what is killing and maiming teen-agers at an alarming rate? Automobile accidents and sports injuries. Each Year over 5,000 teens ages 16 to 20 die due to fatal injuries caused by car accidents. About 400,000 drivers age 16 to 20 will be seriously injured. These are not urban legends--these are reportable, verifiable statistics, plus they are deaths that in many cases could be prevented if we had the collective guts to raise the driving age to 18! Snowmobiling, with speeds of 90 miles per hour and vehicle weights of more than 600 lbs., causes 200 deaths and 14,000 accidents yearly. And school buses? In 2002, 26 children ages 14 and under were killed, and in 2001 an estimated 4,500 were injured in school bus-related incidents. More than 40 percent of these deaths were child pedestrians.

What about dog bites? From 1979 to 1996, 304 people in the USA died from dog attacks and 30 in 2009 alone. How does that compare to deaths by suicide caused by bullying--a statistic that just doesn't exist?

How do you know a gay teen doesn't commit suicide from unrequited love--just like straight teens--he is madly in love with someone who rejects him. Because of his youth and inexperience, life seems without value and meaning. If he was teased or bullied on Tuesday and commits suicide on Thursday after a text message from his boyfriend who is dumping him, is it the bullying, the boyfriend, or his own insecurities?

Is There a Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic? | Homosexuality, Lesbian & Gay Teen Suicide, Sexual Orientation | LiveScience

The holiday food drives are coming!

You can help the unemployed and low-income while helping your local economy. As the holidays near, you'll be getting a lot of appeals for food drives and food pantries. Many will ask for checks or donations because they can buy a lot of food for each donated dollar, much more economically than we can, because those bulk warehouses and food producers/brands are based on federal grants to states and agricultural surplus created by government planning (i.e., they aren't really cheaper if you look behind the curtain).

However, I suggest you actually purchase the food locally to help your local businesses and their employees and the whole chain of supply that isn't government sponsored or getting government grants. This time of year health and beauty aids are always appreciated. I don't like to buy giant bottles of shampoo for our use, but I've seen some brands for under $1.00, so I will buy one or two for each bag that goes to the food pantry.

Many food pantries are stressing healthier foods, so salt-free and sugar-free canned items are also appreciated. Thirty years ago we volunteers were told that many poor people didn't have adequate cooking equipment--like refrigeration, stoves or microwaves--but these days, I suspect they don't have adequate cooking knowledge. Macaroni and cheese, potato soup, navy bean soup and red beans with rice are all very inexpensive and nutritious, but how many women (or men) know how to make those Depression era delights?

The Ford Women

In today's Wall St. Journal there is a very attractive ad for women in the automotive industry. Apparently Automotive News did a feature on 100 of them. The photo includes 19 executive women at Ford (2 are not in the photo). So I took a closer, fashion look to see if there's something to be learned. I'm assuming they all had a little help with make-up and style, maybe not the two from "What not to wear" on TLC, but at least an advisor.

Of the 19 women in the Ford photo

1. 15 are in pants, 4 are in skirts
   
2. 13 are wearing black and white
   
3. 5 are in shades of grey
   
4. 1 is wearing a taupe jacket with black (Barb Samardzich, 51, who might be at the highest level, although I don't know the meaning of all the job titles
   
5. only one woman is black, none are Asian, if any are Hispanic, they must be more Spanish than Indian because I couldn't tell
   
6. only one had a really short hair cut
   
7. 7 had shoulder length or longer hair styles
   
8. 9 had chin length hair styles
   
9. one had ear lobe length hair
   
10. one had below the chin, above the shoulder length hair
    
11. only two appeared to be overweight
    
12. only one appeared to really thin (hard to tell)
    
13. all had fabulous shoes and good make-up

Good job, ladies.

Maybe he can answer my question

Today I wrote to Patrick P. O'Carroll, Jr., Inspector General of the Social Security Administration. In September he wrote (or his staff did) a report on the dead people and convicts who received the $250 stimulus check back in 2009. 71,688 beneficiaries were deceased and received about $18 million and 17,348 beneficiaries were incarcerated and received $4.3 million. I always wondered why I received one because people with teacher's pensions aren't allowed to "double dip" so I don't get a Social Security check. If there's going to be a clawback, I don't want to wait until they've added a few hundred in interest. I won't hold my breath to see if he answers.

Zombie payments

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has just released a new report on the payments by the U.S. government to over 250,000 deceased individuals--$1.1 Billion of that was to farmers. The title is Federal Programs to Die for. This is a decade long report, so it spans both the Bush and Obama administrations, however, the failure belongs to Congress which has oversite over these Agencies which have misspent the money.

"Since 2000, the known cost of these payments to over 250,000 deceased individuals has topped $1 billion, according to a review of government audits and reports by the Government Accountability Office, inspectors general, and Congress itself. This is likely only a small picture of a much larger problem. Among the agencies making payments to the deceased:

• The Social Security Administration sent $18 million in stimulus funds to 71,688 dead people and $40.3 million in questionable benefit payments to 1,760 dead people.

• The Department of Health and Human Services sent 11,000 dead people $3.9 million in assistance to pay heating and cooling costs.

• The Department of Agriculture sent $1.1 billion in farming subsidies to deceased farmers.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development overseeing local agencies knowingly distributed $15.2 million in housing subsidies to 3,995 households with at least one deceased person.

• Medicaid paid over $700,000 in claims for prescriptions for controlled substances written for over 1,800 deceased patients and prescriptions for controlled substances written by 1,200 deceased doctors.

• Medicare paid as much as $92 million in claims for medical supplies prescribed by dead doctors and $8.2 million for medical supplies prescribed for dead patients.

• Congress has established HIV/AIDS funding distribution based on historic numbers of deceased HIV/AIDS patients, while many individuals living with AIDS desperately wait for medical care."

Since almost 72,000 deceased individuals got the $250 stimulus check through the Social Security Administration, I guess I shouldn't worry that I got one, even though I don't get a Social Security check.

The Cat Club Register of 100 years ago

The National Library of Agriculture has a digital archive of fascinating publications--The Cat Club Register, is one of them. I've chosen my cats' creative, interesting names from horse registries, because they seem to have all the great names. But 100 years ago, there were some good ones for cats:

The Prince of Orange

Oliver Woolleepug

and Tortietumtee, a tortoiseshell female whose sire was unknown, but her mommy, who was out catting around, was named Toddiegoloddie

In this archive I also found a 1942 typed report of a government lab attempting to create rubber from the goldenrod plant--this was an invention of Thomas Edison who had used this process to create tires for his friend Henry Ford's Model T. He had turned it over to the U.S. government in 1930, which did nothing about it until it was desperate for rubber during WWII.

This one, Small gardens for small folks, 1912, is really precious. The author, Edith Loring Fullerton, uses photos of her own children, and it was published by W. Atlee Burpee for distribution by the USDA.

Thomas Friedman's predictable election rant

Who is Friedman kidding by blaming Republicans (and indirectly the Tea Party supporters and candidates who are the only life in this current campaign) for our economic mess? Democrats have been in control of Congress for the last four years (and most of my life time), so let's plot a graph. They are in charge of all the major cities; they've pushed all the major social legislation since FDR's New Deal and the Johnson War on Poverty, which statistically he is showing has failed, and under their President Barack Obama, have spent more money with fewer results than any administration in our history. And then with Katie Couric and Barack Obama, he blames the great unwashed, the vast fly-over couch potatoes and gun clingers watching TV evangelists, for the mess instead of the well-heeled, well- educated, beltway revolving door lobbies, and Ivy League crowd that have gotten us here with misguided, incredibly expensive social engineering.

Thanks, Mr. Friedman, for your usual, insightful drivel.

Thomas Friedman: Election rhetoric shows you can't keep a bad idea down | Viewpoints, Outlook | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle