Programming for week 2 at Lakeside, Ohio

Two interesting seminars are scheduled: "Faith and foreign policy in the U.S." and "Cultural bridges as U.S. military strategy." And of course, a highlight at the Rhein Center, my husband will teach his class on perspective drawing and watercolor techniques.

Parts of Stephen Rock's latest book, "Faith and foreign policy," are on the Internet, and after looking at it, I probably won't walk out, which I often do rather than argue with the speaker.

Good preparation for this week is this document titled, "The American religious landscape and political attitudes" (2004) which defines traditionalists, centrists and modernists within 3 groups, the evangelicals, mainline protestants, and Roman Catholics. Traditionalists are the largest group within each category of Christian.

After Democrats were defeated in 2004 I remember watching a panel of them on PBS discussing the election and they agreed that they needed to (pretend) move to the centrist/traditional Christian viewpoint--and it worked in 2006 and 2008, mainly by redefining what values words mean. Obama used the "hope and change" vision that is New Testament language with a familiar ring to push his socialist agenda. He fooled many, but we're smater now. Unfortunately, too many "centrists" were just fence sitters and fell for a pretty face and charming rhetoric.

Dynamite program tonight at Hoover: Riders in the Sky. A very funny and musically talented cowboy quartet. Monday we'll hear the Jazz Ambassadors of the U.S. Army. Next Friday, Second City, which will have the whole audience laughing. This week's herb study is on horseradish--the herb of the year. What a strange name, and I'm sure Carolyn will explain.

I used our sparkling clean and fresh laundromat on 2nd street this morning. It's official: my washing machine has died. It won't spin out the water. We drove to Sandusky last night to look at Sears and Lowes. Doesn't seem to be much of a recession there. The parking lots of the motels were full (Cedar Point is near by) and so were the restaurants. Traffic everywhere.

Three things I like about President Obama

1. He's Black. Or bi-racial, or African-American or Kenyan-American. Whatever you want to call his ethnic background, his mother was Euro-American secularist and his father was a Kenyan Muslim, many of us thought this would never happen in our life time--not even Jesse Jackson or Michelle Obama. It hasn't improved race relations one iota, but in that sense it's good, because it shows character and politics trump race. Something conservatives had figured out before the election of 2008. Even black Republicans voted for him for that reason--and are now sorry.

2. He's married to the mother of his children and from all public appearances, is a better father than he is a President. This will be a lasting legacy, and I hope young men of all races and politics imitate him.

3. Barack Obama has given conservatives and libertarians a kick in the pants that they needed to put down the remote and the golf club and figure out what they believe and why! Whether you call them Tea Party, or 9/11 groups or grass roots conservatives, many are paying attention for the first time. Some voted for the first time realizing they've sold out their core beliefs for the good life. This is positive, even though Democrats denigrate citizen involvement unless they've organized them and taken their money. We conservatives now know or will soon learn:
Our American history, including the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Federalist Papers

FDR and LBJ were among our worst presidents growing this wet snow ball known as incapacitating entitlements

RINOs are not our friends and should be voted out of office for the sin of bipartisanship and "crossing the aisle."

Medicare and Social Security are bloated, corrupt and a huge part of our deficit problem (so Tea Partiers need to stop gripping about cutting them)

The role of the Supreme Court in our problems

How special entitlements from federal block grants to summer lunch programs have hurt minorities and low income

How the government helped create the last housing bubble and is doing all the wrong things to correct it

The relationship of church and state--stop looking at the buttons on the uniform and pay attention to the real battles

What are our property rights

How important to the economy are small businesses

Cooperation is growing among Christian groups that formerly quarrelled about everything from baptism to the Pope

People are really looking at local issues like city council, library boards, schools, zoning and seeing all politics are local and knowledge begins at home

Conservative women cadidates are more popular, knowledgeable and well known than liberal--and they've earned their spots instead of riding in on coat tails

Life issues like abortion, sex slavery, stem cell research, and euthanasia have made the Republicans the party of the "least of these" and the Democrats the party of the rich and powerful.

Great programs this week

On Tuesday evening we enjoyed Carpe Diem String Quartet. Originating at Ohio Wesleyan University, they are a wonderful group that promotes music education as well as enjoyment of all kinds of musical styles. Korine Fujiware (1/4 Japanese, if I got her story correct) composed Montana, and it was wonderful.

The Wednesday evening it was the Raleigh Ringers based in Raleigh, NC. They are a group of 17 who play both handbells and chimes. They have released a number of CDs and have performed on public television.

Tonight we plan to see Water for Elephants after a reception for donors. It's a crummy week for weather, but the programming is terrific.

What unemployment problem?

A Wall Street Journal review of financial-disclosure forms reveals that about 250 congressional staff members earned a total of $13 million in 2009 from former employers, companies they run or other side jobs.

My new garden journal

In herb class today at Lakeside we made garden journals from plain brown 3 ring notebooks. We covered them with scrapbooking paper, magazine clip art, poetry, quotes, or our own art work. The instructor gave us 3 hole punch sheets with calendars, notes, layout sheet, wish list, etc. and 3 hole dividers to which we could add envelopes for saving notes.

I pasted this quote on the cover: "I appreciate the misunderstanding I have had with Nature over my perennial border. I think it is a flower garden; she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass, and tries to correct the error." Sara Stein, 1988.

Farmers' Market today in Lakeside

Tuesday and Friday--haven't seen this year's merchants yet. Love the veggies, but despite rising prices caused by fuel costs, U.S. food is still a great buy. Just make sure it is "grown in the U.S.A."

Last year's produce

Back to the old, tired and biased news sources

Now that we're at the lake house, I have to watch ABC or CBS if I want some news. You might hate Fox News, but Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly aren't newscasters, they are opinion/talking head shows. Fox News just gives the news, and some of it you'll not find on broadcast, and some of it is dumb car chases and pretty women. Not so the news on broadcast TV. I was shocked by the opinion inserted into the two stories I remember from yesterday, the Wal-Mart law suit and the Supreme Court and John McCain's comments on the fires in Arizona. This morning at the coffee shop on Fox News I got the real McCain story--that he was quoting from a US Forest Service testimony and report about fires. I, of course, realized the snippet ABC was quoting used the words "some" and "may" but they had to interview someone from La Raza to make it "fair," the radical, anti-U.S. organization that wants the southwestern states to be returned to Mexico.

The End of Green Ideology

"President Barack Obama’s administration has thrown billions of dollars at wind, solar, ethanol, and other alternative-energy resources. Now the Fukushima tragedy is being used to justify continuing these economically dubious programs. We can bet that none of these alternative energies will easily replace oil, gas, and nuclear power in the foreseeable future.

At market prices, without public subsidies, a unit of energy produced by solar or wind in the US costs five times more than a unit produced by oil, gas, or nuclear plants. Moreover, supporters of alternative energies systematically downplay their negative environmental impact. A wind turbine requires 50 tons of steel and half a square mile of ground space. If California were to rely on solar power for its electricity consumption, the entire state would have to be covered with photovoltaic cells."

The End of Green Ideology by Guy Sorman - Project Syndicate

Michele Bachmann--she's now THE candidate to watch

She's a conservative and a Tea Partyer. Now that's refreshing. Let's see if the Democrats, who can't stand a talented beautiful woman with a special needs child, will be able to tolerate one who had 23 foster children.

"Bachmann has faced up to the Democrats' gaudy lie that people, aged 56 and over, are facing Medicare cuts with the Ryan Plan. They are not, not with the Ryan budget. Though with the Obamacare Plan we are all facing the eclipse of Medicare. Medicare will be slashed for everyone very soon, and that is written into the president's policy. Better it is to note that Ryan's reform gives us plenty of time to fix the system before the under 55-year-olds enter the depleted policy and are faced with the cuts that even the older seniors now face."

The American Spectator : The Pulchritudinous Michele Bachmann

Blogging break -- see you at Lakeside

I have a few things to take care of--mostly of a technical nature, but I shall return.

Weasel words and phrases to watch for--because they are meaningless

WAGE INEQUALITY doesn’t mean poor, doesn’t mean rich. It means a high school student working at Panera’s in a part time job makes less than a computer programmer with a college degree working for Bill Gates. It means Bill Gates makes more than the President of the United States. Wage inequality is an inflammatory phrase, however, so think about it the next time you hear it. It also means that a 2 income household generally has more money than a one income or no income household receiving government assistance, which shouldn't be rocket science.

FOOD INSECURITY doesn’t mean hunger or starvation, and especially doesn’t mean too few calories. It means that some time during the last week, month or year, a person or head of household wasn’t sure where tomorrow’s meals were coming from. Could be one day until the social security check arrived, or the support payment from the ex-, or perhaps a tornado blew through town and you have no kitchen, pantry or paycheck and the bank is gone, too. Think about that term when you hear about 14% of the nation being “food insecure.”

FOOD STAMPS don’t exist anymore; The program is now called SNAP and they don‘t use stamps, but a plastic debit-like card. Regardless of the name, they were never intended to feed families, only to supplement the resources a family already had. So if some wise guy asks you if you could live on food stamps, say NO, because that’s not the intention. The USDA began this program in the 1940s to assist farmers--there were surpluses after WWII. Now the USDA is about food subsidies, not farm subsidies, and it is also about changing behavior which costs more and is more complicated, requiring many more staff which is where a lot of the money goes. The government has about 26 food programs spread across six different federal agencies.

A LIVING WAGE begs the question whose life, what wage and living where? In 1983 when I worked for JTPA (Job Training Partnership Act which replaced CETA) I was told a living wage was $10.50 an hour in order to live minimally in Washington DC (it would have been middle class for Columbus). Not even college grads were making that 28 years ago in most cases. But that’s what the workshop presenters wanted in government entitlements--housing, child care, food, education--for welfare mothers. If a stay-at-home mom goes back to work waiting tables at lunch when the kids go to college, should she be paid “a living wage?” Listen carefully when you hear a speaker demand a “living wage” for the poor. Does he mean your babysitter, which would put you out of work? Door to door Bible salesman, which means you couldn‘t afford it? The school teacher today earns more per hour than an accountant or architect. 10 years out of college making $70,000 for 10 months with a guaranteed pension at age 55 with a union to protect her. Or how about your congressman?

ACCESS used to mean a wheel chair ramp into a restaurant or public building. Not anymore. Now it is folded into anything someone of a minority or different culture might have in their original homeland. And that includes food at public institutions or schools and no pork in government feeding programs. It might mean no gluten or peanut butter for you kid even if he's not allergic. It also means having farmer’s markets in poor neighborhoods, a long, long way from the truck farmer. It means making the low income people experimental subjects for every cockamamie sociology and nutrition program your local college or university can dream up. “Eat it, it’s good for you. Because I said so.”

SUSTAINABILITY is the all-purpose, go-to word when “green” or “tree-hugger” or “renewable” sounds too crass or over done. It’s meaningless when you think about it. Agriculture, whether industrial type farms or organic plots or your backyard, requires huge inputs--seeds, fertilizers, water, labor, and technology. Boondoggles like growing corn for ethanol were found wanting 30 years ago, but agriculture lobbyists keep at it. Fields were planted right up to roads creating run off and destroying wild animal habitat leaving birds with no home which then required more pesticides. Thousands of acres of corn changed the moisture content in the air which created storms in neighboring counties and states. Trucking the corn to storage kept huge vehicles running day and night polluting the air. Trees and animals are actually renewable resources, and petroleum is decayed vegetable matter with stored energy waiting to be used, but don’t confuse an environmentalist with science. They’re looking for religion. Oh yes, is there anything uglier than a wind farm?

Here’s a myth that helped create our housing crisis

“Homeport Programs at Columbus Housing Partnership is a private, nonprofit organization founded in the belief that a decent and affordable home is the cornerstone of family life and a healthy community.”

1) When you see the word HOUSING linked with NONPROFIT, it means government grants fund it, or the government provides tax incentives to foundations, churches or private companies like Nationwide or Huntington to help fund it.

2) PARTNERSHIP means that rather than private developers bringing their skills and resources to the neighborhood, they are encouraged to “invest” in a corporation offering tax credits where the money will first be used by the CHP to pay its staff and office expenses before it selects the builders and unions that will “redevelop” poor neighborhoods, most of whom will be making political donations to the Democratic party or the Mayor or city councilmen.

3) The mortgage industry and the construction trades may be private non-governmental businesses, but they are the biggest beneficiaries of the government's experiment of putting low-income families in mortgages they can‘t possibly afford, rather than rental property they can afford until they can develop home ownership and budgeting skills, can learn a few home repairs, or save enough for a down payment and all the expenses that go along with ownership.

4) DECENT doesn’t mean cheap. Home Again, a Columbus rehabbing project of $25,000,000, in one year (2006) did 96 roof repairs costing nearly $1,500,000. That’s nearly $14,000 a piece in crumbling neighborhoods of small houses 70-80 years old with poor streets, utilities and public schools. After Hurricane Ike a damaged church in affluent Upper Arlington with a huge roof had it replaced (not repaired) for $5,200.

5) AFFORDABLE in government housing speak means money has been transferred from tax-payer abc to entitlement receiver xyz, but many in that chain are not poor--they are staffers in government backed programs and agencies (like HUD, USDA, HDAP, OHFA COHHIO) earning good salaries, with excellent benefits and job security, which is why the programs must be continuously expanded.

6) FAMILY LIFE may be a single mom with several children. Does she really need a mortgage to add to the burdens the government has already imposed on her and the children? Like limits on her income or savings if she is to qualify for health care or nutrition supplements. The housing money would be better spent on job training and moving the children to charter schools, or a small private van service to get her to a good supermarket outside her unsafe neighborhood (but with repaired roofs).

Dear Reader, do you think the households of Andrew Weiner or Arnold Schwarzenegger are “healthy?” What about their “communities” that are circling the wagons defending them?

A house is shelter. Period. It should not be turned into a government experiment in economics, morality or education, nor an evangelization vehicle for churches.

Politico Admits 'Error' in Attributing quote to Palin

Are they trying to stir up trouble? Sometimes I miss a quotation mark or an attribution/link, but I don't take ads on my web page, and I'm not a professor at a famous university.

Politico.com admitted Friday that it made an "error" in attributing a nasty quote about Rep. Michele Bachmann to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The quote came in an opinion piece Thursday by former Virginia Democratic Party chief Paul Goldman and George Mason University professor Mark J. Rozell. The piece speculated on whether Bachmann's possible presidential run might compel Palin to get in the race, and argued that her recent bus tour sent a message to Bachmann, R-Minn. -- a message they attributed directly to Palin.

And it was nasty.

Politico Admits 'Error' in Attributing Bachmann Criticism to Palin - FoxNews.com

Media feeding frenzy in Juneau, which isn't covering the story

I hope they are bored out of their minds. And how clever to release it on paper. Does the media do this to all former governors, or just women they love to hate? At least the birthers knew they were looking for something--a birth certificate. What are these guys looking for?

"Alaska officials on Friday released thousands of pages of emails sent and received by Sarah Palin during her first 21 months as governor, giving a fresh glimpse at the time when she rose to national prominence and became the GOP vice presidential nominee. Reporters and photographers crowded into a small to pick up the six boxes of emails — 24,199 pages and weighing 100 pounds — to begin poring over them. Some carried boxes down the stairs and others, wheeling them on dollies, scrambled to be the first ones to reach elevators." Link

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "Jim Crow Was The Wrong Analogy To Use"

Someone must have told Ms. DNC the Jim Crow laws were the Democrats' idea.

But also, allowing ex-felons and illegal immigrants to vote with no ID is probably a side you don't really want to say is the image you equate with African Americans. And how she thinks the 2000 Gore Bush hanging chad fiasco fits in here is bizarre. Bush, as you recall, won that district; it was the Democrats who didn't want to believe minority voters could choose anyone but whom they were told to vote for.

HotAirPundit: Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "Jim Crow Was The Wrong Analogy To Use"

Do what I say, not what I do--Democrats

According to a 2008 article at American Thinker by Randall Hoven, lawyers and law firms are heavy donors to the Democratic party, with 76% of all donations to Democrats, the same percentage as Hollywood. (BTW, this is a paltry number compared to Democrats in the library profession.)

American Thinker Blog: Lawyers and the Democrats

So why, if they are so liberal and progressive, are law firms doing such a poor job of recruiting African Americans into their profession, even with affirmative action?

According to a completely unrelated article by James Lindgren in the Journal of Contemporary Legal issues, Vol. 17, 2008, "In 1960, 2.0% of male lawyers and judges ages 36-45 were African Americans. After several decades of affirmative action, in 2000 the proportion in the same age group has grown only modestly to 2.8% of male lawyers. Since the 1980 Census (when most African-American lawyers ages 31-65 would have graduated from law school before the era of affirmative action in law school admissions), the changes for African-American men have been even less impressive in employment by private firms and companies: from 1.8% of males in 1980 to 2.1% in 2000."

The Private and Public Employment of African-American Lawyers, 1960-2000 by James Lindgren :: SSRN

And in yet another unrelated statistic from the census, the anecdotal evidence that blacks are losing out in self-employment apparently isn't true either. Without affirmative action, they haven't done that much worse than the lawyers. Self-employed blacks have gone from 3.6% to 4.1% since 1960, compared to 11.1% to 11.4% for whites. It is down for both groups over the last 100 years.

GK Chesterton comments on the Weiner scandal

Not really, but he does talk about small, round, hard things. . . like Weiner's . . . brain.

"A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large.

In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but is not so large.

A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. . .

A lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument."

Delusional Democrats and Union Thugs in Wisconsin

Kathleen Vinehout, a Wisconsin state senator who fled to Illinois to avoid her duty to her constituents said this after an improbable naive and hopelessly pious statement about honor and harmony too bizarre to even quote:

On March 9th, Republican Leaders invented a new process of passing a bill, without warning, without a hearing and without even a bill on the Senate floor. Republican Leaders engaged in legislative trickery to deny us the democratic process; seeking only to advance their national agenda.

James Lindgren offers another view at "SSRN, Social Science Research Network" which probably state Democrats routinely ignore, just has they ignore the national one.

This essay takes a brief and preliminary look at the remedies available to the Wisconsin Senate to enact its 2011 proposed budget legislation without Democratic senators who fled the state in February 2011. Article VIII, §8 of the Wisconsin Constitution requires a three-fifths quorum only for statutes that are fiscal, that is, statutes that actually appropriate money, impose taxes, create a debt, or release a claim owed to the state. Even then, these categories have consistently been interpreted in the most limited form conceivable.

Weiner's wife and marriage

It's been a surprise to me that the slogan of the day (the last 2 days) for Associated Press (distributed to multiple syndicates) has been that the "Weiners have a strong marriage." Look, she was out of the country when the scandal broke, he was using her absenses which are frequent since she's Hillary's aide to sext his on-line buddies, and they've both been using the Clintons as mentors. I supposed that's a fool's idea of a strong marriage, but if she hangs in there with him, she's just another abused Muslim wife married to a despot. It's in her tradition.

How great a lover and husband can he be? In order to achieve those erection photos, he needed to be masturbating while excitedly anticipating others seeing it. Who really gets that overwrought by the sight of the erect male member other than other males? Who buys all those male porn magazines--other men. There will probably be more to come out of the closet for this guy. There are some secular Jews who don't like Israel although they may see themselves as Jews (Weiner actually is pro-Israel except for his party choice), and some married men who don't really like or respect women, may love their own wife (again, Weiner has a strange way of showing devotion and loyalty). I'm just saying. . .

Father's Day is June 19--think about it!

"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." Norma Bruce, June 20, 2010