An Overview of the U.S. Department of Education-- Pg 2

Is there anything in this expensive federal agency that actually improves education? I realize it pays a lot of salaries which in turn buys groceries, pays mortgages, and shops for new clothing, but really, what has it done for education of our young people if we're still so far behind other first world countries?

An Overview of the U.S. Department of Education-- Pg 2

Sustainability--the new squishy buzzword

Like nailing jello to the wall. Here's some meanings for the corporate world.

Key Practice Area - Sustainability - What is Sustainability - NAEM

Living with an aging parent--JAMA Aug 17, 2011, vol 306.no.7

JAMA has a bimonthly series called, "Care of the Aging Patient; from evidence to action," and the most recent was Living with an aging parent, a well written summary with citations to the medical literature of one family's exerience. In the library field, we used to call these articles, "How I done it good" papers. JAMA solicits these articles from actual experience, assures the authors of "peer review" status to put on their CV, and gives a $500 honorarium.

The three authors tell a story of a healthy couple, 89 and 86, who move across the country in 2006 to live with their daughter and husband after the husband begins showing signs of dementia. The daughter invites them, rather than have them go to a retirement community. The backstory is that for 15 years, the parents lived with this family in the summer to take care of their children while the parents worked. The article describes the health condition and living arrangements and how things changed between 2006 and 2011. There are 3 tables which would help anyone considering this type of living arrangement, and one list of "issues."

I could have written this article myself, and I don't have an MD, PHD or MSPH, but my good frinds Jim and Jackie did a similar move to Colorado a few years back with similar results. Nor would I need 5 grants from the U.S. government, or various awards from foundations, all listed as an appendix to the article.

Now I say this for two reasons: 1) the article is an interview with 46 citations from medical databases to confirm the points made by either the interviewer or the interviewees. There is nothing wrong with this method--it's informative, easy reading, and although it would seem to be common sense, many people don't have that, so it will be very helpful for anyone considering a multigenerational living arrangement; 2) this type of writing isn't rocket science, but for the tax payer it is very expensive.

As near as I can determine, Alabama has received nearly $9,500,000 from the federal government of Title VIII just in 2010. Glancing through the list I think this is all geriatric health issues. That's just one state, one issue. The lead author, Christine S. Ritchie, according to her vita which I looked up, has at the moment, 7 simultaneous positions/titles, and if my experience in academe is to be trusted, she's being paid for each one. I found two different amounts for Dr. Richie, both over $200,000, for grants that supported this research--research that I could have written given a few days off my regular duties. The other two authors also report (disclosure) support from grants.

No heroic measures

We came back to Columbus on Sunday and I got an early a.m. appointment today with the vet. Our cat stopped eating on Thursday, and has had very little since then and has lost a pound. The vet could find nothing in the physical exam and recommended some tests--blood, urine, etc. We've been through this before with 2 other cats, and know that not only are the tests expensive, but that more medications will follow and usually something uncomfortable for the cat or the owners. I decided against the "panel" and requested an appetite stimulant and rehydration. I went to the store and bought some "people" food she might like--tuna and salmon--and cooked her a little chicken. At this point, anything she will eat is OK.

Rich Americans Poor Americans

Why aren't we dancing in the streets?

Red Tape: Rising Cost of Government Regulation

Full employment for regulators creating and monitoring red tape.

In the first six months of the 2011 fiscal year, 15 major regulations were issued, with annual costs exceeding $5.8 billion and one-time implementation costs approaching $6.5 billion. No major rulemaking actions were taken to reduce regulatory burdens during this period. Overall, the Obama Administration imposed 75 new major regulations from January 2009 to mid-FY 2011, with annual costs of $38 billion.

Red Tape: Rising Cost of Government Regulation

What Do We Do With Barack Obama?

Michael Wolff said this 11 months ago--September 2010

Some mass misperception put Barack Obama in the White House and now nobody knows what to do with him.

What Do We Do With Barack Obama?

Five Best Saturday Columns: Obama Takedown Edition - The Atlantic Wire

This is one way columnists, generally supportive of only one view point, get to be "balanced;" they link, point or cite people they don't agree with. Atlantic is quite left of center, and here the author summarizes the latest unflattering stories about Obama. However, I took a look at the "tags." I'm a former cataloger of essentially Soviet propaganda, but I had to learn all the basic rules. None of these 5 writers are members of the Tea Party (even if such an organization or party actually existed), yet the tag is Tea Party. I suppose that's closer than "racism," which used to be the charge for anyone against Obama's policies. But Blow, the first link, is a black writer, and Peggy Noonan was so far out of favor with the Bush crowd and such an admirer of Obama during the 2008 campaign, she's lucky to have any readers at all. And one of the cited authors is British. So just who tagged this beef stew as left-over fried rabbit?

Five Best Saturday Columns: Obama Takedown Edition - Politics - The Atlantic Wire

The Anti-American President--or why we want him to fail at destroying the U.S.

It is no secret that Obama doesn't like us or the country. He's not stupid; he's not inept. He wrote about it, and apparently either no one read his books, listened to his speeches, or no one believed him then. Believe him now?

"Obama gets dreams from his socialist father. His mother was a fellow traveler. Obama lived in anti-American Indonesia as a child. Later, granddad decided Obama needed a Communist mentor. O got into Harvard on the recommendation of anti-Semitic Khalid al Mansour, an adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. In college O chose his friends carefully -- "the more politically active black students, foreign students, Chicanos, Marxist professors and structural feminists." As a professor he taught Marxist Saul Alinsky tactics, and as a constitutional scholar he believed that there are fundamental flaws in the Constitution, such as restraint on governmental power. As a community organizer and counsel he pushed sub-prime mortgages which helped buckle our economy.

He's a trench-mate with voter-fraudsters ACORN and quasi-commie SEIU. He had house parties and sat on boards with an unrepentant, revolutionary communist, who probably ghostwrote one of O's autobiographies. He attended the social-justice church of Jeremiah Wright, where he was preached at on collective salvation and black liberation. Illinois state senator and communism-lover Alice Palmer, picked O as her chief of staff. As a U.S. senator, he had the most leftist voting record. His wife's only source of American pride came in her 40s as a result of O's own success. He was endorsed by the Communist Party in 2004, and in 2008 Obama got CPUSA's endorsement again, basically running on the CPUSA platform. (And yes, CPUSA have endorsed him again for 2012!)"

Articles: The Anti-American President

Happy Birthday to my brother

My how time flies--sweetest guy in the world.

Rick Perry on evolution

If there's anything the media hate more than a pro-life candidate, it's one who doesn't believe the theory of evolution has all the answers to origins. On the other hand, maybe they love these candidates because they get so much press out of these gotcha comments.

According to the New Testament, Jesus existed before everything and created everything. Now why would he devise such a loopy plan that would take millions, maybe billions of years of death, disease and destruction before the final product finally evolved, and then have the audacity and duplicity to blame Adam and Eve for bring death into his "perfect" creation?

Paul's letter to the Colossians, Chapter 1
15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,[e]
16 for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him.
17 He existed before anything else,
and he holds all creation together.
18 Christ is also the head of the church,
which is his body.
He is the beginning,
supreme over all who rise from the dead.[f]
So he is first in everything.
19 For God in all his fullness
was pleased to live in Christ,
20 and through him God reconciled
everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Canadian luxury bus ferries U.S. President Barack Obama through Midwest - US Bus News

Another way for Obama to thumb his nose at American workers. Go on a jobs tour in a bus made in Canada. If it were anyone else I'd call him dumb, but I think this was intentional.

Canadian luxury bus ferries U.S. President Barack Obama through Midwest - US Bus News

Where is Obama's beer summit on the race riots of 2011

In 2009, the President got off on the wrong foot with most thinking, law abiding Americans by sticking his nose into a Boston local law enforcement issue--Professor Gates being mistaken for a burglar while breaking into his own home. He was reported to the police by a neighbor who didn't know him. His handlers tried to repair his butinski image by the famous beer summit.

Now there have been "flash mob" riots in a number of large cities, and many have been created by black youth using cell phones and social media. These are not poverty or "race" riots; the people are gleeful and having a great time, but they are also intimidating law abiding citizens and other young people--especially if they are white. The President has decided he will be silent on this generation that has been subsidized with food stamps, rent subsidies, Earned income tax credits, two meals a day plus snacks at school, WIC (and about 25 other food and nutrition programs), Medicaid plus free treatment at any ER and endless jobs programs. I seriously doubt that any of these young men (although there were a few women chasing them) grew up with married parents, or ever held a job that wasn't subsidized by the government.

Many in the media are ignoring the racial aspect of these riots and only showing photos of the police, not the rioters, or they are attributing the problem to "social media." It's like SUVs being blamed for accidents instead of the driver. The media will consistently report on the racial profile of a peaceful gathering of the Tea Party, but almost never if a roving band of young blacks break into and loot a department store, or disrupt a state fair.

This obvious media blindness is fodder for the white supremist web sites--you can find them by googling "flash mob riots."

Articles: Lessons from a Milwaukee Mob

These flash mobs probably won't help the Obama campaign

The media is reporting it and not mentioning race, but it's fairly easy to see. These are just punks gleefully plundering. And Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia definitely has noticed.

"Pull up your pants and buy a belt 'cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt," he said. "If you walk into somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half-down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy," the mayor said. He added: "You have damaged your own race."

The Social Degeneration Of The West: Part I - Investors.com

Is there a hole in the bucket for Obama water carriers?

What is going on? Tonight on NBC news I heard a negative report on President Obama! They actually doubt his staff that this bus tour isn't part of his campaign. Wow! Followed that with news about food inflation, caused in part by bio-fuels (aka green, or alternative energy sources).

And in a lecture today where the presenter had Obama's inaugural address on the screen and we were looking at Biblical references, a man actually said that reading the content of the speech was enlightening especially since things were so much worse today than when he took office. In Lakeside he said this. I was stunned (it's a pretty liberal place). Of course, the retired Presbyterian pastor sitting behind me, disagreed. He thought things were better. I wonder what--another war front? Inflation? The national debt? A floundering Congress? The stock market? Pretending he's not campaigning?

I guess everyone sees what they want to see, including me. Maybe I imagined that NBC story. And maybe the guy who spoke up was on the far left and thought Obama had disappointed his supporters.

Wisconsin Recall, Fleebaggers face the music

I know some Illinois women who have gone to Wisconsin to help the Fleebaggers. Seems like a fair exchange. They fled their responsibilities by fleeing to Illinois, now Illinois which has huge problems of its own created by years and years of crooked pols in Chicago and local union strikes, is going to head for Wisconsin. The unions are importing truckloads of money from outside the state, and when that isn't enough, they find volunteers.

Michelle Malkin » Wisconsin Recall, Part Two: Fleebaggers face the music

What happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing

Some moderates are surprised, but many life long Democrats see no problem with his behavior. The social wish list of the last 40 years is what they wanted, and he looked like he could do it, plus he was a 2-fer, a guy who could absolve their guilt for a history they didn't create. Most white liberals wanted him for his racial make-up, pure and simple. His politics was a plus. No white liberal could have defeated the Clinton machine with so little experience.

But whereas the communists had in their delusional vision of the Soviet Union a model of the kind of society that would replace the one they were bent on destroying, the new leftists only knew what they were against: America, or Amerika as they spelled it to suggest its kinship to Nazi Germany. Thanks, however, to the unmasking of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nightmare, they did not know what they were for. Yet once they had pulled off the incredible feat of taking over the Democratic Party behind the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972, they dropped the vain hope of a revolution, and in the social-democratic system most fully developed in Sweden they found an alternative to American capitalism that had a realistic possibility of being achieved through gradual political reform.

Norman Podhoretz: What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing. - WSJ.com

Timeless knowledge and skills

"We can’t predict the future, but we can teach “timeless knowledge and skills that all students must master to succeed in any environment,” writes Kathleen Porter-Magee on Flypaper."

I think I can count them on my 10 fingers. And they all deal with the basic building blocks of everything else I need to know.

1. Reading, writing and spelling. And I think this is a package.

2. Basic math--addition, subtraction, multiplication tables, fractions, decimals. I wish I'd had some basic statistics--it would be much easier to read medical and economic articles.

3. Simple cooking skills. White sauce. Pie crust. Lightly steaming fresh vegetables. Setting a pretty table. How to pick beans or strawberries (from the vine, not the store), and pit cherries.

4. A few basics about physics and chemistry, like hit the nail not your finger, and water that turns to steam can cause a bad burn. Why there are snowflakes and clouds and who created the world.

5. How to use a few research tools like an encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, phone book, table of contents, index, appendix, etc. particularly those concepts that are transferable to the internet and mobile devices. Call me a crazy librarian, but knowing where to find information is useful when you can't remember all of the world of knowledge.

6. Basic hygiene and health tips like don't smoke, eat all the colors, get plenty of exercise and brownies have more calories than carrot sticks.

7. Typing and a few things about basic bookkeeping.

8. First verse of at least 10 hymns and some Bible verses to use in foxholes.

9. Driving a car. I learned that about age 15 and am still doing it. Otherwise you're terribly dependent on others--although I drive less and less as I get older and never did long distances.

10. Basic music reading skills, like maybe 3 years of piano and some time in the band with a trombone.

What would you add? Or subtract?

Notice I haven't added sewing, although I used to find that useful; or gardening, although I did try that and was required to do my share as a child; or team sports (hated that); I actually think learning to swim is very important and the younger the better, but the only time I almost drowned was before I learned to swim so actually knowing how has never been very useful.

Abortion opponents have a new voice

A very interesting story about the niece of some of my Facebook and blogger friends--particular for its anti-prolife point of view. From "antiabortion" to "seeming candor" to "like any smart girlfriend" to "stoking" her belief to "dictating the national conversation" this writer definitely sees your niece and any of us who don't want babies killed in the womb as a huge threat to women and society. I will read CSM with a fresh eye from here on out.

Christian Science Monitor isn't a Christian publication, but the word Christian is still in the title. I find it hard to imagine that this reporter asks pro-abortion mothers of their subject what type of contraception they use. Rude!

And the author actually refers to our "pro-abortion rights president" not noting his deplorable record on life and that he is more extreme than anyone in Congress and believes late term, born alive abortions are legal.Yoest frames her argument similarly. "You either believe it's a life or you don't," she says. "The intellectual underpinnings really do matter. And they matter for our culture. If you can't draw the lines, you lose your bearings. You lose true north if you can't defend innocent human life."

Abortion opponents have a new voice - CSMonitor.com

Jennifer Skalka--you've got some explaining to do to the creator of life.

Taking of Private Property for Public Use

I'm watching a video on c-span about the abuses of eminent domain to seize federal public housing to reduce black population. Most of us probably feel eminent domain in the taking of private property can certainly be unfair, particularly as it destroys homes and neighborhoods in the name of public good. But this is different--it's about taking federal public housing.

Perhaps you recall, if you're from Illinois, all the neighborhoods that were destroyed in the 40s and 50s because they were "slums" and required "urban renewal." Cabrini-Green is famous. Huge, impersonal, Soviet style architecture blobs were erected. Families and neighbors were scattered. Then 40-50 years later, those buildings came down, the families and neighbors were again scattered, and the yuppies moved back into prime real estate in Chicago. The friends of the Chicago Housing Authority probably did quite well--and may even be serving in Washington DC these days.

As public housing developments go, Cabrini-Green was never the largest, toughest or most troubled in Chicago. It was, however, the closest to the city’s rich and influential neighborhoods and perhaps the most widely known housing development in the country. It was made famous by the 1970s CBS television sitcom “Good Times,” which was set in Cabrini, and it also became known for its gang wars and headline-grabbing crimes — prompting Mayor Jane M. Byrne to move into the development in 1981 with her husband and a large contingent of police officers.

Taking of Private Property for Public Use - C-SPAN Video Library

Notice how young and articulate the first speaker, Ilya Somin, is. He's a Russian immigrant who came to the U.S. at about age 9--he still remembers life in the Soviet Union. Wish our home grown children did this well--and could preserve and protect as he has the ideas of the importance of private property and free markets or even the rights of people who must live in public housing. It would be a good project for a young person to track some of the wealth created for unions and building trades of condemning, building and then condemning again and rebuilding again in the same neighborhoods. And don't forget the freebies and tax rebates that the city government hands out.