Escape from slavery

C. L. Bryant, the runaway slave.

The film’s central figure is Rev. C.L. Bryant, a self-professed “runaway slave. A former NAACP chapter president in Garland, TX, C.L. abandoned an organization he felt was more about political posturing, and less about civil rights. As a former Democratic Radical who escaped the bondage of Progressivism and denounced the shackles of entitlements, he has committed himself to helping others secure the blessings of liberty that are guaranteed by the Constitution with his new found conservative values.

Rev. Bryant takes viewers on an historic journey across America that traces the footsteps of runaway slaves who escaped along routes that became known as the Underground Railroad to freedom. But in the film, he travels a “new underground railroad” upon which Black Conservatives are speaking out against big government policies which have established a “new plantation” where “overseers” like the NAACP and so-called “civil rights” leaders keep the Black community 95 percent beholden to one political party.

Citing statistics that demonstrate increasingly high rates of abortion, crime, unemployment and single parent households in the black community, the film features interviews with politicians and everyday Americans including economist Thomas Sowell, Dr. Alveda King, U.S. Representative Allen West, GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain, activist Star Parker and many others. Images from national events in Washington, D.C. provide a shocking look into the mindset of the liberal left as they seek to oppress black Americans every day.Its underlying theme asks the questions: What does the black community have to show for its 95% support of the Democratic Party? Is it truly “free at last?”

From the web page

Dramatic increase in resistence to gonorrhea anti-microbials since 2006

The incidence of resistance of Gonorrhea to drugs has been soaring since 2006--and the nasty bug is becoming resistent to the antimicrobial agents.

It is time to sound the alarm. During the past 3 years, the wily gonococcus has become less susceptible to our last line of antimicrobial defense, threatening our ability to cure gonorrhea and prevent severe sequelae.

Gonorrhea is the second most commonly reported communicable disease in the United States, with an estimated incidence of more than 600,000 cases annually. It disproportionately affects vulnerable populations such as minorities who are marginalized because of race, ethnic group, or sexual orientation. Unfortunately, Neisseria gonorrhoeae has always readily developed resistance to antimicrobial agents: it became resistant to sulfanilamide in the 1940s, penicillins and tetracyclines . . .
NEJM Feb. 9, 2012

The popularized accounts of this report didn't note that the increase is primarily among gay men.

The official report in NEJM first had the obligatory blame whitey and homophobia, 1) "minorities who are marginalized because of race, ethnic group, or sexual orientation, 2) hand out more condoms, more lectures, and more testing, 3) develop new drugs and tests, and 4) develop a vaccine.

Smack down from Alan Dershowitz

Two Soros beneficiaries and Obama water carriers get a smack down from Alan Dershowitz.

“Media Matters and Center for American Progress are two extremely left-bigoted groups that are so virulently anti-Israel and anti-supporters of Israel that they’ve gone over the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism,” Dershowitz said. ”They now use the term ‘Israel firsters,’ the way anti-Catholic bigots used to use the term ‘Vatican firsters’ or ‘Irish firsters,’ as if to suggest Americans who support Israel have dual loyalty. This false charge goes back to the Bible — goes back to the Book of Esther, goes back thousands of years. It was one of Hitler’s justifications for killing the Jews: ‘Dual loyalty, they’re not good Germans, they’re not good Americans,’ whatever it is.”

Dershowitz has been vocal against Media Matters in recent days, making that charge of anti-Semitism. However, his classification of the Center for American Progress as borderline “anti-Semitic” is noteworthy because both Media Matters and the Center for Progress have received money directly from billionaire left-wing financier George Soros, who has faced similar charges in the past."

"The daily battle is waged in Media Matters’ emails, on CAP’s blogs, Middle East Progress and ThinkProgress and most of all on Twitter, where a Media Mattters official, MJ Rosenberg, regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree as “Iraq war neocon liar” (the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) or having “dual loyalties” to the U.S. and Israel (the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin). And while the Center for American Progress tends to walk a more careful line, warm words for Israel can be hard to find on its blogs." Weekly Standard

ThinkProgress, the Center for American Progress’ blog, is run by Faiz Shakir, who also serves as the organization’s vice president. The ThinkProgress blog has become extreme even by CAP standards, forcing Ken Gude, CAP’s national security director, to attempt to distance his center’s policy arm from its blogs. In a post jointly co-authored by Faiz Shakir and Ken Gude, the two men denied that their work was anti-Semitic, but avoided similarly ruling out that their work was anti-Israel, probably because such an assertion would have simply been unsupportable.

CAP and its various affiliated blogs have taken an enthusiastically uncritical approach to the Islamist Arab Spring and a hostile, critical approach to the State of Israel. At the ThinkProgress blog, Matt Duss described Israel’s border controls with Hamas-run Gaza as a “moral abomination” and compared the deaths of Islamist radicals who attempted to murder Israeli soldiers to the murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner in the South during the Civil Rights movement. Front Page

Mid-Ohio Food Bank and Upper Arlington Public Library

The cover of the slick PR magazine for the Upper Arlington Public Library shows two staffers, a stack of packaged food and boxes, plus a banner in the background about "Donate food and reduce fine" with a logo of Mid-Ohio Food Bank. I couldn't find an article in the magazine to go with the cover so I googled it. The January 31, 2011 issue of This Week Community Newspaper Upper Arlington explained it: one Saturday afternoon from 1-5 p.m. library patrons could donate one non-perishable item and get $1.00 off their fine. Other people could donate too. I wonder about the time and effort to do this. And then, did the people just pay off the rest of their fines, was that the point? If you donate a 79 cent can of beans and get $1.00 off the fine--and you spent time and gas money to get to the library, how does that work out? Or do you just take something out of the cupboard you weren't going to use anyway, like past due date noodles from Israel or canned mushrooms from China? I've worked at the food pantry, and really, the odd things people donate. . .

I have several problems with this gimmick for paying fines. First of all, the Mid-Ohio Food Bank is primarily tax supported--either by USDA food directly, by farm produce supported by the USDA, by direct payments from the federal government, by direct payments from the state government which probably dipped into a federal grant, through tax deductions given to businesses, or by donations from foundations which receive their money from gifts which are tax deductible. Second, the public libraries are also supported by local taxes. Third, the mission of the public library, a tax supported institution, is not to support other tax supported institutions. It has a very specific purpose in the community that no one else, no other organization can do. It should not be teaching people to read--the public schools do that; it should not be offering craft classes, hobbies, and art classes and other lyceum type programs--there are other community and private groups that do that.

If you can't make your case for being an outstanding library without this type of "volunteer" for the community poor, then hire a new PR staffer, or revise your fine schedule.

That reminds me, I have an overdue book. Crazy love by Francis Chan. It's a Christian book--a very rare find at the Upper Arlington Public Library. Take your food items to the collection box at your church. This is one area where I favor separation of church and state.

Unemployment could rise again

"Unemployment could rise back to 9 percent of the U.S. population in February, according to a Gallup survey released Tuesday, painting a grim picture for the Obama administration, which had been temporarily buoyed by promising jobs figures at the end of January." The Hill

Now, why would that be happening since things looked good in January?

1) Killing Keystone pipeline RealClearPolitics

2) The new budget is about as transparently, blatantly anti-economy as we could ask for with higher taxes. Wall Street Journal

3) The HHS Mandate on "reproductive health" which doesn't reproduce and isn't very healthy is an obvious buy off of his support among radical, anti-life feminists, and the phony "compromise" just made the President look "compromised" after it was learned his only advisors were the pro-abortion crowd. Faith and Family

And that's just in recent weeks. The only American enjoying the good life these days is Mrs. Obama, now on her 12th vacation. No wonder she left town.

Capitalism, Corporatism, Socialism and Fascism

"Capitalism is (or was) an “economic system in which capital was privately owned and traded; owners of capital got to judge how best to use it, and could draw on the foresight and creative ideas of entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers.” The main dynamic of the market system is the relationship between the producer and the consumer. Corporatism, by contrast, brings to the fore the role of the “managerial state,” in which the government takes on an increasingly larger task in telling producers what they should produce and consumers what they should consume. This can be done in many ways, some more implicit and others more aggressive. Corporatism is distinct from socialism, because under corporatism the means of production (capital) remain in private hands. But the private firms are not simply free to respond to market signals. Instead, under a corporatist structure, the government directs firms in the ways in which they should employ their resources, sometimes through moral suasion, but more often through regulation, tax policy, and legal directives. Fascism, which uses coercion, bullying, and demagoguery to control private firms, is an extreme form of corporatism."

From Corrupted Capitalism and the Housing Crisis by Jordan Ballor, Acton Commentary, Feb. 15, 2012

Could this be the new Pruitt Igoe?

In the area Hatert, at the edge of the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands, the housing corporations Portaal and Talis organize a great renewal operation. Most of the current housing does not comply with contemporary standards or needs a substantial make over.

72 apartments and a healthcare center. The irregularly shaped balconies project from each corner of the 13-storey-high tower, which was recently completed by Rotterdam studio 24H architecture. “We had a flower in mind,” says Boris Zeisser of 24H. “The balconies were designed to look like white petals and an overall organic shape was intended to evoke the image of a white rose.”

So it was with the public housing/renewal projects of the 1940s and 1950s in the United States. One of the most famous, Pruitt-Igoe of St. Louis came down in the 1970s. They had become cesspools and slum housing, festering towers of crime. Ironically, Pruitt Igoe was designed my Minoro Yamasaki, designer of the World Trade Center. Now a new film on The Pruitt-Igoe Myth "argues that the dysfunctions that prompted the Pruitt-Igoe demolition were not inevitable—that crime, violence, and vandalism were products of a negligent maintenance regime, poor financing, and poor design, as well as what New School urban studies professor Joseph Heathcott, an interviewee, characterizes as the use of public housing as a means of “planned segregation.” Freidrichs’s film is a well-crafted mix of retrospective interviews of residents and archival footage from local news sources." Howard Hosack of City Journal says the documentary is a victim of myths of its own. The fact is, the government is no better landlord than it is a step father, and the public housing actually hurt the people it intended to help. Because of preference given to single parents, fathers voluntarily left their families so they would qualify for the new housing, thus in the grand government tradition, making matters worse. ". . . blacks were robbed of the opportunity to advance through their own efforts, to build assets, and to forge communities. They—and Americans generally—continue to pay a steep price for ill-conceived projects such as Pruitt-Igoe."

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History – Film Trailer from the Pruitt-Igoe Myth on Vimeo.

People have problems with freedom

The lastest hoopla and disinformation from the left (Planned Parenthood, Democratic operatives, main stream media) demonstrates that some people have problems with the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment--protecting the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. [Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.] From the beginning of recorded time the individual has tried to get out from under the authority of the tribal leader, the dictator or the King. Finally in the 18th century civilization made it to that point where the people set up a government which guaranteed all sorts of liberties to be free of government control, like speech, religion, private property, a jury trial, the right to bear arms, etc., and now we've got misinformed yahoos who are trying to drag us back to the dark ages of serfdom and slavery. They are willing to throw it away for a roll in the hay (Obama's contraceptive compromise).

What Obama is trying to do to the Catholic Church by requiring it insure its employees for birth control, sterilization and abortifacients is nothing other than an attempt to take out the only institution in the United States big enough, and organized enough to stand up to him. God knows (no pun intended) the Protestants are too fractured and struggling with in-fighting to ever take a stand for religious freedom and morality. The Catholics have been led by the nose by their liberal wing for years, and they even helped Obamacare get passed, but they seem to have awakened from a deep sleep. The church, both Lutheran and Catholic, didn't stand up to the government of the National Socialists in Germany in the 1930s. By the time the cathedrals were being decorated with Nazi banners, it was too late.



Without subtitles

Percent voting by race and age

The latest Pew Report points out some problems with the American voting system, but this graph from the Census Bureau show that among young voters (18-24), percentage of black voters has been surpassing white since the 2000 presidential election. And it was very close in 1996. In 2008 the percent of all-blacks voting (slightly over 60%) exceded all-whites for the first time.

Very interesting graphs at the Census Bureau web site, Historical Time Series Tables.

Obama and Medical Marijuana

From Rolling Stone:

“Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue,” he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration’s high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush’s record for medical-marijuana busts. “There’s no question that Obama’s the worst president on medical marijuana,” says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “He’s gone from first to worst.””

I’ve leaned toward legalizing medical marijuana for the seriously ill for years. The stats for deaths and ER visits for legal, prescribed pain killers is horrific—especially since the drug coverage under Medicare. There are 1.2 million emergency room visits a year and a 98.4% increase since 2004. Sales of opioids in 2010 were 4 times greater than 1999. (JAMA Jan. 4, 2012) At least I haven’t heard of too many deaths from medical marijuana. Any one else?

Global warming skeptics don't deny science

"The skeptic view is that science education vis a vis climate and other environmental matters tends to be shallow, or one-sided, or politicized — in other words broken in some way and needing repair. In this way, most every prominent skeptic that works even a bit in the science/data end of things believes him or herself to be supporting, helping, and fixing science. In fact, many skeptics believe that the continued positive reception of catastrophic global warming theory is a function of the general scientific illiteracy of Americans and points to a need for more and better science education."

The Heartland so-called smoking gun

I could never get my mind wrapped around this one. It was no secret that Heartland didn't promote a lot of the man made climate change stuff, so what "strategy" was to be exposed? Anyway, the exposed document was apparently a phony.

Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient

New Pew Report is evidence that America’s voter registration system needs an upgrade

• Approximately 24 million—one of
  every eight—voter registrations in the
  United States are no longer valid or
  are significantly inaccurate.
  
  
• More than 1.8 million deceased
  individuals are listed as voters.
  
  
• Approximately 2.75 million people
  have registrations in more than one
  state.
  
  
• Researchers estimate at least
  51 million eligible U.S. citizens are
  unregistered, or more than 24 percent of
  the eligible population.

Read report here.

Inappropriate cleavage in the workplace

I had an eye popping experience at the city building last week. A female employee with 4 inches of cleavage and low cut t-shirt was sitting in a chair waiting on people who were standing behind the counter looking down practically to her navel. The African man next to me, probably a Muslim, finally went out to wait in the hall for his wife who was talking to the buxom employee rather than violate her with his eyes. Cover up ladies. You look ridiculous. I was embarrassed for her and our culture which creates such exhibitionism and then whines about sexism and women disrespected on the job. Save it for a party or the special man in your life. Any guy you attract dressed like that probably isn't going to be a good catch.

The way we dress has a huge effect on the way we perceive ourselves, and on the way we're perceived. Sadly, the two don't always match up.

My star candidate in the sexy dress, for example, may have looked in her mirror that morning and seen 'confident, individual, fashionable'. I saw 'bimbo, trying too hard, someone who doesn't have the sense to dress for the context in which she's going to be seen'.
Read more

The other female employee in the front office was wearing faded jeans and a hoody sweatshirt. She looked ready to go out and cheer on her grandchildren's soccer team, but at least she was covered up.

When I was a zygote

Even when I was a single cell, a zygote, everything about me was already determined in that little data set--my gender, eye and hair color, body build, intelligence and personality. All I needed was oxygen and nutrients to thrive, which I received from my busy mother who was chasing 2 toddlers--but I wasn't my mother and I wasn't my father, I was something unique and special, and not an extention or an appendage of their bodies, even though I would be a little bit like both of them. I continued to need oxygen and nutrition after I was outside Mom's womb, and which I still need and depend on from other people right up to today. I couldn't possibly survive alone in this world and neither can you. No one had the moral right to take my life then regardless of what ancient customs or modern laws such as were invented in 1973 that say otherwise, and you still don't now.

Santorum and Romney tax plans, similarities and differences

Mitt Romney has proposed permanently extending the 2001-03 tax cuts, eliminating taxation of investment income of most individual taxpayers, reducing the corporate income tax, eliminating the estate tax, and repealing the taxes enacted in 2010’s health reform legislation. . . The Romney plan would lower federal tax liability by $600 billion in calendar year 2015 compared with current law, roughly a 16 percent cut in total projected revenue.

Rick Santorum has proposed permanently extending the 2001-10 tax cuts and further reducing individual income taxes; cutting the corporate income tax rate in half; eliminating the estate tax; and repealing the alternative minimum tax and the taxes enacted in 2010’s health reform legislation. . . The Santorum plan would lower federal tax liability by about $1.3 trillion in calendar year 2015 compared with current law, roughly a 40 percent cut in total projected revenue.

More information at The Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.

The U.S. still needs immigrants because our schools aren’t cutting it!

Alexander Boldyrev and colleagues at Utah State University, Logan, working with Lai-Sheng Wang and colleagues at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island have synthesized a planar boron compound that has the highest coordination number of any flat molecule, squeezing ten spoke-like bonds to boron atoms into a wheel. This astounding feat of engineering not only breaks previous records for such compounds but offers new insights into bonding, coordination and the development of boron chemistry. (Alchemist Newsletter)

Naturalized U.S. citizen Alexander Boldyrev, professor of Theoretical Computational Chemistry at University of Utah, Salt Lake City did his undergraduate and master’s level work at Novosibirsky University and PhD at Moscow State University, and his Dr. Science (highest degree in USSR) at Institute of Chemical Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, in 1987.

Lai Sheng Wang received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Wuhan University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1990. His current Vita shows 322 publications where he is the first author.

My new Macy's credit card

Today I got my new Macy's card attached to a bright red and white "Congratulations" letter--enclosed with 4 pages of tiny print with a very nasty tone. “The following terms apply to both your store account purchases and American Express account purchases. It seems there’s an entity behind all this called “Department Stores National Bank” which is known as “we”, “us”, and “our”, and I‘m “you“ and “your.”

“Payments in excess of the Minimum Payment Due will be applied in accordance with law, and payments less than the Minimum Payment Due and credits will be applied at our discretion.”

Returns and credits are not applied toward your minimum payment due. Oops. I mean--Minimum Payment Due with capital letters.

“The late payment fee for each billing cycle bill be $25; or $35 for any additional past due payment during the next six billing cycles after a past due payment.” Huh?

“We may add a returned check fee for a returned payment--electronic debit, payment check, or similar payment instrument which is returned unpaid. We may add this fee the firs time your payment is returned, even if it is not returned upon resubmission. The fee will be $25; or $35 or any additional returned payment during the next six billing cycles . . . But will not exceed that permitted by law.” Woot!

You could do a telephone transfer from a deposit account, but “we” will charge a Pay-by-Phone Fee for each such transfer. . .but “we” won’t tell how much that is unless you request this optional payment service.

If for some reason you want copies of your statements, then “we” will charge you $3.00 PER ITEM--

And if you die, and “we” fail to receive Minimum Payment Due “we” can declare the entire unpaid balance in your Account due and payable (paraphrase).

We can change any thing we want in this agreement--we’ll mail you the changes but only if you’ve first notified us you are moving (paraphrase).

We can assign any information you gave us to open this account to anyone we damn well please (I’m paraphrasing), and don’t come whining to us if you think we made a mistake, contact the Credit Bureau Dispute Verification, etc. Mason, OH.

And you realize all this is done from South Dakota. What?

You are only half way down the first page, and can’t even grasp was #19 says.

On to the next section:

The annual percentage rate description is so arcane, you can’t understand it, but it is calculated at 24.50% which corresponds to a Daily Periodic Rate of .06712%. But that could increase. . .

“We” can terminate the use of your Account without giving you notice in advance. . .

Then in the last third of the 2nd page is “Your Billing Rights,” in which we tell you what we will do if you think there is an error. (paraphrase)

Then the next document is about how we share your information.

Everyone we do business with; everything you do or any information you gave us.

Most Americans still pro-life

"By a 24 percent margin, 61-37 percent, Americans take the pro-life view that abortions should either be legal under no circumstances or legal only under a few circumstances. Although Gallup doesn’t specify those “few” circumstances, polling data has consistently shown that, when asked about cases such as rape, incest, or the life of the mother, a majority of Americans want all or almost all abortions made illegal — leaving only life of the mother or rape and incest as the exceptions.

“Americans are rather conservative in their stance on abortion, with 61% now preferring that abortion be legal in only a few circumstances or no circumstances. By contrast, 37% want abortion legal in all or most circumstances,” Gallup analyst Lydia Saad writes. “Over the past two decades, Americans have consistently leaned toward believing abortion should be legal in only a few or no circumstances, although less so in the mid-1990s than since about 1997, when combined support for these has averaged close to 60%.”

In fact, Gallup polling shows that, since 1994, a majority of Americans have held a pro-life view wanting all or almost all abortions made illegal — and that pro-life view has strengthened with an average of 60 percent of Americans saying that over the years." Gallup Poll

The 37% who want abortion legal in all cases (like President Obama whose views are the most extreme of any American politician extending to a born alive infant who was intended for death) may be your health insurance company or that of an organization you are supporting. Ask. Demand a change.

Shocking revelations--corruption in government!

"Overall, the [Washington] Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers. ... White House officials stress that staffers and advisers with venture capital ties did not make funding decisions related to these companies. But e-mails released in a congressional probe of Obama’s clean-tech program show that staff and advisers with links to venture firms informally advocated for some of those companies." Washington Post

Add that to the insider trading scandal and the need to even pass the STOCK Act, and you've got a pretty good idea why the general public is apathetic about changing things in Washington. Also shows why so many votes are for sale, and why dead people still vote.

Don't look for help from certain Lutherans

Today I was chatting with a Catholic lobbyist about the HHS Mandate. I told him I didn't think he'd see much support for the Bishops from the Lutherans. I explained that I checked with Lutheran Social Services about its health insurance for employees, and found out that yes, it does cover abortions in employees' health insurance. He seemed surprised, because many Protestant groups have come forward to support them. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America--UALC's former synod--and LSS are doing much worse than Obama's mandate! If they step up now, they'll be total hypocrites.

I told the Vice President (of the local LSS) that I would not be contributing to Lutheran Social Services any longer and reminded her that over a third of abortions are for black women.

If the mandate were only about extending contraception coverage, exempting religious institutions would be obvious. But it's more than that. It is about bringing institutions thought to be retrograde to heel, and discrediting their morality. It is kulturkampf disguised as public health.
Read more.

Missouri Synod Lutheran is more Christ-like and Biblical in its response and may remember what happened when the German state socialists (Nazi) took over the church in the 1930s.

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran statement.

“The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod clearly understands and teaches that Jesus has directed his followers to ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s’ (Mark 12:17) and that secular government is used by God for the good of all society. Christian citizens recognize their responsibility to pay taxes, support the government, obey its laws, and pray for its leaders. While it is not normally within the sphere of the church to become involved in secular politics, we do recognize that individual Christians have a responsibility to exercise their rights as citizens, to express their beliefs, and to encourage the government to act in the best interest of society.

“Therefore, we encourage all of our members, as Christian citizens, to express their convictions boldly and to urge the government to be faithful in carrying out its primary responsibility to protect and preserve life. We also encourage our members, as many others in various denominations and church bodies have done, to recognize and speak out against this clear threat to the blessing of religious liberty American citizens have enjoyed since the founding of the nation.

“We also confess and affirm that if the government directs us to do something in clear violation of the will of God, ‘we must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29).”