Home made ham and bean soup with cornbread

My son got a large ham for Christmas and talked his sister into making bean soup with it.  She shared, so I thought corn bread might go well with the bean soup.  Don’t you love Google when you’re sorta, almost sure you could wing it, but you’d better check?  This is from Heather Likes Food.

Ingredients

2 cups Bisquick baking mix (I had Jiffy on hand)

1/2 cup sugar

½ cup cornmeal

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

1 cup water

½ cup melted butter

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350. In a mixing bowl, sift together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl mix together eggs, water, and butter. Add the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. There’s no need to get the lumps out, over mixing will make your cornbread dry and tough. Pour batter into a greased 8×8 pan and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. A toothpick should come out clean when inserted in the middle. ENJOY!

Inmates are lining up to sign on!

Beth Shaw writes, “Dianne Fienstein received a petition signed by over 100K people stating they'd gladly give up all their weapons when all law-abiding citizens give up their guns. One guy who signed the petition as WV128943 said he hopes to see people unarmed when he is out in a few months so that he can pursue his career in a safer environment. He added that every one of the inmates people who have signed the petition have double pinky promised to give up their guns under the above mentioned conditions.”

Chinese scientist engaged in lawsuit against the Nobel Prize Assembly

A Chinese scientist, Dr. Rongxiang  Xu, claims to have discovered “human body regenerative restoration science''  and has filed a suit in Orange County, California, seeking credit for the research that led to the work of Sir John B. Gurdon (England) and Shinya Yamanaka (Japan)  for their discovery that "mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body."

“The work of Gurdon and Yamanaka led to a practical medical use for stem cell research that sidesteps the main argument by anti-abortion opponents” a feat pretty much ignored by our President who in 2009 reinstated embryonic stem cell research paid for by government funding (it was never illegal or restricted).

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/08/world/europe/sweden-nobel-prize-medicine/index.html

http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e8414/rr/619952

http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1087407/world-renowned-scientist-dr-rongxiang-xu-speaks-out-about-nobel-assembly-statement-claiming-they-have-not-heard-of-him

Our generation, not so much . . .

This is never a problem for us because of the age of most of the people with whom we socialize, but I sure wish the people at the next table would try it!

Al Gore—naked hypocrite

Al Gore, inherited tobacco money and a famous name, and now has further enriched himself in ways no one can support.

1) Sold his failing cable network to Al-Jazeera, an Islamic presence in our media and huge critic of US;

2) kept it out of... the hands of Glenn Beck, a libertarian and Mormon who made his money the old fashioned way (didn't inherit it);

3) avoided the new taxes of 2013 by clenching the deal in 2012, taxes he claimed were good for us;

4) will be paid in filthy fossil fuel money so he can enlarge his already huge carbon footprint.

Hypocrisy, your name plate says Gore. Wear it like a proud Democrat.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/45752

About Snopes and other fact checking websites

I'm a librarian, and I've been impressed by Snopes' research, the on-line search operation conservatives hate.  The owners have never kept it a secret that they are a small operation.  When you go to the library you can get a lot better information asking one reference person who will go after your question with a good strategy, experience, and a gut feeling that develops over time (or you're the 10th person that day to ask), than you will if you try to google it yourself and look at the first 5 based on an algorithm that favors some advertiser. 

In my opinion, the reason people don't like Snopes is because they put faith in a really dumb viral story they saw on the internet, and get mad when it is disproven. There are more fact finders debunking right wing stories than left because the right seems to have so many gullible folks. (Better gullible than mean and destructive, right?) When I write a conservative blog entry, the screamers and nasties are usually liberals who call me every imaginable name--but they are really mad about the facts I cite. (My filter deletes people with bad manners.)

I NEVER share a story without checking it first, and probably 50% of the time there are errors or exaggerations--quotes from famous people seem to be the worst—why try to improve on Billy Graham or John Wayne?  It’s a mystery.

Facts don't belong to a political party, but politics do definitely influence which questions are answered. Is Snopes' ownership liberal?  Probably.  And librarians are 223:1 liberal to conservative, but most people still go to the library for information and pay taxes to support them.

http://www.rd.com/home/rumor-detectives-true-story-or-online-hoax/

Promises, promises—your Social Security

At the outset of the Social Security program (law was passed in 1935), the federal government published an informational pamphlet that stated the following about Social Security taxes: "And finally, beginning in 1949, 12 years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay." 

Social Security is a better program for the poor than the middle class. 

"A person who earns $15,000/year will pay $86,000 in payroll taxes (employer and employee combined) over 44 years of work. When he retires, his annual benefit will be $10,128 or 11.8% of his lifetime payroll taxes. But a person who earns $110,000/year will pay $627,000 in payroll taxes over 44 years of work. When he retires, his annual benefit will be $31,260/year or 5.0% of his lifetime payroll taxes."

Most of us today would be thrilled to get almost 12% on our retirement accounts. The down side is you can't pass it along to your survivors like a private account.

This is a very informative site. 

The Tennessee Waltz

This song, the B side of Boogie Woogie Santa Claus,  is forever associated with Patty Page, who died New Year’s Day.  Page was the top-selling female singer of the 1950s with more than 100 million records.  It tells of a love lost to a friend, who danced the Tennessee Waltz with the singer’s lover.  It was written by Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart in 1946, but was made famous by Page in 1950.

In 1950, I wasn’t listening to too many pop tunes, although I’m sure I heard them in the background on radio.  But I do remember hearing Tennessee Waltz around 1950 when riding in the horse truck with Charlie Ranz.   He sang it. Silly me.  I wanted to actually hear the Tennessee Waltz, not just a song about the Tennessee Waltz, and asked him if he knew THAT song.

 

Summer 1950 on a gray pony with Charlie Ranz with his truck in the background. Sweet memories of a dear man.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57561785/patti-page-remembered-by-george-jones-charlie-daniels/

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/01/02/tennessee-waltz-singer-patti-page-dies-at-age-85/

Here’s my plan

Genealogy the casual way

Found a few more cousins on Facebook over the holiday--grandchildren and great grandchildren of my grandparents, Joe and Bessie (seated), children and grandchildren of Gladys (far right), Dad's sister who died in 1976. She had the biggest smile and greatest laugh in Northern Illinois. My dad had four sisters--all loaded with personality and good looks.

Crafting religious freedom

"Lang may yer lum reek!"

We Bruces don't have any Scottish customs (but I do have a genealogy from Cousin Jim Bruce going back to Scotland), but I thought this one might be nice. A traditional Scottish New Year toast is: "Lang may yer lum reek!" It's not as racy as it sounds. It means "Long may your chimney smoke"--a reference to coal and keeping warm and prosperous. We've come a long way since enough coal for the fireplace was a good luck toast. We are very blessed indeed!

I'm going to try the "drop a note about the good things that happen" in a jar idea and then read them next New Year's Eve--an idea which I found on Facebook. I have a nice glass jar with a blue lid that had candy in it--from a client, I think. So I dropped in a note this evening about the wonderful church service last night and dinner with friends to bring in the New Year (technically not 2013, but a nice memory), and I asked my husband for a good thing, and he said, "Northwestern won its first bowl game in 64 years."

From Day 1 of the page a day calendar we got from sister Debbie.

"God uses marriage to help us eliminate loneliness, multiply our effectiveness, establish families, raise children, enjoy life, and bless us with relational intimacy. But beyond this, marriage also shows us our need to grow and deal with our own issues and self-centeredness through the help of a lifelong partner."

If I did this

I’d be writing poetry in my home office.

http://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/poetry-at-work/

My 2009 New Year’s Resolution

Was to buy a decent floor lamp.  I think this might be it. JC Penney’s.

Uses three 40W bulbs and one 100W bulb, maximum—not sure how that compares with what I bought in December 2009 or if you can have all that wattage on at one time.  When I was growing up, my parents had floor lamps with a number of bulbs so you had some control over the light.  They are not a piece of art, but that’s OK if all you want to do is read or mend something.

Different rules, of course, for California.  They’re probably hoarding their old lamps. “Due to Title 20 legislation, California customers will receive a lamp with an on/off switch and a free compact florescent bulb.” Woot!

Have a blessed and holy New Year!

Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

The January selection for our book club is Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901). I'm finding it very interesting, and Kipling's knowledge of the country of his birth which he left at a young age is amazing. Also enlightening are the notes and introduction in my used paperback copy (Penguin, 1987) by Edward Said, probably read by thousands of high school and college students in the last 25 years. Dinesh D'Sousa calls Edward Said Obama's founding father.... "One of Obama’s founding fathers who remains relatively unknown is the Palestinian radical Edward Said. Prior to his death in 2003, Said was the leading anti-colonial thinker in the United States. Obama studied with Said at Columbia University and the two maintained a relationship over the next two decades."

Said is actually an excellent writer, and I’m thankful to have his critical analysis of a novel 110 years old.  But as a man without a country, a U.S. immigrant always unhappy with his adopted home, he reminds me so much of all the transient (in soul and sometimes body) faculty and foreign students I knew at the University of Illinois in the 1950s-60s. Because I was a foreign language major many of my instructors were emigres—driven from homeland by politics or war.  First degree relatives shot, burned or imprisoned, never to be seen again.  The cultural heritage of centuries ripped away.  Many of my classmates came to the U.S. as “displaced persons” as toddlers or children after WWII--grateful for their lives, but always mourning what had been lost to Stalin, or Mao, or Hitler, or Tito, etc.  Some had been ethnic Chinese whose families had lived for years outside China, sort of double displacement.

No matter what is good in the novel Kim, Said can't get past British imperialism, as Obama can't get past what he calls American imperialism. One can substitute Said's situation for what he says about colonial powers/Kim's: "For what one cannot do in one's own [homeland--anywhere in the middle east or Asia] where to try to live out the grand dream of a successful quest is only to keep coming up against one's own mediocrity and the world's corruption and degradation, one can do abroad." (p. 42 introduction, Penguin ed.) I think Said enjoyed his tiny celebrity status as the ultimate anti-colonialist, and he would have been a nobody in any other country without the give and take and freedom of speech he was allowed in the U.S. and classrooms filled with adoring disciples ready to deny anything good in Western civilization.

If you live with a librarian. . .

Lunchtime conversation may include, “I was looking at the UN statistics on homicide yesterday and noticed some very odd things.” Then the spousal eyes glaze over—sandwich in hand he heads for his man cave.

Of course, the compilers warn that not all countries keep stats the same way, nor are all current. But you can’t miss the obvious—the homicide rates for North America-- Canada (1.6 per 100,000) and the United States (4.8)--are far lower than Central and South America. Brazil 21 per 100,000, Columbia 31.4, Dominican Republic 25, Jamaica 40.9, El Salvador 69.2, Honduras 91.6. 

And then there is poor little French speaking Haiti (6.9)—apparently far safer than its island neighbor, Spanish speaking Dominican Republic, which is much more wealthy and developed.  And the African countries are almost as high—Cote d’Ivoire is 56.9 for instance, Lesotho 35.2, Malawi 36, except those African countries with Islamic rule have low homicide rates.  (Maybe covering up the women works since most homicides are committed by men.) The tables don’t specify guns or knives, clubs or poison. But countries with lower gun ownership than the U.S. do have higher homicide rates. 

Like every other bad social charting, our homicide rate soared with the war on poverty and then began dropping in the 90s, although it hasn’t returned to the 1950s level before the government encouraged men to leave their families and let them fend for themselves.

Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe, yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland's murder rate is nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder rates but few guns

 http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html

There are plenty of statistics out there—but I’m sure Congress will just throw them at each other since this isn’t about life, safety or property, but about politics.

As they play kick the can again

the President gives everyone a raise for showing up!

Why liberals hate Tim Scott, a newly appointed black Republican from South Carolina

“Taxation is a form of slavery. When a man does not receive the benefits of his toils because it is taken from him by the government, that is a form of slavery. As a black man, he [Scott]should be anti-tax.

Looking back at the creation of the unions, one must remember that unions were created in order to keep the black man from getting certain jobs. Even today, the Democrats in the state of New York do not allow BOCES programs in the state’s five big-city minority-student school systems because they don’t want black kids to learn a trade that might enable them to compete with white tradesmen for unionized jobs. As a black man, Rep. Tim Scott should be anti-union.

As far as abortion, when one reads the words of the Eugenists who promoted abortion to kill off black babies in the wombs of their mothers in order to “improve the genetics of the population,” and when one considers the fact that abortion mills are purposely placed in ghettos where they’ll be more likely used to kill black babies, it is no surprise that Rep. Tim Scott is against abortion.

All three of these things that this liberal despises Tim Scott for opposing are things that the Democrat Party use to institutionalize inequality in society.”

The Frederick Douglass Foundation

Mental illness and guns

Mack Rights writes about how the mentally ill respond to psychotropic drugs

“People talk about mental illness all the time, but they don’t too often speak of the side effects of psychotropic anti-depressants. Nor do they like to talk about the fact that 90% of mass murders are done by those on psychotropic drugs. Nor do they talk about the fact that many on these drugs commit suicide due to constantly changing brain chemistry. Nor do they talk about why so many on these drugs actually mentally snap.

While I’ve written about this more extensively in the past, I’ll give a brief description. Anti-depressants and ADHD drugs very often change the brain’s chemistry so that it begins to rely upon the artificially high level of neurotransmitters in their brain’s synapses. These neurotransmitters then guarantee that the drug taker feels good all the time, no matter what happens. This is bad when the taker of the anti-depressant suddenly doesn’t like the fact that he or she is no longer able to feel sadness upon being informed of sad news. Many of the normal emotions in life are then repressed. The feeling of artificial and euphoric happiness is the feeling all the time no matter what is going on.

Eventually, the person may try to experiment with trying not to take the drugs that the brain has become reliant upon. A crash occurs. A major crash sometimes. The brain’s synapses become devoid of the neurotransmitters that we require to function in life. This crash can also occur when the drug is replaced with another. These crashes are common. By the way, if you are taking anti-depressants or ADHD drugs and are freaked out by what I’ve just written, please do not try to quit using these drugs without help from professionals. The addictions are real, and the withdrawals are severe.

And that’s why guns aren’t recommended for people whose happiness depends upon the use of a drug to maintain an acceptable brain chemistry.”

Gun control laws and liberal policies