Remodeling the upstairs bathrooms

One thing we've learned while remodeling two bathrooms (other than it costs much more to remodel than to build new) is that the building trades are doing just fine--they are very busy here in Columbus. If they were sloppy or careless, the recession did them in (as it should--survival of the fittest). However, to avoid what Obama is doing to small businesses, they are running on very small crews and expecting a lot from their employees. I'm hoping deadlines can be met. We're expecting company in June, and I don't want to send them to the neighbors.

My husband was not fond of the wallpaper in the guest bath, but I sort of enjoyed it.  High end decorators with big price tags, two men, lived in here about 23 years ago—I think this reflects their taste.   The cabinets and doors are black.  The guest bedroom had black carpet, yellow walls (lightened by the next owner from a dark green), and black and forest green checkered fabric on the walls and ceiling, plus pink roses drapery fabric with forest green completely covering the window. My husband said it looked like a funeral home.

Tax cheats in the White House and Congress

Congress gets an annual report on serious delinquents working in each government agency who are tax cheats each January. This year 98,291 current civilian employees have a severe tax lien against them. When retirees and military personnel are included, the debt figure goes up to an astounding $3.4 billion. In the Senate, there are 217 who owe the IRS a total of $2,134,501, and there are 36 tax cheats in the Executive Office of the President, owing a total of $833,970. Let's insist they clean up their act before spending one more dime of our money. The president should be ashamed to even mutter the words "fair share" if he can't get his own staff to pay theirs (and they all make excellent salaries).

Source:  Washington Times

The War Against Women—more breast cancer

Kill the babies; then make the women vulnerable to breast cancer and suicide.  Good plan, Democrats.

I was reading an article in JAMA (Feb. 27, 2013) about the increase in aggressive breast cancer among young women (15-29). Why the increase? Well, about the only suggestion offered was better imaging technology. No mention of oral contraceptives and abortions, which many studies have shown to create a problem for young women. Oral contraceptives are a class-1 carcinogen. Pregnancy and nursing protects breast tissue. Abortion increases breast cancer risk as reported in numerous studies. But then that would be both political and religious, wouldn't it, if the premier medical journal of an organization that has backed Obama 100% actually reported this?

Didn't AMA cover up tobacco risks and the Tuskegee syphilis study scandal? Isn't the journal packed with ads from pharmaceutical companies? The abortion that hurts the health of women the most is a first pregnancy abortion. I wonder if they are told that at abortion clinics? Clinics that are supported by the same government handing out oral contraceptives like they were lemon drops.

Republicans and immigration reform

Everyone seems to be talking about immigration reform. The 1986 IRCA didn't win friends for Republicans even though it was an example of bipartisan legislation many years in the making and included employer accountability, border enforcement, and amnesty for millions. 27 years later the illegals have tripled, the border isn't enforced, and employers are damned if they do and damned if they don't. The government bureaucracy did expand, however.

Signed in November 1986, IRCA required all persons to show authorization to work in the U.S., increased border enforcement, and created a legalization program for undocumented immigrants who met eligibility requirements. While critics complain that IRCA failed to prevent future waves of unauthorized immigration, they often forget the important things IRCA accomplished.

IRCA legalized approximately 3 million immigrants who met strict eligibility requirements, 1.3 million of whom legalized under the special agricultural legalization program. Obtaining legal status allowed unauthorized immigrants to improve their lives and contribute even more to the U.S. economy.

http://immigrationimpact.com/2011/11/07/remembering-the-benefits-of-irca-25-years-later/

Safety in flying

An air traffic controller who lives in Columbus and attends our church writes:  “Thank you Mr. Obama and your inept Senate and administration whose gallant efforts today, to block Senator Moran's Contract Tower Amendment, succeeded; thus in turn costing me and a thousand other Air Traffic Controllers their jobs. Your political brinkmanship in using the safety of the national airspace system as a pawn in some elaborate narcissistic game continues to prove your inadequate ability to govern this country. Shutting down 238 Air traffic Control Towers (nearly 50%) which control nearly 1/3 (28%) of our nation’s air traffic is utterly absurd as well as dangerous. I now have grave concern for the flying public as well as the ripple effect that will be felt among all who use these airports across the country for their livelihood. You have done a great disservice to this country and I pray that the cost in not in human lives.”

Spelling was a victim of the sequester

These workshop providers are racists

I was watching/listening to some parts of a diversity/multiculturalism/hate all euro-Americans training session for teachers of Wisconsin that was narrated by Dana where participants were told it was impossible for blacks to be racists because they have no power.  Really?  A black president, black attorney general, blacks on the Supreme Court, black senators and representatives, black Secretary of State, black governors, black mayors, black CEOs, black college presidents, black doctors and lawyers, black millionaires,  our top military leaders are black, all the major franchises have black owners, and so forth.  I think what these trouble makers mean is that if a black is really successful in a capitalist country, they aren't down with the struggle as Al Sharpton said.

How racist is it to ignore the accomplishments, and power of 13.6% of the population?

Who was Charles Darwin?

Church of England, but no real belief system. Worshiped at a Unitarian Church. Grandfather was a doctor and poet—very liberal and “evolutionary” in his thinking. Father was a physician and a good communicator. Shrewd investor. The culture was of “free thinkers” when Darwin was growing up. Great winds of change.  Man is supreme; no need for God. Darwin didn’t like medical school, preferred natural sciences.  His father thought he was an idle, sporting man so pushed young Charles toward the clergy (positions could be bought) so he would have an income.  He couldn’t assent to the orders of the church. So he took an ocean voyage . . .

Columbus on the move

In the last 6 days I've done more traveling around metropolitan Columbus than probably the previous decade. I am so impressed with our city even on gray rainy days! Congratulations to our Republican governor and Democratic mayor. I saw lots of growth and ingenuity, great small businesses, and yet big developments, too. Our immigrant community is starting many new businesses; I saw expansion everywhere. (unemployment 5.8%)

It was three trips to the east side for my eyes (I was wowed by Mt. Carmel), and then lots of driving around picking out bathroom cabinets, fixtures, tops, lights, etc. Yesterday we spent an hour with a salesman who will be singing in Vaude Villities (a local talent show 71 years old). At all the businesses, the sales force was knowledgeable, polite and helpful. Today the contractor came and ripped out the old shower. Finally, we have a dumpster and big trucks in our drive-way just like our neighbors.

Remember when the feminists told women they didn’t need men?

Also told them that marriage was a trap.  Oppression.  What’s a piece of paper?  They needed to be liberated.  More liberated than men.  So why if it was a trap when a woman was married to a man, is it not a trap when it’s two women or two men?

Monday memories—bathrooms

We are stripping the walls, moving furniture, and emptying bathroom cabinets that will soon be removed.  The contractor is to start on Tuesday.  Two 1970s era bathrooms are being upgraded (I’ve got a bad case of sticker shock). Who knew we had 6 different boxes of band-aids, and never could find one when needed? And to think my father was a senior in high school before he knew people had bathrooms inside their homes.             

                                

The story he told me, which may be embellished a little because he was a great story teller, was he knew there were bathrooms in public buildings like schools.  He attended Polo High School and was in the senior play.  Because his parents lived on a farm and there was a night rehearsal and then the performance, he stayed overnight with a fellow cast member and realized that people living in town had toilets inside the house, just like at school!  He was a year ahead of his age group, since in rural schools they weren’t real picky about that, so I’m guessing he was about 16 or 17 when this was taken.

When I was in first grade and my father returned from service in the Marines after the end of WWII, his old route with Standard Oil had been taken over by someone else, so he was doing a long drive to a different area.  So he bought a home in Forreston, about 15 miles from our home in Mt. Morris.  It was an old farm house on the last street at the south end, and it had no indoor toilet.  And there was a pump on the counter of the kitchen.  Really, I don’t know what my mother must have thought, but she learned carpentry and plumbing and we soon had a bathroom.  Nothing fazed that woman. Of course, being six years old, I thought it was a great adventure.  Now, not so much!

Noah’s Ark—Lessons from

An orange a day . . .

                   

Usually I have such terrible, miserable colds that last so long--usually three weeks--I really should give them names--like hurricanes or tsunamis. I was coming down with a cold when my husband returned, sick, from Haiti 2 weeks ago. But not much happened. This winter I've been eating oranges. I've always liked them, but rarely have more than one or two a year. They just tasted awfully good this year, and I've been buying 8 lb bags for about $6 and have added one orange to my daily one apple. So I think I've eaten 5 bags since the fall, or 40 lbs of oranges. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=37

Also, I candied quite a few of the orange peels until eating them was making my mouth a little raw—and making me hungry for other sweets. Maybe it was all those peels.  Lots of good stuff in those too.

Waiting for Pope Francis’ first Angelus prayer at St Peter’s square on March 17, 2013

I was watching this on EWTN.  He drives his translators and security detail crazy by going off script and off in any direction.

Celebrate!

           

In just a few days. . .

They missed the apostrophe, but it’s still cute.

CPAC 2013

There’s nothing a Democrat fears more than a black conservative . . . Allen West

http://gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com/video/former-congressman-allen-west-on-the-record-6/

Rick Santorum and Allen West

An early Ohio gun law decision

In 1920, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Mexican for concealed carry of a handgun–while asleep in his own bed. Justice Wanamaker’s scathing dissent criticized the precedents cited by the majority in defense of this absurdity:

"I hold that the laws of the state of Ohio should be so applied and so interpreted as to favor the law-abiding rather than the law-violating people. If this decision shall stand as the law of Ohio, a very large percentage of the good people of Ohio to-day are criminals, because they are daily committing criminal acts by having these weapons in their own homes for their own defense. The only safe course for them to pursue, instead of having the weapon concealed on or about their person, or under their pillow at night, is to hang the revolver on the wall and put below it a large placard with these words inscribed: “The Ohio supreme court having decided that it is a crime to carry a concealed weapon on one’s person in one’s home, even in one’s bed or bunk, this weapon is hung upon the wall that you may see it, and before you commit any burglary or assault, please, Mr. Burglar, hand me my gun.”
State v. Nieto, 101 Ohio St. 409, 430, 130 N.E. 663 (1920).

What goes on in an abortion clinic—the war against women

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J7YmrsY4KSY

Late term abortion clinic—but also an unsanitary shop of horrors. A process called “snipping,” was used by Dr. Gosnell. Scissors severed the spinal cord of the babies born alive—because he did late term abortions.  One woman in the film went back for 8 abortions. . . for that I don’t blame the doctor or the staff.  Abortions are lucrative—Gosnell became a millionaire.

“Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams called Gosnell's macabre medical clinic -- where agents found filthy and blood-stained patient rooms in addition to fetal body parts in glass jars and staff refrigerators -- a "house of horrors."”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57572339-504083/dr-kermit-gosnell-abortion-doctor-set-to-go-to-trial-for-8-murders-in-philadelphia/

The last time this clinic had been inspected was 1993. Hair and nail salons have more supervision.  Why didn’t any of the women patients or staff say something and report Gosnell to the police?

State of the Union