Have a blessed Palm Sunday

Appendicitis during a pregnancy

Although I don’t think an abortion was suggested, my husband’s mother had an appendectomy during her pregnancy with him.  He was very tiny when born.  I think I weighed more than twice his birth weight, and with his head in the palm of her hand, his toes touched the crook of her elbow.

Shades of the 60s!

I remember seeing these tight, patterned pants on campus when I was in college.  Although I think they wore socks.

I guess it’s in again.  Ah, the bold, strong American male.

http://www.zegna.com/us/home.html

Ermengildo Zegna.

You got those tax hikes, now what?

Democrats got their massive tax hikes, and are indiscriminately cutting rather than carving with the sequestration they wanted. Creating new job losses so they can blame Republicans (ran out of the Bush excuses after 4.5 years) No reduction in the deficit, however.

The problem is Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And no one has a solution; putting younger workers on a self-directed plan while raising the retirement age will be stomped to death by Democrats (not because it is bad, but because it will work), and Republicans will scream at reduction in benefits for current recipients.  No one said Republicans were conservative about spending on themselves.

Get ready for a third world experience—or medical care

Obamacare is three years old, but what terrible tantrums this oversize, clumsy youngster is having. Premiums going up, employers shrinking their work force, doctors retiring early, and young people who might have become doctors are selecting a different career route. The insurance exchange official (Chao) in charge is hoping it won't be a third world bureaucratic experience. And we're hoping we haven't been downgraded to 3rd world medical care, but wouldn't that be "fair" in the president's eyes?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2013/03/22/cms-on-obamacares-health-insurance-exchanges-lets-just-make-sure-its-not-a-third-world-experience/

Domestic violence and Sharia Law

In April 2009, the Islamic Fiqh Academy (IFA)  made a ruling entitled ‘Domestic Violence’. It’s available on-line.  It has been around for three years, and I can’t recall any American politician or feminist speaking out for the rights of women trapped in Sharia Law. It is a consensus of leading Muslim scholars in the world today on the rights of women.

This fatwa represents the absolute authority of the sharia over all understandings of human rights as they apply to women and the family, specifically including international human rights conventions and covenants.

The fatwa upholds the right of a husband to beat his wife.

This fatwa also upholds the right of a husband to rape his wife, for it is not 'domestic violence' for a man to insist upon his conjugal rights.

The fatwa also upholds the right of a male guardian to contract the marriage of a virgin female .

The right of women to move around freely in public without a supervising male is rejected as contrary to sharia law.

The fatwa upholds sharia law's non-reciprocal approach to divorce, which make it easy for man to divorce his wife, but hard for a women to obtain a divorce, except through a difficult legal process.

http://markdurie.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Domestic%20Violence

Change in Hourly Wages for men and women

“The economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households. Men who are less successful are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.”

Source: "Wayward Sons: The Emerging Gender Gap in Labor Markets and Education," David Autor and Melanie Wasserman

Friday Family Photo—sort of

Today I turned on 610 a.m. and got dead air.  It was Glenn Beck so overcome with grief about his dog Victor that he couldn’t speak.  Glenn gets a lot of hassle from the lefties for his tears (progressives don’t cry), but you’d  have to be awfully hard hearted not to tear up a little on this one. He prepared his children by watching Roma Downey’s “The Bible.”  They talked about faith and love.  He wanted to bury Victor but was afraid what would happen to him if the family moved, so he will be cremated.

At first I thought I would never be able to remember all the dogs I wept over—because dogs that live outside just don’t live long. And their awful deaths! 

Lassie, 1944 (killed on my grandmother’s farm near Franklin Grove while we were in California during WWII)

Large stray we had for a few weeks in Alameda—he was sick; if we  named him, I don’t remember it. I’m guessing he’d been abandoned by another military family and my mom took pity on him. 1945

Laddie, 1946 (hit by a Greyhound bus when he followed us children to town, Forreston)

Jerry, 1948 (hit by a car in front of our brick house on the high-way in Forreston)

Pretty, 1948  (black and white small collie mix who had puppies under our neighbor’s porch; I think she was given to a farmer just in case she had more pups)

Curly, 1949  (one of Pretty’s pups we got to keep who disappeared when my brother and I were on a trip with Mom and grandparents)

Zero, 1949 winter (large ugly hound who “followed” me home from school one day which was against the rules; disappeared)

Lady, 1950-52 (a beautiful Dalmatian that didn’t like my mom until she learned that is who fed her regularly—died of skin cancer, buried behind the garage at 4 South Hannah)

Polka-dot, 1952-1963 (Dalmatian mix, our only indoor pet—after 1958; died of old age, I think)

        

Gay marriage fantasies—I don’t think it is the benefits

It's interesting that more young people, liberal and conservative, Christian and non-, have become more favorable about gay marriage--but not so much for traditional marriage, the one promoted in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and all civilizations from the beginning.  They’ve fallen for that “rights” argument—the carrot of government benefits.  Ha!  Marriage in the last 20 years for young adults is becoming more and more optional, with the children walking down the aisle with mom and dad, if they marry at all.  All the government studies in the world that show their own children are less likely to thrive haven’t budged their opinion that shacking up is more fun and economical.

I know a lot of older couples (male and female) living together, who I assume know about all those wonderful government perks gay marriage proponents  seem to seek.  Yes.  She ran into her 1950s boyfriend at the reunion, but they don't want to give up her alimony, so they have a commitment ceremony spoken by a preacher who got her license on the internet and see a good lawyer to protect their assets which will go to the children.  Or her husband died 30 years ago, she's got a good pension, they keep their homes separate, but are always together, on trips, outings and social events. Or they don't marry because of consanguinity or they were formerly in-laws. And of course, there's always his kids can't stand her kids, so for peace and inheritances, they avoid the marriage thing. Or, the worst.  He divorced her after her stroke which left her brain injured so she could get Medicaid and he comes to visit her in the nursing home with his girlfriend with home he shares his wife’s home.

Social security?  Oh really?  Ask any widow in her 50s who hasn't worked in 25 years. Or ask someone with a teacher's pension like me. There is nothing for us.  Also, they might want to talk to a woman, not divorced, whose husband left her for a younger more buff version of herself, and she found out the hard way there is no legal requirement for support while married and he doesn’t care if the house goes into foreclosure or the utilities aren’t paid.

It’s not all Obama’s fault

Other administrations have also contributed to the deficit.

Thanks you, Mr. President

Understanding Mary

The last few mornings I’ve been watching “Catholic Canvas” on EWTN which is an explanation of the art of the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican museums. I had known about the restoration of the frescoes, but the restoration of the tapestries is less known (at least to me).   The cape that appears to surround God in the most famous panel of Michelangelo (God reaching to touch Adam’s finger with his other arm around the baby Jesus), says a doctor, is a model of the human brain.  My minimal understanding of perspective puts me in awe of the “foreshortening” of his style, where the viewer looks up and the figures move into our space, with arms and legs and clothing hanging down.  Michelangelo knew his Bible and Christian theology. But you can’t watch much EWTN without a lot of “Mary,” adoration and stories completely unfamiliar to Protestants—at least this Lutheran.  We Lutherans give Mary a lot of attention at Christmas as an obedient, chaste young woman, and some at Easter as a grieving follower of Christ, but otherwise, not so much.  I was looking up a quote of St. Leo today, one of the few Popes ever elected who was not a Bishop, who had to deal not only with barbarian invaders of the Roman empire, but terrible fights within the church.  I came across this interesting item about Mary as the Mother of God.

Pope Leo wrote many letters and instructions in his lifetime. 140 of these letters and numerous sermons he preached exist to this day. He is known as one of the prime witnesses for the Primacy of the Pope and his authority to lead the Catholic Church. This was a controversial fact and in great dispute in his day. One of his greatest writings is known as the "Tome of St. Leo" and was a defense of the belief that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. This defense of the Incarnation of Jesus also had implications on the Church's understanding of Mary. The Church Council of Ephesus had debated the identity of Jesus and it's discussion was based on the role of Mary, was she "Christokos", i.e., the mother of Jesus the man, or was she "Theotokos", i.e., the mother of God. The sway in the Council was about to declare that she could only be the mother of the human part of Jesus, but this would imply a split in the reality of Jesus. For this to be a fact, Jesus would have only been human until his birth when at that moment the divine took form in the newborn human. Thankfully, the people of Ephesus intervened and refused to allow the Bishops to conclude their vote. They had a powerful attachment to Mary as she had spent her last years of life on this world in their city. The Council was deadlocked until delegates from Leo arrived and announced by his letter that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. This belief, would later become a formal part of our Nicene Creed. When the letter was read the delegates declared that truly "St. Peter speaks though Leo."

http://www.stleo.com/Patron.htm

Today all Christians  agree on the Nicene Creed; those on the fringes who do not may still argue about the divinity and humanity of Jesus. That he was born human and became divine is just one of the many heresies still floating today. Thank you, Pope Leo, for battling both the outside evil and the inside fighting.

Truthland, a film by Shelley, a dairy farmer

The answer to Gasland, a film shown on HBO, which was a lot of lies.  Watch the scene where Shelley interviews the EPA official sitting at a shiny surface desk—they look very odd. Sort of doubles.

Fracking. Minimal risk.  Tight regulations. Very low surface damage.   A million to 2 million wells have been created by fracturing.  No problems yet. It’s been done for decades in Louisiana.  A man, Josh Fox, who didn’t understand the science of it, made a movie called Gasland that is a story—fiction.  If there are problems it is from poor equipment, but not from fracking. Uses LESS water than other forms of energy. It’s clean, abundant, economic and it is HERE.  Flaming faucets?  Water catching on fire began a long time ago—it is not caused by fracking.  “Gas saved our Ass” was one bumper sticker that a Dimick area farmer had. It was a depressed area, and the gas wells save their family farms.

STDs infect one in four teen girls

A CDC study released in March 2008 estimates that one in four (26 percent) young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States – or 3.2 million teenage girls – is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, and trichomoniasis).

Even though most of the young women had either received information/services on STDs or contraception, the recommendation was for more counseling, testing and treatment.  No mention of the obvious—chastity and celibacy to save their lives or fertility.

So I moved ahead to the 2012 study presented at the same conference. For some odd reason, the researchers were encouraged that there was more testing among African American women, those who had multiple sex partners, and those who received public insurance or were uninsured.  But all that showed them was there is a problem. I’m not sure why annual screenings are recommended as a solution when the retesting rates remain low.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/Newsroom/stdconference2012pressrelease.html

Bi-polar disorder in children

For the general population, a conservative estimate of an individual’s risk of having full-blown bipolar disorder is one percent. Disorders in the bipolar spectrum may affect 4 to 6 percent. When one parent has bipolar disorder, the risk to each child is 15 to 30 percent. When both parents have bipolar disorder, the risk increases to 50 to 75 percent. The risk in siblings and fraternal twins is 15 to 25 percent. The risk in identical twins is approximately 70 percent.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2695748/

Who is homophobic? Society or the gay men.

Men who have sex with men is the primary way HIV/AIDS is spread.  Although less than 14% of the population, blacks (men and women) have 44% of the new infections.  New HIV infections among 13-24 year olds increased 22% from 2008 to 2010, and half of those were African American.  If the gay black or bi-sexual man is afraid to go to the doctor/clinic and continues to risk his life and the lives of the men and women he is having sex with, then who is being homophobic?  The black man with the disease, that’s who.  That excuse might have been good 20-30 years ago, but not in 2013.   Stop blaming others in society for their unwillingness to be healthy, chaste and faithful to their partners.  If they don’t think enough of themselves and their boyfriends or casual sex partners, why is the CDC (the government) expecting others to? The increase from 2008 to 2010 shows young men are being careless with the hard earned truths of the 70s and 80s.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/HIVFactSheets/TodaysEpidemic-508.pdf

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/