The death of pretty

"Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different. When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well." Men will cherish pretty; they regard hot as a commodity to be used. "The death of pretty" http://www.ncregister.com/blog/pat-archbold/the-death-of-pretty

Helpful hints—just try a few

1. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster!
2. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
3. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.
4. Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
5. To make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonsful of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.
6. Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic, and at the end of the recipe if you want a stronger taste of garlic.
7. Reheat Pizza Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.
8. Easy Deviled Eggs: Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.
9. Expanding Frosting: When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.
10. Reheating refrigerated bread: To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.
11. Newspaper weeds away: Plant your plants in the ground, work the nutrients in your soil. Then wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go, cover with mulch, and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.
12. To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.
13. Flexible vacuum: To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.
14. Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip to eliminate static cling. It works; you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and ... Ta DA! ... Static is gone.
15. Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
16. De-fog your windshield: Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!
17. Re-opening envelopes: If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Voila! It unseals easily.
18. Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair.
19. Goodbye Fruit Flies: To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2' with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup an d gone forever!
20. Get Rid of Ants: Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!
21. Wash your dryer filter: Did you know that cleaning your lint trap with a dryer sheet can ruin it? Dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free, and smell good. You know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box? Apparently that stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down with it! You can test it by running the lint trap under water. If the water goes through you are good. If not then you need to clean it. The best way to keep your dryer working for a long time (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months.
22. Drop a small object on the carpet and can't find it. Place panty hose over the end of the vacuum hose and start vacuuming. The panty hose will trap anything too large to fit through the tiny hose and keep it from getting sucked into the vacuum.
23. Wearing a skirt or dress on a windy day. Cut open a few sections on the bottom seam. slip in some heavy washers or flat weights (anything small heavy and flat will work) then sew the seam back up.
24. Need to cut some corn off the cob. Use your bundt pan. Place the ear on the opening in the center of the pan, and as you slide the knife down the ear, all the kernels will collect in the main part of the pan..

Just one baby not aborted . . .

How many more have been killed who may have done great things?

Still, he was not too virtuous when he fathered an out of wedlock child himself and denied paternity claiming he was sterile. Jobs did not initiate a relationship with his daughter Lisa until she was 7.  When she was a teenager, she came to live with her father. I think I recall reading that she and her mother were on welfare for awhile.

ObamaCare bailout for Members of Congress and their staffs

How does even the most devoted Democrat justify this?

“Thanks to an amendment from Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley that Democrats enacted in 2010, the Affordable Care Act says that "the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available" to Congress are the ones offered on the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. But Members and many aides have been flipping out because they won't qualify for ObamaCare subsidies and they'll lose employer contributions they now receive under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP, which picks up about three-quarters of the average premium.

At President Obama's personal request, the Office of Personnel Management decreed that the Members don't have to get off the gravy train after all. The eat-your-own-cooking provision begins with the phrase "Notwithstanding any other provision of law." The feds now interpret that clause as a loophole to mean that the Affordable Care Act did not change the 1959 law that created the FEHBP.

Since Members and staff still technically meet the definition of federal employees qualified for the FEHBP, the Administration says they're still entitled to enroll in the FEHBP concurrently with the exchanges. The feds then "clarify"—their euphemism—that the regulatory meaning of health benefits in the FEHBP can be ObamaCare plans. Voila, taxpayers will continue to chip in $4,900 for individual and $10,000 for family coverage.”

Wall St. Journal, Review and Outlook, August 7, 2013

Screwed again by the very guys that assured us they also would be covered by Obamacare, so how bad could it be.  As it has turned out, worse than anyone expected.

RFS needs to be repealed

Repeal the Renewable Fuel Standard. It's bad for the environment and even worse morally, when many in developing countries are hungry. Ethanol made from corn is taking agricultural land and using it for fuel. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved, without adequate testing, E15 — a blend of up to 15% ethanol in gasoline — for sale to consumers. This decision wasn't based on consumer demand, but simply to meet arbitrary ethanol mandates in the flawed Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). E15 fuel can cause serious damage and potentially ruin many types of engines, even ones approved by the EPA to use the fuel.

This cannot be blamed on Obama--although he hasn't stopped it. "April 10, 2007--In step with the Bush Administration’s call to increase the supply of alternative and renewable fuels nationwide, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today established the nation’s first comprehensive Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program. . . “The Renewable Fuel Standard offers the American people a hat trick – it protects the environment, strengthens our energy security, and supports America’s farmers,” said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. “Today, we’re taking an important first step toward meeting President Bush’s “20 in 10” goal of jumping off the treadmill of foreign oil dependency.”

That was hogwash in 2007 and is even worse now. The ethanol push is welfare for farmers--it actually harms the environment and causes hunger, not security. If one administration makes a mistake, the next one can correct it.

Tina Fey and Jay Leno

Comedians--should they be influencing the news? Obama made a number of gaffes on Leno the other night, but the MSM covered for him. And they seemed impressed that instead of addressing the nation about the seriousness of the embassy closings, he went on TV with a comedian.   When Tina Fey, impersonating Sarah Palin, said she could see Russia from her house during the 2008 campaign, the MSM played it as Palin's gaffe. You really can see some Russian islands from Alaska, however, as Palin actually said. "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." But in order to make her look like a doofus, they would quote Fey. It's not hard to catch Obama in terrible mistakes on geography, titles, pronunciation or founding documents, but the press don't report it.

TV series about teens have certainly changed

Here on Lake Erie we get Canadian TV and I see shows I’ve never seen—although they may be available, but I don’t watch much TV in Columbus. Really makes me miss the Cosby show of the 1980s and Ozzie and Harriet of the 1950s. Tonight I was watching Degrassi, a Canadian series on CTV about teens who face various challenges, such as poor self-image, peer pressure, child abuse, sexual identity, gang violence, self-injury, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, death, and a number of other issues.

Frozen track and swimming pools

When Leno asked if such laws [about homosexuality] would impact the upcoming Winter Olympics, Obama said he felt Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia "have a big stake in making sure the Olympics work, and I think they understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we won't tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently."

"They’re athletes, they’re there to compete," Obama said. "And if Russia wants to uphold the Olympic spirit, then every judgment should be made on the track, or in the swimming pool, or on the balance beam, and people’s sexual orientation shouldn’t have anything to do with it."

The Winter Olympics, it goes without saying, will not have events on the track, in the swimming pool, or on the balance beam.

 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Sports/2013/08/06/Obama-Confuses-Sochi-Olympics-for-Summer-Olympics

Obama’s “legitimate rape” phrase—James Taranto

"The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack obviously are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately," President Obama told NBC's Jay Leno last night.

Wait, "unfortunately"? Does the president really wish more Americans were killed in terrorist attacks? Indeed, orders of magnitude more, since nationwide traffic fatalities typically run between 30,000 and 50,000 a year?

Of course not. Obviously when he deployed that adverb he was thinking of the unfortunate souls killed in car accidents, not the victims of terrorism. He simply misspoke--just as Todd Akin did last year when he used the unfortunate phrase "legitimate rape." But for some reason, the World's Greatest Orator and the most powerful man in the world is held to lower standards of verbal exactitude than a lowly congressman from Missouri.

James Taranto, Wall St. Journal, August 7

Yes, and Ohio and all the Appalachian states agree

Oprah and Till

It’s very unfortunate that Oprah Winfrey, the richest and most successful woman in the United States, has passed along the misinformation that the Emmett Till case of 60 years ago is like the Trayvon Martin case.  Essentially, she’s said the last 50 years of the civil rights movement, her rise to prominence, the election of thousands of black officials to city and state and federal governments, the election of a black president, a growing middle class and rich CEOs like her have been for nothing.  Both the Defense and the Prosecution said the Martin/Zimmerman case was not about race. Martin attacked Zimmerman, and was bigger than Zimmerman.  His friend Rachel said on the Piers Morgan show that Zimmerman didn’t understand “whoop ass” and that he was a creepy ass cracker maybe a gay man intent on raping Martin. Emmett Till was 14, was from Chicago visiting in Mississippi, and flirted with the wife of a convenience store owner.  Does that sound like the Trayvon Martin case? Till was kidnapped, tortured and murdered and dumped in a river.  Zimmerman called the police and clearly thought he was in danger of his life when attacked.  Maybe it’s true what Obama says about rich fat cats—they lose their perspective. Oprah certainly did.  If she said this to get publicity for her new movie, her respect meter really sinks.

Afghanistan U.S. military deaths under Obama and Bush

This was dated February 2013, so Obama’s would now be higher.

http://icasualties.org/oef/

This is for all my Democrat friends and relatives, and those Republicans who gave up on Bush and decided to vote for “hope and change.” Remember, Bush had the Congress behind him to go to war.  Obama has just done what he pleased, and not what he promised.

Work place violence? Don’t tell that to the victims

How did the early Christians worship?

For as long as I’ve been a member of a 20th or 21st century church, I’ve heard that we need to go back and do things the way the early church did.  Yet I experience churches that have liturgy, creeds and hymns with preachers in robes, and churches that have the look and feel of a rock concert with preachers in torn jeans holding guitars. Christian leftists in the mainline churches think “social justice” when they read certain passages in the Gospels; others to the right somehow find free markets and capitalism. Why not take a look at how the first and second century Christians did “church?”

St. Justin Martyr, A.D. 150
“On the day we call the day of the sun, all who dwell in the city or country gather in the same place. The memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read, as much as time permits. When the reader has finished, he who presides over those gathered admonishes and challenges them to imitate these beautiful things. Then we all rise together and offer prayers for ourselves . . . and for all others, wherever they may be, so that we may be found righteous by our life and actions, and faithful to the commandments, so as to obtain eternal salvation. When the prayers are concluded we exchange the kiss. Then someone brings bread and a cup of water and wine mixed together to him who presides over the brethren. He takes them and offers praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and for a considerable time he gives thanks [eucharistian] that we have been judged worthy of these gifts. When he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all present give voice to an acclamation by saying: ‘Amen.’ When he who presides has given thanks and the people have responded, those whom we call deacons give to those present the ‘eucharisted’ bread, wine and water and take them to those who are absent.”

Luke 24:30-31, 35; Acts 2:42, Corinthians 11:23-26

“He took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened. . . He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.”  “They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  In Chapter 11, after telling the Christians of Corinth everything they were doing wrong, Paul explains: “ ²³ For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

With the exception of the kiss, and not communing at each gathering Justin’s letter sounds like our traditional service at Upper Arlington Lutheran Church, and with the exception that the believers don’t get wine (only the priest does), it sounds like a Roman Catholic service.  Todays Protestants follow the Reformers who gave up a lot to break with Rome.  They would probably do better to follow the early church patterns, in service and sermons.  I don’t know where sermons on right relationships, parenting, attitude, volunteerism, war, government, patriotism, etc. come to play in “challenges them to imitate these beautiful things.” Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I think everyone in the pew, saved or not, needs to hear the Good News that Jesus died for them—that no one killed him—he gave his life willingly and asked us to remember his sacrifice and to give thanks by eating his body and drinking his blood in the bread and wine.

97% of news jobs are part-time

The July jobs report was blah. . . Over the past six months, the Household Survey of the Bureau of  Labor Statistics shows 963,000 more people reporting that they were employed, and 936,000 of them reported they’re in part-time jobs. This hasn’t happened in the history of this survey.  And it happened under Obama, and the finger of blame should be at his “signature” program, Obamacare.

Arguments both pro and con at Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/07/31/who-can-deny-it-obamacare-is-accelerating-u-s-towards-a-part-time-nation/

Having a crowd for Breakfast? Lazy eggs might work.

1) Spray each muffin well with nonstick spray.
2) Place a slice of ham in the bottom of each muffin well.
3) Place about a teaspoon or so of diced tomatoes on top of the ham.
4) Sprinkle some shredded cheddar cheese over the tomatoes.
5) Break one egg into each spot.
6) Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper on each.
7) Bake at 180/350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until the yolks are as firm as you desire and the whites are cooked through.

What can’t the government fix? The government.

Monday Memories—pre-school?

Noticed this advertisement for the OSU run pre-school--"a high-quality early education and care program that prepares 3 and 4 year olds to be ready for kindergarten." Although I did attend kindergarten in Alameda, CA, when I was 5 I'm not sure there were pre-schools.  My early education program prepared me for life—not kindergarten.  It was playing with neighborhood friends Mike, Tommy and Dick, riding tricycles and pulling a wagon around the block, attending church and Sunday School at the Mt. Morris Church of the Brethren on Seminary Avenue, watching how my mom did household tasks, making tents out of blankets and the dining room table, lining up my dolls for “school,” and lunch, visiting my neighbors Ruth and Earl who had no children so I used the box of toys in their living room, shopping with my mom at the A & P,  watching the traffic on Rt. 64 which was in front of our house and pretending to be a truck driver making all the transmission noises and gear shifts, standing on a stool at the kitchen sink to “pretend” to do the dishes, listening to Mom read to my brother and me from “My book house,” a collection of children’s stories from around the world, coloring and trying to stay inside the lines like my big sisters, walking down the street to visit my great-grandmother, watching the older kids—9 or 10—play softball in the street one block over, inspecting the toes and fingers of baby cousins Joyce and Janet,  listening to my Mom tell stories while she French braided my hair, and of course, the best pre-school adventure in the world—travelling to California and back from northern Illinois in a 1939 Ford with my family seeing the prairies, mountains, desert, and interesting people.

 

The North Dakota jobs boom

When I see posters like this, I wonder how many young, unemployed or under employed, government dependent adults would even be able to figure out how to get there, apply, and then show up. Do they have any skills? Can they read instructions; follow instructions?  Would they even know ND is in the United States? What do you bet immigrants will find the jobs? 

Well, they still need fast food workers to feed all those with the necessary skills. “North Dakota has turned into an energy mecca that has delivered state budget surpluses, the nation’s lowest unemployment rate and thousands of workers who get $15-an-hour-plus jobs in restaurants and convenience stores that serve $30-an-hour oil field and construction laborers who hail from across the United States.”

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY!

*Our Phones ~ Wireless
*Cooking ~ Fireless
*Cars ~ Keyless
*Food ~ Fatless
*Tires ~ Tubeless
*Dress ~ Sleeveless
*Youth ~ Jobless
*Leaders ~ Shameless
*Relationships ~ Meaningless
*Attitude ~ Careless
*Wives ~ Fearless
*Babies ~ Fatherless
*Feelings ~ Heartless
*Education ~ Valueless
*Children ~ Mannerless

Everything is becoming LESS,
but still our hopes are Endless.
In fact we are ~ Speechless
And our PRESIDENT is . . ... CLUELESS
and our Congress, USELESS!

Passed along by my sweet sister-in-law, Debbie.