Head Start isn’t

One of the biggest failures in the War on Poverty has been Head Start--again, no member of Congress would dare vote against it. The gains are lost, aka "fade away," and no amount of money will change that. Not every child with a caring, nurturing home will succeed, and not every child whose home is a disaster will fail. But statistically, we are throwing good money after bad, and 50 years of testing has shown that. Head Start has provided a lot of jobs for parents and government workers, some nutrition and health care for children, but it was never a works/nutrition/health program. If Obama wants more money for pre-schools to close his gap, just say no. It's a feel good drug.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/how-lasting-are-the-benefits-of-preschool/2014/01/07/

The War on Poverty—we’ve negotiated a failure or stalemate instead of winning the war

“The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Government spent $916 billion on these programs in 2012 alone, and roughly 100 million Americans received aid from at least one of them, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. (That figure doesn't include Social Security or Medicare benefits.) Federal and state welfare spending, adjusted for inflation, is 16 times greater than it was in 1964. If converted to cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all official poverty in the U.S.”

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303345104579282760272285556

Capitalism vs. young basement dwellers

Amish sugar cookies—Taste of Home recipe

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Directions

1. In large bowl, beat the butter, oil and sugars. Beat in eggs until well blended. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and cream of tartar; gradually add to creamed mixture.
2. Drop by small teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets.
3. Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: about 5 dozen.

Nutritional Facts

1 serving (2 each) equals 233 calories, 14 g fat (5 g saturated fat), 31 mg cholesterol, 108 mg sodium, 25 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 2 g protein.

One reader suggested adding a little salt.  Another chilled the dough, rolled into small balls, and flattened with a glass.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/amish-sugar-cookies

Hu is on first.

The Climate Change scam

‘On a domestic scale, one would think that slow economic growth, persistently high unemployment and historic low levels of labor participation, the failure of our public school systems (outside of the richest suburbs), and the imminent implosion of our health insurance and health care systems would be higher policy priorities than the Quixotic and fundamentally egomaniacal quest for humans to change (or stop changing) the climate of our planet.”

Unless, of course, you needed something to hide your policy failures.

http://spectator.org/articles/57355/our-political-climate

Conservative sources

Rush Limbaugh,
Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes,
Glenn Reynolds,
Dick Morris,
Ed Driscoll,
Richard Fernandez,
Andrew Bostom,
Caroline Glick,
Andrew Bolt,
Pamela Geller,
Tim Blair,
Phyllis Chesler,
Robert Spencer,
Melanie Phillips,
Michelle Malkin,
Victor Davis Hanson, The Blaze,
National Review and
FOX News.

Snow plow in Lucas County, Ohio

Stay home, Tuesday, January 7.

Adoptees born in Ohio are finally adults

If you were adopted in Ohio between January 1964 and September 1996 you were part of a special class of citizens denied your birth records, even if living in another state--unless you could prove you were an American Indian or you had connections to someone in vital statistics who could do the search for you. Governor Kasich signed Senate Bill 23 in December. Imagine being 50 years old (1964) and your state deciding you were still an adopted baby, unable to know the truth about your fake birth certificate. I believe Ohio Right to Life was very, very wrong to fight this for 40 years even as they fight for the right to live of the unborn.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/12/20/with-law-all-adoptees-get-access-to-records.html

Academic race and gender studies

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304858104579264321265378790

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/cjc0714hm.html

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_2_multiculti-university.html

Obama beats a dead horse named “The Gap.”

Obama, having embarrassed his administration with the tax increases and loss of insurance for millions, will once again bang the drum of income inequality to drown out the complaints, aka "the gap." But the gap for the majority who are not celebrities or wealthy millionaire politicians is caused by marriage, or the lack of it. To even it up will he tax married people more--oh wait, that is already the case, including higher prices for Obamacare than if they were single.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/two-classes-in-america-divided-by-i-do.html

Class envy, lies, distorted statistics, fuel for anger, wagging finger--all after a very expensive holiday.  Really, it's discouraging how many Americans are blind to his methods. He can help close the gap by getting government out of the way, reducing regulations, lowering taxes, but he's done just the opposite. The stock market had an unbelievably good year—he parties with celebrity millionaires and billionaires and still gripes about the rich who finance his campaigns. Also, the country did very well under sequestration and the shut down. Economy actually improved.

Upping the minimum wage so it is more expensive for the middle class to eat at a fast food restaurant and extending unemployment benefits haven’t done anything for the low income in the past—in fact those programs worsen the situation.  And it certainly won’t close the gap between my income and the President’s.

Happy now?

In Columbus it has warmed up to minus 4.  That’s not the chill factor—it’s somewhere in the mid 20s.

No coffee date this morning

Usually I meet my friend Adrienne for coffee on Tuesday morning.  We’ve called it off for today, and yesterday’s book club meeting has been moved to next Monday.

This is channel 6, about an hour ago.

Happy 69th anniversary to the Bushes

She said she married the first man she kissed.

They set the record in 2000 when they surpassed John and Abigail Adams’ 54-year union—now they’ve extended that.

http://youngcons.com/the-longest-presidential-marriage-in-us-history-celebrates-their-69th-anniversary/

The romance began when the two met during a Christmas dance at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., back when the future president was 16 years old. The two were engaged a year and a half later, right before President Bush shipped out overseas to fight in World War II as a naval pilot.

A few years later, in Sept. 1944, Bush was shot down and nearly killed during a mission over the Pacific, which resulted in his being sent back home in time for Christmas. Soon after, Bush and the then Barbara Pierce were married in Rye, N.Y. on Jan. 6, 1945. They would have six children, including future President George W. Bush.

Now that the 2 weeks vacation is over. . .

Calories at fast food restaurants

I love the You Pick 2 at Panera's, and if counting calories, it could be the better choice. The You Pick Two Broccoli Cheddar Soup and Chicken Caesar Salad add up to only 420 calories. A single Sierra Turkey Sandwich has a jaw-dropping 920 calories. (from a quiz on fast food calories at Dr. Oz) On politics I score 94%; on fast food calories, only 33%. I guess I need to eat out more.

Claire Berlinski on Sweden

Hysterical. The author of There is no alternative; Why Margaret Thatcher matters (2008 Basic Books) explains why socialists will bring up Sweden when justifying socialism:

“In his view [Neil Kinnock who disliked Thatcher], and he is perfectly clear about this, the alternative to Thatcher was a planned economy.

And the evidence he offers that such an economy can create anything other than a human hell is Sweden.  Let me finish the sentence he wouldn’t let me finish [in her interview with him, p. 151-53].  Socialists love analogies to Sweden.  But they are always unconvincing because they are based on some fantasy Sweden, rather than on an actual Nordic country bordered by Norway and Finland.  In this Sweden of lore, every single woman is also eighteen years old, blonde, busty, lonely, naked, and waiting for you in the sauna.  Kinnock is simply mistaken about Swedish unemployment statistics.  In the early 1990s, Swedish unemployment rose to 13 %, higher than ever experienced in Britain after Thatcher came to power.  In the period Kinnock is discussing, Sweden in fact experienced a precipitous slide in the prosperity league—from fourth place in 1970 to sixteenth place in 1998.  In fact the policies Kinnock admires nearly ran Sweden into the ground.  Only when they were abandoned did the Swedish economy begin to recover.  You may as well argue that the command economy has been a splendid success in Narnia.”

Berlinski agrees with her critics that she didn’t plan for Britain’s economic transition—precisely because if the government plans the economy, it is no longer free, and if it isn’t free, the transitions are likely to be in the bread lines.

Cats stealing dog beds

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/13/jerk-cats-love-stealing-dog-beds_n_4093467.html

and trying to fit in boxes, jars, vases

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/22/if-it-fits-i-sits-supercut_n_3790622.html

Claire Berlinski on free markets

The author of Why Margaret Thatcher matters (2008 Basic Books) attempts to first explain free markets, in explaining why Margaret Thatcher was so passionate about them as a key to a moral society:

“The argument for free markets involves a beautiful, fascinating, counterintuitive theory.  It is one of the great achievements in human thought.  It is also, basically, simple.  A free market is one in which the prices of goods and services are determined by individual sellers and buyers, not by the government.  It differs from a planned or command economy in that no centralized authority makes decisions about resource allocation.” p. 118

Then she goes on to explain how selling a product at gun point or deliberately not fulfilling the order on January 1 that you promised is not healthy free markets and government is needed to ensure that won’t happen. (p. 122)  Since she probably wrote this part in 2006 or 2007 she had no way to know she was predicting exactly what has happened during the Obama reign with the ACA.

Employer based health insurance  (60% of workers, 90% of market) which grew up after WWII was originally a choice by employer and employee which then developed to a jumble of government law and regulation.  The biggest plum for manipulation by Washington was exemption from income tax on that benefit.  If the government had bowed out and let the system evolve, perhaps we wouldn’t have had the messy government built system as a foundation for another failed system—Obamacare.  PPACA was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and the President has been violating it ever since.

Grammar fails

http://www.bitrebels.com/lifestyle/grammar-mistakes-on-signs/