Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Monday, August 11, 2014
Remember this boondoggle—Cash for clunkers
Cash for clunkers" (part of Obama's 2009 stimulus) actually cost the auto industry 3 billion in less than a year, according to recent research. I wonder why no one ever calculates the cost to low income families, who if they could buy a c...ar, any car which was destroyed by this program, could get to work, the super market, family reunions, recreation, etc.? And how many moderate income family took on new debt to buy that environmentally friendly vehicle due to the carrot of a discount? It's about more than the auto industry losses. http://www.nber.org/papers/w20349
“Cash for Clunkers was a 2009 economic stimulus program aimed at increasing new vehicle spending by subsidizing the replacement of older vehicles. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show the increase in sales during the two month program was completely offset during the following seven to nine months, consistent with previous research. However, we also find the program's fuel efficiency restrictions induced households to purchase more fuel efficient but less expensive vehicles, thereby reducing industry revenues by three billion dollars over the entire nine to eleven month period. This highlights the conflict between the stimulus and environmental objectives of the policy. “
Ohio’s geology—history
The lecture on Ohio's geology by Scott Kell today at Lakeside Chautauqua was really great. It's interesting to see the gender mix when the government doesn't control it. I'd say 90% of this full house was male; a few weeks ago when the lecturer was from Garth's antiques and the subject was home furnishings of the Gilded Age, it was about 90% female. Speaker Scott Kell is a long time Lakesider and really presented a fascinating, well paced lecture. Best joke: "Western Ohio is so flat, that one man sat on his porch and watched his dog run away for 3 days." The hill ridges that run through Lakeside east to west are old shore lines of Lake Erie.
Thin Privilege
I’ve lost the link, but yesterday I saw an article about "Thin Privilege." That's like "White Privilege" but only for thin, white people. I'd say this to the author (female); wait a few years, honey, and you won't need to feel guilty about being thin and getting all those privileges. I know many women who were drop dead gorgeous and slender as teens and 20s, and by the time the 40th or 50th reunion rolls around, they were all comparing diets. What's next? "Nice skin privilege?" "Great teeth privilege?"
“That’s my boy.”
Those are said to be the proud words of a convicted terrorist, an Australian Muslim Khaled Sharrouf in Syria, who tweeted out a photo of his young son holding up the severed head of a slain Syrian soldier. No, I won't give you the link because there are photos (Australian newspaper). Too gruesome.
And now some fighters have dropped bombs on ISIS and Yazidis are “free” to flee to Syria. Syria? How safe is that? Maybe if the president had done something two months ago when asked?
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Week 8, 2014 in Lakeside
The week begins on Saturday at Lakeside, and it was a wonderful performance by Joan Ellison and the Lakeside Symphony in a tribute to the “Music of Judy Garland.” Ms. Ellison is a member of the voice faculty at Baldwin-Wallace and has been a guest artist at many Ohio venues.
I attended church twice today—lakefront with pastor Jennings, and at Hoover Auditorium. Martin Marty is the guest preacher/teacher this week, and there was a wonderful quintet that played at both services, the Phoenix Wind Project, which will also present a concert this afternoon at 3 p.m. at the Lakeside Methodist church. A flute, 2 clarinets, French horn and bassoon (I think). Wonderful sound. Also today is a Heritage Society lecture at 2 p.m. about Lakeside “old timers.” This week’s lecture series is, Monday and Tuesday, Ohio Geology, history, mining and fracking; and health and medicine, two on cancer, and two on memory loss. There’s a nice architectural walking tour (right in my neighborhood), but it conflicts with the geology. I hear a lot about architecture so I opt for geology. On Tuesday I’ll need to choose between the fracking and a lecture on fashion of the Downton Abbey era, by the curator of the Kent State University Museum.
The Monday night movie in Hoover, is Meet me in St. Louis, with Judy Garland and Tom Drake. Drake was my sister-in-law’s Uncle Buddy, brother of her mother. My nephew looks a lot like him. Tuesday is Lakeside Symphony with a talented young artist, Gavin George and Wednesday Don Knotts daughter, Karen, will present “Tied up in Knotts” a tribute to her dad (Barney Fife) who died in 2006. On Thursday there is acoustic folk/rock guitarist Al Stewart, with the LSO finishing the week on Friday with violinist Jinjoo Cho and cellist Ana Kim. And finally, there’s a movie at the local theater that I’d like to see “The Fault in our Stars.”
Wednesday night we’re having guests for dinner, so I’m hoping for good weather—5 people is a tight squeeze in our tiny kitchen. Then on Friday and Saturday James and Leah from Cleveland will be visiting with us.
If it will fit in our car, my husband may bring back our family room couch for the cottage. The couch here is probably 70 years old, and when we bought the cottage in 1988, we decided we would get rid of it. . . my how time flies.
Saturday, August 09, 2014
The Friday Foreign Affairs Forum at Lakeside
At yesterday's Foreign Affairs Forum one woman said, "I still support President Obama. . . yada, yada" and that in itself didn't surprise me--Lakeside is a highly educated community with progressives retired from university faculties as common as summer flowers and perch sandwiches. But I was tempted to say, "Why? Can you name anything, particularly in foreign affairs, that he has touched that has gone well?" What country where we have national interests is better off than in 2008? We were discussing Gaza, Ukraine, and ISIS. Has he shown leadership there or in Libya, Pakistan, Nigeria, or Somalia? American women get free birth control with bragging rights for the president, and middle eastern women and girls get rape, slavery and beheading. Then he wines and dines African potentates at the White House who suck up American aid for lavish life styles. But I kept quiet. I'm just telling you.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/us-africa-leaders-summit
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/08/05/photos-obama-toasts-african-leaders-at-white-house-dinner/
It’s not true that Obama didn’t know what was coming with ISIS
It may look like Obama was just dumb and caught flat footed when ISIS (aka ISIL or IS) overran Iraq and began killing Muslims and Christians, beheading and crucifying and raping. But he was warned. Many times.
“It’s simply not true that nobody saw a disaster like the fall of Mosul coming,” Ali Khedery, who served as a senior adviser at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, told The Daily Beast. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I literally predicted this in verbal warnings and in writing in 2010 that Iraq would fall apart.”
“I and a zillion other people said in 2014 that we needed to do more than the very slow and inadequate reaction,” added James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. “If [ISIS] could move in and seize Fallujah and they were on the offensive, and they were active in Mosul and Nineweh [province] too, the army was lethargic and not doing very well, at that point there was a possibility for us to provide air strikes and advisers.”
Instead, the Obama policy meandered through a series of half-measures. . .
While the policy process in Washington was frozen, U.S. intelligence analysts still filed their warnings about major weaknesses in Iraq’s military. Both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have issued reported analysis for nearly a year warning that Iraq’s military would not be able to stand up against a sustained campaign from ISIS.”
Friday, August 08, 2014
The cost of war
I’ve seen a lot of people try to explain what money spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could have purchased in social services. But that’s true of any war. In the August 1934 Reader’s Digest, this small item appeared:
“The World War, all told, cost—apart from 30 million lives—400 billion dollars. With that money we could have built a $2500 house, furnished it with $1000 worth of furniture, placed it on five acres of land worth $100 an acre and given this home to each and every family in the United States, Canada, Australia, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, Belgium, Germany and Russia. We could have given to each city of 20,000 inhabitants and over, in each country named, a five million dollar library and ten million dollar university. Out of what was left we could have set aside a sum for an army of 125,000 teachers and a like salary for another army of 125,000 nurses.” Nicholas Murray Butler
Just bombs—no boots on the ground
When the media report on Obama authorizing bombing of Islamists in Iraq yesterday before leaving for a 2 week vacation, they note that he campaigned on ending the war, without reminding us that Bush ended it.
"17 November 2008 – The US and the Iraqi Government sign the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement providing for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities by 30 June 2009 and a complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by the end of 2011."
By the time Obama was elected, the heavy lifting was over, yet the media credit him for ending it. Even at the end of the 2008 campaign, it became a non-issue. But it wasn't over was it? ISIS aka IS, a Sunni offshoot of al-Qaeda, was growing and although Obama was warned many months before we knew, nothing was done. The leader of ISIS is far more brutal than Osama could have dreamed of. Beheadings and crucifixions are far more common than with Osama. Although we left troops in Korea in the 1950s and Germany and Japan for decades after WWII to help with stabilization, never mind Iraq--it could wing it. Perhaps if a better solution to helping Iraq get back on its feet had been worked out, there would be thousands of Iraqi minorities and Christians and Shiia still alive.
http://www.westernjournalism.com/obama-kerry-warned-isis-paid-attention/
Thursday, August 07, 2014
Pray for the minorities in Iraq
“Please continue to pray for the Iraqi people who have fled their homes because of religious persecution. Their situation is dire--with some reports saying thousands of people hiding in the mountains are being left with two choices 1) die at the hands of the IS militants 2) die of thirst in the mountains. Please pray!
"Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako, who heads Iraq's largest Christian denomination, said the overnight offensive had displaced 100,000 Christians.
"This is a humanitarian disaster. The churches are occupied, their crosses were taken down," he told AFP, adding that 1,500 manuscripts had been burnt."”
http://news.yahoo.com/jihadist-offensive-sparks-mass-iraq-exodus-084039459.html
Jihadist fighters moved into Qaraqosh, Iraq's largest Christian town, and surrounding areas on Wednesday night after the withdrawal of Kurdish peshmerga troops, who are stretched thin across several fronts.
"Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella and Karamlesh have been emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants," Joseph Thomas, a Chaldean Catholic archbishop in northern Iraq, told AFP.
Christians flee ISIS
“UN officials said an estimated 200,000 new refugees were seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish north from Islamic extremists who had pursued them since the weekend. The city of Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul, home to around 50,000 Christians was the latest to fall, with most residents fleeing before dawn as convoys of extremists drew near.
Other Christian towns near Mosul, including Tel Askof, Tel Keif and Qaramless have also largely been emptied. Those who remained behind have reportedly been given the same stark choice given to other minorities, including Yazidis: flee, convert to Islam, or be killed.
Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen have been at the frontlines of Iraq's war with the Islamic State (Isis) ever since the jihadist group stormed into Mosul and Tikrit and mid-June. The Iraqi army capitulated within hours, with at least 60,000 officers and soldiers fleeing on the first day of the assault alone.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/isis-offensive-iraq-christian-exodus
Quoting a UNICEF spokesperson, the Washington Post reports today: “There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads. There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.” Not to worry. The Obama administration made a statement. “The United States is committed to helping the people of Iraq as they confront. . . and so forth.”
How to ride a dead horse—the church version
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians—passed on from generation to generation—says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
Modern churches, however, have found a whole range of far more advanced strategies to use, such as:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Declaring, “God told us to ride this horse.”
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Threatening the horse with termination.
6. Proclaiming, “This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse.”
7. Develop a training session to improve our riding ability.
8. Reminding ourselves that other churches ride this same kind of horse.
9. Determining that riders who don’t stay on dead horses are lazy, lack drive, and have no ambition - then replacing them.
10. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
11. Reclassifying the horse as “living-impaired.”
12. Hiring an outside consultant to advise on how to better ride the horse.
13. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.
14. Confessing boldy, “This horse is not dead, but alive!”
15. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
16. Riding the dead horse “outside the box.”
17. Get the horse a Web site.
18. Killing all the other horses so the dead one doesn’t stand out.
19. Taking a positive outlook – pronouncing that the dead horse doesn’t have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the church’s budget than do some other horses.
20. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
21. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
22. Name the dead horse, “paradigm shift” and keep riding it.
23. Riding the dead horse “smarter, not harder.”
24. Stating that other horses reflect compromise, and are not from God.
25. Remembering all the good times you had while riding that horse.
The Obama Blues
“Why the long downhill slide for the Obama presidency?
Short answer: He has talked his way into it.” Daniel Henninger, WSJ
Is it really a “gift” to make all sides think he agrees with them? Isn’t that classic passive aggressive?
"A cranial gong goes off when Barack Obama starts droppin' "g's." The American president who is seen discoursing eloquently at the African leaders summit hits the stump and suddenly he sounds like Gabby Hayes. "Folks like you are havin' a hard time makin' it when the wealthiest are grabbin' it all in for themselves." . . . "Stop bein' mad all the time. Stop just hatin' all the time." He is a politician talking his way to an approval rating in the presidential red zone that lies below 40." Daniel Henninger
We are stewards of God’s creation
On the one hand, I think we’ve made wonderful progress, using the old term, on environmentalism. We started vacationing on Lake Erie in 1974, and it was just beginning to turn around. Automobiles—huge improvement, as also appliances. Many of these changes have come about because of pressure groups and modest increment in government regulations. However, climate change/global warming are a different animal. They are primarily a dislike for modern society, and a longing for a purity in the past that never really existed (usually we think conservatives live in the past, but on this it is the opposing team). The EPA regulations are increasingly economy killers. And also harmful to the environment. Burning corn to fuel autos is not only bad for the environment, but causes deforestation in South America, hunger in other parts of the world and air pollution. This is not a current administration problem, I think it was Bush’s EPA, or maybe Clinton (these things start small and grow). Certain groups see global weather changes every where and use it as an excuse to stop economic growth. There’s not been much change in the last 2 decades, and they see that as evidence of change! Most scary to me is the reported solar flares of 2012 which could have destroyed our civilization as we know it because we’re so dependent on technology, and no one could have done a thing about it. Earth missed the solar storm by one week. Whew. That was close. Someone must have been praying—was it you? Maybe God decided we needed another chance. As a Christian I see the whole climate change/earth worship as a desire to feel some control in an increasingly senseless world; others see it as a take over by a one world government. Here’s a link to our near miss.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/25/tech/2012-solar-storm/index.html
There's been no warming for over a decade. Could be another long cold spell. We could be heading for another 17th century cold spell. But this time we have technology on our side. Assuming some government power broker doesn't kill it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/24/solar-lull-little-ice-age-sun-scientists_n_4645248.html
Wednesday, August 06, 2014
How's that working out for us, Mr. Krauthammer?
Charles Krauthammer says he would legalize 11 million illegal aliens in exchange for a secure border. Checking the 1986 law, I see that was the deal then. Legalize 3 million, but have tougher border security. That's how we got to 11 million. "Public Law 99-603 (Act of 11/6/86), which was passed in order to control and deter illegal immigration to the United States. Its major provisions stipulate legalization of undocumented aliens who had been continuously unlawfully present since 1982, legalization of certain agricultural workers, sanctions for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, and increased enforcement at U.S. borders." Homeland Security.
In addition to messing up the brain, it isn’t too great for the lungs
There are 33 cancer-causing chemicals contained in marijuana. Marijuana smoke also deposits tar into the lungs.
http://www.lung.org/associations/states/colorado/tobacco/marijuana.html
“Marijuana is a drug made from the dry, shredded parts of the Cannabis sativa hemp plant. It is usually smoked in hand-rolled cigarettes called joints, in pipes, or in water pipes called bongs. It is also smoked in blunts, which are hollowed-out cigars filled with a mixture of tobacco and marijuana.
Marijuana contains a potent chemical called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, more commonly known as THC. It’s very similar to chemicals that the brain naturally produces, and disrupts the function of these chemicals in the brain.
Marijuana today is more potent than marijuana of past decades. For a long time THC levels averaged 2.3 percent. Today, average THC levels are higher than 8 percent and can go up to 35 percent in medical marijuana.”
Yes, you can eat on SNAP allotment—but you don’t need to
A very nice cookbook you can download. The idea is tasteful, healthy meals on $4/day, although SNAP was never intended to be the full budget for food, but a supplement, it can be done. http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/
Broccoli and Cheddar Empanadas (makes 12)
Dough
2 cups all purpose or whole wheat flour
½ cup cornmeal
½ tsp salt
½ cup butter
1 egg
1/2 cup cold water
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Filling
8 cups broccoli, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ tsp chili flakes
salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 egg (for brushing)
Water wasn’t the only story in Toledo last week
Unsafe and unsanitary conditions in Toledo’s last abortion clinic and no agreement with a hospital.
This has been dragging on for some time through appeals.
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