As Carson moves up in polls, there are more attacks, but of course, the left media aren’t racist [sarcasm alert]

Salon dot com is a left wing digital news rag. And apparently racist, too. Article yesterday on how scary and extremist Dr. Ben Carson is. Worse than Trump, they report. He actually believes Planned Parenthood and the Democrats' commitment to abortion are committing genocide (more black babies killed in 4 days than all the blacks lynched in 80 years). And he would use drones on the border (instead of just against middle east Muslim terrorists). If you dislike a black politician's policies, you're a racist, right?

And then there was the deliberate misinterpretation about what he said about marriage. “When I mention bestiality or pedophilia in the same sentence with homosexuality, people say ‘Carson says they’re the same.’ Of course they’re not the same,” he told the New York Times. “That point was if you change the definition of marriage for one group, you’ll have to change it for the next group and the next group.” Dr. Ben Carson

Pumpkin Bread with Pumpkin Butter Cream—more pumpkin recipes—it’s autumn, almost

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon...
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
2 large eggs
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar (You can substitute light brown sugar)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons freshly grated orange zest (I omitted this)
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest (I left this out, too)
1/2 cup canola oil
1 1/4 cups canned pure pumpkin puree
1/2 cup chopped, toasted pecans or walnuts, optional (I didn’t add the nuts to the batter, but sprinkled them on top of the frosted loaf instead)
Position your oven rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 x 5″ loaf pan; set aside.

Directions:
Combine flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and allspice in a medium bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined; set aside.

In another bowl, or bowl of an electric mixer, beat eggs on medium-high speed for two minutes or until lightened in color. Add the brown sugar, mixing for about 2 minutes, then the granulated sugar, mixing for about 1 minute. Add the orange and lemon zests, if using, and beat for another minute. Scrape down the bowl as needed.

Drizzle in the canola oil with beater on medium-low. Reduce speed to low and add the pumpkin puree. Mix until thoroughly combined. Add the dry ingredients in two additions and blend for 10-15 seconds just until incorporated. Fold in the pecans using a rubber spatula.

Spoon the batter into your prepared loaf pan and bake for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool loaf in pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then remove and cool completely on a wire rack.

If you’re going to frost the loaf, you can make the frosting while the loaf is cooling…

PUMPKIN BUTTER CREAM FROSTING

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
2 Tablespoons canned pure pumpkin puree
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons half & half or milk
1/4 to 1/3 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, optional, for sprinkling on top
Cream the butter, pumpkin puree, cinnamon, and vanilla, blending well. Add powdered sugar a cup at a time, blending well after each addition. Add half & half or milk and blend well. NOTE: This makes a very thick butter cream frosting. If you want a thinner, creamier frosting, add more half & half or milk until you get the desired consistency.

After frosting the cooled pumpkin loaf, sprinkle with chopped pecans or walnuts if desired.

I tried to find the original source of this recipe which I found on Facebook, but wasn’t successful.  This appears to be the recipe book http://www.amazon.com/Great-Coffee-Cakes-Sticky-Muffins/dp/0307237559

But I did go back and look through the posts of the Facebooker whose page showed it; his son had been murdered in June, so I think this recipe was probably from sometime last year. A very say story.

Carrot cake

Ingredients

CAKE

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

        ----------or----------Use a spice cake mix

• 1 1/2 cups olive oil
• 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups shelled walnuts, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups sweetened, shredded coconut
• 2 cups finely grated carrots

FROSTING

• 8oz cream cheese at room temperature
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Spray two 9″ cake pans with nonstick cooking spray. Cut out rounds of parchment paper and place at the bottom of cake pans. Spray the top of the parchment paper with cooking spray.
2. Whisk together flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt in a large bowl. Add the oil, eggs, and vanilla. Beat well. Fold in the chopped nuts, coconut, and carrots.
3. Pour the batter into the pans, set on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes or until the edges have pulled away from the sides, and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a cake rack.
4. To prepare the frosting, cream together the cream cheese, sour cream, and butter in a mixing bowl. Slowly sift in the confectioners’ sugar and beat until the mixture is free of lumps. Stir in the vanilla and lemon juice.
5. Once the cakes have completely cooled, frost. Sprinkle the top with chopped walnuts, or create icing carrots to decorate with.
6. Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Simply Recipes and at the 12 Tomatoes website

A quest for spirituality gone to waist

Dear Danny  Hamen,

Your ridicule of religion in your chicken and waffles article published in Stock & Barrel, Summer ‘15 (a 614 publication, pp. 38-41) wasn’t cute, funny, or clever, but instead disrespectful, sarcastic and in poor taste (pardon the pun since it was a foodie article).  One or two references, like “promise land” or “on a mission,”  or even an “Oh Lordy” would have been fine, but you apparently spent your Sundays in church as a youth thinking about food instead of the sermon and didn’t want to waste what you learned. 

Here I quote your phrases in all your religious imagery:

Religious experience
I found divinity
The Holy Ghost veiled in Frank’s Red Hot and Ohio maple
I was speaking in tongues
Oh my God. . . Oh my God. . . Oh my God. . . Jesus Christ
Holy pilgrimage
But hath no fear
Like a great messiah of fatty fried food
Took my hand and led me to the promised land
There was only one set of footprints in the sand
Hot sauce stain which looked like a baby Jesus . . .I took this as  a sign.
I  licked it up, and drove home a believer
I had a mission
Divine intervention
I was starting to see visions
What I felt was pure divinity
I was born again, greasy and obese with a chicken breast in one hand and a waffle in the other
Praise be to Biggie

http://614columbus.com/2015/06/biggie-breakfast-and-belgium/

Oatmeal with raisins for breakfast

My husband's breakfast is usually the same (except with the Thursday Cursillo guys when it's bacon and eggs), oatmeal with raisins. This morning (at the lake) he was out of raisins, but being resourceful, he remembered I had raisin bread in the freezer. Yep. He took 2 slices, picked out the raisins for his cereal.

Let’s get out of the abortion business

Planned Parenthood does not offer any women’s health services that are not offered by other health care centers. None. . .

Planned Parenthood boasts that it served 2.7 million patients last year, but FQHCs alone served 21.1 million. That’s about eight times more clients. . . .

There are 665 Planned Parenthood facilities compared to the 13,540 comprehensive women’s health clinics.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/02/why-womens-health-care-will-thrive-when-planned-parenthood-is-defunded/?

Fifty years after Watts

I was reading through this 50 year anniversary article on the Watts riots, summarizing the books and research, and see the writer STILL believes it's a matter of more government money. “Solving these problems through federal action, as well as local grassroots pressure that ties police reforms to economic justice initiatives, is essential to averting more rebellions in the next fifty years.”

Never mind the trillions spent on Head Start, housing, medical care, education, etc. and the 123 transfer programs.  And yet those black families who have moved on to the middle class and the upper quintile have behaviors and life styles and education not unlike their cultural cousins, white middle class and upper middle class. Marriage, education, jobs and family support. Look at every powerful black government official, including our President, and that’s what they’ve got. (Celebrities and sports figures are rich but have the opposite life style.) Why is that so difficult to see? Well, there's no money in advocating that, either for academe or government or churches.

http://bostonreview.net/us/sekou-franklin-watts-rebellion-50-years-later

Milwaukee man gets no jail time for illegal gun sales

This man illegally purchased guns and sold them them on the street to people who can't buy guns legally. Now compare his jail time to the Kentucky woman who wouldn't issue a marriage license. Judge seemed to like that Dontray wants to be a rap musician. Why didn't Kim Davis think of that! Story from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"In giving probation with no jail time to a Milwaukee man charged with 55 counts of buying firearms with fake identification and dealing them without ...a license, a federal judge delivered a message:

"People kill people," U.S. District Rudolph Randa said, echoing a common gun rights slogan. "Guns don't kill people."

Dontray Mills, 24, purchased a total of 27 firearms, mostly handguns, between December 2012 and April 2014 and pleaded guilty to one of the charges on April 22, 2014, after an ATF investigation. As a result of the conviction, Mills will never again be able to buy firearms legally."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/milwaukee-man-to-be-sentenced-on-gun-fraud-charge-b99560011z1-322283481.html

Paul Harvey, The Policeman, one of his best narrations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUUZ2fKVqcs

Not everything you see on the internet is accurately attributed.  This is.

Transgender Women (male to female)

A systematic review of studies of HIV among transgender women suggests that the prevalence of HIV in the United States is 27.7% among all transgender women and 56.3% among black transgender women. Data also suggests high rates of HIV among transgender women globally. Bacterial STD prevalence varies among transgender women, but is based largely on convenience samples.

Providers caring for transgender women should have knowledge of their patients’ current anatomy and patterns of sexual behavior before counseling them about STD and HIV prevention. Most transgender women have not undergone genital affirmation surgery and may retain a functional penis; in this instance, they might engage in insertive oral, vaginal, or anal sex with men and women.

http://www.cdc.gov/std/tg2015/specialpops.htm

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(12)70315-8/abstract

Back to School purchases big business for retailers

• $8.2 Billion – The estimated amount of money spent at family clothing stores in August 2014. Sales at bookstores in August 2014 were estimated at $1.6 billion. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly Retail Trade and Food Services
• For back-to-school shopping, choices of retail establishments abound: In 2013, there were 27,340 family clothing stores, 7,047 children and infants clothing stores, 25,100 shoe stores 6,998 office supply and stationery stores, 7,064 bookstores and 8,102 department stores. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2013 County Business Patterns

Speaking of and in Spanish

Telemundo, a Spanish language TV network (owned by NBC) with all white faces, blue and green eyes, tall skinny blondes and no brown or black tokens or hints of Indian heritage in sight, has sent me an e-mail: "TELEMUNDO PRESENTA “FRANCISCO EN AMÉRICA”, EXTENSA COBERTURA DE LA VISITA DEL PAPA A CUBA Y LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS A PARTIR DEL 19 DE SEPTIEMBRE." Every product I purchase, every tag and label I read also includes Spanish. Why do U.S. Spanish language companies have a different set of rules for good customer service?

I was looking for a video to practice Spanish while exercising, and this morning found gringoespanol.com. Clear pronunciation (in English) and good understanding of why we often don't get it. Forgiving and funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs5M_XpyjvU

Unions lie about right to work states

Private sector wages are not reduced in right-to-work states as union advocates have argued, according to a new report released Tuesday by The Heritage Foundation.

Every state with compelled union membership and Virginia, a right-to-work state, has living costs above the national average, which is how EPI arrived to its finding that right-to-work states have lower wages.

Though more than three-quarters of Americans believe union membership should be voluntary, 25 states still have compulsory unionization.

What about Fox–Michael Smith

“Let's just think about this for a minute - since 1995, the Fox News channel has been the only broadcast outlet, cable of otherwise, that has featured Republicans with conservative views. At one time or the other every pundit on Fox's prime time lineup has been vilified as a right wing extremist nut job. Hillary Clinton even accused them of being in league with Richard Mellon Scaife to form the VRWC (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy).

Even (or perhaps because they are) presenting a conservative point of view, Fox News has been #1 overall with the most #1 shows for the past decade+ and in doing so has earned the badge of honor from the left as Faux News because they report on things the left would rather us not know.

Megyn Kelly asks a tough question of a tough,"hard shelled", assertive, non-conservative newly minted Republican who was a Democrat until the last decade and then worked to become the Reform Party (the party of Jesse Ventura) nominee. Said "hard shelled" candidate goes on to whine incessantly for weeks against Fox and makes sexist grade-school comments and tweets regarding Kelly.

Said candidate gets softball interviews and the red carpet rolled out for him at Democrat friendly media outlets and shows, inducing Meet the Press, ABC and NBC. Said Democrat biased media uses said candidate to spout off how the other candidates in the race simply can't match up to such majestic accomplishments and gargantuan ego of said candidate, essentially the same thing Hillary would do if she wasn't afraid of slipping up and getting saying something that would get her indicted.

So tell me again how Fox is the tool of the Democrats and the GOP establishment? It would seem to me that there is a tool but I would propose that it isn't Fox News.

For goodness sake people, look at who you are aligning with to attack Fox.”  From Michael Smith’s Facebook.

Biden confused about FDR—especially his accomplishments

Yes, Joe Biden really said this in Sept. 2008 while campaigning, but the worst error is thinking FDR did anything about the Great Depression, which he extended into the 1940s.

Black Lives Matter even when they aren’t victims—tell the organizers

There are many things BLM protestors (funded by leftists with deep pockets) can do--like read victim reports of the Department of Justice, and the FBI. New policing and law enforcement laws--including tough on drugs--of the Clinton years have brought down crime and saved many black lives. Since 1993, the rate of serious violent crime has declined by 75% from 29.1 to 7.2 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older, but has taken an uptick under Holder and Obama. The rate of violent victimization increased 17% with a black president and black AG--mostly among whites. Violent crimes against American Indians is almost double the rate for blacks--and it is also intraracial. Those not killed or injured matter too.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv11.pdf

General Mills to spend millions on climate change

Not to be too cynical, but the more "climate change" laws and treaties the U.S. can foist on developing countries, the more goodies are left for the western, developed countries. I'd rather the money be spent on things that will actually help people, in developing countries like pure water, better infrastructure, fairer import/export agreements, stop protecting tyrants, etc. To put Appalachian coal miners out of jobs while China is building all the new dirty coal burning facilities is dumb; to waste billions on chasing a carbon myth when African women still carry dirty water in their pails walking miles from home makes no sense. But it's good advertising.

http://grist.org/climate-energy/general-mills-pledges-100-million-to-combat-climate-change/?

On Monday, the food giant announced plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent in the next 20 years, and said it will be investing more than $100 million in renewables and improved energy efficiency in its facilities. Other large food companies have also set greenhouse gas reduction targets, but General Mills’ plan stands out because it involves the whole supply chain, from farmers to eaters.

Almost too embarrassing to read

The newest batch of Hillary’s illegal e-mail stash reveals her sycophantic, bootlicking, weasel word lackeys begging for attention and favors.  Lanny Davis was Bill Clinton’s special counsel. Here’s just one example:

“He grovels for a favor in a 2010 email with the subject line “Personal.”

“[A] personal favor My dear friend Hillary: I hate to email you too much and to ask you for any favors,” Davis writes before proceeding to ask her for a favor. “I feel as if I am taking advantage of a great privilege that you allow me to send you a personal email every so often. But this is a favor that I fully understand for 100 reasons might not be appropriate or comfortable for you to say yes to.”

Davis launches into a long-winded diatribe about an article that is going to be written about his law firm and humbly requests that Clinton say nice things about him—but not before telling her she is nearly as important to him as his own wife.

“Aside from Carolyn, my four children, and my immediate family, I consider you to be the best friend and the best person I have met in my long life,” Davis writes. “You know that from the dedication and appreciation of you I have always felt and expressed to you over four decades. So that is why your comments would mean a lot to me, even if just a written statement.” “

In 2009 after the first 100 days, Davis wrote an equally abject confession about how he’d converted to Obama, after supporting Hillary in the 2008 campaign.  The man knows no shame. And she was his “best friend” in his long life.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/01/inside-the-new-hillary-clinton-emails-all-the-secretary-s-yes-men.html?

In the short term . . .

Older individuals who undergo knee or hip replacement are at high risk for myocardial infarction (MI) [heart attack]  in the first postoperative month, a general population-based study found.

In the long run, joint replacements benefit the heart health.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/298756.php

Among those with hip OA who underwent hip arthroplasty, 128 had a heart attack during follow-up, compared with 138 controls. However, the team notes heart attack incidence was higher for hip arthroplasty patients in the first 6 months following the procedure, before declining to a lower level than those who did not have surgery.

The researchers also found that patients who underwent hip or knee arthroplasty were at greater risk of VTE - a collective term for deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) - years after the procedure, compared with controls.

DVT occurs when a blood clot forms in a deep vein, most commonly in the lower leg, thigh or pelvis. PE is a common complication of DVT, occurring when a blood clot breaks off and makes its way to the lungs via the bloodstream. It is estimated that around 300,000-600,000 people in the US develop DVT or PE every year.

Title of the research article: “Total joint arthroplasty and the risk of myocardial infarction - a general population, propensity score-matched cohort study,”  Yuqing Zhang et al., Arthritis & Rheumatology, doi: 10.1002/art.39246, published online 31 August 2015, abstract.

Age and the Presidency

I would never belittle someone for her age, some people my age do amazing things.  But I have personally experienced how the body and mind just don't do as instructed despite years of accumulated wisdom and education. I remember 60 with great fondness--sort of a surprise for someone who not too long ago thought 30 was really over the hill. I've watched a lot of presidents age quickly in office--Bush and Obama seem to really have aged right before our eyes--looking tired, wan, wrinkled and gray.  Perhaps it's the constant TV and internet exposure.  But the age of the Democrat bench for 2016 really worries me.

Warren is the youngest, and she would be almost 70 if she won the election and took office in 2017, in addition to being a millionaire flake who lied about her ethnicity to get special perks and speaks with forked tongue about the rich. Joe Biden, well, even Democrats call him their crazy Uncle Joe. It turns out he’s the best thing that ever happened to Obama, because he makes him look good.  Bernie?  Advocating openly a philosophy that has killed millions in the 20th century. And this folks, isn't dementia.  It's just wrong headed, pie in the sky socialism, the foundation of both Communism and National Socialism the major killers of their own citizens of the last century