Government controls through grants

For-profit prisons, for-profit colleges and technical schools like ITT (which was just forced to close when it lost government student loans) and private for profit charter schools are all propped up by government money. And so are many church social service programs, including those run by Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. Churches particularly are on the dole for their immigration resettlement programs. What the government gives it can take away especially if you begin to ask questions or support the wrong candidate in this election.

It's not like recidivism at state and federal prisons weren't outrageous, or that students at state universities aren't having debt problems, or that teachers union controlled public schools weren't graduating students not ready for the work force.

 https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/refugee-resettlement-fact-sheets/

 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres-exactly-how-much-the-government-would-have-to-spend-to-make-public-college-tuition-free/282803/

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/is-the-federal-government-trying-to-take-down-the-for-profit-college-industry/2016/09/08/effb7ffe-75dd-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html

So while the federal government pulled out student loans causing a for profit college (ITT) to close without notice and thousands of students are left dangling, many with loans to repay, Bill Clinton gets $18 million as "honorary" chancellor at a for profit college. There really should be riots in the streets over this. There's no evidence that Laureate's business model is any different than ITT (totally dependent on government loans) and its connection with the Clintons allowed it to go global.(Owner is a donor to the Clinton Foundation).

Poor Matt Lauer, eaten by his own

Hillary supporters have had a melt down because Matt Lauer during the NBC debate treated her fairly--asked tough questions--even about the e-mails which just keep oozing out of her past lies. In fact, according to one observer, he interrupted her responses 7 times, and not in an unkind way, and interrupted Trump's responses 13 times. If she can't handle Lauer, what will happen when she meets with Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China or Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany? It's very common for these broadcast journalists to cover for their candidates, and they don't even pretend to be unbiased. He's still on their team.

Meanwhile, her husband anxious to get his third term has been campaigning for her.  Bill Clinton is calling Trump's campaign slogan "racist," but it's the same one Clinton used in the 1990s, and even more recently--in 2008 for Hillary's campaign. "Make America great again." Why is that more racist than "Hope and Change?" Can Democrats ever discuss issues?

Hillary's overload

Hillary has not only had some press conferences this past week after a long dry spell, but today she's lowered her irritating voice and is speaking quietly and softly (should help the coughing), following Trump's lead.  He met with the Mexican president (she was fund raising with rich celebrities) and black leaders (she was fund raising with rich LGBTQ). Somewhere I read she'd had 41 minutes (before today) to his 4.5 hours of press conferences. Today she really hammered Trump for calling Putin a good leader.

Remember when Mrs. Clinton while Secretary of State gave Russia a red "reset" button, but it said   "перегрузка" (peregruzka) which actually means "overcharge?" Oh, and remember how forceful the U.S. was in handling the Crimea and Ukraine problems? NOT. EVER. Trump was not in office, but she was. She participated in a disastrous Obama foreign policy that got Russia, and Putin, all wrong. Whisper through that one, Hillary.

Leaf peepers

One photo shared today on Facebook was by my veterinary medicine librarian friend (also retired) and colleague  Mitsuko Williams (University of Illinois) sitting atop Cadillac Mountain. I had a flash back to the mid-70s when we drove to New England to see the fall color. Friends Scott and Tricia stayed with our children. It was off season so we thought we'd have our carefully planned sites of interest and roads to ourselves. We were stunned to see a whole world of retired people traveling and enjoying themselves. They were giggling, flirting and laughing like middle school kids, even with various frailties like low vision and walkers. Every restaurant parking lot was filled with their buses and the conversation inside was about the menu, which was often being read aloud. We'd quietly laugh. Now we know what fun they were having.

Hillary's health

 

Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I collect vol.1 no.1 issues of magazines and serials (I have a blog about this), so when vol. 1 no.1 of The Atlantic Monthly was mentioned in this article about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. my Library of America newsletter on-line I pulled my copy off the shelf and read "Every man his own Boswell." Interesting that in those days it didn't seem to be necessary to list the author's name.

" Everything changed in 1857 when James Russell Lowell, a fellow professor at Harvard, was hired as the editor of a new magazine, and he in turn insisted that his friend Holmes become one of its founding contributors. Initially hesitant, Holmes agreed and even suggested the magazine’s name, The Atlantic Monthly. Holmes then lit on the idea that would make him famous: reviving the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table as a monthly column. Far more mature in style and content than the essays from a quarter-century earlier, each piece is written as a table conversation monopolized by the unnamed Autocrat, with interruptions (including poetry, stories, and jokes) from other residents—including the Professor, the Landlady’s Daughter, the Schoolmistress, the Poet, the Old Gentleman, the Divinity-Student, “the young fellow called John,” and others. The new and improved “Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” appeared in the debut issue of The Atlantic (November 1857) and immediately became the most popular feature in a magazine that boasted works by such celebrities as Emerson, Whittier, and Longfellow."

So I kept browsing through the volume (bound) and looked through the next issue (no. 2) finding the poem "Catawba Wine" by Longfellow, also written in 1857. Had to research that one. Catawba Island up on Lake Erie is not named for Catawba Indians (as I always believed) but for the Catawba grape which is praised in this poem. Northern Ohio was big wine country (still is). Catawba wine was made in Cincinnati from Catawba grapes from the Catawba River in NC. 
"For richest and best/Is the wine of the West/ That grows by the Beautiful River/ whose sweet perfume fills all the room/ with a benison on the giver." . . .
 "And this Song of the Vine/ This greeting of mine/ The winds and the birds shall deliver/ To the Queen of the West,/In her garlands dressed,/ On the banks of the Beautiful River." 

Many names of wines in the poem, and rivers of several countries, but the Queen of the West and that river is Cincinnati on the Ohio River.

Traffic fatalities up

I wonder if it is marijuana? More people texting? Both?

“The nation lost 35,092 people in traffic crashes in 2015, ending a 5-decade trend of declining fatalities with a 7.2% increase in deaths from 2014. The final data released today by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed traffic deaths rising across nearly every segment of the population. The last single-year increase of this magnitude was in 1966, when fatalities rose 8.1% from the previous year."

 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812318

Preparing for surgery tomorrow

[This is what I wrote in an e-mail, but I'm just leaving it here in case you're researching what to do.]

My head explodes when I think what we pay for these EMR!! How many billions ($27 billion in 2009) and there wasn’t a shred of evidence from any studies it would help health care.

 

We just had a call from the hospital (9 a.m. Tuesday) from a clerk checking all the details for surgery tomorrow. We have to call between 2-4 p.m. today to find the hour of the surgery on Wednesday. The hospital still didn’t have any of the test results from his complete physical on Aug. 16—different doctor, 2 miles down the road. Carrier pigeon could have done it better. And as I think I mentioned before, his internist never received the results of the scans 3 weeks before his physical. Also the hospital had him listed as 5’11”, high blood pressure and cataract surgery. None of that is true. I’m wondering what other Bruce’s medical records got folded into his. He’s about 5’8”, no problem with blood pressure ever, and his eyes are fine. Always, always, have another person checking. The lobbyists for IT made a bundle on this, but at our expense. 

 

Rant over. I’m going to vacuum to blow off steam.

 

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/report-electronic-medical-records-market-nears-25-billion-300066515.html

 

http://www.hitechanswers.net/about/about-arra/

 

As a bonus, here’s what I wrote about this problem 7 years ago:

 

I stopped by to pick up a prescription at my doctor’s office because the “electronic transfer” of information between that office and the pharmacy I used hadn’t been able to manage the job in 3.5 days, and I was out (old methods of fax and phone aren't used anymore). Normally, I would have just told the receptionist what I needed, and my file (paper) would have been retrieved (human). No. I waited about 10 minutes as she struggled getting the right screens up, then worked from screen to screen, asking me questions I didn’t know, like date of my last appointment and address of the pharmacy. A line was forming behind me. When she finally found it, she said there was no record from the pharmacy requesting permission for a refill, but the doctor would decide.

That night we got a call from the doctor’s office that “it was ready,” i.e. the prescription script. My husband went to pick it up and waited about 15 minutes in line as the receptionist struggled with the screens of 2 or 3 people ahead of him. Fortunately, it was in a paper envelope with my name hand written on the outside. We can only hope and pray that the national “network” that Obama is forcing thousands of small offices to buy into (causing many to close their doors), doesn’t work any worse than what you’ve all experienced at the local level as your doctor or clinic transitions.

Those nasty, judgmental Christians

Christians can be so judgmental! Here's St. Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, chastising new Christians for sexual immorality. "Brothers and sisters: It is widely reported that there is immorality among you, . . " He said the congregation should be sorrowful and the offender kicked out. The very first Christian handbook on rites and morality, The Didiche, compiled before the Bible, forbade abortion and homosexual relations with boys, an acceptable Roman and Greek custom. Very different from today's advice, isn't it, when congregations vote on sin and the government decides what can be condemned?

 https://www.pcusa.org/news/2015/3/20/what-same-sex-marriage-means-presbyterians/

 http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-tornado-the-lutherans-and-homosexuality

 http://www.wndu.com/content/news/Goshen-church-passes-vote-to-allow-same-sex-marriages-380426541.html

 http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/04/us/lutherans-vote-abortion-stance-seeking-new-language-in-debate.html

The protests in Detroit

Do Trump supporters disrupt Hillary's speeches? I watched on TV some protests at a Detroit church. Apparently it went well. The media really took him over the coals for this one.  Imagine, a Republican going for black votes, when blacks went 99% for Obama in 2008. And in the primaries that election year, they didn't like Hillary.  Is it worth checking to see if she spoke at black churches?  Nah.

This is one area I think Donald sounds way too much like a Democrat-- that he can, from the White House, fix everything that is wrong. Really, that should be the state and local governments' responsibility to fix the schools and attract the employers. Then it should be the homes and churches that prepare the young people to be good employees and loving parents.

Candidates all spend too much time treating blacks as victims, when in reality, in the 21st century they've done extremely well.  The poverty rate for married black families is no different than whites. Their college enrollment rate (not graduation rate) has been higher than whites for almost 2 decades.  We've got a black president, attorney generals, senators, governors, businessmen, and even a pouty football player with white parents making millions a year who is protesting white privilege.

http://blackdemographics.com/households/middle-class/

Black and white incomes are not outrageously different, but in household wealth there is quite a gap.  I think lack of marriage (smaller households, fewer incomes) accounts for a lot of this.  Also, there seems to be a distrust in investing outside one's home and community. Blacks tend to rely more on family and friends for financing.  Only blacks can change that perception. Also blacks more commonly have their wealth tied up in home ownership, and that took a big hit in 2008 due to government fiddling in the housing market.  But I'm sure a Democrat president would decide it's unfair that whites have saved and invested for our old age, and should have our wealth "redistributed."

http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/stalled-struggling-black-middle-class

Keep your mind challenged

Just in case you think the only reason to discuss things, argue and research for a blog or Facebook is to change someone's mind,  keep in mind we’re fighting dementia! It's good for us.  Each time you shut down an idea you don't agree with or say "Oh, let's talk about something more pleasant," you might be depriving yourself of a brain boost.

College is protective by about a decade, but lifelong intellectual activities such as playing music or reading keeps the mind fit as people age and also delayed Alzheimer’s by years for those at risk of the disease who weren’t college educated or worked at challenging jobs. http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1883334 This is a free access article. 

 

Since I read it to my husband about 2 years ago, he has taken up guitar. Had zero musical training so also had to learn to read music.

 

At our cottage in Lakeside where we attend lectures and concerts daily.

Book Club selections for 2016-2017

Except where noted, we meet at Bethel Rd. Presbyterian Church.

Sept. 12--All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr--led by Carolyn at her home

Oct. 3--Ashley's War by Gayle T. Lemmon--led by Mary Lou

Nov. 7--The Wright Brothers by David Mc Cullough--led by Norma  at home of Peggy

Dec. 5--The Annotated Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll--ed. by Martin Gardener--led by Peggy  at home of Carolyn A.

Jan. 9--Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers--led by Justine

Feb. 6--Nobody Tells a Dying Guy to Shut Up by David Chilcoat and ed. by Beth Chilcoat--led by Jean

Mar. 6--The Brigade by Howard Blum--led by Peggy

Apr. 3--Lisette's List by Susan Vreeland--led by Carolyn A.

May 1--The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom--led by Bev

The Five Biggest Lies of Hillary Clinton--and that's a big stretch

The key points:
1. She cited her 2012 concussion as the reason that she cannot remember details of briefings during her "transition out of office."
2. She said she never even thought whether emails she exchanged on a future U.S. drone attack should be classified.

3. She said she thought the "C" before a paragraph indicated alphabetical order. The C actually stands for "classified."
4. She said no one ever raised concerns to her about her use of a private email server.
5. She said she could not recall any training on how to handle classified information.

She also "lost" 13 mobile phones.

" FBI Director James Comey may have decided not to indict Clinton, but the public revelation of this transcript today (Sept. 2, the day before a 3 day week-end) does a lot of damage. While you can expect most of the mainstream media pundits to pour cold water on the severity of the facts contained in them, the transcripts put the email scandal right back into the center of the news cycle. The last time that happened, Clinton's poll numbers wilted badly and it took a series of Trump missteps to reverse the decline." Jake Novak, CNBC

If Obama weren't under pressure from (God know who or what), these wouldn't have been released.  Not sure what he's angling for.  A different candidate?  A third term--because who's to stop him? Certainly not the Supremes or Congress.

The continuing fall of Hillary Clinton

Today's Wall Street Journal: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation waited until the Friday afternoon before Labor Day weekend to release its investigation summary and interview notes with Hillary Clinton about her private email server, and no wonder. The new information makes a hash of what’s left of the former Secretary of State’s credibility.

Mrs. Clinton is running for President as an experienced statesman, but her handling of classified material was even more reckless about state secrets and disdainful of public records laws than even we had thought. Start with her convenient memory lapses.

For example, Mrs. Clinton told the FBI that she “did not know” that the “(C)” marks on classified material meant classified and “speculated it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.” Yet in her famous—and last—press conference about the emails in March 2015 she said, “I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.” To the public she claims to be a sharp professional who knows the score; to the FBI she presents herself as a clueless grandee who left the details to her minions."

I went on-line and looked at the testimony.  The second most stupid, next to citizens who believe her, is James Comey, FBI director who reported to us in July.  My opinion of him has really dropped.  What did she have on him?  It baffles me that intelligent, law abiding Democrats are so worried about Trump's off the cuff, non-teleprompter, silly, injudicious outbursts that have killed no one, or often repeated what Democrats said in the 90s, revealed no state secrets and put none of our spies in danger, yet they will grovel in front of this pathological (or brain injured from her fall/stroke) liar. 

Well, maybe I'm not so baffled--they desperately want Bill back in the White House turning on that charm and chasing interns. They are what they are and they won't change, especially now that they've been joined by the #NeverTrumpers.

Disruptive women

I see an Ohio State University dean has published an article about “wellness” at Ohio State (nothing wrong with its content) at the website of Disruptive Women, which appears to be sort of a global front organization with the obligatory “reproductive justice” feminist agenda, embryonic stem cell research (which has had almost zero success compared to adult stem cell), global development issues and diversity slogans.  Disruptive Women in Healthcare seeks to educate Congress and our politicians about medical research.  I hope there’s a conservative counterpart voice.

Feeding America and its hunger statistics

Just saw an ad on TV by Feeding America about hungry children. Feeding America is a United States-based non-profit organization that is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies. Most of these are run by churches and their volunteers and donors. (According to FA website its $2 billion budget is through donations--CEO earns over $600,000/yr.) They do good work, but its ads about 16 million hungry children is most likely an exaggeration.  The federal government doesn't even use the term "hunger;"  it is called "food insecurity," and if mom was in a drug induced stupor or mentally ill and didn't pull a can of pop or chips out of the cupboard twice in 6 weeks, that's called "food insecurity." 

In the USA we don't have hunger, we have bad parenting and dysfunctional families that begin with babies before marriage. Marriage drops the probability of child poverty by 82%. We have foundations and state grant programs tripping over each other to help. We have 123 wealth transfer programs in the federal government to address the problems of low income and poor, everything from housing support to earned income tax credits, to special pre-schools, to special feeding programs for infants, to Medicaid, to clinics for women, to home heating plans, to job training. If there is a hungry child, statistically he sits in front of a flat screen HDTV with video games in an air conditioned home, Mom has a frig, microwave and dishwasher in the kitchen, a cell phone, and probably car in the drive way. But his "poverty" is supporting an enormous number of social workers, academics and non-profit employees through grants that come to his state, then his city, then the non-profit or church, and finally it trickles down to him.

Redefining the word sex, and Title VII and Title IX

Doctors and medical experts didn't redefine the word sex; Congress didn't redefine the word sex; churches didn't redefine sex; not even Merriam Webster's Dictionary redefined the word sex. Everyone in the world knew the word sex was about biology, not about feelings, fantasies or dysphoria. But Washington bureaucrats redefined the word sex to include a made up concept of gender identity. It's time for some law suits. Time to take our country back, regulation by regulation, bureaucrat by bureaucrat, appointee by appointee. Some of you may even have to take back your churches. It doesn't stop with restrooms, locker rooms, marriage or parenting rules. No. You are going to be forced to change pronouns and be subservient to the minuscule number of people and their groupies who are mentally ill or just confused or conning you about who they are. Why would your federal government, your president, do that? For power. And for complete power forget health care--you must destroy the family.

When I was the veterinary medicine librarian at Ohio State I read a lot of human medicine material, especially since about 1/3 of our journals were not specifically about animals but about organs and systems and viruses and infections and cell biology, many shared. That's when I first came across body dysphoria, particularly people with the desire to amputate limbs or other body parts. On the internet you can find support groups for extreme anorexia--not to cure it, but to encourage it as a "right." One of my male assistants was getting counseling for his desire to become a woman, but you didn't hear much about it in the 1990s. Now, we are told believing dismembering healthy body parts is a type of "phobia" suffered by the one who believes it is wrong rather than the one who wants the amputation.

"The medical community—though not all of its members—has decided that amputating healthy breasts and testes and providing sterility-inducing cross-sex hormones constitutes medicine, while amputating an arm is quackery. Isn’t that judgmental and “transabled-phobic”?" 

 
 https://illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/the-trans-truth/

Before I read the article, I thought this was a male to female transgender because of his face (men have higher hair lines and longer chins), then was surprised he was also a transdisabled, or whatever it's called when you believe erroneously that you have disabilities and try to convince others.

Mexico's race problem

When Trump stood on the stage with President Nieto of Mexico, I couldn't help but notice that Trump was darker than the Mexican president. But maybe it was the make-up for the camera. The ruling and wealthy classes of Mexico are very fair skinned, as are the TV celebrities and movie stars, at least the ones I see on American owned Spanish language TV like Telemundo and Univision. There are some strict rules for Mexico's naturalized citizens quite different from ours and many government elective offices are closed to them. You can shorten the residency requirement for citizenship if you are a native born Spaniard, which would of course make you lighter skinned than someone entering from Central America. or the islands or Africa. But the only people crossing the border into the U.S. looking for better lives or temporary jobs to send money home are brown. The gangs bringing in the drugs, too. Why are Mexican leaders exporting their brown citizens? Mexico is a very wealthy country in natural resources.  Who is the racist here?

 

 

LIS Microaggression on Twitter

There's a Twitter site for librarians who get insulted easily, "LIS Microaggression." Apparently, if you are a white male, no one ever says ridiculous things to you.  Anyway, I've been looking through the sticky notes (which I think someone then catalogs, but I'm not sure), and truly, although librarians are 223:1 liberal to conservative, now they've completely fallen off the left edge of the cliff.  I used to read through the ALA committee assigned e-mails and wondered how they ever got their work done since they were so busy fighting the battles of the world. 

Truly, people have always said dumb things to librarians, my favorite being, "You mean you have to have an education to do this?" or "What a great job--you just sit around all day and read." Once I got a phone call from a NYC chef who wanted to know if baking blackbirds in a pie would be safe from diseases.  Another time a student from another state wanted to know how to cook the flesh off the bones of some road kill so he could reconstruct it for his science class.  

BTW, a WOC is a "woman of color."  And apparently no one ever told her in library school that your boss just might get credit for your work.  Think of it as being the speech writer for the president.

The gay organ majors at Oberlin

Gay alumni of Oberlin (small college in Ohio) have documentation of their history on the internet.  One writer decries always presenting gay men as victims, when in fact he thinks they are quite wonderful  and creative and supportive (in his introduction to this  history of the organ majors of 50 years ago). Here's how they carved out a special dorm space.

"Nearly all the organ majors were gay men, their presence could not be denied, by the school or to each other. It wasn't calculated at all, it simply was. Gay men following their passion for music arrived to discover that others were more like themselves than they could ever have dreamed. How wonderful is that? Starting in the early '50s, someone whose name is lost to history had the brilliant idea for the organ majors to take over the top floor (consisting of 10 or 12 rooms, some double, some triple) of a dormitory named Burton Hall. And so they did. If you have ever lived in a dorm at college you know this took considerable forethought and planning, applying for particular rooms a year in advance. Covert and subversive, it was a sacred trust, no one admitted to what was going on and would deny it if questioned. The administration was mute. It remains unclear whether the scheme was unknown or best unacknowledged. The organ majors of Oberlin did hold some esteem and clout. They were talented and it is said what they lacked in technical skills was far exceeded by the emotion they could find in a seemingly neutral piece of music. There is much evidence that some highly placed, closeted professors knew well what was going on and did what they could to deflect and gloss over rumblings from the administration or gossip."

 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/9/4/1013446/-