DNC chair praises socialism as future of party.

In an interview on the Bill Press Show, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez claimed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist running for Congress, is “the future of our party.”

http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/03/dnc-chair-socialist-ocasio-cortez-is-future-of-our-party/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIriGu5dtHM

What do Democrats have against ICE?

Maybe it’s just on social media—Democrats and Socialists wanting to get ride of ICE.

“Operation Broken Heart was set up by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, which partnered with ICE and its Operation Predator.  The criminal sweep occurred during March, April, and May.

In addition to the 2,300-plus arrests, Operation Broken Heart led to the identification of 195 offenders guilty of child pornography or child sex abuse, and the identification of 383 child victims of child pornography or sexual abuse, reported ICE in a statement.”

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gavi-greenspan/over-2300-suspected-child-predators-arrested-through-operation-broken

ICE is actually protecting children—leftists are throwing them to the wolves.

Declaration of Independence

If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.... The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward to an infinite future, having lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do.... These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world."
-- Samuel Eliot Morison
(1887-1976) Rear Admiral USNR, Naval historian

A clinger not a climber

“A woman protesting U.S. immigration law attempted to climb the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July. She did not get very far. She refused to come down until “all the children are released.” But her pledge held up about as well as her climbing abilities. Headlines screamed of a woman scaling the Statue of Liberty. When a climber does not reach Lady Liberty’s ankles, the said climber becomes a said something else. Call her a demonstrator, an activist, or Lady Lunacy. Don’t call her a climber. Climbers climb. This lady just held onto the base of a statue for a long period of time.”

American Spectator, July 5, 2018

A prayer for Independence Day from the Lutheran Prayer Book

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. We give You grateful thanks on this anniversary for the priceless blessing of liberty that with Your help was won for us by our ancestors. Stir up in us a new appreciation for the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness we enjoy in this land of the free and a greater readiness to serve our nation with our talents. Teach us, above all, to treasure that precious freedom of conscience and worship, without which other liberties would not long survive. May we never contribute to the loss of those dearly won blessings by our own selfishness, ambition, or indifference. Teach us furthermore, O Lord, that the enjoyment of freedom brings the responsibility to serve. Make us willing to respect the laws of our country, exercise faithfully our privilege to vote, and give our loyal support to all public institutions. Bless all those in authority. Grant wisdom and faithfulness to those in positions of leadership. Preserve them from becoming the prey of selfish pressure groups and give them willingness to serve the interests of the public. Grant enduring peace to our country and its institutions, so that Your Gospel may be able without hindrance to turn the hearts of all from the bondage of sin to the freedom won by the blood of our precious Redeemer, Jesus,  in whose name and for whose sake we ask this. Amen

My new dryer

Last summer we’d decided we needed to replace our washer-dryer in the basement of our lake house, however we were waiting for the summer of 2018 since we’re not here much after August.  This week we have our niece and nephew Dan and Joan Poynter with us, and he can fix anything, so after looking at the platform and the way the appliances were placed, he thought we could support 2 full size instead of 2 apartment size (more expensive and don’t do as well) if he rewired the outlet and bought longer hoses for the washer. The washer is ancient, but works fine, a freebie from our neighbor about 5 years ago when he was replacing his.

So all four of us went to Sandusky to shop yesterday (we not only put our guests to work, we take them to the best tourists spots!). We were looking for the scratch and dent, but only found one—$250 for a full size dryer—but it was gas not electric, and another more expensive model which was over $600 even on sale. We went to Lowe’s and Home Depot, and finally to ABC Appliances where they “sell for less” and they sold us an Amana for one dollar less than the Home Depot price—$377.  Most of the other makes and models were $500-$800.  Fortunately, Joan had snapped a photo of the tags at the Home Depot, so she had proof, and did the negotiation for us. It was loaded into the van and home we went. It was about a two hour adventure, but then another two hours for Dan in the basement.

Bob and Dan weren’t sure that there was enough room on the platform, so they also bought some wood to extended it, cut to the right size at the store since we didn’t have a power saw.  (As it turned out, the feet on the dryer were a little recessed, so the extension wasn’t needed, but it’s there.)

Of course, you don’t just buy a dryer—we also needed to buy new hoses for the washer, new venting for the dryer, new wiring for the outlet, rent for a dolly (that was to remove the old dryer, and the next day we went to a neighbor’s to get the old one down), plus two doors had to be removed.  We probably have about $550 invested in a dryer I’ll use 10x a summer.  The basement stairs are not standard, and rather dangerous.  I sat on the porch not wanting to listen to the grunting and groaning.  Oh, and Dan also fixed our basement light so I can see now. Today he’s going to install a fan in the guest bedroom. Let this tale be a warning if you ever come to visit us in Lakeside!!

 

 

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Before we had a Constitution, Americans had the Articles of Confederation and the most important piece of legislation of that era was the Northwest Ordinance. In 1785 and 1787 that government sold land in "the west" claimed as spoils of the war to investors (to pay for the war) on condition that certain rights and responsibilities be observed. It's the core of our Bill of Rights, and also the concept of local education, and the humanity and freedom of slaves and native Americans. Not all townships or states followed the rules--particularly on education and religion--because there's always graft and greed in government especially in collusion with capitalism, but when you read it, you see how far ahead the thinking was for any other existing government. 

https://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary-source-documents/northwest-ordinance/

Fan mail

Hey there,

I was poking around Subscribe with Bloglines today and came across your page: Leg Exercises for Older Adults for gait speed (http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/leg-exercises-for-older-adults-for-gait.html).

Great stuff!

I noticed that you mentioned https://eldergym.com/leg-exercises.html. I also love that article.
In fact, it inspired me to create this resource which breaks down the best leg exercises and an awesome leg workout: https://fitnesscrest.com/leg-workouts/

It would make my week if you'd consider mentioning it on your page. Either way, keep up the awesome work with Subscribe with Bloglines!

Cheers,
Kyran

Least patriotic states

Wallet Hub’s survey.  “In looking at such factors as the percentage of resident volunteers, voters, veterans, and enlistees, the site’s annual study—just in time for the Fourth of July—named Massachusetts America’s least patriotic state (New Jersey and Rhode Island follow close behind; Virginia tops the list [as most patriotic]). As a Bay Stater, this makes me sad. As an American, it makes me sad, too. The American Revolution started here. We celebrate Patriots Day. We root for the UMass Minutemen and the New England Patriots. We make tourism dollars off the Freedom Trail and Boston Tea Party reenactments. Unfortunately, all that history is just that—history. Past isn’t prologue.”

Ohio ranks 32nd in patriotism.

https://wallethub.com/edu/most-patriotic-states/13680/

Wallet Hub has many “best” and “worst” articles.  Some facts about July 4 and the various celebrations https://wallethub.com/blog/4th-of-july-facts/22075/

Desperate Democrats

“Like sharks thrashing about in chum-filled bloody water, the unhinged hysterics of the progressive left have gone into a feeding frenzy as they prepare to attack whomever President Trump nominates to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Thanks to Kennedy’s retirement, Trump is now in a position to appoint a non-activist, strict constructionist to the Court. Senate confirmation of the nominee will result in a solid, reliably conservative Court majority.

Needless to say, the Democrats in the Senate and their leftist supporters view this as the coming of the Apocalypse. But it was the triumphant Democrats who, during the heady days of the Obama administration, changed the Senate rules to allow judicial confirmations to proceed on a simple majority vote. Thanks to their lack of foresight and the existing bare majority of Republicans in the Senate, they are facing a tough uphill battle. So we should expect the desperate Democrats to resort to every device and artifice to slime, smear, destroy, and defeat the nominee.” George Parry

Read more:
https://spectator.org/too-catholic-for-the-democrats/

Baking powder

Yesterday my neighbor asked me if I had any baking powder—she wanted to make a coffee cake.  So I went to the kitchen cupboard and got out the Ziploc bag with flour, baking powder and baking soda.  I told her I thought it was several years old, and she should just use more.  After she made it and it cooled, she brought over four pieces and returned the can.

Today I needed to borrow a pizza pan, so I went over to her house, and she gave me a new can of baking powder so I could throw the old one out.  Which I did.  But first I removed the price sticker so I could see the use by date on the bottom of the can.  November 1996.

Lakeside 2018, week three

Very, very hot here—when we step outside it’s like be slapped.

About once a summer at our dockside church service we sing the hymn Leaning on the everlasting arms (What a fellowship). I blogged about it in 2012, and  my brother in law Nelson added an update for me. It always reminds me of my sister Carol who died in 1996. https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2012/08/leaning-on-everlasting-arms.html   Then in the afternoon we went to a memorial service for Joel Brucken who was one of Bob’s clients and in several groups with him here at Lakeside. The organist apparently went to the wrong location and rushed in a few minutes after start time, with only time to play one piece, and it was that hymn. So I heard it twice in one day.

Our niece and nephew, Joan and Dan,  are with us this week.  Since we rarely have anyone to celebrate with in this VERY family oriented place, it’s fun to have them. This is their 4th year to come for the 4th.  They are taking advantage of the new swimming pool that opened last summer.  I’ve been adding to my regular walking routine by using the small exercise room in the new Wellness Center then include a nice walk through the woods. Dan can fix anything, and he rewired an outlet for our dryer.  Now we have to buy a new one.

Another acquaintance at Lakeside, James Fisher, 80, drowned this past week working on his boat. We rented next door to them on Jasmine in the 1970s and they had 6 children, 2 of which were just the right age to play with ours. And they took our kids out on their boat for fishing. Very nice people and a very sad situation—had celebrated their 60^th wedding anniversary.

Saturday evening’s program was the Cleveland Pops Orchestra with a number of patriotic selections plus some medleys by old timey pop stars like Elvia Presley, Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, and some show tunes from Music Man and Grease.  The vocalist was Connor O’Brien, and a lovely 18 year old, Kate Klika. Tonight’s speaker is Laura Schroff who wrote “Angels on Earth”.

Medical advancements are the topic this week—today it is lung, and tomorrow eyes. The speaker today is Marie Budev of the Cleveland Clinic, and she was very interesting. She shared some of her success stories, but there are not many. Some of the take-aways I learned: the 5 year survival rate is 47%-57%; short people have more of a problem finding a match for a transplant because lungs must be the right size; transplant for cystic fibrosis is always a double; skin cancers are common after a transplant and must be regularly checked; IPF, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, is frequently misdiagnosed for 2-3 years, and consulting with 4-5 doctors.

Blaming Trump?

On Facebook a friend was complaining about unusual helicopter activity in his Cleveland Tremond neighborhood—he was sure someone was after illegal immigrants and that was all Trump’s fault.  Now I see that the FBI has arrested a possible terrorist who was planning to target the July 4 activities which brings out thousands in Cleveland.  Don’t know if that was the activity, but it might be worth it to say thanks to the FBI for stopping another Boston bombing, Jim.

Update:  Muslim. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/02/terror-suspect-arrest-cleveland/750294002/

http://abc7chicago.com/suspect-accused-of-plotting-cleveland-terrorist-attack-on-4th-of-july-arrested-abc-news-reports/3691045/
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/07/02/cleveland-july-4-attack-fbi-makes-arrest-alleged-terror-plan-cleveland/750345002/
https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/crime--law/cleveland-terror-plot-fbi-makes-arrest-says-attack-was-planned-for-fourth-july/r97ODUG3ynjERr5gAAdtTO/

Mexico immigration

I haven’t checked the details, but I know the reason the Central American refugees/illegals don’t stop in Mexico, is because they are stricter about illegal immigration.

Old Age

Deportation under Obama

“President Barack Obama has often been referred to by immigration groups as the "Deporter in Chief." (Aug. 29, 2016, ABC News) Between 2009 and 2015 his administration has removed more than 2.5 million people through immigration orders, which doesn’t include the number of people who "self-deported" or were turned away and/or returned to their home country at the border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

According to governmental data, the Obama administration has deported more people than any other president's administration in history.

In fact, they have deported more than the sum of all the presidents of the 20th century. “
Yet the country was full of marchers this week-end objecting to Trump?  You don’t really think this is about children, do you?

The left hates the Constitution of the United States, guest blogger Michael Smith

Deviations from the Constitution will always end in disaster. It reminds me of Thomas Jefferson quote from his letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816:

"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [the war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man."

The left hates the Constitution of the United States. They have since the days of Woodrow Wilson. They believe it is a dusty old parchment dreamed up by old slave owning cis-gendered white men to preserve white supremacist patriarchy.

You don't have to believe me - just listen to them when they say the Second Amendment is invalid because there is no way the founders could have foreseen the invention of the AR-15 or when it comes to the radical social engineering they favor, engineering that cannot stand without the coercive force of government being applied.

So, just imagine my chagrin when these same people -people who hate the Constitution - hold up signs saying they want to "defend the constitution" from an "un-American president".
They believe when some leftist justice finds a convoluted way to create some "right" from whole cloth - that is what the Constitution is. It isn't.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist #78 that "...the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them."

Hamilton also argued that the "Necessary and Proper" clause of the Constitution did not mean the federal government powers were unlimited, that Congress could only enact laws necessary to support the powers enumerated in the Constitution itself.

Boy, I can't imagine the look on old Alex's face if he could see what has happened to his "least dangerous" branch. He had an inkling how despotism could come about - reading a bit further down in Federalist #78, we find this:

"It equally proves that though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty can never be endangered from that quarter: I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and executive; for I agree that “there is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and the executive powers.” And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but it would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments."

If we take an honest look at the Supreme Court, over the past century, in addition to its power to interpret the laws, it has assumed the power of the Executive to enforce and the power of the Legislative to regulate. Rather than creating a "union with either of the other departments" the SCOTUS usurped those powers and is shielded from retribution by the idea of "judicial supremacy", a concept twisted from John Marshall's opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803), elevating the Supreme Court to the single and sloe arbiter of that which is constitutional.

But Marshall's opinion said none of that. Marshall never expressed that SCOTUS should be the ultimate arbiter - he simply held that Congress could not extend the jurisdiction of the Court beyond that which the Constitution had provided. President's all the way through Lincoln saw the three branches as equal in interpretation of the Constitution - essentially saying that the judiciary could be overridden by the other two branches.

The first moves to politicize the courts gained momentum under Woodrow Wilson and continued with FDR trying to pack the Supreme Court when the Republican majority ruled many of his New Deal actions unconstitutional. Conservatives wanted to strengthen the court against FDR's machinations and in doing so, set the stage for things to come.

The first real expression of "judicial supremacy" came about in the Warren court in 1958 when the justices claimed that Marbury v. Madison had “declared the basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in its exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principle has ever since been respected by this court and the country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system.”

The Warren Court went a long way toward politicizing and weaponizing the court system and setting SCOTUS up as a super-legislative body that is not co-equal to the other branches but one that sits above them. . . and that is why the progressive left sees control over the Supreme Court as a matter of life or death. For their ideology, it is.

Bullying Maxine

I read that a few people on the right (although who knows on social media—lots of trolls)  are bullying Maxine and the Red Hen biddy. Stop it! No need to act like a Democrat. Besides, their bad behavior is helping Trump.

I'm not being disrespectful to women by using the term "biddy," even though it is slang for a cranky, tiresome old woman. Biddy is also the term used when calling hens to come. It’s like cu-boss (come bossy) when calling the cows. When I was a child, my mother raised a few chickens whose eggs were worth $10 an egg by the time she spent the money to keep them alive.

Prairie plants of Ohio

On Friday afternoon of the second week of the Lakeside season John Blakeman of Sandusky spoke on “The Ohio Prairie Story.”  Called “Noah of the Prairie” because he rescues plants, Blakeman told us prairies are part of Ohio’s heritage, although one usually thinks of Iowa and Nebraska.  Ohio didn’t have many bison, but elk were common.  Fires are essential for prairie regrowth because there are some seed that need the heat to pop and reseed.  The plants are dense and grow deep, with about 1/3 above ground.  The plants he showed us usually grow only on the prairie—he went through the slides quickly and there are Latin names for all, but these are the common names, best as I can read my notes.
 
Indian grass

Michigan lily

Whorled Rosinweed 
 
White lady slipper orchid

• Indian grass
• Switch grass
• Cord grass
• Tall sunflower
• Ashy sunflower
• Butterfly weed
• Milkweed
• New England aster
• False White Indigo
• Water hemlock (very poisonous, looks like Queen Anne’s lace)
• Dense blazingstar
• Wild bergamot
• Prairie coneflower
• Ohio spiderwort
• Michigan lily
• Rough white lettuce (requires fire)
• Virginia meadow beauty
• Tall coreopsis
• Prairie Dock (stem will get 11’ tall with yellow flowers)
• Whorled rosinweed
• White lady slippers orchid (needs fire)

 Blakeman (former high school biology teacher) has established a number of prairie grass areas in Ohio, including one at Terra Technical College, as well as yard prairies for individuals, and our new prairie garden in Lakeside at 6th and Laurel across from the new swimming pool and wellness center.

Drain the swamp

As socialists try to make us feel guilty for “ignoring” the poor, sick, prisoners, immigrants while quoting Bible verses--think on this.

"The Committee on the Budget in the Senate identified 83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011 — more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these 83 federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the amount expended on just 10 of the largest of these programs has increased by 378 percent over the last 30 years. “

That's why a good job is the best program for the poor and low income, not another government program to fatten the bureaucracy. The Trump economy has done more for minorities and poor than guilt and smears the left can throw.

 https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS%20Report%20-%20Welfare%20Spending%20The%20Largest%20Item%20In%20The%20Federal%20Budget.pdf