Monday, June 03, 2019

Jeanellen grieves the loss of a friend

This happens far more often than it should—bigotry and intolerance in politics. She writes:

“Feeling a heavy heart tonight as I may have lost a friend due to politics. Had dinner with a few friends that came into town who I haven’t seen in years. They all are very liberal, but one in particular looked at me & said, “Please tell me you would not vote for Trump again”. I was trying to keep it light but it just degenerated with her bringing up the abortion debate and acting like I was utterly ridiculous for believing that life begins at conception.

This is a person I like and respected who always agreed to disagree with me. Even though I was calm & respectful during the discussion she was barely speaking to me at the end.

This is not the first time this has happened and I really avoid bringing up politics but the media has poisoned the waters and makes people in the left feel like they have the right to take the stance of righteousness and unfettered disgust towards those who don’t agree.

How did we get here?”

Sunday, June 02, 2019

Constant anti-Trump drumbeat

I am so sick of the anti-Trump drivel in every media source--this in "Architect," which awards issue (336 pp) is the size of the old Penney's Christmas catalog. President Obama was known as the "deporter in chief," turning back hundreds of thousands of illegals, and the so-called child cage photos were from his administration. Only because he was dealing with fewer illegals crossing the border has Trump passed Obama on numbers and Soros funded non-profits are assisting with the onslaught. Why is it journalists in all media are all progressives? Why is it "anti-immigrant" to protect our sovereignty which is the #1 job of a President?

Author Jacobs brings up his grandmother, a Polish immigrant, who opened a Kosher restaurant in Hoboken to first drum up sympathy with readers, but of course, there weren't 22 million illegal Poles storming our borders after WWII, were there Mr. Jacobs? "Make the Road New York" is an immigrant rights group and it has a building designed and out sourced to a Mexican firm hired while Obama was president (I suppose there are jobs American architects won't do in a struggling economy?). I'm betting there are walls, doors and locks in this building.

https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/ten-arquitectos-designs-a-beacon-for-the-resistance_o

Over half of this issue is devoted to advertising, indicating a booming economy. I hope Mr. Jacobs takes notice.

Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic candidate for President ponders, imagine if

50% of Congress were women and 50% of mayors and governors were too. (Twitter, July 2017)  But I say. . .

Imagine if 60% the NBA and NFL were white like the population in that age group. Imagine if 51% were female. Imagine if half of all race car drivers were female. Imagine if half of all librarians were women instead of 90%. Imagine if half of all teachers were women instead of 80%.

Imagine what it would be like to have our government shoe horn us into a profession/life style that didn't fit because of our skin color, ethnicity or sex. I think that was tried by the Democrats about 100 years ago--it was called Jim Crow back then.

https://theweek.com/speedreads/837445/more-than-half-kirsten-gillibrands-donors-are-women-only-2020-contender-who-say-that

We now export energy

"As of 2017, renewables (solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and biomass) provided 12.8% of the US power supply, an increase from 8.1% of all power generated in 1980. Biomass is the leading renewable energy source, accounting for 5.1% of 2017 power production. Solar power grew by 12 times since 2007, but only generated 0.9% of power in 2017. Nuclear power provided 8.6% of the nation's power, up from 3.5% in 1980. Meanwhile, fossil fuels supplied 77.7% of American power in 2017, down from 89.4% in 1980. Petroleum continues to be the largest source of energy consumption, with natural gas being a second and rising source." USA Facts, annual Report.

We used to be an importer of energy; now we're an exporter.

https://annualreport.usafacts.org/articles/26-transportation-infrastructure-energy-natural-disasters-diversifying-power-supply-energy-independent

Saturday, June 01, 2019

President Trump as defender of religious freedom

I was puzzled that the Washington Post editorial board was attacking the Bible as literature in schools today; after all, you can't read a history of rock or pop music or understand Shakespeare if you are illiterate in the Bible. But the attack by its "editorial board" is tied to Trump. He tweeted it is a good idea, therefore, it must be awful, oppressive and fascist.

The president made promises as a candidate about restoring our religious freedom, and it was one of the earliest promises he kept and with little fan-fare. The MSM haven't said a lot, but the left continues to attack nuns, bakers, and Catholic school kids at a march for life even after the Supreme Court returned to them their constitutionally protected rights.

I urge you to go on line and print out "Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty" from the Office of the Attorney General, Oct. 6, 2017. Give it to your pastors, priests and professors. No other country has this; and no other U.S. president has told his AG to compile an easy to understand guide of laws, regulations, court cases and litigation results concerning that most precious of all our freedoms.

During the eight years of Obama, our freedoms were eroded in small but alarming ways with, "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone" to "fundamentally change" our nation. From announcing embryonic stem cell research at a Catholic university to setting up bureaucratic regulations in various agencies which bullied people of the book to using a website announcing which religious schools were receiving exemptions from Title IX, President Obama, a professed Christian, ground his heel on religious liberty in the United State.

Slowly the agency actions which were chipping away at our freedoms are being undone. That website which was used by the left to harass and mock people of faith, has been taken down. Other changes are being made in hostile bureaucracies in the Department of Labor and State Department and there is an ambassador at large for international religious freedom. HHS now has a division devoted to conscience protections and religious freedom.

Use it or lose it applies to religious freedom, too.

For more on this important issue see May 2019 issue of First Things. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/05/trump-and-religious-liberty

Friday, May 31, 2019

Guilty of being white with no license to exist

How crazy is academe (choose that college carefully)? Dorothy Kim, an assistant professor of English at Vassar, demanded that all faculty who specialize in Middle Ages use their classrooms to address white supremacy and assure their students "you are not a white supremacist." Diversity! Inclusion! Intersectionality! Of course, this is impossible. Being an English speaking person of European heritage will always brand one--usually as a toxic male, but women get smeared, too. Kim demanded her colleagues in the rather esoteric specialty take a side because not taking a side is choosing a side. Crazy totalitarian battleground classrooms. Faculty drunk with power over their students. People of fair and light skin are being marginalized and bullied--for existing. So is it the behavior and the hate, or the ethnicity that makes bullying and prejudice wrong?

This is a link to a very biased article, written by someone named Xu for the Vassar paper.

 http://miscellanynews.org/2017/09/27/news/vassar-medievalist-harassed-for-advocating-diversity/

A different point of view—I think this is a gay publication. https://www.dangerous.com/49082/why-is-inside-higher-ed-propping-up-this-abusive-lying-fraud/

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Mueller Report

Is there a pay gap, are teachers underpaid, and why do Democrats run on issues that are settled law?

“2020 Democratic presidential contender Sen. Kamala Harris is on a mission to close the pay gap for America's teachers, something she says is "not a partisan issue." Harris, who unveiled her new plan to increase the pay for public school teachers nationwide with a $13,500 pay raise, told "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday that "for too long" teachers have been paid "substandard wages" and are "not being paid their value to us as a society."” (CBS News)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-on-closing-teacher-pay-gap-lets-pay-them-their-value/?

Why do Democrats campaign on issues settled in law--will more laws help? Teacher pay gap? Local schools set those salaries, not the Department of Education (a federal agency that doesn't need to exist). Public school teachers according to BLS earn $63/hour (with benefits)--if they lie about teachers, then they lie about engineers and plumbers.

The "equal pay for equal work" law was passed over 50 years ago. When women continued to choose jobs that were easier, less risky, closer to home, and child-friendly, the feminists decided it became "equal pay for equal value" and what is that? Of course, a day care worker's job is valuable, but is it as valuable as an RN with an advanced degree or an entry level teacher?

What happens when you compare women with women? I was a librarian, one of the lowest paid jobs that requires an advanced degree, and dominated by women. Who is the commissar of jobs in DC who will decide that entry level Alabama librarians should be paid the same as chefs with 20 years experience in Chicago or a petroleum engineer in Alaska?

Tribalism, South Sudan, and Us

Tribal. I'm again reminded of what the left is attempting in our culture. Two weeks ago at church we hosted the president of The Lutheran Church of South Sudan and he explained the terrible losses among the Christians, who after finally gaining independence from the predominantly Muslim Sudan after decades of oppression and civil war, have returned to their tribal state and are killing each other in tribal warfare and terrorism.

Yesterday I checked out from the library "A rope from the sky; the making and unmaking of the world's newest State," (2019) by Zach Vertin. The author worked in Sudan and DC (Obama administration) and has both a local and western viewpoint on the unfolding tragedy.

Vertin doesn't expose this (obviously a liberal), but going or returning to tribal instincts is essential in what is also happening in the U.S. Diversity, multiculturalism, intersectionality, inclusion, equity, social justice, liberation, revolution, reparations, tolerance are all agenda words that really mean divide and conquer. That's what every IED (Inclusion, Equity, Diversity) department in college or business is about. Divide; get people to fight each other. Women against men, black against white, gay against straight, trans against drag, college educated against less educated, blue collar against degreed, urban against rural, patriot against globalist, Protestant against Catholic, mainline against evangelical, vegetarian against meat eating, animal rights against pet owners, fit against fat--any excuse imaginable to keep the political divide going.

Being a librarian, I always check table of contents, index and bibliography first to see if a title will be worth my time. Christianity was not listed in the index so I could cherry pick what I wanted to read, but I did find a few paragraphs on p. 119, not bad for a political writer. He does say,

"Amid a history of war and division, church leaders have often been voices of reason and reconciliation. But the legacy of divvying up the map between denominations has also complicated the work and perceptions of church leaders, as no institution has remained immune to politics and polarization.'

So far I haven't found any interviews of priests, pastors or missionaries--and as evidenced by his basketball player talk (Vertin is 6'5" and dwarfed by Sudan's players) and lost boys dreaming about their cattle--he's very good at that.

Lori—from Obama to Trump

She had never paid much attention to politics, but did vote for Obama his first term.  From the WalkAway Facebook page.

“One of the things that appealed to us about Obama was healthcare. We had a child with pre existing conditions and were paying a $600 per month additional premium on him. We wanted Obamacare and not to have to pay that extra premium anymore. Well, what a lie that turned out to be. Not only did the extra premium not go away for our child with a pre existing condition, but we had to pay more every month and it has steadily increased ever since!

We became small business owners during Obama’s first term and this is what really started opening our eyes to Democrats not being good for small business. We were providing jobs but being taxed to death and providing affordable healthcare for our employees is almost impossible. We did not vote for Obama his second term mainly for business and health care reasons, but still did not wise up that the media had a liberal agenda. What woke me up to the lefts true agenda was the Media when Trump announced his candidacy. I could not understand why the media was so hateful towards him. I just couldn’t believe the hate and why wasn’t the media being neutral?! I could not stand to watch the news because if it. I became a supporter of Trump early on because I agreed with everything he was saying.”

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

The back row in America

Chris Arnade, a Wall Street bond trader, had a pretty lofty view of himself. He was an atheist, and a progressive. This is from his new book, "Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America," Sentinel, 2019.

"Like most successful and well-educated people, especially in New York City, I considered myself open-minded, considerate, and reflective about my privilege. I read three ­papers daily, I watched documentaries on our social problems, and I voted for and supported policies that I felt recognized and addressed my privilege. I gave money and time to charities that focused on ­poverty and injustice. I understood that I was ­selfish, but I rationalized. Aren’t we all selfish? ­Besides, I am far less selfish than others. Look at how I vote (­progressive), what I believe in (equality), and who my colleagues are (people of all races from all ­places)."

And so he begins traveling, photographing and talking to "back row America" and discovers that those in the front row don't have all the answers.

You can read this excerpt on-line, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/06/back-row-america?

Chris Arnade writes for many publications.  In this article in the Guardian he is skin color focused, and he blames Trump for exploiting the pain and humiliation of the poor [but not Hillary?].  However, he gets a lot right in this article published shortly before the Nov. 2016 election--why Trump is supported by the working (and not working) poor.

"She was blunt when I asked her about her life. “Clarington is a shithole. Jobs all left. There is nothing here anymore. When Ormet Aluminum factory closed, jobs all disappeared.” She is also blunt about the pain in her life. “I have five kids and two have addictions. There is nothing else for kids to do here but drugs. No jobs. No place to play.”

She stopped and added: “I voted for Obama the first time, not the second. Now I am voting for Trump. We just got to change things.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/03/trump-supporters-us-elections

And Trump is changing things, and that is terrifying for the progressives who are willing to give away the country economically, socially and culturally. What he says about education rings true to me.  Who would want to give up their position at the top?

The battling deferments, Biden and Trump

Hugh Hewitt has an interesting take on Mayor Pete bringing up Trump's deferments 50 years ago as a way to denigrate him. It's a way, he said, to take out Biden by letting the press and social media do it. You see, Joe Biden had 5 deferments and the same classification as Trump, 1Y (called up only in a national emergency). That clown car is very crowded and someone needs to be thrown under the bus (pardon the mixed metaphors) and right now, Biden is riding high in the polls, and staying very quiet.

Democrats tried to go after Cheney on deferments, but never said anything about Presidents Clinton and Obama.  Obama didn’t need a deferment, but then he also didn’t serve in the military as we had an all volunteer military by then.

Most deferments were for education.  My husband had 3 for being in college and 2 for paternity.  But deferments weren’t fair, either.  He lived in a very large city; rural communities had a more difficult time giving deferments.  Then finally all married men were deferred, so maybe that’s 6.  Women were always deferred from the draft.

Monday, May 27, 2019

The No-Fear Act

I had never heard of the No FEAR act until I came across it in a government document. "On May 15, 2002, Congress enacted the ‘‘Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002,’’ which is now known as the No FEAR Act. One purpose of the No FEAR Act is to ‘‘require that Federal agencies be accountable for violations of antidiscrimination and whistleblower protection laws.’’ Pub. L. 107–174, Summary. In support of this purpose, Congress found that ‘‘agencies cannot be run effectively if those agencies practice or tolerate discrimination.’’ Pub. L. 107– 74, Title I, General Provisions, section 101(1)." So I looked at the 2019 report to see what was going on in violations of the various protection laws, and see that since 2016 the complaints have dropped about 1/3. Didn't see that any resulted in a finding of discrimination after a lengthy investigation and hearing. https://www.cdc.gov/eeo/docs/2019-No-Fear-Tables-2nd-Qtr-04-9-2019.pdf

The Dear John letter

This isn't exactly a Memorial Day tale, but. . . I was talking to a Vietnam vet today about church. He’d never heard of Lakeside, Ohio, which is a Chautauqua community originating as a Methodist Campground.  He said he grew up Catholic--attended church 6 days a week. I asked him when was the last time he'd been to confession, and he said 1967. He was in Vietnam and went to confession. The next day he got a "Dear John" letter from his fiancĂ© who had become pregnant by another man while he was gone. He never went back to church, and he has no idea what became of his fiancĂ© or the baby, except the new boyfriend dropped her.  He must not have grown up in a small town—people never forget those things, or what happened to whom, when and why.

I had the feeling she didn’t follow these instructions. https://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Dear-John-Letter

96 cherries in every bottle!

Not everyone reads full page magazine ads for products new to her. I do, especially if my friend Sonja just told me how many tart cherries must be in a cherry pie by law. This product, a juice drink called Cherrish, has 96 cherries (pulp, skin, and juice) in one 12 oz. bottle! The nearest store to me is in Las Vegas, so if I want to try it, I suppose it will be via Amazon. http://www.cherrish.net/why-cherries/ I don't have symptoms of exercise induced muscle damage, but who knows, some day I may work hard enough at the gym to get that. . .

Speaking of cherries, I just bought a pound of sweet cherries--just gorgeous and delicious--for $2.99/lb at Marc's. Not sure they will last until lunch time.

Happy Birthday, Mom

My mother would be 107 today. It's hard to imagine, and also to believe she's been gone since 2000. Our family never made much of a fuss about birthdays when I was growing up, and I can recall only a few times I was with her to celebrate during adulthood. I saw her for 2 days in late May of 1993 when I came out from Chicago after an MLA conference, but then she left for the DC area to see a granddaughter graduate, so I can't remember if we did anything to celebrate. Perhaps she celebrated it jointly with Julie. Then in the late 90s my sister and I both came in May and spent time with her.

And today is also the 3-day week-end date for Memorial Day, the last Monday in May instead of May 30 which was the date from 1868 to 1971--certainly enough years for me to adjust. It was originally a day to honor the Civil War dead--and there is still some controversy about that--however, now the tradition is to decorate the graves of family and friends, but also attend parades to honor war dead. In a letter to her cousin in Iowa, Marianne [posted at my blog], "Mom fretted a little on Memorial Day 1975 that she and her sister were the only ones left to place flowers at the grave sites of parents and brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, something their mother had always done." I hope my brother is able to get to Ashton to continue the family tradition of our parents and grandparents, and that my sister will place some flowers on the graves in Plainview in Mt. Morris.

Mom actually had a great uncle Jacob, the brother of her grandfather David, who died in the service during the Civil War, but if my grandmother, her mother knew that, she never told my mom. His birth and death dates are not in the family Bible. He was born in 1848 and died in May 1865, just weeks before the end of the war. He's buried in the National Cemetery in Nashville [Section J, grave 14379]. Mom and her sister found out about this 120 years later through a cousin in Iowa who still owned a letter he'd written from a prison camp. He was only 16 years old when he enlisted.

We are usually at our lake home over Memorial Day Week-end and here's a collection of the blogs I've written about it. https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/search/label/Memorial%20Day





Sunday, May 26, 2019

Abortion’s link to breast cancer

Women should be told about the relationship between induced abortion and breast cancer. And so should researchers who look only at race, income and social safety net. In the 1950s black women and white women were married at about the same percentage, but that changed with the War on Poverty and drastically by the late 1990s. Until the late 1950s black women had lower breast cancer mortality rates than white--even with aggressive segregation, more poverty, poor housing, and limits to education. And guess what else changed? Higher abortion rates for black women than white when Uncle Sam became the sugar daddy.

https://rtl.org/educational-materials/abortion-breast-cancer-link/

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6540a1.htm

http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/0817998721_95.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2568204/

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2730628

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/why-do-more-black-women-get-breast-cancer-more-black-women-get-abortio

Saturday, May 25, 2019

We’re all safe.

If we're on your prayer list, thanks. It never hurts to be preemptive. We're OK. The fire has been put out, and we had some clean up. The cottage odor is a combination of Febreze, scented candles and burned butter. We had a wonderful meal at Sortino's (Sandusky, OH) on Thursday evening and came home with 5 carry out bags + bread. However, the 20" stove in our summer home wouldn't quite hold everything when we tried to warm up dinner the next evening and (we're blaming Bob) some fettuccini alfredo over flowed, dripping butter, which then caught on fire. The four of us in the tiny kitchen (think Keystone Cops) were a hoot, with Phoebe rescuing our dinner from the flames and Mark squelching the fire. It is cleaning week-end so we then had fine soot over our freshly washed cabinets, counters, and floors. BUT. No one was hurt and there's no permanent damage. Supper was delicious once we all settled down, and I think there's enough for tonight's dinner. I do plan to buy a new stove, though.

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

The end of women’s sports

"If you know sport, you know this beyond a reasonable doubt: there is an average 10-12 percent performance gap between elite males and elite females," Coleman and Shreve wrote in an analysis published online.

"The gap is smaller between elite females and non-elite males, but it's still insurmountable and that's ultimately what matters," they wrote.

"Translating these statistics into real world results," they wrote, "we see, for example, that: Just in the single year 2017, Olympic, World and U.S. Champion Tori Bowie's 100 meters lifetime best of 10.78 was beaten 15,000 times by men and boys.”

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/house-votes-effectively-ban-womens-sports?

Venting on stupidity in Washington

Why do billionaires like Soros, Steyer, Bezos, Zuckerburg, Brin, et. al. support the Democrats? It's good for business, and they are first and foremost capitalists and globalists. The more heavy handed government control, the less competition they'll have because smaller companies won't be able survive.

Since November 2016 the Democrats have done nothing but try to impeach the President and have accomplished nothing for the country. The Mueller report is out and they are still at it. The Democrats are rushing to impeach because the investigation of the Obama regime's spying is coming down the pike. (Caller to Mike Gallagher show--paraphrased). Good point. And that may have been the motive behind the entire phony investigation.

"We no longer live in a constitutional republic. We live in an idiocracy. Only in modern-day America, under the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, is the basic proposition that federally subsidized public housing should benefit American citizens and legal residents slammed as “despicable” and “damaging.” " Michelle Malkin

Women are marching in support of killing other women's children. Whatever moral authority women may have had in the past, it's gone forever.  The pro-lifers marching outside the clinics are the abolitionists of the 21st century. The pro-choicers bragging about their abortions at rallies are the slave traders of the 18th century.

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2017/05/22/zuckerbergs-open-borders-group-enforcing-immigration-law-hurts-public-safety/

https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Bezos-contributions-Democrat-Washington-Post/2013/08/07/id/519168/

https://dailycaller.com/2018/07/30/soros-uygur-ocasio-cortez/