Dark chocolate morsels

I haven't been able to get Hersey Dark Chocolate Nuggets lately where I shop, but did find some dark chocolate Dove red foil wrapped "promises." Today's wraps for the 2 of us were "Don't wait for sleep to start dreaming," "Be fearlessly authentic," "A smile is the quickest way to brighten a room," and "Be(you)tiful." Dark chocolate is good for your brain and heart; milk chocolate just adds waist.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16774-heart-healthy-benefits-of-chocolate

Praying for Anna

Fixed hour prayer time observances are very old in the Judeo-Christian worship traditions--Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Episcopal--but not in mine. I've made one up--6, 9, 12, 3, 6 and 9 and am praying for a fictional Russian grandmother (great-grandmother) who is my age and I've named Anna Ivanovna. She represents all Russian grandmothers whose grandchildren will go back to Russia in body bags because of Putin's foolishness in wanting to reestablish ancient Russia. So in my mind's eye she is 82. Although data for the early 1940s on life expectancy in Russia have been lost due to the war, she's lived beyond the average. In her formative years she would have been nutritionally deprived. She's educated but lost her government job and pension when the USSR collapsed. I don't blame her for not believing her government run news or Putin about what's going on in Ukraine. She doesn't even have a tradition of a free and honest press; I do/did and can't believe mine either! In my fictional grandma story, her father (Ivan) died before she knew him in WWII; her grandfather died in the Stalin purges of the 1930s; her great grandparents were children of emancipated serfs and lived through the turmoil of 1905 and 1917.

The corruption of banks

It's bad enough that our taxes fund the deaths of the unborn due to clever politicians' machinations--now our banks and investments with women in the board room are tainted? This is to further entrench the idea that a job can replace a family and the lie that abortion is "women's health care."

 
"One of America's largest banking corporations [Citigroup] is reportedly shelling out cash [for travel] to help employees circumvent state abortion laws." (The Blaze)

You may recall, this is how we ended up with employee benefits tied to jobs, which then later were assumed to be necessary for all. After WWII when there was a shortage of good workers with salaries and wages frozen (The Stabilization Act), larger companies began offering paid health insurance to circumvent government laws.

Two years ago during the Covid war. . .

Looking back two years ago, Ohio had 67 cases of Covid-19 and zero deaths. And yet on social media and main stream media Trump's enemies were saying president Trump should have been taking action in December 2019! They'd decided by March to side with Communists and claim he was a racist for calling it a Chinese virus even though a month before that was the term the media used. After three years of insulting him, calling him a traitor, demented, deplorable, not my president, racist, etc. they flipped completely and claimed he should have known more than all the bureaucrats, academics, scientists and career politicians who study and make laws and regulations about viruses and infectious diseases. These are the same folks who ten years before gave Obama a complete pass on the Swine flu epidemic. These are the same people who sued the president every time he tried to close our border, then howled when he didn’t shut down the economy six weeks before the lethality of Covid was known. They assigned to Trump the powers and intelligence of a deity or maybe just a dictator. Then when he kept his word about funding a vaccine within a year, they ridiculed him, said they would never trust it because his fingerprints were on it, and turned around to take the credit and mandate its use.

Now we're in a new kind of war (or the old kind) and Biden is negotiating with Iran using Russia as the intermediary to restore Iran's power to develop nuclear weapons. We need to stop calling Biden demented and compromised, and acknowledge he's the worst snake in the grass, worse than Putin, and the most evil destroyer of our country we've ever faced (and all with the same lies from media and Big Tech that worked against us in the Trump administration).

The difference between men and women

"The gender gap in athletic performance, as shown in records from Olympic competition, has remained stable since 1983. The mean difference has been about 10 percent between men and women for all events. The mean gap is 10.7 percent for running, 8.9 percent for swimming and 17.5 percent for jumping. When performances improve, the improvements are proportional for each gender." 

A well trained, in shape, female athlete can out perform a male non-athlete. Female equestrians can compete on a par with males because of their physical balance and concentration.

 
This article will probably be taken down as "hate research," (2018), so read it while it's available.

https://www.sportsrec.com/6580144/how-do-men-and-women-differ-athletically

Biden's terrorists compared to Trump's terrorists

Biden is "Poised To Remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp From Terror List To Wrap Up Nuke Deal" (headline Mar 16, 2022) so he can restore Obama's dangerous nuclear deal. Yet his Secretary Mayorkas of DHS is bullying parents as "violent domestic terrorists" if they speak out about trans-indoctrination for kindergartners and CRT reeducation camps in our schools or voters who investigate fraud in the 2020 election or federal employees who speak out against government abuses. Whose side is Biden on? American citizens, or Islamic terrorists?  https://www.scribd.com/document/564349619/Report-to-the-Secretary-of-Homeland-Security-Domestic-Violent-Extremism-Internal-Review-Observations-Findings-And-Recommendations#from_embed

"US President Donald Trump officially designated the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019, imposing sanctions on the group. The IRGC has been linked to numerous terrorist attacks around the globe, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and an attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US on American soil. It provides arms and training to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen." https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/324094

Why is Dr. Fauci untouchable? The Forbes story

Adam Andrzejewski “published 206 investigations while writing an estimated quarter million words on the platform.” His targets were bipartisan, outing Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and plenty of others. But then. . . he wrote about Dr. Fauci. Bye, bye. After extensive digging and overcoming NIH foot-dragging, Andrzejewski discovered that Fauci and his wife, Christine Grady, chief bioethicist at NIH, are worth more than $10.4 million, and they rake in major money for a lot of things. Andrzejewski’s reporting held up under scrutiny, even from the National Institutes of Health, which found only minor semantics corrections to complain about. Nevertheless, it seems that pressure from NIH got Andrzejewski cut from Forbes’s lineup.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/86911-in-brief-how-fact-finding-fauci-led-to-my-cancellation-2022-03-15

from the original article at https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/factfindingfaucicanceledforbes?s=r

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2022/01/12/no-faucis-records-arent-available-online-why-wont-nih-immediately-release-them/?sh=766d1f7e46bd  Story about Fauci's financials NOT being public and transparent

"Two [NIH] directors, two bureau chiefs, and two top PR officers didn’t send an email to the Forbes’ chief on a Sunday morning because they wanted to correct the record about Fauci’s travel reimbursements.

They sent that email to subliminally send a message: We don’t like Andrzejewski’s oversight work, and we want you to do something about it.

Unfortunately, Forbes folded quickly."

The Tulsi and Tucker are treasonous meme

When Mark Levine, Mitt Romney, Keith Olbermann and the ladies of the view all think it is treasonous and you/we are a Russian assets to question whether there are bio-labs in Ukraine and perhaps we should be cautious about no fly zones and expanding the war zone, then we have a truly divided nation. Democrats against Democrats and Republicans against Republicans; twitter mobs and Tik Tok influencers against long time investigators; Christians against Christians, and military veterans against people who never served a day; liberal minorities against illiberal minorities; and women who are ignoramuses against women who have done something with their lives--I tell you--it's makes my head spin. Especially when we're into our third year of the government lying to us about the source and funding of a virus that has locked us all up for two years! A government that says you must be silenced if you can't support the non-science that men are women; a government that says there was no flimflamming in the 2020 election; a government that sends a cackling airhead to Europe and Poland to further convince our allies of our weak, feckless administration. The world is indeed a global crazy town.

Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches--different but the same

"Look, major saints of the Slavic Orthodox Church — and I’m talking about Ukrainian Russian Orthodox Church and Serbian, what have you — a lot of them are of Ukrainian descent. Ukraine has produced the fathers of Orthodox Church that have served in Russia, Serbia, Moldova, Romania, in other parts of the world, including Middle East and in Jerusalem. Ukrainians have contributed to the fabric — into the mosaic — of the spiritual entity of who we are as Orthodox Christians.

We are two distinct groups of people, Russians and Ukrainians. We’re people of one faith — we’re Christians. But our cultural background makes us different. Because of the impact that Western society has had on Ukraine, people the Western Ukraine, and in general in Ukraine, are open to their whole idea of self entities, identifying themselves as Christians and asking themselves valid question, “Why am I a Christian? Why am I Orthodox? Why am I doing the ritual I’m doing? Why am I living the way I live?”

In the northern part, or the northern neighbor, the Russian Federation, they would often use the teachings of the saints of the church and imply that you are not worthy of anything as a person, as a child of God, to accomplish anything in order to fully and truly approach him with your worthiness. Two distinct approaches to the sanctity of human life."  https://religionnews.com/2022/02/25/a-religious-politician-head-of-ukrainian-orthodox-church-of-the-usa-slams-patriarch-kirill-putin/

The history of Russia and Ukraine, as partners and as enemies

This article is from "Plain News" a paper for plain people, conservative Mennonite, Amish, Hutterite and Brethren. It's an opinion piece on what is behind the invasion of Ukraine. It has a good history going back 1000 years, and a partial motivation about the NATO policy and expansion (I don't really think that is so strong because even if Russia owned Ukraine, NATO would still be on its border just as it would be if Ukraine were part of NATO.

https://www.plainnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Why-is-Russia-invading-Ukraine-___-Plain-News-3-9-22-1.pdf

"The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined in 2004; Albania and Croatia joined in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020. NATO reports that Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine are all currently seeking membership. Almost all of these countries were previously a part of either the Soviet Union and/or the Warsaw Pact military alliance. Russia has viewed this NATO expansion to its very borders with much trepidation . . . "

YouTube channels--addictive time wasters

Do you ever watch the YouTube channels? Today I wasted a huge amount of time watching 3 videos of Top Notch Lawn Care. Yup. Watched a guy cleaning up the worst yards and lawns you've ever seen. Thousands of viewers and many comments. It was sort of satisfying after all the war footage and the hopeless mess our politicians get us into. As my mom who remodeled her parents' farm home as a religious retreat center used to say, "I can't save the world but I can save 4 acres." I think that must be how this guy believes.

Older adult ministry at UALC

 On December 29, 2021, I wrote a letter to a "ministry" (don't know who read it since there was no personal name) which was no longer on the schedule when our church reopened after the Covid lockdown. For over two decades there had been a Thursday morning Bible study mostly attended by retirees, although there were a few younger adults who attended. There were also attendees from the retirement communities near by, and by members of other churches. I attended only occasionally until the last few years. I could see that it met a lot of needs, especially social and mental stimulation.  There was a once a month luncheon after the study with interesting programs, sometimes about social services offered in the community, or volunteer opportunities, or featuring an interesting member of the congregation or artists in conjunction with the visual arts ministry. Here's the letter--there's no "dear pastor" since I didn't have a name:

"I read through the [winter] offerings and am wondering why the Thursday morning study has not been reinstated. Your ears must be burning for all the times members of that group discuss it during Sunday coffee time. It’s one of the longest running ministries that I’m aware of in the church. I retired in 2000, have participated at different times, but it was going strong when I was still employed. I know of no group that was more affected by the church lockdown/closure than this age group. It provided intellectual stimulation, a service opportunity for some, fellowship, occasionally lunch, and friendships. Not everyone in the group is an elder, and some are not members of UALC, so it also does outreach. Many do not use social media (which UALC provides) so it’s a chance to connect—as essential as the smart phones are for the teens. Loss of the Sunday church bulletin has also affected this group more—its reinstatement would mean more than card stock handouts suggesting volunteer opportunities or special needs.

If this older adult group is to be eliminated, perhaps you could announce it."

I'm happy to report that the group met today at 10:30 a.m., about 2 years to the day that the church closed in 2020. I didn't count, but there was a very large group--I'm guessing maybe 50. The study was led by our senior pastor, Steve Turnbull speaking on "Jesus is Lord," and there was good group participation. We also sang two familiar hymns (singing is good for the health) and had prayer.   It was followed at noon by the mid-week Lenten service in the sanctuary which included communion and a nice lunch (soup, salad, hot drinks, corn bread, and ice cream with a cookie).  The three groups didn't necessarily overlap with some who came to the church service weren't at the Bible study, and some at the Bible study didn't stay for church or lunch. There were already many isolated, lonely people in this group, particularly widows and widowers, who looked forward to this program, and the lockdown hurt them with loss of church services and volunteering. Not all could use Zoom for Sunday school. Everything we know about the health and welfare of elders was out the window during the lockdown. Some I know began attending other churches which reopened much sooner.  So losing their Thursday group after the reopening with no explanation was painful. I pray we can keep it going and I'm appreciative that someone managed to work through the problems of reinstatement. Thank you pastors Steve and Joe.

How Biden has failed us and helped Putin

 Ted Cruz says Biden is the best thing that ever happened to Putin.  Agreed.

Biden refuses to protect or encourage our own energy sources which could also save Europe; he allows our country to be invaded; he sat and watched as Putin threatened to pounce as soon as weather permitted; he flooded our economy with inflationary dollars using Covid as an excuse; before he took office he warned oil and gas investors he would shut them down; and he hides in his basement terrified of our homegrown global green terrorists.

Tribute to Dmytro Shtohryn

 https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/endowment-in-honor-of-dmytro-shtohryn-established-at-u-of-illinois/

https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/dmytro-shtohryn-librarian-initiator-of-ukrainian-studies-at-the-university-of-illinois-at-urbana-champaign-95/

When we lived in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, I was a Slavic Librarian at the University of Illinois where I worked with a number of Ukrainians and other emigres from the Baltics and Russia.  One I remember well was Dmytro Shtohryn.  I learned a lot about cataloging, librarianship, Ukraine, and WWII from him. He was also kind and generous--a good boss.  With all the recent news about Ukraine and Russia I decided to look him up.  He died in 2019 at age 95.  A life well lived. His obituary mentions Ralph T. Fisher who died in 2015, and he was my boss when I  worked in the Russian Language Area Center which is how I ended up being a Slavic Librarian.

Fossil Fuels, our way of life

As Kamala Harris gets all excited about electric cars before she takes off for Poland in a jet powered by jet fuel from a mixture of hydrocarbons, let's not forget all the products made from fossil fuel, beginning with all the plastics, and including polypropylene from which billions of face masks and PPE were made--in China. From where I sit at my living room desk looking out the window, I can see nothing except my mother's 1930's sewing cabinet, that doesn't contain in part products made from fossil fuels--desk, lamp, clock, computer, i-pad, printer, mouse pad, cords, notebooks, BIC plastic pencils, window blinds, frames on the paintings. Fossil fuels about as organic and natural as you can get. Plant material decayed and buried by pressure of earth. https://lifepowered.org/the-unsung-hero-of-coronavirus.../

What is a woman these days?

 

Joe lies about inflation

Joe Biden has made us energy dependent AGAIN, so the smoke screen about inflationary gasoline prices because Putin's being a bad boy again is just that. Psaki claimed its about the invasion of Ukraine, after months of telling us inflation was temporary because people were returning to normal purchasing after the pandemic. No Joe, this one's on you. You and your terrorist green squad that wants to ruin our country. There are just as many emissions when we use Venezuelan, Russian, or Iraq black gold or does the religious climate cult think that our fossil fuel like our skin tone alone is tainted?

If Trump were president

• No disastrous exit from Afghanistan leaving billions in military supplies
• No lies about Covid
• No cancelling careers of medical experts who offer alternative therapies
• No soaring gasoline prices

If Trump were still president

• We'd have even bigger lies from the media who are all covering for Joe

When women protested against President Trump

I wrote this on March 8, 2017 about women protesting President Trump. Some Women's History.

"Some women will be marching today against President Trump.

 
We know it isn't for the right to vote, because many have that and don't vote;

 
we know it isn't for higher education because they outnumber men in college;

 
we know it isn't for protection of Title IX because they believe biological sex doesn't matter and anyone can be a woman even a 6' 300 lb. male wrestler;

 
we know it isn't for higher salaries because most work for the government in some capacity either as teachers (average hourly wage about $60 according to BLS) or mid-level bureaucrats in local or state or federal government and they are paid more than in the private sector;

 
we know it isn't for freedom of religion or the right to own a gun because they want people to keep religion private and inside churches and want the 2nd amendment to go away;

 
we know it isn't for life from womb to tomb because they are pro-abortion and for euthanasia;

we know it isn't to stop hunger because only 25% of Americans are "normal" BMI;

we know it isn't to crash the glass ceiling because women are free to make choices for career track;

we know it isn't to stop international slave trade in women for sex because they want to do battle against 18th century slave trade.

 
So that only leaves the obvious since for the last 8 years they just went to work and nothing is different today."

Recent uses of the word predecessor

Recent examples of the word "predecessor" on the Web

That’s a similar result to one achieved by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, in an October 2020 poll by the Pew Research Center, 47%-53%. — Sofi Sinozich, ABC News, 25 Feb. 2022

Portman said Trump agreed to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, that his predecessor, Barack Obama, would not give.
— Sabrina Eaton, Cleveland, 24 Feb. 2022

During a small portion of the Oval Office meeting [with the Finnish president Niinisto] open to reporters, Biden said his predecessor Barack Obama believed the world would be fine if they left matters up to Nordic countries. Niinisto replied we don't usually start wars. [I saw this clip and Biden was so weak and fumbling that his staff immediately rushed him out of the room.] March 4, Reuters, video

Where is Merrick Garland when churches are attacked?

 Sen. John Kennedy says the Justice Dept. has not responded to his complaint in 2020 about attacks on churches. More than 80 attacks have occurred since his first letter urging the Justice Department to step in. Is Merrick Garland too busy ferreting out terrorist parents to pay attention to real anti-Christian crimes?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/mar/2/sen-john-kennedy-urges-merrick-garland-crack-down-/