A Kennedy supports the never primaried candidate

Jack Kennedy Schlossberg, 31, is the grandson of John F. Kennedy and the son of Caroline Kennedy and has endorsed Kamala Harris for president and mocked his cousin, third-party candidate RFK Jr. No surprise here.

Children and exercise--the gym or outdoors?

I go to Lifetime Fitness (I call it the gym) about 5x a week. Sometimes parents bring their children--I think they need to be 12 to be a guest. They are well-behaved and no trouble--but I do feel sorry for them, especially the young girls who are probably already a little over concerned about their bodies.

No one wants to hear that we knew better in the "old days" but here it is. I hated school PE classes, I admit it. I did avoid all organized summer sports although the town had community leagues. But I certainly had a lot of exercise. Watching a little kid on one of those machines today I recalled:

• climbing trees
• riding horses
• biking on no-speed, manual brake bicycles
• playing hop-scotch
• raking leaves in the fall
• mowing the lawn in the summer
• pulling weeds in the garden in the summer
• digging dandelions in the yard in the spring
• running during recess
• swinging on the monkey bars in the school yard
• roller skating with strap on skates on the sidewalks
• catching tadpoles and frogs in creeks
• playing softball in the street with neighborhood kids
• delivering newspapers on a morning route
• running just because
• and we walked because our mean mothers wouldn't drive us everywhere we wanted to go!

Most of these with the exception of newspaper delivery were social activities--done with friends or a group.

The White House plan for inflation, health and energy

“My plan is to lower everyday costs for hardworking families and lower the deficit by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes.” — President Biden (White House web site)

The Harris Biden plan to reduce government induced inflation is to blame business. They flooded the nation with money long after the Covid crisis receded (in part created by their lockdown and masking policies) with too much money chasing too few goods. Many businesses just closed and some owners who fought back went to jail (especially in Minnesota under Walz who even had a tip line so neighbors could snitch on neighbors). Are they at fault for the policies that ruined them? The "wealthiest Americans" many of whom are backing Harris, can't bail them out with higher taxes. They just move their assets off shore. There's not enough money in their investments, which we need to grow, to reverse the bad monetary policy of the Harris Biden years.

The same WH message says they will take on Big Pharma, the same folks who prevented us from getting treatment for Covid because they could make greater profits with "preventive" measures that didn't work and actually wounded many Americans. Some Americans are still being terrorized by tax supported messages of fear and have submitted to 6 or 7 boosters while still wearing masks in their cars.

The same WH message says Democrats will lower our utility bills, but how will they do that when they intend to destroy fossil fuels in the pie in the sky plan to stop climate change, something that has been going on since the beginning of the record? What do you think is powering those electric vehicles? Coal!

Harris owns this. As vice president she casts the tie breaking vote in the Senate. She voted for those additional IRS agents to stop cheating on tips. Now she's running for cover by laughing and copying Trump's proposal to end taxes on tips.

 
We need a moderate Republican like Donald Trump in the White House to stop the radical leftist Democrat administration from destroying our economy and our Bill of Rights.

Harris and the takeover

Why in the world would Harris sit for an interview, even for friendly, soft ball questions from the "legacy media?" The media have already puffed her up to princess level; she's already allowed a foreign invasion as the Border Czar. How much difference did it make to Democrats that she did nothing. Said nothing. Answered no criticism. She only has to wait and not speak. She lies when her lips move, so what difference does it make? No shots fired. Easy Peasy. The stage is set for the totalitarian takeover.

Pray as though your life depended on it--because it's true

We are on the brink of war with Iran who is allied with Russia and China. Our current "border czar" allowed many terrorists to enter our country and they are now working with the rioters on the campuses and in our major (mostly blue) cities. She's busy campaigning for another 4 years of careless, anti-American, weak, feckless leadership and refuses to repudiate her years as Biden's right-hand lackey. She was not primaried, she was not selected by the people.

 
Pray as though our lives depend on God. It has ever and always been so, but some need more evidence. And it is right in front of us.

Break dancing at the Olympics

Count me as one who says break dancing is not an Olympic sport (why not have waltz or Texas 2-step events?). It is the height of hypocrisy for a black man to criticize a Lithuanian woman for wearing a Durag in a break dance event as "cultural appropriation." They expect us to accept a man parading in heavy mascara, 4 inch heels and sex hormones as a woman. That's absolutely cultural and sexual appropriation! The whole concept of an Olympic contest is cultural appropriation from Greece in 776 BC. Get over yourself.

Election fraud and Democrats--refresh your memory

When so many have already tossed the assassination attempt of Trump down the memory hole (less than a month ago), perhaps it's too much to hope we can recall election fraud and conspiracies by Democrats in the past. 1988 was the last time Democrats didn't cry fraud when they lost. Pelosi is already making threats about 2025 if Trump wins. So how is their record? Especially for mail in ballots, always ripe for fraud. New York Times and Washington Post used to warn of the dangers, then after 2020, Republicans were accused of being conspiracy theorists or spreading misinformation if they questioned the flood of ballots. Listen if you don't have time to search or read the book. In case you missed it, Walz, the vice president pick of the Democrat party for 2024, is already laying plans to outlaw free speech if he deems it misinformation. To refresh your memory. . .

  https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2021/11/mollie-hemingway-talks-election-fraud

Edith Stein, August 9 memorial

Today, August 9, we Christians and Jews memorialize the death of Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was killed in Auschwitz on August 9 for both her ethnic Jewish heritage (had converted to Catholicism in 1922 after being an atheist) and her Catholicism. After the Dutch Catholic Bishops had condemned the Nazis for the persecution of the Jews in 1942, Roman Catholics were rounded up and sent to the death camps.

 
The Collect for her memorial in the "Episcopal Book of Common Prayer" reads as follows:

"Pour out your grace upon thy church, O God; that, like your servant Edith Stein, we may always seek what is true, defend what is right, reprove what is evil, and forgive those who sin against us, even as your Son commanded; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, now and forever."

Yad Vashem, the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Jerusalem, commemorates Edith Stein as a Jewish woman murdered by the Nazis: “Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany in 1891. Prior to WWII she lived in Koeln, Germany. Edith was murdered in the Shoah.”

 
Pope John Paul II canonized her in 1998.
-----------
Let's remember on this day that Nazi (National Socialists) totalitarianism was against Christians as well as Jews. To revere God as higher than the state is a crime in totalitarian societies. Today we need to watch for that evil as the creeping socialism in our own country becomes an open, in-your-face marathon. We see attacks on Jews in our elite universities and the FBI has been found spying on traditional Catholics. Parents lose their rights for fighting against the agenda of radical trans activists who deny God's plan of Creation of male and female.

(Information from Magnificat, August 2023, pp. 117-118 and Praytellblog,com)

FACT and Kamala Harris and Walz and born alive

On June 26, 2018, the US Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to strike down as unconstitutional the 2015 California Reproduction Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act (the “FACT Act”). This law was co-sponsored by California's then Attorney General Kamala Harris. The law required crisis pregnancy centers that offer reproductive health services to inform clients, by posted notice or handout, about California’s public programs that provide low-cost or free contraception and abortion services. It also required that they post a phone number for more information, and that unlicensed facilities post a notice acknowledging that they are not a licensed health care provider. 

Just another example from the memory hole of how much Harris wanted women to get abortions instead of giving birth to healthy babies and how much she tried to destroy free speech.

And the record of her running mate, Tim Walz, on abortion and the value of babies born alive after an abortion is even worse.

"Minnesota was the rare state to require such born-alive abortions to be publicly reported, creating a powerful statistic for pro-life and anti-abortion forces to draw upon.

But in 2023, Walz worked with his new Democrat-controlled Legislature to eliminate both the REPORTING requirement and the state’s legal obligation for doctors, nurses and medical professionals to administer LIFE SAVING CARE to infants born alive during an abortion procedure. The governor-turned-vice presidential nominee signed an omnibus bill known as SF2995 that closed one of the few statistical windows on late-term abortions and the possibility that babies born alive were left to die."

Tim Walz Removed Born-Alive Abortion Reporting Requirements (dailysignal.com)

And this is the guy who called Vance weird?

Biden and the Constitution

I have a copy of the Constitution of the United States (and with Index, and The Declaration of Independence) c. 2009, 2012--in my hand. Every American should own one and read it occasionally. Especially the part about 3 branches of government. It's hard to imagine how powerful and historic such a small booklet can be--although it's not the print or the pages, but what it represents. And yet, Biden (and Harris/Walz) are willing to destroy it, with the most recent attack against SCOTUS. Biden should be on his knees smoothing their robes for their decision to clarify immunity for the president. There is so much crime, evil and malfeasance in his administration that sooner or later some clever lawyer/prosecutor just might string a few laws together that show it all started at the top. The Biden years are an insult to that precious document.

Biden Announces Plan to Radically Alter the Supreme Court Because He Didn't Like Trump Ruling (westernjournal.com)

Supreme Court Justice issues stern words on Biden's plans for huge overhaul | Daily Mail Online

https://nypost.com/2024/07/29/us-news/biden-formally-unveils-plan-to-overhaul-scotus-with-focus-on-limiting-trumps-powers/

Harris choses the most leftist of the party, Tim Walz

So the defund the police riot control candidate chooses a let it burn down candidate.

The mayor of Minneapolis failed and the governor of Minnesota failed to get things under control until the rioting spread across the nation, in late May-June, 2020. The senator from California jumped on the defund the police and raised bail for rioters bandwagon. Pennsylvania's governor, Josh Shapiro, most likely lost out because he's a Jew and Kamala, being at the far left of her party, favors the Palestinians.

What a team!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/minnesota-gov-tim-walz-up-harris-vp-criticized-remarkable-lack-leadership-during-covid-riots?

Semaglutide and weight loss for diabetes or obesity

I recently saw a photo (mid-2023) of Oprah on Dr. Peter Attia's web site (promotes health, longevity, exercise, etc.) and noticed how thin she was. I heard she'd been on one of the GLP-1 drugs (semaglutide[Ozempic, Wegovy]) and had stopped the "healthy" diet promotions. That article was a "members only" read, but here's what she told People magazine.

“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for,” Winfrey stated. “I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.”

I wonder if the thin Oprah will be as popular as the fluffy Oprah?

Some researchers question the safety, and others who are not researchers (me) think it's too expensive.

Because it also lowers the risk of some other dangerous health conditions, how much should the taxpayers be chipping in? Ozempic is FDA approved for type 2 diabetes and Wegovy is FDA approved for weight loss with or without diabetes. This matters for insurance, but there is a cost either way. Someone pays. Someone makes a profit.

 
Remembering how Hormone Replacement Therapy drugs were called a "miracle" about 30 years ago to prevent heart attack, stroke, dementia etc. as well as hot flashes, then were dropped in 2022, I'd be a bit cautious. That's a personal opinion.

Here's a video, useful for its recency with a voice over to help with pronunciation.

https://youtu.be/DTOcV8uFZyw?si=Hpi5yoWnPJpaDMxr

What Kamala Harris believes

 https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-kamala-harris-believes-c1136006

What Kamala Harris Believes

The Vice President’s political record reveals the views of a California progressive.

---

By The WSJ  Editorial Board

Democrats are rapidly unifying behind Kamala Harris as their party nominee, yet the Vice President remains relatively unknown to most Americans. That means it’s important to look at her record to see what she believes.

As VP she’s closely identified with the Biden agenda, for better or worse, and she embraced that record in remarks on Monday. She said President Biden’s first term has “surpassed the legacy” of most Presidents who have served two.

So mark her down as endorsing the spending blowouts that caused inflation, the Green New Deal, entitlement expansions and student loan forgiveness. Until she says otherwise, we should also assume she’s in favor of Mr. Biden’s $5 trillion tax increase in 2025.

The Vice President’s four years as a Senator from California are another window on her worldview. She sponsored a bill to create a $6,000 guaranteed income for families making up to $100,000. Another Harris proposal: A refundable tax credit that would effectively cap rents and utility payments at 30% of income. Liberal economists panned the subsidy because it would drive up rents.

She co-sponsored legislation with Bernie Sanders that would pay tuition at four-year public colleges for students from families making up to $125,000. This is more honest than the Administration’s back-end student loan cancellation. But it would cost $700 billion over a decade and encourage colleges to increase tuition.

Another Bernie mind-meld: Single-payer healthcare. Ms. Harris co-sponsored his Medicare for All legislation paid for by higher income taxes. She tweaked Bernie’s plan when running for President in 2019 by extending the phase-in to 10 years from four and exempting households making less than $100,000 from the “income-based premium.” But it would still put government in charge of all American healthcare over time.

As a San Francisco Democrat, Ms. Harris shares the state’s hostility to fossil fuels. She used her power as California Attorney General to launch an investigation into Exxon Mobil over its carbon emissions. In 2019 she endorsed a nationwide ban on oil and gas fracking, which would cost tens of thousands of jobs and cause power outages like those that often occur in her home state. Expect this to be a GOP talking point in Pennsylvania.

One question to ask is whether the Vice President wants to restructure the Supreme Court. She said in 2019 she was “open” to adding more Justices, but that idea doesn’t poll well. Does she agree with Mr. Biden’s mooted plan to endorse “reforms” to the High Court that would make the Justices subject to Congressional supervision?

Mr. Biden famously put Ms. Harris in charge of border policy, and we know how that has turned out. Rather than push for border policy changes, her first instinct was to blame the rush of migrants on “root causes” in developing countries, including corruption, violence, poverty and “lack of climate adaptation and climate resilience.”

Climate change makes the U.S. border a sieve? Apparently so. “In Honduras, in the wake of hurricanes, we must deliver food, shelter, water and sanitation to the people,” Ms. Harris declared. “And in Guatemala, as farmers endure continuous droughts, we must work with them to plant drought-resistant crops.” These “root causes” take decades to address, and in the meantime she had nothing to say about actual border security.

Ms. Harris’s foreign policy views aren’t well known, or perhaps even well formed, apart from promoting Mr. Biden’s policies. While she has backed the Administration’s military assistance to Ukraine, she has equivocated about support for Israel. In March she chastised Israel for not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe.” Leaks to the press say officials at the National Security Council toned down her speech’s criticism of Israel.

She lambasted the Trump Administration for killing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani, claiming it could lead to bigger war in the Mideast. The killing chastened Iran’s rulers instead, at least until the Biden Administration began to ease sanctions and tried to repeat the 2015 nuclear deal.

It will be especially important for the press to ask Ms. Harris about her national security views. If her handlers control her as much as White House advisers have Mr. Biden, we’ll know they’re afraid that the Vice President might not be able to handle the scrutiny.

A fair conclusion from all of this is that Ms. Harris is a standard California progressive on most issues, often to the left of Mr. Biden. Perhaps as she reintroduces herself to the public in the coming weeks, she will modify some of those views. She would be wise to do so if she wants to win.

Given the rush by Democrats to anoint Ms. Harris as their nominee, the press has a particular obligation to tell the public about who she is and what she really thinks. Does she believe California is a model for the country?

Kamala Harris was supposed to be there

Donald Trump comes into a hostile environment with bad equipment and poor sound. President Trump showed up and Kamala Harris didn't. She can't face an audience--will probably campaign from the basement just as her mentor, Joe Biden, did in 2020. I heard the entire Q & A between Trump and the ABC host. She lied about him from the get-go and he was gracious and honest after he called her on her rudeness. But he held his ground, made his points, and she on behalf of black journalists looked rude, weak and foolish.

 
He absolutely did not attack Kamala for her race. I heard every word. She threw out a gotcha question on DEI and he asked for a definition, but got no answer. So, he said when he first became aware of Kamala Harris he thought she was an Indian-American, because that's how her election to the Senate was described--not by him, but by the media. It was called historic! You can watch the videos! When it was to her advantage, she "became black." So, his detractors say calling her an Indian-American is insulting? Oh my, Democrats are such racists!

 
https://youtu.be/GgKLPzQe6uI?si=32FoLVz1CRpv3jqv

https://youtu.be/fqF54777VsY?si=HIXsT7MB7dflEzn8   Megyn Kelly on National Association of Black Journalists' conference,

 

https://youtu.be/K3oflr7rEU4?si=h_3znfqYnM8LeK0K Historic first Indian American in Senate

https://youtu.be/QiVNHyl0_3E?si=bk7w1PRfbd6PwCh8 Charlie Kirk on Megyn Kelly

https://youtu.be/w5PyJw3TYgY?si=6ebuNBav5EX15tht  Kamala speaking code for black audiences

https://youtu.be/WRPpP277D8Y?si=CLI7FzMF2hjGk6cQ  Judge Joe Brown calls her a Ho and corrupt; ;and "she ain't black". Met her father--he wasn't black.

https://youtu.be/2nTjb1QJmnU?si=UJnWyK5ePn9bFQyM   Harris campaign staffer tells all. Tell the donor what they want to hear. James O'Keefe.

Research for Tracy Kidder book on Rough Sleepers

Our book club is reading Tracy Kidder's book, Rough Sleepers (2023). I was researching some of his information on homelessness, and saw the subtle but common myth some of our current burden was the Reagan policies "with its deep cuts in programs for the poor and policies that led to declines in the supply of inexpensive housing." ( p. 55) I'll skip over the housing supply (single room occupancy) because that is a local/city problem. I did find the article in "Behavorial health news," by Michael B. Friedman, which I then checked further, since it also brought up Reagan. Yes, there was a 1983 SSDI law passed to stop fraud and he signed it. Then it was revised twice in 1984 and actually eased the requirements so the disability awards shot up, not down. Since I was a Democrat then and only believed the worst about Reagan (same media treatment that Trump gets, and Bush before him) I had always believed Reagan was the reason people were put on the streets.

But as the author himself wrote, the deinstitutionalization which is closely tied to the SSDI recipients finding housing began in the 60s and 70s, long before Reagan was in the White House. And truly, one can't deny that most of the programs that make it to Congress and the White House begin in academe (where I worked). Congressmen are so busy raising money to campaign they have no time to dream up billions in social and economic programs, or even read the bills they vote on.

But I want to pass along two experiences with government programs for the disabled, one from the late 1960s and one from 2020. In the late 60s at church coffee hour I met a former pastor of the Church of the Brethren (Anabaptist tradition) who was a social worker in one of the rural Ohio residential institutions for the blind and deaf mentally challenged. It was in the process of "deinstitutionalizing" his clients because he said, "they deserved their civil rights like any other citizen." Joe was thrilled with the idea. At that time, I was a giddy humanist in my early 30s, so he convinced me they would do fine on the "outside" because there would be community programs and smaller homes (not yet established) that would help them. So, many of them lost the only home they knew and life long friends.

In October 2019, our son was diagnosed with glioblastoma. He was 51, employed and a homeowner with a mortgage, but no wife or adult children, only his 80 something parents. However, he could not work, especially not after the surgery and chemo which is the same "slash and burn" method of 30-40 years ago. The SSDI application was brutal. I can't imagine how anyone, let alone someone who has been on the streets, completes it. Our daughter who works in the medical field and her cousin who was a lawyer for Social Security in DC worked together on it. Probably took eight hours with both working on it. The sick, unemployed person usually waits 6 months--to prevent fraud (which vastly increased during Obama years as people lost their insurance). He died about 6 months and 1 week after the application went to Washington. He paid his bills with his IRAs and retirement account, he had family to help, and it was all used up in 6 months plus he was charged a penalty for closing out his retirement funds and he had to pay income tax on it (or rather his estate did since he was deceased).

Between the green local laws to save the environment which adds thousands to every home purchase/rental and the new codes for safety and transportation, all types of housing have become prohibitive. Plus this is not the 1930s culture where people let even cousins or childhood friends sleep or rent a room at their home. Let's not point fingers at the 40 year old Reagan administration; there has been plenty of mischief since then. 

Are you old enough to remember or have studied the housing shortage after WWII? Low income, inadequate housing was taken off the market through special codes. A lot of livable housing was condemned. There was no actual shortage. Reagan was a movie star then, not a politician. There were the same number of housing units in 1945 as in 1940--it was the liberal policies that destroyed them by law.

California has become a cesspool of homelessness by fixing the tax system with Prop 13 so no one would dare move and it weakened the tax revenue for supportive services. The grifting of non-profit agencies and probably thousands of California state employees to "fix" a problem has contributed to the now mushrooming homeless population who suffer from legal and illegal drugs, alcoholism, mental illness, illegal immigration, an aging population, lack of general life skills, and mentally challenged (probably some blind, deaf).

It wasn't Reagan and it isn't Trump. But it is government at all levels working with academe. It's liberal, pie in the sky programs that don't work which began in academe by people who need to publish and who don't live in reality or a low income neighborhoods.

*                                         *                                   *                                    *

Growth of homelessness--who caused it? Reagan policies, loss of SRO housing, closing of institutional care facilities, 1968-1973 (about 1/3 of the increase), https://www-origin.ssa.gov/benefits/disability/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/04/08/how-americans-game-the-200-billion-a-year-disability-industrial-complex/

Why Are the Disability Rolls Skyrocketing? The Contribution of Population Characteristics, Economic Conditions, and Program Generosity, pp. 337-379, chapter 11 in "Health at Older Ages: The Causes and Consequences of Declining Disability among the Elderly" (2009) https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c11119/c11119.pdf  

Deinstitutionalization Did Not Cause Homelessness: Loss of Low-income Housing and Disability Benefits Did By: Michael B. Friedman, LMSW Mental Health Policy Advocate
April 1st, 2020 https://behavioralhealthnews.org/deinstitutionalization-did-not-cause-homelessness-loss-of-low-income-housing-and-disability-benefits-did/

"At the height of deinstitutionalization in New York (1968-1973), people who were discharged (with wildly inadequate discharge plans) were not homeless. Most went to live with family. Some went to adult homes. Many went to nursing homes because they had dementia. And quite a few went to single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) and other places where poor people lived. To be sure, this resulted in huge family burden, inadequate care in adult homes, transinstitutionalization to often unprepared nursing homes, and squalid sometimes dangerous living conditions in SROs and poor neighborhoods. But they were not literally homeless. In fact, the scandal that led to the creation of the community residence program for people with mental illness in NYS was not homelessness. It was the squalid and dangerous conditions in SROs."

The Olympics, 2024 in Paris

I've watched one Olympic event. Men's volleyball. I didn't intend to since France has promoted yet another drag queen outrage against Christians (let them try that on Muslims). I knew nothing about volleyball, and truth be told, still don't, but I was captive.

 
I was at the dentist and the TV was on, muted.

 
Now I've researched it and I know the short guy (6'), the libero, didn't forget his uniform. They always have a different color. Most have played in the Olympics several times, but there are 3 new ones. And I didn't even know we had national teams. https://www.kshb.com/news/team-usa-avoids-disaster-five-set-win-over-germany?

 
But my teeth are clean and I still have all of them. 32.

Vacation Bible School beautiful art at UALC Mill Run

After Sunday School on July 28 (Lytham Rd. congregation at Windermere school while our regular space is being remodeled) we drove to our church's other location, Mill Run, which is in Hilliard, to look at the art of the VBS Kindergarten-fifth grade. The theme was Jesus' parables and the children made 2 things in their art time--puppets and theater curtains.

 
When VBS was over the curtains were saved and hung in the upper level. The best view was standing at the end of the corridor and taking in the explosion of color. Like the parables, "the curtains REVEAL (open) and show the drama and they also CONCEAL (close) and hide it. They create anticipation. They help our hearts lean toward the truth. The stage curtain is open or closed and the meaning of the parable is open or closed depending on the readiness of the hearts in the audience. It's by grace that our hearts become ready to hear God's word with faith."

  

I think (I don't teach and have no one in those classes) they emphasized treasure, thus all the glam and glitter and jewels woven into the curtains. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” It's difficult for adults to understand Jesus' parables, so perhaps this will start them on a study and discussion that could go on and on.

We were both impressed, not only with the message, but by the effort (by the adult volunteers and teachers). To make these people donated necklaces, earrings, bracelets and weaving fabric for the children to create the 12 curtains. 

I enjoyed art as a child, but hated "group" or "team" projects. I would have been the one complaining waiting for recess. I was artistic and always had to pull the others along. We think of that as relatively new--but we were doing it in the 1940s too. That said, I still have one VBS project I made when I was about 8 and we attended Faith Lutheran in Forreston, IL. Bookends made of wood with a cross on them. When I look at them now, I can remember all the adults who were working behind the scenes, because it was quite complex (involved wood burning, painting, and varnishing to preserve it). So even though I could say, "I did that," and take it home, there was a whole lot of labor in it that wasn't mine. God bless those VBS teachers (who learn more than the kids).

If you'd like to see it, the display will be up the rest of the summer. http://ualc.org

Cyber Slaves in Asia

When I formed a question I thought AI (Copilot) would give me, I got this:

 "Response stopped
Sent by Copilot:
I apologize, but I won’t be able to continue discussing this topic. If you have any other questions or need assistance, feel free to ask. Thank you! "

It was about slave computer scammers. The computers weren't "slaves," but the educated, unfortunate men working the scam were. Governments across a vast swathe of Asia - including Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan - have sounded the alarm reports BBC. I'd seen the story in the WSJ but with a pay wall so I wasn't able to read the whole story--thus I was looking at other sources.

 
We in the U.S. are so blinded by the slavery of the 17-19th centuries which corroded our own history, that we ignore modern day slavery that surpasses by many millions the transatlantic era. This kind of "investment" doesn't get used up--it's renewable. There's labor slavery and sex slavery, and there's child slavery in mines to pull from the earth the minerals we need to run the smart phones and equipment that enslaves minds. The WSJ story is almost too bizarre to comprehend--cyber slavery.

This is from BBC: 

""I was forced to make 15 friends every day and entice them to join online gambling and lottery websites… of these, I had to convince five people to deposit money into their gaming accounts," he said.

"The manager told me to work obediently, not to try to escape or resist or I will be taken to the torture room… Many others told me if they did not meet the target, they would be starved and beaten."
The abuse often results in lasting trauma. Two Vietnamese victims, who declined to be named, told the BBC they were beaten, electrocuted, and repeatedly sold to scam centres."

When I kept looking, there were numerous articles, some documentaries, and perhaps sourced from the same report. In this case the cybercriminals are themselves victims of the crime.

My pedicure at a Cambodian nail salon

For someone my age, a pedicure is pure luxury, and also a necessity. The salon I've been using the last year and a half has an all Asian staff, but I didn't know the country. They could all speak to each other, and some spoke a little English, but I didn't feel comfortable asking. This past Monday, the young lady only spoke English and said they were all Cambodians. She was born in the U.S. and told me her step-mother worked there (so I had the impression she was only there occasionally). She told me there were many Cambodians living in the Columbus area. Later when I was under the dryer another customer told me that the owner of this salon had started it after working in another salon in our community. Wow.  What entrepreneurs. And all female! And I was to discover, a lot more to the story.

I looked up Cambodians in the U.S. There was a civil war in the 1970s in Cambodia and the Communists won.  An estimated 1.7 million people out of an estimated total population of 7.9 million died from executions, hunger, disease, injuries, coerced labor, and exposure to the elements. Think of that. They killed about a fourth of the population. After the Communists took over, life became so awful I'll just quote my source. (Chan, Sucheng. "Cambodians in the United States: Refugees, Immigrants, American Ethnic Minority." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History.)

"The very afternoon of the day they captured Phnom Penh, they ordered its population (that had swelled from half a million to more than two million during the civil war) to evacuate the city and go to their ancestral villages. Even patients in hospitals were forced to move, some being pushed along while lying on gurneys. Along the way, Khmer Rouge cadres cajoled people, at gunpoint, to tell their life stories so that former government officials and military commanders, educated people, professionals of every kind, merchants, and landlords could be identified. Branded as enemies of the people, these unfortunate individuals were shot or bludgeoned to death. The Khmer Rouge defrocked Buddhist monks, the most revered persons in traditional Cambodian society, forced them to work in the fields, and killed many of them. They used Buddhist temples to store their weapons and ammunition. Barely a year after coming to power, Pol Pot ordered his most trusted henchmen to arrest, imprison, torture, and execute thousands of individuals among the Khmer Rouge’s own officials, political cadres, and military commanders, including a large number of high-ranking ones, whom he suspected of being disloyal to him. The Khmer Rouge closed schools and colleges, and abolished private property, money, banks, markets, hospitals, Western medicine, and all other modern institutions. They let vehicles and machinery rust in the humid tropical climate because they opposed the use of such symbols of Western modernity. They separated husbands from their wives and children who were older than seven from their parents. They also trained children to spy on their parents and interrogated the youngsters about what their parents had talked about.7 The entire country was turned into a giant slave labor camp: people had to plant and harvest crops, as well as build dams and levees, with their bare hands while subsisting on meager bowls of thin rice gruel. Starving individuals who dared to catch fish, mice, lizards, and other creatures or to look for wild plants to eat were severely punished or even killed."

Read that carefully.  You'll notice some oddly familiar themes. Destroying the educated, destroying religion, destroying families, destroying symbols of Western civilization, and finally killing off the very people who helped build the power structure.

This encyclopedia article is very informative but is laced with the usual blame and coulda shoulda woulda complaints about American society. (This is not uncommon in the Oxford encyclopedias.) Still, it's worth reading for an overview. Cambodians in the United States: Refugees, Immigrants, American Ethnic Minority | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History

The Hamas Pro-Palestine protests in DC

 Now if they were J-6 protestors, it would be months in jail. Harris left town and didn't meet with Netanyahu. She was in Indianapolis with her Sorority Sisters.