He hasn't changed much, has he?

In an interview with Jet, Feb. 26, 1990, a pop culture magazine published in Chicago for African Americans, we find that no accomplishment of an African American is good enough, high enough, or satisfactory enough for Mr. O. Not even his own.

Barack Obama, a 28-year-old second-year Law student, was elected in balloting by last year's editors [student law review, Harvard]. Obama, a native of Hawaii, said his election shouldn't be seen as a sign social barriers have been broken down.

"I wouldn't want people to see my election as a symbol that there aren't problems out there with the situation of African-Americans in society," he said. "From experience I know that for every one of me there are a hundred or a thousand Black and minority students who are just as smart and just as talented and never get the opportunity," he added.

By 1999, 58% of Chicago's blacks had some college or a college degree; 54% were home owners; 39% were married; and 43% were white collar workers. (Marketing stats from N'DIGO). I'm sure the 2008 stats are even higher. And I'm just as sure, it's not good enough for Mr. O.

Can you name another nation in the 21st century with a black president or black presidential candidate who could claim statistics like this for his black population?

It's possible you weren't even aware of the black middle class because our race baiting media hide their wealth, accomplishments and achievements. It's also possible you didn't know that 100% of American historically black Protestants believe that God is alive and well, compared to about 63.6% of Mainline Protestants (mostly white). Unfortunately, about 98% of those God-fearing folk are going to go to the polls and vote for a false Messiah.

10 million documents on tobacco

50,000,000+ pages. Give or take a few. Hurry before California melts down and look at its Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. I was a librarian, I've seen it all, but this is awesome.

I found it through Library 2.0, LibGuides of Babson College Horn Library, which has 248 guides, and the ones I looked at (about 6 or so) were all current within the month. The geology librarian at OSU had heard about LibGuides which has almost 18,000 guides at the CIC geoscience Librarians meeting.

Today I was following a pick-up truck with some construction materials in the bed. It had a bumper sticker that read, "Librarian, the original search engine." Must have bought it used, because he didn't look like any librarians I know.

Worst advice I've ever heard

Last Thursday my husband called me into the family room to check out the Dr. Phil show. We sat there in stunned disbelief as we heard absolutely the worst advice on finances anyone could possibly be promoting. In fact, if his TV audience actually did what he said, I'm sure we would have been in a total financial meltdown by Saturday! I'm sure Phil and his friend Oprah and Rachel all have enough to get by, but there are a few retail clerks, waitresses, builders, truck drivers, etc. who need to stay in business. I'm surprised he didn't cause a run on banks and a new purpose for mattresses.

Barack's cousin Odinga

Jerome Corsi was being interviewed this morning on the radio. He was detained (not imprisoned) for a few hours in Kenya, and not for promoting his book (he only brought his personal copy) as the AP erroneously (surprise!) reported. All his papers were in order and clearly stated the research nature of his trip. He went to Kenya to dig up some more dirt on the relationship between Odinga and his cousin Barack Obama, who had been his campaign advisor (this is illegal, btw, for a sitting senator to be involving himself in another country's election). Seems the campaign theme was "hope and change" and that when Odinga didn't win, his supporters took to the street rioting in a seige of ethnic violence. In Kenya, there's a slight difference. You shout out the other tribe's name; in the U.S., you just shout "racist." And instead of threatening rape, as an Obama supporter Sandra Berhard has done during our 2008 campaign, you do it to women and boys as they flee their burning home.

The dead, who had been barricaded inside the church, were members of the country's dominant Kikuyu tribe. They were among hundreds that sought shelter in an Assembly of God church near the western Kenyan city of Eldoret. The city is a stronghold of the nation's main minority tribe, the Luo. According to witnesses, a mob barricaded the church and started the fire with gasoline-soaked mattresses. While many escaped through open windows, at least 30 victims and possibly dozens more were trapped in the flames.

The incident was the most violent of several that have erupted in Kenyan cities since a hotly contested presidential election. Sitting Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, narrowly defeated opposition leader Raila Odinga, who is a Luo.

Odinga's followers have alleged that voting fraud perpetrated by pro-Kibaki polling officials tilted the election's outcome. The election took place Dec. 27, and Kibaki was sworn in Dec. 30. Riots in urban centers across the country quickly ensued, causing more than 300 deaths as of Jan. 2, according to Agence France-Presse. . . Baptist Press

Obama and his cousin are NOT members of the Kikuyu, they are Luo. Looks like Obama was destined to be a minority candidate whether he ran in Kenya or the USA, and he's just darn mad about that. Democrats have already warned us that American blacks will take to the streets if Obama doesn't win; they've accused their own party members of racisim when he was low in the polls in early September; they accused two of their candidates, Clinton and Biden, of racism early in the primaries; they've upped the ante on every possible criticism of Obama and his policies and friendships calling them racist. Do we see a theme here? Who is the person using race baiting in this campaign?

A new generation of consumers

The children of China in school today outnumber the total population of the United States. I think Wal-Mart figured this out many years ago--the Walton family organization (they are 26th today in wealth, Buffet is 1st) is a marketing genius. First they bought the labor there using our know-how and raw-materials, then they marketed there. The people had money from the jobs to spend on the products they were creating. Why not skip the middle step and just market to the Chinese? By-pass all those stupid protestors and regulations trying to keep Wal-Mart jobs out of their communities. You may have noticed in those gut wrenching videos of the earthquake last spring as people scrambled to get out of danger, how extremely well dressed they were and what lovely buildings and parks were being destroyed. That's the new consumer generation American business caters to, not us. We're yesterday's news. How the global financial meltdown, which some are now suggesting belatedly was economic terrorism with help from our own stupid Congress, we'll have to see. The U.S. government caught on to the Walmartization of China, particularly the USDA, and is acting accordingly.

Meanwhile, we're still shipping tofu from Ohio soybeans to China (much bigger market--they actually like tofu). Then we buy their funny contaminating mercury light bulbs made in dirty coal factories and feel self-righteous because Ohio environmentalists believe in Al Gore and want alternative sources of energy not our clean coal. It's called trade.

Who gets the bonus?

The Food Stamp Program is USDA's largest domestic nutrition assistance program serving more than 28 million individuals each month and has given the states that administer the program $48 million in bonuses this year for 2007. It was renamed SNAP as of October 1, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is supposed to imply healthier food.

OK, call it whatever you wish, but what do states do with their bonuses for outstanding customer service? For improved program access? For processing applications in a timely manner? For excellence in administering benefits. Do the poor people get this money or do the government employees? I’m counting $48 million in bonuses--that’s about $1.70 per person on the program. However, we know it would cost more than that to cut them each a check, so who’s getting the bonus? Do they close the office early one Friday and have a big party for the clerical staff? Do the Executive Directors get to go to Hawaii or Florida?

1) $18 million
USDA's Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services announced Sept. 26 $18 million in bonus awards to states in fiscal year (FY) 2007 for outstanding and timely customer service in the administration of what has been known as the Food Stamp Program, soon to be known by name change from Congress as "SNAP" - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
$12 million
Each year USDA awards a total of $12 million in high performance bonuses to the eight States with the best and most improved program access index.

$6 million
USDA also awards a total of $6 million among the six States with the timeliest processed applications.
2) $30 million
In June 2008, the Food Stamp Program awarded $30 million to states for excellence in administering benefits.

To see if your state was awarded a bonus see USDA FNS Press Release Ohio must have a really shoddy work force helping the poor because we didn't get a single bonus. Or maybe they call it a paycheck?

From Marx to Bernacke

She writes:"Yes, the proximate cause (trigger, really) of this unfolding meltdown is the mortgage crisis. And this we have courtesy of Barney Frank, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Obama’s ACORN, and their collective PC folly that home ownership is a right and not something to be earned. But the foundational cause is that ancient, yet ever-ascendant humanism which holds that Man knows better than God: “This fruit doesn’t look dangerous; License, not submission, brings fulfillment; Government, not Providence, can be our safety net; Paper, not Nature’s gold, will be our money”, (and will conveniently enrich those who control it). The list is endless.

Now comes the day of reckoning. The piper waits, but we’re unable to pay. The house of cards has fallen. We’ve been dancing with a harlot dressed like a bride, but now the veil is lifted. Pick whatever metaphor you please - almost all of them apply."

From Marx to Bernacke

How ACORN and Brunner will steal Ohio for Obama

Our Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, put in place a week of same day registration and voting, then claims she can't be expected to check all those phony addresses and names before the election. Brunner says she wanted to avoid the questions of 2004 when some doubted the results. Who? The Democrats who believed the polls and MSM talking heads instead of the results.

People in Ohio this week may register to vote and cast an absentee ballot on the same day. Critics, including state Republicans, say this may open the door to voter fraud. Election officials are hoping to avoid a replay of 2004 when some people had to wait hours to vote. NPR

Is this how Brunner thinks confidence will be restored? Homeless people from God knows where were being bussed in to vote last week. A friend of ours went down to Vet's Memorial to vote because they'll be out of town on election day, and said the sight was stunning. Story Why wait for hanging chads?

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside a federal judge's order a day earlier that Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner institute the means to verify voter registration information and make it available to Ohio's 88 county election boards.

Brunner argued that it would take two to three days to create the necessary computer programs, and that nothing in the Help America Vote Act required her to do what the lower court ordered. A three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed in a split decision.

Why didn't she have such a program already in place. I thought this was to instill confidence in the process.

Farrakhan calls Obama the Messiah

I've heard conservative talking heads joke about Barack Obama's Messianic complex, but when you hear Louis Farrakhan speaking to the Nation of Islam call him that, it's a bit more eerie. Check out this web site

FARRAKHAN: You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change and that's why Barack has captured the youth.

And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn't care anything about. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.

Creeps me out. Hmmm. Can we say that or is it on the "racist" vocabulary list along with Ayers is a terrorist, baby daddy, skinny, that one, his wife's patriotism, his full given name, etc.?

Here's Farrakhan blaming Jews for black music destroying the youth (ADL site)

“Do you know some of these satanic Jews have taken over BET?... Everything that we built, they have. The mind of Satan now is running the record industry, movie industry and television. And they make us look like we’re the murders; we look like we’re the gangsters, but we’re punk stuff.”

And he's not too nice to Christians and gays either. Is there anyone this guy likes, besides Obama?

Good-bye Cincy

The goal of Green Cincinnati Plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8% in 4 years, 40% in 20 years, and 84% by 2050. This plan has 80 specific recommendations. Everything from riding your bike, to air drying your dishes to composting your garbage. And why are they doing this Earth Day repeat that anyone who lived through the 70s remembers?

"You‘ve seen and heard about it everywhere, from the media and the scientists to celebrities and your own family members. Earth‘s climate is changing, and we all are to blame." GCP Introduction

Because they saw Al Gore's movie and listened to some Hollywood starlet who reads script for a living say it is true. Helloooo Ohio--you used to be under a glacier. We are not to blame for climate change. There are a hundred good reasons to have clean air and water, but why don't you start with cleaning the trash off the city streets, the old mattresses from the underpasses, and requiring all the legislators to reduce their BMI and their hot air. The world would be a much cleaner, cooler place. No one has a clue how much greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by these measures, but I think we can guarantee that for every new "green" business or activity you bring to town that can smell a greenback a mile away, you'll drive ten established businesses out who won't be able to afford this idiocy.

Mayor Mallory needs to read Kids Against Anthropogenic Global Warming written by a 14 year old. Not everyone under 65 has been sucked into this silliness.

Our mission here at Kids Against Anthropogenic Global Warming is to make aware that AGW is nothing but an unproven theory. We don’t want to pay all these carbon taxes when they are enforced, especially if its for something unproven.

You go girl.

If the builders knew why didn't Barry and Barney?

"Approximately $216 billion in subprime and Alt-A mortgages will reset for the first time this year, which could ultimately push 3 percent of all outstanding mortgage debt into default. As a result, a large number of households will return to the renter pool throughout 2008. To compensate, builders are expected to expand existing apartment inventory by 1.1 percent, or more than 100,000 new market-rate units." Buildings, Annual Industry Forecast, 2008

Living green

Instead of making a big old footprint the way Algore and the Hollywood left do, Greenpa has an upfront list on the right hand side of his blog on how to live green.

1) Off the grid. 31 years. Solar electricity
2) Limited power- house electricity has 4 golf cart batteries.
3) Composting toilet. Outside. (eew, you do that indoors!?)
4) No road to house. You gotta walk.
5) No running water in house. Water pumped by wind.
6) Showers solar heated; outdoors.
7) Heat with wood. One stove in house-..
8) Cook with wood 8 months, propane in summer
9) Most of our fuelwood now is from trees we planted
10) No refrigerator. 31 years. You don't need one either.
11) Big garden.
12) Eat locally when possible, not obsessive about it.
13) No pesticide use ever, gardens or crops; not even organic (ok, except a little in the outhouse and the greenhouse...)
14) Earth sheltered solar greenhouse (aren't they all solar??)
15) Shut up about it. Nobody likes preaching.
16. These are our choices- yours are yours.

I respect a guy who walks his talk.

I don't respect the regulators and legislators who think we all should be living like Greenpa (rest assured they won't be). For instance, S.B. 221 and H.B. 562 in Ohio.

The Senate bill creates an Advanced Energy Standard (AES)--a minimum of 25 percent of electricity sold by Ohio's investor owned utilities must come from renewable (wind, solar, biomass, fuel cell, hydro), clean coal and advanced nuclear sources by 2025. Right off the bat you know the feds under the greenies and global warming alarmists will shut down the coal and nuclear industries, so that leaves it to your imagination on how we're going to light, heat, cool or cook in Ohio. Folks, in a good year we might get 37% sunshine, and we can't even put up a clothes line in Upper Arlington. Our sunshine is underground in coal where the good Lord stored it for later use.

The amended substitute House Bill 562 signed into law on June 24 provides for definitions and classifications of wind farms. I haven't seen any in Ohio, but they are ugly as sin on the prairies of Illinois. Ohio doesn't have prairies, it has Appalachia. We are part of the Pittsburgh Coal Bed with 34 billion short tons of coal. Both presidential candidates are mouthing platitudes about clean coal, but the alarmists will shut that down as soon as either one gets to the White House.

How do you site a wind farm? First you commission someone or something to do it through an initiative (that's a difficult word to spell and understand). Legislators do that too through, you guessed it, using our tax money. They have public meetings using the help of public institutions like universities which are also paid by us. Interestingly enough, the public always agrees with them and the project moves ahead. Right now they are looking at the western basin of Lake Erie as a "demonstration site." This will be sold to Ohioans as "economic development" even though we are a very rich coal state and much of our economy depends on coal.



There goes the neighborhood, and tourism, and shipping and fishing.

Cleaning the bathroom

This story is for Bev, who patiently reads through my political stuff hoping for a good story. She loves me, my cat and my foibles.

I've never claimed to be an organized housewife. Drives my husband crazy. He knows exactly where his Boy Scout folding cup from fifth grade is. So today I started on the guest room by moving a few things to my closet off the master bedroom. However, that bathroom is my husband's, so after I rearranged my shoes which our house guests will never see, I started on his bathroom. I'll be using this while our California relatives are here, so for my sake, I decided to attack it. I don't care if a guy is a bachelor or married or a CEO with a private office suite and maid service, men's bathrooms are always YUK!

While cleaning the shower (on my knees) I got a good look at the bottom of the shower door. Double yuk. The seal on the bottom of the flap was so mold covered, I think that's all that was holding the trim piece on. I saw there were 4 screws, and needed a Phillips screw driver. I know how to do that, so I went to the basement and found a small Phillips. Three screws came out after much effort and a blistered palm. The fourth wouldn't budge. I think this is a type of Murphy's Law--4 screws, 3 come out. So instead of yelling until I was hoarse from the second floor to the basement the way the other person in this marriage does, I walked down.

"There are four screws on the trim piece of the shower door, and I could only get three of them out. I'm trying to clean off the mold. Can you do the fourth one?"

"Phillips?"

"Yes, I got it out of the store room."

"I'll get my bigger one out of my tool bin in the garage."

"What's wrong with my Phillips?"

"Not enough torque."

"What's torque?"

he explained.

What's for dinner?

One good reason to blog about your menus or dinners, you can look back when company's coming and see what worked. My husband's brother and sister-in-law are coming next week, so last night my husband said, "What's for dinner Tuesday night (the day they arrive)?" I was still thinking about the dust in the guest room and cleaning out some closet space, so I drew a blank. Then I was looking through my January blog entries, and I FOUND IT.

My husband is the only one in his family who's only been married once. In the above photo (Bruce sibs with their father), there are 12 marriages represented and another three "significant others" that we've known over the years who've disappeared from view and the Christmas card list. Family holidays and get-togethers are always so interesting. They are all terrific people and we have a lot of fun.

How Democrats brought down the economy through ignorance, sloth and bribes

When Republicans tried to rein in the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) our Democrat economic brain trust said: Maxine Waters, "Wasn't broke." Gregory Meeks, "I'm pissed off [that you're investigating this]." Barney Frank, "I don't see anything that's an issue." Lacy Clay, "Political lynching."



And now they want us to elect another Democrat to fix it. I've always thought of Obama as a marxist, Hillary as a socialist and McCain as a Democrat, so maybe they've got this one right. Vote McCain-Palin. It couldn't get worse than what these financial wizes whized. And if I may continue in that vein about Democrats, "they haven't got a pot to pee in" when it comes to the poverty of their ideas.

McCain got it; Obama didn't

Remember that Chicken Little thought the sky was falling and that Foxy Woxy could save her and the other animals she had frightened. Well, meet Foxy Woxy, the one Democrats want us to elect to guard the hen house.

Where were they then--before the bailout?

All the people who went to the elite schools, who had the law degrees, MBAs, PhDs, who peopled the econ and finance faculties at left and liberal institutions like Harvard and Yale, Columbia and Darmouth, and who had years on the banking and finance committees in Congress, who knew several languages, had passports and travelled, wore the right clothes and drank the expensive wines, who knew all the beltway gossip and sent their children to private schools. Where are they? Where were they? When all this stuff was coming down over a year ago. And they didn't notice? Or told their staff to check on it because they were too busy running for a bigger job. You know--the folks who make fun of the lack of sophistication and experience of say, a Sarah Palin.

December 16, 2007, Financial Times: "A plethora of opaque institutions and vehicles have sprung up in American and European markets this decade, and they have come to play an important role in providing credit across the financial system. Until the summer, structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) attracted little attention outside specialist financial circles. Though often affiliated to major banks, they were not always fully recognised on balance sheets. These institutions, moreover, have never been part of the “official” banking system: they are unable, for example, to participate in Monday’s Fed auction.

But as the credit crisis enters its fifth month, it has become clear that one of the key causes of the turmoil is that parts of this hidden world are imploding. This in turn is creating huge instability for “real” banks – not least because regulators and bankers alike have been badly wrong-footed by the degree to which the two are entwined."

Or, as a blogger I've never heard of before wrote today: "The very dipsticks who gave you this crisis now promise to solve it for you. I told you: this is not an economic crisis anymore, it’s a full-blown political emergency, and they’re all trying to hang on to "power". They can’t, so prepare for the sound of goose-stepping boots in your streets." Automatic Earth

The summer of 1929

The Great Depression is generally dated as beginning with the crash of the stock market in the fall of 1929, but as I've mentioned before, for farmers it had already begun. In a desperate attempt (in my view as a non-farmer) to salvage their heavily mortgaged farms, my grandparents who owned several farms in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska (and possibly Kansas) decided to fatten cattle on the plains of Nebraska, then ship them back to Illinois. Today we think of land as wealth, but when it is mortgaged for more than it is worth, being taxed, and you can't sell it, it's much like today's housing market when the bubble burst.

When I was a little girl I heard many stories about this summer of 1929, because Mom was in high school and for her the summer in Nebraska was sort of an adventure, although she was a rather studious, sober child and I think she knew they were in serious financial trouble. Today I received a letter she wrote in August 1929 from Caldwell, Kansas. Without sharing the personal "girl talk" with her friend here's her account--very much the way I remember her telling me over 50 years ago as we would do up the dishes after dinner. I haven't changed anything--spelling or sentence structure.

"I have been riding around in the car and sleeping and working all summer. The reading that I have done could be put in a thimble along with your finger. I have missed the piano lots but I haven't had any time for music at all. [This did surprise me a little because I rarely saw her play the piano--only the cello.]

Muriel and I go riding every day on our horses. I sure will miss my dear Blackie this winter. I have grown so very fond of her. [As a child I was horse crazy and would just be distraught at the thought that she had to leave her horse behind.]

On Sundays we generally go about the country. One time we visited the Indian mission on the Rosebud reservation just north of us in Dakota. It was a most interesting excursion. Another Sunday we set out for the forest and game preserve, but got lost in the hilly country around the Niobrara River (a most beautiful place).

Pa had to come to Caldwell so we all packed up and came along. We left Ted [the dog] at the tenants and the canary at Brills our nearest neighbor. The tenants have so many small children that we thought the canary would be safer where there weren't so many children and love of pets.

We have been here in Caldwell since Sunday evening. We started Friday morning about eight o'clock and spent the night in a tourist cabin at Humphrey. On Saturday we stopped at Lindsborg to see Mr. ------- [this must have been a former resident of their home community]. We found both Mr. and Mrs. at home and very glad to see us. It is very difficult to tell which of Mr's eyes is glass. It is his left one. He looks and talks just like he used to. They have a very nice home there and intend to settle permanently, I believe, as Mr. is very well liked.

We had some very bad roads after we got farther south and had to fight mud till we got within 40 miles of Wichita [paved roads would not be common for another decade]. Cars were sliding all over the roads and as we were all in the same fix everybody was friendly and lent less fortunate travellers a helping hand. One fellow had taken off his shoes and stockings and had rolled up his pant legs and was helping push their family car up a steep grade. He looked so awfully comical because he was fat and his clothes were very good, but he took it good humoredly one car pushed another one up the hill on his bumper. [It's possible that my Uncle Clare was with them to help with the driving, but I think he was with Grandpa to drive the cattle to Illinois. Grandma was thoroughly modern, and in those days loved to drive--although I never saw her drive a car.]

We stopped Saturday night at McPherson. They have wonderful cabins there, so nice and clean, toilets and hot and cold shower baths. Sunday we drove the remaining distance of 125 miles and stopped for a while at Wichita at the air fields. We watched a cabin plane go up many times with passengers. The fare was $2.50. [No mention is made of them taking a ride as I suspect the price was too high. It's another reason I think Clare was not with them--he was crazy about airplanes and died in one in 1944 in WWII.]

We have been house keeping in two upstairs rooms of the dairy house so as not to be a bother to the tenants, as they already are taking care of a woman and three of her children. [There was no plumbing or electricity in this building, which wasn't a house.]

We cook on our little Camp Kook [I think this is a cast iron dutch oven on legs to use over a fire]. It has been so handy. We bought a little cook stove for the ranch house at Crookston which we use for baking, washing and heat the rooms when it is chilly and it is chilly quite often.

I love the hills at Crookston, but it has become almost a relief to see level plains again, although I think the Nebraska climate up in the hills can not be beat, at least by Illinois.

We will go back to Crookston tomorrow and then start for Home (Franklin Grove, IL) the middle of next week and probably get home a week from this Sunday. But it depends on how long it will take Pa to get to Crookston with a carload of cattle, as we won't leave till he gets there too. We are anxious to get home a week before school starts so as to get straightened around."

Mother in 1929

Cells from human testes superior to embryonic stem cells

was the headline in the paper October 8. Well, good. They can start using men as cell farms and poking and proding them instead of pregnant women. If GWB never did one more good thing in his life time other than these three, 1) appoint two outstanding judges to the Supreme Court, 2) stay focused in Iraq and not turn tail and run out on the people he liberated, and 3) hold the line on growing embryos so the guys in lab coats could experiment, then he should go down in history as our finest President. Ever.

Abstract: "Human primordial germ cells and mouse neonatal and adult germline stem cells are pluripotent and show similar properties to embryonic stem cells. Here we report the successful establishment of human adult germline stem cells derived from spermatogonial cells of adult human testis. Cellular and molecular characterization of these cells revealed many similarities to human embryonic stem cells, and the germline stem cells produced teratomas after transplantation into immunodeficient mice. The human adult germline stem cells differentiated into various types of somatic cells of all three germ layers when grown under conditions used to induce the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells. We conclude that the generation of human adult germline stem cells from testicular biopsies may provide simple and non-controversial access to individual cell-based therapy without the ethical and immunological problems associated with human embryonic stem cells." Nature, online Oct. 8, 2008

"On Aug. 9, 2001, Bush announced his decision on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in an address to the nation. He said only research on stem cell lines already in existence by the time of his speech would be eligible for federal funding.

He said research on these stem cell lines was permissible because an embryo had already been destroyed. But federal funding would not be allowed for research on any stem cell line created after Aug. 9, 2001, as to discourage future embryo destruction. However, privately funded human embryonic stem cell research has remained permissible on either the “existing” human lines or on lines derived after August 9, 2001.

At the time of the address, the National Institutes of Health determined that there were 64 stem cell lines in existence. However, researchers have expressed doubts about how many lines are actually available for use, whether the cells provided enough genetic diversity and whether the lines are contaminated with animal cells. On Sept. 5, 2001, Thompson acknowledged that only 24 or 25 of the cell lines were established embryonic stem cell lines.

On Nov. 7, 2001, the NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry was launched. It lists all the cell lines that are eligible for federally funded research, as well as contact information for researchers who wish to use them." Stem Cell Research 101

And I should give Bill Clinton and Congress of the late 1990s some credit too, who held the line all through the 90s with just a little slip up in 2000, which opened up those original lines for research. The U.S. never fell behind on stem cell research, in fact it led the world. It was only the federal money that was restricted--and my goodness, look what you can accomplish! You wouldn't know that if you only let NYT or WaPo form your opinions about the value of human life.

The Hank and Ben Show

Seen at jomama

Is it too early for a repeat? So much has happened in 2 weeks. Our investment advisor says we're the lucky ones--our portfolio has dropped "only" 8%--the market 20%. By next week it won't make much difference, but we'll be using cash to draw down our IRAs which we are required to do next year.

I’ve got the low down, trillion dollar, Ben and Henry Blues
by Norma Bruce

Woke up this morning ‘bout five fifteen,
Read my big ol Bible and a new magazine,
Jumped in the van, turning on the key
Let me tell you mama, there’s no stopping me.

Driving on to Main Street, stopping at the light
Heading for the coffee shop the other side of night,
Singing with the radio, changing stations now
Got the dog and pony show, candidates take a bow.

Mitigating factors, oozing out the wazoo,
Sell ‘em or hold ‘em, it’s all a rescue.
I’ve got the low down, trillion dollar
Ben and Henry blues.

Warm bakery bread and yeasty brown rolls
Congress still propping up the C-E-Os
Espresso coffee chai and tea
The government ya know--that’s just you and me.

NINJA loans for aliens, flipping for the rich,
From coastal homes, to buildings in the sticks,
McBama to Fannie to Goldman Sachs
They’re pointing fingers and covering tracks.

Mitigating factors, oozing out the wazoo,
Sell ‘em or hold ‘em, it’s all a rescue.
I’ve got the low down, trillion dollar
Ben and Henry blues.

Doesn't scare a Chicagoan

No, this isn't about who's the next president. Three people were murdered in Columbus' Hilltop area, execution style, in a home that had apparently become a drug deli. One local said, "It looked like a drive through." One of the deceased had the usual high recommendation from a relative, "He had a good heart, . . he was smart. He cared about his family. I don't think he deserved to be killed like that."

Do residents feel unsafe? One young woman, 28, according to the Columbus Dispatch said the block is generally good and that she wasn't frightened to live there.

"I'm from Chicago," she said. "It don't scare me."

Keep that in mind as you go to the polls.

Corporate executives and directors of Fannie Mae

Look how much they earned to screw up your retirement accounts. Click on each name. Some are on more than one board. You can check on their donations--Linda K. Knight, one I just chose at random--has made two $500 donations to Obama and one $500 donation to Chris Dodd.

A Tangled Web of Housing Grants

Since 1978 "NeighborWorks has been helping create opportunities for homeownership through NeighborWorks® America, local NeighborWorks organizations and Neighborhood Housing Services of America." Considering the amount of money they've been pulling down, I'm surprised anyone is left to recruit for the program! Just teasing. The money goes to fund their offices and salaries just as in most government programs.

Why, just last year NeighborWorks received a big chunk ($180 million) of the $360 million funds appropriated by Congress for 2008 to increase the availability of foreclosure counseling services across the country, and they're getting another $180 million from the newest bailout. Grants are being made to fund foreclosure counseling and legal assistance to homeowners at risk of foreclosure to housing counseling intermediaries approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Of course, if you sign up to take one of their classes so you can counsel people in foreclosure who were probably counseled by one of NeighborWorks home ownership counselors, you'll have to pay over $1,000 to take the class. It's only $610 to learn how to prequalify potential buyers. Who knows where the $360 million goes--the courses certainly aren't free--maybe to pay your salary after you become a counselor?

And look who helps NeighborWorks--research and input from ACORN, and La Raza, the militant organization that wants to return our southwestern states to Mexico is on their Advisory Board. Not that advocacy groups like NeighborWorks much. Seems to be a parting of the ways when slicing and dicing the poorer communities.

And you should see the career opportunities in this organization. Big time. I don't know how many poor get into homes, but there are bunches of high level administrative jobs for bureaucrats like DIRECTOR OF FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION, Senior Corporate Partnership Development Manager, and PRESIDENT/CEO! And you can work in the nice trendy suburbs of DC (except for that one with the Navajos--you need to go to NM and have a brokers license).

How buyers were lured into home ownership they couldn't afford

In June 2005, Black Enterprise was encouraging potential minority home buyers with the following article, which contained a chart (scroll to the bottom of the article) of private and government programs to assist with low or no down payment home ownership:

With interest rates still near historic lows and the growing popularity of low down payments and "no money down" mortgage programs, more families and individuals are taking the plunge into first-time homeownership. . . many people are still delaying building wealth through homeownership because they think they must already have the money in the bank to do it. "People assume they'll need 15% to 20% down to get their first home, which is simply not the case these days." [said Pierre Dunagan, president of The Dunagan Group].

Fannie Mae, while not a lending institution itself, is a government-sponsored enterprise that buys loans from lenders to make mortgage financing available to more borrowers. A number of financing programs that don't require the standard 20% down payment -- or any down payment at all -- are available through approved Fannie Mae lenders and mortgage companies. One of them is the Flexible 100 program, which is especially popular with first-time home buyers. Borrowers need only contribute $500 toward the down payment and/or closing costs. The Flexible 97 program, which allows borrowers to put up just 3% of the cost of the home, is also available through Fannie Mae. Banks have created similar programs to help new home buyers. . .

SPECIAL PROGRAMS MAKE IT EASIER
Many of the new loan products for first-time home buyers have been created specifically to make homeownership easier, says Fannie Mae spokesperson Sandy Cutts. "In addition to our Flex programs, we have the Expanded Approval/Timely Payment Rewards program for people with less than perfect credit. With this program, the homeowner makes on-time payments for two years, then after that time, their interest rate automatically lowers," she explains.

Cutts also says Fannie Mae has rolled out a new pilot product called the Payment Power program, which allows borrowers to defer two monthly payments a year -- but no more than 10 over the life of the loan -- in exchange for slightly higher interest rates. The loan reamortizes, meaning that the skipped payments are recalculated into the remaining payments. This program may be especially beneficial for people who hold seasonal jobs, such as teachers and construction workers who may not have an income during certain times of the year.

Dunagan says there are also 100% financing programs available for first-time home buyers but, in some cases, they have higher interest rates and higher private mortgage insurance costs. He says deciding whether having a higher interest rate is better than long-term renting is an important decision prospective home buyers will have to make.

One of the programs listed in this article is AmeriDream, which as near as I can determine was a shell game founded in 1999 under the Clinton Administration whereby builders “donated” the down payment to a charity (AmeriDream), took a charitable deduction, and then that was gifted to the buyer. The buyer was actually charged that amount more for the house, plus paid a fee to AmeriDream, but it looked like they had the down payment to qualify for a loan. By law the seller gifting the buyer is illegal, and of course it hurt many buyers in the long run, who would have been better off saving first, buying later. The AmeriDream program was eliminated on July 30, 2008, after which Representatives Gary Miller, Maxine Waters, and Christopher Shays introduced legislation to reauthorize and reform the charitable down payment assistance funded in part by sellers. The program was eliminated by legislation signed by President Bush on July 30, 2008. It still has a website, and is appealing for funds--and its life.

The Black Enterprise article has links to some other programs--Austin, Sacramento, Washington, DC, etc. but I haven't looked at all of them. Some sites I googled no longer exist--I suspect the companies have gone under with their clients.

Cheers for GWB for eliminating AmeriDream, but I suspect it will resurrect itself after Maxine can show her face in public again. Miller and Shays serve on the House finance and banking committee, and Shays is up for reelection.

Creating the meltdown
--a rousing cheer for the Democrats

Fannie, Freddie, Sallie,
Barry, Nancy, Harry,
Barney, Chris and good ol' Joe
Watch our pensions as they go

Yeah team Democrats!
Boomers, Yuppies and the old
On team Democrats!
Watch our pennies not our gold.

A house of very shaky cards
with old junkers in the yards,
On the backs of working poor
Now you're checking us for more.

Yeah team Democrats!
Boomers, Buppies and the cool
On team Democrats!
More control for which you drool.

Their dream, our nightmare

Ordinary people get it. Why doesn't Congress?

In one month, we've lost more value in our retirement funds than the value of the mortgages of many of the home buyers the government is trying to bail out. Why are we being punished for the misdeeds of Congress, who actually alotted $20,000,000 a year to protect buyers from "predatory lenders" while forcing banks to make risky loans.

We played by the rules--bought our first house in 1961--didn't exceed credit limits or go into consumer debt, lived in a crummy neighborhood, got fixed rate mortgages, fixed up our homes and never missed a payment. We weren't the ones who thought low income workers had to have "the American dream." We actually understood from 47 years of home ownership that a home isn't an investment, it's a place to live that you care about more than the place you rent. Period.

But Congress thought it was a good idea to provide NINJA loans (no income, no job, no assets) and push low income people into the suburbs to fill up cheaply built houses where they had no network of friends, services or church and a long drive to work. Not the best place to be when gasoline prices started to soar due to more diddling by Congress with e-regulations.

All this was encouraged by the other dream--"wealth redistribution" and "justice" (just-us) pushed by the left, by church groups and "organizers" with their hand out, like ACORN, and the clever entrepreneur real estate home flippers, and wealthy CEOs atop the Fortune 400 who never miss a chance to make a buck with government loop-holes.

Now you want to hand out below market rates to rescue these mortgages, and that's what got my retirement account where it is? Are you guys crazy? Why do you want to rescue people who couldn't make it the first time, but not me who did?

Let's stop grilling CEOs

For now. I don't care if they make $90 million a minute, if it's legal and their stockholders don't object. Franklin Raines (formerly of Fannie Mae) made far more than Hillary Clinton and Barney Frank who both make way more than I do, and after the first million or so, I lose track of who is being greedy.

First, let's serve up some toasted Congress for public heckling, disgrace, fines and prison.

So just how did a little ACORN bring down the mighty oak of our economy? By manipulating some very vague regulations about how banks should treat low income applicants for mortgages in a social engineering law of the 1970s. Doesn't this sound innocent enough? But it's a recipe for blackmail once ACORN started realizing they could rake in big money from the government by spinning off smaller groups to get government grants (millions and millions from HUD) and big pay-offs from the banks (more millions in hush money).

The OCC encourages community and civic organizations, government, and other members of the public to express their views about a bank’s CRA performance to the bank and the OCC at the earliest possible time. This allows the bank to address any concerns and the OCC to take the public’s views into account in evaluating the bank’s CRA record and reaching conclusions about its performance ratings. If those comments are sent to the OCC, the OCC will also consider them when reviewing applications covered by the CRA. OCC Link

Some of you "get" the voter fraud stories we see about ACORN every election cycle--just 6,000 votes have determined a president in Ohio [Carter], the swing state, and this year they probably bussed in that many homeless in our one week marathon of register and vote the same day. Fox is all over this story today. Why not go directly to START? Voters and investors should be more outraged about how they've set in place the machinations to destory your retirement income (46% of Americans are invested in the stock market which has just recently lost trillions).

“Critics of the notion that CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) had a major impact on the subprime crisis ask how a law passed in 1977 could have caused a crisis in 2008? The answer has a lot to do with ACORN — and the critical years of 1990-1995.”

Read the whole story. Planting Seeds of Disaster; ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Democratic party. By Stanley Kurtz

The new racist vocabulary

The left just keeps embarrassing itself looking for new ways to cry "RACIST!" First it was "dressing a Moose," according to that Floridian Hastings, whose only regret is he wasn't clearer in how he called her a racist. Then "palling around" with a terrorist (Bill Ayers, a person of pallor) was a racist comment according to a hypersensitive AP writer. And now they've gone berserk over "that one." Obama can be "the one," but not "that one." And to think Hip Hopsters make millions with the "N" word. And yet, look at what his running mate called him and the left tolerated and even rewarded that.

Biden has a long history of making statements that get him in trouble. He was forced to apologize to Obama almost the moment he entered the race for president after he was quoted as describing Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," a remark that drew criticism for being racially insensitive. [Press Democrat]

The left is truly losing it.

Bill Ayers, proud terrorist, stands on the American flag, but Palin is called a racist for pointing out his long standing friendship with the Obamas.

Sarah Palin and the rape kits

Here's another favorite lie of the left about Palin.

The Boston Globe editors opine about Sarah Palin and the rape kit allegations. The only problem is they ignore any facts that are inconvenient to their stated position, which is, apparently, that Palin is akin to the Anti-Christ, but more evil. Link.

It begins with the headline, "Wasilla Made Rape Victims Pay." Except that there's no evidence that any rape victim was ever charged by the town. In fact, the town has financial records indicating they did pay for rape kits during Palin's time as mayor.

The Globe writes, "The policy so outraged the Alaska Legislature that in 2000 it passed unanimously a bill forbidding such fees." As discussed earlier, in six separate hearings on the legislation, Wasilla was never mentioned. Other, much larger jurisdictions like Juneau were mentioned as places where victims were being charged. During those hearings, the deputy commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Public Safety testified that he had never found a police agency that had billed a victim.

They are so afraid, so very afraid, of a woman. It really is in a class with the Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The Effort Diet

Seth says that effort is more important than luck, and suggests you try his diet

. . . here's a bootstrapper's/marketer's/entrepreneur's/fast-rising executive's effort diet. Go through the list and decide whether or not it's worth it. Or make up your own diet. Effort is a choice, at least make it on purpose:

1. Delete 120 minutes a day of 'spare time' from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.

2. Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:
1. Exercise for thirty minutes.
   
2. Read relevant non-fiction (trade magazines, journals, business books, blogs, etc.)
   
3. Send three thank you notes.
   
4. Learn new digital techniques (spreadsheet macros, Firefox shortcuts, productivity tools, graphic design, html coding)
   
5. Volunteer.
   
6. Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
   
7. Give a speech once a month about something you don't currently know a lot about.

3. Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.

4. Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.

If you somehow pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intelligent, best funded and motivated person in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other people don't, you'd have a wider network and you'd be more focused.

It's entirely possible that this won't be sufficient, and you will continue to need better luck. But it's a lot more likely you'll get lucky, I bet.

Where have you been all my (blogging) life?

Today I found Dennis. He's a library director and theologian. Can't imagine I've not had him on my links, unless he fell off during one of my remodelings or has used a pseudonym.

"Dennis Ingolfsland: I usually write these commentaries in the evenings or weekends from my recliner (hence the name, Recliner Commentaries). I am a library director with masters' degrees in library science and theological studies. I also have a doctor of philosophy in religion and society. I've published about 30 articles, 50 book reviews, numerous scholarly conference papers and I have an insatiable interest in almost everything."

Wow. He's written more on the current campaign and Obama than I have! Wow. What a guy.

Obama votes pro-growth 0%; McCain 94%

Take a look at your portfolio if you are over 50. Does it have time to recover with a 0% growth President?

These are pro-growth issues. These issues are what will keep you and yours employed, traveling, attending good schools, enjoying a night out, redecorating your home, buying that new car, having a nice retirement, keeping the lights on, reading new books, buying the grandkids some great toys at Christmas and birthdays, choosing what you want to listen to on the radio or watch on TV, what indoor temperature you prefer, what doctor you’ll go to, how much of your parents’ estate you’ll inherit, and a multitude of other things perhaps you’ve forgotten you’ll miss if they are taken away.

1. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent
   
2. Death tax repeal
   
3. Cutting and limiting government spending
   
4. Social Security reform with personal retirement accounts
   
5. Expanding free trade
   
6. Legal reform to end abusive lawsuits
   
7. Replacing the current tax code
   
8. School choice
   
9. Regulatory reform and deregulation

Check out the Club for Growth

Americans for Tax Reform ask Obama

Here.

Most small business profits are taxed at the top marginal tax rate. Is now the time to raise this rate? In what way will your tax hikes on small businesses help Main Street?

The capital gains and dividends tax rate help set the value of the stock market. With the Dow under 10,000, is now the time to raise these tax rates?

Specifically, which of your policies will increase the value of the average American’s 401(k)?

Sen. Biden has said paying higher taxes is “patriotic”. Do you agree with him?

Historically, trade protectionism has served to cause and deepen economic recessions. As president, are you prepared to buck the labor unions and work for bilateral and regional free trade agreements?

Do you support the expansion and new creation of domestic nuclear power plants as a clean, safe and reliable source of energy?

As president, would you protect a worker’s right to a private, democratic ballot when deciding on whether or not to join a union?

As a top recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, do you feel that you have a conflict of interest in fixing the housing mess?

Looking into the camera, could you explain to the family of every police officer in America why it is okay to associate with William Ayers?

Just because the debate is over, you don't need to stop asking about his tax-us more plan.

Good source for conservative news

Check here for some headlines. OK, so they missed me, but I did get an offer the other day to join some blogger service for pay. I thanked him and said No. If I did this for pay it wouldn't be fun. Although if my Democratic dumbed down investments go further into the basement, I might have to reconsider. I wonder where I put that?

Annoyed Librarian has gone over to the other side. She's actually going to blog for ALA. Couldn't believe it.

Whose tax plan gets us where we need to go?

"According to the Tax Policy Center, around 78% of the McCain tax cut would accrue to the top fifth of income earners, with almost 30% going to the highest 1%. This seems inequitable on its face, a point the Obama campaign and the press focus on.

As it happens, the top fifth of earners currently pay 67% of all federal taxes -- including not just income taxes, but payroll taxes, corporate taxes and death taxes. The top 1% of earners pay 26% of all federal taxes.

If the McCain proposal were passed, the top fifth would actually pay a greater share of total federal taxes and the top 1%'s share would decline by only 0.3%. In other words, high earners carry the vast majority of the federal tax burden and, despite what the media portrays as a shift from Scandinavian egalitarianism to Latin American inequity, would continue to do so under Mr. McCain's plan. . .

As it happens, the McCain proposal would maintain current income tax rates and lower corporate taxes to help American businesses -- which ultimately provide American jobs and pay American wages -- compete in a global economy"


The Rich pay their fair share

No preconditions for the tea party with Ahmadinejad

And we’re not talking about misinformation passed out by Joe Biden at last week's debate, either. No, it's the religious Left (and some not so religious, and a few not so Left). The Christians, of course, were simply following their community organizer's command some 2000 years ago to "Go therefore and eat together and hold a dialogue, but forget about worshiping me and baptizing them; just use your own plan."

“In a fourth encounter over two years, American church officials shared an Iftar meal with the visiting Iranian president on September 28 in New York City. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier in the day had delivered his usual rant against Israel and the United States at the United Nations. But hosting religious officials, anxious for dialogue, were undeterred. Nor were they were intimidated by boisterous demonstrators outside their Manhattan hotel, where some placards demanded: "No Feast with the Beast."

Who’s responsible for this travesty?

The Mennonite Central Committee, the Americans Friends Service Committee (Quakers), the World Council of Churches' UN Liaison Office and Religions for Peace. About 300 religious representatives attended, mostly American church officials, but also including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, leftist Jewish Renewal movement chief Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a Zoroastrian priest, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik, a Lutheran minister.” . . .“The other denominations that sent representatives to the Iftar dinner included the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), all of which, along with the UCC, have recently rejected anti-Israel divestment initiatives, thanks partly to appeals from American Jews.”

The National Council of Churches, in an unusually wise move for a left of center Christian group, boycotted the party for Amadinejad due to his hateful language, behavior, and screwed up views of history.

Then there was the usual, naive woman asking questions later.

“United Methodist Women's chief Harriett Jane Olson told Reuters afterwards that she wished Ahmadinejad had talked about "practical issues" such as the treatment of women and children in Iran instead of abstract theology."

Story at Weekly Standard.

Fritz Hoffman

The central Ohio art scene lost a wonderful friend Sunday with the death of Fritz Hoffman. Every day we enjoy two of his wonderful watercolors (he was AWS and OWS) that hang in our dining room and my husband was in an artist luncheon group with him as well as community organizations. In recent years Fritz had changed to oils, and my husband thinks they may even be better than his watercolors, but I find that hard to imagine. Here is the obituary from today's Columbus Dispatch. He will be greatly missed.

HOFFMAN Frederick R. Hoffman "Fritz", age 78, went home to be with his Lord and Savior on October 5, 2008. He served in the Army during the Korean Conflict, was Vice President of Burkholder Flint and Nichols Advertising Agency, was also active in C.O.W.S., A.W.S and O.W.S. Fritz is preceded in death by his parents Frederick and Susie Hoffman. He is survived by his loving wife, Joanne of 50 years; daughters, Betsy (Steve) Leitwein, Kathy (Jerry) Cutler; grandchildren, Steven (Ashley) Leitwein, Drew Leitwein, Jessica Cutler, Kaitlin Cutler; great-grandchild, Olivia Leitwein; sister, Barbara Hoch; nieces, nephews and many friends. Family will receive friends at SCHOEDINGER NORTHWEST CHAPEL 1740 Zollinger Rd., Friday, October 10, 2008 from 5-8 p.m. to celebrate Fritz's life. A private family service will be held at a later time. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the charity of ones choice.

John McCain's arms

I hate to watch John McCain. I usually have to leave the room or switch channels. My body just aches when I see his poor, damaged arms. I'm such a wimp. I should be asking myself, "I wonder how many hours or minutes Barack Obama would survive if tortured for his country and his beliefs?" When I see what McCain has given up in just being comfortable in his body, I wonder which pains him more, an electorate who thinks it doesn't matter if we run out again on our allies, or his own broken body.

Recommended by a Canadian!

"As a pro-America conservative Canadian, I enjoyed this book so much. Lots of answers to some very confusing questions like Public Health Care, Defense and Foreign Policies, role of the US in the world and many more. If you're a liberal, you should read this to understand more about our point of views. If you're a right winger, you still need this great handbook to defend yourself against the Lunatic Leftists. Highly Recommended!" [Amazon Review]

I haven't read too much of this title--already know a lot of it, but it's got some great notes, charts, definitions and web sites. Conservatives need something like this to come up against the in-your-face Alinsky-trained almighty Obamites. And can you believe this was actually at my very liberal public library branch? Throwing a bone to the conservatives in town who pay their salaries. I was so thrilled, but I noticed the titles with which it was keeping company (the ones not checked out but sitting on the new book shelf). I've probably missed a few left and right, but I'm going by cover and spine titles. It's a little like trying to take photos of all the out of state license plates where the Dems were registering voters this past week--gotta work fast.

The political mind

Right is wrong

The wrecking crew

The trainwreck

The last campaign

A time it was

Know your power

The good fight

Bush's law

Fire breathing liberal

Step by step

Against the tide

A time to fight

Who killed the Constitution

Your government failed you

Guantanamo diary

and then there were twenty-one "green titles," from gardening to jobs, too many to list, and not all worthless of course, but many hyping the human caused global climate change myth (it's very lucrative for business, but especially publishers).

I won't provide the links to these title--sometimes librarians just yawn and point when you ask a question (I never did, but I've seen it done). But in case you noticed how the list lists to the left, I'll remind you that among journalists, they are 5 to 1, liberal to conservative; out in Hollywood in the entertainment industry they are 11 to 1, liberal to conservative; but the library profession is 223 to 1, liberal to conservative. Dixie Chicks and Barbra Streisand have nothing on your local library staff selecting titles from LJ and PW while posting their banned books list.

The next bailout

says Sue Shellenbarger in today's WSJ is your adult children. Sorry Sue. Hate to break the bad news, but Americans have already done that. Boomers were bailed by their parents, and the boom-lets and boom-lights even more so by their boomer parents. No one in America is allowed to have a living standard less wonderful than their parents' it seems. That was a constant riff in the "this economy" theme we've heard the past seven years, and probably before that, because Democrats didn't invent that, I think Republicans did.

My husband's parents (who were younger than mine) didn't help us much--all their disposable income that wasn't needed for the basics like housing, food, clothing went for alcohol, cigarettes and nice vacations. My husband during one stint in college lived with the parents of his best friend, not his own parents. This dear woman even fed him and bought him a winter coat. But my parents certainly chipped in. A lot. It was sort of a family tradition. My great-grandfather had helped my maternal grandmother, and on the other side, my great-grandmother had helped Dad buy his first home. Dad provided for my college education, of course, at least until I was married, then it became a loan to be paid back (and I did). He gave us $1,000 for our first home (a duplex) which didn't have to be paid back, and then took a second mortgage for us on his own savings account (that was paid back). He also sold us my mother's car, which we made payments on. But still, for the 1960s when we had no credit of our own, that was a big help. The irony is we actually inherited more from my in-laws, who'd never given us a dime, than my own parents who had so carefully managed their own resources. That really doesn't matter, since we're grateful to both families not only for their love, but their limited resources the government didn't tax away, so that I could retire at 60 instead of 65.

For our daughter, things were fairly straight forward--we had purchased stock for her (Wendy's) that had recovered from the bust in the 80s and reinvested the dividends (and hid it from her in her late teen years). We'd also taken out a life insurance policy after she left home and it had some value when she cashed it in. The money we had "sheltered" for her when she was very young designated for college was long gone by the time she wanted to buy a house, because we'd made the mistake of using her SS# which meant at 18 she had control, not us. That money went to buy a car to replace the one wrecked by a drunk driver who hit her while she was waiting at a stop light.

For our son we had to be a bit more creative to be "fair," and we won't know for years if we helped or hurt him. His stock tanked and was worthless, and we couldn't get insurance for him. His childhood college account also went for other things that young adulthood required and he had access by then. So after his divorce we purchased a home for him, a wonderful place where he could garden and run his big dog. We used our assets to qualify for a low interest ARM, and he made all the payments. He now owns it (with the bank) and we gave him the equity that he had built up by faithfully paying the mortgage and paying all the expenses for four years.

Of course, we hadn't counted on the government so badly managing the mortgage market with the same good intentions we had that it would bring down the economy. We knew some of the places we looked at with him in 2004 had bizarre financing options (NINJA), but although tempted, we took the "conservative" route, and took on the debt ourselves after years of having no debt at all except for a few months of a "bridge loan" when we bought our condo. We did far more than our parents had done for us, but still within the family tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries being the financial safety net for adult children. However, we live in a two-income household society, and try as I might to interfere, he hasn't found a wife to help with the cost of living and a mortgage. So being a brand new home owner in a neighborhood where many foreclosure signs are popping up may be tough if the credit market tumbles even further and affects his job.

But just like the social engineers in Washington, we believed home ownership was right and "a right" for all Americans, especially our children. It may take years to straighten all this out, and there could be more bailing in our immediate future.

Who is more dangerous?

Over at Democratic Underground dotcom which seems to be a discussion board (I haven't found actual articles) there are 30,200 posts about Sarah Palin and 5,270 about Bill Ayers and his relationship to Obama. Most of those Ayers posts are how to refute, stomp on, deny and disclaim that he has any link to Obama other than just a harmless fuzz ball from the neighborhood. I didn't even bother to check on what they're saying about Sarah, but obviously as a woman not defined by leftist feminism, she's a terrible threat to the Democratic Underground.

Definitions of leaks

Some bloggers do have ears for the leaks, but mainly those go straight from the government's lips to AP, NYT or WSJ "sources" then the bloggers go to work. I wrote about this maybe 2.5 years ago, and found these definitions really interesting. Leaks about the current financial crisis weren't too important. It was all out there loud and clear. Even the talking heads could hear Maxine and Barney defending Fannie, and no one cared because their own portfolios were doing fine. We all wanted to believe the house of cards built in the suburbs was the "American dream" for people who couldn't afford it.

Source: Stephen Hess. The Government/Press Connection: Press Officers and their Offices. Washington, DC : Brookings Institution, 1984. 77-79;

Ego Leak: Giving information primarily to satisfy a sense of self.

Goodwill Leak: Information offered to “accumulate credit” as a play for a future favor.

Policy Leak: A straightforward pitch for or against a proposal using some document or insider information as the lure to get more attention than might be otherwise justified. The leak of the Pentagon Papers falls into this category.

Animus Leak: Used to settle grudges; information is released in order to cause embarrassment to another person.

Trial-Balloon Leak: Revealing a proposal that is under consideration in order to assess its assets and liabilities. Usually proponents have too much invested in a proposal to want to leave it to the vagaries of the press and public opinion. More likely, those who send up a trial balloon want to see it shot down, and because it is easier to generate opposition to almost anything than to build support, this is the most likely effect.

Whistleblower Leak: Usually used by career personnel; going to the press may be the last resort of frustrated civil servants who feel they cannot resolve their dispute through administrative channels. Hess is careful to point out that Whistleblowing is not synonymous with leaking.

Bolstered by Congress?

"Open access pioneer BioMed Central has been acquired by Springer, ScientificAmerican.com has learned.

Open access is the movement, recently bolstered by Congress, to make studies available for free online, instead of charging taxpayers who funded the research (and others) to read them. Many prominent scientists have backed it, signing on with BioMed Central and a non-profit open access publisher, the Public Library of Science". Full article and links at Scientific American.com

The idea that the federal government isn't already involved up to its eyeballs in all scientific research is bogus in itself. The only thing different about "open access" is that at one step--early publication--you should not have to pay to see what you've already paid for. You pay many times over--you fund the researchers (you've probably already paid for their education) at their various institutions through the grants they get from various government agencies, then those institutions skim a huge amount to keep the university running, including the library, which in turn keep those programs going that don't have a cash cow. This in turn eats up a huge amount of time of the faculty, which is why you are paying for your kid to be taught by a grad student from India or China, rather than a full professor, who has to be off in the lab researching and publishing so he can keep his job, which is to hire more foreign nationals to teach your kids. Then you are charged again for that research when it appears in peer-reviewed scientific journals which the library has to buy so the researchers can keep applying for more government grants. A decade ago librarians were all caught up in the idea that the internet was going to be our savior, but sadly have learned otherwise, because business and Congress were just much more clever than we were. This symbiotic relationship, this coziness between research and politics is best illustrated by the shut down of scientific debate on the hoax of human caused climate change--just one example of why science isn't impartial when you let international left wing organizations, Hollywood and Congress control it.

Justice and Redistribution

The Christian evangelical Left parallels the rise of the radical far Left in American politics. That's why I don't see a conflict with calling Obama a Christian and a marxist. I am not one who was surprised that Obama stayed with Wright's church. Like many churches, it runs programs for the poor, such as housing, food, clothing, but it also receives funding from the government to do so. That money comes from you and me in the form of taxes. Sometimes it is a summer lunch program, sometimes it is rehabilitating older housing, or it may be career or job training (or subsidies for barely working). Christians see this as "distributive justice" (or more accurately, redistributing our wealth). There is also a far left wing among mainline protestants and Roman Catholics. Together these three groups are the Religious Left. They all have their own organizations, many of which receive money from the government as well as their denominations to fund their programs and achieve their goals, which are often in line with those of the government.

Justice in the Bible is synonymous with righteousness, which is an attribute of God. Man, made in God's image, was also righteous before the Fall, but now is a sinner and receives Jesus' righteousness by faith. The "good news" includes concern for the whole person, but leftist Christians have distorted the Biblical view with the idea that government needs to redistribute goods and services through taxation to achieve justice. Thus the state can be God's representative on earth.

The following is from Stewardship Journal, Winter 1991, "The Christian Debate over Justice and Rights" by Ronald H. Nash, 29-40.

The most elementary analysis of the Religious Left's writings about justice makes it clear that they are interested almost exclusively in questions of distributive justice. When one's announced intention is to help the poor, it is probably inevitable that one's emphasis will be upon distributing (or rather redistributing) society's wealth. . . Political liberals concerned with distributive justice on the level of an entire society usually try to disguise the fact that the redistribution of a society's holdings they wish to institute must be enacted through coercion, that is, through the state or government forcing people in some way or other.

On several occasions, I have heard my friend Ron Sider give eloquent appeals to rich Christians in America to spread their wealth around to help the poor. I am often mystified as to why Sider fails to tell his audiences that what he desires is for the state or government to effect his desired redistribution of wealth through force, that is, through taxation (the IRS, after all, does not suggest that one make a donation). Some of Sider's followers obviously sense that he is an apologist for higher taxes that will supposedly support greatly expanded liberal social programs. Others seem to miss this obvious point and simply get caught up in the idealism of a noble crusade to help the poor.

Please note the big difference between Christians voluntarily giving their own money to fund programs to help the poor and the quite different situations in which agents of the state take other people's money, keep a large chunk of it to pay their inflated salaries, and use some of what's left to fund counter-productive and self-defeating programs that end up making life even more miserable for the poor. . .

Social or distributive justice as liberals view it is possible only in a society that is controlled from the top down. There must be a central agency with the power to force people to accept the liberals' preferred pattern of distribution. . . What liberals call justice is a setting in which representatives of the state, the most powerful and coercive institution on earth, are empowered continually to take from some in order to give to others, taking care in the process that they keep enough to pay their own salaries. . .

Devotees of liberal "social justice" often fail to see how their position leads to an aggrandizement of state power, how it enslaves people to the state. They too easily overlook the massive threat the institution of the state poses to human liberty. . .

Christian political liberals want the state to use its vast powers of coercion to force everyone in society to help attain the Christian's ends. . . [They] often use the doctrine of Christian stewardship in an attempt to justify their commitment to statism. . . Christian stewardship is perverted into a doctrine that obliges Christians to surrender their judgment, will, and resources to the liberal state which, in the view of the Religious Left, becomes God's surrogate on earth. (p. 31)

Never believe a promise that they'll only tax the other guy

That's class warfare. Class envy. Obama can't reduce taxes for 95% of Americans, since about 1/3 don't pay taxes anyway. Here's what to remember the last time a charismatic candidate promised to tax the rich and give you a break.

“Back when Mr. Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, he made a pretty direct pitch: Raise taxes on people making more than $200,000, and use those revenues to fund tax relief for the "forgotten middle class."

In an October presidential debate, then-Gov. Clinton laid out the marginal-rate increase he wanted and some of his plans for the revenue that would be brought in. He followed with a pledge:

"Now, I'll tell you this," he said. "I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending, or we will slow down the phase-in of the programs."

Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise. At a Jan. 14, 1993, press conference in New Hampshire, he claimed that it was the media that had played up a middle-class tax cut, not him. A month later, he announced his actual plan before a joint session of Congress.

p. 1 NYT . . . "Families earning as little as $20,000 a year will also be asked to send more dollars to Washington under the President's plan." About That Middle-Class Tax Cut . . .

Why health care insurance is so expensive

"As a state senator in Illinois, [Obama] voted to require that dental anesthesia be covered by every health plan for difficult medical cases. Today, the requirement is one of 43 mandates imposed by Illinois on health insurance, according to the Illinois Division of Insurance. Other mandates require coverage of infertility treatments, drug rehab, "personal injuries" incurred while intoxicated, and other forms of care.

By my count, during Mr. Obama's tenure in the state Senate, 18 different laws came up for a vote and passed that imposed new mandates on private health insurance. Mr. Obama voted for all of them.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama says people lack health insurance because "they can't afford it." He's right. But he is also partly responsible for why health insurance is too expensive. A long list of studies show that mandates like the ones Mr. Obama has championed drive up the cost of insurance for the very people priced out of coverage." Insider scoop, By Scott Gottlieb - WSJ 05-06-08

Who's left?

I used to stare at the list of 50 or so organizations on the campus willing to help me, a poor lil'ol weak, helpless female, and wonder why with all the local, county, state and federal laws and local and national organizations in place and living in the best country in the world, I needed so much help. That was about 10 years ago. Slicing and dicing the university community into small manageable groups (academe is very liberal, in case you hadn't noticed) continues. I wondered who was not eligible in this announcement. I really think I might be eligible for something (age? marital status?) even though my Wenger ancestors left Switzerland in the 1740s. I just need to find someone who thinks blogging is important and can nominate me. If you cast your net broadly enough, I suppose you ensure your continued existance.

“The Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Awards recognize individuals or groups who have demonstrated a significant commitment to enhancing diversity at Ohio State and to exceeding expectations in implementing the Diversity Action Plan. The program, now in its 21st year, rewards efforts to enhance diversity on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, sex, age, disability, veteran or military service status, gender identity, economic status, political belief, marital status or social background.” Recognizing excellence, OSU Resources

OSU Increases Adoption Assistance Benefit for 2009

The Adoption Assistance Program reimburses eligible employees for adoption-related expenses upon placement of a minor child in the employee's home. In 2009, the university will increase its reimbursement amount from $4,000 to $5,000 per adopted child.

Adoptions eligible for the benefit should meet the following criteria:

• Adopted children must be under 18 years of age.

• Adopted children may or may not be biologically related to either parent.

• Adoptions are made through public, private, domestic, international, and independent means.

Looks like if you adopt your own step-child, you can get $5,000.

How McCain handed the election to Obama

"McCain unaccountably failed to make his strongest argument [about the economy]. The roots of the crisis lie in both parties' encouragement of greater home ownership. But at critical points, notably in 2005, some Republicans, including McCain, called for tighter regulation of the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This was resisted by Democrats, with no demur from obama." Michael Barone, column in Columbus Dispatch, 10-7-08.

Obama has promised so much based on taxing the rich, promoting class warfare, and now they'll all show losses. That's a lot of angry, expectant, greedy people. So, you know who's next in line for more taxes. You and me.

The Taxman Rap
by Norma Bruce
June 10, 2008

More new taxes
to buy axes
for our backses
and our neckses

for our gases
and our classes
(just the riches'
and the niches.)

Yo! Obama
Go! Oh mama
You our Papa
You Messiah.

Obama can
He is the man
He do the plan
He be the taxman.

Global Economic Challenge

C-SPAN covered an interesting conference yesterday called Global Economic Challenge. The first guy said that when he accepted the invitation to speak a year ago, he had no idea we'd be in the middle of this mess. I thought that was quite telling because I wrote a poem about the mess at Fannie and Fred in September 2007. If I noticed it, I wonder why the economists on the panel didn't. Or maybe they did and Congress stonewalled them as they did Bush.

Paul Krugman was on the panel. He and Thomas Sowell are about the only economists I've read. His comments were interesting to say the least, in that he really had no answers. He was extremely hesitant--almost as many "ahs" and "uhs" as Barack Obama as he thought his way through his responses. There were lots of "could be" and "it's not compelling" type phrases. However, in discussing how our problem has spread world wide he reminded me of something I'd completely forgotten; the Asian economic contagion of 1997-1999. The only reason I remember it at all is that it started in tiny Thailand and spread through out Asia. A Thai PhD student came to me looking for a job. Not only had her government scholarship money dried up, but her very wealthy family had been wiped out. She had even sold her jewelry. Usually I didn't hire this type of student because they often don't do well in repetitive library routines, but I felt sorry for her and for the few months she worked for me, she was able to perform some complex jobs. Her IQ probably qualified her for Mensa. As soon as the college offered her an assistantship, she quit.

Krugman did make some memorable points, however. It isn't just the trade linkages--where we're buying less from other countries and hurting their economies. Diversity, which is recommended for the private investor, actually hurts us in the global economy. Many of our assets are foreign owned, so that affects the world economy. Krugman didn't like the Paulson Plan--he joked that it should be called "Bailey Mae" or "Hanky Panky." Capital has been destroyed he said, and Paulson has "grabbed the wrong end of the stick." (Note the complex economic jargon.) He should have injected capital, but time was wasted as well as political capital.

In conclusion, with one tiny jab at the Bush Administration (the lack of blame here I think indicates that the Bush admin is not to blame) he said, "This is amazing stuff," which I'm sure the audience found helpful, and that "We need clear thinking."

Guess I'll keep checking the blogs for links to CRA and ACORN. Good intentions run amuck, or Fox watching the hen house sounds about as useful an explanation as "stuff out of whack" and "burst housing bubble."


Freddie and Fannie
Sept. 29, 2007
by Norma Bruce

Freddie and Fannie
went up to Capitol Hill
to fawn for a bigger profit
Sticking you and me with the bill.

With help from our taxes
They'll package and resell,
a windfall for the banks and rich,
for the rest of us, economic hell.

Years ago the original aim
was to help the struggling poor.
Now they seek those jumbo loans--
Congress and Bush! Show them the door!