My windows look terrible, I’m going to give it a try.

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My pastor’s house always had the clearest windows I had ever seen. One day, to learn his secret, I came over to help with some spring-cleaning chores. Being a do-it-yourself sort of fellow, he didn’t use a single paper towel or commercial cleaning product to clean. Instead, he mixed 2 cups of hot water with 1/4 cup of vinegar and a tablespoon of cornstarch.

“The vinegar gets anything off the window,” he beamed, proud of his homemade window cleaner. “But it’s that little bit of cornstarch that really gives it the shine!”

After shaking the solution up in a spray bottle and spritzing the windows, we wiped them down with crumpled newspaper. Unlike paper or cloth towels, newspaper is absorbent without leaving lint behind. Those windows sparkled in spectacular fashion!

From that day on, I have used this method to clean the windows in my own home. It works like nothing else and keeps my windows shined to perfection.

Here’s what I do.

I mix the 2 cups of hot water in a pitcher with the corn starch first, and then I add the vinegar last. Then I pour it in the spray bottle and shake it up. And seriously, the newspaper trick really does work! Streak free every time. If you don’t have a old news paper try a coffee filter…

Kristy Currier, 26, of Detroit, pays $600 a month in school loans. Her job doesn’t pay enough to cover loan payments plus living expenses. REGINA H. BOONE/DFP

Detroit Free Press

DETR OIT The U.S. govern­ment projects to make more money off student loans this fis­cal year than ExxonMobil, Ap­ple, JPMorgan Chase or Fannie Mae made on their respective businesses last year, a new analysis shows.

According to the Congres­sional Budget Office, the federal government projects a record $50-billion profit on student loans this year. ExxonMobil made $44.9 billion in 2012, ac­cording to published reports, making it the most profitable company in the country. And if Congress doesn’t stop rates on some loans from doubling on July 1, that profit will increase.

“I can understand private companies making profits off student loans — part of mine are private — but it doesn’t make sense for the government to be making huge profits off the backs of young students just trying to make themselves em­ployable in a terrible economy,” said Kristy Currier, 26, of Detroit.

Currier said she pays be­tween 3.9 percent and 10 per­cent interest on various loans, which total about $75,000.

The record-high profits on student loans come during a time of historically low interest rates on home mortgages and car loans. While a homebuyer can get a 30-year mortgage at about 4.5 percent interest, the federal government is charging as much as 6.8 percent interest on unsubsidized student loans.

When Nathan AuBuchon graduated from Walsh College last fall, he did so with $35,000 in federal student loans. The 31­year-old Commerce Township, Mich., resident, who co-owns a real estate company, pays $172.66 a month in loans.

He doesn’t have a problem with the government making money from his loans.

“I see it as the taxpayers who are making the money, and I have no problem with that. The taxpayer should be compensat­ed for their opportunity cost and the risk of loss of their money,” he said.

The Congressional Budget Office’s May look at the federal student loan account forecasts the federal government will make more than $173 billion in profits from student loans over the next 10 years.

Those projections are higher than the Obama administra­tion’s projection — which fore­cast a $34.3 billion profit this year versus the CBO’s $50 bil­lion projection. Using the ad­ministration’s projections, the government is making an aver­age of about 18 cents in net profit from every dollar it lends. The government makes prof­its by lending money at rates higher than it borrows. The CBO projects the government rate will be 2.1 percent during 2013. Loan interest rates for borrowers run from 3.4 percent to 7.9 percent.

The profitability of the stu­dent loan program is under in­creased scrutiny amid political debate over the cost of higher education and borrowers’ debt levels.

The interest rate on the fed­erally subsidized Stafford loan is set to double on July 1. Con­gress is debating a number of bills designed to hold that rate closer to 3.4 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that keeping the loan rate at 3.4 percent on sub­sidized loans would cost the government $41 billion over the next decade, while eliminating the subsidized program would increase the profit by $49 billion.

Budget projections from the Obama administration show an expected profit of $26.3 billion in 2014, with a slight uptick in the profit rate to nearly 19 cents for every dollar loaned in 2014.

“I think the government should cover costs, but certain­ly not profit off (student loans),” said U.S. Rep. Tim Wal­berg, R-Mich., a member of the House’s higher education sub­committee.

RELATED:

SWAT team bursts into man’s home, keeps him handcuffed for six hours over the collection of a student loan http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bJ_TguhRTsM

If you are thinking about tweeting about clouds, pork, exercise or even Mexico, think again. Doing so may result in a closer look by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
In a story appearing earlier today on the U.K’s Daily Mail website, it was reported that the DHS has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor various social networking sites. The list provides a glimpse into what DHS describes as “signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.”
The list was posted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, before suing to obtain the release of the documents. The documents were part of the department’s 2011 ’Analyst’s Desktop Binder‘ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.
The information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats. The Daily Mail’s article noted the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, describing it’s choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.
What wasn’t disclosed is how the agency actually gains access to the various search engines and social networks to monitor the specified keywords. My guess is the DHS has a “special arrangement” with companies like Google GOOG -0.26%, Facebook FB -0.34%, Microsoft MSFT -0.91%, Yahoo and Twitter to gain secure direct API access. This type of access would allow it to use distributed cloud technologies to monitor the daily flow of social media and search activity in something close to real time.

PAGE 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/

PAGE 2: the list: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/2/

Elderly suicide rates hitting new highs as traditional social networks break down | Ontario | News | Toronto Sun.

TORONTO — Hope I die before I get old.

The Who gave the world this famous line in their 1965 rock anthem My Generation.

The sneering words, delivered by lead singer Roger Daltry, and the song remain icons for the baby boomer generation to this day.

Sadly, many of them may be destined to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy and in doing so unwittingly pose the question: when did living longer become a problem rather than a blessing?

Canadians 65 years and older, particularly men, may hold the answer. They have the highest suicide rate of any group in the country.

Approximately 33 out of every 100,000 individuals in that age range die by suicide in Canada annually.

And older, white males are the most likely to commit suicide, a benchmark 2005 study found.

READ MORE: http://www.torontosun.com/2013/06/15/elderly-suicide-rates-hitting-new-highs-as-traditional-social-networks-break-down

Rescind the 2nd Amendment

Thirty thousand Amer­icans die every year from gunshot wounds, whether from homicide, suicide or accident. The National Rifle Association has thus far opposed attempts to remedy this problem. They remind Americans that the Founding Fa­thers saw fit to assert in the Second Amendment to the Constitution that “a well-regulated militia be­ing necessary to the secu­rity of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Those willing to ex­cuse the wreckage guns have wrought have con­sistently triumphed. No matter what arguments the advocates of gun con­trol deploy — that the phrase “well-regulated” implies some ability on the part of government to limit gun rights; that the verb construction to “bear arms” has been used almost always to de­scribe a military use for weapons; that the Consti­tution is a “living” docu­ment that ought to be in­terpreted in the light of changing circumstances; and that the Founding Fa­thers could never have considered the sort of vio­lence acted out in New­town and in the streets of Chicago a justifiable ex­ample of bearing arms — advocates of “gun rights” will always have their tendentious reading of the Second Amendment to defend their position.

So let’s repeal the Sec­ond Amendment. It is dat­ed, lethal, and morally ab­horrent.

Americans have re­pealed amendments be­fore. The Constitution is not a sacred text. It is a framework for govern­ment, the product of doz­ens of compromises. The men who framed the doc­ument envisioned that it would be changed. They made the process diffi­cult and time-consuming, but it has happened.

The NRA advocates an untrammeled right to keep and bear arms and asserts the constitutional right to do so. Meanwhile, the killings continue. Let’s take aim at that part of the Constitution that provides cover for the NRA. At our current pace, we will continue to bury too many victims of gun violence each month.

The Second Amend­ment emerged out of a context unique to a new nation. When it was rati­fied, America’s leaders relied upon the militia for local defense, to punish Indians, and control slaves, and in a nation separated from its impe­rial rivals by the Atlantic, the militias were ade­quate. They distrusted standing armies. But the conditions from which the Second Amendment emerged obviously no longer apply. Repealing the Second Amendment would de­prive no one of their guns, but it would empower the Congress and state legis­latures to do something effectively to end the slaughter. Some jurisdic­tions will act with deci­sion to limit magazines and increase background checks, and others will not. But let’s get rid of this antiquated and blood­drenched amendment. Let us not wait for the most determined advo­cate of gun rights to de­cide that too many have died.

Oberg is a professor of history at the State Uni­versity College at Gene­seo.

Did you know Jesus was a Palestinian? Neither did he. That hasn’t stopped the enemies of the Christians’ Prince of Peace from attempting to use him for diabolical political purposes.

What began as a clever propaganda ploy by Yasser Arafat—as part of his lifelong attempt to erase Jewish history—has been picked up by American evangelicals. That Jesus of Nazareth was born and lived as a Jew is an obvious historical fact, just as, for example, Robert E. Lee commanding the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. The background of Jesus Christ, however, inarguably the most famous person in history, is of great importance. His life as a Jew is increasingly being called into question by Muslims, who are working overtime to open “interfaith dialogue” channels with American Christian leaders.

READ MORE: http://balfourpost.com/the-palestinian-jesus/

http://joshwendell.yolasite.com/redemption-book.php