First are nations of peace..where they dont spend trillions upon trillion on defense....they arent scared.

trillions upon trillion on defense...

That much can only be spent upon offense.

Shared in first with nations of peace are, of course, the Deans!

Virgil Goode is Directly Attacking Me and I'm Pissed

The more I think about it, the angrier I get. Virgil Goode

 -----------------

It sounds like Virgil broke a law of some kind, maybe he should be disciplined, censored or impeached.  That would send a message

Could that judge be Zephyr's mother?

seashell

I 've been meaning to ask you - didn't you say you brought back 3 DVD players? My daughter wants a portable DVD which brands went dead on you ?  Which did you end up buying?

5. jc - I bet it is. How many Teachout's are in Vermont?

Elf Yourself!

http://www.elfyourself.com 

http://www.gratefulness.org/candles/candles.cfm?l=eng&gi=T2T4D

13 listed Teachouts in Vermont.

Fred, I answered you but you must have missed the post.  The one that kept breaking is the cheapest and smallest in the shelf and I can't remember the name.  If you give me a multiple choice, I'll pick it out.  LOL

I now have the next one up in price, a Sylvania.  So far so good, but the VCR which is only a few months old (Sony) is not taping well on LP - picture on playback jumps.  They are making cr#p these days. My expensive digital camera, Sony, which I've had only 3 years or so, jammed today and fixing it might not be worth it.

Just junk! 

2964

I think I remember that Zephyr's parents were involved in the legal profession and in teaching (maybe law professor?).

Puddle, jc and Thankful, thank you.

Sea, that's great, I must have missed a year in between, huh? Happy 6 :)

Sen. John Kerry, on a Mideast tour taking him to Damascus for talks with President Bashar Assad, said Friday that the Bush administration's rejection of dialogue with Syria and Iran to try to calm Iraq is a mistake. "Dialogue is an important thing. It's very hard to move the ball if you don't know firsthand what people's needs are, what their own perceptions are," Kerry said in Cairo. The White House said Thursday that trips to Syria by U.S. lawmakers were "inappropriate."--AP

I'd like to see a coordinated diplomatic effort from the Democrats.  If the Bushies won't do it then just end-run them.

and good evening to all:) 

Linda SFN, kudos kiddo!   If you didn't need chemo, you've hit a home run.  Nothing to worry about anymore!!!

&**********************

5 more of ours dead.  

The daughter of Peter Teachout, Professor of Constitutional Law at Vermont Law School, and the Hon. Mary Miles Teachout, a judge on Vermont's Superior Court

Wikipedia 

jc, Zephyr's family has some excellent credentials, don't they?

Linda, they sure do. :-)

seashell

--------------

Thanks.  I might be able to help you with the camera.  Did surveys and much research before I bought the Konica Minolta Z10 for my daughter.  Got it from a camera store on ebay for $125   "roberts_distributors" was the ebay store name. If you are not on ebay their contact information in their ebay store is

255 S. Meridian
Indianapolis, IN. 46225
317-636-5544
1-800-726-5544

Roberts General Photography Questions
    camerasales@robertsimaging.com
 

It was  only $17 for  a three year extended warranty.

We love it. It is easy to use , sturdy and the zoom telescope is built inside.   It is an older model but look at the reviews on www.dpreview.com for a later model if you cannot find it.

jc, can't you put gw in one of those bubbles, like, maybe forever? sort of like aladdin's lamp?

sorry: except no 3 wishes. that's mandatory.

Thanks, Fred!

http://www.seasonssculpting.com/

Dean inspired.

"You have the power."

Now this statement might sound corny but it's the whole truth nothing but the truth.

Here it goes.

I always despised politics. I'm a guy who when encountering a problem is interested in solutions.
This of course involves looking into how the problem manifested itself.

Anyhow, living in a rural area with no High Speed Internet Access and bitterly needing it for my business I joined the newly forming local Broadband Committee that was instituted by the local Select Board.

As the Board  looked into who might be able to provide Broadband services we discovered that a neighboring town had already negotiated with two to three start-up wireless service providers and finally selected one company and signed a statement of support with that company.
Instead of reinventing the wheel we joined their effort.
The company finally (after going through endless internal turmoil) put up the main tower and two repeaters.
After two years the company has about 100 customers including maybe about 10 in my community.
So, after having been on the Board for two years all we got was 10 more people connected to Broadband.

Unfortunately the road I live on (about 2.6 mi long) is 'shaded' by a ridge so the chance of getting a signal on our road is nil.

That's when I had enough.

The thing is that the cable company comes up the road for about half a mile and then turns left into a side road and then stops.

So, I figured I live only 1.8 miles from High Speed Internet Access (Broadband).

Well, then I had this crazy idea of calling the cable company to find out what it would take to get cable up our road.
Have you ever tried to call the cable company? Or any big company for that matter?
You get into an automated loop. It usually ends by being disconnected.

Okay, I looked up the phone number in my local phone book. It was an 800 number.
Right away you are presented with choices to press numbers.
I pressed the number to order new service.
Then I had to put in my phone number, area code etc. Twice, three times?
Finally I got a live person.
Had to give the same info I punched in already many times.
Guess what they told me?
We don't service your road and we will connect you to a service that will determine what company serves your road.
A new voice comes on and asked for the same info again and then lets me know that there is no company serving my road and hang up.

Tried a few more times choosing different options with no results in getting a person to ask what it would take to get cable up the road.

Then I remembered my state representative and called her. She gave me a name and phone number of the Public Service Board.
Took a few more calls to get someone who gave me another phone number.

This new phone number actually got me into contact with a Regional Service Manager of the cable company who is physically located in a neighboring state.
He said that I would be called from a representative in my state.
Low and behold I was called and given a ticket and phone number (with extension) and told that I would get a response to my request within 10 business days.
That same day the service manager called me to make sure that I was all set up.

Of course 10 business days went by and no response. Called back with ticket number and was told that an email was sent to my local office asking them to respond.

Finally I was called from the local office. The guy told me that it would cost me $39,654.38 to get cable to my house.
Then he said if I had more participants the cost would be less.
So he sent me a letter explaining the formula the cable company uses.
According to that formula  if I found 14 more participants the cost for each would be $50.05.

I had my work cut out. There are 27 houses on the 1.8 mile stretch.
Took me 2 days to get 14 participants. I'm now up to 17 and my goal is to have 20.

Way back we had signs here "Take back Vermont". I'm tempted to put up signs like
"Where is my Broadband, Jim?"

Sorry for this very low level political Dean inspired action report.
I told you, I don't like politics.

Merry Christmas everyone.~

http://www.myholidaysweater.com/

well, the power tools are cool.

30. mprov

They took a minute to get control of, but they're fun.  ;-) 

I don't want to bring D&G but perhaps this will end up being a very good thing.  It's not wise to ruffle the general's and Joint Chiefs' feathers.  This is a proposed escalation, not a "surge."  We need to make sure the public is not snowed by this repulsive language.

A. Alexander | Press Ignores the Generals
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122206R.shtml
"The Joint Chiefs of Staff and practically every actively serving general strongly opposes President Bush's proposed Iraq 'Surge' Plan, but you've probably not heard too much about the generals' discontent ... because the media only barely reported on the generals' mutiny," writes A. Alexander.

tester's family looks like people i'd know.

Jesus! This is possibly the most deadly situation we’ve ever seen. What did this poor staffer do to Conrad?

Another absolutely terrifying photo of the former senator from Montana’s War On Christmas Rampage through Washington, after the jump.

Where are the cops? Note that Conrad is driving past a police car. This breaks about nine traffic laws — plus the whole murder thing, once this poor staffer’s body is found outside the Naval Observatory.

Closing the tailgate would seem a safer option. Is Conrad Burns stealing the desk? Glad our nation was in such capable hands the last 6 years.

PEACE ACTION: Progressive Democrats of America has been working and organizing support for HR 4232 since Rep. McGovern introduced this important bill in November of 2005. Rep. McGovern spoke at the PDA "Get out of Iraq" Town Hall meeting the day after he introduced HR 4232. We continue to work for its passage as a top legislative priority. We urge you to continue organizing support for HR 4232 and to ask your Congressional member to co-sponsor the bill. PDA is committed to cutting off all funding for deployment of US troops in Iraq and for the removal of all funding for the occupation of Iraq. Please sign the online petition at www.pdamerica.org and send it to your friends.

29. jc I had fun decorating a sweater. the ice sculpture was beyond my abilities.

charles in montana - thx for tester picture.

sunlight that was a good story -- i thought we all paid a connectivity fee or some such every month that was supposed to finance getting connectivity to the hinterlands (i live in a hinterland myself but they brought my cable down my street no problem -- i must not be as hinterlandish as you)

seashell that article on the previous page - the tinfoil hat one from truthout just makes one's blood boil. guess we all report to the sheik of arabie. sheesh.

well, nite all -- it's a rainy night in n fl good for sleeping i hope.

sorry feeling lazy about capitalization.

...and just to clarify...this does not mean I think we should send half a million troops to Iraq.  But you knew that already ;-)

♥ Hypatia ♥ long time no see

♥ sunlight ♥ long time no see

just popping in for a few - in front of a Panera waiting for a call from Alison for a ride

38. great rant! no apologies needed :-)

Have a lovely xmas eve eve. See ya tomorrow sometime...

♥'s to all

Kindness is free

Hypatia Kingsley
Fri, 12/22/06
11:22 pm
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hypat,

Hello.........what we areseeing today is the Demcoratic party more worried about not losing another Presidential election than trying to win one.................in other words, its time for a 3rd party.................

Both parties are playing with the live of thousands...........only for their own selfish goals.........

The people will learn.........eventually.  Jolly good luck to you in your travels.

cheers

sunlgiht, that is amazing!  You dun good.  Hope it works.  Wanna move here?  I sure wouldn't mind broadband. . .

Hey, Thankful!!

I'm starting my shopping today, so won't be around, but browsing in two shops yesterday wasn't jostled much.

I have two friends with shops, and they wouldn't make the other eleven months if it wasn't for December.

actualy most of mine are a "gift was made in your name" cards which are done, but there is something about an object you can hold in your hands

here the gift is a community striving for peace and I can think of nothing more fitting for the season

spread the love

THIS IS THE SEASON

Does your crying wake the donkey

baby born midst noise of war?

one more sound of need?

the stars notice

and rumble creation in the silence

of distance

were we to turn our back

and walk far enough

a child's cry

would disappear too

silent night

Phil, did you write that?  It's wonderful!

Nite, Phil, and lurkers.  I'm really caught up in reading "The Disappearance of the Universe."

Good morning, everybody

The question was whether the rain would turn to snow. It hasn't. I can hear it on the roof. The snow is silent and stills the whole world.

I'm thinking about the world because my question of the day is "Can America be trusted, again?"

Will have to write that up for Hannah.

bbl

congrats on another democratic win in Vermont!  every vote counts - the voters have spoken! 

 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

John, John, John - when will you ever learn...?!  straight talk - out the window!  we'll have to rename this campaign - perhaps 'the dirty tricks express'?

Sen. John McCain's recent hiring of Karl Rove protege Terry "Call me" Nelson didn't surprise those of us who have never bought into the "straight talker," "maverick" image that has been manufactured by McCain and his supporters. Now McCain has hired yet another morally-challenged staff member, Jill Hazelbaker, as communications director for his New Hampshire campaign.

Hazelbaker is known for posing as a liberal and stirring up trouble on liberal blogs. She was caught, too, but continued to lie about what she had done. These kinds of campaign dirty tricks, recently popularized by Rove and Karen Hughes, are probably pretty common, but in this case, the selection of both Hazelbaker and Nelson tell more about McCain than anything else.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/12/3170_mccain_goes_loo.html 

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/12/3170_mccain_goes_loo.html

 here's the link again - looks like it was cut off in the last post.

 happy Christmas eve-eve to all! off to get groceries while the store is fairly sane... lol!  bbl

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/arch...

voila!

wow!  I was the only shopper in the store - loved it - for some reason I 'browse' better when it's not crowded!   GREAT way to start a busy day...

well when all you sleepyheads show up, just know that Jo*in*Vermont sends Christmas blessings and love to you all.  have safe and happy hopildays!

 btw, as for 'Happy Holidays', I used this all the time as a child,  meaning 'Happy Christmas AND New Year' - TWO holidays.   I didn't know ANYONE who didn't celebrate Christmas way back then!  ahhh, the innocence of youth - if only I'd know it was blasphemy...

lol!  happy hopildays - now that's a new one!   kinda like the year I celebrated 'Solstivus'...

Hey, Jo, are you still around?

I'm able to make my first appearance for days and it's good to be back!  What a great story to come back to ... another Dem win!

Up to now, Dec 2006 has been one of the busiest months ever ... now things may settle down for a bit and into a new surge come mid-Jan. 

I'm on the US side of the Atlantic now so this is real EST blogging.  My sisters believe that I inherited my father's legendary *luck of the Irish* because I am one of the few in recent days who managed to take off in Europe, transit through London Heathrow and arrive at my final destination not only on the same day but within ten minutes of my scheduled arrival time!   Even my luggage made it.

London fog has been the culprit disrupting the Christmas travel plans of countless thousands across The Pond.  I count myself as termendously fortunate but certainly wish that others had also been beneficiaries of the same good luck. 

er ...*termendously* s/b *tremendously*

***************

Anyway, what on earth is this *surge* thing?  It's much too little, much too late and just provides more US hostages to fortune.  Here's one of the newly elected Reps who is asking the right question at this time.

============= 

WASHINGTON -- As Rep. David Wu visited wounded soldiers in the National Naval Medical Center this week, he thought about President Bush considering a move to send more troops to Iraq.

Wu fears the White House will quietly roll out the "temporary surge" over the holidays, as if it were a company marketing a new product.

"We need to focus on whether we would choose to send our own son or daughter, our own wife or our own husband off for a temporary surge in Iraq," said Wu, D-Ore. "If we wouldn't do that, then should we permit this administration to roll out a potential product like that?"

[...]

 http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1166846116292360.xml&coll=7#continue

Here's a bit of what others have been facing.  Thursday was my travel day.  How lucky I was!

===================

British Airways promises to resume domestic flights from midday.

• Dan Milmo, transport correspondent,
• The Guardian,
• Saturday December 23 2006

A man dressed as Santa Claus hands blankets to queueing passengers at Heathrow airport. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty

Tens of thousands of airline passengers spent another frustrating day stranded in the gloom at Heathrow airport yesterday as fog continued to disrupt the Christmas getaway. Britain's busiest airport cancelled 350 flights but British Airways gave some hope to passengers with the promise of a much-improved service today, with all domestic flights running from midday.

[...]

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2006/dec/23/travelnews.theairlineindustry.uknews?print 

Jo

you hit upon the word

it is "Solstivus", we all celebrate this time of year

on the 22nd my father would start with "the days are getting longer, summer will soon be here",(my mother, being choir director, was focused on the Sunday School pageant dress rehersal practices)

Joy to the world.

It doesn't look like those links posted.

I'll try again.

**********************

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1166846116292360.xml&coll=7  

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2006/dec/23/travelnews.theairlineindustry.uknews

**********************

We'll see. 

Doesn't look like I was successful ... I've not had this problem before.

???

Of course, I'm using Firefox now ... could that be it?

*******

Hey, Phil ... good to *see* you! 

I don't know why anyone would be holding one's breath to know the outcome of the Gates visit to Iraq.  He's been programmed to request a *surge* ... .

====================

5 U.S. Troops Die West of Baghdad

Friday December 22, 2006 6:31 PM

AP Photo BAG110

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Insurgent attacks killed five more American troops west of the Iraqi capital, the military said Friday, making December the second deadliest month for U.S. servicemen in 2006.

This month, 76 American troops have died in Iraq, the same number that were killed in April. With nine days remaining in December, the monthly total of U.S. deaths could meet or exceed the death toll of 105 in October.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew back to Washington on Friday to give President George W. Bush his advice on transforming U.S. policy in Iraq after holding three days of talks in the war zone with military and political leaders. Gates was scheduled to see Bush at the mountain retreat of Camp David on Saturday morning.

The White House said Bush would meet his full National Security Council next Thursday during a stay at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. That session was designed to whittle down the options rather than make final decisions, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6298049,00.html 

Seasons Blessings to you Judy.

the blog messed up the stanzas on the poem I wrote overnight

3 lines, space, 3 lines, space, 4lines, 1 line

if you are a poet you give a poem for Christmas

bbl

Even that one didn't work and it was a shorter link.

**************** 

Timely question ... and yes, I have been to Bethlehem, but it was in happier days when there was hope.

Now there is neither hope nor happiness. 

==================

 23 December 2006 07:39

In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.

Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. "What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured," she says.

Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. "It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on," she says. She was already nervous about the birth - her first, and twins - so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.

They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. "Obviously, we told them we couldn't wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn't understand."

Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. "I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital," she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could "certainly" have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.

[...]

http://news.independent.co.uk/appeals/indy_appeal/article2097790.ece

Hi Judy

Welcome home. I guess. We're in a mess.

Anyway, the "surge" is just the word of the week. Goes with "insurgent" don't you know. Let's hope we'll have an "outsurge" next. Maybe that's what the carrier group in the Gulf is for. LOL

I don't think so, but we can always hope. Certainly, if all the electronic equipment they've hauled into the bases to set up radar and missile installations is to be removed over land, they will need an extra contingent to provide "security" for the convoys to the sea. (Still haven't figured out why Basra was put under the jurisdiction of the Brits).

I understand that the resistance has promised a month's cease fire to facilitate the move out. But, Gates responded that we are going to be there for a long time yet. That spy network is just too much to give up. After all the trouble the N.S.A. has gone through to develop models that will take our "enemies'" communications systems out while leaving our "internets" alone!

Hey, Phil, I liked your poem even with bloggie behaving badly.

All the best wishes of Christmas to you and your family! 

***********

Bloggie is also behaving badly with my links.  I'll have to wait until my in-house expert has risen and shone and then perhaps I can fix things. 

67.

Actually, the program was for Gates to come in and supervise the installation of the computers and other electronic spying equipment in the embassy. Why else would they construct a building with double-thick concrete walls and with foreign slave labor that doesn't speak English and can't describe what was done, even after they escape back to their southeast Asia homes?

Hello, Monica, didn't I see you upthread earlier, musing about the noise difference between rain and snow?

****************

We went in to see *The Nutcracker* last night: the Moscow Ballet at the Lyric Opera House in Baltimore.  It was pouring and driving visibility was poor.

We'll be heading off to spend an early Christmas tonight with one set of kids/grandkids/extended family.  It helps to take some of the pressure off the kids for Christmas Day.

With the rain, careful driving is at least possible.  At the first sign of a snowflake around here, people go berserk.  It's really something to behold.

Still, when I don't have to drive around here, I prefer snow.

Judy,

You have to either select rich text in the upper right hand corner and use the tool bar to make links. Or you have to select "plain text" to make the URLs clickable on the page.

If you use the tool bar, you have to first type a word or two, highlight them, click the link tool and then fill in the box with the URL

Speaking of slaves and the Middle East (and I for one think that your conclusions about the thick building are not too far off the mark, Monica, despite the scoffers who try desperately to cloud the issue), here are some who may have a chance at a better life.

Slavery is only the symptom.  The causes are desperate poverty ... and those who seek to exploit that poverty for their own ends. 

================ 

Amir is a victim of the trade in child camel jockeys. But he cannot tell his story. When he opens his mouth, he can only make incomprehensible sounds.

Sold by his parents at just five to take part in races in Dubai, he fell off the back of a camel in a race and was badly trampled by the camels running close behind. His face was shattered so badly he cannot speak any more. He is blind in one eye. He is just six years old. His life is ruined before it has even begun.

Today, child camel jockeys are not allowed in Dubai any more, because of a prolonged campaign by Anti-Slavery International, one of the charities featured in The Independent's Christmas Appeal this year. Campaigning to change the law, and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable people, is one of the key aspects of the agency's work.

But such advocacy is not yet over, according to Tanveer Jahan of Anti-Slavery International's local partner in Pakistan, the Democratic Commission for Human Development (DCHD).

[...]

http://news.independent.co.uk/appeals/indy_appeal/article2073019.ece

===============

You'll have to cut and paste the links until I get my personal tutorial, I'm afraid. 

Thanks, Monica, I'll try and see whether I can figure it out based on your instructions.  They seem clear enough but I am one of the more technically challenged.

The toolbar should work on Firefox. Opera works with 'rich' sometimes. Othertimes the wrap function gets messed up by a hard return or the use of a hyphen or an asterix. I think it's the html coding that's at fault. Plus the addition to the numbering to the basic software program.

Good morning,
Monica, this has turned into the mother of all quagmires. I've been busy with holiday stuff the past few days and just found this on CNN and then read your post.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The leader of an umbrella organization for Iraqi insurgent groups is offering the United States a one-month truce to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq and turn over its military bases "to the mujahedeen of the Islamic state."

In an audiotape posted on Islamic Web sites Friday, a speaker identified as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Mujahideen Shura Council, said that if U.S. forces begin withdrawing from Iraq immediately and leave their heavy weaponry behind, "we will allow your withdrawal to complete without anyone targeting you with any explosive or anything else."

"We say to Bush not to waste this historic opportunity that will guarantee you a safe withdrawal," al-Baghdadi said on the audiotape.

The United States was given two weeks to respond to the offer.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/2...

The only real advantage to using 'rich' is that you can include images. Presumably you can also adjust the location of text on the page, but that's not particularly useful from my perspective.
It all works nicely on the "Write" page and I've had fun putting together posts with pictures and text running down the side.

Robert Fisk speaks the truth ... STILL hard to find in US media.

===============

I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect. Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at the faraway region in which I live and work for The Independent - the Middle East - and see a landscape which I do no recognise, a distant tragedy turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and barefaced lies. Am I the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter?

I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights".

Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is "afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...". A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, "is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them".

Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book - until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour - Egypt - secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print", ho! ho!) then felt free to tell its readers that Carter had stirred "furore among Jews" with his use of the word "apartheid". The ex-president replied by mildly (and rightly) pointing out that Israeli lobbyists had produced among US editorial boards a "reluctance to criticise the Israeli government".

[...]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2097774.ece 

Not a good pupil, I'm afraid, Monica.

Fortunately, my in-house expert is patient, albeit very tired right now. 

In any event, must get busy.  

bbl 

70.

I'm sorry, but I get a little impatient with these stories of Palestinian women giving birth in cars to still-born infants. After all, it was the God of the Old Testament who supposedly sent around the angel of death to kill all the boy babies in houses that didn't have the proper sign on the door-frame. In addition, it's well known that one of the main reasons the Israelis are, reluctantly, agreeing to a two-state solution is because the Palestinians are bearing too many children and threaten to out-number the Jewish population. Given that, what else would one expect but that every Palestinian birth avoided would be considered a boon.
Lest you think that a targeted program of fertility interruption and early intervention would make more sense, let me suggest that if a population is to be weakened, then women bearing children almost to term is more effective. Regardless of whether the infants survive, the women are physically debilitated and a drain on energies of their family or clan.

People do what was done to them. The Isrealis are taking their revenge. In the next generation it will be the Palestinians' turn.

I had to chuckle just now...in this mornngs News and Observer in the Home & Garde section was "Thanks For The Memories", people wrote in what wer their most memorable Christmas ornaments...............on the front page was the "one legged santa"........hilarous...............

At this festive holiday season, I am curious as to what were some of your favourite and funniest Christmas or Hannukah memories...........here are a couple of mine from the hall of fame

1)Christmas 1968-we usually went to cut our trees down this year was my choice to oick the tree.......we would all go as a family..............only prblem was the tree was too big for the front room...............it ended up on the back porch, and we went out and bought another one from the corner lot downtown.

2)Christmas 1967-the year the parrakeet got out of its cage and flew into the Christmas tree and got caught in it.

Send yours along..............lets have some laughs this weekend.  cheers

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/23...

84.

1984....A co-worker dressed up in a Santa Suit and bought a bunch of toys to give to his friend's kids.  He arrived at my house in his old truck just as the kids were going to bed, gave them some small gifts and said he'd be back later with some more to put under the tree. After the kids went to bed, Richard and I had a holiday brew and he went on his way (kids watching out the upstrair window I later found out). Here's how it was told to me by my son's 1st grade teacher.

 After Christmas vacation, the teacher had each student tell about their Christmas. My son had new information about Santa that had learned this Christmas. The teacher asked him what he had found out about Santa. He said "Santa drives a pick-up truck and drinks beer!".

Good morning all,

A New Thread awaits

Hey Judy!...all clear on my 2 year! :)