Here's To Jimmie Higgins! Any Friend of Barb & Jim Is A Friend Of Mine.

I Feel So Much Safer Now.

A dictator created then destroyed by America

The Things We Give Up To Keep Our Women Healthy

Doing housework can cut substantially a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer, according to researchers.

Happy 22nd Barbara & Jim. And They Said It Wouldn’t Last.

The Good Witches of Johnson County

The women in Virg's family are powerful but usually benevolent.

The Decider’s Folk Finally Almost Concede Carbon Emissions Are Killing Polar Bears-Right On Time, But This Is Yesterday’s Train.

“. . .as an object of . . . Coca-Cola commercials, the polar bear occupies an important place in the American psyche.”
Let’s see, is anyone or anything other than Coca-Cola & our psyche in danger? Nah!

My Cousin Pat

Pat died this weekend. She was kind, loving, honest, and smart. She might have pardoned Nixon too, but only because of her great compassion. Pat, and those like her, are the ones who really make a difference in this world.
See, GOODBYE TO OUR DEAR SISTER

James Brown’s Body,-Not Gerald Ford’s-Will Lie At The Apollo.

The good Dr. S says "forget Ford." A giant has died whom, in my haste to praise a comparitively good Republican, I neglected.

President Ford Was Not Just a Partisan Hack. We’ll Miss You Gerry & Wish There Were More Like You.

President Gerald Ford was "An outstanding statesman, he wisely chose the path of healing during a deeply divisive time in our nation's history. He frequently rose above politics by emphasizing the need for bipartisanship and seeking common ground on issues critical to our nation. I will always cherish the personal friendship we shared." Jimmy Carter

Peace on Earth? Calling a Dope a Dope? Ron Paul Is Not Just Another Texas Republican

"In Washington, the answer to every problem is always more of the same. If a war is not successful, escalate it – or even start another one. This is our only policy in Iraq, where we don’t even know whom the enemy really is. Can one in ten Americans even distinguish between Sunni, Shia, and Kurds? Unless we rethink our senseless policy of endless occupation, regime change, and nation building in the Middle East, we must expect more of the same: More troops injured or killed, more spending, more debt, more taxes, more militarism, and especially more government."
For Another View of Dr. Paul Double ClickHere.

Virgil May Not Adopt Chinese Children. Neither Can This Guy.

Abraham Would Be Proud. So Should His Descendants Be. So Should The Rest of Us.

"Fadil Bayyari and Jeremy Hess laid the groundwork a few weeks ago for Bayyari, a Muslim, to build a new home for Temple Shalom, Fayetteville's Jewish congregation. . . .The coming together of faiths often pitted against one another wasn't lost on either. . . Bayyari, a Springdale general contractor, will donate his services to Temple Shalom . . .The symbolism of the men working together is more significant than bricks and mortar, temple president Bill Feldman said. Bayyari and Feldman agreed demonstrating the positive side of Muslim-Jewish relations is important locally and internationally. Bayyari said he approached Hess through a friend in the local Rotary Club about lending his services. He said he thought it would be an important way to show his support. Bayyari previously built a mosque for Fayetteville's Muslim community.‘We are all children of God when you look at it,’ Bayyari said. Feldman said members of Temple Shalom were ‘thrilled’ to work with Bayyari, in order to demonstrate similarities in the two religions." Temple Unites Faiths, Jewish congregation "thrilled" to work with Muslim contractor on new building By Dug Begley The Morning News

Thanks To Jim, the Buddhist, for this ecumenical tip.

We Need Leader Like These In These Troubled Times.

Either Washington, who led our young country, or the Bruce, who often led the Scots, could do it for us. Be on the lookout for them. I know that they live.

Virg n’ Mary Again Wish All A Mary Christmas.

See exact likenesses of Mary.

Macaca Revisited? Yes, Virginia, You Rival Oklahoma’s Idiocy In Choosing Leaders.

Chester Goode was kind hearted and loved all of God’s creatures. He respected the rights of others and the rule the law. His decedent, Virgil Goode (Rep. Va.), has disgraced his country, his state, and his family, but try as he might, he’ll never destroy Chester’s goode name.

The Decider’s Strategery for Winning the “War” In Our Airports

"Even assuming, for just a moment, that previously banned, but now "legal" fingernail clippers could ever have been used to hijack a plane, the current version of airport security would still be worthless. (The fact that almost anyone with a pulse can even now successfully get a deadlier weapon than a pair of nail clippers on a plane is just an example of the lunacy.)

A primary problem is that airport treats what is a symptom while never addressing any root causes. Simply put, for increased security to preclude subsequent attacks, ineffective security must have led in part to the previous attacks. Direct causality has to exist between security and terrorism for increased security to result in decreased terrorism. But people who obeyed the existing rules carried out those attacks. Their weapons were not hidden, and their identification was not invalid. Thus, bending me over and checking me very thoroughly for weapons is unlikely to help. Worse, looking at the 9/11 attacks, the simplest logical analysis yields another firm conclusion: the methodology used to take over those planes on that day will never work again anyway. . . .
Somewhere in the offices of DHS right now, execs are gathered around a conference table, doing shots of Jack, laughing: "Hey Bill, let's make them take off their shoes!" "That’s too funny!" "Hey, why not dial up the metal detector to catch underwire bras?" "Wow, I wish I could film that scene!" "Hey, I’ve got one. Let’s ask them if they packed their own bag or let some unknown person pack it for them. Terrorists never pack their own bags!" "Ooooh, good one!" It’s a veritable laugh riot.
And just to be very clear, when I assert that terrorists around the globe know that a similar plan to that implemented on 9/11 will never work again, I am not talking about the really smart terrorists. A terrorist with only the mental capacity to avoid soiling himself occasionally during a typical day could have reached this conclusion. If such a person could actually get to the airport on time, he would have reached the upper limit of his capability." From, Do You Know the Way to San Jose? Hidden in Plain Sight, Part First by Wilton D. Alston

Dragon Worship Cult Expected Soon.

Wise men testify.

Bush Appoints New General To Lead In Iraq

No Tall Tale, This.

"The long arms of the world’s tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins . . ."

Yes, Virginia, Congress Sucks Too.

“The role of the president as Commander in Chief is to direct our armed forces in carrying out policies established by the American people through their representatives in Congress. He is not authorized to make those policies. He is an administrator, not a policy maker. Foreign policy, like all federal policy, must be made by Congress. To allow otherwise is to act in contravention of the Constitution. Library of Congress scholar Louis Fisher, writing in The Oxford Companion to American Military History, summarizes presidential war power:
The president's authority was carefully constrained. The power to repel sudden attacks represented an emergency measure that allowed the president, when Congress was not in session, to take actions necessary to repel sudden attacks either against the mainland of the United States or against American troops abroad. It did not authorize the president to take the country into full-scale war or mount an offensive attack against another nation.
But it’s not simply the decision to wage war that is left to Congress. Consider also the words of James Madison:
Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. They are barred from the latter functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of enacting laws (italics added).
So Congress is charged not only with deciding when to go to war, but also how to conduct – and bring to a conclusion – properly declared wars.”

The Importance of Stupidity

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” Gustave Flaubert He also said “The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.” Mission Accomplished!

A Vice President's Prayer-Lettuce Spray

“Sir--and I call you Sir because I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that you're a sir, .. .I don't kneel to anyone, not even you, ... If the Democrat party takes over the Senate, . . .they'll try to make us cut and run from Iraq, just when we're about to turn the corner, just when the Sunnis and the Shiites are about to kill each other off entirely, once and for all, and leave the region's oil fields safe at last for American investors.
Sir, you don't want that, . . and regardless of how they voted in the last election, the American people don't want that either. That's why I'm praying today for Tim Johnson. If he dies, Governor Rounds of South Dakota--a good Republican, I can assure you of that--will replace him with a Republican, which would give us 50 seats in the Senate, and then of course I could tip the balance in any tie vote. Johnson is now recovering from his operation, they say, but still in critical condition. And in spite of what we've been told about his chances, I'm betting he's in pain. And even if he survives, even if he has a pretty good chance of full recovery, I'm betting he's likely to end up permanently incapacitated, with the fate of the Senate and the fate of the country and the fate of the entire world hanging in the balance. Don't let that happen, sir. Put him out of his misery. Now."

Happy Holidays

Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower alley'garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby lilla boy, Louisville Lou? Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly welly cracker n' too-da-loo! Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

Duck us all in bowls of barley, Ninky dinky dink an' polly voo! Chilly Filly's name is Chollie, Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof! Tizzy seas on melon collie! Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!

Then there is Beauregard's version:

Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly wolly cracker n too-da-loo! Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope cantaloup, "lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon, Willy, folly go through! Chollie's collie barks at Barrow, Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

We also have this third version:

Duck us all in bowls of barley, Ninky dinky dink an' polly voo! Chilly Filly's name is Chollie, Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof!

Tizzy seas on melon collie! Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!

Certain Democrats Gag Virgil Too. We Need A Statesperson. We Haven't Found Her.

Good to see with Iraq spiraling out of control, Hillary is focused on the important stuff.

Hot on the heels of the release of the Iraq Study Group Report -- and a day in which 10 U.S. servicemen were killed and at least 84 Iraqis were blown up or shot -- prospective presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will join with Joe Lieberman to hold a press conference today at 3 pm ET to announce the launch of a television PSA campaign about... video game ratings.

So what demographic is into scolds? (Thanks Dr. S.) Tammy Wynette was twice the woman Hillary is, and George W. is once the man Joe is only dumber.

Giving The Dick His Due.

Vice president Cheney is "looking forward with eager anticipation" to the birth of his daughter Mary Cheney’s baby “with her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.” Nobody's all bad, and I suppose we're all hypocrites to some extent.

Happy Pearl Harbor Day

It could never happen again with Honest Abe in control.

Make Him Victor Hugo

Hugo Chavez is up for TIME Magazine's man of the year. Dr. Steve, who keeps up with such things says “Vote for him! Vote for the example of someone putting government at the service of the people, putting human needs before profits!”

Merry Christmas Et Al!

Mrs. Betty Bowers wishes you Happy Holidays!

Buddha’s Enlightenment Day

Dr. Taylor explained it to us last year.

Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut

And sometimes you “feel like, a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.” Credit: Tom Lehrer in Send the Marines, from That Was The Year That Was.
Gloating is seductive, but I had rather have been wrong. I get no comfort in the discovery of “a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.” The same with the finding that there is “a correlation between the severity of a person's psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.”
It’s, of course, no surprise at all that "Bush supporters had significantly less knowledge about current issues, government and politics than those who supported Kerry."

Virgil Belatedly Wishes You A Happy Thanksgiving.

It’s never too late to have either a happy childhood or a happy thanksgiving. “. . . all you got to do . . . is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.”

Thanks to Tennessee Guerilla Women

In With The Newt? Stranger Things Have Happened

“Newt Gingrich, . . .now proposes to turn the U.S. into a police state. . . . It doesn't make any difference if we lose the country through external attack or because, in fear, we surrendered our freedoms. Either way we lose. It's time to remember Ben Franklin's aphorism: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." From Newt Gingrich is Un-American By Alan Scholl

See also, Newts, Even Gingrich Ones, Are Better Than Allen and Frist (Now Virgil is Not So Sure, and NEWT (Yes, the same one) THINKS PRESENT GOP CORRUPT- WILL COACH ON HOW TO GET "MORAL HIGH GROUND"

Buy Right

I got this from my friend "C" the other day. "Just in time before you go off to hand over your hard earned dollars, is the HRC annual corporate equality report, rating corporations on how equitably and fairly gay, lesbian, bi-and transgendered employees are treated. Believe it or not, many of the Fortune 500 now offer domestic partner benefits, a sign that progress is being made in the workplace. Please consider spending at companies that are respectful and supportive of folks like me. C."
Anyone who treats C well is ok with me and them what don't are walkin on the fightin side of me. Please vote for the good guys & gals with your dollars.

Sex American Style From St. Augustine To W.

W. and Liberty.

Faith, Hope, & Power?????

"‘Whereas Christianity was once synonymous with charity, compassion and love for one's neighbor, today it is more often equated with partisan politics, anti-homosexual rhetoric and affluent mega-churches.’ . . . C. S. Lewis once warned that any Christian who uses his faith as a means to a political end would corrupt both his faith and the faith writ large. A lot of Christians are reading C. S. Lewis these days." Putting Faith Before Politics By David Kuo, Drawing by Anthony Russo,New York Times. November 16, 2006.

IRAQI POLICE-TO PROTECT AND TO SERVE

". . . police stood by as gunmen checked identity cards to sort Sunnis from Shi'ites and then drove off with Sunni men."

Rental Cars-From my friend and teacher Jim Jackson Sunday 11/12/2006

I've reached that point that I can no longer talk. Now days when I communicate with someone in person, I write on a dry erase board. But that takes a while, certainly longer than talking. People try to finish my messages while I'm still writing. ;-) I can use email, as you see, although my right hand doesn't work very well, and I hunt and peck which takes longer than when my hands worked. As a result, my emails are shorter than in the past. I've reached that point when everything takes a long time. My rental car is slowing down.
Today I thought about you as I was practicing with the Chickadees on the deck. They were in great form as usual, giving the Buddha's teaching, as were the leaves, the wind and the traffic on Sixth Street. I hope you have been able to continue your daily practice. What a gift it is. How fortunate we are to have the opportunity.
Our time in these human rental cars is limited.
In the dharma,
Jim
Jim Jackson Sunday 11/12/2006.

As my prayers became more attentive and inward I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent. I started to listen-which is even further removed from speaking. I first thought that prayer entailed speaking. I then learnt that prayer is hearing, not merely being silent. That is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard.
Soren Kierkegaard

Remember Kristallnacht Today Lest We Forget

". . . on the night of November 9, 1938, an event occurred which revealed the true nature of Hitler's regime to the world and also marked the beginning of deadly radicalization of Nazi policy concerning the Jews."

W's Pants on Fire

“A week ago, President Bush said in an interview with news service reporters that he wanted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to remain at the Pentagon for the administration's final two years.
On Wednesday, he said Rumsfeld was leaving, and he made it clear that he agreed there was a need for a ‘fresh perspective’ at the Defense Department. . . .
Explaining his apparent dissembling, the president said he did not want to inject ‘a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign.’
‘The only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer," he said to a reporter who took part in the interview.’”
President admits Rumsfeld pretense. By James Gerstenzang, Los Angeles Times
Rush, is just as truthful.

The Real Numbers

“The Democrats Got In We Fell In Love Again” Child of the 50s by Don Reid
As Yosemite Sam says of dragons, Texans (at least 39% of them) “is so stupid.” Their best candidate for governor, Kinky Friedman, lost and the worst and richest won.
Many Evangelicals are not “nuts” and certainly not stupid.

They're Going To Hang Saddam & His Henchmen. Why Do I Not Feel Safer?

"It is easy to tell the difference between the trial of Saddam Hussein and the Nuremberg tribunal. That was a grave and dignified affair; Saddam's trial is more like a French farce, . . . Given the chaotic incompetence of the Iraqi regime created by the occupation forces, the ludicrous spectacle unfolding before our eyes in the courtroom in Baghdad then became inevitable. Abdel-Rahman and his fellow judges will find Saddam guilty, no doubt, and they will hang him as fast as possible. But the court is accomplishing the improbable feat of turning this monster of a man into a hero and a martyr in the eyes of many people across the Arab world, and even in Iraq itself." Starring in A Farce, A Monster Becomes A Hero. by Gwynne Dyer

Giving Away Nuclear Secrets To Terrorists To Keep Republicans In Power Does Not Make Us Safer

Typical Bush logic-Increase the risk of our being incinerated in order to elect Republicans to protect us from the risk of being incinerated that they created.
“Scientists at a U.S. weapons lab complained more than two weeks ago that captured Iraqi documents containing sensitive nuclear information were available on the Web site that the government shut down on Thursday, The New York Times reported on Saturday. . . .The Bush administration set up the Web site in March at the urging of Republicans in Congress who said that public access to such materials from Iraq could increase the understanding of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein. It was shut down after the Times inquired about the disclosure of nuclear information and the experts' complaints. Among documents posted were roughly a dozen that nuclear weapons experts said constituted a basic guide to building an atom bomb.”

Holeier Than Thou.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, a top evangelical leader with White House ties. . ."
I reckon it depends on who's gay is being bashed.
Just what are you allowed to eat on the Jerusalem Diet ?

"'We've never been stay the course,'he says. Oh, we say."

"The truth is being stolen right before our eyes. Yet there are no mass demonstrations at the executive mansion. There are not a million headlines saying, ``Wait Just A Bleeping Minute!''
''We've never been stay the course,'' he says. Oh, we say.
To which I can only add that war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. And Orwell was off by only 22 years." A new course on 'staying the course' BY Leonard Pitts Jr. In the Miami Herald

Bush Going NuQler Won't Sway Election

Thank God For Women.

God Bless Our Troops.

The Troops Are Plenty Smart, Bush Isn’t, Kerry’s a Klutz - It’s Still Iraq Stupid

The Voice of Privilege - Not Intelligence or Experience.

Vote Republican to Keep Negroes Out of Congress & Girls In Their Place.

Keep Negroes Out of Congress.
Keep Girls in Their Place.

Apologies to Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, and the few others.

Right and Wrong

“Who doesn't know the difference between right and wrong? Yet that essential knowledge, generally assumed to come from parental teaching or religious or legal instruction, could turn out to have a quite different origin. Primatologists like Frans de Waal have long argued that the roots of human morality are evident in social animals like apes and monkeys. The animals' feelings of empathy and expectations of reciprocity are essential behaviors for mammalian group living and can be regarded as a counterpart of human morality. Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist, has built on this idea to propose that people are born with a moral grammar wired into their neural circuits by evolution. . . .

The moral grammar now universal among people presumably evolved to its final shape during the hunter-gatherer phase of the human past, before the dispersal from the ancestral homeland in northeast Africa some 50,000 years ago. This may be why events before our eyes carry far greater moral weight than happenings far away, Dr. Hauser believes, since in those days one never had to care about people remote from ones environment. " An Evolutionary Theory of Right and Wrong, By NICHOLAS WADE, New York Times, October 31, 2006 J.J. says “This is a reasonable explanation of why we make charitable contributions to local causes when there are places in the world suffering from much more dire situations that we don't support. I've often wondered about this. On the other hand, when those far away places are given T.V. coverage that people see, they are more likely to aid those far away places. The same for concern about warfare in far off places like Iraq.”

Happy Halloween. Do You Know Where Your Children Are? What About Your Bill of Rights?

"Under torture I would admit that George W. Bush is a wise and articulate leader, if that’s what I thought my tormenters wanted to hear."

Vote God

“No party has a corner on God. But as I vote, I want to support people who will most closely represent Biblical and Christian values. What are those values ? . . . When asked, “ Who is my neighbor ? ” Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus ’ teaching is that your neighbor is anyone who is in need. Anyone. Love your neighbor as yourself. That’s the politics of Jesus.
Vote God.”

From ROOTS & WINGS : Vote God by Lowell Grisham in the Northwest Arkansas Times.
The full article is well worth the read.

More Great Stuff From Our Patriotic Patti-Three Cheers For Snobbish Women

Global Warming, Exxon Profits, Trickling Down, and A New Lexus
US now ranks 53rd in World Press Freedom Index
Who Really Supports Our Troops?
About that coffee: Fair Trade?
Stem Cell Research
So many ways to die in Iraq