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.”
“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
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.
"‘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.
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
“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.
"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
"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
