George Bush ducking the shoes ends up being a good metaphor for his entire presidency. They said Reagan was the "teflon" president, but Bush makes Reagan look like an amateur.

When Bush was owner of his ball team in texas, he and his cronies cooked up a way to get a large number of acres taken into eminent domain so that a stadium could be built. That doesn't sound all that bad on the face of it, but when you scratch the surface you find that , although only around 10 acres are needed for a stadium, 50 acres were commandeered. 40 acres were kept by the buyers, who were then able to develop that property commercially and make another fortune.

As we know, eminent domain is a concept that has undergone an incredibly cynical transformation in recent years. This may be somewhat of an over-simplification, but essentially, developers seem to be able to go to municipalities and make the case that they, the developer, could bring in far more revenue, thus the property that they want should be condemned and sold to them.

Being able to own property and keep it as long as you pay the taxes has always been a huge part of the american dream...and the republicans have the nerve to call some of us un-american!

Bush just made all these metaphorical roadside bombs that always blew up in someone else's face, not his.

It has never been answered to my satisfaction why Bush 43 did nothing at all to prevent an al quida attack in the weeks and months before 9/11. We will never know if Al Gore would have prevented it, because the opportunity was wrested from him , but I'll bet he wouldn't have ignored a memo on his desk on August 14 or so that said al quaida wanted to steal our airplanes.

Could he just possibly have ignored it because an attack on our soil would be a tailor-made excuse for an invasion into Iraq?

It just doesn't seem to me that the Bush/Cheney family, minions and sycophants suffer much at all from the giant messes that were made. Only the rest of us.

And it continues. Those they don't agree with are labeled liars or sick puppies. The truth is denied daily. Bush' s presidency just went from one wtf moment to the next, and truthfully, they did expect us to believe all the malarkey. Stupid people think every one else is as stupid as them.


If we consider Katrina, the holes in all their stories become all the more apparent. I'm still trying to understand how they expect us to believe that Anderson Cooper could get into New Orleans but the richest country in the world couldn't drop some batteries on a hospital roof top. Could the neglect of New Orleans have been intentional? I wonder how many people lost their small but valuable chunks of gulf area real estate to developers.

I am getting way past tired of the way all of these lying crooks keep hanging around like a bad smell. They lost the election for a very good reason; the american people can tell the difference between truth and lies. If telling the truth makes you a sick puppy, call me a sick puppy too.

Perhaps the christian right should quit thumping their bibles and open them up and read them.

The book of proverbs lists " 6 things the lord hates and one his soul detests , namely, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plots, feet that are swift to run into mischief, a deceitful witness that uttereth lies, and him that soweth discord among brethren."

I was thinking of the seven deadly sins first with regard to Karl Rove. Every time I saw him on the news he reminded me of gluttony and sloth. Actually he reminded me of the pillsbury doughboy because he always seemed so pasty-white and shapeless, not even all that heavy of a guy, but with this oozing, amorphous, complete lack of muscle tone as though he had never done an honest day's work in his entire life. From all reports, he also has a heart that devises wicked plots.

After I got done thinking about that, I realized that there was a perfect cast of characters for a modern version of the seven deadly sins: Glen Beck, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove. How perfect; just enough sins to go around. And who among them has not or is not sowing discord among brethren?

The seven deadly sins are generally listed as Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

Pride is also sometimes called vainglory. George Bush standing on the aircraft carrier declaring victory would have to be called vainglory.

None of these guys are even remotely sexy, but I would have to award lust to O'Reilly, and wrath to Dick Cheney. Rush limbaugh competes really hard with Karl Rove for gluttony and sloth, so they get to share. I will award greed to Sean Hannity, because greed can also be defined as avarice which includes disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason. When DO we all get around to acknowledging how treasonous all these media bastards are ? They are relentlessly working against President Obama , ignoring the wishes and the voice of the vast majority who voted for our president.

Glen Beck surely deserves envy. "Those who commit the sin of envy resent that another person has something that they perceive themselves as lacking ; they wish the other person to be deprived of it." I think Glen Beck cries because something beautiful has come into the world and he realizes he can never be a part of it, so he will just try and destroy it instead.

It's not that I'm happy that the afghan (I can NEVER remember how to spell that) elections turned out to be a fraud, but, I do feel that we who are advocating for restraint are vindicated.

Are any of us really surprised that the Karzai government is not really trusted by the Afghan people? The Bush Cheney Whitehouse engineered Karzai's ascension to power in Afghanistan. They really never seem to vet anything all that well. Karzai's brother is apparently the biggest drug dealer in their country..should we spill the precious blood of our children for that?

If Bush had been able to stay on message and deal with the Taliban like he said he would, maybe things would be different.

But all of a sudden a huge portion of the resources of the armed forces were being squandered in Iraq, for reasons that most of us will probably never fathom.

The republicans were always claiming that they should be re-elected because they "kept us safe". Really? When was that? After theydidn't keep us safe? That has been their biggest lie of all.

They never got anything right, and they never did anything the way they said they would.

These are the same losers who are claiming that Mr. Obama hasn't accomplished enough.

Yet the voices of the world say otherwise.

The repubs and cons need to quit believing they can turn horseshit into champagne.

Mr. Obama's base is going nowhere, no matter what people like former Senator Crist say. We are all still firmly in his corner, believing in him and pulling for him to succeed.

So I'm up at the crack of dawn watching "Way Too Early" and it comes over that Mr. Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm happy for that and I believe he deserves it, because he has changed the tenor of diplomacy. I'm happy for him too; anyone would like a little lift after the media bashing he's received the last few weeks.

Right on the heels of my happiness comes Joe Scarborough LAUGHING at the idea of Mr. Obama being honored with the Peace Prize.

What kind of people are you out there, who would attack someone for trying to make things better?

I'm very uncomfortable with the media in general right now. Even left-leaning shows such as SNL and Countdown have bellied up to the bashing bar. My first thought was "et tu, Brutus" .

The media was almost single handedly resposible for burning down Howard Dean, and look where that got us.....four more horrifying years of Bush Cheney...as the bumper-sticker said, "steady horsemen for the apocolypse".

George Bush-hole led us into a war in Afganistan which thus far has accomplished exactly nothing. The women are no safer; they are still being brutalized and terrorized, and Bin Laden is still hanging out with his friends.

I guess we went to war with Iraq so we could make things better for exxon-mobil. War with Iraq weakened America more than anything else up to now. It was also very convenient to hang Saddam Hussein before he could spill any of the beans about his relationships with people like Donald Rumsfeld , way back before he became public enemy number one.

The conservatives, dare I call them the christian-wrong, are clamoring for a war with Iran. I think it is worth remembering when the Americans were held hostage in Iran. Everyone came home ALIVE. Those people cannot be too barbaric. Of course I'm not happy that they were held hostage, but the Iranians were not happy that we had interfered in their country's politics. As witnessed by the recent elections in Iran , people are trying to break away from the poison fruit cake regime of their current leaders. How shall we help them? Shall we drop more bombs on an already brutalized people? Or shall we use diplomacy and friendship?

I'm gonna vote for friendship. I'm gonna vote for all those Iranian young people who use the internet and hope for a better world for themselves. And to paraphrase Bill Clinton, I'm going to vote for an America that uses the power of example, not the example of power.

My heart-felt congratulations to Mr. Obama.

The fastest way to have an efficient health care system would be to build it ourselves and separate ourselves from the insurance companies.

Health care for all children should be part of our school taxes. It should include children from birth to age 20, 23 if attending college, and pregnant women.

When we pay for car insurance, we are not buying it for maintenance and wear and tear. Homeowner's insurance also does not cover maintenance, etc. We should be able to get routine medical care at a fair price, and count everything that we spend as a tax deduction. Insurance should only be needed for injuries and diseases, and it should cost one tenth of what it does now.

There are plenty of doctors and nurses out there who are willing to simply make a good living, not a killing. So let them work for the government. We already have an Indian Health service. Why not a health service for the rest of us? We can provide educations to people who are willing to work for a good living. There are plenty of talented and compassionate young people out there who don't need to make ten times more money than the president and get rich off misery and suffering.

It would be cheaper to educate legions of healthcare workers than to continue to try to appease the insurance company monsters. The health insurance companies will never have our interests in their hearts.

I have never been much into conspiracy theories, and I have to admit that when Hillary Clinton referred to a "vast right-wing conspiracy"(during the Monica debacle), I kinda rolled my eyes. But then, when I started to think about it, I began to think that she was quite possibly right. And I am more convinced then ever that such a conspiracy does exist, and we have been engaged in a struggle to break this insidious right wing strangle-hold. It must exist, or agencies like Fox News would just never survive. They would not get away with the way they distort the truth, the way they try to package rumor-mongering and rabble-inciting into their version of the evening news.

This is the faction that has whipped the birther movement into a frenzy. But if anyone is an interloper here, it is Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox. He is only lately become a citizen, and that not so much for love of this country, but love of his monetary interests.

Just a few minutes ago I stopped by accident on Fox Cable News, and listened and watched as some lady newscaster tried to whip her viewing audience into a frenzy, implying both with choice of words and tone of voice that Mr. Obama is somehow negligent for not instantly falling into line and shipping another 40,000 young people into a war zone.

I think the major social ill that we are faced with right now stems solely from these right wing news agencies and the special interest groups that support them. All they do is take our collective energy away from solving the real problems; the same way they did when Mr. Clinton was forced to use all his energy defending himself against the likes of Ken starr et al, for something that amounted to bad boy behavior.

Very recently it was reported that it was known very well that Mr. Clinton would not be found guilty; they just went through with impeachment proceedings because they could!

We have to stop supporting these people financially. I saw an ad for Jos. A Banks on Fox this morning. Why buy anything from them? Buy it somewhere else.

There are plenty of good fish in the sea why settle for dead mackerel.

What kind of person gloats about someone else's loss or failure? It was never a foregone conclusion that Chicago would secure the olympics, and the fact that the olympics will go to Brazil should not for an instant be seen as reflecting poorly on Mr. and Mrs. Obama. But to hear Rush Limbaugh tell it, this is some huge cataclysmic failure.

Rush Limbaugh is simply a spiritually destitute man..no, I'll call him a man-shape, because real men don't act like this. I continue to have a really hard time understanding how people can listen to him and think he has any credibility. He is the worst kind of hypocrite, attacking those who have been busted for drugs while being a giant oxy-contin crack head. What do you suppose the chances are that he actually kicked his habit? Just about zilch...he completely lacks moral fiber. He doesn't have the ability to try that hard at anything.

Lindsay Graham finally stood up to contribute a few weak sentences toward doing the right thing, but really it's about 7 months later than it should have been.

The best part of the whole week is Mr. Grayson from Florida, getting up in congress and explaining the Republican Health Care Plan. The Emperors don't like being told they're not wearing any clothes. I just love the way those ninnyhammers start calling for an apology! Like Mr. Grayson was anywhere near the same category as Joe Wilson. But what a cup of delicious when he said he would apologize to the dead! I,m still belly laughing every time I think about it.

What an interesting installment of Theatre of The Absurd yestersday. Mr. Khadafy is pretty much a fruit cake. It occured to me that satellite tv must have good reception in Libya, because Khadafy seems just like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck; ridiculous assertions based on collosally false predications, broad gestures and a lot of meaningless paper throwing.

I didn't hear anyone interupt him. Or call him a liar. And just as an aside, I found it offensive that Facebook had a question, "do you think Kanye West is a douche-bag for interupting Taylor Swift?" Where was the same question on Facebook about Joe Wilson? The really big difference between the two incidents (other than the gravity of the venues) is that Kanye West made a sincere apology, and Joe Wilson made a very grudging, half-hearted apology and he might as well have been winking while he said it.

A while ago I read a study about marriage counseling. Surprisingly, there is one predictor which is very strong for the failure of the marriage, and that predictor is, if one or both parties are treating each other with scorn.(Maybe it's not so surprising.)

Scorn is generally defined as; a feeling of anger and disdain; extreme contempt; to treat disdainfully; to refuse or reject as contempible; to treat derisively. I do believe the average observer would have to agree that the birthers, tea partiers, politicians such as Joe Wilson and media types such as Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are all very scornful in their descriptions and depictions of President Obama, and this is really the heart of why it's becoming so dangerous.

It indicates (just like in a marriage) that none of them are trying anymore. By their very contempt they are saying that they are seceding from this political process and that they will not be constrained from their incivility. The back and forth has broken down in them, and they don't care what they say anymore, and it's not too far off before they don't care what they do anymore.

And really, this is what terrorism is all about. It's about people who don't care about other people's rights or feelings anymore, they feel entitled to be scornful and hurtful, and their flesh and blood, and that of their own children's flesh and blood, is not as important to them as advancing their own ideology, no matter how sick or corrupted their ideologies are.
Just what we all needed......people who make the world even more dangerous.

If anyone ever wanted to know what the dregs of humanity look like, now we know, because they were all on tv yesterday carrying absolutely reprehensible signage, NONE of which actually bore much resemblance to a demonstration about taxes. Taxes are just their flimsy pretext, camouflage if you will.

I bet they set a Guiness book of world record for having the largest gathering of assholes in one place ever.

I had felt a little guilty I suppose, for painting all these people with the same brush, but after seeing that pathetic gathering of chuckleheads I feel vindicated. Racism overshadows every single one of their platforms. They are the rabble without a cause.

I was trying to do the math for 70,000 people. If one out of every thousand people who feel that way came to that hate-fest, that would mean there are 70 million people who feel that way out of 350 million. I hope it's really not that high, but it's in line with what I think about the 20 to 30 percent out there who are miscreants at their heart. I mean really, talk about having your heart in the wrong place.

Some of these people are undoubtedly truly treacherous. I hope their potential (and likely their penchant) for creating disasters is scrutinized and monitored very carefully. During the Bush regime people were spied on and worse for disagreeing with policy and doctrine. Many of these people go beyond disagreeing and venture into the realm of threat.

One of the very worst things about these people is how truly undiscerning they are. All of these people who are ready to buy into any specious monsense that is spewed out at them. They are fed a sort of verbal swill (garbage mixed with liquids and fed to animals, especially pigs).

How fitting. Verbal swill fed to racist pigs!

Well, whom shall I rant about today; there are so many likely candidates.

I really didn't think anyone could disgust me more than Rush Limbaugh, but Glen Beck surely disavowed me of that notion. What is amazing and truly troubling, is that there are so many people out there who listen to them and believe them. Listening and believing them requires that you suspend all rational thought and swallow the lies whole. I would have liked to have been able to think better of people, but I can quite see how naive I was 6 or 8 months ago.

Then a couple of nights ago, a new boor jumped onto our theatre-of-the-absurd stage.
Joe Wilson What a mannerless, classless yutz, an out of shape, overweight hillbilly with a beer belly. In the history of our country no one has ever heckled the president during any kind of session of congress. No one ever heckled George Bush, who is a proven liar.

I am all for free speech, and while I might not like the dissenting point of view, I do feel obligated to at least listen. But Mr. Obama is right. This is not legitimate dissension. This is lies and innuendo, fear mongering based on baseless rumors, and a blatant attempt to disrupt the entire political process. Really I think it begins to border on domestic terrorism.

Most of these people seem unable to accept the outcome of the last election. They seem like a bunch of petulant children bent on having their way at any cost. They seem to not only want to go down with a sinking ship but drown everyone else along with them.

And the racists out there don't know or care that racism is a malignancy that will make us all sick.

I pray to God every day that the rest of us will continue to have the strength to stand together and combat these mean characters who are swimming in a sea of moral decay. Our country's heart depends upon it, and if we fail we risk breaking the spirit of the world.

I got one of those e-petitions lately. It started out "whether you are for or against President Obama" , and went on to petition the president not to allow illegal aliens access to social security. I'm quite sure that the author or authors of this petition know perfectly well what the bill really says, and they also must be well aware that the White House is not going to give any creedence at all to such a blatant canard.

So, the only real purpose of a mailing such as this is to fan rumors and spread lies, which sounds an awful lot like sedition to me.

I read a great post by Macon the other day; about people who are missing "their America". I think they are all missing Hannity"s America. I also think they are mostly white supremacists, who are so disconnected that they don't even realize that about themselves. There is a new world order trying to be born. A lot of people got used to a conception about themselves that said they were inherently "better", and that their skin color automatically determined their place in the pecking order.

It seems to me that all these people who are missing their america are part and parcel of the same fools who are trying to wreck the health care reform. They are the same nuts who claim that we are heading into socialism. that Obama's government wants to seize control of everything. There are people who would disagree with me , but I think most of these people just can't stand it that a black man is in charge, and they will work against him in any way they can.

That birth certificate bullshit is just that.....bullshit. This ploy allows them to imply that Obama is "not worthy" or "not one of us.
God I'm gettin so sick and tired of all these dog and pony shows.

The most illegitamate presidency in our history was that of GW Bush. He (with the help of the supreme court) literally stole the office from Al Gore. Now we find out the so-called Brooks Brother's riot in Florida was actually staged by republican political operatives from various other states, all working for republican senators and congressmen.
These same liars are the ones trumping up ridiculous charges about Mr. Obama's place of birth, and going around staging more theatre of the absurd in the various town halls with regard to Health care. They have a huge financial stake in this..,,they want to be able to continue to gouge the average person while they continue to make millions, no trillions from the misery of people who are sick or injured. Like the doctor who charged my husband 11,000.oo dollars! as his fee for my husband's knee arthroscopy! And guess what! My husband's insurance paid the guy 4,000.00 and my company paid 7,000.00, without making a peep! None of them want this gravy train to derail.
There used to be a form of socialized medicine in this country, no matter what the party of no will tell you. My mother and father along with millions of others during the depression, had access to clinics. If you couldn't afford a doctor, you could be seen in a clinic, and while it wasn't top shelf maybe, it was competent. When I was a child, we went to an eyeglass clinic, because my dad's insurance didn't cover glasses. All of these clinics have been slowly dismantled by the same people whose lives are ruled greed, and who profess to believe in god so deeply. I say bullshit.
And guess what to all the nay-sayers. Obama has been right so far. Look at the stock market, look at the unemployment rate. Take a close look at what real diplomacy can do. Kennedy said years ago, if you're not a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem. So where does that leave the tea party, birther, anti-universal health care republican wack jobs.

I'm not the biggest tv junkie in the world, but I knew who Henry Gates was cuz I've seen him on Charley Rose and Tavis Smiley, so he's not exactly obscure to begin with. I was a little suspicious, but I kept trying to withhold judgement til I knew all the facts. The only trouble is, as each fact comes out I am more and more convinced that the police did in fact act stupidly, and that would be the least you could say. It is one more bleak example of the Police State some of us have to live in.
Now, some are calling on Obama to apologize! For what? He is a very gracious man, and he is generously choosing to call it a teachable moment. It is all these people with their tired, selfish and mean-spirited attitudes who need desperately to learn something about human rights and mutual respect. And no matter what his colleagues say, I say, shame on Seargent Crowley.
These are the same people who are going to Tea Parties, starting a birther movement and rhapsodizing over Sarah Palin!
Who in their right mind would want to align themselves with all these delusional nut-cases. They are quite simply a huge bunch of sore losers masquerading as activists.

Nearly every time we the people are marched into a big war on our behalf. we're told that our freedom is being defended. Yet, gays and lesbians are not free to marry. Raped 10 year olds are not free to have an abortion, and black men are not free to be police officers. So, whose freedom are we talking about? Apparently, old white men are free to run the stock market into the ground. Wealthy old oil men are free to manipulate the price of oil and make three fortunes while the stock market goes up in smoke. The government is free to sucker young people into joining the service and then force them into staying in combat well past the tours that they agreed to. (isn't that slavery?) The lunatics like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Bill O'reilly are free to make any kind of statements they like without being accountable. Eighty-eight year old nazis are free to walk the streets of Washington, DC carrying a rifle! What's so great about freedom?
The newsworthy events of the last several weeks have been chilling. It seems to me that the evil, the twisted and the greedy are free to incite the mob and murder the innocent. The rest of us are free to pay our taxes. Remenber that song from the 60's "Is That All There Is?". I guess so.

And another thing..you know, what is up with Dick Cheney and Karl Rove? They are like a never ending duet featuring the michelin man and the pillsbury dough-boy. Every time I see one of them I think of the line from Macbeth "the lady doth protest too much." If they were really sleeping the sleep of the just, they would have nothing to fear and they wouldn't always be coming out and trying to spin the story. I am reminded of criminals who can't resist coming back to the scene of the crime. I heard it reported that the vice president was running an assassination squad from his office. I could never imagine believing that Al Gore ran a hit squad, or Gerald Ford, or Bush 41, but sadly Mr. Cheney wouldn't seem so implausable, mainly due to his apparent doctrine of "Any Flimsy Pretext ".

I am against the death penalty. I am against torture in any form for any reason. So it follows that I am against tazing. No one should have to be afraid of the police, for then, it is not long before we are living in a police state. And like it or not, I believe that many of our African-American citizens live every day of their lives in a police state, right here in America.
Cast your minds back to Eleanor Bumpers. She was a mentally ill black woman in NYC, shot dead by six policemen because she was wielding a knife. Ooohhh..a knife you say, but...she was grossly overweight and old and hardly light on her feet and skilled at knife-throwing. Any number of strategies would have worked to defuse the situation, but they were not utilized.
Then you may recollect Abner Louima, brutalized in a brooklyn police station without pity and for no reason, and even so-called good guys in the department did nothing, until they were forced to.
Next comes Amadou Diallo, murdered in a hail of bullets for having the nerve to reach for his wallet, and oops, don't forget that the "authorities" then tossed his apartment, looking for some evidence to exonerate their actions! Even freakier is when you realize that the officers involved received a change of venue for their trial, went up to Albany and were found "not guilty" within a week! That had to be one of the shortest murder trials in recent history. We must ask "why".
Right now in our newspapers we read about the trial in Westchester where a black police officer was shot dead by officers from another department! while he was doing his job! because he didn't follow their directions.
We can not go back and raise someone from the dead, but we can soul-search and humbly realize that our attitudes must change most of all. Every one is of equal value. Every one is guaranteed equal rights. Why are our African-american citizens so often deprived of their rights, even in a time when we have seemed to come so far.
If it is not fair for everyone, then it is not fair for any one. No one could ever argue that African americans have not borne the brunt of police brutality. There are a lot of good and even great cops out there, and they more than anyone else, have to engage in self-examination and educate their collegues accordingly.

christian right wing
you better come to your senses
better start mending fences
or sooo long.
when the world moves on you've gotta change
or just become a fossil
and keep in mind your attitudes
weren't held by christ's apostles!



A work in progress...words in my head when I woke up..sung to the tune of "desperado" More to follow.

When is someone going to let dick cheney and karl rove know that they are surplus to requirements? Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't recall people from the Clinton camp and the Gore camp weighing in constantly on the Bush presidency. When are these people all going to cease and desist, so we can all get down to business?
The tea parties of the previous week were just nonsense. Then, this week, the gutter press went on and on and on about a handshake! I looked up the word "churlish" yesterday. It means boorish or ill-bred, and that's the kind of person you would have to be to turn your back on someone's proferred offer of peace and friendship. And you know, hello, Mr Chavez has a right to his opinions whether we agree with them or not, unless we're turning into nazis. And this is the point where I think we really all have to stop and take stock. Historically, movements such as fascism and nazism have sprung from the conservative and reactionary factions of political parties, never the liberal or progressive factions. You can almost boil it down to "live and let live" or, "live the way I live or else!" Awful things have been done in our name, and the previous administration must be held accountable. These tempestuous little non-issues are simply a smoke screen to attempt to deflect us from the real truths we are seeking to uncover.
Isn't it ludicrous to call republicans "the right"? The right what? The right stuff? Hhmmp. and then we come to the "christian right". Who would Jesus torture? Who's hand would Jesus refuse to shake? And how come it is they who seem the most morally bankrupt to me?

911 Calls

Last night when I first heard about that girl calling 911 I had a tendency to giggle a little,but you know, when I thought about it.....what recourse does any one really have? If she had jumped the counter to grab her three bucks out of the till, they would have called 911 for sure, and they would have made sure she was in way worse trouble. She paid for something that she didn't get. And how do we know that she didn't have her weary mother waiting out in the car with a two -year -old ready to have the mother of all tantrums if they didn't get their mcnuggets? or any of a thousand other scenarios. Maybe, to her, it really was an emergency. The fair thing to do would be for Mcdonald's to pay her fine and undertake to educate people about the uses and misuses of 911 and educate themselves on how to treat customers. It's possible that at that moment in her life, 3 bucks was a lot to her, because everything else for that day had already been spent.
There has been some research published lately about the experience of unfairness and how it can undermine our immune and cardiovascular systems . I am expecting McDonalds to make this right for her, otherwise, that's just another product I won't buy.

I have been reliably informed that the purpose of satire is always to illuminate, not perpetuate.
Satire is the political cartoon's reason for being. Can anyone out there actually claim that the Post's ignoble excuse of a cartoon met that definition? It did convince me of one irrefutable fact; there is a whale of a lot of work left to be done.
Freedom entails responsibility; responsibility to monitor your own behavior so that it does not infringe upon any one else's rights to liberty or opportunity. John Stuart Mills is credited with the saying "Your liberty ends where my nose begins".
In every way possible, the Post and their cartoon let us down.
Did you know that John Wilkes Boothe was a white supremacist; that it is actually that kind of mindless scum that ended the life of a brilliantly kind man? Lincoln was assassinated on april 15, 1865, and in that particular year, the 15th was Good Friday, the same day Jesus was nailed to the cross.
The Christian Right is certainly becoming an oxymoron for me .
I have really grown to love the transparency of the hospital setting. It doesn't take long to separate the wheat from the chaff as regards the people you are working with . The work is very intimate, so people who are predjudiced leave because they consider themselves too good for that kind of work. That is good for us because there is so much more oxygen to breathe!

During the Bush years, I constantly felt as though we were all stuck in some scene from "Animal Farm" or "1984", and now forever in my mind I will think of them as the Orwellian years. You think in your mind about what those books were like and the way we were constantly bombarded with facts which turned out to be lies, dire warnings of danger were we not to climb on that bus of insanity, and a simply astounding breach in the armour of our constitution.
I feel as though we have been delivered. We have been transported back to the land of rationality and it is safe for our minds to come out of hiding.
I think part of Mr. Obama's great charm is that he reminds us of Jimmy Stewart. He is tall, stalwart, staunch, determined, committed to his own values and confident yet humble; he is the ultimate "good guy". And I am very grateful to be finally getting a good night's sleep again.

The Post

I still can't stop thinking about this, and I wish I could, because the post is all about the past, not the present or the future that MOST of us want. I had to do my CPR yesterday(training) and a very young nurse told me she thought that "too much was being made" of the editorial cartoon. And all I could think was that her sense of "white Privilege" was nearly palpable.
Now my question is, how do I trust the fairness and decency of this person? She passed her boards, so she can't be stupid.
Back during the primaries, the illegal alien question was always coming up. During the primaries , Mitt Romney said he would just "round them all up and ship them back! Would he have started with the Irish first? Because they are the biggest group of illegals; maybe no one notices them because they are white. oh my God I need a little icon that laughs and cries at the same time! The utter insensitivity of his stance appalled me, but his stupidity surprised me, because he is supposed to be such a financial genius. So start adding up how much it would cost to locate these 12 million people, house them and return them to their country of origin. There went the stimulus package. And you know, I just don't like mean-spirited people, and that stance was mean. I've met people who have literally crawled here to have their shot at freedom and opportunity. Where would I be if my ancestors had been turned away? Would I even be?
Mr. Obama has a 5 point plan for a legal path to citizenship: pay a fine for entering illegally, pay back taxes, back social security, learn to speak English and apply for citizenship. Bingo! This is a humane approach, and the beauty of it is, the illegals pay for it! And they can just pay a little at a time........we're all living pay check to pay check anyway. And just for a litle reality check, we could afford 50 million illegal aliens if we weren't dropping bombs all over the place.
I only bring this up because Rupert Murdoch recently became a citizen. What is the procedure for getting him out of the country, 'cause he's using up way too much oxygen!

The New York Post really sucks

I can not believe that so-called political cartoon that appeared in the post. And even more, I can't believe the editor/author et al have the nerve to blithely explain it away as something other than what it is.
Clearly this is thinly disguised domestic terrorism. There are probably 30% or so of people in the country who just don't get it, either because they are terminally stupid or morally bankrupt.
I really can see only one response to Rupert Murdoch, and that is to boycott all of his companies and all of his products. I realize that the guys who deliver the papers have to make a buck, but it would be nice if they were in a position to refuse to even touch those newspapers. I already thought no one should watch Fox news. Now I think we should watch nothing of theirs...not even American Idol.
I love Mr. and Mrs. Obama. I feel somehow like they are our brother and sister. There is nothing paternalistic about him, and she is, finally, a modern woman. They are simply trying to work shoulder to shoulder with us, and then we turn on our tv's and see something like this.
Rupert Murdoch and his minions should be ashamed of themselves. They are nothing but hateful, bigotted and inciteful, and this should be treated as a hate crime. The person who allowed this to go to press should be arrested, and there should be a huge fine levied against this corporation. Kudos to Rev Al Sharpton. Boycott anything to do with Rupert Murdoch. Start boycotting anything that is even advertised in these venues and we might see some result.

I'm from New york; it's not that I actually expect horrible things to happen, it's just that that is so often the case.
But that jet that landed on the hudson river.....oh my God what a thrill! I don't even know one single soul of these people but I am so happy and so proud of every one. This is what we're supposed to be like.The passengers got away with their lives, which is more than enough! The ferry boat personnel prove that new yorkers are not cold or unfeeling, just savvy and quick to react. And the plane pilot! Oh my God chalk one up for the older folks. Experience and courage will trump a thirty year old hot-dog any day of the week!
And in a peculiar and superstitious way, I think it is a glorious portent for Mr. Obama's presidency. We are going to turn this all around and get it right this time. Hope springs eternal!