(article) said Ms. Hughes, a retired newspaper columnist. �I want her to be strong and express strong feelings, not just fit her feelings to that audience at that moment,� she said. Which is exactly what every politician, male or female, does in order to please the particular audience in front of him/her.

(Kathryn) Which is exactly what every politician, male or female, does in order to please the particular audience in front of him/her. And yet only Hillary is being held to this standard.

That was my exact initial reaction, too, when I read that passage, but there's emphasizing aspects of your views to tailor to a certain audience then there's blatant pandering where one tends to show some contradiction what they say from one day or audience to the next. It's called talking out of both sides of your mouth and not all of them do it. Hillary has done it since the first time she ran for Senate here. And I may express some reservations about her, but I have still voted for her twice. And if she is the nominee, I will vote for her again (unless Gore gets into the race beforehand ;-))), because there isn't a single current Republican candidate I would even remotely consider for President. And as I repeat yet again, I will vote Republican if I feel that's the better person for the job as I have in one or 2 national elections in the past and in local elections as well. It's what you stand for, not what party you're in is what interests me. I just read a poll today or yesterday that a large number of Republicans aren't happy with their candidates either and a high percentage chose "would consider other candidate" out of all the choices. Not a ringing endorsement for the GOP.

I will say it "out loud" though, I'll be happy if she wins to get Bill that much closer back to the WH. I think he'd be a fabulous Sec of State and could probably get the world back to a much more peaceful state. I wonder if that actually would be allowed, a former President in a cabinet position. Hmmmm....

And I can tell ya, you couldn't pay me enough to vote for any idiot who would pose with people as obviously stupid as that one and with a sign like that (or transport their dog on the roof of their car in a carrier). I didn't realize Chelsea had a Museum of Modern Art. http://www.tmz.com/2007/07/21/mitt-catches-s-t-over-hillary-bashing-sign/

Ms. Carroll said she was �not ready for a lady president.� �I�m not for this women�s lib stuff,� she said. Obviously, this person has had a frontal lobotomy and is not fit to vote anyway.

(Mari) Obviously, this person has had a frontal lobotomy and is not fit to vote anyway. But will, which is the sad thing.

Too bad he didn't find it cruddy enough to not take the job. Cheney once considered vice presidency "cruddy job" By Steve Holland Mon Jul 23, 8:21 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dick Cheney once considered the vice presidency a "cruddy job" but got over his misgivings and went on to be arguably the most powerful No. 2 in U.S. politics, and one of the most heavily criticized. The 66-year-old Cheney's stoic, no-nonsense demeanor and influence in many White House decisions are in stark contrast to his youthful days when he was caught twice for drunk driving in Wyoming and dropped out of Yale University for bad grades. Cheney's life has been chronicled in a fairly sympathetic biography by Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard conservative magazine. He spent nearly 30 hours in one-on-one interviews with the normally reticent Cheney for the book. In his research Hayes found that Cheney in 1996 called the vice presidency a "cruddy job," which his political mentor, President Gerald Ford, had hated. But by 2000 Cheney was persuaded to accept when George W. Bush offered the position. Cheney's role as a behind-the-scenes adviser has fed a left-wing stereotype that he is Bush's dark, brooding puppetmaster and advocate of war and torture, an image the media-averse Cheney has done little to change. "He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive, treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant president he serves," Hendrik Hertzberg, a former speechwriter for Democratic President Jimmy Carter, wrote in The New Yorker. Cheney's insistence that his office did not fall under Bush's executive branch as a way to avoid providing records to a government oversight agency also has drawn fire. Satirical cartoonist Garry Trudeau featured Cheney in his Doonesbury comic strip as in charge of a secretive "black branch" of the U.S. government. "My shirt size is classified," the Cheney character says in the strip. The vice president's office shrugs off the criticism. The White House said Cheney remains a close Bush adviser. "Always has been and will remain so," spokeswoman Dana Perino said. After such attacks and his role in pushing the unpopular Iraq war, Cheney's job approval is at a lackluster 30 percent, a recent Gallup poll said. HATRED Former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, a longtime Cheney friend, said the attacks are emblematic of an ugly period in U.S. politics. "There's so many people that hate the guy, people that hate Dick Cheney just like people who hate George Bush or hate (Democratic presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton. It's a really ugly thing out in the land, not disgust or irritation, but hatred, and it's a whole new ballgame in my time," he said. Driving some of the criticism has been a series in The Washington Post describing the backdoor way Cheney persuaded Bush, particularly on approving harsh interrogation methods for captured suspects in the war on terrorism. According to The Post, a foreshadowing of how Cheney would operate came when former Vice President Dan Quayle congratulated him on his new job in early 2001. Quayle advised Cheney he should expect to attend a lot of funerals, a traditional duty of U.S. vice presidents. "I have a different understanding with the president," Cheney told Quayle with a small smile. Presidential historians say Cheney is by far the most powerful vice president in modern U.S. history -- "He has more power by a factor of maybe 5 or 10," says historian Richard Jensen. Cheney might not have gotten as far without Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was Ford's chief of staff in 1974 and hired Cheney as a deputy despite eyebrows raised over the two drunk driving arrests in the early 1960s. Cheney and Rumsfeld maintain a close bond, and Hayes reported Cheney "absolutely" disagreed with Bush's decision to dump Rumsfeld as defense secretary in November after Republicans lost control of the U.S. Congress. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070723/pl_nm/usa_cheney_dc;_ylt=AmLc0Axxb0nvdKaE9d9OLDvMWM0F

(Dorine)I wonder if that actually would be allowed, a former President in a cabinet position. Hmmmm.... Well, if Cheney can be in both the Executive & Legislative branches of government (depending upon what "top secret" information he's being asked to cough up on any given day) I really don't see why not ;-)

I don't remember when Dorine's comment was made, but absolutely nothing Constitutionally speaking prevents a president from holding another position, especially an appointed one.

Well, if Cheney can be in both the Executive & Legislative branches of government *snicker*

I vaguely read about the fashion comments from Robin Givhan about Hillary after that debate last week. I didn't read her piece, but it was seems to be quite insulting to comment on her clothing in such a fashion. How come she didn't deconstruct the men's outfits and looks. And again, from a *woman* no less. :-( Ellen Goodman Political fashionbabble By Ellen Goodman, Globe Columnist | July 27, 2007 AMONG the endless reasons I will never run for public office is a deep-seated fear of having my wardrobe subject to the fashion police. Excuse me, the fashion shrinks -- those media monitors who seek deep meaning in every shoe, sexual clues in every hemline, and psychological insights in every shirt collar. Just imagine the casual summer wardrobe that I am modeling so stylishly at this moment. What would the fashionbabblers have to say about my well-worn khaki capris? That they display a certain comfort-first sensibility? Or does that flash of calf reveal a senior citizen insouciance? What of the green polo shirt? Does it symbolize my bond with the Land's End sisterhood? Or my rebellion from the designer-label sophisticate? And what to make of my lime-colored Crocs with their peek-a-boo holes? Do they express a certain post-feminist funkiness? Or do they expose a feminine (if chipped) pedicure? This self-couture-analysis comes in response to the latest piece on Hillary Clinton's attire by The Washington Post's resident fashionista. Robin Givhan's cultural critique began with a holy-moly observation: "There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-Span2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton." Givhan's 750-word plunge into the shirt of the presidential candidate had women throwing up their hands (among other things) all over the blogosphere. Cleavage! Omigod! As one blogger responded, the senator has breasts. Two of them. Details at 11. Only in Washington would a fashion reporter get tips watching C-Span2. But the Post piece managed to make a media mountain out of a half-inch valley. As one of the thousands who have scrutinized the black V-neck top on the Internet, I can attest that it barely (in both senses of the word) fits Wikipedia's definition of cleavage, as in: "The cleft created by the partial exposure of a woman's breasts, especially when exposed by low-cut clothing." Nevertheless, Givhan fashionbabbled the heck out of the V-neck. Clinton's cleavage, she wrote, was a "small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity." It was "like catching a man with his fly unzipped." It was also a "teasing display." And to wrap things up, she explained: "To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style." Not even Nora Ephron, who wrote a book called "I Feel Bad About My Neck," could have spent more energy deconstructing a neckline. Isn't there, somewhere, a booby prize for covering pulchritude instead of policy? Hillary is not the only female pol to have made more news with what she wore than what she said. Just a few weeks ago, a camera from on high focused down on the chest of Jacqui Smith, the British home secretary, and created what some Brits called the Tempest in a D-Cup. The failed female candidate for president of France, S�gol�ne Royal, was captured in a bikini looking like an ad for "French Women Don't Get Fat." Meanwhile, Condi Rice has had her high-heeled boots put on the couture couch and Nancy Pelosi has had her suits power-rated. Candidates' wives too -- as Hillary well knows -- have long been subject to scrutiny. Joe Scarborough wins the prize for trash-talking Jeri Thompson, second wife of Fred Thompson. In his best Don Imus voice, Scarborough asked, "Do you think she works the pole?" He did not mean Gallup. Yes, men in politics are also subject to fashionbabbling about masculinity. Al Gore was famously mocked for wearing earth tones. Barack Obama was dubbed the pinup in the 2008 swimsuit competition. John Edwards was YouTubed for styling his hair. Even John McCain's V-neck sweater was labeled, at least, "metrosexual." But this is nothing like what happens to women. I do not say this in a lofty, superior voice. Do I notice what a woman wears? You bet. At the CNN/YouTube debate, Hillary was coral in a sea of gray. Watching her campaign, I'm glad she's finally gotten it right -- right colors, right style, right fit. I'd give her clothes the female presidential seal of approval. But is there one? In the end, the question is not whether a candidate can show a hint of breast but whether you can have breasts and be president. It's not a matter of cleavage in fashion but cleavage in the voting population. Does anyone remember what Hillary was talking about on C-Span2? Education. Need I say more? Fashionbabblers of the world, let me remind you of the quote attributed to Sigmund Freud: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a V-neck is just a V-neck. Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/27/political_fashionbabble/?p1=MEWell_Pos5

Here's a story about one of those oh so incompetent, useless blogs and how the mainstream media is the only legitimate news source. I check into to this blog fairly often myself. http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/how_talkingpointsmemo_beat_the.php?page=1

A related story is on Newsweek's cover this week. Gore: Polluters manipulate climate info By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 7, 2:00 PM ET SINGAPORE - Former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday that some of the world's largest energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., are funding research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming as part of a campaign to mislead the public. ADVERTISEMENT ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, rejected the allegation. "There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community" about global warming, Gore said at a forum in Singapore. "In actuality, there is very little disagreement." "This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science," Gore said. "We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion." Gore likened the campaign to that of the millions of dollars spent by U.S. tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of uncertainty and debate within the scientific community on the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes. "Some of the tobacco companies spent millions of dollars to create the appearance that there was disagreement on the science. And some of the large coal and utility companies and the largest oil company, ExxonMobil, have been involved in doing that exact same thing for the last several years," Gore said. After the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world's top climate scientists, released a report in February that warned the cause of global warming is "very likely" man-made, "the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere," Gore said. "They're trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools," he said. Last year, British and American science advocacy groups accused ExxonMobil of funding groups that undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. The company said the scientists' reports were just attempts to smear ExxonMobil's name and confuse the debate. ExxonMobil spokesman Gantt Walton said Tuesday that the company's financial support for scientific reports did not mean it influenced the outcome of those studies. ExxonMobil believes the risk that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change warrants taking action to limit them, he said. "The recycling of this type of discredited conspiracy theory diverts attention from the real challenge at hand: how to provide the energy needed to improve global living standards while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he said. Gore said that with growing awareness of climate change, the world will see an acceleration in efforts to fight the problem, and urged businesses to recognize that reducing carbon emissions is in their long-term interest. But while Washington should lead by example, he said developing nations also have to play a part. "Countries like China, just to give an example, which will next year be the largest emitter in the world, can't be excluded just because it's technically a developing country," Gore said. "When you look at the absolute amount of CO2 each year and going forward, China will soon surpass the U.S." As its economy expands, China faces an increased risk from the effects of climate change and must find ways to leapfrog old, polluting technologies in ways that can maintain growth, Gore said. In June, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency said China overtook the United States in carbon dioxide emissions by about 7.5 percent in 2006. China was 2 percent below the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, the agency said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070807/ap_on_re_as/gore_climate_change;_ylt=AiJwr1xYeh.5Yb8oc7KofUqs0NUE

LOL!!! Short and sweet. Edwards Statement on the Resignation of Karl Rove Aug 13, 2007 2:36 PM Chapel Hill, North Carolina � John Edwards today released the following statement in reaction to President Bush�s announcement that his senior advisor, Karl Rove, will resign at the end of the month: "Goodbye, good riddance." http://johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20070813-karl-rove/

Wonder what happens if the dog doesn't spend it all before she dies? Boy, I'd sure like to be the administrator of that trust. ;-) Helmsley's Dog Gets $12 Million in Will Wednesday August 29, 12:45 pm ET Helmsley Dog Gets $12 Million, but Real Estate Billionaire Leaves Nothing to 2 Grandchildren NEW YORK (AP) -- Leona Helmsley's dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum. But two of Helmsley's grandchildren got nothing from the late luxury hotelier and real estate billionaire's estate. Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court. She also left millions for her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who was named to care for Trouble in her absence, as well as two of four grandchildren from her late son Jay Panzirer -- so long as they visit their father's grave site once each calendar year. Otherwise, she wrote, neither will get a penny of the $5 million she left for each. Helmsley left nothing to two of Jay Panzirer's other children -- Craig and Meegan Panzirer -- for "reasons that are known to them," she wrote. But no one made out better than Trouble, who once appeared in ads for the Helmsley Hotels, and lived up to her name by biting a housekeeper. "I direct that when my dog, Trouble, dies, her remains shall be buried next to my remains in the Helmsley mausoleum," Helmsley wrote in her will. The mausoleum, she ordered, must be "washed or steam-cleaned at least once a year." She left behind $3 million for the upkeep of her final resting place in Westchester County, where she is buried with her husband, Harry Helmsley. She also left her chauffeur, Nicholas Celea, $100,000. She ordered that cash from sales of the Helmsley's residences and belongings, reported to be worth billions, be sold and that the money be given to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Her longtime spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, had no comment. Helmsley died earlier this month at her Connecticut home. She became known as a symbol of 1980s greed and earned the nickname "the Queen of Mean" after her 1988 indictment and subsequent conviction for tax evasion. One employee had quoted her as snarling, "Only the little people pay taxes." http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070829/helmsley_s_pooch.html?.v=1

I saw that yesterday. I and some others were wondering yesterday if the brother gets the dog's money when it's gone. Maybe it goes to the foundation also. And the poor chauffeur gets a whole 100K.

In the Too Stupid for Words Dept: Airline tells woman her outfit won't fly 20 minutes ago SAN DIEGO - A 23-year-old woman who boarded a Southwest Airlines plane in a short skirt for a flight to Arizona says she was led off the plane for wearing an outfit that was considered too skimpy. Kyla Ebbert said a Southwest employee asked her to leave her seat while the plane was preparing to leave San Diego's Lindbergh Field on July 3. Ebbert, a student who was headed to Tucson for a doctor's appointment, said Friday on NBC's "Today" show that the employee told her she would have to catch a later flight. "You're dressed inappropriately. This is a family airline. You're too provocative to fly on this plane," she quoted the employee as saying. "I said, 'What part is it? The shirt? The skirt? Which part?' And he said the whole thing." Ebbert was eventually allowed back on the plane after offering to adjust her sweater but said she was humiliated and embarrassed. "I felt like everybody was staring at me. They had all heard him lecturing me," she told "Today" show host Matt Lauer. She appeared on the show in the same short white skirt, white shirt and green sweater that she said she wore on the flight. Chris Mainz, a spokesman for the Dallas-based airline, said a customer service supervisor asked Ebbert to leave the plane and addressed her in the walkway leading back to the terminal, "away from the other customers." The employee felt the outfit "revealed too much" but was placated after Ebbert made adjustments that included covering her stomach, Mainz said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070908/ap_on_fe_st/odd_skirt_squabble;_ylt=Am9Vqh3rqegkSxZMuwsP3QouQE4F

I found this story so sad, yet fascinating. I'd be very interested in seeing that book. Perhaps it will end up in a museum one day. I've been to Dachau, but was strangely not as moved as I thought I would be. The grounds are very spare (or were 16 yrs ago), so it was hard for me to really feel what went on there. Sort of like with the WTC site now. It's simply a construction hole in the ground like any other to simply look at, the difference being I still have the memory of seeing the pile of rubble up close not long after....and the smell. Woman pursues mystery of Dachau album By ARTHUR MAX 49 minutes ago BAD AROLSEN, Germany - Deep in Shari Klages' memory is an image of herself as a girl in New Jersey, going into her parents' bedroom, pulling a thick leather-bound album from the top shelf of a closet and sitting down on the bed to leaf through it. What she saw was page after page of ink-and-watercolor drawings that convey, with simple lines yet telling detail, the brutality of Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp where her father spent the last weeks of World War II. Arrival, enslavement, torture, death � the 30 pictures expose the worsening nightmare through the artist's eye for the essential, and add graphic texture to the body of testimony by Holocaust survivors. "I have a sense of being quite horrified, of feeling my stomach in my throat," Klages says. Just by looking at the book, she felt she was doing something wrong and was afraid of being caught. Now, she finally wants to make the album public. Scholars who have seen it call it historically unique and an artistic treasure. But who drew the pictures? Only Klages' father could know. It was he who brought the album back from Dachau when he immigrated to America on a ship with more than 60 Holocaust orphans � and he had committed suicide in 1972 in his garage in Parsippany, New Jersey. The sole clue was a signature at the bottom of several drawings: Porulski. Klages, 47, has begun a quest to discover who Porulski was, and how her family came to be the custodian of his remarkable artistic legacy. The Associated Press has helped to fill in some of the blanks. What unfolds is a story of Holocaust survival compressed into two tragic lives, a tale with threads stretching from Warsaw to Auschwitz and Dachau, from Australia to suburban England, and finally to a bedroom in Florida where a fatherless girl makes a traumatic discovery. It shows how today, as the survivors dwindle in number, their children and grandchildren struggle to comprehend the Nazi genocide that indelibly scarred their families, and in the process run into mysteries that may never be solved. This is Shari Klages' mystery: How did Arnold Unger, her Polish Jewish father, a 15-year-old newcomer to Dachau, end up in possession of the artwork of a Polish Catholic more than twice his age, who had been in the concentration camps through most of World War II? None of the records Klages found confirm that the two men knew each other, though they lived in adjacent blocks in Dachau. All that is certain is that Unger overlapped with Porulski during the three weeks the boy spent among nearly 30,000 inmates of Dachau's main camp. "He never talked about his experiences in the war," said Klages. "I don't recall specifically ever being told about the album, or actually learning that I was the child of a Holocaust survivor. It was just something I always knew." As adults, she and her three siblings took turns keeping the album and Unger's other wartime memorabilia. The album begins with an image of four prisoners in winter coats carrying suitcases and marching toward Dachau's watchtower under the rifles of SS guards. It is followed by a scene of two inmates being stripped for a humiliating examination by a kapo, a prisoner working for the Nazis. One image portrays two prisoners pausing in their work to doff their caps to a soldier escorting a prostitute � intimated by the seam on her stocking. Another shows a leashed dog lunging at a terrified inmate. The drawings grow more and more debasing. Three prisoners hang by their arms tied behind their backs; a captured escapee is paraded wearing a sign: "Hurray, I am back again"; an inmate is hanged from a scaffold; and, in the final image, a man lies on the ground, shot dead next to the barbed-wire fence under the looming watchtower. The album also has 258 photographs. Some are copies of well-known, haunting images of piles of victims' bodies taken by the U.S. army that liberated the camp. Others are photographs, apparently taken for Nazi propaganda, portraying Dachau as an idyllic summer camp. Still others are personal snapshots of Unger with Polish refugees or with American soldiers who befriended him. Barbara Distel, the director of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, said Porulski probably drew the pictures shortly after the camp's liberation in April 1945. He used identical sheets of paper, ink and watercolors for all 30 pictures, she said, and he "would never have dared" to draw such horrors while he was still under Nazi gaze. "It's amazing after so many years that these kinds of documents still turn up," Distel told the AP. "It's a unique artifact," and clearly drawn by someone with an intimate knowledge of the camp's reality, she said. Holocaust artwork has turned up before, but Distel and Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, who is with the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, say they are unaware of any sequential narrative of camp life comparable to Porulski's. "I've seen two or three or four, but never 30," said Berenbaum. In Coral Springs, Florida, where she now lives, Klages showed the book in 2005 to a neighbor, Avi Hoffman, executive director of the National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts. Hoffman immediately saw its quality and significance. The two became determined to uncover its background and find out if the artist had created an undiscovered body of work. In August, Klages, Hoffman and Berenbaum went to Germany to begin their hunt. They hired a crew to document it, hoping a film would help finance a foundation to exhibit the book. They began chipping away at the album's secrets at the Dachau memorial, outside Munich, where they found an arrival record for Michal Porulski, which listed his profession as artist, in 1941. They learned that Unger hid the fact that he was Jewish when he reached Dachau three weeks before the war ended. "That probably saved his life," Hoffman said. They also discovered a strong likelihood that the album's binding was fashioned from the recycled leather of an SS officer's uniform. Unger, an engaging youngster, became an office boy and translator for U.S. occupation authorities at Dachau, which was turned into a displaced persons camp, and obtained a U.S. visa in 1947. Research by Klages' group and the AP has begun to pull together the scattered threads of Porulski's life from long forgotten records at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, a tiny museum in Warsaw, Auschwitz and Dachau, the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross, Australian immigration records and data from England. Porulski enrolled in the Warsaw arts academy in 1934 after completing two years of army service. Attached to his neatly written application is a photograph of a good looking young man with light hair and dreamy eyes. It says he was a farmer's son, born June 20, 1910, in the central town of Rychwal, although in later records Porulski said he was born five years later. Chronically poor, he left the academy after failing to secure a loan for his tuition but was later reinstated. After Germany invaded in 1939, he made some money painting watercolor postcards of Nazi-occupied Poland, two of which have survived and are now in the Warsaw Museum of Caricature. In June 1940, he was arrested in a Nazi roundup "without any reason," he wrote many years later in an appeal for help from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Two months later, he and 1,500 others were the first Poles to be shipped from Warsaw to Auschwitz. He spent eight months there, then was sent to the Neuengamme camp and finally to Dachau, near Munich, in May 1941. In Dachau, according to a brief reference in a Polish book on wartime art, he painted portraits, flowers, folk dance scenes and decoration for a clandestine theater. In 1949 he sailed to Australia and tried to work as a painter and decorator but mostly lived off friends. Relatives say he was robbed of his money and passport. He returned to Europe in 1963 and lived in England. He visited Poland in the early 1970s for about three weeks, and stayed with his sister, Janina Krol, in Gdynia on the Baltic coast, and another relative outside Warsaw, Wanda Wojcikowska. He brought his sister paintings of Dachau, his niece, Danuta Ostrowska, now 75, recalls. But her mother threw them away, saying "I can't look at them." The family still owns nine of his mostly prewar paintings. Poland's communist authorities wanted Porulski out of the country, Wojcikowska's daughter, Malgorzata Stozek, recalls. "My mother even found a woman willing to marry him, to help him stay in Poland," but he had already left, Stozek says. His letters from England said he found work maintaining bridges, Stozek said. "He wrote that the moment he finished painting a bridge over some river, he had to start again." It could have been a metaphor for a life going nowhere. "One day I came to see my mother and she was crying because he wrote to her that he had no money, he was hungry and was sleeping on park benches. He lived in terrible poverty," Stozek told the AP. He was so lonely, she said, that he had considered suicide. In 1978 he sent a request for war compensation to the International Tracing Service in the central German town of Bad Arolsen, which houses the world's largest archive of concentration camp records and lists of Holocaust victims. "I have no occupation of any sort. I was unable to resume my studies after all those years in the camps," he wrote. "I am just by myself, and I live from day to day." The ITS replied that it had no authority to give grants, but was sending confirmation of his incarceration to the U.N. refugee agency to support his earlier reparations claim. Unger also shows up in the Tracing Service, in a 1955 two-page letter he wrote recounting his ordeal that began when he was 9. Unger's father had a prosperous furniture business near Krakow. "Then the infamous horde of Nazis overran our town, disrupted our life, murdered my parents and little sister, and robbed us of all we had." He was the only survivor of 50 members of the Unger family. Christian friends hid him for a while, but he ended up imprisoned inside the Krakow ghetto, then was moved to a series of concentration camps. His daughter says that after he immigrated to America, he told a cousin with whom he lived in New Jersey that his job at Dachau had been to tend the ovens. The Nazis commonly used inmates for such purposes � it was one of the few ways of surviving. Newly arrived in America, Unger spoke to Newark newspapers of his years of torment, saying he escaped three times during marches between camps but was always recaptured. At one point, he told the Newark Evening News that he was herded into a gas chamber at Natzweiler camp with 50 other prisoners, but they were spared at the last minute because some of them were electricians the Nazis needed for their war effort. The two lives, briefly intertwined by the Holocaust and an album of photos and paintings, ended 17 years apart � Unger by hanging himself in 1972, Porulski in 1989 in St. Mary's Hospital near Hereford, England, of pneumonia and tuberculosis. The death certificate gives his age as 74 and his profession as "painter (retired)." Shari Klages was 12 when her father died. He had just been laid off from his 18-year job in the aeronautics industry, and his wife had been diagnosed with brain cancer. His suicide is given added poignancy by the image of the hanged inmate in the album, and Klages believes it was his Holocaust experience that weighed most heavily on him. "I have no doubt it was the most significant contributor to his death," she said. ___ Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report. Arthur Max reported from Bad Arolsen, Germany, and Monika Scislowska from Warsaw, Poland. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070916/ap_on_re_eu/drawings_from_dachau;_ylt=AgaydLk_UeCE2jT2ARycfbCs0NUE ___ On the Net: National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts: http://www.2jewish.org/ Dachau: http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/englisch/content/index.htm International Tracing Service: http://www.its-arolsen.org

I am outraged that the senate wants to pass a resolution to get rid of MoveOn.org. They want to stop the truth, they want to intimidate the knowlegeable public. I called my senators this morning and told them too. Why doesn't Obama give an opinion. Giulianni has already said that Hilary has ties with MoveOn.

Ridiculous to waste time on this and still defeat a motion to vote on a bill that would give troops 1:1 time at home after deployment. Here's Chris Dodd's website with his comment on the MoveOn.org vote. http://chrisdodd.com/blog/dodd-moveon-ad-votes-senate

Time Mag weighs in; too funny. I'll tell ya--Giuliani is surprising me, and not in a good way. I thought he was too much of a no-bullshit guy for this. Wednesday, Sep. 19, 2007 How Dare You! By Michael Kinsley Goodness gracious. oh, my paws and whiskers. Some of the meanest, most ornery hombres around are suddenly feeling faint. Notorious tough guys are swooning with the vapors. The biggest beasts in the barnyard are all aflutter over something they read in the New York Times. It's that ad from MoveOn.org � the one that calls General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, general betray us. All across the radio spectrum, right-wing shock jocks are themselves shocked. How could anybody say such a thing? It's horrifying. It's outrageous. It's disgraceful. It's just beyond the pale ... It's ... oh, my heavens ... say, is it a bit stuffy in here? ... I think I'm going to ... Could I have a glass of ... oh, dear [thud]. Welcome to the wonderful world of umbrage, the new language of American politics. You would not have thought that the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly would be so sensitive. Sticks and stones and so on. Yet they all seem to have taken one look at that ad and fainted dead away. And when they came round, they demanded � as if with one voice (or at least as if with one list of talking points) � that every Democratic presidential candidate must "condemn" this shocking, shocking document. The ad is pretty tough, and the pun on the general's name is pretty witless. You could argue that since the verb betray and the noun traitor have the same root, the ad is accusing the head of American forces in Iraq of treason. The ad can also be interpreted � more plausibly if you consider the rest of the text � merely as questioning the general's honesty, not his patriotism. But whatever your interpretation of the ad, all the gasping for air and waving of scented handkerchiefs among the war's most enthusiastic supporters is pretty comical. It's all phony, of course. The war's backers are obviously delighted to have this ad from which they can make an issue. They wouldn't trade it for a week in Anbar province (a formerly troubled area of Iraq that is now, thanks to us, an Eden of peace and tranquillity where barely a car bomb disturbs the perfumed silence � or so they say). These days, mock outrage is used by every side of every dispute. It's fair enough to criticize something your opponent said while secretly thanking your lucky stars that he said it. The fuss over this MoveOn.org ad is something else: it is the result of a desperate scavenging for umbrage material. When so many people are clamoring for a chance to swoon that they each have to take a number and when the landscape is so littered with folks lying prostrate and pretending to be dead that it starts to look like the end of a Civil War battle re-enactment, this isn't spontaneous mass outrage. This is choreography. The constant calls for political candidates to prove their bona fides by condemning or denouncing something somebody else said or to renounce a person's support or to return her tainted money are a tiresome new tic in American politics. They're turning politics into a game of "Mother, May I?" Did you say "Here is my plan for health-care reform"? Uh-oh, you were supposed to say "I condemn MoveOn.org's comments on General Petraeus, and here is my plan for health-care reform." All this drawing of uncrossable lines and issuing of fatuous fatwas is supposed to be a bad habit of the left. When right-wingers are attacking this habit rather than practicing it, they call it political correctness. The problem with political correctness is that it turns discussions of substance into arguments over etiquette. The last thing that supporters of the war want to talk about at this point is the war. They'd far rather talk about this insult to General Petraeus. It just isn't done in polite society, it seems, to criticize a general in the middle of a war. (Although, when else?) The Republican front runner, Rudy Giuliani, is another tough guy who has seized the opportunity to reveal his easily bruised soft side. He is running TV commercials saying Hillary Clinton "stood by silently" while MoveOn.org ran its despicable ad. Another way of saying this would be that she had nothing to do with the ad. But Rudy accuses her of "joining with" MoveOn.org and "attacking" General Petraeus, although the only evidence he can muster for this accusation is a clip from Clinton telling the general at a hearing that his reports of progress in the war "really require the willing suspension of disbelief." For this, Giuliani demands an "apology," not just to the general but to all American troops in Iraq. He accuses her of "turning her back" on America's brave soldiers "just when our troops need all our support to finish the job." When we try to untangle this web of accusation and innuendo, Giuliani appears to be suggesting that it is unacceptable for a Senator to express skepticism about anything said by a general in uniform. If he believes that, he does not understand democracy. I am shocked by this. In fact, if Giuliani doesn't apologize, and if the other Republican candidates don't condemn this commercial, I think I'm going to faint. Click to Print Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1663424,00.html

all the gasping for air and waving of scented handkerchiefs among the war's most enthusiastic supporters is pretty comical. Daily Kos has been making fun of all their "angst" all week. denouncing something somebody else said or to renounce a person's support or to return her tainted money I was thinking after the Clinton/Hsu thing that every candidate should be allowed one questionable donation/donor, so every one's on a level playing field and no one can claim some kind of ridiculous financial moral superiority over the others. Now more than one.....;-) But Rudy accuses her of "joining with" MoveOn.org and "attacking" General Petraeus, although the only evidence he can muster for this accusation is a clip from Clinton telling the general at a hearing that his reports of progress in the war "really require the willing suspension of disbelief." I listened to the hearings while cruising up the CA coast on vacation and Hillary pointedly prefaced her quote above with saying how much she respected the General (and the troops) and his service over the years. And believe me, she wasn't the only one who expressed deep skepticism. Wish I could remember name of the last committee member who interviewed Petreus and Crocker, but while she also expressed her respect and support for Petreus and his duties, she went on to very pointedly express disbelief at and ask for an explanation of the lack of accountability for all the money that's been spent (she gave details) on reconstruction and "supporting the troops" with little to show for it. Her career had been as an auditor prior to govt service. Thanks, Mari.

Thanks, Mari. I am starting to hate Giuliani. I enjoyed reading the Criss dodd blog, thanks, Dorine. This all makes me sick to my stomach, and if Feinstein from CA voted against MoveOn, what can come next? Why don't people protest en-masse? I've been to the anti-war rally in DC and it was a joke, there should be millions out there marching. What makes this youth so apathetic?

I have to say, that I have been continually surprised at the good will for Guiliani outside of NY, but then again I shouldn't be. Now I say that having voted for him once....I think he was mayor already when I moved here. But while I found that he had his significant faults, he was a good mayor for NYC. But knowing his governing style, I knew he was not President material when this talk was thrown around years ago, even while they talked about him running for Senate or Governor. You might call him another "Decider". Finesse and diplomacy are not his middle names. He's closer to Bush's style. He's completely full of sh*t.

I used to like him. Giulianni turned NYC around for the better. The only thing he has said that makes sense is that there are too many mosques in the US and something should be done. I will add that no one in EU is doing anything about the many mosques there and it is a problem. My solution, for every mosque in the western world there should be a church in the muslim world. That would nip it in the bud. I am happy that Obama was a no-show at the Senater vote against MoveOn.org yesterday. I am beginning to like him more and more.

LOL!! Obviously someone has nothing better to do. 'God' apparently responds to lawsuit By NATE JENKINS, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 20, 11:18 PM ET LINCOLN, Neb. - A legislator who filed a lawsuit against God has gotten something he might not have expected: a response. One of two court filings from "God" came Wednesday under otherworldly circumstances, according to John Friend, clerk of the Douglas County District Court in Omaha. "This one miraculously appeared on the counter. It just all of a sudden was here � poof!" Friend said. State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha sued God last week, seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty for making terroristic threats, inspiring fear and causing "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants." Chambers, a self-proclaimed agnostic who often criticizes Christians, said his filing was triggered by a federal lawsuit he considers frivolous. He said he's trying to makes the point that anybody can sue anybody. Not so, says "God." His response argues that the defendant is immune from some earthly laws and the court lacks jurisdiction. It adds that blaming God for human oppression and suffering misses an important point. "I created man and woman with free will and next to the promise of immortal life, free will is my greatest gift to you," according to the response, as read by Friend. There was no contact information on the filing, although St. Michael the Archangel is listed as a witness, Friend said. A second response from "God" disputing Chambers' allegations lists a phone number for a Corpus Christi law office. A message left for that office was not immediately returned Thursday. Attempts to reach Chambers by phone and at his Capitol office Thursday were unsuccessful. ___ Associated Press Writer Anna Jo Bratton in Omaha contributed to this report.

Apparently there's nothing that can't be outsourced to India. :-/ World outsources pregnancies to India By SAM DOLNICK, Associated Press Writer ANAND, India - Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills. A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world. The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for the women during pregnancy and delivery, and counsels them afterward. Anand's surrogate mothers, pioneers in the growing field of outsourced pregnancies, have given birth to roughly 40 babies. More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many would make in 15 years. But the program raises a host of uncomfortable questions that touch on morals and modern science, exploitation and globalization, and that most natural of desires: to have a family. Dr. Nayna Patel, the woman behind Anand's baby boom, defends her work as meaningful for everyone involved. "There is this one woman who desperately needs a baby and cannot have her own child without the help of a surrogate. And at the other end there is this woman who badly wants to help her (own) family," Patel said. "If this female wants to help the other one ... why not allow that? ... It's not for any bad cause. They're helping one another to have a new life in this world." Experts say commercial surrogacy � or what has been called "wombs for rent" � is growing in India. While no reliable numbers track such pregnancies nationwide, doctors work with surrogates in virtually every major city. The women are impregnated in-vitro with the egg and sperm of couples unable to conceive on their own. Commercial surrogacy has been legal in India since 2002, as it is in many other countries, including the United States. But India is the leader in making it a viable industry rather than a rare fertility treatment. Experts say it could take off for the same reasons outsourcing in other industries has been successful: a wide labor pool working for relatively low rates. Critics say the couples are exploiting poor women in India � a country with an alarmingly high maternal death rate � by hiring them at a cut-rate cost to undergo the hardship, pain and risks of labor. "It raises the factor of baby farms in developing countries," said Dr. John Lantos of the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Mo. "It comes down to questions of voluntariness and risk." Patel's surrogates are aware of the risks because they've watched others go through them. Many of the mothers know one another, or are even related. Three sisters have all borne strangers' children, and their sister-in-law is pregnant with a second surrogate baby. Nearly half the babies have been born to foreign couples while the rest have gone to Indians. Ritu Sodhi, a furniture importer from Los Angeles who was born in India, spent $200,000 trying to get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization, and was considering spending another $80,000 to hire a surrogate mother in the United States. "We were so desperate," she said. "It was emotionally and financially exhausting." Then, on the Internet, Sodhi found Patel's clinic. After spending about $20,000 � more than many couples because it took the surrogate mother several cycles to conceive � Sodhi and her husband are now back home with their 4-month-old baby, Neel. They plan to return to Anand for a second child. "Even if it cost $1 million, the joy that they had delivered to me is so much more than any money that I have given them," said Sodhi. "They're godsends to deliver something so special." Patel's center is believed to be unique in offering one-stop service. Other clinics may request that the couple bring in their own surrogate, often a family member or friend, and some place classified ads. But in Anand the couple just provides the egg and sperm and the clinic does the rest, drawing from a waiting list of tested and ready surrogates. Young women are flocking to the clinic to sign up for the list. Suman Dodia, a pregnant, baby-faced 26-year-old, said she will buy a house with the $4,500 she receives from the British couple whose child she's carrying. It would have taken her 15 years to earn that on her maid's monthly salary of $25. Dodia's own three children were delivered at home and she said she never visited a doctor during those pregnancies. "It's very different with medicine," Dodia said, resting her hands on her hugely pregnant belly. "I'm being more careful now than I was with my own pregnancy." Patel said she carefully chooses which couples to help and which women to hire as surrogates. She only accepts couples with serious fertility issues, like survivors of uterine cancer. The surrogate mothers have to be between 18 and 45, have at least one child of their own, and be in good medical shape. Like some fertility reality show, a rotating cast of surrogate mothers live together in a home rented by the clinic and overseen by a former surrogate mother. They receive their children and husbands as visitors during the day, when they're not busy with English or computer classes. "They feel like my family," said Rubina Mandul, 32, the surrogate house's den mother. "The first 10 days are hard, but then they don't want to go home." Mandul, who has two sons of her own, gave birth to a child for an American couple in February. She said she misses the baby, but she stays in touch with the parents over the Internet. A photo of the American couple with the child hangs over the sofa. "They need a baby more than me," she said. The surrogate mothers and the parents sign a contract that promises the couple will cover all medical expenses in addition to the woman's payment, and the surrogate mother will hand over the baby after birth. The couples fly to Anand for the in-vitro fertilization and again for the birth. Most couples end up paying the clinic less than $10,000 for the entire procedure, including fertilization, the fee to the mother and medical expenses. Counseling is a major part of the process and Patel tells the women to think of the pregnancy as "someone's child comes to stay at your place for nine months." Kailas Gheewala, 25, said she doesn't think of the pregnancy as her own. "The fetus is theirs, so I'm not sad to give it back," said Gheewala, who plans to save the $6,250 she's earning for her two daughters' education. "The child will go to the U.S. and lead a better life and I'll be happy." Patel said none of the surrogate mothers has had especially difficult births or serious medical problems, but risks are inescapable. "We have to be very careful," she said. "We overdo all the health investigations. We do not take any chances." Health experts expect to see more Indian commercial surrogacy programs in coming years. Dr. Indira Hinduja, a prominent fertility specialist who was behind India's first test-tube baby two decades ago, receives several surrogacy inquiries a month from couples overseas. "People are accepting it," said Hinduja. "Earlier they used to be ashamed but now they are becoming more broadminded." But if commercial surrogacy keeps growing, some fear it could change from a medical necessity for infertile women to a convenience for the rich. "You can picture the wealthy couples of the West deciding that pregnancy is just not worth the trouble anymore and the whole industry will be farmed out," said Lantos. Or, Lantos said, competition among clinics could lead to compromised safety measures and "the clinic across the street offers it for 20 percent less and one in Bangladesh undercuts that and pretty soon conditions get bad." The industry is not regulated by the government. Health officials have issued nonbinding ethical guidelines and called for legislation to protect the surrogates and the children. For now, the surrogate mothers in Anand seem as pleased with the arrangement as the new parents. "I know this isn't mine," said Jagrudi Sharma, 34, pointing to her belly. "But I'm giving happiness to another couple. And it's great for me." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071230/ap_on_re_as/india_wombs_for_rent;_ylt=AuneZmOsRsqDpOMaqDtuxTys0NUE

From yesterday's (pre NH) NY Times: Women Are Never Front-Runners By GLORIA STEINEM THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father � in this race-conscious country, she is considered black � she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity. Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth? If you answered no to either question, you�re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy. That�s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter). If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama�s public style � or Bill Clinton�s either � without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits. So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects �only� the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more �masculine� for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren�t too many of them); and because there is still no �right� way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what. I�m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That�s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that. I�m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country�s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I�m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he�s the nominee, I�ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama. But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex. What worries me is that she is accused of �playing the gender card� when citing the old boys� club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations. What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn�t. What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama�s dependence on the old � for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy � while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo. What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age. This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It�s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: �I�m supporting her because she�ll be a great president and because she�s a woman.� Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women�s Media Center.

Mari, I'm so glad you posted this here. Kudos to Ms. Steinem, who has always been a hero of mine.

Is anyone watching the Democratic debate tonight? Yeow! Quite lively! Gloves half off. But it's the Obama and Clinton show. Poor Edwards is getting shoved to the side.

You know, after 7 years, you'd think the guy could say NU-Clee-er correctly. What a f'ng a*hole. Good riddance...in a year.

(Dorine)What a f'ng a*hole. Good riddance...in a year. That shoe seems to fit... I just can't seem to make myself watch him - he's appalling. Did you happen to catch Bill Maher the other night? He made the comment that there's only one year left & he just hopes that Bush doesn't have one more major "F**K-up in him." Scary thought, indeed.

Oh thanks, you reminded me I didn't go back to watch his show last week. I missed it.

John Edwards is quitting the race. I like John; he's a good man. In a less crowded year . . . http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hoAvkYTooNMqpzn8fF_3B76ko8eAD8UG9L300

Texas looks like it's Hillary's last chance, and she's 2 points behind in the polls. Anyone catch that SNL skit with Obama and Hillary?

I missed the SNL skit. But I was working at Hillary's Headquarters last night and one of the big wigs came to tell us that they are obtimistic by the info they are receiving from Texas and Ohio. I personally spoke to many voters in Spanish last night and they do seem to be supporting Hillary. The odd thing is that in Texas they have the primary vote during the day and voters must come out again at 6:30 PM to vote in the caucus. The primary vote determines 60 percent of the delegates and the caucus 40. So how many old women who voted absentee will be out at night for the caucus vote?:-( Dorine, I applaud the women in Anand India.

Did any UK Ladies feel the earthquake last night? It occurred around 1am. I can't believe I sat here at 1am working on a gif (bad case of insomnia) and didn't even notice any difference apart from the TV stand rattling and creaking, which I was a little spooked by, Crikey!

I'd just gone to bed, and the bed started shaking and the widows rattled. My DH, who was still downstairs, didn't notice anything!

Thanks, Bethan. it put's my mind at rest that your DH was downstairs and didn't notice anything because I was also downstairs and apart from the TV stand rattling I really didn't notice anything. Ant was upstairs and was awoken by the bed shaking. Not enough for him to fully wake though. I guess the ground floor is more stable than a first floor. We have friends whom live in Hull. Their wardrobes rattled so much they thought they would land on them. My Mum told me a story of a lady whose pet parrot was shaken off it's perch and now the bird won't get back on it's perch, awwweee.

Anyone catch that SNL skit with Obama and Hillary? You mean the one that satirized the shameful free ride that the media has given to Obama, while being inordinately tough on Hillary? No, didn't see it.;-) But here's Tina Fey's endorsement of Hill: http://tv.popcrunch.com/did-tina-fey-endorse-hillary-clinton-on-saturday-night-live-video/

Thanks, Mari, I needed that. I keep telling them to Ying it. We need Ying in the Whitehouse. :-) Glad to hear the earthquake was not a bad one. I still remember a few from when I lived in LA, phew!

Check this out! It would put me off flying for sure. And kudos to the pilot. (You'll have to sit through an ad) Hope it plays ok. http://news.aol.com/story/_a/pilots-move-averts-possible-plane-crash/20080303094209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

(Moon) But I was working at Hillary's Headquarters...in Texas they have the primary vote during the day and voters must come out again at 6:30 PM to vote in the caucus Wish I'd been more involved, now:-( I just came back from voting and running errands. On my way I passed 7 polling places and my precinct was the only one with a live Democratic presence on the perimeter. They were Obama supporters. Didn't see any Hillary signs at all and Obama signs at only 2 precincts. Now,mind you, I live in a very, very republican area and there are 10 Republican candidates running for the nomination for Congressional district 22 seat which is now held by a Democrat for the first time since I moved here 23 years ago! I has been interesting to watch these people clamor over each other trying to establish who is more Christian and/or more conservative. The caucuses start at 7:15 or after all of the voters are through. No one seems to know how long they will go and what to expect. I'll report on that later. Last night's local news had a story about voters being told to show up at 6:30, yet the polls don't close 'til 7 p.m. Some election officials were worried about chaos and overcrowding. I was really disappointed to see that Obama was first and Hillary was last on the ballot in my county with 4 other candidates in between them. I don't know how the order is decided, but the candidates are listed in a different order in other counties. (SueH) I guess the ground floor is more stable than a first floor. We have friends whom live in Hull. Their wardrobes rattled so much they thought they would land on them. Right,the higher you are in a quake the more movement there is. (I've lived with a physicist, lo, these many years;-)) My old auntie did have her china cabniet topple during a big one near San Jose and I once watched waves splash from my pool when I lived near San Francisco. I am glad that there weren't many injuries.

Good luck with that Texas two-step, Peggy! What a cesspool some of these election processes are. And don't even get me started on superdelegates. Or the Electoral College, for that matter--we never did fix that, after the 2000 fiasco. The entire process needs an overhall, IMO. Jack Nicholson's very clever endorsement of Hillary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mOa3sXjqE4&eurl=http://movies.aol.com/news/main

Saw Ari Fleischer (former press secretary to the prez) on CNN last night. He says Republicans would much rather face Obama in the fall because "the guy is a blank slate." He went on to say that "there are many more things that will come out about him between now and November, if he's the nominee."

Gad! I've been saying that for weeks. Lots of R have been voting for O in the primaries for that same reason. :-( Many Dems will not voter for O either come Nov. I would love to see Hillary president and give O Sect. of State and have him try to make something out of the middle East mess. He can even wear his turban. ;-))) Keeping fingers crossed for to night. Go Hillary!!! Jack could have done it earlier, but better late than never.

I am just back from my caucus and it was a chaotic. There were 2 precincts sharing my polling place , ergo, 4 caucuses- 2 Rep., 2 Dem. Generally only a handful attend these and sometimes only the Pct. Chairman shows up! Tonight there were hundreds and the vast majority had no idea what to do. No one was available to organize the lines through the parking lot. There was doubt that there would be enough forms for everyone to sign but someone rounded up extras. The precinct chair even had to leave to take the election results to the county. Results- my Pct. went 2 to 1 for Obama but there is a predominantly black neighborhood in the precinct boundaries. The other Pct. which is the remainder of my subdivision voted for Hillary 60% to 40% Obama. For the two precincts 10 delegates for Hillary and 11 delegates for Obama will go to the county caucus. The county caucus will be at the end of the month and there the delegates for the state convention will be chosen. Right now the local news is showing this to be a very tight race at 49% each.

Woo-hoo! I usually vote absentee, but today I voted in person, and also cast my vote for Hillary! I'm thrilled she picked up three states! Go Hillary! A lot of things were screwed up in Ohio again. A neighboring county wasn't supplied with enough Democrat ballots and people were asked to come back! Sheesh! :-( My precinct is also largely well-healed Republicans, but I know they are fed up with Bush. BTW, I just started reading The Bush Tragedy and it's a fascinating look at what makes W tick. I saw the author on C-Span, and was hooked. Peggy, that Texas Two Step is really odd...but then again so is this whole super delegate business.

I checked into CNN around 10 which was calling TX for Obama who was up by around 10 pts at that time. Didn't notice how much of the vote was counted then though. Switched off to watch something else, fell asleep. Then saw the headline this morning at the newsstand at my bus stop that Hil won TX. Amazing! I still haven't read any details yet. I hate when the news calls races so early, as I'm presuming CNN did again last night.

Looking at Peggy's post especially, and with Mari, my bafflement and dissatisfaction witht the Electoral College, with systems like those, it's a wonder anyone gets elected in this country.

(Moon) Lots of R have been voting for O in the primaries for that same reason. :-( Many Dems will not voter for O either come Nov. I was just reading a political blog from one of the newspapers in Cleveland (I think), where it was talking about the number of R's crossing over to vote D, partially because of local politics, but quite a number said they voted for Hillary since she's perceived weaker against McCain and they'll switch back to R for the national election to vote for him.

With the Machiavellian twists and turns to voting and politics, I am always amazed that people don't become totally jaded by it all. I respect volunteers who are so passionate about their candidate (whoever it is) and work tirelessly for them.

(Kathryn) am always amazed that people don't become totally jaded by it all The irony is that there are more voters than in a long time across many demographics taking part in the process.

talking about the number of R's crossing over to vote D, partially because of local politics, but quite a number said they voted for Hillary since she's perceived weaker against McCain and they'll switch back to R for the national election to vote for him. And I love those dumb R. Keep voting for Hillary! She's the one that can beat McCain. Peggy that two-step in Texas is enough to prompt a law suit, IMO. I sopke to many Hillary supporters that voted absentee because they are unable to get out to their precints to vote in person, be they elderly, or sick, or they don't go out afte3r a certain time. All that plays in O favor because of his supposed younger voters. Lisa, thank you big time! Hillary needed Ohio and her speech was perfect. :-)

(Moon) Peggy that two-step in Texas is enough to prompt a law suit, IMO Two-step is a messed up mis-step. The system does need to be changed. It would be much better to have the caucuses after the popular vote is counted and choose the delegates accordingly. The Democratic party made the plans and ordered the materials for this election months ago and at the time had no idea that the turnout would be so huge. Of course when participation is 200 times that of any previous election there are bound to be problems for either side. I could go on ad infinitum about what was wrong with just my Pct. caucus. It was hardly and orderly meeting, and I felt like my friend and I were the only ones there who had any knowledge of Robert's Rules. It didn't do much good after a vocal, bossy lady wes elected to run the meeting, then she just stood there without a clue what to do! I don't think anyone was guilty of fraud, just ineptitude. Here are some links to local stories. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5593307.html http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5593307.html Also, I must say that Barack mounted a phenominal telephone campaign. I recieved a recorded message from him and Michele every day this last week. Go Hillary- On to Pennsylvania!!! On a different 'Mad World' subject, I found this story to be remarkable. Buster has a beer and cigarette for his halfway refreshment! http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4385601&page=1

Peggy, in Texas lots of voters were disenfranchised because they were not able to go back for the Caucus that night. Lots of older voters, or handicapped voters, etc. Just curious, did you receive any calls for Hillary? Our phone bank from HQ are live people not recorded messages. Mari, we need your help in PA, I hope you have lots of friends you can gather as well. As we speak, field offices are being set up all over PA.

In NY they were recorded messages. I got several.

PA is on the case, Moon! Hill's Philly HQ opened yesterday: BTW, I've been using their computer-based calling system and it works pretty well. This way, you can make calls from home or wherever. Anyone can sign up to make calls anywhere; you just specify the area. (Those poor people in Texas last weekend kept asking me to "talk slower!") LOL!

Dems can't win without superdelegates By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 54 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton won't catch Barack Obama in the race for Democratic delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, even if she wins every remaining contest. But Obama cannot win the nomination with just his pledged primary and caucus delegates either, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. That sets the stage for a pitched battle for support among "superdelegates," the party and elected officials who automatically attend the convention and can support whomever they choose. Two months into the voting, Obama can claim the most delegates chosen by voters. Clinton can claim victories in most of the big states. What should a superdelegate do? Unsurprisingly, the two campaigns have different takes on that question. "It is very difficult to see any scenario that Hillary Clinton would get the nomination in a way that doesn't rip the party apart," said Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, an Obama supporter. "I think that it would be a terrible mistake for the Democrats to not accept the will of the people who have turned out in primaries and caucuses." Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway said Obama's lead in pledged delegates is "hardly a mandate." "Some superdelegates will go with (the) pledged delegate count, but many will go with the candidate they think can win," Hattaway said. "We have a very compelling case to make on that front, given that we're winning general election swing states, must-win states and must-win constituencies." Clinton won three out of four primaries this week, giving her campaign a much-needed boost after a month of defeats. But she picked up only 12 more delegates than Obama, leaving him with a 140-delegate lead among those won in primaries and caucuses. There are only 614 delegates available in the remaining contests, meaning Clinton would have to win about 62 percent of the them to overtake Obama, according to the AP analysis. That's nearly impossible, given the way Democrats award delegates proportionally. Consider this: Clinton posted a big win in the Ohio primary Tuesday, beating Obama by about 10 percentage points. Her take: nine more delegates than him in the Buckeye State. In the Texas primary, Clinton's margin of victory was smaller, about 3 percentage points, and her net gain was smaller, too: four more delegates than Obama. Obama could wipe out most or all of that advantage if early returns showing him winning in the Texas caucuses hold up. Final results won't be available until the party's county conventions at the end of month. The message to be taken from Clinton's victories, again, depends on which campaign is doing the spinning. "In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in an e-mail to supporters. "They failed." Clinton's campaign pointed to her earlier victories in states like New Jersey, New York and California, and they questioned why Obama couldn't win in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday. "We think she can bring Ohio in a general election," said Harold Ickes, a chief strategist for Clinton. "We are not sure (Obama) can do that." The biggest remaining primary is in Pennsylvania, which will have 158 delegates at stake on April 22. Clinton's team is optimistic about her chances there. She'll be campaigning hard in the state, as will Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania's popular governor, who is an enthusiastic supporter. Obama is expected to win the Wyoming caucuses Saturday and the Mississippi primary next Tuesday, but Clinton is competing in both states to hold down his delegate accumulation. Her advisers acknowledge their past system of focusing on certain states and largely ignoring others � particularly those holding caucuses � was a mistake and helped Obama build a significant lead among pledged delegates. Obama has won nominating contests in 27 states and territories, giving him the lead in pledged delegates, 1,360 to 1,220. Even if he wins every remaining pledged delegate � including 33 that haven't been awarded from previous races � he will fall short of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination. That's where the superdelegates come in, the nearly 800 party and elected officials who will decide the nomination if both candidates stay in the race. Clinton leads in endorsements from superdelegates, 242 to 209. But that lead has shrunk in the past month. Since an AP survey the week of Super Tuesday, Obama has added 53 superdelegates, while Clinton has had a net loss of one. In the overall race for the nomination, Obama has 1,569 delegates, to 1,462 for Clinton, according to the latest AP tally. The lobbying of superdelegates has been fierce, with at least six Clinton superdelegates switching to Obama. So far, none of Obama's superdelegates has strayed, at least not publicly. David Parker, an undecided superdelegate from North Carolina, said he has been pressured by both sides to endorse. He offered some insight on how the outcome of the primaries and caucuses would influence his vote. "In a fairly tight race � 35-50 votes � I think superdelegates have got a green light to vote how they want," Parker said. "If Obama's out there at 150, that's a red light, and I don't think the superdelegates have much business subverting the will of voters." But, he added, "Every once in a while some people run red lights." ___ Associated Press writers Beth Fouhy in Washington, Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis., and Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080307/ap_on_el_pr/democrats_delegates;_ylt=AuPZe8ER3G.BsFPlH.hucIGs0NUE

Donna Brazil was on Hillary's camp when I met her at the DNC meeting in No. VA, now she's on CNN as an Obama supporter even though, she claims to be impartial. :-( Hillary seems to be able to carry the swing states and hold on to the big Dem. ones, she's the one the super delegates should be backing if they want a Dem in the Whitehouse. The red states that O got will vote R. If O gets the Dem nomination, McCain will be the next President.

(Moon) Peggy, in Texas lots of voters were disenfranchised because they were not able to go back for the Caucus that night. Lots of older voters, or handicapped voters, etc. Just curious, did you receive any calls for Hillary? I understand about the disenfranchisement. Even my son couldn't caucus due to a rehearsal and there were some who showed up but were unable to stay because it was taking too long. I think it is unreasonable that it takes the better part of one's day to vote. I don't remember getting any call from Hillary's campaign. I was getting at least 10 calls a day, most were pre-recorded messages. Barack's campaign did make live calls to university students and recent grads (registered here) asking for them by name. I confirmed this with the two other neighbors who showed up. I just checked the results for my precinct 285 votes cast in the Dem. primary. Actual votes Obama- 45.80% Clinton- 53.85% Caucus delegates Obama- 6 Clinton-3

From today's Wash Post: Downside of Obama Strategy Losses in Big States Spur General-Election Fears Read the article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030703318.html?hpid=topnews

This is a translation from yesterday's Corriere della Sera, Italy's #1 newspaper. I have always admired Magdi Allam, a very intelligent unbiased journalist. I did not know he was under a fatwa. He has just converted to Catholism so now his risk is higher. Magdi Allam Recounts His Path to Conversion Benedict XVI Baptized the Journalist at Easter Vigil VATICAN CITY, MARCH 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Magdi Allam�s account of his conversion to Catholicism. The Muslim journalist was baptized by Benedict XVI at Saturday's Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. An abbreviated form of this account appeared as a letter to Paolo Mieli, the director of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Allam is the paper�s deputy director. The Italian version of the complete text is available at magdiallam.it. * * * Dear Friends, I am particularly happy to share with you my immense joy for this Easter of Resurrection that has brought me the gift of the Christian faith. I gladly propose the letter that I sent to the director of the Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, in which I tell the story of the interior journey that brought me to the choice of conversion to Catholicism. This is the complete version of the letter, which was published by the Corriere della Sera only in part. * * * Dear Director, That which I am about to relate to you concerns my choice of religious faith and personal life in which I do not wish to involve in any way the Corriere della Sera, which it has been an honor to be a part of as deputy director �ad personam� since 2003. I write you thus as protagonist of the event, as private citizen. Yesterday evening I converted to the Christian Catholic religion, renouncing my previous Islamic faith. Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace -- the healthy fruit of a long, matured gestation, lived in suffering and joy, together with intimate reflection and conscious and manifest expression. I am especially grateful to his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who imparted the sacraments of Christian initiation to me, baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, in the Basilica of St. Peter�s during the course of the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil. And I took the simplest and most explicit Christian name: �Cristiano.� Since yesterday evening therefore my name is Magdi Crisitano Allam. For me it is the most beautiful day of [my] life. To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ�s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 [�], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ�s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the �different,� uncritically condemned as �enemy,� were privileged over love and respect of �neighbor,� who is always, an in every case, �person�; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom. On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason. My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy. I had to ask myself about the attitude of those who publicly declared fatwas, Islamic juridical verdicts, against me -- I who was a Muslim -- as an �enemy of Islam,� �hypocrite because he is a Coptic Christian who pretends to be a Muslim to do damage to Islam,� �liar and vilifier of Islam,� legitimating my death sentence in this way. I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a �moderate Islam,� assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Quran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive. At the same time providence brought me to meet practicing Catholics of good will who, in virtue of their witness and friendship, gradually became a point of reference in regard to the certainty of truth and the solidity of values. To begin with, among so many friends from Communion and Liberation, I will mention Father Juli�n Carr�n; and then there were simple religious such as Father Gabriele Mangiarotti, Sister Maria Gloria Riva, Father Carlo Maurizi and Father Yohannis Lahzi Gaid; there was rediscovery of the Salesians thanks to Father Angelo Tengattini and Father Maurizio Verlezza, which culminated in a renewed friendship with major rector Father Pascual Chavez Villanueva; there was the embrace of top prelates of great humanity like Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Monsignor Luigi Negri, Giancarlo Vecerrica, Gino Romanazzi and, above all, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who personally accompanied me in the journey of spiritual acceptance of the Christian faith. But undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert was that with Pope Benedict XVI, whom I admired and defended as a Muslim for his mastery in setting down the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization, and to whom I fully adhere as a Christian to inspire me with new light in the fulfillment of the mission God has reserved for me. Mine was a journey that began when at four years old, my mother Safeya -- a believing and practicing Muslim -- in the first in the series of �fortuitous events� that would prove to be not at all the product of chance but rather an integral part of a divine destiny to which all of us have been assigned -- entrusted me to the loving care of Sister Lavinia of the Comboni Missionary Sisters, convinced of the goodness of the education that would be imparted by the Catholic and Italian religious, who had come to Cairo, the city of my birth, to witness to their Christian faith through a work aimed at the common good. I thus began an experience of life in boarding school, followed by the Salesians of the Institute of Don Bosco in junior high and high school, which transmitted to me not only the science of knowledge but above all the awareness of values. It is thanks to members of Catholic religious orders that I acquired a profoundly and essentially an ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to undertake a mission that inserts itself in the framework of a universal and eternal design directed toward the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth and the whole of humanity on the day of judgment, which is founded on faith in God and the primacy of values, which is based on the sense of individual responsibility and on the sense of duty toward the collective. It is in virtue of a Christian education and of the sharing of the experience of life with Catholic religious that I cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension and also sought the certainty of truth in absolute and universal values. There was a time when my mother�s loving presence and religious zeal brought me closer to Islam, which I occasionally practiced at a cultural level and in which I believed at a spiritual level according to an interpretation that at the time -- it was the 1970s -- summarily corresponded to a faith respectful of persons and tolerant toward the neighbor, in a context -- that of the Nasser regime -- in which the secular principle of the separation of the religious sphere and the secular sphere prevailed. My father Muhammad was completely secular and agreed with the opinion of the majority of Egyptians who took the West as a model in regard to individual freedom, social customs and cultural and artistic fashions, even if the political totalitarianism of Nasser and the bellicose ideology of Pan-Arabism that aimed at the physical elimination of Israel unfortunately led to disaster for Egypt and opened the way to the resumption of Pan-Islamism, to the ascent of Islamic extremists to power and the explosion of globalized Islamic terrorism. The long years at school allowed me to know Catholicism well and up close and the women and men who dedicated their life to serve God in the womb of the Church. Already then I read the Bible and the Gospels and I was especially fascinated by the human and divine figure of Jesus. I had a way to attend Holy Mass and it also happened, only once, that I went to the altar to receive communion. It was a gesture that evidently signaled my attraction to Christianity and my desire to feel a part of the Catholic religious community. Then, on my arrival in Italy at the beginning of the 1970s between the rivers of student revolts and the difficulties of integration, I went through a period of atheism understood as a faith, which nevertheless was also founded on absolute and universal values. I was never indifferent to the presence of God even if only now I feel that the God of love, of faith and reason reconciles himself completely with the patrimony of values that are rooted in me. Dear Director, you asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christian living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims. For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those �fortuitous events� that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on Sept. 3, 2003 was entitled �The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts.� It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope�s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their esire to be fully themselves. If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear. Happy Easter to everyone. Dear friends, let us go forward on the way of truth, of life and of freedom with my best wishes for every success and good thing. Magdi Allam Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-22151?l=english

Lots of good zingers from them both! McCain, Letterman spar on 'late Show' Wed Apr 2, 6:49 AM ET Republican presidential candidate John McCain good-naturedly sparred with David Letterman on Tuesday night's "Late Show." During his monologue, Letterman joked that the Arizona senator reminded him of "the guy at the hardware store who makes the keys" and "the guy who can't stop talking about how well his tomatoes are doing." After Letterman added that McCain looked like "the guy who points out the spots they missed at the car wash," the senator appeared on stage. "You think that stuff's pretty funny, don't you?" McCain asked, then added: "Well, you look like a guy whose laptop would be seized by the authorities." McCain also said the host resembled the guy caught smuggling reptiles in his pants, to which Letterman replied, "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it." The candidate also likened Letterman to the manager of a creepy motel, the guy who enjoys watching his swim trunks inflate in a hot tub and the guy about whom neighbors later say, "He mostly kept to himself." Later in the show, the two discussed more serious issues, including the national credit crisis, Iraqi casualties, the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Bear Stearns and accusations that McCain's not a true conservative Republican. "I think maybe some people think that you ought to have exactly the same position they have on every issue," McCain said. The two Democratic candidates have also appeared on the CBS show this year � Hillary Rodham Clinton in February, and Barack Obama in January.

Not thrilled he used the VA as a good example as they had/still have issues with quality care despite, or perhaps because of, their financial system. I knew people who worked at VA's during the Clinton years who complained about budget cuts that made it more difficult to get good equipment to treat patients. Granted they opened a new hospital in our area, but then kept cutting. Op-Ed Columnist Voodoo Health Economics By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: April 4, 2008 Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. John McCain has had cancer in the past. Last weekend, Mrs. Edwards bluntly pointed out that neither of them would be able to get insurance under Mr. McCain�s health care plan. It�s about time someone said that and, more generally, made the case that Mr. McCain�s approach to health care is based on voodoo economics � not the supply-side voodoo that claims that cutting taxes increases revenues (though Mr. McCain says that, too), but the equally foolish claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone. As Mrs. Edwards pointed out, the McCain health plan would do nothing to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to those, like her and Mr. McCain, who have pre-existing medical conditions. The McCain campaign�s response was condescending and dismissive � a statement that Mrs. Edwards doesn�t understand the comprehensive nature of the senator�s approach, which would harness �the power of competition to produce greater coverage for Americans,� reducing costs so that even people with pre-existing conditions could afford care. This is nonsense on multiple levels. For one thing, even if you buy the premise that competition would reduce health care costs, the idea that it could cut costs enough to make insurance affordable for Americans with a history of cancer or other major diseases is sheer fantasy. Beyond that, there�s no reason to believe in these alleged cost reductions. Insurance companies do try to hold down �medical losses� � the industry�s term for what happens when an insurer actually ends up having to honor its promises by paying a client�s medical bills. But they don�t do this by promoting cost-effective medical care. Instead, they hold down costs by only covering healthy people, screening out those who need coverage the most � which was exactly the point Mrs. Edwards was making. They also deny as many claims as possible, forcing doctors and hospitals to spend large sums fighting to get paid. And the international evidence on health care costs is overwhelming: the United States has the most privatized system, with the most market competition � and it also has by far the highest health care costs in the world. Yet the McCain health plan � actually a set of bullet points on the campaign�s Web site � is entirely based on blind faith that competition among private insurers will solve all problems. I�d like to single out one of these bullet points in particular � the first substantive proposal Mr. McCain offers (the preceding entries are nothing but feel-good boilerplate). As I�ve mentioned in past columns, the Veterans Health Administration is one of the few clear American success stories in the struggle to contain health care costs. Since it was reformed during the Clinton years, the V.A. has used the fact that it�s an integrated system � a system that takes long-term responsibility for its clients� health � to deliver an impressive combination of high-quality care and low costs. It has also taken the lead in the use of information technology, which has both saved money and reduced medical errors. Sure enough, Mr. McCain wants to privatize and, in effect, dismantle the V.A. Naturally, this destructive agenda comes wrapped in the flag: �America�s veterans have fought for our freedom,� says the McCain Web site. �We should give them freedom to choose to carry their V.A. dollars to a provider that gives them the timely care at high quality and in the best location.� That�s a recipe for having healthy veterans drop out of the system, undermining its integrated nature and draining away resources. Mr. McCain, then, is offering a completely wrongheaded approach to health care. But the way the campaign for the Democratic nomination has unfolded raises questions about how effective his eventual opponent will be in making that point. Indeed, while Mrs. Edwards focused her criticism on Mr. McCain, she also made it clear that she prefers Hillary Clinton�s approach � �Sen. Clinton�s plan is a great plan� � to Barack Obama�s. The Clinton plan closely resembles the plan for universal coverage that John Edwards laid out more than a year ago. By contrast, Mr. Obama offers a watered-down plan that falls short of universality, and it would have higher costs per person covered. Worse yet, Mr. Obama attacked his Democratic rivals� health plans using conservative talking points about choice and the evil of having the government tell you what to do. That�s going to make it hard � if he is the nominee � to refute Mr. McCain when he makes similar arguments on behalf of such things as privatizing veterans� care. Still, health care ought to be a major issue in this campaign. I wonder if we�ll have time to discuss it after we deal with more important subjects, like bowling and basketball. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html?em&ex=1207540800&en=f01f4dbf8080b294&ei=5087%0A

I know there are some Hillary volunteers here. Opinions? http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/7/10533/63574/492/487686

Opinions? About? Calling a halt "for the good of the party?" We are perfectly content to let the American Idol season roll on for about 20 weeks. But when it comes to choosing a president, we all of a sudden have ADD?!

Hee hee. Shia/Sunni, Italians/Asians and Hispanics...why pay attention to who's who and where they are. I'll have to admit though, I didn't realize South Philly had or was divesting itself of the Italian majority. Seems it's the same as our Little Italy, with the Asians taking over. Little Italy here is now really one street of a block or 2. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/09/mccains-gaffe-on-south-philly/

ROTFL! Wow, that's one superstitious Red Sox fan. NY Yankees remove buried Red Sox jersey By KAREN MATTHEWS Associated Press Writer 9 minutes ago NEW YORK - A construction worker's bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot. After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out. The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday. Yankees President Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was. "The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York," Levine said. "But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?" On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt's location. "We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it," said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site. It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said. On Sunday, Levine and Yankees CEO Lonn Trost watched as Gramarossa and foreman Rich Corrado finished the job and pulled the shirt from the rubble. In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters "Red Sox" on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34. Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney's office. "We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual," he said. A woman who answered the phone at Castignoli's home in the Bronx on Sunday said he was not there. A spokesman for Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said Sunday he did not know whether any criminal charges might apply. Levine said the shirt would be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity affiliated with Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "Hopefully the Jimmy Fund will auction it off and we'll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful," he said.

"...you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York..." Good line! LOL! ~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm amazed (not really) by how little play this received here: Clinton supporter Elton John laments U.S. misogyny Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:44pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - British pop star Elton John, playing a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in New York on Wednesday, said he was amazed at the misogyny of some in America and he hoped that wouldn't stop her being president. At the fund-raiser which Clinton's campaign manager said raised $2.5 million, John said there was no one more qualified to lead the United States into the next era. "Having said that, I never cease to be amazed at the misogynistic attitude of some people in this country. And I say to hell with them," he said, drawing cheers from the crowd at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan. "The reason I'm here tonight is to play music, but more importantly as someone who comes from abroad, and is in America quite a lot of the time (and) is extremely interested in the political process because it effects the whole world." "I've always been a Hillary supporter," he said. Introducing him, Clinton recalled that the entertainer had played at the White House at a state dinner when her husband Bill Clinton was president. The New York senator, who is trailing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, vowed to take her battle for the Democratic nomination to the end of the primary process, saying all the states should have their say. Clinton said she couldn't sing but "What I want you to know is 'I'm still standing,'" -- echoing the title of an Elton John song. John opened his set with the track "Your Song," dwelling on the line "How wonderful life is when you're in the world." Other hits he sang included "Daniel" and "Rocket Man."

(Karen)I'm amazed (not really) by how little play this received here You mean by our misogynistic press?:-( I saw that. Love Elton, always have.

I did wonder too. If it had been for Obama, it would have been all over. I'm sick of it.

Oh, no. Just received this from the Wash Post site: Source: U.S. Strike on Iran Nearing By: Jim Meyers Contrary to some claims that the Bush administration will allow diplomacy to handle Iran�s nuclear weapons program, a leading member of America�s Jewish community tells Newsmax that a military strike is not only on the table � but likely. �Israel is preparing for heavy casualties,� the source said, suggesting that although Israel will not take part in the strike, it is expecting to be the target of Iranian retribution. �Look at Dick Cheney�s recent trip through the Middle East as preparation for the U.S. attack,� the source said. Cheney�s hastily arranged 9-day visit to the region, which began on March 16, included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Turkey, and the Palestinian territories. Tensions in the region have been rising. While Israel was conducting the largest homefront military exercises in its history last week, Israel�s National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer warned Tehran about expected attacks on the Jewish state. �An Iranian attack will prompt a severe reaction from Israel, which will destroy the Iranian nation,� he said. He predicted that in a future war, �hundreds of missiles will rain on Israel,� but added that Iran �is definitely aware of our strength.� In addition to long-range missiles Iran has been developing to strike Israel, Israel�s military strategists see the Iranians using terror groups they back like Hamas operating from Palestine and Hezbollah from Lebanon to launch attacks. Iran has supplied Hezbollah with an arsenal that now contains �tens of thousands of missiles,� according to the Washington Post. Israel�s recent war exercises, including preparations for chemical and biological weapons attacks, drew a sharp response from Syria which held its own military drills. The Syrian government accused Israel of preparing for a war which Damascus predicted would be begin anytime between May 1 and the end of June. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently told foreign journalists that Israel needs to confront the threat posed by Iran. Privately he has been telling associates his number one priority is have the Israeli military strike Iran if the U.S. is unwilling. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz disclosed that Israel is concerned that North Korea has transferred technology and nuclear materials to Iran to aid Tehran�s secret nuclear weapons program. Iran remains intransigent to international pressure that it offer full transparency relating to its nuclear program. On Sunday the head of Iran�s nuclear program �abruptly canceled a meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, dealing a blow to the U.N. monitor's efforts to investigate allegations that Iran tried to make nuclear arms, an agency official said,� according to an AP report. �But a senior diplomat had told the AP that IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] head Mohamed ElBaradei likely planned to use the meeting with Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's nuclear program, to renew a request for more information on allegations Tehran had tried to make atomic arms.� A number of signs indicate that, contrary to the belief President Bush is a lame duck who will not act before he leaves office, the U.S. is poised to strike before Iran can acquire nuclear weapons and carry out the threat of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to �wipe Israel off the map�: According to intelligence sources, the administration now rejects the National Intelligence Estimate report issued in December that asserted Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in late 2003. The French daily Le Monde reported in March that newly surfaced documents show that Iran has continued developing nuclear weapons. In late 2006, U.S. intelligence reportedly intercepted a phone conversation in Iran�s Defense Ministry in which the nuclear weapons program was discussed. The commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, resigned in March amid media reports that he broke with President Bush�s strategy on Iran and did not want to be in the chain of command when the order comes down from the President to launch a strike on the Islamic Republic. Democrats suggested he had been forced out because of his candor in opposing Bush�s Iran plans, and Esquire magazine contended that Fallon�s departure signaled that the U.S. is preparing to attack Iran. According to a Tehran-based Iranian news network, Press TV, Saudi Arabia is taking emergency steps in preparing to counter any �radioactive hazards� that may result from an American attack on Iran�s nuclear facilities. The Saudi newspaper Okaz disclosed that the Saudi government has approved nuclear fallout preparations, and the Iranian network reported that the approval came a day after Cheney met with the kingdom�s high-ranking officials, further stating that the U.S. �is now informing its Arab allies of a potential war.� The American commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, has stepped up criticism of Iran, telling Congress last week that Iranian support for Shiite militias posed the most serious threat to Iraq�s stability. He told senators : �Iran has fueled the violence in a particularly damaging way.� Last week, the U.S. said Iran was providing insurgents with missiles that were killing Americans and hitting targets within the U.S. occupied Green Zone in Baghdad. MSNBC Commentator Pat Buchanan said Petraeus� remarks to Congress lay the groundwork for a U.S. attack on Iran. President Bush said in a speech at the White House on April 10 that Iran, along with al-Qaida, are �two of the greatest threats to America.� He said Iran �can live in peace with its neighbors,� or �continue to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups which are terrorizing the Iraqi people � If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners.� He later told ABC News that if Iran continues to help militants in Iraq, �then we�ll deal with them.� Members of Congress are said to have been briefed by the administration about the rising Iran threat. Iran did little to cool tensions when it announced that it had begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Centrifuges can enrich uranium to a low level to produce nuclear fuel or a high level for use in weapons. The announcement of the new centrifuges by President Ahmadinejad came on April 8, Iran�s National Day of Nuclear Technology, which marked the second anniversary of Iran�s first enrichment of uranium. Iran already has about 3,000 centrifuges operating in Natanz, and the new announcement was widely seen as a show of defiance to international demands to halt a nuclear program that the U.S. and its allies insist is aimed at building nuclear weapons. � 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Contrary to some claims that the Bush administration will allow diplomacy to handle Iran�s nuclear weapons program, a leading member of America�s Jewish community tells Newsmax that a military strike is not only on the table � but likely. Same thing Seymour Hersh first reported in the New Yorker 2 (I think) years ago. I think there was a great deal of internal mutiny by the armed forces, and probably among others, that may have put it off then if it was so.

Again, Karen Heller gets it right. I do agree with Obama that people are bitter; I know I am. WIP's snickers at Clinton underscore gender gap By Karen Heller Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist Oh, the guys were going at her. The other morning on sports radio, the station that calls grown women "girls," they were talking about Hillary Clinton. Specifically, how she didn't turn them on and, graphically, how a certain body part flatlined in response. She's a United States senator. She's the first viable female presidential candidate. And the boys are talking about whether she's hot. As if they would find any 60-year-old woman hot. Or take a female politician seriously. When Don Imus slimed the Rutgers basketball team racially and sexually, he lost his job - well, for eight months. When WIP's morning team denigrates Clinton sexually, no one notices. Understandably, she didn't go on WIP's morning show, which Barack Obama has visited twice, resulting in the staff's major mancrush. Clinton spoke instead with afternoon jock Howard Eskin. Hillary Clinton is right. She's been bashed harder. And some members of the media have been merciless. Her figure has been ridiculed. Her clothing has been criticized for being too dark and serious - as if her male counterparts are partial to pastel frippery. Her voice is deemed too shrill. It can "grate on some men when they listen to it," Chris Matthews once said, like "fingernails on a blackboard." She's been charged with having no sense of humor, which is absurd. If she cries, she's too weak. If she attacks, she's a shrew. What's the male counterpart of shrew? Leader. Clinton has plenty of experience, as a family and children's advocate before becoming first lady and as a senator afterward. But people would rather discuss her hair than her health-care plan, which calls for universal coverage at a cost that is far less than her rival's proposal. It's also true that Barack Obama has been a better campaigner. He's a master orator. He's fresh, a break from the weight of the past. He didn't vote for the Iraq debacle. And his presence in the White House would send a vital message to countries that don't like America these days. They're both serious, qualified candidates. You can like one without maligning the other. Still, people speak about Clinton in a way they never would about Obama. When voters say "not this woman," you have to wonder "well, then, which one?" Pennsylvania is dreadful when it comes to electing women. Allyson Schwartz is the lone woman of 19 representatives in Washington. Despite an electorate that is 57 percent female, according to Franklin & Marshall's G. Terry Madonna, the commonwealth hasn't come close to electing a woman senator or governor. "When I arrived in the state senate in 1991, we doubled the number of women - to four," Schwartz said. Then, Pennsylvania ranked 46th in the nation in electing women to the legislature. Today, it's advanced all the way to 43d. There are nine female senators out of 50. Schwartz is none too happy with how Clinton has been treated. "There's been this willingness to blow up her comments while discounting those made by her male counterparts," said Schwartz, a Clinton supporter. "You hear people say her opponent is a brilliant lawyer who could have done anything. The same can be said for her. They keep pointing to his community service while discounting all her work for families and kids, which diminishes its importance." To paraphrase Obama's speech in Philadelphia, gender is an issue that this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Again, I'm just paraphrasing, but it makes you think. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact staff writer Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com. Post a comment on her blog, The Populist, at http://go.philly.com/populist.

Still, people speak about Clinton in a way they never would about Obama. When voters say "not this woman," you have to wonder "well, then, which one?" Amen Despite an electorate that is 57 percent female These kind of numbers kill me. They really show how pathetic women are in supporting their own. Do they just like having men dictate to them ALL the time on ALL issues. Disgusting!!

Here's the url for the original article: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/17799164.html I wanted to read the comments. Of course, it didn't surprise me to find one comment from a women, who "considers herself" to be a "strong feminist" who thinks HC has no qualifications. She's the won using the PA voter alias. Here's a good article about how they're finally focusing on gender. They have to. http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/04/08/clinton_women_0408.html

I don't understand it from women either. I get men tell me that they would never vote for a woman, and I remind them that their mother was a woman. I also get women tell me that they won't vote for her because they don't like Bill, and I remind them how unfair it would be if they were judged by the things their husbands did. Those super delegates must take into consideration the Hillary has carried the big democratic states, and some swing states. O has carried the traditional R states that will go to McCain in Nov. If the Dems are serious about taking the White House, they must back Hillary.

(Moon) I remind them how unfair it would be if they were judged by the things their husbands did. And these are the women who ask their husbands' permission to do anything or spend anything? And they're probably the same ones who ask their husbands who they should vote for, right? But I do like your arguments, Moon. Must be a first. ;-) (Moon) Those super delegates must take into consideration the Hillary has carried the big democratic states I know. I just don't understand this "step-aside" mentality. She's won all the big (read: populated) states. No offense to anyone, but who cares who wins Wyoming. Not only doesn't it have hardly any human population, what it does have pretty much votes Republican anyway. Now, does that mean that Hillary would get those states in the general election vs a Republican white male? Who knows?

(Karen), Now, does that mean that Hillary would get those states in the general election vs a Republican white male? Who knows? Oh, but it would be a change, and maybe, just maybe, Hillary might get those females. But I do like your arguments, Moon. Must be a first. ;-) LOL! You relate to my feminist side? ;-) You won't believe this but one woman in Texas told me it was in the bible not to vote for a woman.

"Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!" Young women are growing increasingly frustrated with the fanatical support of Barack and gleeful bashing of Hillary. By Rebecca Traister http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/14/obama_supporters/index.html I also followed the link and read Robin Morgan's endorsement of Hillary (which I hadn't read before) and saw a lot of truth there, too.

When I read in the previous article about how the younger women don't see the need to vote for Hillary because they're sure (hah!) they'll see a woman president in their lifetimes, all I can say is selfish bitches!! What about all of us, who really suffered at the hands of a male-dominated workplace? From the Salon article: these cool young customers have embodied their elders' worst nightmare of a generation that takes feminism's victories for granted by throwing over Hillary Clinton for her challenger faster than you can say "I've got a crush on Obama." These young women are way over feminism, we're told, and perceive gender bias to be an antiquated notion. Exactly. I've been railing against this idiotic mentality for years. These women are deluding themselves. [...] Bruch said. "People talk about him as a secular messiah who will bring us political salvation. There's no sense of what is plausible." Or factual. Bruch points to healthcare as an area in which "Hillary's policy is the more politically progressive one, but this has somehow been ignored, and Obama was projected upon as the progressive redeemer. It's a political fantasy." [...] Valenti continued, "I pinpoint sexism for a living. You'd think I'd be able to find an example. And I hate to rely on this hokey notion that there's some woman's way of knowing, and that I just fucking know. But I do. I just know." When it comes to feminism, she continued, so much proof is required to convince someone that sexism exists, "even when it's explicit and outrageous. So when it's subdued or subtle, you don't want to talk about it." "When the election started, I felt very postfeminist," said Wiegand. "I felt like, I'm a woman and I'd love to have a woman president, but I also have many other issues I care about and the Iraq war is a big one, and I'm not going to make my decision just because I'm a woman." But over the course of the campaign, Wiegand said, "there has been a lot of anger toward Hillary that's felt really intense and misogynistic. The gloating after Iowa was something to behold. And it's made me realize we are still dealing with the gender issue. I don't think we know what to make of women in power, or make of Hillary. I don't think the world is as postfeminist as I was feeling that it was." Finally, someone who woke up. Unfortunately, it also says she's an Obama supporter. Pathetic. :-(

(Moon) You won't believe this but one woman in Texas told me it was in the bible not to vote for a woman. Believe it? LOL I live in the big fat middle of it! Am forever 'rabble-rousing' my friends who feel guilty when they go away to visit children and grandchildren. Hubby doesn't want to go and makes her feel guilty for leaving him alone! Then there is the group in the area who believe that Eckhardt Tolle's New Earth is blasphemous and are burning up the internet telling everyone- I do wonder if any of them have actually read it. I have given up on trying to talk some sense into them. Might as well try to convince those women of the polygamy sect that 'oui' are not devil-people and that it is NOT proper to marry off 14 year olds to some elder with a sicko libido.

Obama superdelegates find their 'sisterhood' questioned By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 20 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Some female superdelegates backing Sen. Barack Obama are having their "sisterhood" questioned, just as some black Democrats have been challenged for their endorsement of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. No one has actually accused Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., of betraying her gender in supporting Obama over Clinton in the race for the party's nomination, but they've let her know they're disappointed. The reason some give: If Clinton does not win the White House this year, no woman will reach that goal in their lifetimes. Klobuchar gets it; her mother, 80, is one of these women. The senator's 12-year-old daughter, meanwhile, supports Obama. Mother's Day, when the three will next spend time together, could be a bit uncomfortable. "Early on, I had a few people call and say, 'Please don't do this. We don't think it is a good idea for you.' They tended to be donors," Klobuchar recalled. "No one actually yelled at me to my face." Superdelegates are members of Congress, elected officials and other party leaders who can back any candidate regardless of the vote in their state or district. For those voters who feel betrayed by their superdelegates, the question isn't so much why they endorsed one Democratic candidate, it's why they rejected the other. Sometimes, the query is coupled with a veiled threat: Don't take your own success for granted. "There's no question that some of our members are very angry," said Ellen R. Malcolm, president and founder of the EMILY's List political action committee, which gives money to female candidates who favor abortion rights. "They feel that they elect the women and they've gone to bat for the women and they want every single woman to go to bat for every woman candidate," she added. Asked whether Klobuchar and fellow freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, another Obama superdelegate, risk losing their seats over these endorsements, Malcolm said, "We'll just have to wait and see." The issue is so sensitive some superdelegates are remaining neutral until a clear winner emerges. Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan, who is black and a woman, remains uncommitted. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California is avowedly neutral but intimately aware of the conflict. "My family is divided," she said. Exacerbating the situation is the reality that a woman or a black man is poised to capture the party's nomination to an office that's been the province of white men for two centuries. Each candidate represents major constituencies in the party. In the absence of major differences in their policy positions, race and gender loyalty becomes a factor. Among black superdelegates, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., asked Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, a Clinton supporter, earlier this year: "If it comes down to the last day and you're the only superdelegate ... do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?" A veteran of the 1960s civil rights struggles, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, switched from Clinton to Obama in mid-race. Older women particularly feel that Clinton is their only hope of seeing a woman occupy the Oval Office, McCaskill said. One refused to talk with her during a Democratic fundraiser in early April, she said. And some feel simply that it's Clinton's turn, something she's owed. "I don't know, really, where that comes from, the 'her turn' stuff," McCaskill, a former prosecutor and state auditor, said in a recent interview. "I just don't think we can ever get into the trap of deciding elections based on who's 'turn' it is. "Nobody ever considered it my turn," she added. "I had to go out and fight for it." Former lawmaker Pat Schroeder said the media's focus on Clinton's difficulties � from the pitch of her laugh to Bill Clinton's affect on her candidacy � "have become kind of female legend." "There's a feeling, you know, of sisterhood," explains Schroeder, a Clinton supporter who flirted with a presidential bid in 1988. "There's really a general consensus that (Clinton's) gotten the short end of the stick when it came to media, and you have women knowing all along that women have had a tough go in politics," Schroeder added. EMILY's List has spent nearly a quarter-century working to elect women who favor abortion rights to public office, and the majority of female House Democrats have endorsed Clinton. In the Senate, six of the female members have endorsed Clinton, two Obama and two are uncommitted. The group has helped the Obama supporters, too. But Clinton by far is the brightest name on its marquee. "It is sort of a man bites dog story when the women senators or congresswomen support Senator Obama," said Malcolm. Klobuchar tried to explain. Starting on Feb. 5 when her state chose Obama over Clinton 2-to-1, she made perhaps dozens of telephone calls to supporters and Clinton herself, "so no one would be surprised." "There was no doubt where I was going after that," Klobuchar recalls. Clinton, she said, "understood, given what happened in my state." McCaskill says she is more than willing to explain her personal connection to Obama and her belief that he would make the better president � as well as her willingness to support Clinton, should she instead win the nomination. But as McCaskill can attest, not everyone wants to hear her side. Recalling the woman who avoided her: "She was very upset with me and didn't want to talk to me. And that was hard. I just hope that time will help heal that." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080417/ap_on_el_pr/women_superdelegates_3;_ylt=AsoQqE7s7KFtPFtFnuZMJWNh24cA

The senator's 12-year-old daughter, meanwhile, supports Obama. Let's all take our cue from 12-year-olds. "They feel that they elect the women and they've gone to bat for the women and they want every single woman to go to bat for every woman candidate," she added. Another annoying trait. Women are not noted for their loyalty to other women. The mentality is "I made it on my own." As you can see with the following statement: "Nobody ever considered it my turn," she added. "I had to go out and fight for it." These women are stupidly than shit. Men play by these rules. They always have. They just don't get it and are playing into the Obama camp's hand. Fools!

Ongoing nomination fight hurting Clinton more than Obama http://news.yahoo.com/page/election-2008-political-pulse-obama-gains;_ylt=AoSbe9KvQ6psk8I5nhgeIxus0NUE

For the record, this weekend in a 12 hour period, my aunt got 3 candidate calls....2 Clinton, 1 Obama, all recorded.

I almost thought this was a joke. Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital By Joe Bavier Tue Apr 22, 1:24 PM ET KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings. Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure. "You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday. Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released. "I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said. "But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said. Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members. "It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/ ) (Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080422/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_congo_democratic_witchcraft;_ylt=AiHn8CDsbS9Z__8zueJcuxus0NUE

Being true to my word, I'm bringing the political comments over here: By Kathryn Jean Lopez But what about the president? Why should he perform for the press? I cringed Saturday night, far beyond his Dick Cheney peephole sex joke. Even while he conducted the Marine band I had this nagging feeling he was the butt of a joke to a majority of the room, viewing the president of the United States as a goofball. A goofball is mild. He's been the butt of jokes for nearly 8 painful years. Does this woman not turn on late night television? The president said: �I love the mixed crowds here.� I prefer mixed crowds on the Hill, when they actually get something worthwhile done. Like put the economy into the crapper? (my next post) (There were moments Saturday night I worried they weren�t laughing with him but at him, taking joy in the press-mandated abasement of the president.) Op. cit.

Just picked one of the articles from this topic, which has been rankling me. What about the skyrocketing food costs here? Bush calls for approval of $770 million in food aid WASHINGTON (AP) � President Bush called on Congress Thursday to approve $770 million to help alleviate dramatically escalating food prices that threaten widespread hunger and increasing social unrest around the world. In a surprise mid-afternoon appearance at the White House, Bush announced he is asking lawmakers to approve the additional funds for global food aid and development programs. The money is being included in a broader $70 billion Iraq war funding measure for 2009 that the White House sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday. "In some of the world's poorest nations, rising prices can mean the difference between getting a daily meal and going without food," Bush said. "The American people are generous people and they're a compassionate people. We believe in the timeless truth `to whom much is given, much is expected.'" The new money comes on top of $200 million Bush ordered released two weeks ago for emergency food aid. Even so, Bush called it "just the beginning" of the U.S. effort to help. He said the United States would spend a total of $5 billion this year and next on food aid and related programs. "America's in the lead, we'll stay in the lead and we expect others to participate along with us," he said. The new funds are aimed at meeting immediate needs with direct shipments of food aid, and the White House said the amount would allow for millions more people to get help, But the funds also have long-term aims, boosting U.S. programs to help farmers in developing countries increase productivity and making cash payments to purchase local crops, so communities are less in need of emergency help in the first place. The issue has become more urgent recently because of food shortages and rising prices that, combined with high gas costs and rising home foreclosures, are putting a huge squeeze on families at home and abroad. What has been termed the first global food crisis since World War II has resulted in cries for help from United Nations officials and raised questions about how Bush will respond. Some have blamed the food crisis in part on Bush-backed policies that push food-based biofuels such as ethanol as alternative energy sources. Bush says diverting corn and soybeans into fuel is still a smart approach, though he favors increasing funding for research into eventually using waste byproducts of those commodities rather than the edible portion. The United States is the world's largest provider of food aid, delivering more than $2.1 billion to 78 developing countries last year.

Even while he conducted the Marine band I had this nagging feeling he was the butt of a joke to a majority of the room, viewing the president of the United States as a goofball. (Karen) A goofball is mild. He's been the butt of jokes for nearly 8 painful years. Does this woman not turn on late night television? I thought she was trying to be ironically understated....er, something. I prefer mixed crowds on the Hill, when they actually get something worthwhile done. (Karen) Like put the economy into the crapper? (my next post) I chuckled thinking she was being sarcastic, or ironic....er, something...again. "In some of the world's poorest nations, rising prices can mean the difference between getting a daily meal and going without food," Bush said. "The American people are generous people and they're a compassionate people. We believe in the timeless truth `to whom much is given, much is expected.'" I do love this....trying to guilt Congress (and the American people) into supporting his war funding by throwing in some "compassion" for starving people...and not in his own country, as Karen points out, in with this bill. And the one thing that's gotten my goat over the past week, and is yet another in a series of things that has seriously given me pause over Hillary, is her support for that absurd proposal from McCain to give a gas tax moratorium for the summer. I mean if she's going to jump onto a bandwagon on that ridiculousness, I have to seriously, *seriously* question her judgement.

Thanks for the articles, Dorine and Karen. I LOL at the penis one. Isn't Obama's uncle from Congo? ;-) My call to IN this week were balanced. I didn't know there were so many hicks in IN, really! At this point, we must go with the popular vote and allow FL and Mich, Hillary's got those. I'll be at HQ for a final push on Monday. It would be so great if she took IN and NC.

Sad news re: Sen, Edward Kennedy and his diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor.

Donkey jailed in Mexico for biting, kicking people THE ASSOCIATED PRESS TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - A donkey is doing time in southern Mexico for assault and battery. Police say the animal was locked up at a local jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances after it bit and kicked two men near a ranch in Chiapas state. Officer Sinar Gomez says the donkey will remain behind bars until its owner agrees to pay the men's medical bills. http://www.mytelus.com/ncp_news/article.en.do?pn=oddities&articleID=2924009 ********************************************************************* Considering there have been at least 4 murders of Canadian tourists in Mexico that remain unsolved, it's reassuring to know that the local police are not entirely inept. ;-)

If you want the democrats to win in Nov. I urge everyone to call their local senators and super delegates and tell them to support Hillary Clinton. It is amazing the type of pressure the O people are putting on them. This makes it so obvious who the candidate to win is...the one who relatively easily wins electoral college: Clinton map: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Clinton/Maps/May23.html Obama map: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Obama/Maps/May23.html Good article from Philadelphia Inquirer: In most inclusive count, Clinton has the numbers Lost in the excitement of Barack Obama's coronation this week was an inconvenient fact of Tuesday's results: Hillary Clinton netted approximately 150,000 votes and is now poised to finish the primary season as the popular-vote leader. In some quaint circles, presumably, these things still matter. Real Clear Politics keeps track of six versions of the popular-vote total. They are, in ascending order of inclusivity: (1) the popular vote of sanctioned contests; (2) the total of sanctioned contests, plus estimated votes from the Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington caucuses; (3) the popular vote plus Florida; (4) popular vote plus Florida and the caucuses; (5) the popular vote plus Florida and Michigan; (6) popular vote plus Florida, Michigan, and the caucus estimates. After Tuesday, Clinton now leads in two of these six counts. If you believe that the most important precept in democratic politics is to "count every vote," then the sixth category is the most inclusive, and here Clinton leads Obama by 71,301 votes. Of course, this includes the Michigan result, where Sen. Obama had removed his name from the ballot. So while it may be the most inclusive, it may not be the most fair. The third and fourth counts - the ones which include Florida - seem more fair. Here, Obama is clinging to a slight lead of 146,786 votes (257,008, with the caucus estimates). However, with Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota remaining, he will almost certainly finish behind her in these counts, likely by a few hundred thousand votes. But could Clinton take over the lead in all of the popular-vote tabulations? Quite possibly. In Puerto Rico's last major election, two million people voted. Let's assume that turnout for this historic vote - Puerto Rico has never had a presidential primary before - will be equal to or greater than that turnout. If Clinton were to win Puerto Rico by 20 points she would pick up at least a 400,000-vote margin. This would allow her to swamp Obama in the popular-vote counts, which include Florida, making her the leader in four of the six permutations of the popular vote. At that point, Obama would be left clinging to the least-inclusive count, which he now leads by 441,558 votes (551,780, including caucuses). To understand how razor-thin this majority is, consider that if the Puerto Rico turnout is slightly larger than we have imagined - or Clinton's margin is slightly greater - then Clinton would finish the primary process leading in every conceivable vote count. With two million voters, a 28 percent victory would put Clinton over the top even in the count, which excludes Florida and Michigan and includes estimates for Obama's caucus victories. It is this looming prospect which explains the tremendous pressure Obama partisans and the media are putting on Clinton to drop out of the race. They want her gone now because they understand that she has an excellent chance of finishing as the undisputed people's choice. Would it matter if Clinton were the undisputed (or even disputed) popular-vote winner? That's hard to say. The question is, matter to whom? The superdelegates will determine the nominee and there's no telling what will sway them. They have no objective criteria from which to make their decisions. But if they were to deny the popular-vote champ the nomination, there is a real question of whether Democratic voters would reconcile themselves to the decision. As it is, much of the talk about Democratic defections in November has been overstated. Partisan voters almost always come home after their candidate loses. The problem arises when a candidate's supporters believe that their guy (or gal) didn't lose. Expect the chorus calling for Clinton's withdrawal to grow louder over the next week, with people insisting that she has no "path to victory." Clinton's path is both obvious and simple: Win the popular vote and force Barack Obama and his cheerleaders to explain why that doesn't matter. E-mail Jonathan Last at jlast@phillynews.com.

From a British correspondant, a validating article: http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/05/obama-clinton-vote-usa-media

LOL, Sandy. Priorities. ;-) I think it's in Mexico that some police officials and officers have been killed as well. Thanks, Moon. I still have to get to the British article you posted. And in the You Can't Write This dept: Pilots run out of fuel, pray, land near Jesus sign Wed May 21, 7:50 PM ET WELLINGTON, New Zealand - It seemed like an almost literal answer to their prayers. When two New Zealand pilots ran out of fuel in a microlight airplane they offered prayers and were able to make an emergency landing in a field � coming to rest right next to a sign reading, "Jesus is Lord." Grant Stubbs and Owen Wilson, both from the town of Blenheim on the country's South Island, were flying up the sloping valley of Pelorus Sound when the engine spluttered, coughed and died. "My friend and I are both Christians so our immediate reaction in a life-threatening situation was to ask for God's help," Stubbs told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He said he prayed during the ill-fated flight Sunday that the tiny craft would get over the top of a ridge and that they would find a landing site that was not too steep � or in the nearby sea. Wilson said that the pair would have been in deep trouble if the fuel had run out five minutes earlier. "If it had to run out, that was the place to be," he said. "There was an instantaneous answer to prayer as we crossed the ridge and there was an airfield � I didn't know it existed till then." After Wilson glided the powerless craft to a landing on the grassy strip, the pair noticed they were beside a 20-foot-tall sign that read, "Jesus is Lord � The Bible." "When we saw that, we started laughing," Stubbs said. Nearby residents provided them with gas to fly the home-built plane back to base.

Found this story around the time Sandy posted her animal story and thought this was a nice companion piece, then forgot to post it. I had a cockatiel I tried to teach to talk, but she never really did. And truthfully, I didn't try real hard. Lost parrot tells veterinarian his address Thu May 22, 11:36 AM ET TOKYO - When Yosuke the parrot flew out of his cage and got lost, he did exactly what he had been taught � recite his name and address to a stranger willing to help. Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor's roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said. He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet. "I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura," the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs. "We checked the address, and what do you know, a Nakamura family really lived there. So we told them we've found Yosuke," Uemura said. The Nakamura family told police they had been teaching the bird its name and address for about two years. But Yosuke apparently wasn't keen on opening up to police officials. "I tried to be friendly and talked to him, but he completely ignored me," Uemura said.

Anti-Hillary Message Says 'Women Go Home' Run Date: 05/27/08 By Caryl Rivers WeNews commentator http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3614 Hillary Clinton's strong presidential bid has broken barriers. But Caryl Rivers cautions that a retro cloud is also following her campaign. College admissions, court rulings, congressional votes, media narratives are all telling women to stay home. -The presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton has some disturbing messages for uppity women in the United States. The reality that a woman is so close to the top political post in the country--perhaps even the world--has stirred up old ideas about the danger of female power and about woman's proper place in society. The backlash is sending a retro cloud across a number of fronts. I'd been hearing from female friends--some of whom do not support Hillary--that the backlash surprised them. Apparently, they missed the Wall Street Journal story on April 9 by Jonathan Kaufman and Carol Hymowitz, who wrote about the slurs and inflammatory language that many women encountered when the topic of the campaign came up at work, and which they thought had been banished from public discourse. "Some women worry that regardless of how the election turns out," they wrote, "the resistance to Senator Clinton may embolden some men to resist women's efforts to share power with them in business, politics and elsewhere." If Hillary were male, and had garnered so many votes, no one would be calling for a pullout. Worrying Signs Are we heading into a new era of resistance to female gains? There are worrying signs to suggest that the answer is yes. They are not only found in the dust of Hillary's campaign trail, but also in the college admission practices, votes in Congress, Supreme Court decisions. Elite schools are quietly instituting affirmative action policies for white men, so top-scoring women may not be getting into their colleges of choice. U.S. News and World Report, using undergraduate admissions rate data collected from more than 1,400 four-year colleges and universities that participate in the magazine's rankings, found last year that over the previous 10 years many schools are maintaining their gender balance by admitting more men with lower scores than women. "The fat acceptance envelope is simply more elusive for today's accomplished young women," Jennifer Delahunty, the dean of admissions at Kenyon College, wrote in a New York Times op-ed last year. Most disturbing, Delahunty told Time magazine, "was the reaction of young women. By and large they just assumed this is just how things work. Why aren't they marching in the streets? It isn't fair and women should be saying something about it not being fair." What's the Message? What message are girls--and boys--being given? That men and boys will always be allowed to step ahead of women, no matter how accomplished the latter? The U.S. Congress could not even summon enough votes in April for a bill that would allow a woman to sue for sex discrimination at the time she discovered it was happening. Pressures, meanwhile, are intensifying for women to work longer and longer hours as family-friendly policies stall. An ongoing media narrative says that women in good jobs are deserting the workplace because of a traditional pull toward home and family. In a time when affirmative action programs for blacks and other minorities are under attack--limited by the Supreme Court and challenged by new activist groups--special privileges for white males are on the rise. Parents are seeing their high-scoring, talented girls losing out to less able boys, and this comes not just from a few isolated anecdotes. At the same time, the political powers-that-be are sending out a message that discrimination against women in the workplace is no big deal. When an Alabama woman sued Goodyear because she had been paid less than men doing the same work for two decades, the Supreme Court (just after the departure of Sandra Day O'Connor) ruled that she had waited too long to sue. The court said she should have brought her case within six months after her first unequal paycheck--that is, 20 years before she discovered it. You'd think the Congress, which pays lip service to equal pay for equal work, would come racing to remedy this injustice. What happened? The House countered the high court ruling by passing a bill that would permit lawsuits by victims of discrimination when they discover discrimination, not when the discrimination occurred. But it couldn't make it through the Senate. George Bush threatened to veto such a bill if it passed, and John McCain said he opposed it. Media Embraces a Narrative Meanwhile, a media narrative persists that the best and the brightest women are simply going home. They are "opting out" and becoming more traditional, feeling the pull of kids, hearth and home, their "natural" place. Signs hoisted by hecklers at Clinton rallies --"Stop running for president and make me a sandwich," "Iron my shirt"--show the ugly underside of that sentimental version. What's really happening, says New York University sociologist Kathleen Gerson, is that full-time paid work has come to mean 50 hours or more. That overload is what working mothers are rejecting. Women, overall, aren't "opting out" of full-time work, but are getting pushed out by an increasingly inflexible workplace. That story is not being told. Just ask Joan C. Williams. In a report in the American Prospect in March she found the vast majority--more than 70 percent--of the newspaper stories she and others analyzed emphasized pulls rather than pushes. Women were following the pull toward home, "with little mention of how the workplace pushes them out." This is true even though a 2004 study by researchers Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy found that 86 percent of highly qualified women surveyed said work-related reasons, including workplace inflexibility, were key considerations in their decisions to quit. Only 6 percent of newspaper articles that Williams reviewed identified workplace pushes as key reasons why women left work. Put these disparate items together and you see the clear message: Women have gone too far, and they shouldn't be running for president. They belong at home, and in fact are choosing to stay home. So why shouldn't males get the college spots, and who cares about workplace discrimination? As president Hillary Clinton could change at least some of this. That's why it's so hard to listen to the delegate-counters say her prospects are fading. Some women are fighting back. On May 20, the Women's Media Center launched a "Sexism Sells, But We're Not Buying It" campaign against the pervasive sexism in the media's election coverage. The group's Web site offers a petition for you to sign, chiding media outlets for their performance. "Sexism isn't a partisan issue," it says. "We're not going to let anyone hit the snooze button on this important issue!" To which I say, "Amen!" Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers is the author of "Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women."