The Norwegian newspaper VG has reported a truly amazing story about a newly-wed trying to get to Norway to be with her husband, and the stranger who helped pay an unexpected luggage surcharge. The blog 'Leisha's Random Thoughts' has translated the story.It was 1988, and Mary Andersen was at the Miami airport checking in for a long flight to Norway to be with her husband when the airline representative informed her that she wouldn't be able to check her luggage without paying a 100 surcharge:When it was finally Mary's turn, she got the message that would crush her bubbling feeling of happiness.“You'll have to pay a 103 dollar surcharge if you want to bring both those suitcases to Norway,” the man behind the counter said.Mary had no money. Her new husband had traveled ahead of her to Norway, and she had no one else to call.“I was completely desperate and tried to think which of my things I could manage without. But I had already made such a careful selection of my most prized possessions,” says Mary.As tears streamed down her face, she heard a “gentle and friendly voice” behind her saying, 'That's okay, I'll pay for her.”
It has been months since I have blogged here....weeks since I even looked at my page.
I have missed it, and been blessed by more than a few messages that I have been missed.
Thank you.
While quiet here, I have campaigned. The person to person, neighbor to neighbor way.
A few uncomfortable exchanges. Some harsh words.
More smiles, agreements, sense of belonging.
After talks like that, calls across the country, emails, and blogs -
I do have hope.
I also watch too much news.
And from that...I gain fear...even when the news is good.
I am, one who can worry.
Sleep has been uncharacteristically hard for me this last week.
Focus at work wandering.
I wonder...will it all come true?
Will there be another, even worse wrenching loss.
Worse, might there be efforts to steal that work?
And what then for this nation? for this movement? for me and my spouse?
So, I needed a way to respond to that.
First I came back here.
Read.
Went through dozens of emails here and in my private account - reading words and thoughts and hopes
of friends I have made because of this effort.
And...
I donated.
Not a lot. But more than anyone would say is prudent for me to be donating at this time.
And that is what helped.
Looking around at people I know spending days on end on the phone, on the blogs, on the streets helping, working, trying, doing what they can, it became so clear that this is no time for prudence.
It is instead, a time for thoughtful abandon of normalcy, and a two day spasm of effort, built of hope, and fed by my belief that the better world I long for, that I wish for others, ALL others with no exceptions, will have its greatest likelihood, in a Barack Obama Presidency.
So I say to all of you, for all you have done and are yet to do, Thank You.
I say to all who fear and worry as I do, BREATHE, SMILE, HOPE and then ACT - it helps.
I say to the world watching us - hang on and be hopeful with us and for us. I believe we will get this right and then be better friends and neighbors again.
I say to all who may - VOTE.
I say upward and outward with all the sincere desire in my heart- Please.
John
As a 31 year old woman, who has for the last three elections voted Republican and am now a registered Democrat. I believe I speak for many.I belive that the country is ready for a woman to hold the highest office in our government. However, I do not believe in voting for a candidate just because they are a woman. As a woman I want to be the one who makes decisions about my health, about my body. I do not believe the government has the right nor the need to make that decision for me.
I am a high school teacher. I've seen what our lack of a sex education program has done to our teenagers. It has created a lot of teenagers with one or more children, who as much as they try not to often drop out of school. Is this what you want? I know we want to believe that this education should be provided at home, but let's get real. It's not happening. For the most part, we as educators see these children more than their parents do and for a lot of them we may be the only person who listens, who gives them a hug, who notices that they need new shoes or that they are even pregnant.
I want to believe that mother nature takes care of herself and will adapt to us. But, we have gone and created things that no one thought was possible. These chemicals destroy the environment and the eco-systems around us. It's time for us to give back and that includes creating alternative energy sources. I mean even the biggest oil baron T. Boone Pickens has said that we can no longer rely on oil as our sole source of fuel. Someone give this lady a clue.
There is so much more I could say about her inexperience, about her ability to stand up with no remorse and lie to the American public about what she has and hasn't done as Governor or even the fact that she mocks the community activism that this country was founded on. ALL of which have nothing to do with the fact that she is a WOMAN and everything to do with the fact that she is the WRONG WOMAN.
The U.S. is not currently at war, at least according to Richard Stearns, a federal judge in Boston.
The determination wasn’t just so much dicta*. Judge Stearns actually had to decide whether the U.S. is at war in order to decide whether the statute of limitations had run on certain criminal charges in a case involving the Big Dig, the massive construction project that’s been going on for years in Beantown. Click here for a copy of the opinion. (Hat Tip: How Appealing).
The background: In May of 2006, former employees of a concrete supplier were indicted on a handful of charges alleging, among other things, that they’d submitted fraudulent reports to the government. The defendants argued that because the alleged activity took place in early 2001 and before, the charges were time-barred by the five-year statute of limitations.
The government, however, argued that something called the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act, as the name implies, suspended the statue of limitations. The Act provides:
When the United States is at war the running of any statute of limitations applicable to any offense (1) involving fraud or attempted fraud against the United States or any agency thereof in any manner, whether by conspiracy or not . . . shall be suspended until three years after the termination of hostilities as proclaimed by the President or by a concurrent resolution of Congress.
Therefore, strange as it seems, Judge Stearns had to decide whether the U.S. is war to rule on a motion involving contractors in a highway project.
The opinion, while detailed, is a pretty fascinating read. The bottom line, according to Judge Stearns: the U.S. ended the war in Afghanistan on December 22, 2001 and ended the war in Iraq on May 1, 2003. In other words, the statute of limitations on the criminal charges hadn’t yet expired by the time the government filed its superseding indictment in June.
BusinessWeek: President Bush recently lifted an executive order prohibiting oil exploration in U.S. coastal waters, and many people believe the gold mine of oil in coastal areas could be tapped to lower prices. But the reality is that drilling in the now-restricted areas would require years of extensive seismic research before a single rig could operate. Even then, companies would not embark on such massive projects unless the profitability were clear, and the federal Energy Information Administration estimates that access to new U.S. deposits would not significantly affect overall domestic production for 22 years.
When Cathy Landry, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute Says "Every day we wait is a day further from more oil production." I say EXACTLY!
Let's get one day further away from oil production.
Then let's get one week away.
Then a month, and a year.
And finally and rightly lets get away from oil production FOREVER.
WORTH A RE-POST........BETTER TO STAND FOR SOMETHING THAN FALL FOR NOTHING....
June 1, 2008 | 2:02 pm
Democrats have trouble winning presidential elections. One reason is that they have difficulty keeping the campaign focused on their issues. Polls show that this year especially the issues favor the Democrats, with the big ones, the Iraq war and the economy deeply in the Democrats’ favor. But campaigns are not stately debates about issues. They are also battles over what the debate will be about. The politics of distraction can be very powerful, and Democrats have struggled with it for years. Consider how John Edwards found his campaign derailed because he had an expensive haircut. John Kerry had to deal with false attacks on his war record. Right now, the biggest distraction for Obama is Hillary Clinton’s quixotic campaign. Even though she has no chance to win the nomination, she keeps going (at least for a few more days). Media coverage of the fairly ridiculous case for Florida and Michigan being seated at the Democratic convention distracted from Obama’s attack on John McCain for flubbing how many troops we have in Iraq. Of course, the biggest distraction for Obama has been the Rev. Wright controversy. And since this is a real issue, he has had to deal directly with it at some length. While he has dealt fairly effectively with the story, and this week quit the church, this distraction may always be there as a kind of low-level illness. But there will be more, and the Republicans are artful at working the media to keep them alive. A good example is the misstatement Obama made about his uncle liberating a Nazi death camp. He had the wrong camp, and corrected it. It made headlines. In order to keep the distractions from messing up your campaign, you have to speak loudly, clearly, and firmly. You have to say things that are more interesting than your haircut, or the latest distraction. And you have to say them over and over again. You can’t get caught up in the distractions. Deal with them, and move on quickly. So far, Obama is showing some skill at this, as he has directed his attacks at McCain, and not at Clinton. That’s a way of saying, without saying, that the nomination race has been over for a while. He turned McCain’s distraction of challenging him to go to Iraq into an attack on McCain’s lack of knowledge about Iraq despite his several trips there. I expect a cascade of distractions from here on. They are like marbles on the floor, or nails in the roadway. They will keep coming. If one doesn’t work, another one will come up. They will come by viral email. They will come on radio talk shows. They will be presented on the evening news. Some will be true, if pointless. Some will be plainly false. Obama’s road to the White House is not paved with thoughtful debates, although there will be some. It’s paved with marbles and nails. His task will be to keep our eyes on the road.
Posted by Raphael Sonenshein
Once you catch your breath, write him here:
KOLBERMANN@MSNBC.COM
Thanks.
JWZ
--------------
Keith-
While I do not know you well enough to call you Keith, I feel you know
me that well for almost nightly I hear you speak my heart.
Never more so than on Friday May 23, 2008.
Your special comment was compelling, masterful, and unfortunately
absolutely necessary.
It was also heart wrenching. Your efforts to support the Clintons in
the past are well documented. The obvious and painful disappointment
you feel in her massive, repeated, and inconscionable actions creates
in your delivery a different tone and cadence than when you more
gleefully rail against President Bush.
Thank you for both what you do and how. Please keep it up. This
nation, this world, and this individual are in desperate need of your
reasoned and empassioned voice.
Thank you
John W. Zinsser
All -
I have been quiet for a while.
Chalk it up to personal and professional demands, not a loss of interest and desire.
The good news is I have a bunch of things I want to write about and look forward to your thoughts and responses on.
But first this unbelievably surreal piece of politics.
Yesterday the WSJ carried a piece by Karl Rove entitled "Obama's troubling instincts."
If it was not so painfully partisan and attack driven, it could be the opening to a SNL skit this week.
I wrote a comment to the WSJ website and it follows. Encourage you all to do the same.
Do it nicely. Be like Obama - respectful, thoughtful, maybe a little funny, but courteous.
But do act.
We all know this is but the tip of the iceberg. But this bad dog needs to be shown that we, the master, will not accept this form of bad behavior. So roll up that newspaper and please take a respectful discplining swing at Rove and the WSJ.
Best-
My Response -
_______________________________
Wait... Karl Rove is titling a piece "(anyone else's) troubling instincts?" Karl Rove who is under supboena from Congress for his troubling ACTIONS not instincts - but ACTIONS? Karl Rove (and others associated with him) who either instinctually or with great personal fore thought continue to choose to thumb their collective noses at the legislative branch of government in hereto fore unseen ways making a mockery of our form of government and balance of power? Karl Rove has no right to question any one else's instincts these days. Something about those in glass houses seems right here. I laughed so hard at the headline, had to wait for the tears to clear from my eyes before I went on to the article. Troubling Actions Karl...how about you write us a meaningful piece about your very troubling, offensive, and possibly illegal actions. That, or show up on July 10, and tell us all about it. Someone will be there to write it all down for you in the congressional record. SIDE BAR - The WSJ's editorial slant has so declined and shifted since the purchase of the paper and realignment of leadership there, that I can almost not read it anymore. It is quite sad to me. Like watching a good, trusted friend, one who was smart and intelligent and helpful, loose that capacity to some insipid brainwashing or disease. A real loss to the business community and America as a whole. Thanks. John
King James BibleAnd let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
