Go Jeff Hardy at Armegeddon! I will be SOOOOOOOOO happy if he won.

Happy hoidays WWE! it is almost christmas. I am asking for Jeff Hardy to win the WWE champion at Armegeddon.

Obviously I couldn't go back to sleep so I've been surfing again.  I hope this works because I found it interesting.     :)

OK so I did the always popular yearly "putting up the lights" dance the other day without too much fanfare (and profanity) only to find out once I was on the roof:

Forgot the extension cords!

And, of course--even though I checked ALL bulbs previously..several were out once I was back on the ground..so Dan gave me this pic of the ultimate display if Christmas lights were left up to men!

.:12 Strays Of Christmas
These are 12 amazing animals from the Washington Humane Society who would love a family for Christmas... (HINT:click on the pictures to read the info)

.:Big **** Truck And Storage Rental
This is a hilarious commercial...why don't they do these here

.:From LA To DC On Bike
And it's all for Obama's inaguration

.:Worst Commercial Placement Ever
Haha someone's gonna get in trouble for this screw up

.:Cheesecake Factory Harassment
I wouldn't go into the kitchen if I was you...read on

.:What's White Black and Red All Over??
A group of penguins being mauled by a fox...hahah I think I'm funny

.:What Corona Commercials Really Look Like
This is actually pretty funny...  I mean it's funny enough to procastinate work for

.:No More F's For Students
Because that hurts their feelings...now they'll fail but H's instead

.:Woman Swept To Sea During Proposal
No joke...she was almost engaged and than engulfed by a wave

.:How Do You Tell Your Kids Santa's Broke
I don't know what I would do in this situation but this article could possibly help

.:Terror Passed On By Smell
You can really smell terror on someone...read on here

.:Don't Mail Yourself Pot
From Samy's hometown...and ohh is he proud
BONUS:Father son duo busted for same thing

.:One Things Growing In This Economy
And that is contraceptive sales...  I mean babies are expensive
PS:Also the movie business has seen a boom as well

.:Why You Shouldn't Buy Your Wife A Vacuum
In case you thought it would be a great idea...it really isn't

.:Most Annoying Holiday Songs
And you're bound to hear them 100 times before year's end

.:Man Proposes With Banner On Interstate
I don't know if I could've gotten away with that, but to each their own

.:Amazing Basketball Shot
This is awesome and I don't even really watch sports!!

.:Eggs Could Cause Cancer
Now don't throw them all away just yet, but it's something you should read

.:You Have The Flu
You could be getting a text message before you even feel the symptoms

.:This Year's Hot Color
Get ready to wear a lot of yellow this year...just forewarning

.:Break With Him Already
If you find yourself answering yes to these....maybe it's time to end it

.:Man Finds 20 Year Old Class Ring In Fish
No joke...someone caught the fish and returned the ring 20 years later

Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. is the clear favorite of Illinois Democrats among the party's top five candidates to succeed Barack Obama as the state's junior U.S. senator.

The Chicago congressman who has been openly campaigning for the job has the support of 36% of Illinois Democrats, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state taken Tuesday night.

Tammy Duckworth, director of Illinois' Department of Veterans Affairs, is next with the backing of 29%, followed by state Attorney General Lisa Madigan with 17%.

Another congressman mentioned for the post, Rep. Jan Schakowksy, has eight percent (8%) support, with Emil Jones, president of the Illinois Senate, at two percent (2%). Just seven percent (7%) of Democrats are not sure which candidate they prefer.

Rod Blagojevich, Illinois' Democratic governor and consistently one of the most unpopular state chief executives in the country, has said he will appoint Obama's successor during the Christmas holidays. Obama has not endorsed anyone for the post for the seat which he resigned following his election as president.

Just 15% now say Blagojevich is doing a good or excellent job as governor, while 61% rate his performance as poor. Both numbers mark an improvement for Blagojevich from his numbers in the final Rasmussen Reports survey just before Election Day. to With just two years remaining in Obama's Senate term, a key issue for Democrats is the electability of the fill-in senator in 2010.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? Sign up now. If it's in the news, it's in our polls).

Madigan is the top vote-getter among Republicans (37%) and those unaffiliated with either party (23%). Nearly one-third in both these groups, however, are undecided, which is perhaps not surprising since all the action is on the Democratic side.

Among all Illinois residents, Madigan attracts 25% support, closely followed by Jackson with 23%. Duckworth is next with the backing of 21%. Schakowksy has seven percent (7%) support, with Jones at three percent (3%). Twenty-one percent (21%) are undecided.

Each of the contenders for the job offers political advantages and disadvantages for the embattled Blagojevich. Madigan is expected to challenge Blagojevich if he seeks reelection in 2010, so naming her to the Senate would remove a powerful potential rival and perhaps tone down one of his sharpest critics, Madigan's father, who is speaker of the state House. One of the governor's only remaining pockets of support is the African-American community which is insisting that a candidate such as Jackson or Jones succeed Obama, who was the only black U.S. senator.

Duckworth, who lost both her legs while serving in Iraq and was an unsuccessful candidate for the House this year, has the support of Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel and Senate Majority Whip **** Durbin, Illinois' senior senator.

Madigan is the leader among men with 28% support, while Jackson is the favorite of a plurality of women (29%). Next for women is Madigan with 22% backing. Second for men is Duckworth (24%), who gets 19% support among women. Just 15% of men support Jackson.

Eighty-one percent (81%) of African-Americans favor Jackson, compared to 10% of whites. Madigan gets the highest level of white support (31%), followed by Duckworth with 22%. Statistically, Madigan has 0% support among blacks.

Duckworth is the top choice of married Illinois residents, closely followed by Madigan. Jackson and Madigan are the top picks for unmarrieds.

Jackson's support is highest among low-income residents in the state, while those with higher-incomes prefer Madigan and Duckworth.

Illinois residents are even more supportive of Obama as president-elect than voters nationwide. Fifty-seven percent (57%) Strongly Approve of Obama's performance since Election Day, while 12% Strongly Disapprove.

Nationally, in the Rasmussen reports daily Presidential Approval Index, 42% of voters now Strongly Approve of the way Obama is handling the role of president-elect while just 14% Strongly Disapprove.

Obama easily carried his home state on Election Day.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it's free)... let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

See survey questions and toplines. Crosstabs are available to Premium Members only.

10-Angeline Jolie

9-Carrie Underwood

8-Marisa Miller

7-Shakira

6-Paris Hilton

5-Joss Stones

4-Miley Cyrus

3-Diane Neal

2-Ashley Tisdale

1-Demi Lovato

AND ANYONE WHO IS TIED TO THIS MADNESS WILL BE REVEALED, I SAID BY FRIDAY RIGHT... Blagojevich ius going to come under fire because this is his watch, far more than anyone else because he is the face of the state. I said by Friday right?

Feds raid pharmacies of Blagojevich fund-raiser tied to probe

December 5, 2008
BY PATRICK FERRELL AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters

FBI agents on Thursday executed a search warrant at two Joliet pharmacies owned by Harish M. Bhatt, a fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich who has been linked to a federal probe involving the governor's administration.

It appeared, however, that the feds' visit to Bhatt's pharmacies was not connected to the Blagojevich probe. "They are looking into somebody else," Bhatt said Thursday. "We have nothing to do with it."

Bhatt would not disclose whom the feds were interested in, saying agents asked him to be quiet.

The feds combed through paperwork at Basinger's Pharmacy, 2130 W. Jefferson St., and Essington Pharmacy, 2202 Essington Rd., according to FBI spokesman Ross Rice. The visits were part of "an ongoing federal investigation," said Rice, declining to elaborate.

Bhatt vehemently has denied wrongdoing involving his fund-raising activities for Blagojevich.

Late last year, federal authorities took over a State Police probe into whether Bhatt might have illegally solicited a $25,000 contribution for Blagojevich's campaign fund from another pharmacy owner, Jatin Patel.

Patel had claimed in a State Police report that Bhatt had told him the contribution would help him be treated "fairly" by the administration on a regulatory issue. Patel's company, Sarj USA Inc., gave $25,000 to the governor's campaign fund June 27, 2005. But Patel canceled the check within a few weeks and filed the police report.

Patel said he took those actions because he suspected the solicitation might be inappropriate.

Beacause you did not believe that I had eyes on you, if you did not believe then why you want to beleive me now, it is toolate they have watched all of this, I said I would cover Barack and you could have any of the rest, but you cannot touch him or as the media reports, you cannot take that (Obama's win) away from me.

Strange how a book can change you or maybe it just seems that way in retrospect. A year passes and you know you feel differently but you're not sure what, why or how so you cast your mind back for something that might give that difference shape.  When you read about a historic and momentous world event for the first time which strikes a powerful chord with you, you remember the sight, sound and smells of the exact moment of where you were when you were turning the pages. Lying on a beach in Cape Town on January 1998 on a piercing hot day I learned about September 11^th ....1973.What then happened on September 11^th 2001, an ideology that was devised in American universities and reinforced by Washington governments decades earlier, had gone full circle and come home.    

The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America was based in Santiago, Chile and throughout the 1950's until the mid 60's, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay looked more like Europe or America. Social democrats and developmentalists gave local business's generous subsidies, workers formed powerful unions who negotiated middle class salaries, children went off to newly built public universities and foreign imports were kept out by high tariffs.

The gap between the 'polo elite' and the working masses narrowed. Proof that smart, socialist, practical policies could close the gap between the first and third world. (The only people 'suffering' were the feudal lords).      

But for the heads of U.S and U.K. corporations, those were dark days. A corporate, capitalist expansion was needed by 'discovering' new territories, grabbing land without paying for it and extracting the minerals from the earth without compensating the local populations.  

Students from Chile and other Latin countries as well as Indonesia etc. were sponsored at the Universities of Chicago and Berkeley in California to train as economists effectively to dismantle developmentalism. The US government decided what their elite students should and should not learn.

Dr Allende  was eventually murdered, the copper mines 'controlled'  and military juntas, financially supported by the US throughout South America systematically tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Leftist intellectuals and workers were drawn up on lists by the CIA, handed over to the generals and exterminated. The multinationals gave thanks and the directors and their ugly wives attended church.

In the sixties the left was the dominant mass culture ....poets, singers, artists, writers, actors were exterminated and tortured by the juntas determined to kill off socialism.

Five executives from a local car company were assassinated by the CIA. Ford and General Motors moved in and funded their own privatised torture squads. They supplied the military with cars and the juntas rid the assembly lines of troublesome unionists. The US trained economists implemented policies to flood the local market with imports, pay low wages and fire workers at will whilst sending profits home unhindered by regulations.     

It was on a beach in South Africa whilst the country was itself, recently engaged in "combating communism" in Angola (for diamonds), that I realised and understood what enforcing 'pure capitalism' on a nation meant.  I returned to London in early  September 2001 and all I remember thinking about the 11^th was... 'what goes around comes around'.  I met my good friend from Iraq in Kensington the following weekend who's uncle had been a secretary in Saddams Ba'th party and who had eventually fled ten years earlier to Austria taking his whole extended family with him.  We had a good laugh at Bush. 

In 1996, I  had just purchased my 4^th house in a small village outside Cape Town and well before the sale ten years later I was absolutely sure that would be my last ever property venture. Having worked for multinational IT companies in S. Africa, Singapore, Germany and the U.S. I had made a firm decision that I would not prostitute myself or have their blood on my hands and that I would never tie myself into the banking system ever again to eventually have their policies backed up by a couple of thugs banging on the door should I decide to default on repayments.

Five years in Cape Town was good. My life consisted of playing squash, 'dining out' (Tracy may be reading this) with various women and weekends away whilst receiving a passive income. In time I came to despise the Mercedes and BMW driving elitists who lived behind their alarms, walls and razor wire and inviting me to their little dinner parties (chiefly to show off their homes)to talk a load of idiocy. Debates and arguments with Jews in cafe bars with diamond encrusted Rolex's who's sole ambition was to own all the properties along the coastal route started to become tedious.    

The intellectual stimulation was dire. A new life for me was in its embryonic stage and it wouldn't all be legal...............

  There has been much angst ridden breast beating hereon this morning over the Karen Matthews story. Personally,  neither the existence nor the venality  of such moronic dysfunctional families either surprises or interests me - at the end of the day "nobody died".

  The one thing that did rather concern me, however, was the way in which the BBC cancelled it's scheduled programming to show an hour long Panorama special on the case. Clearly this program had be made in advance, at the license fee payers expense , in the hope and anticipation of those accused being found guilty.

  I can only assume that its producer is the kind of cretin who bangs on the side of prison vans when child molesters and the like are being transferred from courthouse to prison.  

  It was not television, or journalism, it was voyeurism. The BBC should be ashamed of itself.

DIA 5 - ¿Cómo somos?

¿Qué es ser un ejemplo? El Diccionario lo define como: "cosa o hecho que se propone y cita para que se imite o para que se evite, si es malo"  y "Persona cuyo comportamiento puede servir de modelo"

Hay personas ejemplares, y hay ejemplos que nos motivan y nos conducen a actuar...

"Los ejemplos son diez veces más útiles que los preceptos" (Charles Fox)

Pablo veía un ejemplo en Filemón:

• "Pablo, prisionero de Jesucristo, y el hermano Timoteo, al amado Filemón, colaborador  nuestro...Doy gracias a mi Dios, haciendo siempre memoria de ti en mis oraciones, porque oigo del amor y de la fe que tienes hacia el Señor Jesús, y para con todos los santos; para que la participación de tu fe sea eficaz en el conocimiento de todo el bien que está en vosotros por Cristo Jesús. Pues tenemos gran gozo y consolación en tu amor, porque por ti, oh hermano, han sido confortados los corazones de los santos" (Filemón 1, 4-7)

Asimismo, Pablo  cuya vida ejemplar le daba autoridad, la dejaba a un lado ante este hombre...

• "Por lo cual, aunque tengo mucha libertad en Cristo para mandarte lo que conviene, más bien te ruego por amor, siendo como soy, Pablo ya anciano..." (Filemon 8-9)

Evidentemente Pablo lo respetaba...

• "Pero nada quise hacer sin tu consentimiento, para que tu favor no fuese como de necesidad, sino voluntario... Así que, si me tienes por compañero..." (Filemón 14,17)

Y también reconocía que la vida de Filemón era ejemplar, por su entrega al Señor...

• "Porque oigo del amor y de la fe que tienes hacia el Señor Jesús...Te he escrito confiando en tu obediencia, sabiendo que harás aun más de lo que te digo" (Filemón 5, 21)

"Todo está perdido cuando los malos sirven de ejemplo y los buenos de mofa" (Demócrates)    

Recordemos: Nuestra conducta puede generar muchas reacciones, pero si somos ejemplos, el respeto de los demás será evidente...

TBS

Greetings all!

I have been quiet of late, after finishing my school libraries book I had a lot of work away with the Other Half, but now I am finally able to relax (kind of!) and catch up with everyone.

After receiving much inspiration from lovely EF, I have begun work on faerie sketches and paintings, it is a long time since I have painted properly and am sooo pleased to have found my way back to it! I have also bought some polymer clay to make faeries with too, again it is a long time since I have used this medium too. So thank you EF for reminding me to take up these hobbies again!

I will post my creations on here soon, I am hoping to put together a website in the new year for my art and sculptures, it will be called Realm of MerFaery. So excited, can't wait! Just had to share with my EF friends. :o)

I am also eager to get writing again after a few weeks' break, so look out for some new suite101 and AC articles soon - I have had so many lovely comments about the kitchen witch articles I will definitely be doing some more - you'll be pleased to know that they are my most popular articles on suite101!

The publishers who are printing my school librarian's guidebook also print a small range of children's fiction. Not mainstream, but what they call 'reluctant readers' - short, easy stories for those children who struggle with reading, or aren't very interested in reading. My next pitch is going to be for a range of faerie fiction based around helping the environment, so fingers crossed! Although their books are aimed at schools, anyone can buy from their website, so there will be more opportunity for these titles if they are accepted. Toes crossed as well!!

Sending Love and Light to all! xxx

CENA GONNA BE THE NEXT CHAMPION!!!!ONE!!!!

I'd like to stand up for Karen Matthews. Don't misunderstand me - I don't believe she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice after her conviction for kidnapping and incarcerating her daughter, Shannon, in an attempt to win reward money from The Sun.

But I do think she's a victim of a miscarriage of vocabulary. I've heard her called "the original Waynetta Slob", after the comedy character played by Kathy Burke, but that's just a sneering and snobbish slight from the relative comfort of better neighbourhoods.

There is nothing comic about the comment from Det Supt Andy Brennan, who led the inquiry into Shannon's phoney disappearance. He said: "Karen Matthews is pure evil. She is manipulative and has a remarkable ability to lie."

One can forgive a triumphant policeman at the end of a successful case for not choosing his words more carefully. And I'm sure he's right that Matthews is manipulative and peculiarly deceitful. But that doesn't make her "pure evil".

If being manipulative and having an ability to lie were the prime qualifications, most of our politicians - even Tony Blair perhaps - could be described as "pure evil". Quite a lot of journalists, too, for that matter. And maybe the odd policeman.

More seriously, we lose our moral scale when we call someone evil too glibly. Matthews isn't evil. She's dysfunctional, simple, quite cruel, probably disgusting and maybe even wicked. But evil? To label her so is to diminish the vocabulary that we apply to evil people.

And who would we suggest represents "pure evil"? Recently convicted rapist-murderers of teenage girls Peter Tobin and Maninder Kohli perhaps. Or the torturers and killers of Baby P. Or Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

Even these may not be in the same class as Josef Mengele, the experimental butcher of Auschwitz. Or the architects of the Final Solution that put him there.

We're in very dangerous territory when we start to invoke evil whenever some human behaviour outrages us. Matthews is not evil. She's pathetic. Just look at the feeble plot she hatched with the uncle of her partner to hide and then "discover" Shannon. It's farcical and it's hardly up there with the plans of the aforementioned monsters, is it?

To put it brutally, Shannon was not cut up and buried in bin bags. And it's important that we distinguish levels of immorality, or we lose touch with what our rightful response should be to the most grotesque acts of which humans are capable. And, dangerously, we dilute our sense of what is really evil.

Both Matthews and the killers of Baby P will be sentenced in early 2009. We should truly be outraged if their sentences are not in different leagues to each other, because to be civilised is to recognise that their terrible deeds were also in entirely different moral categories.