Hi everyone!!! If you are like me and have been waiting and searching for a really down and dirty column from 'someone' about the latest phenom otherwise known as Sista Sarah, then please read the following exerpt from a Dick Cavett column today in the NY Times.
Any old folks reading this will no doubt be able to picture Dick, with his wicked and sardonic but yet innocent at the same time, manner of delivery, and that could be even more enjoyable.

September 12, 2008,  7:40 pm
Experience 101

Dear Reader:It may be time to give up on writing about current events in this space. When you think how news travel time has been telescoped, it’s dizzying. It took days for even the rumors of Custer’s annihilation at Little Big Horn to reach the east. Now any news over two hours old isn’t news — it’s “olds.” Anything from the day before is virtually archaeology.

In reading what follows, be aware that nothing here is exactly meant to be a “this just in” bulletin. And so, the inevitable phrase: “By the time you read this….”

Or, for short:

B.T.T.Y.R.T.: Sarah Palin will doubtless have been outed even further from the witness protection program in which her handlers have kept her secreted since her smasheroo solo performance on That Memorable Night.

There’s no denying that she rocked the place and, as her enthusing boosters said, “She really delivered the goods.”

So she did, even if some were shoddy.

Back here in the past, when I’m writing this, we have just seen part one of her quizzing by Charles Gibson, with mixed reviews for both. So far I have not seen her confronted with some of the things about which she has been, to put it in that awful Diplomatically Correct phrase, “somewhat less than fully truthful.” (Typesetter: If space is scarce, use “lying.”) As in claiming “no thanks” to the bridge money while failing to disclose that she kept it.

Getting through both conventions has taken a toll on me and I bet on a lot of you folks.  What to do to get through the long days.  Well, last week I started to bake bread.  Not that I need bread, not that bread is on my diet, but rather that I needed something constructive and fullfilling, (No pun intended), and baking fills that bill.

First I started with regular white bread dough with some calamata olives and garlic cloves.    Oh that was good and I made several more loaves.  I then started to run out of yeast and not living within walking distance of a purveyor of yeast, I decided I needed something I could count on to be there when the need arose, thus I settled on making my own sour dough.  

I know politics has been depressing for oh say the last 8 years or longer, well anyway I think getting out in to the garden might help.  Please join me and post some garden or flower pictures of your own.

Plumeria in bloom, reminds me of Hawaii, I pic the blossoms and float in water at my desk.  Oh the aroma, wish you could smell them.

Plumeria getting ready to bloom, can't wait.  

A view of our nice little tomato garden area, busting with tomatos but only a few ripe so far, looking forward to a big harvest.

I picked up this from Yahoo news and I think we all might want to take a look at this.  I posted as a comment but don't know how many will see that comment and I think this is serious enough to warrent a diary.

link
Update: Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley is pushing the bill.
Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America's small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.
Call Congress and Tell Them to Oppose The eBay Reporting Provision in the Housing Bill: 1-866-928-3035

FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: "This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking."

snip

Payment Card and Third Party Network Information Reporting. The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions.

I was so happy to read in the Washington Post this morning, a great article about the resurgence of trains in this country, and that is both passenger and freight. This follows a conversation Shirlstars and I had last week about our hopes and dreams that there would be a comeback of trains. Then we reminisced about what a role trains played in the development of this country, the opening up the west and which allowed for easier communication between those who moved on west and those left behind in the east. Not to mention, the role trains played in the great glamorous time of Hollywood' 40's, all the stars traveled by train, from coast to coast and points in between. Many movies of the 40’s and 50’s took place on trains, not to mention Murder on the Orient Express.
I have to ask you is there anything more romantic than travel by train?

   

Is it the day after tomorrow yet?

I was just browsing through some web sites and I ran into this in the UK guaridian.  I think it's particularily troubling that the is all happening faster than predicted by scientists in the 90's.  

This entry is going to be two diaries in one, since there is a lot I want to share with you.

First the title. Many of you here may know that for several years I had the site Village Blue which I closed the  down in November 07, due to lack of participation and the cost.

Village Blue was a site about anything but politics, a lot of this and that, a dash of spiritual,  a frame built upon The Native America Code of Ethics, lots of beautiful art and flower pictures (mostly of my garden) and many just plain fun entries.

"Well sometime in early march I got an hankering for that kind of site again, seems I had a lot to say and just couldn't find the appropriate place to publish my thoughts. Of course I dropped a few diaries on Booman, but you know it just wasn't the same, so I set out on a journey to restore the old VB.  

10 days later, much hair pulling, frustration, angst and anger, 2 hosting services later, I once again had A VB.  It was at this point bare bones, nothing like the old VB, that had been carefully nurtured for 3 years, just a plain old site and for 2 days I stared at the site, wrote a word or two, tried to spruce it up, and then started to ask myself, why!  Here I was again staring at this site, that would cost me money again and now I could barely write a word.  LOL.  Writers block.

So being the sometime sensible person I am, I thought, "heck over here on the other hand I have this lovely free site, Village Blue 2. with guess what, all kinds of bells and whistles, easy to use, didn't need a degree in computing to fix it up, so what the heck, I canceled the paid site and kept the free one.

Which brings me to the point of inviting you all to come and visit Village Blue2 , a non political site, once again beginning to be filled with flowers, lovely words, art pictures, and Shirlstars and Whisel with their uncanny ability to write the most delightful series of words. Expanded Views which is mainly the purview of Shirlstars to post the esoteric and spiritual material she collect and receives from various sources, of her group of spiritualists and friends around the Internet.

This is loser as applied to an individual, as in "You're nothing but a loser,", oh wow do I hate that label and no time more than this morning.

Let me explain:
My daughter is going through a divorce, as some of you might know from comments I have made, and it's like a lot of divorces, not going well, in fact when I wrote that I thought, do any divorces or separations for that matter, go well?  
Perhaps, but this one surely has it's ups and downs...Just yesterday I was feeling good about the whole deal, she and I had worked through some difficult things, found that a restraining order was not a good thing at this time and I could write a bunch about what it takes to get one.  Not good.
Anyway, she did not feel in physical danger, only emotional and she always has the option to call the police and the possible ramifications of getting the order itself seemed to out weigh the daunting process.

When I was born  Roosevelt was president, when I was in 1'st or 2'nd grade we had the Dewey/Truman election, we voted in our classroom, I voted for Dewey, I hoped I was right in that vote cause our family was Republican and I knew I would be quizzed when I got home.  Sure enough I was and got lots of praise for voting the right way...everyone was positive Dewey would win and what an upset that was.

I was alive when Truman dropped the bomb on Japan, I wondered what was so great about all of that, (there was a big picture in the paper of the mushroom cloud and everyone oohed and ahhed over that,  everyone said it was good so I believed them..Later on I came to understand it was not good, no matter the US rationale for same.

I was in grade school when we got under our desks at school for the survive the bomb blast drill.  Try growing up with that threat hanging over your head every day.  We lived in fear and dread to hear that siren go off, when it was drill day.  We all lived in dread and tried to be happy, but it was hard and we mostly thought we didn't have long to live.

I was just 20 or so when Kennedy was president, he brought with him the dreams and we loved him for that and we had hope for a little while till the Cuba thing. Then he was murdered, I just starting out in my life when his was ended, it was the darkest day I've ever seen in America, up to and including the present.  The nation was in dark morning for weeks and months.

Then came Bobby, MLK and many, many others, they came, they rose up and they were gone, in an instant and we were left with their words and their dreams, and we dreamed the dreams, we still try to, we still try to hold onto them, but they seem always to be fading.
I was taught how great this country was and then I grew up to find out more about slavery, about the Native American, the Hawaii takeover,Mexico, and more and more and more and more and more,  all the way up to Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and of course Bush.

Now I can hardly muster an 'I love this country'.
But yet I do not want to see it fail although there is a part of me that thinks (like AG) it needs to all fall down before it can be built up again.

There is knowledge in living through history, that can not be found in merely reading it.  I haven't lived too long in the grand scope of things, but the 65 years that I have, have been quite something and some would say the most exciting of all the years of this country.

I just picked up this mantra template from Shirlstars yesterday and I want to share it with all of you.

It goes like this, when you want a different outcome from something, when you want a certain outcome from something, say or think something like this:

"Won't it be wonderful when, the election is over and Obama will be President,"
or
"wont't it be grand when the Left blogoshpere no longer hates or vilifies HRC."
or
"won't it be glorious when GWB is no longer President and can no longer damage the country."

or it can be more personal like:

Won't it be terrific when my daughter is going back to college, and won't it be great when her family is functioning in a happy and prosperous way.

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Hi Everyone, It's been a long time since I hosted one of these wagons, so bear with me, I have forgotten how to do most things related to this, but luckily it's coming back.

Any way, here's the deal, you are all hereby invited to "tell us about you", update us as to where you are in your life today, or anything interesting you have to pass on.

In case you do not know me, here is a little of my story.  I am semi-retired and living in socal near my family in which we have welcomed 2 babies in the last 2 years, another one due any day, another due in Feb. Yeah it's a baby bonanza here for sure.

I was going to write this in the morning but the thoughts are whirling around my head and I can't sleep so I will write it now.

I am shortly going to take a break from this site, but before I do that I feel the need, as one who has stood beside you, behind you and for you  these many months since the site began, to give you my frank assessment of the site and it's problems.

My assessment is that the continuing problems have been as result of several things, your inability to handle situations before they get out of hand, your contributions to situations that help them get out of hand and your lack of having and enforcing firm rules.

 
I still wanted to give it the good old college try this weekend and see if I could help you come up with a better method of handling things here, so I did the diary and spent hours and hours on it yesterday. I hope you will find some things of value in the comments and the contributions from members.


By the way, the current rule 'Don't be a Prick' (and especially if you keep it as such)  is in my mind pretty sad that a group of educated people cannot use a non gender biased genitalia pejorative to determine errant behavior, so I sure do hope you change that if nothing else.

I have an observation about swearing on sites that I want to share, that if people are using swearing to express themselves in their comments, then it's pretty easy to take that same swearing and toss it around a little bit and have it come out loaded with venom aimed at other members.  

Also I must tell you I have a great problem with the recent fracas and your handling of the situation, your treatment of 2 members of the site that I thought was far beyond the pale and a horrible example of the site over something which you should have taken off site in the first place.  I think you need to reflect on all of that and hopefully  you will some day apologize to both the site and to those with whom you were so offensive.  This more than anything is leading me to take this leave.

Over these last few days I have had to weigh whether I could be on such a site or not and I find it difficult at this time to be involved based on the above mentioned fracas, so I am taking a break.  

Not being one to easily give up, I gave it a last ditch effort to help you bring some order to the site in the diary I did Sat. but now I am done.  I hope you find some value in the contributions members made.
I am just too tired of going through this and spending nights when I cannot sleep because I'm writing this kind of diary in my head.

I gotta tell you tho Boo, you are losing the heart of the site, bit by bit and I really hate to see that happen.

Well we sure had a big discussion yesterday about this subject but I am happy to say, no fights and no margin busting, so that is good.
The following is the last draft made by Vieravisionary based on what he got from the input of members yesterday.  I am posting here pretty much as he sent it to me last night, I did remove some lengthy descriptions and changed the word Prickish to Jerkish.

This is still a work in progress,what I would like to do with this diary is whittle it down a little, take suggestions for language changes and so on and come up with a concise message to post on the site that will exemplify the etiquette rules, this is what I have come up with so far for posting:

Cordial and civil behaviour is required and strictly enforced

The second part of this the QRT, or community board part needs further refinement and simplification.

Based on ths following interchange between Booman and I, I am posting this diary to ask for your views and suggestions on site rules.

I understand your point fully well Boo, however the problems to be seen are pretty visual to all of us.

Booman I have asked you this before many time and I will ask yet again, are you willing to make firm rules on this site (and not don't be a prick cause that might include you at times) and institute a firm policy of temporarily blocking a member for infractions and then after that if a new offense comes up remove the privileges altogether.
It is my opinion that the repeat erruptions are always caused by those that caused the first, and while they remain on the site the possibility exists.  There are so many things we can no longer bring up on this site, for fear it will be misunderstood, witness, Janet Damnit and her diaries.
I am really feeling and I wish you would open this up to discussion in a separate diary that members would like to see this and it could make a great difference to the future well being of this site.
This is a critical time for action, rather like the whole Iraq mess, are you going to take a firm hand on this and get us out of this mess or are you going to allow this to continue to deteriorate?

Doorway to the ~~Village Blue~~ Come on over for a visit!
by diane101 (dianed101 @ yahoo.com) on Sat Feb 3rd, 2007 at 08:10:00 AM PST
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
* [new] Re: Open Thread (none / 0)
I am about to head off to take care of a few things and I will be offline for a while.  I don't want people to interpret my silence as indifference.  I'm open to rules on suspension or other ideas.  

This particular problem should be solved.  There will be no more verbal abuse from this member and that is where it stands.

I'm fully aware that some people think I should just ban and be done with it.  But she has the chance, if she wants it, to either stay away voluntarily or to engage in a civil manner.  

If someone wants to set up a diary about rules I will look at it.  I find that strict rules cause more problems than they solve.  But combined with a flexible enforcement mechanism we might be able to tighten them up.

So I am presenting to this to you for consideration.  I propose that we act on this such as you would in Congress and prepare a resolution of

Site Rules of Conduct
It is hereby resolved that the site rules of conduct shall be that offensive verbal behaviour resulting in the injury either emotional or otherwise of any and all  members shalll be dealt with in the following ways.

The first offense shall result in a warning, followed by a temporary blocking of the member for a period of two weeks in order to have a cooling down period.

Second offense will result in a permanent blocking of ip address and membership.

Such rules shall be prominently posted on site so that all are aware.

A quorum of elders shall be nominated and elected (in a poll and subject to yearly renewal) by the membership to serve as arbritration body or to act and represent for the benefit of members as opposed to management, similar to the minority party in congress,and to act on the behalf of the site owner when he is not present.

So I am open to amendments and suggestions!
I call the meeting to order.