Summer Reading?
Today, Democratic Representative Henry Waxman, who chairs the oversight and government reform committee, released an interim report on the use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts by Bush White House officials. Here are some of its conclusions:
* The number of White House officials given RNC e-mail accounts is higher than previously disclosed. In March 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a "handful of officials" had RNC e-mail account. In later statements, her estimate rose to "50 over the course of the administration. In fact, the Committee has learned from the RNC that at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the President's senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.
* White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail accounts. The RNC has preserved 140,216 e-mails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these e-mails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official ".gov" e-mail accounts. Other heavy users of RNC e-mail accounts include former White House Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 e-mails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 e-mails). These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies.
* There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove's former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account "frequently, daily." In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush's first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.
Waxman's report also notes that the
Presidential Records Act requires the President to "take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented...and maintained as Presidential records." To implement this legal requirement, the White House Counsel issued clear written policies in February 2001 instructing White House staff to use only the official White House e-mail system for official communications and to retain any official e-mails they received on a nongovernmental account.
The evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts in a manner that circumvented these requirements. At this point in the investigation, it is not possible to determine precisely how many presidential records may have been destroyed by the RNC. Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.
Time for another criminal investigation? Waxman is continuing his investigation, but the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section should take a look at this. The Waxman report also notes that the Bush political operation is stonewalling:
The Committee may need to issue compulsory process to obtain the cooperation of the Bush Cheney '04 campaign. The campaign has informed the Committee that it provided e-mail accounts to 11 White House officials, but the campaign has unjustifiably refused to provide the Committee with basic information about these accounts, such as the identity of the White House officials and the number of e-mails that have been preserved.
With the House and Senate judiciary committees heading toward a showdown with the White House over whether it will turn over documents regarding the dismissals of the US attorneys and whether it will permit past and present White House officials to testify to the committees, another confrontation is brewing. If Waxman succeeds in obtaining access to all these emails, congressional investigators and reporters will have many hours of intriguing reading ahead of them.
The full text of the report is available at www.oversight.house.gov.
Posted by David Corn at June 18, 2007 12:25 PM
29 comments:
Go Waxman!
Who will make this WH do anything? The WH will just continue to stonewall and do as they please.
This administration has shown complete contempt for the rule of law, the courts, the constitution, etc. - nothing will change the dynamics short of revolution.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
~ John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
capt
Airstrike kills 7 Afghan children
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S.-led coalition jets bombed a compound suspected of housing al-Qaida militants in eastern Afghanistan, killing seven boys and several insurgents, officials said Monday.
Clashes in the south left dozens more suspected insurgents dead, officials said.
In the capital, police said they have detained a suspect in connection with the deadly bus bombing that killed at least 35 people, most of them police trainers.
In an operation backed by Afghan troops, the jets on Sunday targeted a compound that also contained a mosque and a madrassa, or Islamic school, in the Zarghun Shah district of Paktika province.
Paktika Gov. Akram Akhpelwak said there normally is strong coordination between the government and the coalition and NATO, but that he was not made aware of the missile strike on the madrassa beforehand, resulting in the death of seven boys, ages 10 to 16.
More HERE
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All the Bush bashing in the world will not stop this crud.
capt
Laboratory for a Fortressed World
Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hezbollah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith.
At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: Why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?
Thomas Friedman recently offered his theory in the New York Times. Israel "nurtures and rewards individual imagination," and so its people are constantly spawning ingenious high-tech start-ups--no matter what messes their politicians are making. After perusing class projects by students in engineering and computer science at Ben Gurion University, Friedman made one of his famous fake-sense pronouncements: Israel "had discovered oil." This oil, apparently, is located in the minds of Israel's "young innovators and venture capitalists," who are too busy making megadeals with Google to be held back by politics.
More HERE
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Naomi Klein has a talent.
capt
Levitate the Pentagon
"I read the news today oh boy." - The Beatles, A Day in the Life, 1967.
"The only enemy of Iraq is the occupation. " - Muqtada al-Sadr, 2007.
Forty years ago down in sunny Monterey, California, an ultra-cool black cat from Seattle named James Marshall Hendrix set the world on fire. "Respect" by Aretha Franklin (written by Otis Redding) was the No 1 hit single in the US (to be replaced, a month later, by "Light My Fire" by The Doors). Hendrix and Otis in Monterey merged into the Summer of Love - the apotheosis of Make Love Not War, vinyl treasures and Indian mottoes dressed in caftans and granny dresses.
Already in the spring of 1967 a stirring wave of counterculture fusion between London and San Francisco was irresistible. Dismissed Harvard sage Tim Leary ordered everyone to "turn on, tune in, drop out" (The Beatles, already in 1966, were quoting from Leary's version of The Tibetan Book of the Dead - "turn off your minds, relax and float downstream").
While the radically politicized were yelling "Kill the pigs!" the Beatles were inventing whole new groovy sounds in the studio and beat poet Allen Ginsberg was singing the praise of Bob Dylan's victims in "Chimes of Freedom" - and assisting LSD experiments unsupervised by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The irretrievably fragmented consciousness of the whole Western world was unifying, at least in the hearts and minds of young people everywhere, even for a fleeting moment in time. It was a river flowing out of the postwar consumer boom, from jazz to the beats to rebels without a cause to Dylan to The Beatles.
The Grateful Dead loved Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (from 1955) so much they set it to music. The doors of perception were being cleansed by what Ginsberg defined as "the divine herbs and greases" and by LSD - the crucial catalyst.
Yippie icon Abbie Hoffman, who defined The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as "Beethoven coming to the supermarket", later recalled that "at the height of the American Empire we had all the bombs, all the cops in the world - and it was all ours - the Cadillacs, the two-car garages, the split-level ranch houses".
But then young people, spiritually unfulfilled, started to think there might be something else. Flower power met the East, met unbounded optimism - before, in 1968, reality came crashing down and despair set in.
More HERE
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Pepe is on a great roll. A real trip down memory lane.
capt
U.S., Russia: Iraq had no WMDs
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.S. and Russia have agreed to dismantle the U.N. agency that searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and affirm that Saddam Hussein's government had no such arms at the time of the American invasion in March 2003.
The Security Council will adopt a resolution the last week in June to close the U.N. Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission, created in 1999 to search Iraq for biological and chemical weapons, Belgian and British diplomats said. The measure will also end the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency's mandate to look for nuclear arms in Iraq.
U.N. inspectors found no banned weapons before or since the invasion.
Feisal al-Istrabadi, Iraq's deputy ambassador to the U.N., said his country is "still dealing with the residue of having been a pariah state" and called the resolution a "huge symbolic step that will show we are taking steps forward to be reintegrated in the community of nations."
He said adopting the U.S.-drafted resolution would be a prelude to lifting all U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq during Saddam's reign.
The Bush administration's justification for invading Iraq and toppling its government was the alleged threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq has complained about paying $50 million since the invasion to maintain the agency, known as UNMOVIC. The agency, which withdrew the inspectors before the war, employs 34 people and prepares quarterly reports to the Security Council.
An annex to the proposed resolution will include a letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar al-Zebari pledging that his government won't develop WMDs.
Online: www.unmovic.org
More HERE
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Anybody still holding out for the WMD's (Rush, Hannity, and the rest of the delusional) ought to face reality.
Now if the ICC is listening they know it is time to prepare some indictments for the misleaders that violated the peace by starting a war of aggression by way of false preemption.
capt
A Clinton Redeployment Proposal for the Middle East
With U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East a fitful proposition at best, longtime observers are forecasting a long hot summer for the region. Among the worst-case scenarios: an Israeli-Syrian war combined simultaneously with an all-out conflict between Israel and Hamas as al Qaeda leaders seek to cash in on unrest in Lebanon.
And these grim prospects have at least some liberal-leaning policy hands touting a prospect first raised by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York: appointing her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as a roving ambassador — who would undoubtedly be called to rove a good deal in the desperately unstable Middle East.
A special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs in the Clinton administration, Rob Malley, greeted the scenario warmly at a recent Brookings Institution seminar on the region’s troubles. "A few things would have to happen to get there," he says. "But I think he’d be about as good a special envoy as we’ve had, probably better."
Nor would the former president’s assignment to the region necessarily be contingent on a second Clinton presidency. As Malley noted, several other Democratic candidates endorsed the idea at a presidential debate in New Hampshire this month. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who did some roving ambassador work himself in the Clinton years, promised to make the ex-president a Middle East envoy, as did former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered general praise for the 42nd president’s diplomatic track record but noted that his wife "may have something to say about how I use Bill Clinton."
Others who would have a lot to say about such an experiment would be the roving ambassador’s negotiating partners. As Malley noted, many of the past decade’s breakthroughs in the Middle East came about thanks to an "alignment of the bright stars" — i.e., Clinton, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
By contrast, Malley suggests that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has had difficulty jump-starting stalled diplomatic progress in the region because of an "alignment of falling stars" — Bush, Assad’s weaker son, Bashar al-Assad, secular Palestinian leader Abu Mazen, and Ehud Olmert, who was wounded politically by his failed attempt to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.
Aaron Miller, a Middle East adviser to six secretaries of State who’s now at the Woodrow Wilson Institute, says it’s far too early to be assigning Clinton the hypothetical post of freelance diplomatic fixer in the region. Still, he, too commends the former president’s qualifications. "No one has greater sensitivity to and understanding of the issues than Bill Clinton," he says. "But along with empathy we need real toughness, so if he can combine the two, it might work."
More HERE
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OMG - probably the best idea in a very long time but I think it would make Dumya's head explode.
capt
Here is a website that should be viewed from time to time - www.followthemoneyproject.org!
A great website to view from time to time
Are the Hitler Parallels Too Close for Comfort?
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it."
~ George Santayana
On May 9, 2007, with little attention from the snoozing media, George W. Bush issued a "presidential directive" that allows him to assume control of the federal government following a "catastrophic emergency."
Although the directive doesn't specifically identify the types of emergencies that would qualify as "catastrophic," it is vague enough to encompass "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function." As Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive noted, it could include "another 9/11, or another Katrina, or a major earthquake in California." In fact, the language is so broad that it could include almost anything the public is led to believe might have a major impact on the country. Not surprisingly, the president's order comes neatly packaged within the trappings of national security and safety.
This directive followed on the heels of a bill, which I have previously written about, that was pushed through Congress and which gave the president the power to declare martial law and establish a dictatorship. Under these provisions, the president can now use the military as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any "other condition."
More HERE
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Does anybody really believe that Bush will not use (abuse) such power? Are we suppose to think these insane dictatorial edicts are being put in place for a democratically elected successor to enter the office of president already possessing these powers by previous proclamation? Really?
capt
I think the dictatorial power is the "plan-B" if the evoting machine fix, disenfranchisement and caging, and voter suppression doesn't work.
THAT would be a GOP emergency - the GOP would FREAK if they thought a Democrat president had that kind of trump card.
Maybe I am just paranoid.
capt
Rise and Fall of the Bizarro Empire
Praying Each Day: June 18
What Would You Do for Love?
A magazine asked its readers: “What’s the craziest thing you ever did for love?” The responses were warm and wonderful; even a bit wild and wacky. Here are a few:
· “My husband and I spent a month in Kazakhstan adopting our daughter…a country I had barely heard of a year earlier. She was worth every second.”
· “In college I took skydiving lessons and jumped out of an airplane to impress a new boyfriend…”
· “The craziest thing I’ve done for love was never walking away over the first five years of my marriage.”
· “It was my husband who did a crazy thing for love. When I was having chemotherapy for breast cancer, my husband shaved his head. …It made my baldness seem more normal during a very abnormal time in my life.”
Allow love into your life, keep love in your life, and do something wonderful.
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Love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. (Song of Solomon 8:6)
Remind us, Holy Wisdom, that while love is neither easy nor effortless, it is wonderful and life-giving.
Let us love our brothers and sisters in God by saying, "No more wars!" It may sound crazy but no more wars are possible when our hearts are filled with love for all of God's children.
Hitler Parallels Too Close for Comfort
We are at the abyss of a Hitler Bush takeover of our freedoms and rights.
A Tragic Legacy
I am truly frightened by the accuracy of my predictions. Have I not said that Hitler Bush will not leave the White House in 2009 or 2029? Honest posters will have to say that I made the prediction several years ago. Fortunately for me I CAME IN AT THE RIGHT TIME AND I AM LEAVING AT THE RIGHT TIME. Yes, my spiritual advisor is right that Americans are experiencing pain and suffering because we, as a people, will not repent. Unfortunately, the pain and suffering will only get worse. Are you starting to feel the noose around your neck? It's there!!! Soon it will tighten and tighten and you will gag and gag for some air to breathe.
And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace: George Bernard Shaw - Irish playwright "Caesar and Cleopatra"
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"But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922- ) Author
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The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder. ~Henry C. Wright, The Liberator, 7 April 1837
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"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.": John Morley - (1838-1923) - Source: Critical Miscellanies
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As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand: -Josh Billings
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Thanks ICH Newsletter!
Newly empowered US Democrats draw wrath of voters
WASHINGTON, June 18 (Reuters) - The new Democratic-led Congress is drawing the ire of U.S. voters upset with its failure to quickly deliver on a promise to end the Iraq war.
This is reflected in polls that show Congress -- plagued by partisan bickering mostly about the war -- at one of its lowest approval ratings in a decade. Surveys find only about one in four Americans approves of it.
"I understand their disappointment," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "We raised the bar too high."
In winning control of Congress from President George W. Bush's Republicans last November, Democrats told voters they would move swiftly to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
But they now say voters must understand they need help from Republicans to clear procedural hurdles, override presidential vetoes and force Bush to change course.
Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware said he explained this recently to anti-war demonstrators. "'We know. We know,'" he quoted them as replying. "But we are so disappointed.'"
Biden, seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, said: "Voters are going to be mad with us until we end the war."
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said some Democrats understand "we can only do so much."
"Others are just very unhappy. I include myself among them," Pelosi, of California, told The New York Times.
More HERE
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The sad truth is: If the Democrats had super-majorities in the house and senate they would STILL be doing the same thing - NOTHING (about ending the war).
We would hear Pelosi saying crap like: "We have to show deference to those in the minority" and another dead soldier would get his angel wings for her lie.
capt
Sunday morning talk TV fails to inform the population of critical facts. Instead, it informs people what the pundit class are saying about one topic or another. Usually, the topics chosen are the most discussed by the pundit class and not the issues that affect American citizens most directly. Read this about the pundit lass.
POW
Dear Posters:
I am writing this letter and pleading with whoever will read my letter. I believe that the time is right and well overdo for another peace organization. I do not trust the snakes and vulchers who control us. We must unite for the common good.
I am asking you to join me with a grassroots organization in your communities. The organization’s name will be POW, not prisoners of war but it will be PARENTS OPPOSING WARS.
All parents are invited to join. I ask you, “Do you want your children to be cannon fodder to fight in everlasting wars or do you want peace on earth?” Please do not worry about the United States of Evil losing a war because it will not happen. The United States of Evil has the nuclear weapons to annihilate the entire planet 100 times over. Please do not fear about terrorism harming us because that will not happen. Yes, we have terrorism but the terrorism that I fear is our tainted foods, medicines, and vitamins. They are tainted to the point where we will die sooner than from an attack by some terrorist group.
Please spread the word to all parents who love their children. Parents who want their children to be cannon fodder for everlasting wars will not be interested in POW.
Sincerely,
Gerald
Gerald,
How about a link or address for POW?
I can't seem to find it.
capt
The politics of the Sacred Heart
Posted on Jun 19, 2007 10:29am CST.
On the Road to Peace by John Dear S.J. Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Last Friday marked one of my favorite days in the liturgical year, the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For 47, I guess I'm old fashioned, but I love everything about that image. In recent years, however, I've begun to wonder: What are the social, economic and political implications of the Sacred Heart of Jesus? That question, I believe, can lead us to a whole new world of love, compassion, forgiveness, nonviolence and justice, to our own disarmed, sacred hearts.
I know that some people like the image of the Sacred Heart because it projects a safe, non-threatening God. It demonstrates the enormity of God's love for humanity, and calls us to disarm our own hearts that we too might be gentle, nonviolent, compassionate and perpetually loving. I figure most people tend to forget that this gentle Jesus also denounced injustice, turned over the tables in the Temple, and was arrested, jailed, tortured and executed.
But there's even more to the story. On Dec. 29, 1673, when Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in Paray-le-Monial, France, he said: "My divine heart is so impassioned with love for humanity, it cannot contain the flames of its burning charity inside. It must spread them through you and show itself to humanity so that they may be enriched by the previous treasures that I share with you, treasures which have all the sanctifying and saving graces needed to draw them back from the abyss of destruction."
The abyss of destruction? Poor Margaret Mary probably didn't have a clue about what Jesus was talking about, but we sure do. Today we stand at the brink of unprecedented global destruction, global warming and global violence. This violence pushes us personally and internationally ever closer to the abyss of destruction, but the grace of the Sacred Heart -- with all its burning social, economic and political implications -- has the power to convert us into people of Gospel nonviolence, pull us back from the brink, and create a new world of peace with justice.
For all Christians who truly believe in Jesus Christ let our hearts be filled with love for our Jesus and for our brothers and sisters in God. Let our loving hearts transform the world where love, mercy, justice, and peace reign supreme.
capt, POW is my creation. I am asking all persons to start a grassroots organization in their communities. This grassroot organization can start by word of mouth through family and friends.
Each person is called upon to create POW among family and friends.
We must mobilize parents against everlasting wars.
I am writing to family and friends to spread the word to other families and friends.
capt, many organizations start up by asking for donations, etc. I do not seek money or donations. All that is necessary is a willingness to contact family and friends to spread the word.
Here is an example. I have a cousin who belongs to a book club. Friends meet at her home to discuss a current book. She could say that I have contacted her to spread the word on POW or I could ask her if I could speak to her book club and explain POW. Too many Americans are being lulled toward a path of self-destruction. We have insidious people who are into wars, murders, and war crimes.
Word of mouth is the modus operandi. It costs nothing but maybe some time. The reward is some satisfaction in trying to sway our actions as the United States of Evil away from wars.
capt, I fear that unless people get off their wide bottoms we will be enslaved to everlasting wars by our evil leaders.
I hope to empower people with the feeling that they are important and that they can change the direction of our country's evil ways.
Basically, POW needs to let people know that wars are not the direction and solution for our problems among people.
capt, I hope that I have helped explain what I hope to be a personal grassroots organization in every community. I do not want POW to be a political organization that endorses a certain political party. I do not want POW to start off like Jerry Falwell and become an organiztion where the organization is bigger than the body of persons who spread the word. I would hope that POW spreads the word through love and not through hatred for some person or persons. I would want POW to be important but not more important than the people.
The Christophers is an organiztion that calls upon us to light one candle to see our way. Can you imagine that everyone would light one candle how our way would be filled to see our way toward justice and peace?
When I spelled organization, I left out the a between z and t.
"Each person is called upon to create POW among family and friends."
That is a wonderful idea.
Thanks
capt
capt, we have posters who are very active in commenting on websites and by contacting politicians and friends. Here are three such names - micki, carey, and kathleen from Athens, Ohio. Kathleen has been silent for awhile so I do not know what has happened to her.
There are other persons as well but these three persons come to mind.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...?
All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
It took five minutes for the TV warm up?
Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
Nobody owned a purebred dog?
When a quarter was a decent allowance?
You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels?
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time?
And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . and they did?
When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady? No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a .." And playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?
And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.
Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow , Nellie Bell, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.
As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?
I am sharing this with you today because it ended with a double dog dare to pass it on. To remember what a double dog dare is (Just click This), read on.
And remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.
How many of these do you remember?
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Black Jack, Clove, and Beemans chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie
P.F. Flyers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines
Peashooters
Howdy Doody
45 RPM records/78 RPM, too
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's
Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers
Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers
5 cent packs of baseball cards -
with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
Penny candy
35 cent a gallon gasoline
Jiffy Pop popcorn
Do you remember a time when...
Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?
It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"?
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?
A foot of snow was a dream come true?
Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense?
Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?
Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from
their "grown-up" life
from: http://www.thestatenislandboys.com/U_thrill_me/
capt, here is some information why I do not want to start an organization that asks for money and donations.
Every month I receive 10 to 12 letters requesting a donation for some organization and charity. There are 50 or more websites that seek donations.
Each one of us has so much money to give to a charity and/or organization. That is it.
Charities and organizations reach a point where money is their primary objective and they lose sight of specific goals.
Money does corrupt a charity or an organization.
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