Arkansas Blog

No predicitions, but click on my handle for a better and more honest "state of the union" than we have heard for a long time.

Great post docholliday!

Predicitions: Developments in NWA will continue to fail. The main cause is lack of funding as financial institutions can see a the potential for mass failures much better than short sighted developers. A few lenders either were there during the 80s meltdown in housing/development or at least know about it. Back then the same situation arose: high oil prices, Raygun ran the debt up without curtailing spending, and we were suffering the slow death of huge deficits carried over from Viet Nam.
Eventually the Fed steps in and jacks up interest rates which will likely begin this coming year. No lender wants hundreds of millions tied up in loans that will be losses for them in 2-3 years.

Bluename for yet another example.

The "greatest country in the world" - this is OUR version of suicide bombers.

"Keep doin' what you're doin', keep gettin' what you're gettin'!" ---Les Brown

"Logic and reason only affects those who are not part of the problem." ---Edwin Friedman

Best wishes for the new year to you, Max. Your blog efforts are greatly appreciated. I especially appreciate your collecting the daily Huck news from around the country.

Wow, a paid off mortgage. Wonder if I'll evr feel that senasation?

Man, I'd love to pay off my mortgage...congrats...and with the new college grad...

Pretty exciting year in the rosso household with the addition of a young one (our second and last)...

Also, is anyone else as worn out as I am from the holidays? We had three straight weeks of folks coming and going from everywhere...

I love seeing everybody, I really do...but...

Take me out, Coach...I'm tired...

Just a damn minute here. You're supposed to be MAD at North Little Rock over the TIFs, not setting them up as the greatest democracy since Atlantis. Look at your notes before beginning to write, for goodness sake. You and Huckabee are just trying to confuse me. I feel like Pig in "Pearls Before Swine" (actually, I kind of look like him too).

Happy New Year anyway.

If I were a man of signicant means that reward offer would be $100,000 and I am still for the death penalty. If this little girl's death doesn't justify it I don't know what does.

You could have put:

Year #7: Bush fucked that up too.

Or just " ", to follow years 1-6.

Well, I remember thinking in 2000 that surely things couldn't be all bad with Bush as pres. WRONG. . . Then in 2004 I was sure he wouldn't get reelected. WRONG AGAIN . . . Now I'm holding my breath as 2008 approaches. Another presidential election, and who knows . . . can it get worse? That's a fear I hold inside, but I am going to try to remain ever hopeful.

2007 was interesting - things stayed pretty par for course around the Liberal and Proud household. Spent lots of time with family and friends. My two boys just keep growing and my schedule gets more and more hectic. Not that I'm complaining. I love every minute of it - soccer games, swim meets, football games, triathlons, bicycle races, etc. Before long, they'll be out on their own, and I'll be wishing for these days again.

Hubby and I have managed to make to anniversary #15 (today!), and still love that SOB. Couldn't live without him, and I love him more now than ever.

Book club enjoyed year 2, and we read lots of great books. My favorite of the year was The Road by McCarthy and Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Chandrasekaran. Good friends are dear and precious. I'm glad to have them all.

I truly enjoy the AT blog. I don't post much, but, man, do I love to read it. DBI should get 2007 poster of the year (as he should every year for those of us who've been reading since the beginning). I would never be able to keep up with local, state, and national news without the blog. Always informative, often entertaining. I love the food blog and the moviegoer, too. A huge thanks to Max and all who make it happen.

Very happy new year to everyone!

From Project Censored - Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008 (at my name)

Terrible terrible news about the shooting.. Bush and Cheney have intentionally ordered our good soldiers to do this countless times just as needlessly as what happened by thugs in LR.. We have caused one million orphans in Iraq.. ONE MILLION ORPHANS created by needless American war and occupation in Iraq alone. If we don't elect someone who will hold our war criminals to the fullest account possible..and elect someone who won't be a war criminal themselves.. Well then none of us are any better than the random shooters themselves.

ENOUGH!

I have a lot to be thankful for this year... following my dreams being tops on that list.

No predictions for 2008, but hopes: I really hope this will be a year for optimism and gratitude. This will be the first presidential election since 1992 that I haven't spent in the news media, and I'm hoping for some sanity in the proceedings. Will that hope be realized? Prolly not, but what the heck.

Best wishes for the new year.

Click on handle for the full opinion.

At the risk of raising DBI's ire and getting called a "law and order bigot" again, albeit it politely.

" . . . He's the Illegal Immigrant, and he's the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year - for better or for worse. . . . Antonio, a waiter at a North Texas restaurant, was an accountant in Mexico. He and his wife thought they could make more money in Texas, so they came illegally.

"In the time I've been here, this country has been very good to me. I am a responsible person. I pay my taxes. I pay my bills on time - utilities, mortgage. I pay federal taxes, too," he says.
[Click image for a larger version] COURTNEY PERRY / DMN
COURTNEY PERRY / DMN
American prosperity is built in part on the backs of illegal-immigrant labor, such as these workers picking onions on a farm in South Texas.

Antonio resented any suggestion that he should consider returning home or that illegal immigrants don't belong here. He seemed to regard his presence here as exercising a right. . . ."

Nothing like more Bush Bandits to show the government won't work and the laws can't be enforced by the Bush administration, therefore we need an imperical republican president-for-life.

385 days to the end of an error . . .

happy new year to all. for me the best is that i am here to write this. sorry to get personal but it was close this time. now on to the bastards in the white house. i know there will not be impeachment so lets give them as much trouble as possible. the big problem is reid is not going to do that, therefore we must work as hard as we can to insure a democrat is elected president. we have a lot of differences of who that is but once it is decided at the convention then we must get behind the candidate and elect that person no matter who it is and elect him or her. we cannot let a republican in office no matter what.

a fun read

Best wishes for strength and improved health, zonker, and for a splendid 2008! I know I'm not alone when I say I enjoy your posts.

click on handle and go to "Navy JAG Andrew Williams Resigns Over Torture"

Welcome to Bush/Cheney's and conservatism's finest hour. When did torture and acts our country prosecuted people for as war crimes, become acceptable as U.S. policy? We, the people, should be very, very ashamed at what we have let our country become! And we have another 385 days of the nonfeasance, misfeasance, and premeditated malfeasance to endure.

Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Williams, a JAG officer with the U.S. Naval Reserve, recently resigned his commission over the alleged use of torture by the United States and the destruction of video tapes said to contain instances of that torture. . . . Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, repeatedly refused to call the hypothetical waterboarding of an American pilot by the Iranian military torture.

Explaining his resignation in a letter to his Gig Harbor, WA, newspaper - the Peninsula Gateway - Williams said Hartmann's testimony was "the final straw":

" The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.

His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials.

Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.

In the middle ages, the Inquisition called waterboarding "toca" and used it with great success. In colonial times, it was used by the Dutch East India Company during the Amboyna Massacre of 1623.

Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo and the feared Japanese Kempeitai. In World War II, our grandfathers had the wisdom to convict Japanese Officer Yukio Asano of waterboarding and other torture practices in 1947, giving him 15 years hard labor.

Waterboarding was practiced by the Khmer Rouge at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Most recently, the U.S. Army court martialed a soldier for the practice in 1968 during the Vietnam conflict.

General Hartmann, following orders was not an excuse for anyone put on trial in Nuremberg, and it will not be an excuse for you or your superiors, either.

Despite the CIA and the administration attempting to cover up the practice by destroying interrogation tapes, in direct violation of a court order, and congressional requests, the truth about torture, illegal spying on Americans and secret renditions is coming out. . . ."