What Do These Years Have In Common?

• 1953, 1975, 1983
They are all years in which Republican-led governments bailed out of wars without winning.
• 1953, the Korean stalemate
• 1975, the VietNam debacle (cut-and-run)
  
• 1983, Lebanon (cut-and-run)
  

What do these years have in common?

• 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
  They are all years in which a Republican-led government did not - in spite of a continuous stream of bluster - kill or capture Osama Bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri.

What do these years have in common?

• 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
They are all years in which a Republican-led government failed to mold Iraq into a peaceful democracy. The same could be said for 2008, if it were not for the the following:
• the USA hired 80,000 Sunnis to be soldiers in the Sunni region of Iraq (the US propoganda referred to it as "The Awakening" - the labor cost of those Sunni soldiers is about $325,000,000 annually (not counting food and housing, cost of US officers and training forces, equipment, weaponry, ammunition)
• Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his army of Shiite insurgents to temporarily refrain from insurrection
• the US military added 20,000 troops to the Baghdad area

What does this year have in common with any other year

• 1991
  On the subject of US involvement in 20th century wars, it has nothing in common with other years or other wars. The Persian Gulf War is the only 20th century war for which Republicans can claim victory .. unless one counts the invasions of such formidible enemies as Grenada and Panama.

What do these years have in common?

• 1918, 1945, 1999
  They are all years in which Democrat-led governments WON wars
  • 1918, World War I
  • 1945, World War II
  • 1999, the complete resolution of the Balkan wars of the late 20th century. The US involvement was unique in that the USA won, i.e., acheived objectives, with ZERO combat deaths - and many war criminals were turned over to international authorities for war crimes trials (and convictions)

It's often useful to capture an image of what is displayed on the screen.

• Pressing the PRT
  SC or Print
  Screen key puts an image of the entire desktop into the clipboard
  
  
• Pressing ALT + PRT
  SC or Print
  Screen takes a screenshot of just the active application.

No surprises there. It's what you do next that matters.

Don't paste your screenshots directly into Word!

The resulting file is much too large. Instead do the following:

1. Click on Start .
2. Click on All Programs .
3. Click on Accessories .
4. Click on Paint .
5. Click on Edit .
6. Click on Paste . Your screen capture should appear in the Paint program's editing window
7. Click on File .
8. Click on Save or Save As .

For most purposes you should choose a compressed format to save the image to a file:

• PNG: the Portable Network Graphics format is a great choice because it compresses the image without losing any detail.
• JPG: loses some detail during the compression process but produces good, small files.
  
• GIF: loses more detail than PNG or JPG, but spaces even more disc space.
  
• BMP and TIFF: avoid these - they create files that are 10-20 times larger than PNG/JPG/GIF.

You can print the resulting image or paste it into an e-mail or Word document.

A drunken man staggered in to a Catholic church and sat down in a confession box, saying nothing.

Sunni? Shiite?

Now I know, and you can, too.

	Sunnah	Shia (or Shi'ah)
adherents called	Sunnis	Shiites, Shi'i
meaning of name	"well-trodden path" or "tradition"	"party" or "partisans" of Ali
current adherents	940 million	120 million
percentage of total Muslims	90%	10%
primary locations	most Muslim countries	Iran, Iraq, Yemen
subsects	none, but four major schools of Muslim law are recognized	Ithna 'Ashariyah (Twelvers; the largest), Isma'iliyah and Zaydiyah
origins	c. 632 CE; theology developed especially in 10th cent.	c. 632-650 CE; killing of Ali's son Husayn in 680 CE is major event
did Muhammad designate a successor?	no	yes
true successor of the Prophet	Abu Bakr, father of the Prophet's favoured wife, 'A'ishah (elected by people of Medina)	'Ali ibn Abi Talib, husband of the Prophet's daughter Fatimah (designated by the Prophet)
qualifications for ruler of Islam	tribe of the Prophet (Quraysh); later, any qualified ruler	family of the Prophet
current leaders	imams	mujtahids
identity of imams	human leaders	infallible manifestations of God and perfect interpreters of the Qur'an
Al Mahdi	will come in the future	was already on earth, is currently the "hidden imam" who works through mujtahids to intepret Qur'an; and will return at the end of time
religious authority other than the Qu'ran	ijma' (consensus) of the Muslim community	infallible imams
concealing faith for self-protection (taqiya)	affirmed under certain circumstances	emphasized
temporary marriage (mut'ah)	practiced in the Prophet's time, but now rejected	still practiced
holy cities	Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem	Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Najaf, Karbala
major holidays	Eid al-Adha, Eid al-Fitr	Eid al-Adha, Eid al-Fitr, Ashura

Source:Religionfacts.com

Does he pay for his music at Rhapsody or Amazon or iTunes? Or does he torture it out of someone?

What's on Dick Cheney's i-Pod?

On his recent visit to UK, Barack Obama gave, to the queen, an i-Pod. That suggests some questions:

1. An i-Pod????
2. What was he thinking?
3. Can you picture the British queen putting the i-Pod in her pocket, slapping on the headset, and truckin' down the road catching some tunes?
4. Does the queen have a pocket?
5. Does the queen now, or has any queen queen ever, had a pocket?
6. Does the headset go over or under the crown?
   
7. Does the i-Pod replace a royal boom box?
   
8. Does she pirate her music or does she buy her music from iTunes?
9. If she pirates the sharps and flats, does she outsource that activity to someone like Captain Henry Morgan or Captain William "I'm not Billy the..." Kidd?
   
10. What are the queen's favorite songs?

This is an actual crime report from our local Emergency Services. Someone actually called 911 to report this. No, really!.

Friday, Feb. 27 - At 1:58 a.m., a caller on Wandering Lane reported that her friend was being hostile.

I'm going out a on a limb here....

• 1:58 am
• "friend was being hostile."
• stupid phone trick

Do you suppose that alcohol might be involved?

This is an actual crime report from our local Emergency Services. Someone actually called 911 to report this. No, really!.

Tuesday, March 3 - At 5:47 p.m., a caller reported he "really likes the new [ local police ] patrol cars" because "they blend in more with traffic and can sneak up on people doing bad things more easily."

This is an actual crime report from our local Emergency Services. Someone actually called 911 to report this. No, really!.

Sunday, March 1 - At 6:50 p.m., juveniles were reported ringing doorbells at a residence in the 30000 block of Highway 20. Caller said the subjects had previously put mustard on her car.

Pardon me... Do you have any Grey Poupon?

This is an actual crime report from our local Emergency Services. Someone actually called 911 to report this. No, really!.

Friday, Feb. 27 - At 6:09 p.m., a female caller reported a male in a small white car "tried to run her over" and then called her over to his vehicle where he "called her profanities and told her how stupid she was."

Don't get me wrong. I know that we have to continue harvesting oil.

But there is a big hunk'o'wisdom in hoarding our oil reserves and letting foreigners drain theirs. In fact, it's more than wisdom, it has the ring of a national security strategy.

Whether we suck ours up as fast as possible, or help them danged ferginners exploit their future, there are some important points to consider:

1. Develop Alternatives To Petrol, Baby, Develop Alternatives To Petrol. That is our future economy and national security - and it's our present economy and national security.
2. Conserve Here, Conserve Now. When oil prices got too high last year, Americans had enough. We went on a conservation binge. The price of oil crashed. Many oil speculators were wiped out (boo-hoo). Car companies stopped producing gas-suckers. Does anyone want to buy a Hummer - really, really cheep? Cars that are gentle on our wallets and a bit kinder to Ma Nature became hot items. Them danged feregnners went into a frenzy as their cash cows got cow-tipped. All of that happened because Americans wised up and conserved.
3. Accept responsibility and take our stewardship seriously.

   Assume that you are the parent of a teenager. You child demands new shoes. You point out that in his/her closet there are there are many, many shoes never worn - never even taken out of the box.
   
   Now assume that your teenager has grown up and become an oil company flack. Some things never change. Now your adult child is demanding new oil leases. Ever the wise patri/matri-arch, you point out that in the closet there are 68 million acres of oil leases going unused.

68 million? Unused? It's true, every bit of it. If you don't believe me, check it out:

• The Truth About America’s Energy:Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits. House Committe on Natural Resources.
• Total Producing and Non-Producing Leases: Fiscal Year 2007. Mineral Management Service.
• Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48. Federal Outer Continental Shelf Energy Information Administration.
• Inventory of Onshore Federal Oil and Natural Gas Resources and Restrictions to Their DevelopmentU.S. Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Energy.

Whole Foods workers in Tulsa found a poisonous Brazilian spider in a crateload of bananas Friday. The venom causes prolonged erections. They're scary because when somebody must suck the poison out of the bite, you find out who your real friends are.
-- Argus Hamilton