Merry Christmas!

Please sign this petition!

http://wh.gov/R6h2

Make education of our children the number one priority for our country.

We need to make our education system better than any in the world. Make this our number one priority. Poorly educated students are a drain on our GDP and tax base. Nearly half of the heads of households on welfare are drop outs. The average annual cost of maintaining a prisoner: 3X higher than the annual dollars expended to educate a school-age child. We can and should reverse this. We must develop a system of funding our education system that ignores current financial issues because the long term effects are so much more expensive. Consider tying our education funding to an index of crime rates and prison population geography. Overwhelm our communities with education and positive opportunities.

Another year gone. Ah but what a way to celebrate the end! Yes sir, everyone buying junk from China to hand each other along with a cherry happy holidays! Millions in gas expense millions in airline fees and billions in gifts soon to be exchanged or sold at a garage sale.

Yes it is Christmas so keep Christ involved -you know Jesus the Messiah who started a cult called Christianity? Christianity which borrowed this day from other cults and since they already had a day to celebrate in Easter they declared this time to be his birthday.

To all...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Family, Friends and good times.

To those less fortunate... our hearts and thoughts are with you.

To those who have had great tragedy this year... the Holiday season will be tough, but ALWAYS remember those great times before. Cherish the past and honor those who have left us. Physically they may be gone, but the memories and love for those fallen will live on. Nothing can ever stop that.

To Rachel Maddow... I just started watching MSNBC during the fall of 2012 (yes, better late than never)... I am addicted. Rachel, I look forward to every evening at 9pm for your weekly show. Thanks for shedding light on those things we don't have a clue about. Your style is one of a kind. Your delivery of the daily events is terrific and always entertaining.

Once again... Happy Holidays... We are in this together!

whoever takes these pictures knows what they're doing. I only wish somebody would give us the option to save a larger version of these images. These pix are wallpaper good.

Anyway, happy holidays everyone.

Great Synergy! Happily Agreeing to Disagree!

Everybody really does know everything (proof later). Strangely, everyone is also a pain in the buttocks contrarian, except for you and me, err, although,, I'm not so sure about you...

My latest revalation (too late to sane the world) is that we probably travel thru this reality in teams of 120. Realize and reinnervate your team.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Screw it, Mr. Benen. Take the day off. Don' t worry about us. We should be spending time offline, enjoying the day, and you should be, too.

Merry "Whatchamacallit" and we'll get back to work tomorrow.

Cheers!

Thank you everyone. The work put into this blog, the insightful comments (mostly) and even our trolls are food for reflection and thought. Whatever you celebrate may you have joy and here are wishes for a great new year.

Charles Durning passed away on Monday. Most will remember him as a long-time character actor, one who specialized in playing blustery, somewhat-befuddled roles. He often played a "heavy," but particularly seemed to relish his occasional comic turns.

During World War II he landed at Normandy on D-Day, was wounded there, and later was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He earned three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star, but even years later refused to speak publicly of those events. "Too many bad memories," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I don't want you to see me crying."

During was nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor -- in 1982, for playing the Texas governor in the film version of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and again the following year for his performance as the bumbling Colonel Erhardt in Mel Brooks' To Be or Not to Be.

This clip from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, most of which was actually shot inside the State Capitol in Austin, always makes me smile.

Now that we've received our wishes and it's on to the New Year, I hope we can all agree that the best wish for 2013 is some effective action on "The Gun Issue". I've heard it all this past week from mental issues, violent culture, computer games and judge them to be nothing more than distractions to the real problem-The Gun. It's only purpose and function has never been anything more that to KILL! In this Country of 3millon plus we get along pretty well considering all of the reasons the deniers are offering. Consider the total killed by the so few and it's anything but cultural, mental or other wise. Humans have always killed humans but the gun was produced to be the most effective. Hopefully, we can get rational about what to do and produce some control over the slaughter. Let's tax it out of favor, legislate it out of favor or anything to reduce the horror.

And so another long count calendar begins. The prophets of doom have been saved from their own worst nightmares just so they can start anew.

Thirteen O'Clock is a coming(2013?). Beware the ides of March or is it going to be April?Tell us oh wise and exhalted FOX fantasy writers, when is the end coming? We survived the first four years of Obama despite the republican obstruction. We will survive the republican rush to push us off the fiscal cliff also.

Today's "NRA award of Gun Freeeeeeeeedom" goes to Little Rock, Arkansas - where six juveniles were shot and wounded outside of a motorcycle club very early Christmas morning.

Happy Holidays to all! Will Rachel and the rest of the gang be back tomorrow? MSNBC has got to get more programming! The weekend and holiday programs just don't cut it. How about hiring some lesser known people to do some programs during those times? It would be far better than those prison shows and stuff.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas. My thoughts and prayers for the holidays are with Chief Theresa Spence and with all First Peoples of Turtle Island.

NRA backs gun rights for felons:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/felons-finding-it-easy-to-regain-gun-rights.html

Honest to God, that's not a joke. Amazing. It shows what the NRA really stands for. As much gun sales as possible. Heck, felons can't even vote or get food stamps but they can get a gun.

Compassionate Gun Owners (C.G.O.) needs to be very fluid in it's (lack of) dogma as well as it's positions on anything but the goal. The target is something like: To realize the end of unprovoked violence.
For me this is a koan in one respect. I believe that violence can't be "provoked" once a person reaches a level of responsibility and becomes adept with their emotions. So all violence is truly unprovoked. It's never really a valid argument to say: " I killed 'A' because he ..." The truth is purely "I killed". So as most or possibly all violence is unprovoked, the end of that may end violence. Please hang with me here...

Said another way, at a certain point in our maturation we come to realize that we are at choice with how we respond to stimulus (good or bad) and that our response is our creation and responsibility. If people can be brought along the path to true responsibility for their emotional state, emotionally triggered violence will end, that being an overwhelming percentage of the violence that occurs.

We have a largely fearful culture that understandably incorporates strategies to try and feel more secure. We try numbing with substances. We distract ourselves with anything that works, shopping, sex, food, TV, gossip, etc. We get in the habit of protecting ourselves even when there's no threat present.

We lock doors, install alarms and acquire weapons, attempting to manipulate the outer world to shift an inner experience. The master learns along the way that the outer world must be allowed to be itself with no conditions imposed by him/her. Whatever arises in the outer world must first be fully embraced before a perfect response can be crafted or initiated. By embraced I don't mean that you just allow any random stupidity to continue or join the club of idiocy or mediocrity. But to masterfully respond to a happening, as a ninja warrior, turning the opponent's energy and momentum to your advantage requires first to fully truly SEE the situation. The whole picture must be embraced, accepted, felt. (Any part that is denied or glossed over can kick ninja butt.)Then a perfect response is crafted and executed. Accurately perceiving the whole picture is a skill that must be acquired and honed.

The way to the CGO goal is through tolerance for all points of view. It's through raising consciousness, promoting emotional intelligence and perceptive mastery, facilitating dialogue specifically on the weapons issues. Even though the weapons are a smoke shield, the guns issue gets quickly to the true heart of the problem (peoples fear- an inner experience) and "triggers" the very argument which ultimately upon being settled will end violence. This, along with weapons use training and whatever control legislation and enforcement is acceptable to all is where we would be involved.