Digby [via Atrios] with another interesting perspective....
If the chief executive turned down his bonus it would "demoralise" staff members and would send a signal that they now effectively "worked for an arm of the civil service or a utility, rather than for a bank".
Just one George shy of Bo D. Start from the beginning and go to the end, or start at 39:40 and go to the end. Or, if you just want to hear the two songs, end at 55:00.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (May 8, 1829 - December 18, 1869)
Gottschalk was born to a Jewish businessman from London and a Creole mother in New Orleans, where he was exposed to a variety of musical traditions. He had six brothers and sisters, five of whom were half-siblings by his father's mulatto mistress.[1] His family lived for a time in a tiny cottage at Royal and Esplanade in the Vieux Carré. Louis later moved in with relatives at 518 Conti Street; his maternal grandmother Buslé and his nurse Sally had both been born in Saint-Domingue (known later as Haiti)
a funny perfect thing, this messy house.
it gave no stress.
and was filled
to the brim with
the left-behind touches
of those we love
in fact, the slight disarray
felt merry and warm;
as we had our morning coffee
and laughed about who said this
and who did that...
'round noon, we slurped some warm soup,
and late afternoon we sat with some tea,
all in the glow of our holiday chatter
i felt sad, in the end, to clean it all up.
the bright little bows and the crinkled up paper.
there were pieces of cookies, a discarded sock, and
all those burned out candles...
there was a washload of sheets, and
stuffing the pillows back into their cases
i dusted and swept
and yes, even wept,
as this perfect day
finally leapt to its end
Who would understand this but you guys? Diana asked Joseph to make sure to send me a birthday card.
I got it on Christmas Eve.
Can you believe that? It just blows me away.
She wanted to make sure I got a birthday card. Incredible. Lovely. Wild. And only Diana. Only masslass. Only ml could think of something just that right.
Love you ml. miss you. miss your voice. miss our calls.
hugs to you where ever you are ...................
She was sitting on the street somewhere in Slatina, Romania. She was sitting in the rain and cold, with her feet cut away. And yet she lived, this sweet girl with a big desire to survive.
She could use some more help. The wonderful Prietenii Nostri is a shelter and haven for some 400 to 500 dogs. This dog was lucky, as she was brought to Prietenii Nostri's founder Gratiela Ristea, who does what she can to feed and house and provide medical care for these creatures, our fellow earthlings. I found my dog, Bobby, there almost two years and she is my sweet sweet girl.
Bobby had her tail cut off and her teeth kicked in. But this poor one, well... she's had two surgeries already. And Gratiela says her spine is not broken, which is very good news.
Perhaps there are some of you who could make a donation to help cover her care ... or even bigger: offer her a home... this would be wonderful.
The United States of America, the greatest country the world has ever known.
I heard that alot growing up.
Accolades for American greatness came from politicians, foreign statesmen, artists and writers, journalists, Hollywood, my teachers. It could be heard in the crashing of generational waves of immigrants onto our shores, all wanting to become Americans. Hell, even my own kin folk broke down in sentiment on a 4th of July or two.
America's secret to greatness was no secret: we were the land of the free. We were free and we celebrated and touted it, exported it and, we told ourselves and the rest of the world: this freedom is enduring.
Freedom defined who we were and it justified how we lived... the big ideas, the free markets, the hippies and Hollywood, helping our neighbors worldwide in times of crisis... we were great, rich, and generous.
In remembrance of our freedom and its stamp on the the American character, I give you two great Americans, Franklin Roosevelt and Norman Rockwell ...
THE FOUR FREEDOMS excerpt from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's speech to Congress, 6 January 1941
... and illustrated by the great Norman Rockwell In the future days which we seek to make secure,
we look forward to a world founded upon
four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression --
everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
After nearly nine years, 4,500 American dead, 32,000 wounded and more than $800 billion, U.S. officials formally shut down the war in Iraq - a conflict that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said was worth the price in blood and money, as it set Iraq on a path to democracy.
Panetta stepped off his military plane in Baghdad Thursday as the leader of America's war in Iraq, but will leave as one of many top U.S. and global officials who hope to work with the struggling nation as it tries to find its new place in the Middle East and the broader world.
More than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion in 2003, according to the Iraq Body Count website. Bombings and gun battles are still common. And experts are concerned about the Iraqi security force's ability to defend the nation against foreign threats.
Still, Panetta said earlier this week, the war "has not been in vain."
Wonder if the dead and the widowed and grieving mothers and fathers of the dead would agree, Leon.
I thought I`d posted this earlier but I guess I must have screwed up.
I was thinking since I hadn`t been around much, I owed it to my Badger friends a few things to ponder.
Now, I know that some consider life begins at conception but I have a problem with chickens.
So my question is, "What came first, the Human, or the Egg.
