green

Marjon has expressed the concerns of the pro choice gang very well. It is this total lack of concern or sense of compassion for the woman who finds hereself in this position which is appalling to us who sit on the other side of the street with respect to this debate. You see we live in an era which is very confusing for women. On one hand we are told that women have the same value as men and thus have the right to all the same freedoms, rights, and responsibilities. At the same time, by denying women full control over their own bodies you may as well be telling this entire segment of the population that they must wear the niqab for to force women to remain controlled by their own bodies is to insure that this entire group of individuals will remain handicapped by the vagaries of biology. Women will never be regarded as the equals of men but will be viewed as little more than incubation equipment, hatcheries...or whatever.

Actually, there are cases of babies who are gravely deformed who do go on to live. These children would be individuals who are born with little more than the brain stem, that is to say the part of the brain which controls the automatic functions of the body; they are usually blind, crippled, and remain in fact little more than machines which process food. These babies will grow larger but they will never grow up. Children like this require much hands-on care. Their limbs must be massaged and worked in order that the muscles don't atrophy. They must be fed by hand, they must be bathed, and their diapers must be changed. Such children do exist, you know.

I am so happy with the results of my band. Yesterday I tried on two pairs of pants which I had grown too fat to wear and I found that I could pull them off without undoing them!

Sounds yummy! Thanks for giving us your recipes.

Ooh, I can't deal with heat and humidity, either. Let's go to the mountains and trout us a fish. I'll bring chocolate and wine. And yes, it is too bad you didn't save your drugs! A grrl never knows when she might enjoy a rest from the rat race. Haha *wink*

I want to thank you all for sharing your advice with me. This really is a great community we have here. :love:

Hmmm, very interesting. Maybe the reason I want linear reality is because I am an old fart and grew up on the linear stuff! :tired

Yep, this seems to be an advantage of living in one of the minor countries. You do get more exposure to global news.

Thanks for the compliment, eh! :what: It seems to me that there are some interesting men, men with actual signs of intelligence, in the race for the chance to run for a Republican presidency this time around. Rudy Giuliani is one. Certainly for America to win back its standing in the eyes of the international community it will have to elect an intelligent president this time around, one who doesn't talk about gittin' his orders from God. In international diplomatic circles this sounds just plain weird. And of course the war in Iraq has badly damaged America's reputation as well as ruining the current British Prime Minister's, Tony Blair, political future. You might recall that he supported the war in Iraq and now he is being forced to resign because he is the single most hated politician in Britain as a result of this action. At the moment I am not starving but I am sick.:sick I have had a cold for four weeks now and I caught some kind of intestinal bug when I was down in Mexico.:help: I am living on cough syrup with codiene and Immodium! Ugh!

While I have sympathy for people who are economic and political refugees - Toronto, Canada which is where I live is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world - I still believe that these people must, like everyone else for that matter, respect their home and their neighbours. This means learning the folkways of the new country in order to integrate, being respectful of your neighbours and of the laws, and getting a job.

Our kitten showed up at our house as a stray. After she spent two nights knocking on our front door we took her in. She was really nice to us when she first arrived but beat up on the resident cat, a large and very sweet cat, all the time. Then we discovered that tiny as she was she was pregnant. We paid for her shots, her abortion, and for her to be spayed. The big cat died from kidney failure. :cry And we were left with the kitten from hell! :tired Her good point is that she is not a picky eater. Maybe she will ditch us someday.........:straight

Hey, that idea of getting spare batteries is a great idea. Thanks, Kyethra. What kind of HP did you have?

Yep, so, so true.........:help:

Up here in Canada we have been in one horrible beaurocratic mess ever since a bunch of paranoid Republicans decided that the "world's longest undefended border" was no longer reliable and that all Canucks travelling south of the border and, for that matter, all those Americans visiting Canada needed to have valid passports in order to return to the United States. This has resulted in horrible delays for passports up here and at many government offices there are line-ups which begin at 3 or 4 in the morning, which is long before business hours, eh. And for those of us who are travelling to those parts of the globe where one always requires a passport these new delays are an irritant or worse. Canadian passports are issued with a five year expiry date but you can't really use them after 4.5 years. This is why everyone figures that four and a half years from now there is going to be something in the way of another wave of passport renewal demand. Green and her mate have been kinda lucky. We do a lot of travelling and so we tend to keep our passports current. And in the case of Green, because she doesn't drive her passport is the only ID she has. This is how we have managed to miss the current passport hysteria. I personally think that profiling makes more sense when it comes to issues such as dealing with the "world's longest undefended border" or when choosing whom to pay close attention to when loading individuals on an aircraft. Of course the deal is this: all profiling has to be sensitively done.

We live next to the neighbour from Hell, too. There is a website called, I think, Neighbour from Hell, where one can read and even contribute one's own story. It is horrible living next to the neighbour from Hell and all the more offensive when the guy is illegally there! You have my sympathy.

It does sound like a splendid life and I am going to suggest that BJean and I invite ourselves down for a visit. You might know that I have never, ever tasted true Bar-B-Que, eh. (By the way, do you have any of those real nifty post lapband surgery drugs kicking around?:nervous )

Evillah, I suspect that you are in the same quandary as most folk. You have some values which are considered as leftist and others which are considered as being right-wing. Up here in Canada you would be considered a centrist. The problem with voting for a worthy candidate is that he or she is often pressured to vote along party lines and so what you are getting is not that individual's particular set of ethics but the party programme. This means that when you are voting you must examine the platforms of the dueling parties and take this into account. Given your set of values I would be inclined, if I were you, to vote Democrat. And now I will tell you why. Up here in Canada we have 3 major parties, a conservative one, a middle of the road party and a party which is left-wing. Though our left-wing party has never been successful at gaining power at the federal level it has won power at the provincial (state) level from time to time in various Canadian provinces. Once this idealist, left-wing party manages to achieve power it inevitably slides towards the political centre. It has to, for it must deal with the needs of both big and small business - the wheels of economy, in brief - as well as the constraints of the operating budget, the concerns of the taxpayer, etc. In short, a left-wing government becomes aware that compromises do have to be made. Your Democrat party will never be able to push through universal health care; there is simply too much opposition from big business and too much fear of this type of programme from people like yourself. They will never be able to push through same sex marriage for exactly the same reasons. Similarly, your Republican party will probably be unsuccessful at outlawing abortion altogether. But the Democrat party is a greener and more environmentally friendly party. They are also considerably less friendly to big business and to big oil, preferring, instead, to support small businesses and small business initiatives, preferring to loosen American dependency on fossil fuels, and choosing to recognise the value of the worker and the importance of trickle up economics. I do believe that the Democratic party is prepared to be a little more creative and responsive with respect to the serious problems which harrass both America and the international community today. Of course I am writing from the viewpoint of a Canadian and you must understand that we are viewing your situation as outsiders. This can be useful but at the same time we foreigners do miss a lot of the subtleties, eh.

Omigawd! I love this! Too bad our kitten survived those days o masturbation. I guess there were just not enough teenage boys in our neighbourhood to have taken her out! She's the cat from Hell and a lousy pet. She eats our food and flips us the paw. :tired We never get any respect from her. LOL

I heard that Samsung is very good.

Although I am pro choice I personally find the concept of a post-viability abortion to be utterly repulsive unless there is something medically very wrong with either the foetus or the mother. I would be comfortable with legislation that would block abortion as an option at this stage of the pregnancy. My only concern would be that such a law might slow down the performance of the procedure if in fact it was required for urgent medical reasons; for with laws and exemptions there come protocols which must be followed and it always takes time to do the paperwork. I believe that any woman who has allowed her pregnancy to continue to the stage where the foetus may be considered a viable baby has already made her choice. At this point she has a different set of choices to make: will she choose to keep the child or give it to a couple who are unable to have a child and dearly desire one.

These past few weeks are the first time I have ever watched Idol. I usually don't watch reality shows other than Judge Judy whom I adore and Trading Spouses. I thought I would find Idol boring and irritating but have found it quite interesting. This was a real surprise to me. I wonder if there is much betting action going over Idol results. I also now regret that I never got to see Sanjay in action. Damn!!

Well, we have just come back from buying the laptop and we have taken everyone's advice except that I forgot Carlene's advice about buying the extended warranty! Damn!! We bought an HP Pavillion series model with a 14" screen. It has got the stuff which Betsyjane said it should have and so it will be fast and it can perform a bunch of clever tricks because it has a microphone and videocam/eye? built into it along with a CD/DVD burner. The little thing cost $950 in Can-bucks which are cheaper than Ameri-bucks. Of course we have hugely expensive sales taxes - 14% - and then we bought an external mouse (a red one), a Norton's complete protection programme, a WiFi router to hook up to our D-link, a travelling case for the thing, etc.... (It seems the only downside to this smaller model compared to the larger model of the same make is that the battery doesn't last as long but on the other hand it will fit on an airplane table.) And so we had ourselves quite a little spend-fest. Then we continued on to have either a late lunch, a very late breakfast or an early supper! Argon: We were afraid to get an Apple because we had heard that Bell Sympatico which is our internet provider gets strange with Mac.

Oh! Yah! I was awake for both of my colonoscopies. Ugh! This seems to be the way they do 'em in my city. I have heard they take a kinder, gentler approach elsewhere. Colon TV was kinda cool, though....but only if you have enough drugs!

I personally prefer Jazz and Soul to Pop. I hate those bluddy Whitless Huston-type sentimental ballads. I think that they all sound alike. I figure Blake, a guy with a weaker voice but with more musical intelligence than Jordin, to be a natural as a Jazz singer. The thing which I have noticed with US Idol is that no matter what the material is, the orchestra/back-up band handles it in a homogenized manner. The back up music all sounds the same and this makes it difficult for the singer to create a truly indivual sound. The Idol definitely is a Kaoraoke contest and nothing more and this is thanks to the artistic insensitivity of orchestra.

I believe that this should be an open site and if it takes ads to underwrite this then so be it. This site has a huge membership but very few of us actually post. Those individuals who like to visit and read will be driven off if they have to pony up with $$.