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I'm in love with trim. I want it everywhere and I can't get enough of it. It might border on addiction, but since it is so awesome, I'm happy to call myself an addict.

We all know how amazing it looks on drapes, pillows and even walls, but how about your furniture? Particularly to finish off the bottom of furniture. I think it can be like a great pair of shoes - it 'makes' the piece.

Let's take a look shall we?

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Nick Olsen for Lee Jofa

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So what do you think? Amazing right? It's pretty major. Now I've got to go and trim something.


And don't forget, it's Friday which means another great week of the Simply Baby Nursery blog party. This week's party is hosted by the lovely Katherine of Rhymes with Smile. Check it out!

When YOUR Ox Is Gored ...
Attack of the Lapdogs!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*****************

WOW!  What a turn around!  I refer of course, to the repentance of the Mainstream Media. Repentance here is meant in the classic definition:  turn around and go the other way.  That's what the press has done the past few days.  And , yes, it IS remarkable!

It is nigh on to laughable to observe the MSM in high angst going after the Obama administration after learning about the "monitoring" of AP reporters phone calls, both personal and business.  It really does depend, I suppose, upon whose ox is being gored.

As long as the Obama White House was persecuting conservatives, and backing and filling the Benghazi cover-up, everything was hunky-dory with the Mainstream Media. 

But the moment they (the MsM) become the target of the Obama administration the MsM went ballistic! 

You may recall the Fox News Channel was out there, all by itself, on the Benghazi affair for months and months.  The MsM just yawned and looked the other way.  The IRS harassment of the Tea Party and other conservative groups received only cursory and lukewarm interest amongst the denizens of the press.

But WAIT!  The inviolate MsM has been violated by none other than their messiah! Suddenly they feel betrayed -- and with good reason.  They HAVE been betrayed.

But -- HEY! Countless times we have warned the leftist press that under a tyrannical government the press would be among the very first targets for censoring, and for ultimate control by the government.  Now they have had a taste, just a taste, mind you, of what we have been warning them about for years now.  And they seem blind-sided by it all.  It is just unbelievable.

As of this writing vast holes have appeared in the circle of wagons around Mr. Obama. And Obama is -- suddenly -- vulnerable.

Hours before this writing the dems were scrambling to find a way -- some way, ANYWAY, to bribe the MsM back into their corner.  They began by suggesting that now might be a good time to revisit the proposed reporter/press shield law that made its way ignominiously into the "round file" the last time it reared its head on Capitol Hill.

Judging by the reception of Obama's suggestion, the shield law bribe is not working.

It is gratifying to actually witness the MsM rediscover their purpose.  They were to be the people's watchdog over the government.  Instead they became the Obama Administration lapdogs.  Suddenly they were transformed from reporters to stenographers reporting the White House's -- AND -- the Democratic Party's "talking points" as news.

This loss of their mission not only affected the national media it reached all the way down to community news organizations, as well. As a result, Americans have only seen a white wash of the Obama Administration -- and the Democratic Party -- for the past four and a half years.

What little esteem for the MsM held by those few Americans who actually derived their news from those sources must now feel themselves betrayed, as well. Unarguably they have been deluged by a tsunami of left wing propaganda employed by the west wing f the White House, and various executive departments under the direct or indirect control of the Obama Administration.

Now "the chickens have come home to roost" as a famous religious leader said a number of years ago. 

I have no idea where all these scandals will lead, eventually.  But understand -- even if an impeachment proceeding is begun, and Obama is impeached in the House of Representatives, it will take a vote by the Democratic Party controlled US Senate to convict Obama and that is about as likely to be successful, as rolling a snowball clear across Hell in the middle of August. It ain't gonna happen.

We're asking ourselves today, if Obama's protective bubble has finally burst, if his Teflon coating as developed a scratch, will we actually get to see Obama for what he truly is before some sort of makeshift barrier is erected to insure that the real Obama is never exposed to the scrutiny of the "low info voters" who put him in office -- not once-- but twice.

This could be a pivotal  moment in American history.

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"  -- The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

We Americans must continually guard against the encroachment of tyranny. 


© J.D. Longstreet

Click to enlarge.

My new personal best is 273 notes in a row in 100 seconds. I've done it twice in the last week. That speed was good enough to help inch my way up into 4th place. And when I say inch, I really mean it. As seen in the picture above, I'm just 1,200 points ahead of the person in 5th place (out of 161+ million). Whew!

I need to play roughly 0.5% faster overall (on 11 different scales) in order to get to #1. That definitely seems doable given enough practice and patience.



I've latched myself onto this mini-game like a honey badger would. Giving up is not an option! :)

See Also:
Five
Nine

A North American Union? Really?
Why the government won't seal the southern border
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

**************
Recently, I heard more false claims that the US stole much of the land that is now the southwestern states from Mexico.  It’s TOTAL BUNK!

The mainstream media continues to publish those claims without counterbalancing them with the truth.  That does two things.  It emboldens those perpetrating those false claims against the US – and -- it is accepted as truth by our woefully undereducated citizenry. 

Over three years ago we attempted to bring truth to the discussion by explaining that the US did, in fact, purchase that land. It is a matter of historical fact.

As the months have gone by, I have seen no attempt to set the record straight.  This, dear reader, is how revisionist history becomes so successful.  No one refutes it.  It is the first rule of propaganda: tell the lie long enough and loud enough and it will eventually be accepted as truth.

It would seem that is what those groups in the United States, whose aim it is to push AMNESTY for Illegal Aliens legislation through the Congress and onto Obama’s desk for his signature, are endeavoring to do.  We refer, of course, to the new Immigration Reform Bill.   I mean, how can we insist that those people abide by the law and apply for citizenship in the US legally, because, after all, IT IS THEIR LAND.   

OK, let’s take another shot at setting the record straight and look at some facts.

First, The Mexican War:

The Mexican War between the United States and Mexico began with a Mexican attack on American troops along the southern border of Texas on Apr. 25, 1846. Fighting ended when U.S. Gen. Winfield Scott occupied Mexico City on Sept. 14, 1847; a few months later a peace treaty was signed (Feb. 2, 1848) at Guadalupe Hidalgo. In addition to recognizing the U.S. annexation of Texas defeated Mexico ceded California and, New Mexico (including all the present-day states of the Southwest) to the United States.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican War, was signed on February 2, 1848, by Nicholas P. Trist, for the United States, and by a special commission representing the collapsed government of Mexico.

Under the treaty, Mexico ceded to the United States Upper California and New Mexico (including Arizona) and recognized U.S. claims over Texas, with the Rio Grande as its southern boundary. The United States in turn paid Mexico $15,000,000, assumed the claims of American citizens against Mexico, ($3.25 Million) recognized prior land grants in the Southwest, and offered citizenship to any Mexicans residing in the area.  Then a few years later, the US bought the land that is now Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico for another 6 million dollars. 

Why did we need that additional land?

After the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, border disputes between the United States and Mexico remained unsettled. Land that now comprises lower Arizona and New Mexico was part of a proposed southern route for a transcontinental railroad. US President Franklin Pierce was convinced by Jefferson Davis, (Later the First President of the Confederate States of America)  then the US Secretary of War, to send James Gadsden (who had personal interests in the rail route) to negotiate the Gadsden Purchase with Mexico. Under the resulting agreement, the U.S. paid Mexico $10 million.  There was a problem with the money, however: Even though the agreement specified $10 million, the US Congress only agreed to pay $7 million. When the money finally arrived, in Mexico City, $1 million was found to be lost, thus making $6 million the amount Mexico actually got for the sale of that land.  Hey, they set the price… we paid it!

Run the numbers and you will find that the US paid Mexico $24,250,000.00 (24 million, two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand) US dollars for the land in the Southwest US which many claim, today, we (The US) stole! 

You know,  I get a bit tired, and even short-tempered, with folks who attempt to perpetuate an untruth by the act of sheer omission.  As  a Southerner, I know how that can hurt.  To say the US stole all that land in the Southwest is a flat-out lie.  So, 24 and-a-quarter-million isn’t much money?  Not by today’s standards perhaps, but back in the mid 1800’s we’re talking about somewhere in the area of $600,000,000.00!  Now that IS big bucks!

So, next time you hear someone prattling on about how the US stole all the southwestern United States from Mexico, set them straight.  Tell them we bought it and paid for it.  If they refuse to believe you refer them to the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty and the Gadsden’s Purchase a few years later.  It’s all there.  It’s a part of history -- a part of history students in the American government schools apparently never hear about.

Of course, the claims that we stole the land from Mexico is all a part of the propaganda being employed to saddle Americans with more undeserved guilt.  People who feel guilty will ofttimes respond in the way those prodding them wish them to respond.  That is what is hoped for with all the unmitigated garbage heaped on America today. 

Actually, as I view the relationship between the US and Mexico today, I have to wonder if there really is a move afoot to combine the three nations of the North American Continent into one nation, or one entity as in, say, the European Union.  

Some form of union of America, Mexico, and Canada has been discussed or proposed in academic, business, and political circles for decades now.  The NAU (North American Union) is a theoretical economic and political union of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The concept is loosely based, as we said, on the European Union, occasionally including a common currency called the "Amero" or the North American Dollar. You may read more about this NAU at:  SOURCE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Union   

Before you brush this aside (As I did years ago!), ask yourself why, exactly, is the US government refusing to seal the southern border with Mexico?  Why?

I'm tired of supporting the country of Mexico with the billions of US dollars a year pouring into Mexico from Mexican citizens who have burglarized the US.  The total amount is staggering.

The US has a huge number of problems these days that must be dealt with.  But we must not let our guard down for one minute else an amnesty bill for illegal aliens (The New Immigration Reform Bill) will be passed by the Congress and signed by the President into law.  

Eternal vigilance truly is the price of freedom.

© J. D. Longstreet

There once was a girl who wanted to switch her living room and dining room. She worked hard and made herself a swanky new dining room, but the living room needed a pick me up. So, she asked her friend for some help. Luckily this girl can DIY with the best of them, and also luckily her friend is me.

My very great friend and her family wanted a cozy space where they could read, do homework, practice the violen and spend hours on Pinterest. And although she knew she wanted to invest in grasscloth, the goal was to work with what she already had, just adding a few things here and there to spruce up the room.
Here is the space before. (cute children not included)


And here is the after.

My girl is hardcore. She put up the grasscloth all on her own. Right after she painted that mirror orange and before she put together those IKEA shelves. Unstoppable I tell you.


I love that we talk about the gallery wall and play with some pictures one day, and the next time I talk to her she says, "oh yeah I hung the gallery wall". All I do is plant the seed and she runs with it and makes it look great.


All of the artwork was created by her, in addition to a few pieces by her dad and her kids. They are basically the Partridge family of art.


I love a new tray on an old coffee table. It's almost totally better than a pair of new shoes. That's right, I will always pick a tray over a pair of shoes.


That grasscloth makes all the difference. It makes all of the moldings pop (which she put in during a previous project) and it makes the room so warm. It's like a big huge hug.


The lamp was originally orange but she gave it the gold touch with a can of spray paint.


A collection of gold animals has begun and the gold K looks great against the wallpaper.


The milk glass acquired by the two of us at the single most uncomfortable and slightly bigoted garage sale ever. I'll have to share that story one day.


Yes, this book is upside down. I'm quirky.




And because I hate it when magazines talk about a space and don't show a picture of it, here is her wonderful dining room. Good, right?

So that is the story of the girl who switched her living room and dining room and ended up with a great family space.

How about you? Have you switched rooms in your house before? Made some changes to a room that wasn't working for you?

 A magic place called Longwood Gardens is the place where Bogdan and I love to escape. This was our first visit this year and we intend to do it more often. I think the photos speak for themselves...
Enjoy!
P.S. Speaking about escaping... I'm on my way to New York and I will keep you updated with lots of photos on my Instagram account Here and Facebook Page Here.
See you soon!!!




                                                                              Shirt: c/o Sheinside/ Here
                                                                              Pants: Tommy Hilfiger/ similar Here  
                                                                              Pointed Heels: BCBGeneration/ option Here
                                                                              Clutch: 3.1 Phillip Lim/ Here
                                                                              Ring: c/o Lulu's.com
                                                                              Bangle Bracelet: c/o Robyn Rhodes/ Here

Drone Attacks Dishonorable
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
**************

Allow me to state, up front, I expect to catch a lot of flack for these comments.  But I have a burr under my saddle and I'm going to pluck it out.

America's use of drones to kill her enemies does not sit well with me.  It's distasteful to me and most of all -- it strikes me as being dishonorable.

OK.  I have been accused of being a "throwback" to an earlier age, and I won't argue that, at all.  I'll go a step farther and tell you that I find little to admire about the current age and still farther to say that -- yes, I remember when America acted with honor both at home and abroad, with her citizens as well as with her enemies.

So far as I am concerned killing a terrorist with a drone is equal to placing a bomb beneath his vehicle or shooting him in the back.  I don't like either.

I understand that chivalry is dead, long dead.  But do we have to shed what little honor we have remaining, as well? And I understand, too, that looking the enemy in the eye as he slips his blade between the hapless opponent's ribs is pretty much the work of our Special Forces these days.  Old school?  You bet.  Effective?  Heck, yes! And ... it is honorable.

I have not been able to get past the belief that we are choosing to kill our terrorist enemies rather than capture them and then have to imprison them.  Prisoners cost money, lots of money.  Dead men in the desert cost nothing -- once the ordinance is dropped on them.

But -- we can LEARN NOTHING from a dead terrorist, either.   No intelligence is gleaned from a dead terrorist.  I have to ask -- what might we have learned from the stack of dead bodies littering the Middle East? Maybe nothing.  But now we will never know.  Heck, we don't even know what we DON'T know!

Consider this from an article by David Bell in the New Republic entitled: "In Defense of Drones: A Historical Argument"  Mr. Bell writes:  "With its explicit embrace of advanced technology over traditional methods of combat, the strategy seems designed to provoke the increasingly vocal critics who doubt the morality, effectiveness, and political implications of “remote control warfare.” Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, making the inevitable comparison to video games, has argued that “to accept killing far from the situation of battlefields where there is an understanding of necessity is really ethically troubling.” The Economist, hardly a bastion of radicalism, has similarly asked: “if war can be waged by one side without any risk to the life and limb of its combatants, has a vital form of restraint been removed?” And just last week in The New York Times, Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution called unmanned systems “a technology that removes the last political barriers to war”—and thereby undermines democracy—because it allows politicians to take aggressive military action without having to face the electoral consequences of young Americans coming home in coffins."  SOURCE:  http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/100113/obama-military-foreign-policy-technology-drones#   

The article goes on to say:  "There is nothing new about military leaders exploiting technology for this purpose. And, for that matter, there is nothing new about criticizing such technology as potentially immoral or dishonorable.  In fact, both remote control warfare, and the queasy feelings it arouses in many observers, are best seen as parts of a classic, and very old history."  SOURCE:   http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/100113/obama-military-foreign-policy-technology-drones# 

Mr. Bell goes on to say:  " ... Drones are not cruise missiles, or shells fired by Big Bertha. They are controllable, and are explicitly designed to allow the military to target opposing forces as carefully as possible. Of course, targeting raises its own set of questions: War that takes the form of a campaign of assassination is both morally problematic and politically counter-productive."  (Emphasis by underlining is mine.) SOURCE:  http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/100113/obama-military-foreign-policy-technology-drones# 

In an article by Akbar Ahmed and Lawrence Wilkerson in "The Guardian" entitled  "Dealing remote-control drone death, the US has lost its moral compass,"  the authors state: "The warrior ethos may be largely a myth but, like most myths, it protects something very important: the psychology of killing in the name of the state. That killing becomes nothing less than murder when the soldier doing it is utterly invulnerable. Most US citizens, so long divorced from any responsibility to take up arms and fight and kill, do not understand this. Soldiers – good ones – do. (Emphasis by underlining is mine.)Such understanding was behind the recent cancellation by Secretary of Defense Hagel of the valor award for drone operators."
SOURCE:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/drone-death-us-moral-compass

The authors go on to state that the use of drones is making war into murder and creating more problems than it is solving.

Let me be clear here.  I am not pleading a case for the terrorists.  I am pleading a case for America. 

I, too, want the terrorists dead and gone, or at the very least imprisoned.  My concern is for the damage we MAY be doing to the soul of America.

In the final analysis, maybe it's just me, as my wife would surely say.  Maybe I'm just an old veteran who has grown soft in my waning years.  Whatever the answer, I can tell you, without hesitation, that I do not like what America is becoming.

The use of drones instead of living, breathing, soldiers does not sit well, with me. I still prefer the exclamation "Send in the Marines" over "Launch a drone."

But understand this, America.  As long as politicians can wage war without having to face an angry electorate when those silver coffins begin arriving at Dover Air Force base,  you can bet they will continue to do it, even increasing the frequency of attacks around the globe.  And, too, as long as the Obama administration's policy is to "lead from the rear" those drones will continue to wreak death and destruction all over the world.

But -- there WILL be "blow back."  At some time -- and at some place -- a reckoning will be exacted.  We may find that we are saving American lives through drone usage only to lose them to the enemy's asymmetrical warfare on our own shores.

No matter what I think, drone technology, and its usage,  is here to stay.  I, and those who agree with me, will  just have to learn to live with it.

I think I'll go take a shower.

© J. D. Longstreet

Oy! I hope you all had as much fun this past weekend as I did. It was the perfect mix of shopping, projects, family and good food. Fun was had by all.

Here are some peaks into the last 72 hours.


We took pictures of each other taking pictures of each other.


I got out some ribbon and my glue gun.


Did a bit of shopping/research. Sadly this hot little number didn't come home with me but I'll keep my eye on it. Wouldn't she be saucy in a bathroom holding all types of pretty hand towels and jars of pretty soaps? I miss her already.


But this little tray did come home with me. I'll have to take another shot of the top - think dragons and billowy smoke. Look for that on Instagram.


Finished up one project.


And started another.


All was wrapped up with an attempt at a family selfie. Mouths full of cookies have some sort of power to make the girls look at the camera. Go figure.

Stay tuned for more info on those projects, and make sure to come back on Wednesday for another client before and after!

Stolen  (With permission) from Patriot's Corner

This article was so good, that I had to share it here in its entirety. Credit goes to Daniel Greenfield (AKA Sultan Knish), and the original can be found on Daniel Greenfield (AKA Sultan Knish), and the original can be found here.

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America is becoming a more tolerant nation, we are told. Each new thing that we learn to tolerate makes us more progressive. But tolerance is a relative thing. For every new thing we learn to tolerate, there is a thing that we must stop tolerating.

Tolerance can only be allocated to so many places. The balance of tolerance and intolerance remains the same no matter how progressive a society becomes. A tolerant society only allocates its intolerance differently.

America today tolerates different things. It tolerates little boys dressing up as little girls at school, but not little boys pointing pencils and making machine gun noises on the playground.

The little boy whose mother dressed him up in girlish clothes once used to be a figure of contempt while the little boy pretending to be a marine was the future of the nation. Now the boy in the dress is the future of the nation having joined an identity group while the aspiring little marine is suspected of one day trading in his sharpened pencil for an assault rifle as soon as the next gun show comes to town.

The Duke of Wellington once said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton. What battles will the boys playing on the playgrounds where dodgeball is banned and finger guns are a crime win and what sort of nation will they be fighting to protect? The trouble with tolerance is that there is always someone deciding what to tolerate. A free society does not tolerate people; it allows them to live their own values. And a tolerant society is not free. It is a dictatorship of virtue that is intolerant toward established values in order to better tolerate formerly intolerable values.

A free society does not tell people of any religion or no religion what to believe. A tolerant society forces them all to pay for abortions because its dictators of virtue have decided that the time has come to teach this lesson in tolerance. An open society finds wisdom in its own uncertainty. A tolerant society, like a teenager, is certain that it already knows all the answers and lacks only the means of imposing them on others. It confuses its destruction of the past with progress and its sense of insecurity with righteousness.

To the tolerant, intolerance is the most powerful act possible. They solve problems by refusing to tolerate them. School shootings are carried out with guns and so the administrative denizens of the gun-free zones run campaigns of intolerance toward the physical existence of guns, the owners of guns, the manufacturers of guns, the civil rights groups that defend gun ownership and eventually toward John Puckle, Samuel Colt, John Moses Browning and the 82nd element in the periodic table.

None of this accomplishes a single practical thing, but it is an assertion of values. The paranoid mindset that cracks down on little boys who chew pop tarts into deadly shapes, little boys who point pencils and fingers at each other, is not out to stop school shootings, but is struggling to assert the intolerance of its tolerant value system over the reality of violence. It’s not about preventing school shootings, but about asserting a value system in which there is no place for the aspiring marine, unless he’s handing out food to starving children in Africa in a relief operation or serving as a model of gay marriage to rural America.

To understand the NRA’s argument about the moral value of a gun deriving from the moral value of the wielder would require a worldview that is more willing to accept a continuum of shades, rather than criminalizing pencils and pop tarts for guilt by geometric association. A free society could do that, but a tolerant society, in which everything must be assigned an unchanging value to determine whether it will be tolerated and enforced or not tolerated and outlawed, cannot.

That is as true of Newtown as it is of Boston. The same tolerant liberalism that can see deadly menace in a pencil or a pop tart is blind to the lethal threat of a Chechen Islamist. If a gun is innately evil, then a member of a minority group, especially a persecuted one, is innately good. In the real world, it may take bad guns to stop good Muslims, but the system just doubles down on encouraging students to recite the Islamic declaration of faith while suspending them for chewing their pop tarts the wrong way. Liberal values are at odds with reality and they are not about to let reality win. In their more tolerant nation, there is more room than ever for little boys who dream of one day setting off pressure cooker bombs at public events in the name of their religion, but very little room for little boys dreaming of being the ones to stop them.

The little boy in a dress has put on the uniform of tolerance while the little boy making rat tat noises with a pencil is showing strong signs of playing for the wrong team. The wrong team is the one that solves problems by shooting people, rather than writing denunciations of them to the tolerance department of diversity.

The complainer is the hero and the doer is the villain. Reporters and lawyers are the heroes because they are the arbiters of tolerance. Soldiers and police officers are the gun-happy villains because they respond to realities, rather than identities. They unthinkingly shoot without understanding the subtext.

A free society is practical. It acts in its own defense. A tolerant society acts to assert its values. The former fights terrorists and murderers, while the latter lets them go to show off its tolerant values.

This is the clash of values that holds true on the playground and on the battlefield of war. On the playground, little boys are suspended for waving around pencils and on the battlefield, soldiers are ordered not to defend themselves so that their country can win the hearts and minds of the locals in the endless Afghan Valentine’s Day that has stacked up a horrifying toll of bodies. In their cities, men and women are told to be tolerant, to extend every courtesy and to suspect nothing of the friendly Islamists in their neighborhoods. It is better to be blown up as a tolerant society, they are told, than to point the pop tart of intolerance on the great playground of the nanny state.