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 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
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                                                                              Clutch: 3.1 Phillip Lim/ Here
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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.

************************************************************

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.

Painful Possibilities of Obamacare
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
******************************

In an article at http://www.express.co.uk  we learn the following:

"THOUSANDS of Britons are carrying out DIY (Do It Yourself)  dentistry, pulling their own teeth with pliers and using household glue to stick down fillings.

Unable to afford soaring charges, almost a fifth of people have all but given up going to their dentist, the Sunday Express has discovered.

There has been a surge in sales of dental kits at pharmacies including chemicals to whiten teeth.

Experts say that up to 200,000 DIY dentists risk injuring themselves and missing out on potentially life-saving check-ups.

Up to a third of adults no longer have an NHS (National Health Service)  dentist, according to the latest figures.

Gulf War veteran Ian Boynton, 46, from Woodmansey, East Yorkshire, pulled out 13 of his teeth with pliers because he was in agony and could not find an NHS (National Health Service) dentist to treat him.

In another case a 46-year-old man from Wandsworth, south London, needed major surgery after he stuck a crown into his mouth with super glue which rotted the bone in his gum.

Other DIY dentists have whitened teeth with household cleaning products and popped ulcers with pins."  SOURCE:  http://www.express.co.uk/news/health/399032/Now-we-pull-out-our-own-teeth-Boom-in-DIY-dental-kits-as-patients-cannot-afford-NHS-fees

Is this where Obamacare will eventually take American health care?  I believe it is.

I am asked, occasionally, why I still harp on Obamacare so much. The answer is simple.  America was sold a bill of goods. I should probably qualify that last statement.  Only those Americans who bought into the idea of Obamacare, as Obama and the liberal-socialists who make up the modern Democratic Party presented it, were hoodwinked.  Most clear-thinking adult human beings saw through the scam from the beginning and warned and warned and WARNED against it.  We TOLD you what it was -- and is -- and we told you what it would do to America, as a whole, and to you and I as individuals.

Obamacare is a lie, dear reader, one of the biggest lies ever told the American people and one of the biggest lies/hoaxes ever perpetrated upon any nation on the globe. It was -- and is -- a grand “CON.”  It is founded on Marxism and is, in fact, Socialism. But it is more than that – much more.  It brings America to the threshold of becoming a police state.

Oh, uh, gun owners... you're not going to like Obamacare.   Here's why.  Under Obamacare there is a strong likelihood that if you own a gun you will not get healthcare insurance.

Far-fetched, you say?  Maybe.  Before you decide definitively for yourself, check out this article at the Washington Times entitled "U.S. quietly begins to study gun safety."  You'll find it here:   http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/19/nih-funds-study-of-teen-firearms/?page=all 

 And then read this article entitled:  "Stealth Agencies for Gun Control" at:  http://karendecoster.com/stealth-agencies-for-gun-control.html

Why would the national HEALTH agency (NIH) be studying gun control issues or any issue having to do with guns?  I mean, after all -- it is a HEALTH agency, right? Their intention, I believe, is to fix solidly in the collective mind of the public that guns (and gun control) is actually, a HEALTH issue.  It's a lie, of course.  But tell a lie long enough and people begin to believe it.

With the extension of government control into the everyday lives of American citizens, which Obamacare will certainly do, it will provide the perfect vehicle for gun control. 
By establishing gun violence as a health issue it will fall within the purview of the universal health care laws.  Once that is done, it is a very simple step, indeed, to declare that an Obamacare Policy holder who owns guns, even for self-protection in the home, does not qualify for national healthcare.  Turn in your guns and get your healthcare, or keep your guns and don’t get healthcare. 

Wait a minute! It will be against the law not to have healthcare, so you must turn in your guns or be fined, and not have healthcare, or heavens forbid, go to jail and not have healthcare… or simply turn in your guns and have healthcare and all is well.  See?  Is it clear now? 

OK. So maybe not. But I think you begin to understand why it has gun owners across the nation, and a few in Congress worried.

Here's a snippet from the article by Karen De Coster we mentioned above:  “But in the end, even the CDC couldn’t make its research work in favor of its agenda. Its own studies could not link gun control laws to the reduction of crime. Nevertheless, any time the government studies “gun safety,” you know that in spite of the fact that all the research in the world will not support its end goal of the necessity of disarmament, the aim is to produce enough information, studies, and opinions to influence the public against gun ownership and persuade them to internalize the emotional aspect of the issue, thereby leading them to despise guns, distrust gun owners, and desire more government intervention to make gun ownership more difficult.

The anti-gun movement is built on pure emotion – hating guns and being afraid of guns – so building perception among the masses through fear mongering and emotional coercion is much more essential, and uncomplicated, than actually proving a hard case through a mishmash of statistics.”

Obamacare is the law of the land.  Until we have a veto proof conservative Congress, or a conservative controlled Congress AND President, we have no hope of riding ourselves of this plague. The best we can hope for is that the Republican House of Representatives will "starve" Obamacare by cutting off funds for various elements of the law, or at least decreasing funding for it.

Obamacare is ALL about POWER for the government and SERFDOM for the American people.  It always has been.

In the past few weeks and months we have seen State legislatures reassert themselves as sovereign states and begin to nullify federal laws within their states as my native state of South Carolina did just days ago. It won't work, of course, because of the "Supremacy Clause" of the US Constitution, but it allows the states to state publicly -- and for the record -- where they stand on Obamacare. And another thing:  It demonstrates to the world, just exactly where those states stand in the fight for the preservation of freedom in America. 

It is going to get a lot uglier, dear reader, when the federal government decides it must use force to motivate the states to obey those laws the states say are unconstitutional. But, just as we warned way back in 2007 and 2008, THIS is what a nation gets when it opts for socialism and elects a socialist as President and hands over the reins of the Congress to socialists as well.

Ready to do something about it?  Keep the pressure on your Congressperson and your Senators. Hold their feet to the fire. There's an election coming in November of 2014 a little over a year and a half from right now.  Let them know you will be voting for the candidate supporting the repeal of Obamacare.  Be ready.

© J. D. Longstreet

 Stripes and a burst of neon colors is a combination seen more and more lately; I just love this fusion and I enjoy wearing it over and over again. The brighter the better- this is a rule that I follow and it gives me a great mood :)
Have a wonderful Sunday and a great new week!




                                                                                 Pants: J Crew/ option Here
                                                                                 Pointed-Toe shoes: Zara/ a great version Here 
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                                                                                 Sunglasses: Foster Grant/ similar Here 

The Gray Riders Remain
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
***********************

The Confederate Soldier has been slandered and libeled for 150 years.  Those who would drag his name through the muck and mire are still at it… full throttle.

Organizations who claim roots to slavery in this country (whether their ancestors arrived before, or after, 1865, it doesn’t seem to matter) deride the SCV and that beautiful old battlefield emblem the Confederate Battle Flag.

It would seem that the truth doesn’t matter. Their hatred for all things Confederate even includes some of their own ancestors, as it is a fact that African-Americans served in the armed forces of the Confederacy.  We know this.  We can prove this.  But try to convince the campus elite who gain favor with minorities for lambasting all things Southern.  The fact that blacks served in the Confederate armed forces can be documented… means nothing.  They have made up their minds and we have been unable to dent their armor of ignorance.

There is hardly a day that goes by that we don’t hear of, or read of, an incident involving a Confederate symbol of some kind, which has offended somebody.   Our limp wristed, jello-spined, politicians come down on the side of the complainant rather than on the side of truth.  That leaves the southerner, the direct ancestors of the brave men of the Confederacy, to slowly twist in the wind, as we become targets for the real bigots and the real racists in America today.

When I was a boy there was a popular song with these lyrics:  “Save your Confederate money boys, the South’s gonna rise, again!”  Well, the South has risen again.  Today the South is arguably the most prosperous part of the country.  Very much as it was in the 1850’s the South has come under fire again, as a result of envy.  Other Americans are jealous of our prosperity, even of our mild climate, of our tenacious hold on our history and our honor.
 
We have thousands of visitors to this fair part of the USA from “other” parts of the country.  Unfortunately, they do not return the courtesy, nor the hospitality, offered them, here, by the native Southerners.

Look, down here, if you go… to visit another man… in his house… you don’t criticize the furnishings of that home.  You don’t complain when he says grace over his food and invokes the blessings of God on his family and the guests in his home.  You don’t complain about the way he does things, or doesn’t do things.  We Southerners understand that a person’s home is his, well, his HOME.  We keep any complaints we have to ourselves.

Unfortunately, the influx of “others” into our fair homeland has brought clash after clash as the visitors complain about nearly everything Southern.  The question immediately comes to mind; if they are so dissatisfied with the way we do things here… why did they come down here to begin with?

The thing that really burns me up is that a good number of Southerners who have been indoctrinated in our schools and universities will agree with them.  These mis-led Southerners don’t know their history.  They don’t know who they are.   They have no appreciation for the trials and tribulations the South has met, head on, and triumphed over.

All they know about the so-called “Civil War” is that the North was good and the South was bad because the South had slaves.  Nobody bothered to tell them, during that expensive education their Southern parents paid for, that Slavery was LEGAL… that the North had slaves, too.  Nobody bothered to tell them that the north controlled the slave industry out of the New England states with their fleets of slave ships and their hundreds of rum distilleries which produced the rum with which they purchased the slaves from other Africans, and Arabs, in Africa.  They don’t know how the South was bled nearly dry, by the Federal government, to keep the US afloat economically. 

The story is told that when a politician asked Lincoln why he didn’t just let the South go, he replied:  “but who would pay for the government!”

As the years go by and we become more distant from the great War for Southern Independence, as the intellectuals on our college campuses re-write history to suit themselves, and as the Politically Correct crowd continues to push their agenda to trivialize all things Southern, we are losing sight of our Southern heroes. Their historic deeds are being buried. Our Southern icons, such as the Confederate Battle Flag, are being hidden from public sight. The old song Dixie can no longer be sung in public.

Things have surely changed. I can remember that as a lad in High school, on Friday nights, when the community gathered at the local High School for the weekly football game, the crowd would stand as the Star Spangled Banner was played by the school band   and the crowd would remain standing as the wonderful song “Dixie” was followed hot on the heels of the first national anthem.  Then a great round of applause would roll through the stadium and the game would begin.

Many Southern schools, today, forbid the wearing of any piece of clothing with a Confederate icon -- of any kind -- on it. 

Just a few hundred yards from one such Southern high school is a mass grave of American Revolutionary soldiers massacred by the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton as they dared to fight the British Crown for our right to free speech.  It is a right those men, who were the grandfathers of the Confederate soldiers, were willing to die for.  It is  a right denied us, as ancestors of the Confederate soldier, today -- AND -- a right those kids, (just down the road from that huge mound which holds the remains of the men who were willing to fight and die for that freedom) are not allowed in order to express their pride in their heritage.

Please remember THAT when you open your news papers and see that another southern child has been sent home from school for wearing a piece of apparel with a Confederate flag on it.  Remember THAT when your see the Confederate Battle Flag removed from State House domes. Remember it when you see Confederate Battle Flags flying over the graves of Confederate Veterans ordered taken down.  I beg you… do not turn away when these things happen. Let your voice be heard.  It is our Southern Heroes whose honor is being denigrated.  It is our family they are calling traitors.  It is our great grandfather, or great, great grandfather, they slander in this way.

On behalf of all those men lying in forgotten graves, in small family cemeteries, all over the Southland and those buried in the finest cemeteries in the South, I thank the SCV for not forgetting.  I thank the SCV for not allowing our heritage to be taken away from us.  I thank the SCV for demonstrating, to the world, that the Southern spirit still lives in our hearts.  For we will not bend, and we will not bow, but we will hold our heads high as proud Sons of the South, as Sons of Confederate Veterans, as proud descendents of those men who wore the gray.    Remember them always, for they are our family.

The unknown poet has said:

“The Gray Riders are gone, yet they remain
 asleep in our soil, and alive in our veins!
 Untouched by the fire, untouched by the frost,
they whisper within us…. OUR CAUSE IS NOT LOST!”

© J. D. Longstreet

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton take part in the Transfer of Remains Ceremony marking the return to the United States of the remains of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya. Molly Riley/DPA/Zuma

It ain't a cover up but...

Mother Jones - The latest revelations about the Benghazi talking points—as opposed to what actually happened at the US diplomatic facility at Benghazi, where four Americans died—do not back up Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham's hyperbolic and absurd claim that the Benghazi controversy is Obama's Watergate. But neither are they nothing.

As ABC News reported on Friday morning, the most discussed talking points in US diplomatic history were revised multiple times before being passed to UN Ambassador Susan Rice prior to her appearances last September on Sunday talk shows. The revisions—which deleted several lines noting that the CIA months before the attack had produced intelligence reports on the threat of Al Qaeda-linked extremists in Benghazi—appear to have been driven by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who, it should be noted, is a career Foggy Bottomer who has served Republican and Democratic administrations, not a political appointee. Her motive seems obvious: fend off a CIA CYA move that could make the State Department look lousy. (The other major deletion concerned three sentences about a possible link between the attack and Ansar al-Sharia, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group; last November, David Petraeus, the former CIA chief, testified that this information was removed from the talking points in order to avoid tipping off the group.)

But here's the problem for the White House: It was part of the interagency process in which State sought to downplay information that might have raised questions about its preattack performance. That's a minor sin (of omission). Yet there's more: On November 28, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC's best assessments of what they thought had happened. The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility because 'consulate' was inaccurate."

Assuming the talking points revisions released by ABC News are accurate—and the White House has not challenged them—Carney's statement was not correct. {Read More}

Damage Control? You be the ultimate judge.

Via: Memeorandum

I heard this quote on CNBC today and there was more head nodding than I could stomach. Apparently the financial "experts" have not yet heard that the 1980s and 1990s are actually over.

The following chart shows the S&P 500 index adjusted for inflation (March 2013 dollars).


Click to enlarge.

The next chart shows real wage and salary disbursements per capita (March 2013 dollars).


Click to enlarge.

Red exponential style trend lines in both charts were generated using an artistic license. Good enough for government work! In any event, both trends have failed spectacularly. I would argue that neither are in any condition to resume their former trends over the long-term. Put another way, I have absolutely no desire to invest in the stock market after it has cyclically doubled. Call me crazy if you must.

As a side note, real wages per capita tend to rise during economic recoveries as more people get put back to work. As seen in the chart above, I guess this recovery is special though. And when I say special, I actually mean FUBAR. If real wages per capita cannot rise during this expansion then what will they do during the next contraction? Don't answer. It's rhetorical. Sigh.

The 1980s and 1990s really are over. This is not a popular theory on CNBC. Perhaps it is because CNBC was launched on April 17, 1989. They may not know financial value but perhaps they do know sentimental value. I'm certainly teared up just thinking about the one hit wonders of the 1980s.




As seen in the following link, the future is now.

December 25, 2012
Program to help homeless living in cars off to slow, steady start


And lastly, The Market Ticker has an interesting take on what the S&P 500's dividend yield will get you over the long-term.


That was certainly true where I once worked. Sierra Entertainment was founded in 1979. It was "aborted and shut down" in 2009. It only survived 30 years. I'm not sure why the word "aborted" was needed when "shut down" would seem to suffice. But then again, I left as a rat would leave a sinking ship in 1999. I can certainly empathize with the sentiment. Sigh.

See Also:
Sarcasm Disclaimer

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Wage Chart
St. Louis Fed: Custom S&P 500 Chart

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

File Photo

As to be expected the IRS targeting conservative political groups, Tea Party activists, and patriots during the 2012 election cycle to see if they were in violation of their status as tax exempt organizations. Certainly inappropriate if as appears to be the case liberal groups failed to undergo the same scrutiny.

Following is an excerpt from the

Associated Press on this story.

The agency — led at the time by a Bush administration appointee — blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware. But that wasn't good enough for Republicans in Congress, who are conducting several investigations and asked for more.

"I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not under way at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

White House spokesman Jay Carney declared it was indeed inappropriate for the IRS to target tea party groups. But he brushed aside questions about whether the White House itself would investigate.

Instead, Carney said the administration expects a thorough investigation by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration. The inspector general has been looking into the issue since last summer, and his report is expected to come out next week, the IG's office said Friday.

Carney's response to rEpublicans is a reasonable one. Before anybody gets all lathered up (either side) lets see what the investigative report as to say. As a reminder don't forget who was in charge, a Bush administration appointee.

Read the rest here

Via: Memeorandum

Espadrilles are Spring's go-to shoes and is no more a secret that I became a fan lately. As a color lover I had to include a colorful pair in my mini collection: This Celine bold orange calf skin pair is the perfect one, don't you think?
As for the outfit, is a return to tropical prints, happy colors in casual chic approach. Seeing and wearing these exotic prints I start dreaming to a vacation...






                                                                             Blazer: Coldwater Creek/ I also love this one Here
                                                                             Top: vintage/ option Here
                                                                             Clutch: Samudra/ Here
                                                                             Cuff bracelets: thanks to COOEE.se/ Here and Here
                                                                             Espadrilles: Celine/ now dreaming on these ones Here 
                                                                             Sunglasses: c/o zeroUV

In honor of the holiday that should be celebrated every month (in my opinion), I thought I'd take a moment to say a big Happy Mother's Day to my mom, Jan. I owe every inch of my design sensibility to her, she taught me everything I know. I could tell you the difference between Biedermeier and Baroque by the time I was 10 and I was picking out estate jewelry before I could talk. And thanks to her I've toured every old home on the eastern seaboard and been to 46 state capitals. She is a great teacher and friend and there is no one I would rather go shopping with.

Basically what I'm saying is this...

source

And for something only she will understand - this is as close to a card as you will ever get. xoxo


And speaking of moms, don't forget to check out the Simply Baby Spring Blog Party today. My girl Heather, from Vivid Hue Home is hosting this week and I know she's got something special cooked up.
And stay tuned in the weeks to come for great ideas from

• Rhymes with Smile- Katherine
• Forever's Like a Dream- Kelley

How are you going to celebrate Mother's Day?

Today is Confederate Memorial Day in the Carolinas
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
********************************

Today, May 10th, in North Carolina and South Carolina, is Confederate Memorial Day.

I am reminded of the local “Sons of Confederate Veterans” Confederate Memorial Day celebration, which I attend every year.  When last I spoke to the gathering I spoke of the  Confederate Soldier, or as I sometimes refer to them, the “Southern Knights.”

As it was a celebration of the southern warrior, I spoke on the attributes of the Confederate soldier… who he was, what he was like, what he did, what he felt, why he did what he did, and why he felt he MUST do what he did, and so on, and so forth.

When one studies the Confederate soldier, one quickly comes to understand that there has never been, before or after the American “War Between the States”, a warrior quite like the “Southern Knights”. As a combat soldier, he was more akin to the various “special forces” of numerous militaries around the world than he was to the “regular” soldiers we are acquainted with today.  He was a killing machine… with good manners. 

It is impossible to overlook the fact that 800,000 badly equipped, badly clothed, badly fed, but wonderfully led Confederate soldiers managed to hold at bay 2-1/2 million federal troops of the US military for four of the longest, bloodiest, years in American history. They were masterful at the art of war.

It is absolutely shameful that political correctness has driven its talons so deeply into American consciousness that to speak of the Confederate soldier in anyway other than as a defender of slavery is totally unacceptable.  Modern day ancestors of the Confederate soldier are taught that their great, great, great, great grandfathers were traitors!  There is no other way to address that accusation but to say it is a bald-faced lie.

The Confederate soldier was a citizen of another country.  He was a citizen of the Confederate States of America, not the United States of America.  One cannot betray a country of which one is not a citizen. Plus, there is this fact:  Something like 97% of the citizens of the Confederacy owned NO slaves.  Common sense says men do not put their lives on the line, in a war, to preserve another man’s right to hold other human beings in bondage! 

An article I recently read persistently nags at me.  It is an article by Paul Gottfried entitled:  “On Loving To Hate The South.”

Referring to my compatriots in the “Sons of Confederate Veterans” Mr. Gottfried said: “You may take pride in those whom you honor as your linear ancestors but equally in the anger of those who would begrudge you the right to honor them. What your critics find inexcusable is that you are celebrating your people’s past, which was a profoundly conservative one based on family and community, and those who created and defended it. For your conspicuous indiscretions, I salute you; and I trust that generations to come will take note of your willingness to defy the spirit of what is both a cowardly and tyrannical age.”  Mr. Gottfried nailed it! You can read Mr. Gottfried’s entire article at:  http://takimag.com/article/on_loving_to_hate_the_south/print#axzz2SnoHOm6E

Mr. Gottfried had said earlier in his article that we “Southern traditionalists are still celebrating a pre-bourgeois, agrarian, and communally structured world. It appealed to hierarchy, place, and family; and its members displayed no special interest in reaching out to alien cultures. Such ideals and attitudes and the landed, manorial society out of which they came, point back to a nineteenth century conservative configuration.”

It is here we find the root cause of the virulent hatred for the ensign of the Southern soldier, the Confederate Battle Flag, and for the hatred of the people of the Southern region of the United States.  It is our conservatism.  It is our unyielding determination to hold on to the conservative values of our Southern ancestors.

Every year, as I attend Confederate Memorial Day events, I watch my fellow Southerners stand in silent reverence as the troops bearing the US flag pass and I watch as we all stand and recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag, and then the NC state flag, and then to the Confederate flag. I see no contradiction.  These are gatherings of conservative people who love and honor their country, the USA, just as their Southern Ancestors loved and honored THEIR  country, the Confederate States of America.   We were remembering THEM and honoring THEM and the commonality of that conservative philosophy which is STILL alive and well in their off-spring today.

Many of us in the South today worry that we see many of the same causes of the conflict of the 1860’s reflected in the political conflicts between liberal and conservative Americans today.  Having yet not fully recovered from the so-called “Reconstruction” of the South after that bitter war, we are concerned that, as remote as it may seem, to those not versed in the history of this country, we may be headed for another conflict in which Americans will square-off with fellow Americans. 

These are dangerous times for America.  Standing in silence and watching those two red, white, and blue flags that once flew over the two nations that briefly occupied this land is always a sobering moment. To realize that only the people living below those flags can prevent a repetition of history is equally as sobering.  It is a jolting moment for this scribe when I think that it could happen all over again! 

Never has America been as divided since the War Between the States. We are, today, two countries living beneath a single flag, as a gentleman from South Carolina reminded me a few years ago. As he spoke his eyes were downcast gazing at the sacred soil of that old cemetery and his head was slowly shaking from side to side as if to say “NO” to the unthinkable.   But I could not escape the thought that it obviously wasn’t unthinkable as we stood just six feet, or so, above the earthly remains of a Confederate soldier screaming in silence a warning that history says will go unheeded.

© J.D. Longstreet