Happy Birthday Whoopi!!  Hope it’s a great day!!

And, the person who actually got that beautiful pose was my friend Debbie Collins with her never resting camera.

Thank you so much for featuring my Beana who passed away in 2008 shortly after her picture was taken.  She was the beginning of my love affair with the breed of Rat Terriers.  She was one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever seen, with a little zip and vinegar thrown in.  I miss you Beana.

Thank you.  I echo your sentiments! 

I cannot believe this man.  Someone really needs to muzzle him.

I also had skin cancer — basal cell, luckily, and had to have surgery on both of them.  I watch both my husband and I very carefully as we are both outdoorsy.  Skin cancer is a "true cancer".  We lost a friend to melanoma.  It doesn’t play fair. 

This is sad.  When President Obama was elected, I thought we really could work together as a country.  But, the hatred that has been put forth since his election by the very few that did not vote for him is really a bad commentary on the country.  If we can’t work together to pull ourselves out of the hole that has been dug over the last 8+ years, we will no longer be one of the strongest countries in the world.  We have already lost a lot of allies due to our lack of international diplomacy.  I really think that if people would just step back and look at the big picture, President Obama has the ability to turn this around.  He deserves our respect and help.  And, I agree about the mental illness, too.  And, the talk show hatred hosts need to tone it down.  You can disagree with someone, but the name calling and hate mongering shows how childish and ill mannered they are.  If they are so brilliant, what is their plan to repair the economy and the country, line item by line item, please?

I agree.  You know, I used to enjoy this group.  Now, it is even more hateful than it was during the elections.  I guess the new motto of the US is "Hatred of anyone who does not agree with you".  The US does allow free speech, but some people really need to think before they spew.

Who is to blame for this boondoggle?  All of us.  Republicans, Democrats, the greedy, the lender who gave people a mortgage he knew they could not afford, politicians who pandered to the businesses such as AIG….And, the people who were lying about the state of the economy who were supposed to be the watchdogs standing between us and this mess.  Everyone is to blame.  What I cannot figure out is how the subprime got started in the first place.  Loaning money on McMansions was not the idea when it was first proposed.  That was supposed to enable people to buy a home — not a McMansion — and build a life.  Greed, lack of ethics, and other stupidity caused this.  Now, it is time for all of us and eat our little bit of the poop pie and get our country back together.  I am sick and tired of the finger pointing.  I don’t speak Chinese, but they hold most of the paper owed by this country.  We all may have to learn.

No matter how great the school, the MBA does not guarantee that they have common sense.

I agree.  I really think a lot of people don’t realize that it is a real cost of war that people die — they don’t get up and walk off like they do in the movies or in a video game.

So many people said that we should go to war in Iraq, but very few of them had someone in their family that was going to fight it.  Some of those same people would discourage their children from joining the military if they had to fight in a war.  We should be supplying them with an honor guard, and their wives and children should be given appreciation for their sacrifices as well.  Many of those fallen heroes are not active duty military, but rather National Guard and Reserves.

I agree.  What would his mama say?

Thank you for the recommendation.

The Iraq War was one of the biggest mistakes the United States has ever made in my book. It was Viet Nam revisited. And, the outlay of funds to fight it was unbelievable. And, to give the contracts to Haliburton without even putting anything out for bids was one of the stupidest economic mistakes we could have made. Fraud continues to be unearthed, and a fine does not even make a dent in the amount of money that was taken. What was truly amazing was the “Economists” saying that the economy was doing just fine. The Republicans kept pushing for more tax cuts (during a time of war, no less), and saying that the economy was fine. John McCain keeps harping on tax cuts and he was the one that was saying that the economy was just fine during the beginning of his campaign. Well, they obviously never went to the grocery store, pumped gas, or had to pay a heating bill. In my opinion, the numbers that were pushed down our throats were all done with “funky math” and I believe we had a much higher rate of inflation than was posted since about 2001. I just hope we are not too late to recover in our lifetimes, let alone the near future. We didn’t get into this mess in just a few months — and it’s going to take a lot of work and time to get out of it now. President Obama is at least trying to generate jobs by rebuilding infrastructure. We can’t keep doing more of the same. We need to learn from our mistakes.

Tax cuts have not worked in the past to jump start the economy. The corporate tax cuts sure didn’t — they just pocketed more profits when the getting was good. Now, this house of cards which has been built over the last 20 years is crashing down. You cannot continue to pay your bills with credit cards — that’s what’s been done over the last 8 years. Someone needs to do something that will stop this tumble and it needs to be done collectively. Bush economics tried “trickle down economics” and failed even more miserably than the Reagan “trickle down economics”. Tax cuts for the rich didn’t help to generate jobs to refill our coffers, either.