So does J.K. Rowling, but you don’t see her mentioned every two days.

I don’t think that the Vatican or Rush Limbaugh know anything about women.

Ann Coulter’s name comes up way too often on Wowowow.  One would think she owned it.  [Do a search for her name if you don’t believe me; she shows up several times a month.]  Since she is one of my least favorite authors, this makes Wowowow much less interesting to me.

Surely wowowow can find women doing or saying more interesting things than Coulter.   

What, no Nancy Pelosi?  Surely she is the most powerful women in Congress. 

 Nice pics Liza! 

Most people do not realize that food stamps was a program originally devised to help FARMERS.  The benefit to individual families was not the original point.  But it certainly is when it is your family that is hungry. 

I think more people have been on food stamps at one point or another than most who have not might think.  They are no longer very obvious.  Store clerks have learned not to make a big deal of them.   I am not surprised that so many people are on food stamps.  Unemployment is high, and that is just the number of people currently being counted.  Quite a few people do not show up as "unemployed" even though they do not have a job and wish they did.

Thanks!  That made me laugh out loud!

My first job in a legal office I was a legal secretary.  One of the attorneys did divorces, often for people who were battered.  There was a pattern, however.  Monday morning a number of them would come in all bruised and ask to file for divorce.  By Friday, they were asking that the divorce papers not be filed, their husbands had apologized.  Monday, they would be back again, asking to have the papers filed.  This could go on indefinitely.  I ended up doing a lot of listening to some very confused women.  This is back before there were shelters and sympathetic police men.  [And they were men, the police officers were men back then.]  Back then, if one had called the police they would not likely have encouraged any of them to file a report.   I got the impression that the abuse had to do with getting paid, getting drunk, and getting violent.  Apologies began when the guys sobered up. 

 So the way I see it, she may be in a dangerous relationship, maybe not.  It may well be that something more complex was going on.  I do hope they get counseling.  I am guessing that they could benefit from it.

OK, maybe you are right.  I thought she was sort of an innocent bystander with inherited money of her own, but it turns out that the inherited money story was just a story, and that makes her less innocent than I thought.  All of their money should go to the victims.  Make her get a job or go to prison.

Ah but it is not money that is the root of all evil, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil.  People are more important than money.  If one has it and a friend badly needs it, one should make a gift of it.  If the friend later chooses to pay it back, let it be a surprise and use the money for charity or to help another friend. 

I think this is a wonderful gesture.  I do think of Senator Kennedy as a kind of knight.  Only he is not after the grail, he is after universal health care and so much more.  I just wish he could have been there this morning to hear Gordon Brown give that wonderful speech, which called for global action on the economy and the environment and saluted the Senator as well. 

Sleeveless, sure, but sleeveless in FEBRUARY??!!  I don’t remember Jackie being sleeveless in the winter, but my memory of the early sixties is a bit fogged by the late sixties. 

Michelle is going to wear what she likes and look good.  I just got a shiver when I saw her at Obama’s state of the union.  I wanted to lend her my sweater.

Excellent point, Linda!

It does give the term "bank robbery" a whole new twist. 

I don’t know that is essential to have a credit card these days.  With a debit card and an emergency fund and a sensible savings strategy, why mess with those people?  The credit card rules are always printed in such small type that one gets a headache trying to read them.  And one year one of my credit card banks changed the "grace period" for paying interest free from thirty days to 18 days.  Without really saying anything, unless it was one of those 6 point type leaflets that they send out.  When you suddenly get hit with late charges because the bank is not depositing your check for a week after they get it, the inspiration is not how to pay balances in full and on time, but how to drop credit cards altogether.

Frankly, I think that my generation grew up in the post war boom when Japan and most of Europe was recovering from massive bombing and the USA was the major manufacturer.  With the loss of manufacturing and the appearance of substantial rivals our standard of living has been declining, but people have been propping it up with credit cards.

Get real people!  If you have to carry a balance on your credit card at 22%, maybe it is time to stop buying so many things and pay off the balance.  Loan sharking has somehow become legal and respectable in the last quarter century.  But you don’t have to be a victim. 

I think we are fortunate that most Catholics take these directives with a grain of salt and try to do the right thing.   The Church is preoccupied these days with sex.  A generation ago, it was preoccupied with "mixed marriages" and priests gave passionate sermons against the evils of Catholics marrying Episcopalians. Notice that the priests do not give nearly as much energy to things like the Death Penalty, genocide, war, the lack of health care, you know, the really important things.

She would have to have an ironclad prenup!  I say let her keep a half a million and the rest goes to victims.   That way, she will not starve to death, and she will finally know the meaning of her wedding vows.