Thursday, January 04, 2018

Iguanas

 Oh, goodness.  I saw this and practically shrieked just from the headline.
 

 
 
It's so cold in Florida that iguanas are falling from their perches in suburban trees. Temperatures dipped below 40 degrees Fahrenheit early Thursday in parts of South Florida, according to the National Weather Service in Miami.
That's chilly enough to immobilize the green iguanas common in the region.
 
 
Poor iguanas!

At least they are not dead as some reports thought (dead from the cold).
 
 
I never had a pet iguana.  And every time my children would want a pet (I have 3 kids), I would suggest one to my kids but they never wanted an inguana. 
 
My brother had one when I was little and I thought they were so cool.
 
It got to be two feet long, He.  My brother named him Ralph.
 
We had one tree in the backyard in the middle of the yard.
 
He’d take Ralph out to that tree to let him climb.  (We had too many trees in the front and they were by the roof so he was afraid front yard would mean Ralph would escape.)
 
Ralph ate raw fruits and raw vegetables.
 
He was big, but he was fast.

  



"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Thursday, January 4, 2018.


We are going to again stress the need to please read James Risen's piece for THE INTERCEPT.






















As 2017 was coming to close, the Iraqi government began pursuing new ways to persecute the Palestinians in Iraq.   Though largely ignored in the US, there was outcry from the international community.  Iraqi officials may now be feeling pressure.   MIDDLE EAST MONITOR reports:

The Palestinian Ambassador to Iraq, Ahmed Aqel, said the Speaker of Iraq’s Parliament, Salim Al-Jubouri, has promised him to find a legal formula during the next few days to preserve the Palestinian refugees’ rights in Iraq.
The ambassador met with Al-Jubouri in his office in Baghdad to discuss the issue of Palestinian refugees in Iraq and other issues.
[. . .]
Iraq abolished last month Resolution 202 which gave Palestinian refugees in Iraq the same rights as Iraqi citizens except citizenship, army service and political action.


Will there be any actual effort?  At this point, no one knows.

Today, for example, Hayder al-Abadi served up this Tweet:


 2 hours ago
PM receives leaders of Iraq’s Christian denominations, says Iraq’s religious diversity is a source of pride & strength, and that the is working with all communities to build a prosperous, fair and equal society for all Iraqis
1 reply8 retweets15 likes







Photos and empty promises come easy for Hayder.  Follow through?  Not really so much.


Which makes pieces like Jack Watling's "The Remarkable Resilience of the Prime Minister of Iraq" (THE ATLANTIC) puzzling -- unless you remember the long, long history of western journalists doing puff pieces for despots around the world.

Hayder's accomplished so very little but if you're able to ignore the squalor so many Iraqis live in, if you're able to ignore the widows and orphans, if you're able to ignore the government persecution, if you're able to ignore so much, he might actually have accomplished . . . well . . . breathing.  He's still breathing.  Installed by the US in 2014 and he's still breathing.

The biggest howler in the piece?  Hard to say but this one surely ranks near the top:

Taha al Tamimi, a former advisor to the governor of Basra and political advisor to the British government, said that corruption in Iraq extends to its senior-most politicians. Anti-corruption institutions have proved unable to confront senior political figures, but al Tamimi predicted this will change, and that there would be little opposition to serious corruption charges against former Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, and some of his allies.


How will it change?

The courts are corrupt.

How is it going to change?

And while I would love to see Nouri behind bars, I don't believe it's as simple or as easy as Taha al-Tamimi portrays it.

Is Nouri corrupt?

Yes.

He's enriched himself and fleeced the Iraqi government.

But Hayder going after Nouri?

They are from the same political party (Dawa) and Hayder belongs to Nouri's political slate (State of Law).  Hayder's shown no independence from Nouri.  Even in the face of Nouri's attempts to return as prime minister, Hayder seems both inept and oblivious.

Hayder's only 'bragging right' is the so-called defeat of ISIS.  (So-called?  The Islamic State remains in Iraq.)

In May, Iraq's supposed to hold elections.  In four months, Hayder's victory or 'victory' may look even less impressive.


The editorial board of THE CHICAGO TIMES argues for a continued US military presence in Iraq:


 The U.S. and Baghdad are stepping up talks about maintaining a U.S. military presence in the country, USA Today recently reported. It’s not known how large an American contingent would be involved, but its role would likely mirror that of U.S. troops in the bid to defeat the Islamic State group — advising Iraqi commanders and providing surveillance and intelligence help. James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and now a foreign affairs analyst, told USA Today that the new contingent probably would be smaller than the current force of 5,500 soldiers.
Keeping American boots on the ground in a part of the world as unstable as Iraq is never an easy decision, but it behooves both Iraq and the U.S. to hammer out a deal. Iraq’s peace is desperately fragile.
[. . .] 
An American military intelligence presence is needed in Iraq to ferret out and neutralize whatever the Islamic State group is up to, whether that be web propaganda or suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad.



Huh?

The US military has to remain "in Iraq to ferret out and neutralize whatever the Islamic State group is up to"?

Wouldn't that actually be the responsibility of the Iraqi government?

And what's with tasking the US military for everything under the sun?

The US military is trained to wage war.

But it's already been tasked with reconstruction and rebuilding in Iraq.  It's also supposed to have helped democracy take root.

Now we're going to also push off spying duties and bodyguard duties onto the US military?

That's a hell of a burden for a group that returns home only to have to battle for timely treatment from the VA.

And in Iraq?

They get to be the target of the Shi'ite militias that Hayder brought into the government.


KURDISTAN 24 reports:


The head of Iranian-backed militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq recently called on the Iraqi government and Parliament to review the United States’ military presence in the country.
During a ceremony over the weekend marking the anniversary of “victory and liberation” over the US in Iraq, Qais al-Khazali, head of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shia militia—a faction within the Hashd al-Shaabi—said defeating America in the country was a victory against the most powerful force in the world.
“We are honored to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the US defeat,” Khazali said while addressing supporters in Baghdad.
“The defeat of the occupier [US] led to the restoration of Iraq’s sovereignty which the US wanted to violate,” he stated, adding the Asaib Ahl al-Haq inflicted damages to American troops “without killing the innocent or relying on suicide bombings.”

The report goes on to note that he is also accusing the US of creating ISIS. Did it? Maybe so, maybe no. We've noted this before and how the lack of a response to it has not helped. But that's for the US image in general. Right here? We're talking about the image in Iraq -- we're talking about painting a bulls eye on the backs of US service members in Iraq. In his ATLANTIC piece, Jack's convinced that Hayder can control the militias. Then maybe he can prove that by getting them to cease making that charge?

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Wednesday, January 03, 2018

Chocolate and a new DNA discovery

 
Chocolate is supposed to run out in 2025.  It was on the radio.  I see about 50 stories on Google so you can find it for the facts.
 
But no chocolate?

Seriously?
 
I love chocolate.
 
Can you imagine what it would be like if it was all gone one day?
 
And artificial chocolate?  Just saying the words makes me squirm.
 
Now for an exciting development.  Rachel Becker (THE VERGE) explains:
 
 
 
An Alaskan baby buried 11,500 years ago has clued scientists in to a forgotten branch of the Native American family tree. This child’s DNA is more genetically ancient than the ancestors of modern Native Americans — so it must have come from a previously unknown, even earlier population, the study says.
By analyzing the infant’s genome, researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Copenhagen found that while all ancient Native Americans originated in East Asia, the family tree branched roughly 20,000 years ago. One group — the infant’s group, now named the Ancient Beringians — lived in the frozen north and eventually disappeared. The other moved south, splitting yet again roughly 15,000 years ago into two distinct populations that peopled North and South America.
 

Is that not amazing?


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS)
Tuesday, January 3, 2018.   James Risen tells the truth -- few others do.




James Risen's piece for THE INTERCEPT has many strong passages and is worth reading in full.  It covers many topics, including Barack Obama's war on the press.  Since our focus is Iraq, we're noting this section (but please make time to read the piece in full):
By 2002, I was also starting to clash with the editors over our coverage of the Bush administration’s claims about pre-war intelligence on Iraq. My stories raising questions about the intelligence, particularly the administration’s claims of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, were being cut, buried, or held out of the paper altogether.
One of the few stories I managed to get on the front page cast doubt on reports that an Iraqi intelligence officer had met with 9/11 plotter Mohamed Atta in Prague before the attacks on New York and Washington. But Doug Frantz, then the investigations editor in New York, felt that he had to sneak it onto Page 1. “Given the atmosphere among the senior editors at The Times, I was concerned that the story would not make it to page 1 on a day when everyone was convened around the table,” Frantz emailed me recently. “So I decided that it was too important to appear inside the paper and went ahead and offered it on a Sunday, a day when the senior editors weren’t often involved in the discussion.”
Then-Executive Editor Howell Raines was believed by many at the paper to prefer stories that supported the case for war. But Raines now says he was not pro-war, and that he did not object to putting my Prague story on the front page. “I never told anyone at any level on the Times that I wanted stories that supported the war,” he told me in an email.
Meanwhile, Judy Miller, an intense reporter who was based in New York but had sources at the highest levels of the Bush administration, was writing story after story that seemed to document the existence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Her stories were helping to set the political agenda in Washington.
Miller and I were friends — in fact, I was probably one of her closest friends in the Washington bureau at the time. In the year before 9/11, Miller worked on a remarkable series of stories about Al Qaeda that offered clear warnings about its new power and intent. In the months after 9/11, she and I both scrambled to document Al Qaeda’s role in the attacks and the counterterrorism response by the United States. We were both part of a team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for our coverage of terrorism and 9/11.
But in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, while Miller and other Times reporters were landing a string of big stories that dazzled the editors, I was getting frustrated that so few of my sources in the intelligence community were willing to talk to me about what they thought of the Bush administration’s case for war. I kept hearing quiet complaints that the White House was pressuring CIA analysts to cook the books and deliver intelligence reports that followed the party line on Iraq. But when I pressed, few were willing to provide specifics. Intermediaries would sometimes tell me that they were receiving anguished calls from CIA analysts, but when I asked to talk to them, they refused.
After weeks of reporting in late 2002 and early 2003, I was able to get enough material to start writing stories that revealed that intelligence analysts were skeptical of the Bush administration’s evidence for going to war, particularly the administration’s assertions that there were links between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda.
But after I filed the first story, it sat in the Times computer system for days, then weeks, untouched by editors. I asked several editors about the story’s status, but no one knew.
Finally, the story ran, but it was badly cut and buried deep inside the paper. I wrote another one, and the same thing happened. I tried to write more, but I started to get the message. It seemed to me that the Times didn’t want these stories.
What angered me most was that while they were burying my skeptical stories, the editors were not only giving banner headlines to stories asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they were also demanding that I help match stories from other publications about Iraq’s purported WMD programs. I grew so sick of this that when the Washington Post reported that Iraq had turned over nerve gas to terrorists, I refused to try to match the story. One mid-level editor in the Washington bureau yelled at me for my refusal. He came to my desk carrying a golf club while berating me after I told him that the story was bullshit and I wasn’t going to make any calls on it.
As a small protest, I put a sign on my desk that said, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” It was New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst’s supposed line to artist Frederic Remington, whom he had sent to Cuba to illustrate the “crisis” there before the Spanish-American War. I don’t think my editors even noticed the sign.

The same press that the brain dead likes of dabbling Meryl Streep rush to praise is the press that sold the Iraq War.  I'm sick of trash and I'm sick of lies.  Cher lied last week and I did a long response and then didn't post it because it gets really old being the one who has to say, "Wait a damn minute."

But if you missed it, last week, Cher was vouching for her friend Meryl.  Meryl, she insisted, six weeks after giving birth, was observed by Cher -- who apparently was a frozen statue who couldn't move or speak herself -- defending some unknown woman against a man's insult.

As if that would make her silence on Harvey Weinstein acceptable?

But it never happened.

Not when Cher says it did.

People are stupid and I'm so damn tired of being the one to say, "Wait a damn minute."

The period Cher's referring to?

Meryl was in Los Angeles.

Cher?

She was in England, she was in New York, she was in LA, she was really busy.

Because it was a make it or break it period for her.  The film career wasn't panning out and the new album had to be a big hit or she'd be dropped.  She was dropped by the label.

That's right, the period Cher was kicking back and relaxing was when her album had just come out and, no, she didn't observe Meryl doing anything.

But the press just repeats these days, it doesn't report.

It may seem trivial.  It's not.

Outlet after outlet elected to repeat the claims Cher made in the Tweet.

No one reported.

If they had, they would have noted that this alleged event occurred, for example, while Cher was under press scrutiny and ridicule for her live concert appearance -- only then it turned out she wasn't singing live on that special.

Every moment of Cher's life at that time was documented because she was pimping that album that failed.  And reporting would have meant sitting there and saying, "This is what Cher claims.  Let's look at the public record and see if it can be backed up."

It couldn't be backed up.

Cher and Meryl are longterm friends so she lied to protect Meryl.

I get that.


But there are so many lies going around.

And it would be so much easier to just tell the truth.

But telling the truth is too hard for too many.


  1.  11h11 hours ago
Ayesha A. Siddiqi Retweeted David Frum
remember when you coined the phrase "Axis of Evil" and argued America should invade Iraq
Ayesha A. Siddiqi added,

Not in a mood for Twitter jokes. This is dark & dangerous. I shudder for every parent of a son or daughter in uniform - and for us all.
11 replies617 retweets2,297 likes



Ayesha A. Siddiqi Retweeted David Frum
Ayesha A. Siddiqi added,

US-UK intervention offered Iraq a better future. Whatever West's mistakes: sectarian war was a choice Iraqis made for themselves.
6:27 PM - 2 Jan 2018
1 reply13 retweets86 likes




Who let the Frum in?

The so-called 'resistance' did.

They lap his crotch and treat him like a god.

He's trash and he's responsible for the deaths of so many.

"US-UK intervention offered Iraq a better future."

No, it did not.  Nor, according to Condi Rice in the last years, was that ever the point.


"Sectarian war was a choice Iraqis made for themselves."

Again, a lie from the king of all liars David Frum.

The Iraq Inquiry led by Chilcot in England made many things clear on the record.

And the sectarian split was fostered by the US and UK.  The whole point was to demoralize the Iraqi people and turn them against one another.

It remains the point which is why someone like Nouri al-Maliki -- a terrorist responsible for the deaths of American citizens long before he took his chicken ass back to Iraq -- got installed by Bully Boy Bush as prime minister of Iraq -- and was kept as such by Barack Obama even though he lost the 2010 election.

It was not about spreading democracy.

You don't overturn the will of the Iraqi people -- as Barack did the 2010 election -- if you're attempting to spread democracy.

David Frum should never have been adopted as special pet by the delusional 'resistance.'

But now that they've brought him in, it's up to them to denounce him.

But they won't.

They'll look the other way and ignore everything he does because it really doesn't matter -- not Iraq, not the Iraqi people.  The only thing that matters to them is hissing Donald Trump.

They can't defeat him because they don't want to.  But they can hiss and they can boo.

Lazy and stupid.

Which explains why, in two months, the Iraq War hits the 15 year mark and crowds in the street are not demanding it end now.

From Monday's "2017: The Year of Chicken Little:"

 Again, the Iraq War.

 It's not over.  It's not ended.

 Where are the voices?

 Senator Dianne Feinstein stated:
The Administration offers no apparent road out of Iraq. It offers only an escalation plan that keeps growing, and an open-ended commitment to a civil war.

 Those words are so accurate.

 And they were also accurate March 27, 2007 -- when she stated them.

 There is still no road out of Iraq.

 There is still an open-ended commitment to a civil war.

 Nothing has changed.

 Every 'turned corner' leads back to the same exact spot.

 Over a trillion dollars has been wasted on an illegal war that has claimed over a million lives.

 And Iraq's no closer to democracy, no closer to power-sharing.

 The exiles that the US government keeps installing are motivated by vengeance.

 Silly Shi'ites who fled Iraq when Saddam Hussein was alive and only returned fater the 2003 US-led invasion.

 It's no surprise that they are not accepted by the Iraqi people as legitimate leaders.

 Legitimate leaders don't flee a country like cowards and then wait until foreign forces invade to come back.

 But the plan is apparently -- the same plan as it has always been -- to back whatever cowards the US government has put in place and to try to hold back the Iraqi people until they're too exhausted and go along with whatever they're stuck with.


15 years of ongoing war and we can't even be as honest today as we were in 2007?

That's not progress.

Nor are the continued lies by Peter Van Buren -- HUFFINGTON POST for latest which includes:
So much for Pax Americana in the Middle East, but at least it was all over.

Until Obama went back. Obama turned a purported humanitarian mission in August 2014 to save the Yazidi people few Americans had ever heard of from destruction at the hands of Islamic State into a full-scale bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq.

We get the lies, right?

First, Barack was sending US troops in back in 2012 -- two years before Petey notes.  Second, it was never "over."

But will he get called out -- no, because they just repeat, they don't report.

I'm so sick of this nonsense and can't believe this is how we're choosing to kick off this year.



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Tuesday, January 02, 2018

DISJOINTED





 DISJOINTED comes back to NETFLIX with new episodes on January 12th.

I can't wait.

To me, it's the best sitcom that NETFLIX has done so far.

Kathy Bates is wonderful in it but everyone on the show, everyone, helps make it worth watching.

It's not a show with only two laughs an episode.

And you can watch it repeatedly and not just laugh at the same moments but also discover moments you missed the first time you watched an episode.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, January 2, 2017.  The Iraq War continues but look who's back after leaving in a dramatic huff and now saying that the Iraq War ended in 2017.



It's difficult to tell who's more of an idiot: Peter Van Buren for writing "2017: The Year the Iraq War Truly Ended" or THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE for publishing the piece?
The year 2017 saw America’s serial wars in Iraq ending with a whimper, not a bang. And in the oddest of ironies, it may be that Donald Trump, the fifth president to preside over U.S. military operations in Iraq, has more or less ended it, whether he had much to do with or not. 
With Baghdad declaring victory over ISIS (with U.S. military and Iranian assistance), U.S. officials say the number of troops remaining there could end up being far lower than the 5,500 there today. The lowest since the invasion in 2003.


The Iraq War ended?

So, Peter, the US troops are all coming home -- all?

And ISIS is no more?


And XINHUA didn't just report on Sunday, "At least three people were killed and nine injured in attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq's central province of Salahudin, a provincial security source said. The attack occurred before dawn when gunmen, believed to be IS militants, attacked the village of Farhatiyah in Es'haqi area, some 60 km south of the provincial capital Tikrit, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity."?

Or, last week: "A local leader of Islamic State (IS) group and two of the group's militant were killed Friday in an airstrike in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial security source said."

Or, yesterday:

 A local leader of Islamic State (IS) group and two of his aides were killed Monday in an airstrike in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial security source told Xinhua. 
The Iraqi aircraft bombarded an IS hideout near a village named Sansal, some 45 km northeast of the provincial capital Baquba, destroying the hideout and killing the three militants, the source said on condition of anonymity.


Peter Van Buren also seems to have missed what Richard Sisk (MILITARY TIMES) reported last week, "U.S.-backed forces were in the process of 'crushing the life' out of ISIS but 'the war is not over' in Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday."



Somehow they all didn't get the same memo Peter Van Buren did.


Last August, Peter Van Buren issued his now infamous I-'ve-blogged-all-I-can-blog-I-can't-blog-anymore post.

Poor little Disney princess, "But after some six years and over 2,000 posts, I’m gonna do something else. Not sure just what yet."

Well apparently "something else" is provide the musings of a mad man.

The Iraq War is not over.

Peter Van Buren might be, but the war is not over.

For someone who whined about how he was being attacked on all sides for trying to provide context to now write this junk?  Rather embarrassing.

But then his whole cross climbing was.

As Stevie Nicks says, "Who in the world do you think that you are fooling?  Well I've already done everything that you are doing."


"Two Kinds Of Love," written by Stevie Nicks, Rupert Hine and Rick Nowels, first appears on Stevie's THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR.


Peter's had his drama and his stomping off the stage moment.  Now he's back and the big question is: Why?

That's what he wants to offer?

In August, he's whining that no one wants to listen to reality.

So he returns with the lie that the Iraq War is over and it ended in 2017?

Thanks, Peter.

You make it so hard to miss you.





"Well it's hard on my heart"
Said, "Well open your eyes"
 "Yeah, it gets harder every day"
Said, "I need to know now "
Soon you will be gone
Take your violet and blue
Mornings with you
-- "Violet and Blue," written by Stevie Nicks, first appears on the AGAINST ALL ODDS soundtrack


Soon you will be gone, Peter Van Buren, but not soon enough.

Not soon enough.

"Going forward, Trump is unlikely to pull troops out of Iraq entirely, having seen the political price Obama paid for doing so in 2011."

What political price did Barack "pay for doing so in 2011"?

Getting re-elected in 2012?

Shall we drop back to the day after the 2012 election, November 7, 2012:

 Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.)


b.o.
Lies about Iraq drove the 2008 election and they drove the 2012 election as well.

The country was transformed to the elephant in the room for 2012 that no one could be honest about.  President Barack Obama  lied that he'd 'ended' the Iraq War, he misled people into believing that all US troops had left Iraq, and he failed to inform Americans that he was negotiating to send even more US troops into Iraq.

While the uninspiring victory speech last night blended The Hollies "He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother" ("The road is long") with Jerry McGuire ("You've made me a better president"), it also made clear that the administration was on fumes even before the second term officially begins in January.

The administration is as empty as the media.  If you doubt that, September 26th, the New York Times' Tim Arango reported:

 
Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence.




September 26th it was in print.


Days later, October 3rd, Barack 'debated' Mitt Romney.  Again October 16th.  Again October 22nd.  Not once did the moderators ever raise the issue.


If Barack's sitting before them and he's flat out lying to the American people, it's their job to ask.  They didn't do their job.  Nor did social menace Candy Crowley who was apparently dreaming of an all-you-can-eat buffet when Barack was babbling away before her about how he wouldn't allow more "troops in Iraq that would tie us down."  But that's exactly what he's currently negotiating.

Maybe Candy Crowley missed the New York Times article?  Maybe she spends all her time pleasuring herself to her version of porn: Cooking With Paula Deen Magazine?

That is possible.

But she was only one of the three moderators.  Bob Schieffer and Jim Lehrer also moderated.  Of course, they didn't foolishly self-present as a fact checker in the midst of the debate  nor did they hit the publicity circuit before the debate to talk about how they were going to show how it was done.

Poor Crowley, a heavy weight strutting into a non-competition will always look woefully misdressed.

Barack lied and Americans will face that or not.

He wasn't the only one.
He certainly wasn't.
And if Cassandras like Ava and myself had been listened to back then, all that followed might have been prevented.
Along comes Peter today with lies -- (a) the Iraq War has ended and (b) Barack paid a political cost for removing some troops (it was a "drawdown" not a "withdrawal" per the Pentagon -- though not a lot of people wanted to grasp that).
A lot of people paid a cost for the US government sticking by Nouri al-Maliki, for the US government overturning the results of the 2010 election to give Nouri a second term.
A lot of people are still paying the costs.
Susannah George (AP) reports:

Local officials say thousands of people, mostly men and teenage boys, remain missing in the wake of Iraqi victories against the Islamic State group.
In Mosul alone, more than six months after Iraq declared victory, more than 3,000 people remain unaccounted for. Some are believed to have been killed by IS, while others were detained by security forces on suspicion of extremist ties.


But war is over, if Peter Van Buren says so, apparently.

At a time when so many of us are begging Americans to pay attention, along comes Peter to declare, "Nothing to see here, folks, move along."

What did Peter do when he worked for the State Dept?

It's fairly clear that he didn't do analysis.


  
It was way too hard...it was way too tough...
On this she had not bargained
But she was like some missionary dancing to the beat of some
man's ancient drum
And she tries hard to tell this story...but it's a hard one to tell
She consults her book of Miracles...
Cry...and the wind says fly on
Well now you're on your own
You're back out on the road again for a million reasons
Well you're back out on the road again
And you try to tie together some connections...
You get some ribbons and some bows and get back out on the road again

So you found a queen without a king
Oh yes, and everyone here loved her...no one was wrong
But you're a little bit like her
You're just a little bit like her
A little bit like her...a little bit like Juliet

Turn to the blue crystal mirror...well as always it is truthful
Oh, well you see it in the reflection of the real blue lamp
Well tie the connection...get some ribbons and some bows...get back
out on the road
-- "Juliet," written by Stevie Nicks, first appears on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR


There's more honesty in a chorus of a Stevie Nicks' song than in the "over 2,000" blog posts Peter Van Buren's contributed in the last years.


New content at THIRD:




In addition, these were the end of the year pieces in the community:










  • 2017: The Year of Chicken Little
  • Kat's Korner: 2017 in Music
  • 2016 in Books (Martha & Shirley)
  • 2017 in film (Ann and Stan)
  •  2017 in film (Ann and Stan)






  •  10 sexiest men of 2017 



    • And let's note Jody Watley's "Jody Watley 2017 Favorites" as well.

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