Just a day after former President Jimmy Carter told reporters that the Bush administration is “the worst in history” the current White House resident called Mr. Carter “the best former president ever.”

Susie Glaze with Dan Sankey and Steve Rankin
The Appalachian Songs of Jean Ritchie

American Folk Music legend Jean Ritchie is brilliantly celebrated by this powerhouse acoustic trio. Broadway actress, singer and recording artist Susie Glaze is quickly becoming known as the next generation of Appalachian roots music interpreters, and a specialist in the work of Jean Ritchie. The native Tennessean’s concert/theatre piece, “Singing the Moon Up: The Voice of Jean Ritchie” premiered to critical acclaim in September 2005 at the Pennsylvania Centre Stage Company with Kenny Kosek and Ritchie sons Jon and Peter Pickow.

Beautiful day, fun crowd, gorgeous gals and great music. In short, I had a truly awesome time.

And I even got to hear three separate versions of one of my fav-o-rite fiddle tunes, Soldier’s Joy

Yup, that’s right.  Lizards, vine ripe tomaters, live bait, boiled peanuts, bbq, lottery tickets, burgers, fries, propane, hot wings, firewood, hot dogs and onion rings.  All under one roof.

And they don’t habla epsañol at Pop’s Place, neither.

what do Sean Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio and Rosie O’Donnell have in common?

ok, here’s a hint:

Close the book.

CRAWFORD, Texas -In a biting rebuke, the White House on Sunday dismissed former President Jimmy Carter as “increasingly irrelevant” after his harsh criticism of President Bush.

ouchie’

Established British families should be given priority over economic migrants for council housing, government minister Margaret Hodge has said...........

“Of course it’s true that we need to develop more social housing,” she said.
“But however much social housing you do create, you will nevertheless have to take decisions to ration what will always be a finite resource.”

~
“The first thing to do is start building social housing again, not to blame immigrants for the catastrophic government failure to tackle the issue,”
~
Lib Dem president, Simon Hughes, whose south-east London constituency recognised that housing allocation was among the biggest causes of racism.

~*~

LGF

You only deserve what you earn. No one owes you a thing.

Amazingly, many Americans are dumbfounded and utterly confused over these simple truisms.

Because of the culture of entitlement many Americans have embraced since the mid-1960s, we have created generations of Americans addicted to the government handout machine.

They are ballast in this experiment in self-government, solidly in the liability column simply because they choose to be.

Even more amazing are the politicians who would further want to entrench into our cultural and economic fabric the very system that has stripped people of their work ethic, pride and self-esteem.

The pathetic so-called Great Society of President Johnson didn’t eliminate poverty as he claimed it would. Rather, it destroyed individuals, families, businesses and entire communities while flushing hundreds of billions of hard-earned tax dollars down the drain.

Only a hapless idiot or bottom-feeding politician trolling for votes would dare advocate more destruction through more bloated and ineffective government programs. Yet they do, calling for universal health care for all Americans, including many who obviously don’t care about their health.

Nothing is free. Nothing. Someone has to pay for universal health care. That someone is you, the taxpayer. Call the newspaper and leave a message for me if you believe you are not taxed enough.

It sickens me when I hear a disconnected, soulless political advocate make the socialist claim that because America is a wealthy country we should redistribute earned income from the hardest of workers to pay for the health care of Americans who cannot afford health insurance or who choose to spend their money on other things.

The latter opt for things like blingbling, custom wheels, fashionable attire, I-pods, stereos, cable TV, deadly fast food, movies, pets, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, meth and hair-dos, ad nauseaum.

Of course, with such expenses they can’t make ends meet. They think waste and gluttony are their rights. God help us all.

All Americans should benefit from our capitalistic health care system. Our health care system is envied around the world because it has been fueled by profit.

If you want better health care, more effective treatments and better high-octane medicine, make it more profitable for the companies that produce and provide it.

Up by their bootstraps

Americans addicted to the welfare state need to take stock in their own lives and pull themselves up by their bootstraps just as their forefathers did.

If one job doesn’t pay the bills, work two jobs. If you want health insurance and don’t believe you can afford it, disconnect the cable television, quit smoking and drinking, get rid of cell phones, don’t eat at restaurants or go to the movies, sell your bling, get rid of your pets, etc.

You will be amazed at what you can afford if you prioritize. Only the guilty need feel guilty.

In conjunction with Americans taking stock of their own lives, our politicians should pass tough tort reform that will limit how much damage manipulative legal sharks can continue to do to our health care system.

Lawyers, not doctors and others in the health care industry, are to blame for the high cost of health insurance.

I fully believe that 99 percent of Americans who do not have health insurance could do much in their own lives to pay for it if they cut out the excess and actually cared about their health.

Taxing hard-working Americans even more to pay for the health care of careless others ultimately will erode the high standard of health care Americans enjoy.

Socialized medicine sucks. Those who advocate socialized medicine suck even more.

Pay your own way. It’s the American way.

The fights were last night and I drank 4 RockStar energy drinks and ate 2 trays of nachos....got home about 12:30 and had to get up at 6 for work and then went back to sleep when I got home and only just woke up because I had to pee.......

the set-up

Since they joined their deported parents in Mexico, 7-year-old Adriana has stopped screaming “Papa!” in her sleep and 10-year-old Yadira’s asthma has eased. Pedro, 15, doesn’t break into tears anymore, and Adrian, 12, thinks of his new life as an adventure.................

More than 30 Skowhegan Area High School students were suspended from school Friday, a day after they held a sit-in on campus, boycotting classes.

The protesters say they refused to attend class because they have been subjected to harassment and intimidation by a group of students who favor Gothic dress and call themselves “The Carnival Killers.”

School officials said those claims are nothing more than rumor. The self-described leader of the Carnival group called the allegations a lie.......

I guess you only have something to worry about if you’re a carnival.

this is for JR
Who loved Elizabeth Taylor
and left me today to go sailing

Ps: give back the painting you washed up ol’ hag.

A man who tried to position himself as a leader of the anti-war movement by claiming to have participated in war crimes while serving in Iraq is facing federal charges of falsifying his record.

Jesse Adam Macbeth, 23, formerly of Phoenix, garnered attention on blogs and in some alternative media after he began claiming in 2005 to have been awarded a Purple Heart for his service, which he said included slaughtering innocents in a Fallujah mosque. His story was contradicted by his discharge form, showing that he was kicked out of the Army after six weeks at Fort Benning, Ga., in 2003 because of his “entry level performance and conduct.”

A complaint unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle charged him with one count of using or possessing a forged or altered military discharge certificate, and one count of making false statements in seeking benefits from the Veterans Administration.

~SNIP~
Organizations that opposed the war, including Iraq Veterans Against the War, posted videos or statements containing Macbeth’s claims on their Web sites. In one videotaped interview, a skinny, stuttering Macbeth, dressed in a camouflage jacket, described slaughtering hundreds of people in a mosque: “We would burn their bodies ... hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque,” he said.