This sterling article, Waterboarding Is Torture...Period.  in Small Wars Journal by Malcolm Nance says it all. And, since he is a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California, he knows whereof he speaks.

It is time to stop the Orwellian doublespeak and kowtowing to tinpot dictators who have captured the White House and Congress, and get this horrid era behind us. Else America ceases to be America in finality. Know the truth, it will set you free. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Bring our nation to its senses.

Signs of life & hope

Wendall Berry essays

Karen Kwiatkowski writings, especially this one

Ron Paul,  Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich

Please donate as much as you can today at    ronpaul2008.com

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

Ron Paul Remember the 5th in Columbia, SC 11/2/07

Oppose facism, torture and tyranny.
1 MIL 350K raised by ten a.m. CDT. Keep on donating, folks!!
www.ronpaul2008.com

RP raised 4.2 MIL in 24 hours! That's a real candidate in anybody's book.

I just ran across this great post by Michael McDonnough of nolanchart.com:

Exerpt: "While the Ron Paul Revolution is a decidedly peaceful one and the changes we seek to be performed are hard ones but government is just simply too big. It has failed to be safe to our liberty and must be put on a leash, a crash diet, and liposuction as well as a trim to the claws and teeth while we are at it."

From the excellent sermons of Father Ripperger, a sermon on Charity...please be sure and visit his home page and donate a dollar or else pray a rosary, or other holy prayer or chant, or do an act of charity while using his "penance ware". 

Glad to be a bad old trad, ain't it sad the world's gone mad....
Calm Eagle
zaadz Catholic Irish Nez Perce in residence

I'm just back from an amazing seminar, the topic of mental health and working with compulsive behaviors and perfectionist syndrome...the huge problem in our culture of unhappy people who are disgusted with their lives and their appearance. Women especially who think they are always too fat  - no matter how they look. The huge preoccupation with food: how much, what kind, how much, what diet, what fad, to be anorexic or bulimic...trying to control how much food one eats and how one looks...

It strikes me that many of us in the modern Western world are not at all grateful for the abundance that Nature and the blessings of the modern world and through our lack of appreciation and thankfulness we become addicted to the chronic and compulsive overeating, overdrinking and/or alcoholism and in some cases the habitual use of drugs, both prescription and street, to dull the pains of life.

The gift of knowing when to say when, knowing how to say no and how to give oneself over to a higher power, is a huge gift.  The facade of being "OK" or being "normal" is a mask which covers a multitude of problems and pains.  With some it is money, with some it is sex, with some it is drugs, sex, alcohol, foods -   but many, many of us are using something compulsively to medicate ourselves and to build a facade that hides the imperfections and the troubles we do not want or do not know how to deal with.

I think the myriad of diet plan, drug programs, alcohol treatments and 12 Step groups  in our culture shows that people want to deal with this stuff, but what actually works?

Action = Willingness.  Do a small thing, be successful. Then do a little bit bigger thing, be successful. Baby steps. Get better. Be well.

Enjoy life.

I've been invited to blog over at Red State Eclectic, so come on over and find out what the more freethinking red staters are up to. Also, to get you ready for the trip, go check out Jackie and Dunlap down at the local tire and transmission shop: