Ruth's blog

Leaving 2007 with a sigh of relief, I am ready to see a few things forever in the past, never to return again. With my usual optimism, I think this has happened. Read below the fold...

Naming its people of the year brings out a perverse consideration in other press organs than just Time magazine. In Dallas Morning News choices, number 6 choice is our most famous judge, Sharon Keller of "we close at 5" fame. That is the judge who ended a man's life rather than wait for a computer glitch to be cleared.

Murderous and ruthless, these are qualities like those of Putin, Time's Man of the Year 2007. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose is the standard for the choice. Read below the fold...

The U.S. has reached a very low point as revelations daily show how deeply mired the country's government has been in unspeakably immoral behavior. Torture is anathema to the civilized world, yet it has been brought into the fold of this occupied White House. Read below the fold...

The Dallas Morning News distinguished itself this year by ending its 100 years of support for the death penalty. Sunday, it put forth the argument that a history of color bias indicates the death sentence cannot be maintained. We need to encourage this courageous stand. Read below the fold...

This is the border you're paying to fence. Read below the fold...

Today we will get that credit crunch "Plan" the occupied white house has been trumpeting about, that will give relief to only those home buyers who can meet and have been meeting scheduled payments on their sub-prime loans, and has been bought into by mortgage financers. Read below the fold...

I took the opportunity yesterday of watching seven hours of the Office of Thrift supervision forum on home funding, with four panels and several speakers. The occupied White House couldn't have the news there get out, so it defrauded the public of real reporters by sending them on a wild goose chase.

Secretary of the Treasury Paulson scooped all the real news by announcing his vague plans to get the mortgage servicing industry to commit to freeze rates and bail out the industry. Read below the fold...

No Thanksgiving is complete without a turkey. Read below the fold...

This is the kind of great news for cancer victims that you hope will break down the walls of a prejudice. Cannabis has been found to have potential for halting the metastases of breast cancer, and has been shown to have that effect in brain cancer. Read below the fold...

Anyone else remember that O. Roy Chalk bought the D.C. trolley system in 1955 and tried to promote it, but the D.C. government, WaPo and the Senate District Committee refused to allow that, and replaced it with buses? Picture D.C. today with an electric above ground system instead of those fuming behemoths - of course, now there's the Metro, but it makes occasional stops only - and we might have still had both. Read below the fold...

Usually I want to bring a little more emphasis on the role we play in adult matters, and national or international affairs. Today I saw something I think needs attention on an inter-personal level.

Maybe mommying isn't for just anyone. I don't think anyone has ever found it easy, but then later you have an adult to talk to without any sort of barriers to get over, if you're lucky.

Sometimes it seems to bring out the worst in us though. And when parents gang up in their kids' rivalries some bizarre and horrible things tend to happen. Read below the fold...

A wonderful observation popped up in a WaPo editorial today, and since lately they've been so few and far between, it seems worth notating. Read below the fold...

Kucinich's Cheney Impeachment Resolution being read by Clerk of the House, charges of misleading information used to send the country to war on lies.

This is a wonderful day. Read below the fold...

The farcical nature of the post-911 attack on 'terrorists' was brought out to me by Ibraham Warde, who appeared on "Foreign Exchange" this week. His account of the pursuit we tend to think of as "following the money" was so engaging, I looked up an account of the activity he had written earlier. It gives a really spectacular overview of our clownish cabal. It also points out that typically, small sums of clean money (not illegally obtained) are used to fund acts of terror Read below the fold...

Costs are mounting in areas hit hard by the wave of mortgage failures in ways other than personal loss. Where vacant houses are popping up like fleas, housing values fall, the tax base suffers, and businesses lose sales. BBC.com has an interesting analysis of the situation, and notes that bailing out the lenders will not help the communities that are afflicted. Read below the fold...