1/ Thomas Frank interviews the maverick professor Cornel West, and West is no fan of the President for his entirely logical reasons. You may not agree with him, but do so after reading his case for deciding the President's performance is disappointing.
It's the President always striving for the middle ground that's annoying, because the right wing are attacking relentlessly and the middle ground keeps shifting further right.......you would think he would have learned by now it doesn't matter what he does, he will always be wrong.
He also wasted five years looking for bipartisanship. He got played......
Cornel West (Credit: Albert H. Teich via Shutterstock)
Cornel West is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and one of my favorite public intellectuals, a man who deals in penetrating analyses of current events, expressed in a pithy and highly quotable way.
I first met him nearly six years ago, while the financial crisis and the presidential election were both under way, and I was much impressed by what he had to say. I got back in touch with him last week, to see how he assesses the nation’s progress since then.
The conversation ranged from Washington, D.C., to Ferguson, Missouri, and although the picture of the nation was sometimes bleak, our talk ended on a surprising note.
Last time we talked it was almost six years ago. It was a panel discussion The New Yorker magazine had set up, it was in the fall of 2008, so it was while the financial crisis was happening, while it was actually in progress. The economy was crumbling and everybody was panicking. I remember you speaking about the financial crisis in a way that I thought made sense. There was a lot of confusion at the time. People didn’t know where to turn or what was going on.
I also remember, and this is just me I’m talking about, being impressed by Barack Obama who was running for president at the time. I don’t know if you and I talked about him on that occasion. But at the time, I sometimes thought that he looked like he had what this country needed.
So that’s my first question, it’s a lot of ground to cover but how do you feel things have worked out since then, both with the economy and with this president? That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.
No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are—we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody—a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility.
2/ An insightful look at the crisis in the Middle East, from an Al-Jazeera reporter who interviewed Kurds, Yaziidis, Sunnis and Shias on the ground......gives the backstory of what is happening and why.
This is a disaster.......there are no good guys, and it's going to be difficult to get out of this quagmire and keep the oil supplies flowing, because let's face it - that's ALL we care about....
SINJAR, Iraq — Khodeda Abbas is one of the saved. His wife went into labor coming off the mountain and needed medical assistance right away. The couple had just arrived at a shabby medical tent 20 kilometers from Mount Sinjar, along with hundreds of other refugees rescued in tractors, buses and cattle trucks. The drivers were all volunteers, men with enough gasoline and empathy to cross the desert and take exhausted strangers from Iraq into Syria over a border made only of dust. The tent had run out of medical supplies three days earlier.
It was here that Abbas smoked the best cigarette of his life, he said, after becoming a father to the sleeping baby in the milk crate by his feet. He named the child Farman. “It means ‘the tragedy,’” he said, “to remind him of where he came from.”
The tragedy in question began nine nights earlier, on Aug. 3. News of it arrived through the screams of the neighbor banging on Abbas’s door in the village of Siba Sheikh Khidr, on the outskirts of Sinjar town in northwestern Iraq: “Peshmerga have left. Daash are coming.” (Peshmerga are Kurdish security forces; Daash refers to the Islamic State, or IS — the armed Sunni fighters who are seeking to establish an independent state crossing the current borders of Iraq and Syria.)
In recent weeks, IS forces have advanced deeper into Syria and overtaken cities in northern Iraq, killing, imprisoning and evicting those who don’t submit to their cause. Kurdish forces in both countries have also been taking advantage of the current chaos to expand their territories. Here, the border between northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria has effectively disappeared. Alliances are shifting and national identities are being discarded; many are turning to those they fear the least.
This infant's mother went into labor during the YPG operation to rescue Yazidi families trapped on Mount Sinjar. The boy's name is Farman, meaning "the tragedy," says his father, "to remind him of where he came from." (Click to enlarge images)
That night in Siba Sheikh Khidr, Abbas said, he grabbed his Kalashnikov rifle and told his wife to get ready in case she had to leave without him. There were reasons to be fearful. Like most of his neighbors, Abbas is Yazidi. Followers of the ancient pre-Islamic religion, an estimated 700,000 globally, hold a special veneration for a fallen angel, Melek Taus, whose remorseful tears, they say, extinguished the fires of hell and brought the angel back to God. IS fighters and others call Melek Taus "Satan" and Yazidis “devil worshippers.” The Yazidis, like many minorities in the Middle East, have long lived near mountains, seeking safety in their remoteness.
3/ Stephen Colbert is back, and judging by this clip is in great form.....it may have been the two Emmy's the show won that got him in this great mood.
Here he skewers the idiots at Fox News for their coverage of the ISIS crisis.......six wonderful minutes, and some classic zingers.....
Stephen Colbert (Credit: screenshot/The Colbert Report)
On Thursday’s “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert poked fun at the way the GOP is suggesting we take on Islamic extremist group ISIS, their own alternate reality.
A Fox News host has an odd idea: “Can I just make a special request from a magic lamp? Can we get, like, Netanyahu and Putin in for, like, 48 hours as head of the United States? I don’t know, you know, I just want somebody to get in here and get it done right.”
However, if we’re playing make-believe, Colbert would rather play like Newt Gingrich.
“Yes, as long as we’re making shit up, as a conservative, my allegiance is to an ever greater imaginary leader — Ronald Reagan,” Colbert states. “He is the one we should be pretending is stopping this crisis, and Newt Gingrich agrees. Yesterday, he posted a lengthy fake speech he imagines Reagan would give if he were still around.”
4/ Paul Krugman with a success story for the Obama administration in addition to the Affordable Care Act - the Dodd-Frank financial bill is having some positive effects on checking Wall Street's abuses.....
We need to be reminded of these rare triumphs, in a week when Bank Of America was fined $17 billion for it's role in the financial crisis, and it's stock went up. Yes it sounds like a lot of money [three months profits], but the fine is tax deductible, and noone went to jail......
Although the enemies of health reform will never admit it, the Affordable Care Act is looking more and more like a big success. Costs are coming in below predictions, while the number of uninsured Americans is dropping fast, especially in states that haven’t tried to sabotage the program. Obamacare is working.
But what about the administration’s other big push, financial reform? The Dodd-Frank reform bill has, if anything, received even worse press than Obamacare, derided by the right as anti-business and by the left as hopelessly inadequate. And like Obamacare, it’s certainly not the reform you would have devised in the absence of political constraints.
But also like Obamacare, financial reform is working a lot better than anyone listening to the news media would imagine. Let’s talk, in particular, about two important pieces of Dodd-Frank: creation of an agency protecting consumers from misleading or fraudulent financial sales pitches, and efforts to end “too big to fail.”
The decision to create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureaushouldn’t have been controversial, given what happened during the housing boom. As Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve official who warned prophetically of problems in subprime lending, asked, “Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers?” He went on, “The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.” The need for more protection was obvious.
Of course, that obvious need didn’t stop the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, financial industry lobbyists and conservative groups from going all out in an effort to prevent the bureau’s creation or at least stop it from doing its job, spending more than $1.3 billion in the process. Republicans in Congress dutifully served the industry’s interests, notably by trying to prevent President Obama from appointing a permanent director. And the question was whether all that opposition would hobble the new bureau and make it ineffective.
At this point, however, all accounts indicate that the bureau is in fact doing its job, and well — well enough to inspire continuing fury among bankers and their political allies. A recent case in point: The bureau is cracking down on billions in excessive overdraft fees.
Better consumer protection means fewer bad loans, and therefore a reduced risk of financial crisis. But what happens if a crisis occurs anyway?
The answer is that, as in 2008, the government will step in to keep the financial system functioning; nobody wants to take the risk of repeating the Great Depression.
5/ Welcome back from vacation Jon! And what a start - he takes apart the media responses [OK mostly Fox News] to the shooting and rioting in Ferguson with gusto, and in between the jokes is quite serious......an excellent 9 minutes.......
There are three videos below.....
Don't open the first one......it's just a quick joke and there's an ad......
The second is the 9 minute Fox News response.....excellent!
The third segment is also very good....three minutes......Michael Che reporting from Ferguson.....
Jon Stewart returned from a long summer break to tackle the unrest in Ferguson over the past few weeks. In fact, he started out by taking the Ferguson Challenge. It’s like the Ice Bucket Challenge, only with mace and tear gas.
But in the main segment, Stewart set his sights mostly on Fox News, which he believed to be outraged about all the wrong things out of Ferguson. He played audio of Sean Hannitydefending the cops and said, “You really have no fucking idea, do you?”
Stewart said black people go through all sorts of things that white people don’t. He even revealed that when a black Daily Show correspondent in a suit was walking in New York city with a white Daily Showproducer wearing “homeless elf attire,” it was the black correspondent who was stopped.
Stewart said, “You’re tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.”
In the second segment, correspondent Michael Che desperately raced to find a place where black people aren’t stopped and/or shot by the police. Long story short, he ended up in outer space.
6/ And Tom Tomorrow with a cartoon look at the way Ferguson has played in the right wing media.....
7/ David Letterman and Rachel Maddow talk about Ferguson and the broader issues of policing in this country.....if you've been asleep for the last two weeks, this is a good summary of what happened and why.....four common sense minutes.......
When David Letterman needs an update onwhat’s happening in the news, he tends to call onRachel Maddow. Last night, he asked the MSNBC host to give him the primer on the “homicide” or “police shooting” that happened more than two weeks ago in Ferguson, Missouri.
From Maddow’s perspective, Ferguson is a community that felt “very unrepresented” in their local government before a police officer shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown and that incident just brought those feelings to the surface.
“The amount of information coming from local authorities was almost unbelievable,” Maddow said, noting that there still has not been a full police report on what happened. “But they found a way to release information about this kid that made him look bad.”
On top of that, Maddow said it was “terrifying” for Americans to see the type of military-style weaponry that a small police department like the one in Ferguson had at its disposal to use against largely peaceful protesters. She said the militarization of police has been a “sleeper issue” for the past few decades, but is just now going mainstream. “It doesn’t make any sense, and I think there’s going to be a backlash against that,” she said.
8/ We have become an unequal country, and the data proves it.......the fantastically wealthy oligarchy [0.1%], under them a cadre of professionals who are doing very well [about 10%] servicing the upper classes, and the rest of us.......
Very good story from Al-Jazeera......
A small group of very well-paid workers is earning a third of the nation’s wages. Why?
August 25, 2014 10:45AM ET
From 2000 to 2012, American workers as a whole had a tough time, as population grew much faster than new jobs and many people gave up looking for work. There was one major exception: jobs paying $100,000 to $400,000 (in 2012 dollars).
This is what I call America’s new prosperous class. Many of these workers have an advanced degree. They no longer struggle, but they continue to work because their wealth is far from adequate to support their lifestyles.
The number of prosperous-class jobs soared to 10.8 million, an increase of 2.1 million since 2000. That is almost 10 times the growth rate of jobs paying either more or less.
Most astonishing is how much of the overall increase in wages earned by the 153.6 million people with a job in 2012 went to this narrow band of very well paid workers: Just 7 percent of all jobs pay in this range, but those workers collected 76.9 percent of the total real wage increase.
This rise of the prosperous class illustrates a fundamental shift in the economy — as wrenching and potentially enriching as the country’s 19th century transition from an agricultural nation into an industrial one. The change this time is to a knowledge economy in which big bang after big, big bang in science rapidly expands our expertise and mastery of our world, both physical and conceptual, and with it our wealth.
Managers of wealth
What sort of workers are these? In our infotech age, the jobs that pay in the low to middle six figures tend to be in several categories, all of which require extensive education, polished skills and often a government license.
Many of them serve the rich, not as household help but as managers of wealth: accountants, bankers, investment advisers, lawyers, business managers and money managers.
9/ A two minute break in Monday night's Emmy awards gave celebrities a chance to ask Seth Meyers some "spontaneous" questions.....reasonably amusing.....
Like a good host, Seth Meyers opened up the floor for an informal Q&A in the middle of the Emmy Awards. And the celebrities jumped at the chance to ask their biggest questions, like: May I use the bathroom? Can I park my car without getting towed? And can we do the Emmys every year?
Jon Hamm takes the prize for most important question: “Is this being televised, and when will it air?”
“You’re on TV right now,” Meyers deadpanned.
“Awesome!
10/ A most interesting story, and quite revealing of the state of democracy in this country. Not only are we on the verge of becoming a full blown oligarchy, there is another wild card - the national security complex, which has taken advantage of the hopeless dysfunction in Washington and expanded to the point of becoming immune to oversight.
During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the U.S. government has evolved. It sprouted a fourth branch: the national security state, whose main characteristic may be an unquenchable urge to expand its power and reach. Admittedly, it still lacks certain formal prerogatives of governmental power. Nonetheless, at a time when Congress and the presidency are in a check-and-balance ballet of inactivity that would have been unimaginable to Americans of earlier eras, the Fourth Branch is an ever more unchecked and unbalanced power center in Washington. Curtained off from accountability by a penumbra of secrecy, its leaders increasingly are making nitty-gritty policy decisions and largely doing what they want, a situation illuminated by a recent controversy over the possible release of a Senate report on CIA rendition and torture practices.
All of this is or should be obvious, but remains surprisingly unacknowledged in our American world. The rise of the Fourth Branch began at a moment of mobilization for a global conflict, World War II. It gained heft and staying power in the Cold War of the second half of the twentieth century, when that other superpower, the Soviet Union, provided the excuse for expansion of every sort.
Its officials bided their time in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when “terrorism” had yet to claim the landscape and enemies were in short supply. In the post-9/11 era, in a phony “wartime” atmosphere, fed by trillions of taxpayer dollars, and under the banner of American “safety,” it has grown to unparalleled size and power. So much so that it sparked a building boom in and around the national capital (as well as elsewherein the country).
11/ Have a look at this again.....Katy Perry and Jodi DiPiazza [who is autistic] sing a duet at a benefit for autism......there's a forward giving a look at Jodi's life and how the family deals with her autism, then it cuts to a live performance of "Firework". I know it's designed to get some moisture in the tear ducts, but it's done really well.....
12/ This is a pretty good summary of where we are as a nation with getting more organic foods to the marketplace, and how to change American diets for the better. Organics are only about 5% of the market, so there is a loooooong way to go.
Good article.....
Hmmmm........I'll bet the people buying organics [5% of the overall market] are in the top 10% of household income......
What’s Holding Back the Organic Revolution?
- By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, August 20, 2014
There is growing alarm among conscious consumers and activists that our 21st Century food and farming system, and the government-corporate cabal that that props it up, is spiraling out-of-control. Chemical-intensive, energy-intensive, climate-destabilizing factory-farmed and genetically engineered food and farming are destroying not only our health and our environment, but also the soil fertility, biodiversity, and climate stability that make civilization possible.
U.S. sales of certified organic products hit $35 billion in 2013. Given that the organic products industry has seen four decades of steady growth, at a rate of 10-15 percent, sales will likely hit $40 billion in 2014. This amounts to approximately 5 percent of all grocery store purchases, 10 percent of retail fruits and vegetables, and over 20 percent of baby food. Organic sales are increasing 10-15 percent annually, more than five times the anemic 2 percent growth rate of conventional (i.e. chemical) foods.
The latest poll shows that nearly half of U.S. households now prefer organics; that most consumers buy organic foods and products at least on an occasional basis; and that most would buy even more if they felt they could afford to do so.
When asked why they prefer organics, health conscious Americans consistently state that they want to avoid toxic pesticides, synthetic hormones, antibiotic residues, and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).
Health-conscious consumers increasingly understand that the chemical and genetically engineered junk food (so-called “conventional” food) that typically makes up 80-90 percent of the U.S. diet is the primary cause of deteriorating public health and childhood disease. These foods have spawned an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, cancer, antibiotic-resistant infections, behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, autism, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.
Organic foods on the other hand, especially raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains, healthy oils, and grass-fed, pastured meat and animal products, are recognized as safer, healthier and more sustainable
But it’s not just the impact of organic foods on personal health that concerns consumers. Organic consumers express rising concern over the destructive impacts of industrial agriculture and factory farms on the environment, climate, animal welfare, farm workers and rural communities. Increasingly, consumers are coming to understand that industrial agriculture and factory farms are the leading cause of water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, wetlands destruction, desertification, reduced biodiversity and, most important of all, climate-destabilizing greenhouse gas emissions.
U.S. sales of certified organic products hit $35 billion in 2013. Given that the organic products industry has seen four decades of steady growth, at a rate of 10-15 percent, sales will likely hit $40 billion in 2014. This amounts to approximately 5 percent of all grocery store purchases, 10 percent of retail fruits and vegetables, and over 20 percent of baby food. Organic sales are increasing 10-15 percent annually, more than five times the anemic 2 percent growth rate of conventional (i.e. chemical) foods.
The latest poll shows that nearly half of U.S. households now prefer organics; that most consumers buy organic foods and products at least on an occasional basis; and that most would buy even more if they felt they could afford to do so. When asked why they prefer organics, health conscious Americans consistently state that they want to avoid toxic pesticides, synthetic hormones, antibiotic residues, and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).
Health-conscious consumers increasingly understand that the chemical and genetically engineered junk food (so-called “conventional” food) that typically makes up 80-90 percent of the U.S. diet is the primary cause of deteriorating public health and childhood disease. These foods have spawned an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, cancer, antibiotic-resistant infections, behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, autism, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.
Organic foods on the other hand, especially raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains, healthy oils, and grass-fed, pastured meat and animal products, are recognized as safer, healthier and more sustainable
But it’s not just the impact of organic foods on personal health that concerns consumers. Organic consumers express rising concern over the destructive impacts of industrial agriculture and factory farms on the environment, climate, animal welfare, farm workers and rural communities. Increasingly, consumers are coming to understand that industrial agriculture and factory farms are the leading cause of water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, wetlands destruction, desertification, reduced biodiversity and, most important of all, climate-destabilizing greenhouse gas emissions.
13/ More on what we eat, why we eat it and why this nation is obese - the root causes.....
And by the way dear reader, what do you eat? Any of this shit?
10 reasons America is morbidly obese
It's not just the fast food: Our country faces a perfect storm of obstacles to living a healthy lifestyle
(Credit: Shutterstock)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
A popular talking point on the far right is that the United States has such a high standard of living and is so blessed that even its poor are obese. But the exact opposite is true: rampant obesity reflects the country’s decline and underscores the fact that the quality of life is growing worse for much of the U.S. population.
Ironically, our culture bombards people with weight-loss schemes and goofy fad diets while doing so many things to promote obesity (and by extension, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and other chronic conditions). That is not to say it is impossible to stay thin in the U.S. or that Americans battling weight problems should simply give up and take a fatalistic attitude. But obesity is encouraged by one’s environment, and there is much about the modern American lifestyle that is conducive to gaining a lot of weight.
Below are 10 things that encourage obesity in the United States and make weight loss not impossible, but more challenging.
1. Widespread, Increasing Poverty
Between corporate downsizing, outsourcing of American jobs to developing countries and the economic crash of September 2008, poverty has become much more widespread in the U.S. (where the number of people poor enough to quality for food stamps went from 17 million in 2000 to 47 million in 2013). While it is certainly possible to eat healthy on a budget, it can be challenging—especially when unhealthy processed food is cheap, ubiquitous, convenient and easy to obtain. In a 2013 article for the Washington Post, Eli Saslow took a close look at the relationship between poverty and obesity in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas: not surprisingly, many of the poor, obese people Saslow interviewed were living on a steady diet of processed foods.
2. Food Deserts
14/ Todays George Carlin award [nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care] goes to the states [and Ontario] around Lake Erie, which allow phosphorus runoff into the Lake, causing algae blooms which just poisoned the water of Toledo, Ohio.....
To fix the problem will take firm action by the gub'mint, so it ain't gonna happen soon......
Behind Toledo’s Water Crisis, a Long-Troubled Lake Erie
By MICHAEL WINESAUG. 4, 2014
TOLEDO, Ohio — It took a serendipitous slug of toxins and the loss of drinking water for a half-million residents to bring home what scientists and government officials in this part of the country have been saying for years: Lake Erie is in trouble, and getting worse by the year.
Flooded by tides of phosphorus washed from fertilized farms, cattle feedlots and leaky septic systems, the most intensely developed of the Great Lakes isincreasingly being choked each summer by thick mats of algae, much of it poisonous. What plagues Toledo and, experts say, potentially all 11 million lakeside residents, is increasingly a serious problem across the United States.
But while there is talk of action — and particularly in Ohio, real action — there also is widespread agreement that efforts to address the problem have fallen woefully short. And the troubles are not restricted to the Great Lakes. Poisonous algae are found in polluted inland lakes from Minnesota to Nebraska to California, and even in the glacial-era kettle ponds of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
PLAY VIDEO|0:36
Algae Blooms Create Water Crisis in
Toledo
15/ Something new - 16 household tips, hints and timesavers.....I love the clean your shower head technique!
It would be nice if we could all have a spoon full of Mary Poppins' sugar to make cleaning a snap. In the real world, though, it's always just the worst when you realize things have gotten a tad too untidy. Unless you're one of the strange and rare folks who seem to actually enjoy scrubbing and polishing, it's a struggle just to talk yourself into starting the awful tasks. But when the alternative is living in your own filth, you know it's time to hang your head and get to work.
Before you resign yourself to another sad cleaning spree, take a look at these tricks to help your attitude and home get a little brighter. Being organized and clean can actually be easy with the proper planning.
1.) Use a shoe organizer for easy access to your supplies.
Todays video - "Prancercise, Fitness With Passion"......it's difficult [but amusing] to watch this train wreck of a video as it's awful on so many levels.......below is the blurb that comes with it, and the "hostess" takes herself incredibly seriously....amazing......
For connoisseurs of the bizarre.......you get the complete idea after 30 seconds, but it's strangely hypnotic......
Up, Up and Away.... feel better than just ok, with"Official Prancercise®Fitness with Passion." This video goes a step beyond my original video " Official Prancercise: A Fitness Workout" exploring the potential of getting fit along with a preferred partner; in a preferred environment; and even alongside preferred animals. A feeling of liberation from the boring and overbearing typical fitness scene ( usually even lacking in self-expression), can be experienced right here in "Official Prancercise®Fitness with Passion." Free your mind from the usual grind!
Todays awful jokes - jokes so terrible they're actually funny......
Todays retiree joke
Working people frequently ask us retired people what we do to make our days interesting.
For example, just the other day my wife and I went into town and visited a shop, browsing
for a while. When we came out, there was a parking meter cop writing out a parking ticket.
I went up to him and I said, 'Come on, man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?'
I went up to him and I said, 'Come on, man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?'
He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him an asshole. He glared at me
and started writing another ticket for having worn-out tires.
So Liz called him a shit head. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield
So Liz called him a shit head. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield
with the first. Then he started writing more tickets.
Just then......our bus arrived, and we got on it and went home. We weren't too concerned about the
vehicle's owner because of the sticker on the back window:
vehicle's owner because of the sticker on the back window:
Romney/Ryan 2012
We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age.
Todays ladies joke
Woman
Between 18 and 22, a woman is like Africa ...
Half discovered, half wild, fertile and naturally beautiful!
Between 23 and 30, a woman is like Europe ...
Well developed and open to trade, especially for someone of real value.
Between 31 and 35, a woman is like Spain
very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty.
Between 36 and 40, a woman is like Greece
gently aging, but still a warm and desirable place to visit.
Between 41 and 50, a woman is like Great Britain
with a glorious and all conquering past.
Between 51 and 60, a woman is like Israel
has been through war, doesn't make the same mistakes twice,
takes care of business.
Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Canada
self-preserving, but open to meeting new people.
After 70, she becomes Tibet
Wildly beautiful, with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages.
An adventurous spirit and a thirst for spiritual knowledge.
MAN
Between 1 and 80, a man is like Iran
ruled by a pair of nuts.
ruled by a pair of nuts.
THE END.
