'Twas the day before Thanksgiving,
And all through the house...
Big day tomorrow! Feasting with the VanDemarks! (Already received my marching orders... no politics...)
As for the weekend... we'll see... the only shopping we may do is pre-vacation (Kim's Indian Wedding) cloth shopping. (A new pair of black sneakers, perhaps; a new pair of khakis... some new tee-shirts, socks, underwear...)
No Christmas per se for the Barkers this year! This trip is tapping us out so please... no presents for us.
(Mary refuses to even send cards this year! So don't be offended! All will be back to normal next year!)
Anyway... for the rest of you who WILL be celebrating Christmas with gifts exchanges... allow me to reiterate my yearly plea:
BUY AMERICAN...!!!
Nope. Not everything. Just... what you can. It matters, folks. Just Google "American Made Products and Gifts" or think about what someone on your list would want and search for that item adding the term "American Made."
4 comments:
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/21/opinion/ballen-afghanistan-loya-jirga/index.html
A traditional grand conclave of elders, a Loya Jirga, convenes Thursday in Kabul, Afghanistan, to decide whether U.S. forces can remain in the country past 2014. But events this past weekend illustrated the continuing perils and myopia of American policy.
On Saturday, just a few hundred yards from the site of Thursday's critical meeting, expected to be attended by 2,500 people, a car bomb exploded, killing at least 13 people. The Taliban took responsibility.
At the same time, at Georgetown University in Washington, former first ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton took the stage together to exhort Americans not to abandon the women of Afghanistan.
* HOW ABOUT THE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS OF AMERICAN SERVICE PERSONNEL...??? DO THE "FORMER FIRST LADIES" GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THEM?
Former Secretary of State Clinton stated that it is essential the U.S. continue to play a role in the country to provide the security necessary for continued progress for Afghan women and girls.
* FUNNY... I DON'T RECALL CHELSEA VOLUNTEERING FOR A STINT IN THE MILITARY... NOR THE BUSH DAUGHTERS... (THOUGH AT LEAST THEIR FATHER SERVED...)
American reconstruction of Afghanistan is the most expensive reconstruction of a single country in U.S. history, costing more than $90 billion to date.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Last year, Afghanistan received almost twice as much as the next four largest foreign assistance country beneficiaries combined.
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
With about 2,300 U.S. service members killed in this effort, the loss to American families has also been incalculable.
* HOW MANY TENS OF THOUSANDS WOUNDED...???
Yet, with all this sacrifice, the United States is not meaningfully closer to the goals Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration have asked us to embrace.
* KEEP ON SQUANDERING BLOOD AND TREASURE... THAT'S "BIPARTISANSHIP" FOR YOU.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
While our political leaders laud that progress and the need for a continued U.S. military presence, the Taliban respond with more bombs and more innocent lives are lost.
* IF ONLY THE TALIBAN WOULD TARGET OUR POLITICAL LEADERS INSTEAD OF THE POOR GRUNTS JUST DOING WHAT THEY'RE TOLD...
Hopes now for any kind of peace in Afghanistan largely depend on Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
* YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS, FOLKS... (READ ON!)
After the Loya Jirga, a delegation of the Afghan High Peace Council will reportedly visit Pakistan to meet Baradar in a renewed push to end the decades' long conflict. Baradar, once the top deputy to Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, was freed from jail in Pakistan in September at the request of the Afghan government to help facilitate the peace process. Mullah Omar has denounced the Loya Jirga and the Taliban opposes any U.S. troops remaining.
The seminal event in sealing Mullah Omar's authority as unquestioned leader happened in April 1996. Then, in the dusty southern Afghan Pashtun stronghold of Kandahar, Mullah Omar donned, from a religious shrine, the holy relic of the cloak of the Prophet Muhammad. After the initial American victory in Afghanistan at the end of 2001, Mullah Omar and Mullah Baradar retreated to Quetta, in Pakistan. As recounted to me by someone in Omar's inner circle, the Mullah was devastated by the Taliban's defeat. Paralyzed with inaction, Mullah Omar could not decide what to do, waiting patiently for another "true night dream" from God. As a result, Mullah Baradar helped to direct a meeting in the spring of 2002 at a madrassa in Quetta with Mullah Omar's favorite seer. It was only after the Taliban seer recounted a dream in which he saw Mullah Omar's "beard turn a blinding white - for it was now made of the threads of the holy prophet's very cloak" - that Omar decided to lead the fight again against the Americans inside Afghanistan. This is the same Mullah Baradar upon which peace talks now substantially depend.
While our Afghan allies hold the Loya Jirga to decide the fate of a continued U.S. military presence in the country, their Taliban enemies deliver their response with more bombs.
And while the U.S. continues to invest unprecedented resources into a largely corrupt and feckless Afghan government, the Taliban leaders wait for dreams.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/online-shop-enrollment-delayed-by-one-year-100438.html
The Obama administration today announced a one year delay of online enrollment for small businesses looking to purchase health coverage through federal Obamacare exchanges, another high-profile setback for HealthCare.gov.
* UNDER WHAT AUTHORITY...?!?!
It’s the second delay for online small business enrollment, which the administration had said would begin this month.
* WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION SAYS AND WHAT IT DOES ARE TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS...
The announcement just before Thanksgiving is the latest in a series of delays and miscalculations for the president’s signature domestic legislation. On July 2 — also just before a holiday — it delayed the employer mandate for a year.
* AGAIN... WITH NO AUTHORITY TO DO SO...
House Speaker John Boehner said the delay is more proof that the law should be repealed or delayed.
* WHAT SPEAKER BOEHNER SHOULD BE DOING IS PROTECTING THE CONSTITUTION AND THE RULE OF LAW INSTEAD OF SIMPLY MOVING ASIDE TO LET OBAMA DO WHATEVER IT IS HE SEES FIT!
“The president bit off more than he can chew with this health care law, and small businesses are now forced to bear the consequences,” he said in a statement.
* LISTEN. THE WHOLE COUNTRY IS FACING THE CONSEQUENCES! OBAMACARE IS A DISASTER!
The administration originally delayed online enrollment in the federal-run small business exchanges just days before the failed Oct. 1 launch of HealthCare.gov. At the time, HHS said online enrollment would be available “sometime in November.” But now, it won’t be ready until November of next year.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/26/rules-of-engagement-bind-us-troops-actions-in-afgh/?page=all#pagebreak
The new U.S.-Afghanistan security agreement adds restrictions on already bureaucratic rules of engagement for American troops by making Afghan dwellings virtual safe havens for the enemy, combat veterans say.
* BRING... OUR... TROOPS... HOME...!!!
The rules of engagement place the burden on U.S. air and ground troops to confirm with certainty that a Taliban fighter is armed before they can fire — even if they are 100% sure the target is the enemy. In some cases, aerial gunships have been denied permission to fire even though they reported that targets on the move were armed.
* BRING... OUR... TROOPS... HOME...!!!
The proposed Bilateral Security Agreement announced Wednesday by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Secretary of State John F. Kerry all but prohibits U.S. troops from entering dwellings during combat. “U.S. forces shall not enter Afghan homes for the purposes of military operations, except under extraordinary circumstances involving urgent risk to life and limb of U.S. nationals,” Mr. Obama pledged in a letter to the Afghan leader.
* UNFRIGGIN'BELIEVABLE...
Ryan Zinke, who commanded an assault team within SEAL Team 6, said of the security deal: “The first people who are going to look at it and review it are the enemy we’re trying to fight. It’s going to be a document that can be used effectively against us. This is where we either fight or go home. What’s happening is we’re losing our ability to fight overseas.”
* FOLKS... THIS IS INSANITY!
Said retired Army Col. Ken Allard, now a military analyst: “Call me crazy, but what on earth is the point of remaining there under these [rules of engagement], much less subjecting American soldiers to another set of restrictions that make sense only in proportion to your distance from the combat zone?”
* THERE IS NO POINT IN REMAINING THERE! THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING!
The security agreement lays out the legal status of U.S. troops who remain in Afghanistan after the end of 2014, when all international combat forces are set to leave the country. As many as 18,000 international troops — including 8,000 from the U.S. — will remain for 10 years to train and assist Afghan security forces and hunt terrorists.
* THIS... IS... INSANE...!!!
Terrorist-hunting missions will require U.S. personnel to engage in combat by accompanying Afghans on counterterrorism raids and supplying close-air support. That is why the rules for when U.S. troops can and cannot fire on the enemy or enter a dwelling remain important.
* LISTEN. I DON'T WANT OUR MEN AND WOMEN FIGHTING AND DYING AND BEING MAIMED OVER THERE. PERIOD. BRING THE TROOPS HOME! ALL OF 'EM!
A rare look at today’s classified rules of engagement is contained in the huge investigative file on the Afghan Taliban’s downing of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter last year that killed 30 U.S. troops, including 17 members of SEAL Team 6. The report notes service members’ frustration at seeing people they knew were Taliban fighters during the August 2012 operation in Afghanistan’s Tangi Valley, but they were denied permission to shoot.
* ...BUT THEY WERE DENIED PERMISSION TO SHOOT.
An AH-64 Apache gunship pilot said he saw the spot from where Taliban operatives fired the rocket-propelled grenade that felled the chopper. “Due to [rules of engagement] and tactical directives, I couldn’t fire at the building where I thought the [shooter] was, so I aimed directly to the west of the building,” the pilot testified, according to transcripts obtained by The Washington Times.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
During the battle that preceded the shootdown, the crew of an AC-130 gunship spotted two armed Taliban fighters who were moving into new positions.
* PERMISSION TO ENGAGE... DENIED.
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