WHO IS SMARTEST!?

Who has more brains???

John McCain?

Or George W. Bush?

Or Broccoli?

Or Bloom County's Bill the cat?

Please voice your choice but also post a logical reason for your choice (such as: "Isn't it obvious, you fool?").

Note: If you think two (or more) candidates are tied, you can vote for both (or all).

Choices:

























































The Committee to elect John McCain appreciates your responses. You can take pride in knowing that you have assisted in electing the next, greatest and most heroic president in the history of this great nation.

Interesting Discussion

Here's an interesting discussion I ran into while searching for information about NLD.

It demonstrates that there's a lot of confusion about diagnosis and that NLD is often (maybe always?) misunderstood. As I search for NLD information, I'm amazed that there is so little talk of helping adults......especially older adults.

Are we not worth it? I think I am.

NLD: Not Just a Learning Disability

Thoreau said most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Mine was not quiet.

Even now......NLD is profoundly misunderstood. The past mistakes of ignorance and misunderstanding rate as almost criminal.

Whenever people hear "Learning Disability," they think of something that school kids have....something that means you need special help in learning.......which is true, of course....but that's only the beginning. And some of us never got that "special help." We just had to wing it.....ignorant that we even had a problem.

NLD is a crushing, 24-hour a day handicap. It means that much of what your eyes see.....your brain cannot process. You miss a lot. You learn to guess at proper responses. You're always at least a half-second behind everybody else at best, and not getting it at all at worst. It doesn't come and go, or get better or worse, it's just there constantly--determining that you will dream and never be able to accomplish those dreams.

I grew up in an exciting time. The Russians had just shocked us with Sputnik. Our scientists were racing to catch up. My dream was to build rockets. Well.....I'm no rocket scientist. From the 3rd grade on....I was a D and F student in math.

By the sixth grade I knew Wernher von Braun's life story and had all the principles of rocket propulsion down pat and notebooks full of my own illustrations......but I couldn't do long division, and fractions were far beyond my ken.

This was hard for most people to accept, because....if you talked to me for a while, you'd think I was very intelligent. In the eighth grade, my IQ was 135 and my teachers knew it. I suffered for years with teachers who were determined to either help me or force me to reach my potential by teaching me things like math and chemistry.

"You're not applying yourself."

I heard it so often I should have just worn a T-shirt that said, "HE WILL NEVER GET IT! WHAT HE DOES GET HE WILL NOT REMEMBER TOMORROW!!! GET OVER IT!!! STOP YELLING AT HIM. STOP BELITTLING HIM!!!"

But I didn't know to wear the T-shirt. Nobody knew. Nobody ever thought I needed special help.

Teachers thought I was simply a smart-ass. A lazy and disruptive jerk. Having nothing better to do.....I quickly met their expectations. I was well-read (it was the only thing I did well) and my general knowledge was formidable. I could embarrass some teachers by knowing more than they did and I could make people laugh--usually AT the teacher. I spent my junior year mostly staring at a wall in the principle's office.

All the teachers would have hated me, but luckily I could, and often did--make the teacher laugh, too. Had I not been able to make them laugh, things would have been much worse. They'd often be laughing when they kicked me out of class for a week and laughing when they happily welcomed me back. Only a few hated me.

In a way, they created me. By not giving me the help that I needed, they ensured that I would never learn the math and science and grammar that they so desperately wanted me to learn. They wanted to succeed in making me succeed....but they didn't know how. It wasn't their fault--they just didn't know.

And I sure didn't.

Of course, math wasn't the only problem. There were many more, both physical and mental. Math was just the one that crushed me.

Twenty years later they would have spotted me and had the knowledge and skill to teach me.

It was 45 years before a psychologist finally diagnosed me......after a life of noisy desperation.

Winter Soldier

In the meantime.....here's a site worth supporting.

Winter Soldier

Ok, It's NLD.

Ok, here it is.

About the time of my last 2007 post.....I was diagnosed with NLD. So......I've spent some time trying to figure out what that's all about. More when and if I can write about it.

Life

See, these cat thoughts are supposed to be about politics and religion and life.......and having nine lives, I have a lot to talk about.

But.....I have a problem.

The people who write these blogs......they're opening up--spilling their guts every day. So much spilling. Such a quantity of guts.

Do I really want to add to that gutpile?

Near Life Experience

I had one.

So, for a while I thought I had a life. Luckily, this proved to be untrue. This could mean I'll be posting here again. Or not. But, it'll be ok.

Can Christians Condemn Islam?

So, there are a few Fundamentalist Muslims who seem radical and dangerous.

Thus:

Christians often tend to try to portray Islam as evil.

But Islam is not evil, and....as a matter of fact--is traveling the same road that Christianity did.

It is traveling that road at about the same pace as Christianity did.

Hard to understand?

I will explain.

Christianity is 2000 years old.

Islam is 1400 years old.

The difference is 600 years.

Think about it.

What were Christians doing 600 years ago?

Those were the days of the Inquisition--when Christians tortured and murdered anyone who questioned the Faith. Millions died for questioning the Christian dogma.

This behavior started early and often and only 350 years after Jesus said, "Love your enemy."

Muslims, especially, were considered to be sub-human and worthy of only death. America today still promotes the killing of Muslims, setting up and controlling oppressive puppet governments in order to control the oil supply to America.

Why would anyone be surprised at the negative attitude that many Muslims have toward America?

But Christianity's record, when closely examined, leaves plenty of room for Islam to catch up or even surpass Christianity.

The gap is 600 years, but some of Christianity's primitive and superstitious behavior is less than 300 years in our past.

It was only around 300 years ago in America when the Salem Witch Trials sentenced innocents to be drowned or burned by Christians.

Even today in America, homosexuals are murdered by confused and ignorant Christians because the Bible (badly interpreted) appears to be condemning of all homosexual behavior.

And, of course, most of Christianity still treats women as second-class citizens (be a nun....NOT a priest).

Cultures and religions progress at their own pace. Islam is progressing just as quickly as Christianity did, and will probably catch up (as Christianity seems to be currently undergoing a time of regression and darkness).

And we should remain aware that progressive attitudes are common in some Muslim nations. Many Muslims, especially the Suffi Muslims, are as liberal and modern in their religion as any elderly Presbyterian of America.....perhaps more liberal and modern.

The bottom line is this:

We should judge no culture by our standards when our standards are alien to that culture.

Christians, who are themselves only a heartbeat away from the days of murdering anyone who questioned their dogma, are probably least qualified to condemn other cultures for those same actions.

SOMALIA: MEET THE LATEST WAR CRIME

You know.....the persistent Christian oppression of Somalia is truly amazing. In 1920 the British, in their crazed determination to take over Somalia, killed more than half the people in Northern Somalia.

Yes, they really did. To force their way in to rule Somalia....the British killed more than HALF of the people in Northern Somalia (the people who dared to resist them taking over).

Just coldly wiped them out, mostly with a relentless aerial bombardment of every village and everything that moved.....man, woman, child, goats--everything.

Just another little-known Christian crusade.

Nobody in the West really cared. The dead were, after all, only Muslims.

Today, at America's bidding, the Ethiopian Christian armies are trying to do the same thing.

Over the past few years, a Muslim government, the Council of Islamic Courts, had brought a semblance of order to Somalia after many years of instability and violence. Things were getting better. Peace was coming.

But America couldn't allow Muslims to take over--America thinks Muslims are terrorists....so, the Christian Ethiopian Army was used by America to invade Somalia to crush the hated Muslims (with the help of American advisors, spy planes, spy satellites.....and, of course, air strikes from American aircraft carriers).

What America has now accomplished is that Somalia is again in chaos and the people are rising up against America's puppet, the occupying Ethiopian army.

And the streets of Mogadishu are again running red with blood.

The whole scenario is so familiar:

From the Toronto Star:

American-backed, foreign Christian troops intervene in a Muslim civil war to unseat the winning Islamist side; a U.S. warplane searching for alleged terrorists in that same country blasts the wrong people; both the European Union and the United Nations express their dismay; Canada, home to tens of thousands of immigrants from this war-torn, African nation, says nothing.

Does any of this sound familiar?

If not, it should. Somalia is making headlines again and the world is nervous. That's because this week's events in that East African country are eerily reminiscent of other failed Western adventures in other far-off Muslim lands.

Somalia: Meet the Latest War Crime

Canada really shouldn't feel too guilty for her silence.....nobody else is standing up to America either.

America wouldn't give a damn anyway.

America, like the British in 1920, is willing to kill as many as necessary to gain control of Somalia, killing, in the first few days, about 100 innocent civilians.

And, like the British in 1920, they used low-risk aerial bombardment (low-risk to the bombers--high-risk to those bombed).....killing men, women, children, goats.....anything that moved was a "terrorist ally."

How can anyone stop this?

The answer is blowin' in the wind....but America just doesn't give a damn about the wind.