and you're nothing but a broken record~~~

Mty concience is clear. Apparently yours is in standby mode.

So now that the Bush's are poisoning the Republicans chances for the next decade or so, you feel the need to say "nyah?"

Oh.

What post are you referring to?

Carol, et al,

This is not a contest. And it's not about which Party is more corrupt.


(COMMENT)

So the Republican Party justifies unethical practices by saying: We are less corrupt (didn't get caught as often) as the Democrats???

That is a sad commentary indeed.

I think, in the wake of every scandal, there is this tendency to say: At least I’m not as bad as the other guy. That is unacceptable. Is that the kind of behavior we want to reward and pass-on?

Whatever happened to the “spirit and intent of the law?”

I like the way the recent talking-heads have justified their ethical behavior (which is not the same as legal behavior).

Some say that unethical behavior is really acceptable if it is common practice. This is based on the idea that if every politician does it, what would be unethical for you and I, somehow becomes acceptable ethical practice in politics because all politicians do it. It is an offshoot of the idea that Politician A cannot be challenged on ethical grounds by Politician B, because Politician B has also acted unethically in the past. Just because everyone does it, does not make it ethical.

Some say that anything that is not illegal is ethical. So, on that basis, if someone does something by leapfrogging the spirit and intent of the law, it is ethical because it is not criminalized. Ethics is about character, and naturally doing the right thing. Legality is about compliance, doing the right thing because you might suffer a penalty.

There is a very neat web site (http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/MED/MED-5rationalizations.htm ) on issues of ethics and the decision making process. It discusses some important ideas that you often hear in political justifications:

If It’s Necessary, It’s Ethical
The False Necessity Trap
If It’s Legal and Permissible, It’s Proper
It’s Just Part of the Job
It’s All for a Good Cause
I Was Just Doing It for You
I’m Just Fighting Fire With Fire
It Doesn’t Hurt Anyone
Everyone’s Doing It
It’s OK If I Don’t Gain Personally
I’ve Got It Coming
I Can Still Be Objective

Ethics, anywhere, is about how we (individually) and we (collectively as a group) exercise moral values and judgments; it exemplifies how we define “right and wrong.”

If you want to throw away the ideas of “right and wrong” – that is fine. But you cannot suggest that Party “A” is less corrupt than Party “B” just because of criminal visibility. That is nonsense. The Republican Party only demonstrates what little regard it has for ethical practices when it tries to mitigate its unethical practices through a comparison to the past corrupt and unethical practices of the Democratic Party.

BE DIFFERENT: Work for a stronger party that place moral value judgments and ethics above all else. Make a difference.

Most Respectfully,

That one. Just plunked down out of nowhere in the middle of a serious discussion on Iraq, without any comment or apparent relevence. Just a turd dropped out of the blue.

What's the ethic or value behind your habit of doing such things?

Oh, THAT Churchill.

Yeah, he's a turd and just a reminder of it.

I have a problem with Demos who come on here and act so pius when their own party is a mass of corruption.

I have a problem with Demos who think they can push their acceptance of immorality on me.

That was before the indictment. After it:


Isn't there an old adage about how you're in a hole, first thing to do is quit digging? Do you people making excuses really think you're helping Bush when you do?

And saddest of all is that Carol herself is doing all she can to drag things lower. Hence, my inquiry to her about her habit of just flinging turds for no apparent reason.



I have a problem with people like yourself who apparently think that ethics and values have no place in politics, judging by our own unethical and value-devoid conduct.

Judy Ann's on a tear.

Next victim.

Don't be so hard on yourself.

It just comes with the territory of being a political hack.

Perhaps, Bart, you'd like to offer an explanation of why such an overwhelming percentage of the public thinks ethics and values in politics are as bad as or WORSE than the Clinton debacle?

Perhaps you might want to reflect that your own conduct is contributing to that impression?

ROFL! Talk about a TYPO!

Perhaps you might want to stop attacking people who haven't said one out of the way word to you. Then we might talk.

bwahahahahahaha!!

Republicans get elected on ethics reform, morals and values then become even bigger bullshitters and consumers of pork laden bills, try to change the ethics rules so they can't be caught and you have the nerve to say anyone is a mass of corruption?


I have a problem with faith-based assholes trying to portray themselves as the arbitor of what's moral then turning around and acting like criminals and profiteers. Acceptance of immorality?

Look in the mirror. I bet you don't have a reflection.

I gave you my reason.

Reject it~~~who cares...certainly, not I.

You do have a personal problem, of which you seem to think you have the end all to end all values and ethics.

Would you like to continue to talk about me? Go right ahead. I'm not a politician, but maybe it will give you some satisfaction.

The Toledo Blade is doing an investigation into the corruption in the GOP in Ohio. It started on Sunday and will go for days.

They have a team of reporters going through records, and the pay to play system of government.

Whole sections of the paper have been showing how the GOP have corrupted the system and how decisions have been made as to who gets what contract, etc.

I wish the Blade would send this bunch to DC.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/s...ry=SRRARECOINS2

A BLADE INVESTIGATION
Bush fund-raisers reap millions in contracts, corporate subsidies

They were executives, lobbyists, evangelical Christians, political veterans and rookies, and a rare-coin dealer from Maumee. They bankrolled a president.

Thirty Ohioans collected at least $4.1 million for George W. Bush's re-election campaign last year - exceeding Sen. John Kerry's entire take from the state. They raised $2.4 million more for the Republcan National Committee.

They are Ohio's "Pioneers" and "Rangers," President Bush's most prolific fund-raisers. Most Ohio voters have never heard of them, but the White House knows them well.

They have sat on crucial policy committees and won choice appointments. In the last five years, their firms have conducted more than a billion dollars of business with the state and the federal government.

One was Tom Noe.

Prepare to meet the rest.

The Blade assembled a team of six reporters to investigate how the Bush-Cheney campaign raised millions to win the Buckeye State.

Using raw data, the reporters assembled portraits of each of the top fund-raisers' poltical donations. They also built a database of checks cut by the state over the last five years and mined federal databases to track the state and federal dollars paid to the firms of Ohio's Pioneers and Rangers.

Over the next four days, The Blade will introduce you to the 29 men and women who engineered a fund-raising landslide for Mr. Bush in Ohio and helped deliver him a narrow victory in the state. The series will show:

# How several of those fund-raisers tied their fortunes to government spending, sometimes through unbid contracts.

# How Republican leaders, including future Pioneers and Rangers, built what was a ragged state party into a rich, well-tuned machine. The GOP has dominated Ohio politics for a decade and a half and laid the groundwork for Mr. Bush's 2004 victory.

# How a half-dozen Democratic fund-raisers in Ohio corralled at least $750,000 for Sen. John Kerry's losing presidential bid, and what they stood to gain if he had won.

# How the increased mingling of money and politics raises questions about the electoral process, and what experts call Americans' best hopes for influencing public policy without writing or collecting large checks.

A year after Ohio's 20 electoral votes clinched Mr. Bush's re-election - and only days after a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Noe on felony charges of laundering cash to the President's campaign - a Blade investigation shows the power of money along the Ohio Trail.


http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...-1/SRRARECOINS2

The conservative republicans in Congress have been looking for money, cutting medicaid, school lunches, etc., and have OVERLOOKED this.



October 24, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative



Money for Nothing

Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets.


by Philip Giraldi


The United States invaded Iraq with a high-minded mission: destroy dangerous weapons, bring democracy, and trigger a wave of reform across the Middle East. None of these have happened.

When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi’ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant.

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.

Some of the corruption grew out of the misguided neoconservative agenda for Iraq, which meant that a serious reconstruction effort came second to doling out the spoils to the war’s most fervent supporters. The CPA brought in scores of bright, young true believers who were nearly universally unqualified. Many were recruited through the Heritage Foundation website, where they had posted their résumés. They were paid six-figure salaries out of Iraqi funds, and most served in 90-day rotations before returning home with their war stories. One such volunteer was Simone Ledeen, daughter of leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen. Unable to communicate in Arabic and with no relevant experience or appropriate educational training, she nevertheless became a senior advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad. Another was former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer’s older brother Michael who, though utterly unqualified, was named director of private-sector development for all of Iraq.

The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 “cashpaks,” each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.

Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent. There was also considerable money “off the books,” including as much as $4 billion from illegal oil exports. The CPA and the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Board, which it controlled, made a deliberate decision not to record or “meter” oil exports, an invitation to wholesale fraud and black marketeering.

Thus the country was awash in unaccountable money. British sources report that the CPA contracts that were not handed out to cronies were sold to the highest bidder, with bribes as high as $300,000 being demanded for particularly lucrative reconstruction contracts.

The contracts were especially attractive because no work or results were necessarily expected in return. It became popular to cancel contracts without penalty, claiming that security costs were making it too difficult to do the work. A $500 million power-plant contract was reportedly awarded to a bidder based on a proposal one page long. After a joint commission rejected the proposal, its members were replaced by the minister, and approval was duly obtained. But no plant has been built.

Where contracts are actually performed, their nominal cost is inflated sufficiently to provide handsome bribes for everyone involved in the process. Bribes paid to government ministers reportedly exceed $10 million.

Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier’s name or provide a good description of him.

Paul Bremer, meanwhile, had a slush fund in cash of more than $600 million in his office for which there was no paperwork. One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag. Three-quarters of a million dollars was stolen from an office safe, and a U.S. official was given $7 million in cash in the waning days of the CPA and told to spend it “before the Iraqis take over.” Nearly $5 billion was shipped from New York in the last month of the CPA. Sources suggest that a deliberate attempt was being made to run down the balance and spend the money while the CPA still had authority and before an Iraqi government could be formed.

The only certified public-accounting firm used by the CPA to monitor its spending was a company called North Star Consultants, located in San Diego, which was so small that it operated out of a private home. It was subsequently determined that North Star did not, in fact, perform any review of the CPA’s internal spending controls. Today, no one can account for billions of those dollars or even suggest how the money was spent. And as the CPA no longer exists, there is also little interest in re-examining its transparency or accountability.

Bremer escaped Baghdad by helicopter two days before his proconsulship expired to avoid a possible ambush on the road leading to the airport, which he had been unable to secure. He has recently been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor he shares with ex-CIA Director George “Slam-dunk” Tenet.

Considerable fraud has been alleged regarding American companies, much of which can never be addressed because the Bush administration does not regard contracts with the CPA as pertaining to the U.S. government, even though U.S. taxpayer dollars were involved in some transactions.

Many of the contracts for work in Iraq were awarded on a cost-plus basis, in which an agreed-upon percentage of profit would be added to the actual costs of performing the contract. Such contracts are an invitation to fraud, and unscrupulous companies will make every effort to increase their costs so that the profits will also increase proportionally.

Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, has a no-bid monopoly contract with the Army Corps of Engineers that is now estimated to be worth $10 billion. In June 2005, Pentagon contracting officer Bunny Greenhouse told a congressional committee that the agreement was the “most blatant and improper contracting abuse” that she had ever witnessed, a frank assessment that subsequently earned her a demotion.

Halliburton has frequently been questioned over its poor record keeping, and critics claim that it has a history of overcharging for its services. In May 1967, a company called RMK/BRJ could not account for $120 million in materiel sent to Vietnam and was investigated several times for overcharging on fuel. RMK/BRJ is now known as KBR or Kellogg, Brown and Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been the focus of congressional, Department of Defense, and General Accountability Office investigations. Defense Contract Audit Agency auditors have questioned Halliburton’s charges on a $1.6 billion fuel contract, claiming that the overcharges on the contract exceed $200 million. In one instance, the company charged the Army more than $27 million to transport $82,000 worth of fuel from Kuwait to Iraq. Halliburton has also been accused of billing the Army for 42,000 daily meals for soldiers, though it was only actually serving 14,000. In another operation, KBR purchased fleets of Mercedes trucks at $85,000 each to re-supply U.S. troops. The trucks carried no spare parts or even extra tires for the grueling high-speed run across the Kuwaiti and Iraqi deserts. When the trucks broke down on the highway, they were abandoned and destroyed rather than repaired.

Responding to complaints, Halliburton refused to permit independent auditing and inspected itself using so-called “Tiger Teams.” One such team stayed at the five-star Kuwait Kempinski Hotel while it was doing its audit, running up a bill of more than $1 million that was passed on to U.S. taxpayers.

Another U.S. firm well connected to the Bush White House, Custer Battles, has provided security services to the coalition, receiving $11 million in Iraqi funds including $4 million in cash in a sole-source contract to supply security at Baghdad International Airport. The company had never provided airport security before receiving the contract. It also received a $21 million no-bid contract to provide security for the exchange of Iraqi currency. It has been alleged that much of the currency “replaced” by Custer Battles has never been accounted for. The company also allegedly took over abandoned Iraqi-owned forklifts at the airport, repainted them, and then leased them back to the airport authority through a company set up in the Cayman Islands. Custer Battles reportedly set up a number of shell companies in offshore tax havens in Lebanon, Cyprus, and the Cayman Islands to handle the cash flow.

Two former company managers turned whistleblowers have charged that the company defrauded the U.S. government of at least $50 million. The Bush administration’s Justice Department has only reluctantly, and under pressure from a Newsweek exposé, supported the rights of the plaintiffs in the case. The White House has indicated that it is not interested in assisting other investigations of fraud in Iraqi contracting, preferring to regard the CPA as a “multinational entity” and thereby limiting its vulnerability in American courts.

Another American contractor, CACI International, which was involved in the Abu Ghraib interrogations, was accused by the GAO in April 2004 of having failed to keep records on hours of work that it was billing for and of routinely upgrading employee job descriptions so that more could be charged per employee per hour. Both are apparently common practices among contractors in Iraq, and audits routinely determine that there is little in the way of paperwork to support billings. The GAO report also confirms that many private security contractors in Iraq have been charging the U.S. government exorbitant fees for their services, frequently because the contracts allow security costs to be rolled into the overall cost of the contract without being itemized. In one case, contract security guards were effectively being billed at $33,000 per guard per month while the average rate for a security specialist worked out to between $13,000 and $20,000 per month.

The CPA also spread its largesse around the U.S. armed forces, distributing over $600 million in cash to four regional commanders to fund reconstruction projects as part of the Commanders’ Emergency Response Program. An audit of one region disclosed that 80 percent of the funds could not be accounted for, and more that $7 million in cash was missing. It is widely believed that many of the contracting agents working under the regional commands literally stole the money. In one reported instance, an American contracting officer doubled the price of a multimillion-dollar contract and brazenly explained that the extra money would be for his retirement fund.

Unfortunately, the corruption of the occupation outlived the departure of Paul Bremer and the demise of the CPA. A recent high-level investigation of the Iraqi interim government concluded that the corruption is now so pervasive as to be irreversible. One prominent businessman estimates that 95 percent of all business activity involves some form of bribery or kickback. The bureaucrats and fixers who live off of bribery are referred to by ordinary Iraqis as “Ali Babas,” named after the character in The Thousand and One Nights who was able to access riches from a treasure cave by saying “open sesame.” For the average Iraqi businessman, there was formerly only one hand out, that of Saddam’s designated minion. Now every hand is out. The educated and entrepreneurial are leaving the country in droves, as is most of the beleaguered Christian minority. Huge government appropriations are approved by Iraqi lawmakers and then simply disappear. Meanwhile, life for the average Iraqi does not improve, and oil production, water supplies, and electricity generation are all at lower levels than they were when the U.S. took control in 2003. The only thing that everyone knows is that all the money is gone and daily life in Iraq is worse than it was under Saddam Hussein.

The undocumented cash flow continued long after the CPA folded. Over $1.5 billion was disbursed to interim Iraqi ministries without any accounting, and more than $1 billion designated for provincial treasuries never made it out of Baghdad. More than $430 million in contracts issued by the Petroleum Ministry were unsupported by any documentation, and $8 billion were given to government ministries that had no financial controls in place. Nearly all of it disappeared, spent on “payroll,” wages for “ghost employees” in the Ministries of the Interior and Defense. In one case, an Army brigade receiving money to support 2,200 men was found to have fewer than 300 effectives. 602 actual guards at the Ministry of the Interior were billed as more than 8,200 for payroll purposes.

Iraqi Airways carried 2,400 employees even though it had not operated for over a year and had no planes. The airline itself was sold to an unidentified buyer without any paperwork to show for how much it was sold and what assets were included. It has been alleged that the buyer might well have been Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi.

Nearly all payrolls in the national guard and national police were also inflated, leading to uncertainty over how large the security forces actually were—still an open question. Absentees from the nominal rolls of police and soldiers provided by government ministries are believed to number in the tens of thousands, and as the United States Congress has figured out, frequently cited figures on available trained manpower are largely imaginary.

Even the “coalition of the willing” partners have been quick to cash in. Polish helicopters purchased as part of a $300 million deal with arms maker Bumar Ltd. were found to be obsolete, largely unflyable, and were actually rejected by the Iraqis. Bullets purchased from Poland by the Defense Ministry cost three times the normal international price. Five Polish peacekeepers have been arrested for demanding $90,000 in bribes. Both British and American soldiers have also demanded bribes from shopkeepers and travelers.

In yet another instance of take-it-while-you-can, a senior Interior Ministry official flew to Beirut in a helicopter accompanied by $10 million in newly printed Iraqi dinars. He has yet to return. Interim Iraqi President Iyad Allawi’s Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan transferred $500 million to a bank account in Lebanon, allegedly to buy weapons, in a case that continues to be murky. Shaalan is reportedly vacationing abroad and has not returned to Iraq. A Bremer favorite at the Defense Ministry, Ziad Tareq Cattan, was responsible for a number of shady arms-procurement deals. A warrant has been issued for his arrest, an unusual occurrence, and he is avoiding detention by staying with family in Erbil in Kurdistan.

Countless billions will never be accounted for, and the full cost of corruption has yet to be tallied. Sources report that much of the money that was designated for the development of a national army and police force is actually going to units that are exclusively Kurd or Shi’ite in expectation of a day of reckoning over the country’s oil supplies. The Kurds have made no secret of their desire to continue their autonomy-bordering-on-independence and have stated that they regard Kirkuk as their own. The Shi’ites have possession of the oil-producing region to the south and are using their control of the Interior Ministry to fill police ranks with their own pro-Iranian Badr Brigade members as well as militiamen drawn from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army. The Sunnis are the odd men out, virtually guaranteeing that, far from becoming the model democracy the U.S. set out to build, Iraq will descend deeper into chaos—aided in no small part by the culture of corruption we helped to fortify.
_______________________________________________

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.

October 24, 2005 Issue



Culture of corruption, just like the one in DC.

Me too.

That Pioneer and Ranger scam goes nationwide, I'm sure.

Like Amway.

$1,500,000,000 in cash unaccounted for. Or is it? Olliver North's modern counterpart probably put it right into Bush/neocon black ops projects.

Dick DeVos, founder of Amway is going to run for governor of MI next time. He couldn't get his Catholic schools paid for by the state under the democrats so he's going to try and get in power to make sure "school choice" will pass.

Very powerful player here in MI but so far he hasn't had statewide backing.

RAPTURE

(shudder spasm)

I don't see why a criminal conspiracy charge wouldn't be brought against all the players in this leak.

It's obvious to me that they all went after Wilson for his dissent by going after his wife.

They knew she was CIA and didn't care.

We just have to wait and wait and wait.

Bart Katz, Friend Judy, et al,

I don't think this was Judy's intent at all.


(COMMENT)

Everyday we are bombarded with very clever sound bites that resonate ever so logically. The whole idea of a psychological deception is to present a view that is persuasive, yet illusionary. We have all seen it and fell prey to it.

(REMEMBER) A trip down memory lane.

How many of you were around when we constantly heard about the “Four Food Groups.”
(1) meats, and eggs;

(2) dairy products;

(3) grains;

(4) fruits and vegetables.

I listened to that for nearly 30 years. Now (by now, I mean after I retired from the Army in the late 80’s or early 90’s), that dairy products, steak (meats in general) and those eggs I order with my “Steak’n’Eggs” are not as healthy as I was taught. Now, it’s tofu, broccoli, apples and whole grain.

If you hear something often enough, you believe it, even though you have no real way to ascertain the truth or validity of it; particularly if it comes from a source you have come to recognize as an authority.

It has happened to me, and I am sure it happens to the best of us. It is speech particularly crafted to induce by act, argument, or reason a personal belief that is not corroborated on the evidence, and (in fact) may be misleading entirely.

I believe that Judy writes from her heart – with soul, and there is no greater source of conviction than that. Or as they say: she has some insight into the heartbeat of America; and what people are quietly thinking. And that in itself is worth taking notice.

Most Respectfully,

she aint got no soul. Like all bushlovers she traded it to satan

I'm not sure I caught that Mr. Rosano.

"Judy?"

as in "judy" the RightWinger ot "FriendJudy" the fighting (conservative) Quaker?

Oops--sorry that was me.

Hard crashes on 'puters stink. I gotta stop running photoshop and anything.

Arnold Swartzenegger vetoed some bills that were not Wal-Mart friendly this year.

Today the Walton family gave a million dollars to Swartzeneggers causes.

Pay to Play.

Corruption abounds across the land.

follow the money.

Really? Dang, I can run it and a few other things too. Must be a Mac thing.

Cha ching!

Yeah? ever work on a 2 gig, 25 layer, hi-resoulution Book Cover?

Can you say scratch disk space?

Why yes, I have, uhhhhh....... I mean, no, of course not. 2 gig? Pssshawwww. Got me a hundred and sixty gig hard drive. I've got a decent 'puter. Brand new. A 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor. Looking to upgrade my memory to a 1024. Got 512.

It plays my games reeeeeal good. Could use one of those $400 video cards but ... priorities.

25 layer you say? Cool. I've gotten up to maybe our or five layers and that included text. lol.

Multiple images and er, effects. in order to open this file, you need 20 gigs of free space--just to open it. I'm getting a G5 imac soon. the screens are awesome, and that's the WHOLE puter.

I have two gigs of ram on this 'old G4. It'll make a nice back-up.

cool. Saw the coolest pc while I was at the Post Office today.

It was a touch screen interface. I think that stuff is so cool. Was out at Hobbylobby, a craft store and the girl in the framing department said they have a computer driven mat cutter. You put the blanks in and it slices and dices. You don't even have to know anything above basic skills.

They had a mat with numbers cut out as the windows. Unreal.

Yeah, I used to work with textiles. 'puter's are amazing.

Alright Herb. Southwest rules. We'll talk later.
OK, at the risk of interrupting a funeral parade (But the House priest stole my prayer already) I'm asking you all; What are you wearing tonight?

I'm going out as a kumquat! [SIZE=1](a small, round or oblong citrus fruit having a sweet rind and acid pulp, used chiefly for preserves.)[SIZE=1]

Van Gough.

Or did I cut myself shaving?

I spent a Full day &1/2 at your house in Amsterdam. No words can possibbb....
Film @ 9.

Eye didn't see you...

I'm behind the bush.



Now they tell me gramps wouldn't allow orange in the house. SHeeeze.

You say quomqwhat, japanese say kinkhan (kumquat)

good grief

But that's not my quote.

It doesn't matter. It's called Literary License.

Transposing my name onto a FJ quote sure ain't.