Quote by Will in Phoenix:

Good morning, everyone!!! I hope that everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving.



BobR, good point with the credit cards. To me, it seems that this is the Commerce Season not the Holiday Season. The Obamas passing out food bags far better captures the spirit of Thanksgiving than a trip to the mall. (I may pick up some shampoo at Walgreen's but I am staying away from the malls -- far, far away.)



My ninety-something great aunt Gussy was at Thanksgiving dinner. (One of her daughters flies her out here and other relatives to visit a third cousin who lives here in the Valley.) Gussy said she thinks Bush is ignoring the current economic crisis more than Hoover ignored the Great Depression during the transition to the Roosevelt administration.



The early edition of the Daily Headlines are up.

Quote by Raine:

Quote by Will in Phoenix:

Good morning, everyone!!! I hope that everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving.



BobR, good point with the credit cards. To me, it seems that this is the Commerce Season not the Holiday Season. The Obamas passing out food bags far better captures the spirit of Thanksgiving than a trip to the mall. (I may pick up some shampoo at Walgreen's but I am staying away from the malls -- far, far away.)



My ninety-something great aunt Gussy was at Thanksgiving dinner. (One of her daughters flies her out here and other relatives to visit a third cousin who lives here in the Valley.) Gussy said she thinks Bush is ignoring the current economic crisis more than Hoover ignored the Great Depression during the transition to the Roosevelt administration.



The early edition of the Daily Headlines are up.

Heya Will, you Aunt Gussy sounds great!



Sounds like you had a loverly T-Day!

Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India's Muslims in Crisis

By Aryn Baker Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008



The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in Mumbai's Oberoi Trident hotel where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one.



The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, which make up 13.4% of the population, and India's Hindu population, which hovers around 80%, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels, and lower-paying jobs. Add to that toxic brew the lingering resentment over 2002's anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat. The riots, instigated by Hindu nationalists, killed some 2000 people, most of them Muslim. To this day, few of the perpetrators have been convicted. See pictures of the terrorist shootings in Mumbai.



The huge gap between Muslims and Hindus will continue to haunt India's, and neighboring Pakistan's, progress towards peace and prosperity. But before inter-communal relations can improve there is an even bigger problem that must first be worked out: the schism in subcontinental Islam, and the religion's place and role in modern India and Pakistan. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.

The terrorists attacked my city because of its wealth

Suketu Mehta



The first time I went to the Taj in Bombay, it was on a date, but not my own. I was 12, and the third wheel between my uncle and his fiancee; I had to be taken along for propriety's sake.



We sat in the Sea Lounge, overlooking the harbour, amid the Parsi matrons arranging marriages and the British bankers drinking gin with American aid officials. My uncle had brought my future aunt here because he wanted to impress her with the hotel's opulence, and I had the most expensive bhelpuri of my life. The Taj is to Bombay what the Empire State Building is to New York: it is what you see on a postcard of the city, a building that does not need to be further identified. It is, simply, "Bombay".



People who are seeking position or money in Bombay often use this one hotel, this one citadel of empire, as a mark or measure of their progress upward through the strata of Bombay.



The Taj was born out of a slight: because a man was turned away from a fancy hotel. When the prominent Parsi industrialist Jamshetji Tata was refused entrance into Watson's hotel in the 19th century because he was a native, he swore revenge, and built the Taj in 1903. It is less a hotel than a proving-ground for the ego. The Taj lobby and its adjoining toilets are where you test your self-worth; theoretically, anyone can come in out of the heat and sit in the plush lobby, or relieve themselves in the gleaming toilets. But you need that inner confidence to project to the numerous gatekeepers, the toilet attendants; you need to first convince yourself that you belong there.

Quote by Mondobubba:

Note to the producers, director and writer of "Die Hard With a Vengence" Maine Ave and Constitution Ave do not touch.

Quote by wickedpam:

Quote by Mondobubba:

Howdy all. When I came home last night and went around the bend, my next door neighbor's house couldn't be ignored. There are enough lights decorating the house to cause planes to wander off course.



Memo to neighbors: It isn't even Advent yet please no Xmas lights yet. Its not the the 29 days to Christmas, its the 12 Days of Christmas started December 25th and running to January 7th. Thank you, the atheist who knows more about the liturgical calendar than you do.

I've had my outside lights up for a week now - they dont' go on until tonight though. I have my standards thank you.

Quote by Random:

Quote by Mondobubba:

Quote by Random:

Quote by Mondobubba:

Note to the producers, director and writer of "Die Hard With a Vengence" Maine Ave and Constitution Ave do not touch.

Note to Mondo, The movie is over ten years old, get over it.

I have errored I meant Live Free or Die Hard.

Then second note to Mondo. It's a Fourth movie in a franchise. Logic and reality went out the window with the second movie. (See the now defunct lighting the plane fluid on fire. Thank you Mythbusters)