BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

from the must-read RBO : Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat who campaigned for President Obama in 2008, yesterday slammed the U.S. leader’s recent treatment of Israel as “outrageous” and “hostile,” declaring he is “close” to “getting off the Obama train.” Koch’s sentiments are significant. The former politician has long been an indicator of American Jewish sentiment regarding U.S. presidents and Israel. His statements may serve as a signal that some American Jews are moving away from the Obama administration. Koch was speaking in a radio interview with WND senior reporter Aaron Klein, who hosts an investigative program on New York’s WABC 770 AM. The former mayor took issue with the Obama administration’s diplomatic row with Israel last month after a Jerusalem municipality announced the construction of 1,600 new homes in the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, an already existing Jerusalem Jewish community. That announcement came during a visit to the region by Vice President Joe Biden...

This article is right on! Despite moving from Astoria almost 7 years ago, I still shop there - one of my children's schools is there, my children's doctors and dentist is there. I spent a week in the hospital there last January. I have friends there. I belong to WHY LEAVE ASTORIA and ASTORIANS for news and opinions on local businesses, which I support. Astoria has some recent additions in the form of world class restaurants - places which I gladly take my children! Just today I went to a small store that's only open a few days a week - and showcases the work of local Astoria artists. I went to pick out a nice birthday gift for one of my dearest friends and took one of my kids with me to help. I circled the block for 20 mins looking for parking, since I am disabled and can't walk very far many days. When I came out, I had to climb over poorly removed snow while a ticketing agent stood tapping his ticket machine by my car. My disabled placard tag was clearly pla...

from (major HAT TIP!) DEADENDERS: When you don’t listen to 75% of your state you know somethings fishy. Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), the final Democratic holdout on health care, announced to his caucus Saturday morning that he would support the Senate reform bill, clearing the way for final passage by Christmas. “We’re there,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), as he headed into a special meeting to outline the deal. Democratic leaders spent days trying to hammer out a deal with Nelson, and worked late Friday night with him on abortion coverage language that had proved the major stumbling block. Nelson also secured other favors for his home state. Under the new abortion provisions, states can opt out of allowing plans to cover abortion in insurance exchanges the bill would set up to serve individuals who don’t have employer coverage. Plus, enrollees in plans that do cover abortion procedures would pay for the coverage with separate checks – one for abortion, one for rest of health-care service...

by Underground Panther in the Sky When I was growing up and I faced people in school on the bus, people who rejected and bullied me, soon I felt strange, like I had been marked. When kids from schools I had never attended, kids I never met spat on me, it felt like I had some invisible neon sign on my forehead -- I could not see it only bullies could see it. It felt bad like the mark of Cain. It was burned into my being by abusers. The contact I had with psychopathic evil that erased my self-hood as an innocent kid, in repeated blinding soul-shattering moments of senseless unspeakable horrors and betrayal, made a mark. If you care and can feel, and see too much of the evil in the reality we live through, too soon, too close it changes you forever. I knew this was true even when I was 6 years old. I just didn't have the words to express it than like I do now. It felt as if abuse had made a change within me, a message I did not want to send out, advertising the damaged goods -- I am w...

O.K. I have to give credit where's it's due. But Cheney? Yes, Cheney! Truly there should be head explosions over in Cheetoland. Their messiah has forsaken them. Cross-Posted. FROM The GREAT Uppity Woman & NoQuarter: While I have long thought VP Dick Cheney was the devil incarnate, no one ever said he wasn’t a smart guy. Cheney was also arguably our most unpopular Vice President evah! He looked to be hiding out in a bunker most of the eight years President Bush was in office, and was probably lucky to slink away without jail time. Who’d’a thunk he’d be getting a big bump in the polls for defending Bush era national security decisions and their safety record. He also rocked our new President, a man of enormous personal popularity, back on his heels. Obama made the terrible mistake of elevating Dick Cheney to his own level by insisting on doing dueling speeches with him the week before on the topic of national security. Why President Obama would wish to draw more attention t...

by Aaron Klein Netanyahu clashes with White House on West Bank construction The Obama administration wants to abrogate a secret deal that President Bush made to allow Israel to construct homes in previously existing West Bank Jewish communities, WND has learned. "The matter is ongoing and is subject to current talks with the U.S. administration," said a source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office. The source was referring to a 2005 deal Bush made with then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel can continue "natural growth" of West Bank settlements, meaning adding housing to current communities in that territory to account for growth in population. The deal was forged just prior to Israel's 2005 retreat from the Gaza Strip. It was confirmed by Sharon aide Dov Weissglas in 2005, and again last week in statements to the Washington Post by Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser to Bush who reportedly negotiated the arrangement. The ...

How many times in my life did I hear those words? Usually attached to some depressive episode. Those words always drove me deeper inside myself, deeper into depression and triggered months of 'circular thinking' well known to those of us with PTSD and related depression. I grew up in a home where I was constantly reminded that I was not fitting in, not what was expected and not only unlikeable but probably unloveable as well. The verbal abuse grew physical but it was many, many years before I realized this was not the way every home was. I grew up loving people who were incapable of really loving me back. And that continues to this day; which is why I have turned my back on any other relationship -- ever. I took beatings at school and had no friends until I was about 17. I was shunned by just about everyone. My Drama teacher took me under his wing and slowly but surely tried to give me some self-esteem. I only had it when I was performing, though. My high school senior ...

A HEARTFELT THANK YOU TO READERS OF SANCTUARY FOR THE ABUSED!!! This week Sanctuary for the Abused got it's 467,000th hit. That's 467,000 hits in the 6 years since I opened that site to the public. I am honored and awed that so many have found resources and answers there. I am moved often to tears by the thank you letters I get from women & men who found the strength and information they needed to reclaim their lives there. I started that blog in November, 2003 as a way to keep my own personal research on abuse private and out of view from people around me, including my abusive ex. As a voracious reader and a research junkie... I needed answers and I got them. Five years ago I was 'emotionally raped' by a narcissistic sociopath. Someone who I had cared for and felt I was friends with for more than 1/2 my life and yet - had no idea of his true nature for those 28 years. Someone who, to this day, tells a very backward, upside-down and twisted version of the truth (...

Monday, January 12, 2009 Cleveland Date: Monday, January 12, 2009 Time: 12 pm Location: Public Square in Downtown Cleveland Vienna, Austria Date: Monday, January 12, 2009 Time: 6 pm Location: 1010 Vienna, Place of the Jews Wien Date: 12. Januar 2009 Time: 18.00 Uhr Location: 1010 Wien, Judenplatz Portland, OR Date: Monday, January 12, 2009 Time: 7:30 pm - 9 pm Location: Congregation Beth Israel Street: 1972 NW Flanders Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Baltimore Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Time: 11 am - 1 pm Street: Corner of N. Charles St. and Preston St. Princeton, NJ Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Time: 7 pm Location: The Jewish Center Street: 435 Nassau Street Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Columbia, SC Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Time: 11:30am Location: South Carolina State House Building Street: Gervais Street & Assembly Street Hartford, CT Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Time: 7 pm Location: Mandell JCC Address: 335 Bloomfield Avenue West Hartford, CT London, UK Thurs...

ECONOMISTS’ STATEMENT ON JOHN MCCAIN’S JOBS FOR AMERICA ARLINGTON, VA – U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today released a statement signed by over 300 professional economists in support of John McCain’s Jobs for America economic plan. The list includes Nobel Prize winners, business economists with experience in the private sector, policy economists with experience in government and academic economists from major universities and state and community colleges. Those signing the statement include Nobel Prize winners in Economics (Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell and Vernon Smith), former Presidents of the American Economic Association (Gary Becker, Martin Feldstein, Anne Krueger and Robert Lucas), economists who have served in the U.S. Treasury as Secretary or Under Secretaries (George Shultz, Beryl Sprinkel and John Taylor), former Chairs and other Members of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (Michael Boskin, Martin Feldstein, Glenn Hub...