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Environmental Specialties Inc. Looks Ahead to a Green Future in Canadian Printing Market
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Press release from the issuing companyCHICAGO -- Environmental Specialties Inc. is best known for manufacturing earth-friendly coatings used in the U.S. printing industry. This year has seen the company making a strategic move into the Canadian market.
ESI has opened a warehouse and distribution center in Brampton, Ont., a suburb of Toronto, to directly supply its extensive line of water-borne and ultraviolet (UV) coating products to printing and converting companies in Canada.
"Canada has been a leader in recognizing the significant adverse human health effects of ozone, particulate matter and their precursors, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs)," said Mike Miske, president of ESI. "It seemed a natural step to launch a network for selling and distributing our VOC-free coatings in Canada."
Miske pointed to results published in January of a poll conducted by The Globe and Mail and CTV identifying environmental change as the most important issue confronting the nation.
"This poll shows that Canadians are concerned that toxic chemicals, air pollution and global warming represent the most critical challenges for the future," Miske said. "The coatings industry continues to take action on environmental concerns."
ESI was founded in 1985 to provide high-quality, dependable pressroom products. Initially, ESI specialized in the distribution of pressroom chemistry and coatings manufactured by Terra Lacke and Vegra, the European leaders.
Due to the success ESI experienced selling these products in the United States and the support the independent company received from overseas, ESI in 2002 licensed the technology to begin producing environmentally friendly coatings.
ESI's 24,000-square-foot headquarters in Chicago features top-quality laboratories and production facilities staffed by an expert team of coating and effect varnish formulators. Warehouses located in major metropolitan areas in Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri and Texas allow the company to quickly respond to the needs of printers.
Miske said the Brampton site will provide the exceptional service that customers have come to expect from ESI.
"We are dedicated to unique solutions and individualized attention to customer needs," he said.
The ESI product line is free of VOCs and manufactured using only the highest quality raw materials. All incoming materials must meet established quality control specifications. The production team ensures that every product has been thoroughly tested to pass multiple quality control specifications before it leaves the plant. Each batch is shipped with a certificate of quality analysis.
Ongoing research and development have resulted in many innovative products, including aqueous coatings for inline towers and ink train, UV coatings for inline and offline applications, ink train coatings and overprint varnishes. Within each product category, ESI offers a wide range of choices for diverse applications.
ESI has formulated specialty coatings and coating systems for some of the industry's most respected commercial and carton printers. The company's R&D, manufacturing and sales departments work closely with raw material suppliers to develop resources that accomplish the desired performance goals.
The company also distributes specialty pressroom products from Litho Research and Folex.
In terms of product development, ESI sees continued growth for its water-soluble coatings.
"Aqueous coatings still dominate the market, and our water-based business has been strong," Miske said.
At the same time, technical advances in both the hardware and application side of printing enable printers to differentiate their capabilities. Miske said there is a growing interest in UV because it achieves the highest gloss levels and protection.
"A variety of configurations and materials are available to meet specific end-product requirements," Miske said. "Special printed effects are no longer reserved for luxury products, such as high-end folding cartons. We see a trend toward more creative combinations of printing and coating techniques to deliver interesting and sophisticated surface finishes in commercial, label and packaging printing. From gloss to matte, metallization to pearlescence and even raised texture, UV technology adds significant value to print products."
ESI's recent activities support the company's effort to provide solutions that respond to evolving trends and changing industry needs. Miske said opportunities exist to capitalize on ESI's internal strengths and external resources to give Canadian customers a competitive advantage by making the most innovative pressroom products available to them.
"We feel that our size and our distribution network, which for years has been effectively meeting the needs of U.S. customers, will help us bring value to Canadian printers as well," he said. "The response to our expansion has been very positive."
Industry News
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I've had leads before, but not like this. Most shows I'm in, I have whole scenes to take pictures, schmooze backstage, go potty or whatever. This one, not so much. There are a lot of scenes in which I am not, but they are so short, I barely have time to change to the next costume.
So, of course, I've been petrified.
Never mind that the character is just so awesome, I'm stretched to the max to convey that. I wish Maude really existed, and I wish I had her to phone (though she doesn't use the phone much). She can ungrumble me in the blink of an eye! Of course, now she does exist, inside my head, and shutting her up may prove more of a problem than calling her up.
It has been awkward, at times, thinking about her suicide, and then considering Jim's. Of course, there really is no connection, as hers came from an entirely different place than his. Still, the fact that I can do this is a testament to how far I have come down this road of survival.
The show is rocking along, thanks to a wonderful cast and crew. Every actor and techie is spot on and tight.
At the first night of auditions, I was really upset that no one showed up to audition for Harold. I began to think that it was me. Bad breath...body odour...snarky personality...troubles with lines...did nobody want to work with me? On day two, Joshua Landry Dews walked in and is just perfect. I am also working with some old friends I've never been on stage with, in spite of knowing them for years...Russ Jernigan and Steve Menke. A treat. And then there are friends with whom I have worked many times...B J Machalicek and Richard Dodwell. There are a couple of people who have done a couple of shows at Sam Bass, Meredith Nelson as the gardener and Michelle Foxworthy as the maid. The three dates, Vanessa Harkins, Asia Killars and Lindsay Snyder have never been with us before, and I sure hope they come back.
This is turning out to be one of the best theater experiences ever, so muchisimas gracias to Frank Benge for casting me.
There are still seven shows, with some seats available for each one. Please come and see it, because you will never hear the end of it if you don't!

subset: commoncrawl


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Poor Tom Brady's suspension
On Sunday, the ESPN Fantasy Football site went down on the Fantasy Football players. It is the only time the words, "Went down on the Fantasy Football players" have appeared together.
The Italian Supreme Court ruled that a man masturbating in public was not a crime. The Italians even have a name for it: Spankarino Al Fresco.
During the Bronco-Panther game, Cam Newton was flossing on the bench. That didn't bother me as much as when he undid his pants and started manscaping.
"And I thought shaving referred to points."
- Jerry Perishio


text: > I think it would be very interesting to implement a pre-computed index > system that is optional for the user. I.e. if the user wants to save disk > space, he grabs the basic stuff we have right now (or preferrably a > compressed version), but if he wants to save time on searches, he grabs the > pre-computed search index as well. If the search index file is present in > the module directory, it uses its search method, otherwise it falls back on > a linear search. As we have a need to support everything from servers to palm pilots, our API will remain as modular as possible, including enhanced search functionality. No worries here. > We maintain cross-endian compatability by having everything in little-endian > and converting to big where necessary (just Solaris so far). It's done in > the library, so the modules are the same for both schemes and the front ends > don't need to worry about this either, though I'm not actually sure if > anyone has compiled a frontend on Solaris. That's Solaris on Sun cpus, of > course, not intel. Yeah, cheatah compiles and runs fine on an Ultra5 running Solaris 2.6 Just to restate what Chris has said. We DO NOT have multiple file formats per operating system. I run a dual boot system between a WIN32 environment and a Linux install and have 1 module set installed for both. This has always been a high priority from the start.


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In this week's Fresno Beehive podcast, Kathy Mahan, Joshua Tehee, Rick Bentley and Rory Appleton ask what makes for buzz-worth television (like "This is Us"); break down Hollywood's worst (and best) product placements (you can guess where the "Power Rangers" falls) and question whether movies need to out their characters.
Listen all the way through for our new feature, the recommendation round.
The Fresno Beehive podcast is a half-hour weekly entertainment show produced by the Fresno Bee features department with Appleton, Mahan, Bentley and Tehee, plus theater and arts writer Donald Munro.
Listen below or get it now on iTunes.
Sign Up and Save
Get six months of free digital access to The Fresno Bee
Joshua Tehee: 559-441-6479, @joshuatehee


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World should focus on controlling human population
In regard to the Jan. 29 editorial, "How to feed the hungry billion": This commentary was fine as far as it went. But it needed to go beyond a brief mention of "a global population surge from 6.5 billion to 9 billion" expected by 2050 and call for increased worldwide attention to population control.
We need to focus on giving people the means to stop having so many children, accompanied by an education program about how having fewer children can lead to a better life for everyone. No one wants to give birth to children if they think they may have to watch them die of starvation, but in too many cases they do not know they have alternatives.
Marilyn Silvey
Reston, Va.
There is reason to panic over 401(k)s
Regarding the Jan. 30 Opinion piece, "Don't panic about your 401(k) losses. Here's why": This commentary is an appallingly superficial and unhelpful analysis. The market may recover, but that will not help the millions of people forced into early retirement with pitifully reduced 401(k)s. They do not have time to wait for the market. Neither does this bode well for mid-career people (like myself), who are laid off just short of vesting and forced to rollover 401(k)s reduced both by the market and a withdrawal of matching funds. It is unlikely that any recovery is going to restore that loss before retirement.
Our retirements are starting to look like mirages in the desert.
Norina Nettleton
Blodgett, Ore.
Unions must demand more from Dems
In regard to the Feb. 2 commentary, "Unions see better days ahead under Obama's leadership": Author David R. Francis's views on the prospects for organized labor under the Obama administration is naive, if not disingenuous.
He reports that the president has promised to push for the Employee Free Choice Act. If President Obama planned to push for the EFCA, he would at least have included it in his agenda posted on the White House website. The EFCA does not even appear in the "Additional Issues" section. Furthermore, The Washington Post reported on Jan. 16 that Mr. Obama "seemed in no hurry to have Congress bring it up."
Passing the EFCA, which is progressive but weak legislation, will take a monumental effort, not by Democratic legislators, but by organized labor itself. For all its support of Democrats over the past 40 years, labor has gained nothing (unless you count NAFTA and the WTO). It will continue to gain nothing if it gives its support unconditionally to Democrats.
If unions fail to make demands on the Democrats while providing no alternative, they will continue their 40-year trend of increasing impotence even if density ticks up.
Their $303 million in campaign donations would go a long way toward building a new party. That prospect might prod the Democrats into action.
Evan Rohar
Olympia, Wash.
A trick for hot cereal in the morning
In regard to the Jan. 28 article, "Hot cereal dressed for the cold": Thanks to author Jeannie McDermott for her wheat berry cereal suggestion. Another trick for hot cereal that my father taught me is to use a small crockpot with a timer. I prepare our steel-cut oats every night before bed and set the timer for about four hours of cooking in the early morning. It is fully cooked and hot upon waking.
Alan Bressler
Billings, Mont.
The Monitor welcomes your letters andopinion articles. Because of the volume of mail we receive, we can neither acknowledge nor return unpublished submissions. All submissions are subject to editing. Letters must be signed and include your mailing address and telephone number. Any letter accepted may appear in print or on our website, www.CSMonitor.com. Mail letters to Readers Write and Opinion pieces to Opinion Page, 210 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail letters to Letters and Opinion pieces to OpEd.


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(The Frisky) -- Nobody likes to get stood up! But it does happen. And if you date long enough, it's bound to happen. It's so embarrassing.
You get left at a restaurant, the dude never shows, the man of your dreams just doesn't call. No matter what the situation is, here are the five stages of dealing with a dating no-show.
1. Acceptance. He's not in the hospital. His mother did not suddenly fall gravely ill. He did not lose his crackberry and has no way of contacting you. He. Stood. You. Up.
Do not call the local hospitals. Do not call him. Do not call your mother. You have been stood up. Accept it. Then you can move on.
The Frisky: The 10 types of emotionally stunted men
2. Embarrassment. Now that you've actually accepted the reality of what happened, you have to feel it before you move past it. Your level of humiliation will depend on several factors. How far the relationship was along. Where you were stood up. Your confidence level. If you were feeling low already, you'd been dating for a while, and he left you hanging in the middle of a romantic restaurant to sit by yourself at a candlelit table for two, this may be an unpleasant experience.
If you were at home, it was the first or second date, and you don't give a holy hell, this shouldn't be too bad. After you've embraced it, let it go.
The Frisky: Why Diana's ring may be bad omen for Kate Middleton
3. Anger. Do not throw something, especially your new iPhone. Call up your girlfriend to rage if you must, but remember it's only going to increase your stress level.
Reaching out to the guy who stood you up to holler at him will probably leave a bad taste in your mouth in the future. Take up kickboxing or meditate during yoga class, but don't let your fury get the best of you. Breathe, girlfriend.
The Frisky: 6 bad moments in celebrity biting
4. Moving On. There's a saying that men are like buses, and what you need to do is get on the next one. No need to dwell on the dude of the past when there's another better ride coming down the avenue. It doesn't matter what you do, but don't turtle, decide you'll never date again, or play the victim. At least you've gotten the experience of getting stood up over with, right?
The Frisky: 7 celebs we're so over
5. Why Me? It's tempting to want to figure out why this happened. Are you a dog? Is he a dog? Are all people dogs? Is he emotionally stunted? Did you say something wrong?
Who cares? It doesn't matter why it happened, and there's only one lesson to be learned: Standing someone up is a lame move. Be glad he spared you the rest.
TM & © 2010 TMV, Inc. | All Rights Reserved


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Return to Transcripts main page
President Obama Visits Afghanistan
Aired March 28, 2010 - 12:00 ET
CANDY CROWLEY, HOST: I'm Candy Crowley. I'm Candy Crowley and here in Washington, we have some breaking news for you. President Obama is in Afghanistan. He is in Kabul for meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This, of course, a surprise visit. Not a surprise they would want to keep it that way, given of course the dangerous situation there. The president took along a number of top aides. As many of you may know, in fact, the White House and the administration in general has had some trepidation about whether Hamid Karzai is up to the job of being able to get his country in a position where U.S. troops can begin to be withdrawn. This, of course, a status meeting and a way for the president face-to-face with President Karzai to both give him the force of a U.S. presence, as well as give him some advice privately, of course. So again, President Obama, who left shortly after 10:00 Eastern time last night, now in Afghanistan. He will also visit U.S. troops there, now on the ground in Kabul for meetings with officials there. I'm Candy Crowley, again, here in Washington. We are going to continue soon with State of the Union. It's over. Congress has gone home to start explaining and campaigning for November. That nastiness, the threats, the vandalism we have watched this past week seems to have subsided. And the victorious administration says it is important not to gloat. But as this photo released by the White House demonstrates, it is hard not to. The Republicans say the administration may be celebrating but most Americans are not. His critics keep using the word arrogance to describe President Obama's handling of health care reform. With a different president, it is was the Democrats who chafed at what they called arrogance in victory. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEORGE W. BUSH, 43RD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is like earning capital. You ask, do I feel free? Let me put it to you this way. I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. (END VIDEO CLIP) CROWLEY: Listen to President Obama this week. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: They are actually going to run on a platform of repeal in November. You have been hearing that. And my attitude is, go for it. (END VIDEO CLIP) CROWLEY: It took John McCain and Sarah Palin one day to take up that challenge. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I am confident that I am here reflecting the view of the majority of American people by saying, right, Mr. President, we are going to go for it. (END VIDEO CLIP) CROWLEY: Does this sound like a new tone to you? I am Candy Crowley and this is STATE OF THE UNION. This morning, a question of civility with the president's chief adviser David Axlerod, senior senators Lamar Alexander and Barbara Mikulski. Before we can discuss the issue of civility, we have to address the question of whether what was reported actually happened. Sarah Palin doesn't think so. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SARAH PALIN (R), FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: Hearing the news reports lately, kind of this ginned up controversy about us, common- sense conservatives, inciting violence because we happen to oppose some of the things in the Obama administration-- (BOOS) CROWLEY: FOX's Sean Hannity had more than doubts. SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: And this is denied by a lot of people. I am not seeing the videotape that confirms this yet. If anyone has it, send it to me, I want to see it, of racial slurs, anti- gay slurs being made at the tea party movement. Do we have any evidence that corroborates this at all? CROWLEY: Two FOX reporters responded that they had seen no evidence. So we begin by trying to set the record straight. There is video. Watch Congressman Emanuel Cleaver as he approaches the man on the left. Cleaver confirms that this man spit on him. He confirms that this is the man whom Capitol Police detained. Cleaver chose not to press charges. From where they were positioned, CNN microphones did not pick up racial epithets. As for anti-gay slurs, a CNN producer heard the word "faggot" yelled at Barney Frank more than once in the House Longworth Building. The producer cannot say for sure whether it was coming from one person or more. These things happen. The question is, what to make of them? Is this a sign of political discourse gone terribly wrong or does Eric Cantor, the number two Republican in the House, have it right? REP. ERIC CANTOR (R-VA), WHIP: It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain. To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible. CROWLEY: For the White House view, we begin with my exclusive interview with President Obama's Senior Adviser David Axelrod. We spoke yesterday afternoon. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) David, thank you for joining us. I want to show you a couple of things just to go to Congressman Cantor's point that came out as fund-raising letters last week. The first one from the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tim Kaine, who wrote: "Democratic offices have been vandalized." He closes by saying: "Please chip in $5 or more." Then we get this Mitchell Stewart, Organizing for America, an outgrowth of the Obama campaign. You know it well. Starts out in saying: "Members have had death threats. Democratic offices have been vandalized." And it ends: "Please donate $25.00 or more." Interpret those fund-raising pleas to me as anything other than milking the situation as the Republicans have charged. AXELROD: Well, look. I -- I think -- you know that great scene from Casablanca where the -- the police captain says, I'm shocked to find there's gambling going on here, when they're handing him his gambling money? I mean, I don't -- I think the Republican Party has been -- has been very active in exploiting sentiment around this for -- (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: -- for organizing purposes. Well, I think there was a great deal of outrage about some of the things that were said and done. And there are a lot of people who support the Democratic Party who believe in what the president and the Congress has done, and were sort of taken aback by words like "Armageddon" and calls to action of the sort that we saw on the Republican side. The -- none of these things, however, should overshadow the magnitude of the things that have happened this week. In an environment in which people are so cynical about getting things done, we accomplished a -- a landmark health insurance reform. We reformed the student loan system and took unwarranted subsidies away from banks, and gave them to kids of middle class families and.. (CROSSTALK) CROWLEY: And I -- I don't think anybody argues with that. AXELROD: -- and we've signed an arms control -- we announced an arms control agreement, the first major one with the Russians in many, many years. This was a week of progress. And so we shouldn't get detoured into the intramurals here. CROWLEY: No. And I -- I agree with you. It was a great week. And you all have a lot to tout here. But the big action this week post the passage of this bill was some really nasty, and sometimes dangerous politics. You know, bricks thrown into windows. It was used as a fundraiser for Democrats who blamed Republicans and their rhetoric for inciting some of this. And -- and the point of this really is, is there a way to tone this down? Were not Democrats also kind of milking the situation for political purposes? This is a political town. AXELROD: I don't think if anybody who listened to the debate on Sunday in the United States Congress would say that -- that Democrats were using rhetoric comparable to Republicans. We weren't talking about Armageddon We weren't -- we weren't-- (CROSSTALK) CROWLEY: Well, Armageddon is different than a brick through the window. (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: -- talking about -- we weren't talking -- well, but the thing is that one thing leads to the next. If you use incendiary terms, and then people respond with acts, then, you know, there -- you have to look at cause and effect. I quite agree with you. I think we should tone it down. I think, you know, one of the most-- (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: -- one of the -- one of the most moving things I saw, Candy, this week was the end of the Senate debate on reconciliation when Senator Gregg was in the leadership position for the Republicans, and had outreached to the Democrats, Senator Conrad and Senator Byrd, and -- and Senator Reid back to the Republicans. And then there was a minute -- moment of silence for Ted Kennedy. And I thought it was a reminder to all of us that before we are Democrats and Republicans, we are Americans. And we can compete vigorously. But at the end of the day we all love this country. We all are trustees of its future. And we ought to work together. CROWLEY: In your view, were these Democratic fund-raising letters OK -- fund-raising off the nastiness, and the bricks and the threats, and then all that, were they OK? AXELROD: I think that they were within the parameters of -- of acceptable fund-raising. I -- I would rather there were not events around which to send out missives like that. And I know at the end of the week that Governor Kaine, the Chairman of the Democratic Party, reached out to the chairman of the Republican Party and said, let's issue a joint statement urging a change in tone. And unfortunately Mr. Steele, the Republican chairman, felt he -- he couldn't join in that. CROWLEY: Does the -- does the president have a role in that? Could the president bring that down? I ask because he went and said to the Democrats, sometimes there are things more important than politics. AXELROD: Yes. Yes. CROWLEY: It's the right thing to do. And he argued-- AXELROD: Yes. CROWLEY: -- that's why people should vote for this bill. And the next day he went out and he said to the Republicans effectively, bring it on, come on-- AXELROD: Well, look-- (CROSSTALK) CROWLEY: -- let's fight it out. (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: No. No. Understand-- (CROSSTALK) CROWLEY: Is that appropriate? AXELROD: Understand what he was saying is he believes in the advance that this represents. It will bring security to people who have insurance, and it will bring insurance to people who don't at a price they can afford. It's good for this country. And, you know, millions of small businesses this year will get tax credits for health insurance for their employees. Kids with preexisting conditions will get coverage for the first time. They won't be excluded any more. And what he was saying was, if people really want to repeal those things, then go and make the case to the American people. After all, that's what elections are for. CROWLEY: Let me ask you in -- in just sort of the whole tone thing. As you know, the president campaigned on changing the tone in Washington. Forty-one senators, Republicans, wrote him and said, please don't do a recess appointment with Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. They think that he is a union plant, if you will. They think that he will do check card. They -- they think he is bad for this board. And yet the first thing the president did, of course, was to go ahead and do that recess appointment. Was that necessary? AXELROD: Well, the -- he made a series of recess appointments because, Candy, we are in a position where the Republican Party has taken a position where they're going to try and slow and block progress on all fronts whether it's legislation or appointments. Just to make the comparison, at this point in the Bush administration there were five appointees who -- on the floor of the Senate who had not been approved. When the president -- that President Bush made 15 recess appointments. We have 77 appointees who have -- who have not gotten a vote because they've been held up by -- by the Republican party. Some of them are in very sensitive positions in Treasury, and Department of Homeland Security. And on boards like the Labor Relations Board that -- where there -- there are a huge number of -- of vacancies. Now-- (CROSSTALK) CROWLEY: Even when the -- President Bush did it, it was seen by Democrats as a very in-your-face sort of movement. AXELROD: We have a -- look, the Senate has a responsibility to dispose of these nominations. The average wait for the people who are appointed in these recess appointments today -- they've been waiting seven months for a vote in the Senate. There's never been anything like this, Candy. And what we have to do, if we really want civility; if we really want to have bipartisan cooperation, then let's not try and throw a wrench into the -- into the functioning -- smooth functioning of government. You know, Senator McConnell was quoted, a couple of weeks ago in an interview, as having told the caucus, from the beginning, we're going to try and stop everything; we're going to oppose everything. We've had -- in a number of instances, there were filibusters to hold up appointments for weeks. And then when they finally were broken, a majority of Democrats and Republicans ended up voting for the nominees. It was just an exercise in obstructionism. That's not good for the country. It's certainly not fair play. So I think it was -- it was necessary, unfortunately, for the president to do what he did. Other presidents have had to do it as well. (END VIDEOTAPE) CROWLEY: That's the president's senior adviser, David Axelrod. That interview was taped late yesterday afternoon. Later that night, shortly after 10:00 Eastern time last night, Axelrod got aboard a plane, Air Force One, with President Obama, who then flew to Afghanistan, and that's our breaking news this morning. The president has landed in Kabul, Afghanistan for talks with President Hamid Karzai. He'll also visit some troops. We are following all of these details, and up next after the break, we'll give you as much as we know. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) CROWLEY: Welcome back to "State of the Union." I'm Candy Crowley with some breaking news for you. As we've been telling you, President Obama has landed in Kabul, Afghanistan, his first trip to Afghanistan as president. Much, much invested there for the Obama administration and for this country. He has sent more troops to Afghanistan than President Bush did, so this is a very important strategic region for the U.S. and very important to the Obama administration in terms of its major, its first major foreign policy decision was to send more troops to Afghanistan. I want to bring in CNN's Kate Bolduan who is with us today covering the White House to kind of go over the details. We do know about when this trip started. We thought the president was at Camp David, at least I did. You may have known differently but how did this unfold? KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How did this unfold? Well, this is the first time, as you said, that the president has gone to Afghanistan as commander-in-chief. He did take a trip to Afghanistan then as candidate and Senator Obama in 2008. Then, like it was this time, shrouded in secrecy because of security reasons. He is there now. He's meeting with President Hamid Karzai. Some of the interesting points, not only is he going there to meet with President Karzai and also he will be meeting with troops and speaking with troops at some point during this trip, but it's also important to note some of the underlying reasons and goals for such a big trip to happen, as you know, so quickly and so secret. Speaking to reporters that were on the pool report note, I just could read you a couple of points, Candy, because it is interesting. We're told National Security Adviser James Jones spoke with reporters and he said that the president will engage President Karzai to make sure that he understands in his second term that certain things that weren't -- that had not been paid attention to almost since day one, and he wanted to talk about that. And among those things is a merit-based system for appointment of key government officials, battling corruption. That's something that's been a big frustration from this administration and from the U.S. is some of the widespread corruption that has been suspected in Afghanistan in terms of government officials and that's one thing we know he'll want to talk about going forward. CROWLEY: That's our Kate Bolduan in Washington. Stick with us, Kate, because we do have Atia Abawi, our correspondent, and she is in Kabul, and I want to bring her in now. Atia, tell me what you can about what you think this mission is about, the state of the U.S. relationship with Hamid Karzai. We certainly have not felt here that there was total confidence in President Karzai's ability to bring his country together. What does it look like from your angle? ATIA ABAWI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Candy, what's really important here is that President Obama has made it to Afghanistan but we also have to look at how long it took him to come back to Afghanistan. His campaign was surrounded -- his foreign policy campaign about moving the war on terror from Iraq back to here, back to where it started, but yet this is his first time actually coming to the country, meeting with President Karzai in his own palace. They did meet back in June at the White House. But what's important here is it seemed as though President Obama was distancing himself from President Karzai, especially with the campaign here in Afghanistan in 2009, a presidential campaign that was marred with allegations of fraud. President Obama and his administration making it very clear that they were not happy with President Karzai's administration. They were not happy with his government that is seen as a corrupt government not just by the international community but by the Afghans here themselves. The Afghan people over eight years now living through a war, living through promises made by the international community and by their own government and seeing the tensions actually growing between America and Afghanistan, between their president and the U.S. president. In fact, the majority of the Afghan people when President Obama was inaugurated were excited. They thought that this would bring change into Afghanistan. A year later they're still wondering if that change will come. This is a war President Obama has just added 30,000 additional troops. Some of the Afghans happy about it, some of them not so happy about it because some see it as a change coming to Afghanistan. Others see it as more civilian casualties. Candy? CROWLEY: Atia, what can you tell us about the feel on the ground there for the prospects for success for President Karzai? Obviously the terms of success, if you are an Afghan, are totally different than what the U.S. citizenry would see as the term for success because what U.S. citizens are looking for is, of course, a good outcome for Afghanistan but also the withdrawal of U.S. troops. What is the term for success on the ground in Afghanistan, and is there a feeling among Afghans that President Karzai is up to the task? ABAWI: Right now Afghans are very, very skeptical. They have been for the past few years. They saw a turning point in 2005 and 2006 and it was actually a turning point for the worse. Right now the Afghan people are not as hopeful as they were since the start of the war back in 2001 and 2002. Right now when you talk to the majority of the Afghans throughout the country, you will get differing opinions. This country is very divided. It's very different from one province to the next, let alone district to district. The majority of Afghan people, what they see as a success is to actually have food on the table. Their number one concern when you talk to the majority of Afghans is actually poverty. It's feeding their families. It's not so much the war until you go to the southern regions and the eastern regions of Afghanistan where they are witnessing the fighting. Then they talk about the security over there. Success when it comes to the majority of the Afghan people is to have some sort of comfort, some sort of peace and some sort of safety. And when you talk to them, they say that they don't see that happening any time soon and they haven't seen that in the last eight years, but they do have one small bit of hope left and they hope that that comes with the international community. They're begging the international community to help them, but after eight years, they're skill very skeptical if the international community is really here to help them. CROWLEY: Atia Abawi who is our correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan where the president is at this moment meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Atia, hang with us for a minute but I want to turn back to our Kate Bolduan here in Washington who today has been covering the White House. There still is a White House, even though the president is very far away. Kate, I want to talk to you a little bit about U.S. expectations for Karzai, but first I'm told you may have a little bit of the detail of what's going on. BOLDUAN: Yeah. Right now as we're getting all of this pool information, the only way we can get this information, we have the latest that right now the two presidents, President Obama and President Karzai are meeting in the palace. They're having a one-on- one meeting first and then that meeting will be expanded to include some of their important members of each of their cabinets, so that will be very interesting to hear what goes on in those meetings afterwards. But you'll know this, Candy, very well because we always talk about this. There's a very recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll that actually was just released Friday that shows that the American public are actually growing more optimistic about the war in Afghanistan. That for the first time opposition to the war has dropped below 50 percent and there's actually a huge 23-point jump in the polling numbers in how people feel about the U.S. in Afghanistan since November. Fifty-five percent of the American people now saying that they are -- they are approved generally. They feel well about the U.S. being in Afghanistan, so that's a very big jump in the numbers. CROWLEY: Our Kate Bolduan in Washington. We also have Atia Abawi who is in Kabul for us. All three of us will remain here while we follow this breaking story but we want to take a quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) CROWLEY: Welcome back to "State of the Union." We are rolling with some breaking news here and that is that President Barack Obama has landed in Kabul, Afghanistan. Most of us thought he was at Camp David. These sorts of trips always kept secret, obviously, for security reasons, but we now can report and authorities of course have said it's safe to report that President Obama is in Kabul. He is there where he will be meeting with a number of officials. Most importantly with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, much to talk about there. Of course the U.S. has a huge human and monetary investment in that country, something that the president really, as we like to say in the news business, owns at this point because he has sent tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and the campaign he said continually that Afghanistan is the real place where the war on terror is taking place. So he now owning that war and now for the first time as president visiting Afghanistan to talk with officials there. I want to bring back in both our correspondents, beginning with Kate Bolduan who is here with me in Washington. Kate, we were talking about some of these new numbers that we've been seeing in our polls, very recent polls, as a matter of fact. Interesting to me, as you cited, that the number of people who now favor the war in Afghanistan at 48 percent, opposed 49 percent. Clearly a country that's very split, but that's a big improvement because the president when he came into office faced a huge majority of Americans who did not favor this war and the bulk of them were Democrats. The support he was getting for putting more troops into Afghanistan was from Republicans. So this is a pretty good reversal and seems to me might give the president a freer hand that he might otherwise have felt. BOLDUAN: That's -- exactly. And that's part of the conversation that we've been having as the president announced adding 30,000 additional troops to the fight in Afghanistan as well as when he was talking when he announced the plan of beginning to withdraw troops in July of 2011. And then when we talk about the operation that went under way just last month, a lot of it is for the American public. Their focus is here on domestic issues, on their wallets, on their pocketbooks, and a lot of people say that they have really lost sight of understanding why they need to support the fight in Afghanistan. And that was part of the issue for the administration. They really needed to get out there and try to tell the American public and help them understand why this was important to them. You can be sure that part of this trip, is the president really putting this war that he owns now, as you said, putting this back in the forefront of the conversation and showing that it is very important and it is a top priority for this administration. CROWLEY: Kate, let me ask you to stand by. Also standing by we also have Atia Abawi, our correspondent in Kabul, but I want to bring in now Peter Bergen. He is CNN's national security correspondent, because I think, Peter, you can help us understand if people don't at this point, highly secret. The president left last night around 10:30, shortly after 10:00 Eastern Time. What are sort of the real security concerns for Kabul for bringing the president in there, and is this sort of secrecy, which we all totally assume is necessary, is it? PETER BERGEN, CNN SR. NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST (on phone): Well, it is, Candy. You may recall that back in 2007 when Vice President Cheney was visiting Afghanistan, he visited Bagram Air Force Base which is about an hour north of Kabul and the Taliban in cooperation with al Qaeda launched a suicide attack outside the base which killed a number of people, including an American soldier. And also the American embassy in Kabul, the area around it has been a frequent target of the Taliban attacks. So security is obviously a serious consideration here, Candy. CROWLEY: And Peter, talk to us a little bit about the security situation in the country right now. We, of course, saw the massive U.S. and Afghan offensive recently, that was seen as sort of a strong hold. But there's still real strong holds for al Qaeda and for the Taliban that the U.S. has not gone after. Has the situation improved in the year plus that President Obama has been president? CROWLEY: Well, I think it depends where you are. Clearly, you know, in areas of Helmand, I was there with Anderson Cooper in September and many of the particular areas in Helmand have been cleared by the marines, but the Taliban has a tendency of melting away and showing up in other places. According to an assessment that CNN reported on by Major General Flynn, the chief intelligence officer of the United States military in Afghanistan, the Taliban has had an ability to expand its operation geographically. The briefing by this senior military intelligence officer concluded that 2010 was likely to see more violence, so, you know, the situation is not good. And of course last year more Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the war than had been the case since the fall of the Taliban. But Candy, the point I wanted to bring up is why is Obama in Afghanistan right now, and obviously we're not privy to exactly what is taking place with Hamid Karzai. But clearly the big issue this year is a battle for Kandahar, the major sovereign city, that is the former de facto capital of the Taliban. That is really the prize for the war, the battle of Kandahar. Who controls Kandahar to a large degree is the Taliban but also Hamid Karzai's brother Wali Karzai. And so taking Kandahar is as much a political mission as it is a military mission. And surely that's one of the main areas of discussion that will be taking place between the two presidents, Candy. CROWLEY: Peter Bergen, our CNN senior national security analyst. I want you to stand by and I want to go back to Atia Abawi, who is our correspondent in Kabul. And picking up on what Peter just said, Atia, looking at it from a strategic standpoint and from a security standpoint, what is the conversation, do you think, between President Obama and President Karzai at this point? What does President Obama need to push President Karzai to do? ABAWI: Candy, I just caught the end of your question over there but President Obama -- we have to remember has been pushing President Karzai but not face to face. This is the first time that he's actually come into the country since he was a candidate back in 2008. Right now what he's trying to push President Karzai into doing is to fight corruption in Afghanistan. He knows that the biggest challenge right now is credibility, not just with the international community but with the Afghan people themselves. The Afghan government, when you talk to the Afghan people, they say that Afghanistan is actually eating itself up from the inside out. They do see the war as a big problem, especially when you go to areas in the south and the east where they see the constant fighting. But the biggest problem that they see is the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces. I was just in Helmand Province where the U.S. Marines launched a large offensive, Operation Moshtarak. When I talked to the Afghan people in the city of Marjah, the first thing that they would tell you and ask you is whether the Afghan government and the Afghan forces were coming back. I was talking to men who actually supported the Taliban, even though they wanted the international community there, because they said it was the international community who could help build in their area as they did in the '50s and '60s with USAID, building the canals and irrigation system that say we saw there. But what they were afraid of was the Afghan national police force coming back, the Afghan security forces coming back. Because what we have to remember in that same area in the city of Marjah, the coalition forces went in there in May of 2009 said that they cleared the area from the Taliban. But guess what, the Taliban came right back and the Afghan people supported them because they saw them as less corrupt than the Afghan security forces as well as the Afghan government. So in some areas of Afghanistan, obviously the Afghan people trusting the Taliban more than their own government because the government has been a big, big problem for the last eight to nine years. CROWLEY: Atia, hang on a minute. I want to bring in our Barbara Starr, who has been to this region reporting so many times and who knows it so well. She's on the phone with me now. You know, we're talking, Barbara, about the offensive in Helmand and about really sort of twin problems that the U.S. has with the Afghan government at this point and one is its ability to sort of military control the country and the other is its ability to kind of win the hearts and minds of its own population which really doesn't trust the government that's kind of viewed as corrupt. So when you look at it, is this all part and parcel of the same package or is there one challenge that's bigger than the other? BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Oh Candy, I think you're absolutely right. It is all irrevocably tied together at this point. General McChrystal has really come to the understanding that there will not be a -- what he calls a U.S. military victory in Afghanistan. That the way you bring security to this country is to start working with the people across every town, every village, every mountain pass across Afghanistan. Make the people believe that their lives can be better by beginning to provide economic assistance, jobs, get the farmers off of growing the poppy crop. And really leave -- the idea is to leave the Taliban no room to maneuver in Afghanistan. Make the people turn against them. Because, look, history shows you cannot put enough combat force in to Afghanistan to win against fundamentalist ideology. The Russians learned it, the British learned it so many years ago. So this is not about a military victory in the long run, it's about counter-insurgency which starts with winning those hearts and minds of the people. But I also think that President Obama's trip to Afghanistan must be viewed on several different levels. There's sort of that top level, working with President Karzai, talking about corruption, but the troops on the ground, the U.S. soldiers, the U.S. Marines, these kids really slogging through this very tough combat, it's very important for them to see that the commander-in-chief, even if he is not coming to their combat outpost, that he is coming to the ground that they are fighting on. This is -- you know, the president hadn't been there since he was a candidate. A lot of people have been talking for many months now, when would he show up? Knowing that the health care debate in Washington was keeping him here in Washington for so many months. Still, people were watching the calendar, not totally unexpected. A lot of people thought he would go to Afghanistan. And I think the troops are really going to be very pleased to see that he was coming all that way to see them -- Candy. CROWLEY: I want to ask Barbara, I want to ask our correspondent in Kabul, Atia Abawi, and want to ask Peter Bergen to stand by, all of you to listen as I bring in Kate Bolduan. Kate, I know you're gathering sort of the details of how this trip was put together and why. What have you got for us? KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, interesting point. National Security Adviser James Jones, on the way over -- on the plane ride over, told reporters that this is an "important year," and that was a quote. And he said, by the end of it we'll know whether the strategy that we've put in place is moving in the right direction. And I want you to listen to some sound about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan that President Obama discussed in a big speech on strategy at West Point back in December of 2009. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As commander-in- chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan. (END VIDEO CLIP) BOLDUAN: And you see right there that President Obama, Candy, really lays out to the U.S. has a lot at stake here. And I don't think there's any doubt of that at this point. That in order for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing in July, 2011, a lot needs to happen. You know, the goal -- the mission really needs to show and prove some success, ousting the Taliban, stabilizing the country, and beginning to hand over security to the Afghan government. And that is top priority as we look at the long-term goals. CROWLEY: Kate, let me bring Peter Bergen back in. He's joining us on the phone. Our senior national security analyst. And, Peter, when you look at the relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan, what the U.S. needs, what Afghanistan needs, there was something that was -- General Jones said on this plane en route over to Afghanistan that caught my attention in the pool report. When he was asked about the relationship between the U.S. and Afghan officials, specifically Karzai, and Jones said that Karzai is a, quote, "adequate strategic partner," which doesn't sound to me like a huge pat on the back. What are the major problems that the U.S. has with this strategic partner? BERGEN: Well, Candy, that's a very interesting choice of words from General Jones, the national security adviser, because it's a direct kind of referral to the secret dissent that an Ambassador Eikenberry sent on November 7th in the middle of the Afghan review saying that Karzai was not an adequate strategic partner. Now that privately held dissent eventually leaked and The New York Times actually has published the cables themselves. So, you know, when you've got the ambassador in Kabul saying -- raising real questions about Karzai is an inadequate strategic partner and now you have Jim Jones giving this kind of very lukewarm semi-endorsement, you know, it's sort of an interesting situation. What are Karzai's problems? I mean, one is that in Kandahar, his brother, Wali Karzai, is the most important politician, is widely reported to be profiting in some manner from the drug trade. The -- Kandahar is sort of run as almost a political criminal enterprise by people associated with the president's brother. That's a huge problem. And then, you know, Karzai has had a history of bringing in and out of the government warlords for political purposes, which is his right, but there's a fair amount of push-back against some of the people that he's associated with who had had, to put it mildly, spotty human rights records in the past. And then, you know, as Atia said, I mean, the Afghan police are a huge problem. A lot of people in Marjah, the area in Helmand that was cleared by the Marines, are more scared of the police than they are of the Taliban because they're seen not just as corrupt, but people who can really make your life difficult. So, you know, there's a whole raft of problems that are associated with the central government -- Candy. CROWLEY: Peter Bergen, Barbara Starr, Kate Bolduan, Atia Abawi, we want you all to stand by. We are going to take a quick break as CNN continues to cover the president's trip to Afghanistan. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) CROWLEY: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION where we are covering some breaking news. The president of the United States has gone to Afghanistan. He is in Kabul now meeting with Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai. So much important going on in terms of U.S. hopes, Afghan hopes, the lives of Afghans as well as the U.S. military over there in force, as well as lots of money being poured in internationally, and of course, international troops as well. I want to bring in CNN's Kate Bolduan. Kate, we're finding out that in fact Hamid Karzai knew of this trip last Thursday when it was in the planning stages, so we do know that President Karzai can keep a secret because this came as a surprise to us this morning. We thought he was in -- we thought he was at Camp David. So we were sort of looking at the overall U.S. investment in Afghanistan, what the president's hopes were, and how he really has increasingly become the president of the face of the war in Afghanistan. BOLDUAN: Exactly. And as one -- at the same time you also hear from the administration this idea of a partnership. This is not just a U.S. effort, you know, in trying to stabilize Afghanistan. And then on the trip going over, some of President Obama's top military advisers, in talking to reporters, really said that, you know, this -- the trip -- we get the sense that the trip, the focus is on progress. And as you can imagine, a face-to-face meeting on some key issues is -- carries much more weight than, say, just a teleconference or a phone call, as often happens between presidents, because President Obama has such a busy schedule. But there were three key areas that they noted on the plane trip in speaking with reporters that they really wanted to push President Karzai on to see areas of progress. They want to see progress in the area of creating a merit-based system for appointments of government officials. As we've talked about, there has been concern about widespread corruption in certain areas, especially when talking about government and people holding those positions. A second area is cutting off and really taking on the poppy producers, the narco-traffickers that help to fuel the insurgents that the troops on the ground are really fighting to combat. And as well as setting up a judicial system that can help to prosecute those narco-traffickers. And I want to take you back one more time, Candy, to President Obama in speaking. There was a big speech on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan that he made December, 2009, at West Point. Listen here. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Because this is an international effort, I've asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies. Some have already provided additional troops and we're confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. And now we must come together to end this war successfully. For what's at stake is not simply a test of NATO's credibility, what's at stake is the security of our allies and the common security of the world. (END VIDEO CLIP) BOLDUAN: You get a sense right there, Candy, of the president really laying out that this is not just the U.S. involved in this fight, this is a NATO-led group, a coalition working together in order to try to stabilize this country. And we should note, as we should, always keep our eye on the people, the men and women who are fighting on the ground for that exact goal. And by the end of this summer, as this 30,000 additional troops are getting over there, there will be 98,000 U.S. troops that they anticipate to be over in Afghanistan by the end of the summer. CROWLEY: Kate, I want to get some reaction to what you and I have been talking about as well as to what's going on on the ground, any details we can get, but right now we want to take a quick break, but we will be back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) CROWLEY: Welcome back. I'm Candy Crowley, and this is STATE OF THE UNION. We are rolling with some breaking news here. The president, just about an hour ago, we found out, has flown to Afghanistan. He is in Kabul. He is meeting with Afghan officials there. Much at stake for both sides. The security of a country, the safety of a country, the security of U.S. troops as well as troops from across the world that have gone to Afghanistan to try to stabilize that country. We have many details, but we are still adding to it. And helping me do that is our Kate Bolduan, who is in Washington with me, who is picking up some details here and there -- Kate. BOLDUAN: Hey there, Candy. Well, we're just now getting some information from the reporters who are on the ground with the president in Afghanistan, of a statement -- a joint statement that President Obama and President Karzai made to reporters. President Karzai, of course, thanking President Obama to come over. Also, and I thought -- found very interesting, expressing gratitude to the American people for their tax-payer money for helping to rebuild institutions in our country. President Obama, though, went on to stress the partnership -- the good partnership that exists between the U.S. and Afghanistan, saying that it will continue. But as you and I talked about just before the break, a lot of this discussion, we hear that the goal of President Obama going over is to talk about the need for more progress in certain areas. And President Obama noted that in his statement, saying that he wanted to see more progress on energy production, good governance, anti- corruption, and all he said will result in helping Afghan people be more prosperous and more secure. He then invited Hamid Karzai to Washington in May to have a discussion on long-term strategic institutions. I believe that's exactly what it said. So we're getting some more information on this pool report, but you can see that the conversation is happening and you can only -- I wish we could be behind those closed doors in those one-on-one discussions to hear exactly how hard President Obama pushed for such progress and meeting such benchmarks as we've been talking about -- Candy. CROWLEY: He probably pushed a lot harder than he pushes in public, I would think... (CROSSTALK) CROWLEY: Kate Bolduan. I want to bring back in Atia Abawi, who is our correspondent in Kabul. Atia, Kate has just been talking to us about some of what has been said in this joint statement. It seems like a little bit of tough love from the president. Here's where we'd like to see progress in Afghanistan, but this is a strong, strategic partnership. When the president of the United States comes to Kabul, stands beside the president of Afghanistan, does that help raise the stature of the president of Afghanistan or does it bring him problems? ABAWI: Well, in all honesty, Candy, it actually helps President Karzai trust the international community. In the last year we've seen a lot of tension when it comes to the Afghan government as well as the U.S. government, the administration there. President Karzai is likely very welcoming to President Obama's trip at the moment. President Karzai standing next to President Obama for the Afghan people who will see it, for those who have television sets, for those who have radios to hear about it, for the most part it may help. It may actually help because the majority of the Afghans who knew anything about the presidential campaign in the United States back in 2008, for the majority of the Afghans, they were actually hoping that President Obama would come into office because of his focus on Afghanistan and his promises that they were making. But what's interesting to note is that President Obama invited President Karzai to the White House in May. We have to remember May of 2010 is also when there's a planned peace jirga here in Kabul, a peace jirga meaning that President Karzai wants to get elements of the Afghan government, elements of different ethnic groups, as well as elements from the Taliban and their commanders together to find a way forward in Afghanistan -- Candy. CROWLEY: Atia Abawi in Kabul. Thank you so much for sticking with us today as we are watching this rolling news. We will continue to do that throughout the day. A fascinating trip. Important to all sides. I want to also thank our senior national security analyst, Peter Bergen, who has been with us; our Barbara Starr, who has been on the ground in Afghanistan so many times, and at the Defense Department, at the Pentagon all the time and knows so much. Barbara Starr, thank you. Kate Bolduan telling us today what's going on at the White House. We obviously don't always know because we thought President Obama, now in Kabul, was actually in Afghanistan. So the fact of the matter is we will continue to watch this, but we want to thank you for watching STATE OF THE UNION. I'm Candy Crowley in Washington. For our domestic viewers, "FAREED ZAKARIA: GPS" starts right now.


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For this project I used these stamps:
Monday, April 20, 2015
Swings 'n Slides Coconut Shy
It's been one of those days where I finally get everything done that I "needed" to get done but nothing that I really "wanted" to get done. Sigh. So this will be a short post but I wanted to share the project I created with the Swings 'n Slides images that everyone helped me with. I have saved the color combos on this one too but have since lost it. Boo. :( However, if I ever find them then I'll come back in and update this post to add them. In the mean time... enjoy!
Posted by Barbara Sproatmeyer (LM2) at 3:00 AM
4 comments:
The finished project is so beautiful hun.ReplyDelete
Adore the colours you went with in the end.. superb creation.
Beautiful coloring!ReplyDelete
Hi sweetie she is just gorgeous in such sunny colours, I love this hugs Pops xReplyDelete
Super dupe! I LOVE the colours and colouring! Such a 'happy' card! xxReplyDelete
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Cold Turkeys
being successfully introduced far north of its historic range, could this
bird thrive elsewhere in our chilly state?
This story is featured in Montana Outdoors
March–April 2004
My back was cramping against the scabby bark of the ponderosa pine, but I didn't dare squirm. A tom turkey was pumping his head up and down just 40 yards away, behind a screen of blooming hawthorns, and he was getting suspicious, wondering why he could not see a hen that would ex-plain the hen calls I'd been making.
Turkeys have phenomenal eyesight, and any twitch or even an eye blink on my part would send that gobbler back the way he had come, across a half-mile of peach-colored sandstone, scrub juniper, and sagebrush, into the sanctuary of the heavy timber.
I couldn't scrape another enticing cluck on my box call, cradled in my lap. Or turn my head to meet his wary stare. I couldn't even raise my shotgun, though the bird was now within range. Covered in camouflage clothing and head net, I was hidden only as long as I didn't move an inch.
Then the turkey, which was circling my hiding spot, stepped momentarily behind a pine tree. I shouldered my gun, and when he emerged from behind the trunk, the hunt was over, the dramatic tension of the previous half-hour dissolving with the echoes of gunshot.
I had never called a wild turkey before that morning, though I had read plenty about how love-struck spring gobblers can be attracted by the right combinations of yelps, clucks, and purrs that mimic the sound of a receptive hen. Though I had practiced using a box call in my basement, I was sure the awful noise I made would appeal more to a kenneled hound than a discriminating tom turkey. So I was shocked when, at first light in those piney woods of southeastern Montana, I actually got a response to my manufactured yelp.
In the ten years since that morning, I've called other gobblers in other woods, and I don't recall the actual shots or the size of the birds as much as the sights of the hunt itself: the neon green of new tree leaves, the yellow haze of arrowleaf balsamroot on open hillsides, and crisp white crocuses emerging from brown pine needles at my feet. Compared to the sterile snowscape of November's deer season, April's fertile turkey woods are downright sensual.
The birds are, too. Toms strut about open areas, puffing out their chest, fanning their tail feathers, arching their wings, and turning pirouettes and circles—all in an attempt to intimidate rivals and appeal to hens. In the spring, the white-and-blue head of male wild turkeys periodically fills with blood and turns a bright red, which contrasts strikingly against the purple-black of the body feathers. To keep rivals from mating with hens, toms will often fight, leaping and kicking to lacerate opponents with their sharp leg spurs.
The male's springtime gobble electrifies hunters and anyone else who has ever heard the thunderous declaration echo through hills and valleys. Created by compressing and releasing air in a complex set of ana-tomical "pipes," the gobble can be heard for miles, especially from an elevated perch. It's a call to draw hens in for breeding, and a pronouncement of a gobbler's dominance.
A long trip north
Southeastern Montana's woods didn't always echo with gobbles. Until the mid-1950s, this state had no wild turkeys, and there is no archeological evidence to indicate that the species ever existed anywhere in the West much farther north of modern-day Denver. Various strains of the American wild turkey evolved in the hardwoods of the East and Southeast (the Eastern subspecies), the palmetto swamps of Florida (the Osceola subspecies), the brushy rivers of Texas (the Rio Grande subspecies), and the pine ridges of the Four Corners area in southwestern Colorado and northeastern Arizona (the Merriam's subspecies).
Across most of their native range, wild turkeys were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1800s. But the species began to recover in the mid- to late 20th century as state and federal wildlife agencies across the United States trapped birds from existing populations and transplanted them into unoccupied habitat. Today wild turkeys are found in every state except Alaska.
In 1954, encouraged by successful introductions of the Merriam's subspecies into Wyoming and South Dakota's Black Hills, biologists with the then-named Montana Department of Fish and Game released the state's first wild turkeys in the Judith Mountains north and east of Lewistown. Over the next few years, they also released birds in the Long Pines area southeast of Ekalaka and in the Ash-land area. The birds fared especially well in the Long Pines, growing from the initial 18 turkeys to nearly 1,000 in just three years. During Montana's first turkey hunt, held in 1958, hunters shot roughly 100 birds.
Heartened by the department's early success, state biologists began trapping the home-grown turkeys and moving them to new areas. Bob Greene, a state wildlife biologist in the 1950s, was a key player in Montana's wild turkey restoration efforts. The state's main turkey trapper during those early years, Greene still marvels at how the birds thrived in most initial release sites.
" Those birds took in every place we ever put them, almost without fail," says Greene, now retired and living in Warm Springs. "I think the success was partly due to gentle weather and good nesting cover, but mainly it was food. We tried to put them in habitat that was like what they came from, with yellow pine and a good grass understory."
Over the next 30 years, the department moved more than 1,500 turkeys to sites across Montana, sometimes supplementing existing flocks but more frequently putting turkeys into new habitat.
Turkeys are adaptable birds that can survive in a range of conditions. The basic habitat requirements are mature trees for roosting, nearby grassy cover for nesting, and accessible food and water. The birds are opportunists, eating anything from worms and beetles to berries and grains.
Like other upland birds, wild turkeys are vulnerable to certain weather conditions. Too hot in the spring, and chicks can suffocate in their eggs. Too wet and cold after they hatch, and the young birds might not find enough insects to sustain them in their first few weeks. Wild turkeys also can't survive many winters without brushy sanctuaries to escape the wind and locate food not covered in snow. If the weather stays too cold for too long, turkeys can't maintain their core body temperature, especially if high-calorie foods are hard to find. However, in areas where supplemental food is available, such as from ranchers' haystacks or silage pits, turkeys can generally make it through even the toughest Montana winters.
In some of the state's northern and high-altitude areas, where snow
gets too deep or there is little ranching or agricultural use, the transplanted
birds didn't survive. But in many areas, wild turkey flocks have grown
enough to support regulated hunting seasons. In the core turkey habitat of
southeastern Montana, where I shot my first Merriam's tom, hunters
may kill two gobblers in the spring season. Hunting is also allowed in much
of western Montana (though by
special permits valid only for defined areas), and turkey numbers are increasing in the lower Clark Fork and Libby areas and the Bitterroot and Yellowstone valleys. Though the department hasn't finished compiling harvest survey data for the last five years, it appears that both hunting pressure and harvest are up significantly, especially for the spring gobbler season. (Hunting is also permitted in the fall, when both male and female turkeys may be shot.)
Could there be more?
Like other wildlife species restored to unoccupied habitat—including elk, pronghorn, and Canada geese—the introduction and spread of wild turkeys in Montana is one of the state's wildlife management success stories. Currently, wild turkeys live in at least a portion of most counties due to natural migration or state transplants.
Yet there may be potential for turkeys to occupy additional habitat in Montana and for more people to enjoy the sport of turkey hunting. Dale Manning thinks so. Vice president of the National Wild Turkey Federation's Montana chapter, Manning would like FWP to beef up its trap-and-transplant program to fill unoccupied habitat.
"Montana's best habitat already has turkeys, but there is unfilled habitat in many western valleys and foothills where they could do well," says the Missoula taxidermist.
Greene isn't so sure that would work. He has observed how transplanted wild turkey flocks descend on livestock feeding operations during the winter. The hungry turkeys peck seed heads out of stacked hay bales and even run feedlot cattle away from silage and grain. Greene says the only reason some of those flocks survived is that landowners put up with the depredation.
Landowner tolerance remains a key fac-tor when FWP considers turkey releases. Because the birds are such charismatic creatures, most people like seeing a few turkeys. But as the initial Long Pines flock demonstrated, turkey populations can explode in just a few years, and a handful quickly can become hundreds. Wildlife managers are leery of putting new flocks in areas where the birds might become nuisances to landowners, even if the habitat is suitable.
That's what happened in northwestern Montana's Flathead Valley, where a flock of pen-raised Eastern subspecies turkeys was released in the early 1960s. The valley's small-scale livestock operations and hobby farms provided supplemental food, and turkey populations boomed. But so did nuisance complaints. FWP started a widespread spring turkey hunt there in 2002 to reduce the flock size and scatter birds away from farms and homesteads.
Because wild turkeys need large tracts of habitat, suburban sprawl is another factor limiting their spread. According to Jeff Herbert, assistant chief of FWP's Wildlife Division, the department has been reluctant to expand turkey populations to areas where prime turkey habitat is being replaced by subdivisions and strip malls.
Between 1990 and 2003, fewer than 300 turkeys were moved into new sites, partly because the department did not want to create more nuisance problems and partly because, says Herbert, "the best habitat is already occupied by turkeys."
Manning, however, argues that FWP could do more to find new release sites in addition to the dozen the agency has already approved for future releases. He and other wild turkey advocates also want the department to take more interest in how existing flocks are faring. They say state biologists should survey populations, collect better harvest data, and conduct gobbling routes similar to the spring crowing surveys used to chart pheasant population trends. And the department needs to develop a wild turkey management plan that outlines population and distribution goals.
" Turkey hunting is one of the fastest growing hunting activities in the country, and Montana is becoming known as a destination state," Manning says. "Can our existing populations handle more hunting pressure? If so, how much more? We currently don't have any consistent ways to answer those questions."
Though Herbert agrees that FWP could do more, he notes that the department is still trapping and transplanting birds, "though not at the level some might want." He adds that the department has signed up Block Management Areas containing turkey populations to provide increased hunting opportunities, and it is working with ranchers to develop rest-rotation grazing systems in southeastern Montana to benefit turkeys and other wildlife species. A lack of funds and staff, he adds, restricts the department from doing much more.
When it comes to putting turkeys into previously occupied areas, Herbert says the department needs to scrutinize each site before attempting any releases."If we've tried to put birds in there in the past and they're gone now, that says something about limitations of the habitat or changes that have taken place since the introduction," he says. "Studying those limiting factors would be far more productive than simply releasing more birds back into that area."
Herbert adds that FWP is more open to transplanting turkeys into new, suitable habitats that haven't been tried in the past: "If there have never been birds in an area, and important habitat components are in place, then certainly it's worth trying." Herbert says the department would welcome help moving birds and then monitoring their populations in the new release sites. "That strikes us as a good use of volunteer assistance," he says. "We're just not keen on introducing and managing birds in marginal areas, which would become a put-and-take scenario, not responsible wildlife management."
As for a wild turkey management plan, Herbert agrees that such a document could help outline management issues and potential strategies for achieving goals. But a more pressing priority is for FWP to finish its upland game bird management plan, which will include a section on wild turkeys." We've recently hired someone to take the lead on the plan, and he can certainly work with Wild Turkey Federation members to include their concerns," Herbert says. He adds that FWP will consider producing a separate wild turkey plan in the future if time and funding permit.
" If we didn't have such a rich array of hunting opportunities, or if we had limited species like other states, then turkeys would be a larger part of our management responsibility," he says. "Even though it's popular with some hunters, turkey hunting is still a small component of Montana's overall hunting opportunities."
It may be small, but Manning and others believe that it could be bigger. And that more people should get the chance to call in a big gobbler, to hide beneath a tree, heart pounding, and wait for the cautious bird to move within shotgun range.
It's an opportunity both FWP and turkey advocates want to promote. On a recent Montana wild turkey hunt, ten years after my first one, I sit alone on a timbered ridge overlooking the serpentine Tongue River, as thankful for the solitude as I am for the warm gobbler at my side. I was up well before dawn, and the noontime sun is making me drowsy. It's tempting to nap here awhile, but I have to get back and break camp.
While picking my way down the ridge, I hear a gobble in the distance. I can't imagine these woods without that sound, which to me has become as much the anthem of spring as a rutting elk's bugle announces the arrival of autumn.
But whether such gobbles fill the woods in new Montana sites depends on many factors. Weather will need to remain mild during most winters, and quality habitat must be preserved. But most important, turkey advocates and FWP will need to work together. These great birds are still relative newcomers to Montana, and they need all the help they can get in what continues to be an often inhospitable landscape.
Andrew McKean is an FWP information officer at Glasgow.


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The PC(USA) Office of Public Witness has released workshop titles and descriptions for Compassion, Peace Justice (CPJ) Training Day, held annually in Washington D.C. The 2016 training date is Friday, April 15. Attending Presbyterians can then join the larger ecumenical community for the next two days in plenaries, worship and discussion as part of Ecumenical Advocacy Days (EAD), which brings together more than a 1,000 people within the Christian community for its annual national gathering.
The event culminates on Monday, April 18, where attendees can lobby their local congressmen on important social justice issues. The 2016 EADs conference theme is "Lift Every Voice! – Racism, Class and Power."
A wide range of topics is available in the training sessions, including racism, environmental justice, mass incarceration, and immigration. The new interim executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA), Tony De La Rosa, will co-lead one of workshops. Titled, "Lift Every Voice!: A Conversation…" De La Rosa will share his hopes for the PMA as it seeks to confront racism, class and power in the midst of transition within the agency. Sara Lisherness, director of Compassion, Peace and Justice Ministries, will also co-lead this session.
Other workshops and their descriptions include:
Anti-racism: Next Steps? - prepares participants to initiate conversations around anti-racism in their congregations and/or communities. Tools and resources will be made available.
Backyard Beauty, Backyard Pollution: What Role Can We Play in Environmental Justice? – explores how to go beyond changing light bulbs and starting a church recycling project to tackle systemic issues of race, class and power. It includes a discussion on how to use the environment to bridge divisions that exist in our own communities.
Educate A Child: Disrupting the School to Prison Pipeline – focuses on the domestic component of the church's Educate A Child initiative, and asks "Who has the power?" in our current education system. Leaders will equip participants with tools to directly serve students who are falling through the cracks and that can impact policy at local, state and national levels.
The Global Refugee Crisis – provides an overview of the current global crisis and suggests ways to respond to the largest number of refugees and displaced persons in the world since the end of WWII.
Locked Up and Locked Out: Addressing the Issue of Mass Incarceration and its Continuous Disempowerment of Low-Income Communities – examines recidivism reduction and the struggle inmates have acclimating to society post-release. It also examines the difficulties current laws pose for released offenders and their employment, voting and welfare opportunities.
CPJ Day participants can also choose to attend workshops titled Engaging Corporations on Human Trafficking; Global Corporate Exploitation: Debt and Taxes; Privilege and Social Capital: The Impact of Race and Class; and Unrigging U.S. Elections: Voting for Citizens, Not SuperPACs, to name a few.
You can view a complete list and description for each of the 17 workshops and register for CPJ Training Day and EAD. The discounted early registration fee ($75 for CPJ Day and $55 for EAD) has been extended to March 1.
In a previous story, Sara Lisherness spoke to the importance of CPJ Training Day, which has grown steadily over the past five years since it's been integrated into the start of Ecumenical Advocacy Days.
"What's important about this event is it gets at the essence of what it means to be reformed. We've always understood that we care for the spiritual life of faith communities, but we are also called to care for the moral life of our communities, nation and world. We are called to work for justice and peace."
The Office of Public Witness, which is the public policy information and advocacy office of the General Assembly of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), hosts CPJ Day.


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Nanco N701 Front Knobby 21X7.00-10 A/2PR Tires
This listing is for new Nanco N701 Front Knobby 21X7.00-10 A/2PR Tires. Manufacturer part number: 30180001.
The Nanco N701 Front Knobby is an ATV tire built and designed for all-terrain traction on trails, or in general service around the farm. Every single Nanco tire is built to exceed the highest standards of the North American ATV replacement tire market.
Shop With Confidence! Tires –easy is a BBB Accredited business since 2014. We have won the Biz Rate Circle of Excellence Platinum Award two years in a row.


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Welcome to Aid for Developing Countries! (AFDC) We do hope this site will aid you in finding out more about our ministries.
We are a group of like minded christian individuals who have been called by God to the mission field. We are currently working in the country of Haiti. For some time now we have been focusing our efforts on the area of Creve, Haiti. It is located in the northeast corner of the country. However, during our trip in July 2015 God has shown us other areas where we can expand our missions efforts.
Beginning this year we will be partnering with Jean Claude and the School of Hope, Wilson's compound, and Pastor Maurange Caneus' orphanage.
Please go to Creve in the menu to see the work that has been completed in the Creve area and read more about our expanding efforts in other parts of the country of Haiti. Please be in prayer as you explore our page about how the Lord might lead you in your involvement in helping us. Most of all PRAY! It is only through the power of prayer that we are able to accomplish all we have in the country of Haiti and expand to other areas that are in need. Thank you! And God Bless all of you!


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The small BFS Circle Flourish Frame is BIG in design.There are so many different ways to adorn your chipboard. I used Lindys Stamp Gang Flat Magicals to color all of my pieces, including my die cut leaves, and the spatters on the layout. I added a few pearls and gems to the middles of my flowers on the Circle Flourish piece. I touched it here and there with some clear crackle medium for texture. Look out for new Lindys Stamps Gang Flat Magicals. I used a gorgeous color set called Beauty School Dropout. The colors I used on the Circle Flourish are t-bird turquoise and "frenchys pink pouf." Oh my, looks like I need a dose of Grease right about now!!! Beauty School Drop Out will be available come September!!!
For the Bohemian Butterflies, I primed them with white gesso, and after they dried, painted them with the Magicals in 2 colors. t bird-turquoise and Aloha Avacado which come from Lindys Hawaiian Islands set which will be released July 15th. Then I just added pearls to their antennae.I used the same 2 colors on my die cut leaves.
My next project is a tag I created with the cutout pieces from my 12x12 layout above. I used 2 layers and did some machine sewing around the edges before putting them together. I use the Tim Holtz Tag and Bookplate die. The just cut the second one down 1/4 inch on each side. Once they were layered, I used gesso and a mask on the tag and did some spattering with the Flat Magicals in t-bird turquoise. I
I used one piece from the Romantic Page Dangles Set. I just created this one simple by adding some flowers and leaves. I colored some cream colored seam binding ribbon with Lindys Stamp Gang Starburst Sprays in 2 colors. I used Tiffanys Blue and Sweet Violet Purple Teal. The seam binding I use is the Hug Snug Brand. I have 4 rolls from white to cream colored. Each roll is 100 yards... Love them!! I have an old tutorial on how to color your ribbon. How to Hand Dye Vintage Seam Binding Tutorial.
Just substitute Lindys Sprays...
For the Romantic Page Dangle, I heat embossed it using Lindys Embossing powder in Aurora Amethyst. Then just added a few pearls to finish off the piece. I added a tiny title, "hope" and called this tag done...
Thank you for joining me today. Don't forget to check out our Blue Fern Studios July Sketch Challenge for a chance to win some beautiful BFS chipboard!!


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Jazz Mando Review of the Gallatin D-hole Mandola
Dec 18, 2015
We been stricken by the 2-point (let alone F-body) instruments founder Bruce Weber and his team of mountain country craftsmen have produced the last decade and a half under the Weber name, and prior to that, the original Flatiron. Looking to keep costs down for what would be more of an auxilliary instrument we chose the A-body Gallatin, appropriately named after the Gallatin River of Yellowstone which spills into the Gallatin Valley, home for wildlife and first class fishing. Tradition, subtle contemplation, and a stripped down, uncomplicated atmosphere would also be the perfect environment, for playing this instrument.
The finished work is not something that sparks huge attention with penetrating harmonics or brash projection. The mandola sonic character packs a humble, yet rich lower register, and the only thing that distinguishes it from its more expensive siblings (Bighorn, Fern, Bitterroot) besides cosmetics is a reduced tonal prowess in its upper frets. The Gallatin is perfectly competent below the 12th fret where the majority of less experienced players reside, anyway.
String-to-string balance is terrific, everything you'd expect from a world class builder, action smooth across the string courses as well as up and down the fingerboard. The wood is well-figured, easy on the eyes, especially with its luscious faded leather stain and finish. It feels good in the hands, jumbo sized frets stable, and stirs the ears as well. Anyone wanting a competent secondary instrument to complement a soprano voice would enjoy this for a change of pace.
Plenty of volume, the mandola resonates nicely, and even this warmer oval-holed incarnation projects well. It doesn't explode sonically, but it slowly erupts.
There are some great things happening out in the converted schoolhouse of Logan, Montana, 25 miles outside of Bozeman. A rich multi-decade tradition of craftsmanship lives on in the hands and training of Bruce Weber and his American team of workers. The higher end models continue to compete successfully in the professional realm of the international market, and the streamlined Gallatin and Hyalite instruments are worthy of attention for even the serious mandolinist looking for a competent auxiliary or mid-level aesthetic tool.