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In August, 1995, Carolyn Huber, an aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, was doing a little tidying up around the White House when, in the so-called book room, she noticed a sheaf of computer printouts lying on a table. Without looking at them too closely, Huber picked up the papers and shoved them, along with a stray coat hanger, into a box, which she then pushed underneath a table in her office. The printouts—and the coat hanger—sat there, undisturbed, for five months, until Huber finally got around to cleaning her office and discovered what a mess she had got into.
The printouts were old billing records from the Rose Law Firm. They detailed work that Hillary Clinton had performed in the nineteen-eighties for Madison Guaranty, a failing Arkansas savings and loan, and they had been subpoenaed back in 1994 as part of the Whitewater investigation. The records had been searched for but, investigators were told, were nowhere to be found. Huber realized that she needed to report the discovery of the documents right away. When she delivered the papers to the Clintons' lawyers, her hands were shaking.
As Carl Bernstein tells us in his new biography of Hillary, "A Woman in Charge" (Knopf; $27.95), the appearance of the billing records presented a challenge even to the First Lady's staunchest allies. The White House book room was off-limits to almost everyone except Huber, the Clintons, house guests, and Mrs. Clinton's grooming staff, and it was hard to imagine the First Lady's makeup assistant taking much interest in them. (When investigators examined the records later, they found Mrs. Clinton's fingerprints, literally, on them.) Hillary offered no explanation for what had happened—"I do not know how the billing records came to be found where they were found," she told reporters—but was nonetheless angry that so few in her party rallied to her defense. She questioned her aides, one of whom tried to explain the awkwardness of the situation.
"You know, we don't have answers for people," the aide said to her, according to Bernstein. "We can't tell them where these things were. We can't tell them why it took two years to find them." Clinton still didn't see the problem. "Yeah, but people should know that if I wanted to destroy these things I would have destroyed them," she said. "And they never would have been found."
There are two kinds of books about Clinton. The first tries to prove that she's really much worse than you think she is, the second that she's really no worse than you think she is. Bernstein has apparently mellowed since his Watergate days, and his book belongs squarely in the latter camp. Even as he chronicles one fabulous misstep after another, he describes the former First Lady as "well-intentioned" and "principled," motivated by deep religious faith and a passionate sense of caring. He characterizes the "so-called Whitewater matter" as "overblown almost from the moment the New York Times first wrote about it," and relates Clinton's various self-justifying comments—"If I wanted to destroy these things, I would have"—with no apparent irony.
Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr.,'s "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton" (Little, Brown; $29.99) is the other kind of Clinton book. Van Natta is a Times reporter and Gerth a former Times reporter. Indeed, it was Gerth who broke the "so-called Whitewater matter," back in 1992, and then, more than any other journalist, kept the story alive. The tantalizing promise of "Her Way," which is appearing simultaneously with "A Woman in Charge," is that there is still a book's worth of dirt about Hillary out there. But, thanks in part to Gerth's earlier diligence, this is a promise that's tough to make good on. Take the hitherto untold story of Lee Telega, a Cornell University extension employee who worked in Clinton's Washington office for six months, guiding the new senator on agricultural policy. Gerth and Van Natta go to great lengths to prove that Clinton's office never filed the required paperwork for Telega. The result? Apparently, Senator Clinton is guilty of receiving unauthorized dairy-farming advice.
"A Woman in Charge" and "Her Way" join what is, by now, a veritable library of Clinton biographies, including Donnie Radcliffe's "Hillary Rodham Clinton: A First Lady for Our Time," Gail Sheehy's "Hillary's Choice," David Brock's "The Seduction of Hillary Rodham," and Edward Klein's "The Truth About Hillary." The pace of publication has quickened recently, so that the book lists this spring and summer include at least five new Clinton volumes—six if you count the paperback that accompanies "The Hillary Clinton Voodoo Kit: Stick It to Her, Before She Sticks It to You!"
Just about every biography—and this includes the two latest entries—begins with a description of Clinton's formative years: her middle-class childhood in Park Ridge, Illinois; her stint as a Goldwater Girl in high school; her arrival, in thick glasses and bell-bottoms, at Wellesley College. Most then rush through her years at Yale Law School, a romantic interlude whose unromantic climax is seventeen years in Arkansas. There follows a discussion of the 1992 campaign, Hillary's critical role in saving Bill from Gennifer Flowers, and the requisite reflection on the complex nature of their marriage. Sympathetic and unsympathetic biographers alike tend to tell Clinton's more recent history as a sequence of spectacular humiliations—first Gennifer, then health care, then Monica—followed by even more spectacular recoveries: an office in the West Wing, a seat in the United States Senate, a shot at the Presidency. Along the way, they offer some never before disclosed documents or factoids. As the end approaches, they try to come up with an account of what matters to Hillary and what doesn't—an explanation of who she truly is. Then, in the very last pages, they acknowledge that the effort probably hasn't quite succeeded and that the reader is still feeling at sea. As the historian Gil Troy observes in his 2006 biography, "Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady," the "literature regarding Hillary Rodham Clinton is vast but unsatisfying." Or, as Gerth and Van Natta put it at the close of their book, "So, who is the real Hillary?" So many pages, so little progress.
The repeated failure to get at the "real" Hillary can itself be variously interpreted. It can be taken as a reason to abandon the project or, alternatively, to rethink the question. On the face of it, one would be hard pressed to maintain that the public doesn't yet know enough of the relevant facts. By now, even those who have been only half paying attention possess more information—much of it intimate—about Hillary Clinton than they do about their neighbors, their co-workers, and, quite possibly, their parents. If many Americans, including many of Clinton's biographers, still feel that they don't know the real Hillary, then surely that must say something about who Hillary really is.
Consider the apparently simple but, it turns out, unanswerable question of her name. When she married Bill, at the age of twenty-seven, Clinton pointedly decided to remain Hillary Rodham. According to Bernstein, she had resolved to do this "as a young girl, even before the practice was encouraged by a nascent women's movement." He quotes Clinton telling a friend that the choice was a matter of principle: it affirmed that she would continue to be "a person in my own right." Seven years later, when Bill was in a tough campaign to regain the Arkansas governorship, Hillary changed her mind. Except, she insisted, it wasn't a change at all.
"I don't have to change my name," she declared. "I've been Mrs. Bill Clinton. I kept the professional name Hillary Rodham in my law practice, but now I'm going to be taking a leave of absence from the law firm to campaign full-time for Bill and I'll be Mrs. Bill Clinton." Hillary remained Mrs. Bill Clinton all the way up to the eve of her husband's Inauguration as President, at which point she suddenly began introducing herself as Hillary Rodham Clinton. This change, too, she insisted, wasn't one. "Hillary Rodham Clinton has been the First Lady's name all along, since 1982," her press secretary, Lisa Caputo, told the Times, in what was described as a tone of exasperation. "We're at a loss as to why people think this is something that we're just trying to change now." A few weeks ago, the Albany Times-Union reported that Clinton has now dropped "Rodham" from her Presidential-campaign literature, though it still appears on communications from her Senate office. Even the one apparent constant in this history—Hillary—turns out to be dodgy. During a 1995 trip to Nepal, Clinton said to reporters that she had been told that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first climber to reach the top of Mt. Everest. This is why, she explained, her name has two "l"s. But, since Clinton was born in 1947 and Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, was unknown outside his own country until his summit, in 1953, the account, as many noted, was implausible. (Questioned about the tale during the 2006 Senate campaign, a Clinton aide called it a "sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter.")
In a political culture like ours, where character supposedly is all, this sort of fuzziness is obviously a problem. And yet even here it's possible to look for an advantage. Clinton's Presidential campaign is explicitly premised on the idea that no one really knows her. The day before the formal announcement of her candidacy, on January 20th, Clinton told NPR's Steve Inskeep, "I may be the most famous person you know very little about." Two days after the announcement, she told NBC's Brian Williams, "I'm probably the most famous person you don't really know." The day after that, she told the "Today" show's Meredith Vieira, "I may be the most famous person you really don't know." Speaking to potential supporters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the following weekend, she said, "I may be the most famous woman you don't really know."
In the fifteen years since Hillary became First Lady, she has made news for almost everything she's done. (Her hair styles alone have probably generated more headlines than most congressmen.) Two episodes, however, stand out, because they were so consequential and, in different ways, so disastrous. "A Woman in Charge" is especially good on what's generally referred to as the health-care debacle; "Her Way" offers genuinely new insights into Clinton's vote on Iraq.
Bernstein makes several things clear about the health-care debacle, one of which is that it didn't have to happen. As he reports the story, the first critical misstep was Bill's. Many of the new President's advisers, including Lloyd Bentsen, the Treasury Secretary, and Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, opposed the choice of Hillary to lead what was formally known as the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform. They doubted her qualifications and advised the President to keep his distance. Shalala tells Bernstein that she warned the President, "You can't run a major policy like this out of the White House. You've got to have some insulation from it, in case it falls on its face." But he wouldn't—or couldn't—listen. As an anonymous deputy explains to Bernstein, it was a matter of politics in the most domestic sense. Hillary had "stood by him in the Gennifer Flowers mess. And he had to pay her back. This is what she wanted."
The next mistakes were Hillary's, and Bernstein documents them in rich detail. Clinton and the task force's staff coördinator, Ira Magaziner, assembled five hundred members for the group, then decided to organize them—if that's the right word—into thirty-four committees. Not surprisingly, work quickly fell behind schedule. The committees were required to meet under near-military conditions of secrecy: members were forbidden to photocopy documents under discussion or even bring pens and pencils to some sessions. Their meetings were closed to the press and, indeed, to all outsiders, an arrangement that was soon challenged—successfully—in court.
Clinton's biggest blunder, as Bernstein tells it, was to offend the very legislators whose support she needed most. At a retreat for Democratic senators in the spring of 1993, Clinton was asked whether it was realistic to pursue such an ambitious health-care program, given her husband's many other legislative initiatives. She responded that the Administration was prepared to "demonize" those who opposed the task force's recommendations.
"That was it for me in terms of Hillary Clinton," Senator Bill Bradley, of New Jersey, told Bernstein. "You don't tell members of the Senate you are going to demonize them. It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy."
When the task force finally finished its proposal, months after it had promised to do so, the bill was one thousand three hundred and twenty-four pages long and so complex that, Bernstein writes, "even Hillary's closest allies on the Hill could not fathom its contents." In the meantime, Clinton all but assured a poor reception for the bill by allowing it to be leaked to the Washington Post before formally briefing lawmakers. Still, there was hope for some kind of health-care reform. As the task force's plan was dying, key senators and congressmen of both parties proposed simpler alternatives. Had Clinton thrown her support behind any one of these, millions of Americans who lack health insurance might now be covered. But she refused.
"I find her to be among the most self-righteous people I've ever known in my life," Bob Boorstin, the task force's deputy for media relations, told Bernstein. "And it's her great flaw, it's what killed health care."
The Senate voted on the Iraq war resolution on October 11, 2002. On October 10th, Clinton delivered a speech on the Senate floor explaining her position. She called her vote "very difficult"—"This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make," she said—but she would "cast it with conviction," she added.
"The facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt," she said. "Intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members." All these so-called facts, of course, turned out to be very much in doubt.
A great deal has been written about the intelligence gathered before the war and about the extent to which it was manipulated. It now seems clear that the White House presented to the public information that it knew, or at least should have known, to be false. But senators had access to information that the public never saw. Ten days before the vote authorizing the war, the Bush Administration delivered to Congress a classified, ninety-page report entitled "National Intelligence Estimate: Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." The document, most of which to this day has not been released, detailed what was known and, just as important, what was not known about Saddam's capabilities. On the basis of the report and other information, Senator Bob Graham, of Florida, then the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, decided that evidence of W.M.D.s in Iraq was weak. He repeatedly urged his colleagues to read the full report and not to rely on the unclassified—and highly selective—summary that the Administration had made public. (Graham was one of the twenty-three senators who ultimately voted against the war.)
Did Clinton take the trouble to read the intelligence estimate before casting her vote? All the evidence that Gerth and Van Natta review indicates that she didn't. Clinton would have had to go to a secure room in the Capitol to get access to the document. Meanwhile, as Gerth and Van Natta point out, her aides could not have seen the intelligence estimate, because they lacked the necessary security clearances. Her spokesperson recently told the Washington Post that Clinton was briefed on the report "multiple times" by several members of the Administration.
No one, except perhaps Clinton, can know whether reading the intelligence estimate would have influenced her decision to authorize the war. Gerth and Van Natta argue, plausibly, that her vote was all but predetermined by her need to appear "tough" and by her husband's 1998 bombing campaign against suspected W.M.D. sites in Iraq. They also argue, plausibly, that her failure to consult the report undermines recent statements she has made. At a candidates' forum in February, Clinton declared, "My vote was a sincere vote based on the facts and assurances that I had at that time." Also in February, she said, "If I had known then what we know now, there would never have been a vote and I never would have voted to give the President the authority." At a campaign stop in New Hampshire the same month, she pointedly refused to label her vote a mistake, saying, "The mistakes were made by this President, who misled this country and this Congress." But can you really be misled by a report you've never read?
Neither Bernstein nor Gerth and Van Natta talked to Clinton directly for their books. (Bernstein reports that when he started work on his book, in 1999, both Hillary and Bill indicated that they would be happy to speak to him; later, they changed their minds, on the ground that they didn't want to favor one book over all the others.) As a result, "A Woman in Charge" and "Her Way" are forced to fall back on Clinton's largely ghostwritten, highly sanitized account of her life, "Living History," published in 2003. Then again, Hillary being Hillary, it's not clear how much the authors would have gained by spending time with her.
I covered Mrs. Clinton sporadically from the day she began her first campaign for the Senate, on Daniel Patrick Moynihan's farm, through her early years in office. In that period, I saw her in dozens of settings—working the state fairgrounds in Syracuse, nodding attentively during her "listening tour," chatting with aides in Washington, signing books in Westchester County, taking a call from her husband on her cell phone. I also interviewed her a few times. When the subject was policy, she was always smart and engaged; when the topic was personal, it was like talking to someone through several layers of Plexiglas. Of course, I was trying to get at the "real" Hillary. (In the interest of full disclosure, I never even came close.)
History is full of politicians who have sacrificed other people to their ambitions. A willingness to do so might even be called a precondition of power. Clinton is unusual in that she seems, above all, to have sacrificed herself. Whether you follow her around for months or just read a book about her, you can't help admiring her extraordinary discipline. When her husband was accused of creating a "slush fund" to manage his extramarital affairs, she organized a legal team to protect him—that's the kind of person she is. (Bernstein reports that, in 1990, the team interviewed five women, in one case with Hillary in the room, to obtain statements from them that they had never had sex with Bill.) In January, 2000, I accompanied Clinton on a campaign swing through western New York. The first morning began with what was expected to be a friendly radio interview. Instead, the host asked Clinton whether she had ever slept with Vince Foster. No matter what else she did or said that day, it was clear that this story was going to dominate the news cycle. Her press secretary looked as if he wanted to vomit. But Clinton managed to smile and shake hands through the next ten hours of campaign events, as if the whole incident had never happened.
As soon as Clinton indicated that she was going to run for President, it was inevitable that books like Bernstein's and Gerth and Van Natta's would appear. It was also inevitable that, whether or not anything truly new was revealed, other journalists would use these volumes as an excuse to trot out their own favorite Clinton stories—the billing records, the name changes, the absurd extravaganza on the Moynihan farm, and, oh, have I mentioned "I've always been a Yankees fan"? The Clinton camp's official response to the books has been dismissive. "Is it possible to quote someone yawning?" the Senator's press secretary, Philippe Reines, said to the Washington Post. Perhaps Clinton is, at this point, hardened enough to be bored by the efforts of Bernstein et al. Or perhaps she is pained by them. It would be interesting to know what she really feels, and it is possible to argue that such information is relevant to the electorate. How a chief executive regards his (or her) mistakes is, after all, a matter of importance. (See President George W. Bush.) But, as "A Woman in Charge" and "Her Way" make clear, this is precisely the sort of question about Hillary that cannot be answered. ♦


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What do the Spencer County Homemakers Garden Club, Jeneen Wiche and the Spencer County Cooperative Extension office have in common? They're all key parts of a fun, fundraising event this weekend for Spencer County Habitat for Humanity.
The Garden Club is hosting its Second Annual Gardens and Goodies event at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Extension office.
Wiche will be the featured speaker and proceeds from the tickets ($8 in advance and $9 at the door) will benefit Spencer County Habitat.
If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the The Spencer Magnet, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below.
Click the question mark below to see where your account ID appears on your mailing label.
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The Burbank Civitan Club held its installation of officers on Oct. 2 at the Burbank Holiday Inn. The officers were installed for a second term by Civitan Lt. Gov. Sandy Lucas. They are President David Holland, President-Elect Randy Garcia, Secretary DeeDee Ruhlow, Treasurer Shari Epstein and Immediate Past-President Elaine Paonessa. Among the members in attendance were past presidents Morey Goodstein and Richard Bertain, as well as Joan Newbro, Lance Ryder and guests Pat Jacobsen, RoseMarie Holland, Bobbie Garcia, Lisa Ryder and Ruth Gordon.
Holland commended the club for a great award-winning year. The club received the first-place award in the Burbank Public Library's Annual Trivia Challenge and other Civitan District Awards for its continued support of BCR "a place to grow" and the annual Baseball Jamboree for more than 1,000 young Hap Minor League baseball players. The latter was co-sponsored with the Foothill Civitan Club and the Burbank Park, Recreation and Community Services Department. These events were followed by the Ponytail Jamboree for as many as 1,000 softball players where hotdogs and punch were served to all the ballplayers for a very memorable event.
Their annual St. Patrick's Day brunch at the Castaway Restaurant raises funds to support the Special Olympics and the Research Center for Mental Retardation and other mental health disorders in Birmingham, Ala.
The Burbank Civitan Club meets at 6:30 p.m. the first Thursday of the month (at a member's house) and third Thursday at the Holiday Inn, 150 E. Angeleno Ave., Burbank. For more information, contact Paonessa at (818) 845-6851 or at email@example.com.
Halloween at Vickroy Park
The Burbank Optimist Club in conjunction with the Burbank Park, Recreation and Community Services Department and Disney VoluntEARS once again hosted a fun Halloween party for all the children at Vickroy Park in Burbank. The club was busy all morning setting up the game booths and all the usual decorations to "scare" all the little ones who attended the event, which took place between 6:30 and 8 p.m. on Oct. 31.
It is always such fun to see the children enjoying themselves, and how nice that they have a safe place to trick or treat.
The Burbank Optimist Club meets at 6 p.m. on the first and third Thursday of the month at the DeBell clubhouse. For more information, call Ed Davis at (818) 557-1288.
Kiwanians in action
The Burbank Noon Kiwanis and the Kiwanis For Fun clubs held their annual joint pancake breakfast on Oct. 30 at the parking lot of Tyerman's Automotive. Set-up started at 6 a.m. immediately after the horrendous downpour of the early hours. Members didn't know if anybody would show up. But it turned out to be a very successful event, and the day turned out to be sunny. There were 695 breakfasts served, and this does not include the breakfasts served to all the volunteers. The money raised at this event helps both clubs fund all the charities they support.
The Kiwanis Aktion Club's third annual convention took place Sept. 10 to 12, at Wonder Valley. This event keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Thirteen clubs from all over the state attended, which is an increase of three from the year before. This is a really rewarding experience for all. The members attended fundraising seminars and worked on service projects. They sang by the fire and went on hayrides in the evening. They also had great fun at the Fishing Derby, with Joey Harris of the Burbank for Fun Aktion Club winning a medal for the biggest fish caught.
Kiwanis Club of Burbank meets at noon every Wednesday at the YMCA. For more information, contact Cynthia Faust at (818) 242-2261 or at email@example.com. Burbank Kiwanis For Fun meets at 6:45 p.m. the second and fourth Thursday of the month at the Hill Street Cafe, 3301 W. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank. For more information, contact Jan Loporchio at (818) 843-0535 or at firstname.lastname@example.com.
ISABEL ADAMS can be reached at (818) 842-7359 or at email@example.com.


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Welcome to Sanicare.com
Renaissance Bidet 2000 | Renaissance Bidet 5000 | Renaissance Bidet 5001
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|2006-12-25, 11:50
|Link #1
Sexy Tornado
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: The European Bunion
Age: 40
Tales of Symphonia OVA Discussion
Doesn't seem to be an actual thread for this yet, so I thought I'd create one, since I'm a huge fan of the Tales series. I imagine this will be something like the Tales of Phantasia OAV, with a fairly truncated story. The entire story could easily make a 100+ episode series, so it'll likely be a fanservice trip for us fans (and damn I'm looking forward to seeing Sheena and cute Presea fully animated )
Brief summary from ANN:
Last edited by Radiosity; 2007-09-02 at 19:43.
|2006-12-26, 16:25
|Link #6
Sexy Tornado
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: The European Bunion
Age: 40
Haven't actually played TotA yet since I don't have the appropriate console (I'm a GC man), but I'd agree that more than 4 eps would be nice. Phantasia was good for what it was, but Tales of Eternia The Animation was better from the point of view of having 13 episodes (that and I love Meredy )
Oh well, here's hoping we get a good 13+ adaptation.
|2006-12-27, 09:19
|Link #8
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv173
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 33
the problem would be : how will it cover Kratos' and Zelos' story and character development?
until the possible animation crew create another story which will grant them justice without any disaster
Spoiler for end game spoiler:
it would be rather awkward to animate the end of TOS (would they be able to correctly portray how twisted is really the "villain" of the story to begin with?)
while zelos has the best character mojo, kratos is the most interesting character, plot wise, even better than the
Spoiler for another end game spoiler:
*sigh* anyway, yeah, TOS deserve an anime ^^
note : i can't understand why in the hell every TOS summary, even from namco/nintendo spoil the 2 worlds plot. the mana balance shouldn't be that obvious at the beginning of the story.
|2006-12-27, 16:44
|Link #10
Sexy Tornado
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: The European Bunion
Age: 40
Spoiler for major game spoiler, seriously:
At least they don't spoil it to any really serious degree though, as such.
|2006-12-27, 20:32
|Link #11
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Asia
|2007-02-07, 08:51
|Link #12
Genjo-Subs Founder
Join Date: Nov 2006
well the First Trailer is out.
so far it looking Great cant wait for it to come out.
|2007-02-11, 08:35
|Link #14
Sexual Tyrannosaurus Rex
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: St. Louis, MO
Age: 37
On the subject of the anime it looks nice and fluid, just like an OVA should. But theres no way it'll even come close to covering all the important plot points before ending. Lots of stuffs gonna be cut and it may ruin the experience for fans of the game while seeming shallow to those that aren't familiar with it.
I myself never beat it, got all the way to the end then went back and did all the side quests. Did the same thing with FF8-got to the next-to-last dungeon about 4 times but never actually beat it. I really need to stop doing that with my RPGs.
|2007-02-11, 13:26
|Link #16
I remember seeing the first episode of Tales of Phantasia which if I recall started right in the middle of the 2nd act with the attack on Dhaos's castle and by the end of the 1st episode they were already back in the present and starting the 3rd act. They just flew through 2/3 of the game in 1 episode and I decided not to continue even though it was a nice fan treat (basically if you hadn't played the game you'd have absolutely no idea what was going on). Also I wish they had gotten Satomi Koorogi as Mint instead of the one who did her in the full voice version and her cameo appearances.
Tales of Symphonia is also and I swear this a 50 or so hour game, so how they are going to do this in a 4 episode OVA without repeating the Phantasia formula would be quite a feat. Unless each OVA is at least an hour long and they cut any scene that isn't absolutely 100% critical to the story, they are screwed. Also if they replace Ai Orikasa as Genius Sage they die. (edit: Oh thank freaking god she's there. I know how they're desperately trying to retire my favourite voice actors. This is already an improvement over Tales of Phantasia which had maybe half of the original cast. You can blame Dhaos's new voice on the fact that Kaneto Shiozawa is dead, but Satomi Koorogi being replaced was bullshit.)
Logically, you would also expect them to use Starry Heavens for the opening, but if that happens I will eat my hat that I'm not wearing. It hasn't happened before, though a lot of H-Games are moving down that path, I can't see them throwing me that bone.
Oh and with ToE they actual did a completely original story which was a great way to go about things and it ended up working really really well, making it the only Tales anime I've enjoyed to date (well it was the only one besides Phantasia). Star Ocean wasn't half bad either, but that was 26 episodes and it only got through the first disc of the game.
Last edited by Kaioshin Sama; 2007-02-11 at 13:37.
|2007-02-14, 03:38
|Link #18
Join Date: Nov 2003
|2007-02-16, 22:22
|Link #20
Sexy Tornado
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: The European Bunion
Age: 40
Anyway, looks like I was right in my summise of this being another 4 ep OAV like ToP Keeping my fingers crossed, and I'll be watching it for sure simply to see Sheena and Presea animated
As for VA's... anyone will be fine really, since absolutely any Japanese seiyuu will be better than the hideous american 'actors'. I switch voices completely off while playing, it's a much more enjoyable experience (seriously, who the hell wants to hear 'RISING FALCON!!!, TEMPEST!!!, SWORD RAIN!!!, BLEH BLEH BLEH being shouted 17 times every battle? Certainly not I.)
Ah well, I'm still looking forward to this, even if it only turns out to be a ToP style fanservice trip. With Sheena in there, fanservice is fine by me Though I would of course prefer something with a bit of substance, like the game itself
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Quinoa Tabbouleh Arugula Salad
This Quinoa Tabbouleh Arugula Salad is so fresh, healthy and delicious. This is going to be your new go-to recipe for days when you want lasting energy and strength!
Quinoa Tabbouleh Arugula Salad
One of my favorite things to do is go to lunch with my girlfriends. I love trying new dishes and new restaurants while chit chatting the afternoon away. That's the best right?!
A favorite place to go grab a bite to eat is right in Fashion Island, Newport Beach. It's a little cafe/bakery called Le Pain Quotidien which means "the daily bread"
They serve fresh, healthy and wholesome menu options that leave you feeling great. Last week, if you follow me on Instagram, you saw my photo of a salad similar to the one I have here today. It was a gorgeous quinoa tabbouleh over arugula and drizzled with dressing. It was so fresh and wonderful I had to re-create it at home for you all!
So…..here you have my take on Le Pain's Quinoa Tabbouleh Arugula Salad 🙂 Enjoy!
How to Make This
You start with a beautiful bed of arugula leaves….or any of your favorite greens.
You'll whip up my simple quinoa recipe that is perfect over your greens….or eaten straight out of the bowl.
Time for a simple balsamic vinaigrette. My husband, the lovely hand model will be demonstrating this for us today. Start with some extra virgin olive oil into a mason jar. I would use a large mason jar for the whole reciope, what you see here was for 2 salads for my hubby and I 🙂
Add some balsamic vinegar next please 🙂
Some kosher salt to the jar.
….and some freshly ground black pepper.
Here's the fun part, give a good shake.
No, a really good shake. My husband was being too gentle with it, lol! Shake like crazy until nice and combined.
Set your dressing aside and slice a beautifully ripe avocado.
There we go, now fan the avocado slices around your greens.
Take a giant cookie scoop or spoon and place your lovely quinoa right on top of your greens.
Here you have one of my favorite salads that you can enjoy right at home. This salad is gluten free too, yippee!
My husband is not the world's biggest arugula fan, so he uses spinach leaves which was equally as delicious, so use what you'd like.
Make sure you drizzle some of that wonderful dressing over your salad and eat up!
This Quinoa Tabbouleh Arugula Salad is so fresh, healthy and delicious. This is going to be your new go-to recipe for days when you want lasting energy and strength!
- 2 cups dry quinoa
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 3 roma tomatoes diced
- 1 large cucumber diced
- 8 oz crumbled feta cheese
- 1/2 cup parsley leaves minced
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 tsp kosher salt (more can be added after tasting)
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 8 cups arugula leaves washed and dried
- 2 large avocados pitted and thinly sliced
Cook quinoa according to package directions. Transfer to a large bowl and fluff with fork. Let cool for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so.
When quinoa is cooled for the most part, add Parmesan, tomatoes, cucumber, Feta, parsley, salt and pepper, stirring to combine.
To prepare dressing, place olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper into a large mason jar. Close lid and shake like crazy for a good minute, or until dressing is nicely combined. Drizzle half into quinoa, stirring to combine. Save remaining dressing for drizzling over greens.
Divide arugula between 4 large plates. Top arugula with large spoonfuls of quinoa and garnish plate with avocado slices. Drizzle greens with a touch of dressing and serve.
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28 Responses | Comments RSS
I love Balsamic anything…and your vinaigrette with the salad and avocado mixed in – perfect summer easy meal!
This looks so good – I really enjoy lunches like this. I have never made anything with quinoa – I think this may be my first! My – that avo does look good hey!
I love quinoa tabbouleh, and make it all the time. I love the idea of eating it on a salad. I use food should taste good chips or cucumber to scoop it into my mouth. And sometimes just straight out of the bowl. Can't wait to try it with fresh greens!
Oh my gosh, GORGEOUS salad girl!! What a refreshing summer lunch. Love those action shots of the salad dressing! What a great helper you had 😉
Such a great and healthy quinoa recipe Jenny!! Must make this weekend. Miss you girl.
I can't wait to make this! I LOVE arugula and quinoa so I don't know why I never thought of putting them together! My hubby is like yours and likes spinach better than arugula…must be a guy thing!
Looks great!! And so similar to the one at Le Peite – – I love that little cafe. It's my favourite place for hot chocolate 🙂
I am definitely gonna try this!!!
This looks so good! I love arugula but don't pair it with quinoa often enough! Can't wait to give this one a try.
Absolutely adore this Jenny!
this is right up my alley!
Oh, yum! I love all of your pictures, they are beautiful!!
Yum! This looks super delicious and very healthy! My husband would love this!
So healthy! I quinoa but don't cook with it enough. I'll have to make this soon!
Ooh! I love shaking up a good salad dressing. 🙂 The word "tabouleh" reminds me of one of our favorite restaurants in California. If you're ever heading out to Vegas, right off the 15 in Victorville is a Middle Eastern restaurant called Ala' al-Deen. Don't be turned off by the fact that it's in Victorville. 😉 The BEST Middle Eastern we've ever come across. We miss it so much. Here's a link to it on Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/ala-al-deen-victorville-2
Anyway, I'll have to give this salad a try as I'm searching for more health-conscious recipes, and this seems to fit the bill! Something fun and different, too. Thanks, Jenny!
Now THIS is my kinda meal; gluten-free and beautiful! Love it; such a fun summer recipe. Thanks for sharing. Have a great weekend.
I just don't understand how anyone can NOT like arugula. Your Quinoa Tabbouleh Arugula Salad is going straight to my "Salads" board on Pinterest. Love the added touch of avocados. Oh geez, wait a minute–I have an "Avocado" board, too.
Keep writing…
What a great and creative salad! This would make a fantastic summer entree!
[…] this: Quinoa Tabbouleh Arugula Salad. I have become obsessed with quinoa lately. If you don't know what it is, just buy it, make […]
OMG I made and ate this scrumptious salad over the weekend (still craving). Added dried cranberries to offset the saltiness of the feta cheese. I also added a few more crunchy diced veggies (celery, zucchini) just to give myself a pat on the back while cleaning out additional fresh veggies on hand. Most definitely a keeper and I will make again & again. Thanks!
There's so much to love about this salad! The avocado! The arugula! The cheeses! And that dressing! I can't wait to give this a try – thanks so much for the amazing recipe!!
This looks really good! I'll try it soon! But do you really use 1 1/2 cups of olive oil to 1/4 c. balsamic vinegar? It seems like a lot of oil?
Great article. I'm going through a few of these issues
as well..


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"Hush, Dorothy," whispered the Tiger, "you'll ruin my reputation if you are not more discreet. It isn't what we are, but what folks think we are, that counts in this world." ~ Frank Baum, The Road to Oz
Have you ever had something in your life that you were afraid to say aloud to someone else? A struggle that you held beneath the surface and didn't want anyone to know? A secret that you packed in a box and swore never to open? I've carried mine since childhood. And when I woke on July 26, 2012, I had no idea it would be exposed, not just to my family and friends, but posted online for the world to see.
As best I can remember, my secret began early when I was around the age of 7. That was how old I was when Michael, a much older boy who lived in a brick house near the front of our neighborhood, began to sexually abuse me.
Michael's family and mine had been friends for years. We were drawn together by his father's terminal cancer. My parents would look after him and his sister in the afternoons so his dad could rest after chemotherapy. We'd pick them up for church on the weekends so they wouldn't miss Sunday school. The bond between our families was tight and only grew tighter the day lung cancer finally stole Michael's father's life.
He'd still come by to play with me and my brothers in the months after the funeral, but his countenance was different—frustrated and pensive. He always seemed to be pondering something but never voiced what vexed him. One evening when Michael was spending the night in my room, he told me that boys could have secret kinds of fun without parents noticing. As he spoke, he put his hands in places I'd never been touched ...1


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60 in x 120 in Expressionism Acrylic on canvas
Joni's comments from the 1988 eclection art exhibition catalog: "Dog Eat Dog" was painted to be the cover of an album by the same name. The record company suggested I put my face on the cover instead.
(from an interview on KSCA by NA 1994)
JM: Well, "Dog Eat Dog," for instance, had a large canvas, 10-foot-by-5, all dogs, God dog, Jesus dog, you know, and racial dogs in conflict and so on. I sold that painting in Tokyo. Geffen told me that, "Okay, Joan, we know you're an artist, but stick your picture on the cover." So I did a kind of a collage being attacked by wild dogs, you know, and that was fun to do. So there were really two album covers for that. But he wanted my kisser on the cover, so I had to give it to him (laughs). The patron, the great patron, spoke.
(Singing Her Palette: Reflections on Joni Mitchell's Visual and Musical Art by Peter Brookesmith, Perfect Vision November 1999)
But the desire to relate paint and the things of the world was never far away. For her 1985 album Dog Eat Dog she spent months, sometimes up to 13 hours a day, working on a cover painting that was eventually rejected in favor of a photograph. The reason: "It was suggested to me that I hadn't put my kisser on the cover for a long time," she explained to the BBC's Richard Skinner. The Dog Eat Dog canvas is huge, perhaps 5 by 14 feet, and almost entirely covered in cartoon-like dogs of various dimensions and with various styles of teeth, an din an extraordinary range of hues, few of them naturalistic. The canine forms seem to emerge from the welter of color so that the effect of abstraction dissolves as one approaches the picture and discerns the details.
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baby1965 on :
beautiful depth of color, it is perfect!


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Eastwood Park Real Estate
Eastwood Park is a charming little neighborhood in eastern Cameron Park. Upon entering the area off Meder Road, residents and guests are greeted with a plaza-like park with an expansive grassy area peppered with oak trees and one or two park benches.
The peaceful roads meander back as the neighborhood stretches into the forested hillsides. These hillside homes are a bit larger than the rest in the community. The homes range in size and style, but are all pleasantly aesthetic and charming. The yards are well maintained and manicured, but offer individual style and preferences. It's uniformed and flowing without the cookie-cutter monotony.
The nearby Hacienda Park has an informal baseball field, numerous trails, and the county's first off-leash dog park. The Cameron Park Country Club is not far away, and offers many family amenities, including a heated pool and junior golf programs. The Cameron Park Lake offers more rustic swimming in the lagoon, which is open daily during the summer months. There are also tennis courts, a playground, fishing, trails, and picnic area. The lake is also home to the area's Summer Spectacular, a large community gathering in late June, featuring music, arts and crafts, and fireworks.
Regional attractions include Bass and Cameron Lakes, the American River, and Apple Hill. Downtown Sacramento is just 35 miles away and the shores and slopes of Lake Tahoe are just a convenient 90-minute drive.
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News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch confirmed that the Wall Street Journal is planning on building an application for Apple's iPad.
"In fact, we've been allowed to work on one, and it's under padlock and key," he told the crowd, according to the Wall Street Journal. "The key is turned by Apple every night," he said. "But we will be on that with The Wall Street Journal."
He was speaking at a luncheon for members of the Real Estate Board of New York yesterday. The news is no surprise, considering that Steve Jobs himself visited the Journal recently, and Murdoch has plans to bring in multiple new revenue streams into the company.
He'll also want to be on par with the New York Times, which demoed the first newspaper publisher app on the iPad at Steve Jobs' announcement.
He added at the luncheon that newspapers and other media would be ushered onto a half dozen or more other devices soon.
Speaking on a recent earnings call, Murdoch told analysts that without quality News Corp. content, the world's tablets would be "unloved and unsold." He said devices like the iPad would be "merely an empty vessel" without content. It is not "powered by batteries," it is powered by great content.


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The European Parliament today adopted legislative plans to prevent the introduction and manage the spread in the EU of invasive alien species (IAS) of plants, animals or insects that cause ecological and economic damage. The legislation aims to tackle the threat through better, more coordinated action by member states, and provides for a ban on species declared to be of "Union concern".
"This new regulation is an important step towards strengthened action to protect the EU against the devastating impacts of invasive alien species on its biodiversity and economy. Among other positive elements, we welcome the removal of the cap of 50 species of EU concern. On the other hand, the negotiated outcome has not met all of IUCN's asks, such as the full inclusion of species that are native in some parts of Europe and invasive in others, and remaining openings for derogations," said Luc Bas, Director of IUCN's Brussels office. "The challenge now is implementation and IUCN looks forward to providing scientific expertise through our broad network in the coming years."
The parliamentary report also insists on the establishment of a dedicated scientific forum to advise on the scientific aspects of enforcing the new rules, a move welcomed by IUCN. "The scientific community has long called for a more science-based approach to tackle invasive alien species in Europe, and we thus welcome EP's strong stance on establishing a scientific forum," said Piero Genovesi, Chair IUCN SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group and Senior Scientist at ISPRA. "Also, the design of the regulation is very much in line with the decisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on invasive species, and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which IUCN considers key tools for halting the global biodiversity loss."
According to the European Commission, invasive alien species are a major and growing cause of biodiversity loss and species extinction. They can cause health problems, damage infrastructure and facilities, hamper forestry or cause agricultural losses. Invasive species are estimated to cost the Union at least € 12 billion per year.
The draft legislation is already informally agreed with EU ministers and is scheduled to be formally adopted by Member States in May. It would require EU member states to ascertain the routes of introduction and spread of invasive alien species and set up surveillance systems and action plans. Official checks at EU borders would also be stepped up. For widespread invasive alien species, members states would have to draw up management plans.
"Efforts to minimise the impact of invasive alien species will now be coherent across the EU member states and there will be better co-ordination, which means that the overall effectiveness will be improved. Early warning and rapid response systems will help the member states to reduce the costs and further prevent the negative impacts related to new invasions," said MEP Pavel Poc, author of the parliamentary report.


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Journeys Through Revelation: Apocalyptic Hope for Today is the Horizons Bible study written by Barbara Rossing. The Horizons Bible study is published annually, and studied by individuals and groups, women and men throughout the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other Reformed denominations. Journeys Through Revelation explores the mysterious images of Revelation to find a message of hope and promise.
See all the lessons for this study.
For best results, right-click the Download link (or click and use "control" key for Macintosh) and save the file.
Agency: Presbyterian Mission Agency
Tags: bible study, horizons, pw, revelation


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Today I celebrate my 33rd birthday. Thirty-three years of laughter, tears, joy, sorrow, learning, growing, evolving, loving, living.
For some reason, this number – 33 – has been hard for me. Perhaps because I'm nearly one-third of a century (gah) old now. Perhaps because the days, weeks, months and years seem to be going by faster and faster than ever before. Perhaps because I've been taking a mental inventory of my life and haven't been particularly happy with some of my discoveries. Perhaps a combination of these things.
Don't get me wrong, I have a wonderful life, a charmed life. But I've recently had to be honest with myself about how much I can realistically commit to doing and still feel good about the kind of parent I am. I want to do it all. All of us moms do. We want to juggle all of the balls and keep them all up in the air, and, if we drop one (because invariably we will), we don't want anyone to see it.
I've been getting more and more comments lately from people saying they don't know how I keep it all together or how I do so much. I tend to answer the same way, telling them that it's hard and I'm still working on finding that perfect balance, but the truth is when someone seems to be doing it all and have all of their sh*t together, you can rest assured that they are falling behind in at least one area (probably more) of their life. I know it was happening to me.
And so I've chosen to cut back on some commitments (though it was very hard to) and not take on new ones (even though they were appealing) in an effort to focus more time on the things that really matter – my children and my husband.
Jody and I had a parent-teacher conference with Ava's Waldorf preschool teacher last night and she raved about what a delight Ava is. Ava is "fiery" (no surprise to us to hear that word), but a real joy. I love hearing about how well she is doing in school and how much her teacher appreciates her. It's sometimes easier for me to focus on the bad and overlook the good and this was a good reminder for me that she really is an amazing kid.
Julian strung together his first two-word phrase last night. "Hol' me." (Hold me.) He said it first to Jody, but later to me as well. He's been talking more and more the past couple of weeks, but this in particular was oh. so. very. sweet.
I don't have any special plans for today, and that's OK with me. I intend on spending some good quality time with the kids and enlisting Ava's help in baking my cake. I think we'll go with carrot cake and cream cheese frosting made from scratch. Mmmm. Perhaps we'll play outside for a bit. Perhaps we'll read some books. Perhaps I'll focus on just how amazing these first 33 years of my life have been, how blessed I am, and make a wish for more of the same in my next 33.


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Magda Hassan
Stop NATO January 24, 2009 Global Military Bloc: NATO's Drive Into Asia Rick Rozoff With the sixtieth anniversary summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to occur jointly in the French city of Strasbourg and and the German one of Kehl on April 3-4, the world should take note of how far from its original area of operations this, history's first, international military bloc has expanded in the interim since its creation in 1949. At its genesis the Alliance did seem to have chosen an accurate name, as 10 of its 12 founding members - Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United States - had coastlines on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. Italy of course didn't and neither did Luxembourg. And Iceland learned the first lesson of the new trans-Atlantic system by being forced into the Alliance against the will of its populace. Three years later, after bloody civil war and heavy-handed repression made Greece and Turkey ready for NATO's 'Euro-Atlantic values,' the Alliance, whose tortuous logic and distorted sense of geography are both equally infamous, expanded into the Aegean, Marmara and Black Seas and demonstrated that its aims extended far deeper into Eurasia than its name - false like everything about it - indicated. During the 42 years of its Cold War embryonic stage NATO's major powers (surely no one can imagine nations like Iceland and Luxembourg having much of a say in important matters or, as NATO officials disingenuously and routinely state, possessing veto power) were content to use other, comparable, regional military blocs like CENTO (Central Treaty Organization), SEATO (Southeast Treaty Organization) and ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty) to both continue a half-millenium long Western domination of Asia and the South Pacific and to expand the American Century into former European colonial and semi-colonial domains. Both the above objectives faced formidable opposition from the peoples of the affected areas in the wave of post-World War II anti-colonial and liberation struggles, where the wartime propaganda of the Western powers was taken at face value and the notion seized hold that democracy both within and between nations could no longer be denied to the majority of the human race. But it was no easy or peaceful struggle. In fact it immediately cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Asians and several million more in the aftermath. The following founding members of NATO still possessed as colonies, territories or outposts in Asia, aside from the Middle East and the South Pacific: Britain -Burma until 1947 -British Indian Empire (now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan) 1947 -Sri Lanka 1947 -Malaya (now Malaysia) 1957 -Hong Kong 1997 France -Cambodia 1953 -Laos 1954 -Vietnam 1954 -French India (Pondicherry, Karikal, Yanaon, Mahe [Malabar coast], and Chandannagar [Bengal]) 1954 Netherlands -Indonesia 1949 Portugal -Goa 1961 -East Timor 1975 -Macau 1999 With the end of the Asian anti-colonial and post-War anti-neo-colonial campaigns - all against founding members of NATO, note - in 1975, it appeared that the continent and its peoples were finally rid of Western military presence and threats. But after the self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, itself formed six years after NATO and as a reaction to it, in 1989 NATO and its major powers in the first place saw that not only all of Europe but the entirety of Eurasia as well was open to it. Five years later it initiated what it chooses to call the Partnership for Peace, effectively an apprenticeship program for full NATO membership, amd immediately inducted all fifteen former Soviet republics, all former non-Soviet ex-Warsaw Pact/Comecon nations and six of the seven mainland European nations that had been in neither bloc formerly - Albania, Austria, Finland, Ireland (a holdout until 1999), Sweden and Switzerland - as well as Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. That is, NATO established military-security relations with every state in Europe except for those in Yugoslavia, former and then present, excepting Macedonia by 1999. The latter gap would soon be addressed, with NATO's first two military operations - Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia in 1995 and Operation Allied Force against what remained of Yugoslavia in 1999 - completing the fragmentation of the nation. Now all six former Yugoslav republics - Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro (the world's newest nation, only two and a half years old), Serbia and Slovenia - are in the Partnership for Peace and four of the six have been levied for troops for the Afghan and Iraqi wars. The Balkans and the Black Sea region - of the last nine nations invited to join NATO five are in the Balkans (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia), two on the Black Sea (Bulgaria and Romania) and three on the Baltic Sea (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) - are NATO's bridgehead to the Caucasus and from there to Central and South Asia and to Western Asia, the Middle East. But with the incorporation of the former Soviet republics into NATO's nexus the bloc acquired outposts and basing and transit rights within Asia itself: In the South Caucasus with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia and in Central Asia, right to the Russian and Chinese borders, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. NATO was then well-positioned for its next transformation, the deployment into Central and South Asia and its first Asian and first ground war after the events of 9/11 in the United States. As the State Department's Matthew Bryza, formerly Deputy to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy (1998-2001, the three years preceding 9/11) and current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, boasted last year: "The East-West Corridor we had been building from Turkey and the Black Sea through Georgia and Azerbaijan and across the Caspian became the strategic air corridor, and the lifeline, into Afghanistan allowing the United States and our coalition partners to conduct Operation Enduring Freedom." (U.S. Department of State, June 24, 2008) NATO's tortuous, indeed torturous, logic and geography have already been remarked upon. That attacks on the capitals of US finance and government blamed by Washington on nineteen perpetrators from Arab nations would be used as justification for global and permanent military operations from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Philippines archipelago and from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean Sea is, then, perhaps not to be wondered at. For such is exactly was has occurred. The US launched Operation Enduring Freedom (after its initial name, Operation Infinite Justice, was discarded) which to this day takes in fifteen nations: Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) has four components: Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan (OEF-A) Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines (OEF-P) Operation Enduring Freedom - Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA) Operation Enduring Freedom - Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) And formerly Operation Enduring Freedom - Kyrgyzstan and Operation Enduring Freedom - Pankisi Gorge {Georgia). Operation Enduring Freedom - Horn of Africa is too little examined and commented upon, but as it's the US-NATO opening to naval expansion into the Arabian Sea and from there to the Indian Ocean where it links up with Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan, a few details are warranted. After 9/11 the Pentagon's Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa moved into the French Camp Lemonier in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, setting up what in Pentagonese is called a forward operating site. There, with the participation of French, German and other NATO forces, Lemonier has been a base for overseeing the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the latter leading into the Persian Gulf, and for coordinating what can only be described as counterinsurgency wars in Yemen and Somalia (with the US also shelling the latter from sea) and proxy conflicts like the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and the Ethiopia-Eritrea and Djibouti-Eritrea border wars of the past seven years. The importance of this control over the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea will be demonstrated later when the role of NATO's most ambitious project in Asia, the military integration of India, is explored. In conjunction with Operation Enduring Freedom, both its naval and its ground and air war components, on October 4, 2001 NATO activated for the first time in its then 52-year history the Alliance's Article 5 'mutual defense' clause and embarked on the 'international war on terror.' (Though one would be hardpressed to find many references to terror or terrorism in NATO documents prior to that.) This unprecedented action played out in three realms. NATO begin what it calls and continues to run as Operation Active Endeavor, a comprehensive naval surveillance and interdiction effort throughout the Mediterranean Sea, controlling all access into and out of such key chokepoints as the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal (at the north end of the Red Sea) and the Dardanelles Strait leading into the Sea of Marmara, which in turn leads into the Black Sea. As NATO itself fairly brags of, Operation Active Endeavor has already 'contacted' 100,000 vessels and boarded 148. As the Alliance describes it, "The mission assigned to Operation Active Endeavour was to conduct naval operations in the Mediterranean to actively demonstrate NATO's resolve and solidarity." Secondly, NATO contributed - German - Airborne Warning and Control Systems aircraft (AWACS) to the United States to patrol its Atlantic coast. The third and most significant facet of NATO invoking its Article 5 was to open up South and Central Asia to NATO military forces. In 2003 NATO officially took over the International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan, which includes most military forces outside of the bulk of US ones, that is all troops not serving with Operation Enduring Freedom. All twenty six NATO members have troops in Afghanistan and the war that is now in its ninth calendar year has also been used as training grounds for NATO combat deployments for such Partnership for Peace members as Albania, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Croatia, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Macedonia, Sweden and Ukraine. In addition, the US has an air force contingent at the Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan and had one at the Karshi-Khanabad base in Uzbekistan before the government in Tashkent expelled it in 2005. Germany retains a military base in Uzbekistan at Termez and France has a military force and six Mirage fighters in Tajikistan, the latter to be transferred directly to Afghanistan as the West escalates its South Asian war. US, French and other NATO nations' militaries are also present in Pakistan, though the fact is not touted for obvious reasons. NATO now comprises not only 26 full and two new candidate members, and not only 23 Partnership for Peace adjuncts throughout Eurasia from the Irish Sea to the Chinese border, but also enough other partners on five continents to comprise over a third of the world's nations. As the Alliance's US-based headquarters reported of a recent meeting in Albania: "Allied Command Transformation (ACT) and various other NATO member Nations joined together for the 2008 Strategic Military Partnership Conference (SMPC) Nov. 3 - 5 in Tirana, Albania. "SMPC [Strategic Military Partnership Conference] is an annual event dedicated to providing a unique venue for all [26] NATO, Partnership for Peace (PfP), Mediterranean Dialogue (MD), Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and selected Contact Country (CC) Chiefs of Defence for frank and open discussions on issues important to partners and NATO." [NATO International, Allied Command Transformation, November 5, 2008) The following is an attempt at a comprehensive list from the Stop NATO email list: Partnership for Peace members: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Mediterranean Dialogue: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. Istanbul Cooperation Initiative: Effectively the Gulf Cooperation states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Contact Country: A looser term to designate NATO partners, ad hoc and long-term, that are not in any of the above three categories, which at this point could reasonably include Afghanistan, Australia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Kenya, Kosovo, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Somalia, South Korea and others not yet openly acknowledged to have agreements with NATO such as Lebanon, the Dutch Antilles and numerous sub-Saharan African nations. (Stop NATO, November 6, 2008) The so-called Contact Country allies are largely in the Asia-Pacific area and are such primarily because of their involvement in NATO's Afghan and related operations. Australia has as many as 1,500 combat troops, including special forces, serving under NATO command. New Zealand has military forces serving similarly. South Korea had over 200 troops in Afghanistan before pulling them out in exchange for the release of kidnapped aid workers. In reference to earlier comments about the new, self-proclaimed, global NATO absorbing members of former Cold War military blocs like ANZUS, CENTO and SEATO, the ongoing and endless Afghan war marks the first time that US, Australian, New Zealand and South Korean troops have fought together since the Vietnam War. Despite the withdrawal of South Korean ground forces, it's recently been reported that "The Korean government plans to send an investigation team to Afghanistan in the wake of the Obama administration�s expected request to Seoul for deploying troops to Afghanistan." (Dong-a Ilbo, January 2, 2009) And that "South Korean officials said Thursday that South Korean and Japanese government will hold talks on expanding their roles in Afghanistan." (Xinhua News Agency, January 22, 2009) The Japanese navy has been assisting Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in the Indian Ocean from 2001 until a brief pause last year when the nation's political opposition demanded a halt, but plans seem afoot to resume that role soon. Another historical footnote: The war in Afghanistan (and increasingly in Pakistan) is the first time since World War Two that military forces from the former Axis powers - Germany, Italy and Japan - are engaged in a joint military campaign. NATO has established a tripartite commission with Afghanistan and Pakistan to prosecute the wars in both nations independently of the US and Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was in the Pakistani capital two days ago to ratchet up the war effort. Yesterday the official NATO website (URL: www.nato.int - NATO International) announced that "The Secretary General welcomed Pakistan's acceptance of NATO's offer to provide training to Pakistani officers in NATO schools...." Afghan troops have been trained by NATO in Europe for years. (Analogous to the NATO Training Mission � Iraq.) Growing out of the Greater Afghan War and the Proliferation Security Initiative begun by the US in 2003, a worldwide naval interdiction effort similar to NATO's Operation Active Endeavor in the Mediterranean, but far more comprehensive and aimed predominantly against Asia, recent years have witnessed increasing references to the creation of an Asian NATO. Candidates for this emerging bloc include Afghanistan, Brunei, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore (with troops in Afghanistan), South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, with Australia and New Zealand further expanding their military roles in South and Far East Asia. (Australia, for example, is involved in the counterinsurgency campaigns in the Philippines in addition to its activities in Fiji, East Timor and the Solomon Islands.) Two perspectives on this development appeared, one recently, the other almost three years ago, in the Russian and American press, respectively: "The meeting [of the Russian and Chinsese defense ministers] will...address the creation of a regional missile defense system in Asia and the Pacific involving the U.S, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan." (Interfax-Military, December 10, 2009) "[T]he Navy's 7th Fleet currently holds 100 exercises per year and will increase that number. It will include exercises with India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan. "All branches of the U.S. military also have been conducting secret war games that use China as an adversary. The war games have been kept secret to avoid alerting the Chinese." (Washington Times, April 20, 2006} To consolidate the Pentagon's and NATO's plans for complete global military domination, and to further the encirclement of China as well as Russia, the main target of both is India, acquisition of which would be the most significant advancement in both's history along with the intended absorption of Ukraine. Former career India diplomat M K Bhadrakumar wrote in 2007: "Washington genuinely seeks a NATO-India partnership. As NATO retools for the 21st century for new missions in Africa and South Asia, and as it advances across the Middle East toward the Indian Ocean, looking for global partnerships (numbering 20 at present), India inevitably figures in its agenda. "NATO's future role in the Indian Ocean forms part of a well-thought Western strategy. NATO's naval mission to the Indian Ocean in September coincided with another major initiative by Washington. The newly created Africa Command (AFRICOM) of the US military, reflecting the long-term strategic value of Africa, is poised to begin its initial operations in October. "For any security system in the Asia-Pacific (US, Japan and Australia), India remains the prize catch. Equally, without India, NATO's partnerships in the Indian Ocean region would remain inherently weak. (Asia Times, October 5, 2007) The above came shortly after the Malabar 07-2 naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal, described by the official US armed forces newspaper as follows: "The ongoing naval exercise called 'Malabar Exercise' between five nations in the coast of Bay of Bengal including United States, India, Australia, Japan and Singapore...More than 20,000 naval personnel from five countries kicked off Exercise Malabar off the coast of India on Wednesday. "The United States will be represented by the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk; guided-missile cruisers USS Cowpens and USS Princeton; guided-missile destroyers USS Curtis Wilbur, USS Mustin, USS John Paul Jones, USS Chafee and USS Higgins; and various aircraft." (Stars and Stripes, September 7, 2007) Below are excerpts form the Indian press at the time. "Days ahead of the crucial multi-nation naval exercise in the Bay Bengal, top defence officials from Japan, Australia and US are visiting New Delhi for talks with the Defence Ministry to identify areas of mutual interest and chalk out plans for further military cooperation." (Indian Express, August 22, 2007) "The five-nation Malabar war games are being conducted on rules and procedures compliant with the requirements of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Indian naval and air force officers disclosed in interviews aboard the aircraft carrier today. "The Malabar 07-02 war games, now into the fourth day, have raised concerns in Beijing of an emerging 'Asian Nato." (Calcutta Telegraph, September 8, 2007) Two months earlier noted Indian journalist Siddharth Varadarajan had observed: "Two weeks before the July 2005 nuclear deal, India and the U.S. signed a �New Framework for the Defence Relationship,� which envisaged an action plan ranging from joint exercises, collaboration in multinational operations, 'expand[ing] interaction with other nations' (i.e. U.S. allies such as Japan and Australia), enhancing capabilities to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, collaboration in missile defence, and so on. "For the true purpose behind the aircraft carrier�s [the nuclear-armed American aircraft-carrier USS Nimitz's] 'landmark visit' is to anaesthetise the Indian public to the Pentagon�s decade-long plans for logistics access and 'interoperability' with the Indian military, thereby smoothening India�s eventual participation in U.S.-led 'structures of cooperative vigilance' in the wider Asian region." (The Hindu, July 5, 2007) Immediately after the above-mentioned Malibar exercise, India was invited for the first time to the annual US-NATO Red Flag war games, held that year in Alaska. Here are comments from Indian press services: "Red Flag will take India even closer to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) countries...." (Press Trust of India, October 6, 2007) "Red Flag, an advanced aerial combat training exercise, has been hosted at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, and the Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, since 1975. "It is meant to train pilots from the US, NATO and other allied countries for real combat situations. This includes the use of 'enemy' hardware and live ammunition for bombing exercises. "As for the NATO procedures, the Indian armed forces adopted them for the first time during the five-nation Malabar-2007 war games in September, the biggest to be held in the Bay of Bengal....The NATO procedures were extended to other sectors of the exercise as well in areas like anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial offensive and defence manoeuvres." (Indo-Asian News Service, November 26, 2007) To end and pull together many of the strands examined above, here is another analysis by M K Bhadrakumar from a feature entitled "NATO reaches into the Indian Ocean": "US officials are on record that Africom and NATO envisage an institutional linkup in the downstream. The overall US strategy is to incrementally bring NATO into Africa so that its future role in the Indian Ocean (and Middle East) region as the instrument of US global security agenda becomes optimal. For the strategy to succeed in the Indian Ocean, however, NATO will need to align three key littoral states - India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. "NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General John Craddock, acknowledged that the mission furthers the alliance's ambition to become a global political organization. "By acting with lightning speed and without publicity, NATO surely created a fait accompli. NATO's naval deployment in the Indian Ocean region is a historic move and a milestone in the alliance's transformation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the alliance didn't have a presence in the Indian Ocean. Such deployments almost always tend to be open-ended. "In 2007, a NATO naval force visited Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and Somalia and conducted exercises in the Indian Ocean and then re-entered the Mediterranean via the Red Sea in end-September. "[T]he Indian warship will eventually have to work in tandem with the NATO naval force. This will be the first time that the Indian armed forces will be working shoulder-to-shoulder with NATO forces in actual operations in territorial or international waters. "The operations hold the potential to shift India's ties with NATO to a qualitatively new level."


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Since the advertising boycott of Rush Limbaugh's show began—at least 36 companies have pulled their media schedules from his show—our comments boards have filled up with hundreds of posts from conservatives supporting Rush. Although B.I. readers are always a vocal bunch, this outpouring is on a scale above that. You can read some of their hundreds of comments here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. The gist of their defense is that liberal commentators ( such as Ed Schultz) have also made offensive remarks about women and not been called to account in the same way. They also believe that the pressure brought to bear on Limbaugh's advertisers amounts to politically correct censorship of robust debate. These points may have some merit, but they don't address the central problem conservatives have with the ad boycott: This isn't the left's fault, or Obama's fault. It's Rush's fault. Here's a selection of what B.I.'s readers are saying.
- voting for republican in 2012 election: BI closet obama voters coming out of the woodwork again to bash Rush, even after he apologizes twice, or that the majority of Americans not only agree with Rush's commentary, but empathize with him regarding the unfair treatment by the media.
- BreitbartIsHere: All this proves is that the left succeeded in pressuring some sponsors to end their association with the show. So?
- All Is Fair: Any advertiser that would pull out is caving to the progressive pressure machine. I am canceling my subscription to Carbonite because of this.
- Oh Pleaae: AOL and Huffington Post are affiliated. No wonder there is such a uproar over something so inconsequential. It's all manufactured by the left, even the fake congressional hearing Fluke spoke at.
- Maritxu: Has "Free Speech" died in this country? It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with Rush's comments. Rush's advertisers have no business trying to punish him for speaking out. Rush needs to let us know the names of every one of these advertisers, so that we the people can boycott every one of them because they do not believe in Free Speech.
- BARACK OBAMA LOVE FEST: Advertisers are dropping simply to get their name in the news and a positive vibe among the brainless, strategically-retarded liberals, then they'll be right back to advertising on his show.
- Romney 2012: The left is manufacturing outrage over this Rush Limbaugh slut comment at least 90% of Americans either agree with rush of simply don't care
Note the repeated theme: That somehow this is a fake scandal generated by the left, and that liberal attacks on Limbaugh are per se unfair. The problem with this angle is that it's demonstrably untrue. The scandal was generated entirely by Limbaugh's own words. What makes it especially infuriating for conservatives is that the battle has been fought using the traditional weapons of the free market: the supply and demand of dollars (advertiser dollars in this case). The irony that is driving conservatives nuts is that this isn't another Obama plot—it's capitalism working exactly the way it should. And they just can't stand it.


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Website Detail Page
written by the Physics 2000 and Martin Goldman
This site from Physics 2000 contains an interactive simulation of waves bouncing back and forth in a box. The user controls the wavelength, and the simulation shows the superposition of all the waves in the box. When the waves resonate, the large amplitude of the superposition is unmistakable, and the relationship between the wavelength of the waves and the size of the box is clear.
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Physics 2000, and Martin Goldman. Physics 2000: Resonance. August 25, 2006.
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Physics 2000 and M. Goldman, (2006), WWW Document, (http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/AcademicAffairs/ArtsSciences/physics/PhysicsInitiative/Physics2000/microwaves/standing_wave2.html).
Physics 2000 and M. Goldman, Physics 2000: Resonance, (2006), <http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/AcademicAffairs/ArtsSciences/physics/PhysicsInitiative/Physics2000/microwaves/standing_wave2.html>.
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Physics 2000, & Goldman, M. (2006, August 25). Physics 2000: Resonance. Retrieved September 22, 2019, from http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/AcademicAffairs/ArtsSciences/physics/PhysicsInitiative/Physics2000/microwaves/standing_wave2.html
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Physics 2000, and Martin Goldman. Physics 2000: Resonance. August 25, 2006. http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/AcademicAffairs/ArtsSciences/physics/PhysicsInitiative/Physics2000/microwaves/standing_wave2.html (accessed 22 September 2019).
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Physics 2000, and Martin Goldman. Physics 2000: Resonance. 2006. 25 Aug. 2006. 22 Sep. 2019 <http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/AcademicAffairs/ArtsSciences/physics/PhysicsInitiative/Physics2000/microwaves/standing_wave2.html>.
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@misc{ Author = "Physics 2000 and Martin Goldman", Title = {Physics 2000: Resonance}, Volume = {2019}, Number = {22 September 2019}, Month = {August 25, 2006}, Year = {2006} }
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With increasing international clout, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (Oct 11-20) is also a key backer of international films.
Anyone who saw the world premiere of Hala Alabdalla's As If We Were Catching A Cobra at the Toronto International Film Festival in September will have spotted the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF) acknowledged in the opening and closing credits.
Alabdalla, whose documentary explores the hot-button relationship between the Islamic world and caricature, repays ADFF's faith by appearing in competition this year at the very Arab film festival that helped finance the completion of her film.
At least three other films selected for Abu Dhabi in 2012 also benefited from Sanad, the festival's development and post-production fund that awards annual grants totalling $500,000 to "bold and remarkable" projects from film-makers across the Arab world. Others include Annemarie Jacir's When I Saw You, a drama about Palestinian refugees in 1960s Jordan; Philippe Dib's documentary In Search Of Oil & Sand that includes real footage shot by members of the Egyptian royal family in 1952 just weeks before a coup d'etat threw them out of power; and Mahdi Fleifel's A World Not Ours, a Lebanon-UK-UAE co-production that looks at the FIFA World Cup through the eyes of Palestinians.
Sanad, the festival's development and post-production fund, awards annual grants totalling $500,000
Such locally backed productions underline ADFF's ambitions and sit confidently alongside a line-up of international titles from every film-making corner, many of them still hot from festival launches at Cannes, Venice and Toronto. These films are no longer token gestures to Arabic culture, but expressions of increasing clout on the world stage - a clout epitomised in the glitzy opening night film, Arbitrage. A Wall Street crime thriller starring Richard Gere, it was produced by Mohammed Al Turki, the young Saudi-born producer who has become an emblematic new face of Hollywood and its shifting balance of power.
Al Turki, Richard Gere and his Arbitrage co-star Nate Parker will all attend Abu Dhabi this year alongside director Nicholas Jarecki, whose brother Eugene will also be represented at the 10-day festival as the director of The House I Live In, one of 12 films in the documentary feature competition where the top prize is a cool $100,000. The same generous sum, not to mention many lucrative runner-up prizes, are lavished on the winners of the other two feature-length competitions, the Narrative Feature Competition for international films and the New Horizons Competition for first and second-time film-makers. Of the 44 titles competing for these prizes, nine involve the UAE as a producing partner - another sign of the rapid strides the country is making as an international film-making force.
Now in its sixth year, the ADFF will be returning to the iconic Emirates Palace after a brief stint at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr hotel last year. This is the first year the festival will be presented under the management of twofour54 as part of the plan to align the festival alongside the emirate's other media initiatives and related events. With that shift has come a change in programming leadership. Earlier this year, Ali Al Jabri, the former director of the festival's Emirates Film Competition, replaced Peter Scarlet, the US veteran of the festival scene.
Al Jabri has been greeted in his debut year by "literally hundreds of submissions from all over the world".
Narrative feature competition
After The Battle (Egypt-Fr-UAE)
Dir Yousry Nasrallah
Araf - Somewhere In Between (Turk-Fr-Ger)
Dir Yesim Ustaoglu
Betrayal (Rus)
Dir Kirill Serebrennikov
Everyday (UK)
Dir Michael Winterbottom
Gebo And The Shadow (Port-Fr)
Dir Manoel de Oliveira
Ginger & Rosa (UK-Can-Croatia-Den)
Dir Sally Potter
Harraga Blues (Alg)
Dir Moussa Haddad
Hidden Beauties (Tun-Fr-UAE)
Dir Nouri Bouzid
In The House (Fr)
Dir Francois Ozon
It Was The Son (It-Fr)
Dir Daniele Cipri
The Last Supper (Chi)
Dir Lu Chuan
Lore (Aus-Ger-UK)
Dir Cate Shortland
Love Is All You Need (Den)
Dir Susanne Bier
No (Chile-US)
Dir Pablo Larrain
Outrage Beyond (Jap)
Dir Takeshi Kitano
Perfumes Of Algiers (Alg)
Dir Rachid Benhadj
'We are seeing a new generation of film-makers'
Ali Al Jabri, director of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, tells Colin Brown how the festival is acting as a catalyst for Arab film-making
What does this upcoming festival hope to achieve on the programming front, both for local audiences and international guests?
"The festival has a very strong line-up of Arab and international films and we are very happy with the selection for this year. It will, as in the past, engage multicultural audiences and will provide local, Arab and international film-makers with the perfect place to exchange ideas and projects. One of the many aims of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival is to help develop emerging and established Arab film-makers through their exposure to international cinema and interaction with film-makers from all over the world. We believe our programme this year, both on and off screen, will fulfil our role of helping to develop a film culture in the region."
How do you view prospects now for Arab film-makers and film companies in terms of building a self-sustaining industry?
"We are seeing the emergence of a new generation of film-makers, young Arabs that are embracing technology and telling their stories in new and innovative ways. We are also seeing Arabs getting involved in all aspects of the industry, especially behind the camera, and we hope the Abu Dhabi Film Festival encourages more to get involved. This will lead to the development of a sustainable industry… All of this makes me very optimistic for the future of the Arab film industry."
What film-making trends do you see coming out of the Arab cinema world, and the wider international marketplace?
"Throughout history, film-makers have been influenced by issues affecting society and 2012 is no different as people use film to tell their stories. Like everywhere else in the world, the big trend is technology and the ability for anyone to become a film-maker. You will see this at the film festival in the form of the Emirates Film Competition. This year has seen a record number of entries, especially from students, and the festival provides a great platform for these emerging film-makers."
What is your festival programming philosophy and can we expect to see any changes in direction or emphasis at either this edition of the ADFF or in future years?
"Abu Dhabi enjoys the benefit of being the first festival on the region's annual calendar and has always had a reputation for our programme, especially the Arabic films. We aim to continue to build on our strengths. We want to create a strong bond with the UAE community, with the whole city celebrating film. We want to support the emerging creative community in their understanding, appreciation and engagement with the medium of film, as well as the role of storytelling, and contribute to the creation of a film culture in the city. We hope this will act as a catalyst in stimulating a passion in young Emiratis and Arabs to pursue a career in film."


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As The Hill and some other news outlets have reported, Mitt Romney received fewer votes from members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints than Bush. It wasn't a landslide difference: 80% of the Mormon vote went to Bush in 2004; 78% to Romney in 2012. But even if the figure is subject to a statistical margin of error (based on exit polling), it does make one wonder why Mitt didn't get closer to 100% of the Mormon vote.
Maybe, it's that there are an increasing number of liberal Mormons.
Or maybe, just as Romney was rejected by his birth state of Michigan and the state that he was governor of (Massachusetts), the more people who know Mitt, the less they like him.
It would be easy to satirize Romney's devotion to being a Mormon. Until this election, Evangelicals largely considered the religion that Joseph Smith founded in upstate New York, after claiming to be visited by an angel, as a cult.
Stephen Pizzo, who is a contributor to BuzzFlash, wrote a commentary mocking the Mormon practice of wearing holy underwear:
Defeated GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, met with leaders of the LDS (Mormon) Church this morning, telling them that he believes he was the victim of liberal witches.
"I know it sounds outlandish, even silly," Romney told reporters as he left his meeting at LDS headquarters here this morning. "But my holy underwear never failed me, never. Even when I invested in horrible companies, that later failed and all the workers lost their jobs, I made millions. So how do you explain my election loss? Huh?"
Though Romney would not name names, he accused "liberal witches" of casting a spell that drained all the magic out of his traditional Mormon "magic underwear."
Pizzo may be a bit harsh, given that the United States guarantees freedom of religion and practices. Nonetheless, it is worthy of note that more than 1/5 of Mormons voted for Obama.
Mitt should take heart that the Romney extended family that stayed down in Mexico – after his grandfather returned to the United States – to practice polygamy (although no longer actively) would have voted for him. A Reuters article is headlined "Romney's Mexican cousins lament U.S. election loss":
The family's Mexican roots go back to Mitt Romney's great-grandfather Miles P. Romney, who crossed south of the border in the 1880s, like other early Mormon settlers in Mexico fleeing U.S. marshals who were seeking to arrest him for practicing polygamy.
His descendants still live in Mormon enclaves in the state of Chihuahua about 200 miles from the U.S. border and near where Mitt's father, George Romney, was born. There are about 300 Mormons left in the area, and dozens called Romney.
Maybe Romney would get a better share of the Mormon vote in Mexico. But it still must be a bit embarrassing to receive less votes from followers of your own religion in the US than George W. Bush did.
But a $250 million fortune will help Mitt get over it. With that kind of money, maybe Romney can pay for his sons to star in the Broadway hit, "The Book of Mormon."