And the first time I needed heat in all these years, none was to be had. We have A/C, of course, but evidently ‘package’ units don’t automatically come with heat. Truthfully, I never even thought about it until yesterday.

So I’m going to Lowe’s for a space heater. Don’t worry, if it needs much more than plugging in it’ll have to wait until Himself comes home from work!

Witness the case of the Cuisinart. With great anticipation, I purchased the Pro Classic food processor last July. Unfortunately there was a learning curve that prevented last minute meal prep help, so it just sat on my kitchen counter, waiting.

It remains untested, but not for lack of trying.

The first time the machine and I met on the field of battle, I admit to being unprepared. Still… you’d think I could do something as simple as put the bowl on properly, right? No, after a prolonged struggle I needed hubby to tell me -after a 5 second glance- how it worked. Humiliation abounded.

Our second encounter occurred last night. I had some time and needed a slew of potatoes sliced. Should have known there would be trouble when my gaze landed on the damnable machination, sitting so white and clean. Untouched. Nothing that pure and shiny could come to any good in my kitchen.

This time it took about thirty minutes of playing before I finally gave up and sliced the taters myself. They’d been in the oven for an hour when hubby returned home from work, but I knew I had to ask him about it… and when he pinpointed the problem in a few moments, I felt that all too familiar mortification. He has the gene… that man can fix anything, solve any problem. Fortunately he never makes fun of my gross incompetence.

Putting whipped topping on my serving of humble pie, I remembered reading in the manual that larger veggies would have to go in ‘backwards’.

If I hadn’t paid a hundred dollars for that thing I’d take it out into the Everglades and use it for target practice. If I could remember how to use my gun.

What happened to taking terrorists to a black site and making them talk…? Oh, yeah… closing black sites was among Doc Utopia’s first decrees…! Bet the Doc would love to prosecute the perpetrators of 9/11.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with the failed attempt on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight, was initially “talking to people who detained him” but now has a public defender and “doesn’t have to,” John O. Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have different ways of obtaining information from individuals” in the criminal-justice process, Brennan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A lot of people . . . understand what they’re facing, and their lawyers recognize that there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements, [and] we’re going to pursue that.” Brennan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that other terrorism suspects have “given us very valuable information as they’ve gone through the plea-agreement process.”

At least Senators DeMint and Lieberman got it right:

“If we had treated this Christmas Day bomber as a terrorist, he would have immediately been interrogated military-style, rather than given the rights of an American and lawyers,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said on CNN. “We probably lost valuable information.”

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said it was a “very serious mistake” to send Abdulmutallab to federal court.

“He was trained, equipped and directed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” Lieberman said on ABC. “That was an act of war. He should be treated as a prisoner of war, held in a military brig, questioned now, and should have been ever since apprehended for intelligence that could help us stop the next attack or get people in Yemen.”

But no, the ‘alleged’ bomber will be given legal representation, three squares a day, a comfortable place to pray as often as he wants and most probably a ‘deal’. That’ll send a message back to his brothers-in-arms, eh?

The wrong one.

This government sucks. Even armed with adequate knowledge beforehand, they cannot protect us…. when the unthinkable happens they protect the perp and last but not least are unwilling to take steps to stop further attacks.

Sucks.

Guide to a good life: When all hope is lost, pray
Jo-Anne MacDonald, National Post

A year ago, Marcella Dubuque was preparing for what she believed would be her last Christmas.

A month earlier, she had been diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, the tumour that had been growing in her right breast had already invaded her lymph nodes. It was too advanced for surgery; chemotherapy would be the only treatment.

She was 76 years old.

So Lella, who pursued life with girlish enthusiasm, quietly accepted imminent death.

She got her financial affairs in order. She cleaned out her closet and cupboards and gave all the old clothes and unused dishes to charity. She picked out the Sunday dress she wanted to be buried in; a wash-and-wear paisley print with a pleated skirt. She told her husband and four children she did not want a wake, just a traditional Catholic funeral without eulogy or flowery obituary. Burial would be in her local cemetery in Walpole, Mass.

“The acceptance was so total that there were no regrets, just gratitude for the life, for the family. Realizing how lucky I was,” she says.

Luck, however, can’t explain to her what happened next. Nor can medicine.

She went for 15 rounds of chemotherapy, but quit before the final two treatments last May. She was losing too much weight, her red blood cell count was slipping and the hair she kept a burnished red and tied back with a black ribbon was all gone. A PET scan in June showed lesions near her heart, in one of her lungs and in her lower back. The cancer had advanced to stage 4.

Her son, Michael, urged her to get a second opinion and to make her annual trip to her childhood home on Cape Breton Island.

Every summer but for three since 1953, Lella has returned to the three-storey towering white clapboard house by a brook in Judique, a rural community hugging the western coast of the island. She was born in the house with windows of wavy glass, walls of Douglas fir and a wood stove burning in June out of necessity. For three months of the year, they would open the kitchen door and serve their friends tea in the afternoon and something stronger in the evening and host ice cream picnics.

Michael, along with daughter Melissa, made the 13-hour drive for his parents. Lella’s husband, Bob Dubuque, a retired Walpole police officer, had a serious stroke 10 years ago.

They arrived in July. Lella’s brother had opened the house. A cousin had scattered vases of wildflowers, Lella’s favourite, about the rooms. Her twin brothers flew in from Windsor, Ont. Her son, Mark, came from Kentucky.

Over the course of a week, more than 100 people came to see her in what has been described as a living wake. They exchanged old stories and brought her rosary beads, prayer cards, holy oil, even blessed salt. Lella assured anyone who asked about her illness that she was “looking forward to the journey” and to being with her relatives in Heaven.

Judique’s parish priest, Father Allan MacMillan, performed what was once known as the Last Rites, but is now more optimistically called the Sacrament of the Sick. Afterward, the family gathered on the veranda with a bottle of wine and Lella asked Fr. Allan, a Gaelic singer, for a song.

When they returned to Walpole, she had an appointment with a specialist at the Dana Farber, a renowned cancer hospital. The doctor examined Lella and recommended another PET scan.

Two days later, when Lella went back to her oncologist for the results, the nurses smiled at her. The doctor, who had copies of both scans – the June one showing the ugly lesions and the August one inexplicably clear – delivered some stunning news.

According to Lella’s recollection, “The words he used were: ‘Nothing short of a miracle, no scientific explanation.’”

Lella has a spiritual one: “Prayer – how else could it change that drastically in two months?”

The oncologist, Dr. Charles Chen, is still somewhat guarded, as he awaits the results of another scan, but he allows, “She’s had a remarkable recovery. We don’t have an explanation for it.”

Lella is on the drug Herceptin to keep the cancer in remission. She goes for physiotherapy weekly to try to reduce the fluid trapped in her right arm where the lymph nodes were destroyed.

In December she celebrated her 77th birthday and spent a quiet Christmas with her family. She says she now has a greater appreciation for people and more empathy for the sick.

“I often thought – pre-cancer – that here I am about 75, 76, and I’d think, ‘Why is God keeping me around so long? I never accomplished anything worthwhile in my life, what am I hanging around for anyway?’ And then after cancer, I’m thinking, ‘Ah, well, maybe there’s something here I can pass on.’”

She says it’s hope.

What a great way to start the new year!!

Excuse me… the ‘misunderstood, alleged’ bomber. Poor kid must have fallen in with the wrong crowd, eh? Yeah, it’s a real sob story.

In reality, 23 year old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab made the conscious decision to join our enemy. He trained with al Qaeda and then boarded a flight to the United States, intent on becoming a live bomb. And the fact that he was not successful in blowing up a plane over American soil should have no bearing on the fact that he tried.

There is no ‘alleged’ anything about this man and his deeds. He was caught in the act, an enemy combatant trying to kill hundreds. And instead of receiving full civil rights and an attorney he should be taken out and shot. He is clearly guilty.

Doc Utopia finally looked up from his busy shaved ice and snorkeling schedule to assure us that Umar was indeed trained and equipped by al Qaeda… but even so makes it sound as though Umar was but a tool:

“It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

Oh, and the prez said that withdrawing troops from Iraq would help “make us safer”. Wanker.

What denotes a field of battle? I have an incongruous mental image of men and women fighting in hand to hand combat… but instead of killing or wounding the enemy, our side asks for their attorney’s information.

The redneck flyboy had a better idea for the disposition of the underwear bomber: put him up against that wall, but instead of shooting him, let every willing passenger aboard the flight he tried to blow up throw stones at him until he’s dead. That sounds like justice to me.

1) Get over this bastard sinus infection
2) Do everything in my power -little though I it may be- to defame, deflower, defrock and otherwise help kick the ruling party to the curb where they belong.

Via The Reaganite Republican, who always has the very best toons:

Time’s up!