Congratulations to Elvis Scarecrow for winning first place at the Huntsville Botanical Garden’s 2007 Scarecrow Trail, but, as you can see, all the scarecrows were winners.

I hope everybody is enjoying Halloween and getting ready for a day full of costume parties, haunted houses, more treats than tricks, and staying up late and watching some horror films.

Happy Halloween!

Read More: Elvis Scarecrow, Huntsville Botanical Garden, Halloween

While Bush asks Congress for $189 billion more in war funding, the U.S. State Department has announced it has lost $1.2 billion that was supposed to go toward training Iraqi police.

This war scam has gone on so long, instead of being outraged, I’m telling my children things are just like the good old days. You remember the good old days, over three years ago when the government lost track of $9 billion in Iraq.

Let’s not forget that all these extra hundreds of billions of dollars to fight wars with are on top of the already gargantuan percentage of our tax dollars that are already set aside to keep the military running.

Here’s some numbers for pause from Globalissues.org via Timothy V. Gatto:

Would it upset you to know that China, the #2 country for military expenditures only spends 6% of its budget on the military? Russia, #3, is the same. Iran, the big boogie man of the Middle East that we are so worried about according to Dick Cheney, is #27 with a whopping $4.9 Billion Dollar budget with 1% of their budget spent on the military. It’s estimated that the United States will spend 52% of its budget, and 481.4 Billion dollars on defense this year, and that’s not counting the money for the war in Iraq which so far we have spent $130 Billion Dollars on this year and another $190 Billion that the President has requested. Isn’t this a little bit of overkill?

And there’s nothing you can do about it. Have a nice day! ;-)

Read More: Iraq War, war profiteers, military industrial complex

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Hard-boiled Dreams of the World!

Whoooo-hoo!!!

And, since the definition of anniversary means to return to the same point, the nature of this post be a smack in the face from last year’s reality, which was returning from Guatemala City with a beautiful baby girl…

Guatemala Adoptions

One year later, the histrionic Main Stream Media is spinning Guatemala adoptions in a negative light, claiming mothers are coerced into giving up their babies, that Guatemala is a baby farm, that adoptions are run by private lawyers thereby making the process open to corruption.

The touted solution? Put the process in the hands of the government! Yes, the world is well aware that politicians are sooooo much less corrupt than lawyers.

Trying to stay focused on the truth and not the spin, U.S. ambassador to Guatemala James Derham said earlier this month:

We have thousands of cases of Guatemalan children who have been adopted to the United States and have had terrific experiences as adoptive children there and frankly have probably experienced a life more full of opportunity and support than they would have if they had been abandoned in Guatemala.

What’s more, Kristen Bristol of Rhode Island gives these facts about the so-called lax Guatemalan adoption process in her comment at Anderson Cooper’s blog:

1) The birth mother is required to sign off on the adoption no less than FOUR times during the process. She has until the very end (longer than birth mothers in the U.S.) to change her mind.
2) The birth mother must be interviewed by a social worker in the family court system in Guatemala. If a child has been stolen or the mother has been coerced, the truth will come out there. The social workers are randomly assigned to each case.
3) The birth mother must submit to a DNA test to be administered by a physician approved by the U.S. Embassy. If the DNA of the woman does not match that of the child, the adoption will not continue.
4) To make sure that a child was not switched after the DNA test, the child will be given another DNA test after the adoption has been approved, to make sure it is the same child that took the original test. If this is negative, the adoption will not be completed.

Those facts supplied by Kristen Bristol echo our Guatemalan adoption experience, which I am convinced was a blessing for all involved.

Hard-boiled Dreams

Anyway…one year later, Beautiful Baby Ana is even more wonderful.

One year later, my hard-boiled dream sometimes looks like this (via phone camera through auto glass):

One year later, I’ve learned a lot more about this world, from really Amasnic Facts, to really amazing real history.

One year later, I’m aware that according to science, our world is more akin to a dream than previously realized.

And no, I’m not talking paranormal theories here; I’m talking cold, hard science.

I’m talking about John Wheeler, eminent physicist and colleague of Einstein and Niels Bohr, proclaiming in non-metaphorical language that our consciousness is intricately involved in the creation of external reality, that this universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well.

So, you know, let’s keep on creating. Why not!

Thanks to all who’ve dropped by, and more thanks to those who’ve contributed thoughts and comments. It’s been fun, and I’m looking forward to another year of bouncing thoughts off the interactive universe.

Read More: hard-boiled, world culture, war, poverty, religion, peace, dreams, adoption, Guatemala, John Wheeler

President George W. Bush finally seemed to be channeling Thomas Jefferson last Friday on a rare occasion when he shared his personal thoughts about different religions:

I believe in an Almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God. That’s what I believe.

Yes, he did leave atheist Americans out of the equation, but this was about his personal belief, which doesn’t include a world without a universal creator intelligence, so I won’t knock him for that. It was just nice to hear him say praying to a higher power by a different name doesn’t automatically put a free-delivery tactical nuke in your mailbox.

What further almost knocked me out of my Barcalounger was when Bush drew attention to the fact that not all terrorists are Muslim, which has been inferred by the religious right so many times since 9/11:

…we had a person blow up our – blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City who professed to be a Christian, but that’s not a Christian act to kill innocent people.

I know Bush has been a big bad dumb wolf in sheep’s clothing most of his Presidency, so don’t call me a fan of his continued march toward dictatorship. But I also think when he says something right, his words — and these latest words aren’t very popular among his evangelical-bomb-Iran-and-bring-on-Armageddon friends — should get some due attention.

So, even if he only said these words for show, I do now know that the thought of coexisting has at least crossed his neuron-starved brain, which is more than I used to believe.

More from Bush:

We are having an Iftaar dinner tonight – I say, ‘we’ – it’s my wife and I. This is the seventh one in the seven years I’ve been the president. It gives me a chance to say ‘Ramadan Mubarak.’ The reason I do this is I want people to understand about my country. In other words, I hope this message gets out of America. I want people to understand that one of the great freedoms in America is the right for people to worship any way they see fit. If you’re a Muslim, an agnostic, a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, you’re equally American.

And the value – the most valuable thing I think about America is that – particularly if you’re a religious person – you can be free to worship, and it’s your choice to make. It’s not the state’s choice, and you shouldn’t be intimidated after you’ve made your choice. And that’s a right that I jealously guard.

Secondly, I want American citizens to see me hosting an Iftaar dinner.

Read Bush’s full address to his Iftaar dinner guests here: President Bush Attends Iftaar Dinner at the White House.

Read More: George W. Bush, freedom of religion, Christians, Muslims, Iftaar dinner

Yesterday in Newton Iowa, Fred Thompson said Saddam Hussein had WMD:

We can’t forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there he clearly had had WMD. He clearly had had the beginnings of a nuclear program. And in my estimation his intent never did change. And by today, he clearly would have had that rejuvenated. Especially looking at what Iran said that it’s doing.

What doddering old Fred Thompson fails to mention is that, according to the Iraq Survey Group’s final word on the matter, Saddam’s WMD program and his nuclear program were destroyed and ended after the 1991 Gulf War.

If Fred Thompson thinks he’s clever enough to rewrite history by telling lies (and I consider deceptive half-truths lies), I think I can do it better. So, I’m taking this opportunity to announce my run for President of the U.S. of A.

While I come up with a platform, I’d like to remind everybody that at the time Columbus arrived, there were no indigenous people on what is today known as the American continent. Also, Hitler was actually a fictitious character that people have come to associate with a real 20th century dictator through mass misinterpretation of a quatrain written by Nostradamus. The Apollo moon landing was a fake. And Arabs wielding box cutters rendered NORAD impotent by flying magic carpets disguised as planes around Washington and New York.

Oh, yeah, and Fred Thompson? He IS the real Santa Claus.

Read More: Fred Thompson, WMD, Iraq War