At the end of the day it's nice to go outside and lie in the rocking hammock. The trees provide plenty of shade and the grass is green and lush. A perfect time to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet. However, it appears that Bows and Eli have had the same idea and have beaten me to the hammock. Fortunately, there's plenty of room for me. Scoot over guys!
Fayetteville has made a big step in developing a regional park. The Fayetteville Parks and Recreation Advisory Board voted to accept 200 acres of land to begin building a large multipurpose park. Another additional 200 acres could be added as the South Pass development phases are completed. The major focus of the park is the large baseball and soccer fields. The city hopes that it can start hosting large tournaments. The concept of the South Pass development is to use the park as a regional magnet. As people come to the park they are going to want places to eat, shop and stay. Everyone was happy with the park and it's amenities, although there was some concern about the number of available parking space. There are going to be some fields that will be open and could be utilized as parking areas. They do this at Gulley Park when they have those summer concerts. This is going to be a great park. It will have just about anything you want to do. However, this is a big project and it could take up to 10 years to complete. Money is going to be a big issue. The park is going to cost over 14 million dollars. The city currently has just over 2 million for the park now. They are going to have to come up with the rest of the money somehow.
But this is what Obama said in response, in a written statement circulated by his campaign:It's a reminder of how inexperienced Obama may look running for President in a time of war, and how much more effective McCain is on the national security issue.
"This country is united in our support for our troops, but we also owe them a plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else's civil war. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe the course we are on in Iraq is working, but I do not. If there ever was a reflection of that it's the fact that Senator McCain required a flack jacket, ten armored Humvees, two Apache attack helicopters, and 100 soldiers with rifles by his side to stroll through a market in Baghdad just a few weeks ago."
The McCain camp came back with this: "While Sen. Obama's two years in the U.S. Senate certainly entitle him to vote against funding our troops, my service and experience combined with conversations with military leaders on the ground in Iraq lead me to believe that we must give this new strategy a chance to succeed because the consequences of failure would be catastrophic to our nation's security.
By the way, Senator Obama, it's a 'flak' jacket, not a 'flack' jacket."
One of the more important things to do on vacation is taking a nap. Especially after working on projects around the house and the afternoon is warm and humid. Tigger's napping style is a little unique. I think I'll just lie on the sofa.
I decided to utilized one of my Christmas gifts, (autographed too!) I decided to go to the Tanyard Creek Nature Trail. It's one I haven't walked. It was absolutely beautiful. The trail follows Tanyard Creek so there are lots of flowers, trees and birds. There was a lot of interpretive signs. They had quite a lot of the trees and bushes identified. 
The House felt it was important to take on OPEC, the major player in oil production. Member states of OPEC late last year cut production by 1.1 million barrels a day to counter what had been a buildup of world oil stocks. (John)Conyers D-Mich, accused the OPEC engaging in a "price fixing conspiracy" that has "unfairly driven up the price" of crude oil and, in turn gasoline.
released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three deaths were related to the vaccine. One physician’s assistant reported that a female patient “died of a blood clot three hours after getting the Gardasil vaccine.” Two other reports, on girls 12 and 19, reported deaths relating to heart problems and/or blood clotting.
We were not at all happy at the news that Mayor Coody and people within the City Administration had somehow changed the proposed 5 lanes on Wedington Dr. to 4 lanes with a couple of turn lanes. Most of the concern for the 4 lanes was not enough turn lanes were included nor were there plans to provide space for more turns as development continues on Wedington. A prime example is the proposed Woodstock Community, a mixture of residential and commercial lots. There is no plan to provide a turn lane for access in the middle of the community. Can you image the traffic that will be stacked up in the middle of the road trying to turn into the complex? I'm fairly certain more big commercial development are going to be built on Wedington. How are people going to safely access these if there is no turn lane? The State has already started work on Wedington. I just hope it's not too late to get the State to make some changes. I just hope that the State is willing to make changes.
I am on vacation this week and I have a lot of projects lined up to do. I will, however, occasionally have a little fun . Friday night I saw the play "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change". This show is a clever, funny, and lively. The singer/actors were great! I really enjoy Michael Elliott's performances. The audience and I were laughing through the whole thing. This play had many one-liners about men, women and relationships. I can't understand why Michelle Parks gave it such a bad review. It certainly didn't deserve it. This is one play you definitely should see.
I spent the rest of the weekend working in the garden. My legs and arms are really aching, but I have only 1 blister. I swear, some one must have thrown in a bunch of grass seeds in some of those beds. All the garden work is finished. Every bed is weeded and everything is planted. Whew!
I've discovered that Eli likes going through the tunnel. Now I thinking, could it be possible to train a cat to go through on command? I can put him in one end and go to the other and call him through. Now I just need to figure out had to get him to respond to the command "Tunnel" and go through by himself. 
I’ve been asked to aid in that quest by giving you some advice, so here it goes.
First, live boldly. Live a whole life. I have five tips for pulling this off and – let me warn you — they’ve all been road tested. I learned the old-fashioned way, through trial and error. Number one, think. You’ve got a diploma now, you’ve got a brain. Put them to work.... Second recommendation: Go off-road. It’s tempting to search for comfort, but don’t play it too safe. Every once in a while you’ve got to get yourself into a mess, a scrape, a circumstance that makes you look around and gasp, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” You’ll shudder and tremble, but you will have no choice but to rise to the occasion. Let’s be honest. Most of us spend a great deal of our lives over our heads in one way or another. Don’t reject it, don’t resist it, don’t deny it. Just make the most out of it.... Third: Commit. This is a way of talking about faith... When it comes to faith, I’ve taken my own journey. You will have to take your own. But here’s what I know. Faith is as natural as the air we breathe. Religion is not an opiate, just the opposite. It is the introduction to the ultimate extreme sport. There is nothing that you can imagine that God cannot trump. As Paul said “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And once you realize that there is something greater than you out there, then you have to decide, “Do I acknowledge it and do I act upon it?” You have to at some point surrender yourself. And there is nothing worthwhile in your life that will not at some point require an act of submission. It’s true of faith and friendship.... Next, get out. You are about to encounter a world larger than you know with peaks, valleys, pits and precipices that you cannot possible imagine. You’re going to work long hours. You’ll eat pizza at four in the morning. You’ll try to find love in the weirdest places. You’ll audition personalities, outfits and styles until something seems to fit but eventually the way you’re going to craft your legacy is predictable. You will stamp your imprint on other people’s hearts. You’re not going to get to do that writing in front of a computer... Finally, love. How trite is that? But it’s everything. It separates happiness from misery. It separates the full life from the empty life. To love is to acknowledge that life is not about you. I want you to remember that: It’s not about you. It’s a hard lesson. A lot of people go through life and never learn it. It’s to submit willingly, heart and soul, to things that matter. Love is not melodrama. You don’t purchase it, you don’t manufacture it. You build it.
This case-control study, reported in the May 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found that a prior HPV infection increased the risk of developing oropharyngeal cancer by 32, much higher than the 3-fold increase in risk found for smoking and the 2.5-fold increase for drinking.
Oral-genital contact was strongly associated with oropharyngeal cancer, suggesting that the main route of transmission for oral infection with HPV was via oral sex. Study participants who reported having more than 6 oral sex partners in their lifetime were 8.6 times more likely to develop the HPV-linked cancer. However, the researchers acknowledge that the study cannot rule out transmission through direct mouth-to-mouth contact or other means, such as via skin contact.
When doctors give the vaccine to patients, they think that " 'I am protected against everything,' and that's just not true," said Dr. Diane M. Harper of Dartmouth University, who helped design a related Merck-funded HPV study in the journal.
She is still in favor of giving Gardasil to girls because it is safe and it "protects against the main HPV bad actors," but she argued that neither doctors nor women should be lulled into a false sense of security by the shots.
"I don't think this is the gun that is going to take cervical cancer off the map," she said.
Karl said the war was decades in coming. It began in the Beirut Barracks in 1984. The question we now face is will we stay and prevail or are we going to leave and lose. It would not be like America to leave our promises unkept, our friends and allies abandoned and our security put at greater risk. This is the focus and philosophy of your government and of this administration. Victory in Iraq, nothing short of Victory.
The evening belonged to our troops. Nearly 50 soldiers with their spouses or family were given free tickets to the event. Corsages and boutonnieres were provided to them by Asa and Susan Hutchinson and all the women were given bouquets. They were individually recognized on stage with Congressman John Boozman and Karl shook hands with them as they came offstage. I heard them make comments on how much they enjoyed the evening and the wives appreciated having an evening out where they could dress up.
Bows is supervising the replacement of the screen door on the porch. It was the most abused door in the house. I don't believe the wood was treated so it was warped and rotting in places. The bottom was coming apart because every cat and dog in the place would try to push it open when it was latched. I decided to replace it with a vinyl door. It was a little more expensive but it won't warp or rot and I won't have to paint it.
This weekend was the Arkansas Federation of Republican Women's biannual meeting. This is the first time I've attended an AFRW meeting. There were women from all over the state. A lot of the meeting seemed to be just socializing, but we did manage to get some business done. Roger's Mayor Steve Womack hosted our Friday night reception and spoke about how the principles of the Republican Party was at work in making Rogers an exceptional and highly successful city.
Congressman John Boozman showed up on Saturday. I did manage to briefly ask him to look into the new Army rules which could kill milblogs. Mike Huckabee called into one meeting. He discussed the changing positions on critical issues by some of the other candidates. He said that if they changed once then they may change again. On the debate, he complained that he came to debate the other candidates not Chris Mathews. Congressman Duncan Hunter also called in and had an opportunity to discuss his issues; national security, illegal immigration and the loss of America's industrial factories. 
Methane emissions from flooded rice paddies contribute to global warming just as coal-fired power plants, automobile exhausts and other sources do with the carbon dioxide they spew into the atmosphere. In fact, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting this week in Bangkok concludes that rice production was a main cause of rising methane emissions in the 20th century. It calls for better controls. "There is no other crop that is emitting such a large amount of greenhouse gases," said Reiner Wassmann, a climate change specialist at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.
"In the developing world, you really have to think first and foremost about providing population with food," said Pete Smith of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, lead author of the IPCC report's section on agriculture. "You can't start thinking about climate mitigation if you have to feed your family."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday created a senior position to supervise the agency's regulation of food safety.
Congressional critics dubbed the new FDA position "food safety czar" and derided it as likely to be ineffective. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) on Tuesday introduced a bill, which Durbin plans to co-sponsor in the Senate, that would allow the FDA to order recalls of contaminated food, create an early-warning system for problems with human or pet food and broaden the agency's power over food labeling, importation and record-keeping. Under current rules, food manufacturers must issue recall notices.
"I think the FDA needs to do more than just create a food safety czar," DeLauro said. "This is about reshuffling the management, and I think it does little to focus the agency on its mission to protect the public health."
On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility."
Here's the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September
15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday." And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.
