My Favorite Cookie

NYTimes Chocolate Chip Cookies

My favorite cookie is the chocolate chip cookie. My daughter makes the ultimate best chocolate cookies of all time. She found a recipe and puts in her "secret" ingredients and they come out moist and chewy and still crumbly like a cookie should be. If you like to dunk your cookies in milk, they are perfect, because even though they are moist and chewy, they still hold their shape after a good dunk in your milk. When you take a bite, the chips start to melt and slightly ooze apart in your mouth. They are soooo goooood! My daughter is a brilliant baker, does her mommy proud.

Mitt Romney Blasts Obama: ‘One Of The Most Ineffective Presidents,’ He’s ‘Failed’

It is easy to criticize from the side benches, but if you think about it, if Romney had been President, he would have let the auto industry go under. President’­s Obama’s decision, derided by the right at the time, turned out to be a good decision for the American auto industry. Moreover, Romney, instead of standing 100% behind his decision to implement a health care insurance plan based on the individual mandate, back pedals and says that the mandate is only viable within the confines of the state. Romney endorsed the mandate because it meant individual responsibi­lity( a republican ideal) and it made fiscal sense to contain the increasing health care costs. Since he would like to be President and a huge part of our increasing deficits is due to the escalating health care costs, how can he not be brave and admit that an individual mandate makes sense on the national level? As President you have to look beyond the individual states and think bigger. You can’t govern a country as large and diverse as ours if you are running under the illusion that the States powers trump those of the federal government­. It is a grossly ineffectua­l way to govern the nation as a whole.
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Eric Cantor On ‘Face The Nation’: Disaster Relief For Joplin Tornado Victims Must Be Offset (VIDEO)

Cantor’s position is nothing new, I commented on it when he first said that disaster relief funds must be offset by spending cuts. However, to read about his interview on FACE THE NATION on Sunday and that even after President Obama went to survey the overwhelmi­ng devastatio­n and reassure those poor people that they will be helped, Cantor still pig-headed­ly held his position that relief needs to be offset, has made me so angry that I can feel it in every fiber of my being. How dare he say that when he has never offered to offset the tax cut for the wealthy, when it’s for them it is quite alright to add a few billion dollars to the deficit. He has never offered to offset any tax breaks to any corporatio­ns to save us tax payers a few dollars. The list goes on and on and I’m getting madder and madder. How in the world can he ever have been elected? Heartless is right. And another thing, STOP comparing the federal budget to a family’s budget, it’s like comparing apples and oranges, they have nothing in common.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Who should you be remembering today?

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postaday2011

My grandfather on my mother’s side served heroically during World War 1 and World War 2. He was a captain in the French Army, he lost his regiment in the trenches due to mustard gas bombing, he was the only survivor. During World War 2, he was a colonel, he eventually got captured and was a prisoner of war held by the Germans. He didn’t die during the wars but he fought long and hard under horrible conditions. I remember my grandfather as a strong, quiet, sweet old man. My mother was the second to last baby and she was born during World War 2 when he came back home for a visit, (I guess) he was captured before my mother was born and he was released under an officer exchange after she was born. I was too young to really understand war and what it does to a person, so I never asked him anything of his experiences. From what I’ve gathered from my aunts, uncle and cousins, he never spoke about any of his war experiences. He was wonderful and so big in my little girl eyes. I was extremely proud of him.

So I often remember my grandfather for all sorts of reasons, regardless of Memorial Day. It is an important day for remembrance of all those who served and died defending us and the ideals we share in the world. But for me it is a bit impersonal because I don’t know anyone close to me who died in a war. However, even though I don’t have a personal connection, I still feel the weight of the day, all those fallen, because of the horror of war.

What I'm Saving Up to Buy

Bordeaux France

I have been saying the same thing for going on 6 years, I'm saving up to go France with my daughter to visit my family. However, without fail, each year at around the same time a crisis emerges which depletes the stash of cash I so carefully put away. Hopefully, I'll get it right sometime soon because I miss France so much.

Campaign Finance Ruling Inappropriately Attempts to Overrule Supreme Court Decision

Since the Citizens United ruling is perhaps the most odious ruling this nation has ever seen, deeming that corporatio­ns has similar rights as the individual­, anything that will contain the damage any further is welcome. The wording is explicit, only expenditur­es, not donations, and in the world of law wording is everything­. The more specific a ruling is, the more limited are the parameters that surround the ruling. In my opinion, anything that can weaken the ability of corporatio­ns to directly impact elections financiall­y is a boon for us as a society.
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Obama Acts As Healer-In-Chief In Tornado-Stricken Joplin, Missouri

President Obama may have been in republican territory but I don’t think the Joplin residents were thinking in terms of democrat or republican­. I think that they were appreciati­ve of their President coming to see the devastatio­n and offer the help and support of the government to help rebuild their community and their lives. These tragedies transcend political affiliatio­ns, the overwhelmi­ng loss and impact, I think bring things down to a much simpler nature. We are in this together.
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The Worst Flight I've Taken

Cesna 208 Caravan

I've taken so many flights back and forth from Europe and turbulence has often been an issue but not badly enough to scare me. I suppose it was because the planes were nice and big. I took a put-put plane once in Costa Rica from San Jose to the jungle. I was scared when we were on the tarmac because there were 6 pilots huddled together discussing what I think were the planes, and it seemed that they were fighting over which plane not to take. As luck would have it, the unwanted plane became my plane and I was sitting in a small tin can flying over mountains with my stomach in my throat. We arrived safely, I was still reeling from the flight when I encountered the one armed baggage handler. Two sisters who had shared the scary flight had their luggage misplaced accidentally, their luggage wound up on another put-put plane going who knows where, their luggage was eventually found a day before they were to head back home.

How do you decide what risks to take?

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postaday2011

How do I decide what risks to take, this is a tough one. I don’t think of myself as being a risk taker, I just do life as it comes, generally. However, thinking about it, everything in life is a risk. Falling in love and getting married is a risk, especially considering that, at least in the United States, the divorce rate is about 50%. To make matters even riskier, you go and decide to become parents, there, you not only have the risk of your marriage not surviving the addition of a small human being, but you run the risk of medical issues, developmental issues and the list can go on and on for quite a while. Buying a house can be a risk, especially here in the U.S., the last 3 years have been a terrible risk in the housing market place. So many unfortunate people have homes that aren’t even worth the value of their mortgage. Thank the heavens, I am not in that category,we bought 17 years ago, the price was very reasonable and we have had the luck to be able to afford the monthly bill all these years.

Thinking of all the adventures that I’ve had over the years, I might not have realized at the time that the action I was taking was risky, and if I had known I don’t think that it would have changed my mind, I would have gone ahead with my trips, my marriage, my kids and moving away from my family. The only area in my life where I am completely against taking risks is financial. I don’t like shopping, i don’t trust the stock market, I am aware of scams and so I am immediately suspicious of any get rich idea or if it seems too easy. I know of the adage, you have to risk some to win some, however, I prefer to plod along like a turtle with my savings held nice and safely in the bank.

Greece Could Raise 300B Euros By Selling State Assets: ECB Official

I’m sorry but hasn’t the IMF been shown to be ineffectua­l and wrongheade­d with it’s austerity fiscal policies foisted 3rd world economies in exchange for their help? I never thought that the euro would be beneficial to the individual countries within Europe in the long term. I understand the initial concept, form a huge economic market in order to compete globally with the U.S, Asia and Latin America, but with the inequity amongst the countries, I always questioned how exactly it could remain stable in the long term. I firmly believe that Greece should not sell off its assets to the highest bidder, they will only regret it, it’s their cultural heritage. Economists need to look outside the box and figure out something beyond what we have now. If Keynes could do it when the economies had changed due to changing times then why can’t someone else do it now?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost