On a personal note if you will allow, the following expresses my feelings perfectly about two recently found friends.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” — Anais Nin

Just a little something I did not want to leave unsaid.

My daughter in law just got off the phone with me. The test results from Wednesday have been confirmed, and the two lymph nodes under her arm are so small no treatment is necessary on them.

She will go back in six months unless she has some symptoms for another scan. After 4 clean scans a person is declared in remission from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

This is absolutely nothing short of a miracle and a Physician much greater than any on earth is responsible for this.

I get down on my knees and cry Holy! Holy! Holy!

Heavenly Father, I praise Your Holy Name, for you are God, and there is none other before You or after You.

Amen.

This article got me to thinking about what would happen in the US if this were in our court system ( I know, too much time on my hands right?).

Chimp denied a legal guardian
Court turns down request in case aiming for ‘ape rights’.

An Austrian judge turned down a request this week to appoint a woman as legal guardian of a chimpanzee.

The decision is a blow to a growing movement in Europe attempting to give apes some of the legal rights of humans, such as protection from being owned. But proponents of ape rights say they will appeal the decision and continue fighting for the cause elsewhere in Europe. In Spain, for example, they are pushing for a national law that would extend some human rights to apes.

The goal of the Great Ape Project is to extend basic human rights to apes, such as the right to life, protection of individual liberty and prohibition of torture.

I’m not sure if this is good news or bad since history has shown each leader in Russia gets progressively worse, and Putin has virtually returned to communism as a system of government.

MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin told Russians more clearly than ever Thursday that he will step down when his second term ends next spring, but left his choice of a successor tantalizingly unclear.
Speaking a day after the burial of Boris Yeltsin, who handed him Russia’s reins seven years ago, Putin rejected claims that he has beat a retreat from democracy and stifled freedoms that flourished under his predecessor.

The constitution adopted under Yeltsin bars presidents from serving three straight terms. But Putin’s popularity—and Russia’s lean experience with democratic power transfers—has led to persistent speculation that he might stay on.

Last month, the speaker of the upper parliament house became the latest in a string of politicians to call for constitutional changes allowing Putin to run in the presidential election in March 2008.

Putin has dismissed the idea but has occasionally left confusing hints. In a state of the nation speech to parliament, he seemed to clarify the issue with few words: “The next state of the nation address will be given by another head of state.”

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Full story.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire:

The subject of hedge funds came up tonight and two top contenders — John Edwards and Hillary Clinton — had only good words for the investment pools that others in their party have come to see as symbols of unchecked financial excess, of the rich and for the rich.

The question came at the first Democratic presidential debate at historically black South Carolina State University, in rural and lower-income Orangeburg, from moderator and NBC News anchor Brian Williams: Do hedge funds make America better in any way?

Mr. Edwards, who’s been tweaked by critics of late for a perceived disconnect between his populist “Two Americas” rhetoric and his own lifestyle of hedge funds, huge homes and $400 haircuts, envisioned at least the potential for good: “The financial markets are an important component of trying to figure out what it is we need to do about the fact that we have 47 million people without health care, 37 million people who wake up in poverty every day.”

“They play an enormous role in how money moves in this country,” the former North Carolina senator continued.

Mrs. Clinton actually sounded the more populist note, suggesting the potential for some regulation of hedge funds: “America is a great place because we have an entrepreneurial economy. We have people who are willing to make stakes and new enterprises and invest their money. And, obviously, one of the other reasons we’re a great country is because we’ve learned over the years how to regulate that, so nobody gets an unfair advantage.

The former first lady of Arkansas also drew a question on that state’s Wal-Mart, another favorite target of fellow Democrats: Is the now-global retailing giant “a good thing or a bad thing” for the nation?

“Well, it’s a mixed blessing,” she replied. It started, she recalled, as a homegrown provider of affordable goods to rural areas of Arkansas (“where,” she added, “I was happy to live for 18 years”). But as the company grew, she said, it “raised serious questions” about corporate responsibility for providing employee health care, safe working conditions and not discriminating based on race and sex.

Go read the rest so you can see it all in context.

Also, stroll over to this WSJ article for a summary of the actual debate. (Subscription may be required)

Wizbang, a site that has been conservative since its inception, now has Wizbang Blue for the liberal readers of the blogosphere.

I’m adding it to our blogroll and now you have someplace other than Huffington Post or Kos to choose from which to read.

Seems they’re doing what we are except we don’t devote an entire section of our blog to each side of the political aisle.

From The American Spectator Online comes the story of our Speaker of the House refusing to meet with the President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, who is an ally of the United States in the war on drugs.

According to sources within the House Democratic leadership, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has denied the request for a meeting with Uribe when he comes to Washington next week. Uribe’s staff has attempted to set up a meeting with Pelosi, offering to come to her offices with Uribe if necessary. Pelosi has refused the meeting.

“She has third parties who have encouraged her not to take the meeting,” says a leadership aide, who said a coalition of labor organizations and MoveOn.org had been pressuring her to not meet with Uribe. “We’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not like we’re talking about some family from San Francisco who stopped by her office unannounced. This is the president of a country.”

In Colombia, Uribe has been struggling against communist terrorist groups financed by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, as well as leftist political pressure internally. All while attempting to work with the U.S. against narco-trafficking. “He’s a friend and an ally,” says a State Department source, who was unaware of Pelosi’s snub. “I’d be surprised that one of our national leaders would not meet with a strategic partner of the United States of America.”

Earlier this week Pelosi declined to meet with the man overseeing U.S. military forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petreaus. Pelosi, though, is willing to meet with America’s enemies. Against the advice of the State Department, Pelosi pressed for and did meet with the dictator of Syria earlier this month. According to leadership staff, she has members of her personal staff working on initial plans for a trip to Venezuela, perhaps in the fall, to meet with Chavez.

It has already been announced former Vice President Al Gore has refused to meet with Uribe for human rights violations, but with our Speaker of the House being an active member of the leadership of our country what is her excuse for not meeting with him?

She met with Assad and he can’t be any better than what she thinks Uribe is. She refused to meet with Gen. Patreaus before going ahead with the plan to block him and our troops in Iraq, but she can find the time for Assad and now possibly Chavez, who stood at the U.N. and publicly proclaimed the sitting President of the United States of America “Satan” and announced he could still smell the sulphur.

Even if he were a benevolent dictator I wouldn’t meet with him just on that principle.

What kind of signal is she trying to send out to the world? That if the Democrats get in the White House it will be as it was when Jimmy Carter was there? Everything will stand on “human rights” and enemies of our country will be welcome even if they violate human rights?

Sometimes I think our government is curiouser and curiouser, and I can’t figure out our newly elected leaders.

Why is it the Democrat leaders in our government march to the beat of Moveon.org and labor’s drum? Aren’t they special interests and don’t they accuse Republicans of favoring special interests?

How about both parties favoring the special interests of the American people for a change?