Yes, and when Putin's through with Snowden, he'll toss him out like a carcass picked clean.

This OP knocks it out of the park!

Don't know which picture I like best - the one with McConnell (hahahahaha!!!!) or the one of little Barack with the baseball bat. Impossible to choose so I won't even try.

We are privileged indeed to live in these times, challenging as it may be. If life on earth is

preparation for something afterward, then I feel as if we're standing in high cotton even now.

Although I try to keep an open mind w/o letting it become a garbage pit,

and I try to give others the benefit of doubt when possible - still I have the most stringent standards for deciding who has earned the moral authority to lead me. (While I keep a watchful eye even there!) With an equal nod to women such as Hillary and Elizabeth Warren, these two men will always have my ear and heart. They've earned it. Pity the fool who treads on them too heavily in my presence.

I saved my hot cocoa for the speech. It was worth it.

I was impressed by POTUS' nod to the Speaker.

Showed a lot of class. Put the lie to his own detractors. Not that they'll appreciate it...

I quit watching commentaries on his speeches. I heard it myself, thank you guys, and I don't need to be told what it meant. I certainly don't enjoy listening to the way his words are so often twisted.

Yes, they do; and your violation of GROUP standards says a lot about YOU.

Not at all flattering either. This is not GD, not a forum for debate; we are a GROUP, specifically devoted to promoting President Obama's policies. Please don't hand us that threadbare excuse of not realizing where you are. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Repeat offenders rather quickly get themselves banned, just in case you've been misled elsewhere as to how long-suffering we tend to be.

Any further such negative comments will be given short shrift, I assure you.

If it's not too evil to inject a bit of levity here,

I had a strange case on a military base where the next-door neighbor lady mistook my Persian cat's wails for a baby's crying. I was doing some decorating that the cat interfered with, so I shut her up in another room and she editorialized at the top of her lungs.

When the MPs arrived, luckily they thought it was funny as hell when I led them to the cause of the disturbance. The neighbor lady never stopped apologizing, but I kept telling her she did the right thing because it could've been a person in trouble - even me!

Luckily she never heard our 1/4 bobcat screaming at the top of his lungs when we lived out in the boonies. That would send a chill up anyone's back, although I don't think he could be mistaken for a human. It was a wild shriek that no domestic cat I know of makes.

Sounds like my kind of priest.

My dad not only believed in protecting the weak and innocent, he also told the boys that if he ever heard of them NOT being proactive enough when they should, then he'd beat the crap out of them. Either that or he would've made them wish they were dead, because he didn't mess around and people knew it.

Ah, the Irish... gotta love 'em, don'tcha?

That case is seared into my brain - I lived nearby at the time.

Also the case of Richard Speck killing 8 nursing students by removing them from a room one by one. Back then girls were raised to be submissive - look what it got them. I vowed if I ever had a daughter, I'd teach her to KICK ass worse than anybody alive.