The country which has had expansionist policies since before its inception is Israel. The country bombing its neighbors is Israel. The country with nuclear weapons is Israel. Israel wiped Palestine off the map! Israel has been conducting ethnic cleansing since 1947. The country that has been assassinating nuclear scientists is Israel. And the country that launched the cyber attack is Israel.
Whatever sympathy Israel may have enjoyed in 1947 and 1948 has been squandered. Only a fool cannot see that. Keep it up! Keep trying to silence Israel's legitimate critics by slandering them. (I don't even know what chardonnay is.) Concerned reasonable people think that Israel's behavior may lead it to end in a ball of fire. You'd have to be a fool to think you can go on committing ethnic cleansing forever without people wanting to put a stop to it. Right now, Israel thinks it can handle the Palestinians and their supporters with more and more violence. They value building settlements on occupied land more than they value peace.
Israel has only one sane choice. They should pay reparations to the Palestinians whose land they have stolen and to the families of the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Turks and Americans that they have murdered. They should get out of the occupied territories. They should disband the settlements and treat the settlers for their serious mental illnesses. They should get out of the Golan Heights. They should pay reparations to the governments of Palestine and Syria. And they should stop squandering water. They need a sane water policy, the cornerstone of which should be solar powered desalination projects.
Stop using the term "oil rich." Israel's per capita income is almost twice as high as most other countries in the Middle East. Iran is an oil exporting nation, and like all nations, it knows how much oil there is left on earth and how rapidly it is being depleted. Iran has been rationing petro at least since 2007. World oil production has peaked and cannot keep up with demand. In the long term, Iranians, like Americans and Israelis should learn to appreciate the beauty of wind turbines. In the short term, Iran does have a legitmate need for nuclear power.

At least she gave them up willingly. With most animal hoarding cases, that is not always the case. Hopefully she will get the help she requires (we are talking about mental illness here - which is why I wince at your repeated use of her name and address, but I guess that's freedom of speech/public record) and these dogs will get medical treatment and will be able to live happy lives.

Kudos to MSPCA Law Enforcement, Northampton ACO and Dakin for working together.

Please do a follow up on the punishments given.

Cathy, put down the wine for a few minutes and read the chain of posts between us.

I commented that Iran is constantly threatening to wipe out Israel at the same time they are pursuing nukes.

You retorted that I must be reading unreliable right-wing garbage.

I replied back listing the news organizations that have reported the comments of the Iranian leadership and have also reported the world's fears that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Dispelling your false accusations must have been like spilling a glass of good chardonnay to you. Now you come back with a tangled "straw man" ploy to divert attention from the fact that you're initial accusation was blown out of the water.

Has Israel behaved like a saint since their inception? No. What country has?

Let me try to address it this way to you:

Let's say that someone keeps threatening to level their neighbor's home and kill everyone in it - and does it with a creepy smile.

Well, the police don't take the threat seriously because the neighbor has no way of actually carrying the act of leveling that persons home - so they just call that person a crackpot and go on their merry way.

Suddenly that crackpot starts tinkering with high power explosives and starts to get pretty good at it. Add to it that crackpot intensifies their actions and starts bragging about how they are going to send their neighbor's house up on a huge ball of fire and kill everyone in it.

Does the person being threatened have a justifiable reason to be concerned? Might it make sense for the police to step in and see what's going on? And what if that crackpot won't let the police check his house (like the Iranians won't let the U.N. in to inspect)? What is the person being threatened to do?

According to you, everything is fine and if the person being threatened has their home blown to bits and everyone inside is killed, well they simply deserved it.

Genocide, Cathy, should NEVER be tolerated for ANY reason.

What a great testimonial. I recently directed a co worker towards Whole Children and she reports being thrilled with the opportunity it is providing her daughter. Keep up the good work

Whatever we think about who controls what, countries with cheaper universal health care have much better statistics on life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures of quality of health and life than the US does, and all at a much lower cost. When we continue to use catchwords like "freedom" think about Somalia which doesn't have much government intervention at all. What are living conditions like there?

Every year, supporters of Israel resort have to resort to more and more torturous reasoning to come up with any sort of justification for Israeli actions. Your arguments don't stand up to any sort of fact checks or logical analysis. The arguemt in the article that VSM linked goes like this: If Bill knows George and George says something that I can twist into something brutal and ridiculous then I can tar Bill with being guilty of having brutal and ridiculous ideas. That's the old straw man debate technique. If Bill says something based on solid facts and logic, then I must distort what Bill said and then argue with the distortions of my own creation. It is a slander against Bill because you're alleging that he said things that you know he did not say. In this case, you're setting up a straw man once removed, because you're not even alleging that Bill said anything. You're only alleging that he knows someone who said something.