I have read with great interest over the last few weeks numerous diaries on a number of different blogs that point out how it is virtually impossible for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination for the Democratic party.  I certainly hope, indeed I pray, that they are right.  I am also pleased to see this meme picked up by the general press.  

However I think the time has come to change that narrative....

The world is full of colour and shades of grey, not black or white.  Life too often is cerebral and we take little time to smell the roses along the way.  Politics, above all else, is thought and passion.

Bliss is different and is never found in a brief moment.  I do not know, but I suspect, that bliss is different for everyone.   Great moments are found in laughter with friends, the fun of planning and preparing a perfect meal, moments savouring a special wine, the happiness of hugging a child, the wonder and the hope of a newborn, the smell of a freshly bathed baby, the comfort and warmth of a well loved pet.  But bliss is different from all these things.  It is that rare and special moment when many things come together to create and revitalize a sense of wonder in the world.  There's more...

Saturday, diary virgin, and stinking cold notwithstanding, I had to write tonight, so please be kind.

In September last year Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, two Americans, along with Kenneth Bigley, a Brit, were taken hostage. Eventually, all three were beheaded.  The ransom demand for their release was the release of female Iraqi prisoners.  

Today, Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena was released.   Interestingly, Giuliana was reporting (amongst other things) on the torture of women and children in Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq.  Yet did not the US military and the British and American governments claim in September of last year that there were no Iraqi female prisoners?  They claimed there were two exceptions: Rihab Rashid Taha, a scientist who became known as "Dr. Germ" for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a biotech researcher known as "Mrs. Anthrax.  More below: