jeff

i'm here

What does this have to do with the President? Just sounds like another guy that wants to blame all of the ills of the world on Obama.

This is terrible news, I was really hoping for a happy ending. The stepdad's story makes absolutely no sense to me. What kind of father leaves his child alone to go out drinking with his friends, and he called his mother at 1am to borrow her truck and she actually came right over. Noone checked on the girl, and he was gone for five hours after that. I'm sorry that I'm casting judgement, and if he's innocent I apologize. I just need to vent. This story and it's outcome really bothers me.

Java, Java, and Java Seriously, stay away from COBOL, it's ancient and well past it's prime. I know a couple of Java programmers and they get job offers constantly. One switches jobs about once a year because the demand is so great. The other works for the government. C++ and Visual are good, I don't know much about RPG. I would just find my dream job on monster.com and see what languages they are looking for.

I'm looking for a free message board host for my website. It doesn't have to be fancy or very powerful, it's just a family website, but it does have to be free. I would really like to find one that is easy to use, I barely have time to update the website, much less manage a message board. Can anyone recommend a good one or one's to stay away from?

I've been to Estes Park quite a few times, most recently in 2004, and I would highly recommend it. There are many places to camp, many things to do(especially for kids), and Rocky Mountain National Park is breathtaking. This campground borders RMNP and has reasonable rates http://www.estesparkcampground.com/. I have about a million pictures of RMNP if you want to see any.

pm sent

Being born and raised in St. Louis, I physically can't root for a Chicago team to win anything, ever. It's childish, but I can't control it. Indy 312 Chicago 2

Phil, it was the downtown Best Western, near the landing. For what it's worth, one of the other guests said that they were charging "in season" rates, instead of the normal January rates. He claimed you could usually get a room at that hotel in January for less than half what they were charging. Since returning I've heard of many Branson hotels offering rooms at discounted rates, just hard to get that information out to people with no power.

Sunday night We're one of the lucky ones in Springfield, our power is back on. We spent one night at the in-laws farm and one in a Branson hotel. Gotta love a hotel with the class to raise their rates for people in need. Paid $85 plus fee for the dog for one night, total $95. Checked the internet when we got home, same hotel : $50. I won't give the name of the hotel, but it rhymes with West Bestern. The girl at the front desk said everyone in the hotel was a refugee from Springfield. As for the storm, we lost two trees and too many branches to count. It looks like a frozen tornado went through our neighborhood. One of our neghbors had a tree fall on the power line to their home, ripped the wires out from the house, they'll be out for a while. We got lucky, the only real damage is to the privacy fence, which is missing about 4 sections, but overall nothing major. I was hoping something would fall on our ugly shed, but no such luck. We checked on the house Sunday, and there was a tractor-trailer in the local grocery store parking lot selling generators and chain saws out of the back of the truck. There were probably 50 people in line waiting.

freezing rain all night here on Springfield. I've already had a tree branch fall through a section of my fence, and have lost two large branches in the front yard. Just hoping that the fence is the only thing to get hit tonight.

Those will never pass. A ban on ammunition not for sporting use, what are you supposed to shoot propane tanks with? 6 rounds per magazine? I can't see what good that will do. A majority of the new Democrats in congress ran on pro-gun, anti-gun control platforms. I don't see them trying this.

what is the proposed anti-gun law? I haven't heard anything about one, do you have a link?

How did they put the security of the troops and the nation in jeopardy? The democrats have passed no legislation and have had little or no influence on policy, and the press only does a 30-second blurb about Iraq at the top of the evening news. There was no affection before the war. The ties have been created by the war and occupation. They aren't siding as much with the Iraqi's, as against us. Al Qaeda couldn't care less about the Iraqi government or people, they just want to kill Americans.

Has anyone ever fished Big Cedar's nature park, Dogwood Canyon? I've been there a couple of times just to look around, but never fished there. We went on a Saturday in the summer, and the people we saw fishing were surrounded by onlookers. Would the crowds be smaller during the week and in the winter? Is the fishing worth it? A friend and I were looking at trying one of the pay to fish places this winter, and Dogwood looked like the closest to Springfield. Thanks.

Al Qaeda, and Bin Laden in particular, have never had any affection for Iraq. Bin Laden's reasoning for his first declaration of jihad against America was for our using of Saudi Arabia as a base for the first gulf war. He even offered to lead a Muslim force to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. He thought the war against Saddam should be lead by Muslim's, not by us. Of course, noone even considered his offer, because even then we knew he shouldn't be trusted. After the war, Bin Laden got some phony cleric (only clerics can declare jihad) and had a press conference declaring the jihad. PS - I know 3 muslims and they aren't violent at all, and in a conversation with one of them, he was concerned that Christianity was a violent faith. From the Crusades to the annihilation of Native Americans, the name of God has been used to justify all kinds of horrible things. Christianity even has it's own terrorists, the abortion clinic bombers of the 80's and 90's, the Oklahoma City bombers had ties to a few radical religious groups, and Christian Identity bomber Eric Rudolph. All religions (like all groups) have bad members that aren't representative of the faith in general.

I've heard a couple of plans floated around. One involves troop reductions starting in 2007 and another involves splitting the Iraqi government into 3 sections with provisional authority. I don't know if either will work, I doubt anything will work in a civil war, but at least they are ideas. The point was that the president was chastising others for not having a plan when he has no plan himself. I believe the phrase is "the pot calling the kettle black". But then again he also said on Nov 1 that Rumsfeld was staying for the duration of his term, that Rumsfeld and Cheney were "doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them."

I watched part of Bush's speech and it was almost funny. He accused Democrats of secretly plotting to raise taxes, and he made fun of them for not having a plan in Iraq, while he hasn't had a plan in Iraq for years now.

We had a very lost deer in my neighborhood last week. He had to be lost because we live in the middle of Springfield, a couple of blocks from Glenstone and Sunshine. the wife grabbed the camcorder and got some shaky video. The quality isn't very good, but at least she thought to tape it. I put it on my website here. It takes a little while to load the whole video. I tried to post this on OzarkHunters but the site seems to be down. I guess he was going to the bank, because that's the US Bank in the background. just in case, here's the address : http://web.mac.com/j_hoener/iWeb/Site/Podc...1AE2158278.html

I was getting ready for work and watched the whole thing. My brother was flying cross-country that day and that's all I could think about. I didn't find out that he was ok until late afternoon. I found out later that a friend from high school died in tower 1.

I don't profess to be an expert in global warming, but working at a university, I do have access to those that are and they all agree that global warming is real. Whether or not global warming is totally due to man's activities is still debatable, but there is very little debate as to the fact that man has had an impact on climate. Do you really think that all the power plants, cars, planes, and buildings on the planet have no impact at all? The earth has had periods of high carbon dioxide due to natural processes (fires, vegetation changes...), and warmer temperatures in the past, but the planet can take thousands of years to regulate this. The problem with global warming is that it has become a political football. Many people have made up their minds about global warming before they even look at the facts. Liberals will blindly believe any doom and gloom predictions because they distrust business. Conservatives won't even consider the possibility of global warming because they distrust science. All I know is that I have a 7 month old son, and I don't want him to inherit a planet with rising temperatures, rising ocean levels, and all the economic and social upheaval that could go with it, and all I can say is sorry, but we didn't want to change until it was absolutely certain, and by then it was too late.

I think it's interesting that the Bass Pro in Branson will be opening soon, and Bass Pro donates a bunch of money to improve Table Rock Lake and Taneycomo. It seems like a smart investment to me.

This concerns me for many reasons. First, when government claims to do things for schools, the money never seems to make it to the schools (especially rural ones). Second, I don’t like the thought of less public land. As someone who enjoys hiking and hunting on public land in SW Missouri, with all of our population growth, I’m worried about availability of public land. Third, who do you think will be buying this land? These are small tracts of land when compared to the whole Mark Twain National Forest, but they are large tracts of land on the market. Large enough that I think the only bidders will be developers and timber companies.

ILLEGAL