In the election last week, Missy Reilly Smith ran for Washington DC delegate to the United States House of Representatives (she lost to Eleanor Holmes Norton).  Smith ran largely as an anti-abortion candidate. She ran 30 second ads which aired 24 times on local broadcast network affiliates across the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area, preceded by a 15 second warning (added by the station management) due to the shocking content. What was the ad? More >>

Missy Smith is running for Washington D.C. delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.  She is running against incumbent Eleanor Holmes Norton and claims to have the backing of the Tea Party movement.   What is most interesting about this candidacy?  She is running largely as an anti-abortion candidate. More >>

Last week, I wrote about Molly Norris, the Seattle cartoonist who made a declaration that April 10, 2010 should be known as "Everybody Draw Mohammed" day.  This poor woman is now on a designated Muslim "hit list," according to our FBI, and has to go into hiding for the rest of her life.  The American-born Muslim imam Anwar al-Awlaki (the guy who allegedly inspired the Fort Hood massacre) singled out Molly Norris as a "prime target," saying "her proper abode is hellfire." More >>

I feel so very sorry for Molly Norris. She is the Seattle cartoonist who, tongue in cheek, made a declaration that April 10, 2010 should be known as "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."... More >>

I've been sitting "shiva" for the past four weeks after I issued my apology for using a word on this radio program that I should not have used. I've let the hounds of fury misinterpret and misrepresent my apology, as well as my decision to end my syndicated radio program at the end of the year.  I've been asked why didn't I strike back?  Frankly, with folks like Al Sharpton and Howard Stern and Wanda Sykes and organizations like Media Matters, the NAACP, and the Urban League (to name only a few) pelting me with insults, calling me a racist, saying "good riddance".....it was hard to get a word in edgewise. More >>

I want to make a public statement about Sarah Palin; former Governor of Alaska and candidate for Vice President of the United States.  More >>

10 Reasons Why You Should Become A Virtual Assistant This Year
By Liz Folger, Work-at-Home Mom Expert

First of all, what is a virtual assistant (VA)? I like to explain it as a word processor gone wild. A VA is someone who works with clients, providing them with top quality support services without having to be physically present at a clients office. VA services are becoming more and more popular thanks to today's technology such as email, the Internet, online instant messaging, fax, phone, and overnight delivery. Gone are the days of offices needing their support staff in the same building.

If you have a secretarial background or other support staff expertise and a love for computers and all the technology it offers, then here are ten very good reasons why you should start your own VA business this year.

1. Make An Income You Can Live On
   
   It was reported by virtual assistant trade organizations that the average full-time VA working in the US would gross about $39,452 annually. Now that isn't a bad income! That is the type of money you can live on, even if you are a single mom.
   
   
2. The Need For VA's Is Only Going To Get Greater
   
   According to the George Washington University forecast of emerging technology, Virtual Assisting will become a $130 Billion Industry by 2008. Thanks to our growing technology, and the fact that it's easier to just source out work to a VA due to the fact that a business doesn't have to pay for any benefits when they out-source, this type of service will only get bigger and more in demand.
   
   
3. Are you feeling unfulfilled, unchallenged, and unmotivated? Is your current corporate job beginning to feel like a real drag?
   
   Are you dreading getting dressed up, driving your commute to work, and working with a boss who is ungrateful and unappreciative? Do you love some parts of your job and despise other parts and wish you could do the parts you love more? Then becoming a VA might be something you need to look into.
   
   
4. Want to continue your professional working life without having to leave home? Want the flexibility to work from home and have a better balance between work and life?
   
   Maybe you're thinking of having kids, or have had your first baby. You so want to continue your career, but you also want to spend more time with your children. Take a good hard look at the world of a VA. This type of home business will continue to give you the satisfaction of a career, while also offering you the ability to be there for your kids doctor appointments, their first step, school field trips, and running them around to after school events.
   
   
5. Gain the ability to work with people you want to work with.
   
   Do you tend to click with certain types of people more than others? With a VA business, you can decide who you want your clients to be. Authors, salespeople, consultants, coaches, executives, entrepreneurs, and small business owners are just a few of the types of people you could work with.
   
   
6. The ability to do more than just one thing.
   
   Looking for a little variety in your business? Don't want to get stuck doing the same thing over and over again? Here is a list of just some of the things you can do as a VA.
   
   Administration
   Writing services (technical or creative)
   Business/employee communications
   Proofreading and editing, research (online or traditional)
   Word-processing
   Spreadsheets
   Data entry
   Database management
   Message management
   Scheduling
   Bill paying
   Simple website design
   Newsletter distribution
   Bulk mailing
   Reminder services
   Event planning
   Special projects
   Concierge services
   Secretarial services
   Research
   Data processing/data management
   Desktop publishing
   Transcription services
   Mail and email services
   Telephone/fax services
   Internet services
   Bookkeeping
   Purchasing services
   Writing/editing services
   Marketing services
   Personal services
   Santa letters
   Proposal Writer
   
   
7. The ability to Niche yourself.
   
   Choose just a few of the ideas above and take it one step further. Niche yourself. You might already possess knowledge in a certain area. You can contact those businesses you are already familiar with and work with them. Maybe in the past you had worked as support staff for a marketing company. If marketing is your thing, you can let businesses know that you can not only be their VA and take care of all their typing and database applications, but that you can also use your expertise to help them market their business.
   
   
8. Use the equipment you already have.
   
   If you're reading this article, then there's a good chance you already have a computer, a printer, and fax capabilities. Why not start putting that equipment to good use and make some money?
   
   
9. The choice between working full-time or part-time.
   
   Maybe you don't want to work full time, but you need to do something to call your own. That's great! You'll be your own boss; you can decide how much or how little you want to work.
   
   
10. Being able to say you love the way you make money.
    
    If just the thought of working with your computer and current technology makes you giddy, why not make money doing something you love? Grab hold of the opportunity to make as much money as you'd like and the ability to work from your home. You have the opportunity to decide who you want to work with, the type of work you want to do or not do, and your niche area. If this sounds like the perfect opportunity for you visit *** to learn more about starting your own Virtual Assistant Business.

For More information on starting your own Virtual Assistant business visit: www.bizymoms.com/cart/careers/va_kit.html

Liz Folger is the founder of www.bizymoms.com. Bizymoms.com is the leading online resource for work-from-home ideas. The site offers home-based business start-up kits, online classes, e-books, chats and enthusiastic support for moms who want to have it all - a family and a career. Visit a href="http://www.bizymoms.com" target="_blank">www.bizymoms.com for more information.

* The author gives permission for the use of this article on DrLaura.com

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Fears Of A Clown
by Bob Schwartz

There are certain words spoken by a child that can send a shiver of panic through every parental nerve ending. I've discovered that the words causing the greatest consternation were not "Don't worry, the tattoos can always be removed with a laser" or "Can you believe putting in six eyebrow rings barely hurt?"

Rather, the words which sent me quickly into a panic attack were, "My Gymbo's gone!"

Most children, sometime in their early bedtime careers, take a liking to sleeping with a stuffed animal, cuddly clown, small blanket or even something out of the ordinary like one of my children's predilection for nightly embracing a deck of Rugrats Uno cards. Don't ask.

Our son fell into the clown category, and while putting him to bed one night during a family vacation in Canada, we discovered the terrifying experience of finding that his Gymbo the clown was gone. Vanished. Without even a trace of stuffing left behind or a crayon scribbled note.

After ransacking the room and coming up Gymboless, it was clear that he was most likely the victim of an involuntary dollnapping. We concluded he must have been inadvertently scooped up with the sheets that day by the hotel staff. Poor little Gymbo was lying innocently on the bed one minute and then, suddenly, his world was torn asunder with the disengagement of a fitted sheet.

Apparently, he was abruptly wrapped up in the bed linen and tossed down that dark and seemingly never-ending chute to the basement laundry facility. He went from his sheltered suburban upbringing, to being quickly exposed to the giant underbelly of a hotel building. He was naively left to wonder what he'd done to be cast aside and jettisoned into the dungeon of the sheet and pillow case world he was then forced to call home.

The immediate focus was damage control by one parent and Gymbo retrieval by the other. As our son broke out into hysterics, he made it painfully clear that no Gymbo for him meant no sleep. For everyone. And after a long day of nonstop vacationing movement, no sleep was simply an untenable concept for me.

My wife quickly got connected to the hotel laundry room and explained the dire circumstances. She was advised that they'd not seen him yet, but amazingly, they requested she provide them a description of the victim.

This caused us to immediately wonder just how many stuffed dolls they had lying in that basement. Was there some international black market for stuffed cuddly things going on down there? I grabbed the phone and interjected that we'd be able to pick him out of a lineup, so please just let us know how many cotton clowns they'd seen recently. Or perhaps they'd like us to come down and do a composite watercolor painting for them.

I handed the phone back to my wife who patiently provided the laundry staff the unmistakable physical characteristics of a stuffed blue and yellow clown #151; a missing button on his body-hugging suspenders, frizzy red hair, a frayed right leg, about twelve inches long, a bow tie, and with an unwavering cat that ate the canary smile on his face. I felt very confident they wouldn't confuse him with a mattress pad.

As we anxiously paced back and forth, the phone finally rang. In a thick French Canadian accent, the unemotional voice said, "Vee have located your clown."

The words, spoken so solemnly yet somewhat muffled, forced me to become fearful they would next demand a ransom? Or, worse yet, advise us that after a violent fifty-minute foray in the tumble dryer his arm was hanging by a thread?

My wife and I were so thankful that Gymbo was soon delivered to our door in one piece and wearing that same cockeyed grin, but to me, he had a little shell-shocked look. I could only think of the horrors he must have seen down below, tossed in amongst the giant spinning washer along with stained tablecloths and thrown about in the whirling dryers with a bath towel pressed against his face.

We could only hope that the familiar rhythmic breathing of his sleeping owner in the footed pajamas would soon erase the memories of his emotionally charged excursion into the outside world.

We did learn to avoid any unchaperoned Gymbo excursions in the future by tying one end of a shoelace around his waist and the other end around the bedpost each morning. I know that doesn't necessarily look all that loving, but hey, he never stops smiling. And it does eliminate one potential for bedtime parental panic.

Once was enough #151; for all of us.

Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com

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Thank you for speaking about these jerks that don't want to see T shirts with the Greatest American flag worn by somebody else in the 5 de mayo celebrations. More >>

An Oregon middle school teacher has publicly denounced the Tea Partiers - a grassroots political organization which opposes many of President Obama's health and financial concepts and actions - as "a loose affiliation of racists, homophobes and morons" among more offensive names.The school district placed him on leave, pending the conclusion of an investigation by the school district into whether he used school hours or computers to work on his anti-Tea Party website, and if his political activity was appropriate behavior for a teacher of middle school students.The teacher had announced his intention to embarrass Tea Partiers by attending their rallies dressed as Adolf Hitler, carrying signs bearing racist, sexist, and anti-gay epithets, and acting as offensively as possible, according to FoxNews.com.The Oregon Tea Party organization is quoted as saying that the teacher doesn't need to lose his job.' He just needs to have sensitivity and anger management training.I think they're just being politically correct.' He should be fired for sure.He has the responsibility of teaching and role-modeling the proper behavior for a citizen in a democracy.' Attempting to embarrass and destroy an opposing point of view is not part of the democratic process, in spite of the fact that it seems like the main means of discourse in our society at present.' And it has to stop ''somewhere.He could have had his students do a project, learning about the positions of the Tea Party movement, and to critique them, with pros and cons as they see them (in spite of the fact that most kids their age pretty much just parrot what they learn at home).' Nonetheless, debates and critical essays are what he should be teaching, not "search and destroy."I hope he is fired ASAP.'' Let that be a lesson! More >>