1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Ground Zero Mosque Alternative?

The Drudge Report is currently showing a picture from the news organization that cannot be mentioned of the West Wing of the White House covered in a white tarp.

Seeing as Obama just stepped in it over the weekend by originally in very strong language supporting the Mosque at Ground Zero, I was thinking perhaps his compromise on this issue, to get his aspirin out of the doghouse, was to allow his Moslem brothers to build a Mosque at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue instead.

Yes, I know that's crazy but what ideas do you have for why the White House is currently undercover?

Anyone?

Elusively yours,
ilja

Crazy & Scary Flash Floods in TN

We are having some crazy weather here in middle Tennessee. We have 3 interstates closed due to flooding and I have been watching local news for the last hour of a major interstate flooding with people still in their cars. We've had 5 1/2 inches of rain in one day which equals what was expected for the whole month of May.

I'm looking at video right now of cars where you can barely see their roofs. Oh and the water is starting to turn muddy. This is crazy. This is the same interstate that leads to my neck of the woods. God I hope everyone got out of those cars in time. I was watching earlier when they first started flooding.

Now I'm watching a home floating down the interstate. They believe it was a home that was being transported but they aren't for sure. This is horrible. It's like watching a disaster movie. I just pray like crazy that no one is in any of these vehicles. The home is falling apart. It's wild. The roof just popped up and the house is disintegrating.

I'll try to go back and recap what I first saw. Oh wait a minute, I just heard that the home floating down the interstate was a portable building from a local private school. The same school that my son attended for a few years.

Okay, here I go again trying to recap this crazy day. I got a phone call from my son making sure I was at home since it was so bad out there. He said he was trying to go somewhere, when the weather got so bad he turned around and went back home. It didn't dawn on me at the time how unusual that is since this is the same son who isn't afraid of ice.

A few minutes later, it thundered so loud and the rain sounded so bad that I grabbed my dog, my phone and my cancer sticks and went running to the closet to dive in, barely closing the door so I could still hear the TV weather reports.

That didn't take too long and thankfully we didn't actually get a tornado. But ironically my favorite weather lady, Lisa Patton on WKRN TV, started warning us about driving through standing water and how us Tennesseans respect tornadoes but have a tendency to not respect the dangers of flash floods.

There are several cameras around town that are normally used to show traffic reports that WKRN started showing us because of the reports of some of the interstates being closed. Unfortunately, the part of the interstate that first went crazy had not been closed yet when we first started watching what was happening on it. On the eastbound side of I-24, the cars were all in the far left lane driving bumper to bumper very slowly because the other lanes were already flooded.

You could see a large semi on the westbound side of the interstate just stopped. I don't know why. Suddenly, the water started rising on the cars in the eastbound lane when people started jumping out of the cars and climbing over the interstate barrier to the westbound side. At first, I thought these folks were crazy because there were a few cars starting to come down that side of the interstate. But it wasn't long when the cars in the eastbound lane started floating sideways. Then there were more people getting out of their cars and climbing the barrier.

It was really scary already . . .

BREAKING NEWS: There was just a report that a hillside in a surrounding county gave away.

Back to the story. Anyway that one semi that had been sitting still started moving and other cars were coming down the good side of the interstate when the barrier climbers were just walking around in the middle of that side of the interstate. I later realized why they weren't going to the other side of the interstate. It was flooding worse than where they had just come from.

Then suddenly on the eastbound side, a large semi started driving down the middle of that roadway that was already flooded and his truck created such large waves that they started going over the tops of the cars that had previously turned sideways from the flooding. I'm still praying all of the people in those cars did make it out in time.

Later, the news was showing video (mind you this is live-stream video) of the same interstate further east, heading west toward the same part of the interstate we had just watched flood. The news-folks were getting excited saying someone needs to let emergency workers know what was ahead. Apparently, they did know or at least they found out quickly and the interstate was closed.

Right now I'm watching what looks like a river in the middle of the interstate and another semi is driving through it. This is crazy. Now there's a car driving down the other side of this same interstate.

I'm worried about my son's fiancé' coming home later tonight. She's working until late this evening and I don't know how she's going to get home safely. He keeps telling me that she's not stupid and will be careful. I can't help but think that the folks in those first cars on I-24 weren't stupid either. They just got caught in one of our worst flash-floods that I can remember. Thankfully, there are no reports of any deaths yet.

I just heard on the news that there was 9 inches of rain in Franklin, TN where my son's fiancé is working.

I'm currently watching a water-rescue of some folks in a rubber boat right in front of a Church that I drove past last week. I'm watching a video right now of a man hanging onto a telephone pole and since it's not a live video, they said they believe the man was swept away. They tried to get rescue boats in to help but they were all in use and no one could come.

I just spoke to my son and he told me how his fiancé'' is planning on getting home. Right after that, I saw a news report of one the roads she is planning on using to get home being flooded. Hopefully, it's a part of that road that is further north than where she is.

I know this is quite a long Blog but things keep happening. Please keep us Tennesseans in your prayers and especially the one man that was hanging on the telephone pole.

Elusively yours,
ilja

Edited to add: I just learned the man hanging onto the telephone pole died.

Edited again because some of my corrections did not take yesterday.

Being at the Dem's Beck & Call

I'm feeling pretty hopeless right now about America. I just watched Glenn Beck and pray like crazy that he is wrong. He was talking about a bill that is suppose to be brought up tomorrow regarding Puerto Rico. According to Beck, this is just the first step in making Puerto Rico our 51st state via the TN plan.

Isn't that special? Apparently, my state demanded to be seated in Congress, making us a State without any kind of approval or process as was done by every other state except perhaps Alaska. And now that process may be what the progressives use to stack the deck of Congress with enough leftists to the point where the Dems will be in power for decades to come.

There is also talk about passing legislation to allow D.C. to have Representatives in Congress despite our founding fathers warning against it. Wouldn't that be special; more leftists in Congress?

And of course, they are still working on the felon vote.

If all of this is true, no wonder the Democrats weren't worried about going against the majority of Americans on Healthcare reform.

Beck talked about how the progressives have worked for ages to remove God from the public square, to not respect the Constitution by not even teaching it anymore and replacing it's importance in our courts with case law and to replace individualism with collective rights. In other words, our rights are no longer considered unalienable but given to us by government, i.e. men who can change our rights to the whims of the moment. Or as we all know, more power in their hands and less in our own.

Then of course there is the teaching of Social Justice in our Churches which also is nothing but replacing God's desires with man's.

And just now, they are reporting that the Senate Republicans gave in to the Democrats and have agreed to debate the financial bill. Yet there is nothing in this bill about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What's the point? I wonder if we can get the word backbone removed from Webster's dictionary? Talk about the Republicans knowing how to take defeat out of the jaws of victory. What idiots!

If that is not enough, I heard earlier today that Marco Rubio expressed concerns about the new illegal immigration legislation passed in Arizona. Here I was thinking that he was someone we could count on to be more Conservative than Republican but nooooo, he's more afraid of losing the votes of people who support illegal activity just because of the law-breakers ethnic background. Geeze, Rubio, I am of Mexican descent but I do not support amnesty for illegals regardless of their heritage. This makes it hard to be upset with Crist's move to run as an Independent and I'm definitely not sending Rubio any money.

Others such as Huckabee and Romney have also spoken out against the new Arizona illegal immigration bill. While I'm not a great fan of either man, the fact that they would both be so weak-kneed about illegal immigration when they both are just salivating at another run for President speaks volumes about the caliber or lack thereof in our possible future leaders.

All this time, I've been irritated with Glenn when he would imply there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Now I'm starting to wonder if he was right all along.

This is what happens when you put your hope in men. They will always fail you. The only one who will never disappoint even if I don't always understand is our Father who art in Heaven, Jesus Christ.

I just wish it did not take so much angst for me to re-open my eyes to the truth.

I love the United States of America. I love our founding fathers. I love our Constitution. I love Tennessee. I love my freedom. I know freedom isn't free, but sometimes I just want to go on home. I've been praying for Him to help me to seek His face instead of just His hand. Maybe this is a start.

Elusively yours,
ilja

Stupid Is As Congress Does

So it's the middle of the night and I'm sitting here wondering what I'm going to do if I lose my job. You see, I work in the healthcare industry and my clients are private insurance companies. Since the house just passed the public healthcare plan, if this bill makes it through the Senate, then it's only a matter of time before all private insurance companies go out of business.

I've been down this road before, worrying about how I was going to make a living when I could not get a job but this time it's different. In the past, when I was laid off twice, I always knew that if only I could get my foot in the door, I could still make a decent living as long as I stayed within my same industry. Don't get me wrong. I'm not crazy about the insurance industry but seeing as I don't have a college education, the only other jobs I could get paid much less for someone like myself since I would be so green.

It's times like this when I really miss having living parents. At least if they were still alive, I would have some place to go if all else fails.

Yes, I know I'm going to the extremes here in my worrying but this is my Blog and I can worry if I want to.

What I don't get is how can so many Americans be so oblivious to how wrong it is for the government to take over private industries? If you ask someone personally if they want to live off the government dough, they will speechify how they've worked for everything they've gotten in life and of course they don't want handouts. But in the very next breath, they will espound on the evils of big business and how they need to be controlled. Never once does it seem to dawn on them that government bureaucracy and red tape is much worse than any evil industrialists.

Then what about Congress? Did they not hear about those two governors in NJ and VA who just won by a landslide defeating opponents from the same party as the house majority? While I can see a couple of folks being so ideologically driven that they are willing to push through government-run healthcare no matter the consequences, how can so many of them not see the writing on the wall?

What is it going to take to wake up the rest of America? Shoot, most of them have no idea that they are going to have to give up their incandescent light bulbs in just a little over 2 years. I want to scream from the hilltops, PEOPLE WAKE UP!!! This is no rantings of a nut-case or someone so Ayn Randish, that they see conspiracy theories around every bend. Yes, I'm a pro-lifer and a fundie but that doesn't mean I'm stupid.

Speaking of stupid, Congress just acted stupidly and I don't need to wait on any more information to come to that conclusion.

Elusively yours,
ilja

Real Conservatives Will Boycott the NFL

If you are a "real" Conservative, then you will boycott the NFL for the remainder of this season at least. It is not right what they did to Rush Limbaugh. How dare they say he cannot invest in an NFL team simply because he's a Conservative. That is the same as them saying that you, as a Conservative, are not good enough to invest in the NFL. Therefore, you should follow their logic and not invest anything in the NFL including your time, money or fan support.

Rather Rush is your cup of tea or not, it cannot be argued that he is one of the major players in the Conservative movement of today. Without him, there is no way we would have gotten as far as we have, even if it's not far enough for most of our tastes. He is a living legend and we are privileged enough to be living during his time.

What happened to Rush is despicable. If that is not the very definition of slander, I don't know what is. The audacity of the drive-by media to repeat the rumors of Rush quotes even if they were being clever with their words implying they were just reporting what others were accusing Rush of was beyond the pale.

Then the nerve of the race-baiter kings, Sharpton and Jackson, after what they have really done, while not surprising, was disgusting.

How can we as Conservatives let the NFL get by with this when we wouldn't dare let any other industry do the same without repercussions? Do we have the integrity of character to stand up for one of our own or are we as spineless as the RINOs in our midst? Isn't football just a game or do we really worship at the altar of the goalposts?

While I know many of you will be appalled at my making such a statement as "real" Conservatives will boycott the NFL, I am planning on putting my money where my mouth is. I have been a football fanatic ever since I had a crush on that hunka hunka burning love football player that sat in front of me in my High School Math class . I have been a TN Titans fan ever since the Music City Miracle. Yet, I am willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and boycott watching any of their games for the rest of the season. How about you?

Elusively yours,
ilja

Discovering Freedom in Ownership

How do you explain something that you don't quite understand yourself? How do you break a topic down that most people are clueless about, when you are still in the beginning stages of learning it yourself?

I use to be a trainer and still am at times and I have been told that I am really good at it. I believe the reason I am so good at it, when I am, is because of the way that I think when I'm in the process of learning a new topic. I have a tendency to ask a lot of questions and am not satisfied until someone explains something to me in a very basic level where I can understand it from the ground up. I have learned that if I can understand nearly any topic at it's most basic level, then I can much better teach it to someone else.

What does all of this have to do with the topic at hand, you ask?

The past couple of years, particularly after supporting Fred Thompson and reading his and Thomas Sowell's writings, the light bulb has finally gone off over my head. I am finally learning just how much our freedom is related to our ability to own property. I am finally learning that the less government has the ability to interfere with what we earn and how it is spent, the more we are able to achieve. Not only does more government interference with our earning ability stifle us from being able to reach our goals, it also interferes with our being able to stay motivated to do the hard work that is needed to get to where we want to go.

In essence, the more government taxes us, regulates how business is conducted, passes legislative mandates in all areas including healthcare, the tighter the handcuffs that keep us from pursuing happiness. And in reverse, the less government interferes by lower taxes, less regulations, less mandates, the higher we can soar to where the sky is the limit.

I realize that to most of you reading this, you are probably thinking 'well duh'. But to me and I believe to most Americans, it is not something that we have grown up knowing. Which brings me back to my first point.

I tried explaining all of this to my son and it was apparent that I was not making a bit of sense or at least, if I was, I was not keeping his interest. While I can attribute some of his non-interest to his age, I believe a bigger part of it is that I simply don't understand economics enough myself to be able to use the right words to convey just how important all of this is to our freedom.

Not only am I wanting to explain this to him, I am wanting to explain this to others that I know that don't keep up with current events the way we do here at RightNation. This is where you come in. I am hoping that some of you who are more knowledgeable in this area can help me to better understand it in a very basic level so that I can tell others.

I remember a few years ago when another poster on this board was constantly talking about the relationship between fiscal conservatism and freedom, I accused him of caring about nothing but his pocketbook. Now, I'm finally starting to understand and wish like mad that there was a way to open the eyes of our fellow citizens.

In the end, when I was trying to explain all of this to my son and I realized I was getting nowhere, I finally just said it all boils down to taking from those who work, like us, and giving what we earn to those who don't, who are lazy. Now how do I go from that to explaining the biggest government power grab in our history via the so-called 'stimulus package'?

Elusively yours,
ilja

The Top 10 Ways Conservatives Can Enjoy An Obamanation

10. We can now get a thrill up our leg watching the White House Press pool beat up on the Press Secretary

9. We can watch "The Tonight Show" again since there's only a 10% chance that Jay Leno's monologue is going to include Bush bashing

8. We have 7 more States to go visit on vacation

7. Michelle my belle will only be appearing on shows that we don't watch anyhow so we won't have to hear her voice for the next four years

6. We can sit back and relax watching the left eat their own

5. Speaking of which, we can play a drinking game based on taking a shot every time Obama throws another Obamanite under the bus

4. We can get a kick out of watching Obama deal with the Katrina victims still asking for their monthly rent to be paid by the government

3. We can get a big chuckle out of Obama's folks responding to Cheney's warning about the danger of dismantling Bush's anti-terrorism measures by accusing him of using fear tactics while Obama is using fear tactics to try and sell his Spendtoomuch bill

2. We get to spend 4 years mocking the angry left as they try to pretend to be happy which goes against every fiber of their being

And the #1 way to enjoy the next 4 years of an Obamanation:

We can place bets on just how long it's going to take before The One totally loses it and makes a fool out of himself in public!

The View From A Twenty Percenter

Over the last several days, I've been hearing over and over again that 80% of the country has been giving President Obama favorable ratings. While I have no clue what questions were asked, what sample size was used and what demographics the respondents represented, there is one thing I know for sure. I am not in or anywhere near that eighty percentile. As a matter of fact, it took all the restraint I could muster at work today to keep from making a sharp retort when the person I am suppose to be mentoring asked me if we could get together later in the day so she could listen to the inauguration.

As for wanting Obama to succeed, fuhgetaboutit. Why in the world would I want a Socialist, wealth-spreader, unconditional Terrorist meeter, who believes babies are punishment to succeed? If anything, I'm hoping just the opposite. I'm hoping that some of our wonderful elected weasels in WA will finally grow a pair and start pointing out how un-American Obama's views are.

And don't even get me started on his supposed willingness to reach across the aisle. Jonah Goldberg addressed that issue best today on Glenn Beck when he started talking about folks who like to espouse how wrong it is to use labels. He mentioned that you notice it is never Conservatives who complain about labels but always leftists. He also mentioned how Obama is doing his best to be known as a pragmatist. Yet, anyone who calls themself that never offers to give up on their principals but instead wants the right to give up on theirs and agree with them.

Did you happen to catch Obama's speech this past weekend when he said "What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry — " AP link

Notice how he is equating ideology with small thinking, prejudice and bigotry? I don't believe for a minute that's a mistake.

Jonah pointed out that Obama and the left are doing their best to to make it appear as if anyone who dares to disagree with them and their plans is certainly not worth listening to.

But enough about Obama.

I keep thinking of the song "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone". There was a moment today when I realized that President Bush was no longer our President. While I still believe God is in control, there is this part of me that feels dead inside just thinking about how we no longer have a President that will do anything to protect us. We no longer have a President that knows evil when he sees it and is not afraid to call it what it is.

Of course, I don't think one man is responsible for us not having another Terrorist attack since September 11th. However, I do believe that the Terrorists knew without a doubt that they could not mess with President Bush and get away with it.

Now all they have to do is speak some lofty rhetoric and there is no telling what our new leader will or will not do.

I don't know about the rest of you but I am bummed. I feel kind of lost as if the world has gone crazy and I'm on the outside looking in. Oh how I miss that man who looked so hot in his flight suit that day.

Elusively yours,
ilja

Atlas Slugged

Well I finally did it. I finally finished listening to the full unabridged audio of "Atlas Shrugged". I had read for years from other Conservatives and especially libertarians how inspirational and influential this book was to their core beliefs, particularly in how government should conduct itself. And often, these same folks were the ones who greatly influenced my beliefs by challenging me to 'check my premises'. Unfortunately, I did not end up loving the book as much as others, checked premises or not.

For those of you who don't know, "Atlas Shrugged" is a book about a society that totally demonizes capitalism and worships at the altar of socialism. It shows how easily a society can become one instead of the other. Mind you, it does start a ways down the road to socialism yet references at one point an event that was probably the beginning of it all.

Ayn Rand, the author of the book, is a brilliant writer. I was enraptured for weeks on end listening to her book. I have a near two hour commute each day and spent most of that time fully engrossed in Atlas. It was probably the first time in my life that I could hardly wait to go to work just so I could enter the world of Dagny Talbert and the rest of the producers.

The book is so long that it ended up taking me over two months to listen to it all. And yet, after devoting all of that time to it, I was so disgusted by one particular part that I nearly quit when I only had about five Cd's left. The part I did not like was during John Galt's speech. I did not like him when he started denigrating faith.

I thought I remembered from a long time ago someone warning me about "Atlas Shrugged" being anti-Christian. But when people started talking about it on the net, I asked someone about that and they pretty much dismissed that assessment. While they did tell me that Rand was not a believer, they made it sound like her unbelief was not a big part of this book.

And to be honest with you, it wasn't brought up all that much at all until the speech. Here is a link to the speech.

When Galt said the following:

“You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or the social. You have been taught that morality is a code of behavior imposed on you by whim, the whim of a supernatural power or the whim of society, to serve God’s purpose or your neighbor’s welfare, to please an authority beyond the grave or else next door-but not to serve your life or pleasure. Your pleasure, you have been taught, is to be found in immorality, your interests would best be served by evil, and any moral code must be designed not for you, but against you, not to further your life, but to drain it.

“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors-between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

“Both sides agreed that morality demands the surrender of your self-interest and of your mind, that the moral and the practical are opposites, that morality is not the province of reason, but the province of faith and force. Both sides agreed that no rational morality is possible, that there is no right or wrong in reason-that in reason there’s no reason to be moral.

“Whatever else they fought about, it was against man’s mind that all your moralists have stood united. It was man’s mind that all their schemes and systems were intended to despoil and destroy. Now choose to perish or to learn that the anti-mind is the anti-life.

“Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being-not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement-not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason.

“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man-for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.

“Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death. Such a being is a metaphysical monstrosity, struggling to oppose, negate and contradict the fact of his own existence, running blindly amuck on a trail of destruction, capable of nothing but pain.

“Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness-to value the failure of your values-is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man-every man-is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

“What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge-he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil-he became a mortal being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor-he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire-he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness; joy-all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was-that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love-he was not man.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

I don't usually do this but this morning while I was looking for a joke to post in my ilja's corny corner block, I ran across a joke that was so funny I felt it deserved it own's blog. This is from my favorite jokes site "The Good Clean Funnies List" aka www.gcfl.net.

SARAH PALIN: Before it got to the other side, I shot the chicken, cleaned and dressed it, and had chicken burgers for lunch.

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either against us or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

<snip>

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.