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A Veterans tribute with just a pack of cards and a beautiful ending. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGPKpIuX3cY

Christmas Card Day Always on December 9th.....Honors Sir Henry Cole (1818 - 1874) of England. Cole created the first commercial Christmas Card in 1843. Just a few decades ago, sending Christmas cards through the mail was a holiday "must". Sending cards through the mail continues to be very popular. The cost and time for writing and sending cards has caused many people to stop sending them. Free Ecards have surged in popularity. Animated Christmas and seasonal Ecards have made sending and receiving them a lot of fun.  Today is  a good day to send out your Christmas cards and holiday...

Christmas Cards, official items printed with a Christmas message and sent to wish others a "A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.", were first printed in England in 1843 making them as old as the opera Don Pasquale, the United Free Church of Scotland, the British colony of Natal, a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and your grandmother's fruit cake. Sir Henry Cole commissioned John Callcott Horsley to create the first Christmas card. Sir Cole must have had a lot of friends and a lot of free time since he had 1000 printed. Unfortunately, he didn't...

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Was President Barack Obama too busy watching the “Operation Repo” marathon or something else last Friday night? When KMOX host Charlie Brennan asked now-retired St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa how the traditional call of congratulations from the White House went, La Russa suddenly realized that…it never happened. “That’s a good point, I hadn’t really even thought about that,” replied a surprised-sounding La Russa, who can be forgiven for having a few other things on his mind over the past week. “As we were getting into the World Series we had a call from the...

"They sent us letters. They phoned it in. They asked their retailers, you know, in their neighborhood, where do I find a card that says this?” Hallmark Creative Director Derek McCracken told NPR. “And again, loss of job, like any loss, is a grieving process. And so we have to acknowledge as soon as possible what had happened and then try to support them. So that's where we kind of offer more cards on the, you'll get through this, versus dwelling on the loss of the job itself.”

Request all seriously and intensely critique the following, pointing out flaws and recommending improvements: Immigration Reform - as the liberals in Washington want it defined within the limits they want to use and the way it has been tried several times before - cannot work. It increases the problems now present, rewards those who break the current law, past laws, and future laws. Worse, or perhaps deliberately so, it rewards the democrat party with more resident illegals to swell their constituents in most of their carefully chosen low income House Districts, provides a ready source of illegal voters, and illegal...

California EDD Replaces Unemployment Checks With Debit CardsJuly 8, 2011 8:55 AM SACRAMENTO (KCBS) — Calling it a major change in the history of California’s unemployment program, the Employment Development Department is now sending out debit cards instead of traditional checks to people receiving unemployment benefits. The phase-in transition from paper to plastic is expected to take a few months to complete. Starting Friday, debit cards are replacing unemployment checks for the 1.2 million Californians currently receiving benefits.

Hi Gang, I wonder if any FReepers have a deck of Gulf War playing cards. I'm most interested in cards which were actually handed out to US soldiers in Iraq. Do any of you guys have the printing, or computer expertise to print new decks of cards? If possible, I'd really like to talk to you about best images, numbers and cost. Agape, BrokenHealer

More at Reaganite Republican (PG-rated)

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department slapped American Express Co. with a civil antitrust suit after the credit-card company refused to join an industrywide agreement to allow merchants to steer customers toward cheaper forms of plastic. To head off a court fight with the government and seven state attorneys general, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. agreed Monday to scrap a range of restrictions on the merchants that accept their cards. Under the proposed settlement, Visa and MasterCard would allow merchants to offer discounts, rebates or other incentives to get customers to use cards with lower merchant fees, such as "plain-vanilla" cards with no...

A rare Stephen Strasburg baseball card is hitting the auction block againStephen Strasburg’s rare autographed 2010 Bowman Prospects rookie card goes on the auction block with a starting bid of $9,000. The anonymous owner tried to sell the card on eBay in June, but that auction ended when outrageous bids exceeding $900,000 could not be verified. The owner pulled it from eBay and re-listed it -- only to see it reach a ridiculous $500,000 quickly. It was pulled again. Bidding begins Wednesday at noon, and lasts for two weeks. Pulled from a pack of Bowman Trading Cards, Beckett Grading Service...

The NAACP, void of any attention since the rest of the country is focused on our oil spill, our failing economy, and our worthless President, has decided that it must make up something to get attention. So, it sent its members on a nationwide hunt for the Don Imus-like comment to raise a stink about. What did they find? Well, nothing really. However, they have succeeded in making something up. Hoops and YoYo, a popular cartoon, can be found in many places, usually saying some strange things. One incarnation of this duo is the greeting card series that are sold...

The Department of Homeland Security has just reported that during 2009, they issued 1,130,818 new Green Cards to foreign nationals, allowing them to work legally in this country. That number represents the fourth highest number of cards issued in one year.

750,000 of the new Green Cards were given to the families of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

The top four recipient nations are as follows:

-Mexico…164,920 
-China…receiving 64,238
-Philippines…60,029
-India…57,304 

In Feb. 2009, the financial institution Merrill Lynch announced that the nation’s actual unemployment rate had reached 13.9 percent. A year later, that number had risen to 17.3 percent. This figure represents Americans...

After months of sending cards and cookies, a group of second-graders at Lyons Elementary School received a special visit from their pen pal, Air Force Capt. Mark Uberuaga. Uberuaga, a combat search-and-rescue pilot, spent three months in Afghanistan before returning Feb. 4. He stopped by Elizabeth Wiley's classroom Thursday to thank the children for their support and to fill them in on his trip. As he told students that he piloted a HH-60G Pave Hawk aircraft, one student had to make sure he heard Captain Mark - as the kids referred to him - correctly. "Wait, did you say you...

DUBAI (Reuters) - New evidence incriminating Israel's spy agency in the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai includes credit card payments and phone calls made by suspects, an Arabic-language daily reported on Saturday. Police have already said the 11 suspects used forged passports in the names of innocent individuals of several European nationalities. "Dubai police have information confirming that the suspects purchased travel tickets from companies in other countries with credit cards carrying the same names we have publicized (in the passports)," Al Bayan daily on Saturday quoted Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim as saying. It did not...

Valentine's Day cards featuring Obama, Pelosi, Gore, Franken, etc. It's hard to believe but apparently someone at the RNC headquarters has a sense of humor. The majority of these are actually witty! Enjoy!

Valentine's Day derives from the Feast of St. Valentine, established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I. Why this feast day was decreed remains obscure and the identity of the specific St. Valentine thus honored is uncertain -- there are several St. Valentines recorded in the early centuries of the Catholic Church. Neither is it certain how the Feast of St. Valentine came to be associated with cupid, romance, roses, doves, and such.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, Valentine's Day cards became very popular, and many examples of Victorian-era cards still exist. Popular themes included cherubs, angels, roses, hearts, and pretty girls. For the most part, Victorian style Valentine's Day cards were made like postcards, with the picture on one side and space for a message on the other.

Credit and debit cards contain software that can't process number ‘2010’ BERLIN - Millions of German bank cards have been affected by a "millennium bug"-like problem because they contain software that can't process the number 2010, an industry group said Tuesday.

Send cards to the troops! Pick the art and the message.

Christians around the world, join hands and hearts, stand up and show that we are not a silent minority and that we serve a mighty God who will not be thwarted as we unite against all who would come against us! The ACLU is one such entity in the United States.

If you want to send a holiday card to one of our troops, please send it to Holiday Mail for Heroes, P.O. Box 5456, Capital Heights, MD 20791-5456, but it must be postmarked no later than Dec. 7th.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2009 – The American Red Cross again will sponsor a national “Holiday Mail for Heroes” campaign to receive and distribute holiday cards to servicemembers, veterans and their families in the United States and abroad. The card campaign includes those working and receiving care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here. A special P.O. Box address will be published the first week of November online at http://www.redcross.org/holidaymail. In the meantime, people shouldn’t send cards to Walter Reed unless they are addressed to a specific wounded warrior. Due to security restrictions, Walter Reed cannot accept generic mail addressed to...

New credit-card rules, designed to curb the industry's abusive practices, went into effect a few weeks ago. But already lenders have found ways to get around the regulatory roadblocks—moves that may cost good paying consumers and people who pay their balances in full. Watch Video...

Calling card calls to Mexico are not functioning very well at all right now. Looks like some 20+ million people are trying to call relatives in Mexico at the same time tonight. It is overwhelming the calling card system. Very interesting. The government could monitor the phone system and get an idea of how many illegals are here with the call volume, if it wanted to.

Let's help these folks understand why they can't find work, placing the blame squarely on the Democrats and their bad fiscal policies. We can offer a care package or greeting card with a little cash or gift, to get out the truth about Democrat's high tax rates punishing the achievers is causing them trouble finding work. Tactfully done, we can counter the damage Democrats, ACORN and the media are doing. Showing them some kindness and understanding for their situation, like start a greeting with "I know it must be hard for you to not find work, and have to come...

First Side: Keep America Free Other Side: Freerepublic.com

The National Republican Congressional Committee is holding a NCAA basketball tournament "pick 'em challenge." Winners will receive two tickets to the June 8th GOP dinner, where Governor Palin will be delivering the keynote address.

A great painting of some of our greatest Presidents.

So I said to him, "Barak, I know Abe Lincoln, and you ain't him." Caption the past Republican presidents having a laugh in honor of the messiah's speech this evening. The original artwork is copyright by Andy Thomas, who has paintings of all political persuasions, including the messiah.

A bunch of guys playing cards.

'Clients used corporate credit cards for sex'Press Trust of India Updated: Feb 08, 2009 at 0028 hrs IST Wall street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs and media executives often used corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, claimed a woman who once ran the financial city’s most expensive escorts services. The madam Kristin Davis, in an interview with the ABC News programme 20/20, said “I was writing up monthly bills for computer consulting, construction expenses, all of these things, I was invoicing them monthly so they could get it by their accountants. Some of these guys, I was...

Ill child has Christmas wish -- cards, and plenty of them BY TOM KNAPP, Intelligencer Journal Staff Hannah Garman wants to celebrate Christmas in a very big way. But the plucky 4-year-old -- she will turn 5 in January -- was diagnosed in late October with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain tumor, in her cerebellum. The prognosis, according to her grandmother, Shirley Garman, is not good. "The tumor is very aggressive," Mrs. Garman said. "It is not something they can take away." The Garman family is working overtime not to dwell on grim reality. Mrs. Garman said they'd rather focus...

From the front lines to the home front, the American Red Cross provides service members, their families and veterans with the care and assistance they need. The Red Cross is partnering with Pitney Bowes this holiday season for the Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign. For the second year in a row, we’re collecting holiday cards to distribute to American service members, veterans and their families in the United States and around the world. Pitney Bowes is generously donating technology, resources and postage to make this holiday card program possible. Our goal is to collect and distribute one million holiday cards...

Letters for the troops Through Dec. 10, the public can send their greeting cards, with adequate postage and a return address, to Holiday Mail for Heroes, P.O. Box 5456, Capitol Heights, Md. 20791-5456. To speed delivery, mailers should not send care packages, money or any inserts, including glitter.

Thousands of primary pupils were prevented from making Father's Day cards at school for fear of embarrassing classmates who live with single mothers and lesbians. The politically correct policy was quietly adopted at schools "in the interests of sensitivity" over the growing number of lone-parent and same-sex households.

The compulsory identity card could be used to carry out surveillance on people, MPs warned today. Members of the Home Affairs Select Committee said it was concerned that the way the authorities use sensitive data gathered in the multi-billion pound programme could "creep" to include spying. The all-party committee also urged ministers to make plans on how to deal with the theft of personal details from the National Identity Scheme, which will build a massive database on every person over 16 in Britain. It accepted ministers' assurances that surveillance was not part of current plans, but asked for a guarantee...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― We will be spending more than $26 billion on gift cards this year. And just when you thought there's nothing new under the Christmas tree along comes one for "good health." When it comes to Christmas presents, Stacey Smith was stumped over what to give to her husband's grandmother. "Especially an older person … they really have everything they need," Smith said.

12/18/2007 - BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- What began as a small idea soon became a big initiative for a Balad Air Base Airman. Senior Airman Amber Sams had no idea what she was in for when she asked her small hometown of Morocco, Ind., for Christmas cards. But soon, the boxes started pouring in. "Last time I was deployed through the holidays, the base exchange was in a tent," said Airman Sams, a 332nd Expeditionary Services Squadron recreation coordinator deployed from Langley Air Force Base, Va. "They didn't have a wide variety of holiday greeting cards or any...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2007 – Kate Deyermond is going on a $15,000 holiday spending spree today -- but not for herself or with her own money. Ken Fisher, Fisher House Foundation chairman, receives a $100,000 check from Margaret McKenna, Wal-Mart Foundation president, during the kick-off of “Operation: Deck the Walls,” Wal-Mart’s new program to bring holiday cheer to recovering military families at Fisher houses in the United States and Germany. Photo by Linda Hosek  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The manager of the three Fisher House facilities at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here will use donations from...

WILLMAR — Sen. Joe Gimse, R-Wilmar, said he’d like to see Minnesota offer worker ID cards to illegal immigrants. Doing so would allow “hard-working” undocumented immigrants who are already living here to get “out of the shadows” and work at businesses that need, and want, them. The Willmar Republican said employer-sponsored identification cards would remove the “criminal aspect” of being here to work. It would also reduce identity theft because illegal immigrants could use their own identity to get a job legitimately while they work toward becoming legal citizens. “They’re working hard in our state and we need them here,”...

I am writing this to give some kudos to a company for outstanding service. While it is easy to offer claims of lifetime warranties and 24/7 service when trying to sell a product, too often a consumer finds that those claims are well neutered by fine print and long wait times to call centers based in exotic places with names like Bangladesh and Mumbai. Once you do get through there comes the  game of twenty questions which you must indulge in order prove to the person on the other end that you are not an idiot or a criminal...

Prisoner poker could crack cold cases By PHIL DAVIS, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 24, 6:10 PM ET TAMPA, Fla. - Prison inmates are getting a present from the state of Florida: playing cards. For detectives looking to solve dozens of cold cases, it's the start of a game of Go Fish that might pay off big. On Tuesday, Florida's nearly 93,000 state inmates started getting one of two decks that between them highlight 104 of the state's most troubling unsolved murder and missing persons cases. "What better way to get them talking than to have cards with the cases...

American troops in Iraq are being sent another deck of playing cards, this time showing some of the country's most precious archaeological sites and advice on how to respect them. The Pentagon is sending 40,000 new decks to units in Iraq and Afghanistan, four years after it issued soldiers with a more gung-ho pack showing pictures and information about the most-wanted former members of Saddam Hussein's regime. The cards are part of an archaeology awareness programme designed to make troops aware of the damage they can cause to sites and to discourage the illegal trade in artefacts. Archaeologists working at...

Wal-Mart plans to launch a payments card aimed at the estimated 80 million U.S. residents who do not have access to a bank account. Called the Wal-Mart MoneyCard, the prepaid product would be launched with GE Money, the retailer's financial partner, and branded a Visa card, Wal-Mart officials said. An official announcement of the pilot programme could come as soon as this month. The venture represents a significant expansion of Wal-Mart's financial services offered to mostly low-income customers, which include low-cost check-cashing and money-transfer services. It also follows the decision this year to abandon a bid to win a state...

Until now, royalty and paupers have been the only ones not to carry cash. But within five years, it could apply to all of us. The prediction comes, perhaps not surprisingly, from a man whose career is based on the growth of plastic transactions. Peter Ayliffe, head of Visa's European operation, says that by 2012 Britain will be a cashless society in which everyone will see credit and debit cards as more convenient than notes and coins. He believes the transition will be eased by the advent of a new generation of "wave and pay" cards which it is hoped...

Executives from some of the biggest credit card companies found themselves on the defensive on Capitol Hill today over their fees and interest rates. John Dimsdale reports.

The "Holy Grail of baseball cards," the famous 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card once owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky, has sold for a record-setting $2,350,000, the seller of the card said Monday. The anonymous buyer has only been identified as a Southern California collector. SCP Auctions Inc., a company that holds sports memorabilia auctions, said it bought a small share of the card. It is scheduled to be shown at a news conference at Dodger Stadium Tuesday. There are about 60 of the tobacco cards in existence featuring the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop, one of the first five players to...

What do a gym membership, a bottle of prescription pills and a holiday gift card have in common? Each of them is a thing that is bought and then often goes unused. In their recent paper “Paying Not to Go to the Gym,” the economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ulrike Malmendier showed that people who buy an annual membership to a health club overestimate by more than 70 percent how much they’ll actually use it. Many people, therefore, would be better off buying monthly or daily passes. ...As for gift cards — well, let’s just say there is good reason that...

FUN WITH THE ACLU Wanna have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD! As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice, CHRISTIAN, card to brighten up their dark, sad, little world. Make sure it says "Merry Christmas" on it. Here's the Address, just don't be rude or crude. ACLU 125 Broad Street 18th Floor New York, NY 10004 Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn't know if any were regular mail containing contributions.. So spend 39...