That's a good, fair article. Very well stated. Thanks for posting the link!....nm
Posted By: ms on 2008-09-26
In Reply to: I don't know if this will help at all, but try this link. sm - MT and worn out
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post the link only, not the whole article and the link. See rules for posting.
x
It is a good article. Thanks for posting !
nm
Good article, thanks for posting....sm
Heard Cheney on Rush the other day. Good man, probably the most intelligent VP we've ever had.
Good article - link inside.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/10/women.uselections2008
A Link? As I stated, this was a quote
from a letter I received from the SSA. I don't know how to include a link to this. However, if you go to the SSA website, I believe you will find the info you are looking for: http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10519.html
Each brown place in the link takes you to a different article that supports this article...nm
x
Great article. Thanks for posting it....sm
I had a feeling she'd do well talking with them.
What a great article...thanks for posting it, ms!
:)
Excellent Article! Thanks for posting.
It boils down to the feds weren't forcing bad loans on the banks, the lenders were forcing the bad loans out of greed.
This is an excellent article - thanks for posting
x
Thanks for posting this link.
My son-in-law is going to love this! Hope you have a great holiday.
I just couldn't resist posting this article.
When I read it, my first thought was "how fitting this would be for those to read who are firm in pro-life, pro-war and its contradiction".
Let’s Count the Ways We’ve Sacrificed for the Iraq War
by Mary Conroy
As children, we learned about Santa Claus — a pleasant, harmless myth. As adults, we’re being taught another myth — that ordinary people haven’t sacrificed anything during the Iraq war.
But the sacrifice myth isn’t an innocent belief we shed before adolescence. And the more people accept it, the more dangerous it is.
So let’s count our sacrifices. One of our biggest came at the start of the war, when we gave up freedom of the press. Media outlets agreed they’d only send journalists who’d be embedded with the troops, so everything we’ve read or seen has been censored.
Worse yet, in 2006, new media rules from the Department of Defense stated, “Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without service members’ prior written consent.” Just when should an embedded journalist hand out consent forms?
Photos of dead or wounded Americans in Vietnam swelled the number of anti-war protesters. Back then, we saw horrific images of GIs writhing in pain. We also saw dead GIs, not in coffins, but bloody and dismembered in the field.
Even before the new media rule began, embedded photographers rarely pictured dead or wounded GIs, according to Pat Arnow of Extra, a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Instead, most of our media’s coverage of Iraq has pictured the injured GIs who can sit up in bed without grimacing to receive a Purple Heart. The few pictures of dead GIs haven’t shown blood or gore; they’ve shown funerals.
Photographers get close to the soldiers they’re embedded with and self-censor pictures of them. If they send their editors explicit photos, the editors declare the images “too graphic to publish,” like the Washington Post did on Jan. 7, 2007.
Embedded journalists also censor pictures of dead Iraqis. “Those pictures overwhelmingly show only one kind of victim — people and things shattered by their fellow countrymen, not by U.S. troops,” Arnow says.
When we do see a photo of an Iraqi killed by U.S. troops, the media distances us by labeling the dead Iraqi “an al-Qaida-linked militant,” or “a militiaman loyal to Osama bin Laden.”
Remember that photo of a terrorized naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack? Today she would be called “a Vietcong guerilla” or “a Ho Chi Minh militant.”
But freedom of the press isn’t the only sacrifice we’ve made. Last month, Congress released “The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,” a report showing the war’s cost so far at $1.3 trillion. That figure includes direct costs plus interest on the money borrowed to wage the war.
The money we spend on Iraq in one day could fund 9,300 teachers for a year, or 14,200 police officers, or 163,700 college Pell Grants, or 58,000 children’s tuition for Head Start, or 513,000 children’s health insurance. We’ve sacrificed all of those and more.
Worst, we’ve sacrificed human life. In September, the Opinion Research Business firm’s study of Iraqi households found that 1 million Iraqis have died due to violence since the U.S. invasion. We know of 4,000 American military who’ve died, but rarely does anyone ask about American civilian death counts.
And we’ll never know what the world lost when each of those people died. Each life was full of possibility. Who knows what contributions each person could have made to the workplace and the world, to their friends and to their families?
Mary Conroy is a Madison-based freelance writer.
what was the point in posting link
we can find all the links we want if our purpose is to belittle a person, shall I post a few of Obama for you?
I agree. Great article. Thanks, LVMT for posting it.
To m: LOL. No problem. It's very easy to do on this board. 
Thanks for posting this. It is interesting...link inside for those interested.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/buckner_tripoli.html
Good question.-and it ISNT fair. Notice how Obama
nm
Link to article
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002765299
It was link to a news article
It was not just a vulgar hand gesture, which I might add was shown on NBC, CBS, ABC a few weeks ago ala Bush when he was leaving a meeting with reporters. It was an article about Bush's vulgar personality.
This link went to a 2003 article....
5 years ago....not sure what you want to talk about?
Interesting article see link inside
Looks like the feminists are supporting Palin. Very interesting article and it explains why they are supporting her.
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2008/09/06/palin-punditry-you-wont-see-in-the-papers-or-on-the-tv-news/
Here is the link to an article about Palin and her friends.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?em
Re-red the original post with the CBS link/article on his
At least it wasn't Fox covering it, so you should believe eyewitnesses, shouldn't you?
That was a good story - thanks for posting!
*
See link to article from Women's News inside.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2046/context/archive
GOPs are gaining - excellent article - see link
Excellent article by D. Morris (who used to be an adviser to Clinton). He hits it right on the head with his assessments. 1.) Obama's poll numbers are not changing but McCain is gaining. 2.) End of July voters trusted the dems to better handle the economy by 11%, now they only trust them by 4%. 3.) Before the convention voters trusted dems to achieve energy independence by 8 points, now it's only a 2 point lead. 4.) When asked who made the smarter VP choice voters said McCain did 50 - 40%.
Key to her popularity is that she understands the average persons problems. Of the question which of the 4 candidates understands the problems of day to day life in America Palin finished first with 33%, Obama second with 32%, McCain with 17, and Biden with 10.
Worst news for Obama is when voters asked who they would consult for advise with the "toughest decision of your life" voters chose McCain over Obama 50-34.
I've been saying all along the Republicans are sweeping the nation. People are seeing through Barack's lies and false hopes. Link to the article is below so you can read for yourselves.
http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2008/09/15/gops-gaining/
I hear this too. Here is a link, but I put the article inside. www.OneNewsNow.com
Obama has aunt living in US illegally
Eileen Sullivan and Elliot Spagat - Associated Press Writers - 11/1/2008 6:55:00 AM
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.
Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.
Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.
Onyango's refusal to leave the country would represent an administrative, non-criminal violation of U.S. immigration law, meaning such cases are handled outside the criminal court system. Estimates vary, but many experts believe there are more than 10 million such immigrants in the United States.
The AP could not reach Onyango immediately for comment. No one answered the telephone number listed in her name late Friday. It was unclear why her request for asylum was rejected in 2004. The Obama campaign declined to comment late Friday night.
Onyango is not a relative whom Obama has discussed in campaign appearances and, unlike Obama's father and grandmother, is not someone who has been part of the public discussion about his personal life.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Kelly Nantel, said the government does not comment on an individual's citizenship status or immigration case.
Onyango's case - coming to light just days before the presidential election - led to an unusual nationwide directive within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement requiring any deportations prior to Tuesday's election to be approved at least at the level of ICE regional directors, the U.S. law enforcement official told the AP.
The unusual directive suggests that the Bush administration is sensitive to the political implications of Onyango's case coming to light so close to the election.
Kenya is in eastern Africa between Somalia and Tanzania. The country has been fractured in violence in recent years, including a period of two months of bloodshed after December 2007 that killed 1,500 people.
The disclosure about Onyango came just one day after Obama's presidential campaign confirmed to the Times of London that Onyango, who has lived in public housing in South Boston for five years, was Obama's half aunt on his father's side.
It was not immediately clear how Onyango might have qualified for public housing with a standing deportation order.
Don't think you read the same article, THAT IS THE TITLE...see the link I posted...
xx
Link to photo and accompanying portion of article
The photo didn't come through, but the link is below. Also, as you can see from the way the article begins, there was no "liberal" involved in the word "spooked." That was pure Republican (if there is such a thing.)
http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2009/06/republican_staffer_e-mails_oba.php
From the beginning of the article:
The picture you're looking at on the right was allegedly sent from Sherri Goforth, research analyst executive assistant for Sen. Diane Black, on May 28 via e-mail, under the headline "Historical Keepsake Photo." "We've never seen President Obama in person, but we're pretty sure those pair of spooked white eyes against a black background don't quite do him justice. In fact, one could argue that forwarding an e-mail like this to 20 of your friends makes you look like an out-and-out bigot."
"... forwarding an e-mail like this to 20 of your friends makes you look like an out-and-out bigot." Yeah. Wink, wink.
Thanks for posting - good reads to explore.
nm
I posted the entire article, but I MUST be LYING! LOL! Link inside. sm
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/8/30/230457.shtml
Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness...see article/link
Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness
By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A01
The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement.
These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person.
He had a fixed delusion about the world, said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. He felt under attack, he felt threatened.
Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.
Very good point!!! The world doesn't see any of that on the news! Thanks for posting that! nm
x
good article
Why No Tea and Sympathy?
Published: August 10, 2005
WASHINGTON
W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.
There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.
A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?
Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.
And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.
The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.
Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.
The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.
The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.
It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.
It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?
W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.
It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.
Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.
Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.
But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute
Good article..nm
nm
me again, good article
Hate to be *slamming* guys..Im working this weekend and on break time, Im here *smile*.
Editorials, Including Those at Conservative Papers, Rip Bush's Hurricane Response
By E&P Staff
Published: September 02, 2005 12:30 PM ET
NEW YORK Editorials from around the country on Friday -- including at the Bush-friendly Dallas Morning News and The Washington Times -- have, by and large, offered harsh criticism of the official and military response to the disaster in the Gulf Coast. Here's a sampling.
Dallas Morning News
As a federal official in a neatly pressed suit talked to reporters in Washington about little bumps along the road in emergency efforts, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an urgent SOS. The situation near the convention center was chaotic; not enough buses were available to evacuate thousands of survivors, and the streets were littered with the dead.
Moments later, President Bush took center stage and talked at length about the intricacies of energy policy and plans to keep prices stable. Meanwhile, doctors at hospitals called the Associated Press asking to get their urgent message out: We need to be evacuated, we're taking sniper fire, and nobody is in charge.
Who is in charge?
Losing New Orleans to a natural disaster is one thing, but losing her to hopeless gunmen and a shameful lack of response is unfathomable. How is it that the U.S. military can conquer a foreign country in a matter of days, but can't stop terrorists controlling the streets of America or even drop a case of water to desperate and dying Americans?
President Bush, please see what's happening. The American people want to believe the government is doing everything it can do -- not to rebuild or to stabilize gas prices -- just to restore the most basic order. So far, they are hearing about Herculean efforts, but they aren't seeing them.
***
The Washington Times
Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it's past time. What took the government so long? The thin veneer separating civilization and chaos, which we earlier worried might collapse in the absence of swift action, has collapsed.
We expected to see, many hours ago, the president we saw standing atop the ruin of the World Trade Center, rallying a dazed country to action. We're pleased he finally caught a ride home from his vacation, but he risks losing the one trait his critics have never dented: His ability to lead, and be seen leading.
He returns to the scene of the horror today, and that's all to the good. His presence will rally broken spirits. But he must crack heads, if bureaucratic heads need cracking, to get the food, water and medicine to the people crying for help in New Orleans and on the Mississippi coast. The list of things he has promised is a good list, but there is no time to dally, whether by land, sea or air. We should have delivered them yesterday. Americans are dying.
***
Philadelphia Inquirer (and other Knight Ridder papers)
I hope people don't point -- play politics during this period. That was President Bush's response yesterday to criticism of the U.S. government's inexplicably inadequate relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.
Sorry, Mr. President, legitimate questions are being asked about the lack of rescue personnel, equipment, food, supplies, transportation, you name it, four days after the storm. It's not playing politics to ask why.
It's not playing politics to ask questions about what Americans watched in horror on TV yesterday: elderly people literally dying on the street outside the New Orleans convention center because they were sick and no one came to their aid.
The rest of America can't fathom why a country with our resources can't be at least as effective in this emergency as it was when past disasters struck Third World nations. Someone needs to explain why well-known emergency aid lessons aren't being applied here.
This hurricane is no one's fault; the devastation would be hard to handle no matter who was in charge. But human deeds can mitigate a disaster, or make it worse.
For example: Did federal priorities in an era of huge tax cuts shortchange New Orleans' storm protection and leave it more vulnerable? This flooding is no surprise to experts. They've been warning for more than 20 years that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain from emptying into the under-sea-level city would likely break under the strain of a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4.
So the Crescent City sits under water, much of its population in a state of desperate, dangerous transience, not knowing when they will return home. They're the lucky ones, though. Worse off are those left among the dying in a dying town.
The questions aren't about politics. They are about justice.
***
Minneapolis Star Tribune
But whatever the final toll, the wrenching misery and trauma confronting the people of New Orleans is much greater than it should be -- as it is, in fact, for tens of thousands of people along the strip of Mississippi that was most brutally assaulted by the storm. The immediate goal must be to ease that suffering. The second goal must be to understand how we came to this sorry situation.
How do you justify cutting $250 million in scheduled spending for crucial pump and levee work in the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), authorized by Congress in 1995?
How do you explain the almost total lack of coordination among federal, state and local officials both in Louisiana and Mississippi? No one appeared in charge.
***
Des Moines Register
The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was the first practical test of the new homeland-security arrangements and the second test of President Bush in the face of a national crisis.
The performance of both has been less than stellar so far.
Katrina was a disaster that came with at least two days of warning, and it has been more than four days since the storm struck. Yet on Thursday, refugees still huddled unrescued in the unspeakable misery of the New Orleans Superdome. Patients in hospitals without power and water clung to life in third-world conditions. Untold tragedies lie yet to be discovered in the rural lowlands of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Very good article, thanks. nm
nm
Good article.
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Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not |
by Robert Steinback |
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One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.
If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.
Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.
If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.
If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.
That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.
What is there to say now?
All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.
I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.
Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to ``protect us.''
President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.
Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, ``What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?''
Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.
Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?
Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.
Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?
Email Robert Steinback at: rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com. |
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FYI good article........sm
http://www.newsweek.com/id/113672
That is a good article.
Thanks for sharing.
Another Good Article...
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senator_obamas_
four_tax_increa.html
I confess. Senator Obama's two tax promises: to limit tax increases to only those making over $250,000 a year, and to not raise taxes on 95% of "working Americans," intrigued me. As a hard-working small business owner, over the past ten years I've earned from $50,000 to $100,000 per year. If Senator Obama is shooting straight with us, under his presidency I could look forward to paying no additional Federal taxes -- I might even get a break -- and as I struggle to support a family and pay for two boys in college, a reliable tax freeze is nearly as welcome as further tax cuts.
However, Senator Obama's dual claims seemed implausible, especially when it came to my Federal income taxes. Those implausible promises made me look at what I'd been paying before President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, as well as what I paid after those tax cuts became law. I chose the 2000 tax tables as my baseline -- they reflect the tax rates that Senator Obama will restore by letting the "Bush Tax Cuts" lapse. I wanted to see what that meant from my tax bill.
I've worked as the state level media and strategy director on three Presidential election campaigns -- I know how "promises" work -- so I analyzed Senator Obama's promises by looking for loopholes.
The first loophole was easy to find: Senator Obama doesn't "count" allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse as a tax increase. Unless the cuts are re-enacted, rates will automatically return to the 2000 level. Senator Obama claims that letting a tax cut lapse -- allowing the rates to return to a higher levels -- is not actually a "tax increase." It's just the lapsing of a tax cut.
Good article - Thanks
DH told me tonight the guy who wrote this was a big Obama supporter. This shows what other countries think of us. Not too good it looks like.
Very good article
He is spot on about Obama in every way.
A very good article.......... sm
I found particularly interesting the link within the article to a writing by Edwin Vieira, Jr. If his suppositions hold true, then we could be in for even more trouble that we had imagined. He presented a very interesting scenario towards the end of his article.
Unfortunately, those who support Obama will negate this as "not a credible source" before even reading the first article, much less the second. Vieira's credentials are outlined at the end of the article and are stellar.
Very good article........ sm
as well as the one below. Thanks for posting them, sam. And it's good to see you around these parts again!
Good article in LA Times
I just read an article about Bush. It states nothing he has done in his five years has benefitted the working person, only the corporations or extremely rich. It went on to explain that the rich got $91,000+ in tax cuts, the working class were lucky to get $300.00, heck I didnt get anything. Yet we now have a major deficit because of the tax cuts. It also stated the passing of tort reform, keeping law suits for people who are hurt by hospitals, drug companies, major corporations, left maimed and crippled for life, they now have a cap on how much they can receive in a law suit. Then there is the bankruptcy law. Corporations can still claim bankruptcy and start over, heck, Trump has done it twice, but in October the working class no longer will be able to. They will have to go to credit counseling and set up a payment plan for the bills they owe. The lobbyists are having a hey day in Washington D.C. and it was never this bad but when you have all of Washington controlled by one party, i.e., Republicans, they do what they want. When they held the Downing Street Memo meeting in Congress the other day. The democrats asked for a room to hold the meeting and were told by the ruling party, there were no rooms for them to hold a meeting. So they held the meeting in a cubby hole basement room. And what company is getting all the business in Iraq? My my, the company Cheney used to run. Coincidence? I think not. Enron and other major companies did not pay taxes in the last few years. Every year, I end up having to pay extra. Now he is pushing private accounts for SS. Oh, geez, during the early 2000's I lost money with my 401K. I would rather get a SS check but you see, its his plan to destroy anything that was created to catch a person before they fall through the cracks, those were created by Democrats. He does not want govt to be responsible in the long run for a person who needs help. I look at it this way. I think a person should take responsibility for their life but if something happens and they need help, for pete sake, that is what govt is for. I would rather my taxes help my brothers and sisters of America then wage war.
Good article from an athlete
who makes us on the left proud.
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The Speech Everyone Is Talking About: Etan Thomas
Etan Thomas Electrifies Anti-War Washington
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by Dave Zirin |
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Every generation the wide world of corporate sports produces an athlete with the iron resolve and moral urgency to step off their pedestal and join the fight for social justice. A century ago, it was boxer Jack Johnson, flaunting, as WEB DuBois put it, his unforgivable blackness. In the 1930s, the Brown Bomber Joe Louis and track star Jesse Owens took turns spitting in Hitler's eyes, and Mildred Babe Didrikson continued to show that a woman could be the equal - if not superior – of any man. In the 1940s and 50s, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, and the Brooklyn Dodgers advanced the cause of civil rights through the transgressive act of the multi-racial double play. In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell, David Meggyesy, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos showed how mass struggle could ricochet into the world of sports with electric results. In the 1970s, Billie Jean King used a wicked forehand, and took to the streets, to demand equal rights for women, and Curt Flood showed the labor movement - and the bosses - how to go from crumbs to a bigger piece of the pie. In the 1980’s Martina Navratilova came out of the closet and onto center court, with her girlfriend on her sinewy arm in plain view of all.
Today we may just have a figure to join their ranks in the NBA’s Etan Thomas. Regular readers of this column will know that I have interviewed the Washington Wizards' Power Forward on numerous occasions and highlighted his views on everything from the death penalty to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. He is also the author of a book of poems called More Than An Athlete.
But this past weekend, Etan made a play for pantheon status. Etan took it to that Ali level, by delivering a blistering poetical speech as part of the weekend’s antiwar demonstrations in Washington DC. His contribution, which was played in its entirety on Democracy Now!, is being hailed as “the best of the day” in various nooks and crannies of the blogosphere.
Here is the transcript. Read and pass it along – it has the power to topple tyrants.
“Giving all honor, thanks and praises to God for courage and wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings and concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal, transcending race, economic background, religion, and culture, and this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House.
In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.
I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.
I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.
Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.
Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.
Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.
I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida. See, for some, and justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.'d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.
They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.
Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.”
Dave Zirin's new book 'What's My Name, Fool?': Sports and Resistance in the United States [Haymarket Books] is available now. Check out his writings at edgeofsports.com. Contact the author at dave@edgeofsports.com
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Good read, article. sm
My cousin, who lives in Alaska, told me about this web site. It has some interesting articles. I enjoyed this one - here is the link/url.
http://alaskadispatch.com/tundra-talk/1-talk-of-the-tundra/121-the-world-according-to-sarah.html
Good article - Obamamania
http://www.therant.us/staff/imani/2008/10282008.htm
Good article, Kaydie..........sm
and good to see you!
Wow....I agree with you. Good article,,,,sm
Can't believe I actually agree with you, but I do!! Very good explanation of all who are at fault which is actually....EVERYONE!!
Good article...thanks for sharing.
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