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Sarah Palin has made a good first impression. Before being named as John McCain�s running mate, 67% of voters didn�t know enough about the Alaska governor to have an opinion. After her debut in Dayton and a rush of media coverage, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 53% now have a favorable opinion of Palin while just 26% offer a less flattering assessment.

Palin earns positive reviews from 78% of Republicans, 26% of Democrats and 63% of unaffiliated voters. Obviously, these numbers will be subject to change as voters learn more about her in the coming weeks. Among all voters, 29% have a Very Favorable opinion of Palin while 9% hold a Very Unfavorable view.

In the new survey, 35% of voters say the selection of Palin makes them more likely to vote for McCain while 33% say they are less likely to do so. Most Republicans say they are more likely to vote for Palin and most Democrats say the opposite. As for voters not affiliated with either major party, 37% are more likely to vote for McCain and 28% less likely to do so. Those numbers are a bit more positive than initial reaction to Biden.

After McCain's announcement, Clinton issued a statement saying, "We should all be proud of Governor Sarah Palin's historic nomination, and I congratulate her and Senator McCain. While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, Governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate." Palin is now viewed favorably by 48% of women. That figure includes 80% of Republican women, 23% of Democratic women, and 61% of women not affiliated with either major party.

Polls are what they are and change like people change socks. However, these are good preliminary numbers. Time will tell how it all plays out.

I posted a lot of links a while back about the economy and terrorism prior to O becoming president.

Clinton knew the terrorists were getting ready for an attack, but just didn't know how and when it would happen. He could have stopped it, had he had GOOD information from the CIA, FBI. Those two groups were part of the reason we were attacked. They didn't work together or share information. There were plenty of warnings. He also knew there were WMDs in Iraq. It's in the report, but he didn't do anything about it and, in the meantime, Saddam tested his WMDs on his own people, killing thousands.

Clinton also did not leave such a large surplus. He and the accounting office cooked the books to make it look good. There was a surplus but not near as much as Clinton stated.

Global warming...I don't believe it. This is a natural happening every so many decades. It will turn around on its own in its own time. Part of the so-called global warming is the people. There are too many people in the world. People breathe in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide. Without trees, we're in trouble. Sounds dumb, but if you want to point fingers, point to the Amazon and destroying the rain forests. Prior to the Amazon forests being destroyed at the rate they are today, there was no problem.

Making peace instead of war doesn't work with terrorists. You have to "walk softly and carry a big stick." O is trying to charm them into peace and we all know that won't work. You have to be ruthless with them or else they will think the US is a pushover. If O wants to keep our country safe, he has to be a combination of FDR, JFK, Reagan, and both Bush's.

Instead of O going on talk shows and joking around, he should have his finger on the pulse of Washington and bring his congress and senate in line. They are so out of control, it's ridiculous. He has to stay in the WH or, before he knows it, those power mongers will be in power, not him (of course, that has already happened).

If O wants to turn this country around, he needs to let the people do it on their own. Government can't solve everybody's problems. People need to solve their own problems. Money doesn't solve any problems, it just creates more. More social programs that we can't pay for doesn't solve problems. It creates a society that depends on the government for all its needs. That's not the American way. If businesses fail, so be it. If banks fail, so be it. You can't prop up those failures by throwing money at them...as you well know, most of those failures are caused by inept CEOs. Remember Dodge, Cadillac, Studebaker, Rambler, etc.? Those businesses failed. GM and Chrylster absorbed some, but not all. The rest died. Did the world come to an end because of it? No.

As for the rest, small banks are gobbled up by large banks. Should they? No. It causes a monopoly and when that happens, that's a problem. Comcast is the largest cable company in the country. How did it get that way? By gobbling up the smaller ones. If I wanted to leave Comcast, I couldn't because there is no other cable company in this area. I am FORCED to have Comcast if I want internet service. There is no free enterprise when companies become conglomerates.

Oh shucks, some will understand what I'm saying, others will still keep their rose-colored glasses on and believe government will solve all our problems. NOT.

Gee, I'd been wondering why we were paying the big bucks to these Fed officials and now I know. So they can tell us things we could have told them (for a lot less money, too).

Perhaps we should call the Fed "MOOSE" (the Ministry For Obvious Official Statements on the Economy)? You can see now why we needed Palin, who knows how to field dress a moose.

...and then there was Obama the other day telling Congress not to spend too much money. In case you didn't catch what I just said, this was Mr. Super-Deficit Obama, telling Congress they should watch the spending.

I think that the White House has been listening to the national backlash on Daddy MoreBucks' drunken spending spree, and wants to have something they can float during Obama's next campaign to show how fiscally responsible he is. Certainly, there's no connection between what he says and what he does.

But wait - we're already seeing Obama's next campaign, aren't we? The man never stops campaigning.

economic nightmare without also addressing those who are already suffering from it. If that is not addressed while we are setting up new jobs, then we go straight into a depression. It's a whole lot harder and longer to get out of a full-blown depression that what we have now....and right now we're on the edge.

NASA = The 50 million Obama allotted for NASA is for them to repair facilities in Houston from hurricaine Ike (which should have already been done, btw) and non-space activities. Again, job creation. NASA wants more, but I doubt they'll get it.

this. If homeowners were to get lump sums and they just payed off their mortgages it would go to the banks, like you said. However, the banks are currently not extending credit. Even after they passed the first bailout and payed out to banks, the banks that received the money actually tightened up on credit, which was the exact opposite of what they should have done. So, if we were all to just pay off our mortgages, the bank would get the money and just sit on it just like they did with the bailout money, and that doesn't stimulate the economy.

The main problem we have is that we've turned into a nation that relys on credit. The banks don't want you to pay off your principal -- they want you to keep paying interest because that's where the money is for them. Now that the credit has been frozen, people who live on credit don't have anything to spend -- thus creating the spending deficit.

And the destruction they have wreaked on our country.......keep the mindset. The republican party will have a wretched time climbing out of the sewer from whence they came.

So, if you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country (the decider), steamrolled the constitution (the decider), and will have changed its landscape forever (the decider). If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about... Yes, GW, you will be just FINE.

Where Would General Motors Be Without the United Automobile Workers Union?

This is a question that no one seems to be asking. And so I've asked it. And here, in essence, is what I think is the answer. (The answer, of course, applies to Ford and Chrysler, as well as to General Motors. I've singled out General Motors because it's still the largest of the three and its problems are the most pronounced.)

First, the company would be without so-called Monday-morning automobiles. That is, automobiles poorly made for no other reason than because they happened to be made on a day when too few workers showed up, or too few showed up sober, to do the jobs they were paid to do. Without the UAW, General Motors would simply have fired such workers and replaced them with ones who would do the jobs they were paid to do. And so, without the UAW, GM would have produced more reliable, higher quality cars, had a better reputation for quality, and correspondingly greater sales volume to go with it. Why didn't they do this? Because with the UAW, such action by GM would merely have provoked work stoppages and strikes, with no prospect that the UAW would be displaced or that anything would be better after the strikes. Federal Law, specifically, The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, long ago made it illegal for companies simply to get rid of unions.

Second, without the UAW, GM would have been free to produce in the most-efficient, lowest cost way and to introduce improvements in efficiency as rapidly as possible. Sometimes this would have meant simply having one or two workers on the spot do a variety of simple jobs that needed doing, without having to call in half a dozen different workers each belonging to a different union job classification and having to pay that much more to get the job done. At other times, it would have meant just going ahead and introducing an advance, such as the use of robots, without protracted negotiations with the UAW resulting in the need to create phony jobs for workers to do (and to be paid for doing) that were simply not necessary.

(Unbelievably, at its assembly plant in Oklahoma City, GM is actually obliged by its UAW contract to pay 2,300 workers full salary and benefits for doing absolutely nothing. As The New York Times describes it, "Each day, workers report for duty at the plant and pass their time reading, watching television, playing dominoes or chatting. Since G.M. shut down production there last month, these workers have entered the Jobs Bank, industry's best form of job insurance. It pays idled workers a full salary and benefits even when there is no work for them to do.")

Third, without the UAW, GM would have an average unit cost per automobile close to that of non-union Toyota. Toyota makes a profit of about $2,000 per vehicle, while GM suffers a loss of about $1,200 per vehicle, a difference of $3,200 per unit. And the far greater part of that difference is the result of nothing but GM's being forced to deal with the UAW. (Over a year ago, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that "the United Auto Workers contract costs GM $2,500 for each car sold.")

Fourth, without the UAW, the cost of employing a GM factory worker, including wages and fringes, would not be in excess of $72 per hour, which is where it is today, according to The Post-Crescent newspaper of Appleton, Wisconsin.

Fifth, as a result of UAW coercion and extortion, GM has lost billions upon billions of dollars. For 2005 alone, it reported a loss in excess of $10 billion. Its bonds are now rated as "junk," that is, below, investment grade. Without the UAW, GM would not have lost these billions.

Sixth, without the UAW, GM would not now be in process of attempting to pay a ransom to its UAW workers of up to $140,000 per man, just to get them to quit and take their hands out of its pockets. (It believes that $140,000 is less than what they will steal if they remain.)

Seventh, without the UAW, GM would not now have healthcare obligations that account for more than $1,600 of the cost of every vehicle it produces.

Eighth, without the UAW, GM would not now have pension obligations which, if entered on its balance sheet in accordance with the rule now being proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, will leave it with a net worth of minus $16 billion.

What the UAW has done, on the foundation of coercive, interventionist labor legislation, is bring a once-great company to its knees. It has done this by a process of forcing one obligation after another upon the company, while at the same time, through its work rules, featherbedding practices, hostility to labor-saving advances, and outlandish pay scales, doing practically everything in its power to make it impossible for the company to meet those obligations.

Ninth, without the UAW tens of thousands of workers � its own members � would not now be faced with the loss of pension and healthcare benefits that it is impossible for GM or any of the other auto companies to provide, and never was possible for them to provide. The UAW, the whole labor-union movement, and the left-"liberal" intellectual establishment, which is their father and mother, are responsible for foisting on the public and on the average working man and woman a fantasy land of imaginary Demons (big business and the rich) and of saintly Good Fairies (politicians, government officials, and union leaders). In this fantasy-land, the Good Fairies supposedly have the power to wring unlimited free benefits from the Demons.

Tenth, Without the UAW and its fantasy-land mentality, autoworkers would have been motivated to save out of wages actually paid to them, and to provide for their future by means of by and large reasonable investments of those savings � investments with some measure of diversification. Instead, like small children, lured by the prospect of free candy from a stranger, they have been led to a very bad end. They thought they would receive endless free golden eggs from a goose they were doing everything possible to maim and finally kill, and now they're about to learn that the eggs just aren't there.

Here is the link for the rest of the article: http://mises.org/story/2124

on the issues in politics is Media Matters America. As the name explains, they monitor all forms of media and report on the distortions and misinformation. They give factual rebuttals. They make it a lot easier to sort fact from fiction.

Seems Rick Davis was paid $30,000 a month - for five years - as president of "an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations," according to the International Herald Tribune.