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Palin (and now her daughter) is actively seeking press coverage and has been ever since the election. In other words, she WANTS to be in the news. She obviously is campaigning for 2012, and that makes her a relevant story.

We've been through this time and time again. What part of this do you not understand?

My daughter is very conservative and we believe only left-wing nutcases get lip injections. There. Now it's political.

the higher gasoline/oil prices get and the harder it becomes to be able to AFFORD to be an American, the angrier they become and the more they troll?

Poor babies. They can't focus their anger and rage at Bush because then they'd have to admit that they voted for an idiot, and, just like Bush, there's no way they can ever admit they're wrong. So they have to come here and attack us instead.

I think the more the Republican party falls apart, the more difficulty they have affording even the most basic of necessities, the more bitter, angry, hateful trolling is likely to be inflicted upon us.

The "drive-bys" are so incredibly in the tank with Baroma! The lovefest has been far more nauseating than it ever was with Clinton.

How sad it is that McCain (who frustrates the krud out of me often times) is supposed to "hide" the fact that he was tortuored by those who wanted to destroy us for five LONG years? The enemy has changed, but their hatred of America has only worsened.

It's very likely that if Baroma wins that he'll be the first to be tested (like W was on 9/11). It could also certainly happen to McCain, but it's quite safe to say how he'd handle another 9/11 type situation. Sadly,this should give everyone a jolt: "Karachi Kids."

the cartoon in the New York Post? Yeah, that's one of the papers owned by Rupert Murdoch -- the same guy that owns Fixed Noise.

CEO first. Obama, like most democrats, are all about unions. I do believe Obama still wants to give unions more control by getting rid of secret ballots, etc. The only reason Obama threw the UAW under the bus was because there was really no other option. Intelligent people know that UAW killed GM and we also know that Obama would stand behind them until there was no hope because so many democrats get campaign money from unions. He wouldn't stab them in the back unless he had no other choice. There is no just no other option for GM. They need to file bankruptcy and restructure things.

My father worked for GM for 30+ years as a salvage worker. He always said that the union did nothing but protect p!ss poor employees from getting fired. They paid all that money into union dues and they never got anything out of it. Unions are nothing but greed and corruption and all they do is push democratic rhetoric while using the money they receive to back democrats in their campaigns.

You ASSUME I am a republican? I am simply stating that I saw it on something and suddenly made that connection. Further reading online there are many others - dems and reps - that have made that same conclusion - it's weird.

Don't read anything else into it and it sounds to me like you think you know where I stand, but you don't know anything about me, so keep your "labels" to yourself. I could make a deduction about who you are voting for, but I won't ASSUME anything. After all, I don't know you.

I just think it's because the stocks were so low yesterday that it was a buyer's market.

You know, it's a crying shame that your every day run of the mill bank robber has to be turned away because banks don't have the cash on hand to support him.
What has America come to?

FDIC�s Bair warns on bank deposit insurance fund

Associated Press

March 4, 2009, 12:35PM

WASHINGTON � The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Has warned that the fund insuring Americans� bank deposits could be wiped out this year without the money the agency is seeking in new fees from U.S. Banks and thrifts.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair acknowledged, in a letter to bank CEOs, that the new increased fees and hefty emergency premium the agency voted to levy last week will bring a �significant expense� to banks, especially amid a recession and financial crisis when their earnings are under pressure.

�We also recognize that assessments reduce the funds that banks can lend in their communities to help revitalize the economy,� Bair wrote.

But given the accelerating bank failures that have been depleting the deposit insurance fund, she said, it �could become insolvent this year.�

�Without substantial amounts of additional assessment revenue in the near future, current projections indicate that the fund balance will approach zero or even become negative,� Bair wrote in the letter dated Monday to the chief executives of the nation�s 8,305 federally insured banks and thrifts.

The industry, especially smaller community banks, has said the new insurance fees will place an extra burden on an already struggling sector. A federal banking regulator said last week the new premiums will unfairly burden smaller banks that didn�t contribute to the financial crisis with reckless lending.

As loan defaults have soared, reflecting the ravages of rising unemployment and sliding home prices, bank failures have cascaded and sapped billions out of the fund that insures regular accounts up to $250,000. The fund now stands at its lowest level in nearly a quarter-century, $18.9 billion as of Dec. 31, compared with $52.4 billion at the end of 2007.

The FDIC now expects that bank failures will cost the insurance fund around $65 billion through 2013, up from an earlier estimate of $40 billion. There have been 16 bank collapses already this year, following 25 in 2008 � which included two of the biggest savings and loans, Washington Mutual Inc. And IndyMac Bank.

The new insurance fees are meant to raise $27 billion this year to replenish the fund.

Bair said the plan protects bank depositors as well as taxpayers, because it likely means the FDIC won�t have to go to the Treasury Department and tap public money to replenish the insurance fund.

Bair has not ruled out that possibility for a short-term loan, but said she doesn�t expect to take the more drastic action of using its $30 billion long-term credit line with Treasury � something that has never been done.

�Some have suggested that we should turn to taxpayers for funding,� she said in her letter to the bank executives. �But banks � not taxpayers � are expected to fund the system, and I believe Congress would look skeptically on such a course of action.�

Furthermore, she said, turning to taxpayers �could open up a whole new debate about the degree of government involvement in the affairs of insured banks.�

The FDIC plan puts new charges on a battered industry while the Obama administration is seeking to pump as much as $750 billion in additional federal aid into ailing banks under its financial rescue plan. The FDIC, as a regulatory agency charged with protecting the insurance fund, acts independently from the administration.

The new emergency premium, to be collected from all federally insured institutions on Sept. 30, will be 20 cents for every $100 of their insured deposits. That compares with an average premium of 6.3 cents paid by banks and thrifts last year.

The FDIC also raised the regular insurance premiums for banks to between 12 and 16 cents for every $100 in deposits starting in April, up from a range of 12 to 14 cents.

UPDATE II: Oopsie. Change-O, Government-O drops the word "require" from their vocabulary in Obama's Change.gov website on "voluntary service" for Obama's new "Youth Corps" program.

Right.

UPDATE III: Obama forgot to remove "require" in one of his Change.gov website on service requirement,

The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11�indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade�, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.

Herskowitz�a longtime Houston newspaper columnist�has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers�expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript�pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.

The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior�who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.

I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."

But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush�personally�in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"�because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.

The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.

Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.

Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.

Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.

in AR's post that she was against it. Instead, she acted as if the topic has no place on this board and shouldn't be discussed... like some kind of dirty little secret.

The *attack the messenger* technique has been used constantly in the last 5 years by the current administration (and his followers) when someone gets too close to the truth. Don't believe me? Ask Valerie Plame.

Didn't you notice it was "dikipedia"...not "wickipedia"?

FDIC�s Bair warns on bank deposit insurance fund

Associated Press

March 4, 2009, 12:35PM