Don't know. It was just a 1 minute report on the news (nm)

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This man has changed his mind (that's a nice way of saying he lies) as much as Biden did in the debate last PM. Keep in mind that literally anything that is "gov't-sponsored" is actually YOU sponsored. You take home less money (less than you do now, that's for sure), you hand over even more control to "the gov't," etc.

If nothing else, look how everything "the gov't" does gets more screwed up every time "they" touch it. The bailout they just signed had thousands of pages added to it. That's the name of that tune. Hope this helps.

Incidentally, I don't give anyone a free pass. That's something I've never understood.

Let us say that your son or daughter are in school. They are very good students. They do their homework, study, and get good grades. In fact, they get an A. However, another little girl or boy didn't do so well in class. Instead...they got a D. Now an A is above average and a D is below average as I'm sure all of you aware of. So the A student can afford to lose part of their grade right because they are above average. So let us say that we take a bit of the A grade to up the unfortunate child who received a D so that way they get a C. That would make the unfortunate child have an average grade. Now the child earning the A but having it taken away is very upset. They worked so hard for that A but because others felt she could afford to give up part of her A so another child could bring a below average grade up to an average grade would make the whole school a happy place because everyone would be average. No one would be below average. But the A student gets very down and stops trying because what is the point. The A they earned will be taken away any way. The D student continues to get below average grades because....hey...no big deal...teacher will just take it from an A student and I'll be average. No harm done except now the A student is getting lower grades because their hard work has been penalized and they have stopped trying.

If this were happening in our school systems each and every one of us would have an absolute fit but that is exactly what Barrack Obama is wanting to do to us. Instead he is doing it with our hard-earned money.

First, $60,000 per year is not exactly in the wealthy category but even in this day it is or should be enough to pay for the necessities with some money left over.

Do I pay for everything with cash? You betcha! We have done so for years while we scrimped and saved to pay off the mortgage, get the cars paid off, etc. Then that money instead of going into finer living went into savings. We still live frugally because we fully expect that we will have to help our kids who are not yet old enough to have followed our advice...I might add that of 4 only 1 (Joe the real life plumber) has the desire to follow in our footsteps. People these days want bigger houses, newer cars, more "stuff" to keep up with the Jones and have kept buying what they can't afford...when their credit runs out then what? Bankruptcy? Bush pretty well took that option off the table. I fully expect debtor's prison to be the next thing on the agenda.

Use your head. If the middle class does well everyone does well. Where's the middle class now? But the greed is still there and that includes greedy people as well as greedy big business.

As for the rebates.....I was NOT in favor of the rebates and said they would do no good........they didn't. Mine went into the mattress and I'd gladly give it back if it would help this economy. I imagine the majority of people threw money at the credit card bill collectors hoping to stave them off another day or so. So who benefited from that?

It can be argued both ways and it is being done so as we speak. The document does not matter much to me. As I said, the NIE has been wrong before but I see what I see and I hear what I hear and the white house is the only place where rosy scenarios are being played out. It is getting old.

What would I have done to stop al-Qai'da?? I would have gone to Afghanistan with all the support and good will behind me that was available at that time. I would have **stayed the course** there until OBL was found. I would have implemented democratic policies there and hope that they would spread altho I believe the chances of that happening are slim to none. I would never never have gone to Iraq. I would have finished Afghanistan, rebuilt, and come home. I really believe that democracy does not come through the barrel of a gun and we cannot force democracy on people. I also do not believe that a perceived failure in Iraq will defang al-Qai'da et al. These are tribal people who have been fighting amongst themselves for 100s of years. It is what they know. That combined with the illiteracy that is prevalent (and I believe that plays a big part in what the people believe - without knowledge how can they formulate ideas and make decisions...they can't). They believe their leaders and follow them. I think we would have made much more progress had we **stayed the course** in Afghanistan.

Sunday, October 5, 8:00 EST
**ONE HOUR SPECIAL**
Obama & Friends: A History of Radicalism: 'Hannity's America' investigates Obama's college years, time as a community organizer and numerous controversial relationships.

How convenient for it to come out when it did. Sure expedited the process for the beggars.

could read it, paying attention to pages 8,9,10, and 11 in part 1, then pages 4 and 5 in part 2.

Secondly, it was both the dems and pubs that passed that bailout. Bush suggested a bailout plan but the dems and pubs are the ones who make and pass the bills into law. Bush signed it, yes, but I betcha he didn't read it, just like this stimulus plan of late.

http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/22386366/acorn-allegations.htm#q=acorn+investigation

even figure out who's WITH you, as evidenced by the little hissy fit above between you and another CON!!!

Please keep posting. You're getting whackier with each post and revealing yourself for the nut case you truly are!!!

Plus, I'm intrigued by all the different voices in your head who surface at different times. I guess tonight TM is doing the talking, and TM seems to be even more rude and angry and hateful than you usually are.

Why so angry, MT? Roberts was confirmed today. Why aren't you happy? Or do you just have a terminal case of chronic bitterness, no matter what? Have you ever been nice to ANYONE?

PLEASE keep posting. You're quite entertaining, even if in a pathetic sort of way.

Just think of what he spent on that. That could be your hard-earned dollars at work in his big spending. 2 million bucks per station. For 30 minutes of the same old stuff.

Yeah, he's going to cut your taxes after he reverses Bush's tax cuts. You will end up paying more than you do now, that is for sure.

I wonder where he was sitting in the ad? It looked like it could have been.....the Oval Office....

Okay, I get it. The wholesale slaughter of babies does not bother you. You have no care for them whatsoever. Better they are sliced and diced than to add to the population problem. What if some of them were serial killers? Sheesh. What if some of the dead Iraqis were going to be terrorists? Good grief!

Talk about oversimplification. Are you saying that every war that has been fought was for naught and should not have been fought? Is that your stand? Or is it just Iraq you are concerned about? I have asked numerous times and you have never answered. Should we never for any reason go to war?

Personally I think Roe vs Wade SHOULD be overturned, because it is unconstitutional on its face. It was enacted by activist judges overturning a state law ad taking it nationwide, which they have no right to do. Only Congress at state or local level can enact law. For that reason alone it should be overturned. Then, if individual states want to change/stop/whatever abortion law they should be able to do it. We are talking about killing of human beings here. You can shoot someone in your house who is a danger to you in some states and face jail time for it...yet we slice and dice innocent babies in the womb who are defenseless and say no harm, no foul? How contradictory is that may I ask? And when, oh when, can we just ask people to show more responsibility? With all the birth control methods there are available, we should not be seeing half a million abortions a year that are second, third, and fourth abortions. That is just nuts. And, though it probably does not matter a hoot to you, my work is done with women who find themselves in a situation where a choice has to be made, and work with organizations who offer a different choice. I would like to change minds because that is where the true answer is.

All that being said, my active work is not going toward overturning Roe v Wade, though it should be for the reasons stated above. Judges need to be reined in. At least then if people are going to condone abortion (pro choice) then let them go to the polls and put their vote where their mouth is, so that we know the true will of the people. If, as you say, over half the country does agree that abortion should be legal, that thought should not scare you and I don't know why it does. And if abortion remained the law of the land, then I would continue the work I am doing, and that is trying to change minds and hearts, and give women in that situation a choice different from abortion. Because I do believe in following the law of the land. Hence, no picketing of abortion clinics, no bombings, no shooting doctors, no demonizing women in that situation. I want to offer a different choice, to give them time to think about what they are doing and the long-reaching effects. And I see nothing wrong with that. If a woman decides to go ahead with an abortion, she is certainly able to do so and receives no condemnation from us. It saddens us, of course. But the women/girls we work with are not sent away with ridicule and condemnation and if they return later with regret they are welcomed and counseled. And we see a fair amount of those as well. And, wonderfully, we are beginning to see more women making a choice for life, whether keeping the child herself or choosing adoption. I realize on the national level it is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket...but one life saved, to me, is worth it. I cannot concentrate on the many who are lost, or I would never get anything done. I have to concentrate on the ones saved.

The real purpose of an abortion law is to encourage responsibility, because obviously something is haywire when half a million abortions a year are repeat abortions. If that is not using abortion as birth control, kindly tell me what is.

And as a final note....the June Cleaver thing is a really old chestnut. You can't tell me that 1.2 million women a year would turn into horrible mothers and the child would be better off dead than alive with their mothers. There are far more success stories than not, and there are many, many families looking to adopt newborns. There are many stories of girls/women who make that hard choice, and instead of the their lives being ruined, the child is the impetus for change in their lives. The good stories far outweigh the bad. And like I said...I am a glass half full kind of person. If we can save even a portion of those 1.2 million lives, then I believe the efforts are worth it. I certainly cannot just stand by and act like it does not matter to me. Because it does.

We are never going to agree on this subject. You can't understand why I would want to save babies and still think defending this country is okay, and I can't understand how you feel such empathy for casualties of war and feel none for aborted babies. I certainly feel empathy for casualties of war. However, I feel that war is sometimes necessary. I have no trouble with that decision. And I cannot equate the two...abortion and war. And I don't know how you can.

I personally don't make the decision to go to war. You don't personally make the decision to get an abortion. Either way, people die, although the numbers dying are much higher on the one side. And, frankly, I don't think even with the war the number of dead Iraqis has caught up to what Saddam did when he was in power. And that was not collateral damage, that was planned wholesale murder...very similar to abortion. Gas them all, men women and children, defenseless and unable to fight back. Line them up on the side of a pit, shoot them all, cover them up. Torture, beheading. Slice and dice, partially born, suck their brains out. There is a similarity. Murder. Barbarism. Same result. Dead human beings. When all is said and done, if a free Iraq emerges and that sort of behavior does not occur again, then I am willing to bet the Iraqis, down the road, will believe that it was worth it. They thought so when they were waving American flags and hugging soldiers and toppling Saddam statues. Just like we believed after the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, horrible and bloody though they were, were worth it.

I sleep well at night and am comfortable with my decisions. I assume you do too. So at least I will agree to disagree.

My husband gets a pretty good retirement check each month so I would argue they didn't QUITE steal all the pension money.

WASHINGTON - Nearly 7 million adults were in U.S. prisons or on probation or parole at the end of last year, 30 percent more than in 1995, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

That was about one in every 31 adults under correctional supervision at the end of 2004, compared with about 1 in 36 adults in 1995 and about 1 adult in every 88 in 1980, said Allan J. Beck, who oversaw the preparation of the department�s annual report on probation and parole populations.

Beck attributed the overall rise in the number of people under correctional supervision to sentencing reforms of the 1990s. The nation�s incarcerated population has been increasing for more than 30 years, with sharp growth in the last decade.He said crime rates have fallen in recent years, which helps account for slower growth among people on probation � those allowed to live in the community with some restrictions rather than being incarcerated.

The number of people on probation in 2004 grew by 6,343 to about 4.2 million in 2004, the report said.

Nearly 50 percent of all probationers at the end of last year were convicted of a felony. Twenty-six percent were on probation for a drug-law violation, and 15 percent for driving while intoxicated, said the annual Justice Department report.

Racial imbalance persists in probation
Whites made up 56 percent of the probation population and only 34 percent of the prison population, according to Wednesday�s report and another Justice Department report released last month.

�White people � for whatever reason � seem to have more access to community supervision than African Americans and Hispanics,� said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, which promotes alternatives to incarceration. He called probation a cheaper and more effective form of rehabilitation.

Blacks, he noted, comprised 30 percent of probationers and 41 percent of prisoners at the end of 2004. Hispanics made up 12 percent of the probation population and 19 percent of the prison population

Parolees grew fastest among those under correctional supervision. They are criminal offenders who rejoin society with restrictions for a time after they complete a prison term.

Number of parolees grows
The adult parole population grew 20,230, or 2.7 percent, during the year, more than twice the average annual increase of 1.3 percent since 1995, the report said. The total number of parolees at the end of 2004 was 765,355.

Beck said a late 1990s spike in prison populations is now showing up in the number of parolees, as the number of prisoners released rises.

The parole population grew during 2004 in 39 states, with double-digit growth in 10 states, led by Nebraska�s 24 percent increase. The number of people on parole decreased in nine states and didn�t change in Maine.

About 187,000, or 39 percent of discharged parolees went back to prison or jail in 2005. While the number has grown, the rate has held relatively stable since 1995, when 160,000, or 39 percent of discharged parolees returned to incarceration.

The total number of people incarcerated in the United States grew 1.9 percent in 2004 to 2,267,787 people, according to the report released last month.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lyn-l...-c_b_11483.html

Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman October 26, 2005

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as conspiracy theories adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.

According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received more than 57,000 complaints following Bush's alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations.

The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.

The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines. The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.

Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House.

Among other things, the GAO confirms that:

1. Some electronic voting machines did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected. In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.

2. It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate. Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.

3. Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level. 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a widespread conspiracy but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.

5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf