It appears to me that the governors are just walking in lockstep to politics......

• This racism thing is getting out of hand - sbMT
  • You said it... - hmm
    • What incentives did...(sm) - Just the big bad
      • You can give up the Bush bashing... - hmm
        • LOL.....(sm) - Just the big bad
          • Actually, you can ask anyone that knows me - sbMT
  • Jeez, I didn't know I was black??? (empty pockets here) :-)......nm - Cyndiee
  • It appears to me that the governors are just walking in lockstep to politics...... - sm
    • Interesting tidbit...(sm) - Just the big bad
      • You think they might have figured out hip-hop won't be enough?......nm - sm
        • LOL.....(sm) - Just the big bad
          • and the left? -consists of loons and then - the really far-left loons. -ALREADY split.nm
            • I wouldn't worry about the left..(sm) - Just the big bad
            • LOL!!! - nm
  • Nice little corner they've backed themselves into...sm - Just the big bad
    • Wow, I wouldn't expect a one liner out of you! - sbMT
      • I don't think he should do that, but...(sm) - Just the big bad
        • I'm pretty sure his point was to divide even further - sbMT

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$7.5 million in (something else). He was top exec for 3 weeks!

I just caught the tail end of this info on Oprah and have been looking for verification of this. Haven't found it yet. They might keep this under wraps since the bail out still hasn't happened yet.

I'm curious if this is true and if it is.....

...need to answer to their citizens.  I personally have a brand new respect for Governor Charlie Crist.  He has refused to play the GOP obstructionist game and has PUBLICLY gone on record and placed the needs of his citizens first.  I believe they call this bipartisanship.

I just love the gall of the obstructionist GOP in Congress (particularly the ones who find "Barack, the Magic Negro," etc. entertaining), those who publicly beat their chests and say they're against it, yet have no problem with their states taking the money.  After eight years of Bush, they must still think Americans are stupid.  We're NOT.

By Jackie Calmes

updated 2:43 a.m. ET, Tues., Feb. 17, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Obama must wish governors could vote in Congress: While just three of the 219 Republican lawmakers backed the $787 billion economic recovery plan that he is signing into law on Tuesday, that trifling total would have been several times greater if support among the 22 Republican state executives counted.

The contrast reflects the two faces of the Republican Party these days.

Leaderless after losing the White House, the party is mostly defined by its Congressional wing, which flaunted its anti-spending ideology in opposing the stimulus package. That militancy drew the mockery of late-night television comics, but the praise of conservative talk-show stars and the party faithful.

Governors, unlike members of Congress, have to balance their budgets each year. And that requires compromise with state legislators, including Democrats, as well as more openness to the occasional state tax increase and to deficit-spending from Washington.

Across the country, from California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger to Florida’s Charlie Crist and New England’s Jim Douglas in Vermont and M. Jodi Rell in Connecticut, Republican governors showed in the stimulus debate that they could be allies with Mr. Obama even as Congressional Republicans spurned him.

“It really is a matter of perspective,” Mr. Crist said in an interview. “As a governor, the pragmatism that you have to exercise because of the constitutional obligation to balance your budget is a very compelling pull” generally.

With Florida facing a projected $5 billion shortfall in a $66 billion budget, and social costs rising, the stimulus package “helps plug that hole,” Mr. Crist said, “but it also helps us meet the needs of the people in a very difficult economic time.”

Mr. Obama’s two-year stimulus package includes more than $135 billion for states, to help them pay for education, Medicaid and infrastructure projects. Yet even that sum would cover less than half of the total budget deficits the states will face through 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research and advocacy organization.

The states’ reliance on the federal government in times of distress will be showcased this weekend, when the governors come to Washington for their annual winter meeting. Their focus will be on infrastructure needs and home foreclosures.

By Jackie Calmes

updated 2:43 a.m. ET, Tues., Feb. 17, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Obama must wish governors could vote in Congress: While just three of the 219 Republican lawmakers backed the $787 billion economic recovery plan that he is signing into law on Tuesday, that trifling total would have been several times greater if support among the 22 Republican state executives counted.

The contrast reflects the two faces of the Republican Party these days.

Leaderless after losing the White House, the party is mostly defined by its Congressional wing, which flaunted its anti-spending ideology in opposing the stimulus package. That militancy drew the mockery of late-night television comics, but the praise of conservative talk-show stars and the party faithful.

Governors, unlike members of Congress, have to balance their budgets each year. And that requires compromise with state legislators, including Democrats, as well as more openness to the occasional state tax increase and to deficit-spending from Washington.

Across the country, from California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger to Florida’s Charlie Crist and New England’s Jim Douglas in Vermont and M. Jodi Rell in Connecticut, Republican governors showed in the stimulus debate that they could be allies with Mr. Obama even as Congressional Republicans spurned him.

“It really is a matter of perspective,” Mr. Crist said in an interview. “As a governor, the pragmatism that you have to exercise because of the constitutional obligation to balance your budget is a very compelling pull” generally.

With Florida facing a projected $5 billion shortfall in a $66 billion budget, and social costs rising, the stimulus package “helps plug that hole,” Mr. Crist said, “but it also helps us meet the needs of the people in a very difficult economic time.”

Mr. Obama’s two-year stimulus package includes more than $135 billion for states, to help them pay for education, Medicaid and infrastructure projects. Yet even that sum would cover less than half of the total budget deficits the states will face through 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research and advocacy organization.

The states’ reliance on the federal government in times of distress will be showcased this weekend, when the governors come to Washington for their annual winter meeting. Their focus will be on infrastructure needs and home foreclosures.

Of course, that doesn't stop my governor from taking the temporary money, probably raising our taxes after the states have to fend for themselves. As he said, he doesn't care. Know why? It's his last term. He's going to let the next governor be the bad guy. We've been suffering since he became governor. He juggles the money all the time, yet the people of this state do not see any relief. He promised property tax relief after the casinos were up and running. We have yet to see a dime of it.

"I'm not sure that we can, over the long run, cope with the high unemployment compensation standard that this mandates for states," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, the head of the National Governor's Association, told "Fox News Sunday."

"But I don't care. My people are suffering," he added. "They need that extra money. And right now that's paramount in my mind."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/22/stimulus.governors/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060805/ap_on_re_us/governors_guard

has threatened Americans again in a new audio tape, saying President Barack Obama inflamed hatred toward the U.S. by ordering Pakistan to crack down on militants in Swat Valley and block Islamic law in the area. 

You just can't win with terrorists.  No matter how nice we try to be to Muslims.....the extremists are still going to hate us and want to kill us.

You crash this board and admonish my behavior, yet you can't see the same behavior on the other board.  You're over there kissing up to them. 

Yeah.  You call them as you see them.

With your right eye closed.

You're just another lying phony crashing this board.

Disclaimer:  I am neither a Demican nor a Republicrat.  I have always voted for the guy/gal based on their stated policies, compared to actual prior performance which agrees with my mostly conservative views.  (I have sort of a peripheral friend who, about four months before the election, called herself an Obamacan.  Wonder how she's feeling right now.)

Having said that, I will add that I do know they all use the TelePrompTer and give speeches mostly written by professional speech writers. I get it.  I do not believe that any of them just make spontaneous utterances inspired by God.  Even Lincoln wrote it down on the back of an envelope on the way to Gettysburg.  But I bet he did not just READ it straight off the envelope, but extemporized a bit without getting himself in trouble.

I always liked Bush's more folksy way of speaking.  When he would veer from his canned text you could usually tell, and it appeared genuine to me.  Example: He addressed criticism of what some were calling his 'cowboy swagger' saying 'In Texas, we call that.......walking.'  Sorry, it just broke me up.  I don't even mind a few malapropisms, as it only adds to the impression that this is a genuine guy.

I compare that to Obama, Mr. Smooth.  I get no sense of warmth from the man and when he gets away from his canned text, I can just see his handlers cringing.  Example:  Why didn't he get a dog for the Whitehouse as he had been talking about during the campaign?  'Guess that was just another campaign promise. Heh, heh, heh.' 

I believe that it is in those unguarded moments, off script, you get a glimps of what's inside of a person.  What do they consider funny?  What do they poke fun at?  Themselves?  Or Special Olympics?

So my puppet remark was directed toward Obama, sorry if I was too indirect. 

I was in Gulfport, MS before, during and after Katrina.  About a year after, all the rent on the coast went sky high (was paying $425 for an efficiency, raised it to $800).  I was working 7 days a week at two hospitals (many MTs had already left the coast), and I had to leave too, leaving them even more short handed.  There have been many articles regarding the majority of the rebuild on the coast is new casinos and high-end housing.  I have no idea how they expect anyone in the service industries to live there without affordable housing.  You cannot have tourist industry without people that support it - casino workers, fast food folk, maids, low-end hospital jobs.

What drove me nuts is the way they portrayed the people in the media - as if we were all illiterate crackheads.  I worked with many fine people at those hospitals, and it would take pages to descibe their suffering.  It disgusts me how there will always be money to accomodate the disposable income players, while the backbone of the community, hard working, serious, responsible people, were left with a trashed out house with no roof, a mortgage to pay and an insurance company that said they didn't have to give them a dime to rebuild.

college and everything......yepper, by golly

       www.sfgate.com        Return to regular view

(08-05) 19:27 PDT DENVER (AP) --

A decade ago, John Roberts played a valuable role helping attorneys overturn a Colorado referendum that would have allowed discrimination against gays — free assistance the Supreme Court nominee didn't mention in a questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The revelation didn't appear to dent his popularity among conservative groups nor quell some of the opposition of liberal groups fearful he could help overturn landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a right to an abortion.

An attorney who worked with Roberts cautioned against making guesses about his personal views based on his involvement in the Colorado case, which gay rights advocates consider one of their most important legal victories.

"It may be that John and others didn't see this case as a gay-rights case," said Walter Smith, who was in charge of pro bono work at Roberts' former Washington law firm, Hogan & Hartson.

Smith said Roberts may instead have viewed the case as a broader question of whether the constitutional guarantee of equal protection prohibited singling out a particular group of people that wouldn't be protected by an anti-discrimination law.

"I don't think this gives you any clear answers, but I think it's a factor people can and should look at to figure out what this guy is made of and what kind of Supreme Court justice he would make," Smith said.

On Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans released two memos by Roberts when he was as an assistant counsel in the Reagan White House. In one, Roberts argued that President Reagan should not interfere in a Kentucky case involving the display of tributes to God in schools.

In the other, Roberts writes that Reagan shouldn't grant presidential pardons to bombers of abortion clinics. "The president unequivocally condemns such acts of violence," he wrote in a draft reply to a lawmaker seeking Reagan's position. "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department denied a request by Judiciary Committee Democrats for Roberts' writings on 16 cases he handled when he was principal deputy solicitor general during President George H.W. Bush's administration. The department also declined to provide the materials, other than those already publicly available, to The Associated Press and other organizations that sought them under the Freedom of Information Act.

"We cannot provide to the committee documents disclosing the confidential legal advice and internal deliberations of the attorneys advising the solicitor general," assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella wrote Friday to the eight committee Democrats.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel's senior Democrat, said Roberts made decisions whether to pursue legal appeals in more than 700 cases. "The decision to keep these documents under cover is disappointing," Leahy said.

The gay rights case involved Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment approved by Colorado voters in 1992 that would have barred laws, ordinances or regulations protecting gays from discrimination by landlords, employers or public agencies such as school districts.

Gay rights groups sued, and the measure was declared unconstitutional in a 6-3 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

Roberts' role in the case, disclosed this week by the Los Angeles Times, included helping develop a strategy and firing tough questions during a mock court session at Jean Dubofsky, a former Colorado Supreme Court justice who argued the case on behalf of the gay rights plaintiffs.

Dubofsky, who did not return calls Friday, said Roberts helped develop the strategy that the law violated the equal protection clause in the Constitution — and prepared her for tough questions from conservative members of the court. She recalled how Justice Antonin Scalia asked for specific legal citations.

"I had it right there at my fingertips," she told the Times. "Roberts was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue. He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute."

Dubofsky had never argued before the Supreme Court. Smith said she called his firm and asked specifically for help from Roberts, who argued 39 cases before the court before he was confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Smith said any lawyer at Hogan & Hartson would have had the right to decline to work on any case for moral, religious or other reasons.

"If John had felt that way about this case, given that he is a brilliant lawyer, he would have just said, `This isn't my cup of tea' and I would have said, `Fine, we'll look for something else that would suit you,'" Smith said.

The Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which helped move the case through the state and federal courts, said Roberts' involvement raised more questions about him than it answered because of his "much more extensive advocacy of positions that we oppose," executive director Kevin Cathcart said.

"This is one more piece that will be added to the puzzle in the vetting of John Roberts' nomination," Cathcart said.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, said his support for Roberts' nomination has not diminished. "He wasn't the lead lawyer. They only asked him to play a part where he would be Scalia in a mock trial," Sheldon said.

Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, said Roberts' involvement was "certainly not welcome news to those of us who advocate for traditional values," but did not prompt new concerns about his nomination, which the group supports.

"That's what lawyers do — represent their firm's clients, whether they agree with what those clients stand for or not," the group said in a statement.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/08/05/national/w135401D98.DTL

Two Border State Governors Declare Illegal Immigration State of Emergency

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Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A S**t About The Election

There are so many funny ones at this site it was hard to decide on one!  You'll have to supply the 2 letters above which were refused.  What could they be?!