The Iraqi war has further destabilized the middle east. It has....sm

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Did Bush campaign promising a freedom agenda in the Middle East? I must have missed that during the debates. In fact, he specifically said he was against nation building when he debated Gore, although in all fairness, he didn't say he was against nation wrecking.

I guess he doesn't understand that the decider created more suiciders than he got rid of.

I can't wait to see how his base spins the long awaited truth from Bush's own lips that there were no WMDs and that Iraq had no ties to 9/11.

Has anyone else noticed what's going on in the middle east with elections? I don't think I would credit all this to just Obama's speech in Cairo, but my guess is that his example (and ours by electing him) has been noticed around the world.

"The leader of the largest bloc in the pro-Western coalition, Saad Hariri, said early Monday in a televised speech that he extends his hand to the losing side "to work together and seriously for the sake of Lebanon." He urged supporters to celebrate without provoking opponents." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/07/lebanon-election-results-_n_212359.html)

Maybe there's something to be said for extending a hand of peace instead of pointing a rifle.

Israel needs the help of no one. They will always prevail because they are backed by God -- the one true God. All those who come against the people of Israel will suffer loss. It is not out of fear that Israel arms itself, it is out of a deep understanding of their past, present, and future revealed to them by God. Israel is loved by God and hated by their muslim neighbors because of that fact.

There is no Palestine. As I said before, the palestinians are squatters. Claiming a land that never belong to them and never will be promised to them. Their name is not on the lease!

President Bush has refused to meet with border law-enforcement officials from Texas for a second time. His response to their request came in the form of a letter Monday, angering both lawmakers and sheriffs.

In fact, some Republican members of the House, upset by what they call the administration's seeming lack of concern for border security, are preparing to hold investigative hearings in San Diego and Laredo, Texas, early next month.

Members of the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation hope to expose serious security flaws that could potentially lead to terrorist attacks in the country, said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who is a member of the panel and has pushed for the hearings.

The next terrorist is not going to come in through (Transportation Security Administration) screening at Kennedy airport, Poe said. We already have information that people from the Middle East have come through the border from Mexico. They assimilate in Mexico learning to speak Spanish and adopt customs and then they cross the border into the United States.

Poe requested the meeting for members of the Southwestern Sheriffs' Border Coalition a group that includes all 26 border-county sheriffs from California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. The sheriffs wanted to speak to the president about the increasing dangers in their communities and along the border.

The president is the busiest man in the world but he needs to take the time to talk to the border sheriffs and learn what's happening in the real world from them, Poe said. We can't understand why he refuses to meet with them.

In May, all of the Republican House members from Texas traveled to Washington to meet the president regarding border security. Bush did not meet with them, however, and former White House spokesman Scott McClellan was sent in his stead.

Poe said the White House letter dated Monday showed the disconnect between the administration and the American people who want the border secured.

The president would appreciate the opportunity to visit with border sheriffs, said the White House letter written by La Rhonda M. Houston, deputy director of the Office of Appointments and Scheduling. Regrettably, it will not be possible for us to arrange such a meeting. I know that you understand with the tremendous demands of the president's time, he must often miss special opportunities, as is the case this time.

Rick Glancey, spokesman for the sheriffs coalition, said its members are angry and disappointed in the president's response. Glancey said Bush's recent tour of the border with Border Patrol spokesmen did not reflect the reality of what locals live with every day.

It's a slap in the face to the hardworking men and women on the front lines of rural America who every day engage in border-security issues, Glancey said. He missed the opportunity to take off his White House cowboy boots and put some real cowboy boots on and walk in our shoes for a few minutes.

The border hearings will expose the truth to the American public and force the administration to take a serious look at the border, said Allan Knapp, Poe's legislative director.

Knapp and Poe have traveled twice to the border this year, spending time along barren stretches where they witnessed no security and numerous migrants crossing into the United States, they said.

We need to expose the lack of border security before it is too late, Poe said. We're fighting a war on terror in Iraq and we're winning, but we're losing our own border war. These hearings will be a necessary step in the right direction.

Andy Ramirez, chairman of the Chino-based Friends of the Border Patrol, said he has been called to testify before the panel in San Diego. Ramirez said he has turned in two years of Border Patrol documents and memos, which he will discuss before the committee.

The president has basically pushed his whole administration's agenda toward the war on terror, yet he can't find the time to meet with law-enforcement leaders responsible for border security, Ramirez said. It is appalling and outrageous that the war on terror and border security does not extend to the U.S. border.

*According to the graph, Iraqi civilians and security forces were killed and wounded by insurgents at a rate of about 26 a day early in 2004, and at a rate of about 40 a day later that year. The rate increased in 2005 to about 51 a day, and by the end of August had jumped to about 63 a day.

Extrapolating the daily averages over the months from Jan. 1, 2004, to Sept. 16 of this year results in a total of 25,902 Iraqi civilians and security forces killed and wounded by insurgents.*

Okay, this is about as disturbing as it gets. I came across this thread on the Democratic Underground website:

Source: AFP

Agence France-Presse

BAGHDAD -- US troops are holding nearly 950 children and teenagers in a military prison at a Baghdad base, some as young as 10, a top commander said Monday.

Brigadier General Michael Nevin of US military police said many of these youngsters, mainly 15, 16 or 17 years of age are illiterate and have been detained for planting bombs and even for "picking up a gun and firefighting."

...

"These juveniles have been involved in something that is perceived as a security threat to Iraq or coalition forces," Nevin told Agence France-Presse during a tour of Camp Cropper.

...

"In January we had around 100 juveniles. Now we have around 950," Nevin said.

...

One of the commanders at Camp Cropper, Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm McMullen, said the juveniles were now part of a wide-ranging educational program launched by the military.

"Many of them come from broken homes with no education," he said.

So, curious as to what type of educational program launched by the military, as I thought it funny this little tibit of information was left out, I came across this:

On January 5, 2006, Congressman Murtha held a town hall meeting with Cong. Jim Moran (D-VA 08).

The soldier who asked the first question served in Afghanistan and said that morale among troops is high and that he would gladly serve in Iraq today. His comment was the only one replayed by Fox News the next day.

But the majority of soldiers in attendance spoke out against the current policy. Fox News did not broadcast their remarks.

Garin Reppenhagen, served as a sniper in Iraq for a year in the First Infantry Division:

And 19 Republican senators and a conservative poster crashing this this board think that monsters like this should receive amnesty for killing our soldiers. Unbelievable.

By Ibon Villelabeitia

Thu Jul 6, 1:41 PM ET

Iraq's prime minister urged the U.S. military on Thursday to keep reckless troops from serving in Iraq in order to prevent abuses like the alleged rape and murder of a teenager and her family by U.S. soldiers in March.

Expanding on calls for an independent inquiry and a review of foreign troops' immunity from Iraqi law, Nuri al-Maliki said commanders should do a better job in preparing their soldiers.

There needs to be a plan to educate and train soldiers, and those who are brought to serve in Iraq shouldn't bear prejudices nor be reckless toward people's honor, Maliki said.

The U.S. military is investigating a group of its soldiers over the rape and killing of a family of four in Mahmudiya, south of the capital, in a case that has strained relations between Washington and Baghdad.

Former private Steven Green, 21, has been charged with rape and murder in a U.S. federal court. He had been discharged from the army because of a personality disorder before the case came to light.

At least three other soldiers are being investigated in the case.

The Mahmudiya incident and other incidents before that ... produce sadness, pain and condemnation from Iraqis, Maliki said.

IMMUNITY

Maliki, facing pressure from Shi'ites and Sunnis to hold Americans accountable, has slammed a U.S. occupation authority decree that grants immunity from Iraqi law for the 140,000 or so foreign troops in Iraq, saying it emboldens soldiers.

I think this matter has become necessary to review and solve, either by reviewing the issue of immunity or reviewing the nature of the investigating committees, he told reporters in Baghdad, a day after he first called for a review of the law.

The rape and murder case is the fifth in a high-profile series of U.S. inquiries into killings of Iraqi civilians in recent months and has outraged Iraqis.

American commanders, keen to repair the military's tarnished image after three years of complaints from Iraqis that U.S. abuses go unpunished, pressed murder charges against 12 military personnel last month. Marines are under investigation for the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.

Iraqis have complained of Americans' lack of cultural sensitivity -- including searching women's rooms during raids or not taking their boots off when entering. Commanders say they are improving such procedures.

Though heavily dependent on America's military muscle, Maliki faces delicate negotiations with its main ally Washington over how to regulate the presence of the U.S.-led forces in Iraq, now under a U.N. mandate that expires in December.

know that it scares the heck outta me and others, Obama.......his middle name is hussein.....

one of the bibles say something to the effect of when the *stuff* happens (the bad stuff) - it's going to happen from the *inside out* -

Then my income will just push us into that bracket. I wonder if that will negate my entire income? If so, I guess we may be better off if I just quit? Right now I work because I can't afford to quit. I won't be able to afford it then either so what will I do? I wonder how many others will be in my situation?

FYI, we live in a small older home that we are trying to pay off so that when our two children are college-age, maybe we can afford it. We don't live extravagently by any means. What will happen to people like us?

Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.

Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use.

All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate.

We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit.

Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses.

And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller.

Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.

and with only a high school diploma. I also believe in Christian values - the actual ones, not the ones that Dobson, Buchanan, et al., supposedly represent. I do not get offended at the terms because I KNOW many uneducated women who only believe the slogans and information they get from Fox news. Trying to engage them in conversation results in heated statements like the terrorists are walking down every street and we need to fear, fear, fear. I know that I actively investigate the issues. Therefore, demographically, I am uneducated, but I take it upon myself to be informed. When Christians are mentioned, I am not offended because I myself can see the distortions and self-righteousness in their spokesmen.

that John McCain's economic plan is designed from the ground up to raise incomes and create jobs for Americans - especially middle-class Americans - and get our economy moving again. It is in sharp contrast to Barack Obama's plan, which does not treat the middle class well and which will reduce jobs rather than create them.

"The McCain tax plan will allow middle-class Americans to keep more of what they earn than the Obama tax plan. McCain will increase the exemption for children from $3,500 to $7,000 per child, and he will provide a refundable health care tax credit of $5,000 for every family. What does this mean for middle-class families? Consider a married couple, one of whom works, earning $55,000 plus employer-paid health insurance of $8,000, and who rent their home and have two young children. Under McCain's plan, this family would receive a tax refund of $2,087 for health care and other things. Under Obama's plan, including his proposed worker's credit, this same family would not get any tax refund; in fact, they will have to pay taxes of $1,213. That's a $3,300 advantage for that family with McCain's plan compared with Obama's.

McCain's plan also provides incentives for firms to hire more workers and to pay them more. He will stop penalizing American firms when they create jobs in America rather than overseas. The U.S. tax code now levies a tax of 35 percent on American firms, the second highest in the world. McCain would reduce the tax to 25 percent, an important reason why his plan creates more jobs than Obama's. Another reason is that McCain will not raise the tax on small businesses, as Obama's plan does. Under Obama's plan, the top marginal income tax rate, which many small businesses pay, will rise to over 50 percent, including his proposed 5 percent increase in the statutory rate, 3 percent for Medicare, 3 percent for Social Security, and 4 percent from the phase out of exemptions.

McCain's economic plan is comprehensive and helps the middle class in many other ways. By promoting domestic energy production, including nuclear power and exploration and production of oil and gas - which Obama has opposed - McCain will reduce the price of gasoline, electricity and heating oil. By promoting free-trade agreements, he will reduce taxes on job-creating exports and reduce the prices that middle- and lower-income families pay for food and clothing. In contrast, Sen. Obama opposes good trade agreements - voting against the Colombia free-trade agreement - that would create jobs in America."

All I heard during Barrack Obama's campaign was how he was going to look out for the middle class and how Bush and McCain would do nothing more than make the rich richer. Well, every time I turn on the news, I cringe. All I see are crooks. CEO crooks, rich crooks, and political crooks. These crooks are getting rich off of taxpayers and we are getting nothing in return. The initial bailout has done nothing. The stock market is still extremely low. The only good thing I've heard of late is that gas is below 2 dollars a gallon right now. Now GM wants a bailout. Their CEOs flying in on private jets and asking for a handout. I truly do not want to get them one because I know it won't change anything. However, it breaks my heart to think of the millions of people who will truly suffer from this....including my mother.

Now President-elect Obama still claims to be out there for the middle class, but I just don't see it. His plans will do nothing more than to help the lower class. The rich will survive as they are rich, but it will be the middle class who again takes the hit. The more TV I watch, the more I see Obama as nothing more than a puppet of his political party.

My husband is so stressed out about this economy and his business that he is losing sleep at night. He had to fire someone yesterday to save costs which means he will have to work a lot more hours to cover for the person he had to let go which will add more stress and little to no downtime for him. Not to mention the poor bloke he had to fire right before the holidays.

I'm sitting here at my desk thinking about our monthly house payment and our two kids and I wonder how we will make it if my husband's boss decides to close his store. Will he send him to another store or will he just let him go? How will he find another job in this economy that would make enough money to pay our house payment? What will happen to my mom if GM gets rid of legacy expenses and she loses my dad's pension and her health benefits. What happens to my brother when his factory goes under and he is left with three kids and a wife to support?

Is anyone else literally sick to their stomach about all of this? I feel like I could just hurl and then I turn TV on and see all these crooks and I just want to scream. I've tried to stay positive and I've tried to give Obama the benefit of the doubt but his pal Bill Clinton is the one who started the housing crisis by forcing bad loans to be given and Obama has done nothing but surround himself with Clintons and I just can't shake the feeling that we won't rebound from this......at least not for a very very long time.

You're parents may have not been bigoted or judgemental but I believe you have more than made for what they didn't have. It's said their child has to be so mean, hateful, and bitter.

The Iraqi war has further destabilized the middle east. It has....sm

Iraqi colleagues killed U.S. soldiers, military says