cnn - palin's father and sister

to speak about her.  Why won't she be interviewed?  What are the repubs hiding by keeping her in a cocoon? 

• cnn - palin's father and sister - Roque

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decided to move into the parents' place after the parents passed on.  There was some (a lot of)  rehab work to be done. 

So she and I were patching and painting in the living room.  BIL was working on cabinets in the kitchen.  Sis and I were having a good time and laughing in there.  Playing music, dancing and carrying on, but actually accomplishing what we needed to do.   BIL actually came in and YELLED at us for having 'too much fun.'  I believe he must have thought we were laughing at him. (Which actually we had not been, until he came in and made an absolute doofus of himself.  After which we could hardly keep a straight face.) 

Nope, he really never did not fit in.  Fortunately, the humor gene was passed on to their daughter; must have been X chromosome linked. 

is making GROSS $250,000 from his business, he is definitely not wealthy in my book.  On the other hand if his taxable income is $250,000 I see nothing wrong with him paying more taxes than someone with a taxable income of say $40,000. 

I do not believe that Obama is going to tax the rich to give to the poor.  I have not heard that a single time from his MOUTH.  IF and I say IF, he is successful, your father-in-law would most likely get a reduction in taxes.  This thing of Obama the modern day Robin Hood is so far out in left field it doesn't even deserve serious consideration.  People seem to believe McCain whatever he says.

These haters seem to forget where their ancestors came from and why they came in the first place!!  Duh, is it because they wanted the opportunity to better their lives, or practice their religion freely?  I wonder if when our forefathers wrote the Constitution they intended there to be an expiration date?   And those same ancestors are the ones that came over here, killed all the Native Americans they could, and the ones they didn't forced them into their religion and then put them on reservations.  Kind of sound like history repeating itself.

Culture: The Battleground for the American Soul

by Father Jonathan Morris

I don't know if anyone cares how I feel after Election Day. In case you do, here's the scoop; I'm happy, with some reservation.

I'm happy to live in a democracy where my vote counts, and no more than the next guy's. I'm happy to be able to trust government workers to tally the ballots. I'm happy there are winners and losers, and happy to hear concession speeches peppered with “I'll be back” and “Don't lose hope.” Yes, today I'm happy — I'm very happy to be an American.

My reservation is deeply seeded. My concern has little to do with partisan politics, with house or Senate control. I could care less about red or blue or right or left. And for goodness sake, I'm rather indifferent to the emotional pull of a clunky elephant or a rickety donkey.

Having followed the major issues and the hottest campaigns of this midterm election, I'm concerned that Americans — on both sides of the aisle — are losing the ability to know what they are fighting for, and why it matters. I'm concerned we are losing the battle for the American soul.

“A Battle for the American Soul?” To some, the phrase itself may sound like simplistic punditry — mouth-candy, cliché, and passé, altogether juvenile.

If I didn't live in Europe, I might agree. But a few years on this side of the Atlantic, combined with regular glances back at the history books, I am convinced America has possessed and still possesses a unique, positive and powerful soul, carried in the hearts of her citizens. In this century alone, it has saved the world more than once.

I am also convinced that now, as never before, the American soul is the target of heavy and deadly fire. The sharpshooters, this time, come primarily from within.

Sordid politics can't take the full blame for our predicament. The real battleground for the American soul is CULTURE.

The word is not easy to define. I think it is a nation's portfolio of values — her priorities, ethics, conceptions, and traditions. It is the common philosophy of life, a mindset, and mentality, a way of judging, acting, and reacting. Culture, we can say, creates in us a collective understanding of who we are and what we are about.

While culture is bigger than politics, in a representative democracy like ours, the quality of politics is a cultural bellwether, a group bill of health. From the sight of all things political these days, I would say our culture is sick.

Some have said the outcome of this election was all about Iraq. I don't think it is so simple. Large numbers of Republicans have proven themselves untrustworthy in character and policy. In their tenure as majority leaders in Congress, they have done some good things, but they have vacillated in their stated priorities. They have failed to push forward the confirmation of important judgeships, truncated integral immigration reform, and most recently, were weak on social ballot initiatives like the Missouri stem cell research amendment and mandatory parental consent for minors seeking abortions.

The deeper problem is not policy. It is the superficial nature of political discourse. Republicans have set themselves up as the pro-life, pro-family party, and its platform promises to protect both. But much like the Democrats, its members have been unconvincing in explaining why they believe what they do. When is the last time you have heard a politician explain why life is precious, and why it is sacred? When is the last time you heard a politician give a discourse on the origin and foundation of human rights? When have you heard a Congressman or Senator lay out a reasoned explanation of a just war, given the new type of unconventional enemies?

This dumbing-down of politics is both a consequence and cause of cultural decline.

Democrats are now in the spotlight and we are watching. On Wednesday, new House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi pointed to a painting behind her, hanging on the wall of the Library of Congress. She signaled a figure burning a scroll of learning and trampling on the Bible. The title of the painting was “Corrupt Government.” She explained:

“It is a harsh image to see a Bible underfoot, but it makes a powerful point: corrupt government undermines our values. We come here today to support those values, and to lay out an agenda for a new era of honest, open, and transparent government.”

It would seem Nancy Pelosi is saying the values of America can be found in the Bible. I am impressed. Maybe she knows America was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs and plans on entering the battle to save the American soul. To do this, she will have to hold Democratic policy up to that very high standard. I'm not holding my breath.

If there is one thing to remember, it is this: culture, not politics alone, determines our national identity, and building culture is the responsibility of us all. We can do it in our homes, schools, and places of work, even as politicians fumble around on Capitol Hill. If you need a guidebook, ask Nancy Pelosi. She just might point to the Bible.

God bless, Father Jonathan

I love Father Jonanthan, but I don't believe Nancy Pelosi is going to be pointing anyone toward the Bible, because she would have to throw the Democratic party platform right out the window wtith the other hand.  But, I believe the Bible is the guidebook.   And, in God's own words, (paraphrasing), Let ye who are called by my name turn from your sin and pray, I will hear from Heaven, forgive you and heal your land.  Ye who are called by my name, I believe that to be Christians.  Let it start with me, then, because I love my country and the principles she was founded on, and I would love to see her restored. God bless!

and she cannot find anyone hiring in her area or anywhere near her area.  She is a registered nurse and is in the process of a divorce and is trying to raise 2 little girls. 

Remember when RNs were needed everywhere?  Now they can't even find jobs.

yet he worked through his adolescent problems and worked his way to first black president of the Harvard Law Review.  What an extraordinary man.

Here is a link to "A Letter to My Republican Father" that I came across yesterday.  I think it makes some awfully good points about John McCain.  It may be helpful for anyone who is undecided about him: 

http://web.me.com/davidvwhite/Site/Welcome.html

see a depression in our lifetime that would be 10 times worse than the great depression. This was back in the ླྀs. My husband always hung on to that statement and believes this is it. It's coming and there is nothing that will stop it. That's why we have been buying extra canned and dried goods when possible. We always made sausage and smoked a lot of pork but of course, we can't have animals here because of zoning, so we buy from a local farmer.

I know how to make bread and butter and have plenty of flour stored, but butter is going to be another issue since we don't have a cow and the last dairy farmer went out of business 10 years ago.

for 30 years at GM.  He was a salvage worker so he wasn't one of those guys who sat on his butt all day long making a ridiculous amount of money.  My dad retired in his 60s because his health didn't allow him to continue working or he would have.  I know how unions work and how they "protect" the employees.  I've also seen the proven statistics about how non-union states are more production and have higher job growth and as far as protecting your job.....no ones job is protected especially nowadays.  People are getting fired left and right so where is the protection.  What good was that auto bailout when all that money pretty much went to pay off the unions.  Unions are nothing but democratic pushed BS. 

Here is a tad bit on unions:

The truth is that unions are essentially parasitic organizations that thrive only by draining and ultimately destroying the companies and industries they control. The essential goal of the unions is to compel the payment of higher wages for the performance of less work and less productive work. Unions are notorious for their hostility to labor saving machinery and to any form of competition among workers, for featherbedding practices, indeed, for “making work” by deliberately and arbitrarily increasing the number of workers required to accomplish a given task and sometimes even by compelling the disassembly or destruction of products already produced.

It should be no wonder that the percentage of the labor force controlled by unions tends progressively to decline. Where the unions hold sway, companies cannot compete. Their market share falls and they ultimately go bankrupt. The only way that unions can maintain any given share of the labor force is by finding new victims to replace the ones they have sucked dry. The finding of new victims, by means of new government intervention is the unstated agenda of  Mr. Stern, Ms. Milkman, and The New York Times.

The actual effects of labor unions are arbitrary inequalities in wage rates, mass unemployment, and substantially lower real wages for the average worker. Labor unions are aptly described as a leading vehicle of what von Mises called “destructionism.”

Whenever a union succeeds in obtaining above market wage rates for its members, it also reduces  the number of workers who can be employed in its field. This is because of the operation of one of the best established principles of economics: Namely, the higher the price of anything, including the wage of any kind of labor, the smaller is the quantity demanded of that good or labor service.

Thus, workers who could have been employed in the lines controlled by labor unions are instead displaced and forced to seek work elsewhere. The added competition of these workers in other lines then serves either to depress wage rates in those other lines, thereby resulting in an arbitrary, union-imposed inequality in wage rates, or, if those other lines are also unionized or are forced to pay union wages in order to avoid becoming unionized (which is often the case), to cause still other workers to be displaced. It should be clear that to the extent that the effect of union activity is to depress wage rates in other fields, the union slogan “Live Better, Work Union” turns out to mean “Live Better by Forcing Other Workers to Live Worse.”

If wage rates in all lines of work are forced above the free-market level either because labor unions are able to impose their wage scales everywhere, or because upward union pressure on wage rates is joined by minimum-wage legislation, the effect is mass unemployment. In this case, there is simply no branch of the economic system that is allowed to pay wage rates low enough to make possible the absorption of workers displaced from elsewhere by the imposition of union wages. The result is the kind of situation presently existing in France and Germany, where unemployment is in excess of ten percent. And, of course, the cost of supporting the masses of unemployed falls mainly on the workers who manage to keep their jobs. Here higher taxes are their reward for “working union.”

For the full article:  http://mises.org/story/1861

Dear Newt,

I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protestors of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, "There you go, again."
However, I realize that you may have been a little preoccupied lately with planning your resurrection as the savior of your party, so I thought I would fill you in on a few important developments you might have overlooked.

The truth is that you're living in a world that no longer exists. I, along with millions of Americans, clearly see the world the way it as -- and we embrace what it can be. You, on the other hand, seem incapable of looking for new ideas or moving beyond what worked in the past.

Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you're so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you're sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.

This unstoppable progress has at its core a group we at HRC call Generation Equality. They are the most supportive of full LGBT equality than any American generation ever -- and when it comes to the politics of division, well, they don't roll that way. 18-24 year olds voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8 and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. And the numbers of young progressive voters will only continue to grow. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, about 23 million 18-29 year olds voted on Nov. 4, 2008 -- the most young voters ever to cast a ballot in a presidential election. That's an increase of 3 million more voters compared to 2004.

These are the same people who helped elect Barack Obama and sent a decisive message to your party. These young people are the future and their energy will continue to drive our country forward. Even older Americans are turning their backs on the politics of fear and demagoguery that you and your cronies have perfected over the years.

This is a movement of the people that you most fear. It's a movement of progress -- and your words on FOX News only show how truly desperate you are to maintain control of a world that is changing before your very eyes.

Then again, we've seen these tactics before. We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a religious group -- one that looks down upon minorities and women -- when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us "fascists" when we fight back. You belittle the relationships of gay and lesbian couples, and yet somehow neglect to explain who anointed you the protector of "traditional" marriage. And, of course, you've also mastered taking the foolish actions of a few people and then indicting an entire population based on those mistakes. I fail to see how any of these patterns coincide with the values of "historic Christianity" you claim to champion.

Again, nothing new here. This is just more of the blatant hypocrisy we're used to hearing.

What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That's really so ྖs, Newt. In this day and age, it's embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.

In other words, stop being a hater, big bro.