He's keeping his campaign of "change" - that's for sure

• I see the new middle class has dropped from 250,000 to 120,000 and could be lower. - middle class
  • where do you see this? nm - Amanda
    • Cannot make up his mind. Here is the site. - middle class
      • Obama did not say that - - Amanda
        • Way to go, Amanda! Great research.n/m - Stardust
    • On the news today Governor Richardson said it. - Just me
      • okay - what I just read said - - Amanda
      • So did Joe Biden....and we haven't heard from him in awhile since. - sam
        • That's why they call him Hidin Biden (sm) and to Amanda - Just me
          • again - the link ya'll give says - - Amanda
  • He's keeping his campaign of "change" - that's for sure - Just me
    • Not a break from reality, - middle class
  • Lawyers, guns, and money?! no message - Sure you don't mean
  • is the the starting point or the end point for the middle class? - ...
    • Combined income or small business making 120,000 or higher - middle class
      • Soon to be 100, then 75, then 40 (see message) - etc., etc., etc.
        • Of course it has to go lower. How else... - sam
    • According to McCain (sm) - Just the big bad

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OBAMA'S 'CHANGE': BACK TO THE DEMOCRATIC Washington INSIDERS

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN 

Published on DickMorris.com on November 7, 2008
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What's with Obama's choice of old-time Clinton cronies and recycled Washington insiders to run the transition to his new politics of change?

Can't the anti-Washington insiders President-elect find anyone who isn't a Beltway has-been?

Judging by the appointments to his transition committee and leaks about possible top staff and Cabinet choices, Obama appears to be practicing the politics of status quo, not the politics of change.

Obama based his innovative campaign on an emphatic and convincing commitment to change the culture of Washington and bring in new people, new ideas, and new ways of doing business.
 But now, Obama has definitely changed his tune. As president-elect, he's brought back the old Washington hacks, party regulars, and Clinton sycophants that he so frequently disparaged. Like Jimmy Carter, the last President who ran as an outsider, Obama has reached out to the same old folks who dominate the Democratic Party and represent the status quo.

His Transition Committee looks like a reunion of the Clinton Administration. No new ideas of how to reform the system there. The Chairman, John Podesta, was Clinton's Chief of Staff. He presided over the outrageous last minute pardons and his style is strictly inside-the-beltway and make-no-waves.

Then there's Carol Browner, Clinton's competent former EPA Administrator who became the consummate Washington insider. She's Madeline Albright's partner and recently married mega-lobbyist and former Congressman Tom Downey. During the uproar over Dubai taking over U.S. ports, Browner brought Downey to meet with Senator Chuck Schumer to plead Dubai's case. Downey was paid half a million dollars to push Dubai's position. He's also a lobbyist for Fannie Mae, paid half a million to try to cover their rears on the subprime mortgage mess. Is his change?

Federico Pena was Clinton's Secretary of Transportation and of Energy. The President felt he was unduly soft on Air Florida after their crash and lost confidence in him. Now he's back as a Transition Committee member.

Bill Daley, Clinton's former Secretary of Commerce and the brother of the Mayor of Chicago, is the epitome of the old Democratic establishment. Clinton appointed him to the Fannie Mae Board and his son worked as a lobbyist for the agency. Aren't these the kind of folks that Obama ran against?

Larry Summers, President of Harvard and former Clinton Secretary of the Treasury is not exactly an outsider either. He's also alienated more than a few with his bizarre suggestion that women may be genetically inferior to men in math and science.

Susan Rice, Assistant Secretary of State under Clinton advised John Kerry and Mike Dukakis. Does that tell you enough?

Obama has named one of his big bundlers - Michael Froman, an executive at Citigroup. Is this supposed to symbolize change? 
 
Obama's choice of a spokesperson for the transition is also surprising; hers' is definitely not the face of reason and new politics. Stephanie Cutter is the brash and combative former Clinton, Kerry, and Ted Kennedy mouthpiece. The liberal DailyKos.com once described Cutter as "a moron to the nth degree" when she tried unsuccessfully to force the New York Times' Adam Nagourney to treat her unsolicited email criticizing Howard Dean as "background" without mentioning her name.

Speaking of brash, Rahm Emmanuel, the new White House Chief of Staff, makes Cutter look timid. Rahm is also a former Clinton White House staffer - and a very obnoxious one. He spent his White House years leaking to the Washington Post whenever he didn't like what the President was doing.  Even Bill Clinton stopped trusting him. Any hopes of Obama keeping his commitment to reach across the aisle would go right out the window with Rahm's appointment.  Instead of extending a hand to the opposition, it would be like raising just one finger. And Rahm's strident demeanor laced with the 'f'  word in every sentence will do little to elevate the bipartisan dialogue in Washington.

Christopher Edley, another member of the transition team, is Dean of the Berkeley Law School. He's a former member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission under Clinton and his wife, Maria Echaveste was Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff.

Transition committee staffer Christine Varney was a Federal Trade Commissioner under Clinton and worked in the White House.

Throughout the early debates, Obama criticized Hillary as part of the inside-the beltway establishment that needed to go. But now he's reaching out to these exact same folks.  Some change.

...Bush remains "The Decider."  The question is, will Bush leave when it's time, or will he hijack the country, declare martial law and promote himself to "The Dictator," which he "joked" about on three different occasions.  He also giggled about World War III, and he stated back in 1999 (TWO YEARS BEFORE 9/11) that if he ever had the chance to invade Iraq, he would.

"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier." Describing what it's like to be governor of Texas.
(Governing Magazine 7/98)

-- From Paul Begala's "Is Our Children Learning?"

"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush joked.

-- CNN.com, December 18, 2000

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, " [Bush] said.

-- Business Week, July 30, 2001

the stuff just mounts up.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/15/top-us-communist-says-elect-obama-and-change-the-world/

Yeah - I know "everyone does it", but this was all supposed to stop under Obama, remember?  Lobbying and all of that?  Corrupting the system for bucks? 

Remember?

I do.  I also predicted Obama would be as bad as any of the rest of them.  Given his promises, though, he is much, much worse because he's a liar.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=adfv4RHV3Kmk

isn't about any of the things you name.  It comes from inside, a peace of spirit and soul. It needs no outside influence except, in my case, my love for God and his for me.  My glass has always been half full.  And it always will be because He is with me always.

It’s something of a tradition– administrations using their final weeks in power to ram through a slew of federal regulations. With the election grabbing the headlines, outgoing federal bureaucrats quietly propose and finalize rules that can affect the health and safety of millions.

The Bush administration has followed this tradition and expanded it. Up to 90 proposed regulations could be finalized before President George W. Bush leaves office Jan. 20. If adopted, these rules could weaken workplace safety protections, allow local police to spy in the “war on terror” and make it easier for federal agencies to ignore the Endangered Species Act.

What’s more, the administration has accelerated the rule-making process to ensure that the changes it wants will be finalized by Nov. 22.

That’s a key date, Nov. 22. It is 60 days before the next administration takes control — and most federal rules go into effect 60 days after they have been finalized. It would be a major bureaucratic undertaking for the Obama administration to reverse federal rules already in effect.

“The Bush administration has thought through last-minute regulations much more than past administrations,” said Rick Melberth, director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit group that tracks federal regulations. “They’ve said, ‘Let’s not only get them finalized; let’s get them in effect.’”

So what are the new rules?

The Washington Independent has highlighted five regulations notable for their potential effect and the way they slipped through the regulatory process. Four could to be finalized by Nov. 22. One was already — on Election Day.

1) The Dept. of Labor proposed a regulation Aug. 30 that changes how workplace safety standards are met. Labor experts contend that the administration, which previously issued only one new workplace safety standard and that under court order, is trying to make it a bureaucratic nightmare for future administrations to make workplace safety rules.

Here’s what it would do:

Currently, if the Occupational Safety and Health Admin. or the Mine Health and Safety Admin. want to introduce a new safety standard on, say, the level of exposure to toxic chemicals, it issues what is called a notice of proposed rule-making. This notice is published in the Federal Register and then debated by labor, business and relevant federal agencies.

The new regulation would add an “advanced notice of proposed rule-making,” meaning OSHA and MSHA would have prove that, say, the said chemical was seriously harming workers.

This would open the door for industry to challenge the validity of the risk assessment and then, if necessary, the actual safety standard that may come from that risk assessment.

“The purpose of this sort of rule is to require agencies to spend more time on a regulation which gives them less of a chance to actually regulate,” said David Michaels, a professor of workplace safety at George Washington University, “You’re adding at least a year, maybe two years, to the process.”

The regulation has not been finalized.

2) The administration proposed a rule that changes the employer-employee relationship laid out in the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.

Here’s what it would do:

The Family and Medical Leave Act says that employers must give their workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave if they are sick or need to take care of a family member or newborn. The employer’s health-care staff can check the legitimacy of the family or medical leave claim with the employee’s doctor or health-care provider.

The proposed regulation would allow the employer to directly speak with the employee’s doctor or health-care provider. The employer could also ask employees to provide more medical documentation of their conditions.

Why such a rule — which may threaten an employee’s privacy– is needed is unclear. The only study the Labor Dept. has done on the act was in 2000. The department collected comments from employers before issuing the proposed regulation, but a report analyzing the comments was never issued.

The regulation also would gives employees the right to waive their rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act, making it the first national labor law to be optional. A worker, for instance, cannot waive his right to earn a minimum wage or get paid more for overtime.

The regulation was finalized on Election Day.

3) The Dept. of Health and Human Services proposed a rule Sept. 26 that would expand the reasons that physicians or health care entities could decline to provide any procedure to include moral and religious grounds. The language of the regulation says the department hopes to correct “an attitude toward the health-care profession that health-care professionals and institutions should be required to provide or assist in the provision of medicine or procedures to which they object, or else risk being subjected to discrimination.”

Here’s what it would do:

The rule change seems to apply to abortion. But they are already several rules that say physicians or health-care entities can deny an abortion request. Some women’s health advocates contend that the proposed regulation’s broad language is meant to increase the number of physicians who not only don’t provide abortions but don’t provide contraception.

“Contraception is certainly the target of this rule,” contends Marylin Keefe, director for Reproductive Health at the National Partnership for Women and Families. “The moral and religious objections of health-care workers are now starting to take precedence over patients.”

The regulation is notable for another reason. A rule involving an employee’s religious rights must be referred to the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission, yet the commission was never told of this proposed regulation.

A bureaucratic battled erupted when EEOC’s legal counsel, Reed Russell, wrote a regulation comment (pdf) blasting both the substance of the proposed rule and its disregard for the rule-making process.

The regulation has not been finalized.

4) On July 31, the Justice Dept. proposed a regulation that would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to collect “intelligence” information on individuals and organizations even if the information is unrelated to a criminal matter.

“This is a continuum that started back on 9/11 to reform law enforcement and the intelligence community to focus on the terrorism threat,” said Bush homeland security adviser Kenneth L. Wainstein in a statement.

Critics say it could infringe on civil liberties.

Here’s what it would do:

“It expands local law enforcement’s ability to investigate criminal activity that it deems suspicious,” said Melberth of OMB Watch. “But what’s suspicious to you may not be suspicious to me. They could be investigating community organizations they think are two or three steps away from a terrorist group.”

The regulation has not been finalized.

5) Before a federal agency approves any construction project– anything from building a dam to a post office — government officials must consult the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. These two agencies enforce the Endangered Species Act, and they can veto any project that adversely affects an animal on the endangered species list.

Here’s what it would do:

A regulation proposed by the Interior Dept. Aug. 12 would end this approval process. “It destroys a system of checks and balances that have been in place for two decades,” claimed Bob Davison, senior scientist at Defenders of the Wildlife. “[A federal agency] wants to go forward with a project that [it wants] to do. So you need an independent agency to look at the decision.”

Davison is not the only conservation advocate up in arms. The Interior Dept. has received 200,000 public comments, which may affect the final rule.

Or not — the department shortened the comment period from 60 to 30 days in its effort to get the regulation finalized.

In May, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten vowed that the administration would propose no regulations after June 1. He and White House spokesman Tony Fratto have repeatedly stated their contempt for what they call “midnight regulations.”

Yet with the exception of the Family and Medical Leave changes, each of these regulations were proposed after June 1. And if finalized, they will effect worker’s safety, women’s health-care choices, local police powers and endangered species.

“It was a pretty resounding election,” said Keefe of the National Partnership for Women and Families. “But this administration acts like it still has a mandate.”

Nope, let's spend a few million and buy new furniture for homeland security and a few million more to buy hybrids for congress. 

Can they not deduce that keeping corporate America from offshoring jobs will actually create more jobs, thereby lower the unemployment rate, and put more money in American's pocket for them to spend?  Cut all tax cuts given to companies for offshoring and give the tax cuts to companies to strive to keep jobs in America?

And here's another V8 moment -- how about we buy American?  Maybe increase tariffs on imported goods to discourage American companies from importing so much crapy and thereby necessitating said crap be sold at higher prices in an effort to discourage Americans from buying imports? 

The ONLY way to help the American economy is to employ Americans and buy American!  It's that simple!

http://www.usflag.org/history/pledgeofallegiance.html

The original Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands- one nation indivisible-with liberty and justice for all.

During my search for the Obama "messiah" discussion, I am just appalled at the nastiness of this campaign.  As an INDEPENDENT, voting for Mr. Independent, my unbiased opinion is that the Republicans are running a nasty campaign based on half-truths and no truths.  Just look at the nastiness on this board if anyone DARES speak a favorable word about Obama. 

My intention this minute is to do a write-in vote for Lou Dobbs.  Should it look as if McCain is going to win, I WILL switch and vote AGAINST John McCain and if that means a vote for Obama, well, so be it.  I have already stated my objections to Obama and got myself in a peck of trouble for doing it!

You know, I have never been so concerned about our election or our country in all my life.  This really weighs heavy on me and I so hate seeing people on this board and others as well as people I come in contact every day so biased one way or the other they won't even begin to listen to any questions about their candidate.  There are plenty of things about both candidates that really concern me.  One thing that has been overlooked is that Congress plays a big part in what a president can and cannot do, although both the Republican led Congress and the present Democrat led Congress are failing the American people.  It is my feeling they should have put the brakes on George W. Bush on many different occasions but instead they have given him free reign.

I agree with Lou Dobbs almost 100%.  I agree that I'm for LEGAL immigration but ILLEGAL is quite another thing.  Our wages are going down and our cost of living is going up, in large part due to the influx of illegals overloading our schools, our ERs and other public services.  This is particularly true here in my part of the country where there are big businesses that demand the low-wage workers and our senator and representative vote against the will of the majority of citizens because the big biz is who owns them.  I wonder if Lou Dobbs were elected president, what kind of president would he be.  I was hoping he would run.  At least we have a news commentator who tells it as it is on both sides.

It really concerns me that posters on this board are so busy fighting over the candidate they can't even discuss the issues.  I always thought MTs were of above average intelligence but reading some of the posts here, I'm starting to rethink that thought.  I've been out and around all day and came home looking forward to seeing what was new and danged if the fighting, backbiting and nastiness here isn't worse than it was this morning.

Seems to me he thought he found something and before confirming it, he started appearing on talk shows.  At the most, he knowingly lied and wanted to tell his base what they wanted to hear. 

At the least, he's reckless and sloppy in his approach to things. 

I suppose the true test of his character will be if he comes clean and admits he was wrong.

Other than that, I find it increasingly difficult on a daily basis to understand why some of these politicians do what they do, both Republican and Democrat alike.

finance law.  Maybe McCain can allow homeless to stay in one of his 11 homes when he and Cindy are out flying in their personal jet?

Obama has had 61% of his ads negative throughout his ENTIRE campaign...........   McCain only for one week. 

Obama spent 47 million on negative ads.....McCain 27 million.  

Yea, poor 'ole Obama....... just keeping believing in this guy.  He'll sell you to the middle east and you'll be feeding their camels.