I can't believe it matters. 2000 or 6000, what's... sm

• Obama does it again!!! Wins 3 states tonight!!! - it's looking so good!!!
  • Totally excited - He gives us hope for a better future - scmt
    • maybe if you're black... or the VP...he's not going to live out his term - you'd better realize
      • That is a terrible, terrible thing - for you to say!!!
      • What - ExMQMT
    • About her, you are right, but - nana
    • yea? well someone w/middle name Hussein - scares me for future of this country!..s/m
      • that's your problem. You put too much stock in a book written - 2000 years ago.
        • 2000 yrs ago? Try 6000.... - scares me for future of this country!..s/m
          • I can't believe it matters. 2000 or 6000, what's... sm - Not the OP
            • Because we all have a spirit whether you believe it or not. I sm - Kim
              • Your 2nd paragraph is complete and utter nonsense. sm - Not the OP
                • You seem very derogatory about faith, my friend... - Observer
                  • Yes, I am very derogatory about faith. sm - Not the OP
                    • Trying To Imagine . . . - Catholic
                      • I'd like to do more than imagine it. sm - Faith Less
            • Nostradamous comes to mind - NM
              • What does Nostradamus have to do with the bible? sm - Am I missing something?
                • Revelations, King James Version - no message
                  • Mainstream - ExMQMT
                    • There are a lot of Southern Baptists around here who would differ with you. sm - Brunson
                      • I should have been more specific - ExMQMT
                        • Perhaps. sm - Brunson
                    • I do not agree about what we were taught... - sm msg
                      • Interesting - ExMQMT
      • i agree - nm
        • where do you people come from? the bottom of the gene pool? - This president's last name was Bush but you vot
      • That is ridiculous - ExMQMT
  • why are you excited? - an American citizen
    • Presidential race - Irish
      • Just an aside.... - Observer
    • I'm excited - obama girl
  • I'm hoping too. Very exciting. - Old lady in Miami.
    • his cousin is Raila Odinga - radical muslim - in Kenya........SM
      • And this would be worse than - -nm
      • SO WHAT. My father is an alcoholic, doesn't - make me one!! you people are silly
        • you're mixing apples and beans, drug addiction - or alcoholism is far different from...S/M
          • Ok here is a better example...my father is Christian - I am athiest. There you go.
        • reality bites very hard...be aware.... - nm
      • Dig dig - ExMQMT
        • keep your head in the sand - a month ago - barack visited cousin odinga in kenya...sm
      • Saw this too - nana
        • wikipedia is not end all be all....edited by US - read other links regarding this, please..SM

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not looking for any kind of attention - you are awfully presuming/assuming for a public board/forum poster....you know nothing about me...

please do not respond to any of my posts if you don't like them - you DO have that choice.

has provisions that state the card cannot be used for alcohol or cigarettes.  They will get no cash back on any purchase. 

The government has already thought of all these things.  The card can only be used for food, personal items, etc. 

electoral college -- Obama WAY ahead there.  Yippie-oh-coyote.

if there was an all white group ANY where in this country that wouldnt allow ANYONE in based on their skin color, it would be a huge deal and people would be held accountable.  DUH.  The reason that it matters is because our new president is probably not going to do anything about this and had a nice little smile on his face when the rev. was giving his speech on inauguration day and said his little comment about its time for white to embrace what is right.  That is the problem.  Many white people in this country have ALWAYS embraced what is right and feel that EVERYONE should be treated equally and I am one of them.  For there to be a group out there doing this is WRONG.  By the way, I am so talented that I can talk about this issue AND the ecomony all at the same time! 

They go after both sides for inaccuracies.  They back up their points with facts.

Yep, W is his goooood buddy. They be bestest of friends. Gives him big ole bear hugs. Nice to see McSame in the saddle.

You'd have to hear it yourself to get the correct context.  The caller was not even talking about reducing the crime rate, Bennett brought this up out of the blue, and he says I do know... before he made the comment, NOT making a reference to Freakonomics but his own opinion.

From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.

BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

so, I called his financial advisor yesterday and told him to put hubby in a "safe" plan. It's now in a money market fund that is part of his IRA.

I have no choice. I have to stay where I am. I have no "safe" available. Neither of us will be able to retire on what is now in our 401Ks and you're not the only one. We couldn't buy a car with Both our 401Ks, let alone live on it.

We are late starters for retirement  not until our late 40s funds (most of our employers did not offer pensions). We are now of the first retirement tier and although we own our home outright, if we live until we are 90, there is no way we can live off retirement 401Ks or SS.

My husband's father told him back in the 50s that we would experience something like what is happening today and stated it would be worse than the ཙ crash. It is sure starting to look that way, but we will survive some way, I hope.

We need to pray for the people on SS now that cannot survive. I, for one, would love to help them, but can't help ourselves at this moment.

his own personal reasons.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php

The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.

Conversations With Bush The Candidate

Herskowitz—a longtime Houston newspaper columnist—has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers—expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript—pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.

The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior—who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.

I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."

Debating The Timeline For War

But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush—personally—in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"—because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.

The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.

On September 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…"

I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."

"I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" …

"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.

Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.

Woodward: "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"

Wallace (voiceover): Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam—and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

Woodward: "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the necessary preparations in Kuwait specifically to make war possible."

Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.

Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.