It's not the past administration?

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Bush supporter, but you can't blame Bush for this economic mess. Perhaps you should do a little more research before you go off like a screaming meemie. It was Bill Clinton who proposed everyone should have a mortgage in every pot, whether they could afford it or not, especially minorities, and the chickens came home to roost. Do a little research, kiddo.

LOL, you can't blame Bush for everything. I think the time is coming when all Americans will realize what a decent man he is, the last decent one we will have as a president. If Americans can vote in an illegal ursurper and think he is the Messiah, they sure won't vote for an honorable, Constitution-abiding successor, assuming we even have another election in this country with Comrade Obama in charge along with his Marxist cabinet.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I was taught in school if the economy is doing bad now, it was due to the president 6-8 years ago. If the economy is doing well, it is also due to the president who was in office 6-8 years ago.

Since it's almost Income Tax time, here's some interesting facts about the Democrat and Republican tax policies. Just compare - and, while you're at it, use these facts the next time you hear that President Bush only "cut taxes for the rich". Looks to me like someone single and making $30K, or a couple making $60K, got a 46% tax break under the Republicans. That's what I would call taking care of the "middle class".

And remember, the truth only comes out when we refuse to be silent....
Source: www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

There will be ZERO help for the average Americans who need it. It's like a reverse "Robin Hood." Take from the less fortunate and give to the wealthy.

This is Bush's policy (more like fascism than socialism), and we don't hear a whimper of protest, yet when Obama even hints at helping struggling Americans, everyone yells and screams SOCIALISM.

Bush can still do a lot of damage in the weeks he has remaining. That's what worries me more than anything.

I knew it was a mistake to pick Clinton for SOS. The person who said she had no problems obliterating Iran if they didn't do what she wants (or something like that). How do you think the current administration to include Hillary will handle this one.

has gone out of its way to be FAIR to everyone (including Republicans), right down to Eric Holder (the Attorney General) taking a look at Republican Ted Stevens' case (prosecuted under the Bush administration) and dismissing the charges against this REPUBLICAN because of mistakes made by the Bush administration.

They're trying to reach out to everyone, but most Repubicans and their followers are returning his outstretched hand of conciliation with a clenched fist.

This is truly sad and does nothing to help strengthen our country. What is comforting is that the "party of no" and their followers represent the minority of Americans.

There hasn't been a SINGLE PRESIDENT willing to address the borders. I wish Bush would get off his duff about the border too, but if he did put a military clamp down on our border, you'd have a huge uproar from the civil liberties camp. You can never make everybody happy.

As for spending... Most Democrats never met a dollar they didn't want to spend. Wanna have your hair stand on end? Read a synopsis of The Big Dig in Boston, a la Kennedy and Kerry. Talk about a money pit at the taxpayers expense. If only it were a perfect world, but it never will be.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated covert propaganda in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education.

The auditors declared: We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds.

The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and television appearances praising Mr. Bush's education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.

When that arrangement became public, it set off widespread criticism. At a news conference in January, Mr. Bush said: We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet.

But the Education Department has since defended its payments to Mr. Williams, saying his commentaries were no more than the legitimate dissemination of information to the public.

The G.A.O. said the Education Department had no money or authority to procure favorable commentary in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition in federal law.

The ruling comes with no penalty, but under federal law the department is supposed to report the violations to the White House and Congress.

In the course of its work, the accountability office discovered a previously undisclosed instance in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the declining science literacy of students, was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country. Readers were not informed of the government's role in the writing of the article, which praised the department's role in promoting science education.

The auditors denounced a prepackaged television story disseminated by the Education Department. The segment, a video news release narrated by a woman named Karen Ryan, said that President Bush's program for providing remedial instruction and tutoring to children gets an A-plus.

Ms. Ryan also narrated two videos praising the new Medicare drug benefit last year. In those segments, as in the education video, the narrator ended by saying, In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting.

The television news segments on education and on Medicare did not state that they had been prepared and distributed by the government. The G.A.O. did not say how many stations carried the reports.

The public relations efforts came to light weeks before Margaret Spellings became education secretary in January. Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for the secretary, said on Friday that Ms. Spellings regarded the efforts as stupid, wrong and ill-advised. She said Ms. Spellings had taken steps to ensure these types of missteps don't happen again.

The investigation by the accountability office was requested by Senators Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats. Mr. Lautenberg expressed concern about a section of the report in which investigators said they could not find records to confirm that Mr. Williams had performed all the activities for which he billed the government.

The Education Department said it had paid Ketchum $186,000 for services performed by Mr. Williams's company. But it could not provide transcripts of speeches, articles or records of other services invoiced by Mr. Williams, the report said.

More than likely, his place will be a nice, large padded room, where he can wander aimlessly as he did during the debate, and not hurt himself as he bumps into walls.

And the destruction they have wreaked on our country.......keep the mindset. The republican party will have a wretched time climbing out of the sewer from whence they came.

So, if you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country (the decider), steamrolled the constitution (the decider), and will have changed its landscape forever (the decider). If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about... Yes, GW, you will be just FINE.

it handled *Plan A* (Iraq War). Manipulate the evidence until it fits your own agenda and then impose it on America. One doctor's personal religious views now control the FDA and every woman in America.

Nov. 27, 2005

(CBS) When the �morning after pill,� also known as �Plan B,� was put on the market in 1999, it was described as an emergency contraceptive that prevents a pregnancy in cases of rape or accidents like condom breaks.

It is only available by prescription. But because women need to take it within 72 hours, the drug's manufacturer applied to the Food and Drug Administration two years ago for permission to sell Plan B over the counter.

The drug is considered totally safe, so the request was seen as a slam dunk. But then Plan B became the target of anti-abortion rights groups, and part of the wider controversy over whether religious beliefs are encroaching on scientific decision-making.
60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.

Until last August, Dr. Susan Wood headed the FDA�s Office of Women�s Health and was one of the scientists inside the agency arguing that Plan B should be available without a prescription. �If it's safe, and it is, and effective, it's more effective the quicker you have it. This is why it needs to be over-the-counter,� she says.

�If you need it on Saturday morning, Monday morning is too late. Getting to a physician to get a prescription, getting that prescription to a pharmacy and getting it filled takes time, as we all know. Then what are you going to do?� says Wood.

That�s a question that a woman named Evelyn faced last year, when she was raped at a New York nightclub.

Evelyn, age 22 at the time, was rushed to St. Vincent�s hospital, the nearest emergency room.

She says the hospital did not offer her an emergency contraceptive.

�It was something that they were supposed to offer,� says Evelyn�s mother, Sandi. �In the situation as my daughter�s, as Evelyn�s situation, they were supposed to offer, you know, and let the person make the decision as to whether or not they wanted it. I didn�t know that it was optional.�

Sandi says she knew about a New York law that says all hospitals must offer rape victims emergency contraception like Plan B.

Sandi called the nurse who had treated Evelyn at St. Vincent�s. �I said, �Why did you not give it to her?� And she very rudely said to me, �Well, we're a Catholic hospital. We don't do birth control.� At which point, I told them what they could do with being a Catholic hospital and their views on birth control � I'd rather not say that on the air,� she recalls. �I was absolutely livid.�

Because of Evelyn's case, St. Vincent�s is under investigation by the state of New York. The hospital told 60 Minutes it is now complying with the law.

Evelyn finally got a prescription for Plan B, and took it 10 hours after the rape. Had she not gotten Plan B and had gotten pregnant, Evelyn says she would have had an abortion. �I'm glad that that didn't have to happen, I never had to experience that, she says.

The Catholic Church opposes Plan B not just because it�s birth control, but because it considers use of Plan B to be, in Cardinal Egan of New York�s words, �a chemical abortion.�

But Wood says this is not an abortion pill. �There is an abortion pill called RU-486, and this is not it,� she says. �An abortion pill interrupts an established pregnancy. This product is contraception. It does not interrupt an established pregnancy.�

She says even if you took it and were already pregnant, it would not end the pregnancy. �The only connection this product has with abortion is that it can prevent them by preventing an unintended pregnancy,� says Wood.

There is some debate about that interpretation. Most of the time, Plan B works by stopping ovulation so that a pregnancy cannot occur. In a small percentage of cases, when a woman is ovulating on the day she has unprotected sex, a fertilized egg could form. In that case, Plan B might prevent the egg from implanting in her uterus.

While most doctors do not consider that an abortion, anti-abortion-rights doctors do, such as David Hager, a gynecologist from Lexington, Ky., who won�t prescribe Plan B for his own patients.

�One of the mechanisms of action can be to inhibit implantation, which means that it may act as an abortifacient,� says Dr. Hager. He says abortifacient means it causes an abortion and that this medication may act to inhibit implantation.

In 2002, Dr. Hager got a call from the Bush White House asking him to serve on the FDA advisory committee charged with reviewing Plan B�s over-the-counter application along with two other anti-abortion-rights physicians. But when Hager argued against Plan B at committee meetings, he didn�t talk about abortion.

�I was concerned about 10, 11, 12-year-old girls buying this product,� says Hager.

He raised moral questions. �I�m not in favor of promotion of a product that would increase sexual activity among teenagers,� he says.

Hager speculated about an increase in sexually-transmitted diseases. �I�m saying that it is possible that with the use of Plan B the individual may put herself at greater risk,� he says.

But the advisory panel reviewed 40 studies that refuted his objections and showed that Plan B does not lead to more cases of sexually transmitted disease, or more risky sexual behavior.

Even Dr. Hager admits Plan B is totally safe. The FDA says there have been no deaths, no heart attacks, no strokes and no evidence of misuse or abuse.

But, he says, one of his major concerns is that young women wouldn�t go to their doctors if such a drug were readily available.

�If we approve this for over-the-counter sale, then what is that going to do as far as what I call access to medical care for younger adolescent women?� Hager asks.

Wood disputes that view. �Is this cutting the doctor out? Would it cut out their relationship? Well, in fact, I think there�s strong argument that the physicians themselves want this product to be over the counter.�

Wood says the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association have all endorsed making this product available over the counter. That includes pediatrics, meaning younger girls.

If Plan B is sold over the counter anyone � any age � could buy it easily in a drugstore, like cough syrup or bubble bath. A big part of this issue is whether pharmacies will stock it. What if they refuse to carry Plan B?

In a survey of drugstores in Kentucky, Dr. Hager�s home state, the American Civil Liberties Union found that most pharmacies didn�t carry Plan B; 83 of them said they would even refuse to order it for women with prescriptions. These include Wal-Mart, which has a nationwide policy against dispensing Plan B.

The American Civil Liberties Union got a prescription for a woman named Fran, and sent her to five pharmacies undercover. 60 Minutes went along with a hidden camera to see what would happen.

Only one pharmacy, Kmart, had Plan B in stock; another drug store offered to order it, but the pharmacist told Fran it would take several days before they could possibly get it.

Remember, it has to be taken within 72 hours.

At another store, Fran was turned down by a pharmacist who explained that she believes it�s an abortion pill. �The morning after pill is after you have that fertilized egg, and that is a baby. You are not allowing it to implant. So it is considered abortive,� the pharmacist said.

The next day, Fran and 60 Minutes went back to that pharmacy together and found the same pharmacist.

�Anyone can walk in off the street and we can refuse to fill a prescription,� the pharmacists said. Asked whether a prescription could be refused on religious grounds, the pharmacists said, �On any grounds. Personal preference. Any reason, we can refuse to fill a prescription.�

But the Kentucky state pharmacy board told 60 Minutes that pharmacists must have a professional medical reason, not simply a personal preference, to turn away a prescription for Plan B or anything else.

The pharmacy did offer birth control but the pharmacist did not consider Plan B birth control.

So, with Plan B mired in the abortion debate, the FDA advisory committee took its vote on recommending whether it should be sold over the counter.

Dr. Hager voted �no.� But his colleagues on the committee rejected his arguments, voting 23 to four in favor of offering the drug over the counter.

Such a lop-sided vote should have meant the application would sail through. But then the saga of Plan B took a strange turn.

Dr. Hager says someone at the FDA � he won�t say who � asked him to write a �minority report� in which he asked for more studies and more data on the use of Plan B by young girls.

A few months later something totally unexpected happened: The FDA ignored the committee�s overwhelming vote and rejected the proposal to sell Plan B over the counter, citing the very concerns in Hager�s report.

Some people believe Hager raised these objections because of his religious beliefs, but that�s something he denies. �The religious aspect did not enter into that decision for me,� he says.

But in to a speech he gave to a Christian college, he seemed to admit his role was all about religion. �God has used me to stand in the breach for the cause of the kingdom,� Hager said at the time.

He was talking about Plan B.

�I argued it from a scientific perspective. And God took that information and He used it through this minority report to influence a decision. You don't have to wave your bible to have an effect as a Christian in the public arena,� says Hager.

Hager says he did not mean to suggest that God wanted Plan B to fail, and that he was His instrument. �I thought that God used me, He'd used my individual gifts of, whatever, in an individual way to be able to express my opinion.�

But with the speech, Hager may have fueled the fire of those who say that all he did was try to cloak religious beliefs in scientific language.

�If the idea in the population of this country is that a person can�t be a person of faith and also be a person of science, I strongly disagree with that,� says Hager.

Should agencies like the FDA be completely divorced from the debates that go on in society?

�Again, the question the agency has to deal with is, is it safe? And is it safe for teens? Yes, it is,� says Wood. �Have we asked that question about other contraceptive methods? Are we going to label, take condoms behind the counter? Make them prescription? I don't think we should.

�I think most Americans would like to leave those decisions as private decisions, and decisions within the family.�

Plan B�s manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals, submitted a new application to the FDA with an age cut-off, so that girls 16 and younger would still need a prescription to get the drug. This seemed to address Hager�s objections and those of the anti-abortion rights lobby.

But last August, then-FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford surprised just about everyone when he announced that the agency had postponed a decision on the new application for what could be months or years. He took the unprecedented step of overruling his own scientific staff.

�I think the Plan B decision to cut the scientists out is sort of a poster child of this concern about science and politics,� says Wood.

She�s talking about fears that religious forces are hijacking government decision-making. Wood was so outraged by the FDA postponement that she promptly resigned as director of the Office of Women�s Health in protest.

�What I saw was the science being ignored. That the scientific and medical staff (was) being cut out of decision making,� says Wood.

In fact, according to a government investigation, top FDA officials had decided to reject Plan B�s over the counter application months before the scientific staff completed its review.

Was there pressure from the White House? The investigators said they couldn�t find out because e-mails and documents relating to the matter were destroyed.

As for Plan B as an over-the-counter drug, nobody knows when a decision on that will be made.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush "veered terribly off course," was not "open and forthright on Iraq," and took a "permanent campaign approach" to governing at the expense of candor and competence.
Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (Public Affairs, $27.95):

� He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

� He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be "badly misguided."

� The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them � and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

� McClellan asserts that the aides � Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff � "had at best misled" him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased What Happened at a Washington bookstore.

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as "authentic" and "sincere," is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president's earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan's tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial," and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that "Karl was convinced we needed to do it � and the president agreed."

"One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush's second term," he writes. "And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath."

McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush's first term.

"I still like and admire President Bush," McClellan writes. "But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. � In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security."

In a small sign of how thoroughly McClellan has adopted the outsider's role, he refers at times to his former boss as "Bush," when he is universally referred to by insiders as "the president."

McClellan lost some of his former friends in the administration last November when his publisher released an excerpt from the book that appeared to accuse Bush of participating in the cover-up of the Plame leak. The book, however, makes clear that McClellan believes Bush was also a victim of misinformation.

The book begins with McClellan's statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they "were not involved in � the leaking of classified information."

At Libby's trial, testimony showed the two had talked with reporters about the officer, however elliptically.

"I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood," McClellan writes. "It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn't learn that what I'd said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later.

"Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He, too, had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth � including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President Cheney � allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie."

McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.

"There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss," he writes. "It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. � Following (a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card's office) � Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. 'You have time to visit?' Karl asked. 'Yeah,' replied Libby.

"I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. � At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. �

"The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame's identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. � I don't know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people's involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence."

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: "If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

"The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. � In this case, the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

Decrying the Bush administration's "excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance," McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a "deputy chief of staff for governing" who "would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity.

"I frequently stumbled along the way," McClellan acknowledges in the book's preface. "My own story, however, is of small importance in the broad historical picture. More significant is the larger story in which I played a minor role: the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course."

Even some of the chapter titles are brutal: "The Permanent Campaign," "Deniability," "Triumph and Illusion," "Revelation and Humiliation" and "Out of Touch."

"I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media," McClellan writes in a chapter in which he says he dealt "happily enough" with liberal reporters. "Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well."

The book's center has eight slick pages with 19 photos, eight of them depicting McClellan with the president. Those making cameos include Cheney, Rove, Bartlett, Mark Knoller of CBS News, former Assistant Press Secretary Reed Dickens and, aboard Air Force One, former press office official Peter Watkins and former White House stenographer Greg North.

In the acknowledgments, McClellan thanks each member of his former staff by name.

� Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in the State of the Union address of 2003: "Signing off on these facts is my responsibility. � And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign." The offer "was rejected almost out of hand by others present," McClellan writes.

� Bush was "clearly irritated, � steamed," when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: "'It's unacceptable,' Bush continued, his voice rising. 'He shouldn't be talking about that.'"

� "As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided."

� "History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

� McClellan describes his preparation for briefing reporters during the Plame frenzy: "I could feel the adrenaline flowing as I gave the go-ahead for Josh Deckard, one of my hard-working, underpaid press office staff, � to give the two-minute warning so the networks could prepare to switch to live coverage the moment I stepped into the briefing room."

� "'Matrix' was the code name the Secret Service used for the White House press secretary."

McClellan is on the lecture circuit and remains in the Washington area with his wife, Jill.