Link please. It was moved to the top because U thought ...

it important to do so, so please move the link for this to the top too so we may see where the rebuttal '"facts" are verified. Though, it is obvious that most of this is editorian/rhetoric/whatever you want to call it.

To that end, I am so tired of the he said this, she said that. They ALL say one thing but mean another. They and their teams are all spinners. It is always a mystery because you never know what you are going to get when they get in there, especially since they are not the ones calling all the shots - there is congress too.

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Most likely, as McCain said about Obama, he is a "good man, a family man." I think he has run a campaign that could be described as win at any cost, no matter what lie or deceit has to be used. The black fellow who stood up and said, "please sir, I'm begging you" right before the little old lady, is anyone so dumb that they didn't recognize that man was planted? Many, many people can't see past the end of their nose.

I'm voting for LOU DOBBS for president. Seems he's about the only one these days who tells it like it is and fries both candidates.

(Almost five years after 9/11, just how committed is Bush to keeping Americans safe?)

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press WriterFri Aug 11, 5:56 PM ET

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course, Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.

The committee is extremely disappointed with the manner in which S&T is being managed within the Department of Homeland Security, the panel wrote June 29 in a bipartisan report accompanying the agency's 2007 budget.

Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration's recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short.

They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven't been using, Sabo said.

Homeland Security said Friday its research arm has just gotten a new leader, former Navy research chief Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, and there is strong optimism for developing new detection technologies in the future.

I don't have any criticisms of anyone, said Kip Hawley, the assistant secretary for transportation security. I have great hope for the future. There is tremendous intensity on this issue among the senior management of this department to make this area a strength.

Lawmakers and recently retired Homeland Security officials say they are concerned the department's research and development effort is bogged down by bureaucracy, lack of strategic planning and failure to use money wisely.

The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.

The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.

The British plot to blow up as many as 10 American airlines on trans-Atlantic flights was to involve liquid explosives.

Hawley said Homeland Security now is going to test the detector in six American airports. It is very promising technology and we are extremely interested in it to help us operationally in the next several years, he said.

Japan has been using the liquid explosive detectors in its Narita International Airport in Tokyo and demonstrated the technology to U.S. officials at a conference in January, the Japanese Embassy in Washington said.

Homeland Security is spending a total of $732 million this year on various explosives deterrents and has tested several commercial liquid explosive detectors over the past few years but hasn't been satisfied enough with the results to deploy them.

Hawley said current liquid detectors that can scan only individual containers aren't suitable for wide deployment because they would bring security check lines to a crawl.

For more than four years, officials inside Homeland Security also have debated whether to deploy smaller trace explosive detectors � already in most American airports � to foreign airports to help stop any bomb chemicals or devices from making it onto U.S.-destined flights.

A 2002 Homeland report recommended immediate deployment of the trace units to key European airports, highlighting their low cost, $40,000 per unit, and their detection capabilities. The report said one such unit was able, 25 days later, to detect explosives residue inside the airplane where convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in his attack in December 2001.

A 2005 report to Congress similarly urged that the trace detectors be used more aggressively, and strongly warned the continuing failure to distribute such detectors to foreign airports may be an invitation to terrorist to ply their trade, using techniques that they have already used on a number of occasions.

Tony Fainberg, who formerly oversaw Homeland Security's explosive and radiation detection research with the national labs, said he strongly urged deployment of the detectors overseas but was rebuffed.

It is not that expensive, said Fainberg, who retired recently. There was no resistance from any country that I was aware of, and yet we didn't deploy it.

Fainberg said research efforts were often frustrated inside Homeland Security by bureaucratic games, a lack of strategic goals and months-long delays in distributing money Congress had already approved.

There has not been a focused and coherent strategic plan for defining what we need ... and then matching the research and development plans to that overall strategy, he said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said he urged the administration three years ago to buy electron scanners, like the ones used at London's airport to detect plastics that might be hidden beneath passenger clothes.

It's been an ongoing frustration about their resistance to purchase off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art equipment that can meet these threats, he said.

The administration's most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from Homeland S&T's 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and instead divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.

Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the top two lawmakers for Senate homeland appropriations, rejected the idea shortly after it arrived late last month, Senate leadership officials said.

Their House counterparts, Reps. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and Sabo, likewise rejected the request in recent days, Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Brost said. Homeland said Friday it won't divert the money.

___

Associated Press writer Leslie Miller contributed to this story.

If the McCain campaign can�t use this Obama quote to raise doubts about his attitude towards wealth and success, then they deserve the shellacking they seem headed for.

�Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn�t it?� the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed �more and more for fulfilling the American dream.�

�It�s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they�ve got a chance for success too,� Obama responded. �My attitude is that if the economy�s good for folks from the bottom up, it�s gonna be good for everybody � I think when you spread the wealth around, it�s good for everybody.�

Plumbers of the country, unite! Forget about the work and effort you put into building up a business or the scummy work that you do that many of us don�t know or don�t want to do. If you have succeeded, you should be willing to give up more of what you earn to help those who haven�t had the great good luck that you have had to be a successful plumber. Remember how Obama is going to give 95% of all of us a tax cut even though over 30% of the population doesn�t pay taxes?

He might call it a tax credit, but what he�s really doing is his vision of �spreading the wealth around.� It sounds a lot like Huey Long�s 1935 plan to �Share the Wealth.� And when he finds that he can�t tax the top 5% of the population to gain enough wealth to spread to the 95% of the rest of us, do you really think that he�ll stop with that 5%?

Remember�This is the guy who said in the ABC debate during the primary season that his approach to raising tax on capital gains is not based on whether it would provide more revenue but on his idea of what is fair:

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, �I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton,� which was 28 percent. It�s now 15 percent. That�s almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I�ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Just what we need in these fragile economic times � a guy who wants to raise taxes because he thinks it�s a matter of �fairness� and time to �spread the wealth around.�

That will be some incentive for other plumbers who want to work hard and build up a successful business.

So refreshing to have someone on this board that can actually think for themselves. I have such vivid memories of my dad dressing up in his class A's to go to war, and coming into my room crying at 4:00 a.m. in the morning to say goodbye, not knowing if we would ever see one another again. Thankfully, he did 1 tour in Korea before I was born, two tours in VN, and we lived on an Army base 25 miles from the Berlin wall when I was 6 years old. If there was ever an american girl, it is me and my brother. That "american girl" posting on here all the time, if she had to earn her FFFF freedom she would learn to keep her mouth shut.

It seems like one of first major priorities would be to ensure fair voting practices. I'm very worried about the accuracy of computerized voting and possible tampering.

If Sara Palin came on the scene as an Independent and ran against McCain & Obama, think how that could've changed things!

As a conservative, I'm thrilled to see someone who knows how to play ball with the big boys. Funny how the feminists want all this equal rights stuff, then shoot this lady down before they really know anything about her.

I wonder how upset Hillary's supporters are over this. Time will tell, not just polls.

It should be interesting what history reveals in the end. Either way, this race will go down in the books as a first. That in itself is interesting.

Since I only heard a snippet of this so far, the governor was trying to have others pay him to appoint them to take the O's senate seat?

If so (and don't bash, I'm asking a very serious question here), could this be how the O came up so quick? He paid for his senate seat?

The gov doesn't look like he thinks he did anything wrong. He's kinda young looking too. Could it be because Illinois has always had corruption like this? Gee, I think I'll go to Illinois and run for senator. LOL

While I'm on a housecleaning campaign, the only woman I find more distasteful than Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton is Nancy Pelosi. She had her friends need to GO.

here's what I think: IF Obama is elected, then look out for the White Supremists, a dispicable group, IMHO, right up there with the KKK. Now........how racist am I? I hate these racist issues no matter what color they come from. We are ALL God's children, yellow, red, black and white, we are precious in his sight. So why can't the Black Power AND the White Supremsts let it go already????? Why can't we be just AMERICANS, not African-Americans, not Vietnamese-Americans, not Irish-Americans, not Chinese-Americans.......just AMERICANS????????????? Can you answer me that? Oh, I know, it's politically correct to say AFRICAN-Americans. Nonsense.

I think we are all bushed; now, after all this bickering, I, as a democrat, feel like a 'sore winner. ' Yesterday a poster used this term and is accurate.

I suggest that we all take a couple of days a break from the politics board to cool down. I will do this. So long!