Saw another estimate of $30 grand, and then a report that

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The whole event is just awesome. Two million people, positive, upbeat, ready to step up and accept the challenge of this dynamic new president to use whatever gifts and talents we have to work with our fellow citizens to help make this a better world. I give praise that this day has come.

The woman was Eleanor Roosevelt. To say she was nothing to look at was an understatement. Very homely looking but what she accomplished which made me think of her when others are talking about looks. Do looks matter- what about a person's soul and heart- does that not count for anything now?

My stepmom worked in Washington during WWII. She saw Eleanor Roosevelt several times. She told me about how Mrs. Roosevelt would board a pubic bus and say hello to the people sitting there, not pretentious at all. I remember her later when she was working at the United Nations as a delegate. She became one of the greatest women of the 20th Century. She was an humanitarian and civic leader (among other roles). She worked for the welfare of youth, black Americans, the poor, and women, at home and abroad. She persuaded her husband to create NYA which gave financial aid to students and young people. She worked closely with the NAACP. She visited the troops overseas during WWII. She was a leader in human right efforts. What she may have lacked in looks she certainly made up for it in her good deeds.

It can be argued both ways and it is being done so as we speak. The document does not matter much to me. As I said, the NIE has been wrong before but I see what I see and I hear what I hear and the white house is the only place where rosy scenarios are being played out. It is getting old.

What would I have done to stop al-Qai'da?? I would have gone to Afghanistan with all the support and good will behind me that was available at that time. I would have **stayed the course** there until OBL was found. I would have implemented democratic policies there and hope that they would spread altho I believe the chances of that happening are slim to none. I would never never have gone to Iraq. I would have finished Afghanistan, rebuilt, and come home. I really believe that democracy does not come through the barrel of a gun and we cannot force democracy on people. I also do not believe that a perceived failure in Iraq will defang al-Qai'da et al. These are tribal people who have been fighting amongst themselves for 100s of years. It is what they know. That combined with the illiteracy that is prevalent (and I believe that plays a big part in what the people believe - without knowledge how can they formulate ideas and make decisions...they can't). They believe their leaders and follow them. I think we would have made much more progress had we **stayed the course** in Afghanistan.

Sunday, October 5, 8:00 EST
**ONE HOUR SPECIAL**
Obama & Friends: A History of Radicalism: 'Hannity's America' investigates Obama's college years, time as a community organizer and numerous controversial relationships.

How convenient for it to come out when it did. Sure expedited the process for the beggars.

could read it, paying attention to pages 8,9,10, and 11 in part 1, then pages 4 and 5 in part 2.

Secondly, it was both the dems and pubs that passed that bailout. Bush suggested a bailout plan but the dems and pubs are the ones who make and pass the bills into law. Bush signed it, yes, but I betcha he didn't read it, just like this stimulus plan of late.

http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/22386366/acorn-allegations.htm#q=acorn+investigation

WASHINGTON - Nearly 7 million adults were in U.S. prisons or on probation or parole at the end of last year, 30 percent more than in 1995, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

That was about one in every 31 adults under correctional supervision at the end of 2004, compared with about 1 in 36 adults in 1995 and about 1 adult in every 88 in 1980, said Allan J. Beck, who oversaw the preparation of the department�s annual report on probation and parole populations.

Beck attributed the overall rise in the number of people under correctional supervision to sentencing reforms of the 1990s. The nation�s incarcerated population has been increasing for more than 30 years, with sharp growth in the last decade.He said crime rates have fallen in recent years, which helps account for slower growth among people on probation � those allowed to live in the community with some restrictions rather than being incarcerated.

The number of people on probation in 2004 grew by 6,343 to about 4.2 million in 2004, the report said.

Nearly 50 percent of all probationers at the end of last year were convicted of a felony. Twenty-six percent were on probation for a drug-law violation, and 15 percent for driving while intoxicated, said the annual Justice Department report.

Racial imbalance persists in probation
Whites made up 56 percent of the probation population and only 34 percent of the prison population, according to Wednesday�s report and another Justice Department report released last month.

�White people � for whatever reason � seem to have more access to community supervision than African Americans and Hispanics,� said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, which promotes alternatives to incarceration. He called probation a cheaper and more effective form of rehabilitation.

Blacks, he noted, comprised 30 percent of probationers and 41 percent of prisoners at the end of 2004. Hispanics made up 12 percent of the probation population and 19 percent of the prison population

Parolees grew fastest among those under correctional supervision. They are criminal offenders who rejoin society with restrictions for a time after they complete a prison term.

Number of parolees grows
The adult parole population grew 20,230, or 2.7 percent, during the year, more than twice the average annual increase of 1.3 percent since 1995, the report said. The total number of parolees at the end of 2004 was 765,355.

Beck said a late 1990s spike in prison populations is now showing up in the number of parolees, as the number of prisoners released rises.

The parole population grew during 2004 in 39 states, with double-digit growth in 10 states, led by Nebraska�s 24 percent increase. The number of people on parole decreased in nine states and didn�t change in Maine.

About 187,000, or 39 percent of discharged parolees went back to prison or jail in 2005. While the number has grown, the rate has held relatively stable since 1995, when 160,000, or 39 percent of discharged parolees returned to incarceration.

The total number of people incarcerated in the United States grew 1.9 percent in 2004 to 2,267,787 people, according to the report released last month.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lyn-l...-c_b_11483.html

Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman October 26, 2005

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as conspiracy theories adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.

According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received more than 57,000 complaints following Bush's alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations.

The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.

The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines. The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.

Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House.

Among other things, the GAO confirms that:

1. Some electronic voting machines did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected. In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.

2. It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate. Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.

3. Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level. 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a widespread conspiracy but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.

5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf

check this out. It has some interesting info: Part 1 is a synopsis and most interesting is pages 8,9,10, and 11. I got as far as Pt. 3 and there is a table of contents on the first few pages to explain everything that is in that part of the report.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/search.asp?pageNumber=1&freqReqRecord=undefined&refinedText=undefined&freqSearchText=undefined&txtSearch=911&exactPhrase=undefined&allWords=undefined&anyWords=undefined&withoutWords=undefined&documentNumber=undefined&startCreatedMonth=&startCreatedDay=&startCreatedYear=&endCreatedMonth=&endCreatedDay=&endCreatedYear=0&startReleasedMonth=&startReleasedDay=&startReleasedYear=&endReleasedMonth=&endReleasedDay=&endReleasedYear=0&sortOrder=DESC

A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks the activities of violent hate groups in the United States, has found an alarming rise in the number of such groups, from 602 in 2000 to 926 in 2008.

This comes on the heels of a controversial report on "violent extremism" from the Department of Homeland Security, which has outraged many conservatives by seeming to lump them in with extremists.

Morris Dees, the founder of the SPLC, told CBS's Harry Smith on Wednesday that he believes the two reports do "synch up pretty much" and that "the report from the Department of Homeland Security should be taken very seriously."

However, the SPLC's own report focuses very narrowly on groups which actively preach violence, including neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and the "racist skinhead subculture." It also notes the surprising rise of "anti-Semitic black separatists calling for death to Jews on bustling street corners in several East Coast cities."

"A key 2008 hate group trend was the increasing militancy of the extremist fringe of the Hebrew Israelite movement," the report states, "whose adherents believe that Jews are creatures of the devil and that whites deserve death or slavery. These radical black supremacists have no love for Barack Obama, calling him a 'house nigger' and a puppet of Israel. They preach to inner-city blacks that evil Jews are solely responsible for the recession."

Dees told Smith, "The political climate, the election of Obama, the immigration issues ... and now, especially, the economy is almost causing a resurgence of what we saw in the days of Timothy McVeigh, almost a militia movement that's being reborn. ... I think that an American person is much more likely to be harmed by a domestic terrorist extremist group than by one from abroad."

Dees also emphasized that many extremist groups are recruiting Iraq veterans and even active-duty members of the military because of their expertise with arms and explosives. "It's a serious issue," he stated, "especially with a lot of these guys coming back with post-traumatic stress syndrome, coming back to a failing economy, the inability to buy a home and get a job and get credit."

This video is from CBS's The Early Show, broadcast Apr. 15, 2009.

Video at: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center_50_rise_0415.html

This is sooooo funny. When I first saw the clip of Allen's Macaca comment, I actually emailed the Colbert Report and wrote, **Help. Senator Allen needs Stephen's help in getting some new ethnic friends** because this true story reminded me so much of the comedic segments on the Colbert Report regarding Stephen's search for a new **black friend.** I think they call this life imitating art! LoL!