The only one fit for the job of being fair

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balanced . . . we're looking out for YOU . . . we're looking out for the FOLKs . . . fair and balanced . . .

For the record, I felt Kfir's remarks to me were offensive first, and that's why my remarks became nastier. In fact, the remark about Kfir not being representative of most Israelis was in direct response and in the same tone to Kfir's post to me regarding being representative of liberals.

And I don't believe my take on the end times is a fact. It's nothing more than my personal opinion, based on things I read that lead me to feel that way and raise the questions I raised.

I do agree that these issues are very emotionally charged and respect your decision to not discuss them further. Again, thank you for being respectful.

I would be 100% fine with my taxes being raised 3% if it meant healthcare for all American children. Heck, I would be overjoyed with that! So if that bill ever comes up I guarantee you I will support it, but the fact is the current bill is a solution that could help families right now, and I support it. I would support just about any bill that would help lower health insurance costs to American families, honestly. I just truly think this one is great because it is aimed at covering minors. I also think it is great that Republican and Democratic leaders tried to work together and compromise on it and decided to tax cigarettes instead of raising taxes in other areas.

So yes, I would rather have a hike in taxes and have more affordable healthcare for kids. Is that the best solution for lower health care costs for adult Americans? Maybe not, but for the minors with no choice in what kind of family they are born into I think it is a great choice.

You can also find this story on Fox, AOL news, and a number of publications. From what I gather, Palin's spokesperson has said she won't accept the raise or will donate it. That really doesn't sound right to me, espcially since not only did she have a hand in selecting the committee that decided to give out the raises, but the committee was actually formed in order to evaluate whether raises were needed.

Why do I care about this? My guess is that we will see her again, so I think it's important to keep up with what she's doing in the meantime. I don't believe in that *out of sight, out of mind* thing.

what it does do is put money in the hands of people who have to spend it. If they were to just give money to the middle class, most of us would simply save it or pay off bills. That doesn't stimulate the economy. The spending deficit is the main problem with the economy, and that's what they are addressing with this. It's the same theory behind food stamps. Statistically, the poorer the people that receive the money, the more likely it will be spent -- and that's the goal -- to get people to spend money.

Really, if you look at the tax cuts that we are supposed to get that come to what, I think someone said about $13 a week, you will see the same concept. When Bush sent out those rebate checks, the idea, again, was to get people spending money. Well, they didn't. They paid bills and saved -- so we know that doesn't work. However, if you are just getting an extra $13 a week, most people will just see that as an extra $13 for something else they will buy. They will be less likely to save that $13 than they would a lump sum like the ones Bush sent out.

Really, if you look at the tax cuts that the middle class are supposed to get, they come to what, I think someone said about $13 a week, you will see the same concept. When Bush sent out those rebate checks, the idea, again, was to get people spending money. Well, they didn't. They paid bills and saved -- so we know that doesn't work. However, if you are just getting an extra $13 a week, most people will just see that as an extra $13 for something else they will buy. They will be less likely to save that $13 than they would a lump sum like the ones Bush sent out. That means the likelihood of the money being spent is greater.

The subject of abortion is just going way too far left here. If someone doesn't approve of abortions, they should not be forced to do them. If a mother has the right to abort her baby, a doctor should have a right to refuse to perform such a thing. That mother will just have to go to someone else. But to take the rights away from either the mother or the doctor......that isn't right. If you want the government to stay out of your uterus, then don't take free will away from someone who doesn't believe in it by making them perform such an act. Think about it. When you look at it from both sides, the extreme left and the extreme right are both wanting unfair things.

I mean....there are the major kool-aid drinkers who refuse to see anything bad about obama no matter what the man does, but that really goes on both sides. Some pubs are just as bad about that. I think that Obama ran a great campaign with promises that people really wanted to believe. However, now some of those Obama supporters are sweating it too. It is now only the democratic kool-aid drinkers that continue to praise him.

They don't need to run that ad. Sean Hannity repeats his mantra of Rev. Wright and Ayers every evening. He does not seem to have much respect for his viewers. He just repeats those 2 things over and over like the viewers are dumb stumps.

My Fair Veep

I hope John McCain doesn�t throw his slippers at Sarah Palin�s head or get as acerbic as Henry Higgins did with Eliza Doolittle when she did not learn quickly enough. McCain�s Pygmalion has to be careful, because his Galatea might be armed with more than a sharp tongue.

For the first time in American history, we have a �My Fair Lady� moment, as teams of experts bustle around the most famous woman in politics, intensely coaching her for her big moment at the ball � her first unscripted interview here this week with ABC News�s Charlie Gibson.

Eliza, by George, got it and brought off the coup of passing herself off as a Hungarian princess rather than a Covent Garden flower seller. Sarah�s challenge is far tougher, and that�s why she�s pulling the political equivalent of an all-nighter. She doesn�t have to pass herself off as a different class or change her voice or be more highfalutin. The McCain campaign is reveling in its anti-intellectual tenor.

Sarah, who is now so renowned that she is known merely by one name and has a name ID of 90 percent, has to be a Kmart mom who appeals to Kmart moms and dads. She�s already shown that she can shoot the pig, put lipstick on it, bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Now all she has to do is also prove that she can be the leader of the free world on a moment�s notice, and field dress Putin as adeptly as she can a moose.

After devilishly mocking Obama � and successfully getting into his head � with ads about how he was just a frothy celebrity, like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, it turns out all the McCain camp wanted was an Obama of its own. Now that they have the electric Palin, they�ve stopped arguing that celebrity is bad. All they do is worship at her cult of celebrity. As Rick Davis, a top McCain adviser, said: �This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.�

Wasilla will be crawling with four groups � ABC staffers, frantically getting ready for the big showdown; McCain staffers, frantically tutoring Palin for the big showdown; McCain vetters, who are belatedly doing their job checking to see if Palin is a qualified White House contender and doing their best to shut down Troopergate and assembling a �truth squad� posse of Palinistas to rebut any criticism and push back any prying reporters; and journalists � from Sydney to Washington � who are here to draw back the curtain on the shiny reformer image that the McCain camp has conjured for their political ing�nue and see what�s behind it.

Gibson has his work cut out for him. His problem isn�t coming up with a list of questions, but finding time to drill deeply enough into all the unknown territory of her life. It�s a task that dwarfs the drilling job the oil companies are doing on Alaska�s North Slope.

In the end, none of it may matter, since Palin has rocketed in the polls, drawing women and men with her vapid � if vivacious and visceral � scripted cheerleading. But if you�re reading this, Charlie, we want to know everything, including:

What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?

Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn�t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?

What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs � as mayor and as governor?

When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?

Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?

Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter�s pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?

As Troopergate unfolds here � an inquiry into whether Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law � it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the F.B.I.?

Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants and a ban on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian?

Just how is it that Fannie and Freddie have cost taxpayers money (since they haven�t yet)?

I disagree - it is well known that they are extremely right-slanted. Fair and balanced. What a joke. Why do you think people in the know refer to them as Faux or Fixed news - just a coincidence?

Chris Wallace's vicious sucker-punch attack on Bill Clinton (wherin Wallace got his rear end handed to him on a platter).

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.

I thought YOU guys were the ones who swore by capitalism and applauded people who worked hard to succeed in life. It's very telling how you swoon over the one who was born rich and never had to work a day in his life. Says a lot about your work ethics.

LOL! Let's see....poor young southern boy works hard, grows up to be successful. I smell a lot of conservative JEALOUSY in the air, and it stinks.

Okay, this is the one area Democratics leaders always try to mislead the American public on:

The rich get major tax breaks.
The rich get all of the Bush tax cuts.
The rich pay no taxes.

Of course they never want to explain what an unproportional percentage the wealthy in this country pay to taxes. Now to the FACTS from the Department of the Treasury:

The latest data is from the 2002 taxes. The following incomes split levels from the IRS are (% of total individual income tax in parenthesis):

Top 1%: above $ 285,424 (33.71%)
Top 5%: above $ 126,525 (53.80%)
Top 10%: above $ 92,663 (65.73%)
Top 25%: above $ 56,401 (83.90%)
Top 50%: above $ 28,654 (96.50%)
Bottom 50%: below $ 28,654 (4.50%)

The President's Tax cuts actually increase the burden on the wealthy while providing greater relief to the bottom 50 (who are not contributing proportionally to the federal coffers).
DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Office of Public Affairs
March 2, 2005
FACT SHEET: Who Pays the Most Individual Income Taxes?

The individual income tax is highly progressive � a small group of higher-income taxpayers pay most of the individual income taxes each year.

� In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income.

� The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group�s tax share has grown faster than their income share.

� Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 94 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, this group paid over 96 percent of the total.

The President�s tax cuts have shifted a larger share of the individual income taxes paid to higher income taxpayers. In 2005, when most of the tax cut provisions are fully in effect (e.g., lower tax rates, the $1,000 child credit, marriage penalty relief), the projected tax share for lower-income taxpayers will fall, while the tax share for higher-income taxpayers will rise.

� The share of taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers will fall from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent.

� The share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers will rise from 32.3 percent to 33.7 percent.

� The average tax rate for the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers falls by 27 percent as compared to a 13 percent decline for taxpayers in the top 1 percent.

Summary of Federal Individual Income Tax Data

I wish Tim Russert was still here. He was someone you could trust to be totally objective and get the answers. RIP Tim.