We already have this plan in my state and it is working very well...sm

• Any of you McCain fans read this? - gourdpainter
  • I'm just voting for him because he is the lesser of the two evils who are running for presidency - Wish there was another option
  • You need to read the article again for yourself if... - me
    • McCain Ex - gourdpainter
    • I am voting for someone who has character. nm - geek
      • You are voting for a radical socialist. - sam
      • Well, that certainly means you are NOT - voting for Obama! Show
      • Good for you! Most people would not recognize good...sm - oldtimer
        • Character? Have you done any research at all... - sam
      • McCain - MT advicate
        • McCain - MT Advocate
      • Oh? Is someone new in the running?...nm - old and tired
        • Character - gourdpainter
          • hey gourdpainter -- was this a typo or not? - dem to the end
            • LOL - gourdpainter
            • I think ASR did that! nm - Ivy
  • Sorry, this does nothing to change my mind. - Zville MT
    • Just another thought - gourdpainterg
    • Respect - gourdpainter
      • Obama voted to extend the Patriot Act... - sam
        • Do you think I'm not aware of that??? - gourdpainter
          • Right back at ya. If Obama does win, - sam
            • The problem here, sam is s/m - gourdpainter
            • It is time we have someone speak for the middle - class instead of the rich! I'm tired of the ri
              • Members of Congress get the best healthcare that...sm - geek
                • R U Kidding? - cj
                  • I suggest YOU study up on Obama's plan...sm - geek
                    • I have read his entire plan - cj
                      • Hillary's plan yes, Obama's no. nm - oldtimer
                        • Obama says you can keep your employer health care.... - sam
                          • We already have this plan in my state and it is working very well...sm - geek
              • Democrats ALWAYS, every election cycle.... - sam

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Two Border State Governors Declare Illegal Immigration State of Emergency

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Many people were confined against their will just because someone wanted them "out of the way." These were normal people with no mental illness - that is why it is so difficult - don't blame the liberals. Blame your state.

CONFINING THE MENTALLY ILL


In the legal space between what a society should and should not do, taking action to restrict the liberty of people who are mentally ill sits in the grayest of gray areas.

Our notions about civil and constitutional rights flow from an assumption of "normalcy." Step beyond the boundaries and arrest and prison may legally follow. Short of that, government's ability to hold people against their will is severely and properly limited. Unusual behavior on the part of someone who is mentally ill is not illegal behavior. Freedom can't be snatched away on a whim, or on the thought that a person is hard to look at, hard to hear, hard to smell.

It was only a few decades ago that the promise of new medications and a change in attitude opened the doors of the mental hospitals and sent many patients into society. There, they would somehow "normalize" and join everyone else, supported by networks of out-patient facilities, job training, special living arrangements and regular, appropriate medication. But the transition has been imperfect, long and difficult.

In some parts of urban America there is little professional support for those with mental health problems. A new generation of drug and alcohol-fueled mental illness has come on the scene. People frequently end up on the street, un-medicated and exhibiting a full range of behaviors that are discomforting at the very least and threatening at their worst.

Written last Thanksgiving:  "Some would argue that two different nations actually celebrated: upright, moral, traditional red America and the dissolute, liberal blue states clustered on the periphery of the heartland. The truth, however, is much more complicated and interesting than that.

Take two iconic states: Texas and Massachusetts. In some ways, they were the two states competing in the last election. In the world's imagination, you couldn't have two starker opposites. One is the homeplace of Harvard, gay marriage, high taxes, and social permissiveness. The other is Bush country, solidly Republican, traditional, and gun-toting. Massachusetts voted for Kerry over Bush 62 to 37 percent; Texas voted for Bush over Kerry 61 to 38 percent.

So ask yourself a simple question: which state has the highest divorce rate? Marriage was a key issue in the last election, with Massachusetts' gay marriages becoming a symbol of alleged blue state decadence and moral decay. But in actual fact, Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country at 2.4 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants. Texas - which until recently made private gay sex a criminal offence - has a divorce rate of 4.1. A fluke? Not at all. The states with the highest divorce rates in the U.S. are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. And the states with the lowest divorce rates are: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Every single one of the high divorce rate states went for Bush. Every single one of the low divorce rate states went for Kerry. The Bible Belt divorce rate, in fact, is roughly 50 percent higher than the national average.

Some of this discrepancy can be accounted for by the fact that couples tend to marry younger in the Bible Belt - and many clearly don't have the maturity to know what they're getting into. There's some correlation too between rates of college education and stable marriages, with the Bible Belt lagging a highly educated state like Massachusetts. But the irony still holds. Those parts of America that most fiercely uphold what they believe are traditional values are not those parts where traditional values are healthiest. Hypocrisy? Perhaps. A more insightful explanation is that these socially troubled communities cling onto absolutes in the abstract because they cannot live up to them in practice.

But doesn't being born again help bring down divorce rates? Jesus, after all, was mum on the subject of homosexuality, but was very clear about divorce, declaring it a sin unless adultery was involved. A recent study, however, found no measurable difference in divorce rates between those who are "born again" and those who are not. 29 percent of Baptists have been divorced, compared to 21 percent of Catholics. Moreover, a staggering 23 percent of married born-agains have been divorced twice or more. Teen births? Again, the contrast is striking. In a state like Texas, where the religious right is extremely strong and the rhetoric against teenage sex is gale-force strong, the teen births as a percentage of all births is 16.1 percent. In liberal, secular, gay-friendly Massachusetts, it's 7.4, almost half. Marriage itself is less popular in Texas than in Massachusetts. In Texas, the percent of people unmarried is 32.4 percent; in Massachusetts, it's 26.8 percent. So even with a higher marriage rate, Massachusetts manages a divorce rate almost half of its "conservative" rival.

Or take abortion. America is one of the few Western countries where the legality of abortion is still ferociously disputed. It's a country where the religious right is arguably the strongest single voting bloc, and in which abortion is a constant feature of cultural politics. Compare it to a country like Holland, perhaps the epitome of socially liberal, relativist liberalism. So which country has the highest rate of abortion? It's not even close. America has an abortion rate of 21 abortions per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44. Holland has a rate of 6.8. Americans, in other words, have three times as many abortions as the Dutch. Remind me again: which country is the most socially conservative?

Even a cursory look at the leading members of the forces of social conservatism in America reveals the same pattern. The top conservative talk-radio host, Rush Limbaugh, has had three divorces and an addiction to pain-killers. The most popular conservative television personality, Bill O'Reilly, just settled a sex harassment suit that indicated a highly active adulterous sex life. Bill Bennett, the guru of the social right, was for many years a gambling addict. Karl Rove's chief outreach manager to conservative Catholics for the last four years, Deal Hudson, also turned out to be a man with a history of sexual harassment. Bob Barr, the conservative Georgian congressman who wrote the "Defense of Marriage Act," has had three wives so far. The states which register the highest ratings for the hot new television show, "Desperate Housewives," are all Bush-states.

The complicated truth is that America truly is a divided and conflicted country. But it's a grotesque exaggeration to say that the split is geographical, or correlated with blue and red states. Many of America's biggest "sinners" are those most intent on upholding virtue. In fact, it may be partly because they know sin so close-up that they want to prevent its occurrence among others. And some of those states which have the most liberal legal climate - the Northeast and parts of the upper MidWest - are also, in practice, among the most socially conservative. To ascribe all this to "hypocrisy" seems to me too crude an explanation. America is simply a far more complicated and diverse place than crude red and blue divisions can explain.

they are adding police and only in the big cities do they have paid firemen. The rest are volunteers.

I look at it this way: If a state can't stay in the black, then they have to cut spending some place that wouldn't jeopardize the safety of the citizens. Threats of cutting essential services like Barney Fife stated today are unjustified. Cut the non-essential services first.

Our governor talks about cutting back on services, laying off government workers, which I think is a good idea because government is too big anyway, but then he turns around and spends more money on non-essential items. Doesn't make sense.  

To begin with I'd like to see the video of Obama saying that he is a Muslim--WITH at least one minute of the interview prior to and after the "quote".  Also, I'd like the person who said that he didn't know how many states were in the United States to back that up with a referrence.  There are SO many others, but those are the two that come to mind. 

My aunt talked to an FBI agent just a few days before Nov. 4th and they are still working on it.  Supposedly O constantly shows he has a passport as proof of his birth certificate because in order to get a passport you have to show proof of a birth certificate.  

Well in order to be president, you have to show proof of birth certificate, not a passport.  Guess what?  O does not show it.  Hospitals have no record of birth certificate.  All O has to do is SHOW THE STUPID THING and get this all resolved.  So why does he not just show it?   Why is he stalling.  Why is O wasting time judges, courts, and lawyers time.  JUST SHOW THE STUPID THING.

I'm not sure I fully understand.  I know that there is no law against who you hire and how you hire. I know of facilities that have on-site MTs and have no plans to outsource at all. 

Private practices if they desire hire on-site MTs because they can usually do coding/billing, answer phones, and make coffee (LOL).  It happens.

I've run into 2 different people that have said when you get tired of working from home, come see us...  We'll hire ya'....  LOL - makes me feel good about this profession. 

I think it depends on how greedy that particular physician/facility is and how much they care about the quality of dictation and how much time they want to spend correcting it. 

Working for a non-profit ministry is vastly different than working for a for-profit company.  I say this, because I work in a ministry.  Many ministries have Codes of Conduct.  However, it's legally required that you be informed verbally and in writing of these codes of conduct, and then you sign a waiver stating that yes, you can follow those, or no you don't.  You have a choice up front.  It's a contract, and you can choose to sign and abide or not to sign and walk away.

I have no idea of the standards for the Salvation Army, but I doubt they are as stringent as what you are saying.  The rumor mill is an ugly thing.  I think we all played pass it down as children, and we know how drastically a statement can be altered when passed down just a minimum of two to three times.

Murtha: 'Surge is working'

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) acknowledged that the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq is “working” after returning from a brief trip to Iraq last week, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The comments, coming from a harsh critic of President Bush’s Iraq war policy, suggest there may be a shift in Democratic rhetoric on Iraq in light of recent reductions in violence in Iraq over the last several months.

Murtha made the comments today at his district office in Johnstown, Pa.

He added that the Iraqi government needed to better “take care of themselves” and achieve greater progress with political reconciliation, according to the Post-Gazette.

The statement is a marked shift from this July, when Murtha told CNN that he “dismissed” an op-ed by Brookings Institution analysts Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon that the surge was beginning to make progress, declaring their comments were “an illusion.”

Well, at least he has the guts to step up and tell the truth after seeing it with his own eyes.  Good for him!

for the last 2 hours?  My compliments - it was worth the wait.

The thing that everyone is forgetting is that not everyone is in Washington right now working - there are some people there trying to work out the details and everyone else will just vote when it is handed to them. 

In fact, they said that things were going better before McCain and Obama got there, that once McCain got there things started going downhill because there are a group of Republicans who do not want to support the package that their Republican President is wanting passed. 

Now, I don't know if I would support it or not if I was there, but I don't think that it is a requirement that every Senator be in that room while they are working on the details. 

I am not a Democrat, I am not a Republican - don't know yet for sure which way I am going - but I do not fault Obama for not automatically running to Washington just because McCain did.  In fact, from all the information I have gather this morning, McCain did not contribute anything to the conversation yesterday anyway. 

but in the end it will pay off. You will live your American Dream and you will thrive. Most today want it all now, gimme gimme, gotta have it now, material things come first. DH and I are debt free but the house; do we want a new BMW or Escalade, you bet, can we afford it, you bet, do we have them, he!! no, our cars are a few years old and paid for and drive just like a new one. Do we have the latest, greatest electronics, no to that too, we don't have anyone we need to impress that much. However, we do have piece of mind that we have money in the bank, can take vacations, can pay whatever price gas is, pay cash for anything new we want and can go the mailbox or answer the phone and know there isn't a debt collector on the other end.

We have been in your shoes, working our tails off and it has paid off greatly for us. Sure, we struggled but now it's worth it. We did it without whining to the gov't for help, expecting some man speaking eloquent words at a podium to come to our rescue.

Peace is an illusion.  Everybody is always planning their next move.

The best any leader can do is make sure we land on the right side.