looks like a bunch of sheep to me living in USA..sm

hmmmmm....?  Just because everyone is voting for Barack doesn't make any of it right - they all are bad candidates to some of us......

blechhhhhhhhhhhhh

JMO.........no flames required......

• Great headlines - Go Obama! - MT
  • obama's church - sm
    • please disregard most of my post, as I should have - checked with snopes first...VERY sorry...NM
  • SM, better links than supplied by OPs - he's not fond of israel, something to think abo
    • Uh-huh, better or biased? - -nm
  • and I too had to pass on this info - More on Mr. Barack Obama....sm msg
    • Actually - Taiga
      • excrement comes in all cultures/colors/ - religious AND political parties/rallying.....SM
        • That it does! - Taiga
          • By the way - Taiga
            • Don't waste your breath. No one with a modicum of sense can honestly - Libby
              • The Vietnam Vets call McCain "Songbird." sm - LVMT
                • Yep, the "if its true" factor. - -Libby
              • Of course, you are right. - Taiga
    • well - Well
  • looks like a bunch of sheep to me living in USA..sm - if they all jumped off a bridge, would ya follow?
    • if we were all sheep we would be voting for another - white man
      • duh yourself - Barack IS 50% white... LOL - no message
        • that doesn't make him white...my son is half black - I don't consider him white or black
          • interesting that everyone behind him on TV - sitting around him is white....sm
            • Well my son is being raised in an all white family (stepdad) - and mostly all white neighborhood
              • from his teens on he was raised by maternal - sitting around him is white....sm
          • It was brought in because - nana
        • oops above post have said sm message, not NM - sm message
    • We do have minds of our own - MT
      • You said, - nana
        • Obama Rated the Most Liberal Senator - linda
          • Liberal: A definition. - -sm
            • Which candidate meets this definition? sm - LVMT
          • newsflash - OMG - ExMQMT
          • well then that's good news for us liberals!!! - that's why this is a liberal board....n/m
            • obama--mega lib - linda

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Harriet Miers: Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing

Of course, if you listen to most conservatives, Harriet Miers is as dangerous as a card-carrying member of the ACLU. I'm disappointed, depressed and demoralized, huffed the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. Her qualifications for the Supreme Court are nonexistent, puffed former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

Nonsense.

Make no mistake about it. This decision is too important. Replacing William Rehnquist with John Roberts was a wash. It's this appointment, to fill the shoes of swing-vote Sandra Day O'Connor, that will determine the future direction of the Supreme Court. Karl Rove never would have let George Bush nominate Miers if he didn't know she agreed with Bush on every issue.

It's not hard to figure out how Bush decided on Miers. If elected president, he promised in 2000, he would appoint to the Supreme Court justices like extreme conservatives Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas. John Roberts didn't fit the bill, so Bush knew he had to deliver this time around. But he also knew any one of the names on the conservatives' wish list -- Michael Luttig, Edith Jones or Janice Rogers Brown -- would stir up a firestorm in the Senate, which Bush wanted to avoid.

So Bush came up with Plan B, as brilliant as it is diabolical: Nominate someone who is every bit as conservative as Luttig, Jones or Brown, privately, but who is a complete mystery, publicly. And that's Harriet Ellan Miers. The perfect stealth candidate. Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing.

In case you still harbor any doubts about her right-wing credentials, here's final proof. After four days of complaints from the far right, Karl Rove got on the phone to leading conservatives, starting with James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family. Rove convinced him to support Miers, Dobson confirmed, by giving him confidential information on her religious beliefs. Miers, like Bush, is an evangelical Christian.

Notice how the White House plays the religion card both ways. It was wrong for Democrats to raise the fact John Roberts is a Catholic, they argued, just one month ago.

Notice also what their doing so tells us about Harriet Miers. She's a soul mate of James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. She's anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-separation of church and state, pro-school prayer and pro-teaching intelligent design in public-school science classes. She's way out of the mainstream.

So what are Democrats waiting for? They know enough about Miers already to merit all-out opposition -- including the filibuster, if necessary. And they'd better act fast.

If Harriet Miers is confirmed, we'll be yearning for the good old days of moderate William Rehnquist.

Bill Press is host of the nationally syndicated Bill Press Show. His e-mail address is: bill@billpress.com.


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you blast the tea parties and try to downplay their significance.  The sentiment behind the tea party is that we shouldn't be part of any flock!  We should be thinking on our own.  We shouldn't hide behind party lines and blindly follow our politicians to our ruin, republican or democrat! 

Geez, talk about totally blind.  If it doesn't have a big fat O stamped on it, you won't listen.  Just a bunch of freaking robots.... O rhetoric goes in and nothing relevant comes out!  I thought you lefties were "intellectuals" and "free thinkers."  Now you're just Obama groupies clinging to his empty promise of hope and change!  Grow a brain!  Exercise your brain cells and THINK!

comments.  nit pickers unite!!

nellies.  Why even bother getting up in the morning with that burden of resentment on your shoulders?

banks by tens of billions of dollars.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20090206/Bailout.Oversight/

    Friday 30 September 2005

Voters are notoriously slow in voting out politicians accused of corruption, but they may reach the tipping point with the latest revelations.

    To be an honest Republican these days must be to wonder what awful revelation is coming next - and how the Grand Old Party, which once claimed to represent political reform, became a front for sleaze, corruption and cynical criminality. Across the country, from the Capitol to statehouses, Republican officials are under indictment, under investigation or under suspicion.

    This week's headlines featured the indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay and the probe of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, but the infection of venality among their fellow partisans is now reaching epidemic proportions. So widespread is the plague that keeping track of all the individual cases, and their increasingly baroque variations, has become a distinct challenge.

    Consider Jack Abramoff, once the prince of K Street lobbyists and a dedicated right-wing ideologue who boasted of his powerful connections to DeLay, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the entire Republican apparatus in Washington. Already under investigation by the Justice Department for his influence peddling among House members, including DeLay, and his swindling of Indian tribes, Abramoff was indicted last month for bank fraud in a separate South Florida case involving a casino boat company that he partly owned.

    The fraud allegedly committed by Abramoff and his business partner Adam Kidan involved a phony wire transfer they used to purchase a controlling interest in SunCruz from the company's founder, Konstantinos Gus Boulis, in 2001.

    Abramoff and Kidan later fell out with Boulis in a bitter business dispute that turned violent. In February 2001, gunmen ambushed Boulis on a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., highway and shot him repeatedly. On Tuesday, Florida authorities arrested three New York men with mob connections for the Boulis killing. Two of the men - Anthony Moscatiello and Tony Ferrari - had received payments totaling more than $240,000 from Kidan and Abramoff. Moscatiello, a longtime associate of the Gambino Mafia family, and Ferrari were supposedly providing food and consulting services to SunCruz - or so Kidan claimed when questioned by prosecutors. There is no evidence, however, that Moscatiello and Ferrari provided any services to the company.

    Connecting the dots isn't difficult here: Kidan and Abramoff want to get rid of Boulis, who won't go away. Kidan and Abramoff hire Moscatiello and Ferrari with SunCruz money. Moscatiello and Ferrari allegedly whack Boulis, without any motive of their own. If the Broward County state's attorney has sufficient evidence to win convictions for a capital crime, some people will probably be talking soon in hope of avoiding the hot shot.

    The stunning fall of Abramoff, who has yet to hit bottom, is certainly the most colorful tale of Republican depravity. The corporate money laundering to Texas politicians that led to DeLay's conspiracy indictment, and the suspicious insider stock transaction that spurred investigations of Frist by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, seem mundane by comparison. Outrage will be warranted if their misconduct is proved, but everyone sadly knows that these felonies are now common practice in our political and corporate culture.

    Corporate misbehavior has also brought down right-wing publisher Conrad Black, neoconservative strategist and former Bush advisor Richard Perle and the entire corporate board of Hollinger Inc., the Republican-friendly media conglomerate formerly controlled by Lord Black - and that he and others are plausibly accused of illicitly looting for their own benefit. Furious shareholders forced Black to relinquish control of the company and are suing him, as well as Perle and former Black deputy David Radler, for $500 million. The SEC is also suing Black and Radler, and the Justice Department is investigating the former Hollinger directors.

    Last month, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who also happens to be the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, accepted Radler's guilty plea to mail fraud and wire fraud. Radler is now believed to be cooperating in the prosecution of what former SEC chairman Richard Breeden, a Republican who investigated Hollinger on behalf of shareholders, termed a corporate kleptocracy.

    Kleptocratic morality evidently ruled at least two Republican statehouses in the Midwest as well. Currently under indictment are former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, whose trial on bribery charges began last week, and Gov. Robert Taft of Ohio, who pleaded no contest last month to charges of accepting illegal gifts from a state contractor.

    That contractor is Thomas Noe, a coin dealer who received lucrative investment deals with the state's Workers Compensation Fund and is now at the center of a gigantic scandal known as Coingate. More than $12 million has disappeared from the fund, and former GOP official Noe stands accused of laundering money to various Republican politicians, including the Bush-Cheney campaign. Like Abramoff, Noe is a Bush Pioneer, responsible for raising at least $100,000 for the president last year.

    Still another Pioneer is currently under criminal investigation in a celebrated corruption case involving Randy Duke Cunningham, a prominent Republican representative from San Diego with a senior position on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. On Aug. 18, FBI and IRS agents raided the offices of defense contractor and Bush fundraiser Brent Wilkes.

    Wilkes is reportedly a former business associate of Mitchell J. Wade, the head of a defense contracting firm called MZM Inc. who is under investigation in San Diego for alleged bribery of Cunningham. According to newspaper reports, Wade purchased a home owned by Cunningham at a price inflated by at least $700,000, and also permitted the congressman to use his 42-foot yacht free of charge. Federal agents searched Wade's offices in July.

    Although prosecutors have brought no criminal charges in the case yet, they have filed civil court documents describing the home sale as a violation of federal bribery laws - and Cunningham, who has served in Congress for decades, has already announced that he will not seek another term next year.

    The Republican National Committee's new treasurer, Robert Kjellander, is under investigation too. (Naturally, he is also a Bush Pioneer.) Not long after he assumed his new post at the party's Washington headquarters, Kjellander received a federal subpoena for records of his dealings with the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, a state pension fund, and the Carlyle Group. Federal prosecutors are reportedly looking into alleged corruption at the fund, and have asked Kjellander to provide information about a $4.5 million fee he received from Carlyle for his role in arranging investments by the fund with the huge private equity fund. Carlyle, of course, is closely connected to the Bush administration, including the president's father, George H.W. Bush, who has worked for the firm as a rainmaker and advisor.

    In fairness, it should be said that all these pols and parasites may be innocent (except for those already convicted), or at least not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also true that voters have historically been slow to evict politicians from office because of corruption charges.

    But public opinion of congressional Republicans is hitting new lows, and Americans are growing furious about the war in Iraq, the government response to Hurricane Katrina and rising energy prices. The natural impulse to throw the rascals out can only be encouraged by the Gilded Age spectacles now unfolding in Washington and in cities across the country as the indictments continue to come down between now and November 2006.

of questions. Some are inappropriate as:"Why does your wife look so miserable all the time." This has nothing to do with serious questions. There was also one on there about somebody losing their labradoodle and what was he going to do about it. Others are down right nasty. I call that abuse.  

Some people are just plain nuts. There are over 11,700 questions listed on there and I think I only got to read around 300. Most that I read were appropriate and relate to questions on what he was planning to do.

Now, before you scream at me, I didn't vote for him, I'm definitely not a fan of his, but I'm willing to watch and see what happens and give an opinion or two once in a while....and that's all it is, an opinion, like everyone else on this board are allowed.

I'm a liberal and I have to say, I really resent it when people say the libs this or the dem's that and refer to all of us in one great big bunch that worships Obama and thinks he's the messiah.   It really bugs the crap out of me.  He's a man.  He's not my Savior. 

I have seen condescension and name calling from BOTH sides of the fence, none of which is appropriate coming from anyone who calls themself an adult.  I do find it interesting that it seems to be much more accepted in this election cycle than in years before.  I don't know if it's because of the proliferation of message boards and the complete lack of humanity that tends to go with posting on them, or if it's this particular year and set of candidates/winners.

Let's give the man a chance.  Yes, he's a man.  I believe he is a very smart man and I have high hopes for him.  Let's avoid name calling, liberal bashing, conservative hate, etc.  That just does everyone a disservice.

in the wrong place and at the wrong time.  Because from here on, you'll be told exactly what to do and when, and probably how you're supposed to feel about it. 

Told what amount of money it is 'seemly' for you to earn, how much you MUST surrender to maintain the lifestyles of others, and how much you may be permitted to keep - if you promise to spend it properly.  Told how much energy it is politically correct for you to use (please drive an approved vehicle) and what modern conveniences it is more 'green' to do without.  Told not to think too much: 'The science is settled.  The debate is over.'  Told what medical tests and procedures it will be proper for you to receive and which (so very sorry) it would be better for society as a whole for you to forego, because there is only so much to go around.  Told for your own good what to eat and taxed extra on the improper items you choose.  (Unless, apparently, you receive food stamps, in which case limiting your choice would be unnecessarily judgmental.)

Perhaps some will see all this as gentle correction from a benevolent parent, but this micromanagement sneaking in incrementally cloaked in a smily face will not really make me feel better about being told what to do.