she asks you to point out specifics and you haven't done it...

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gives them time to answer. When they try to move off the question into a talking point, he insists they answer the question. Show is called Hardball. If you want to appear, you must answer the question.

wearing it that he should and that he should also not use the story in his campaign, but did it ever occur to anyone that the story actually did happen and that maybe the family thought better of what was said and wants it taken back?

I would have to wonder why they gave it to him in the first place if they knew his position on the war. His position certainly wasn't a well-kept secret. If they felt this way, they should haev given it to McCain. I mean no disrespect here, but it is possible. In any case, if the family has requested that he stop exploiting the story, O definitely should. To not do so would be in very poor taste.

WASHINGTON � President George W. Bush will give a farewell address to the nation Thursday night, billed by the administration as a chance to reflect on his tenure and welcome Barack Obama without fighting old battles one last time.

Bush will deliver the speech, expected to run 10 to 15 minutes, from the ornate East Room of the White House. He will have a small audience of people in the room, chosen for their stories of personal courage.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said Monday that Bush will "uphold the tradition of presidents using farewell addresses to look forward _ by sharing his thoughts on greatest challenges facing the country, and on what it will take to meet them."

The president also will defend his record, Perino said, but will show graciousness toward Obama and not attempt to revisit the old battles of his presidency.

Bush will speak in prime time, although no specific time has been set. The White House has requested airtime from the major television networks.

Perino said the speech will be the last scheduled public event for Bush as president until he appears on the North Portico to greet Obama on Inauguration Day, which is Jan. 20. Bush held his final news conference on Monday.
The White House says the ritual of a farewell address dates to the time of George Washington. Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan delivered goodbye speeches from the White House; Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford gave a final State of the Union address on Capitol Hill, Perino said.

Although I am named in this suit in my own behalf, I am motivated to join it by concerns well beyond my own. I have been frankly appalled by the discrepant and contradictory positions taken by the Administration in this matter. First, the entire existence of the NSA's monitoring was a secret, and its very disclosure denounced as a threat to national security.

Then it was argued that Congress had already implicitly granted the power to conduct warrantless surveillance on the territory of the United States, which seemed to make the reason for the original secrecy more rather than less mysterious. (I think we may take it for granted that our deadly enemies understand that their communications may be intercepted.)

It now appears that Congress may have granted this authority, but without quite knowing that it had, and certainly without knowing the extent of it.

This makes it critically important that we establish an understood line, and test the cases in which it may or may not be crossed.

Let me give a very direct instance of what I mean. We have recently learned that the NSA used law enforcement agencies to track members of a pacifist organisation in Baltimore. This is, first of all, an appalling abuse of state power and an unjustified invasion of privacy, uncovered by any definition of national security however expansive. It is, no less importantly, a stupid diversion of scarce resources from the real target. It is a certainty that if all the facts were known we would become aware of many more such cases of misconduct and waste.

We are, in essence, being asked to trust the state to know best. What reason do we have for such confidence? The agencies entrusted with our protection have repeatedly been shown, before and after the fall of 2001, to be conspicuous for their incompetence and venality. No serious reform of these institutions has been undertaken or even proposed: Mr George Tenet (whose underlings have generated leaks designed to sabotage the Administration's own policy of regime-change in Iraq, and whose immense and unconstitutionally secret budget could not finance the infiltration of a group which John Walker Lindh could join with ease) was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I believe the President when he says that this will be a very long war, and insofar as a mere civilian may say so, I consider myself enlisted in it. But this consideration in itself makes it imperative that we not take panic or emergency measures in the short term, and then permit them to become institutionalised. I need hardly add that wire-tapping is only one of the many areas in which this holds true.

The better the ostensible justification for an infringement upon domestic liberty, the more suspicious one ought to be of it. We are hardly likely to be told that the government would feel less encumbered if it could dispense with the Bill of Rights. But a power or a right, once relinquished to one administration for one reason, will unfailingly be exploited by successor administrations, for quite other reasons. It is therefore of the first importance that we demarcate, clearly and immediately, the areas in which our government may or may not treat us as potential enemies.

It's working, too!! So far, American citizens have donated a whopping $39.00!!

By Cam Simpson Washington BureauSun Sep 18, 9:40 AM ET

From the Indian Ocean tsunami to the church around the corner, Americans have shown time and again they are willing to open their pocketbooks for charity, for a total of about $250 billion last year alone.

But now, amid pleas for aid after Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has launched an unusual effort to raise charitable contributions for another cause: the government's attempt to rebuild Iraq.

Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort that it says is aimed at giving Americans a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq.

Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons.

But taxpayers already finance the projects for which the administration is seeking charitable donations, such as providing water pumps for farmers. And officials say any contributions they receive will increase the scope of those efforts rather than relieve existing taxpayer burdens.

The campaign is raising eyebrows in the international development and not-for-profit communities, where there are questions about its timing--given needs at home--and whether it will set the government in competition with international not-for-profits.

On a more basic level, experts wonder whether Americans will make charitable donations to a government foreign aid program and whether the contentious environment surrounding Iraq will make a tough pitch even tougher.

I'm a little skeptical, and the timing certainly isn't the best, said James Ferris, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. It's going to be a hard sell.

Cost of rebuilding skyrockets

The U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government's primary distributor of foreign aid, said Friday, Charitable contributions play an important role in enriching and extending U.S. government efforts.

The effort is just the newest twist in the administration's struggle to rebuild Iraq. Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, first predicted it would cost taxpayers no more than $1.7 billion. The tab has since risen to more than $30 billion, with congressional Republicans and Democrats sharply critical of the high cost and slow pace of progress.

In addition, the new campaign comes amid increasing concerns that some of the administration's major projects in Iraq will be scrapped or only partially completed because of rising costs, especially for security. Some officials fear money may run out before key projects are completed.

Natsios announced the campaign in a speech Sept. 9. In a press release issued the same day, USAID said its new Web site will help American citizens learn more about official U.S. assistance for Iraq and make contributions to high-impact development projects.

Although USAID has received private donations from corporations in the past, this might be the first time it has geared a charity pitch for U.S. foreign aid dollars to citizens.

Initially, the Web site, called Iraqpartnership.org, is offering potential contributors a choice of eight projects, each seeking $10,000 or less. They include purchasing computers for centers designed to assist Iraqi entrepreneurs, buying furniture and supplies for Iraqi elementary and high schools, paying for the production of posters to promote awareness of disabilities and rights issues, and buying water pumps for farmers.

There is also a general Iraq country fund, offering donors another high-impact giving opportunity without making them have to specify a project.

All of the projects are from USAID's existing portfolio of reconstruction programs in Iraq, according to the agency.

Security issues obscure details

Heather Layman, a USAID spokeswoman, said the efforts are being carried out by five private organizations working on Iraq reconstruction with USAID funding. The site does not provide details about the groups involved or the project locations because of security issues in Iraq.

The government says all contributions are tax-deductible.

William Reese, the president and CEO of the International Youth Foundation, said USAID officials did not discuss the campaign with a special advisory committee that he serves on and formerly headed.

That committee, made up primarily of representatives from non-profit groups working overseas, is supposed to help provide the underpinning for cooperation between the public and private sectors in U.S. foreign assistance programs, according to USAID.

Reese said some not-for-profit groups may see the effort as competition, but he predicted few would be concerned because of a more basic issue: While Americans are generous, he said, I don't think your average Joe is going to write a check to the U.S. government.

Carol Lancaster, a foreign aid expert and associate professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, also questioned the premise of the program.

Places that are seen as public agencies or clones of public agencies don't get private donations, said Lancaster, a former deputy administrator at USAID. People generally believe, `It's government, so government should pay for it.'

Nassarie Carew, a spokeswoman for InterAction, an umbrella group of more than 160 non-profits working overseas, said her organization also was not aware of the effort. Its CEO, Mohammad Akhter, serves on the USAID advisory panel. Carew declined to comment until the group had a chance to survey its members.

Layman, the USAID spokeswoman, called the Web site a passive solicitation, saying potential donors would likely find it only if they were looking for a way to support Iraq's redevelopment.

She also said some people who might have donated to projects in Iraq will now choose to put money toward Katrina relief, but that others will still want to help in Iraq.

She said Iraqi-Americans specifically had asked USAID to help them find an avenue for contributions.

Raising charitable contributions for overseas projects can be a challenge even when the U.S. government is not at the center of the pitch. And Iraq is one of the government's more controversial foreign policy ventures in decades.

DevelopmentSpace Foundation Inc., the group that set up the Web site for USAID, operates its own, separate Web site seeking charitable donations for small-scale projects in developing countries.

Since its founding in 2001, that effort has raised a total of about $2 million, said Allison Koch, a foundation spokeswoman.

The organization keeps a 10 percent commission for contributions and has received most of its operating funds through major grants from several other foundations. USAID also gave it a grant of $1.5 million.

So far, $39 donated

Although in its infancy, the Iraqpartnership.org Web site had generated contributions totaling $39 as of Friday night.

According to the Giving USA Foundation, which tracks annual charitable donations by Americans, international giving accounted for 2.1 percent of all charity in the U.S. last year.

Ferris, the director of the USC philanthropy center, said that's because people want to donate to causes closer to home.

Except for the fact that the aim of foreign aid is to bolster U.S. foreign policy objectives overseas, Ferris said the new USAID campaign seems like a natural extension of the growing trend toward public-private partnerships.

There is this blurring of the lines, he said. A lot of things once paid for by the public are now paid through private sources.

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csimpson@tribune.com

That's the whole point. Bush acts like a dictator in complete privacy. Of course nobody can name names because this president thinks he can spy on whoever he wants without ever telling the person.

Just to take the first point: How about a speech he gave in 2008 which he criticized the US because most of us speak one measly language, while Europeans often speak 2 or 3? There is actually a pretty good reason for that, by the way. A person could drive in Europe a distance equal to the trip from Cincinnati to Chicago and pass through several countries. Some countries even have several dialects. Many European countries are tiny. Being multilingual in Europe is very practical. America is huge and people a couple of thousand miles away can understand one another in a single language, from youse guys to y'all.

I don't remember ever hearing a US president or presidential candidate publicly criticize his country the way this one has (well, maybe Kerry). And of course our foreign critics simply lap it up. I think Michelle Obama has some foreign language skills, but I've got to wonder in what second and third languages Barack himself is fluent. Surely he must be.....

I was unable to find the full text/location/date of the speech I am referring to, but here's a link to an article on it. Sorry, it does seem to be an piece that is overall critical of the great man, but then the mainstream would probably not have mentioned this at all

Oh, by the way, no spam file, I wrote it. Whether or not you find it witty, it's the way I view O's public criticism of the US, as though we are a collection of bumpkins he's stuck with and trying desperately to fix up.

I have seen at least four conservatives express concerns about Bush on several occasions, and they even elucidated them. Of course, you would have to take off those blinders to see them but you aren't about to do that. What a joke. As far as your remarks about racisms, I consider your remarks extremely racist. And never mind the fact that black Americans, one of whom was quoted here, are also defending Bennett. Their voices don't count because they must be Uncle Tom's, right. AGAIN, a racist way of thinking.

I would imagine it is $250,000 on the bottom line profit since that is what we all pay taxes on. I agree that a business with a gross income of $250,000 is not all that much, as a rule of thumb, probably $125,000 net. On the other hand if it is $250,000 NET that's a pretty darn good income and I say they could well afford to pay a few measly dollars so those making a net of say $25,000 could have a little relief. But the middle or lower class workers are going to get NO relief because the big businesses are going to protect their greed and the small businesses have to raise their prices to survive. Example: We ate at a family owned restaurant the other night. Sirloin steak was $17.95 the last time we ate there was $21.95. The owner posted a sign apologizing for the price increases but said he didn't have any choice if he was going to stay in business because of his wholesale prices going up. THANKS Bush and big oil.

I'm planning on hitting the polls a little later this morning. Not too concerned about lines as our polling place is in a small town.

IOW, you were for the financials getting bailout money and then letting them do whatever they wanted to do with it? Like hosting great parties, spa resorts, etc?

I have always been against the bailout and I'm still against letting the financials use the money as if it's a free handout. They don't have to pay it back. WE do.

Now, O is trying to get Congress give them MORE? No way. Not without lots of stipulations.

I also haven't forgotten what Clinton did to try to go after terrorists and how Bush managed to put all that work on a shelf.

Just think, while Clinton was trying to work on all this, all you guys could do was worry about where his peter was.

watching/listening to him speak. Instead, my impression is that he's thinking on his feet and trying to choose his words very carefully. In that regard, he's a definite improvement over his predecessor (LOL).

Having said that, I can definitely understand how he could come across to people as he comes across to you.

The press seems to be riding his tail pretty close, and I hope they continue to do so. (Just the other day, I saw a clip where the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was 20 minutes late, and a member of the media scolded him, saying basically to knock it off, that nobody appreciates sitting around and waiting for Gibbs to begin a press conference.)

MSNBC (who was definitely in the "tank" for him) is beginning to challenge some of his actions/words, which I think is good.

obviously according to JTBB that black people are allowed to be racist. It is the white fold who aren't allowed to make any sort of comment against any other religion or race or their career will be in the dumpster. Minorities are the only ones allowed to be racist vocally.

To me....Rev. Wright is nothing but a racist black man who is bitter with a huge chip on his shoulder. He says what he wants when he wants and obviously there is as reason why Obama was made to get away from him....even though he really didn't want to in the beginning.

lost people due to other health issues. I don't want government telling us what we can and can't do, but deep down I cannot hate regulating cigarettes. My dad would still be alive today if it weren't for his smoking habits. Not only did he choose to kill himself with cigarettes but he exposed me, my mom, and sister and brother to that poison filled smoke for years. God only knows what health issue we might have later in life. My dad was a healthy man for years. He worked as a salvage man for GM for 30+ years until he couldn't breathe enough to work anymore and he retired. I literally watched my dad go from a strong healthy man to a man who couldn't walk from his chair to the bathroom without blow breathing to try and breathe. I watched my grandfather die of emphysema as well because of his smoking. Yes....it was their choice to smoke, but they are still my family and I lost them because of that. You cannot help hate something to took away the people you loved so much. I watched my dad struggle to breathe for so long and then when he was in the hospital and I could literally hear the gurgling in his lungs while he tried to breathe....I just finally asked God to stop it. Make it stop and an hour later....He did. Don't preach to me about other health issues because I know they exist too. You tell me to allow you to choose to kill yourself smoking. That is your choice and more power to you but for once....think about your kids and how they would feel watching you die like that. My dad loved me and he was one he!! of a provider for the family but I'd give anything to have him back and I can't have him back. My dad was killed by cigarettes....end of story. You can't blame me for hating cigarettes. I don't want anyone else to have to die the painful death that he did. It was so slow and then....he was gone. I actually tried to mimic his breathing one time and I couldn't do it. It hurt just for that short time. I can't even imagine living years like that until you couldn't breathe at all.

I really don't want government to control our lives like this but deep down...I can't help but like the idea of regulating cigarettes. I know government shouldn't but I just don't want other people to go through what I did when I lost my dad. I can't help but feel that way.