The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation.

His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.

Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.

Continued here

SOURCE: http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/707

Wow! Another one!

Leading Off By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief

My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country.

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.

Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Write to wicka@dmagazine.com.

Sorry Dad, I'm Voting For Obama

William F. Buckley's son, is VOTING for Barack Obama! What a wonderful development! He's not the only conservative who sees the light!

The son of William F. Buckley has decided—shock!—to vote for a Democrat.

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

Dear Pup once said to me, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.”

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

The rest of the article

Here's what your "conservatives" and "great Americans" are saying in response to this article:

Hannity's Loons

Their responses are actually pretty predictable, but it's worth a good laugh.

Here's the transcript to the VP debate. Personally, I think that Biden won. He had more substance and Palin came across to me as disingenuous at best most of the time. It just seemed liked she was just reading off neocon talking points and hardly expressing any of her own original thoughts. I'd trust Biden way before I would trust her. I think Biden really extended his Irish charm and came across  great.
Here's the transcript, I will make an analysis of it later:
Vice Presidential Debate Transcript

Just one further note, I think that the moderator was fair and did a good job. Contrary to the reactionary opinion of many of the republican talking heads.

Another excellent article by Ron Paul from lewrockwell.com

Lipstick on a Bailout

by Ron Paul
by Ron Paul

        
DIGG THIS

This time last week, the biggest bailout in the history of the world seemed to be a fait accompli. Last weekend, the Fed Chairman and the Secretary of the Treasury had harsh words of doom and gloom for Congressional leaders, with the rest of the administration parroting along, and by last Monday it seemed both parties were about to fall in line and vote our Republic away by socializing the banking industry through this bailout.

Foolish business behavior was about to be rewarded, and propped up a little longer, the bubble blown a little bigger, and our coming Depression made that much greater, but then something happened on the way to the House floor.

Citizens made their voices heard.

The real story behind the story in Congress this week was the thousands of calls and emails sent to Representatives, clogging up inboxes and even slowing down the House internet system. Slowly, like the Titanic turning around, sentiments on the Hill shifted, and we heard Congressmen capitulating and changing their tune a little, desperately trying to find ways to salvage the bailout without completely enraging their constituencies.

Now we hear about taxpayer protections, about golden parachutes, and about other nuances that hardly cover up the fact that we would be creating more money out of thin air and further devaluing the dollar! The problem is not HOW the government is spending this money; it’s the fact that the government is spending this money. We don’t have it. We are already nearly $10 trillion in debt, not including unfunded liabilities. We already spend about $1 trillion a year we don’t have on our overseas empire. Now nearly $1 trillion more is somehow supposed to magically appear and solve all our problems! No – creating more money might delay the inevitable for some well-connected banks on Wall Street, but in a few weeks we will find ourselves right back in this same position, but much poorer.

The unfortunate thing is that we’ve already spent at least $700 billion on other bailouts that did not solve the problem. And while all this negotiation was taking place, the auto industry was quietly bailed out, with no controversy, no discussion, to the tune of $25 billion.

Inevitably, it appears Congress will call their constituents’ bluff and the bailout will pass, because that is the habit Wall Street and Washington have fallen into. People are right to be concerned about our financial future. I’ve been talking for 30 some years about reasons we need to be concerned and change our ways. We find ourselves now in a position of no good options, and no silver bullets. But the worst thing we can do is to compound our problems by intensifying the mistakes of the past. We do have tough economic times ahead, no doubt, no matter what we do, even if we do nothing. The question, is will we have the courage to take our medicine now and get it over with, or will we prolong the misery for many years to come? I’m less and less optimistic about the answer to that question.

See the Ron Paul File

October 2, 2008

Ron Paul Archives

Here is the article by Robert Higgs, that Tony is reading right now. This is an excellent article that makes you think.

Ticking Time Bomb Explodes, Public Is Shocked

The failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, setting in motion the biggest government bailout/takeover in U.S. history, brings a grim sense of fulfillment to competent economists. After all, what did people expect, that water would flow uphill forever?

This financial mega-mess is the same sort of event as the collapse of the USSR’s centrally planned economy, another economically unworkable Rube Goldberg apparatus that was kept going, more or less badly, for decades before it fell apart completely. Along the way, of course, famous (yet actually unsound) economists assured the world that everything was working out splendidly. As late as 1989, when the pillars were crumbling on all sides of the temple, Nobel Prize winner Paul A. Samuelson informed readers of his widely used textbook, “The Soviet economy is proof that . . . a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.”

In the future, we will see a similar breakdown of the U.S. government’s Social Security system, with its ill-fated pension system and its even more inauspicious Medicare system of financing health care for the elderly. These government schemes are fighting a losing battle against demographic realities, the laws of economics, and the rules of arithmetic. The question is not whether they will fail, but when—and then how the government that can no longer sustain them in their previous Ponzi-scheme form will alter them to salvage what little can be salvaged with minimal damage to the government itself.

Our political economy is rife with such catastrophes in waiting, yet the public always seems startled, and outraged, when the day of reckoning can no longer be deferred, and another apartment collapses in the state’s Hotel of Impossible Promises, loading onto the taxpayers more visibly the burden of sheltering the previous occupants.

Rest of the article

McCain Loses His Head



By George F. Will

Tuesday, September 23, 2008; Page A21

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

georgewill@washpost.com

Look at who this hypocrite associated with before he became so well known! He has some damn nerve to talk about Reverend Wright. Hannity is sure trying to honor Hal Turner's wishes in his hate campaign toward Barack Obama. I originally posted a video to show you, but when I clicked on it today, it was removed from youtube. So here's a link to youtube that has a few videos regarding Hannity and Hal Turner:
Youtube

I found this to be a pretty interesting article.


Palin Problem
She’s out of her league.

By Kathleen Parker

If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.

To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.
Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman.

Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged.

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)

And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother.

Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

Here's the report according to CNN. This is the republican's version of "fiscally conservative"? What a good laugh, it would be even funnier, if it wasn't so sad......................................................

(CNN) -- The $700 billion economic rescue plan failed in the House of Representatives because people don't think it will do anything for them, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain told CNN's "American Morning."

"We haven't convinced people that this is a rescue effort not just for Wall Street but for Main Street America," McCain said Tuesday from Des Moines, Iowa. "... We didn't do a good enough job."

McCain said the proposal needs modifications, including an increase in federal deposit insurance for private bank accounts.

"FDIC insurance should be increased to $250,000 from $100,000," McCain said. Watch McCain lay out his proposal »

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, made the same proposal on Tuesday morning as a way to persuade lawmakers who voted against the proposed $700 billion bailout to change their minds. Watch the candidates regroup »

Increasing deposit insurance coverage "would boost small businesses, make our banking system more secure and help restore public confidence in our financial system," Obama said in a written statement.

McCain, who briefly suspended his campaign last week to focus on the financial crisis, did not say whether he would take that action again.

"I will do whatever is necessary," he told CNN.

McCain said he spoke to President Bush on Tuesday morning to offer his recommendations for a short-term plan "to restore our economy," including using $250 billion of the Treasury Department's exchange stability fund to "shore up our institutions." Watch Bush urge Congress to act »

McCain said the Treasury Department should also use its power to purchase up to $1 trillion of mortgages.

Obama also spoke with Bush on Tuesday morning.

"Both calls [from McCain and Obama] were very constructive, and the president appreciated hearing from them," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "The senators offered ideas and reaffirmed what they have said publicly -- that this is a critical issue that needs to be addressed.

"We're not going to comment on specific ideas, but we appreciate hearing them and will continue to work with congressional leaders on ideas that will help the economy," Fratto said.

Obama blasted Congress Monday for not passing the rescue package, while McCain's campaign accused Obama and Democrats of putting "politics ahead of country." Watch what went wrong »

The U.S. House rejected the plan Monday, putting a roadblock in front of what would be the largest government intervention in the financial markets since the Great Depression.

The bill failed by a vote of 228-205, with 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans voting in favor and 95 Democrats joining 133 Republicans against.

"This is a moment of national crisis, and today's inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington," the Obama-Biden campaign said in a statement released shortly after the vote.

The statement went on to say that every American "should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington has led us to this point." Watch more on the vote »

Also after the vote, McCain touted his role in last week's negotiations on the bailout bill.

"I laid out principles" including "responsible oversight," transparency and a cap on so-called golden parachutes, those big bonuses Wall Street CEOs would receive despite their involvement in the economic crisis, he said. "I worked hard to play a constructive role." Watch McCain slam Obama on spending »

They are here! I will be interested in hearing your point of view regarding the debate and who had the best answers. I will share mine after the debate. So far 3 candidates spoke about the Fairtax, hmm.

Here's an interesting, well written article I found. I hope they do shorten the tours, so our soldiers can get some R&R and try to return to a normal life again. So many of the neo-con talking heads are so eager for war and say they "support our troops" , yet they don't take the individual soldier's welfare into consideration. If it was up to those non-serving chicken hawks (Hannity, Boortz, Limbaugh, Savage, etc.) we would be attacking Iran and every other country that disagrees with our policies.




Army Leaders Push to Shorten Iraq Tours
By ROBERT BURNS
Sunday, December 9, 2007
As security improves in Iraq, pressure is building to reverse one of the most onerous decisions Defense Secretary Robert Gates made to enable President Bush's troop buildup to go forward this year: extending the tours of active-duty soldiers from 12 months to 15 months.
The extra three months is a weighty burden, both physically and psychologically, for soldiers already stressed by multiple tours, and on families coping with strains that have mounted since the war began in 2003.
"We can't sustain that," Gen. George Casey, who was the top U.S. commander in Iraq before becoming the Army chief of staff at the Pentagon in April, said recently. "We have to come off that." He said a decision on cutting tour lengths could be announced in three months or four months...............................Full Article

Is this "fair tax" plan that Neal Boortz always touts on his show, fair? He says it will "get rid of the IRS", but I highly doubt it. What agency will replace the IRS to collect the "imbedded taxes" from the businesses. On it's face it sounds great! But a closer look makes it seem even more intrusive than the current system. Here's my question; My friend's a plumber and he comes over to do me a favor and fix my toilet, are we subject to that 20% sales tax even though he was doing me a favor? Some people have suggested that is the case. Here's the Fair Tax Bill in it's entirety;
H.R. 25 [109th]: Fair Tax Act of 2005

The other day, I may have been a little harsh on the Michael Savage issue. Today I am in a better mood and I am going to reply to the comments that Savage made on his radio show. I really don't know too much about CAIR, I hear some allegations about them but I have yet to confirm or deny it. I am not a Muslim and I find Islam to be a little too strict for my taste. Unless it's the brand of Islam that many Turkish people that I know follow, which is a very liberal version to say the least. What I do not like is bigotry and generalizations. Especially when it's carried out by someone who's people were persecuted and talked about, in very similar ways to the way they themselves are speaking about Muslims today.
Now it seems to be in vogue to slam and slander Muslims and to say things about them that would be considered racist if it was used against Blacks and anti -semetic if used towards Jews. Imus never even came close to saying what Savage said and look what happened to him!




Excerpt from the CAIR letter sent to the advertisers on Michael Savage's Show:

"I'm not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I'm not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I'm not gettin on my all-fours and praying to Mecca. And you could drop dead if you don't like it. You can shove it up your pipe. I don't wanna hear anymore about Islam. I don't wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your religion and shove it up your behind. I'm sick of you."

Where are these Muslims or Muslim groups demanding that Americans put their wives in "hijabs" and daughters in "burqas"? Where are the Muslim groups demanding that we pray "on all fours to Mecca"?  I do see many Christian groups advocating “school prayer” etc. , but you are fine with that aren’t you? Michael what if someone said”I don't wanna hear anymore about Judaism, I don't wanna hear one more word about Judaism. Take your religion and shove it up your behind. I'm sick of you."? I bet you would be up in arms and crying about anti-semitism and demanding that person's head. If it was a talk show host, I bet that YOU would be trying to get your listeners to boycott that person's advertisers. Your double standard and hypocrisy is revolting.

"What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate. Don't tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation. I don't need reeducation. Deportation, not reeducation. You can take C-A-I-R and throw 'em out of my country. I'd raise the American flag and I'd get out my trumpet if you did it. Without due process. You can take your due process and shove it."

This sounds like something a Nazi would say! How could you sit there and say that crap Michael and look at yourself in the mirror every day? I thought you were an American, as Americans we should demand and expect “due process”. Again I will say that if someone said this about the Jewish people here in America, Savage and co. (Hannity, Boortz, Limbaugh, etc) would be screaming, yelling and crying “anti-Semitism”! I feel that these talk show hosts capitalize on some people’s paranoid and xenophobic attitudes. This only to stirs the pot of hate and enflames people that could potentially be on our side and an asset to us.

"What sane nation that worships the U.S. constitution, which is the greatest document of freedom ever written, would bring in people who worship a book that tells them the exact opposite. Make no mistake about it, the Quran is not a document of freedom. The Quran is a document of slavery and chattel. It teaches you that you are a slave."

What sane person who claims to worship the U.S. Constitution, wants to scrap it and eliminate “due process” when it pertains to a religious group that they don’t like? What sane person makes such an uninformed and asinine generalization about a religion that they obviously know very little about? Some can make an argument that the Old Testament and New Testament is a book that condones slavery and chattel, as well as violence supposedly “condoned by God”. So before you judge someone else’s book, take a look at your own. Even here in America, the “Good Book” was used to JUSTIFY slavery and segregation! Here in America we are supposed to be in favor of Freedom of Religion, not just when it’s our own or when it’s convenient for us to do it.