Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Iraq, Iran, Lieverman-Kyl Amendment, Smart Senators and Conservative Idiots.

If you're a real Democrat, I ought to get that copy protected, or just anyone else who gives a damn about the Constitution or individual rights, this must be a depressing time for you.

It's understandable. Almost seven years of Bush, the Republicans and the vermin that call themselves "Blue Dog Democrats" trying their best to transfer the wealth of this country's lowest moneymakers into the pockets of the country's highest moneymakers while doing away with the Constitution and pretty much destroying the country and others in the process, can be a tad disheartening.

But on the bright side the country's getting sick of the above mentioned scum in nice suits.

This is the Democrats great chance to show that they are something other than the caricatures that the Right-Wing Propaganda Machine has painted them over the years. Fighting back might have rocked the gravy train, better to roll over and take it than risk a fall in campaign donations.

So how are the Democrats taking advantage of this opportunity? Well the top three candidates are proving Jim Hightower right, "There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.". I like Jim Hightower. He proves that there are smart people in Texas.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards all said today that they can't promise to get the troops out of Iraq by 2013. I'm just curious, "Why the Hell not?". Listen to these BS answers that the supposed best of the Democrat Party had to give.

"I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of
Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first
primary state.

"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

"I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of North
Carolina.

As far as I'm concerned, these three have lost all credibility. To say that there's no way to predict if we can withdraw from Iraq by 2013 is just, well it just shows ignorance of the subject matter. Kinda like when Clinton voted to give Bush the power to go to war.

I know the argument, "If we withdraw Iraq will be in chaos.". The question is will it be more chaotic than it is now? Can it be more chaotic than it is now? You know, as well as I do, that removing American troops will relieve a lot of tension over there. They want us out, we want us out. What's so difficult about that?

The Senate has already started the process in their own half-assed, non-binding way. In a 75-23 vote the Senate has seen sweet reason and is willing to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions.

This is simply bowing to the inevitable, but if it gets the troops out, let's bow deeply and with dignity. This is not a new idea.

Unfortunately Clinton, Edwards and Obama refuse to commit to bringing the troops home from a war that never should have been. Check out the other Democrats, the three front-runners don't deserve the nomination.

I'm afraid that Hillary Clinton's lack of good judgement knows no bounds. She has just voted to, once again, give an idiot the power to start yet another war for no reason.

Lieberman-Kyl’s Iran amendment passes.
By a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed
the Lieberman-Kyl
amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via
“military instruments.” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment “Cheney’s fondest
pipe dream” and said it could “read as a backdoor method of gaining
Congressional validation for military action.”

Here's the 22 Senators with functioning brains. BTW, McCain and Obama couldn't make up their minds, so they didn't vote. Real presidential material there.

Biden (D-DE)Bingaman (D-NM)Boxer (D-CA)Brown (D-OH)Byrd (D-WV)Cantwell (D-WA)Dodd (D-CT)Feingold (D-WI)Hagel (R-NE)Harkin (D-IA)Inouye (D-HI)Kennedy (D-MA)Kerry (D-MA)Klobuchar (D-MN)Leahy (D-VT)Lincoln (D-AR)Lugar (R-IN)McCaskill (D-MO)Sanders (I-VT)Tester (D-MT)Webb (D-VA)Wyden (D-OR)

Take a break and check out The Top 10 Conservative Idiots. It's brought to you by the good folks over at Democratic Underground.com.

Have a great Thursday, catch ya' later.

Bush, 9/11, EPA, Toxic Dust, Petraeus, Stay the Course, Yankee Go Home!, War Profiteers & OMG Falwell II

Yesterday was the sixth 9/11 since The 9/11. The 9/11 was the day that almost destroyed our country as we know it. Osama brought down the twin towers and President Bush immediately began destroying the country. All in the name of protecting us from terrorists, of course. Osama's laughing his ass off somewhere right now.

Six years down the road most of us know that the really dangerous terrorists have been sitting on their butts in Washington D.C. and we've been paying them.

Around 2,750 Americans were killed outright that day. It looks like probably more than that will be killed because the Bush EPA lied about the danger of the toxic dust during the rescue/clean-up. It was nothing personal, just simple economics. The people who have benefited most from the Bush Presidency couldn't make more money until the ruins were cleaned up.

Now, at the risk of emulating George Bush, from 9/11 straight to Iraq. I just hope my connection won't be so dubious. And my readers aren't so gullible.

General Petraeus, he's the head military honcho in Iraq, came to town with a whole gunnysack full of horse crap and tried to sell it as chocolate cake. President Bush said "That's some good cake, I'll take it all." President Bush will spend 20 prime time minutes Thursday night telling us just how good that cake is. He might even offer to share.

They said the president plans to emphasize that he is in a position to order
troop cuts only because of the success achieved on the ground in Iraq, and that
he is not being swayed by political opposition. Aides said that he plans to
outline once again what he sees as the dire consequences of failure in Iraq and
that he will make the troop cuts conditional on continued military gains.

"Continued military gains"? I've been watching this since March of 2003 and to describe almost 4,000 U.S. service personnel deaths for no discernible benefits to either this country or Iraq as "continued military gains" is just a tad disingenuous.

To be fair, the war has only gone on for about 4 1/2 years. Longer than our involvement in WWII, but still well short of our involvement in Viet Nam. And we've been told over and over again that there's certainly no comparison between Iraq and Nam. If you can just overlook lying presidents and lying generals and dying troops. Oh yeah, and war profiteering businesses.

To Bush's Ivy League educated mind the solution is obvious, stay the course. Just call it something different. In just a little more that a year it will be someone else's war. We all know that the secret to being a great War President is never having to say "This noble cause has turned into a royal goatf##k".

With the kind of painstaking detail that drove an earlier team of Bush White
House and Pentagon officials to exasperation, Crocker spoke of "moderately encouraging factors,"
such as obscure comments by important clerics and meetings between Iraqi
politicians who formerly either ignored each other or spoke only in angry
confrontation.

Meanwhile in Iraq, Iraqis are not having nearly as hard of a time assessing the situation.

There's even some in this country that understand why it is so vital to "Stay the Course" in Iraq. Like the good folks at Alternet.

The history of American war profiteering is rife with egregious examples of
incompetence, fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, bribery and misconduct. As war
historian Stuart Brandes has suggested, each new war is infected with
new forms of war profiteering. Iraq is no exception. From criminal mismanagement
of Iraq's oil revenues to armed private security contractors operating with
virtual impunity, this war has created opportunities for an appalling amount of
corruption. What follows is a list of some of the worst Iraq war profiteers who
have bilked American taxpayers and undermined the military's mission.

And finally, if you thought that the country would be a better place with the passing of Rev. Jerry Falwell, I did, another little Republican legacy has crawled out from under his rock to spread hate and evil for personal gain. Meet Son of Falwell.

"We must stand up and say, 'Right is right, wrong is wrong,' " Falwell, 41, told
pastors gathered Tuesday for a meeting at the House of Delegates office
building. "We must protect the unborn. We must protect marriage. We must protect
our families. We must protect our young people."

I wouldn't want him anywhere near my kids.

Politics is great entertainment, enjoy the show. And get involved.

Later

Bush, Iraq, Laura Bush to Liberate Burma, Homeland Insecurity, German Terrorists, Larry Craig Again & GOP Ban of Same-Sex Restrooms.

George Bush went to Australia today and right off the bat he made two things perfectly clear.

First, he proved to the Aussies that he has less idea about what's going on in Iraq than the average house cat.

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime
Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to
Sydney.

Second, he thinks that people who were right about Iraq in the first place need to keep their mouths shut.

His defiance on Iraq is growing. He implied that those who argued against the
war in the first place had no role in the current debate.

Meanwhile in Iraq.

Iraq's army, despite measurable progress, will be unable to take
over internal security from U.S. forces in the next 12 to 18 months and "cannot
yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven," according to a
report on the Iraqi security forces published today.

The report, prepared by a commission of retired senior U.S. military officers, describes the 25,000-member Iraqi national
police force and the Interior Ministry, which controls it, as riddled with
sectarianism and corruption. The ministry, it says, is "dysfunctional" and is "a
ministry in name only." The commission recommended that the national police
force be disbanded.

Bush is kicking ass in Iraq and he can produce the numbers to prove it. Remember WMDs?

The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts
within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying
statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.

From McClatchy Newspapers .

WASHINGTON — The surge of additional U.S. troops in Iraq has failed to curtail
violence against Iraqi civilians, an independent government agency reported
Tuesday.

Citing data from the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, the Government
Accountability Office found that daily attacks against civilians in Iraq have
remained "about the same" since February, when the United States began sending
nearly 30,000 additional troops to improve security in Iraq.

The GAO also found that the number of Iraqis fleeing violence in their
neighborhoods is increasing, with as many as 100,000 Iraqis a month leaving
their homes in search of safety.

At least things must be going great at home. Laura Bush has done found a cause, Burma. While on vacation the First Lady found that the government of Burma has been arresting dissidents and protesters and boy did she get mad. I guess she expects the Burmese government to offer the same freedoms we have in this country. You know, put the dissidents and protesters in a cage to start with and label it a "free speech zone".

"So far as we can tell, they thumb their nose at the rest of the world," Bush
said in the interview. "But that doesn't mean the rest of the world shouldn't
continue to speak out about these issues."

Thumbing their noses at the rest of the world, who do they think they are, us?

They can't be us, they don't have the money to spend for state of the art homeland security. Doesn't having a Department of Homeland Security make you feel safer? Me neither.

Hobbled by inadequate funding, unclear priorities, continuing reorganizations
and the absence of an overarching strategy, the Department of Homeland Security is failing to achieve its mission
of preventing and responding to terrorist attacks or natural disasters,
according to a comprehensive report by the Government Accountability Office.

The highly critical report disputes recent upbeat assessments by the Bush
administration by concluding that the DHS has failed to make even moderate
progress toward eight of 14 internal government benchmarks more than four years
after its creation.

Germany seems to understand the meaning of homeland security. How they manage to do it without the genius of President Bush to give them guidance, I'll never know.

BERLIN, Sept. 5 -- German authorities said Wednesday that they had disrupted a
"massive" bombing plot targeting American interests in Germany, and they expressed alarm at evidence that the three local
suspects had visited militant camps in Pakistan -- the latest example of people traveling from Europe to that country for terrorist training.

While the Commander-in-Chief is busy destroying Iraq to protect us from terrorists who weren't there until after we invaded, it looks like our biggest threat just might be the U.S. Air Force. They're flying around over the country with nuclear weapons, without knowing it.

An Air Force B-52 bomber flew across the central United States last week with
six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads that were mistakenly attached to
the airplane's wing, defense officials said yesterday.

The Republican's own little nuclear device has decided that he just might not resign after all. He has a point. Why should one hypocrite in a party full of hypocrites be singled out? Senator Larry Craig, standing up for his rights as a white, conservative American. You go girl!

Sen. Larry E. Craig yesterday launched a campaign to save his
political career, dismaying fellow Republicans with his determination to stay in
the Senate if he successfully overturns his guilty plea, made after he was
arrested in a sex sting in an airport men's room.

And finally a headline from The Satirical Political Report: GOP, TO ‘HEAD OFF’ FUTURE SEX SCANDALS, SEEKS BAN ON SAME-SEX BATHROOMS

Things will get better.

Iraq Reconstruction, General Sir Mike Jackson, Target Iran, Osama, Conservative Dems, Jeb Gets a Job, Sour Grapes & Stupid Katrina Quotes.

Just one of the many, many lies that the Bush Administration told the American people was that we could do this war on the cheap.

Another lie was after the invasion there was "incredible progress" being made on Iraq reconstruction.

Now after years of "incredible progress" and nearly 4,000 American combat deaths comes a GAO report that says we have accomplished squat in Iraq.

This should come as no surprise.

Iraq's crucial oil and electricity sectors still need roughly $50 billion to meet demand, analysts and officials say, even after the United States has poured more than $6 billion into them over more than four
years.

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has
focused much of its $44.5 billion reconstruction plan on oil and electricity.
Now, with the U.S.-led reconstruction phase nearing its close, Iraq will need to
spend $27 billion more for its electrical system and $20 billion to $30 billion
for oil infrastructure, according to estimates the collected from Iraqi and U.S.
officials.

Yesterday I posted former British Army Commander, General Sir Mike Jackson's little critique of the U.S. handling of the occupation of Iraq. He says pretty much what we already know, the Bush Administration is a bunch of screw-ups.

"All the planning carried out by the State Department went to waste,"
Jackson wrote. He said the Pentagon did not deploy even half the troops it would
have needed for a country the size of Iraq.

He said Rumsfeld and those around him took it as "an
ideological article of faith that the coalition soldiers would be accepted as a
liberating army."

Jackson also characterized Rumsfeld's claim that U.S. forces "don't do
nation-building" as "nonsensical."

It looks like the Bush Administration may be putting a lot of faith in the Law of Averages. Afghanistan, blew it, Iraq, blew it and now Bush has his sights set on Iran. If that don't scare you, something's wrong.

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to
annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a
national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at
the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing
for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking
out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

If you look at it from Bush's point of view, it makes sense. Everybody knows that war is good for business. With just a little over a year left to transfer the tax-payer's money into the private sector, another war would be the most effective method. It will also take Americans minds off inconvenient facts like the guy who got this whole mess started, Osama bin Laden is laughing his ass off watching George Bush do more damage the this country than he ever dreamed of.

I wish the media would stop calling conservative Democrats, "moderate" Democrats. It's deceitful. They are not moderate, they are Republicans. Even worse, the gutless Democrat Party is letting them call the shots. The people can see the results of almost seven years of conservatism, Republicanism, fascism or whatever you want to call it and they don't like it. And the Democrats are too timid to take advantage.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Divided by their liberal and moderate wings, congressional
Democrats return from a monthlong recess without consensus on how to tackle
several pressing issues, including Iraq and warrantless wiretaps.

Jeb Bush would make a great "moderate" Democrat. He's selling himself to Lehman Brothers in order to help them get as many of our tax dollars as possible. Selling influence is the Bush family business.

In the arms race by private-equity firms to line up ever-higher profile
"advisers," Lehman
Brothers may have just taken the lead. The investment bank hired former
Florida governor and presidential son and brother Jeb Bush for its in-house
investing arm.

Private-equity firms and hedge funds hire politicos and former corporate
honchos all the time to help them open doors to deals, as well as to manage
government relations and the companies in their portfolios. Former Treasury
Secretary John Snow and former vice president Dan Quayle, for example, both work
for Cerberus Capital Management, the hedge fund that recently bought Chrysler LLC. And Washington
is well-stocked with its share of Wall Streeters, including current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former chairman of Goldman Sachs Group.

Some Democrats are capable of having good ideas, like cutting this early primary foolishness out. I hope.

The Democratic candidates have signed a pledge that would forbid them from
campaigning in states such as Michigan and Florida that have sought to move their presidential primaries into
January 2008.

The move ended weeks-long jockeying over which states get to hold early
primaries.

What the energy companies and their political prostitutes (No offence to honest hard-working prostitutes) don't want us to believe is having an affect on the grape harvest in France.

ROUFFACH, France -- On a cobweb-encrusted rafter above his giant steel grape
pressers, Ren? Mur? is charting one of
the world's most tangible barometers of global warming.

The evidence, scrawled in black ink, is the first day of the annual grape
harvest for the past three decades. In 1978, it was Oct. 16. In 1998, the date
was Sept. 14. This year, harvesting started Aug. 24 -- the earliest ever
recorded, not only in Mur?'s vineyards, but also in the entire Alsace wine district of northeastern France.

Another good reason for Al Gore run for president.

It's Labor Day weekend, my football team lost, bad and I have to take boy to work after while. So I'll leave you with 25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath.

Craig, Warner, Snow, Briefing, General Jackson, Senators Missed, Climate, Renewable Energy, No Child Gets a Break, No Poor in USA & Higgins vs Rector

There's more important things than Larry Craig resigning. But I wanted to use the picture.

Senator Graig is resigning today, another victim of right-wing homophobia. The party that loved him while he raved about naughty Clinton and backed bush's war that opened the U.S. Treasury for rich Republicans to raid, has now turned it's back on one of it's staunchest supporters.

In the GOP you can lie, cheat, steal and probably even kill, no problem. But Republicans can be right prim and proper when it comes to getting caught being gay. It's all right to be a Republican and be gay, as long as you adhere to their "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy. According to some of the gay blogs the GOP even has a system in place to cater to the tastes of the Silent Republicans. At least that's what the guy in the MSNBC interview said.

The Republicans have an image to uphold and when the only people willing to be seen with a
GOP politician are the leaders of the Religious Right, what can you do? Larry you should have remembered the Second Commandment of the GOP, "Don't get caught".

Abandoned by his party, Sen. Larry E. Craig of Idaho is expected to announce today that he will resign his seat amid criticism over his arrest and guilty plea in a police sting operation in an airport men's room, according to two national Republican officials.

They said Craig began notifying party leaders of his decision last night, telling them he will step down Sept. 30.

Tony Snow's leaving too. In a rare outburst of candor he admitted that making a buck is more important than serving your country. Don't get me wrong, cancer and chemo are plenty good reasons to leave the job. But to claim that you can't support your family on $168,000 a year just shows how far this bunch is out of touch with reality.

"I ran out of money," he said.

John Warner's leaving too. Senator Warner is something rare in Washington, he's pretty sensible for a Republican. Hell, he used to be married to Liz Taylor.

Time and again, from his stance on withdrawing troops in Iraq to his concern about global warming, he has taken on his party and bucked conventional wisdom. He has forged alliances and created consensus on both sides of the political divide. He's stood up to the juggernaut of lobbyists and the military-industrial complex and stopped the $30 billion refueling-tanker lease deal with Boeing. It was he who long ago, despite fierce resistance, foresaw the day when unmanned airplanes would drop bombs in war zones, as Predators do today in hotspots such as Afghanistan.

The military briefed Bush on the condition
of the troops. So far there's no indication that he paid attention. But he
knows the troops he cares about, some contracting officers, are doing very well indeed.

Court documents filed in the case say the Army took action because the company was suspected of paying hundreds of thousands in bribes to Army officers to secure contracts to build, operate and maintain warehouses in Iraq that stored weapons, uniforms, vehicles and other matériel for Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005.

Bush don't know what the Hell's happening in Iraq, but former British Army Commander, General Sir Mike Jackson, probably does. He gave a polite critique of the U.S. occupation policy.

The former head of the British Army has attacked US postwar policy, calling it "intellectually bankrupt".

General Sir Mike Jackson, who headed the army during the war in Iraq, described as "nonsensical" the claim by the former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that US forces "don't do nation-building". He has also hit back at suggestions that British forces had failed in Basra.

Mr Rumsfeld was "one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," Gen Jackson says in his autobiography, Soldier. He describes Washington's approach to fighting global terrorism as "inadequate" for relying on military power over diplomacy and nation-building

.

Things are so out of hand in Iraq that the military can't even protect Republican Senators. Three RPGs were fired at the aircraft they were in. But I'll guarantee they come home and tell us how great things are going over there.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 31 -- Four U.S. lawmakers endured a harrowing flight out of Baghdad as their cargo plane came under fire from the ground, causing the pilots to discharge flares and bank sharply to avoid the explosives, U.S. military officials said Friday.

George Bush might not know what he's doing, but he understands why he's doing it. Big Business and the Religious Right have spent a lot of money and got out a lot of votes to get and keep their trained idiot in the White House. And George Bush delivers.

PARIS, Aug. 31 -- A five-day U.N. conference on climate change ended in Vienna on Friday with significant disagreements remaining about how countries should reduce greenhouse gas emissions and daunting estimates about the price tag for combating global warming.

Many industrialized countries, including the United States, are wary of strict and mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, fearing that such curbs could strike at core sectors of their economies.

Fortunately there is hope. No matter how much money they spend or how many politicians they buy, within the foreseeable future the energy companies will go the way of Larry Craig and disappear. Because there are better ways to get energy.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Oregon Iron Works has the feel of a World War II-era shipyard, with sparks flying from welders' torches and massive hydraulic presses flattening large sheets of metal. But this factory floor represents the cutting edge of American renewable-energy technology.
The plant is assembling a test buoy for Finavera Renewables, a Canadian company that hopes to harness ocean waves off the coast of Oregon to produce electricity for U.S. consumers. And Finavera is not Iron Works' only alternative-energy client: So many companies have approached it with ideas that it has created a "renewable-energy projects manager" to oversee them.

"In the last year, it's just exploded with ideas out there," said Vice President Chandra Brown. "We like to build these creative new things.

"

It just amazes me that anyone would vote Republican. It's the blatant hypocrisy of the party that just floors me. They are so concerned with the embryo or fetus, yet show no concern for the living, breathing, outside the womb product.

Last week the Bush Administration was caught helping China ship lead painted toys to our children. Compassionate conservatives. This came from Last Chance Democracy Cafe.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and China have both undermined efforts to tighten rules designed to ensure that lead paint isn't used in toys, bibs, jewelry and other children’s products.

The Bush administration has hindered regulation on two fronts, consumer advocates say. It stalled efforts to press for greater inspections of imported children’s products, and it altered the focus of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), moving it from aggressive protection of consumers to a more manufacturer-friendly approach.

This week the feds watered down a campaign to get more mothers to breast feed. Infant formula makers went to the brothel and told their Republican bitches to do something and they did.

In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.

>

And finally, I spend some time at the politics section at Stumpburners. The resident conservative, Rowdy, posts the latest right-wing propaganda and to his credit, will debate you on it. He posted a cut and paste of an article titled "BEING 'POOR' IN AMERICA" the full article is here. It was written by right-wing hack Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, an outfit that describes itself as a conservative think tank. You can see the irony. Go here to see Rowdy's cut and paste.

As I was checking out stuff to put in the blog tonight, I ran across a rebuttal to Rector's article. It was written by Bob Higgins of Worldwide Sawdust. When I first started this blog, Bob was nice enough to link to me and we've e-mailed a couple of times. He's just a hell of a nice guy. Here's his rebuttal.

"Nearly three quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.""Senior Fellow" Rector quoting from a "variety of government reports."

I own a car, It's 12 years old and I bought it used back when I was not disabled and working six days a week to stay just above the poverty level. I still drive it to my physical therapy appointments at the VA hospital and the grocery store when I can afford to pay the fuel prices that Heritage helped to arrange.

"89 percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher." "Senior Fellow" Rector still quoting from a "variety of government reports."

In all his quoting of vague "government sources," "Senior Fellow" Rector doesn't mention wage stagnation, the continually rising cost of living in all areas, outsourcing and offshoring of jobs in all sectors of the economy, community crippling layoffs, pension defaults, natural disasters, catastrophic illnesses, death, war and a host of other legitimate reasons why good, honest, working people have fallen into poverty yet still have that embarrassing dishwasher in their kitchen and still reside in the three bedroom house with a patio that they lived in before their jobs were shipped off to Timbuktu.

Right on, Bob!

Have a good weekend. I'll know if I have a good weekend sometime after the halftime of the OSU-Georgia game today. Georgia's a great football team. GO POKES!

If they lose I won't mention sports again.