http://blogs.abcnews.com/...

The ABC blog above is stunning in the quotes from Republican legislators and former Executive staff are making about Obama. If the party affiliations were not explicit, you would think they would be Democrats.
It's incredible sight to see. I can only imagine the concern in the McCain camp.

Go and look at Obama's website and look at what he says. I'll wait right here.  ....... Back ? good,  some of that stuff is going to change, not all that stuff is going to the done the way he says it's going to be done.
That's because even as President, he's not all powerful. There's going to be more than one upset. Now that doesn't mean, you shouldn't push for policies you believe in and make noise, but it also doesn't mean that you should drop him and declare him a sell-out at the first time things don't work out perfectly.
It's understandable that after 8 years of Bush messing up the country, we have a hope for everything to get fixed up right away with no problems, but I don't know that it's quite going to happen that way.
I do expect some big things from Obama, I want to see health insurance reformed, I want to see action on Guantanamo, I want to see Social Security taken care of, I want to see something done about Iraq, but not everything is going to happen exactly how everyone wants it to.
As strange as it may seem, the NeoCons didn't get everything they wanted either in 8 years.

Hi,

sorry about the procedural post, but the FAQ is down and I can't seem to find the info elsewhere.

Can I delete a comment that I myself made after I have made it ?

I thought I could, but I can't seem to find a way to do it.
I may be mixing up some other blogging software.

Suggestions very welcome

Ok, so if you want me to stimulate the economy, you need to actually send me the money. Is this happening to anyone else?
I paid my taxes via direct deposit in Mid April (before the 15th) and despite the chart stating that I should get my payment in May, here it is June 11 and I still don't have it. The IRS Stimulus payment website has no info on my refund. I have been on hold for 30 minutes twice today with the IRS, having to hang up each time for various work related reasons.
Where is my stimulus payment ?

I just heard about this and wanted to pass it along:

The office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is polling reaction to the
California Supreme Court decision overturning the ban on gay marriage.
Most of the response they are getting is in OPPOSITION to the court
action.

To vote in support of the Supreme Court's decision on LGBT marriage:
call 916-445-2841
press 1 (for English) or 2 (for Spanish)
press 5 (for hot issue topics)
press 1 (same sex marriage)
press 1 (for support)
Please pass this information on to anyone you think might want to help
support gay marriage.

After reading the demographic post on health care. I went online to see how much health care would cost me if my employer didn't provide it for me.
I went to one of the top sites found by Google (sadly I don't remember which one). I filled in my name, address, phone. standard stuff, and got a list of quotes from various plans. Kaiser, Aetna, Blue Cross, and a wide range of costs in a search engine style results page. (about $380/month for a plan somewhat less than I have with Kaiser right now).  I was worried about the eventual spam, but figured that it wouldn't be a big deal.
Oops.
I kid you not. Within 5 minutes of filing in the survey, I received not one but THREE CALLS ON MY PHONE, from health insurance brokers wanting to provide me with health insurance. Each explaining how they could provide me peace of mind, and quickly ending the conversation when I said I had health insurance and was just doing research.  Over this afternoon alone, I have received 6 emails offering me different plans.
This is way harder sell that I expected..

What ticks me off the most about the subprime mess is that I know what would have happened if regulators had actually had the foresight (or desire) to stop it. It would have gone something like this:

(this might have been a good Frugal Friday post, but I'd forgot about it by then...)
If there is any sort of sign, that we are in a difficult economic time, it is this.
Bucking a 16 YEAR TREND of declining coupon redemption from year to year, coupon use is predicted to equal last years. The decline in coupon use frankly suprised me, but I guess it's in line with spending more than you are saving. That people are now taking the time to clip those items and actually use them (rather than keeping them posted on the fridge door or elsewhere)means something.  Hopefully it's a trend that will continue.
Keeping in mind though, buying something with a coupon is only a bargain, if you actually were going to buy that item anyways. Beware of the old story, about a man who comes home and says to his wife "Honey, I used a coupon and got half off on this 30 pound bag of dog food, it was a steal", and his wife replies "That's great Honey, but we don't have a dog".

Link to article below with some neat graphs comparing coupon usage to unemployment rate and CPI.

http://www.cms.inmar.com/...

The Fed is facilitating a possible bailout of Bear Sterns, accepting mortgage based securities as collateral for loan, and doing whatever it can to prop up those great pillars of capitalism, the big banks.
If Fed wants to do that and the banks, despite their free market rhetoric, are willing to accept billions of dollars of aid, that's fine.
But let's call a spade a spade and recognize that these are now govt supported organizations, and on top of the loans, expect at least partial ownership from each and every banks that comes asking.

Sure the taxpayers of this great nation will keep you afloat, prevent job loss and further market chaos, but in return for saving your ass, the tax payers own part of you, heck in some cases, we should own the whole thing. And in a few years, we'll sell it off in an IPO and makes a bunch of money for Social Security or Health Care or (or a new war depending on who's in power at the time). This is not unheard of. Plenty of countries have nationalized companies and if the banks are going to expect the taxpayers to bail them out every time they make a bad investment, then let's be honest about who it is that actually owns them.
Any bank exec who squeals in horror at having to give some equity in return for help stay afloat can kiss my Fannie Mae

This may not be very long, but I figured I throw it up anyways.
Melanie Morgan got fired by KSFO today.
http://www.sfgate.com/...
According to the news article, it was due to financial pressures, not her performance.
From the article,
" Instead, Morgan's departure has more to do with the financial problems of KSFO's corporate parent, Citadel Broadcasting Corp., which purchased ABC Radio stations from the Walt Disney Corp. last year. Citadel shares have lost 87 percent of their value over the past year. Last month, Citadel reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $848 million."
Apparently, right wing radio doesn't pay the bills. Must be some commentary on the free market in there somewhere...

http://www.nytimes.com/...

In today's NY Times, Paul Krugman reviews the health care reforms of Obama and Edwards and reinforces why Edwards need to be the next President.
With Obama as the reconciler of partisan politics on one end  and Edwards as the man who  takes on corporate interests for Americans,
Krugman says
"Over the last few days Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards have been conducting a long-range argument over health care that gets right to this issue. And I have to say that Mr. Obama comes off looking, well, naïve."

http://www.nytimes.com/...

It's bad enough that some people got sold insane mortgages, but it seems that in the haste to sell off those mortgages in order to make more mortgages, some lenders screwed up the legal paperwork to the extent that there's a question as to who actually owns the loan, which is a problem, when the supposed owner wants to foreclose on the house that's backed by a late loan. Ranting after the break

How bad is it in Iraq ?
How about sectarian militia dressing up as police commandoes and kidnapping 100, yes, 100 people from a University. Under the guise of police, they checked people's id cards and 'arrested' only Sunnis.  A district commander was arrested as part of the group involved.  It's not simply a matter of bad guys launching rockets, or setting car bombs. There's apparently big parts of the police forces being controlled by militias.  This is not something that can be fixed by the brute force of troops.
Yup Damm fine mess we are in....

Google News helps connect the dots
Main Article
http://today.reuters.com/...

5 Officers arrested including a district commander
http://www.iht.com/...

The first thing you should do tomorrow, when you log onto the Internet is use MoveOn.org to make some calls.
http://pol.moveon.org/...=

Make 5-10 phone calls, It will take you 10 minutes. It will go surprisingly fast. If you reach even just one person, you have made a difference. There's still stuff that needs to be done, there's still time to do.  contribute a little time. Don;t just read Daily Kos, put your values into action and make some calls.

Then VOTE!

I totally supported Kerry's outburst. It was exactly what I wanted to hear from a Democrat for years now. So I am dumbfounded when I came across this Boston Globe article,
http://www.boston.com/...
saying that Kerry has cancelled his campaign appearance and is being asked to apologize for his 'botched joke'.
To me, it wasn't a botched joke, it was a valid criticism. Am I completely out of step with the rest of America ?

North Korea has announced that they have sucessfully tested a nuclear bomb as they threatened to.
http://www.boston.com/...
This marks the complete failure of Bush's foreign policy to accomplish anything. If nothing else came from the invasion of Iraq, it could at least have been said that our reckless invasion put fear in the hearts of other countries thinking of developing nuclear weapons. Now it's apparent that that isn't even true. The Bush policy of 'invade now, ask questions later' has failed to make us any safer from dictators with nuclear weapons.

Please check out this link to Free Speech Radio News.
http://www.fsrn.org/...

While talking to reporters after a meeting with Pres. Bush,
Sen Lott made the following remarks.
"Why do they hate each other? Why are Sunnis killing Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me..."
It's about 6 minutes 50 seconnds into the broadcast (which can be downloaded from the link above).

This blew me away. That a leading leading can so blithely dismiss the ongoing war and casually state that "They all look the same to me" and simultaneously wonder why they hate the US  administration so much.

There's lots of angles to the immigration debate, but one detail that shouldn't be forgotten is that despite their mock anger over Democrat's threat to filibuster SC nominees, despite rants over the tyranny of the minority 'hijacking' policy and the 'nuclear option', Repubs are still happy to use the fillibuster when it suits them. Like here:
This needs to be remembered and brought up the next time Democrats are chided for fillibustering a ridiculous nominee. Quote is below.