The Brand New Respectful Presidential Campaign Thread

Has anyone been watching the opening ceremonies on the White House lawn welcoming the Pope........just beautiful............Shokk

Yeah Oilmen just suck.........this country would be so much better off if the oil companies didn't exist........it would solve all our problems.........wouldn't have to worry about all those pesty air pollutants............hell we wouldn't have to worry about car payments...........we wouldn't have to worry about heating our homes and all the horrible things that the oil companies subject us to on a daily basis........don't want to have any successful nasty ole oilmen running this country........what a disgrace.....Shokk

Where are you getting a loaf of bread for $1.35???

No time to read back .. I've lost my mind .. went to my doc appt a day late!!

Oh yeah, the good old days! Seems that's what the republicans want us to think--that they want to maintain the good old days. Well, republicans have never been for the little people, it's always been about corporations, big business, and wealthy people.



Seems part of the tax cuts McCain want to put in place as part of his economy plans, is more and better corporate tax cut. Well, that will surely bring the jobs back here, won't it.



Yes, that's right. Free to take jobs overseas. And get those lovely tax breaks. And then make millions in profits off the backs of all the little people. Oh Please! These oil companies claim they aren't really making a profit, all this money is going into research--researching what? At this point, they could have solved the oil problem, and given us a new form of transportation that doesn't need oil!! But that won't happen, because they are making too much money and you gotta pay the stockholders their dividends.



And I'm glad CA has environmentally "correct" fuel that we put in our cars. I can actually see the Bay Area from atop the mountains!! And I know LA isn't having as many bad smog days has it had in years past. This is good. Unfortunately, there are still people going to Oregon and Nevada and purchasing their cars--without CA required smog equipment--and then using false or relatives address to register car so don't have to smog their cars. So, yeah, I pay more at the pump--but not much more than NY it looks like. Now I drive less and shop less too. And 8 years ago, gas was never 99 cents a gallon. Perhaps it's time to reduce the speed limit, and put some gas rationing in place.



Car pool lanes aren't filling up like they should. Drive out here and all you see are very large SUVs that require 91 octane. People w/bucks are driving solo and don't care what gas costs! What is it going to take to get people to carpool and reduce their footprint on the earth?



Bush's Folly of War bucks could have been used to boost the economy instead of putting us further in debt. We now owe trillions because of his management of this government for the past 8 years. If he worked for a corporation, he would have been fired a long time ago--without costing us benefits that he will get for the rest of his life without earning them!! Ah, that great white male privilege again.

Oh and let's not forget that rotten Bush actually had the nerve to welcome Pope Benedict to the White House today............how dare he do that.........did you see all those stupid Catholics clinging to their religion.........ha.......what fools............and on the up side did anyone see the video footage of our wonderful former President Carter laying flowers on the tomb of Yasser Arafat yesterday.........brought tears to my eyes.........geez sure do miss the days when Arafat's army would strap bombs to themselves and stroll on over to Israel to blow themselves up............sure am looking forward to Carter's meeting with the leader of Hamas......so

No, it's really damn the republicans in charge--they mess up every time they get the chance to run this country. Reagan ruined CA before he ever got into the White House. And of course, I new he'd work at ruining the rest of the country when he got his chance.



This country is run on big business, and there is the power and there lies the wealth. Doing research with the profits as the oil companies claim to be doing, has not helped this country or the people here one bit. And those jobs that are making that HUGE (not HUGH) footprints could be jobs that the people doing them made small footprints on the earth. And they dare, because we elect people who won't do anything about it. We elect Senators and House of Representatives that go into Congress and fall for the lobbyists gifts and the good old boys routine. Congress and Bush could have made changes if they wanted to, but they didn't. And we didn't have a Democratic Congress until a few years ago, when people got fed up with the Bush/Cheney regime. The middle class is disappearing; and Bush and Cheney continue to thumb their noses at the people. You would think that someone would tell Bush the truth at some point--that his disapproval rating is 67%. Yes, that is 2/3rds of the American people believe Bush isn't doing the job. And with all that going for us, some here believe we should have another 4 years of the same old, same old republican--reward the wealthy!



Perhaps instead of Bush's Folly of War, he could have used all those trillions we have borrowed from China to boost the economy--give better tax breaks to the corporations so they would bring their businesses back to the USA--give them big rewards, because obviously their salaries as CEOs and their stock options, and their benefits and their allowances for house, car, etc. needs to be higher--but not the people doing the job for a paltry sum and no benefits and threatened with being fired if they try to unionize--oh yeah--they should feel lucky they have a job even if their salary never keeps up with inflation. Well, I'm sick to death of all the tax breaks going to the wealthy and corporations. And I don't see all the wealthy giving more than middle class. Perhaps they do when they go to the fancy dinners and bid on all those lovely auction items as we see written in the society pages. But I see lower and middle class people giving more than the wealthy, perhaps not in dollars, but in volunteer time. Volunteers know and are right there to see the effect the republican presidential 8 years has done to people less fortunate. Wouldn't it be great if the CEOs of companies decided to pay their employees a fair wage based on comparable salaries. I bet the percentage of salary going to the employee would go up quite a bit. Or let's reverse it, and pay the CEOs a comparable salary to the employees who are underpaid.

Yes Grace you are so right.............horrible stupid corporations...........we would be so much better off without any of them..............you are also so right that President Reagan was the worse President in the history of our Country well except for President Bush...........don't you just hate it when people have principles that they live by..........that they are so stupid to think that we live in the best country in the world when we all know that it is the worse?..........geez...........stupid Republicans..........how could I be so blind...........I kept thinking it was the chemo.........Shokk

I think he should be forced to register as a lobbyist for foreign interests.

Carter's Arab financiers
The Washington Times
By Rachel Ehrenfeld
December 21, 2006

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.

Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.

At that time, Mr. Lance's mismanagement of the NBG got him and the bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank "which would bribe God," came to Mr. Lance's rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi then declared: "we would never talk about exploiting his relationship with the president." Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January 1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance's $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon secretly gained control over the bank.

Mr. Anderson wrote: "Of course, the Saudis remained discretely silent... kept quiet about Carter's irregularities... [and] renegotiated the loan to Carter's advantage."

There is no evidence that the former president received direct payment from the Saudis. But "according to... the bank files, [it] renegotiated the repayment terms... savings... $60,000 for the Carter family... The President owned 62% of the business and therefore was the largest beneficiary." Pharaon later contributed generously to the former president's library and center.

When Mr. Lance introduced Mr. Carter to Abedi, the latter gave $500,000 to help the former president establish his center at Emory University. Later, Abedi contributed more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects. Even after BCCI was indicted â€" and convicted -â€" for drug money laundering, Mr. Carter accepted $1.5 million from Abedi, his "good friend."

A quick survey of the major contributors to the Carter Center reveals hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi and Gulf contributors. But it was BCCI that helped Mr. Carter established his center.

BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. Abedi wanted the bank to reflect the supra-national Muslim credo and "the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists."

Shortly after assuming office, in March 1977, Mr. Carter made his first public statement regarding a Palestinian "homeland." Since then, he has devoted much of his time to denouncing Israel's self-defense against Palestinian terrorism, which he claims is not only "abominable oppression and persecution" of the Palestinians, but also damages U.S. interests in the region.

By the time BCCI was shut down in July1991, it operated in 73 countries with a deficit of $12 billion, which it had managed to hide with wealthy Arab shareholders and Western luminaries. Among them Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan of Abu Dhabi, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Yasser Arafat and Palestinian terrorist groups, and who branded the United States: "our enemy number one"; Former head of Saudi foreign intelligence service, and King Faisal's brother-in-law, Kamal Adham â€" who with another Saudi, the banker of the royal family, Khaled bin Mahfouz, staged BCCI's attempt to illegally purchase the Washington-based First American bank, in the early 1980s.

True to its agenda, BCCI assisted in spreading and strengthening the Islamic message; they enabled Pakistan's nuclear ambitions, and helped the Palestinian leadership to amass a $10 billion-plus fortune, used to further terrorist activities and to buy more influence in the West.

BCCI founders also supported the Islamic fundamentalist opposition to the Shah of Iran, and saw it as an opportunity to undermine Western influence in the Gulf. They assisted the revolution financially, reinforcing their position within the leadership of the Iranian revolution. Ironically, the success of that revolution cost Mr. Carter his presidency.

BCCI's money also facilitated the Saudi agenda to force Israel to recognize Palestinians "rights," convincing Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the Camp David Accords in September 1978. Since then, Mr. Carter repeatedly provided legitimacy to Arafat's corrupt regime, and now, like the Saudis, he even sides with homicidal Hamas as the "legitimate" representative of the Palestinian people.

In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter again laid responsibility for U.S. bias against the destitute, depressed and (consequently) violent Palestinians on American policy makers' helplessness, over the last 30 years, against the menacing tactics of the powerful American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).

However, it seems that AIPAC's real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty. "There has not been any nation in the world that has been more cooperative than Saudi Arabia," the New York Times quoted Mr. Carter June 1977, thus making the Saudis a major factor in U. S. foreign policy.

Evidently, the millions in Arab petrodollars feeding Mr. Carter's global endeavors, often in conflict with U.S. government policies, also ensure his loyalty.

Rachel Ehrenfeld is the director of the American Center for Democracy. 

Shokk, you almost have me rolling on the floor laughing AND it's ALL your fault!  Let's just say I "ditto" your posts.  No sense in me typing responses when there's no need to.

I want jobs back here in the US as well.  But you can't blame Bush about corporations sending their jobs overseas.  Wouldn't that be "unamerican."  Then we'd hear the liberals yelling about the president being a dictator (oh, I forgot, he's already been called that).

Corporations are out to make money.  There's cheaper labor elsewhere.  I hate having to talk to a person from India about my computer and I can't even understand what they're saying.

Grace says:

Ah, that great white male privilege again.

That does not sound good.  Why did you say that?  I find that extremely racist even if coming from a white woman.

Can't wait for the debates tonight.  Can't decide whether to tape the debates and watch the American Idol or tape the Idol and watch the debates. 

Shirley

Okay, here's a good one.  McCain has a hard time answering this question posed to him.  I saw it this morning.

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=e4b05c04-e607-43cc-96fc-2b170bd40719&sMPlaylistID=

That was great Shirley---Saw it yesterday but wouldn't have made the connection in a hundred years.

Ya better buy it all up and freeze it. LOL  You'll never see those prices again.

A slice of pizza gets pricier
Rising wheat prices are pushing up costs for baked goods, and foods from muffins to pizza are getting more expensive.


NEW YORK (CNN) -- Pizzeria owner Joe Vicari shakes his head as he prepares to rip open a 50-pound bag of flour for another batch of dough.

"That's 37-bucks. $37. I couldn't believe it!" says Vicari.

Since opening Mariella Pizza in mid-town Manhattan 30-years ago, Vicari, says he has never experienced such a jump in the cost of his ingredients.

"I can't even believe how much the flour [goes] up. When I see the bill I can't believe it, that's too much," says the veteran pizza maker, who emigrated from Sicily. Only four weeks ago, Vicari says, he was paying just $16-a-bag for Gold Medal brand flour, which at $37-a-bag now seems more golden than ever.

Executives at his supplier, Cremosa Food of Melville, New York, did not return CNN's repeated phone calls, though a source at the company confirms there are plans for a price hike to $40-a-bag in the next week. Cremosa, the source said, is allocating flour to restaurants, refusing to allow customers to buy more than they had purchased the prior week.

Vicari struggles with the thought of raising the price of a slice, which he lifted to $2.50 only a few months ago due to an increase in cheese costs.

"Over here people come to buy pizza, working people. How much [am] I going to raise the pizza now?" asks Vicari. "Somebody come in here for two slices, and I take $5. I feel very, very bad for the person."

But, he concedes, if flour rises a few dollars more, above $40-a-bag, he probably will pass along the higher expense to customers.

The cost of cereals and bakery products climbed at an annual rate of more than 9% last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to a rise in the overall Consumer Price Index during the past 12 months of 4%.


Indeed, it's not only pizza that's becoming more costly. Baked goods of all kinds are heading higher as the price of flour rises due to the fact that wheat is trading near a record high.

At the Chicago Board of Trade a bushel, 60-pounds of wheat, now trades for more than $1100, more than two-and-1/2 times what it was just a year ago.

Why? You can lay part of the blame on ethanol. Huge demand for ethanol has farmers planting more corn to produce the fuel when they could be growing wheat.

"Ethanol was competing against wheat for acres in 2007," said Joe Victor, grain analyst with Allendale Inc.

Poor growing conditions last year also affected the global wheat crop, from a winter freeze in the U.S. to droughts in Australia and France.

And, the dollar sinking to a record low makes U.S. wheat relatively cheap for foreigners.

"Fifty-nine-percent of everything we raised in 2007 is leaving the U.S.," said Victor. "That's 9-10% greater than normal." As a result, Victor said, U.S. wheat supplies are at their lowest level since the end of World War II, another factor pushing prices skyward.

The good news for U.S. consumers is that high wheat prices have led farmers to plant a large crop of winter wheat, which could temper retail prices later this year.

But, for now, it appears likely the cost of baked goods is heading higher.

"It's killing us, it's killing us. It's forcing me to pass it on to the consumer," said Frank Karalis co-owner of Europan Bakery Café in Manhattan. Karalis was holding a menu on which he had just crossed out every price and written in new, higher prices he plans for next week: Bagel with butter $1.30, up 20-cents; Muffins $2.25, up 25-cents; Paninis $7.20 up 25-cents.

"Someone's gonna buy a croissant here for $2 and tomorrow they're going to pay $2.50. They're not going to like that," Karalis said. To top of page
First Published: March 19, 2008: 11:42 AM EDT

Paulette if you are referring to me that I have not taken my meds.....you know darn well I haven't taken my meds.....because of people like you and all the heartless Republicans and that ruthless Bush...........you know I can't afford my meds and I bet that oil loving Bush gets his meds for free..........just because he is the leader of the free world..........yeah right more like the leader of the freeless world.............Shokk

Oh Geez ... I can't focus on my work ... but you guys have really cheered me up today!

Let's talk about sending our jobs to India.  I'm a medical transcriptionist.  Of course, I'm probably the only one of this group that knows about this profession.   About 10 years ago when I started I was making about 13 cents a line.  That's a hard line.  I was doing great, I'm an independent .. no middleman, had my own clients.

I leave the business for a couple of years, then need to get back into it.  Now, I find it's nearly impossible to be an independent.  The lines are now counted by characters and the going rate starting with a transcription company is maybe $.08 p/65 char. line.  Okay, that works out to about $10 to $15 less an hour for me.  You want to know why ....

The business has been taken over by the large national companies and they have outsourced our work to India.  They pay the Indian transcriptionists 3 to 6 cents a line.  This used to be a profession where a single mother could take care of her family .... not anymore.  I'm lucky .. I know how to market myself and scrambled to get my own clients ... still, the market has changed.  I can no longer charge what I have in the past and be competitive.  

Be right back.  

Sorry 'bout that ... SO calling from the road.  Lost my train of thought.

Shokk .. do you want some of my meds?  I've got a pill for everything.  

Ok, how can I find a dem who thinks like a republican