People should take responsibility for the bogus bs information that is sent via email etc. Period. I see nothing wrong with flagging such emails. You can't defend yourself against things you are no aware of.

conservatives liberals Please show the difference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

The anti healthcare folks were the rowdy ones here the other day when she was here. The pro healthcare folks were very orderly and considerate.

Well to be far Rush Limbuge said that the Demorciates are Nazis and the health care bill is similar to the one used in Nazi Germany. Yea...

You are misreading. All insurances have enrollment periods. After the enrollment period is done you cannot enroll or disenroll until the enrollment period comes again. The option of national healthcare being there for you during a time when you missed the enrollmemt or whatever is still an option. Most people would be glad of the coverage during one of these enrollment fiasco times.

The heaathcare is not even a hand out, it is an option program. Noone has to take the option.

I was watching the demonstration that happened here yesterday over the National Healthcare plan. Pelosi was here touring a clinic.

When they interviewed the anti healthcare people, I was shocked to see that they believe lies or made up facts.

The national healthcare bill is not a violation of anyone's constitutional rights at any level, so where do they get that information?

It is not socialized healthcare either so where do they get that information?

The anti national health care people seem to believe that the healthcare problem is not a serious one. Is that because they all have healthcare?

Do people realize that there are forces at work that do not want this type of healthcare offered because it would hurt their bottom line? That these forces would say anything to stop this from happening?

I have to wonder is this the result of an underlying issue that has nothing to do with healthcare. Because the validity of the argument is mute?????

Why would I be suprised by the fact that you think he is right...

Off to find something more constructive to do..

Why would anyone be pissed, the guy is an idiot.

Aaaaa. Again a felon and drug addict!!!!!!! Why do you idolize such a man. He should be in jail and forfeit his rights just like everyone else...

Who cares what Rush has to say except those that think just like him.

Do you still trust the same group that gave us Bush and the NeoCons? Did you support Bush and his administration?

How can anyone support the other side after what Bush and his party did to America? I honestly wish to know

eh, better her than another rich, white old man.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Seventy-one percent (71%) of U.S. voters say President Obama’s policies have increased the size of the federal deficit, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Only five percent (5%) say the president’s policies have cut the deficit, and 10% say they have had no impact. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

Eighty percent (80%) of investors say Obama’s policies have driven up the deficit, a view shared by just 57% of non-investors.

Not surprisingly, 88% of Republicans blame the president’s policies, compared to 52% of Democrats. But 79% of voters not affiliated with either party agree.

Obama has initiated a number of big spending programs intended to jump-start the U.S. economy, and the Treasury Department estimates that the federal debt has grown by more than a trillion dollars since he took office. In his defense, the president notes that he inherited both an economic crisis and an already sizable deficit from President Bush.


http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/august_2009/71_say_obama_s_policies_have_driven_up_deficit

I'd like to know who the 5% were that said Obama's cut the deficit..

How stupid is it when No matter how many times Obama tells people if they are happy with their insurance they can keep it, folks like you keep distorting the message.

U.S. citizens constitute 5 percent of the global population. U.S. inmates constitute 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The U.S. has a higher proportion of its citizens jailed than any other country in history. Close to 70 percent of America's prisoners are people of color. A black male has a greater than one in four lifetime chance of serving a prison sentence. Besides the obvious education and income argument, blacks are disproportionately incarcerated as a result of the “prison-industrial complex” and the “war on drugs.” Through identifying these two central factors, I believe it will be clear that this was a premeditated systematic attack on the black community.

First, I will discuss the prison-industrial complex. The U.S. Prison-Industrial Complex (PIC) is the cruel, hastily emerging domestic component of imperialist globalization. The prison-industrial complex is the process in which the interest groups that represent organizations engage in business with correctional facilities like prison guard unions, construction companies, and surveillance technology vendors, who as a result of the lucrative dealings become more interested in profit than actually rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates.

We can understand this better by understanding and analyzing the facts. Since 1991, the rate of violent acts has decreased by 20 percent. But the number of people in prison has increased by 50 percent. The incarceration of such a huge sector of the U.S. population is rooted within the laws of capitalist economics, which in effect has become the insatiable drive to make profits at the expense of human development. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the industrialized world (2 million people) and it is growing by leaps and bounds in the current period of so-called economic prosperity. The destructive role of the PIC in the lives of poor people in the U.S. mirrors what the IMF is doing to destroy poor people throughout the world, especially in the developing countries.

The expansion of private prisons is considered by many experts to be the most profitable industry in the U.S. today. The Corrections Corporations of America, the country's largest private-prison conglomerate, generates huge profits by operating 46 penal institutions in 11 states, including seven juvenile facilities. Many of the most influential Wall Street firms and investment banks, from American Express to Smith Barney pour an estimated $35 billion annually into supporting prison bond issues, construction and the privatization of prisons. You may ask how the prisons create profit. Many prisoners are paid only pennies an hour to build houses for the elderly and the disabled, wire schools for computers, fight forest fires, and so on. Between 1980 and 1994 the value of goods produced by prisoners rose from $392 million to $1.1 billion. The PIC is the second-largest employer in the U.S. Corporations, such as American Express and Microsoft, profit off prison sweatshops. This slave labor takes the jobs of unionized workers who could be doing the same tasks. Unions should make it their business to organize these prisoners into unions so that they aren't used as scab labor. If you will recall, the unpaid labor derived from African slavery for nearly three centuries provided the platform for the accumulation of capital by a tiny segment of the U.S. population. U.S.-style apartheid continued legally for another 100 years after the abolition of slavery in 1863-65. Today the prison system is the institutional legacy for extreme racist repression.

The PIC has in many ways been fueled by the aforementioned “war on drugs.” At the end of the 20th century, the perception of widespread abuse of cocaine caused policy-makers in the U.S. to consider drug abuse a serious social problem rather than as cases of personal failures. I characterize this as the apparent sentiment of the American majority that working class addiction to crack is a crime. But, middle- and upper-class addiction to drugs or alcohol is a disease. That sentiment is responsible for influencing politicians' ridiculous tough-on-crime rhetoric, which would lead to zero tolerance policies in all walks of American life including school, workplace, and etc.

In federal prisons, 60 percent are drug offenders with no history of violence. It is not unusual that inmates are doing 20 years and more for just being present in a house where drugs were found. The ten states with the greatest racial disparities are: Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, Iowa, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, North Carolina, and West Virginia. In these states, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 27 to 57 times the rate of white men.

According to Jamie Fellner, Human Rights Watch associate counsel, "Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as blacks, But blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison”. The solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders and to increase the availability of substance abuse treatment." U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America “drug-free.” Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. Nearly half a million people are behind bars on drug charges, which is more than all of Western Europe (which features a larger population) incarcerates for all offenses. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health, and a war on our constitutional rights.

In conclusion, both the war on drugs and the prison-industrial complex are major factors that contribute to the disproportionate imprisonment of black people. These factors have a distinct relationship that creates a cycle that when many enter the prison system it they cannot escape it. This is a result of policies that make it difficult to reintegrate back into society because of limits on employment, voting, and basic civil liberties. Hopefully, through awareness the inhumane byproducts of these factors can be minimized.



by Nick Walker