Jim

Wrong again. There is absolutely no evidence that Lincoln was interested in organized religion. He never attended services and certainly did not espouse Christian beliefs with his closest advisers. It would be more accurately to say he was a devoutly spiritual man, certainly believed in God, and often used it as a unifying theme. On the other hand you would be more sucessful making the argument that the evangelical movement of the time was a strong force in abolation, and had an effect on how Lincoln framed the issue. As his Presidency moved on, he became more and more aware of the moral imperative nature of keeping the Union together and abolition. On the other hand, Bush is a charlatan. He has used his religious base to help support an immoral war, lied extensively, and totally botched it. If there is any comparison it should be how low the Republicans and the evangelical movement have devolved since Lincoln.

Simplisticly speaking - no. You can't get out, period. And you don't need to go back to the Federalist Papers, lots of historinas have already rummaged those for you. I would seriously suggest the aforementioned book. It is quite an intriguing read.

While that may be your opinion that is certainly not how it was interpreted by Congress or the President, and seems a fair reading of the constitution, and supported by later historians. I suggest Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine, which I'm reading now, for a start and a very good history of the situation. As for relating anything Bush has to do with Lincoln, well, that's absurd. Lincoln was by far one of the brightest men we've had as president, extremely well read and eloquent, and a shrewd politician. Bush is nothing short of a dolt.

This is BS. Anyone with common sense and a library card (not our president) could see what would occur when we dismantled the tough fisted regime that was the glue of this tribal country. The bushies were warned time and again by the State Department and independent advisors. There are quite a number of good books on the subject. We'll do what I said we would from the start. Declare victory and go home. Only this time there will be long standing consequences, unlike Vietnam.

A tour of the Patagonian ice sheet behind Cerro Torre would be on the top of my list the next time I get down there. A friend spend 10 days out there and said it was un-worldly.

Oh...I thought we were going to counter with Reagan's image.

Agreed. Seems like these campus cops could have just dragged him out. He was already cuffed. I saw something similar at the WTF protests. A group of 15 granola eaters had locked themselves together with some interesting pipes over their forearms. They were just sitting in a circle together. The cops said move along and they just sat there. The cops said ok, were're going to arrest you. The protesters said ok, have at it. Then for no particular reason the head copper just went around the circl spraying all of them directly in the face with pepper spray. There was a "reaction" from the large crowd, someone tossed a large teddy bear at the cops and things went downhill from there.

Yea - thanks pal. "What they need is help in constructing better institutions, public financial management and advice on how to better manage the petroleum sector," he said, according to Reuters. "Help, I believe, in how to manage social safety nets." Of course, money management isn't easy in the middle of a war that has killed or made refugees of a huge chunk of the managerial class. Wolfowitz said he didn't know if U.S. Mideast policy will change with the Democratic takeover of Congress. "I know that they are not going to come and ask me for my opinion," he said. That's a safe bet. "I am not sufficiently well informed on political and security issues to give sensible advice," he added. Wolfowitz was much better informed when he predicted Iraqi oil revenue would pay for the war.

The largest medical government program in the US, Medicare, is also the most effecient provider. Its overhead costs are around 5%, compared to the 25 -30% of the private insurers. Blue Cross of Massachusetts has about the same amount of administrative employees as the entire Canadian Health Care System. Multiply that by the number of other insurers in the state and you can clearly see the issue.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a study author and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard, noted: "We pay the world's highest health care taxes. But much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks. And HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at the taxpayers' expense. But politicians claim we can't afford universal coverage. Every other developed nation has national health insurance. We already pay for it, but we don't get it." Dr. David Himmelstein, study co-author and a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, commented: "Our study shows that universal coverage is affordable - without a big tax increase. Government already spends nearly enough, but its spending it wrong. National health insurance doesn't mean spending more; it means spending wisely. We spend over $309 billion each year on paperwork in insurance companies, hospitals and doctors' office - at least half of which could be saved through national health insurance. We spend $150 billion on medications, at prices 50% higher than Canadians pay for the same drugs. By slashing bureaucracy and drug prices we could save enough to cover all of the uninsured and improve coverage for the rest of us."

She's not the only one bringing up the suject: "Casesa said health care could be the one area where the auto industry could see some financial relief with the new Congress. The three companies estimate they'll spend more than $12 billion on health care this year for more than 2 million employees, retirees and their family members in the United States."

Holy cow!!!! Consider yourself very lucky. That is a Costco sized bridge collapse.

Washington, DC - A new report suggests that the national Republican establishment--including the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and even the Bush White House--may have had a role in the criminal Election Day phone jamming scheme that disenfranchised countless New Hampshire voters in 2002. The Union Leader today reported that "court records show Ken Mehlman's office received more than 75 telephone calls from now-convicted phone-jam conspirator James Tobin from Sept. 30 to Nov. 22 of that year." At the time, Mehlman--the current RNC Chair--was White House political director. [union Leader, 3/23/06] This raises the disturbing question of whether Tobin, who worked for the RNC and the NRSC at the time and has since been convicted on two criminal charges for his role in the scheme, discussed the plan with one of the President's most important political strategists. Today's news also has important implications for other national Republican figures. At the time the phone jamming scheme was devised and implemented, Tobin's supervisor at the RNC was Terry Nelson, who Arizona Republican Senator John McCain recently hired as a senior strategist for his Political Action Committee. This means that McCain may have hired one of the key figures in the phone jamming scheme. "Each new development in this case raises troubling questions about the extent to which key national Republicans had knowledge of or were involved in a criminal scheme to keep New Hampshire voters from getting to the polls," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda. "The revelation that, in the days leading up to the phone-jamming campaign, Ken Mehlman spoke regularly with a man who has been convicted of criminal charges in this case raises deeply disturbing questions about the Bush White House's commitment to protecting fundamental right of Americans to vote.

I had the pleasure of going over to Harvey's house to discuss the potential of buying land parcels to extend Cougar Mt. Park about 10(?) years ago. He rambled on with some great stories of putting in the early trails of the park (encounters with the shy bear) and what the county really should do. We talked about what trails should be closed, the best parcels adjacent to the park, and what the park means to the community. Then he went on to tell stories of when the county first established the park and how mountain bikers wanted their share of the park. There was a big public meeting, the bikers came out in force, as did the politicians and news media. Always a man to take hold of theater when it presented itself, Harvey strode into the meeting muttering something about these bikers who wanted to trash the park while riding around in their sister's underware. What a hoot. Grizzly and determined. He was one of a kind and a force in the local environmental movement.

We have Dell desk and laptops for work, and I have one at home. Never had a serious problem, but I'm no power user. I think Dell is ok for standard stuff, but Toshiba seems to offer more inovative options these days. I did get my daughter a Dell laptop a year ago for school and it seems to do the job.

True. But not something you want to say in public as a politician.

I had and inguinal and discovered it while in Greece. Came back and the Doc was in no rush. Rafted Hell's Canyon (work related) then had my shoulder and the hernia thing done at one time. I would call the clinic and ask though.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

The RHINO hunters are extremists, not conservatives. I say that this was one of the many reasons for the democratic tidal wave. Smart, reasonable, fiscally responsible Republicans were hounded by the far right wing so consistently they moved right and voted with the party line, and out of line from their constituents.

nutty program Not being a computer geek, what then is the best compromise for accuracy and efficiency of counting? Is the bubble-sheet and scan machine sufficiently accurate and precise?

I was travelling on election day so I got to see some cable TV and saw an interesting documentary on the Diebold voting machines. Despite Diebold comments to the contrary, a computer geek was able to change the executible code in the storage disc (not the machine, just the disc) so it would manipulate the vote totals. Thus there was no way to trace the tampering and the paper and electronic summary tables came out square. That and the amount of tech gliches and sometimes lack of sufficient number of machines raises some serious questions. In the 2004 election people in Ohio and Florida had to wait up to four hours to vote because of a lack of machines, most frequently in heavily black disctricts. Seems that the simplicity of the pencil in ballot has advantages over the touch screen. That and the private sector profiteering scenarios are troublesome. On the bright side though are the states like Virgina that have a bipartisan election commission with very high standards. With a tight race in 2004 they only differed by 40 votes in a state-wide recount. In contrast to the continued zoo in Florida.

The Roth IRA limits were set under the Clinton administration in conjunciton with the Republican Congress, not the current Congress. The current democratic wave was a strong repudiation of the hardball, right wing tactics of the current administration. Pombo and Santourm are my favorite ousters. Some decent moderate Republicans got caught up in the tidal wave, but they did not have the stomach to stand up to their party leaders when it counted, so the public wanted a big change. The strangle hold that the republicans had on the legislative process was what allowed them to pass some really crummy laws and blow up the budget while keeping the party lockstep. And it was their ultimate downfall. I think the dems proposed laws for their early days, minimum wage, negoiated drug prices for Medicare, and stem cell research are good starts. Lets see if the republicans go along with the modest proposals and if Bush still wants to appeal to the Christian base with a veto. And hoorah!!!

In talking to some folks at Snhomish co public works this morning they are very worried that flows will reach the Oct 2003 levels, which were quite stunning and took out a bit of infrastructure.

"Long after the days of "The smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud," "Shock and awe," "Mission accomplished" and "Bring 'em on" are mercifully past, historians will chronicle an early 21st-century America so distracted from its real enemy that Osama bin Laden and even the perpetrators of the 2001 anthrax attacks against Congressional leaders are still at large.

But these loudmouths are the ones with multi-million dollar organizations they use to trash talk the same people they are "involved' with. Fricking bible thumpers.