Isn't it funny that deval patrick is announcing all these cuts now. Next week we will hear, what if question 1 passes what else will I have to cut.   All you have to say to me is the teachers union and other unions are against this and I'm in the yes column.  It is time the working people who don't have the security of the union to ensure us of our raises and jobs to take a stand.   Let me just say this who's bailing you out?

Vote yourself a bailout on question 1 and get a raise in your pay, you will in turn give it back by spending it on your choice of things which will probably better serve the community, as far as paying for services like trash, buses, athletic fees,excise,and many other things. We are already paying. So go ahead cut my tax.

• EVERYTHING is decked out in "Debate '08" accoutrement.  Lampposts, dorms, academic buildings, unattended children, everything.  Even Guy Pearce in Memento could tell you there was a debate scheduled for October 15, 2008.

• Forget post-debate bumps for the candidates, the schools that host them get an even better one.  Some friends of mine that work in administration now tell me that Hofstra's number of freshman applicants is expected to bump up about 20% because of the debate. 

• The school clearly plans on capitalizing on Wednesday, because campus is sparkling.  The normally beautiful academic side of campus (a nationally registered arboretum) is pristine, they just opened a brand new dorm room, performance arts building and they're breaking ground on Hofstra Medical School as we speak.  As I said to one of my friends as we wandered through the renovated student center, "Hey, I'd actually go here."

• Secret Service has been on campus since last semester!  Apparently, they've been scoping things out, posing as students and probably raising the curve.  Maybe it's good I'm not there anymore.

• As expected, security is insane.  No one will be allowed near the Arena where the debate is being held.  In fact, everyone that has an athletic office in there had to relocate their office a few weeks ago.  Classes are canceled to eliminate commuters, effectively sealing off campus and the Hempstead Turnpike, a MAJOR highway that runs through campus will be shut down.

• One downside, only 300 students will be able to attend the debate.  The arena holds 5,000+, but most of those seats will be taken by campaign staffers and media.

• It will be simulcast though at many viewing parties organized around the campus, coinciding with Educate '08 events and concerts and the like.

When you can't trust either party:  Vote for the check and balance system

If you are like me and enjoyed for the first few months of the idea of change but then learned during one of the most significant bills in our history was used to funnell money to an organization called ACORN while Americans were suffering the Democrats were using this weak moment to push their own hidden agenda.  Yes, my friends I have given up on both parties as neither can be trusted. So what will I do come this November: Vote for a check and balance system by voting for McCain.  You see the Democrats have been creating and passing the laws for over the passed two years since they have the majority and since I and other Americans are not happy with the current course our country has been headed on I would prefer that neither party has full control so that they can keep each other in check.  Since the Democrats are in control I will vote for the Republican candidate to keep things balanced.  If you do not agree with this statement you have been brainwashed by your party.

NEW YORK — - Newspapers that carried an advertising supplement in recent weeks containing a DVD critical of radical Muslims have faced complaints from readers and questions about whether newspapers should offer a platform to everyone willing to pay for distribution.

Although a few papers refused to carry the DVD, about 70, including The New York Times, distributed it on the grounds that rejecting it would violate the sponsor's right to free speech. The decision generated letters and cancellations.

The Clarion Fund, a nonprofit founded in 2006 to address "the most urgent threat of radical Islam," spent millions distributing the DVDs mostly in battleground election states. That targeting led to further outcry about the group's motives.

Ted Vaden, public editor for The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., said the paper received about 500 e-mail and phone messages and had some 50 cancellations. He said the paper may have sparked some of the complaints by writing a front-page story calling attention to "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," the DVD insert that critics have denounced as anti-Muslim propaganda.
A News & Observer reader wrote: "I cannot believe that I was sent the hate-inflaming, fear-mongering video disk 'Obsession' in my newspaper! What will you enclose next? KKK robes?"

Clarion Fund spokesman Gregory Ross said running the ad in swing states was a means of drawing media attention and not meant to influence the election's result, a move barred by federal tax law covering nonprofits. "Obsession," an hour long movie that features graphic images of terrorism, video of anti-American speeches from Mideast television and comparisons with Nazi Germany, has been sent to about 28 million households through newspapers and direct mail

Two Portland men were arrested today in connection with the early morning burning of a political sign outside a Sellwood neighborhood home.

Kevin C. Robinson and Leslie B. Luedtke, both 25, were being held in the Multnomah County Detention Center. Each is accused of four counts of manufacturing a destructive device and four counts of possession of a destructive device. Luedtke also is accused of reckless burning. They are scheduled to appear in Multnomah County Circuit Court on Monday.

Gene Scrutton, 50, said he was awakened about 1:30 a.m. by a neighbor who telephoned after he saw the 4-feet-by-8-feet McCain campaign sign in Scruttons front yard on fire. The sign, which is mounted on 12-foot-long 4-by-4s, is about five feet from the home where Scrutton and his wife, Karen, have lived for 32 years.

Karen Scrutton, 50, was asleep in the room directly behind the sign and woke up when a burning bottle thrown at the sign hit one of the posts and set it on fire, he said. The devices were Pacifico beer bottles stuffed with gasoline-soaked rags, he said.

The neighbor saw a man trying to light the bottom of the sign on fire with a second burning device, he said. One of the men dropped a third, unlighted device and the two ran when the neighbor yelled, Scrutton said.

Scrutton grabbed his garden hose and put out the blaze, then called 9-1-1 to report the incident.

"They were obviously out to intimidate me," Scrutton said. "But someone easily could have been hurt or killed or my house burned down" if the thrown device had hit the house.

He said his wife was sleeping in the chair because she is recovering from an injury and may not have been able to escape a house fire.

Portland Fire & Rescue investigated the incident.

FOXNews.com

Monday, October 13, 2008

Barack Obama told a tax-burdened plumber over the weekend that his economic philosophy is to "spread the wealth around" -- a comment that may only draw fire from riled-up John McCain supporters who have taken to calling Obama a "socialist" at the Republican rallies. 

Obama made the remark, caught on camera, after fielding some tough questions from the plumber Sunday in Ohio, where the Democratic candidate canvassed neighborhoods and encouraged residents to vote early. 

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed "more and more for fulfilling the American dream." 

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." 

Obama's remarks drew fresh criticism on the blogosphere that the Illinois senator favors a breed of wealth redistribution -- as well as a rebuke from the McCain campaign. 

"If Barack Obama's goal as President is to 'spread the wealth around,' perhaps his unconditional meetings with Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, and Kim Jong-Il aren't so crazy -- if nothing else they can advise an Obama administration on economic policy," McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said in a written statement foxnews.com. "In contrast, John McCain's goal as president will be to let the American people prosper unburdened by government and ever higher taxes."

Obama frequently rails against what he calls a Republican concept that tax breaks for the wealthy will somehow "trickle down" to middle-class Americans. 

Obama says he will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. 

However, McCain's aides and supporters argue that Obama wrongly wants to raise taxes on businesses in a time of economic distress. 

Both candidates spent Monday discussing how they would resurrect the ailing economy. McCain again pointed to his plan to buy up cumbersome mortgages from homeowners and renegotiate them. Obama unveiled what he called an economic rescue plan for the middle class, which included a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures. 

Click here to watch the video of Obama's remarks. 

FOX News' Bonney Kapp contributed to this report

Is there anyone out there besides me that wants to say enough is enough? I completely understand that voting for our next president is crucial to this nations future but seriously the pettiness and overkill have to stop. The media seems to think that every little comment is newsworthy, sometimes taken out of context just to make a story. I know that there are those who are 100% strong in their choice for Obama and there are those who are 100% strong for Mccain and everyone is entitled to their opinions and reasoning. But I think that in reality, no matter who wins this election, theres always going to be that group who is upset that their candidate didnt win, and that group who even though their candidate won may or may not find a reason to be upset with their canditate choice after they have been sworn into office.

My point is this... is the small insignificant things like someones hairstyle, an offhanded comment, something a candidate did years ago in their personal lives, their age, gender, or color of their skin really something to write a news story about and make it into something to try to sway voters either way? I can say this for myself and not sure how many others...Im going to vote for a person for their ideals, their job record, and values...and hope that they are not lying like most politicians these days!  

Is this the "New World Order" We Are Witnessing?

I'm just questioning what I have been seeing,  I'm just throwing this out there  after witnessing THE WTO World Monetary Systems getting in line together...Foreign Power Players meeting an agreeing to certain terms of financial strategies...

I hear today the EURO was discussed between the U.K. an E.U. are we heading in this direction 'ONE WORD BANK" and One Currency? like the EURO....

We always here GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.....We have seen President Clinton create the [PASSPORT WAIVERS] for certain Nations to total access to the United States with out Back Ground Checks the U.K. is one of them even with Radical Islamic Extremist an Terrorist growing numbers there...this was the bill President Clinton  signed before leaving office 2000. The plan to have #3 SUPER HIGHWAYS from the tip of South America to Canada an the most recently the trial of open borders for truckers coming in from Mexico.....that the State Department backed...if i remember right...The there is G.A.T. & N.A.F.T.A.

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK WAS THIS A a take over by the powers players that 3% who really control this country before the new Presidential change by the real Power Players who hold most of the power in this country...with the government approval......Like i have said in previously on my blogs about the whole constitutionality of Henry Paulson an Bernanke having control over our monies....the only one who should have power of out monies is the Congress Period....

Are we being brought down a path blindfolded and told everything will be alright....after all this spending an rearrangement of the global markets an banking system and currency system......

Just keep this in mind........

Money to burn?

“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not for the many.” —James Madison

They believe they have no credit limits in the "CONGRESSIONAL HOUSE OF SQUALOR" down in D.C.

Ross Perot was right about the United States deficit.....and how the Congress thinks they have no credit limit!!!! on our dime..

Please Listen to the framers this is illegal unconstitutional Period they knew this could happen even way in the future we need a separation between the United States Government  in taking over or running Public Business............And We just don't have money to BURN!!!! so some wealthy PHAT KATS can leave and live their lap of luxury in places like Greenwich......

Every time the stock market goes down,the media says; it's a negative for McCain.

 Obama said he wants to double the capital gains tax. This is a large contributer to the downward slide of the market.

 If Obama gets elected,be prepared for a real crash of the market.

 There  will be a huge sell off in November and December, anticipating Obama's doubling of the Capital gains tax..

It seems that for "balance" to be provided here at Fox 25 Boston, we Democratic stalwart bloggers must speak out.  What follows is A.C.O.R.N. defending itself from bogus voter fraud charges (website link).  A.C.O.R.N. itself has never been charged with voter fraud:

ACORN has just completed the largest, most successful nonpartisan voter registration drive in U.S. history. We helped 1.3 million low-income, minority and young voters across the country register to vote.

Unfortunately, just as in 2006, that success in bringing people into the democratic process, have been greeted with unfounded accusations to disparage our work and help maintain the status quo of an unbalanced electorate.

After a similar spate of charges against ACORN in 2006, we learned that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had fired Republican U.S. Attorneys because they refused to prosecute ACORN and other voter assistance groups on trumped up fraud charges. This was the heart of the U.S. Attorney-gate scandal that led Karl Rove, Gonzales and other top Department of Justice officials to resign. Because the press didn’t catch on until long after the election, it was part of a successful strategy to create an unfounded specter of voter fraud and to suppress voting.

Key Facts:

1. In order to help 1.3 million people register to vote, we hired more than 13,000 registration assistance workers. As with any business or agency that operates at this scale, there are always some people who want to get paid without really doing the job, or who aim to defraud their employer. Any large department store will have some workers who shoplift.

2. Any large voter registration operation will have a small percentage of workers who turn in bogus registration forms, Their goal clearly is not to cast a fraudulent vote. It is simply to defraud their employer, ACORN, by getting a paycheck without earning it. ACORN is the victim of this fraud – not the perpetrator.

3. In nearly every case that has been reported , it was ACORN that discovered the bad forms, and called them to the attention of election authorities, putting the forms in a package that identified them in writing as suspicious, encouraging election officials to investigate, and offering to help with prosecutions. We are required by law to turn in all forms, but instead of just turning them in and figuring that it is the responsibility of the board of elections to figure out which are valid, we spend millions of dollars verifying that forms are valid, and then separate out those that are suspicious.

4. This has nothing to do with “voter fraud” – nothing at all to do with anyone trying to cast an extra vote. There has never been a single reported instance in which bogus registration forms have led to anyone voting improperly. To do that, they would have to show up at the polls, prove their identity as all first-time registrants must, and risk jail. The people who turned in these forms did so not because they wanted an extra vote, but because they didn’t care enough to make sure eligible people got to vote at all.

5. When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. But for some reason, when ACORN turns voter registration workers over to the authorities for filling out bogus forms, it gets accused of “voter fraud.” This is a classic case of blaming the victim; indeed, these charges are outrageous, libelous, and often politically motivated.

6. Similar attacks were launched against ACORN and other voter registration organizations in 2004 and 2006. The bogus charges were at the heart of the U.S. Attorney-gate scandal that led to the resignations of Karl Rove, Attorney General Ablerto Gonzales and other top Justice Department Officials. It turned out that it was the charges that were fraudulent, and that they were part of a systematic partisan agenda of voter suppression. Republican U.S. Attorneys David Iglesias (NM), Todd Graves (MO), and John McKay (WA) all were fired primarily because they refused to prosecute similar bogus charges of “voter fraud.” Another U.S. Attorney, Bradley Schlozman, who did politicize prosecutions against former ACORN canvassers, was forced to acknowledge under cross examination by the Senate Judiciary Committee that ACORN was the victim of fraud by its employees and ACORN had caught the employees and had identified them to law enforcement.

7. The goals of the people orchestrating these attacks are to distract ACORN from helping people vote and to justify massive voter suppression. That’s the real voter fraud; the noise about a small fraction of the forms ACORN has turned in is meant to get the press and public take their eyes off the real threat, while those hurling the charges are stealing people’s right to vote in broad daylight. They have already tried to prevent Ohio from registering voters at its early voting sites. In Michigan, they planned to use foreclosure notices to challenge thousands of voters. And if this year is like past years, they are preparing to use this so-called voter fraud to justify massive challenges to voters in minority precincts on Election Day.

The Details:

Fact: ACORN has implemented the most sophisticated quality-control system in the voter engagement field but in almost every state we are required to turn in ALL completed applications, even the ones we know to be problematic.

Fact: ACORN flags in writing incomplete, problem, or suspicious cards when we turn them in,. Unfortunately, some of these same officials then come back weeks or months later and accuse us of deliberately turning in phony cards. In many cases, we can actually prove that these are the same cards we called to their attention.

Fact: Our canvassers are paid by the hour, not by the card . ACORN has a zero-tolerance policy for deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the cases where our internal quality controls have identified this happening we have fired the workers involved and turned them in to election officials and law-enforcement.

Fact: No criminal charges related to voter registration have ever been brought against ACORN or partner organizations. Convictions against individual former ACORN workers have been accomplished with our full cooperation, using the evidence obtained through our quality control and verification processes — evidence which in most cases WE called to the attention of authorities

Fact: Most election officials have recognized ACORN’s good work and praised our quality control systems. Even in the cities where election officials have complained about ACORN, the applications in question represent less than 1% of the thousands and thousands of registrations ACORN has collected.

Fact: Our accusers not only fail to provide any evidence, they fail to suggest a motive: there is virtually no chance anyone would be able to vote fraudulently, so there is no reason to deliberately submit phony registrations. ACORN is committed to ensuring that the greatest possible numbers of people are registered

ACORN will not be intimidated, we will not be provoked, and in this important moment in history we will not allow anyone to distract us from these vital efforts to empower our constituencies and our communities to speak for themselves.

Also, A.C.O.R.N. president, Maude Hurd, released this statement about accusations from McCain's camp that claimed that A.C.O.R.N. is responsible for the mortgage crisis:

"For almost a decade, ACORN, a community organization of 400,000 families in neighborhoods across the country, has been fighting against the predatory lending practices that have robbed our members of their homes, destabilized neighborhoods, and roiled the global economy.

"In his newest ad, John McCain's campaign bizarrely claims, 'ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans, the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today.' Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, ACORN has worked successfully to help working class families get good home loans on fair terms from legitimate banks and has fought vigorously against predatory lenders who have ripped off families in our communities. These predatory loans caused the crisis.

"For more than a decade, ACORN members have held protests, released reports, and advocated for regulations to protect homeowners from predatory lenders. ACORN organizers and volunteers have been working day and night to help victims of the GOP economic meltdown to save their homes from foreclosure. In fact, ACORN has brought class action lawsuits against several predatory lenders, and has lobbied the Federal Reserve and Congress in support of regulations against predatory lending. ACORN has even been successful in convincing many lenders to treat homeowners more fairly and help families be able to make their mortgage payments and save their homes.

"Unfortunately, the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans like John McCain have blocked the sensible regulations that ACORN and others proposed that would have averted the mortgage meltdown. If John McCain thinks that community organizers caused the foreclosure crisis, he knows even less about the economy than previously thought.

"John McCain and the Republicans are desperately trying to shift the blame for the economic crisis they caused with a philosophy of deregulation and indifference to homeowners. All the grainy footage and creepy music in the world can't cancel out some simple, basic facts, and the facts about the economy are not on John McCain's side."