Posted on 05/07/2006 5:33:36 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
The Talk Shows
Sunday, May 7th, 2006
Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:
FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.; Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.; Washington Nationals co-owner Mark Lerner.
MEET THE PRESS (NBC): House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Bush impersonator Steve Bridges.
FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas; Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean; outgoing White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
LATE EDITION (CNN) : Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt; Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.; Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie; former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin.
Nothing is free. Somebody must pay for it.
Why? Ambien lasts no more than 8 hours. A red-eye flight is normally 6 to 8 hours. What's the problem?
It is actually one of the strengths of Ambien that it has few aftereffects when properly used. You take it, fall asleep, and wake up 8 hours later feeling refreshed and with no wooziness. That's been precisely my experience. That's why it's so widely used.
I have to say that it's a little tiresome getting medical advice and handwringing on FR. Doctors prescribe Ambien, and properly used it isn't and shouldn't be a problem for most people. Of course it won't work for some people, and shouldn;t be abused. Sort of like pencillin or Tylenol.
"How can Patrick be in control of his alcoholic poor soul Mother Joan, when he cannot be in control of himself?"
I've always felt sorry for Joan - she seemed like a nice lady. If I had to put up w the Kennedy family and was married to the Swimmer (YUCK!) I probably would have been an alcoholic, too!
The country made a decision more than forty years ago that we are not going to let senior citizens die because they are priced out of the private insurance market when they approach retirement. I dont recall the conservatives offering any alternative 40 years ago other than they should have saved their money and they should have gotten themselves a job that gave them health care after retirement. Given the changes that have occured in medicine over the last 40 years and the fact that drug therapies are much more important in controlling and curing disease, it makes sense to spend a little on this portion to help keep down the cost of regular Medicare. If spending a little on drugs will keep seniors out of the hospital, there are massive savings for the Medicare Program.
For those that scream about Medicare Drug Benefits and budget deficits, I wonder if they would be so quick to give up their crop support payments, Pel grants and govt sponsored education loans, national parks, mortgage tax deductions, and tax deductible IRAs and HSAs. I also have never heard of any conservative seniors refusing to sign up for Medicare when they are 65, assuming they didnt have someone else paying their health bills.
"I'm sitting here wondering just when Arlen Specter became the most important man in the world."
Ever notice how much old Arlen sounds like "Howard" on the Andy Griffith Show?
Our forefathers also believed that all men are inherently corrupt, that is why we have a system of checks and balances. Of course that system is only effective when the first ammendment actually provides truthful information about what our government is doing.
This is an arguement for more free speech rather than less. That makes John McCain even more frightening.
Thanks kabar! This is a really interesting list of party leadership in congress.
Wages are not raising as fast as gas prices and healthcare costs. Employers are dumping more of health care costs on employees. A large percentage of American workers dont feel better off even though the stock market is up near record levels. Rising gas prices over time have the same effect as a tax increase, they reduce consumption. Also because of the all the economic change over the past 15 years or so, many Americans are less secure that their job will be there next year, much less next month. If these issues do not concern you, congratulations. However, that doesnt mean that the pollsters are making these numbers up or that the people are too stupid to know how good they've got it.
Agree.
Though, it appears the deficit may not be quite as bad as the Dims would have us believe. The President made a comment the other day about cutting the deficit in 1/2 by 2009 (I think that was the year he used). One of the ways he wants to do this is for Congress to rein in spending and stop w all of the earmarks. Obviously the tax cuts helped - making them permanent would help more IMHO
CBO: Deficit could be less than $300B
CBO ^ | May 4, 2006 | CBO
Posted on 05/04/2006 6:13:45 PM PDT by RobFromGa
CBO: Deficit could be less than $300B
Non-partisan analyst says gap could be below White House estimate due to increased revenue growth. May 4, 2006: 7:20 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. budget deficit this year could dip to as low as $300 billion, well below the White House's estimate, partly because the federal government was enjoying "robust growth" in revenues, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.
< snip >
More recently, there have been government estimates of a budget deficit closer to $350 billion this year, down from the fiscal 2005 deficit of $318 billion.
The nonpartisan congressional budget analyst said that "robust growth in revenues" accounted for some of the improvement in the deficit picture.
< snip >
CBO said that during the first seven months of the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, the federal government ran a budget deficit of $183 billion, $53 billion less than for the same period in fiscal 2005.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1627026/posts
Budget Office Sees Marked Dip in Deficit
© 2006 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A surging economy producing robust growth in federal revenues promises to significantly cut the budget deficit for the current year, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.
The deficit "will be significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps as low as $300 billion," CBO reported, well below the White House's February estimate of $423 billion.
The CBO estimate assumes enactment of a pending $70 billion tax cut bill, as well as a spending bill for the war in Iraq, hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast and prevention of a bird flu pandemic.
The Senate passed a $108.9 billion version Thursday, but President Bush vows to hold the cost to $94.5 billion.
The nonpartisan budget analysts for Congress credited "robust growth in revenues" for the improvement.
The budget year ends Sept. 30. For the first seven months of fiscal 2006, the deficit registered $183 billion, $53 billion less that 2005. The 2005 deficit was $318 billion.
".....cannot fathom the reason Kerry wants to constantly remind people of how traitorous he was when he came back from Viet Nam."
Yep - - seems they all keep forgetting some of the history of some of the other family members.
I too applaud efforts to help poor seniors. However, as a group, senior citizens are the wealthiest segment of the US population.
The last 30 years have seen a massive transfer of wealth from younger working Americans to older non-working Americans. They may be the self styled "greatest generation," but I think a hearty hand shake and a gold watch should be sufficient thankyou beyond their massive Social Security and Medicare programs, which are going to bankrupt us long before I see anything, let alone my children or grandchildren. This constant demand for more freebies for folks whose average net worth out distances mine by several orders of magnitude is annoying.
Again, helping the poor is totally different. That's why I fully endorse means testing for all government benefits programs (along with severe penalties for fraud).
Sorry, you can't excuse the Republican Senate on the basis of semantics or rhetoric (e.g., my "dominate" versus your "razor thin"). The point is that the Republicans have the majority. Whether it's big dominance or "razor thin" dominance is a distinction without a difference. Dominance = majority = 55 percent.
The other point is that Republican Senators from Frist on down can't seem to envision an immigration bill without an amnesty attached to it. I mean amnesty as in "path to citizenship". Get a work visa in nearly any other country and see if it provides some automatic "path to citizenship." It won't. Typically they are one to three years, often renewable, but completely distinct from the immigration or citizenship process. This is not rocket science, even for third-wortld countries.
To assert that there's some overwhelming problem in crafting the solution that GWB prescribed in March 2004 - a 3-year, once-renewable work visa - is just the height of disingenuousness. Any conservative Republican who supports that position is living in intellectual denial.
You can't disguise that fact with mere semantics, and Republicans ignore it at their own electoral peril (did you see that 5 of 7 members of the Herndon, VA town council were ousted last week due to last year's controversial and widely-opposed support for a "day laborer center"?)
That's right.
I'm not a psychologist, but I play one here. Her father was quite a pain in the *ss at times I have read in a number of books. Anything but all A's was not good enough for him.
But I'm sure she's picked up more personality idiosyncrasies other than ones caused by a dominant father.
Thanks for the article. Don't mean to be catty but that's a really BAD picture of Jane Harmon - -she looks a lot older than when I've seen her on TV - - must be bad lighting, make-up or something.
BTW - why don't these Pubbies just STFU (pardon my French)??? I am so sick and tired of these idiots coming out against one thing or another that the President says or wants often before it's even to be proven TRUE!
Where is their party loyalty?
Where is their loyalty to the President who helped get a lot of them in office??
When are they going to start remembering President Regan's 11th commandment??
When are they going to learn to quit being such media hogs - -don't they know they're only going to be media darlings when they're bashing the Pres? Don't they know that the MSM is a wing of the DNC (and/or vice versa)??
When are they going to keep quiet and get out of the way and let the Dims bloviate and scream and obstruct so the American people can see them for who they really are??
When are they going to wake up and realize that it's a vicious circle - - they're separating themselves from the Pres because of his supposed 'low poll #'s) - -but they're partially responsible for those #s because of their constant harping??
//rant off
A Texas cowboy was tending to his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy... "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"
The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says,
''You have exactly 1586 cows and calves."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"
You're a consultant for the National Democratic Party," says the cowboy.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required," answered the cowboy, "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked; and you don't know anything about my business...
Now give me back my dog."
Good Rant!
My only quibble with what I consider an excellent post is that I think they felt all men are inherently corruptible, but not necessarily corrupt. You still need the checks and balances for exactly the same reasons, but that small change presents a less cynical way of expressing the same idea as well as embracing the basic optimistic realism of our founding fathers.. Reading Franklin, Paine and most of the others, while they recognize the failings men have, they are eternally optimistic about our ability to rise above those failings. Otherwise there is no point in the great experiment they created for us. But they always assume that you don't trust that the guy in charge has prevailed over man's evil nature until you verify it a bit. And even then you provide a countervailing power to any power you grant.
Very Reaganesque.
And John McCain's assault on First Amendment and specifically political speech is perhaps the greatest threat this republic has faced in many generations.
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