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Q: Where do you stand on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion emergency banking plan? A: Congress should pass the Paulson plan. 24 votes Congress should pass a modified version of the Paulson plan. 74 votes Congress should not pass the Paulson plan. 102 votes 200 votes total.

Protest the bailout. Fill out a new W-4 with "EXEMPT" on line 7. That way they can't steal any more of your money. After all if we lose our jobs and don't have any income we expect we will have no tax to pay.

Americans numbed by the daily barrage of politics-as-usual are about to be awakened by some new fireworks — Hollywood-style. Imagine documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and director David Zucker (Airplane! and The Naked Gun) in the center ring and you begin to get the idea. Zucker’s new movie, An American Carol (due in theaters Oct. 3), is a shot across Hollywood’s bow, aimed directly at Moore. No slouch in self-defense — or self-promotion — Moore will release his own online movie, Slacker Uprising, a few days before Zucker’s to reap the benefit of the backhanded buzz. The release of both films...

Many conservatives, including me, don't think a bailout is needed, but McCain has staked his campaign on the necessity of one. What do you think his rescue package (sounds better than "bailout") should contain, and what had better be kept out?

The move came as Russia's broadcast watchdog began hearings on whether or not to revoke the license of a cartoon network as punishment for transmitting episodes of South Park, The Simpsons and Family Guy. The American cartoons, all of which have adult themes, have been fallen foul of recently tightened extremism laws that critics say have been used to muzzle opponents of the Kremlin. The State Duma, Russia's parliament, said that the frequency given to the 2x2 cartoon channel would instead be given to new government network that "reflects the state position in the area of youth policy". In place...

PBS has a short video on Sarah Palin on their website. Also included is a poll that asks: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be VP? A few minutes ago it showed about 50-50. Let your opinion be known to this LIBERAL outfit..... You don't have to give your name or email address in order to vote. It's very simple. Here's the link: http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

OH Secretary of State fooling around with GOP absentee ballotsRick Moran September 24, 2008 This is pretty brazen even for a Democrat. It appears that Ohio's Secretary of State doesn't like Republicans very much. In fact, Jennifer Brunner has been referred to as the "most partisan" official in the state. That must explain why she is disqualifying thousands of Republican votes through some arrogant chicanery that would make Mayor Daley in Chicago proud as James Bronson of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports: * The John McCain campaign sent out more than 1 million applications for absentee ballots to Republicans. Each had...

John McCain's unexpected decision Wednesday afternoon to temporarily halt his campaign has thrown into doubt whether Friday's first presidential debate will go on as scheduled. McCain said he would stop campaigning and pull all his campaign ads after Thursday's appearance at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. But the idea was treated with a cold shoulder by his opponent, Barack Obama, as well as the nonpartisan debate organizers and the University of Mississippi, where the debate is scheduled to take place. "I believe we should continue to have the debate. I think it makes sense to present ourselves before...

Members of Congress are being exhorted to stampede, like lemmings in reverse, away from a postulated cliff. But some of the economic geographers who say they know that the cliff is there, and that the economy will plunge over it if Congress stops to think before empowering the secretary of the Treasury to control the flow of capital through the veins of American capitalism, are some of those experts who said in March that prophylactic federal intervention in the matter of Bear Stearns was necessary to contain the crisis. Everything that has been done for the last six months has...

President Bush, warning of the danger of a "long and painful recession," urged Congress to pass his administration's economic rescue package in a rare address to the nation Wednesday night. "We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and the federal government is responding with decisive action," he said. Bush said the $700 billion rescue package is not aimed at saving any one financial institution, but rather at "preserving America's economy." He cast the need for the package in personal terms, warning American taxpayers that their home values, their retirement accounts and their personal businesses could be at...

Bummer! I ordered a yard sign on the Internet, a beautiful McCain-PALIN sign! I vote! I live in America! I live in the deep South, even! But I also live in a covenanted community, a golf-course community full of stepford wives and pissy no-tolerance types who run the Homeowners' Association. And I just read the following on their web site: Section 15. Signs. No signs shall be displayed upon any Lot or Living Unit other than a sign identifying the name of the contractor during construction of a dwelling . . . provided said sign meets the design criteria of...

UTICA, New York - A majority of likely voters nationwide think Democrat Barack Obama is more intelligent than Republican John McCain, and a plurality believes Obama will come out on top in Friday's first debate of the 2008 general election season, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows. More than four out of 10 voters - 42% - said they think Obama will win the debate Friday, compared to 31% who said they think McCain will come out ahead on points. Another 27% said they are unsure who might win.

One of the most frequently asked questions about the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis is: How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even into the early 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later be. While President Carter in 1977 signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules. In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash...

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Former Marine lance corporal, Justin Sharratt, files suit against Congressman John MurthaSecond defamation suit to be filed by a Marine who Murtha said "murdered innocent civilians in cold-blood". Sharratt is a constituent of Murtha in Pennsylvania's 12th District. Press conferences tomorrow. Developing. Story to follow.

I’ll be the first to admit it. I’ll laugh at myself on this one so that you guys don’t have to. John McCain wasn’t sacrificing anything by suspending his campaign. He was calling “Vegas Harry’s” bluff. Senator Reid opined that he could read minds when he offered up the following bit of “truthiness” regarding Senator McCain’s position on the bailout. “I got some good news in the last hour or so … it appears that Sen. McCain is going to come out for this,” Reid announced. It seems Reid had described McCain’s actual position about as accurately as Senator Joseph...

On an earlier thread (Laura Bush: Palin lacks foreign policy experience (AP spin and not even close to accurate)), Freeper nuvista revealed that the Associated Press took a Laura Bush/CNN interview and deliberately distorted it to make a hitpiece they could spread all over the Net. Unfortunately, YouTube has a copy of the very same interview, proving beyond a doubt that the interview was distorted to make Laura Bush "say" something she didn't say: YouTube: Laura Bush: "Thrilled" About Sarah Palin Upon searching for the anonymous AP author of the hitpiece, I discovered that Dan Eggen of The Washington Post...

( WASHINGTON, DC ) – U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) introduced legislation today that would effectively move the United Nations headquarters out of the United States. The legislation is being introduced amid incessant anti-American and anti-Jewish political grandstanding from the podium of the General Assembly. “The U.N. has coddled brutal dictators, anti-Semites, state sponsors of terrorism, and nuclear proliferators – while excluding democratic countries from membership and turning a blind eye to humanitarian tragedies and gross violations of human rights around the globe,” Tancredo said. “The U.N.’s continued presence in the United States is an embarrassment to our nation, and...

Aloha, Doha. Begun in November 2001 in Qatar's capital, these trade negotiations came to be known as the Doha Developmental Agenda, with the intent to accomplish a 150-nation deal to aid developing nations.Planned to conclude in January 2005, Doha was in overtime longer than it was on time. There have been many excuses for its failure, but in the end it was undermined by its own overreach. As bleak as international trade's future now appears, Doha's failure actually offers the best chance to begin again and to begin aright. Doha's July 29 collapse punctuated the third consecutive summer in which...

In October 1969, Bill Clinton wrote an extraordinarily revealing letter to the colonel who helped him use an Arkansas ROTC program he never ended up joining to evade the draft for the Vietnam War. The key passage: The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life ... I think right now Bill Clinton thinks he's figured...