Y3Y3's Blog

Yes, We now have the gays - with that 'moral relativism' going after all those who are against them making a mockery of 'MARRIAGE" and forgetting that "Majority Rules" stuff.

They LOST AT THE POLLS because they didn't have the votes. They are a sick minority.

WAIT!!! It's the MORMON's Fault that gays are too self centered, and morally corrupt. It's the Mormons who dared to explain that tricky part about married couples(one of each sex) having kids whereas the 'marriage' that gays want is just the part where they tell EVERYONE they are GAY AND MARRIED.

The worst part, and the BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR GAYS, is that they argue on the basis of moral relativism, where everything is "OK" if YOU think it is. The gays are now having a bad sport loser type of tantrum, which makes them look like even bigger whiners and spoiled babies than before.

By Andrew Napolitano
FOX News Senior Judicial Analyst

When Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced at a press conference last week that he had changed his mind on what he had originally argued was the premise for the $700 billion bank bailout he obtained from the Congress, the markets reacted as they usually do when they sense instability: The Dow registered a remarkable 550 point drop in one day.

In his comments the secretary revealed that he did not purchase damaged mortgage assets, the acquisition of which by the government, he had argued, would remedy the credit crunch.

Bailouts violate the Equal Protection doctrine because the Congress can’t fairly pick and choose who to bail out and who to let expire.

Rather, he spent billions acquiring shares of stock in banks whose ledger sheets were in the black and some of whose officers attempted to decline his largesse. Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) have both since argued that the secretary simply cannot be trusted with the peoples’ money. Their anger and sense of betrayal is the tip of a congressional iceberg.

But history will be angry at them and their colleagues for betraying the Constitution. Their attitude underscores the reasons that the Constitution does not repose in the Congress the power to bail out individuals or private industry: Bailouts violate the Equal Protection doctrine because the Congress can’t fairly pick and choose who to bail out and who to let expire; they violate the General Welfare Clause because they benefit only a small group and not the general public; they violate the Due Process Clause because they interfere with contracts already entered into; and they turn the public treasury into a public trough. Worse still, Congress lacks the power to let someone else decide how to spend the peoples’ money.

As objectionable as the secretary’s change of mind has proven to be, as destabilizing as it was to the markets, as frustrating as it has been to the politicians who authorized it, it is not inconsistent with the statute that created the bailout because the Congress gave the Secretary the power to change his mind. It gave him, figuratively and literally, a blank check. In effect, the Congress delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury some of the power the Constitution has delegated to the Congress: The power to decide when, how, for whose benefit, and in what amounts taxpayer dollars should be spent.

This delegation of power to the secretary directly violates a basic principle of constitutional law: Delegated powers cannot be delegated away. The Constitution delegates to the Congress the power to write all federal laws specifically related to spending, to the president the power to enforce those laws (and he must spend as the Congress ordains), and to the courts the power to interpret the laws (and they usually stay away from issues of spending). The Congress can no more delegate to the secretary of the treasury the power to decide how to spend billions than the president could delegate to the Congress his power to appoint the secretary.

Congress can’t cede power to the executive branch because Congress and the president are powerless to change the delicate balance among the three branches of government which the Constitution created. Such an unconstitutional delegation of power — such a role reversal — is tantamount to a constitutional amendment which only two thirds of the Congress and three quarters of the states can enact.

The secretary of the treasury can spend all the peoples’ money he can get his hands on. He can buy all the stock he wants in all the solvent banks that don’t need it and don’t want government investments and the strings that come with them. He can bail out and try to manage all the corporations his advisers recommend whose executives made millions but lost billions. But he is exercising power unconstitutionally given to him by the Congress, procured with only ten hours of debate and hearings, and the very premise of which he unilaterally rejected afterwards.

The bitter fruit of this unconstitutional bailout is the line outside the secretary’s office today. At the head of that line are the CEOs of the Big Three automakers and the president of the United Auto Workers. Further back are agents of old line financial firms that just declared themselves to be banks, so they could stand in this line. Behind them are shameless captains of industry who couldn’t care less about the Constitution, but who want their share of the federal trough.

And on Capitol Hill awaits the Congress; ready, willing, and disdainful enough about the Constitution to write into law any quick fix it thinks it can get away with.

I find it sad that the Left has no clue as to doing RIGHT by the people who elected them.  Instead, we have a BUNCH of elected jerks who give away OUR HARD EARNED TAX DOLLARS to even more crooks, and poor performers as the inept car makes, and greedy lying banking and loan industries. 

We have been rewarding poor performance of our elected creeps BY RE-ELECTING THEM!!!  Hello???  When will you dumb JA's in the press DO YOUR JOB TO MAKE US AWARE OF IMPORTANT THINGS?  The Press shares ALL THE BLAME with the ignorant voters who displayed their lack of knowledge about 0bama and his platforms.

I don’t know about you, but these days it seems I spend most of my waking hours simply trying to keep my head from exploding. Sun up to sun down we’re battered by economic news, none of it very perky to be honest, while experts from the current administration, the incoming administration, the media and Punditville try to demonstrate their command of the situation.

Meanwhile the line for government bailout money keeps growing as new industries and companies shuffle up to Congress with tin cups and those big sad eyes previously seen only on velvet paintings of kittens.

Citigroup deftly showed other big companies how to play bailout bingo earlier this week. They got theirs in record time even though most of the nation didn’t know they were in trouble until a few minutes before the check was written. By the way, lost in the back pages of the Citi story is an interesting sidebar about former Citi director and senior advisor Robert Rubin.

In case you’re not familiar with Robert Rubin, he was treasury secretary during the Clinton Administration and joined Citi in 1999 as a trusted smart guy. How smart? Reporting shows he made somewhere in the region of $100 million while working with the organization. Rubin claims that he studiously avoided any daily management issues, in part because Citi over the past few years has had some bad management issues. So that $100 million wasn’t for management, it was for things like schmoozing, making big picture pronouncements, pondering and muttering smart things in the CEO’s ear while glancing furtively side to side.

He left in August of this year after helping to fill the bucket of poo but before it was thrown at the fan. Rubin’s also been working as an economic advisor to Obama’s transition team. It appears that several Rubin protégés, proponents of Rubinomics, are being positioned within the new Obama administration.

So here’s what I find amusing, in a curl-up-in-a-fetal-position-and-scream-loudly kind of way.

Remember during the campaign how this whole economic mess, according to the Obama camp, was the fault of the Bush administration and the past 8 years? They had all those excellent slogans… we can’t afford four more years of the same… remember? I don’t want to say that a lot of people bought that crap, but anytime you tried to talk about actual economic history and how this mess evolved, most people glazed over and muttered “past 8 years… more of same… must change.”

Well, just this Sunday while enjoying a piping hot cup of joe and a danish, I was reading through the Sunday papers. Being desirous of news from all sides, I always start with the New York Times. Eventually I finish up with Guns & Ammo. The Times had a story on the front page entitled Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk.

The story continued on the inside pages and on page 34, paragraph 15 of the story I came dangerously close to throwing myself off my deck. Here’s paragraph 15: “

When he (Robert Rubin) was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.”

Is the New York Times now suggesting that the Democrats might have had something to do with our current economic troubles? I mention this only because the Dems (to their credit) made piles of hay off the economic crisis leading up to election day… it was those damn Republicans and their addiction to deregulation. What a load of crap.

Imagine my surprise now, after the election, when the other side of the story gets a little play in the liberal press. Turns out the Obama camp might’ve put one over on us. Well played Obama campers.

Regardless, Citi executives apparently showed up to Congress with a better business plan than the fellas from the auto industry. The Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, were all set to write a check to GM, Ford and Chrysler when the latest poll numbers came in showing the public was strongly against the auto bailout. Upon seeing that, Pelosi and crew got tough and insisted on plenty of camera time so they could be seen asking super difficult questions like “What will you do with the money?” and “How many cup holders are in a 2006 Suburban?”.

The auto executives stared gormlessly into the faces of their inquisitors. It became uncomfortable to watch, a bit like old episodes of Mr. Ed where you have to watch Wilbur make a fool of himself yet again because the damn horse won’t ‘fess up to talking. When asked if they have a business plan, one of the auto executives, I believe it was Shemp, muttered “… been meanin’ to get me one of them.” Clearly things were not going well.

While those car guys got bupkus for now, I suspect Congress slipped them a note saying meet me in the alley and we’ll get something sorted out. According to PWB statistical research, the auto industry executives will receive assistance from the government once they figure out how to pull their heads out of their backsides. Wearing cheaper suits and carpooling to the next hearing will likely cement the deal.

There’s so much else to discuss this week but Bobo the talking intern just poked his head in the door and announced everyone is heading down to Buzzy’s lounge for redistribution of beer and wings. Tonight’s seminar at the lounge is entitled “Obama – the new Lincoln or the new FDR?” It’s part of the ongoing seminar series put on by Buzzy called “Crap that makes your head explode”. It’s been very popular.

Intern number two studiously clipped all the articles comparing Obama to Lincoln and she’ll weigh them against all the articles describing Obama as the new FDR. Intern number three will give a practical demonstration of just how much $700 billion is using nothing more than coasters and Slim Jims and then we’ll finish up with a rousing rendition of Those Were the Days. Finally, we’ll sit quietly staring into cold tasty beverages while remembering how the New Deal sent the US into a new recession back in 1938 before WWII showed up to revive the economy. By the way, last week’s question to the PWB faithful… “Bail or no bail?” It was a resounding victory for the No Bail crowd. Many of you pointed out that government assistance might be palatable if we had any confidence that the government could provide proper restrictions and oversight. Unfortunately, many of those same readers expressed doubt that the government could do either.

Not to worry. According to a Bloomberg News study, current bailout promises and planned expenditures only total approximately 7 trillion dollars. So there’s still time for fiscal prudence. As always, we look forward to your comments, thoughts and insight.

1. Liberals hate America.  For the record: Liberals love America. In fact, what makes us liberals is that we actually read and believed all those pretty words in the Declaration of Independence about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and in the Bill of Rights about freedom of speech, religion, assembly, privacy, and all the rest of it.(Thats what we SAY...but)

(We also want to TAKE YOUR GUNS, and, using the “Fairness Doctrine” remove the popular talk shows from commercial(Capitalist) radio.  Remember Liberals all think they know better.  After all, they think they are so smart and enlightened(even though they can’t ell you ONE THING 0bama did as a senator!)

2. Liberals want to leave us defenseless in the face of evildoers around the world. 
(See Jimmy Carter, Wesley Clarke, Bill Clinton)


3. Liberals hate the free market.
(see Unions, and “Fairness Docrine)

4. Liberals hate our troops.
(Murtha’s comments inserted here)


5. Liberals are a bunch of elitists who hate decent working- and middle-class Americans.
(See investigations by Liberals into “Joe the Plumber”) Listen to 0bama disparage Americans in speech in CA , or Liberal Senator from PA)

6. Liberals are against "family values."
(But FOR Killing the Unborn, yet against Capital Punishment, FOR gay Rights, but against Prayers in schools, FOR Social Engineering, but against The Scouts)


7. Liberals want to raise our taxes.
(see 0bamas 1.7 TRILLION in NEW SPENDING (which means NEW TAXES)

8. Liberals are Godless -- and therefore, amoral.
(See ACT UP, Gay Rights, Abortion)

9. Liberals don't believe in personal responsibility.
( See Gun activists speeches where ALL GUNS need to TAKEN because “Guns Kill People” – ignoring the fact that PEOPLE have to operate those guns for them to work)  They have policy to dictate about everything they want you to do.  (See California, Fires, Inability of owners to clear brush off OWN PROPERTIES – causing the fires to be much worse)

10. Liberals are wimps.
(See Jimmy Carter, Act Up, The French)

President-elect Barack Obama is looking very presidential these days. When he makes an announcement, he is ringed by American flags and stands behind a lectern that has a very presidential-looking placard announcing "The Office of the President-Elect." 

But the props are merely that. Under the Constitution, there is no such thing as the Office of the President-elect. Technically, Obama will not even become the president-elect until the Electoral College convenes after the second Wednesday in December and elects him based on the results of the Nov. 4 general election, as stated in the Constitution.

So what is Obama's executive authority in the weeks leading to Jan. 20?

In the 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, the next president must ensure a smooth transition by selecting political appointees to manage key agencies and offices within the Executive Branch, and by creating the policies that will define the new administration -- all while respecting the authority held by the current president.

The Presidential Transition Act -- created in 1963 and amended in 2000 -- establishes formal provisions for the transition period by outlining training and other assistance that the president-elect and his team of advisers can receive as they prepare to assume office.

The amended bill -- co-sponsored by lawmakers including former Sen. Fred Thompson, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and Sen. Dick Durbin -- calls for the "training and orientation of high-level presidential appointees," among other things, as well as more efficient background checks to ensure individuals are properly vetted and confirmed for office.

"New administrations face a series of hurdles they must overcome to accomplish this essential task before they can begin to govern," Lieberman told Congress in 1999 while arguing in favor of the amended legislation.

The original bill also allowed the president-elect and vice president-elect certain "services and facilities," like suitable office space to conduct transition operations, public funds to pay their staff's salaries and money to transport workers to and from Washington.

Obama has employed over 500 staffers to assist in his transition operations -- working from a nondescript office building in downtown Washington and from locations in his hometown of Chicago.

His transition team has received a budget of $12 million -- $5.2 million of which was allocated by Congress, and the rest from private donations of under $5,000.

As president-elect, Obama is also given the same highly classified intelligence briefings that President Bush receives on a daily basis. And Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden get full Secret Service protection, which Obama also received during the Democratic primaries and general election campaign.

But the "Office of the President-Elect," while critical in building the future government, has no official power -- which Obama himself acknowledged during his victory speech in Chicago on Election Night.

"It is an office -- it's just a quasi-government office for planning the takeover of the government," said Stephen J. Wayne, a professor at Georgetown University's department of government.

"Obama has no formal power as far as the existing government is concerned, but he has a lot of informal influence, which President Bush has encouraged," he added.

Wayne compared the function of the "Office of the President-Elect" to spring training in baseball.
"It doesn't count in the standings, but it does contribute to a team's ability to do well from day one," he said.

The extensive operations and considerable funding for Obama's transition office are not unique. President Bush received $8.5 million to fund his transition team -- a sum that was "unprecedented at the time," according to Georgetown University government professor Chris Hull.

"The Bush administration built their transition team a month before the election was over to make sure it would be a fully-functioning office on November 5," he said.

Despite its lack of formal power, some argue that the "Office of the President-Elect" must maintain an official and authoritative front -- even if just for show. This transition comes at a particularly vulnerable time for the U.S. government in protecting against terrorism -- as evidenced in 1993 when terrorists bombed the World Trade Center as former President Bill Clinton prepared to take office.

"President Bush and President-Elect Obama have stressed together that the times of transition are particularly perilous in terms of terrorist strikes," said Hull. "The President-Elect and his team must appear to maintain confidence."

DRIVING

Do you use your TURN SIGNALS to change lanes and make turns?  If NOT  - YOU ARE!
Do you go 10 miles slower than the other traffic IN THE LEFT LANE?? If NOT...YOU ARE!
Do you even LOOK into your rear view mirror to see if you are blocking traffic - If NOT...YOU ARE!

The lack of turn signals when changing lanes is considered as WEAVING IN TRAFFIC, and is probable cause to pull you over, and check for DRUGS, BOOZE, and even SEARCH YOUR CAR!


SHOPPING

Do you bring your ENTIRE FAMILY to shop at the grocery store on a weekend? 
Do you block the lanes in the store yacking with friends?
Do you park your cart in front of the counters and shelves to keep others from reaching the items on the shelves?
Do you talk loudly on your cell phone as you walk the isles of a store?
Do you let your bratty loud fat kids run free in stores/
Do you argue over a few cents or a coupon and hold up the entire line at a check-out line??

I'll have some more as I observe people being JERKS during the holidays...

OK so they were lying.  0bama will have little or NO EFFECT on the world situation, say his closest advisors.

ALREADY THEY ARE APOLOGIZING AND SPINNING HIS LOUSY TERM?   LOL

Obama Advisers To Public: Temper Expectations CHICAGO (CBS) ? President-elect Barack Obama and his inner circle fear that some voters expect him to turn around the economy, wind down the war in Iraq and, perhaps, cure cancer -- all by the Fourth of July.

They know they must manage and lower those expectations, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports.

A top economic advisor to Obama had a glum warning for the rest of us Thursday morning: Neither the job market nor the stock market will be turning around any time soon.

"This might be a long haul," said Robert Reich, who was President Bill Clinton's secretary of labor. "2009 is going to be a very hard year. Some economists say we won't be out of this for two years, others are saying it may be three, or four, maybe five years."

Now on Obama's transition team, Reich worries about what happens after the new president is sworn in Jan. 20.

"We all have to be very careful about the expectations that we are putting on this man, our president-elect," Reich said. "If we all assume it's going to be the first 100 days, we're going to be disappointed."

The man who was Obama's chief campaign strategist is moving to lower expectations, too.

"We are inheriting an array problems unlike any president has faced, maybe since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932," David Axelrod said. "It's not going to be easy, not going to be quick."

Rick Jasculca worked for President Jimmy Carter, President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton. He said Obama will need every bit of his skill as a communicator.

"If people see you reaching across the aisle and they see you making progress -- going forward rather than going backward -- I think people will give  you the benefit of the doubt," Jasculca said.

Added Axelrod: "One of his great strengths is he is never too high, he's never too low -- he's very focused."

That's why some called  him "No-Drama Obama." That has changed a bit, since the president-elect and his Chicago-based team of political operatives have begun to bring on board veteran Washington politicos.

Now there are stories quoting unnamed sources who claim, for example, that Obama's team is frustrated with Hillary Clinton's delay in taking the job of secretary of state. They're not happy with those stories.

"This is a great example of when there's a vacuum, the vacuum gets filled with a lot of speculation and hyperbole," Axelrod said. "No one is frustrated. No one is anguished. She's obviously a talented public servant and someone who'd enhance any team."

Transition aides said late Thursday that Obama plans to nominate Clinton for secretary of state formally after Thanksgiving.

the first guy put a bumper sticker on his car in August, the day after the convention.  He put it on his BMW. 

A week later, a second guy put a bumper sticker on HIS Volvo.

The campaign was ugly.  Finally, the election came and went.

The guy with the losers bumper sticker was carefully removed the 5th of November with a soaking with 1st water with some 409 in it, and later some rubbing alcohol to get the adhesive off.  At least HIS CAR wouldn't have a blemish that reduces the resale value.

The guy who had the winners bumper sticker on it decided to leave it on his car for the near future.  It was on all winter, and all through the next year. 

Finally, after a YEAR of that bumper sticker being on the BMW, the owner realized that with the problems the president was having, and his actions being what they were, that he just didn't want the bumper sticker on the Beemer anymore.  He tried soapy water, HOT WATER, and even special cleaners and removers.  NOTHING would get the paper backing on sticky layer off the back of the car.  Finally, he used a little steel wool and hot 409 and alcohol.  After a time it was finally off the car.  The spot, made by all the scrubbing was visible, even at dusk, and lowered the resale value of his car by 3000 bucks.

With all the expectations of a new and better administration, what we are getting is all the old, disgraced Clinton era fools, back again. 

I guess the promises were just BS......

Just like the promises of ALL the lying Politicians....

The IDIOTS

who run the Auto companies are
SO STUPID
,
they flew down in their
PRIVATE JETS

and Stayed in the
5 star hotels,

and took
LIMO's
to the Hearings,
where they
begged for money.



Chrysler shouldn't get ANYTHING!

They STUPIDLY hired the guy who almost ruined HOME DEPOT,
and let HIM run that company??
And it's tanking?? DUH! HELLO

MORONS ON THE AUTO Industries board of directors:

I'd say YOU ALL WERE TO BLAME FOR THIS.

The Union Thugs did
NOTHING TO HELP EITHER.
 
Unions serve
NO PURPOSE
as it relates to the
quality of the employees.
The Union thugs
have had it too good
for too long.

Make it a LAW that any industry, bailed out CAN'T HAVE UNION CONTRACTS.
They should suffer financial collapse like the businesses they
FORCED to use their lazy, high cost, low output workers.

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: On November 4, documentary filmmaker John Zeigler interviewed a dozen Obama supporters as they left the polls. He asked them simple questions about the campaign and politics in general. Here are some of their responses.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZEIGLER, FILMMAKER: Which party currently controls Congress?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Currently? Like — I don't know, actually.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Republicans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Republicans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Republicans.

ZEIGLER: Republicans control Congress?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yep.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Probably Republican because the president's Republican. That's my honest answer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's — it's Republicans who control it now, I believe.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Republicans?

ZEIGLER: Which political party currently controls Congress?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know.

ZEIGLER: You don't know?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

ZEIGLER: Which wore clothes that their party spent $150,000 on?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Palin.

ZEIGLER: Which has a pregnant teenage daughter?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Palin.

ZEIGLER: Which has a pregnant teenage daughter?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sarah Palin.

ZEIGLER: Which of the four candidates has a pregnant teenage daughter?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sarah Palin.

OBAMA: I've now been in 57 states. I think one left to go.

ZEIGLER: Which claimed to have campaigned in 57 states?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sarah Palin, I don't know.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fifty-seven states? Probably Sarah Palin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLMES: The same questions were asked in a nationwide Zogby poll of Obama voters. Some of the highlights were that, while 81 percent identified McCain as the candidate who forget how many houses he owned, only 42 could say which party controls the Congress.

Joining us now is former radio talk show host, documentary filmmaker and the producer of 'Blocking the Path to 9/11," John Zeigler.

How are you doing, John?

ZEIGLER: Doing all right, Alan. Give me your best shot.

COLMES: Moi? Look...

ZEIGLER: Yes. Go ahead.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Fire away, John.

COLMES: I just want to ask you this. If you were to go out and find McCain supporters, could you put together a similar documentary with those kind of wrong answers?

ZEIGLER: Not without the corresponding poll results, Alan. And here's the challenge I present to you and any other liberal. I will bet you the money that I spent on this video on this poll, which was about $13,000 for you to go out and do the same thing with McCain voters. And if you get the same poll results or worse, I will pay you your expenses. I will double your expenses.

COLMES: No, you fund my film first. I want the money first. I want it up front.

ZEIGLER: I'll be happy to do that up front, if you pay me back in double. You will not be able to duplicate the poll results with McCain voters. Not a chance in the world, Alan. And you know it.

COLMES: So your point is the people who voted for Barack Obama are a bunch of morons...

ZEIGLER: No.

COLMES: ... and the people who voted for John McCain are all bright, well-educated, knowledgeable human beings?

ZEIGLER: No, because that would, of course, be racist, like every other criticism of Barack Obama.

COLMES: That's not what I'm saying. I'm just asking you about your position.

ZEIGLER: But no. No, here's what I'm saying, Alan. What I'm saying is that the media coverage of this campaign was so scandalous, so beyond bias, into the realm of media malpractice, which is why I'm doing a documentary with that title — and that's why we did this film, at HowObamaGotElected.com — that the reality is the media coverage was so horrendous that Obama voters had no idea for what they were voting. They had no idea about some of the basic issues of the campaign, many of which you and Sean talked an awful lot about.

COLMES: So what you're saying. John, at least be honest and tell me, because what you're saying is you believe we stupidly elected Barack Obama. The people who did it, you think, are not that bright. If they knew anything they wouldn't have voted for him. Isn't that the point you're trying to make?

ZEIGLER: No, that's what you would like to believe, Alan. But the reality is, I think that every person that was interviewed on that video, which again you can find for yourself, 12 people who are very intelligent, very informed at HowObamaGotElected.com?

I, by the way, did not choose them. They were chosen by a black female, by the way, Alan. I had nothing to do with choosing the subjects for my — my documentary.

But the reality is these are not dumb people.

HANNITY: John...

ZEIGLER: That's a tragedy. They're not dumb people. They were misinformed by the media.

Yes, Sean.

HANNITY: For years on radio, for years on television, I do a bit. It's called man on the street. And this corroborates every single interview I've ever had.

It's frustrating to me how ill-informed people are, you know, that can cancel out our well-educated, well-informed vote. I mean, you look at the numbers here.

As much as I talked about the Weather Underground, 56 percent couldn't identify that Obama started his career in Ayers' house. Eighty-eight percent said that — could not correctly say that Obama, you know, wanted to eliminate the coal industry, as he said, as you point out. These questions are really fundamental and really basic.

ZEIGLER: Well, Sean — well, Sean, the important point here is the Zogby poll, which will come out in its entirety tomorrow, was a multiple choice question.

HANNITY: Yes.

ZEIGLER: This wasn't just off the top of your head. That means if you were guessing, if you were guessing, you would get 25 percent of them right, because we gave them the four choices of Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin. There are three questions on this list that a group of monkeys, if they had been guessing, would have done better than the Obama voters did.

HANNITY: Let me...

ZEIGLER: HowObamaGotElected.com.

HANNITY: One question — one question. Nearly 60 percent could not correctly say which party controls Congress. Now, that's frightening.

ZEIGLER: What else can you say?

HANNITY: That's pretty bad.

ZEIGLER: What can you say? HowObamaGotElected.com.

HANNITY: I've identified this as Obamania syndrome, and the media, I think, are the biggest culprits. Journalism died. And I suggest, for better — you know, from what I've seen of this documentary, it's pretty frightening, I've got to tell you, John. Thanks.

ZEIGLER: Thank you, Sean.

How the Consortium of News Organizations Conducted the Ballot Review

By FORD FESSENDEN

he ballot review project commissioned by eight media organizations tried to decipher 175,010 Florida ballots that went unexamined in last fall's presidential election and the ensuing recounts.
Beginning in Polk County in February and ending in Orlando in May, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago maneuvered a small army of 153 ballot examiners, or coders, through courthouses and office buildings across Florida's 67 counties to inspect the ballots.
The coders were there to discern what was on the ballots that so divided the parties and the courts, and kept a nation in a constitutional twilight for a month.
The ballot project was organized in December by The New York Times and joined by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Tribune Company, The Palm Beach Post, The St. Petersburg Times and The Associated Press, which shared the $900,000 cost.
The choreography of the ballot review was familiar to anyone who watched the spectacle of hand recounts that followed the election. Like dealers in a slow-motion blackjack game, county employees pulled ballots from precinct boxes one by one, turning them from back to front, flashing them in front of miniature photographic light tables that all the teams carried. The coders, squinting and craning, spent an average of 60 seconds on each before recording what they saw.

But the process was far different from last fall's in critical ways. The coders were not trying to decide whether a ballot showed evidence of intent to vote but simply recording as objectively as possible critical information about the marks they found. Were chads disrupted, and by how much? Were bubbles filled in, and in what fashion? Were there notes, X marks, editorial comments?
The coders made their judgments without consulting other coders. The method provided both a guard against inaccuracy and a measure of how difficult the dimples and scratches were to see.
Every undervote ó the name given to ballots with no machine-readable vote for president ó was viewed separately by three coders.
"Three coders gives us a good bit more accuracy than using one, or even two," said Kirk Wolter, senior vice president for statistics and methodology at the National Opinion Research Center.
On the more straightforward overvotes ó those that were rejected because the machine saw two or more punches or marks in the presidential race ó the research center used one coder, but only after running a test with three coders showing that the overvotes could be reliably recorded by one person.
The database produced by the research center was ultimately analyzed by consortium members using computer software designed by the members to sort the ballots based on rules and standards that might have been used by canvassing boards in a manual recount.
The coders were hired, screened and supervised by the research center. Political and demographic data on the coders was collected so researchers could study the ways hand-recounters worked.
When one coder began professing strong pro-Democratic views after the project was completed, the research center reviewed his work and found it was not tainted by partisanship ó he agreed with other coders 96 percent of the time, the average for all coders.
Dr. Wolter said the outcome proved that the information on a ballot could be reliably recorded by independent reviewers. Even working without consultation, they agreed more than 95 percent of the time.
But the project also showed the inherent difficulties of finding voter intent on punch-card ballots on which the chads are not dislodged. Using a standard that tried to count dimples as well as other marks, the research center found that coders agreed about 87 percent of the time. Using a less ambiguous standard ó a ballot with two corners of a chad dislodged ó and in optical-scan ballots, coders agreed more than 98 percent of the time, Dr. Wolter said.
"A dimple isn't any one thing," Dr. Wolter said. "There's a scale of dimples, from virtually no dimple at all to a more pronounced dimple that borders on detachment."
Dimples also revealed a partisan fissure among the coders: Republicans were more likely than Democrats to see dimples on Bush chads and less likely to see them on Gore chads, Dr. Wolter said. But the use of three coders, he said, would minimize the effect of such differences on the results.
Many county election supervisors initially resisted the ballot project. Some refused to separate the uncounted ballots. Charlotte County refused to put the ballots back through counting machines ó the best way to know which ones the machines could not read ó arguing in court that it would violate the Supreme Court's order to stop recounting the ballots.
A county judge dismissed the contention, and ultimately all the supervisors agreed to produce the ballots.
"There was never any dispute that ballots were public ó everyone accepted that fact," said Rachel Fugate, a lawyer with Holland & Knight in Tampa who represented The New York Times. "What we had to fight about was the manner in which they were produced for us."
In many places, supervisors found it difficult to find all the ballots that were uncounted on election night, even by running them through the machines. The problem was worst in punch-card counties, as chads dislodged and undervotes suddenly disappeared. Even in optical-scan counties, though, supervisors were often unable to exactly replicate the undervotes and overvotes from the election.
In all, the research center reviewed 175,010 ballots, more than 99 percent of the approximately 176,446 that were considered overvoted or undervoted in the certified vote total.

Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote

By FORD FESSENDEN and JOHN M. BRODER


comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.
Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.
Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff ó filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties ó Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.
But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots. This also assumes that county canvassing boards would have reached the same conclusions about the disputed ballots that the consortium's independent observers did. The findings indicate that Mr. Gore might have eked out a victory if he had pursued in court a course like the one he publicly advocated when he called on the state to "count all the votes."
In addition, the review found statistical support for the complaints of many voters, particularly elderly Democrats in Palm Beach County, who said in interviews after the election that confusing ballot designs may have led them to spoil their ballots by voting for more than one candidate.
More than 113,000 voters cast ballots for two or more presidential candidates. Of those, 75,000 chose Mr. Gore and a minor candidate; 29,000 chose Mr. Bush and a minor candidate. Because there was no clear indication of what the voters intended, those numbers were not included in the consortium's final tabulations.
Thus the most thorough examination of Florida's uncounted ballots provides ammunition for both sides in what remains the most disputed and mystifying presidential election in modern times. It illuminates in detail the weaknesses of Florida's system that prevented many from voting as they intended to. But it also provides support for the result that county election officials and the courts ultimately arrived at ó a Bush victory by the tiniest of margins.
The study, conducted over the last 10 months by a consortium of eight news organizations assisted by professional statisticians, examined numerous hypothetical ways of recounting the Florida ballots. Under some methods, Mr. Gore would have emerged the winner; in others, Mr. Bush. But in each one, the margin of victory was smaller than the 537- vote lead that state election officials ultimately awarded Mr. Bush.
For example, if Florida's 67 counties had carried out the hand recount of disputed ballots ordered by the Florida court on Dec. 8, applying the standards that election officials said they would have used, Mr. Bush would have emerged the victor by 493 votes. Florida officials had begun such a recount the next day, but the effort was halted that afternoon when the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 vote that a statewide recount using varying standards threatened "irreparable harm" to Mr. Bush.
But the consortium's study shows that Mr. Bush would have won even if the justices had not stepped in (and had further legal challenges not again changed the trajectory of the battle), answering one of the abiding mysteries of the Florida vote.
Even so, the media ballot review, carried out under rigorous rules far removed from the chaos and partisan heat of the post-election dispute, is unlikely to end the argument over the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. The race was so close that it is possible to get different results simply by applying different hypothetical vote-counting methods to the thousands of uncounted ballots. And in every case, the ballot review produced a result that was even closer than the official count ó a margin of perhaps four or five thousandths of one percent out of about six million ballots cast for president.
The consortium examined 175,010 ballots that vote-counting machines had rejected last November. Those included so-called undervotes, or ballots on which the machines could not discern a preference for president, and overvotes, those on which voters marked more than one candidate.
The examination then sought to judge what might have been considered a legal vote under various conditions ó from the strictest interpretation (a clearly punched hole) to the most liberal (a small indentation, or dimple, that indicated the voter was trying to punch a hole in the card). But even under the most inclusive standards, the review found that at most, 24,619 ballots could have been interpreted as legal votes.
The numbers reveal the flaws in Mr. Gore's post-election tactics and, in retrospect, why the Bush strategy of resisting county-by-county recounts was ultimately successful.
In a finding rich with irony, the results show that even if Mr. Gore had succeeded in his effort to force recounts of undervotes in the four Democratic counties, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia, he still would have lost, although by 225 votes rather than 537. An approach Mr. Gore and his lawyers rejected as impractical ó a statewide recount ó could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent.
Another complicating factor in the effort to untangle the result is the overseas absentee ballots that arrived after Election Day. A New York Times investigation earlier this year showed that 680 of the late- arriving ballots did not meet Florida's standards yet were still counted. The vast majority of those flawed ballots were accepted in counties that favored Mr. Bush, after an aggressive effort by Bush strategists to pressure officials to accept them.

A statistical analysis conducted for The Times determined that if all counties had followed state law in reviewing the absentee ballots, Mr. Gore would have picked up as many as 290 additional votes, enough to tip the election in Mr. Gore's favor in some of the situations studied in the statewide ballot review.
But Mr. Gore chose not to challenge these ballots because many were from members of the military overseas, and Mr. Gore did not want to be accused of seeking to invalidate votes of men and women in uniform.
Democrats invested heavily in get- out-the-vote programs across Florida, particularly among minorities, recent immigrants and retirees from the Northeast. But their efforts were foiled by confusing ballot designs in crucial counties that resulted in tens of thousands of Democratic voters spoiling their ballots. More than 150,000 of those spoiled ballots did not show evidence of voter intent even after independent observers closely examined them and the most inclusive definition of what constituted a valid vote was applied.
The majority of those ballots were spoiled because multiple choices were made for president, often, apparently, because voters were confused by the ballots. All were invalidated by county election officials and were excluded from the consortium count because there was no clear proof of voter intent, unless there were other clear signs of the voter's choice, like a matching name on the line for a write-in candidate.
In Duval County, for example, 20 percent of the ballots from African- American areas that went heavily for Mr. Gore were thrown out because voters followed instructions to mark a vote on every page of the ballot. In 62 precincts with black majorities in Duval County alone, nearly 3,000 people voted for Mr. Gore and a candidate whose name appeared on the second page of the ballot, thus spoiling their votes.
In Palm Beach County, 5,310 people, most of them probably confused by the infamous butterfly ballot, voted for Mr. Gore and Patrick J. Buchanan. The confusion affected Bush voters as well, but only 2,600 voted for Mr. Bush and another candidate.
The media consortium included The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post and CNN. The group hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in January to examine the ballots. The research group employed teams of three workers they called coders to examine each undervoted ballot and mark down what they saw in detail. Three coders provided a bulwark against inaccuracy or bias in the coding. For overvotes, one coder was used because there was seldom disagreement among examiners in a trial run using three coders.
The data produced by the ballot review allows scrutiny of the disputed Florida vote under a large number of situations and using a variety of different standards that might have applied in a hand recount, including the appearance of a dimple, a chad dangling by one or more corners and a cleanly punched card.
The difficulty of perceiving dimples or detached chads can be measured by the number of coders who saw them, but most of the ballot counts here are based on what a simple majority ó two out of three coders ó recorded.
The different standards mostly involved competing notions of what expresses voter intent on a punch card. The 29,974 ballots using optical scanning equipment were mostly interpreted using a single standard ó any unambiguous mark, whether a circle or a scribble or an X, on or near the candidate name was considered evidence of voter intent.
If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive "dimpled chad" standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin.
But the dimple standard was also the subject of the most disagreement among coders, and Mr. Bush fought the use of this standard in recounts in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami- Dade Counties. Many dimples were so light that only one coder saw them, and hundreds that were seen by two were not seen by three. In fact, counting dimples that three people saw would have given Mr. Gore a net of just 318 additional votes and kept Mr. Bush in the lead by 219.
Using the most restrictive standard ó the fully punched ballot card ó 5,252 new votes would have been added to the Florida total, producing a net gain of 652 votes for Mr. Gore, and a 115-vote victory margin.
All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the three coders agreed.
While these are fascinating findings, they do not represent a real- world situation. There was no set of circumstances in the fevered days after the election that would have produced a hand recount of all 175,000 overvotes and undervotes.
The Florida Supreme Court urged a statewide recount and ordered the state's 67 counties to begin a manual re-examination of the undervotes in a ruling issued Dec. 8 that left Mr. Gore and his allies elated.
The Florida court's 4-to-3 ruling rejected Mr. Gore's plea for selective recounts in four Democratic counties, but also Mr. Bush's demand for no recounts at all. Justice Barbara Pariente, in her oral remarks, asked, "Why wouldn't it be proper for any court, if they were going to order any relief, to count the undervotes in all of the counties where, at the very least, punch-card systems were operating?"
The court ultimately adopted her view, although extending it to all counties, including those using ballots marked by pen and read by optical scanning. Many counties immediately began the effort, applying different standards and, in some cases, including overvotes.
The United States Supreme Court stepped in only hours after the counting began, issuing an injunction to halt. Three days later, the justices overturned the Florida court's ruling, sealing Mr. Bush's election.
But what if the recounts had gone forward, as Mr. Gore and his lawyers had demanded?
The consortium asked all 67 counties what standard they would have used and what ballots they would have manually recounted. Combining that information with the detailed ballot examination found that Mr. Bush would have won the election, by 493 votes if two of the three coders agreed on what was on the ballot; by 389 counting only those ballots on which all three agreed.
The Florida Legislature earlier this year banned punch-card ballots statewide, directing counties to find a more reliable method. Many counties will use paper ballots scanned by computers at voting places that can give voters a second chance if their choices fail to register. In counties that use that technology, just 1 in 200 ballots had uncountable presidential votes, compared with 1 in 25 in punch-card counties.
Others will invest in computerized touch-screen machines that work like automated teller machines.
Kirk Wolter, who supervised the ballot review for the National Opinion Research Center, said that the study not only provided a comprehensive review of uncounted ballots in Florida but would help point the way toward more accurate and reliable voting systems. All data from the consortium recount is available on the Web at www.norc.org.
The review produced databases to study this election from a historical perspective, said Mr. Wolter, the research center's senior vice president for statistics and methodology, adding, "I hope in turn this can lead to voting reform and better ways of doing this in future elections."

Lets let the Auto manufacturers crash n burn!

The parts can be rebuilt as "US Auto", and the best of all 3 can produce a new breed of cars, not the overweight, poorly conceived junk they have been building for so long.  Fire the worst managers, and the lazy, inept workers.  build big trucks, small trucks and 5 models of cars. 

The 5 models would be:

1. luxury sedan
2. Caravan type thing
3. 5 passenger mid-car
4. sporty 4 passenger hot roddy type thng (Mustang-ish)
5 tiny green type thing

Also, the managers should get NO severance package as they let it happen!

The DEMOCRATSS are responsible for the saving and loan collapse.
The DEMOCRATS are responsible for the mortgage lender failures.
The DEMOCRATS are responsible for limiting our ability to drill for oil IN OUR OWN COUNTRY.
The Democrats are now giving away al the money in the treasury to reward MORE LOSERS!

It wasn't until President Bush dropped the ban from offshore drilling that the oil prices started going DOWN.  Pelosi & Reid decided that VACTION was more important than tackling the rest of the oil scam, which would have saved more of the average guys savings by a drop in gas prices.

I see it as two competing disasters which should have been avoided IF the DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP had actually been responsible, and DONE THEIR JOBS SINCE TAKING CONTROL IN JAN '07.  Frank, Dodd, Pelosi, Reid, Shumer and others should be ashamed.

Now we have a barge load of the horrid, self-centered, lying political hacks left over from the embarrassing Clinton years...BACK TO CONTINUE their game playing.  Only this time, we don't have a REPUBLICAN CONGRESS to control spending and keep the radical left in check.

The Dems are handing out YOUR MONEY TO POOR PERFORMING COMPANIES, and their inept management.

It looks like we are in for a GREAT DEPRESSION.  We will be able to blame the Democrats and 0bamas failed MARXIST POLICIES.   Just look at 0bamas home state for how bad things will get.  Look at ANY STATE where Liberal Democrats have been running things to see how bad it can get.  CALIFORNIA is the biggest failure.  Look how many taxes they pay, and how many regulations the businesses have to deal with.

I would much rather our government SAVE OUR TAX DOLLARS for important things - of which failing businesses ARE NOT.

We won't get any relief until 0bama is gone as he and his party have no realistic solutions, but are planning to do more of EXACTLY WHAT CAUSED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Also, the pure haters on the Democrat side want to impose all these social engineering changes too.  The Censorship Doctrine.   All to silence their critics.   Very sad, and very immature and emorion driven.    JUST WHAT WE DON'T NEED!