FLYPOLBUZZ

Morning News Roundup - February 11, 2009

2009-02-11T06:32:00.011-06:00

Bankers to appear before dubious Congress

...Eight chief executives will slip behind a witness table in the Rayburn House Office Building on Wednesday morning to face a battery of questions about how they have used more than $160 billion in taxpayers' money.
In prepared testimony, the CEOs applauded the program for making more loans available and promised to pay their share of the money back to the Treasury over time.
...At least one banker sounded almost contrite.
"Many people believe — and, in many cases, justifiably so — that Wall Street lost sight of its larger public obligations and allowed certain trends and practices to undermine the financial system's stability," said Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and CEO of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Geithner's highly awaited overhaul of the rescue program would leverage more than $2 trillion for the banking system and impose stricter accountability standards on banks and their executives. But it wasn't enough to dispel Wall Street anxieties or silence congressional doubters.
..."I have to be honest with you," Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., told him. "A lot of questions still remain unanswered. A lot of details are necessary before I can give it my support."
Those doubts are sure to arise Wednesday when Blankfein and the CEOs of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo and Co., Morgan Stanley, State Street Corp. and the Bank of New York Mellon appear before the House Financial Services Committee.
... A government watchdog reported last week that the Treasury under Bush overpaid the banks for the assets it obtained in exchange for the capital infusion.
...Wells Fargo, which acquired Wachovia on Dec. 31, reported that it had reopened lines of credit to some Wachovia customers who had been denied credit. It also reported $22 billion in new loan commitments and $50 billion in mortgages in the last quarter of 2008.

From ABC News

Negotiators hoped to seal agreement on President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package Wednesday after making good progress in the first rounds of closed-door talks.
Obama's negotiating team insisted on restoring some lost funding for school construction projects as talks began Tuesday in hopes of striking a quick agreement, but by late in the day it appeared resigned to losing up to $40 billion in aid to state governments.
Earlier Tuesday, the Senate sailed to approval of its $838 billion economic stimulus bill, but with only three moderate Republicans signing on and then demanding the bill's cost go down when the final version emerges from negotiations.
..."That's in the ballpark," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said of the $800 billion figure late Tuesday.
Baucus had said earlier that $35.5 billion to provide a $15,000 homebuyer tax credit, approved in the Senate last week, would be cut back. There was also pressure to reduce a Senate-passed tax break for new car buyers, according to Democratic officials.
Within hours of the 61-37 Senate vote, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and other top Obama aides met in the Capitol with Democratic leaders as well as moderate senators from both parties whose support looms as crucial for any eventual agreement.
House Democratic leaders promised to fight to restore some of $16 billion for school construction cut by the Senate. Those funds could create more than 100,000 jobs, according to Will Straw, an economist at the liberal Center for American Progress.
...House leaders are tempering expectations that they'll restore many of the cuts.
"You cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the effective and of the necessary, and we will not," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
While they're fighting to preserve cuts to Obama priorities, Specter is fighting to preserve an enormous $10 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health, while Collins obtained $870 million for community health centers in talks last week.

From The Washington Post

If the House version of the federal stimulus package becomes law, Ohio will save 300 youth services jobs, 130 more in addiction counseling and at least 20 positions for aides who provide a respite to relatives of Alzheimer's patients. It would mean keeping as many as 8,000 children in state-supported child care and saving 500 corrections jobs in a state where prisons are well over capacity.
If the Senate version triumphs, all of those jobs and subsidies -- plus many more -- will disappear, said Gov. Ted Strickland (D), who has joined with other governors to press members of Congress to back the more generous House approach.
The two chambers began to resolve their differences yesterday on how much money to send to states and other sticking points, after the Senate passed an $838 billion stimulus package. Senate and House leaders played down discrepancies between the two versions, saying that both would provide a boost to the economy and that an agreement on a final bill could come as soon as the end of the week.
But for states, the differences are potentially enormous. The House included $79 billion in direct aid to states, $40 billion more than the Senate, and governors are counting on that money to help balance budgets that are billions in the red.
...The Senate halved the $79 billion as part of a deal to win the support of centrists in both parties who doubted the value and necessity of untargeted aid to states. Some Republicans also had ideological objections, based on a belief in tax cuts and skepticism about expanding the federal government's role in local projects such as school construction.
...The House bill provided $39 billion for state education budgets, $15 billion for incentive grants and innovation, and $25 billion that governors could use at their discretion. The Senate cut the education aid to $31.3 billion and the incentive money to $7.5 billion, and it eliminated the $25 billion in discretionary funding.
...In the budget he delivered this month, Strickland estimated that Ohio would receive $3.4 billion from the federal government for general expenses over the next two years. If the Senate version passes, he said, that number would drop to $2.5 billion or less.
Strickland's office reported that without the extra money, 51,000 fewer Ohioans would receive mental health services, 40 percent of college students would pay more tuition and 17,000 needy young people would not get help.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) worried that $500 million in aid not included in the Senate version would mean cuts in higher education, human services and corrections. Special assistant Dick Thompson described the governor's staff as "pretty disappointed" but not giving up.

From Israel Today

Israeli parties reject power-sharing compromise
Senior members of Israel's Kadima and Likud parties, which finished nearly even in Tuesday's general election, rejected the idea of a rotating premiership.
While Kadima won one more seat than Likud (28-27) in the next Knesset, overall the right-wing bloc ended much stronger than Livni's allied parties on the left (65-44), leaving much confusion over whom President Shimon Peres should choose to form the next government.
Israel solved a similar situation following the 1984 general election by forming a unity coalition between Likud and Labor that saw Yitzhak Shamir and then-Labor leader Peres serve two years each as prime minister.
But senior Kadima lawmaker Meir Sheetrit told Army Radio on Wednesday that such a solution today would be a gimmick at the expense of the Israeli public, and is rejected by his party.
Silvan Shalom, number 2 on the Likud list, told Army Radio that his party also sees no need for a power-sharing government, since such solutions are only called for when there is an equal balance between right and left, and Tuesday's election clearly put the right-wing on top.

The Daily Pundit Roundup from Daily
Kos

Morning News Roundup - February 10, 2009

2009-02-09T21:06:00.012-06:00

From The Washington Post

President Obama declared last night in his first prime-time news conference that the task of saving and creating jobs is more important than cultivating the bipartisan cooperation he promised to bring to Washington, and he pressed his case for the massive economic stimulus plan working its way through Congress.
Warning that inaction could "turn a crisis into a catastrophe," Obama rejected criticism from Republicans about the legislation's effect on the federal deficit, noting that government debt had ballooned on his predecessor's watch. Although he called for lawmakers to break out of their "ideological rigidity," he was unapologetic as he pushed a package with a cost of more than $800 billion that has so far drawn only nominal Republican support.
"I can't afford to see Congress play the usual political games. What we have to do right now is deliver for the American people," Obama said just hours after the legislation narrowly cleared a key procedural hurdle in the Senate, where it is likely to gain final passage today.
..."So, you know, we can differ on some of the particulars, but again, the question I think that the American people are asking is: Do you just want government to do nothing, or do you want it to do something? If you want it to do something, then we can have a conversation," he said. "But doing nothing -- that's not an option, from my perspective." Obama defended the role of government in the recovery process, saying that "with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life."
The president fielded 13 questions from reporters in his first wide-ranging session since he took office, touching briefly on foreign policy, his long-range agenda and sports.

...In a brief foray into foreign policy, Obama said with regard to Iran that the administration "will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table, face-to-face diplomatic overtures" with the Islamic republic. He said that "there's been a lot of mistrust built up over the years, so it's not going to happen overnight" and that "even as we engage in this direct diplomacy, we are very clear about certain deep concerns" about Iranian links to militant groups and possible pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
In stark contrast to former president George W. Bush, Obama did not say that the United States would refuse to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. Instead, he all but invited Iran to signal that it, too, is interested in talks. "Now it's time for Iran to send some signals that it wants to act differently, as well, and recognize that, even as it has some rights as a member of the international community, with those rights come responsibilities," he said.
The news conference ended a day of action on the stimulus package: Obama traveled to Elkhart, Ind., to promote the legislation as it made its way toward the Senate floor, clearing a procedural hurdle by a vote of 61 to 36 that set the stage for final passage today.
...Asked about a new proposal to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the potential misdeeds of the Bush administration, Obama demurred, saying he has not yet seen its details.
... Obama's remarks on partisanship -- a gridlock he once vowed to break as part of his signature campaign promise -- were perhaps most striking. ..."In terms of the historic record here, the Republicans were brought in early and were consulted. And you'll remember that, when we initially introduced our framework, they were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cuts that were presented in that framework.
...Obama swiftly dismissed claims of fiscal irresponsibility, saying: "It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks, about this recovery package, after they presided over a doubling of the national debt. I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility."
...Obama will add a new twist when he travels today to Fort Myers, Fla.: He will be introduced at his town hall meeting by Gov. Charlie Crist, one of the few Republicans who are backing the plan in the face of conservative complaints about its size and scope and that it does not rely more heavily on tax cuts. Crist issued a joint statement with Obama yesterday in which he praised the president for continuing to "work hard to reignite the U.S. economy."

From Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama signaled he would be open to seeking an expansion of the $700 billion financial-rescue program should the plan fail to restore stability to the U.S. banking system.
“We don’t know yet whether we’re going to need additional money or how much additional money we’ll need until we’ve seen how successful we are at restoring a sense of confidence in the marketplace,” Obama said in a news conference last night in Washington.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today will announce an overhaul of the bank-bailout fund. The plan, which so far won’t seek additional government money, is designed to support about $1.5 trillion in new lending and handling of distressed assets. It has three main components: more capital for banks, financing for as much as $1 trillion of consumer and business loans, and public financing for investors willing to buy the distressed assets, people familiar with the matter said.
...“The financial system is working against recovery, and that’s the dangerous dynamic we need to change,” Geithner said in remarks prepared for delivery today. “Without credit, economies cannot grow, and right now, critical parts of our financial system are damaged.”
Geithner, whose announcement is scheduled for 11 a.m. in Washington, will also rename the $700 billion TARP fund, which will be known as the Financial Stability Plan. Among the plan’s other components is $50 billion for measures to stem mortgage foreclosures, Republican and a Democratic congressional aides said after Treasury officials briefed lawmakers and staff members yesterday.
“We are going to have to work with the banks in an effective way to clean up their balance sheets so that some trust is restored within the marketplace,” Obama said in his first prime-time news briefing. At “any given bank they’re not sure what kinds of losses are there. We’ve got to open things up and restore some trust.”
...“The American people have lost faith in the leaders of our financial institutions” and are skeptical of the rescue spending so far, Geithner will say today.
...“To kick-start new lending, the Financial Stability Plan will expand a Federal Reserve program for consumer and business loans to as much as $1 trillion from the current $200 billion. The Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility will be backed by as much as $100 billion of Treasury funds in case of losses.

From BBC News

Obama warning on Pakistan 'haven'
US President Barack Obama has said his administration will not allow "safe havens" for militants in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama's comments at his first White House prime-time news conference came as his envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, arrived in Pakistan.
Mr Holbrooke, who said he was there to "listen and learn" about the region, began key meetings on Tuesday.
Mr Holbrooke earlier said the situation in Pakistan was "dire".
..."My bottom line is that we cannot allow al-Qaeda to operate," he said. "We cannot have those safe havens in that region."
Mr Obama added: "We're going to have to work both smartly and effectively, but with consistency in order to make sure that those safe havens don't exist."
The US president said he had appointed Mr Holbrooke as a special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan to give a new focus to dealing with terrorism.
"I've sent over Richard Holbrooke - one of our top diplomats - to evaluate a regional approach," he said. "We are going to need more effective coordination of our military efforts with diplomatic efforts, with development efforts, with more effective coordination with our allies in order for us to be successful."
Mr Obama said he had no schedule for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
"I do not have yet a timetable for how long that's going to take. What I know is... I'm not going to allow al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden to operate with impunity, planning attacks on the US homeland."
Mr Holbrooke met Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday and will later meet President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.
...The envoy is likely to restate the need for Pakistan to do more to tackle militants and express concern over the recent release of disgraced nuclear scientist AQ Khan from house arrest.
Pakistan in turn has repeatedly criticised US drone attacks on militants in its territory.
...Mr Holbrooke will stay in Pakistan until Thursday and is due to visit Afghanistan and India.

From Reuters UK

By Joseph Nasr
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israelis voted on Tuesday in a tight election race, with right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu bidding to oust the centrist party of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
The short campaign was overshadowed by Israel's January war with Palestinian militants in Gaza. The key issue facing voters is which leader can best assure the security of the state while chances of a peace deal seem remote.
Likud party leader Netanyahu, once a clear frontrunner in opinion polls, has lost ground to Livni since the 22-day war last month in which 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. The two leaders were locked in a statistical dead heat.
Livni has led the stalled peace talks with Palestinians on a two-state solution which U.S. President Barack Obama wants to resume. Netanyahu has vowed not to cede Arab East Jerusalem, where Palestinians want to site the capital of a future state.
"It'll be a big day. We'll have a good victory," Netanyahu said in Jerusalem where he cast his vote.
Ultra-rightist Avigdor Lieberman, a potential spoiler for Netanyahu, has soared in the polls. His Yisrael Beiteinu party pledges to get tougher with Palestinians, including Israeli Arab citizens, and keep Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
...Defense Minister Ehud Barak of the once dominant Labor party was trailing in fourth place, though his poll numbers have more than doubled since the Gaza war. He reminded voters that Labor was the only genuine left-wing party in the race.
...In Gaza, where 1,300 people were killed in the 22-day Israeli offensive, Palestinians said they were sure it would make no difference to their lives whoever wins the election. And in the occupied West Bank, from which Israel barred Palestinians traveling, there was similar indifference.
The election could be determined by how smaller parties do. Up to 15 percent of voters were undecided in the final days of campaigning, pollsters said. Some 5.3 million people are eligible to vote, in 9,000 polling stations nationwide.
"The trend we've seen the last few days indicates a very close battle," said pollster Rafi Smith of the Smith Research Center. "No one has jumped ahead and it's tough to call."
Israelis vote by party, and parliament seats are allocated by proportional representation to national party lists. The party with most votes usually is called to form the government.
...Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the outgoing leader who quit in a corruption probe in September, would stay on as caretaker premier until a new cabinet is sworn in.
Foreign Minister Livni, 50, formerly of the Mossad intelligence agency, would be the first female prime minister since Golda Meir in the 1970s.
Netanyahu, 59, a former finance minister, and Barak, 66, a former general, have served previously as premiers.
....The left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said Netanyahu and Livni were not ideal candidates but threw its weight behind Livni given her support for the peace process with Palestinians --- "the most important issue at stake."
Underscoring the enduring conflict, Israel has closed the doors to the occupied West Bank, denying Palestinians entry to the country for the duration of the election, the army said. Some 16,000 police were deployed nationwide for extra security.

The Daily Kos Pudit Roundup Here

Morning News Roundup - February 9, 2009

2009-02-09T06:33:00.010-06:00

From The Washington Post

Senior Obama administration officials sought to intensify pressure on Congress yesterday to pass a massive stimulus package for the crumbling economy, warning lawmakers of the consequences of delay while rescheduling the unveiling of their financial rescue plan to keep the spotlight on Capitol Hill.
...The Senate will hold a key procedural vote today on the stimulus package to determine whether a compromise struck this weekend, which removed about $100 billion in spending from the bill, will persuade enough Republicans to support the measure.
...President Obama plans to fly today to Elkhart, Ind., where the unemployment rate has soared to 15.3 percent -- about twice the national average -- before holding a prime-time news conference to urge congressional leaders to quickly reconcile the two versions of the bill.
The administration's top economic officials said yesterday that, as negotiations on the stimulus bill progress, Obama is interested in restoring support for education and for cash-strapped state and local governments -- measures that were stripped out in the Senate version of the plan.
To persuade enough moderate Republicans to vote for the measure, leaders also added tax credits for home and auto purchases, and provided relief from the alternative minimum tax.
..."The most important thing is to get this done for the sake of an economy that lost 600,000 jobs in one month," Lawrence H. Summers, director of the National Economic Council, said yesterday on ABC's "This Week."
The plan has come under intense criticism from many Republicans, who have called it unfocused and wasteful. They also have complained that they have been locked out of the bill-writing process, despite Obama's public efforts to reach out to Republicans.
..."You need to get it right. You don't want to spend these precious taxpayer dollars in the wrong way," Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Christina D. Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned that if a large stimulus plan were not enacted, it would have a "catastrophic" impact on the economy. "I feel very strongly it's in our hands, that if we can get this package through, we can turn it around and be back on the road to growth," Romer said on CBS.
...Administration officials have emphasized that the economy needs both the stimulus package, which is aimed at creating millions of jobs and reviving consumer spending, and the financial system rescue plan, which is supposed to loosen the credit markets that provide the loans for homes, cars and businesses.

From The New York Times

WASHINGTON —
...In an effort to build support for his signature economic stimulus plan, Mr. Obama is setting off for Indiana on Monday, holding his first prime-time news conference on Monday night and heading to Florida on Tuesday. In both states, he will be working to counter Republican criticism of his $800 billion recovery package and take greater control of the debate.
...For the first 20 days of his presidency, Mr. Obama has been captive to the fixtures of government, dashing from the White House to Capitol Hill to a series of agencies for an early look at his administration. The images, while presidential, bore only a faint resemblance to the man who charmed voters with an outside-of-Washington persona.
...Since moving into the White House on Jan. 20, he has enjoyed a series of firsts, including sitting in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday night and flying aboard Marine One to the presidential retreat at Camp David on Saturday.
...On Monday night, Mr. Obama will address the nation for the first time in a prime-time appearance from the East Room of the White House and make his argument for why the economic bill is necessary. When he does, aides said, he will recount his visit earlier in the day to Elkhart, Ind., a city he visited twice during the presidential race that has seen its unemployment rate rise to 15.3 percent, largely because of layoffs in the recreational vehicle industry.
“They’ve watched their unemployment triple,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. “This isn’t just something that people debate. It’s something that they live every day.”
Mr. Obama is set to meet with the mayor, Dick Moore, who has assembled a list of 18 construction projects, from rebuilding runways at the local airport to upgrading sewer systems, that he said could help create 2,300 jobs.
...To members of Congress who have yet to say how they intend to vote on the economic stimulus plan — including Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana — a bit of high-profile arm-twisting by the president will not go unnoticed on Capitol Hill. The White House is taking six members of Congress along for the ride on Monday, including one Republican, Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, whose vote the president is trying to win.
In Washington, the White House prepared Sunday for its first major presidential trip and a week that could help define Mr. Obama’s presidency with the votes on the economic bills.

From The USA Today

NEW YORK — Wall Street is hoping that the latest government intervention to fix banks and stimulate the economy will do what earlier rescue attempts could not: pave the way for a lasting stock market recovery.
This could be the most pivotal week of the year for investors. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is slated Tuesday to roll out the Obama administration's revamped plan to rehabilitate the nation's ailing banking system.
Investors will also be closely eyeing an expected Senate vote on a massive stimulus plan designed to boost the economy and create jobs.
Stocks began rallying last week amid hopes that the roughly $800 billion stimulus bill would get passed and that the bank plan will have the ingredients needed to restore confidence to the financial system, get credit flowing again and provide help to homeowners facing foreclosure.
The big question is whether the 5.2% gain last week for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is the start of a full-fledged stock rebound or just another failed rally built simply on hope.
...The four major rallies since March 2008 — when the government orchestrated the JPMorgan Chase rescue of Bear Stearns — have all been brief and have been followed by fresh bear market lows for stocks soon after, Strategas Research Partners says.
...Learning details of the various plans could rid the market of paralyzing uncertainty, adds Jim Paulsen at Wells Capital Management: "At least for a while, the future looks more clear."

...AND of course the Daily Pundit Roundup from Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/9/71333/84687/514/695108

Walk the Line!

2006-12-10T12:11:00.000-06:00

Now that the Democrats have taken back the Congress, there is some light at the end of the tunnel, but never underestimate the power of the Republicans to dynamite said tunnel and bring the darkness back. The Democrats must walk the fine line of investigating the huge amount of corruption and possible treasonous activities, without appearing to be obsessed with it. In two short years the 2008 elections will be here and the Dems have a good chance to strengthen their small majorities and recapture the White House, creating a platform to restore many of the environmental, social, and regulatory items that have been stripped away in the past 10 years.
The investigations are sure to lead to Iraq where one third of rebuilding contracts are under criminal investigation, according to U.S. Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen, who is in charge of auditing Iraq's faltering reconstruction since 2004.
The pipelines that are meant to take the oil north have been blown up, so the only way to export it is by road. "That leaves it vulnerable to smuggling," he said, as truckers sell their cargoes on the black market.
Mr Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir), cites Iraqi figures showing that the "virtual pandemic" of corruption costs the country $4 billion a year, with a lot of the money going straight to the Iraqi government's enemies. A U.S. government report has concluded that oil smuggling abetted by corrupt Iraqi officials is netting insurgents $100 million a year, making them financially self-sustaining.
Mr Bowen's office has found that the insurgents and militias have also been abetted by US incompetence. A culture of waste, incompetence and fraud may be one legacy the occupiers have passed on to Iraq's new leaders. Mr Bowen's office found that nearly $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenues could not be accounted for. The cash was flown into the country in shrink-wrapped bundles on military transport planes and handed over by the ton to Iraqi ministries by the Coalition Provisional Authority run by Paul Bremer, a veteran diplomat. But it also fuelled a cycle of corruption left over from Saddam Hussein's rule. A potentially far more serious problem has been the way the US government decided to give out reconstruction contracts. It split the economy into sectors and shared them out among nine big US corporations. The no-bid contracts were set up on a cost-plus basis that guaranteed a profit margin calculated as a percentage of costs, creating huge incentives to pad the costs and therefore the profits. In the rush to get work started the contracts were signed early in 2004. In many cases work did not get under way until the year was nearly over with the contractors racking up huge bills on wages, hotel bills and restaurants. Just as the Republican Congress shirked its oversight responsibilities of the White House, Bush’s cronies have been placed in charge of protecting our tax dollars instead of responsible caretakers. Inspector Bowen campaigned for George Bush in Texas and was one of the small army of Republican lawyers called in to Florida in 2000 to oversee the vote recounts on Mr Bush's behalf. When he started the job in March 2004, few expected he would do anything to embarrass the administration However, Mr. Bowen has emerged as the scourge of the big corporations who are among the Republican party's biggest donors. An attempt was made earlier this year to strip his mandate, but the Democrat victory last month seems to have kept him intact, showing the importance of true oversight in our government.
Predictions for 2008 political season here in Dec. 2006. Hillary will beat out fellow Dem candidate retired General Wesley Clark from Arkansas for the Nomination, and then announce him as her running mate, alleviating a lot of concern amongst people that don’t think a woman should be commandeer in-chief. Clark, a former commander of NATO forces in Bosnia, should help down South, and Hillary will go on to take the White House. The Republicans will put up Guiliani, Romney, and others, with John McCain taking the nomination. It will be close, but Hillary will hold her own against the flip-flopping ex-Maverick, who sold out and thoroughly browned his nose up in W’s derriere. 2008 should prove to be an exciting and pivotal year in America’s future. If the Dems don’t step up to the plate and get some hits, the U.S. will rapidly continue its slide into mediocrity and diminished capacity. Good night and good luck.

Too late to wash off the blood- Neocons....

2006-11-19T13:04:00.000-06:00

The hundreds of thousands of dead, the tens of thousands of severely maimed Iraqi civilians and American soldiers and contractors, and now the Neocons are running as far away as possible from the Iraq debacle....they're trying to pin the tail on the donkey that is our president, but they bear a heavy burden for promoting this war. The PNAC (Project for a New American Century) was founded in the mid-90's as a group that pomoted U.S. intervention in Iraq and the world at large. As the sole superpower, they thought it was in our best interest to go abroad and impose our freedom and democracy on anyone who would dare to reject it. It was our duty as the good cop of the world to impose American rules on sovereign countries, regardless of whether they posed an imminent threat to us or not. They wrote to and tried handily to get Clinton to invade Iraq, and although Clinton refused, he did give them a lot of bombing and no fly zones over Iraq as a bone to chew on until they got a president that would do their bidding...with the oil boys having their own agenda to go into Iraq (Paul O'Neil and other Republican insiders have confirmed that there were plans to invade Iraq from day one of the administration) the Neocons were the finger on the scale that put us over the top and into the war. Within days of 9/11, they were in perfect concert with the White House and the entire Congress, repeating the lies so frequently, that the media and a lot of Dems feared speaking out. Richard Perle, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Kenneth Adelman....you were co-conspirators in starting this illegal war and whether you are criminally charged or not, you will pay the price in any Karmic response to your involvement...

James Baker-Statesman or Traitor? Media complicity continues.

2006-11-19T10:00:00.000-06:00

It's no secret the close ties between the Bush dynasty and the Saudi Arabian royalty....as part of the Bush inner-circle, James Baker has profited greatly from his relationship with the oil sheiks to the tune of $200 million or more according to Carlyle Group investments. Right now the media is exhibiting its usual shallowness and lack of in-depth reporting, feeding into the Bush administrations plan to override the Democrats. The American public didn't just elect the Democrats as a check to the Bush administration, in order for Poppy Bush's ax-man to come in and set the agenda for our foreign policy. As we speak, Baker's law firm is representing the Saudis against a lawsuit filed by the 9/11 families. I haven't checked, but my guess is that a Lexis Nexis search would show little to no articles on this fact. With all of the lawyers available and with 9/11 being such a catastrophic event to this country, it would seem that a statesman would have the dignity and discretion to politely say no to representing the Saudis. A traitor on the other hand would have no problem profiting further from the collective misery of the 9/11 victim's families.

The Brain Drain Kidnapping- Military-Catch-22!

2006-11-14T12:31:00.000-06:00

The first thing you do when creating a dictator-ship/theocracy-is you control and instigate a brain-drain. Get all of the engineers, scientists, academics, and round them up like a herd of cattle. With over 150 people kidnapped in Baghdad, the end is getting closer for U.S. troops involvement. We constantly hear that the Iraqi government has to stand up, and they have stood up and told our military to take a hands-off approach to reigning in certain militias. 2 weeks ago this mass-kidnapping couldn't have taken place, but now the U.S. policy leaders have given it the okay, through lack of intervention.

The Senators and I

2006-11-13T07:34:00.000-06:00

It was a love-fest Friday night at Senator Durbin's 10th anniversary celebration at Fultons on the River in Chicago. The mood in the room was one of total satisfaction, as Congressional, Aldermanic and other pols were in the house to pay tribute to Durbin, the 3rd most powerful Democrat in the country. When Obama arrived, it was like a rock star entered the room as we all clamored to get close to him. The jazz band was excellent, the bar was open, and the appetizers weren't too shabby either.

Spare the rod or.....?

2006-11-10T09:34:00.000-06:00

Now that they have met their goals of taking the halls of Congress, the Democrats have to figure out how to punish their child, even though they helped enable his bad behavior.

Many principled Dems voted against the war, including our own Senator Durbin, but many others voted for it even though they knew it wasn't a good idea. They did it to save their own hides, fearing the unbreakable unity of the media and the Republicans against dissension. The fear/war monger crowd bullied a now repentant mainstream media, and many seats might have been lost if some Dems stood on principle. Today's majority might not exist, so I guess that once again we're supposed to accept it as the lesser of two evils. But that begs the question....was all of the death, maiming, and tragedy worth the Dems having the Congress. If they would have kept us out of the war with fervent protests and filibustering, and lost their seats, would we be better off as a nation? Probably not, because the now defanged Neocons wouldn't have rested until they got their war, and a bigger Republican presence would have allowed that anyways....
So now what? With voices like Jack Murtha and Joe Biden now having the big megaphone to shout at Bush, they might be able to steer things towards some semblance of sanity. Perhaps a three state solution, with oil revenue sharing, and the U.S. troops redployed to somewhere in the area...perhaps in Northern Iraq with the Kurds who have the best chance at a more progressive, less repressive Democracy....they would be all too happy to have us set up shop and protect them from the Turks. It ain't going to be easy, but at least we can get the ball rolling immediately with higher wages and repealing the upper-brackets tax cuts.....

Poppy Bush to the rescue.......again!

2006-11-08T20:26:00.000-06:00

Throughout his adult life, George W. Bush has relied on his father's helping hand to get him out of messes (Cocaine use causing missed Medical exams during VietNam war and AWOL from National Guard Unit, Arbusto business failure, Harken Energy insider trading investigation by S.E.C.) or into a no-risk sweetheart deal (300,000 loaned to him and then sold for 12 Million-Texas Rangers baseball deal). Now after plunging Iraq and the region into a Super-Terrorist center of WalMart proportions, and now having the threat of the new Democratic Congress actually Checking and Balancing his ass, W. has called on the old man's proteges. Robert Gates, an ex-CIA chief was named the new Defense Secretary, and he will be working with Poppy's consigliere James Baker of the Iraq Study Group to try and use some hard-headed pragmatism to help extricate ourselves from this debacle with the least amount of instability and death.

Democrats take Senate

2006-11-08T19:34:00.000-06:00

AP is calling Virginia for Webb-Dems control both Houses. This blogger hopes Harry lets Durbin be Majority leader, but not holding his breath

Dems Take House!-Speaker Pelosi

2006-11-07T22:38:00.000-06:00

Hello to all......we have become a little more genteel as a nation having elected Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. History.....Senate still too close to call

2006-11-07T13:27:00.000-06:00

The voting problems have begun.
http://www.truthout.org/V110706.html

ELECTION PREDICTIONS!!!!!!

2006-11-06T08:27:00.000-06:00

Here it goes........as predicted in Feb. 12th 2006 issue of Torch, but with greater numbers
U.S. House of Representatives- Dems gain 29 seats and therefore a majority!
U.S. Senate-Dems gain 6 seats and therefore a majority!

Congressman Waxman immediately sets up investigation by Thursday morning on variety of subjects.....
Impeachment will be rolling off of the tongues, even though they said it wouldn't...I hope

Tax, Lies, and Stock Market Tape!

2006-11-06T08:26:00.001-06:00

As the mid-term elections close in on us with the Republicans looking vulnerable, they have fallen back on their tried and true propaganda campaign with one noticeable difference: the Democrats will raise your taxes and you will die because they want to be friends with the terrorists. Let’s leave the terrorist aspect aside, as it is so patently ridiculous, and focus more on the fiscal debate. The aforementioned noticeable difference in this years’ lie-fest is that the Dems were always referred to as the ‘tax and spenders’, but the spend part is conveniently missing. The Republicans or Conservatives as they like to pretend they are, were supposed to be the party that reigned in spending and promoted balanced budgets. Their Contract on America specifically called for balanced budgets. Casual defenders will say that since 9/11, we have to spend whatever it takes to protect ourselves, yet putting aside all of the Iraq war, Homeland Security, Social Security and Medicare spending, these Republicans make the Dems look like penny pinchers. John McCain compared their discretionary and earmark spending to a bunch of drunken sailors on leave. So they’ve proven they can’t control their spending, now let’s look at the tax question. As soon as Bush was appointed in 2000, he claimed that because of the surpluses, we needed tax cuts to give back to the American people, their hard earned money. Of course that meant a pittance of $300 to the middle-class and 80% of the benefits to the top 2% of wage earners. The next year we entered a short-lived recession, and lo and behold, the answer was more tax cuts. So for those of you keeping score: surpluses and strong economy = tax cuts for the rich, recessions and weak economy = tax cuts for the rich. See a pattern? Republicans always were for lower taxes, and it made sense at certain times, like when the tax rate on top earners was 70%+. At those high levels of taxation, there really might be a disincentive for capital investment, and the government did the right thing by lowering them to more reasonable levels in the 30-40% range. Then came Reagan and his supply-siders that claimed tax cuts would energize the economy and pay for themselves. That claim was controversial then, as Reagan’s presidential primary opponent George H. W. Bush called it "voodoo economics". The ‘Starve the Beast’ hypothesis came into fruition after the conservatives realized they didn’t want to promote spending cuts on pork, which legislators and voters liked, and claimed that tax cuts would shrink federal spending by starving it of resources, thus causing cuts in spending. Ever since, tax cutting has been the mantra of conservatism, but there have always been dissenting voices, some of the most prominent from within the conservative camp. One of those dissenters is William A. Niskanen, the chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute, who trained at the University of Chicago, and spent his formative years crunching numbers at the RAND Corporation and then in the Pentagon in the Nixon administration’s Office of Management and Budget. In the Reagan administration, he served as acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Niskanen recently analyzed data from 1981 to 2005 and performed a statistical regression that controlled for unemployment. He says there are "no signs that deficits have ever acted as a constraint on spending." "To the contrary: judging by the last twenty-five years, a tax cut of 1 percent of the GDP increases the rate of spending growth by about 0.15 percent of the GDP a year. A comparable tax hike reduces spending growth by the same amount. "

Niskanen then asked at what level taxes neither increase nor decrease spending. The answer: about 19 percent of the GDP. In other words, taxation above that level shrinks government, and taxation below it makes government grow. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, revenues have been well below 19 percent since 2002 (17.8 percent last year),and not surprisingly, government spending has risen under Bush. "Conservatives who are serious about halting or reversing the Bush-era of big spending should stop defending Bush’s tax cuts. Instead, they should be talking about raising taxes to at least 19 percent of the GDP. Voters will not shrink Big Government until they feel the pinch of its true cost." said Niskanen. The most effective constraint of all is to raise taxes and cut spending, exactly the sort of anti-deficit package that anti-tax conservatives punished the first President Bush and President Clinton for approving, and exactly the sort of package that W. and his anti-tax allies oppose wholeheartedly. The conservatives are in no position to accept or even acknowledge those implications, now that tax cutting has become their only remaining sound bite. Therein lies the irony: by turning a small-government platform into an anti-tax platform, conservatism has effectively gone into business with the Big Government that it claims to oppose. It is not starving the beast. It is fueling the beast’s appetite. And the beast has a credit card, which future generations of kids will pay for. We hear all of the talk of the Dow Jones being at a record high, as an indicator of how well the economy is doing, and this is another charade that the media helps perpetuate. For those that don’t know, the Dow is made up of only 30 companies, while the much broader pictures of the stock market, the S&P 500 (500 companies), and the Nasdaq (3,000 companies) are still well off of their previous highs, especially the Nasdaq. I’m sure all of the families out there that are struggling to pay for school and braces and mortgages, are happy to hear that 30 big industrial companies and their executives are doing so well. Maybe they can get a job landscaping the estates of the CEO’s after they’ve outsourced all of the remaining U.S. jobs.

FLY POL BUZZ

2006-11-06T08:22:00.000-06:00

During these troubling political times, it has been especially gratifying to be at a University that sprung from the idealism of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. The world was looking bleak before F.D.R. replaced Herbert Hoover and his nattering neigh-bobs of negativity. F.D.R. would have none of that, and soon gave his famous speech on reducing and eliminating fear and replacing it with hope and optimism. Now we seem to have the two front-runners for the 2008 Democrats, Hillary and Obama, as the hopes for righting our ship before we hit the melting iceberg. People are already anointing the junior Senator from Illinois as the savior of the party and I’m sure Hillary is taken aback by this neophyte’s star power. But never underestimate the power of the Clintons when they are on political ground. I am struggling with the choice myself after having met them both and being in the convention hall in Boston when Obama became an overnight sensation with his uplifting speech to the delegates and the nation. Being a pragmatist, I find that I am leaning towards Hillary, because of the Bill factor. Just as Bill said that if we elect him we would be getting 2 for the price of one, the same is true the other way around. After 8 years of fear and war and stealing from the middle class, people are longing to go back to blue dresses and bimbos. This column will drop the day before the elections, and as I pointed out a few weeks back, the issues may not matter at all in many races. According to a report by a non-partisan watchdog group, electionline.org, as many as ten states face serious problems with this election. "Machine failures, database delays and foul-ups, inconsistent procedures, new rules and new equipment have some predicting chaos at the polls", the report says. Also widely reported recently in the media, many precincts have the election workers taking home the Diebold voting machines, because they don’t have the resources to store them. People are signing up with zero background checks, and being handed the voting machines to take home and store until the election. Even more troubling is a new report that the Feds are investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the government of President Chávez of Venezuela.

The federal inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company
Smartmatic Corporation, and is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the same agency that reviewed the Dubai ports deal earlier this year. According to the Miami Herald, "Smartmatic was a little-known firm with no experience in voting technology before it was chosen by the Venezuelan authorities to replace the country's elections machinery ahead of a contentious referendum that confirmed Mr. Chávez as president in August 2004. With the $120 million from its initial contracts with Venezuela, Smartmatic then bought the much larger and more established Sequoia Voting Systems, which now has voting equipment installed in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The role of the young Venezuelan engineers who founded Smartmatic have become less visible in public documents as the company has been restructured into an elaborate web of offshore companies and foreign trusts. "The government should know who owns our voting machines - that is a national-security concern," said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, who asked the Bush administration in May to review the Sequoia takeover. "There seems to have been an obvious effort to obscure the ownership of the company," Ms. Maloney said. Since the political fallout over the Dubai ports deal, members of Congress from both parties have sought to strengthen CFIUS reviews to include other national security issues. Opposition members of Venezuela's electoral council said they were excluded from the bidding process, which concluded in February 2004 with the selection of Smartmatic and a partner, Bizta, over companies with ample experience to replace a system built by another American firm, Election Systems and Software. At the time, Smartmatic was a technology start-up that operated in the United States from a small house in Boca Raton, Florida, in a one-room office. Its chief officers were two 30-year-old Venezuelan engineers, Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola. Company documents first reported in 2004 by The Miami Herald show that Bizta, which was then virtually a shell company, had received $200,000 from an investment fund controlled by the Venezuelan Finance Ministry in return for 3 million shares in the firm. More recent corporate documents show that before and after Smartmatic's purchase of Sequoia from a British-owned firm, the company was reorganized in an array of holding companies based in Delaware, the Netherlands, and Curaçao. The firm's ownership was further shielded in two Curaçao trusts. After a municipal primary election in Chicago in March, in which Sequoia voting machines were blamed for delays and irregularities, Smartmatic's new president, Jack A. Blaine, acknowledged in a public hearing that Smartmatic workers had been flown up from Venezuela to help with the vote. Some problems with the election were later blamed on a software component that was developed in Venezuela to transmit the results of voting to a central computer system.
So this is what it’s come down to: our voting process and therefore our democracy has been reduced to a hackable, take-home, Venezuelan manipulated joke. Look for there to be several congressional voting debacles that lead to total re-votes instead of recounts, due to the Republican led (see Bob Ney) mandate that there be no paper trail to these machines. What would Eleanor and Franklin think of all of this vote manipulation and suppression of the last five years? We have nothing to fear except those who would steal our liberty, and stealing it they are.

The Senators and I

2006-10-27T10:59:00.000-06:00

It was a love-fest Friday night at Senator Durbin's 10th anniversary celebration at Fultons on the River in Chicago.

Opening Post from Fly

2006-10-11T20:36:00.000-06:00

Hello, I am Kevin Flynn and this is the beginning of my blog. The overriding emphasis on these threads will hopefully be intellectually honest arguments that don't regress into name calling matches and hyperbolic rhetoric. I hope to accentuate the similarities so called conservatives and liberals share, and respectfully argue the issues that don't find common ground. Going into the mid-term elections, there is a lot at stake in the political world. I will work to keep you abreast of the Congressional races in bothe the House and the Senate, and to offer ideas and methods by which you can help get people elected that truly represent your values. Other current events and world affairs will be discussed here also, as they play a major role in shaping politician's attitudes. Thanks and let's get thinking

In God We Trust....

2006-10-11T20:31:00.000-06:00

With the ever-increasing failings of men evident around the globe these days, I was considering leaving the agnostic camp and heading back into God’s world. A recovering, lapsed-Catholic, I fell out of touch with God at a fairly early age, as my parents no longer enforced the Catholic school attending, church going rules that were in place for my five older siblings. Also, Elton John’s song Levon said that the New York Times proclaimed God is dead, so I guess I took it literally. In place of Catholic school, I attended Catechism classes and learned all about the Church’s history including the sanitized story of the Crusades. Wow, what glorious heroes all of these soldiers of the various Popes, on their beautiful horses, were. Of course there are two sides to every story, but no matter how you slice it, the Crusades represent to the Muslim world a devastation of their culture by the various soldiers of the various Popes. Soon after 9/11, our dim-witted leader used the word Crusade to describe our fight against terrorism, and war enabler Colin Powell used it while coaxing Pakistani General / (President to Friends) Pervez Musharraff to join the coalition of the willing. Similar to his “bring it on” rhetoric, this serves as another wonderful example of a diplomatic-free zone around this White House. In order to fight this permanent ‘war on terror’, we need allies, and starting a holy war with a billion Muslims doesn’t seem too beneficial, unless of course you’re an arms dealer, and oh yeah, poppy Bush is one, so carry on! There is a group here on campus that goes by Campus Crusade for Christ or something of that nature, and I wonder if they are aware of what the Crusades represent to many of our fellow students. What would Jesus think of all of the death and suffering brought in his name? Maybe they just don’t care. Sort of like the Republican leadership didn’t care if their carefully gay Florida Congressman Foley had a sweet spot for teenage boys that had the misfortune to be Congressional pages in proximity to him. If this scandal has a familiar ring, look to the Catholic Church for the bell. The Congressional Republican leadership was acting like the Catholic hierarchy, which played shell games with men accused of sexually abusing children. They might not be heeding the teachings of the Apostles, but they’re using the cover up and spin the child abuse doctrine. Denny, step down already and enjoy the profits from your Prairie Parkway land scheme you helped facilitate. Get out while you can still pretend to have some dignity rather than being thrown out on your ass. So what happened to the morally superior Republicans? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and they have enjoyed absolute power in this country. When holding power becomes more important than protecting children, and when politicians try to dismantle the constitution and inject prayer into schools and the public square, and tell women what to do with their bodies, this sounds a lot more like a Taliban society than a true democracy. The fundamentalists which are now the “Democracy” we brought to Iraq, are supporters of Hezbollah and Iran, and will impose a harsh new law on the land that strips women of the secular freedom they had with Saddam and will force them to be covered and silent. The Iraqis might have had a dictator with Saddam, but as long as they didn’t speak or act out against the Man, they were able to live somewhat normal, modern lives with electricity, phones, running water, big televisions, and women were allowed to work in the professions and wear whatever they wanted. Now, all of those things are shattered, and religious fanatics are taking over.

Barack Obama was ahead of the curve on this as he called for Democrats to embrace their spiritual inner-beings, and not be afraid to talk values. In his Universal Values speech Obama said:
“In the months and years to come, I am hopeful we can bridge these gaps and overcome the prejudices each of us brings to this debate. I believe that Americans want this. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool to attack and divide.
Americans are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They might not change their positions on certain issues, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in reasonable terms — those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.”
Well said sir, and while you’re all working that out, I’ll be heading back to Camp Agnostic until the return of Jesus. He is supposed to be back soon, isn’t he?
Email flypolbuzz@yahoo.com with comments

Issues? We don't need no stinking issues!

2006-10-11T20:28:00.000-06:00

It seems that the sentiment of the electorate has turned decidedly against incumbents and the Republican leadership. One recent national poll had close to 70% of respondents saying that Congressional incumbents don’t deserve re-election. On nearly every issue except perhaps terrorism, which the Republicans have used to scare the bejesus out of all the easily shaken masses, the Dems are way out in front. Whether it is social security, health care, stem-cell research or the economy, the issues all point to what should be a successful mid-term election cycle for the Dems, along with historical trends that help the party out of power gain seats. So should the Dems start planning for their new Chairmanships on all of the committees, and picking out the bigger and better offices that come with being back in the Majority? Does the party that gets the most votes still win in America, or have we become a banana republic that let’s a small group of men and women rig the brave new world of electronic voting machines? Repeated studies have shown that touch-screen machines, which provide voters with no paper record of their ballots, are highly susceptible to tampering. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, the leading federal watchdog agency, the machines are “eminently hackable”. It takes only a few minutes to open the machines and insert a PC card containing malicious code that will switch votes from one candidate to another. As demonstrated last year in Leon County, Florida, computer security expert Herbert Thompson cracked into an electronic machine in under sixty seconds, altering the internal code and changing the vote count. ''Every board of elections has staff members with the technological ability to fix the election,'' says Ion Sancho, supervisor of the election board in Leon County. ''Even one corrupt staffer can throw an election. Without paper records, it could happen under my nose and there is no way I'd find out about it.'' And happened it has. Anyone that takes the time to read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s piece in Rolling Stone a few months back, will see that there were way too many mathematical and statistical aberrations in the 2004 election for them to just have been coincidences. There were the obvious corruptions like counties with only 3,000 total registered voters casting 30,000 votes for Bush, and many thousands of voters purged illegally from the voter lists. And then there were the exit polls. Exit polling has become nearly an exact science when you figure in the margins of error, and all of the exit polls showed Kerry with a decisive victory. Of course people will dispute the science of exit polling, but then again people dispute the science of evolution and think that man has only been around for a few thousands years and were planted in a garden by God. With the Republican Secretary of State of Ohio Kenneth Blackwell serving double duty as co-chair of Bush’s re-election campaign, the fix was in big time. To make matters worse, Blackwell received more than $10,000 from Diebold executives, and the CEO of Diebold was on record as saying they will deliver Ohio to Bush. The Diebold voting machines are easily compromised, as the access panel door on their AccuVote-TS voting machine, the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus, can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet. Chris Tengi, a technical staff member at Princeton’s Computer Science Department asked to look at the key that came with the voting machine. He noticed an alphanumeric code printed on the key, and remarked that he had a key at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in his key and surprise, surprise, it opened the voting machine. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access panel on an old VAX computer. A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel mini-bars. It's a standard part, and like most standard parts it's easily purchased on the Internet. The researchers bought several keys from an office furniture key shop – and they opened the voting machine too. They also ordered another key on EBay from a jukebox supply shop, and numerous other sources.
The bottom line is that we always hear from W. how we are spreading democracy to other nations to help them come out from under the rocks of their oppressive leaders and governments. At the same time, the Republicans and this administration are allowing our democracy here at home to become more and more degraded and subverted, so that the will of the people is no longer required. Sure, the Democrats have the issues on their side this election cycle, but the question is, do issues or the voters even matter any more? Has our democracy been reduced so much in importance, that the key that opens a hotel mini-bar can break it?
Email comments or hate mail to flypobuzz@yahoo.com

FLYPOLBUZZ

2006-09-01T08:13:00.000-06:00