The More You Drink The Soberer You Get!

Attacking Rush made for good theatre but did not work. It did raise his ratings, though.

So now it is time to move on so bend over America cause health care 'change' is next! Will the 'change' be positive or will it mean more control, waste and lower the quality of the care we already receive?

Proposing 'changes' in health care is not as critical an issue as getting the economy back on track but crisis permits this president the opportunity of cramming down his all encompassing 'change' agenda which, under calmer circumstances, might receive more scrutiny and resistance.

After all his mission is to make America a nation of which his wife, Michelle, can be proud! That will take some doing because everything we stand for needs to be changed.

So lets begin with Congress! If Congress can spend billions without reading what they are voting on why not do the same with everything else and begin with health care and keep on going? The more we spend the more benefit we will receive and the more we drink the soberer we will get.(See 1 below.)

Will those members of the G 20 who are meeting learn anything from history? (See 2 below.)

Maxine Waters spills her views and denies anything she did was improper in requesting a meeting with Federal Treasury officials regarding a bank in which she and her husband had a financial interest,while he was serving on the bank's board and she on the House Finance Committee. Based on the ethical standards set by Dodd, Frank, Rangel and Jefferson, I agree - anything goes because Congress is above the law and the people who elected them, or so they think and act. (See 3 below.)

Geithner challenged by Sen. Gregg who is not buying the administration's figures and projections. (See 4 below.)

Ask three brilliant investors and you get what you get - three differing opinions.

One believes indexing is a useful tool for the long term, one is out of stocks completely and sees more pain ahead as we deleverage worlwide and the other sees values abounding. You choose. (See 5 below.)

Taking the 'Intel Chief' to task for a not so intelligent pick. (See 6 below.)

Where is this actor now when we need him? Another actor is sitting in his chair but needs a teleprompter! (See 7 below.)

Remember the number 545. (See 8 below.)

What goes around comes around. (See 9 below.)



Dick




1) Next Stop Health Care Reform

PRESIDENT OBAMA gets high marks for courage and vision in pushing for health reform during the worst economic downturn since the Depression. The challenge will be to get Congress to approve thoroughgoing revisions to the system in the face of special interests that will decry them as threats to both jobs and profits. Change you can believe in is easy; health reform you can believe in will be a tall order.


Still, in less than two months of his presidency, Obama has already changed the health landscape in significant ways. He signed the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which will add 4 million youngsters to the 7 million it now covers. His stimulus package includes $20 billion for electronic medical records and $1.1 billion for research comparing the effectiveness of different treatments. Both tools are crucial for sweating waste out of the system.

Most significantly, his 10-year budget includes $634 billion in new revenues and savings as a down payment on the cost of covering the 47 million Americans - and rising - who are now uninsured.

This is all sound groundwork. For the next stage of real changes in the system, Obama has drawn a lesson from the behind-closed-doors Clinton health reform debacle of the 1990s: Congress, the drug industry, medical device makers, insurers, doctors, and hospitals must be involved in basic decision-making. This is wise, but only if Obama and congressional leaders make clear that none of these interests gets a veto over the broad outline for reform that Obama laid down as a candidate.


Lessons from the Clinton years
This will doubtless be a sticking point with insurers, who dread having to compete with Obama's proposed new, Medicare-like public insurer for consumers younger than 65. Candidate Obama's health plan was less fully developed than John Edwards's or Hillary Clinton's. But by backing a public alternative, Obama showed he understood the necessity of an affordable option for those who cannot get work-based insurance, either because their employer does not offer it or because they aren't working.

The need for such a public provider - and yardstick - is vividly evident in Time magazine's March 5 cover story. Reporter Karen Tumulty recounts in heartrending detail her time-consuming effort to get an insurer in Texas to pay for treatments for her brother, who suffers from kidney disease.

Health reform in the United States has stalled in the past not just because of missteps by elected officials like Bill Clinton but also because most of the 250 million who have insurance are more or less satisfied with their coverage - and are worried about how change in Washington might limit their options or raise their costs. Tumulty points out that many of the 250 million insured are actually underinsured, just one serious disease or injury away from financial ruin. She cites the 2005 finding of Harvard's Elizabeth Warren: that half of all bankrupties in the United States are caused by medical bills and, in 75 percent of those cases, the people filing for bankruptcy actually had health insurance.


The Massachusetts example
The Clinton experience from 1993 to 1994 offers "how not to" tips on healthcare reform. Massachusetts, whose 2006 reform plan now covers almost 98 percent of residents, can provide some "how to" tips. One is that Congress should assemble strong majorities in both houses for its health bill. The Massachusetts plan won the support of a Republican governor, a Democratic Legislature, advocates for the poor and underserved, and representatives of business, hospitals, the insurance industry, and healthcare professionals. This consensus has helped the program weather a need for increased funding from all sides last year.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, told the Globe recently that he hopes his committee's health bill will win the support of 75 of the 100 senators. This would provide it far more than the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster by opponents. But there have been reports out of Washington that reform advocates might try to push through a bill as part of a budget reconciliation measure, which cannot be filibustered and thus could pass with as few as 51 votes. This could be a mistake.

In Massachusetts, reform won such broad support in part because the bill focused solely on expanding access to the uninsured and did not attempt to control health cost inflation at the same time. This could work in a relatively rich state, in which healthcare and medical research are seen as economic mainstays. But evading the difficult choices that cost-cutting requires is not an option for Congress.

The escalating cost of care is at least as pressing a problem as the scandal of the uninsured. The nation's healthcare system consumes one-sixth of the Gross Domestic Product, but the World Health Organization in 2000 ranked it just 37th in the world for quality. France, which spends 51 percent per capita what the United States does, was first.

Obama has got it right. Fixing healthcare cannot wait until the economy is back on its feet because its waste, inefficiencies, and special-interest coziness are a drag on economic growth. Skyrocketing health costs for workers and retirees are a key cause for Detroit's collapse. Indeed, all US firms seeking to compete internationally carry the albatross of bloated health costs.

Ratcheting back the nation's medical bills while also extending coverage in a way that commands a solid congressional majority is a daunting task. But the price of inaction is steep: constantly spiraling cost increases for a healthcare system that does not even cover all Americans.

2) A summit that must learn from the 1930s


A useful rule in politics and business is that to exceed expectations you first have to lower them. Gordon Brown, promoting his G20 gathering on April 2, seems to have forgotten this. Since November 15, when the same cast of characters met in Washington, the “London summit” has loomed large in his diary. Not only would it save the world but it would also be the springboard for Labour’s revival.

Now the race is on to salvage even a modestly positive outcome from next month’s one-day summit in a draughty exhibition hall in London’s Docklands. The presence of Barack Obama on his first big overseas visit (he has already popped across the border to Canada) will help. Other leaders, however, particularly Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany, are disinclined to be swept along by the Obama tide. They are more worried about putting in place regulations to stop irresponsible Anglo-Saxon bankers bringing the world to its knees than measures that will add further to government debt.

Mr Brown’s quest for a global new deal is looking problematical. Unhappy comparisons are being drawn with another summit in the capital, the London Economic Conference in June 1933, which failed to lift the world out of the Great Depression. Yes, as long as we do not expect a one-day summit to wave a magic wand over a sinking global economy, there are useful things that can be achieved and part of the way forward was sketched out at the meeting of G20 finance ministers this weekend in West Sussex, chaired by Alistair Darling.

The global economy is in its worst recession since 1945, with world trade and output heading for its first fall since the 1930s. The urgent task is to stem the slide that followed the near-meltdown of global banking last autumn.

Related Internet Links
Red Box blog: G20 is a logistical nightmare
Despite differences of emphasis between Britain and America on one side, and Germany and France on the other, there is no conflict between that and taking steps to prevent the banks wreaking havoc again.

Plenty is being done, including fiscal packages worth a combined $2 trillion, aggressive cuts in interest rates and comprehensive banking rescue packages. These moves are in the right direction and in some countries – by no means all – there is scope for going further.

More importantly, G20 leaders must present their actions not purely as national responses to national crises but as a joint effort to lift the world out of the mire. Confidence is in short supply; there is a better chance of reviving it if people and businesses believe governments are pulling together and that international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund have the resources to step in and rescue economies brought down by the crisis.

Confidence will also be boosted if people think bankers will not be allowed to drag us down again. At one level that means outlawing the kind of bonus culture that encouraged greed and irresponsible risk-taking. But it also means, as Lord Turner of the Financial Services Authority will argue this week, much smarter and more searching regulation. “Light touch” regulation merely lit the blue touchpaper on a bankers’ boom. Change is needed and it is needed internationally.

The other key task at the G20 is to act as a convincing bulwark against protectionism, something its equivalent 76 years ago lamentably failed to do. This does not mean agreeing a communiqué and then returning home and signing protectionist measures into law. The London summit should stand up for free trade and mean it. Otherwise this recession could indeed become another world depression.

3)Waters Denies Improperly Aiding Bank Where Husband Was Board Member
By Bennett Roth

Rep. Maxine Waters said Friday she had not sought special favors for a Massachusetts-based bank where her husband had been a board member.

Watchdog groups claimed the California Democrat took inappropriate actions on behalf of OneUnited Bank, which received financial assistance from the federal government last fall.

Waters said she only helped set up a meeting between federal officials and an umbrella group that represented OneUnited.

A spokesman for the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the House’s ethics panel is formally known, did not respond to a request for comment. The watchdog groups say they do not expect the panel to investigate.

Waters — a senior member of the Financial Services Committee, which oversees banking issues — last year requested a meeting between Treasury Department officials and representatives of minority-owned banks, including OneUnited, on whose board her husband, Sidney Williams, had previously served. He also held stock in the bank.

At the September meeting OneUnited executives asked for $50 million in bailout funds; the request was not granted. OneUnited eventually received $12 million in December, however, through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (PL 110-343). Waters said she never advocated specifically for OneUnited, but lobbied for the meeting with the National Bankers Association, the umbrella group for minority-owned banks.

“The National Bankers Association, the leading trade organization which represents the interests of America’s minority-owned banks, requested a meeting with Treasury Department officials last year as the financial crisis was unfolding, jeopardizing the health of banks large and small,” Waters said in a statement. “It is important to clarify that the meeting was requested and scheduled on behalf of the NBA, not on behalf of OneUnited Bank as press reports suggest.”

Waters said she followed up on the association’s request and asked then-Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to schedule the meeting.

“I did not attend the meeting, and thus did not participate in the conversation,” she said in her statement.

Media accounts have quoted former Bush administration officials as saying that they believed the meetings were intended for minority-owned banks to talk about losses they sustained from federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Instead, they said they were surprised that OneUnited chief executive Kevin Cohee used the occasion to ask for specific financial help. Treasury officials also said they were not notified that Waters’ family had a financial stake in the bank.

According to Waters’ 2007 financial disclosure statements, Williams owned between $250,000 and $500,000 in stock in OneUnited and earned dividends of between $15,001 and $50,000.

Williams also had another unspecified account with OneUnited that had between $250,000 and $500,000 in it, according to the disclosure forms. That account earned between $5,001 and $15,000 in interest.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said it was inappropriate for Waters to request the meeting for the bank, She said the meeting apparently focused largely on OneUnited, not general problems of minority owned banks, and Treasury officials were “sandbagged” because they were not aware of Waters’ husband’s role at the bank.

”It made Treasury look like they were being asked to take favorable action on bank in which Maxine Waters has a financial interest,” she said.

Sloan said it would be difficult for the ethics committee to address the matter because of the way in which House conflict of interest rules are written. She said in order to prove a conflict it would have to be shown that Waters and her family were the only ones who benefited from her arranging the meeting. But any federal assistance to the bank would likely benefit a larger number of people than the Waters family.

“I believe [the committee] would quickly dismiss the complaint based on the conflict of interest laws as written,” she said.

In 2002 OneUnited, one of the nation’s largest black-owned banks, merged with Family Savings, a black-owned bank in Waters’ district in south central Los Angeles. Two years later Williams, a former ambassador to the Bahamas, joined the OneUnited board, on which he served until April 2008, according to Waters’ office.

Waters has received $8,000 in campaign contributions from Cohee, the chief executive of OneUnited and his family since 2002, according to Federal Election Commission filings analyzed by CQ MoneyLine,

Waters argues that she has never hidden her husband’s interest in the bank. Her office points to her testimony before the Financial Services Committee in October 2007 on expanding minority-owned banks in which she stated that her husband served on the board of OneUnited. She said Williams is “proud to be invested in a minority-owned community bank.”

But Financial Serviced Chairman Barney Frank , D-Mass., asked Waters in December to refrain from securing bailout funds for OneUnited Bank because of her husband’s ties to the institution. Instead Frank took the lead on helping the bank, which is headquartered in his Boston-area district.

“It was done in the context of an abundance of caution,” said Frank spokesman Steve Adamske.

4) Gregg to Geithner: You’re lying
By Ed Morrissey

When Judd Gregg abruptly withdrew from his appointment as Commerce Secretary, I wrote that Barack Obama now faced the real risk of having created the most credible critic of his administration. That nightmare came true on the Hill yesterday when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried explaining Deadbeatonomics to the Senate Budget Committee. Gregg chewed Geithner to pieces with facts and figures, exposing Geithner and Obama’s economic policies as incompetent:

In a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee Gregg dressed down Geithner with facts, figures, and charts. While always keeping his cool, the exchange was somewhere between a mother’s scolding, a drill sergeant’s questioning and an attorney’s cross examination.

In his opening statement, Gregg politely called the administration’s budget forecast a lie.

“The argument that it cuts the debt in half in four years is, ahh, is truly spurious,” he told Geithner. …

“The argument that this budget doesn’t have tax increases [on everyone] is, I think, an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ view of the budget,” he said.

He challenged the budget’s math on cutting the debt: “When you take the deficit and quadruple it and then you cut it and half, that’s like taking four steps back and two steps forward. That’s not making any progress; you’re still going backwards.”
The Washington Times reports that both parties have started backing away from Deadbeatonomics, at least as laid out in Obama’s budgeting: [Sen. Kent Conrad, D-ND] said he has been beset by senators on the floor of the chamber, and they have not been heaping praise on Obama’s budget plan. In fact, they are lodging threats.
“There are so many things in it where I have colleagues coming up to me and saying, ‘If this is in, I’m out,’ ” Conrad confessed. “And I’ve heard that on both sides.”

Conrad, who will be a chief architect of whatever compromise is crafted, has already made public his belief that the budget in its present form does not have enough support to pass the Senate, where it is difficult to stroll down any corridor without hearing either a Democratic or Republican declaring their firm opposition to one of its provisions.

In fact, the Times reports that cap-and-trade may be the first piece to get stripped out of the bill. As it has taken shape, its provisions have frightened Senators from both parties. Coal states and manufacturing states don’t want the industry-ending restrictions put in place, and other states don’t want to take home hefty energy price increases in the middle of a recession.

Clearly, Geithner and Obama have lost a lot of credibility on the Hill, and the honeymoon is over even for Democrats. Judd Gregg makes it a lot easier for Senators from both parties to fight Deadbeatonomics, since Obama himself selected Gregg for his “fiscal discipline” and his independent spirit. As the President’s man, Gregg has the best position for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes — and apparently no problem in doing so.


5) Bear End? Wishing won't make it so end? Wishing won't make it so
By Bill Fleckenstein

Last week's rally tempted many to believe that the market has bottomed. Maybe some stocks have hit their lows, but there are many reasons to proceed with caution.

[No doubt, long-suffering bulls will proclaim the stock market's bravura March 10 performance as proof that the bottom is in. The bears will beg to differ, citing the insufficient capitulation in evidence.

I seriously doubt that stocks have seen their final low.

When we get to a really recognizable lowest point, I don't think we'll need to reach for a magnifying glass or devise a tricky way to analyze it. As market commentator Justin Mamis points out about the 1982 market low:

"Big black headlines almost as huge as those announcing the end of World War II were spread across the entire top of the New York Times: 'The Market Rises on Huge Volume' (or words to that effect), and up and up the market went for several days after. In other words, you knew a bottom when you saw it. You could have been a few days late and still on time."

Within this bear market, could we have a substantial rally that might last for a while? Absolutely. (In fact, we had one off the November low that ended relatively recently. We may have many more.)

These are markets, and they can do what they want, especially when there are as many moving parts as now exist. But I think the probability that the worst has been seen is extraordinarily low. (Though perhaps some companies will not make new lows; that we will just have to see.)

And no matter how good a rally looks, it must be remembered that the best ones always occur in bear markets. (As I noted last week, "A bear market rally . . . will be captivating, causing people to believe the worst is over, but will almost certainly be a head fake.")

Take a high (valuation) colonic
Here's what I think will be part of the final capitulation process: Valuations in the tech sector will experience the cleansing drop that other companies in corporate America have recently undergone, especially if more progress is made on the nationalization of the banks in the meantime.

So, for those who'd like to see this decline end (and who wouldn't, really?), a rout in tech stocks might be just what is needed.

Hardier than hardware: Software
That said, I have been following software companies closely, as I mentioned last week. Due to their profit margins, they have the flexibility to trim costs; for the better ones, those margins are a function of barriers to entry. (Read "A soft spot for software," in the last section of "Massive forces cloud market outlook," for more on this.)

For an example, consider Adobe Systems (ADBE, news, msgs), which reported preliminary results March 4. Though revenue was a little on the light side, earnings held up nicely and were better than expected (and not because the company was playing games).

Software is a far better business than hardware. Last week I added to my long position in Microsoft (MSFT, news, msgs). (Microsoft publishes MSN Money.)

For some reason, though, today's crop of Jell-O movers continues to lust after the "hard" stuff.

For now, investors should be patient and err on the side of not losing money. But it's always worthwhile to keep looking for names you might like to own -- window-shopping, as I described it last week -- and looking for an opportunity to get involved.

A lot of times, the hardest part of investing (or speculating) is doing nothing.

5) Three Wise Men Offer Three Takes On Markets: Experts Differ on What Has Changed, What to Do About It

Malkiel endorses indexing. (Via Bloomberg News)

Lynch backs stocks, for those with time. (By Michael Springer -- Bloomberg News)

Gross says he has dumped all of his stock. (By Jonathan Alcorn For The Washington Post)
By Tomoeh Murakami Tse

Bond guru Bill Gross says he's sold off all the stocks in his retirement portfolio, down to the very last share. The world as we know it, he says, has "changed almost overnight."

But legendary stock-picker Peter Lynch thinks bargains are so plentiful now, "you feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony."

And Burton Malkiel, author of the classic investing book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," is sticking to his long-held belief in investing in index funds. That's because judging from history, what we're seeing now is "not anything terribly unusual," he says.

Two years into the financial crisis, our retirement savings have been halved. The unemployment rate is the highest it's been in a quarter-century. And around the globe, economies are suffering the sharpest downturns in decades.

We turn to some top investing minds for their take on the situation. Their words have been edited and condensed.


Burton Malkiel, professor of economics at Princeton University and author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street."


On the economy: This recession is being compared in its severity to the Great Depression, and I suppose in terms of how fast unemployment is going up and how worldwide it is, it probably bears some similarity to the Great Depression. But I want to emphasize I don't think we're going into a Great Depression. For one thing, the money supply dropped by 25 percent during the Great Depression. Today, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet is expanding dramatically. And central banks around the world are doing the same thing with respect to fiscal policy. I think the Obama stimulus plan could be much better. I think it may even be too modest. But at any rate, it's a big stimulus plan. Relative to what we did in the Great Depression, this is real money.

On investing: What's going on now is not anything terribly unusual. There have been many, many periods in the past where the stock market has been absolutely terrible for a decade or more. Unless you think that all of the sudden, the whole U.S. economy is going to go into reverse and never going to return, I think the stock market will prove its worth again in the future.


Does that mean we're going to recover right now? Who knows. What we do know about the stock market is that, after very long periods of hibernation or decline, it typically produces quite generous returns. If you've got a 10- or 20-year horizon, this is probably a very good time to invest in stocks.

I've always thought investors should be very broadly diversified. What they should certainly not do is give up and sell all their stocks now, which is what they're doing. Investors are taking money out of equity mutual funds like never before. And they should, I believe, stop doing that because, invariably, investors take their money out near the bottom and put their money in at the top.

I'm an indexer. I'd buy a very broad total stock market fund. I think you ought to buy a total bond market fund that has safe Treasury bonds, and also corporate bonds which now have very generous spreads over Treasurys. If you wanted a tiny sliver of gold, fine, put it in. But I certainly wouldn't go overboard on that. I also think everybody should have a safe (cash) reserve for contingency. This is part of sensible investing. Money markets are a fine place to be.

Bill Gross, chief investment officer of fixed-income asset manager Pimco:

On the economy: The global economy and financial markets are being affected by three primary forces: deleveraging, reregulation and deglobalization.

Deleveraging has to do with reversal of a long-term trend -- 50 years, probably -- in which businesses and individuals took on more and more debt. It simply got to the breaking point. Now we're going the other way, saving money, paying off debt. That has basically resulted in a destruction of wealth to the tune of $40 trillion or $50 trillion.

In this process of deleveraging, assets are sold, stocks are sold, houses are sold, in order to get out from the burden of debt. And lower prices produce less wealth.

It means economic growth will be much less. This also means returns [on investments] will be much lower because returns are predicated on economic growth and profits.

The second is reregulation, meaning increased government control over credit markets and their operations. Government is a less efficient operator of enterprise, and that also speaks to lower growth.

And the third is deglobalization, meaning each individual country is sort of behaving in their own interest -- things like Buy American.

The three in combination are forcing a wake-up call for investors that the world has changed almost overnight. In five, 10, maybe even 20 years, a generation will be playing by new rules with lowered expectations. This isn't just a one- or two-year thing. It will linger.

On investing: Under the scenario that I just described, income as opposed to capital appreciation becomes important. That means bonds as opposed to stocks become the favored asset class for individuals. The old 60-40, stocks-versus-bonds portfolio of pension funds and endowments -- it seems to me that that goes by the boards.

About a year ago, I gave up on the stock market altogether. I don't own any stocks in my retirement portfolio. I'd say they made up about 40 percent. My money's in municipal bonds and stable corporate bonds.


I made an early mistake in buying bank stocks, thinking they were cheap. Twelve months ago, I saw the light and sold them all. I'm happy about that.

Peter Lynch, former manager of the flagship Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments:


On the economy: We've had 11 recessions since World War II and we've had a perfect score -- 11 recoveries. There are a lot of natural cushions in the economy now that weren't there in the 1930s. They keep things from getting out of control.

We have the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation [which insures bank deposits]. We have social security. We have pensions. We have two-person, working families. We have unemployment payments. And we have a Federal Reserve with a brain.

On investing: I would not disagree that corporate bonds look attractive versus money markets. But I would think stocks are more attractive. But you have to have a time horizon further out than three weeks from Wednesday. Even one year, two years is not long enough. I'm very happy and content that five, 10, 15 years from now, corporate profits will be higher and the stock market will be a lot higher.

You need to have an edge to stock-pick. Buy what you know. If you're in an industry, you can probably find some companies in your field. If you're in the insurance industry, you're going to see things get better before I see them. All you need is a few good stocks a decade. Why don't you use your own industry knowledge? You have a huge edge on the professionals.

There are 7,000 or 8,000 public companies. You really ought to know 10 cold. Know their financial position, know what they do. And those are the ones you concentrate on. And when they get to be clearly attractive, then you understand them.

This dramatic decline in stock prices has affected great companies and good companies and mediocre companies. It's brought them all down. Bargains are all over the place. There are so many attractive stocks out there. But they keep going down. I've definitely been pounded. To use a golf analogy, I'd like to take a couple of mulligans.

6) The Intel Czar’s Picks: Not Too Intelligent?
By Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff



Add president Obama's national intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, to the list of embattled top-level appointees. Blair, a retired four-star Navy admiral who attended Oxford with Bill Clinton, courted controversy among pro-Israel and anti-China activists this month when he named Charles (Chas) Freeman, an outspoken former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to chair the National Intelligence Council, a committee of the government's top intel analysts. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other pols complained to the White House, Freeman abruptly withdrew. Now both Republican and Democratic intel experts are raising questions about another Blair pick: John Deutch, a former CIA director once accused of major security lapses, who's been appointed to a temporary panel reviewing troubled, top-secret spy-satellite programs.

After Deutch resigned as CIA director in 1996, agency officials discovered he had stored hundreds of pages of classified files on his home computers, despite repeated warnings that they could be intercepted via the Internet. Because of the incident, Deutch was stripped of his high-level security clearances, and a criminal probe into the matter culminated in January 2001, when the ex-spy chief agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of mishandling classified material. (The next day, Clinton, in one of his final acts as president, pardoned him.) Given Deutch's history, congressional officials want to know why Blair placed him on a panel so sensitive that its work should require an ultra-top-secret security clearance known as SI/TK (Special Intelligence/Talent-Keyhole). "The decision to grant [Deutch] a security clearance again is an affront," GOP Sen. Kit Bond, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NEWSWEEK, adding that it "should be reversed immediately." An agency spokesman acknowledged that former CIA director Michael Hayden restored Deutch's security clearance a couple of years ago so Hayden could consult with him and other ex-spy chiefs on "classified CIA matters." But Blair also has broad power to grant security clearances. (Deutch did not respond to requests for comment.)

Congressional critics, including some Democrats, say the two appointments illustrate Blair's tin ear. As he vigorously defended Freeman, Blair also underplayed evidence of substantial financial ties between the Middle East Policy Council, a think tank Freeman used to run, and Saudi interests. Blair had told Congress that "no more than one 12th" of the council's $600,000 budget came from the Saudi government. But Freeman told NEWSWEEK that the council had also received a $1 million endowment from Saudi King Abdullah in 2005, plus another $1 million pledge for operating support from Saudi Prince Alwaleed. "Director Blair was asked by the president to … seek the best expertise, and to provide the best intelligence," says Wendy Morigi, a spokesperson for the intel czar. "That's exactly what he's doing."

7)REMEMBER THIS MAN.............One of a kind!

'Here's my strategy on the Cold War:�We win, they lose.'-



'The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'�-


'The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.'


'Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the�U.S.�was too strong.'



'I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.'


'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.'�


'Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.'

'The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.'


'It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.'


'Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.'


'Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.'


'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'



'If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.'�

8) 545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, theFederal Reserve Bankdoes.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Boardbecause that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-pickingthing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash.


The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes..

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.


What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it..

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representativesfor originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi.She is the leader of the majority party.


She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a singledomestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red .

If the Army &Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees..

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

9)Do you know what happened 159 years ago this fall... back in 1850?



California became a state. The people had no electricity.The state had no money.
Almost everyone spoke Spanish. There were gunfights in the streets.
so basically nothing has changed except the women had real breasts.