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Last Friday I put a little more than 9 galleons of gas in my car and it was over $30. The person just before had filled up and it was $62 dollars. I then went to get a prescription filled at Walgreens for some eye drops I use for allergies. The last time I got it filled about a year ago, it cost $55. This time it cost $77. Luckily, I'm financially secure enough not to give anything up to afford these things, but it got me thinking about the people who do have to make choices between what they are going to eat that day and whether they can afford gas or medicine. I wonder how many of these people that have to make these choices between everyday financial necessities voted for George W Bush; because they bought the Republican propaganda about God, guns and gays at the last election? Unless you are in the upper 2% of income earners in this country, or you are a uninformed evangelical Christian, or an uninformed fan of right wing radio, this President and his men have not done one single thing in 6 years that benefits the average U.S. citizen...........Should it be any surprise that the President's response to the price gouging by the oil companies which has sent the retails of gas over $3 and headed for $4 this summer was little more than a shrug of his shoulders? Even after Chevron reported a 49% increase in profits this quarter over last quarter to the tune of $4 billion, and Exxon came in at $8 billion. Remember, when Bush and Cheney came to power in 2000, one of the first corrupt things they did was hold close door meetings with all the oil and energy big wigs to plan their energy policy. They have refused with all the power of the Presidency to release notes of what went on in these meetings. Do you think there could be some connection from these meetings to the high price of gas and the obscene profits the oil companies are reeling in? Should it be any surprise that prescription drugs continue to soar in price, under this Republican leadership when they force through a prescription drug bill with a cost to the tax payer of over $700 billion, that doesn't work, isn't understandable, and doesn't allow the government to negotiate for lower drug costs. Should it be any surprise that the cost of health care has soared during the past 6 years and more people are uninsured and the Republicans and Bush offer ZERO remedies? Should it be any surprise that the air is dirtier, the water is more polluted and global warming is accelerating under this President? Should it be any surprise that it would be almost impossible to find one public school teacher that supports the lack of federal funding for No Child left behind? Should it be any surprise that the defecit and national debt are setting new records under this administration? Should it be any surprise that Osama is still offering video threats to our safety? Should it be any surprise as we near the mid term elections that this administration and the Republicans in Congress want to divert the voters attention from their unbelievable incompetence and corruption on all these issues and the tragic failure in Iraq, to focus on Immigration reform? And should it be any surprise that the Democrats are silent?

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If you saw the movie "Good Night, Good Luck", you will at least have a memory and a record of the apex of a once great network CBS, and it's nightly news anchored by heroic journalists such as Edward R Murrow in the film, or Walter Cronkite and even Dan Rather.
But the relentless Republican "noise machine" and it's dishonest propaganda pimps have managed to nueter CBS evening news of any political content. First they forced out Rather, not for unfactual reporting, but for being duped by forged documents. Of course when the President says in his many excuses to his false claims of WMDs in Iraq, it was due to faulty intelligence, nobody on the right holds him accountable.
And now with the announcement that Katie Couric is going to be the new anchor on the CBS evening news, you can score another victory for the right and for the corporate-owned media.
You can bet Katie is not going to ask any unpleasant questions.
What's next Simon, Paula, Randy and Ryan, replacing the crew on "60 Minutes"?

Here's a relevant, and topical, quote from author Peter Schrag on immigration:
"Now that California's future depends in large measure on the children of Mexicans,Salvadorans,
Filipinos, Indians, Koreans, and Pakistanis, are the voters who remain disproportionately Anglo white, willing to provide the schools, universities and other services that they provided when the beneficiaries were the children of Iowans, Kansans, and Nebraskans?"
The obvious answer, doesn't give me a lot of hope for the future of California, unless we get some politicians with a vision......Arnold is not the answer.

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When Clinton was President the country enjoyed unprecedented economic prosperity, was respected and admired around the world and with the help of Nato and other countries disposed of a war criminal in the Balkans and brought a peaceful resolution to the bloodshed in Bosnia. He did all of this with a mad dog, partisan Ken Starr wasting millions of tax dollars investigating every phony charge by rabid Republicans who's lust to regain the the Presidency was so great they almost pulled off a illegal bloodless coupe. And the mainstream media aided and abetted them trying to fend off the accusations of being liberal. Even to the point of giving up their objectivity in reporting facts to jump on the get Clinton partisan media bandwagon. How quickly we forget..........Lets examine the Clinton scandals. Whitewater, after $60 million tax dollars down the drain in investigations, the Clintons were found totally innocent. And then the scandals about firing Republicans that worked in the White House, what a joke. And oh that despicable, Hillary, she had the nerve to try to jam subsidized health care down our throats. And finally, Monica and Paula Jones. The former, guilty of an extramarital consenting affair, the latter, in Rumsfeld's famous qoute about the end of the Iraq war, "who knows"..........I couldn't help thinking about this and comparing these so called scandals to this weeks revelations: Tom Delay, even my Republican friends are now dis-owning him and denying that they ever supported his tactics extorting money and fixing elections for Republicans. They are even re-writing history and extolling Gingrich as the right kind of political power broker. They somehow conviently forgot, Gingrich was Delay's mentor and confidant, and left Congress in disgrace....Here is a real scandal. Delay is a real crook, and President Bush supported his every move and Cheney and Rove gave him kudos and guidance for his law breaking and money laundering.........Then there were more official documents out of Britain, that Bush was planning to invade iraq no matter what the UN did, Saddam did, the Congress did, or the American people wanted, and Blair had better go along with it......Then finally, the Libby revelations, 2 years after Bush's re-election by stupid, brainwashed red state voters. Go ahead call me an elitist but these people that voted for Bush in this last election don't deserve to live in a Democracy, nor do the 50% of eligible voters who didn't even bother to cast a ballot. So Libby said in court testimony that it came right from the top dog, the leaks of classified information designed to dis-credit war critics and specifically Joe Wilson and led to the outing of his CIA agent wife, and "who Knows" the damage done to our covert intelligence community. Oh yeah, as Scott McClellan said in his press briefing trying to defend this , there are good leaks and bad leaks, and Bush is only guilty of good leaks to defend our post 9/11 security. Yes, folks, if Bush says so black really is white, and even though Bush had said many times before he hates leaks and the people that reveal them, this information was so important he just had to leak it. Of course McClellan and the President never said why he couldn't call a press conference or put out a official statement with this information he just had to leak to protect our security......Meanwhile he's still pushing his tax cuts for the rich, saying he's above the law in domestic survelliance, and he won't consider changing our losing and costly direction in Iraq.....Clinton despite his over active libido was a saint compared to Bush.