Notre Dame is to be congratulated on their decision to invite President Obama to speak. But it is really sad that this is even an issue. Abortion is an awful thing and every woman who has to decide whether to abort or not deserves our sympathy. But there are worse things than abortion. For example children abused by parents who resent them and children who are abused by homophobic priests. It is interesting that President Obama wants to help mothers who decide to carry their child to term. Too many of the anti-abortion brigades will do nothing to help these women. One could suspect that some see unwanted pregnancies as "just punishment for fornication." People who vote for a candidate solely because of his stand on abortion are ignorant.

This is another reason why agro business is a dead end street.

Has anybody done a study what the substances will do to people?

This is just the latest example of the outrage committed by pharmaceutical companies. It is high time that the Supreme Court stop this nonsense. How can anybody be given the patent on a gene, be it human, animal or plant? OK, give them a patent on a testing method. But that is where it must end. A company, forget its name, got a patent on a certain gene in pigs that makes them grow faster. Now farmers around thew world are afraid that they have to pay that company a royalty if their pigs are found to have that gene.

What are these people, GOD?

What an abomination! To add a rider on gun control to a credit card law. Can't Congress change the rules to prevent such a stupid thing? Didn't it require a vote to add this rider?

Concerning the issue at hand, anybody who uses a credit card for anything besides convenience of paying is stupid. People with any common sense at all never charge more than they can pay at the end of the month. I have always been able to strike a deal with a merchant or medical facility to stretch payments for up to 24 months if a purchase or medical bill exceeded my budget. In 30 years I have paid maybe 10 Dollars interest but only for cash advances at an ATM. I guess that makes me a not so valuable customer for the one credit card that I use.

OK, call me arrogant but I have saved thousands over the years!

And he is the Right's poster boy? Poor GOP!

I am fortunate to live in Europe where we cannot get his "show". What an indictment for the American people that so many people love him.

The more I hear of Cheney's ravings the more he reminds me of Goebbels. He and his ilk are fascists at heart. Fortunately the USA has a strong constitution with build-in checks and balances. This has so far saved us from the fate of the Weimar Republic, though enough people over the years have tried to assume dictatorial powers.

OK, some radicalized terrorists managed to hijack four planes and fly three into buildings on 9 September 2001. And Bush did the right thing by going after those who ordered it. But he then used this attack to browbeat the American people into accepting his "war on terror" where all rules have been suspended. That media Blitz was taken straight out of Goebbels' script book.

There, in a nutshell, you have it what's wrong with this country. How come people are not more upset? And it isn't new. A few got filthy rich in the 19th Century when the government gave away the riches of a new land that had no previous owners. Perhaps no owners but many people where living in it, more or less in harmony with nature. Now there is no more land to give away, only a few remaining natural resources such as oil, which Bush tried very hard to give away to a few favored people. So, to make a few rich, those in power are using other ways to redistribute wealth. Conservatives accuse "Socialist" Obama from wanting to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Instead they use every possible trick to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich.

And the poor cheer them on by buying, in this instance, obscenely expensive tickets to watch the Yankees play in stadium that they financed in the first place.

A blind man without a brain could have seen years ago that one of these days a bubble would burst that is too big to re-inflate. Over the years we re-inflated several bubbles but this one may be beyond hope. Not that many governments are not trying to re-inflate this latest bubble. The final crash may bring down the house.

Regrettably, it all started in the USA. Even more regrettably, too many other countries fell into the same trap. But let us not forget that the USA, by going ever deeper into debt (government and individuals alike), fueled a boom around the world. China, Japan, Germany and others could not have exported as many goods had there not been an American market that was buying everything up on borrowed money.

America's addiction to debt fueled a global economic boom. Everything will slow down when Americans rediscover real values. Perhaps then we will have stability, even if it means slower growth. But that would be real, not imaginary growth.