I mean really what good would the $1 Trillion+ dollars we've spent on these adventures have done at home. OK granted universal healthcare wuld cost about that much over the same period of time, but we don't want to be communists or socialists or facists or islamists or whatever it is we become when people get adequate healthcare.

And hey those dying soldiers volunteered.

And the 10s of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, well they don't vote in US congressional elections so who cares.

And those people in Iraq. The ones who in recent polls keep saying life was BETTER under Saddam than it is now. They now have freedom. The freedom to live in refugee camps. The freedom to be killed over ethinic disputes. The freedom to never return to their homes (assuming they still exist).

And the Afghan people are free to watch a bomb fall out of the sky and blow up their family. They are free to watch governent officials (put into power by the US) extort them just to NOT be arrested and 'tried' on trumped up charges. They're free to receive virtually no basic services.

The time do rely on a weakened dollar was during the mid-late 80s and maybe early 90s when the US still had the manufacturing capacity to take advantage of the situation. As I've stated before on a similar thread a few months ago it takes TIME and MONEY to rebuild a shattered manufacturing base.

Take for example the company I work for. We had been counting on the weakening dollar to help us pull business away from Chinese and Philippines subsidiaries. The problem is basic inertia and existing investment. To put a line in here takes a LARGE upfront investment. Investment that duplicates capabilities that already exist overseas.

In addition, while we might be able to do final assembly here, we will still need to import a lot of the raw materials (metals being the biggest) and some component parts. That negates much of the cost benefit gained by shifting the final assembly manufacturing here.

So while we have been able to pick around the periphery, the home office is not yet willing to put in the front end invenstment it takes to build of capacity.

I suspect a lot of companies are in a similar position.

Bob Dole could not win a seat in congress as a Republican these days. He's a guy willing to make compromises and more importantly he actually cares about whether or not government 'works'. Everyone tends to forget that back in 95 when the big government shutdown happened Dole was willing to cut a deal with Clinton to stop it from happening. It was Gingrinch and the House Republicans that scuttled the deal.

Dole actually cared about passing 'good' legislation (I would disagree with his definition of good but he did want it to work). He wanted Congress to work not just score points with the religious right. That attitude is completely unacceptable in the modern GOP.

I have some great beach front property for sale in Arizona.

Citi-bank already announced it was raising rates practically the day after the Legislation passed. Seriously, who exactly is surprised by this? I really need to update my list of iditos I can easily con money off of.

Ok the Hotel screwed up. But what did the guy say to the hotel clerk? Did just out right ask if she was there or did he pull some kind of con? For example:

"Hi, I'm the line producer on Ms. Andrews broadcast. It would be very helpful if I had the room next to hers. Is that possible?"

Be honest, a busy hotel clerk getting such a call, probably after receiving a dozen calls from ESPN personnel, would almost certainly say,"Not a problem Sir," and move on.

How many of us really verify every request for information that come's across our desks? I'd bet very few. Call from a vendor requesting a balance or shipping information. Requests for credit information. 99% of the time its perfectly legimate and we pass it along without a seconds thought. Its that 1% that bite you in the ass.

And how many of us have gritted our teeth and complained about silly secuirty checks at the bank or ID verifacations while trying to info over the phone?

This situation was not good. But hotel personnel were pretty much behaving the way MOST us behave throughout our lives.

Palin has clearly hired ghostwriters for her Facebook page. The style, the language choices, the relative coherence all point to someone other than her doing the work.

The ultimate decision to nominate Palin rests with John McCain. If he acknowledges she was a drain on his campaign or how fundementally unprepared for the job she was than he will have to acknowledge that he screwed up. That will never happen.

As for McCain's aides trashing Palin. I have long maintained that McCain caught most of his staff (especially the folks tasked with vetting VP picks) off guard with Palin. They had been spending weeks vetting 3-5 other people. Getting to know their staffs, figuring out strategies etc etc. And then their boss goes and grabs someboby half of them probably never heard of before and they had never worked with at all.

It was a set up for failure from the start.

occured during the Great Depression.

Being Governor of a state is completely useless if one wants to help people or accomplish anything.