the defense budget by 25% and using this money instead to help improve education reform would make a big difference in our educational system?

UUUUUMMMM NOOOOOO!

maybe your right! lol

Why does everyone want the government to take more control over things? Government bureaucracy never does as good of a job as private industry, and it costs everyone more in the long run. Defense/military is one of the few things the government SHOULD be providing. But schools? Private schools have been providing better education all along - I'd rather see private industry take over public schools.

that is a good idea!

Well, when the government took deregulation off of the banks, how did that turn out?

Please explain! I like to learn.

Well there's a difference between owning and regulating. For example, governments don't do that good of a job that own telephone companies (relatively expensive and poor service) - but government should be regulating private telephone companies to prevent monopolies and encourage competition. That results in lower cost and better service for the consumer.

I'm not against government regulating, just against government ownership of services when the private sector could do a better job.

you still think deregulation was the problem?

Yes. It was the start of the problem. I haven't seen anything that proves otherwise.

Winx I can see that you don't read what I post...one of the articles by Walter E. Williams from this morning was about dregulation and how it had little or nothing to do with this whole mess...

here it is Winx...read it and take notes...

Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."


Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.


Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.


The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain— which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.


It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant.



Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years— including the present year— denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.


It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.


It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.


Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.


Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?


We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.


Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?


Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.


Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.


Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!


The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.


The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.


But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.


Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.


The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.


But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.

I have not been home all day to read everything on here.

It was a beautiful Saturday and I was at Obama's rally.

don't complain to me !

Read and take notes? Why are you so rude?

Who's complaining?

I had a great day.

I agree you cant blame Bush for everything. If you have control of the congress thats another story..Rep control for 12 years...

where is the rudeness ?...the reading part or the taking notes part...

The taking notes part.

I'm just having fun...I don't have a mean bone in my body...or...in my head !...lol