Tight V. Formation

I'm off to London(OH) and won't be back until tomorrow sometime. Everyone have a good evening and stuff.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush's assurances that we'll all be "just fine" if he and Congress can work out an economic stimulus package seem a little hollow this morning.

Much like Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's assurances last May that the subprime mortgage meltdown would be contained and not affect the broader economy. And it seems Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has spent most of the past year trying to influence Chinese economic policy rather than setting the direction of U.S. economic policy.

There is no question that Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will quickly come up with an economic stimulus package simply because they can no longer ignore our economic and financial crisis. That economic stimulus plan will amount to about 1 percent of our nation's gross domestic product, an estimated $150 billion.

But all of us should recognize that the stimulus package will be inadequate to drive sustainable growth in our $13 trillion economy. An emergency Fed rate cut and an economic stimulus plan are short-term responses to our complex economic problems, nothing more than bandages for a hemorrhaging economy.

Bush, Pelosi, Reid and the presidential candidates of both parties have an opportunity now, and I believe an obligation, to adjust the public policy mistakes of the past quarter-century that have led to this crisis. And only through courageous policy decisions will we be able to steer this nation's economy away from the brink of outright disaster.

We all have to acknowledge that our problems were in part brought on by the failure of our government to regulate the institutions and markets that are now in crisis. The irresponsible fiscal policies of the past decade have led to a national debt that amounts to $9 trillion. The irresponsible so-called free trade policies of Democratic and Republican administrations over the past three decades have produced a trade debt that now amounts to more than $6 trillion, and that debt is rising faster than our national debt. All of which is contributing to the plunge in the value of the U.S. dollar.

At precisely the point in our history in which this nation has become ever more dependent on foreign producers for everything from clothing to computers to technology to energy, our weakened dollar is making the price of an ever-increasing number of imported goods even more expensive.

All Americans will soon have to face a bitter and now obvious truth: Our national, political and economic leaders have squandered this nation's wealth, and the price of this profligacy is enormous, and the bill has just come due for all of us.

Bernanke endorsed the concept of a short-term economic stimulus package, but he cautioned that the money must be spent correctly: "You'd hope that [consumers] would spend it on things that are domestically produced so that the spending power doesn't go elsewhere."

Just what would you have us spend it on? The truth is that consumers spend most of their money on foreign imports, and any stimulus package probably would be stimulating foreign economies rather than our own. Imports, for example, account for 92 percent of our non-athletic footwear, 92 percent of audio video equipment, 89 percent of our luggage and 73 percent of power tools. In fact, between 1997 and 2006, only five of the 114 industries examined in a U.S. Business and Industry Council report gained market share against import competition.

And let's be honest and straightforward, as I hope our president and the candidates for president will be: This stimulus will not prevent a recession. It may ease the pain for millions of Americans, but a recession we will have. The question is how deep, how prolonged and how painful will it be. Unfortunately, we're about to find out how committed and capable our national leaders are at mitigating that pain and producing realistic policy decisions for this nation that now stands at the brink.

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I have a great deal of respect for Lou Dobbs. He pretty much tells it like it is, whether it be good or bad, left or right.

Let's see how many people show up at the bottom after I post this... haha!

I know many of you are parents and maybe some of you have been through this... I'm having a difficult time addressing the subject with my son.
Last time he was out visiting, he spent the day at home while I worked. He is 12 and I've come to the conclusion that I can trust him to take care of himself and not burn the apartment down or anything crazy like that. He's been flying by himself for years now so I have no reason to believe that he is incompetent in those regards.
However...
As I would come home some evenings, I would log onto our computer and find porn sites in the address bar drop down. I was shattered...here, my cute little genious of a kid, had somehow discovered the world of internet porn. It was nothing hardcore..more of sites where you could look at celebreties boobs and stuff like that. However, I've viewed my share of internet porn and know that it's always just a few clicks away from the hardcore stuff.
God, in a way, I envy this generation. They have it so easy..it's so accessable. When I was growing up, we had to smuggle Penthouses into our Trapper Keepers at the local convienence store, then find a safe place to hide them at home. Somehow, they always disappeared a few days after going between the matress and the boxspring. And that was the hassle one had to go through for mags... for video, I remember spending an hour once trying to figure out my dad's lock-out code on the cable box. Eventually, I gave up and ended up watching the scrambled porn channels..which rarely would offer a glimpse of a boob or ass between the noise and squiggly lines. It was tough back in those days. Not so much now. Kids can enter any sex term into Google and come up with millions of choices.
So I'm trying to decide how to handle this when he comes out again this year. Do I get cybersurfer or netnanny and block his access? He's only doing something I would have done at his age. Do I turn a blind eye? Is this enabling him? Honestly, I know some see beating off or viewing pornography as a sin.. I don't go there... I think it's all natural until someone's thoughts get perverted and go places they shouldn't.

She is the media equivelant of a Yahoo!Answers troll.

My dad sent me "If Democrats Had Brains They Would Be Republicans" a few days ago. I started going through some of the chapters. Basically, she was taking things she had said that caused outrage and anger in the media..highlighting them...and retorting sarcastically. It seems like the book is less political commentary and more scrapbook of stupidity.

But it seems like her popularity rides on how much she pisses people off rather than her actual intellect.