Collective Sigh

Allen was also the producer of the award-winning PBS series Meeting of Minds, a "talk show" with actors playing notable historical figures, with Steve Allen as host. This series pitted Socrates, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Paine, Sir Thomas More, Attila the Hun, Karl Marx, Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei, and other historical figures in dialogue and argument. A proposed revival of this show was rejected as "too cerebral."

"We have a national policy that says if you work for less, lose your health care and lose your pension, then we can compete," Stabenow says of the status quo. "The No. 1 way we could help employers in this country is to change the way we fund health care."

So how come I'm not thrilled? Because I watched this happen two years ago -- same rejection of the Iraq war, same disgust with Bush and Co., same understanding Republicans are for the rich, period, same polls showing D's with the lead going right into Election Day. And the same geographic gerrymander and same wall of money in the last two weeks. I'm not close to calling this election, and I'm sure not into celebrating anything yet.

Last week, the North Carolina General Assembly cleared the way for a $242m incentive package for Dell. The deal gives Dell a tax credit for each computer or consumer device produced in the state. Dell will receive a $15 per unit credit in 2006 and just a $6.25 credit from 2007 to 2019.

Dell, however, is making serious sacrifices to earn this package. It must, for example, pay 50 per cent of the health care costs for its employees. Ouch! In addition, Dell can only lay off 40 per cent of the employees to still qualify for the tax incentives.

The average salary for a Dell worker at the new plant is expected to be about $28,000. That's about what Michael Dell makes while going to the bathroom in the morning. (link)

Dell - the same company the state is giving millions in incentives to - is now trying to convince 500 computer engineers to leave North Carolina.

The company has hired a couple of rolling billboards to advertise the jobs by driving around Research Triangle Park.

(...)

Bob Orr and his group, North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, are suing the state over the Dell deal. "It certainly proves that Dell, in particular, has no particular loyalty to the State of North Carolina," Orr said.

He says hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local tax incentives were given to the corporation. And what do we get in return? "Now we see that they're, they're using that very money to lure jobs from North Carolina. And, frankly, that's unconscionable," Orr said.

Orr also points out that the 500 jobs being offered by the rolling billboard are high paying engineering jobs paying $60,000 to more than $100,000 a year.

He says the 1000 jobs Dell is bring to the Winston-Salem area are much lower paying jobs and may not generate as much tax revenue as the Texas jobs.

1:41 p.m.- The President has been lunching with some handpicked VIP’s, and they are sneaking in the side door. The late arrivals include Senator Richard Burr and Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. They are the only two members of N.C.’s Congressional delegation in the audience.

2:38 p.m- The President concludes his remarks. I’m hoping to talk with Senator Richard Burr, but he makes a bee line for the side door and is gone before the President has stepped down from the podium. We do talk with Rep. Virginia Foxx who offers an interesting quote when we ask why so few members of Congress were in attendance. “I certainly did not want any doubts about my running away from the President because I don’t feel that way about it, but it’s possible that some members of Congress couldn’t rearrange their schedule,” Foxx tells us. Interesting scenario with mid-term elections less than a month away.

Noticeably missing on Bush's North Carolina itinerary were campaign stops with Reps. Charles Taylor and Robin Hayes, a pair of veteran Republicans facing spirited Democratic challenges that could help tip the balance of power in the House. He didn't go near their districts. Bush was to attend a fundraising dinner for the Republican National Committee at a private residence where no media coverage was allowed. (link)

Rep. Howard Coble, who represents the district that includes the children's camp, told the News & Record of Greensboro this week that he wasn't sure what the political value of the visit would be.

'I'm not uncomfortable having him here,' Coble told the News-Record of Greensboro. 'I don't know that it helps. But it doesn't hurt and it might help. There are a lot of his supporters who are simply not happy with Iraq. I'm not happy about it. But that doesn't mean I dislike my president.'

A US girl of 14 was dragged out of class by Secret Service agents for calling President Bush an idiot on her MySpace page.

Julia Wilson's Internet page, called "So Bush is an idiot but hey what else is new?", infuriated security experts, reports the Mirror.

She also posted the words "Kill Bush" and ran a cartoon of a knife stabbing the hand of the president.

Two federal agents went searching for Julia at her home before finding the teenager at school in Sacramento, California.

After pulling her out of class, they subjected her to a 20-minute interview.

Julia said: "I told them I just really don't agree with Bush's politics. I do not have any plans of harming Bush in any way. I am very peaceful. I just don't like Bush."

She said the agents warned her she could be locked up for making the threat.

On this day in 1793 Marie-Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI of France (who lost his head nine months previous), lost her head. As is the result of about 100% of all beheadings, she subsequently died as a result.

The White House dismissed the premise of a question regarding how Bush might work with a Speaker Pelosi.

"The president fully intends to maintain control of the House and the Senate and looks forward to working with (Republican) Speaker (Dennis) Hastert,'' White House spokesman Peter Watkins said.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, with his job on the line because of the spiraling Mark Foley cyberspace page sex scandal, was duped Tuesday into letting a stranger into his Plano home -- a serious security breach.

Hastert literally let his guard down and allowed in his house a hustling, self-promoting evangelist little known in this country, the Houston-based K.A. Paul, who at 7:30 a.m. arrived at the speaker's home with a camera-wielding associate.

Of those accepted under waivers, more than half were for "moral" reasons, mostly misdemeanor arrests. Thirty-eight percent were for medical reasons and 7 percent were drug and alcohol problems, including those who may have failed a drug test or acknowledged they had used drugs.

The Army said the waiver process recognizes that people can overcome past mistakes and become law abiding citizens.

And then there's the strange case of Donald Rumsfeld. Here was a flaming exception to the Bush family code of honor. Rumsfeld was an ancient rival of Bush the Elder who became Secretary of Defense, Woodward implies, because of a mild Oedipal spasm: the Younger wanted to prove the Elder was wrong about the guy. How to explain the current President's continuing, suicidal loyalty to the architect of the Iraq debacle, even after Laura Bush and then chief of staff Andrew Card lobbied Bush to replace Rumsfeld in 2004? It's a perfect Freudian boggle: if he dumps Rumsfeld, isn't George W. Bush tacitly admitting that his dad was right about a lot of other things too, like choosing not to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 1991?

A Cabarrus County sheriff’s deputy accidentally used his Taser on a captain from the Harrisburg Fire Department, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The incident happened last Monday. Capt. Brad Christopher received 50,000 volts of electricity after being hit in the back of the head by a two-pronged Taser. He suffered some blurred vision right after the shooting, but he is doing OK now.

INCREDIBLE! FOX 'NEWS' LABELS FOLEY AS DEM DURING O'REILLY FACTOR!
Three Different Video Cutaways, 15 Seconds or More Each, Credit Disgraced REPUBLICAN Congressman as Being a Florida DEMOCRAT!

"Reading is not my strong point... I'm not comfortable with computers... I need to be focused on what's going on in the room and who's saying what to whom. I base most of my knowledge on listening to people. I get a lot of briefings and have good people working for me. Some say I have an incredible memory or recall for exactly what happened when and who said what to whom. I do listen pretty diligently, more than a lot of people listen, and I do pick up on facts that way."