Pain increasing in households as economy sinks; who has our backs now as life turns hard?

Tonight at his 5 p.m. Mass, Father Joe Pat Breen of St. Edward Catholic Church in Nashville spoke passionately about the pain felt in his congregation and in Music City from the decline in the economy.

Divorces, he said, have greatly increased the past four to five months, along with layoffs and the decline in the 401ks and other savings of parishioners. At Breen's direction, St. Edward earlier this year offered $100,000 in stimulus checks to the families of children in the church's K-8 school.

Yesterday, the decline in the fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product for the nation was revised downward from 3.8 to a shocking 6.2 percent.

That means things were a lot worse than we thought as 2008 ended. This year has started down the same path.

People are feeling a lot of anger, Breen said.

Yes, and they feel betrayed -- by everyone from politicians to Wall Street to banks to all the financial talking heads on TV.

But Father did not leave the distressing situation unresolved. He encouraged parishioners to look at the people next to them in the pews, and perhaps invite them to dinner after Mass, or bring them to their homes to have hamburgers.

Get to know one another, and help alleviate the anger by listening, sharing and supporting.

Yes, with our busy schedules, such a request would seem an annoyance and impossibility. Yet actually, all we have now is each other, and the faith we share.

Who has our backs?

We do, in the pew.

TennCare advocacy community celebrates choice of KS governor to be HHS director; it sinks Bredesen's chances to revive his political career

Today's choice of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as nominee for secretary of health and human services should be labeled as the saving of a nation and its most vulnerable citizens.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, whose TennCare cuts in 2005 cost people their lives, was in the running to be President Obama's choice. And that caused horror amid the advocacy community here, including myself.

Led by Tony Garr, the community informed a nation and the administration about the bad man they were considering. And Bredesen's name, which had shown up on Time magazine's website, soon fell out of consideration.

An angry Bredesen -- while refusing to confirm he was under consideration -- lashed out against the advocacy community before TV cameras earlier this month. He denied the human carnage he caused. But enough people knew the truth, here and in Washington.

Now Bredesen has to complete the last two years of his term in Tennessee and make budget cuts he hates. He doesn't hate the cuts for the human suffering caused, but because he will lose the political Teflon he has possessed for much of his malignant political career.

And now that career is over in an increasingly Red state.

So hats off Tony and other advocates for saving the nation from a man who would rather harm than help. Now we'll have to deal with his anger.

The Oracle of Omaha finally takes blame for some reckless investment decisions he made in 2008; he caused a lot of Americans to lose lots of money

Warren Buffet has finally confessed that he was full of hot air last year in trying to turn back the decline in the stock market all by himself.

The Oracle of Omaha bragged to the American people that he was investing in the stock market. When people get fearful, it is time to get greedy, he boasted.

And he lost his pants but still has plenty clothing left.

The New York Times reports:

The renowned investor Warren E. Buffett chided himself and the business world at large in his annual letter to shareholders of his holding company on Saturday as he sifted through the wreckage of his worst year in four decades.

Mr. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, reported a 62 percent drop in net income for 2008 and posted a decline in book value per share for only the second time since he took control in 1965. Shares of the company, which peaked in late 2007 at more than $148,000 apiece, closed Friday at $78,600.

With characteristic candor, Mr. Buffett, 78, took the blame for some of the declines, stating that he “did some dumb things,” lamenting in particular an ill-timed bet on oil and the purchase of shares in two Irish banks, which have fared poorly.

Most tragically for this nation, Buffet has been one of President Obama's closest economic advisers. And the president's budget displays the same brash, braggart Buffet way.

Buffet cost a lot of Americans a lot of money in keeping them in the market last fall or convincing them to get in, and he should apologize over and over. Supposed financial guru Dave Ramsey should do the same.

While the Oracle still has billions for investment, the average American household doesn't. They've lost more than half of the value in their 401ks and other accounts.

This guy loves to see himself on TV. He should now stay secluded in Omaha until he can show a profit.

Go to www.williamsonherald.com for the rest of this column on how to reform public education before plowing more unnecessary money into it

For your state and local tax dollars, the largest expense is public education. And I use "expense" on purpose.

If we follow the Whitney Houston song about children being our future, one would believe that public education spending is an investment.

But from what I have witnessed in classrooms in Nashville, and from the largest per pupil spending in the District of Columbia where achievement is the worst, taxpayers are not getting their money's worth.

That's because the bureaucracy surrounding public education in Nashville and around the nation gets first crack at your money. And your dollars go to administrator salaries, large support staff, high central office salaries and programs that simply don't work.

By the time the money gets to the classroom, a big share is missing.

My credentials come from three national reporting awards from the Education Writers Association in Washington, D.C. and two national writing awards from the Casey Journalism Center at the University of Maryland.

I also used my column to help force through charter public school-authorizing legislation in Tennessee earlier this decade.

Consider that from your state tax dollars and the local ones in Nashville, a whopping $8,176 is provided annually there for each child. In a classroom of 20 students, that's an incredible $162,000.

Yet Metro schools have failed to meet No Child Left Behind Act standards for five years. This failure will result in the state of Tennessee taking over the schools, and the expense will be paid by everyone, including you in Williamson County.

There is a better, immediate way. It is called school choice -- creating competition for the public school bureaucracy. And there are two ways you can make a difference now.

I was wrong; I predicted Dow would fall to 7,000 by end of month; I was off 62 points; still waiting for same from NewsChannel 5 and Dave Ramsey

I have to admit it. And the record on this blog shows I wrote the following on Feb. 4:

What I can't understand is why so many people still today are so committed to greed and refuse to get out the market as it prepares to plummet to 7,000 on the Dow this month. And that will be this month -- as it heads down to 5,700 by the turn of the year or soon after.

The stock market(Dow Jones Industrial Average) did not fall from near 8,000 at the beginning of the month to 7,000 yesterday.

It finished at 7,062. So I was a tad off, as wealth was reduced 12 percent on Wall Street for the month.

Against others, however, that kind of guess looks good. Back in September 2008, NewsChannel 5 featured supposed financial guru Dave Ramsey on its 6 p.m. newscast. He told people to get into growth mutual funds. Then, the Dow was at 10,600. And I slammed the TV station for giving Ramsey an unquestioning forum to give such reckless advice to viewers.

Simple math will tell you that people who took Ramsey's advice through NewsChannel 5 have now lost 36 percent of their money. And now those people are being told by financial advisers to stay in the market because they'll miss out on a rebound, which in one day could go up like 1,000 points with the right circumstances and government report.

They also are being told not to certify their losses by getting out. It's only on paper as long as you don't sell. Gosh, that's twisted, but indicative of the undisciplined society we have become.

These poor people are indeed in a no-man's land. I wouldn't dare tell you now what to do.

Meanwhile, here is another prediction:

The Dow is going to continue down, reaching 6,000 by mid-Spring and close to 5,000 by year's end. Don't believe anyone who tells you to get into equities now to be ready for the upturn. If you do, then I have an Obama budget to show you that is actually going to significantly reduce the deficit by the end of 2012.

It's not. Yesterday's shocking GDP revision for the fourth quarter proved that.

Some people say don't use the Dow as a barometer for health of Wall Street and investments there. They say go to the S$P. Yes, it has 500 stocks compared to the Dow's 30, which includes former giants such as GM and GE, now in the single digits. Incredible.

But the S&P is too-weighted to the financials, which are headed toward even more pummeling than the Dow when the full extent of losses is determined. But we're all waiting on the Treasury Department to finally say what is a bad asset, home prices to settle at a bottom and Congress and Obama to say if there will be another TARP. Heaven help the taxpayer and investor.

So I follow the Dow. And I can admit when I am wrong, as with my February projection. I was off 62 points.

I'm just waiting on NewsChannel 5 and Dave Ramsey to do the same formally on the air at 6 p.m. on a weekday soon.

Want to know why American auto industry needs bailing out: Go to Consumer Reports' gradings

My friend and colleague Tony Williams of Dallas sends me another gem from his mighty perspective on the world:

Consumers Reports gradings of the top vehicles lacks American autos.



Of the more than 300 vehicles Consumer Reports recently tested, these Top Picks are the best all-around choices in their categories. This year's list includes two new models: The Toyota Highlander is the new pick for midsized SUVs, unseating the Hyundai Santa Fe. And thanks to improved reliability, the Chevrolet Avalanche replaced the Chevrolet Silverado as top choice for pickups. See more details on all Top Picks in the Profiles.

So why should the taxpayer bail out an industry not delivering quality? The big newspaper industry is closing down because of it. Big Auto should, too, in GM and Chrysler.

Ford is fighting back and is making do on its own. Let free market capitalism remain free.

Walking through Tammy Wynette's old home quite a treat and look into life of a most gracious woman

Judson Baptist Church is one of the great places to worship in Nashville. Pastor Mims preaches a very clear and cleansing message of Christianity to ensure that Christ is what believers are about -- not themselves or cultural values or busy schedules.

I had the privilege last night of enjoying that message and one of the church's key possessions -- the former home of the late and great Tammy Wynette.

Her old home is located next to the church on Franklin Pike. The good believers there refer to the place as the Big House. And it is. The church's youth use the place as their center. And it is used well.

A tour of the home is so eye-opening to the graciousness of Ms. Wynette. The sunken living room with fire place and high ceiling is most warm in the feeling it encourages. The kitchen is so wide and inviting for people to gather and enjoy being alive with great food. You can easily fit 30 people in it. The side, stone patio is quite large, and was a place for social gatherings and weddings.

Her bedroom, which used to have sunken place for the bed, is quite elegant in design with large windows to show off the gorgeous surroundings.

Her walk-in closet with the arch windows is magnificent, befitting her stardom and talent. It is as long as a living room. And you just imagine the beautiful and shining dresses that once sparkled in the walk in-and-through closet.

You can still feel her spirit there throughout the house. And it is appropriate that it is now mixed with the good believers at Judson.

I was first introduced to them through the courageous fight of Ashley Holmertz against bone cancer. Ashley, 23, went to heaven last year, and now she sees God because of the purity of her heart. All she wanted to be was a mother and wife. And she was so wonderful with children she cared for in Nashville and Williamson County households and at the Y.

She also was a missonary to Latin America, and the kids flocked to her. She possessed the beauty of a model and the heart of a killer on the soccer field she had to give up early in her fight. She was the enforcer.

O, she was such a well-rounded human being, the best of all of us.

Her mother still goes to the church and has been battling breast cancer. She did everything imaginable to keep Ashley on this Earth for eight years. I have never seen a greater testament of the love of a mother for a child. And I have never seen a place of worship champion a family as Judson, led by the incredible Donna Drinkwine.

Judson is a special place. And now that Ms. Wynette's house is in its possession, fans can be assured that her memory is honored and cherished by the good people there.

Despite his budget, Obama making sounder decisions -- this time on force kept in Iraq

Mounting criticism from the Left shows that President Barack Obama made the right decision in his plans to keep a larger than expected force in Iraq after the big pullout to be completed in 2010.

The size of force that will remain to the end of 2011 is the president's recognition of the sacrfice made there. And it shows he has listened to many of the loved ones of the fallen in Iraq. Their sacrifice should not be in vain.

He also realizes the danger of Iran sweeping in and taking over, and becoming a Muslim superpower to threaten Israel, our great friend.

I can tell you that for the six Gold Star Moms who are my friends, and the servicemen who are close to me, Obama has made a courageous, wise choice.

The Left and the Pelosi-led House will give him a lot of problems over this decision. But Obama has the support of the people who count, and who make the sacrifice each day for the freedoms we enjoy.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Losing weight made simple: Temporary diets are no replacement for permanent lifestyle choices; give up the fries, you really won't miss them

One of the best things about having leukemia for the past 38 months -- and the diabetes it has brought -- has been the permanent lifestyle choices forced upon me.

Now I cannot think of living without these restraints that have actually liberated me.

No more french fries and fried foods frees the body of disgusting toxins. Green, leafy vegetables in exchange for potatoes really give you more energy and remove the feeling of being bloated. I hate the sensation now of overeating and do not go to buffets anymore.

Best of all, my body craves exercise, twice daily. The more vigorous, the better.

And man, it really is nice being slender and avoiding the mid-life, male belly hanging over the belt. Clothes fit so easily. It really makes you feel better about yourself, even if you are like me and haven't been blessed with good looks. I now know I will be slender for the rest of my life, even if it is shorter because of the leukemia.

Research just released from the National Institutes of Health shows that losing weight and keeping it off requires permanent choices. Oprah Winfrey has been indicative of the stop and start dieting that plagues Americans. And so many Americans are obese, one-third of all of us, which is like holding a gun to your head 24 hours a day.

NBC's Biggest Loser is not the right recipe either. Who has time to commit weeks upon weeks, full-time, to losing weight? And who can afford a personal trainer?

Read the following from Yahoo News which makes perfect sense to take control of your body and life -- for the rest of your life:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Eating heart-healthy, low-calorie foods and exercising is the key to losing weight regardless of levels of protein, fat or carbohydrates, a new study has found.

The research, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health, seems to argue against blanket use of diets that do not necessarily limit calories but call for eating certain foods such as vegetables or proteins, at the expense of others.

The NIH study of 811 volunteers, 38 percent of them men and 62 percent women, aged 30-70 and either overweight or obese, looked at diets that have been popular in the United States in recent years, even as the number of obese Americans has soared.

The "Preventing Overweight Using Novel Dietary Strategies (POUNDS LOST) study found similar weight loss after six months and two years among participants assigned to four diets that differed in their proportions of these three major nutrients," said researchers.

"The diets were low or high in total fat (20 or 40 percent of calories) with average or high protein (15 or 25 percent of calories). Carbohydrate content ranged from 35 to 65 percent of calories.

"The diets all used the same calorie reduction goals and were heart-healthy low in saturated fat and cholesterol while high in dietary fibre," said researchers, whose study is published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Participants lost an average 13 pounds (5.9 kilos) at six months and maintained a nine-pound (four-kilo) loss at two years.

Shocking drop in fourth quarter GDP sends markets lower and undermines Obama budget contentions

The economy in the fourth quarter performed at a shockingly weaker pace than previously predicted, making President Obama's budget contentions to reduce deficit spending much less credible.

The New York Times reported:

Output fell 6.2 percent at an annualized rate in the fourth quarter of 2008, revised downward from a previous estimate of a 3.8 percent decline. The drop was even steeper than many economists had feared, and was much lower than the 0.5 percent contraction from the previous quarter.

The announcement comes on the heels of a new budget from the Obama administration that assumes what some economists have called an unrealistically optimistic view of the near-term future of the American economy.

Obama makes tough but right choice in continuing ICE raids for undocumented workers; these times require sacrifice -- here grudgingly is mine

President Obama has set off a wave of outrage throughout the Hispanic advocacy community across America this week by continuing the Bush administration policy of ICE raids of workplaces for undocumented workers.

This move comes despite his wife's promise to Hispanic leaders at the Democratic Party National Convention that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids of workplaces would stop. The raids have become inhumane to worker families and due process in this nation.

I have opposed such raids in my writing and advocacy. But the economic times have changed so severely. First-time jobless claims for American citizens reached almost 700,000 people, show figures released today. There ia growing need for work, any work in this land. And undocumented immigrants cannot be allowed to take these jobs.

Their removal from this country will force employers to pay somewhat higher wages to get American citizens into the jobs. Ultimately, the resources of this nation belong to its citizens first. These are extra-ordinary times, as the loss of wealth in this nation has easily eclipsed that of the Great Depression.

It pains me to support the ICE raids. But it is imperative to remove people who do not have the legal right to hold those jobs. They must be made available first for the relief and support of citizens here and those people legally here.

While the Hispanic advocacy community has been critical of Obama for this move, it was an inevitable one in keeping with the economic times ... and the rule of law. More strongly enforcing immigration laws will help citizens in need. They must come first.

Undocumented human beings, however, should still be treated humanely and constitutionally. The 287g deportation program in Nashville and 60 other places around the country does not meet those standards. If Obama is going to treat terrorists more humanely, then he should also do so with undocumented immigrants in returning them home.

And terrorists should be kept off American soil like undocumented immigrants.

I wish there was a better way and these were more healthy economic times. But they are not. These times require responsibility and sacrifice on the personal and governmental levels. And so this nation has no choice but to free up jobs for its citizens first, and that should be a priority for the Obama administration.

Before being Hispanic, I am an American first. That is the deepest of my roots here, besides my Christian faith. And so it is for my extended family as well.

No matter our ethnicity, we all cannot afford to be anything but Americans first -- not even Republicans or Democrats -- if this nation and its citizens are to survive the next several years of the Great Recession.

May God help us all to make the right decisions.

For the love of Hunter: Sumner County boy triumphing in last round of serious chemo

The body reacts differently to chemotherapy deep into potentially terminal leukemia.

All chemo kills cells, good and bad. But after the body has been pummeled for months and months by chemo, it makes a decision that doctors cannot predict but prayers can only answer.

It revives. It bounces back from the chemo quicker and stays stronger longer. And what once weakened to fragility, now is more willingly accepted by the body and incorporated in a revival of health.

I can say with increasing confidence that such is the case with 6-year-old Hunter, as he passes the first of three weeks of extra-ordinary chemo to stay in remission and return to a near normal life of maintenance chemo.

Wednesday, he had another spinal tap to get the chemo to his brain. Then he had to have blood, which is a frustratingly slow three-hour process. But his spirits were high as we watched his favorite show about something about "Cody", one of twin blond boys who sing and act with integrity.

It is quite good. We also played with Wonders of Nature figurines, which come in tribes from the sea, volcano and forest.

It is so wonderful to see this boy surge forward, even growing a half inch. His strength is reminiscent of the vitality that returned to my body after I almost died from the same leukemia at Vanderbilt two years ago. Prayers do make a difference.

And wonder of wonders -- peach fuzz has emerged on his previously bald head. You see, the body does catch up. Praise be to God.

Hunter will get less chemo next week at the Monroe Carell Jr. Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. It becomes a more marvelous place for me to visit each week. And the good people there in the waiting rooms -- on the third floor pediatric surgery center and the sixth floor cancer treatment area -- are so patient and loving. An Amish lady and her daughter were there yesterday. And a grandmother was grabbing a quick nap as her grandchild was in surgery.

You can't help but want to pray for each of these people over and over. You know they would rather be receiving the chemo or be in surgery. But they can't.

So we must pray. And hope, that like Hunter, their loved ones are being readied for much better and more normal days to come.

Now this information is really damn scary

There's a reason why investors and taxpayers fear the federal government getting further involved in the banking industry.

Too many big, national banks represent a fiscal black hole for taxpayer money. And the following FDIC report this afternoon turned the stock market from 100 points positive on the Dow to 90 points negative by the end of the trading day.

AP reported:

America's banks lost $26.2 billion in the last three months of 2008, the first quarterly deficit in 18 years, as the housing and credit crises escalated.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Thursday that U.S. banks and thrifts also more than doubled the amount they set aside to cover potential loan losses, to $69.3 billion in the fourth quarter from $32.1 billion a year earlier.

Regulators said there were 252 banks in trouble at the end of 2008, up from 171 in the third quarter.

The FDIC also said that for all of last year, the banking industry earned $16.1 billion, the smallest annual profit since 1990.

Rising losses on loans and eroding values of assets "overwhelmed" banks' revenues in the fourth quarter, the FDIC said. More than two-thirds of all banks and thrifts turned a profit in that period but their earnings were outstripped by large losses at a number of major banks.

Obama budget spending purposeful, visionary, but it scares the hell out of investors and taxpayers

President Obama's first budget sets higher standards for honesty and visionary objectives. He is a leader who knows what he wants in the tradition of Ronald Reagan.

But the growing of government -- contrary to Reagan's vision -- is quite scary to investors and taxpayers. That's because Obama does not ultimately control this process. Budget matters are under more Congressional direction, and these politicians end up spending more money than a president wants.

As it now stands, the Obama budget represents more than $25,000 per taxpayer, the Drudge Report said.

Consider the House, which just passed a $400 billion spending bill that contained more than 8,500 earmarks, something Obama said earlier this week he was wanting to eliminate. But Speaker Pelosi already said before Obama took office that she was going to follow her own political muse.

The New York Times reported:

And one watchdog group said the bill provided nearly $8 billion for more than 8,500 pet projects favored by lawmakers, including $1.7 million for a honey bee laboratory in Weslaco, Tex.; $346,000 for research on apple fire blight in Michigan and New York; and $1.5 million for work on grapes and grape products, including wine.

Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, said Mr. Obama’s call for fiscal responsibility, in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, was “sandwiched between two wasteful spending bills.”

However, Republicans have shown themselves no more virtuous than Democrats in spending control. And it was the Bush administration that exploded the deficit with an unnecessary war that was never budgeted. To his great credit, Obama is budgeting the war into his numbers.

I can appreciate what Obama wants to do even if I do not agree with him. It is the politicians who support him in his own party who are going to turn this budget into a disaster for taxpayers and investors.

And that will delay any economic recovery.

Big newspapers continue to rightly fall; like automakers, papers are victims of own arrogance

E.W. Scripps Co. announced today the Rocky Mountain News would cease to publish Friday, marking a growing tide of big newspapers around the country failing and folding.

And rightly so. Never has one industry been more biased against the reader and his or her interests, in favor of a liberal elitism serving the few.

Consumers have brought on this decline, as they have with the auto industry.

The San Francisco Chronicle faces the same lingering fate that the News had been facing. It is up for sale to anyone, or it will close. Philadephia's newspapers are in bankruptcy court.

Change comes. And with the newspaper industry, it is righteous one. The winners from this change will be the readers, who will now turn to community newspapers that are locally owned and respect the interests of their neighbors -- because their owners live there as neighbors, not as executives in some corporate palace states away.

America playing both ends for profit as Mexico descends into chaos and probable collapse

I was sitting in the choir box at church Tuesday when a fellow singer and I were discussing what I had been writing lately on my blog.

I noted the danger of government collapse in Mexico and Pakistan and the danger posed to our nation and world.

Mexico's problems revolve around druglords who are winning the battle with the government for control. Part of the problem is corruption in the police and with judicial authorities.

My friend responded that Mexico's history of corruption was baffling and sad. The bottom line is that there is something wrong with people south of the border.

There really isn't. They actually are no different than us, and so it is with their government.

It is just that America has had the wealth to withstand the corruption undermining all levels of government. But "had" is the key word here. Our nation is collapsing economically because all the corruption here from Wall Street to banks to Washington to personal households has finally caught up with America and dried up all available funds.

And so this nation's leaders are embarking on unprecedented deficit spending that will ensure this nation never returns to the wealthy days it once enjoyed. In a way, that is a corruption.

If we look at history, America stole its way to the prosperity that allowed it to cover up its corruption. Texas and California are major global economies in themselves. If Mexico had them still, then the situation would be in reverse concerning government collapse.

Today's New York Times reports on how gun dealers in this nation are profiting from shipping weapons to the druglords in Mexico to win the fight. Isn't that ironic, considering the Lou Dobbs always complains about Mexico sending drugs in the U.S to our detriment?

The bigot never criticizes the addictions of America's citizens. You have to provide the market before the drugs can be sent in. It always is easier to blame someone else than to apply discipline at home.

Mexico's collapse will severely affect this nation, particularly the border states. A refugee crisis will have to be addressed by President Obama as citizens from South of the border flee here for safety. If Obama can show mercy to terrorists at Guantanamo, will he do the same for Mexican families who have done no wrong?

America's role historically and currently in Mexico's collapse is unmistakable. And our government now enters its most uncertain days as we no longer have the wealth to cover up all our corruption.

BREAKING NEWS: GM reports 2008 loss of $16.8 billion; bailout becomes riskier for taxpayers

General Motors reported a 2008 loss of $16.8 billion and a fourth quarter loss of $2 billion more than expected -- increasing fears that further government intervention with the automaker will only mean much more taxpayer loss.

Money lent to the automaker last year was wiped out in the fourth quarter.

President Obama in his State of the Union address said that GM and all the nation's automakers would not be abandoned by the government.

President invests in Nashville's top charter public school; Project Reflect's Smithson Craighead Academy lands $225,000 for middlle school

Two days before his State of the Union Address, President Obama's administration awarded a $225,000 grant for the start up of Project Reflect's charter middle school in Nashville. It opens this fall.

The non-profit's Smithson Craighead Academy still will need to come up with a $2.4 million operating budget, which will mostly be taken from public per pupil spending in Metro of $8,176. A charter school is a public school, and per pupil spending follows the student there.

The purpose of the start-up funds from the federal government is to pay for items that the regular annual budget would not cover, such as a school full of furniture, brand new books and supplies in every subject area for 300 kids, a lab or two full of computers, sports equipment for the whole physical education program, etc.

Project Reflect submitted an application for the funding a while back.

In his speech last night to Congress, Obama cited charter schools as one of his education priorities to rescue children from failing, regular public schools. Metro Nashville Schools have failed to meet No Child Left Behind Act standards for the past five years.

Charter schools represent more efficient spending of public school dollars with better results for children who have been left behind. Smithson Craighead in its five years has recorded the fifth highest achievement scores in the school district. The school is under the umbrella of Project Reflect, a non-profit organization headed by Sister Sandra Smithson of Nashville. She is a Catholic nun and native of Nashville.

Before charter schools were allowed in Tennessee earlier this decade, Smithson and her natural sister, Tennessee Hall of Fame teacher Mary Craighead, ran a summer and after-school program to catch children up who were left behind in Metro public schools.

After legislation authorizing charter schools, the sisters opened a K-4 charter public school. Ms. Craighead died earlier this year. But she knew of the plans to open the middle school this fall. Plans now are in the works to open Nashville's first charter public high school under Project Reflect.

As the new director of the board for development(fundraising) at Project Reflect, I will be heading a new campaign to raise money and public support under the cause of "Saving Our Public Schools." It has been distinct privilege to have been involved with the cause behind Project Reflect since 1997. My new position is unpaid.

Read more about how charter schools can serve as a point of reform for public education spending tomorrow in my column at www.williamsonherald.com.

The Decision: Obama prevails on split judges' cards: for a political leader, a strong speech; for investors such as myself, it was not nearly enough

President Barack Obama gave quite a strong political speech for a chief executive delivering his first State of the Union Address.

He outlined an impressive agenda on health care reform, which is most needed.

His energy agenda was impressive and far-reaching. His education initiative was long on spending and short on real reform. Providing more incentives for teachers to do a good job is in sharp contrast to what is demanded as a basic from all workers in the private sector. If they don't do a good job, they're fired.

But as far as convincing the people with money in this nation to re-invest in the financial markets and job-creating enterprises, the speech was far from enough.

Obama's mathematics on cutting the deficit -- partly based on a peace dividend from Iraq -- does not account for the increased cost for the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and increased U.S. intervention in Pakistan. At best, this equation is a wash, not a sum benefit to the nation's fiscal balance sheet.

Taxing households making more than $250,000 is fine, but there are far fewer of those households after the round of layoffs from the Great Recession.

Obama admitted that even more money than the $700 billion already committed to the nation's financial system will have to be spent. And no one knows the final price tag of that disastrous intervention, because the Treasury Department has yet to release details on what will be considered a bad asset.

The president continuously said that the nation could ill afford to do nothing. I disagree. Making too costly policy decisions that will not make a meaningful difference threaten to turn this recession even nastier and make it longer. His commitment tonight to the U.S. auto industry's restructuring was disturbing. That will mean even more spending for bad behavior.

Ultimately, this generational theft of the futures of our children and grandchildren is inexcusable. Bad decisions are being made now from which this economy will never recover from. And today's taxpayers are being greviously abused.

The president's contention that the economy will emerge stronger than before is not rational. History, which he cited often in his speech, dictates certainties. Great Britain could not avoid its ultimate downsizing as the world's ultimate power after World War I. America faces the same fate this century.

The new debt of this nation beyond what Obama inherited will only trigger fierce inflation, making living harder in this nation after 2010.

The president delivered a strong address, showing himself convinced of the direction he has set for the nation.

But for investors such as myself, whose decisions and spending will be needed to turn around the economy, Obama did nothing to convince us to bring our money off the sidelines and back into the marketplace.

And as taxpayers, he left us fearful of his next spending plan.

The Final Rounds: Flourishing rhetoric, draw

President says every American wants the nation to succeed.

But for who?

Build common ground.

Lift nation's from its depths.

Restart engine of prosperity.

God Bless America.

Speech length: 50 minutes.

Round 12: Celebrity time; draw on all cards

Every State of the Union Address gives the president a respite, so he can point out hand-picked guests in the gallery.

Everyone applauds.

Every president speaks of the spirit of America.

Rah-rah!

Round 8 -11: Iraq and Afghan wars, terrorism; Obama loses on all cards; no specifics again

No specifics on withdraw and expansion of fights or the increasing American intervention into a sovereign Pakistan. Bad. Very bad. Main issue he ran on during campaign.

Says everyone loves men and women who are serving.

Increase pay and care for veterans.

Closing Guantanamo Bay, but no details on which state is lucky winner of hosting these terrorists.

Says world is waiting for us to lead.

Meanwhile, we're waiting on the world to buy our overspending and new debt. No mention of capitulation to Chinese during Secretary of State's recent visit.

Round 4-7: The Obama budget, country's direction; split cards give rounds to Obama

President said he will submit a budget to Congress that is a vision, not a spending plan dead on arrival.

Both parties will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities.

Butget will invest in three areas: energy, health care and education.

Energy: the country that harnesses renewalable energy will lead the century, Obama said. It is time for America to lead again in this industry. Basic research funding to increase. Lay down thousands of miles of lines to carry energy to new area. Jobs will be created in this industry. Clean coal, more efficient cars, wind energy.

Obama says automakers will not be rescued from bad decisions but industry will not be abandoned and will be restructured. Uh oh, auto bailout. "None of this will come without cost," Obama said.

Health care costs: Cause a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds. Cost of health care is main reason small businesses close.

Electronic health records -- save costs. Conquer disease by seeking cure for cancer in our time. Largest investment in preventive care. A down payment on quality health care for everyone. Will help bring down deficit with savings.

"Health care reform cannot wait another year."

Education: Three quarters of fastest growing occupations require more than high school diploma. Half of students who start college never finish. This is a prescription to economic decline. This administration committed to quality education for every child up to entering a profession.

Stimulus plan makes college more affordable for 7 million American.

Our schools need more reform. New incentives for teacher performance. Invest in innovative program for schools closing achievement gaps.

Expand commitment to charter public schools.

Obama asks for every American to commit to one more year of education after high school.

By 2020, America's goal will be to lead world in college grads.

The National Debt: Republicans finally cheer.

Pledges to cut deficit in half by end of first term in office. Identified $2 trillion in savings by end of next decade.

Eliminate education programs that don't work and agri-business subsidies. End no-bid contracts in Iraq.

Root out waste and abuse in Medicare program. End tax breaks for companies that shift jobs overseas. Starting to sound like one of his campaign speeches.

End tax breaks for wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, your taxes will not increase, president says.

Begin conversation of Social Security Reform.

Deficit of trust in nation. This budget looks ahead for 10 years.

Round 3: Unfreezing credit markets; no specifics; Obama loses on all cards with this investor

When there is no lending, families cannot buy homes and cars. And economy suffers more, Obama said.

Restart of lending in the nation is a must. The federal government will provide for:

Creation of lending fund to consumers and entrepreneurs to spend. That's new.

Creation of housing plan for people threatened with foreclosure. Still controversial. President said he gets it concerning popular protest about rewarding bad behavior.

Creation of plan to help banks lend more money. Still controversial with no specifics. Obama says more money than $700 billion already committed will be needed for banks.

Obama unduly criticized investors' lack of confidence in his plans. All they want is specifics; he did not provide any.

President claimed his plan is to help people, not banks. Unconvincing. Bad assets in these banks are a black hole. Treasury has yet to say how it will grade bank assets.

Again, Obama lacks specifics. That's big.

Round 2: Stimulus plan explained; Obama scores

The president cited as highlights of his stimulus plan in the next few months:

Fifty seven Minneapolis police officers still on duty, not laid off.

Tax cut in all worker paychecks by April 1.

Families struggling to pay tuition costs get tax credit for four years.

Laid-off Americans will get extended unemployment benefits and health care coverage.

Biden to lead oversight effort of the plan to prevent waste and misdirection of resources.

Round 1: Obama ahead on all cards

Despite the nauseating backdrop of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the president scored early and often with nice rhetoric that delivered a human touch about the national agony and fear over the economy.

Obama then pledged that the country would emerge stronger than before. While I doubt that it can, it still was nice for him to say to try and build some hope in the nation.

That drew a round of applause from Congress.

He also scored points by not laying blame on any administration or political party. He cited decades of knowing that oil dependence was a problem. He cited individual and government piling of debt.

He cited a day of reckoning to make long-term decisions not only for economic recovery but future growth.

Good honesty on his part, plain speaking.

Live blogging from the State of the Union

Stay tuned to this blog for live analysis during President Obama's first State of the Union.

I'll grade his key comments during the speech and deliver an overall grade in the final post.

Markets bounce back big thanks to Berhnanke testimony and hopes for specifics from Obama

The financial markets 45 minutes before closing are poised to wipe out yesterday's losses and give President Obama a vote of confidence before his State of the Union address tonight.

Fed Chief Berhnanke also turned investor moods upward with testimony before a congressional banking committee, backing the administration somewhat from nationalization of the country's largest banks.

So is the market ready to rally beyond today?

I don't think so.

The lows will be tested again before the week is out.

Gore is back in news but not for good reason; his global climate presentation went a tad too far

Al Gore has been found.

The New York Times has this interesting tidbit about the former VP and Nobel Prize winner presenting some erroneous information in pressing his case about global warming.

I like Mr. Gore. And I think he is right on the environment. But I have been a bit disappointed by the low profile he has been keeping during the global recession.

Meanwhile, we get way too much of Bill Clinton.

The Times reports:

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said. (The preceding link is to a video clip of that portion of the talk; go to 7th minute.)

Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here’s why.

Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado. Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters (details below).

Clear and present danger: Mexico, Pakistan cited by military for U.S. forces to prepare for collapse

The U.S. military has cited the countries of Mexico and Pakistan as in danger of collapse -- Mexico from the growing violence in which the government is losing the fight with drug lords to the Pakistan where the Taliban and anti-Americanism is gaining more control.

The military is preparing plans for how U.S. forces will respond to these upheavals.

Mexico poses the danger of the violence spreading across the border into our nation. In addition, its oil trade could ground to a halt, forcing U.S. gas prices higher. Then there is the threat of Hugo Chavez and his influence amid such upheaval.

Pakistan in turn is a nuclear power. So the fall of the government there would put nuclear weapons in the hands of Muslim fanatics, joining Iran as a new nuclear threat to the region. American troops in Afghanistan also would be under heightened danger.

While it is natural to focus more locally with the decline in the U.S. economy, these trouble spots could ultimately pose more danger in the long run.

Who is serving who? U.S. Postal Service needs to be operated by real world rules; bonuses, pay are out control; hike in stamp price is outrageous

The Washington Times reports that a congressional hearing will be held on the big bonus and a 40 percent hike in pay for the Postmaster General -- who just last month told lawmakers that U.S. Postal Service could not keep up with costs and might cut out one day of service.

The Postmaster also recently announced a 2-cent hike in the price of a stamp. But never does the Postal Service simultaneously announce any cutbacks in employee pay, numbers or benefits -- and all are substantial and not reflective of the real world.

I cannot believe that there is not some entrepreneur out there to start a competing enterprise to the Postal Service. And with so many people laid off, the businessman or woman would have a very educated workforce to labor for less.

The service to consumers from the Postal Service is poor. Americans certainly would flock to new mail service at less cost.

Here is The Times' story:

Congress will hold a hearing next month into why Postmaster General John E. Potter has gotten a nearly 40 percent pay raise since 2006 and was awarded a six-figure incentive bonus last year, even as the U.S. Postal Service faces a multibillion-dollar shortfall that threatens a day of mail delivery.

"Last year, the Postal Service took a loss of nearly $3 billion and recommended that the public take austere cuts in service to allow it to operate, including cutting a day of mail delivery and raising the price of stamps," Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, said Friday.

"All things considered, I think most postal customers feel that the huge increase in pay for Mr. Potter is incongruent with the post office's recent performance. I assure you that our subcommittee will look into this matter at a hearing in March," said Mr. Lynch, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service.

On Tuesday, The Washington Times reported that Mr. Potter had received nearly 40 percent in pay raises since 2006 and about $135,000 in incentive bonuses last year. For fiscal 2008, including increases to the value of his two pensions, Mr. Potter's entire compensation package totaled more than $800,000, according to Postal Service financial records.

Corker sticks to his position on auto bailout, GM: 'at some point, we need to let institutions fail'

In an interview just completed this morning on CNBC, Tennessee U.S. Sen. Bob Corker stuck to his position on the auto bailout and the Obama administration's increasing focus on nationalizing the country's big banks.

"At some point, we need to let institutions fail," Corker said of all the rescue plans.

Corker's contention -- which is dead on right -- comes as insurer AIG announced today that it will lose $60 billion despite receiving $100 billion in help from the federal government. Analysts say that AIG remains a black hole of assets declining in value, reinforcing Corker's position that the U.S. government should not get involved in the marketplace.

"This is going to be never ending," the Tennessee Republican said of money AIG and other institutions need.

As for all the Obama plans, Corker said "We are in the wilderness right now. I hope tonight (from State of the Union address) ... we need direction."

The world is watching the administration and its involvement with the banking system, Corker said, as to what the government is going to do with these troubled institutions. Corker is the 22nd most wealthy member of Congress.

"This is 90 percent of the issue(with the economy) if we get it right," Corker said. "We need to have the ability to invest in common shares without their value going to zero."

Look for Corker's star to continue to rise as investors look for more clarity in Obama administration plans --- and don't get it.

Unfortunately, for much of the interview, Corker was saddled with New York Democratic Rep. Maloney, who interrupted with responses that reflected a belief that this economy can be turned around in the short term -- and with the bad Obama policy decisions so far.

It can't, particularly since less than a quarter of the Obama stimulus plan will be spent in the next two years. Corker senses the seriousness of the moment in decisions being made. If our government make mistakes now in trying to relieve matters and rescue institutions immediately, we will destroy this economy for the long term.

The wilderness Corker cites may indeed be where America's economy remains for the decade to come. Truly.

Obama is right to not sugarcoat things with hope

Despite rising criticism from Democrats such as former President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama tonight should stick to his demeanor of being serious about the economy and not offering any kind of false hope of recovery soon.

No one knows when recovery will come, or if it will come even during his first term.

Remember, the Great Depression reached its bottom in 1932, with one in four Americans were unemployed. By 1937, economic numbers were almost as bad. It was not until World War II did recovered employment levels return to the U.S. economy.

If the Great Recession is anything like the Great Depression, Obama will be out of office before the economy fully recovers.

Hope is useless unless it is backed with some fact. Plans do not equate to evidence. Obama in his State of the Union address should leave hope for another day when there is evidence that it is warranted.

A profile of homeowners facing the pinch; their case is not good one to support Obama rescue

The Wall Street Journal features a profile of one set of homeowners in one of the worst hit place in America for home foreclosures -- Maricopa, AZ, a city north of Phoenix.

The profile is telling of how a wife and husband made a choice on buying a home that was beyond their means that included a swimming pool in the back. The couple put down $50,000, which helped bring down the monthly payments for the $250,000 house.

But the husband's job and income certainly were not enough to support such a large house. The profile reinforces the rant of CNBC's Rick Santelli, who last week touched off a national movement against the Obama administration plan bailing out bad behavior fueling home foreclosures.

The couple was sold on the idea of the house rising in value to help make the deal affordable. They could move back home to California in a few years with a nice profit.

But home values didn't rise as expected. No good thing ever does.

Now the home is worth half of what they paid.

The couple ultimately gambled and lost. And there are millions of couples like them across the country.

Do they deserve to be rescued in exchange for saddling our children and grandchildren with an economic depressing debt?

The argument of saving their home to keep up neighborhood property values doesn't fly in their case. Homes on three sides of them are already vacant. One more is not going to matter.

Perhaps the argument can be made that the county needs the couple to keep paying property taxes to support community services, and the bank needs a good asset on its books to stay float. The now defrocked Alan Greenspan says that the housing mess must be resolved before the banking one can.

But do we want $275 billion in our tax money spent for these factors? Once we get into these messes, the cost is sure to rise, double or triple.

You make the call. Santelli has.

Here is an excerpt from the WSJ story:

Builders rushed into this one-time agricultural crossroads during the housing boom. They put up beige stucco houses on winding streets, with names like Heavenly Place and Good Vibrations Lane.

They lured young people who couldn't afford homes in nearby Phoenix or its costly suburbs. The population soared to 37,000 last year from 1,400 a decade ago, making Maricopa one of the nation's fastest-growing towns.

Now, it's become a dead end for some of those people.

"We're trapped," says Tracy Campbell, as she watches her 2-year-old daughter romp on a playground.

In 2005, her husband, Zachary Campbell, accepted a transfer from San Diego to Phoenix to manage a recreational-vehicle store. For the first time, the Campbells figured, they could afford their own home, though that meant moving to Maricopa, about 20 miles from Mr. Campbell's store. They scraped together a $50,000 down payment to buy a new four-bedroom home in Maricopa, for $250,000. It came with black granite countertops, cherry kitchen cabinets and a pool in back.

Today, Ms. Campbell figures, the home is worth perhaps half what they paid in 2005.

Even that might be optimistic. Along a nearby highway, young men hired by a local real estate brokerage wave red signs touting "Homes From $69.9 K."

The Campbells planned to sell their house for a profit after a few years and move back to San Diego before their daughter starts kindergarten. Today, they couldn't hope to sell the house for enough to pay off the mortgage. They fear the down payment they made on the house is money they won't see again.

Some people in the neighborhood are simply walking away from their houses, leaving them for the lenders to foreclose. "We're surrounded by empty houses on three sides," Ms. Campbell says. But she and her husband have kept up on their payments, and want to keep their credit record clean.

If misery loves company, the Campbells are in good shape: Zillow.com, a real-estate information provider, estimates that 75% of all homeowners in Maricopa, including those with no mortgage debt, owe more on their mortgages than the current value of their homes. For the nation as a whole, the estimate is 18%.

Coming to a home near you soon: Credit card companies asking you to cancel your accounts

American Express is offering a certain number of customers $300 to close their accounts and pay off their balances.

The credit card company is reeling from rising delinquencies on card accounts as Americans lose their jobs and put off paying off their debts, including on their cards.

The nation's massive credit card debt, estimated at $4.4 trillion before the economic downturn, will be the next financial crisis to hit the nation's economy, further reducing consumer spending.

And you might get a notice like American Express cardholders -- usually the more affluent in society -- asking for cancellation of your card right when you need it most.

'Batman' series of movies provide a glimpse of a more desperate, recessionary America for long term; today's drop in Dow is proof of difficult truth

The "Batman" series of movies, while greatly entertaining, actually are more prophetic in nature.

They actually foretell the kind of America we'll be living in for quite a long time.

The desperate underbelly to the Gotham Citys of these movies will be reflected in communities across America and in sections of those communities once thought secure.

Yes, all major urban centers in real-life America already have sections set aside for the dispossessed and desperate acts. But the Gotham City of the movies has an underbelly that affects the rest of the city and its survival. And that is the kind of darkness -- which equates to an absence of hope -- facing America as a whole.

Yes, there will be pockets where things are better. But on the whole, a heavy, demoralizing rain will fall on the good and the bad in our land for longer than anyone expected -- even among the most pessimistic economists.

I became convinced of this conclusion today after watching the stock market fall a shocking 250 points after a terrible week before. I predicted the market would close at 7000 by the end of this month. But the plummet has been more dramatic. Now the Dow sits at its lowest point since 11 years ago. And there is no floor below.

Wny? The confidence of this nation's Main Street investors and consumers has declined even further than the Dow -- due to bad policy moves from Washington and the President's intent tomorrow night in his State of the Union address to commence a class war of taxation.

In addition, the nation continues to move toward nationalization of the country's biggest banks -- as with Citigroup and next, Bank of America -- and we'll assume an amount of bad debt that no one still can measure.

Our departure from capitalism and toward socialism in corporate America is astounding. I now see the Dow falling toward 5000. My 6000 prediction was too optimistic.

But the most stark evidence of coming darker times came this afternoon in a fascinating interview CNBC's Erin Burnett conducted with an Asian financial analyst following the beggar-like visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to convince the Chinese to keep buying America's debt through T-bills.

The analyst rightly predicted that the Chinese and the world will tire of buying America's debt. What's more, they can't afford the amount of America's new spending, he said. The result will be the federal government printing a whole bunch of new money, then having to buy its own debt, the analyst said.

That will force inflation up t a terrible pace and interest rates to 15 to 20 percent, ala the days of Jimmy Carter in the White House. No one will be able to afford to buy homes, cars and other big-ticket items. No spending, no new jobs.

America then will face a lingering recession as the Japanese have endured the past two decades. People will be unemployed for years, raising stress in the homes and crime in parts of cities once believed secure from such behavior.

And that brings us back to a society living on the edge of the abyss, on the dark edge, as in the Batman movies.

Some people consider it un-American to say this nation won't bounce back and be like it was before. But you can't cheat economic cycles and move so far away from disciplined spending and good behavior. If the people of Israel could be sold into bondage when they turned away from God, why should America consider itself immune?

So many Americans don't understand or want to face hard times. They want an immediate solution and reversal. And Obama promised as much. Instead, he has made things worse, much worse.

We are going to face public corruption and betrayal along the scale of the Batman movies. We are going to look for a savior such as the Dark Knight, but there is no savior except the person we look at in the mirror and the one on the crucifix.

America will never be the same. We must prepare our lives for this truth now, if not for ourselves, then our children. Our challenge is to survive -- economically, spiritually and amid leadership in both political parties that doesn't get the dire nature of the times.

Obama's auto task force members don't drive U.S.

The Detroit News reports that nearly all the members of the Obama administration's auto task force -- trying to put together a bailout of GM and Chrysler -- drive foreign cars.

So why does the administration believe American consumers will choose any differently than its own task force members even if GM and Chrysler are bailed out with more than $30 billion in taxpayer money?

Incredible.

The News reports:

WASHINGTON -- The vehicles owned by the Obama administration's auto team could reflect one reason why Detroit's Big Three automakers are in trouble: The list includes few new American cars.

Among the eight members named Friday to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry and the 10 senior policy aides who will assist them in their work, two own American models. Add the Treasury Department's special adviser to the task force and the total jumps to three.


By the way, I own a 1993 Ford. And Ford is not seeking any bailout funds. Only the strong should survive in the auto industry.

In the words of Rick Santelli, "are you listening, President Obama?"

Stock market falls to new low as nation prepares for Obama's State of the Union and new class war

The financial markets continued their astounding decline today, off 173 points on the Dow by midday CDT.

Investor confidence continues to be undermined by Obama administration policy, first by a new move toward nationalization of the country's biggest banks and second in preparation of the president's State of the Union address tomorrow night.

Under public pressure led by CNBC analyst Rick Santelli for large public spending plans, the president now has made the incredible claim that he'll cut the budget deficit by two-thirds despite the price tags with his economic, home and banking plans.

Obama says he'll close the deficit by taxing the rich more and saving money from the withdraw in Iraq. Neither are sure things.

There are a lot less rich in this nation because of the fall in the financial markets. And the rich are needed to spend to create jobs. Tax them more and they'll just quit spending like the rest of us.

Second, military commanders are very divided on the pace of withdraw from Iraq. You can never remove yourself from a war on time. And that peace dividend will be largely eaten up by the growing conflict in Afghanistan.

Investors understand these truths, which is why they are deserting the financial markets and consumer spending when the nation needs them most.

Newspaper bankruptcies are fitting result for industry that thumbed its nose at readers wishes

The unthinkable is becoming more of a reality in the newspaper industry with bankruptcy filings for major media companies in the Northeast.

What is happening to newspapers should also be allowed to happen to automakers. If companies are operated badly, they should fold. Newspapers have long rejected the needs and opinions of readers for an elitist approach to kind of the product being delivered.

The Tennessean and Gannett Co. Inc are a prime example of this arrogance. I know. I worked for them.

And so the Internet has allowed readers to go elsewhere for information. Advertisers have followed. Classified advertising has dried up.

More newspapers deserve the fate of the media companies that filed for bankruptcy this past weekend. In the end, the reader will win.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The weekend bankruptcy filings of Philadelphia's two major newspapers and Journal Register Co., publisher of the New Haven Register and 19 other dailies, marks the latest in a wave of companies crushed by corporate debt and is likely a sign of more pain to come.

The operating arm of Philadelphia Media Holdings, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, sought bankruptcy protection Sunday, following on the heels of a Saturday filing by the Journal Register. Both companies were victims of debt taken on for acquisitions, which became a noose as advertising revenue shrivels across the newspaper industry.

Preparing for Lent; it's not about taking things away from lifestyle but adding value to your life

I am somewhat surprised at the too simplistic way that many believers approach the Lenten season.

Their attitude is not one of exciting anticipation but resigned recognition that their lifestyle will be changed for a few weeks. And then they make silly selections like giving up chocolate or soft drink for the season as a representative participation in Christ's suffering.

God must be shaking his head in disappointment.

It is only people who have suffered greatly, such as with cancer, who can really appreciate and embrace the season and act accordingly in a way that God would find pride.

Lent is not about subtracting, it is about adding, specifically an appreciation for life, including its suffering and bad breaks. And we do so more in this season than others because our Savior experienced it all, as did his mother with her seven sorrows.

Don't make silly subtractions from your lifestyle. Choose additions to your life. I will be going to Mass daily to increase my appreciation for Christ's sacrifice and boost my spirituality. And at Mass, my pastor the Rev. Joe Pat Breen gives updates on needs among members of the parish and the community. With this information, he provides personal ways we can interact and make a difference but adding to our life and others.

Lent is a good time to add to one's participation in the community, either in addressing needs of the less fortunate or reinforcing those assets that have made a difference over the generations. Children and their schools could be a place where your additions to your life during Lent could deliver more richness to your life.

Don't fall into the simplistic trap of cutting out chocolate or soft drinks for Lent as anything representative of recognizing Christ's sacrifice. That's a cop out. Choose things that take from your busy schedules and add to your involvement in Christ-like activities of Matthew 25.

And place all your sufferings at the foot of the cross. Christ is with us, because He has experienced all we've been through. And He represents the hope of resurrection from these hurts into a new and better creature in God.

The false hopes of the Chamber report card and Frist/Bredesen effort on Tennessee education; at $8,176 per child, taxpayers are getting cheated

The greatest share of state and local dollars go to public education. And logically, public education draws the most political lies and misleading information to try and fool taxpayers that their money is being spent effectively.

It is not.

And I offer my credentials in winning national education writing awards from the Education Writers Association in Washington, D.C., and the Casey Journalism Center and the University of Maryland. In addition, I have spent countless hours in public school classrooms, watching the bureaucracy win the day and children lose the battle.

Let's roll the videotape:

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce last week gave a positive grade to progress in public education for a school system that has failed to meet No Child Left Behind Act standards for the past five years.

Guess why the chamber gave the school system a positive grade? Because the chamber has used the failure of the public schools to gain control of the school board and to re-segregate schools. It's happy. Old times are not forgotten.

But, for example, here's the ultimate problem with any report card: While the district is graduating more students from its previous abysmal rate, so many are not prepared to go on to college. In fact, Tennessee State University in Nashville has not had an increase in enrollment in the five years that lottery scholarships have been available in the state. Metro Nashville students, usually poor black kids from north Nashville, can't score a 19 on ACT tests to qualify for scholarships.

For those who do get in, they can't keep up. They use much of their first year on remedial education. And that kind of education will be cut as higher ed takes some brutal budget cuts. So what is the Nashville Chamber of Commerce encouraged about? Nashville public schools are not creating an educated workforce for the jobs of tomorrow.

Consider that Nashville and state taxpayers already pay $8,176 per child for public education. In a classroom of 20, that's an incredible investment of $162,000 by you and me. So why is the school district failing?

Because the education bureaucracy eats up so much of our taxpayer money before it ever gets to the classroom. And that bureaucracy is defended by Democratic politicians in Nashville and other big cities.

So enter former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican, and Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat in name only. Frist with the governor in tow offered a new education program last week with a vague mission and criticism of the level of education spending in Tennessee.

Senator, the problem is not the level of spending. The problem is the bureaucracy. And you can't throw more money into a bad system until it is reformed. If not for the children, senator, at least do it for the taxpayers.

And senator, parents of impoverished children of all races deserve the kind of school choice your folks had, and you had as a parent. That means broader eligibility for children to attend charter public schools in Tennessee and vouchers for private and religious schools. Afterall, the money belongs to the taxpayers, not the bureaucracy.

Bredesen likes to hang his education hat on creating pre-K education in Tennessee. But it only adds another level of money-wasting bureaucracy compared to the good done.

For poor children, there already is Head Start. And Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander - a former Secretary of Education -- tried to get reading started in the federal program but was blocked by Democrats. Families with more means can afford their own pre-K education.

Bredesen, who also sent his child to private school, knows nothing of what is needed in the classroom.

Competition will make public schools better, not meaningless report cards. And throwing more money into a broken system without real reform, and without giving parents more choice, is simply deserting the children, the taxpayers and Tennessee's ability to fully join the global economy.

The real versus the phony tonight on television

The choice on TV tonight is reality versus fantasy.

American Movie Classic has "Patton" with the late George C. Scott, while one of the big three networks has the Academy Awards.

I'm going with someone real, versus a bunch of phonies who represent values out of sync with regular Americans. They are as real as their reconstructed breasts, lips and chins.

Hollywood got what it wanted with the election of Barack Obama and the upcoming closing of the Guantanamo detention center. But they don't have to live with the mounting mistakes of Obama's administration on the economy or have the terrorist detainees located next to their neighborhoods like some unfortunate state before Jan. 1.

So I won't be able to stomach the smirking and self-congratulating tone of the beautiful people. They got what they wanted. And America is the worse for it.

With Oscar night here, where is Al Gore?

A year ago, Al Gore was practically on every TV channel -- being feted and saluted as a man of the world and ultimately an Oscar winner.

Now, he has disappeared more completely than Jimmy Hoffa under Giants Stadium.

One reason is that the world that once loved him is now after him for global warming contentions that are going to cost jobs during a worldwide recession. For instance, green jobs are not going to replace coal mining ones job for job. And folks will need to be retrained. That takes cash states here and countries over there don't have.

An America in a Great Recession doesn't want to hear from Gore either. That seems to have been Gore's fate in his career. His message does not sustain, and he doesn't have the persona to keep it alive. Even though he supposedly lives here in Nashville, he does not appear in public enough to be sighted, slighted or celebrated.

Maybe the case is that I don't read enough to discover where Gore has been. In any case, Oscar night will not be the same without him.

Obama loses more credibility points on 'Meet the Press'; his argument behind foreclosure, banking plans debunked by knowledgeable David Gregory

"Meet the Press" host David Gregory did an honest job this morning in blowing holes in the Obama banking and home foreclosure plans -- providing more credence behind the growing public outrage over the administration's incompetency.

For example, as with the Obama plan to modify mortgages in foreclosure, Gregory cited statistics showing than an incredible 50 to 60 percent of all mortgage modifications still end up in foreclosure. So taxpayers are being asked to waste money on a process that mostly fails.

Florida's governor, an early supporter of the Obama housing plan, voiced concerns about it this morning on the program.

Then there is the Obama response that saving at least some of these homes preserves neighborhood property values. That offers little in today's world. Actually, declining values serve the taxpayer better. Lower property assessments will bring lower taxes. And property taxes will be going up around the country.

Gregory countered the White House's lambasting of CNBC's Rick Santelli that he needed to read the Obama plan before criticizing it. Santelli called the plan a way of rewarding bad behavior at the expense of the 92 percent of Americans paying their taxes and bills on time.

Greogry said he has read the plan, and he understands why so many Americans have found favor with Santelli's comments.

As with banking, Democrats continue to point toward nationalizing banks at least for the short term. That would eliminate the value in all common stock owned by investors in the banks.

And it is investors who are expected to invest and spend to turn the economy around, Gregory said.

Is President Obama listening? I don't think so. He is losing control of this country.

The schizophrenia in black leadership II: Nashville is not the Civil Rights landmark it claims to be

Earlier this decade, I brought up a story idea to The Tennessean city editor for Black History Month that was more than the fawning crap usually printed out of political correctness by America's newspapers.

The issue would be the failure of black leadership in Nashville, a dire circumstance considering 25 percent of Music City's population is African-American and the public schools have failed No Child Left Behind standards for five years.

Of course, the editor would have none of it. Because the chamber of commerce types that controlled the city -- which included decisionmakers at the newspaper -- didn't want a vigorous, independent black leadership. They wanted the window dressing approach, of putting some blacks in prominent positions for show, not influence.

Remember, Nashville supposedly was the cradle of the Civil Rights movement. But most of "The Children" as profiled by the late great David Halberstam returned to their cities to get elected or elect other blacks, such as John Lewis in Atlanta.

What was left in Nashville were the accomodationists, those who made sure there was a separate black public college and hospital. After that, they were barred from sharing the real power and most of the resources -- by liberal Democrats in control here.

It is a shocking contradiction of lofty words by sinister action. But the liberally bent news media here will never reveal it, because that would mean calling out some figures in Nashville who are their heroes. They don't deserve to be.

And that's a story for Black History Month in Nashville that no one in the media will ever tell.

The schizophrenia in black leadership: President doesn't mention race while his AG scolds us

To preface my conclusions here, I need to recite from my resume.

In response to racial problems in the upstate New York community where I lived, I directed a program of racial dialogue called Study Circles among 300 readers.

It had an amazing effect. It provided a guide on how to enter such a difficult conversation. And it worked. When we had another racial incident, 500 people of all races turned out for a church service of protest to tell authorities they had better deal with the white offenders with force. They did.

And a clergy committee was created to keep the movement going. Members were from the suburbs and the city, black and white. This program of dialogue I directed from my job as editorial page editor for the Utica Observer-Dispatch was one of four efforts for racial healing cited by the White House in 1998

So it was with great disgust that I listened last week to the race-hating remarks by the new Attorney General Eric Holder. His most outrageous remark was:

“In things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” he told his Justice Department employees in remarks prepared to honor Black History Month on Wednesday.

Holder went on to call Americans self-segregators.

He is wrong on both counts. Holder should go to a good therapist to deal with his anger before unleashing it on the American people again.

First, America is not self-segregating. If you go to the suburbs such as Williamson County, TN., you'll find blacks and whites living in the same neighborhood, joined by a common desire to escape the ills of urban life and poor public schools. I know. I've lived there.

If you go on the athletic fields, you find the different races there, and parents sitting together on the sidelines talking and cheering for the same thing.

In actuality, Black History Month is self-segregation itself. AG Holder failed to remove the sty from his own eye before lecturing others. We all should be Americans first along with our history, before being black, white, Hispanic or Asian.

That is a lesson the AG has yet to learn in all the baggage he is carrying.

Second, you don't bring people to dialogue by calling them cowards. And people are not going to sit at the table with people such as Holder there to just unleash their anger.

Study Circles provide a way for both sides to discuss matters without anger. No race gets the advantage in such talks. White and blacks have experiences to share. Both sides have done wrong.

Now consider Holder's supposed boss, President Obama. He never brought up his race in the election. He called on people to just be Americans. So are we to listen to Holder or Obama when it comes to race relations?

The two should have gotten together and talked. Their mixed messages are doing more damage than we supposedly cowardly Americans are inflicting.

The Obama administration has already done damage to the economy and investor confidence. Carrying that incompetence over to race relations as Holder did promises to stagnate social progress this nation should be most proud of.

Aha! Senate bank chair see nationalization need

U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd has said on a news show to air this weekend that nationalization of the nation's big banks such as Citigroup and Bank of America may be needed for a short time.

And we all know that when government says something is for a short time, such as like a tax, it ends up being permanent. That's why investors have no confidence to invest in markets that would reduce the value of their stock in securities tied to Citigroup and BOA to nothing. And they don't know into which industry the Obama administration will next intervene with taxpayers picking up the bill.

Bloomberg News reports:

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said banks may have to be nationalized for “a short time” to help lenders such as Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. survive the worst economic slump in 75 years.

“I don’t welcome that at all, but I could see how it’s possible it may happen,” Dodd said today on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” to be broadcast this weekend. “I’m concerned that we may end up having to do that, at least for a short time.”

More on The Oklahoman: A good review and explanation on what a newspaper is not doing well; 'Oklahoma City deserves better'; I agree

My friend and colleague Tony Williams offers more of an explanation on his criticism of a family-owned newspaper where we both worked, and it is something all newspaper executives no matter the publication ownership should read and heed.

Just being amid the technological advance in the distribution of information does not mean having a website simply can suffice.

Quality is demanded.

My friend writes:


Shame on me.

A long time ago, I learned to sit on a... Shame on me.

A long time ago, I learned to sit on a letter (or e-mail) overnight before sending it, if I was angry.

The fact is "The Oklahoman" website got under my skin, and I dashed off e-mails while my skin was still crawling.

Tony
Tony Lyndell Williams


Years ago, I also worked at what was then called "The Daily Oklahoman". Why management changed the name of a paper that had been around for decades is still a mystery to me.

Unfairly, I jumped on Ed Kelley because, frankly, he was the only management type that came to mind. Ed is a good man, and a fine journalist.

All this began several days ago when I tried to watch one of Kelley's video editorials. He was complaining about delaying the start of digital television transmissions.

So I will digress a moment.

The fact is the delay is voluntary. In Hawaii, all stations have converted strictly to digital transmission and have shut off their analog transmitters.

All a station needs to do if it wants to end analog transmission is ask the FCC for a waiver. More than 100 TV stations in the nation as of Friday have been granted that waiver.

In the Dallas area, where I live, all the major stations have voluntarily agreed to broadcast in analog and digital despite the expense of running both transmitters. But the stations have left open the possibility of converting to strictly digital before the new June deadline.

In reality, most stations have been broadcasting in both modes for years and have touted digital telecasts in endless promotions.

Well, enough of that. As I said, I tried to view Kelley's video on "The Oklahoman" website. I said I tried. The video stopped in the middle of his commentary each of the five times I tried to view it.

That is exactly an example of the product you see on "The Oklahoman" webpage regularly.

Tonight, I read an editorial about the race for governor in Oklahoma in 2010. To the left of the story was something called a "featured gallery".

When I clicked on, a photo appeared with a number of people attending some sort of meeting. No caption, no identification or anything.

However, the paper invited comments on the picture. Well, I would say that one woman on the front row wore a bright, red dress that reminded me of Nancy Reagan. Other than that, I had no idea what the photo was about.

Oh, by the way, are you kidding me when the editorial mentions J.C. Watts as a candidate for governor. Another story, I know.

Back to the website, one headline read: Oklajoma troops await word on Afghanistan. For 25 years, I've lived in north Tejas, but I still remember how to spell Oklahoma.

And in the era of broadband, why does the website perform like an old, worn-out dial-up service.

When I attempted to find out why Kyle Cannon was kicked off the OU men's basketball team, the search gave me more than 15 items, none of which had anything to do with OU basketball or Kyle Cannon.

Once I found it buried in the search, I found a three-paragraph story that told the who, what and when but no how or why.

Why not ask other players for their feelings about his dismissal if the coach will not comment beyond the typical "we wish him the best" comment?

"The Dallas Morning News" had more on the story than "The Oklahoman". But the fact is, "The Morning News" is by far a better newspaper than "The Oklahoman".

Tim and I may disagree about the paper's reputation. In the last few years, the paper has improved. My father, who headed the Texas Press Association for 25 years, and I had many discussions about how disappointing it was to read the sorry product that Gaylord published for many years.

But in his last years, he was glad to see some improvement in the long morbid paper.

For in the past, "The Oklahoman" was an embarrassment to the community it was supposed to serve and even to the employees who worked there.

And when I worked there, no matter what story I was working on or how many hours I put in, I was never paid more than 39 hours a week. The paper simply wanted to avoid any overtime and prevent me from receiving any benefits.

Despite that, one city editor, Richard Brake, had the gall to tell me to choose to work in newspaper or radio, not both. Frankly, I had to do both as well as attend school to provide for my son and me.

When I worked as a teen disc jockey at WKY in the 1970's, the radio station was still owned by OPUBCO which also owned "The Oklahoman" and WKY-TV. In my years at WKY, I earned far more money on the air in one week than I made in a month at "The Oklahoman".

Every disc jockey on the staff brought home a bigger paycheck than any "Oklahoman" reporter. One reason was Danny Williams was the program director, and he always stood up for his employees with management -- something I never witnessed by an editor at "The Oklahoman".

Kelley may not have anything to do with the website, but if he tapes editorial for it, surely he looks at it. And, if he does he will see the same things others see -- a sloppy website.

Now, instead of improving the product, "The Oklahoman" has decided to layoff employees with years of experience.

Oh yeah, I know about the economy and how newspapers are suffering. But does management really think firing its talent and watering down the product is the future of newspapering.

Oklahoma City deserves better.

Grading the first month of Obama in office: Give him a 'B' for betrayal of taxpayers, generations

The first month of the Obama administration represents the worst in my memory of U.S. presidencies, and that goes back to LBJ.

That's why I give it a "B", but not as far as grading for achievement. It represents "B" for the deep betrayal of the American people counting on Obama to bring hope and change.

He has returned the government to the kind of big spending that voters had rejected from previous administrations, including Bush's. There is a deep sense of tyranny in what the president is doing in spending money of the people like a drunken sailor. And I apologize to all drunken sailors for using them as a comparison.

Let's role the videotape:

1) Democrats have shown a shocking lack of ethics -- Illinois Sen. Burris has been discovered to have lied in testimony to a state panel, which should not have been a surprise since he was appointed by a liar, and another Democrat. Yet Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid allowed the man to be seated while initially saying he would not be.

Obama selected three Cabinet nominees who could not remember to pay their taxes, yet had no problem in demanding more spending by the American people. We certainly could not get away with this. How could these prominent politicos escape scrutiny of the IRS?

After the president's promising of transparency in government, the press had discovered at least one executive order and memorandum from the White House not publicly released or posted. He also re-took the oath of office outside of video cameras.

The list is longer, but I need to move on.

2) After the president promised a national press conference audience that his treasury speaker would have details on a bank rescue plan, Secretary Geithner appeared before Congress with no details. The stock market plummeted.

The administration continues to consider a $30-plus bailout of the auto industry, despite strong public opposition for the taxpayers to pay for the greed and bad decisions of executives and union bosses.

3) Investors across the country have less confidence in returning their money to the financial markets and in consumer spending because of the administration's bungling and a growing trend toward putting the burden of economic recovery on taxpayers.

As Sen. John McCan said yesterday, we are dealing with "generational theft" of hope and affordability to live in this nation for our children and grandchildren.

The Obama homeforeclosure plan has drawn criticism for offering little or no help to Americans -- 92 percent of them -- paying their mortgages and bills on time. It is these people who will turn around the economy through the same kind of discipline they are exhibiting in their lifestyles now. CNBC's Rick Santelli tried to tell the adminstration this truth this week and was ridiculed.

Even with the Obama economic stimulus plan, less than a quarter of the money will be spent in the next two years to revive the economy. What is Obama waiting for? All that was needed was spending to shore up the health care and unemployment benefits safety net. That would have only cost $127 billion, not the $850 billion ultimately passed in the legislation.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering shifting taxation to each mile Americans drive from the gas used. The government will follow you with GPS tracking.

4) The Obama administration gave the Chinese the green light to tighten its grip on Tibet and its own citizens civil liberties yesterday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said human rights abuses would not hinder America's cooperation with the Communists.

5) Obama has increased missile attacks into Pakistan, a sovereign nation which has demanded the killings by air stop. Civilian losses are growing as is anger toward the U.S. As a direct response to these attacks, Pakistan announced that Taliban-like treatment of people -- particularly women -- under Muslim law would prevail in the region Obama is attacking. How can the Left criticize Bush for invading a sovereign nation when Obama is doing the same with missiles.

The above categories are only the top abuses and bungling during ONLY the administration's first month.

I voted for Obama. I even promoted an inaugural ball to support him. After only one month, I find his ascendancy to the presidency a major mistake. The job is beyond him. And he has appointed some incompetent people around him.

Promised change is not always good. The American people, particularly the taxpayer, need to be protected from his bad governance and judgment. That will be my blog's role -- to make up for my mistakes.

Newspapers continue to underwhelm; even locally owned newspapers are leaving readers frustrated

I used to work at The Daily Oklahoman, a family-owned newspaper in Oklahoma City. And it seemed to enjoy somewhat of a rise in quality as chain newspapers faltered in content and subscribers.

But a note from a former colleague, Tony Williams, who now lives in Texas, shows even locally owned newspapers such as The Oklahoman are cutting corners when it comes to best serving the readers.

All this means is that the days of newspapers are coming to an end, not necessarily The Oklahoman, but with many others we believed would be around forever. You can't keep cheating the readers and expect them to just continue buying your product. And advertisers are going to seek cheaper, more immediate ways to reach their consumers.

Even the great New York Times is sinking financially. The big news in the coming two years will be the disappearance of a lot of newspapers, and the people of this nation will go on just fine without them.

Here are Williams' comments:

Except for its appearance, which is not bad, the Oklahoman website is just a mess. A total mess.

Slow, mistakes, errors, typos, terrible search engine ... TERRIBLE. Photos with no captions.

The speed of this website would fit right in with the old dial-up service. Never have I encountered a newspaper site, large or small, this slow.

Everytime I check the top headlines, one is invariably OU or OSU sports. That's a TOP headline? Baloney.

Some stories not only don't have any meat to them, many don't have even gristle. Three or four paragraphs stories often leaving you wondering the how or why of the story.

Ed Kelley ought to be ashamed of this. It looks like they don't edit it or even care about it.

In his defense with the simple truth, Kelley, the top editor, does not control the website. It is run by an entirely separate division. He has no say with it.

Within the newsroom, Kelley would make changes to improve content, but as in many newsrooms, there are political checks and balances that the only the people in the executive suites can finally resolve.

So far, they have chosen not to.

Kelley is a good leader, good man and brilliant. If allowed to do as he wants, The Oklahoman would improve substantially from its position now.

CJR did a hit piece on the newspaper earlier this decade, calling the paper the worst in America. That was most unfair and untrue. And I did not particiate in the piece nor knew it was being written.

If you want to look for the worst paper in America, come to The Tennessean in Nashville.

The best prospect for The Oklahoman's future is its capacity to improve and address any complaint. The largest obstacle is the people at the very top who just need to make the commitment and give Kelley the power to kick some butts and replace some dead-wood managers with go-getters who believe in the web and serving the readers first.

And that will bring in more profits than the people in the suites can imagine.

The Communists win as Obama/Clinton let China off the hook on human rights; the Left is outraged

China has won the global battle with the United States as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today said that the Communist nation's human rights abuses will not hinder America's cooperation with the Asian superpower on trade and other issues.

Amnesty International could not hide its disgust with the Obama administration:

"The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues. But by commenting that human rights will not interfere with other priorities, Secretary Clinton damages future US initiatives to protect those rights in China."

Now the Left knows how America's taxpayers feel when it comes to betrayal by a president promising change.

Nobody knew it would be for the worse.

White House tries to insult Santelli but Obama administration has lost credibility on economy

The White House today foolishly and ineptly tried to portray CNBC analyst Rick Santelli as uninformed over the Obama home foreclosure plan.

But the administration came off looking stupid and disconnected from the people who will have to do the investing and spending to turn the economy around.

President Obama, however, believes it is government spending that will turn things around. He is sadly mistaken and his administration has caused more economic pain and confusion in his first month in office.

Santelli has been on the job -- when it comes to informing investors and the public -- long before the president ever started campaigning for office. And his advice and information has been most sound, helping lead me to get out of the stock market at 13,000 on the Dow.

Obama has no record. And the outright bumbling of his administration in its first month has created a confidence gap in this nation. Those of us with a lot of cash on the sidelines are not going to return to the financial markets with his administration throwing out mixed signals and plans with no details.

Bank nationalization still remains a frontburner issue, with the administration today denying such a move with Bank of America and Citigroup. Meanwhile, Senate Banking Chris Dodd was saying nationalization is not a bad idea. Do these politicians of the same party ever talk? Is this any kind of change in leadership from Washington that Obama promised?

The people of this nation are not stupid. They notice these contradictions. The White House can only hope one day to have Santelli's credibility.

It's time for the Tea Party!

Don't join the Gold rush just yet

I was ready to invest in gold yesterday when a trip to the hospital sidelined me.

Afterward, I heard Rick Santelli say on CNBC not to join the gold rush. There are conflicting signals coming from the global economies and currency trading.

The dollar is up, which is contrary to gold advancing much beyond the $1,000 psychological barrier. Gold hit that ceiling briefly today then fell back $6 per ounce. Still, some gold analysts are saying the metal could advance to $1,200 to $1,500 per ounce over the long-term.

Inflation also is another factor that encourages people to get into gold. But the CPI did not advance from year to year in January. Still, some credible people see a surge in inflation as governments across the world print more money from stimulus packages.

I still have a problem with investing in something as volatile as gold. Santelli's direction is gold to me. And so I will be patient for more traditional investment instruments when credit markets ease.

I hate to rush in with everyone else. Most of the profit may be out of the current vein feeding the surge. And I never could think of gold as a secure place to put money for very long. It is a haven for fear, which will ultimately ease.

Obama comes out against Fairness Doctrine but Dems in Congress still want to push this wrong

Re-instating the Fairness Doctrine does not have the support of President Obama -- the White House announced this week -- but some Congressional Democrats still are intent on pushing the requirement of equal time for political radio programs.

Capitalism and consumers should determine what programs radio offers, political or not. Conservatives have found an audience. Liberals with Air America did not. It failed quickly.

Re-introducing the Fairness Doctrine would be another interference in the free markets by Democrats -- the kind that has already produced disastrous results.

Leave radio alone, along with the rest of the economy. Do not interfere with freedom of speech by re-introducing the Fairness Doctrine. Let the consumers decide.

Drudge's top story: Uncle Sam proposing to tax you by the miles driven instead of gas you buy

To raise more money, the federal government is exploring plans to tax you by the miles you drive instead of the gas you buy at the pump.

Several states are already pushing such a plan.

What do you think?

Better speak up now. Tyranny is always present in the ability to tax and take from the people what they earn. I used to believe government knew better for the common good, at least on the federal level. The Obama administration has destroyed that faith I once had.

AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he wants to consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn — an idea that has angered drivers in some states where it has been proposed.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation's transportation system moving, LaHood said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled," the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said.

Most transportation experts see a vehicle miles traveled tax as a long-term solution, but Congress is being urged to move in that direction now by funding pilot projects.

The idea also is gaining ground in several states. Governors in Idaho and Rhode Island are talking about such programs, and a North Carolina panel suggested in December the state start charging motorists a quarter-cent for every mile as a substitute for the gas tax.

A tentative plan in Massachusetts to use GPS chips in vehicles to charge motorists by the mile has drawn complaints from drivers who say it's an Orwellian intrusion by government into the lives of citizens. Other motorists say it eliminates an incentive to drive more fuel-efficient cars since gas guzzlers will be taxed at the same rate as fuel sippers.

The Santelli Factor may well push Obama to avoid bailout of auto industry, Spring Hill, TN., plant

Call it The Santelli Factor, an already emerging anger among the American people for the Obama administration making things worse than better in encouraging hope among investors.

And investors are people such as you and me on Main Street, not Wall Street, trying to do the right things in running our households and providing for our retirement.

More Americans see Obama pushing the country toward socialism, and the nationalization of banks and possibly now the auto industry. That means more government spending on things other than people doing the right but difficult thing.

CNBC's Rick Santelli unleashed his passion over these factors yesterday, and now his rant is being referred to as "the shot heard around the world". He has a daily, world platform to compete with Obama.

Santelli's rationale is the stuff of revolution, our nation's revolution more than 200 years ago. And I believe Obama will be politically shy at bailing out General Motors and Chrysler for bad decisions and greed with more than $30 billion in taxpayer money.

In trying to read the political tea leaves, FOXNEWS reported yesterday that the president referred to the auto industry as needing "significant restructuring". To analysts, they believe that is a reference to the automakers needing to enter bankruptcy reorganization.

GM says it will not be able to pay employees by the end of next month.

If bankruptcy reorganization happens, GM's future could probably be be one of dissembly, with individual plants sold off to buyers at the direction of creditors. And buyers will either operate the plants with fewer workers and less wages or just take out all the machinery and remove some of the production capacity from the market.

To keep plants open, state and local governments will have to step forward to offer more tax giveaways when they can least afford it.

These are unprecedented economic times, even beyond the Great Depression because of the extent of wealth in this nation.

Expect the unexpected, particularly with GM and its Spring Hill, TN., plant.

Santelli gaining more believers as he adds reason to his rant; the guy is a most honest analyst

CNBC's Rick Santelli has added reason to his rant yesterday and is making me and millions of other Americans believers in what he is saying about where federal aid should be going.

More Americans see a rush to socialism and away from capitalism that made this country great. And with socialism will come even more arduous taxation.

They see reward in the Obama foreclosure plan for not doing right, no encouragement of good spending and earning behavior and discipline.

They see the Obama administration pushing toward the nationalization of the country's largest banks, a responsibility taxpayers should not assume.

They question why the administration is not fully supporting the 92 percent of Americans who are paying their home mortgages on time. We need that block of people to survive and revive the economy with their spending, not more spending from government.

Santelli has shown himself in repeated interviews to be most rationale. He has thought this out. And he was one of the people that was telling people to get out of the markets last summer. I listened and did so above 13,000.

Investors from Main Street such as myself have no faith in what Obama is doing. But from listening to him for several years and now the past two days, we believe what Santelli is saying.

President Obama should listen, if he means to do what is best for this nation and not his political party and ideology.

Markets preparing for large losses again; if you're still in mutal funds, it's your own fault and greed

Futures on the financial markets show large losses today for investors, as the Dow drops even closer to 7,000.

That's remarkable, considering the Dow was double that number and value a year ago. People who have stayed in the market have now lost 50 percent of the value of their holdings.

The flight to Gold resumed today, as the per ounce value of the metal approached the psychological ceiling of $1,000. It will probably crash through it for the time being.

For those people still in mutual funds, your chance to get out and save money has probably passed. I've tried to warn you repeatedly to get out and put your money in cash. But so many people, including very educated people, have declined to protect their assets.

They believe the markets are going to bounce back fast. They won't. Their financial advisers have convinced them to stay in because their profitability is geared to their assets. Greed still rules too much.

The continuing fall of the markets is going to create even more victims. This time, however, it will be their fault. Plenty of us have been warning them to get out.

For the love of Hunter: Sumner County youngster now enters last stage of serious chemo in hopes of normal life that all lovable, rascally boys deserve

Hunter doesn't like his weekly trips to Vanderbilt for chemo treatment of his leukemia.

Neither did I. Because of God, my trips are once a month now, except when circumstances demand more.

But the griping of this 6-year-old is a good sign. He is well enough to complain. His body has recovered enough for him to play outside. But he is not out of the woods ... yet.

For the past several weeks, his white cell count has not been high enough to enter his last stage of extra-ordinary chemo treatment. And mom and dad have fretted. Then, last week, after a sample of bone marrow was taken to make sure he was still in remission, his blood count quadrupled.

So yesterday morning, he was ready to enter the last, three-week stage of extensive chemo. And I was glad to be there with a few toys to cheer on this very brave youngster.

The goal, after the three weeks, is for Hunter to be on regular maintenance chemo. That will allow him to go back to school at Bethpage Elementary and pursue boyhood fully on the family farm.

Hunter hates spinal taps that get chemo to the brain, but children are put under for this treatment. Not adults.

But Hunter loves grilled shrimp, which he consumed with adult-like bites following the spinal tap yesterday.

For the next few weeks, Hunter will spending more of his time during the day on the couch, weakened from the chemo. But he knows it is an investment in feeling better for good.

And that would be a dream for his mom and dad. They've waited a long time to reach these three weeks of hope for the future.

So keep Hunter in your hopes and prayers during his last steps toward a return to full boyhood and the joys it brings.

Rick Santelli starts national movement over Obama foreclosure housing plan with heated rant

The person I follow for the best financial advice on CNBC unleashed a passionate rant this morning against the Obama housing plan to prevent foreclosures. And it has elicited a massive "amen" from the viewing public.

I got this remark from a reader:

I just started a Facebook group based on Rick's recent rant about the mortgage problem. I am very adamant about this topic.

You have to be logged in to get to the group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63519654812

This morning, Santelli turned to the traders at the Chicago board and yelled the question if they liked people who weren't paying their mortgages on homes they knew they couldn't afford receiving their tax money -- while they keep paying their home loans on time.

The answer was a resounding "no", and it was captured on television.

Santelli then said: "President Obama, are you listening?!

Then his rant became a movement, even with a button of "Rick Santelli for Senate". NBC News reported tonight that 92 percent of Americans pay their mortgages on time.

What do you think? I don't know if I fully agree with Santelli's rant. But if he finds some problem with the rescue plan and principles behind it of rewarding bad behavior, then something must be wrong.

The guy is that honest.

Stock market crashes through 7,500 floor on the way to much lower levels for the long term

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to its lowest point since 2002 and through the critical floor of 7,500 on its way to a correction toward or below the 6,000-point mark.

The mood on Wall Street and among investors across the country is nasty and fearful. And there is no confidence in the Obama administration, which one analyst on CNBC -- who predicted the markets' great fall -- said was implementing a piecemeal approach instead of addressing the entire picture.

Banks do not know which of their holdings will be held as bad assets by the federal government.

Retailers with declining consumer spending are no longer a safe haven for investors.

The price of oil rebounded by almost $5 a barrel today, which will mean higher prices at the pump.

A correction of another 15 percent in investor holdings in the stock market is now generally agreed upon by analysts.

This rapid fall in America's wealth continues to astound, along with the lack of leadership to address it.

Bredesen appears the loser in HHS secretary bid

Way to go, Tony Garr!

The New York Times reports that the governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius, is now the probable choice to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Her choice would officially end the political career of Gov. Phil Bredesen, who was depending on the Cabinet job to give him a political future. Now in a strongly leaning GOP state, he will be nowhere soon after leaving the statehouse in early 2011Bredesen also will not be able to avoid destructive budget cuts that will reduce his popularity the next two years.

Give credit to Tony Garr of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign for sounding the alarm and building national opposition to Bredesen's appointment. Garr simply pointed out the truth -- Bredesen's TennCare cuts with an ax resulted in the deaths of Tennesseans.

I know. I covered these cases. Thank goodness President Obama listened.

And the governor of Kansas, an early supporter of him, will be much easier for the president to stomach since Bredesen told then then candidate Obama not to come to Tennessee to campaign and to stand in Walmart to meet real people.

Obama's housing plan meets skeptical investors

The Obama plan to begin to rescue hurting homeowners seemed sound, but he has used up all confidence from investors across the country as they refused to put their money back into the financial markets yesterday.

The administration has wasted two critical opportunities to bring hope to investors, who are desperately needed to return hopes and wealth to this nation. But the economic stimulus and Secretary Geithner's fumbling performance on bank rescue have destroyed administration credibility among investors -- including me.

The flight to gold is indicative of that.

The Obama plan will provide about $1,600 per family to help keep them from losing their homes. That's a good step. But that help will be impacted when local counties are forced to raise property taxes due to state budget cuts.

People aren't buying. So sales tax collections have plummeted.

As the Federal Reserve minutes of their last meeting show, they believe the economy will continue to worsen until the end of 2009. Then the governors expect a slow recovery. Unfortunately, that is just one opinion. No one really knows how low things will go with things before recovery, and how quickly.

That's why investors see any Obama plan as shooting in the dark ... and one they are unwiling to put their money behind.

Go to www.williamsonherald.com from one my most surprising columns, but I have to call them as I see them when it comes to emerging threat

Today's column in the Williamson Herald in Franklin is a surprising one even to me, but the facts coming out this year dictate desperately needed change when it comes to taxation.

And I'm not talking about adopting a state income tax in Tennessee. Actually, taxation with bad representation has become the biggest threat to Americans in this nation.

There is no accountability. And so the column today recommends some drastic changes.

Worst thing would be a recovery for this nation to how we lived before; use hard times to change

In talking the past two days to two people very close to me as friends and the model of conduct they display, both told me the same thing as were discussing the economic downturn and the impact on families.

Their conclusion: This nation and this state does not need to return how we were before.

Why?

Materialism to a gross scale ruined us. We were part of the problem that led to the housing program, lured into believing we should buy something we could not afford. It has been the same in buying everything from boats to televisions the size of Volkswagens to giving our children every bit of technology in their rooms and sending them off to so many activities that it lessened their times in the home with their own family.

Busy schedules resulted in us turning our backs on neighbors and friends needing help or simple words of kind support. Most of all, busy schedules took us away from God and his will, I'm not talking about saying prayers and going to church on Sunday. I'm talking about taking the time to draw closer to him in how much we're involved with those in need and our actual worship services. Stewardship. And people in need are not necessarily the homeless. They are right in our community, they are right in our pews, if we take the time to look.

But we haven't.

God didn't bring this economic downturn on us as one prominent Catholic cardinal proclaimed last weekend. God brings to us choices afterward, to change our lives for the better, whether you get leukemia or laid off or just live in heightened fear of the unknown.

So any hopes of recovery should not be aimed at what we once enjoyed or the income and things we once possessed. The recovery should be geared to who we are, and the better people we should become.

Complex story like GM and Spring Hill plant shows weakness of TV media to provide needed analysis

I am more than willing to leave most of the real and meaningful journalism in Middle Tennessee to the local TV stations, led by NewsChannel 5 and WSMV Channel 4.

But when the story is complex and requires extensive analysis as with GM's need for a bailout and the resulting fate of the Spring Hill plant, TV comes up short. NewsChannel 5 featured coverage this evening of a town hall meeting between auto workers and Sen. Bob Corker that shed no light on what could be one of the most cataclysmic economic events in Midstate history.

The plant's status is most uncertain, as GM says it is going to have close at least five plants and layoff 20,000 workers in this country. By the time it is finished negotiating with the U.S. Treasury Department and Congress for a successful bailout, it will have to cut more. The Spring Hill plant builds Chevys, but only for a short period of time when it comes to auto building. Other plants have a much longer history with the brand. Its original product, Saturn, is being phased out.

And if GM is forced into bankruptcy, the company may well be dissembled and sold off in parts to other companies to pay off bondholders. Those buying companies then will determine if they just want all the equipment inside of the plants or will operate the plant at much lower wages for much fewer workers.

All these options mean drastic economic consequences for Tennessee and the economies for Williamson and Maury counties.

Today's Tennessean features an incredibly inadequate story that analyzed none of these consequences and the political play locally and nationally that will be required. It was a rehashed wire story. So the people of the Midstate were simply left to wonder.

I was distressed to learn this week that probably the most capable business reporter locally to pull off such an analysis, Richard Lawson of the City Paper, has been reduced to very parttime status because of budget cuts.

I find it incredible and shocking that amid the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, The Tennessean has folded its Business Section into its Local Section like a second class citizen and the City Paper has sharply cut back the contributions of one of its two best reporters. Ms. Cheap offering advice on money saving shortcuts just doesn't do it for the gravity of the times.

The people of the Midstate crave the kind of quality and extensive business and financial coverage to provide direction on investing, protecting all their assets and locating the industries for job opportunities. They also need someone watching their local governments for unnecessary and wasteful spending projects.

I appreciate everything local TV does to compensate for the gross failures of its print colleagues. But the GM story is beyond its capability due to time constraints. And the people of Tennessee have a cataclysm sneaking up on them that will make hard times even worse.

Investors wait in worry for Obama's housing plan

President I Screwed Up has already done the impossible: he has made matters worse in the economic recession.

As he signed his economic stimulus plan yesterday that was more spending for what critics call eight years of Democratic frustration, the stock market dropped another 70 points to finish down another 300 points. Analysts now see the market dropping below lows set last fall.

Last night, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said the housing crisis of massive foreclosures must be resolved before the economy will rebound. And today, Obama is to unveil of housing rescue plan.

The problem is that his bank rescue plan released last week was so vague and without detail that the market fell 400 points.

As critics have complained, these guys have been working on these problems since Obama was elected Nov. 4. Why no details?

So Obama's housing plan to be unveiled today is being awaited with dread, not the hope he promised to bring to this nation.

Some good news from Spring Hill, maybe: Chevy is one four brands that General Motors plans to keep

The New York Times reports tonight that Chevrolet is one of the four brands that General Motors plans to keep in its restructuring plan.

An initial glance, that could be good news for the company's Spring Hill, TN., plant since it makes Chevys after turning over the non-profitable Saturn brand to other plants a few years ago.

However, and there are a lot of "howevers" in situations such as these, car analysts say GM will need to reduce its number of brands more to ensure profitability -- such as with the Toyota operating model in America.

Chevy would surely be a survivor since it is the best selling brand for GM. But Chevy production has been a longer mainstay in other GM plants, not in Spring Hill.

And if the matter goes into bankruptcy, there will definitely be fewer Chevy producing plants than GM is wanting to keep. GM says it wants to close five U.S. plants.

For sure, bailout or bankruptcy, a bidding war will be unleashed as states and communities develop incentive packages to reduce operating costs at their respective plants -- particularly in Michigan.

Tennessee will be at a disadvantage with a $1 billion budget deficit. What it may ultimately offer GM of greatest value would be the support of its Sen. Bob Corker, who has been the national leader of the opposition to the bailout.

I don't believe Corker can be turned, particularly with GM asking for an incredible $30 billion -- $12 billion more than previously sought in December.

The people of Tennessee also are on his side, which may leave the Spring Hill plant with much less to offer a company on the edge of a financial abyss. And that definitely could be a deciding factor against it.

Here is GM's case to federal government for your money to bail out its bad decisions, union greed

If you want to read GM's 117-page plan to the federal government, go to:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/20090217GMRestructuringPlan.pdf

GM does not list which plants it will close, from my quick reading. But it says it will reduce its nameplates from 48 in 2008 to 36 by 2012 in its new plan. New car launches in its initial plan to Congress last December was 12. Now it has been reduced to five by 2012.

These numbers do not bode well for workers keeping their jobs.

It also lays out a worst-case scenario if it files for bankruptcy. I don't believe it all, but growing the fear in this nation is its only hope of getting $30 billion in your tax money for bailout.

So for you students of the auto industry, you might be able to read something from this ton of tea leaves as to whether your plant will survive the coming calamity.

But it is coming.

Corker vs Bredesen: Personal friends will be on either side of auto bailout plan before Congress

Republican Sen. Bob Corker and Democrat In Name Only Gov. Phil Bredesen are personal friends, annually sharing Thanksgiving dinner with the other.

Yet now their political fortunes are pitted against the other:

Corker has made a big political name for himself nationally in rightly opposing the auto industry bailout, which now has eclipsed $40 billion from $28 billion late last year.

Bredesen in turn has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money in economic dependence on the auto industry, a very bad move considering this severe recession in consumer spending. Bredesen's intellect has always been overrated when it comes to making decisions for the betterment of the many over the few.

The closing of the Spring Hill plant by General Motors would be disastrous for the Tennessee economy and tax collections. Foreclosures would mushroom in Maury and Williamson County. The current $1 billion budget deficit would grow dramatically.

If GM does not get the bailout Corker opposes, it will have to file for bankruptcy. It says it can't pay its employees or vendors by the end of March. If it files for bankruptcy reorganization, the chances of the survival of GM's Spring Hill's operations will be further up in the air. And their wages will be quickly reduced early in the bankruptcy process.

Public pressure will grow on Corker to change his mind on the bailout. And Bredesen will be pressured to publicly lobby his friend.

Thanksgiving 2009 may cause more nausea than good will.

In Chapter 11 bankruptcy, General Motors will be forced to cut more jobs and close more plants

I covered the federal bankruptcy court in Oklahoma City for 10 years and watched some big companies go through the ringer of reorganization.

General Motors probably will be forced to file for bankruptcy. There is no real public support for a $30 billion loan for bad decision making and union and corporate greed.

Once in bankruptcy, creditors -- for GM, its bond holders -- control the game, and they are going to make the kind of deal that gives them the most immediate and full payback. And the judge will simply follow the bankruptcy code that allows them to do so.

Creditors will not care about communities such as Spring Hill, TN., or others across the country with GM plants. The Spring Hill plant is considered one of GM's most efficient, so that could work in its favor. But the sharp decline in consumer spending -- which is only going to worsen -- makes every plant vulnerable.

GM says it will eliminate 20,000 jobs in the U.S. and close five plants in hopes of wooing Washington to loan it money. You can add another 10,000 jobs in cuts and two more plants if creditors drive the deal in bankruptcy court. And higher wages and benefits will also fly out the window. Bankruptcy law allows for such agreements to be eliminated no matter what workers have voted for.

I believe as Rick Santelli of CNBC. He says there is no prohibition in the U.S. Constitution against a company going under, or a big bank, or an industry. Newspapers are falling, too. Workers who lose their jobs must re-adjust, as must communities. Any work is good work if it brings money in.

Hard times require hard realities, even for auto workers and giants such as General Motors.

BREAKING NEWS: GM will discontinue Saturn brand by 2011 and eliminate 20,000 jobs in U.S.; what will happen to its Spring Hill, TN., operations?

General Motors will discontinue its Saturn brand by 2011, a vehicle that used be built in Spring Hill, TN.

The company also said it would be eliminating 20,000 U.S. auto jobs and closing five plants, according to its reorganization plan filed with the Treasury Department this evening and reported by The New York Times.

GM was not more specific about which plants.

GM says it will cut back on its brands from eight to four. The Spring Hill plant produces some Chevys. Its closure would devastate the Midstate economy, resulting not only in suppliers shutting down but many restaurants and retailers. Loss of jobs could be 5,000 or more.

The fate of GM's Tennessee workers may be sealed or saved sooner than later. GM wants an incredible $30 billion from the federal government soon, or it will be out of money to pay workers by the end of next month. It would like $2 billion immediately to help it with those bills. Wouldn't we all? How are you doing with your bills?

That $30 billion sum is $12 billion more than the automaker wanted a few months ago. Chrysler wants $2 billion more than it asked for originally.

Most Americans do not favor any bailout and would prefer the automaker file for bankruptcy reorganization just like any other business. And that will mean more jobs cuts and plant closures, because creditors will be calling the shots.

Dow down more than 200 points in early trading

The Dow and S&P are setting new lows as the Obama administration has mismanaged investor confidence in a bank rescue plan with no details and a stimulus plan that only will spend a fourth of its funding the next two years.

The Dow is prepared to smash through a floor of 7600. It is now down more than 200 points.

The S&P has already broken its floor of 800. It is down almost 30 points.

If you are still in the market today, be prepared to lose up to 5 percent of your money.

And there is nothing on the horizon to stop the descent.

Investors give vote of no confidence in Obama

The stock market is prepared to open dramatically lower this morning, as investors see no hope in the economic stimulus plan to be signed by President Obama today.

New lows will be established on all the indices, futures now show.

Meanwhile, the price of gold is skyrocketing, as a hedge against the bad times in stocks and the inflation that will be triggered by the new round of extra-ordinary government spending.

Tennessee has a lot riding on GM restructuring; Saturn plant on potential casualty list to Feds

CNBC analysts say that GM's restructuring plan due today to the federal government could include the closing of its Saturn unit, which is a mainstay of the Midstate economy.

GM is on the ropes, and without federal bailout hope, will have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.

So the company -- without any concessions from the UAW -- must show it is serious about turning around its fortunes. And that means cutting back drastically in its operations.

So the Saturn plant here could be one of the casualties in GM's efforts to survive.

Obama's delicate balancing act tomorrow

Tomorrow, President Barack Obama signs into law what he considers a shining accomplishment for his administration -- an economic stimulus bill that will spend less than a quarter of the money in it over the next two years.

People need help now. So such a minor payoff does not seem to match the "catastrophe" description Obama used to describe the nation if his plan did not pass.

So now he faces a delicate balance. His aides on Sunday's political TV news shows were busy downplaying how much of an immediate impact the plan would provide to turn around the economy, or even stem its fall.

But tomorrow Obama must toast his accomplishment as the kind of help the American people have asked for. Yet I don't believe they asked for only a quarter of the possible help for the next two years.

Obama will be in full spin mode tomorrow with his rhetoric on high. He'll be able to fool the American people tomorrow. But it will be increasingly hard in the months to come when the stimulus does not nothing of the sort.

Whoa! Monday City Paper is thinner than a Weekly Reader; free publication must be on its last legs

When a free newspaper tabloid grows thinner than a slice of cheese, then its future is not long for the world of print journalism.

Monday's City Paper was shockingly thin. If not for all the legal notices, content would have been negligible. Two pages featured half-page, in-house ads. And the City Voices page featured a non-city voice -- Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn -- as its major content.

Reporters Richard Lawson and Amy Griffith Graydon are the stars of the staff. Unfortunately, the are saddled with an unimaginative editor Clint Brewer who has offered nothing to contrast content with The Tennessean.

Its first owner was someone who made his money on the tech bubble on Wall Street. He promised a conservative counter to The Tennessean. But he must have lost interest while trying to preserve all his money on Wall Street in the ongoing decline. The paper's editorial page has mostly agreed with The Tennessean's editorial stands.

The only good feature to the paper is that it is free. But you have to wonder how long the owner will allow his investment hemorrhage to continue.

I'd like to say Nashville would be poorer for the decline of the City Paper. But like the Nashville Scene, its quality and content has deteriorated so significantly that readers would simply go to television for anything they might miss.

A difficult time to be an American, a Tennessean; neither political party has the back of the people

From most of my posts, one would believe I am a Republican.

I can't stand that thought from what the GOP currently represents. RNC Chairman Michael Steele is crazy and in denial. The party's anti-immigrant, anti-gay rant is despicable and purposely divisive.

But the Democrats are the ones in power, in Washington and even still at the Tennessee statehouse. And they have shown such an incompetency and service to self.

What I despise most about the Democrats is that they claim to know better, they claim to care more. But their actions defy their words, particularly when they protect a public education bureaucracy that has failed generations of children yet absorbs so many tax dollars for its perpetuation.

Ultimately, a fair and adequate education is all the separates the haves and have nots in this country. LBJ said as much during his presidency that represented the pinnacle of civil rights in this nation.

No Child Left Behind represents the best chance since those heady days to realize that truth. But it remains the responsibility of state and local governments to provide adequate funding once they see the test scores for what they are failing to do. And there is no political will for that critical task.

Things like school choice through charter schools and vouchers are regularly blocked by Democrats. For what they choose for their children, they deny to the least among us. The Obamas have a charter public school right across from the White House. But they choose to send their children to private school, just as did the Gores and the Clintons.

Yet the Obamas don't miss an opportunity to use the charter school and its children for a political photo opportunity. It's just that those children aren't good enough to be educated with theirs. I wonder which school their private chef has chosen for his children.

I choose no political party or ideology. All betray.

But I have the most trouble with all the liberals(progressives) and Democrats, because they claim to know better -- then they do the opposite to preserve political power in spite of the needs of the people.

The rise of another Democratic tax dodger

Probable Minnesota Sen. Al Franken will bring to Washington what is becoming a regular record of prominent Democrats.

He is a tax dodger.

During the primary campaign, a blogger uncovered the truth that Franken had failed to pay his business taxes in California for years. A thin-skinned Franken was outraged at the revelation, saying it took the campaign off the issues.

But with all the Obama nominees who also could not pay their taxes on times, failure to follow one's legal responsibility has become a very important campaign issue to the American people who wouldn't dare to do the same.

Franken still seems to have the advantage to be seated over Sen. Norm Coleman and become the 59th Democrat in the Senate. The Democrat has a several-hundred vote lead. Coleman has taken the matter to court, but that still remains a long shot.

Ultimately, Franken belongs in Washington, with fellow Democrats who have no respect for tax laws but greatly enjoy spending the money of those who do.

Decline of the whiners: Dowd can't crack top 10

The departure of George W. Bush and ascension of Barack Obama has left some of the decade's most celebrated whiners without an audience and target for their venom.

There is no better and satisfying example than The New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Her Sunday column could not even crack the top 10 for most read pieces on The NYT website. Several pieces that had been in the top 10 for days still were more popular than her drivel.

Dowd's broken record assault on Bush has left her with little credibility on anything else. She'll need to buy a home across from his in Dallas to be able to dig up any new dirt or outrage.

Dowd's fall from prominence should be a lesson to all columnists lest they suffer the same rightful fate.

It's back: Car industry bailout revived by Obama

Bad ideas die hard.

And there are few worse than for the federal government to bail out the American auto industry from the bad decisions of its executives and the excessive wages and benefits demanded by its workers.

Their day of reckoning is here. And they should realize it just like other Americans across the country in other economic sectors.

But the Obama stimulus plan revives the bailout plan, which at one point reached almost $30 billion earlier this year. So contact your congresspeople and tell them to kill this bailout once and for all.

Here is what AP has to report:

WASHINGTON (AP) - It will take more than one "car czar" to help get the embattled U.S. auto industry back on track, President Barack Obama has decided. Instead, his administration is establishing a presidential task force to direct the restructuring of General Motors Corp. (GM) and Chrysler LLC, a senior administration official said Sunday night.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers will oversee the across-the-government panel, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no announcement has been made.

GM and Chrysler are expected to submit restructuring plans to the government by Tuesday, the deadline for showing how they can repay billions in loans and become viable in spite of a huge drop in auto sales.

The auto industry task force is just one element of Obama's plan to revive the flailing economy. On Tuesday he's flying to Denver to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill into law, taking his economic message to the American people, who are giving him high marks for handling the crisis.

The coming calamity: More crime because of less police officers will be worst result of budget cuts

The mayor in Nashville has asked for 10 percent budget cuts from various departments, which means there will be 210 less police officers on the street.

Nashville is a growing city, and its crime rate is ready to explode. That is the consequence of being a major league city. Already, homelessness is a mushrooming problem, with one major tent city and at least 30 others around the county.

CBS News reported last night that other major cities face the same budget problem -- less police officers in the coming year as people lose jobs and become more desperate.

Yet cities such as Nashville make a priority of all the things that don't promote safety in neighborhoods. Pro sports take, they do not give.

The mayor here, while preparing to cut 210 police officers, wants council approval to build a $600 million convention center. The debt service on that from taxpayers will be at least $12 million per year, and that's before police or schools get one cent.

The crime chickens will be coming home to roost. And those of us who do not live in a gated, secured community will be more at risk to being victims of crime in a down economy and amid more desperate lives.

Ranking the best presidents; Lincoln tops C-Span

C-Span conducted a poll of 64 historians concerning the best presidents as far as leadership.

I'm a bit surprised at the top 10 results, but here they are, followed by my judgment:

Historians Survey Results Category

Total Scores/Overall Ranking
President's Name 2009 Final Score Overall Ranking

2009/2000
Abraham Lincoln 902 1 1
George Washington 854 2 3
Franklin D. Roosevelt 837 3 2
Theodore Roosevelt 781 4 4
Harry S. Truman 708 5 5
John F. Kennedy 701 6 8
Thomas Jefferson 698 7 7
Dwight D. Eisenhower 689 8 9
Woodrow Wilson 683 9 6
Ronald Reagan 671 10 11
Lyndon B. Johnson 641 11 10

From my perspective, Reagan, FDR and LBJ belong in the top 3 -- with the advantage going to LBJ. But it's very close.

JFK does not belong in the top 10. His presidency was mediocre at best. While he stated worthy goals, it was LBJ who accomplished them. His assassination glossed over major failures such as the disastrous Vienna meeting with Kruschev and the Bay of Pigs fiasco which secured Communism's future in Cuba to this day. Kennedy's Civil Rights package also was effectively bottled up in Congress.

Eisenhower didn't do anything, really. Jefferson expanded the size of America. But his hypocrisy of owning slaves while writing a sacred document stating that all men are created equal denies him moral standing to be in the top 10. After reading David McCullough's book, I'd put John Adams in his place.

Lincoln and Washington and Teddy Roosevelt belong in the top 10. But I would not put Lincoln at the top. He picked horrible generals, which prolonged a war the North should have quickly won with its industrial and manpower advantages. Even Grant was a butcher of his own men. The Emancipation Proclamation was a political ploy. And Lincoln's military build up before secession sealed the fight with the South.

Wilson's League of Nations push was admirable but not solely worthy of a ranking of the best presidents. And it failed to be adopted by Congress.

Truman had some very tough decisions that preserve his ranking, and he desegregated the military.

I would have loved to have seen how Howard Zinn would have ranked the presidents.

Surprisingly, Goeorge W. Bush did not rank at the bottom of the historians' list. He finished seven spots above the bottom. Barack Obama -- with his disastrous first month -- may help him rise in rankings each year. Incredibly, Bill Clinton finished 14th on the list, which says something to the liberal bias of the historian class.

Tennesseans Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk finished 12th and 11th respectively, which shows that the liberals don't care that both played key roles in the massive malevolent mistreatment of the American Indian. Polk initiated the greatest immorality in American public policy -- Manifest Destiny, and invaded another country without cause for which the United States had to pay $15 million in reparations.

But the bias and blindless of this historian class is quite profound. I remember a segment of Sean Hannity's show when a group of Harvard eggheads had joined with Sen. Kennedy in protesting President Bush's Patriot Act. They called it an unprecedented attack on civil liberties.

Hannity then asked one of the elitists which president was his hero. He answered FDR. Theh Hannity reminded the egghead that FDR had put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. How's that for an abuse of civil liberties?

Historians come with their prejudices, just like the rest of us. But theirs is more geared to ideology than the pursuit of truth.

If you want to cut costs, look at vitamin purchases

In an article on Yahoo News, a John Hopkins University physician questions whether all the money Americans spend on vitamins are really worth the cost -- because there is no proof of any benefit.

And there is emerging truth of vitamins not doing any good to prevent things such as cancer and stroke and heart attack.

But with any advice, always check with your physician before making such advice part of your actual lifestyle and health choices.

Here is an excerpt of what was written by Dr. Simeon Margolis, a professor of medicine and biological chemistry at John Hopkins:

Advertisements with tantalizing promises of improved health, prevention of cancer and heart disease, and greater energy have lured millions of Americans to spend billions of dollars on the purchase of multivitamins.

An article in the February 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine reported that multivitamin use did not protect the 161,808 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative Study from common forms of cancer, heart attacks, or strokes. And the numbers of deaths during the 8 years of the study were the same in vitamin users as in non-users. Still, it is important to recognize that this was an observational study, not a more meaningful clinical trial.

Although these findings apply only to women, other studies have failed to show benefits of multivitamins in older men.

These results are not at all surprising for several reasons. No large study has shown that multivitamins significantly benefit healthy men and women. In addition, for some years physicians prescribed folic acid and vitamins B12 and B6 in the hopes of preventing heart attacks and strokes by lowering blood levels of homocysteine. (High blood levels of homocysteine are associated with an increased risk of coronary and other vascular diseases.)

A number of recent studies, however, have shown that, while these vitamins do lower homocysteine levels, they do not prevent heart attacks or strokes.

Robin Smith avoids the obvious for the silly

The move last week by state GOP chairman Robin Smith to kick the puppet House Speaker out of the Republican Party was so much silliness and of little substance.

Yet she has yet to speak out about a more troubling corruption of her party -- the extortive tactics of state Rep. Brian Kelsey to get a committee chairmanship in exchange for tuning down his ethics complaint against Speaker Kent Williams.

That kind of conduct is politics at its worst, even more dastardly than what Williams did in voting for himself along with all the Democrats to become speaker. And it's worse than anything Jimmy Naifeh and his cronies ever perpretrated.

What Williams did in no way broke any law. What Kelsey did sure did border it, no matter what the local DA says.

Republicans are supposed to be about law and order first and foremost -- at least that is what they claim. But it seems that their principles only apply to immigrants, not Larry Craig, Ted Stevens and now Rep. Kelsey.

Kelsey should be kicked out of the GOP. And Smith should call for House GOP leaders to push for his removal before the House ethics committee. Anything less shows that Smith is more about silliness than substance, along with her political party in Tennessee.

The Carpetbagger speaks: Revisionist history recited by Tennessean editor designed to fool you once more; he really thinks we're that stupid

We the people of the South know about the ills of revisionist history.

For instance, we know that Lincoln did not invade the South because of his moral outrage over slavery. He did it to preserve the Union in response to Southern secession.

There are even people, such as a Catholic bishop who recently had his excommunication lifted by the Vatican, who deny there was a Holocaust. The bishop believes only 200,000 of our Jewish brothers and sisters were murdered during Hitler's reign of terror. He also believes that no gas chambers were used.

Revisionists speak and write to deny the truth that makes them look bad and show they lack simple integrity. And so it is with today's column that I read at Kroger's by Tennessean editor Mark Silverman.

I don't but the paper. There is no need to. It takes two minutes to simply scan the pages and take in the little that is offered. The Issues' section in particular is a waste of time.

Besides Silverman, there is Dwight Lewis, who still writes from an age long passed as a black columnist writing on black issues. And that reduces his pieces to mostly being pro-black and anti-white. He is an enabler for bad that is hurting people who look like him but folks he really has NO contact with.

And the one-person-interview profiles on the cover of Issues are simply a writer emptying his notebook. There is no analysis of all the political spin being offered.

Yet Silverman claimed today that The Tennessean has changed along with your reading habits geared more to Internet and away from his dinosaur publication. And he has the audacity to claim The Tennessean's strength is local news.

Consider that with each layoff and vacancy that goes unfilled there, another part of the community goes uncovered by The Tennessean. For instance, there is no coverage of the courts. In addition, the paper has to steal a reporter each week from its Williamson A.M. bureau in Franklin to simply staff a police reporter in Davidson County. Sad.

Its decision makers are not out among you. When was the last time you saw Silverman out as part of your congregation? When did you see him at a junior pro, 11-12 year old football game in east Nashville? Or in north Nashville?

So it is disgusting to read Silverman's claim that The Tennessean and you have reached the same conclusion about news coverage and simple fairness in news coverage. People have gone to the Internet because The Tennessean does not represent the values of the area, be it in political fairness/unbiased news coverage to the importance of faith in personal lives here. Its disdain for the military is obvious.

The roots of the information revolution Silverman writes about is in spite of The Tennessean and other dinosaur newspapers, not in conjunction with them.

Don't believe the Carpetbagger. His like always has many twists to the real truth.

'Meet the Press' and David Gregory are a must watch for tough questioning of political leaders

In a short period, NBC's David Gregory has established himself as the top and toughest questioner of politicians and their spinmasters on Sunday morning, political television.

And the revelations he produces to show the real bottom line to decisions being made in Washington are incredibly enlightening.

For instance, the passage of Obama's economic stimulus plan will produce this shocker: 13 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product(GDP) will go to our national debt.

That's a sure indicator of inflation to come that is going to really make our lives more miserable and our dollars worth less.

"Meet the Press" is a must watch each Sunday morning, beginning at 9 CDT on WSMV. And Gregory has risen to the top so quickly and mightily. He asks the needed questions for us in a most non-partisan way.

Obama takes a holiday after stimulus billl passes

One would think with the urgency of the times that President "I Screwed Up" would want to immediately sign the economic stimulus bill that he claimed was needed to avoid economic catastrophe in this nation.

Yet he and his wife set off for a three-day getaway in Chicago. Very strange and hypocritical. And now his personal chef he brought into the White House has been idled for three days. I bet our tax dollars are still paying for his salary for doing nothing.

Here is how The New York Post reported it:

After pushing Congress for weeks to hurry up and pass the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway.

Obama arrived at his home in Chicago on Friday, and treated wife Michelle to a Valentine's Day dinner downtown last night. The couple was spotted leaving upscale Table Fifty-Two, which specializes in Southern cuisine, with the first lady toting what appeared to be a doggie bag.

The president plans to spend the Presidents' Day weekend in the Windy City, and is not expected to sign the bill until Tuesday, when he travels to Denver to discuss his economic plan.

Both the House and Senate passed the bill Friday night.

The push to get the bill through before the holiday weekend was so frantic, members of Congress didn't have a chance to read all 1,071 pages of the document before they could vote.

"In a perfect world it would have been nice to have had more time to process it," said Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

Bredesen won't be HHS secretary after Gregg departure; Obama can't take new embarrassment

With the embarrassing withdrawal of Sen. Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary nominee, President "I Screwed Up" cannot afford another Cabinet failure and controversy -- and that dooms Gov. Phil Bredesen's chances at being HHS secretary.

Thanks to the Tennessee Health Care Coalition and its principled leader Tony Garr, the health care advocacy community nationally has mobilized in opposition and let the Obama administration know it would be in for a fight if it nominated a man whose health care cuts killed people.

I know. I wrote about these cases.

Obama cannot stand more controversy. He needs an easy nomination process. Bredesen will not provide that. And in anger, Bredesen lashed out last week at his critics telling the truth about him. He knows his political career is over after 2010.

The nation's gain in Bredesen not being the new HHS secretary will be Tennessee's continuing loss in having a leader who has no heart or concern for the good people here.

Lacking needed recruits, military now turns to immigrants with temporary visas to enlist

The New York Times reports a truth and an expansion of it that conservative Republicans should be aware of before they start their next anti-immigrant rant.

Because of lack of needed new recruits among American citizens, the U.S. military will now offer permanent citizenship to immigrants here on TEMPORARY work visas if they enlist in the fight on terror.

The military is desperate with the war in Afghanistan prepared to be more fully waged. But they don't have the men and women.

Where are American citizens, those people born in this nation and raised among its privileges?

In particular, where are African-Americans who avoided service under Bush because their distrust of him? That's fine. But now they have an African-American as commander in chief. Is he not worth serving? Or was his election just another moment to party?

Freedom is not free. It requires sacrifice. From everyone.

Here is an excerpt from The Times story:

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.

Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.

“The American Army finds itself in a lot of different countries where cultural awareness is critical,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, the top recruitment officer for the Army, which is leading the pilot program. “There will be some very talented folks in this group.”

The program will begin small — limited to 1,000 enlistees nationwide in its first year, most for the Army and some for other branches. If the pilot program succeeds as Pentagon officials anticipate, it will expand for all branches of the military. For the Army, it could eventually provide as many as 14,000 volunteers a year, or about one in six recruits.

About 8,000 permanent immigrants with green cards join the armed forces annually, the Pentagon reports, and about 29,000 foreign-born people currently serving are not American citizens.

The truth about Abraham Lincoln is far from the news media spin; it's the same with Barack Obama

People of the South are more studied in history, because they have had to live it more directly than their brothers and sisters in the North.

And so they know everything about Abraham Lincoln, his greatness and his great flaws as president. And they know he was not the greatest president of all -- a fact to consider as the nation celebrates President's Day on Monday.

The news media, however, has hyped up the Lincoln myth with the presidency of Barack Obama. But this celebrity treatment does little to affirm the truth with either man.

Lincoln did not believe blacks and whites to be equal intellectually. And he stated as much to assure the white crowds of voters he spoke to.

Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to give the North something more emotional and passionate the fight for than preserving the Union. I don't think preserving the Union would motivate many folks today, either. The measure freed no slaves outside of the South. And he had no authority to free slaves in states under Confederate control. It was simply a political move, not something out of great morality.

Lincoln publicly stated that if he could preserve the Union by keeping slavery in the United States, he would do so.

Lincoln assembled a great army before any shot was fired on Ft. Sumter in order to indimidate the South out of succession. He even asked Robert E. Lee to command it.
Lee refused. Assembling a great army is tatamount to declaring war.

There is more contradiction to the media's myth-making. But take it from Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, who wrote last month:

On Tuesday, Barack Obama will stand on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and take an oath making him the nation's first president of African heritage.

The statue of Abraham Lincoln, which sits facing the Capitol in a temple two miles away, will not give two thumbs up. Neither will it weep, commune with the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. or dance a Macarena of joy.

The point is obvious, yes, but also necessary given that when Obama was elected in November, every third political cartoonist seemed to use an image of a celebrating Lincoln to comment upon the milestone that had occurred. Lincoln, they told us, would have been overjoyed.

Actually, Lincoln likely would have been appalled. How could he not? He was a 19th century white man who famously said in 1858 that "there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which ... will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality.''

How do you reconcile that with all those cartoons of Lincoln congratulating Obama? You don't. You simply recognize it for what it is: yet another illustration of how shallow our comprehension of history is, yet another instance where myth supersedes reality.

New Illinois senator lied about Gov. B connection

The new U.S. senator from Illinois has been shown to have lied in earlier statements that he was not been contacted -- before his appointment -- to financially help then Gov. Rod Blagojevich, according to documents reported on by The New York Times.

The cesspool of Chicago politics reveals a unmistakable stain of dishonesty that does not wash out. And that same cesspool produced the current president, Barack Obama. But it seems the cesspool among Democrats has spread beyond just Chicago.

Was the Clinton administration the good ol' days when it came to integrity?

Blagojevich appointed Sen. Roland W. Burris. And Senate Democrats initially opposed his seating, then strangely relented. Increasingly, Democrats in power are showing themselves to be disturbingly dishonest -- not only in paying taxes but in simple statements of truth versus lies.

The Times reported:

CHICAGO — Senator Roland W. Burris acknowledged in documents made public on Saturday that the brother of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich sought campaign fund-raising help from him in the weeks and months before his appointment to succeed Barack Obama as Illinois’s junior senator.

Mr. Burris said he provided no money to Governor Blagojevich’s campaign in response to the brother’s request.

The disclosure was inconsistent with Mr. Burris’s earlier descriptions, including one under oath, of his conversations with those closest to the former governor. It raised new questions about events that preceded Mr. Burris’s unusual appointment in late December, and prompted some Republican lawmakers in Illinois to immediately demand an inquiry into whether Mr. Burris committed perjury.

Four girls, their Hail Marys and a blessed moment

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, four Hispanic girls broke from their play and knelt down before the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary north of the buildings of St. Edward Catholic Church in Nashville.

And then they started saying their Hail Marys, not noticing me sitting on the bench talking to the Holy Mother.

This small miracle amid the busy schedules of the adult world was marvelous to behold. And the children all were seven years of age or younger.

It was most appropriate for the time of month, since the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes had just been celebrated a few days earlier. And the three shepherd children to which Our Holy Mother appeared in 1917 reminds us of her special love for the young.

With the four girls today, I can only imagine the great pride Our Lady had in this devotion from hearts just as pure as hers.

So in salute to her, and in gratitude for witnessing the devotion of the girls, I asked which of the girls was the oldest as they returned to the playground.

And then I handed the oldest a $20 bill for her to take the rest to the store to buy something that only the young can enjoy. Her eyes widened. All said "thank you". But I told them that the money was from Our Lady and from her deep appreciation for their devotion.

A half hour later when I went to the convenience store for some gum, the oldest was walking out with her mother, plastic bag in hand. A broad grin with one tooth missing represented her delight at a treat for all that was about to be shared.

Blessed moments such as these have highlighted my life through the difficult past three and a half months. And they remind me of God's presence, of his abiding presence, that calls on all of us to endure for the dawn to come.

We can be our best when things are at their worst

My favorite scene from Starman is when Jeff Bridges the alien speaks of his examination of the human species.

And he speaks to what he finds most worthy in us: "You are at your best when things are at their worst."

He is right. Recite the list of recent tragedies in this nation and the national and personal response -- Oklahoma City, 9/11. Katrina, the Christmas Tsunami and so many others.

But those events are only for the moment. The long-term record for humanity is a very poor one.

Our schedules are too busy. We don't have the time to offer kindness to the world, let alone a person who asks for it. I know that from personal experience.

No government or stimulus plan is going to rescue us. And don't look to God. He has already provided us His son and a Bible that directs us on how to help ourselves and others.

Too many people believe going to church each Sunday and reciting prayers by rote is enough. That is laughable. It is obeying the letter of the law while ignoring the heart of it. I know too many people like that, including those I used to call friends.

Amid our pain and fear, we must reach out to one another, everytime, everyday. We must make time in our busy schedules to simply be kind to one another -- to be our best when things are at their worst.

In that way, we'll show God we have learned the hard lessons about life in hard times. And the reward to us from offering simple kindness to another will be a river of mercy flowing into our lives when we need it most.

I know that from personal experience, too.

The Big Lie: Blaming Bush for recession is wrong

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeated a lie Friday after passage of the economic stimulus plan that President "I screwed up" also has cited often in pushing this reckless legislation.

The idea that Bush administration policy of the past eight years brought on economic hard times is ridiculous.

Take time this evening at 6 p.m. CDT to watch CNBC's excellent program, "House of Cards", to learn what caused the recession. And it was the Clinton administration that removed regulatory prohibitions against the kind of shenanigans involving reckless home lending in communities that was sold upstream to Wall Street and investors.

The scapegoating by the Democrats will not sell. Their plan will not produce anything close to the results promised. And Obama's celebrity status will falter, just as it has with Britney Spears.

The American people are not stupid. They will soon place the blame where it belongs, on both political parties -- but more on the one that now refuses to accept responsibility.

Stimulus plan no lawmaker has fully read passes

For a president who promised change, yesterday's passage of a massive economic stimulus plan in spending and number of pages was more of the same betrayal that has left the people's faith in Washington so low.

No lawmaker had read all of the bill they had passed. So every Republican in the House and seven Democrats voted against it, lest they pass something that they did no know all it would do.

The bill passed in the Senate and got three Republican votes. But the measure is solely a Democratic one, pushed by a president who has shown incompetency of an extraordinary degree in only his first month in office.

The legislation will not have an immediate impact in creating jobs. In fact, it allows for infrastructure improvements with current crews to keep them working.

The stimulus package is more of the same wasteful spending from Washington, except for backing up extended unemployment benefits and health care for laid off workers. But those needs are only a fraction of the nearly $800 billion plan.

Passage of a bill no lawmaker fully read is a betrayal of the American people and holds more threat than help.

Understanding tragedy and God's will

A close friend of mine said she lost her faith when she overheard two believers in her family say that it was God's will when a plane carrying Vietnamese refugee children crashed and killed all these innocents.

Too often, we as believers don't think before we speak. And often, God has yet to more fully reveal himself to many of us, or we are not willing to listen -- using faith as crutch instead of a step toward greater enlightenment.

God does not bring tragedy, He does not give people leukemia nor is He involved in planes crashing, such as what happened to Flight 3407 outside of Buffalo.

God also did not will that one of the passengers be a heroic widow of 9/11, Beverly Eckert. Of course, she had already suffered so much in life.

The tragedy is not part of God. The choices we make afterward are. And the story of the brave widow of 9/11 is representative of a choice made in God, in establishing a memorial and scholarship to her late husband, speaking up for other 9/11 families, and even boarding the plane to celebrate his birthday.

Should she have lost her life after suffering so much? Of course not. No one on that plane deserved to die. Nor did the husband and father killed on the ground in his home.

In a world where free choice and accidents happen, tragedy is unavoidable. And these catastrophic events are made harder when someone like Beverly Eckert is lost.

Remember from the Gospels when the apostles spoke to Christ about a tower collapse in a nearby town that took many lives. Some people were saying it was God's judgment on the victims' sins. Christ would have none of that thinking, reminding his disciples that the rain falls on the good and the bad.

So God did not will the crash of Flight 3047, nor did He intend that Eckert and 49 others leave the world on a icy, foggy morning outside of Buffalo.

His will is present in everything afterward, in how we now react in providing consolation to those families that are hurting and in taking up Eckert's work in championing the families of 9/11. Surely, that is how she would want us to respond to her death.

And His will is present in the promise many of us believe in -- that loss on this Earth is replaced by joy in heaven.

Even though DA avoids responsibility, House Republicans should not in ousting Kelsey

Metro Nashville/Davidson County's district attorney avoided responsibility and decided not to charge state Rep. Brian Kelsey for his extortive efforts in offering to ease his ethics' push in return for a committee chairmanship from the puppet House Speaker.

Kelsey's aim was obvious, even if the DA has excused it. So the leadership of his political party should bring ethics charges against him for his ouster. While his actions may pass muster in political circles at Legislative Plaza and in the DA's office, they are an insult to the people of Tennessee.

Kelsey should not be allowed to hold office and should be ousted by his colleagues. Failure to do so will show that the House GOP is no better the Naifeh and the Democrats. So why change?

The DA has shown himself unwilling to take on politicians. Gov. Phil Bredesen violated state law in using his fortune to loan millions of dollars to his last gubernatorial campaign. The DA can use the excuse of an AG's opinion. But it does not supersede the law.

Kelsey has been allowed off the hook. So has Bredesen. The DA has shown he does not represent the people interests or that of the law.

House Republican leaders should now show what they stand for, if anything at all.

After two failed nominations, is Commerce Department really worth the cost of existence?

As President "I Screwed Up" has gone through two nominees, talk is growing that the Department of Commerce should just be folded up.

That's a point made tonight by CNBC's Larry Kudlow, not my favorite analyst but someone Obama invited to dinner at the White House to woo his favor.

It didn't work. Now that Bill Richardson had to step back because of potential scandal back at home and Judd Gregg removed his name because he couldn't reconcile the administration's positions with his principles, why is a commerce secretary needed at all?

And why is a Commerce Department needed? Can you tell me how a Commerce Department benefitted your life the past eight years?

Let Obama bring change to Washington and eliminate the department and all its spending. That can pay off some of the cost from the stimulus plan.

Into the valley: Despair with cancer diagnosis is unavoidable, but rescue still possible, inevitable

Descent into the valley of despair is unavoidable for most people who receive a cancer diagnosis and immediate treatment, including surgery.

The worst thing is for families to panic. Or for do-gooders to rush in and preach God, hope and prayer. It's ignorant and can do more harm than good.

When I was diagnosed with terminal leukemia, my descent into the abyss was immediate. And my time there was prolonged, as I lost my hair and strength. It was more aggravating to have someone think they could pull me out of it than to be in despair. Even despair is a point of stability.

But for all things there is a season. And the cancer victim will rally. I did. I cannot tell you what it is upon which the cancer sufferer will grasp and pull themselves up.

But something will tell them to appreciate the moment, to cherish the moment for the gift that it is from God. Perhaps another cancer victim will let them in on the secret, like my friend, Gene, from Lawrenceburg who is battling a difficult blood cancer.

At the encouragement of medical personnel, the insurance businessman has become a counselor of sorts to other victims. And when we talk, it's like a convention of evangelists. We can't stop from gushing about God and the goodness he has revealed to us in the valley. We draw strength from each other for the walk we are on.

Ultimately, cancer victims will quit resenting that their busy schedules and plans have been set aside. They will learn to laugh again. They will tell people they love them, many of who they never have said that to before -- but needed to. They will learn to appreciate the insight and instinct received from above.

The prayer of the cancer victim, once they emerge from the abyss, is not for a cure but to learn even more about appreciating the moment. The moment is enough. And the moment brings us closer to the Creator of it.

So don't panic if you are a family member. The descent into the valley is natural, even if troubling. The cancer sufferer must go into the valley to really appreciate rising back to the peak.

All things are in God's time and according to His marvelous wisdom.

And in his or her emergence, the cancer victim will find themselves attuned to that schedule and that knowledge -- not that of the misguided, selfish world.

Men be smart tomorrow; don't listen to your wife

Men, don't be fooled by your wife saying that she doesn't want any big deal made over Valentine's Day tomorrow.

That is her pride talking, which says if she has to tell to make a big deal about it, then it isn't worth it to her.

So make sure you make a big deal out of Valentine's Day, even if it partly is a capitalist creation to suck more money out of us.

Valentine's Day is the sole benchmark annually by which the woman in your life measures whether you still desire her -- not love her.

There's a big difference.

So make a big difference tomorrow and reap the reward.

Now the Democrats are on their own path to failure as no Republican in House votes for stimulus plan with little immediate impact

The political cover that President "I screwed up" wanted for his economic stimulus plan and incompetency did not show up today as every House Republican voted against his wishes in a much anticipated floor vote.

And rightly so. The plan offers little in immediate impact. The only good thing about it is the extension in unemployment benefits and help with health care COBRAs of laid off workers.

But those needs only account for a fraction of the spending.

Obama will probably get three GOP votes in the Senate later today. But that will not be enough for him to run under the banner of being bipartisan. This plan was initially crafted in the House by only Democrats, setting it on the wrong path from the beginning. And Obama endorsed that ridiculous plan with more Christmas tree goodies than the massive fir at Rockefeller Center.

The plan was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, jobs. It is not.

That's tragic considering these numbers reported today by The New York Times:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that employers laid off a record 508,859 workers in the fourth quarter of 2008 in what the bureau calls extended mass layoff events — layoffs involving 50 or more workers for at least 31 days.

That is by far the highest number involved in mass layoffs since the bureau began collecting that data in 1995. The fourth-quarter number represents a 69 percent increase over the 301,592 workers involved in extended mass layoffs in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The stock market has been demoralized by the failure of Obama's secretary of treasury -- another prominent Democrat who couldn't pay his taxes on time -- to provide promised specifics on bailing out the nation's banks.

In the end, Obama is going to get his stimulus plan. But he'll have to sign it without any political cover. And the American people will be able to center all the anger at him and his fellow Democrats for failing to turn things around when they promised change and hope.

Warning: Don't blow nose when you have a cold

The New York Times has a most-needed article for this time of year that says it is bad to blow your nose when you have a cold.

Yes, you read right.

The proper method is to blow one nostril at a time and to take decongestants, said Dr. Anil Kumar Lalwani, chairman of the department of otolaryngology at the New York University Langone Medical Center. This prevents a buildup of excess pressure.

Who knew?

The article says that the sinus cavity simply refills with infectious mucus after nose blowing, thus spreading infection.

So don't blow. Endure.

When I have a cold, I have a favorite nostril that I want to stay clear always. It is the right side. So I'll maneuver and blow just the right side to get relief. But from The Times' piece, I'm really not helping myself, or others around me.

Good thing I live alone.

Claim of poverty by unionized TN auto workers doesn't ring true; our tax dollars should not guarantee employment in any industry

A protest today at Legislative Plaza by Tennessee's unionized auto workers chastised Sen. Bob Corker for opposing the auto industry bailout.

I'm no fan of the 22nd richest person in Congress. But Corker was right. And he represented the views of Tennesseans in not one cent of their tax dollars going to these pampered workers, their union bosses and their wrong-headed, corporate executives.

I covered the GM plant and its UAW workers in Oklahoma City for 10 years as an economics reporter. And these folks were paid very well, and received an incredible number of paid weeks off. You could tell who was a union auto worker in a neighborhood by the boat in the driveway and massive deck and barbecue pit in the back.

I don't begrudge that of any union worker. But I sure draw the line when they want my tax dollars to preserve their wealthy lifestyle.

You could tell how wrong these workers were when they enlisted state Rep. Mike Turner to their cause. Turner has about as much integrity as an Obama Cabinet nominee.

Then it struck me. If these workers are out there protesting, who is doing their jobs? How are they still getting paid? Does your employer allow you time off to protest opposition to government giveaways during the work week?

No more free rides, auto industry folks. It's time to be treated as any other Tennessee worker and live through the hard times like the rest of us. Quit whining and be more productive and essential.

Stunning news: Gregg removes name as Commerce nominee, cites Obama's screw up of stimulus plan

New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg surprisingly removed his name as Commerce Secretary nominee, leaving President Obama with another incredible embarrassment in only his first month in office.

Gregg cited Obama's poor handling of the stimulus package, which he allowed in the House to be filled with pork goodies, and then backed a Senate plan that was much more responsible. This void in integrity has also stunned the financial markets, which have dropped significantly this week as a vote of no confidence in the president.

Gregg, a Republican, would have provided Obama with political cover that he is offering the nation a bipartisan change. Gregg's withdrawl now forces the president to explain his incompetence again to the American people.

A world leader only gets one "I screwed up" excuse per term.

In a statement, Gregg said: “It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me.

“Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.”

Now is not the time to make money in the markets

Take it from someone who got out at 13,000: don't try and make money in the current financial markets as they tumble to new lows.

The volatility is too extreme. And picking stocks at low prices with high dividends won't work either. For every two stocks you pick right, three you'll pick wrong. And you'll end up losing money.

Now is the time to preserve your worth, not to try and build more. Seasons will change but not for another year at least.

And if you still have your money in the markets in hopes of recouping what you've lost, that's a fool's bet that will never pay off. What you lose from now to the ultimate bottom, you'll never get back. That might well be another 20 percent of your holdings.

But for the folks such as me in cash on the sidelines, we'll pick up your losses in new profits -- a reward for our patience amid calamity.

Valentine's Day: The myth versus the hard reality

So ardently sought, true love may actually be a myth, a cruel one dangled before the romantically pure of heart.

But from my experience, most recently, true love is not a healthy concept for people to pursue.

Soon after signing a piece of paper, I will be single for the first time in 16 years, and the thought frightens me. All divorces have two sides. Mine does, too. But I was very devoted to my marriage, so it was hard to be the one to file for divorce.

Since then, I have been a student of the concept of love, and how it goes wrong and how it results in a marriage of more than 50 years. My parents were married for 55 years.

I always believed in true love from the first time I can remember. I always wanted to marry a Catholic girl and go to church every Sunday with our babies. I am a momma's boy, so I would also offer her the utmost respect in listening first before speaking besides sharing decisionmaking.

Most of all, I would spend money on her. I hate spending on myself. I see no virtue in spending on oneself. For the woman I love, no amount would be too much.

The brand of religion soon became non-mandatory in my search, just that the person believed and could share God and our diverse experiences in our union. God's grace is irreplaceable.

But I discovered that the female world did not really want that. Someone who drove a faster car and had a little dark side to him was preferred. Women love a little bit of mystery. I was too much of an open book, and I guess a boring one at that.

My fight with leukemia since Dec. 2005 has taught me so much about happiness and the things to treasure. I am a people person as my mother. So my philanthropy is an extension of that. I love conversation and making people laugh, particularly children such as Hunter.

I like being silly on ocassion, even if my writing does not reflect such a carefree spirit.

But I believe God directs us to new areas of life to develop us into better people. And so I pray to him and in the Rosary that I learn to love being alone. And to offer my love to Him first and Our Lady of Guadalupe before anyone else.

In this way, my heart will no longer be at risk to being so utterly broken again. God is always faithful, and His wisdom is so marvelous.

So to those of you who have true love, always thank God each day for this marvelous gift.

If you are looking for it, be attuned to the reality of things in today's world and its bent expectations.

True love on Valentine's Day and every one after is a mirage to better avoid than pursue.

For the love of Hunter: Waiting for cure can be taxing on mom, dad, sister and this beautiful boy

The body in receiving high doses of chemo to kill everything including leukemia reacts differently in each of us.

And so it is with 6-year-old Hunter, preparing for his last major dose of chemo to finally beat leukemia and get him on a regular dose of maintenance medicine to fully pursue being young once more.

For the past several Wednesdays, his body has not been producing enough white blood cells to survive another high dose of chemo. Mom and Dad go to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital with hopes each week of starting on the final stretch of life-saving chemo. But each time the blood counts have turned them back.

And the delay can be devastating, as it was this morning when I joined Team Hunter at the hospital in rooting for his medical triumph.

The question becomes after several frustrating weeks is "what is wrong?" And the worst question is "has the leukemia come back?" I know the roller coaster feeling from my continuing fight with the same disease.

Hunter had a great weekend in the warm weather. He was riding his bike and throwing baseball. He did not want to come inside the house. The boy and the wonderful weather were one.

So the white cell count was mystifying this morning. That led the great staff at Monore Carell to take a bit of Hunter's bone marrow to see if the leukemia had returned. Then mom and dad and big sister had to wait six hours back at home for the results.

Hunter REMAINS in remission. Hooray! God answers all prayers!

So next week, Team Hunter will return to Vanderbilt. And we'll see if his body is ready for the last big round of chemo ... and his ultimate return to regular, rip-roaring life.

Coming tomorrow in Williamson Herald: Read about secret on how to survive downturn

Tomorrow's Williamson Herald features my column about how to survive the ongoing economic downturn and how to even feel like you are prospering.

The choice is simple, but the way is hard.

Read about it tomorrow.

Bredesen lies again; perfect for Obama Cabinet

Gov. Phil Bredesen lied today, again claiming he took a scalpel to TennCare when everyone knows -- including the families of the people he killed with his decisions -- that he took a hatchet to a program that's supposed to help the most vulnerable among us.

Bredesen lied today before local TV cameras as speculation has him as one of the two choices before President Obama for HHS secretary.

Obama's consideration of Bredesen is an outrage. But the two Democrats deserve each other. The only change they've delivered in their respective offices is a sharp decline in credibility and competency.

So the liar craves the company of the incompetent.

Ultimately, Obama and Bredesen deserve each other.

Bredesen is a bad man, and a bad liar. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Obama is not the man he claims. How far his conduct will decline is to be seen, and feared.

Investors deliver 'no confidence' vote on Obama; his promise of plan today to resolve banking crisis unrealized as treasury secretary avoids specifics

The incredible shrinking presidency of Barack "I Screwed Up" Obama accelerated today into more incompetency as his treasury secretary failed to even fulfill Obama's promise to the American people last night of specifics on how to rescue the nation's banking system.

And Wall Street fell an incredible 400 points based on the president again unable to deliver on his promise to bring change to Washington.

Somewhere in Texas, George W. Bush is laughing.

After four weeks, Obama has shown himself to the most incompetent president in recent American history. The people he has chosen for his administration can't even pay their taxes on time, including Secretary Geithner.

While Obama got a stimulus plan passed by the Senate today, it is far from the one he so vigorously supported in the House. So which one does Obama favor? Only he knows.

The American people will soon realize that Obama does not know what he is doing. As Hillary Clinton said in the primary campaign, the White House is no place for on the job training. I wish Obama was playing at that level. The job is beyond his judgment and experience.

The people of this nation will realize as a conference committee meets that the best stimulus plan is no plan at all. The nation already has realized an economic catastrophe. Wasting more taxpayer money so the Chinese can buy up more of country is no solution. It will just ruin any future we can realize after surviving these hard times.

Demand that government save our money. Put it toward rescuing the housing market, if it must bs spent at all. But keep it out of Obama's hands. He has lost all credibility so soon from so many missteps.

Rural education initiative finds need but more thanks; Bethpage Elementary worthy recipient

Thanks to The Westmoreland Observer, the above photos were taken of the beginning of a rural education initiative for middle Tennessee schools outside of Nashville to support good students and families and schools.

The outpouring of gratitude from the Bethpage Elementary community and Sumner County school officials has dwarfed the little received from Metro Nashville and the more than $100,000 in support and contributions I directed to schools there personally and through my newspaper column for 10 years.

Computers are really cheap, so my contributions shown above were quite manner. However, smart boards and laptops will follow soon for the school. This initiative is under the Vita H. Chavez/Our Lady of Guadalupe Charitable Trust under my direction.

I was most proud to have state Sen. Diane Black on hand and for the school to be in her district. She is a great leader in Tennessee, and I am proud to have helped her through my column to unseat then incumbent JoAnn Graves in that district. I did so by simply showing all the wrong then Sen. Graves had done in representing the few. And I featured Black as a representative battling for the many against the corrupt Naifeh machine.

More rural schools will join Bethpage. However, my health has declined so I must recover some lost ground, if possible. In whatever event, the initiative will continue. My estate executor is aware of the same needs and committed to addressing them. So all is good.

The appreciation that has poured forth has made this minor contribution such a blessed moment in my life. That work will continue for schools in counties around Nashville and for the precious children there -- who deserve to have their needs addressed, too, in media attention and society philantrophy.

TennCare advocate and health care consumer knows how bad Vanderbilt Medical Center can be; no accountability

My favorite TennCare and legislative advocate, Sharon Cobb, says the following about Vanderbilt University Medical Center and its unaccountable bureaucracy:

Patient affairs contacted me too, without my requesting their assistance.

They are screwing up left and right with this new electronic system "My Health At Vandy," which is convenient for making appointments and checking blood work, but is horrible for communication with doctors. A nurse reads your email and decides what the doctor needs to know from it without knowing your complete history. I have severe liver damage now, possibly because my cardiologist had me a on medicine that my liver doctor did not want me on...but even they refused to talk to each other and would only message each other.

Folks, if you're going to Vanderbilt for more than a cold, you're taking your life in your hands. Get out while you can!

Cobb is not just some noisy wheel. She is a former correspondent for MSNBC. Her words about Vanderbilt are shocking. I was just wanting to get an IV so I could get my chemo without having to spend more than one day there.

It took two last month.

They don't seem to realize that we also have a life outside of their world. We also have schedules. And it is that life that keeps our spirits up.

Do Vandy decisionmakers really care? I don't know.

Vanderbilt no longer best place for cancer treatment; be better-served at home at Williamson Medical Center, other area hospitals

Williamson Medical Center ran an impressive commercial about the quality of care for the delivery of babies during the Tuesday Newschannel 5 newscast at 5 p.m.

The emphasis was quality, top care close to home, with your needs coming first. I could not agree more -- but from a different perspective.

That is for cancer treatment.

For the past three years, I have been going to Vanderbilt Medical Center for treatment of leukemia. That required a round trip, along with getting need prescriptions, of one hour. For those of you out who have ever received chemo, you know that every minute counts to get home to endure the weakness and nausea.

Vanderbilt has some incredibly gifted and compassionate doctors, nurses and staff. But for its massive size, it is the same kind of bureaucracy such as at the Statehouse in Nashville. Managers and bureaucrats determine everything, particularly the ease of your care. I've had a problem since July 2006 of getting a place, clinic and manager inside the hospital to take responsibility for simply giving me an IV to receive chemo for my leukemia.

I no longer have what is called a "port", which is a place surgically opened and placed in your body to immediately receive chemo and draw blood monthly for blood counts. The problem with my port was that it was the point of the infection that entered my body and almost killed me over 12 summer days in Vanderbilt in 2006. Only my rescue by God through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe saved my life. I must always proclaim that truth.

I feel so sorry for the poor nurses and doctors and staff. They have heard the same complaints from so many other patients about so many problems in how the care they provide is mismanaged by the system. And they are unable to overrule managers and bureaucrats. So my hematologist told me it was all right for me to write this column about my continuing problem in hopes of helping other people he wants to heal.

And so I am writiing today. In the Stem Cell Clinic that I go to, the policy for treatment of patients -- for example in where I can get an IV -- changes every two to three months. And so patients are bounced between the first and second floors like ping pong balls. And they are the ones who are sick. Some are dying. Some are in wheelchairs with barely enough energy to hold their heads up. I was there once like that. Those days are hard to live, let along live with the hassle of a system changed every three months.

I got an answer Tuesday from the so-called patient advocate at Vanderbilt, Mary K. Sturgis, about my latest appeal for change to help patients, besides myself before the bureaucracy. She continued, however, to excuse the inexcusable.

It is bureaucracy and rationalization first and always at VUMC and so many of other institutions in our society. The consumer, taxpayer and patient be damned.

Well, guess what, all ye institutions. We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!!! (Thank you, Peter Finch.) We're going to speak up and demand to be noticed if you want our business and tax dollars.

Now, it is finally time for We the People to be respected. I don't listen to Les Miserables for simply entertainment.

On to the barricades!

For the past week, I have been investigating chemo services at Williamson Medical Center. And it has been reassuring to find that the capabilities there are extensive for your treatment and survival -- close to home. The patient satisfactory rate is one of the highest in the nation. Lessening the hassle you have to go through is essential in fighting cancer.

Now if you have leukemia, you'll need to go to Vandy. But for most other cancers, stay close to home and avoid the unaccountable bureaucracy that even the good doctors and nurses and staff at Vanderbilt hate.

Here is another advantage -- this time as a taxpayer. County public hospitals are going to take the hardest fiscal hit from the downturn in the economy. If you invest your health care dollars in your own county hospital, you are ensuring not only its survival but the best possible care in an emergency ... and a lessened public revenue need.

And there is accountability at Williamson Medical Center not available at Vanderbilt. A hospital board meets publicly each month. And on it is one of the best public servant I've ever known, County Executive Rogers Anderson. If you have any problem with the hospital and your treatment, Rogers and the board are there to listen and then to immediately enact change.

Conversely, Vanderbilt needs to reform its bureaucratic monstrosity that serves the system more than the patient. It's the same story about the Statehouse and Congress. It is my prayer that some VUMC executive who lives in Williamson County will read this post and demand change that Ms. Sturgis and the manager of the Stem Cell Clinic fight.

If not for the patients, then I hope that the executive will act for change according to the high level of compassion provided daily by Vanderbilt doctors, nurses and staff.

Jobless claims accelerate to 626,000 Americans

The number of Americans filing for weekly jobless claims exceeded the worst projections of analysts and reached 626,000 for the latest reporting period, according to numbers released this morning.

The impact on the stock market is expected to be significantly negative today.

To go with the bad news on jobless claims, states such as Tennessee are expecting to run out money soon to pay unemployment checks. Tennessee pays one of the lowest benefit amounts in the nation, yet still is running out of money.

The federal government can step in, but it will charge Tennessee more for such help, which the state then must pass down in charges on employers that pay for their employees' unemployment insurance. Businesses can ill afford more costs.

It is a vicious cycle.

God save America. Truly.

Obama, Congress have nothing on Pope Benedict when it comes to denying utter incompetence

President Barack "I Screwed Up" Obama and Congress have found a kindred spirit in the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI when it comes to denying the obvious of their incompetency and lack of intelligence to do basic scrutiny before making critical decisions.

The New York Times reports tonight that the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is denying it even knew of the digusting Holocaust denial by a bishop the Pope recently reinstated from excommunication. Meanwhile, the world did.

Here is The New York Times reporting on an Obama-like incident of incompetence at the Vatican:

ROME — Responding to an extraordinary burst of global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust.

Late last month, the pope revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, including Bishop Richard Williamson, a Briton, who in an interview broadcast last month denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,” or Holocaust, or else he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.

The statement said that the bishop’s recent comments denying the Holocaust had been “unknown to the Holy Father at the time he revoked the excommunication.”


How can one apologize and retract Holocaust denial and maintain any credibility -- after the fact of reinstatement? This Pope needs to step down along with the bishop.

Walmart stock falls below $47 per share: continuing drop reflects a public that won't spend

The faulty reasoning behind the economic stimulus plan now fragmented into several versions in the U.S. Senate can be seen in the continuing and shocking decline in the per share value of the nation's most celebrated retailer, Walmart.

I sold out of Walmart for a profit for myself and my mother's estate at $61 per share last summer. We made only $10,000 and $15,000 respectively, but the investment was worth it for a short-term reward earned in only one-month's time.

Then I knew, because of God's grace and watching CNBC 12 hours a day/five days a week, that it was time to get everything out of the market above 13,000 on the Dow.

I also watched FOXNEWS' investor TV shows on Saturday mornings. The original "Trapper John" from the M.A.S.H. TV series is a featured panelist and a most cautious and wise investor. I partly relied on his advice to also get out before the floor fell from under the financial markets.

People asked me all the time how I knew to get out of the market when all the folks with big titles were telling people to stay in. I first invested the time, an incredible amount of time, when everyone else was having fun.

And then there was God. Always God. He always reminded me to never be greedy, that all blessings come from Him. They do. I am alive to prove that. And He, only He, gave me a fortune while others lost so much.

What I can't understand is why so many people still today are so committed to greed and refuse to get out the market as it prepares to plummet to 7,000 on the Dow this month. And that will be this month -- as it heads down to 5,700 by the turn of the year or soon after.

God only helps those who help themselves. Get the greed out of your system, America.

A lot of people also over the past three decades have made nice profits from owning Walmart. I first bought it in 1984 and celebrated when the stock rose and then split every few years.

Today, Walmart fell below $47 per share as Costco's told market analysts that its year to year sales in January would be substantially lower. All retailers face the same fate.

The moral of the story is that the American people are no longer going to spend as they used to. Any stimulus checks are going to go into savings decimated by the stock market's decline or to pay off mounting credit card or delinquent home mortgage debts.

The American people rightly are in shock. And they don't trust Washington, Congress, Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow and Barack Obama.

Walmart remains the top place to buy for household groceries to make ends meet. I stop there every Saturday afternoon before Mass. But its dropping stock price shows that even the best is not enough to deliver the needed profit in this economy.

Don't celebrate Obama's "I screwed up" remark; it's no more than "the dog ate my homework"

Consider Abraham Lincoln, at the Gettysburg Address, with a Civil War so thoroughly mismanaged by his generals in the West and only briefly rescued in the East because of Lee's insistence that Pickett's men charge across an open range of land in southern Pennsylvania.

As famed video historian Ken Burns said at writers conference in 1996 in Wilmington, DE, where I was one of the instructors, "ABC's Britt Hume could have reported, 'Here, President Lincoln, trying to turn the nation's sight from a disastrous Western campaign ... .' "

But then Lincoln delivered one of the greatest oratories in the nation's history, even though the Press of that day panned it for its brevity.

Compare that address amid adversity and so much sacrifice to President Obama's less-than-immortal words last night, "I screwed up."

Obama has tried in the early days of his presidency to try and walk in Lincoln big shoes. He cannot. It is like a toddler in dad's loafers. Yet too many of his apologists consider Obama wonderful to have uttered those three words.

They were nothing more than "the dog ate my homework".

Obama's words last night defied the brilliance of the real leader from Illinois. Obama is simply an impostor. "I screwed up" proved as much.

Not only did he screw up, but Obama doomed universal health care that many of us have publicly fought for the past 20 years. And now with Americans in massive numbers losing their jobs and health care with no hope of universal care for the next four years, Obama's silly admission to try and conceal his incompetency was insulting.

I made a big mistake in endorsing him and even being part of a local inaugural ball to support his presidency.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was the obvious, better choice in the primary, and Sen. John McCain in the general election. McCain now is trying to steer federal aid to where it will do the most long-term good: in rescuing the housing industry. That is where the economic mess began in the first place. His efforts should be supported.

Ultimately, I don't know which is more offensive to those of us who have fought so long for universal care: Obama's three words, or his apologists who champion them.

A POLITICAL STUNNER: Gov. Bredesen on short list to become new HHS secretary; God save this nation and good people needing health care

Each day brings more shocking revelations from Washington.

This one stuns the imagination and hopes for this nation:

Gov. Bredesen is under serious consideration to be the next head of the Department of Health and Human Services. The news comes from national health care sources who have communicated this disturbing information to advocate and friend Tony Garr, executive director of The Tennessee Health Care Campaign.

President Obama, after staggering through his first three weeks in office, now is looking the Right and Republicans for credibility and political survival. And Bredesen, although a Democrat by name, is about as Right as it comes when it has to do with health care -- and devastating Tennessee families in need with life-taking cuts to TennCare.

Yes, people died in Tennessee bcause of Bredesen's cuts. I know. I covered the tragedy he unnecessarily unleashed. I was a political columnist with The Tennessean newspaper until I came down with leukemia. I interviewed the families and clinic directors.

Here is Garr's report and his call for you to act now:

Scary - It appears that Governor Bredesen is on the short list for Secretary for Health and Human Services since Tom Daschle has dropped out. When I saw this I could not believe it. It would be horrible for this country. I believe that we can tell what a person will do by seeing what they have done in the past.

Since July 2005, the Governor cut, cut, and cut TennCare. More than 250,000 low-income working adults lost their health insurance. The safety-net that was there which helped some is now gone. And his Cover Tennessee program is now helping only about 20,000 low-income working adults. Tennesseans died because of these cuts. He acted like the CEO of the managed care company where he made his millions and protected his bottom line.

Governor Bredesen is the wrong choice for this country. We need leadership to expand coverage. Governor Bredesen does not know how to do this.

You need to email the White House today and tell President Obama how you, your friend, or family members were treated when you lost your TennCare. You need to do this for your country. Governor Bredesen has caused serious harm to thousands of people. We don't want him doing this to the country. Go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

You can also call, write, or fax President Obama:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
FAX: 202-456-2461

Tony Garr, Executive Director, tgarr@thcc2.org

Goodbye to universal health care: Obama's incompetency, Daschle's dishonesty cost Americans living in fear of losing coverage

The withdrawl of his nomination as HHS secretary by former Sen. Tom Daschle represents the ultimate betrayal of a cause many of us have fought for: universal health care.

And President Obama's failure to vet his nominee according to simple political standards marks a stunning slap to the faces of people in need across this nation who fear losing their health care after layoff or have never had such care at all.

Remember, Obama's never supported universal care in his primary campaign. Sen. Clinton did.

Now his incompetency -- and Daschle's failure to report his tax misdoings as early as last June -- represent a reprehensible end to a dream for the next four years.

Both men should apologize. Daschle was supposed to lead the health care fight in Congress. Obama was supposed to bring change to Washington. Instead, he has reinforced the same betrayal by both political parties to this nation's moral responsibility to its citizens in need.

Tennessee executes third killer in 50 years

The state of Tennessee this morning executed the killer of an elderly farm couple whose home also was burned out.

NewsChannel5 reported:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A man convicted of killing an elderly couple found dead in their burned-out farmhouse has been executed by lethal injection in Tennessee.

Correction officials said 55-year-old Steve Henley was pronounced dead at 1:33 a.m. Wednesday at Riverbend Prison.

Henley was on death row for the past 23 years for the 1985 murders of Edna and Fred Stafford in Jackson County.

Governor Phil Bredesen denied a request clemency request for death row inmate Steve Henley.

An attorney for Henley said he was also denied a last-minute appeal from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Paul Davidson, Henley's attorney, said late Tuesday that the high court denied his request for a stay.

The appeal filed Tuesday was just one of several efforts on behalf of Henley, 55, who has been on Tennessee death row for more than 20 years for the murders of an elderly couple.

Henley has always maintained his innocence.

The hypocrisy of the Obamas and Maureen Dowd

If it were part of a sitcom, it would be laughable.

But, no, Tuesday was part of what passes for governance in Washington, D.C., and supposed analysis from the Far Left part of the nation's news media.

The Obamas on the worst day of his still young presidency -- three weeks -- went across the street from the White Houe to read to public school students. Now these are the same students and school that the Obamas' daughters could have attended.

But, no, they are going to a private school. Still the Obamas used the backdrop of a public school right next door to the White House that they rejected to get a nice photo op for a disastrous day of governance -- or non-governance and incompetency -- they initiated.

Using public school children for such political cover is shameful. The Obamas should apologize.

Yet then there is NYT columnist Maureen Dowd, who in trying to raise up the president's incompetency as a virtue, takes yet another dig at former President Bush -- citing and chiding his reading to school children when 9/11 happened.

First, to use 911 to take such a political cheap shot is indicative of a person who lives above the people as a liberal elitist instead of coming down to the real world and talking and listening to Gold Star mothers who are my friends.

Second, why is Obama's reading to school children amid an economic tragedy in this nation and his inability to address it effectively not even worth mentioning or chiding?

Then, Dowd cited Obama's appearance on every TV outlet last night -- excluding the Home Shopper's Network -- to explain how his presidency has gone so far awry as taking responsibility for his many errors.

My goodness, it is going to take more than one night of television to cover all the mistakes he has made in only three weeks -- including setting off a protectionist trade war with the EU over his Buy America demand in the stupid and wasteful House stimulus plan. It is going to demand a mini-series like "24" to cover all of Obama's missteps and mistakes.

Obama had to retreat like an Iraqi general in the Gulf War from his protectionist mistake after even the French were ready to go to war. Yes, the French! President Obama sure forgot about Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression.

Dowd and the Obamas deserve each other. And the American people have quickly caught on to their hypocrisy.

We are not so easily fooled by photo ops with children not good enough for their own kids to go to school with and the same old stuff about Bush rewritten to make a foolish point to defend gross incompetency.

God save America.

The colossal collapse of a political party in power: undoing of Democrats is historic, fast, deserved

Never, in my life time, and from my knowledge of political history, has a political party with a substantial advantage in Congress and possession of the White House become so impotent so quickly.

Yet the Republican Party led by crazy man Michael Steele offers no satisfying substitute for control.

God help America.

In watching the navel-gazing Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, the anchor tonight avoided the obvious about the most astounding political turnaround in American history.

David Gergen, along with Cooper, showed themselves to be wide-eyed Obama and Democratic apologists. Gergen's Reagan era credentials be damned. He is playing to the Left.

The most astute analysis came from Roland Martin; he talked of the number of calls he has been making into the White House to find some definition of the issues.

But he acknowledged little luck. The GOP has regained everything it lost as far as leadership credibility, thanks to Bush out of office and massive Obama blunders, beginning with the selection of Cabinent nominees who have not paid their taxes.

A flabbergasted Martin said that asking about a potential nominee's tax record is a political basic.

The American people agree. And now they question Obama's decisionmaking on everything from TARP to stimulus. After only three weeks in office. Incredible. The President has given up on the House plan he backed just days ago faster than lightnng or a last-second Pittsburgh Steeler drive.

But there is no black and gold to the rescue in D.C.

This historic, colossal collapse of a party that supposedly had a mandate astounds every day.

Gannett stock declines below $5; calamity coming

Former USA Today and Gannett investigative reporter Jim Hopkins continues to provide insightful analysis of the approaching fall of the newspaper giant chain.

His website, www.gannettblog.blogspot.com, has become a nemesis of the company's bad executives and an attraction to readers worldwide. The bad corporate execs and bad managers at its newspapers such as The Tennessean hate him for knowing what they're up to and reporting it to employees -- who are being betrayed and their families put at grave risk.

There are good publishers and execs and editors at Gannett. Craig Moon and Rick Jensen are at the top of the list. They suffer for the wrong of others as they watch the company fall. These are good journalists, managers and men.

But they cannot control the decline nor the poor execs and managers driving it. Their numbers are too many, particularly at The Tennessean.

Today, Gannett stock fell below $5 per share while the Dow rose by more than 100 points, signaling the direction of all the markets in general.

Consider that I used Gannett stock in 2001 to avoid the general market downturn. Gannett traded up during that time to more than $80 per share while the general market and mutual funds shed 15% to 20% of their value. So I put all the money of my 401k and that of my wife in Gannett stock.

Here is Hopkins' analysis:

Gannett's stock has just closed at $4.96 a share, a critical level that could spur mutual funds and other big investors to dump it from their portfolios, risking further decline. Such institutional investors own most of the shares, and are prohibited by their charters from holding stock worth less than $5.

The new low pushes the dividend yield up to 32%, pressuring the board of directors more to cut the payout -- a possibility Chief Financial Officer Gracia Martore (left) warned about Friday, during the fourth-quarter earnings conference call.

"Every company globally is very focused on conserving debt, conserving cash,'' Martore told Wall Street analysts, according to Seeking Alpha's transcript. "I think that you will find that we had to look at the dividend back in October and I think that the board wisely wanted to see what the impact of a burgeoning credit crisis and more difficult economic conditions would bring."

Martore continued: "We will -- the next time the board has to act on the dividend is in February and I know that there'll be significant conversation around that. In the context of where credit markets are, where the economies are and where cash conservation comes into play across the country. So we will take that up with the board again in February and we will act appropriately."

With today's close, Gannett's stock is now down 86% from a year ago vs. a 39% decline in the S&P-500.

The suffering in Kentucky: Kinko's manager and daughter of Bluegrass state tells me of terrible suffering there that is out of Middle Ages

I have seen all the TV reports about the winter war on Kentucky, but until you hear it firsthand from a human being in person who has lived it, you cannot really be aware of the extent of the suffering.

That awareness was provided to me today by a Kinko's manager providing me notary services. Her family farm where mom and dad still live has been savaged by the ice.

People who have died in the area cannot be buried because of the ice. And there is no electricity to preserve their bodies after embalment. So all their funerals one day, some day, will be closed casket. That hurt awaits the families that have suffered so much already.

All the trees and power lines have been devastated as if Katrina blew threw. Her mother's small business, a florist, cannot operate during one its most important revenue seasons -- Valentine's Day.

Our brothers and sisters in Kentucky have suffered so much and continue today. There should be some national response as with Katrina to address all the suffering and the long road toward recovery. Where are all the celebrities and telethons?

The people of Kentucky need this considerable outreach and more.

A Pope who is destroying the Church: Benedict the XVI should retire before doing more damage

Most Catholics in Europe do not regularly go to Mass.

I used to think ill of their lack of support for the Church until the aboslute revulsion Europe has expressed over Pope Benedict's recent lifting of excommunication against a Catholic bishop who has maintained that only 200,000 to 300,000 of our Jewish brothers and sisters died in the Holocaust.

And the bishop even had the audacity and evilness to claim that none of these deaths were in gas chambers.

Pope Benedict's far turn to the Right is removing the Roman Catholic Church as a credible player on the world stage. This Pope needs to retire.

Here is coverage of this story receiving little attention in the American media from the Drudge Report:

Attacks on Pope Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust denier escalated Monday, with one theologian calling on him to step down as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Criticism following the pope's January 24 announcement has been particularly cutting in Germany, where denying the Holocaust is a crime punishable with a jail sentence.

"If the pope wants to do some good for the Church, he should leave his job," eminent liberal Catholic theologian Hermann Haering told the German daily Tageszeitung.

"That would not be a scandal, a bishop has to relinquish his position at 75 years, a cardinal loses his rights at 80 years," he said. Pope Benedict is 81.

Meanwhile, a senior Vatican official acknowledged the Vatican administration may have made "management errors" with the decision to lift excommunication against four bishops, including Richard Williamson, whose comments sparked the controversy.

"I observe the debate with great concern. There were misunderstandings and management errors in the Curia," said Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is in charge of the Vatican department that deals with Jewish relations.

"The Pope wanted to open the debate because he wanted unity inside and outside," the German cardinal told Vatican Radio.

He also noted that "these bishops are still suspended."

An international uproar followed the decision to rehabilitate Williamson, an English bishop who has dismissed as "lies" historical evidence that six million Jews were gassed by the Nazis during World War II. Jews and Catholics alike have produced widespread criticism.

"A pardon that tastes of poison," wrote Franco Garelli, an expert in religious history, in Italy's daily La Stampa Monday.

"The trouble caused by this complicated affair is evident not only outside the Church but within it," wrote the academic, who spoke of the "profound discomfort stirred up by the lifting of the excommunication in numerous Catholic circles."

Back in Germany, high-ranking Catholic officials said the pope risked losing vital support.

"There is obviously a loss of confidence" in the pope and "rehabilitating a denier is always a bad idea," the bishop of Hamburg, Werner Thissen, told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt on Monday.

The bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Gebhard Furst, meanwhile spoke of his "uncertainty, incomprehension and deception" in the national Bild.

In France, home to Europe's largest Jewish population, chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim denounced Williamson's remarks as "despicable" in an interview with Le Monde.

Williamson claimed that only between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews died before and during World War II, and none in the gas chambers.

Waiting on Nashville Democrats and House GOP

Leaders in the GOP House and the Democratic Metro Nashville government have remained damningly silent concerning two very big problems in officeholders who should be kicked out.

The GOP should bring ethics charges against their colleague who tried to extort the puppet House Speaker for a committee chairmanship. Huh? The lawmaker said he would tone down an ethics complaint against the Speaker for a chairmanship. This lawmaker should be forced from office.

Democrats who control Nashville should be speaking more about the local sheriff who was the guest speaker for a local White supremacist group. While the sheriff cannot be forced from office for that just yet, Democrats can force an end to his heinous and bigoted 287g program here. But the Democratic mayor and congressman refuse.

Leaders of both parties continue to show themselves more interested in staying in power than serving this state and nation's highest ideals.

Democrats not paying taxes has now become embarrassing; how can they tax and spend?

President Obama's choice for the position of White House Oversight in his Cabinet withdrew her nomination today for being in arrears in paying employment taxes.

The growing list of Obama nominees not paying their fair share of taxes -- and thus supporting the operations of government -- has become a national embarrassment that has sharply reduced the credibility of the administration after only three weeks in power.

Where is The NYT's Maureen Dowd when we need her? If this had been the Bush administration, she'd be raving and writing. Bill Maher would be drooling at the mouth.

No wonder Obama has gone to a Republican senator for secretary of commerce.

Obama cannot lead when he cannot even make the proper choices for his Cabinet. Pay your taxes first, Democratic leaders. Then you can propose more government.

Tennessee to execute third inmate in half century after midnight; he killed innocent elderly couple

The state of Tennessee will execute Steve Henley for his killings of an innocent elderly couple.

Henley claims his innocence. However, famed Northwestern University professor David Protess once told me that of the capital cases his classes reviewed for miscarriages of justice, 90 percent of the convicted were really guilty of their crimes.

I do not support capital punishment. But the people of Tennessee have decided upon it as a form of punishment for the most heinous crimes. That is their right. And Henley's case does not appear -- from news reports -- to be one of an innocent man being executed.

Nick Beres provides stunning report on growth of tent cities around Nashville for homeless

NewsChannel 5's Nick Beres produced some solid journalism this evening with a report of more than 30 tent cities for the homeless across Music City.

The reason is the economy and so many home foreclosures. But Beres' report on the number of people living in tents around Nashville is simply staggering.

Beres deserves our praise for such an insightful report on the need right under our noses. Now with what Nick has told us, what is going to be the response from a city with more than 1,000 places of worship?

Government does not have the resources at any level. So it is going to be up to us.

Daschle withdraws nomination and rightly so; Obama administration struggles to fill Cabinet

Former Sen. Tim Daschle today withdrew his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services after almost $140,000 in taxes he failed to pay over three years.

What was worse is that an equity company provided the driver and car to Daschle for which he owed taxes. Daschle lost credibility over all this mess being an honest mistake.

Tne NYT also reports that another Obama nominee for a position of government oversight also withdrew her nomination.

The Obama administration has more vacant Cabinet position this far into its tenure than any recent presidency.

For the love of Hunter: Sumner County boy fighting leukemia has a very large fan club

WESTMORELAND-- As the thief it is, leukemia came up on Hunter as a 5-year-old amid his busy life of bicycle riding and baseball playing. And two days before he was diagnosed with the killer, he was playing back-to-back tournaments to help his Westmoreland team win the championship.

So there were times when he was playing first base or running the bases when parents and coaches yelled at him to give more in energy. But it was not there. The leukemia had slowly been stealing part of his childhood that spring and summer.

And then the diagnosis came.

That explained everything -- the rash that would not go away and the energy that was not as common to call upon.

But don't feel sorry for this young man. For the several hours I spent with him last week was to be with a child of such great joy that it was easy to fall in love with him. His parents are believers in God. They are surviving the economic downturn on their family farm and in parttime jobs.

Their perspective, however, has been changed. They live in the moment and joy, as I do. They are not angry. They are hopeful. And then Hunter plays Guitar Hero in his bedroom or wants to field a tennis ball in the living room to keep his first base skills honed. And everyone smiles.

Hope lives here and is celebrated.

Hunter should be in kindergarten at Bethpage Elementary. But now he must be protected from childhood and adult germs from the outside that can kill him. I know about that, too. He does not have his hair, to which he exclaims, "I look like Kyle Vanden Boesch!" He loves the Titans.

The 6-year-old now enters his last critical stage of extra-ordinary treatment before he can go on to simple maintenance treatment and better days.

Pray for him. I will be part of his life now. I'll buy him a model of an F-18 so he can play in his weakened state on the sofa. He has extraordinary heroes to continue to move in his life, like his teacher Ms. Eskind, who comes over three times a week to keep him up on classroom learning after finishing her long work day.

To know Hunter is to know joy. And it will be a great blessing to be with him on this last extra-ordinary leg of his treatment to more normalcy, and a return to first base for his championship team.

God is just.

The purpose of Facebook for me personally

The worst thing done to me when my job was eliminated upon trying to return to The Tennessean was that the newspaper would not allow me to tell my readers of 10 years that I was still alive.

The newspaper chose to run a short piece that I had been diagnosed with leukemia in Dec. 2005, 10 days before Christmas. Then Editor E.J. Mitchell and editorial page editor Sandra Roberts allowed me to keep writing from my hospital bed and home.

That ended when the insurance company stopped it in June 2006. Then I almost died at Vanderbilt. Mitchell subsequently left for another Gannett newspaper and Roberts retired. So I had no advocate.

The new leadership of Silverman and Leifeld decided to eliminate my job when I tried to return in Aug. 2007. The most objectionable part was that I was not allowed to tell my readers that I had survived -- thanks to God, all their prayers and the intervention of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

They deserved better, after only being told I had a terminal disease and a too rosy assessment made of my future.

So I hope Facebook can rectify this wrong locally and across the country.

The time now is critical. I have been forced to stop taking chemo treatments to get Methotrexate(chemo) to my brain. Leukemia for men in their third year of remission has the greatest chance of returning to either the testicles or brain. Only spinal taps can get the medicine to the brain. But the procedure risk paralysis.

Since I have no family here, there is no one to take care of me in the event of paralysis. And I would not force that situation on any friend. My good doctor and I talked and agreed on this difficult decision.

Tonight, I finally faced the reality of this decision and contacted my brothers to inform them that there is a great risk of my leukemia returning and that my death will be quick from brain cancer. I have tried to avoid the matter. But leukemia relies on stealth. By the time it gets you, survival is virtually nil, except thank God for children. So I have been about tying up any loose ends.

I have lived long enough since my diagnosis to do so many good things for people who have become my friends. I have resolved financial matters and extended family disagreements. I pray the Rosary every day and am closer to God than at any time in my life.

But I had to be honest with my brothers and prepare them. Life is life. It is much more unfair for people in Kentucky, the Sudan and in so many slums of the world's greatest cities.

I no longer fear death. And I need no one to fix this situation for me. It is mine.

If I do live, that is fine. If I die soon, however, I have no regrets. God has blessed me so much that I long to see his face and that of my mother. The sooner, the better. I have found a close friend to be executor of my estate and make sure my fortune goes to the children of Tennessee in their public education.

I just want my former readers to know now that I survived, marvelously so, and that God is so compassionate. That is reason for them to have hope now in their lives and in the cancers they face and other challenges such as the economy.

Don't feel one bit sorry for me. God has allowed me to live so much longer than I deserved. Now I am ready to see Him, if He so judges that I can. May all praise be to the Lord. His mercy endures forever. Let the House of Israel say, His mercy endures forever.

If you spent fours with Super Bowl, why aren't you spending time to educate yourself on fianances?

A financial analyst tonight on CNBC spoke the most remarkable truth I've heard that investors should follow.

"If you spent four hours watching the Super Bowl last night, why can't you devote one hour to learn about investing your money?

Precisely.

I watch CNBC for entertainment and knowledge. The network breaks critical financial news you never get in newspapers about investment.

So turn off American Idol and turn on CNBC in the evening. A recap of the day's events runs from 7-8 p.m. each weekday. Larry Kudlow gets the 6-7 hour. There also are more financial programs after 8.

Educate yourself. It is your only protection in these difficult financial times.

Macy's announces layoffs of 7,000 workers

Macy's -- which has stores in Middle Tennessee -- announced the layoff of 7,000 workers.

These kind of escalating annoucements bold so ill for state and local budgets, besides the ability of the national economy to recover before 2011.

Job cuts such as these represent positions that never will be refilled. That means Tennesseans and Americans will have to look at fewer opportunities to ever realize the kind of employment they depended on -- and standard of living once possessed.

It is a vicious cycle. Pray for these good people, their families and this nation.

Senate Republicans produce own stimulus plan

CNBC reports tonight that Senate Republicans have unveiled their own economic stimulus plan that reflects a much more balanced investment of taxpayer money.

The plan provides the most money for tax breaks for businesses and taxpayers. Infrastructure investment is there along with other critical needs.

The plan seems more sensible than the Christmas Tree measure produced by House Democrats. That plan compromised President Obama's credibility.

As recession deepens and stimulus plan falters, talk increases of dark future for nation of investors

I'm not a big Larry Kudlow fan, but he brought up an incredible shocking truth I did not know about concerning the financial markets.

The CNBC anchor said the the cost of insurance for 5-year government T-Bills has gone from $6,000 to $66,000.

What does all this mean? There is less confidence in the ability of the U.S. Government to pay off its debts, as in T-Bills issued to represent how much we owe.

And now the government is preparing to issue more than a trillion dollars in new debt that has no guarantee of doing what politicians promise.

Beyond the buyers of our debt, the American people are increasingly not confident that Congress will do the right thing.

Kudlow is speaking of some scary stuff while still trying to convince people that the stock market will rebound by mid-year. It won't, at least through 2010. But the T-Bill trend is scary for this nation's future and where Americans can safely put their money.

Stay tuned and aware.

A Modern Day Carpetbagger: Tennessean editor tries to profit from your misery by claiming he cares about you in Sunday newspaper column

My South -- which I claim now after 13 years of living here and plans to do so for the rest of life -- knows of and hates the word "Carpetbagger".

After Our South lay in shambles, these men from the North came down to profit from our misery.

Today I tell you that the Carpetbagger remains alive and well, as demonstrated in yesterday's column by Tennessean Editor Mark Silverman.

Amid all the hypocrisy I have covered in my career in my home state now and forever, nothing has approached what was written Sunday by -- what most people who have come across him say -- a bad man.

Silverman professed compassion for what Tennesseans are experiencing economically, which for anyone who has worked for him or have been laid off by him the past couple of years, is a claim without credibility. Actually, it is insulting. He believes he can keep fooling you.

First, some background. Silverman is only here because his corporate bosses up North sent him here to stem the decline in profits here. But they did not send him to improve the newspaper. He did not want to come here. He was happy at a larger newspaper in Detroit where he had more staff.

Second, Silverman is great friends with the editor who ruined this newspaper. So he does not see any need to change and respect your wishes in a newspaper, let alone feel compassion for your economic plight.

This man laid of 22 human beings before Christmas 2008, including two with chronic health conditions. More people have left because of his ill treatment of them and so many employees in his newsroom who are Tennesseans by birth and choice. You know what it is like in your workplaces as the workload increases and respect for your efforts decline.

This quarter, Gannett and Tennessean employees will be forced to take a week off without pay. How's that for compassion for families? Analysts expect Tennessean and Gannett employees will have to be furloughed three other times this year. That means a loss of an entire month of income.

So do you believe Silverman has compassion for you and your economic misery when he is dishes out so much on his own?

I laughed out loud while reading a copy of the newspaper at the Walgreens without buying it. Silverman cited Ms. Cheap as a source for help. Yes, the former Banner employee is good at what she does. But one of her bits of advice in the past to readers to save money was to cancel their Tennessean subscription and to read the newspaper on the web.

That was excellent advice. Advertisers should do the same.

Silverman's economic analysis was appalling and ignorant. He cited economic downturns since the Civil War, which is appropriate for a Carpetbagger as he. He says each lasted 11 months.

He obviously does not watch CNBC or know of the famed NYU economist Nourei Roubini who predicted this downturn based on declining home values. This recession will be like no other we have ever known. It will last at least two or three years, Roubini says. Tennessee will be hit harder than other states because of its dependence on the new auto industry.

Silverman's silly comment that it is dark before the dawn was refuted this morning by a CNBC anchor who said with earnings data expected out this week, it is dark before getting darker.

But such poor analysis by the Carpetbagger should be expected from a man who killed his own Business section at a time when readers needed more financial news and direction. And in an area of such entrepreneurism and small business power besides giant health care companies and corporations, Silverman's action is further proof of his Carpetbagger intentions.

Carpetbaggers never give. They just take, particularly when times are hard. He tried Sunday to fool you into believing The Tennessean is a newspaper of compassion. With him and fellow Carpetbagger Ellen Leifeld in charge, you can see for yourselves their indifference and gross lack of respect for your values. The product continues to decline at an increasing place.

But the depth to which Silverman stooped yesterday in feigning compassion was beyond any hypocrisy I have ever seen in my time as a journalist and a Tennessean for life. He made Jimmy Naifeh seem principled.

Spurn the Carpgetbagger and his product. Both only seek to take from the little you have and not give anything in return.

Greatest Super Bowl and win for greatest franchise

Tonight's Super Bowl lived up to its name and ranks as the greatest I've ever seen -- even outdoing last year's Giants win.

The fourth quarter back and forth was the most incredibly exciting football I can remember. Both teams deserved the win. Larry Fitzgerald deserves to be named the MVP but Santonio Holmes of the Steelers also rates at the top.

The end-of-the-first-half touchdown by the NFL's MVP was a man-on-a-mission effort seldom seen over 100 long yards. Incredible.

Sorry Giant fans. But I've watched every Super Bowl since the Packers beat the Chiefs. Today's was the best. And the Steelers and the Rooney family deserve to be labeled the most successful NFL franchise in history.

I was rooting for the Steelers before the game, starting rooting for the Cardinals in the fourth quarter to come back and then was sold on black and gold with the last minute drive.

Steeler fans and Steeler Nation, you rock. And if you remember when I came across you on the bridge over the Cumberland River in Nashville after the Titans beat your team in December, I told you all that your team would be back to win it all.

I just didn't know you'd win the greatest Super Bowl game ever.

Celebrate! You deserve it! America now is Steeler Nation!

'Anchor Baby' insult from Conservative shows too many driven by hate, not appreciation of sacrifice

I got a sick response from a Conservative reader who threw out the insult of 'anchor baby' in referring to American citizens born of undocumented immigrants.

Let me tell you the story of one of these children.

When he was 17, Alfred Rascon convinced his Mexican parents in the United States to sign a waiver so he could go to Vietnam as a medic.

He went. And in one battle, he continuously shielded the bodies of his comrades from bullets and grenade shrapnel. Wounded gravely, he still went from comrade to comrade in answer to their cries for help and got them evacuated by helicopter.

Only after all were gone and he was near death did he allow himself to be taken from the battlefield.

By the grace of God he survived. And by order of the United States government, he received the Medal of Honor.

A lot of other anchor babies have done the same in this nation's wars. And now in the war on terror as citizens have refused to go and fight for their own country, "Green Card" soldiers have emerged and gone to war for us and won their citizenship -- many posthumously.

So for these Conservatives who throw out the "anchor baby" insult, you can go to Hell. There you will find more cowards who refused to serve their nation at time of crisis while those frowned upon did. Courageously and marvelously.

Inside the Conservative mindset: Law and order for immigrants but for themselves many excuses

I got the following response from a reader that demonstrates the Conservative mindset, which demands bedrock law and order when it comes to the powerless and minorities but excuses and no prosecution for its own.

I think that Steele is a great choice. I forget labels and think about if someone is breaking the law or not. I also try to be understanding to someone's plight. It is a very fine balancing act. The law is absolute and final though, if I do something illegal I expect to be punished.

Certainly, Sen. Larry Craig should have been punished for his bathroom homosexual solicitation and then lying about it. But he escaped truth and justice.

How about the Bush administration that illegally prosecuted a war in Iraq with falsehoods to the American people that have cost more than 4,000 American lives and more than 100,000 civilians lives? No prosecution for law and order there either. And so another war is made much more possible since there were no consequences for the last one.

Everyone loves Colin Powell, but he sold the falsehoods to the United Nations.

Liberals love to hate Dick Cheney, but it was Condoleezza Rice who sold this war to the president. She was his foreign policy teacher. And Bush was a man who depended more on the counsel of women. Like me, he is a momma's boy.

And in my one-on-one interview with Rice in Nashville, I could tell she was the passion behind the war. She, as a historian, saw it as a needed historical exercise as in the Cold War. Yet she forgot how many men and women died in Korea and Vietnam.

For her, however, those were acceptable historical losses. She never had children. What did she really care that other people lost their babies in uniform?

Tell me then: which situation presents to greater threat to this nation? The undocumented immigrant whose numbers decrease in this country with the decline in the economy, or the Executive Branch offficials who deceived us into a war in which so many have died and more than $600 billion in taxpayer money has spent in a foreign land that could have gone to citizens here.

You must make a choice. Because good government is about setting priorities.

For the powerless regarding immigration, the Conservative mindset demands that the book be thrown at them, and even to the point of denying them due process as in the raid on the Iowa meatpacking plant last fall. Defendants could not even understand the charges against them. Many spoke an Indian dialect from Guatemala. And they were sent to prison, not deported.

Our Constitution guarantees due process to anyone tried here, citizen or not. You must be able