While I am say that I am not saving a vast sum, I am saving a little… This is a sign of bad things to come.

From the AP

People once again spent everything they made and then some last year, pushing the personal savings rate to the lowest level since the Great Depression more than seven decades ago. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent, meaning that not only did people spend all the money they earned but they also dipped into savings or increased borrowing to finance purchases. The 2006 figure was lower than a negative 0.4 percent in 2005 and was the poorest showing since a negative 1.5 percent savings rate in 1933 during the Great Depression.

For December, consumer spending rose a solid 0.7 percent, the best showing in five months, while incomes rose by 0.5 percent, both figures matching Wall Street expectations.

In other news, the Labor Department reported that the number of newly laid off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits dropped by 20,000 last week to 307,000. That improvement pushed the four-week average for claims to the lowest level in a year, indicating that the labor market remains healthy.

Well this is good news. I was a gay Airman and I found very few ever has a real issue with it. I was not out, but everyone knew…

From PlanetOut

A recent poll from Zogby International and the Michael D Palm Center shows that US military personnel are increasingly at ease serving with openly gay colleagues.

The poll reveals that 73 percent of military members aren't bothered by lesbians and gays. Nearly one in four (23 percent) service members report knowing for sure that someone in their unit is lesbian or gay, including 21 percent of those in combat units.

"Today's poll is one more nail in the coffin of 'don't ask, don't tell,'" said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

"Those who defend the law have argued that openly gay personnel harm military readiness. This research highlights the absurdity of such a hypothesis. Not only are there more than 65,000 lesbians and gays serving in the armed forces, but many are serving openly.

"Their straight colleagues are just fine with that. At a time when our fighting forces are stretched thin and leaders are calling for the recruitment of more troops, it is time for Congress to do away with this archaic law."

The Right-wing is always saying, think of the children, well the people that’s job is to think of the children has spoken.

From 365Gay.com

(Washington) The nation’s largest pediatricians group said Wednesday that children would benefit from the legalization of same-sex marriage.

In a 16-page report the American Academy of Pediatrics found that children of same-sex parents do better in areas of the country which recognize their parents’ relationships.

"Children of same-gender parents often experience economic, legal, and familial insecurity as a result of the absence of legal recognition of their bonds to nonbiological parents" and that "legal recognition of a [same-gender] spouse can increase the ability of adult couples to provide and care for one another and fosters a nurturing and secure environment for their children," the report said.

Titled "The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-Being of Children" the report  was commissioned by the American Academy of Pediatrics Board of Directors. 

"As children, many gay and lesbian persons experience considerable isolation, peer rejection, ridicule, harassment, and/or depression at some time," the report noted. "At least 47% of gay and lesbian teens have seriously considered suicide, and 36% have actually attempted suicide.23 They may experience rejection by their families, homelessness, maltreatment in school, and violence. As adults, gay and lesbian people continue to experience social marginalization, discrimination, and hate-crime violence.

"Nationwide political and religious debate over samegender marriage has intensified an already unstable climate for gay men and lesbians in our society. The lack of societal tolerance, acceptance, and support that gay and lesbian individuals, couples, and their children experience can and does affect their psychosocial and physical health and safety."

The report was published Wednesday in the July of the AAP journal Pediatrics.

It has been said a few time over the last few days, with record deficits looming over our children, those very same children uninsured, the war in Iraq, the sky-rocketing crime rate, jump in the number of abortions, and a great AMERICAN city still fighting to remain afloat (No pun intended), what does the Senate of the United States spend their time doing? The Senate is debating on using the American Constitution to exclude people from Rights, something that in this nations 200 plus years of history we have never dreamed of doing. Let me repeat that, because it needs to be repeated over and over. A document, one that has been a beckon in the world as a document of inclusion, a document of equality, a document that over came the civil war, a document that rebuilt a nation after it was burned, a document that the world over is seen as the gold standard to which many other nations strive to achieve is being used by the Republicans lead Senate to forever enshrine hate, intolerance, and exclusion. The Republicans have embraced the levels of hate that we had hoped were long gone, levels of hate that we thought only found a home in places like the Klan, and are tiring to memorialize bigotry in the document that was born from the phrase “All men are created equal”.

I am ashamed to be an American today, I am ashamed that the Republican lead Senate would use me, and my family as a tool to “appease the fringe right”. A pro-Gay Bigot bill is not what is pressing on the minds of American families, this is way down on the list, if at all. Simply stated, the Republicans do not care about Americans, they only care about getting re-elected. The Republican Party can win election, but have failed miserably in governing the once greatest nation on earth.

Now I know this is not news, we all knew this, but there is more…

RayStory has this as the teaser, no story yet…

GANNON COMES OUT: EX-ESCORT FAMOUS FOR WHITE HOUSE VISITS PUBLICLY ADMITS HE’S GAY FOR FIRST TIME, ENDORSES SOME OUTING OF ANTI-GAY LAWMAKERS… DEVELOPING…

This is great, I guess he did not make it as a right-wing nut, and he is coming to the side of the people, even gay people… We may also get know what his pet name was for Scott when he rolled off of him.

I am always perplexed by the far far left of the Democratic Party, the ones that many call “bleeding-heart liberals”, they think that being from a shit hole of a country should be enough to gain entry into the United States, that merely wanting to be here is all it takes. The position that we should fling open the doors of America and let every single person in is wrong for America.

I am not for OPEN boarders, in fact, I think that would ruin America as we all know it faster than George Bush ever could. I am PRO immigration, but only of those that have something to offer the USA, be it hard work with their hands or brains. We should always have room for those that want to participate in the American experiment, we have no room for those that want to leach off of it.

The people are the backbone of a nation, the dirt only supports them. Therefore, the people have to bare some level of responsibility for the state of their union. The fact is, Mexico is a very stable democracy, similar to the US, and if we really think that we can make a difference by voting in our nation, we have to assume that they can do the same.

America, until recently, has had a strong tradition of taking in those that are in need, be in Cubans seeking relief from a communist regime or abused women fleeing the status as chattel. We should return to this noble tradition (Bush has severely limited the rights of those seeking asylum), but being poor is not cause for asylum.

The immigration issue is easy to fix if politicians place Americans first, not the current pandering to a voting block. We should…

• Reform the immigration process to come to America, so those that want to work, and want to be a part of America can.
• We should make it a felony to hire an illegal immigrant, if there is no jobs for them, they would not come in the first place
• We should send those that broke the law home We can have a guest working program, as long as it ends in the person going home, (See 1) until they are granted citizenship
• We should pay guest workers minimum wage, we do not need to create a slave class in America

This may not make me popular with some on the Left, and I am okay with that. I am for America and Americans first.

In order to make sure that his tax cuts to the rich are able to stick Bush has decided to screw the hell out of the American people.

Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, the system that helps our poor and elderly. Take a read here and see that Bush, and the rest of the Republicans Hate Americans, they only care about the rich in this nation and the corporations that employ them. Republicans and Bush hate the working-class, the middle-class, the poor, the elderly and the youth. They hate them all. Listen not to their words boys and girls, look at there actions.

UPDATE: Here are some news on this…
Bush proposes record $439.3 bln defense budget
Bush seeks to cut payments to Medicare providers
Bush budget triples money from Alaska oil drilling

Ah remember the days when we had a real president, and not a shill for the oil industry.

Today Exxon reported the largest profits ever made by a company. Now at the same time we are told that the reason for higher gas prices is this and that, but the fact of the matter is, if ALL of those factors were true, then oil companies would not be making almost 11 BILLION in a single quarter. Face it, the oil companies are using the “crisis” to make money hand over fist, and our failure of a president is doing nothing. While families choose to eat or fill the car up with gas, Bush sits there… How sad, and how pathetic that his supporters just do not care.

Here is a news story on Exxon making more money then any company has EVER made.