By Patricia L Johnson

I turned on the news today to find out that Ashley Alexandra Dupre' has now had over a million downloads on her MySpace page by people downloading her music, she's been offered a nice cool million by Larry Flindt, she's been offered jobs in the various girly magazines for big bucks and a few book deals.

Prostitution is illegal - it is illegal to sell your body for sex, yet this young woman does it, makes enough to keep up a $3,000.00 a month apartment and is now being offered the kind of money that it takes most people a lifetime to earn?

More than likely she will be charged with nothing, in exchange for providing the sex snoops, a.k.a. the U.S. Department of Justice with her testimony regarding all the dirty little secrets of her tryst with former Governor Elliott Spitzer.

What message are we sending to the young girls growing up in this country?

Here's the message we're sending - don't stay in school - instead get yourself a boob job and bone up on the latest in erotica and if you're real lucky you can catch yourself a politician and spend the rest of your days sitting in your $3,000 a month apartment eating chocolate covered strawberries and counting your money.  Or wait a minute, you didn't finish school so you probably can't count that high - Not to worry - you can always hire an accountant.

We have 17-year olds fighting with their parents every day of the week trying to decide whether or not they should run away from home - well, now they don't have to wonder any more - they can run away just like their new idol "Kristin".

A good man's reputation is now in shred's and a woman that sells her body for a living is put on a pedestal.

Only in America!

By Richard E Walrath

Nothing good in the world of news.  Prices going up on food, oil, and gold.  There is a food shortage coming unless something is
done right away.  Half of the world needs to go on a diet and that would make more food for the other half that is starving.  If
my numbers are a little off, maybe there are 20% that are just right, making the split 40% and 40%.

Global warming is causing the insect population to explode.  Other than frogs and woodpeckers, insects have few natural
enemies.  They need an unnatural enemy like man to decrease the bug population.

Start with those things in your four food groups and work your way to chocolate-covered ants.

That's a dessert, of course.  But someone will come up with soya-covered insects and then you have a health food.

I'm excited about the possibilities.

By Patricia L Johnson and Richard E Walrath

When you allow yourself to be backed into a corner you suffer the consequences in the form of higher prices, and that is basically what has happened to the price of gasoline in the United States.

The retail price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is split as follows:

• 13% - Taxes
• 11% - Distribution and Marketing
• 8%  - Refining
• 68% - Crude Oil

Source:  United States Department of Energy

The United States only produces 5.1 million barrels of crude oil per day, while our petroleum consumption exceeds 20.6 million barrels per day.

By using considerably more oil than we produce, the U.S. has to import oil in order to meet our daily needs.  At one time the majority of our oil imports came from the various  OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)  but, we only import 5,517,000 barrels of crude per day from OPEC.  Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Venezuela are all members of OPEC.

The top three suppliers to the U.S. from the OPEC group are:

• Saudi Arabia - 1,463,000 bpd (barrels per day)
• Venezuela - 1,419,000 bpd
• Nigeria - 1,114,000 bpd

The top U.S. crude oil supplier is Canada  at 2,353,000 bpd and Mexico comes in second with 1,705,000 bpd.  Non-Opec suppliers result in U.S. imports of  8,190,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The largest commodity market in the world is crude oil and the leading exchanges for crude oil futures are the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) and the IPE (International Petroleum Exchange in London).  Unless you've been on another planet, you know that oil futures hit a record high of $105.10 on March 6, 2008.  There are a couple reasons why oil futures continue to rise and hit a new high.

First is the increased world demand for oil - to that end, the United States, who uses 25% of the world oil supply, requested OPEC to increase production quotas at their Meeting of the Conference of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on March 5, 2008 in Vienna.  The conference decided to maintain current production levels and not increase OPEC production as had been requested.  Current commercial oil stocks are above their five year average, so they did not see the need for the increase, especially with the economic slowdown in the U.S.  

Second is the fall of the U.S. Dollar compared to other currencies.  Investors are able to purchase more oil futures with their currency than we are with the U.S. dollar.  We'll use the Euro as an example - As of this morning, the Euro has one and a half times the buying power of the USD.  1 USD = 0.648638 EUR - 1 EUR = 1.54169 USD (Live rates at 2008.03.08 17:34:30 UTC)

Since crude oil represents 68% of the price of a gallon of gasoline, the key to understanding fluctuating gasoline prices, is to understand the impact various global/national events have on the price.  For an example, we'll use changes in the past 7 years - the period of time that President Bush has been in office.

The first year President Bush was in office was 2001 and at the end of the year the average spot price for an imported barrel of crude oil was $15.86 (December 2001).  By December of 2007 the average spot price for an imported barrel had grown to $73.33 (December 2007).There are many factors that influence the price of crude oil and we'll use 2002 as an example because in 2002 the price of crude oil almost doubled, going from $18 per barrel in January to $34 per barrel in December.  

In April of 2002 Saddam Hussein suspended Iraqi oil exports for a period of one month.  The U.S. was importing 795,000,000 barrels per day from Iraq and the suspension, along with the Venezuela labor strikes in late 2002, created a shortage of crude oil that virtually shut down crude oil production and exports to the U.S. 

At the same time, the administration changed the policy on Department of Energy scheduled deliveries to the SPR, Strategic Petroleum Reserves.  Prior to 2002 oil companies were allowed to defer deliveries to the SPR when short term oil prices were high compared to long term prices. 

The oil companies were allowed to deposit extra oil to the reserves at a later date, to make up for shortages.  When the oil companies are forced by the government to fill the SPR with higher priced oil, instead of being able to use federally-owned oil from offshore oil leases, and selling the higher priced oil on the open market, it ends up costing taxpayers more.  Over the three months in 2002, filling the SPR with the higher priced oil, ended up costing consumers an additional $100 million dollars.

In December of 2002 Saddam Hussein refused to renew the U.S. oil company contracts and the rest is history, by the end of 2006 Iraq oil exports to the United States had dropped to 553 million bpd.  We invaded Iraq in March of 2003 and have yet been able to get crude oil exports from this country up to pre-war levels of 795 million bpd.  Anytime there is a pipeline explosion in Iraq, it effects the amount of oil the country is able to export. 

Nigeria has been another problem area with unrest and sabotaged pipelines.  Anytime there is an oil disruption it will go towards reducing the amount of oil available; thereby increasing the price.  Even minor interruptions, such as a fire in a refinery within the U.S. that stops production for a day or two has the ability to affect the price of gasoline, depending upon the location of the refinery. 

How much gasoline do we waste every day?  In the colder states, it is not unusual to see cars running in the parking lot of the local grocery store with men sitting there waiting, probably for their wives to do the shopping.  That happens now, even with gasoline headed for $4.00.  When it hits $5.00 a gallon maybe we can figure out a way to cut down. 

Following are some suggestions:

1.  Let the wife go grocery shopping by herself if she can drive.

2.  Let the husband do the shopping - obviously he can drive himself.

3.  Get out of the car and go into the store together -- turn the engine off.

4.  Make fewer trips.

5.  Turn in the Hummer.

This country has known for decades that we either need an alternate energy source, or we need to build more refineries to increase production, yet here we are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Source:  United States Department of Energy - 2006 data

And Report dated March 5, 2003 - U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

By Patricia L Johnson

Senator Obama has repeatedly attempted to put Senator Clinton on the defensive by bringing up her vote on H.J. Res. 114, the Joint Resolution providing President Bush with authorization for the use of Military Force Against Iraq.  In much the same manner as a Monday morning quarterback, Senator Obama has criticized the "yea" vote by Senator Clinton.

The problem with his criticism is there aren't too many people that don't feel we should not have attacked the Republic of Iraq.  Unfortunately, these same individuals were not  behind closed doors when confidential security data was being presented to Senators. 

In retrospect, Senator Obama has even been published as stating had he been privy to the intelligence the Senators were provided,  at the time, he may very well have voted 'yea' on the bill. 

If you recall correctly, this vote was taken in October of 2002, barely a year after the 9/11 attack on U.S. soil.  At the time, Senator Obama was NOT a member of the United States Senate.  How he would've, could've or should've voted on this bill is virtually meaningless because 'outsiders' simply do not have access to confidential intelligence reports prepared for members of the United States Senate.

Was Senator Clinton the only U.S. Senator to favor this bill?  Of course not, the vote on the bill was 77-23 which means a full 77 percent of U.S. Senators, after being exposed to the intelligence supplied by our agencies, felt the bill should  be passed.  In addition to Senator Clinton, the following U.S. Senators voted in favor of the bill and their names are listed at the end of this piece.

President George W. Bush had only been in office for barely over a year when this bill was brought before Congress.  He had not been in office long enough, at that time, for anyone to question motives as this country was still in a state of shock over the attacks of September 11, 2001.

H.J. Res. 114 was introduced into the House by, then Speaker of the House, Dennis J. Hastert on October 2, 2002 and was passed by the House and Senate in record breaking time with PL 107-243 being signed into law by President Bush on October 16, 2002.

In a nine-day  period of time this bill was introduced, went to the House Committee on International Relations, went through amendments, was placed on the House calendar for a vote, went to the Senate, was amended, went to the Senate floor for a vote and passed the Senate on October 11, 2002, without amendment.

Five days later it was signed into law by President Bush.

On October 4, 2002 the CBO released their cost estimate of this bill and their narrative begins with the following statement [emphasis added]:

"H. J. Res 114 would authorize the President to use the armed forces of the United States as he determines necessary and appropriate to defend the United States against the threat posed by Iraq and to enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

By itself, the resolution would not authorize any funding for the use of force, nor would it affect direct spending or receipts. While the resolution is a step toward building consensus for the use of force, it also might improve the chances of a diplomatic settlement without the use of force. The resolution would leave the decision to use force to the discretion of the President." Nevertheless, if the President should use the resolution to initiate a war against Iraq, the budgetary effects would be significant.

It is an absolute disgrace that Senator Obama would criticize Senator Clinton, or any of the other 77 Senators that voted to pass this joint resolution.  When you add in the 296 House votes you're talking about a total of 373 members of the United States Congress that voted 'yea' to giving President George W. Bush the authority to use military force, if needed.  They didn't authorize him to attack, they authorized him to use military force if necessary to protect U.S. interests.

President George W. Bush chose to attack Iraq.

To  have a Junior Senator criticize actions of other members of Congress, when he wasn't even involved in the discussions, for the sole purpose of benefiting his political aspirations,  is disgraceful and Senator Obama should be ashamed.

The voters in this country are sick of war.  We've seen our country literally fall to pieces, while we're spending $12 billion dollars a month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We want something better for ourselves and our children.

Our members of Congress have to go to sleep every night and remember how their vote indirectly caused thousands of U.S. casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.

What they don't need is the Junior Senator from the state of Illinois throwing in his two cents.  If Senator Obama really had the interests of this country at heart, he would make a formal apology to Senator Clinton and to every other Senator listed below.

Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Biden (D-DE)
Bond (R-MO)
Breaux (D-LA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Campbell (R-CO)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carnahan (D-MO)
Carper (D-DE)
Cleland (D-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Daschle (D-SD)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dodd (D-CT)
Domenici (R-NM)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Edwards (D-NC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Fitzgerald (R-IL)
Frist (R-TN)
Gramm (R-TX)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Helms (R-NC)
Hollings (D-SC)
Hutchinson (R-AR)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Miller (D-GA)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Nickles (R-OK)
Reid (D-NV)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Santorum (R-PA)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-NH)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thompson (R-TN)
Thurmond (R-SC)
Torricelli (D-NJ)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

Re:  Hillary's Math Problem  - Jonathan Alter - March 4, 2008

By Richard E Walrath and Patricia L Johnson

WE hope Jonathan won't mind if we Alter some of his math assumptions regarding the remaining primaries.

The Slate Delegate Calculator is indicating a fixed percentage of votes for Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont.   They're giving Obama 44% to Clinton's, 54% for Ohio,  Obama 40% to Clinton's 58% for Rhode Island, Obama 47% to Clinton's 51% for Texas and Obama 60% to Clinton's 38% for Vermont.

The following states will have upcoming elections, Wyoming, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Guam, Indiana, North Caroline, West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon.

The article is basically stating  if Clinton won 60% in each of the above states she still would not be able to hit the magical number necessary for the nomination.

Well, let's go one step further with that calculation - let us be very generous to our up-and-coming political rock star and provide him with 80% of the vote in all remaining primaries.

We can be well assured that no matter how popular, charming or charismatic Senator Obama is he will not win 80% of the remaining votes, but even if he did, he still would not have enough pledged delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Unpledged delegates (superdelegates) are going to a play a predominate role in this election.  Unpledged delegates will hold the key to the nomination, as will the final determination on Florida and Michigan.  If you recall correctly Senator Clinton did win both states.

What is the role of the unpledged delegates'?  According to Democratic National Committee Chairman, Howard Dean,

"Their role is to exercise their best judgement in the interests of the nation and of the Democratic Party"

Based on the following statement in the article "Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people" Mr. Alter doesn't seem to understand the role of the unpledged delegate. 

The Obama camp has consistently stated the unpledged delegate vote should follow the popular vote.  Looks like that would mean superdelegate votes for Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator John Kerry, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, Governor Deval Patrick, and Governor Janet Napolitano would then go to Senator Clinton wouldn't they?

Why are unpledged delegates even given a vote?   First you have to look at who the unpledged delegates are; they are Democratic Members of Congress, Democratic Governors, former party leaders, former presidents, etc.  In other words they are people that are well versed in politics and completely understand the issues that this country will face in the future.

What they are not is the young followers of  Senator Obama.  The fact that Barack Obama has been able to get our youngsters to the polls in droves is incredible and our hats are off to him.  According to federal election law, if a youngster is going to be 18 years old on the date of the general election, they are eligible to vote in their state's primary. 

Do you really think that 17 and 18 year old students are more qualified to nominate the Democratic candidate or should that decision  be left to the unpledged experts in a race this close?

Something that must also be taken into consideration is the fact the unpledged delegate or superdelegates vote is not set in stone - the number of superdelegate votes may change at any time if delegates leave office, leave the party, or for whatever reason cannot cast a vote at the Democratic National Convention. 

At this point in time the race for the Democratic nominee is not any different than the Super Bowl game with the Giants as a two touchdown underdog.  The Patriots were sure to win except they didn't. 

The game's not over until it's over. That's why they play the game to the finish.

By Patricia L Johnson

Data Source:  Federal Reserve Board

The percentage of household debt dropped from 10.2% in 2006 to 6.8% in 2007.  The decrease in household debt was due to slow growth of home mortgage debt.  Even though household credit card debt increased an an annual rate of 4.0%, slow growth in home mortgage debt resulted in a percentage decrease.

Non-Financial Debt outstanding, end of 4th quarter 2007:  $31.2 trillion broken down as follows: 

• $13.8 trillion - Household debt
• $10.1 trillion - Non-financial business debt
• $ 7.3 trillion - Total government debt (State and Federal)

By Richard E Walrath and Patricia L Johnson

Which will come first?  Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment or a woman president?  Both look a long way off.  The question that must be asked is if the U.S. can ever have a woman president without first having equal rights for women?

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was written in 1923 by Alice Paul.  It consists of the following three sentences:

THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Section 1.

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3.

This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

In 1971 the ERA bill was approved by the U.S. House by a vote of 354-24, and on March 22, 1972  U.S. Senate passed the bill by a vote of 84-8.  http://www.now.org/issues/economic/cea/history.html

There are two separate ways a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution may be made, one has never been used, so the most common is for the bill to be sent to the individual state legislatures for ratification, or approval.  Generally there is a time limit placed on the bill and was originally set at 7 years.  Since the ERA amendment was not ratified within the original 7 year period, a bill has been reintroduced into Congress each year. 

The ERA bill now has 35 of the 38 states necessary for ratification.  Once three more states ratify the bill, it will become the 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The following states have failed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA. 

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

What is interesting about the listing of states that have not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment is the fact all, with the exception of Illinois, are considered "Red" states as apposed to "Blue". 

Red States vote Republican--doesn't matter who is running.  Since the Civil Rights bill was passed under LBJ, the Solid South turned Solid Red.  Missouri is a swing state.  It votes with the winner.  As you can see from the map, Bush took all the non-ratifying states except Illinois, in 2004.

Barack Obama claims to be a civil rights advocate and is from the State of Illinois, the only blue state NOT to ratify the ERA.  Not only is Illinois the home state of the U.S. Senator, it's also a state where he served in the legislature, and considered himself "a leader in the Illinois State Senate".

ERA was big news back in the 70's.  It was ancient history by the time Obama was old enough to think about it. 

Obama is 46 years old.  In the almost twenty years since he got out of school (Harvard Law School), he's written two auto-biographies, worked as a community organizer (not quite sure exactly what that entails).  He served in the state legislature and, since 2005 has been in the U. S. Senate.  Oh, yes, and he spent some time in a corporate law office.

The ERA amendment not only has not been ratified by the State of Illinois, the State of Illinois changed the rules on how many votes were required for ratification: http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era.htm

"Illinois changed its rules to require a three-fifths majority to ratify an amendment, thereby ensuring that their repeated simple majority votes in favor of the ERA did not count."

Why is it that no one in the media has ever questioned Obama on this subject or any other subject of merit?

If ever anybody got a free ride from the media, Obama is it.

By Patricia L Johnson and Richard E Walrath

"Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006" was released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August of 2007. [1]

The publication states "The female-to-male earnings ratio of 0.77 in 2006 was not statistically different from the 2005 ratio..."  In other words working women, on average, only earn 77% of what their male counterparts are paid.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it an “unlawful employment practice” to discriminate “against any individual with respect to compensation..." [2]

"Employers may not pay unequal wages to men and women who perform jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility, and that are performed under similar working conditions within the same establishment."

43 years later women are still being discriminated against in the workplace as can be determined by the $3.1 million in monetary benefits paid out in 2006 for claims filed against employers. [3]

When the women in this country cannot receive equal pay, based on the law, should it come as any surprise that women are not treated equally in other areas?

The current election is a prime example - the two Democratic contenders should be provided equal time by the media,  but inequality on the cable networks is running rampant.  We're not sure how many times CNN has mentioned the name Obama, but it should be clear to everyone by now that CNN believes there is no one else in the race except Obama.

Remember the Harry and Louise ads when Hillary was trying to get universal health care passed in the 90's?  "I don't want the government sticking its noise in my medicine cabinet." 

Funny thing, the same people responsible for the Harry and Louise ads now want to stick their noses into every room of your house and follow you around wherever you go.  But people don't seem to mind.

NBC Universal pulled the original video claiming patent rights, but our own interpretation is that the video showed how unfair and unbalanced the media are and have been.  http://www.alternet.org/blogs/election08/77752

As we know from the media coverage of the primaries, Hillary has to do twice as well as Obama to get half as much praise. 

But - what can you expect in a country that still hasn't managed to get enough states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment?

The ERA in Congress

ERA bills reintroduced in Congress on March 27, 2007:

SJRes 10
HJRes 40
HRes 757

The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, is still not part of the U.S. Constitution. 

The ERA has been ratified by 35 of the necessary 38 states.  When three more states vote yes, the ERA might become the 28th Amendment. 

The politicians that are running around concerned about being fair and wanting to replace our current Internal Revenue Service with the Fair Tax should take a step back in time and replace our current election system with one that treats all candidates fair and equally.

Even those that can't pee standing up!

Are men afraid of women?  Are they afraid Hillary will succeed?  Can it be possible that the men of this country are so chauvinistic they would rather vote for a candidate that is not qualified to be President of the United States than to vote for a woman?

Is that why women are still considered second class citizens in this country?

There is no excuse for the women in this country not voting for Hillary.  There is no way you can look at the credentials of the two candidates, look at what plans they have for our future, and choose Obama over Hillary. 

It's easy to sit back and say 'she voted for the Iraq war'.  Excuse us, but Hillary did not vote to attack Iraq.  Her vote, along with everyone else's was to give Bush the power to use military force, IN THE EVENT IT WAS NECESSARY.

It was not necessary, but Bush chose to go to war.

It's easy for Obama to sit back and say "I was against the Iraq war from the beginning'.  It's easy for him to say anything because he wasn't a U.S. Senator at the time; therefore he was not privy to the confidential data that was supplied to the U.S. Senators prior to the vote giving President Bush the authority to use military force in the event it was necessary.

Actually, if Obama had been a U.S. Senator at the time of the vote he probably wouldn't have voted to give Bush the authority to use military force in Iraq.  After all as the Jr. Senator from Illinois he doesn't find it necessary to make an appearance in the Senate more than 67% of the time.

[1]  http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf

[2]  http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/vii.html

[3]  http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/epa.html