From Pine View Farm

• Romney complained that McCain used “the wrong data” about job creation to support his assertion that Massachusetts had ranked 47th among the 50 states while Romney was governor. Romney was wrong; McCain was correct.
• Romney said his hundreds of millions of dollars in “fee increases” merely caught up with years of inflation and weren’t tax increases in disguise. Independent budget experts contradict him on that.
• Romney said the over-budget costs of his Massachusetts health care plan were due to changes made by his successor. Authorities on the plan say that’s mostly untrue; costs went up because more people than expected signed up for state-subsidized insurance.
• Romney wrongly claimed McCain’s anti-global-warming bill would boost gasoline prices by up to 50 cents per gallon. Actually, the official estimate is 40 cents for most vehicles, and not until the year 2025.
• McCain and Romney traded oversimplified assertions regarding a “timetable” for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
• Huckabee cited a Heritage Foundation study to back up his assertion that rebates to taxpayers aren’t as good a way to stimulate the economy as the highway construction he favors. In fact, the study does disparage rebates but urges tax cuts instead, not increased spending.
• Ron Paul repeated his claim that defending the U.S. “empire” is costing “a trillion dollars a year.” But the dubious figure includes costs such as the entire Veterans Affairs budget. Paul also claimed “nobody” is talking about cutting spending, even as his rivals did so 14 times during the same debate.

The city collected more than $250,000 last year in bounced check fees and fees charged to reconnect customers who have had their electricity turned off. That’s nearly $50,000 more than the amount collected in 2006, which was nearly $50,000 more than collected in 2005.

While history suggests European soccer fans can get a bit more worked up than the average American football fan, doctors think there are some valid warnings to be shared.

An official from the Department of State knocked on Pletz’s white-brick ranch here north of Allentown in late December 2006 and said her Internet business, D&J Virtual Consignment, was being investigated for violating state laws.

“I was dumbfounded,” said Pletz, who led the dark-suited investigator to a side patio area where he grilled her. “I told him I would just shut down,” she said.

Like a member of the Geek Squad (obligatory *tm inserted to please our attorney.)

It did not raise a flicker within the eye of awareness. Not a word I said.

This “Computer professional”…this “Knower-Of-All-Things-Computer”.

He did not have a clue. Not a clue.

I had no choice. I spent the next ten minutes educating him…telling him about the technology and the advantages of the GNU/Linux Operating System. His first response almost took my breath.

One such provision sets up a commission to probe contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another expands protections for whistleblowers who work for government contractors. A third requires that U.S. intelligence agencies promptly respond to congressional requests for documents. And a fourth bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq and for any action that exercises U.S. control over Iraq’s oil money.

• He correctly noted that the number of jobs has grown steadily for a record 52 straight months. But the number of jobs gained is a fraction of the gains made during Bill Clinton’s years, and wage gains have been eaten up by inflation.
• He claimed his proposal to give tax deductions for those who buy their own health insurance will “put private coverage within reach for millions.” Some say that’s true, but other experts doubt it. And even the most optimistic say his plan would still leave the large majority of the uninsured without any coverage.
• He said “we” foiled a terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners over the Atlantic, but the plot was actually uncovered by the British, as Bush himself said in last year’s State of the Union address.
• He talked tough about pork-barrel spending, saying he’d issue an executive order for agencies to ignore more Congressional “earmarks.” But he delayed the effect until November, rather than making it effective with the current fiscal year.

The package is less than a quarter of the money Mozilo collected selling Countrywide stock in 2007 as the company’s shares slumped almost 80%.

According to the Dallas Morning News Andreous Robinson, 20, had been partying with chums in West Dallas when he decided to pop outside at around 1am and fire off a few rounds skywards.

Homicide officer Sgt. Bruce McDonald explained that Robinson “then came back inside and thought that he’d discharged all of the rounds, so he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger”.

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

(snip)

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

Specifically, we found that:

• Clinton’s ad falsely implies that Obama supported “special tax breaks for Wall Street” and running up the deficit, and that he opposed minimum wage increases while refusing to deal with the housing crisis. In fact, Obama voted to increase the minimum wage and actually supported some cost-cutting measures that Clinton opposed.
• Obama’s claim that Clinton flip-flopped on NAFTA is half-true. She did change her position, but she did so long before she began running for president.
• In fact, the two candidates vote with Democrats more than 90 percent of the time and voted with each other 94 percent of the time. Interest groups give them nearly identical ratings for being liberal.

• McCain said he had won the Republican vote in both the South Carolina and New Hampshire primaries, where independent voters also participate. One exit poll showed him narrowly prevailing with Republicans in New Hampshire, while another didn’t. And the same poll that favored him in that state had him losing the GOP vote to Huckabee in South Carolina.
• McCain all but denied that he had said he didn’t know much about economics. In fact, he did say that he needed “to be educated” on the subject.
• McCain also said he voted twice to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent – but doesn’t mention that he initially opposed them.
• Romney falsely portrayed Hillary Clinton’s proposed health care plan as an all-government program. It’s not.
• Huckabee once again claimed the FairTax would benefit everyone. That’s not possible.