Since no improvement is being made on the Iraq War, we need to spend our resources on other issues such as global poverty in order to discourage more terrorism and wars. According to the Borgen Project, in reality only .16% of our federal budget is spent on poverty reduction, the least among wealthy nations. We should let our representatives know that we want change.

Isn't it interesting to try and figure out this White House? Department of Defense has been selling spare airplane parts to Iran which it is considering to have a war with despite the statements of Robert Gates comments otherwise. And with the surge expectations forthcoming in a civil war drama which the White House refuses to use that contention simply because everyone knows that civil wars are intractible processes to get involved with. It is all too comedic, like a slapstick campy movie, to try and get the Iraqis so mad at Americans to once again engage in war with the soldiers who have been on the sidelines of overall activity as Shia fight Sunni, Shi fight Shia, and so on. It is kind of like an attrition process whereby fighting will eventually wind down, once all the suicide bombers run out of material. This is Nuts! And the White House is demonstrating its insanity to reengage the Iraqis to become the more unpopular and fight once again. Watching this process is akin to viewing Inspector Clouceau of the Pink Panther movies out of the fight while the so-called suspects engage each other in various degrees of arguments and berating one another. The White House has become Inspector Clouceau!

Thanks for airing the emotional, thought-provoking piece about the woman who'd evacuated from New Orleans during Katrina to end up in central Florida and have her home damaged by the recent tornado. Most telling, however, is the fact that, even though she still owns her previous New Orleans home which has been fixed up and is on the market, she plans to stay in central Florida and rebuild her current home because she is more confident that that community will soon be coming back. It's heartbreaking because this is all about how the Bush Administration has unconscionably neglected New Orleans' recovery so badly it's discouraging people who had lived there from returning.

Mother Nature strikes The Vilages with vengenance. My husband and I own a home in the Villages that sustained minumal damage from the tornado that swept through The Villages. However, neighbors up the road from us were not so lucky. Their house was deemed condemned. Among the devastation, the one resounding message was neighbors helping neighbors. When dawn arose and gave light to the devastation, people were first concerned about the welfare of folks and secondly lended a hand in helping to clean up the debris left by the storm. FEMA had not yet arrived, President Bush had not yet declared The Villages a national disaster area, but people were helping people. We had one thing in common. We survived and needed to pick up the pieces and carry on. The Villages administration needs to be commended for their quick response to covering roofs, provding shelter and food, and cleaning up yards strewn with debris. The outpouring of love can not be desceibed with simple words. But it became very clear that when disaster strikes our basic instincts to help the needy kicks into gear and we become unified in one common cause: to sacrifically give of ourselves to help the less fortunate.

Hello Dear John,
I saw the tragic seen on NBC News. I saw people bringing injured individuals to the hospital; however, I could not see a nurse or a doctor in that hospital to treat those injured poor individuals. I have read in various places that those Iraqi hospitals have neither doctors not medicine to treat people. It looks like President Bush's war of the 'liberation' of Iraqi has also dehospitalized the country. When will we reach the point to calculate the Iraqi death as part of the cost of the Iraqi war? At the expense of those Iraqi and American dead people, Exxon Mobil has made a record of annual profit of $39.5 billion. People also like to know the annual profit of the military complex. Best Regards.

As for “the global call for urgent measure to stem global warming...” absolutely nothing cuts to the chase than the ability to work at home in large sub-industrial-scale shops and professionally equipped offices without ANY need to travel to work. No daycare, no wasted time commuting, lower vehicle or gas expenditure, and less environmental impact. With 21st-century shop tools, rapid prototyping devices, server computer systems, and government contracts, we could be far more self sufficient at the local level. Such self-sufficiency would also help insulate us communities from disasters, terrorist strikes, and even a little from bird flu pandemics. It disperses our industrial centers from single/vulnerable locations (such as silicon valley).