OH! Thank you; I have always wondered where that expression came from. I knew it was old. Boy, I sure was off in regards to the spelling, and I can’t figure out how you even knew what I was trying to say. What memories it evokes about playing outside all day and into the lightening bug nights. Don’t you remember trying to choose “it”? One potato, two potato, three potato, four?

I remember the call as “Ollie, Ollie, oxen free” as well. This was definitely the call when I was quite young in Virginia and New York. Later, in Florida, we used to call out: “Ollie, Ollie, all come free.” It is something of a relief to me to have this come up, albeit this is an unlikely venue, because I have asked my peers over the decades if they remember this call and NONE of them has! Bottom line, you have validated my memory banks! Thank you! Another one: do you remember King’s X for begging out from the game without being tagged because you just HAD to run home to answer nature’s call? The groups I played with always recognized “King’s X,” but again, no one seems to remember.

Frannie, These people depend upon the reports of the folks that are supposed to be running the other organizations. I don’t accept “truth” from someone just because they are democrats. Paulson and Bernanke are republicans; I’m certainly accepting their imput.So is Buffett and Volcker. it was common knowledge that there were problems in the economy; what Pelosi was saying was that they did were not being told of the seriousness until the meeting that Friday afternoon. Why?, Charlie asked. And, she did not divulge the details of what was said, but indicated it was orders from the white house, which would make sense, because this administration practices secretly as much as possible. As for free thinking, that went by the wayside when the Gingrich Contract on America came into being back in the ‘90’s and I find it odd that you would think that Republicans have been free thinkers in all these years. They are the ones that toe the line together; that is common knowledge and has been documented in many writings. If a Republican official rebels against the body politic, he’s a goner. Until this year when the Centrist Republicans have had it with this group of extremist types that took over the party. I am a free thinker—always have been—- that’s the way I was raised. But, I don’t find your argument credible when people like that Congresswoman the other day says that anyone in Congress that does not agree with her needs to be investigated because they aren’t good Americans. The Republicans have to take responsibility for the past 8 years, they dominated Congress for most of the time since the 90’s, and executive and judiciary has belonged to them. It has been their economic model of supply side economics that Reagan and then the Bush’s allowed that is the BS here. Supply side, “trickle down” is not valid, it’s a myth, and now we are all paying the price for it. Oh, and we can’t forget Phil Gramm, who incidentally, wrote the economic plan and was McCain’s economic advisor until he was forced to quit for calling us a “nation of whiners”.