This is bittersweet. In many ways, a loss for the Obama girls. In many ways a gain for the Obama girls. First, though, clearly security for those girls is most critical. There are millions of people out there in the world who would jump at a chance to harm those girls. Security is top priority. This is beyond debate. Security gives the Obama family very few choices, perhaps only one choice. None can fault the Obama parents for their choice. A bitter part of this is the Obama girls will miss out on normal life, a public school experience of school yard bullies, fun average day play friends, stern teachers, compassionate teachers, dirty bathrooms, wonderful classrooms and science labs which smell like dead frogs. There will be no students who will bust one of the Obama girl’s lip, nor students who will help her up after being knocked down. Neither girl will learn of discipline problem kids nor learn of kids who are hungry and wearing old hand-me-down clothes yet struggling to do well in school. I suppose the sweet is those girls will enjoy the best of an education, a type of education almost all are denied. Well, readers get my drift; those girls will grow up sheltered from reality. Kinda sad, this is to be, there is no choice on this. Those girls must be protected, must be sheltered. The Obama parents have no choice on this and cannot be faulted for their choice. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Judge Judy would be a better choice, a higher quality choice. Gotta love these “fresh” faces Obama is bringing into our government. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Carmel-by-the-Sea comments, “And you are SUCH a wonderful example of any who would follow her!” I make and follow my own path in life. This is rather clear. Liz Peek is offering basic information about investing. She is not promoting a personal agenda. Peek is making a sincere effort to help others. Is yours a personal agenda? Are you looking to have your own followers? Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

During the times of my childhood Oklahoma, this man would already be dead, no arrest, no trial, simply suddenly dead, no questions asked. Upon our Indian lands, even today, the same. This man will certainly lose his freedom, spend life in jail. He will enjoy decent food, health care, a warm bed, television, music, books and such but not his freedom. This is not justice. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Liz Peek, your efforts to help others learn about investing are appreciated. Learning is critical during these modern times of online trading. Too many amateurs think they will become rich overnight. They never do. People like me come along then take away their naive money. Only comment I have to share on this hedge fund installment of your series is the same as before, never hand your money over to another to manage for you, never do this. Research, learn, educate yourself then manage your own money; you will earn a hundred times more profit, or lose a hundred times more. However, with good learning, your odds are much higher you will earn a hundred times more managing your own money. Learning, I must again emphasize learning. You will never be successful at investing unless you invest a lot of time and effort into learning. Liz Peek is offering a basic introduction to investing. Pay attention and download her articles so you can read her articles, again and again, until you can recite her lessons from memory. Hers is just a beginning. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

My Alias comments, “Although I disagree with the majority of her positions, I have respect for her fearless character.” Sarah Palin can strut right through a wall, unharmed. Her aggressive and assertive ways are to be admired. She speaks her mind straightforward and with personal conviction. This is a personal quality few enjoy. Does not matter if we agree with her or disagree with her, these are finer points to debate. What matters is she flat out tells us what she thinks and what we can expect from her. Sarah is about as trustworthy as can be. Do you, the reader, truly trust Old School political hacks? Do you honestly trust Hillary, honestly trust Barack? I sure do not. I know better than to trust Old School political hacks. What is Obama doing after promising fresh faces and fresh ideas? He is surrounding himself with Old School political hacks; Clintonians. Is Obama keeping his campaign promises? I have yet to witness Obama honor a single campaign promise of his, other than a dog for his girls. Obama is maintaining this high stout wall between Washington D.C. and our America. Obama and those Old School political hacks are within the high white Ivory Tower walls, and we slovenly unwashed masses are out here. Sarah, love her or hate her, I am confident she would keep her campaign promises which would either annoy or delight, depending on person. She is a woman of her word. She is a woman who can cause that Ivory Tower wall to crumble with no more than truthful assertive words. Sarah is one of us here on the outside. Perhaps this is what disturbs some people. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Maize James adds value, “We need to … well, ‘SHUT UP’ about Sarah Palin.” What of those, such as Murphy Brown, who enjoy discussing this lively woman we know as Sarah Palin? Are we to “shut up” because you, personally, do not want to discuss Sarah Palin? Rather narrow minded of you, yes? Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Jane Cougar Melonhat, who appears to be an annoyed cat, writes in part, ‘“there are absolutely no grammar rules’ … as a second language speaker I´m very intrigued by this statement….” I am working at not moving off topic. Sure, all languages except for dead languages of dead people, all languages are dynamic and alive. New words are added, old words are removed, fights break out amongst language academics, there never has been and never will be agreement on grammar rules. Previously I write what we know as grammar rules are actually grammar guidelines, not rules. This is reality of language. A fun topic for those who are grammar rule junkies, is to research and study up a bit on “verbal auxiliary” words. These are words and expressions which do not conform to any grammar rules yet are in daily usage. Then there are regional dialects and micro-regional inflections. Here is one of my favorites from my childhood in Oklahoma: “Yall got any sweet mon taters in your’n dinner bucket?” “Do you have any sweet potatoes in your lunch box?” Which is grammatically correct? Both, quite clearly. My former is local dialect and my latter is a widespread formal academic dialect. We set grammar rules on a worldwide basis and those grammar rules are promptly violated or ignored but, more often, adapted and changed as language changes. One last classic example. A mosquito hawk in the southeast, is a snake doctor in the southwest and is a dragonfly on the west coast. Surrounding language, context and grammar for each name of this beautiful bug is as dramatically different as each name. Should we adhere to and demand all strictly follow traditional grammar rules, my word, how boring would be our conversations. This lively art of writing and speaking is only such because there are no grammar rules. I am interested a participant finds a photograph of me wearing Groucho Marx glasses to be weird, but this photograph of you being a cat wearing a sliced up honey dew melon is not weird. This does suggest some here are not interested in meanful dialog rather are interested in some personal agenda. This is wrongful. Seems Miss Manners is all wrong about there being common courtesy rules. Perhaps this is, Melonhat, there are no rules in life at all rather people invoke some rule when this benefits them, personally. Mellencamp is one of my favorite artists. I enjoy playing some of his songs on my cello. Maybe he also likes cats. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Phyllis Doyle Pepe asks, “If you say you are an English Professor why are you using the word wrongful as a noun when it is an adjective?” Same reason I used “believes” incorrectly. Well, not the same reason; this is a brain fart typo plus English is not my native tongue. We will not be productive debating English grammar. I will comment use of a dictionary to determine in-the-wild usage of language is not smart. We use language to convey our messages. Adjectives become nouns, verbs become gerund, and “were” becomes subjunctive moody, at times. Our goal is to communicate, not to use bloody proper The Queen’s good English. There are no, absolutely no English grammar rules. Chew on this thought for a bit, you will discover I am correct about this; we enjoy guidelines for language usage, we do not enjoy grammar rules for language. If you are interested in debating whether or not I am an English professor, venture on over to the USENET group “alt.usage.english” then search for my moniker, “purl gurl”. There you will discover and hopefully enjoy reading literally thousands of articles written by me about English language usage. This will read arrogant, you will discover I almost never lose a debate on English language usage and I almost always display knowledge of English language usage which almost all do not display. Once you finish discovering I display an extraordinary use of and knowledge of English language usage, then write me a critique of Samuel Clemens making quite odd use of our English language, especially his use of our word, “git”. You are venturing onto my turf. This is challenge you probably should not take on. http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/search?hl=en&group=alt…. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Kryssi K comments, “While what you have said is a reasonable argument, I seriously doubt Sarah Palin’s is a poor, starving family.” I agree, Kryssi. I do write of my being fiercely opposed to hunting animals for sport. This is wrongful. I will not support nor condone killing animals for sport. I sincerely and strongly agree with you, Kryssi. Knowledge of how to shoot and skin a moose, is not wrongful. The act of doing those things, is wrongful. Should Sarah Palin leap on the back of a moose then kill this moose with her bare hands and a knife, I would demand she be our president and demand she be let loose on Islamic terrorists. Bergen is suggesting having knowledge of how to do these things is terrifying. I strongly disagree. Heck, look at Dick Cheney, he knows how to use a shotgun to shoot an old lawyer in his face. What were they doing? Hunting quail or wild turkey, some unfortunate bird, which they later have some servant clean and dress to eat. Is Dick Cheney terrifying because of this? No, Dick Cheney is terrifying because he is hard line fascist type. I do not care he is a dangerous shotgun bozo. I do care he is a dangerous bozo in charge of our country. I kinda wish more politicians would shoot each other, no tragedy there. Back on the East Coast, there are wilderness areas where deer strave to death each winter because this deer population is too high and food sources are too scarce. Each year, hunters are allowed to go in to kill male deer, buck, to help control the population. However, killing the male deer does not help to control this deer population. Female deer, doe, are the logical gender to be killed. We think this thinning of a deer population to be an act of kindness. This is not. Our cruelty is not controlling our human population. There are simply too many of us humans on Earth. We need to thin our population and stop destroying natural habitats of wild animals. Mother Nature is thinning our population. She is effecting this through drought, famine, starvation, war, genocide and most well known, our HIV / AIDS pandemic. Mother Nature is being kind by killing us, yes? My point is people are terrifying for judging others based upon community taught behaviors and cultural taught behaviors. We all live different lifestyles and this is terrifying to think a segment of our society, a class of our society believes they have an inherent right to critique all others for their chosen lifestyles. Is not this the very foundation of this class warfare our country suffers today, this rich versus poor class warfare? A question for readers and for Candice. “Did Captain Kirk become fat by eating too many fruits and vegetables?” Looks to me Captain Kirk is ripe for slaughter, as is our human population. Now this is terrifying but much needed. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Candice Bergen is quoted, “There just is something basically terrifying to me about a woman who can shoot and skin a moose….” I am amused. During my life I have hooked, gutted and cleaned bluegill, sun perch and bass. I have skinned catfish with a pair of pliers. During night, I have gigged bullfrogs by Coleman lantern light, then later whacked their heads on the edge of washtub to kill them before cutting their legs off to fry up for a special treat. I never liked killing bullfrogs just to eat their legs, seems a bit cruel. As child, I helped chase down, rope and catch wild boars for slaughter. Suffered a lot of injuries as a result, injuries treated with coal oil, better known as kerosine. I have castrated Duroc hogs and even gutted and butchered those hogs while they hang upside down from a tree. Incidently, hog fat can be used to make an excellent soap, which we did. Does your soap contain animal fat? Strikes me there was a time lipstick and other cosmetics contained whale blubber. I choked a weasel to death when I was seven years old, having caught this weasel in our hen house killing our hens. I cannot remember how many chickens’ necks I have wrung to make a dinner of them. Certainly hundreds, if I had to guess. I cannot count how many times I have nearly been killed by rattlesnake and cottonmouth; too many to remember. As recently as a few years back, I routinely killed coyotes with bow and arrow to thin out their population; they were starving to death and had taken to killing neighborhood pets. I did not gut and clean them, though; coyote are not much worth eating. I am kind enough to only kill female coyotes to control population number. I am sure you are aware over in the Los Angeles area, coyotes have taken to attacking and hauling off human babies. This is because city slickers are not wise enough to thin a starving coyote population, which is a result of humans destroying natural habitats of wild animals. However, I have never shot an animal although we sometimes enjoyed deer venison for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Shooting an animal from a long distance simply for sport is rather cowardly and cruel. I am fiercely opposed to hunting animals simply for sport. Catching and killing animals so your family will not go hungry, this is different. Am I a terrifying woman? When a child and early teen, I enjoyed a good number of fist fights with other kids. Never lost a fight. With luck, only one knife fight with another Choctaw woman. With more luck, I did not have to kill her, which I truly did not want to do; I lucked into a nearby stick which I used to knock her out clean cold by hitting her upside her head. Am I a more terrifying woman? Ironically, I am a retired English professor and public school teacher of decades, a very popular teacher, at that. During my career I was instrumental in helping to start up a drug intervention program for our city, which is moderately successful. I am a licensed intervention counselor and would like to think I made a difference in lives of many troubled children. These days I perform charitable work, provide donated money, to help American Indian children living in poverty and each year I purchase and donate classroom textbooks for a local community school in need. Am I now a less terrifying woman? What terrifies me is those who hold their own community mores and personal standards of behavior to be superior to all others. Some of us were born to the countryside where we kill and eat animals. Others are born to cities where we depend on others to kill animals for us to eat. Some of us know the heartbreak of killing animals to eat so our families will not go hungry. Others eat killed animals but never mention those animals were killed and dressed by others for them to eat. Which is more terrifying? Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Raise your hand if you knew Citigroup was recently nailed by Jerry Brown for stealing money from customers’ credit card accounts. This theft amounted to millions and millions of dollars. Tens of thousands of Citigroup customers were victimized for over a decade. This activity was known to be illegal at the highest levels of Citigroup executives, who facilitated and enabled those crimes. However, none will be sent to prison for their engaging in felony crimes against Americans across our nation. Those are not the only financial crimes committed by Citigroup, and our government, from Bill Clinton to George Bush, turned a blind eye to those commissions of crimes against Americans. Nonetheless, our government, including Obama and McCain, have elected to reward Wall Street and the wealthy for their stealing from American families through a bailout, oh, sorry, through a “rescue” plan. Any keeping up with billionaire Mark Cuban being nailed for insider trading? How funny, Martha Stewart is tossed into Camp Cupcake for insider trading but not Mark Cuban! Oh no! We cannot toss a member of America’s Good Ol’ Boys Club into prison for financial crimes. Heck no! The boy owns a baseball team. Reminds me of Christopher Cox who was indicted, years back, for his involvement in the worst Ponzi Scam of California history. Thousands of eldery folks were robbed of their life savings, hundreds of millions of dollars. Not long after Cox robbed our elderly, I managed to sneak my sorry rearend into a political fund raiser event for Cox, back when he was a nobody lying politician over in Orange County, California. Actually shook his hand, refused to let go, confronted him for his stealing from our elderly, and was promptly removed from this event by big men in nice suits whose names I believe are Guido and Vittorio. Decades later, I am still riding Cox’s back: http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-08-08/s70808-156.htm http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-08-08/s70808-329.htm When Cox was nominated to chair the SEC, I promptly sent out close to a thousand letters urging “no” on confirmation. Congress, Senate, governors, state level politicians, key people in our mainstream media, all and more received letters from me. We know the result. Who did McCain say he would fire? Cox sucks. You know, I do not recall a single Hollywood type, nor many journalists, nor the rich and famous, I do not recall those type of people working at protecting America from a known crook, now a better known crook. How about you readers? Do you invest time and effort into assertive actions when you take notice of wrong doing by the famous of our country, by leaders of our nation? If you are one of those who does not work at objecting to wrong doing, one of those not working at protecting our America, you have no right to complain about all this crime being perpetrated upon you and American families by our famous, by our wealthy and by our leaders. I am a patriotic American. How about you? Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Hillary should whop Billy upside his head with a black cast iron skillet. This would certainly smarten up the boy. I would do this. Reminds me of an evening in my kitchen, years back. I cannot remember what my husband did to make me mad. Anyhow, he comes walking into my kitchen, I am busy fixin’ supper, he says something about something, I do not remember. Whatever, he made me really mad. Boy howdy, I took my kitchen spatula to his head, gave him a good beating about his head and shoulders. Served him and our girl a good supper, though. This was not the time I smushed a handful of mash potatoes in his face. Several weeks passed before he ventured back into my kitchen to say something about something. He is now careful to check what type of weapon I have in hand before smartening off. Probably he made a crack about my big butt. Those are fightin’ words. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Location, location, location. Real property investment is blistering hot today. Many fortunes will be made off real property investments over years to come. Right now is the right time to invest in real property income, such as rental income homes. A challenge is coming up with a down payment and more of a challenge is finding a bank willing to lend. This is why I always adamantly insist people make sacrifices and stash away as much cash as possible for rainy days. We are currently into twenty days of rain out of forty. These low prices on real estate will not come back around during our lifetimes. Next real estate crash is many decades away. Much money is to be made if you act fast and with care, a lot of care. Location is most critical. A fairly decent typical existing home in a clean, quiet and well kept neighborhood is an absolute must. Location must be moderately central to employment centers or within a reasonable commute to employment centers. Existing home, not a new home and never a condo. An older home which is basically sound but with a dead yard, in need of a new roof, in need of painting, carpet, fixing of broken windows and such, is the ideal. A sound older home with poor “curb appeal” is your ticket to earning good money. Real estate sales are beginning to increase, thanks to speculators like our family, and real estate prices are beginning to increase. This is not nationwide rather is regional specific, such as California, Washington and New York. Location is critical. Fairly soon, northern Nevada, Reno area, will become the hottest real estate market of our nation, with my fairly soon being one to three years. Nevada, Reno, general region, suffers the highest foreclosure rate which draws in speculators like flies on mule manure. Stay away from Las Vegas; that place is a glossed over desert slum. On the average, a home will gain a minimum of ten percent in value per year. You will not earn this type of growth from bonds nor bills like we did back in the Jimmy Carter days when CD accounts paid twelve percent interest per year while we waited in line for gasoline several hours. Readers are strongly encouraged to research, to learn and to look closely at real property income; rental home or homes. Caution is a must. A rental home must be carefully selected by location and condition. A rental home out in the middle of the Mojave Desert will do you no good but a rental home just outside a large urban center will prove profitable, if a good decent location. A rental home grows in value each year and a rental home provides monthly income, typically in a range of $1200 to $1800 per month. This is very good money and often just about enough to make your rental home mortgage payment, close, maybe a little bit of negative cash flow. However, you must save away for property taxes, insurance and upkeep. This amounts to about one-fourth of your annual rental income. Your rent income might be as much as your mortgage payment, but you will have a bit of negative cash flow after paying taxes and such. Nonetheless, your net realized growth, with equity value growth and monthly rent income, works out to be around 15% per year. This is darn good money which is safe and reliable; always there. Watch out for Obama, he intends to nearly double our capital gains tax. Under an Obama administration, a very bad time to sell a home for profit, but a good time to enjoy rent income. Plan on keeping investment income property until we are rid of Obama. You will easily double your money over about a decade, once this real estate crash is behind us, maybe another two years. Should the real estate market become overheated again, you can easily triple your money over a decade. Think retirement. Never think “social security.” You must plan for and secure your own retirement funds; social security is a poverty joke. Best option is to hold income real property for twenty to thirty years. Bank loans. Despite all this hype of banks not lending, there are local community banks and other lenders just begging to loan you money at acceptable interest rates, typically around 6.5% or slightly less. You can secure a loan if you come in with 10% to 30% down on a home. This is why you _always_ make sacrifices and stash away cash, which is King today. Remember, only 30 year fixed rate loans. Do not accept any other type of loan such as a predatory adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) loan. Research, learn, be prudient, make good decisions and you will not go wrong on real property investment. Right now, this is where wise money is being invested. Above all, you must be willing to invest sweat equity. This is get in there and make your own repairs. Do your own roofing, your own painting, fixing windows, replacing faucets, cleaning up yards but leave carpet installation to a carpet company; this is very affordable. Stocks. This is an excellent time to buy “value” stocks. These are companies with a long history of turning profits, a lot of cash on hand and very low or no debt. These are often companies involved in consumer staple goods; food, clothing and home repair items; commodities which are in constant demand despite our economic downturn. However, our stock market conditions will not change much for a couple of years. You have plenty of time to research, learn and become a smart investor in stocks. Nonetheless, like real estate, you will not see again these bargain basement prices on stocks during your lifetime. This is the time to buy. Best action, a “must do” action, is for you to research, to learn, to become smart about your money investing. You will lose your money if you do not first educate yourself on the ways of investment methods. You must first learn before all else. I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. Real estate and value stocks, this is where fortunes will be made, if you approach this with smarts backed by good learning. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

Merrell G writes, “…homosexuals…are found in most if not all mammalian groups.” You are engaging in projection. Being gay is a state of mind and is exclusive to humans. I have read this point some animals are gay and I always soundly reject this argument. A person observes an animal engage in “homosexual like” behavior then declares, “You see! Some animals are gay!” This is completely untrue; this person is simply seeing what he wants to see. During my life I have suffered a lot of dogs not only sniffing my butt, sniffing my crotch but also taking hold of my leg then humping away. This almost always involves some worthless little inbred barking rat, like a minature French poodle. Yes, I am a dog bigot and most dogs prefer bestiality. There you are. A dog humps my leg therefore many dogs are neither heterosexual nor homosexual rather are bestial-sexual. Dirty dogs. No wonder I am a wet leg dog bigot. Before a reader jumps on this notion of mine, I have watched dogs hump rabbits, cats and most disgusting, filthy hogs. Those dogs will hump anything. This is not dogs displaying a sexual preference based upon gender rather is dogs displaying stereotypical human male behavior. Here you are, good Scientific Method. Dogs are bestial-sexual and display human male behavior therefore human males are bestial-sexual. This is a topic none us are much willing to discuss. Think of all these unfortunate housewives around the world who lie silent in bed at night, next to hubby, while thinking, “My husband would just assume to hump a cow as to hump me.” This is so tragic none of us are willing to admit men are bestial-sexual, closet bestial-sexual evidenced by men working so hard to conceal their penchant for farm animals. Shoot, I know men are actually bestial-sexual. I know this through good Scientific Method. My old man loves to have me give him a massage with rabbit fur. He loves more when I slip on my gorilla outfit then have wild animal like sex with him. I know my husband would love to have sex with a real gorilla and would if not for fear of having his head ripped off then used for a rousing game of soccer by soccer fan gorillas. You readers ever take in these reports of male dolphins trying to have sex with human females who are snorkeling or diving? Now that is kinky bestility on the part of dolphins. This is tempting; I love dolphins and I most likely would not resist a handsome dolphin, if I could hold my breath long enough. I love whales, too, but no, whales are simply too darn big! A Clydesdale, this is ok. My favorite term of endearment for my corn fed Okie farmboy husband is Clydesdale. I am a very content woman. Any can play this projection game which is serious anthropocentric thinking. There are no gay animals. There are animals which are so driven by this instinctive trait to procreate they are blind to which gender they are mounting. This is not a display of being gay by animals, this is a display of this madness which Mother Nature inflicts upon all of us, this madness of our being blindly driven to procreate to ensure survival of the species. Okpulo Taha Choctaw Nation