This Is Goin 2 B Good!

Obama and Huckabee, winners in Iowa, face new tests in N.H.

CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire is where Iowa's Democratic caucus victors get ratified and where its Republican winners get stung. Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee headed into the Granite State on Friday as Iowa's presidential champions, one hoping to ride history's trend and the other eager to break it.

Neither can expect it to be easy.

Obama is neck and neck in New Hampshire polls with Hillary Rodham Clinton, who finished third in Iowa but has the resources to confront him head on. Will Obama, like Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, use his Iowa victory to catapult himself to victory in New Hampshire? Or will Clinton manufacture a turnaround like her husband did in 1992 and be the new Comeback Kid?

Huckabee faces even bigger questions. He has hardly campaigned in New Hampshire where a Republican contest is already in a dead heat between Mitt Romney and John McCain. He enters the state with little money and little time to mount an adequate come-from-behind surge.

Iowa's results tightened the Democratic field -- Sens. Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd dropped out shortly after the outcome was clear Thursday night. John Edwards mounted an energetic, populist campaign only to see himself repeat his 2004 second place finish in Iowa. He vowed to continue, but he trails Obama and Clinton in polls and in money.

For Republicans, Huckabee's victory served to keep their contest wide open. He beat Romney by nearly 9 percentage points, a setback for the former Massachusetts governor who now faces a reinvigorated McCain. Fred Thompson was looking beyond New Hampshire to South Carolina. And Rudy Giuliani, fading in New Hampshire, was counting on Florida and big state contests on Feb. 5.

An unpredictable factor could be Republican Ron Paul, an anti-war congressman with libertarian views whose legions of volunteers have fanned out across New Hampshire waving placards and knocking on doors in support of their dark horse candidate. Paul has raised a surprising amount of money, further complicating the political calculations in the state.

In their victory speeches, Obama and Huckabee struck similar cords and distinguished themselves from their respective fields -- portraying themselves as unifiers and change agents who didn't view the world in simply Republican and Democratic hues.

"You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington," Obama told his raucous supporters. "To end the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states. Because that's how we'll win in November, and that's how we'll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation."

Huckabee, sounding some of the same economic populist themes that Democrats had often heard from Edwards, said Americans were eager for change.

"But what they want is a change that starts with a challenge to those of us who were given this sacred trust of office so that we recognize that what our challenge is to bring this country back together, to make Americans, once again, more proud to be Americans than just to be Democrats or Republicans," he said. "To be more concerned about being going up instead of just going to the left or to the right."

Money, a defining measure of candidate strength throughout 2007, turned out to be not so determinative in Iowa. Romney, a multimillionaire who pumped more than $17 million of his own money into the campaign by September, spent about $7 million on ads in Iowa to Huckabee's $1.4 million.

Likewise, Edwards remained in the mix with Obama and Clinton even though they broke all fundraising records last year. Obama spent $9 million in television ads in Iowa, Clinton spent $7 million and Edwards spent only $3 million.

Romney's and Clinton's inability to win was also a blow to much of the Democratic and Republican party establishment that had lined up behind both candidates.

But if money was only secondary in Iowa, it could still be a factor ahead. Romney could tap his wealth again to carry him through New Hampshire and Michigan thereafter. And with Obama and Clinton at the top, the Democratic contest appears to be dominated by two financial titans.

As Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle said after the results were in: "Our campaign was built for a marathon and we have the resources to run a national race in the weeks ahead."

Polls of Iowa voters as they entered the caucuses showed that Obama outpolled Clinton among women, and benefited from a surge in first-time caucus-goers and young voters in what was a record Democratic turnout. Similar enthusiasm in New Hampshire could again favor Obama.

Huckabee rode to victory on the strength of born-again or evangelical Christians, who comprised six in 10 Republican caucus-goers. But New Hampshire's Republican electorate is less overtly religious and more fiscally conservative. Even so, Huckabee has a penchant for retail politics and offers a message that is not singularly religious in tone.

"The thing you can say about Mike Huckabee is that he has a very different coalition," said Charlie Arlinghaus, a longtime New Hampshire GOP strategist and senior adviser to Thompson. "Giuliani's support comes from moderates and Romney's from conservatives. But Huckabee crosses a lot of lines -- socially conservative and economically populist. That's why he was underestimated."

While Huckabee's victory over Romney heartened McCain, Obama's win could work against him under New Hampshire's wide open voting system. Obama is likely to attract many Democratic-leaning independents who might have voted for McCain if it appeared that Clinton had sewn up the Democratic contest.

"We now have competitive contests on both sides," said New Hampshire GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen. "That could be good news for Romney, who has been counting on this being a primary that is dominated by base Republicans."
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Still, it's anyone's election.
I'm conservative and i'm voting conservative.
Who are you voting for, fam?

*UPDATE* Lakshmi!!

My honorary baby, Lakshmi, is doing wonderful!!

She's out of Intensive Care and she's being carried around all over the place.

I remember being carried around like that...thank God for God!!! hee hee

click the link below and you can see my girl, Lakshmi, looking bright eyed and bushy tailed and minus 4 limbs! Her legs are in casts, but her arms are free.

check out Lakshmi & fam

$$$ Financial Freedom Friday $$$ Attitude'll Determine Your Altitude

Great Information on credit card debt!

Get Out of Debt and Get Rich
With the right attitude and a little credit know-how, anyone can climb out of the hole and stay debt-free for life.
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"My name is John, and I'm a recovered compulsive debtor." John and thousands like him meet across America -- in church basements and high school auditoriums -- every week. They talk about blowing the mortgage payment on gourmet restaurant meals, then scrounging to find enough coins for the tollbooth. They know that sick dread while opening the mailbox, wondering which bill is now due. They've seen how debt can destroy marriages and even lead to suicide.

They're members of Debtors Anonymous, a 12-step program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. They are clerks and executives, artists and electricians. Some have trust funds, others make minimum wage. Some overcharged on credit cards, others bought "fully-loaded" cars with seven-year loans, still others moved into lavish homes with interest-only mortgages. What they have in common is an overwhelming temptation to spend more than they earn. If you think that makes them different from the rest of us, consider this:

Americans bought over $2 trillion worth of stuff on credit last year.

Current outstanding debt on credit cards -- that's the "revolving" part that we don't pay off every month -- totals nearly $700 billion, up from just $50 billion in 1980.
Three of five American families can't pay off their credit cards each month. Their running balance averages about $12,000, which is one-fourth of the median household income.
By the mid-1990s, credit card debt held by Americans living below the poverty level more than doubled.

Senior citizens, once noted for their frugality, are sinking deeper into debt: Their average credit card balance increased by 89 percent between 1992 and 2001.

Total consumer debt in the United States comes to over $7,100 per person -- and that doesn't include mortgages.Grim as that sounds, there's help to be had. With the right attitude and a little credit know-how, anyone can climb out of the hole and stay debt-free for life. Just ask Wayne and Rebecca Denton of Clayton, North Carolina. In the 1990s, while Rebecca was in nursing school, Wayne, a lawn-care technician, began putting all their purchases on eight credit cards. By 1998 they were $88,000 in debt -- more than their combined annual income of $61,000. At first Wayne tried to hide the debt from Rebecca. But it got so bad that he couldn't even make the late-payment penalties, much less pay the bills. Eventually the phone was shut off, and Wayne had to borrow money from relatives just to buy food. The couple hit bottom when Rebecca considered filing separation papers. "But the lawyer told me that we'd be fighting over assumption of debt," she recalls. "I was shocked. In most divorces, people fight over assets. We had no assets." Rebecca says she "cried to God to save my marriage." The turning point came when she bought a $12.95 workbook by radio host and debt-reduction guru Dave Ramsey. The couple cut up their credit cards, and started working overtime to pay the bills. "Instead of getting mad at each other, we got mad at the debt," says Rebecca. Seven years later, with one son and another on the way, the Dentons are debt-free, living in a larger house and building up their savings. "It's been a radical change in our thought process," says Rebecca, "but I wouldn't trade it for anything." They keep one credit card for buying gas, which they pay off every month. And they read the fine print. "The credit card companies are really trying to put one past you," says Rebecca. It wasn't always that way.

Back in the 1950s, banks introduced credit cards to promote customer loyalty, especially the kind of customer who would pay the bill in full each month. The business grew steadily but remained fairly genteel until the 1980s, when a series of state and federal deregulations made it possible for banks to charge more interest and operate nationally. Nationwide marketing opened the floodgates. In 2003, banks mailed out 5.2 billion offers for credit cards. Today more than 75 percent of American families have at least one credit card, which makes it possible to rent cars, shop on the Internet, and buy plane tickets. "You need a credit card," says Terry Savage, the syndicated Chicago Sun-Times financial columnist.

What you don't need, she adds, is the long-term debt. Banks make more interest when people pay over time; that's why minimum payments on credit cards have shrunk to as low as one percent of the total balance. With payments that small, it sounds so easy. But wait: The average college student owes almost $2,800 on plastic, and that doesn't include student loans. If she pays $50 a month, assuming an 18 percent interest rate, it will take her more than ten years to pay off the credit card -- at a total cost of $6,154.

Financial experts agree that personal responsibility could prevent most debt problems; don't spend it, and you won't have to pay it back. But they still put some of the blame on banks, which lure new customers with low rates, then jack up the interest if they're late on just one payment. Many consumers are unaware that banks can raise your rate if you're late paying a completely unrelated bill, such as your mortgage. (It's in the fine print.)

Banks argue that late payments indicate credit risk, justifying higher rates. But in recent years banks have redefined what's risky -- often raising rates and charging penalties if a payment is late by even a few minutes. According to Robert Manning, a noted industry expert, late fees rose from $1.7 billion in 1996 to $7.7 billion in 2003. Officials at the American Bankers Association, the trade group representing the credit card industry, say this: "Lenders use penalty fees as a risk-management tool against customers who mishandle their finances."

Dave Ramsey has seen it all: "When you hear about a 78-year-old widow living on $800 a month in Social Security, and the credit card company lets her rack up $70,000 in debt, there's a lot of corporate immorality there." How much debt is okay? Savage recommends that your mortgage payment plus property tax and home insurance total no more than 40 percent of your take-home pay; Ramsey says no more than 25 percent. If you haven't already consolidated your student loans, do so before June 30: "Consolidation rates are the lowest ever," she says, "and if you agree to have the payment automatically withdrawn from your checking account, they'll usually knock another quarter point off the rate."

Car loans -- up to four or five years at a low interest rate -- are also acceptable. "If you need a seven-year car loan, you're buying too much car," says Savage. Total debt, though, should never be more than half your take-home pay -- and that's assuming you're putting the maximum into a 401(k) before taxes.

As for credit card debt, most experts agree that any is too much. "If you can only make the minimum payment on your credit cards," says Savage, "that's when you know that debt has become your lifestyle." Struggling to keep up with those payments, nearly 9 million Americans seek debt counseling every year.

Sadly, many will wind up deeper in debt -- victims of overpriced schemes that promise to "Pay Down Your Debt!" According to a 2003 study by the National Consumer Law Center and the Consumer Federation of America, many debt counselors are little more than telephone solicitors, raking in high-pressure "donations" from debtors -- as much as $50 a month plus a sign-up fee that can total a month's worth of debt -- in return for making payments and negotiating lower late fees and interest rates with banks.

But consumers can often get just as good a deal by calling creditors themselves. Furthermore, the plans almost never address secured debt like mortgages and car payments. That means a serious debtor could still lose his home or car, even if the credit card bills are paid -- not much of a deal. Five years ago, Dolores and Aldo Porziella of Hyde Park, Massachusetts, were in debt "up to our eyeballs" -- owing $10,000 on credit cards while getting by on Aldo's modest income as a hairdresser. The Porziellas signed on for a debt-management plan with Florida-based Consolidated Credit Counseling Services. For a fee of about $30 a month, Consolidated offered to negotiate lower interest rates on three Porziella credit accounts. But Dolores was looking for even lower rates, and after just one payment, decided to take her business elsewhere. "They may say they're nonprofit," says Dolores, "but I don't think they're in business to help you out." Technically speaking, Consolidated is not "in business" at all; it's a tax-exempt charity. In 2003 the organization reported revenues of nearly $23 million. Some of that revenue was paid to for-profit companies with ties to officers of Consolidated, for bill processing and other operations. Consolidated spokeswoman April Lewis-Parks notes that the company pays under fair-market value for such work. Lewis-Parks also says that the Porziellas dropped out of the program too soon to see results, and withheld information about some of their creditors. "We have over 50,000 clients, and we strive to provide each person with exemplary service." For just $9 a month, the Porziellas switched to Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Southern New England, part of a counseling network endorsed by Terry Savage and other experts. CCCS got the couple's Visa card rate lowered from 20 percent to 6 percent. In December the couple made their last payment on that card. Living debt-free is about more than getting creditors off your back. Knowing you have the financial leeway to weather hardships brings priceless peace of mind to Gary and Sue Cowan. When Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston in June 2001, the Cowans' home was flooded. "We had to leave our house by boat," recalls Sue, who was five months pregnant with her third child. But with their credit cards maxed out at $50,000 and no savings, they couldn't afford the repairs that insurance didn't cover. Six months later, Gary was laid off from his $60,000 technology job. "We were devastated," says Sue. The couple declared bankruptcy. Soon, though, fresh credit card offers began arriving in the mail. "Bankruptcy doesn't mean anything to them," says Sue. "They just jack up the interest rates." With Gary scraping by on a series of short-term jobs and Sue working at a grocery store, the Cowans quickly rang up $30,000 in new debt. Sue admits she was a shopaholic: "I wouldn't buy my kids' clothes at Target," she recalls. "I shopped at Dillard's" -- an upscale department store. The Cowans finally changed their habits, selling off the house to pay debts and committing to living within their means. "There's a mentality in this country that if you can afford the payment, you can afford the thing," says Sue. "Now our attitude is if we don't have the cash, we don't buy it." It's a way of life they're trying to pass on to their kids. "Our 11-year-old has $1,000 in savings, and she even made a donation to an orphanage," says Sue with pride.

Leading by example could be the best hope for a debt-free future. "Right now we're teaching our kids how to be great consumers," says Dallas Salisbury, chairman of the American Savings Education Council. "Spending is like binge drinking, and the comedown can be very harsh. Moving away from the consumption message will take a personality transplant for the nation."

Fruitcake, and it's not even Xmas yet!

Guilty Verdict in Fetus Snatching Case
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Oct. 22) - A woman whose attorneys had argued that she was suffering from delusions when she killed an expectant mother, cut the baby from her womb and took the infant home was convicted Monday.

Jurors convicted Lisa Montgomery, 39, of kidnapping resulting in death in the 2004 attack on 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore.

Lisa Montgomery's attorneys claimed she was in a dreamlike state brought on by stress when she killed 9-months-pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett and cut the baby from her womb. But a jury didn't buy the insanity defense.

The jury deliberated for about four hours before rejecting Montgomery's insanity defense. The jury could have acquitted her outright or found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors said they plan to seek the death penalty.

After the verdict was read, Montgomery dried her eyes and one of her attorneys patted her back to console her.

Stinnett's husband, Zeb, and Montgomery's husband, Kevin, showed no emotion.

Defense attorneys claimed Montgomery was suffering from pseudocyesis, which causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy.

They portrayed her as a victim of severe mental illness whose delusion of being pregnant was being threatened, causing her to enter a dreamlike state when the killing took place.

They also argued that she had post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by mental, physical and sexual abuse in her childhood.

But during closing arguments, federal prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark called the pseudocyesis claim "voodoo science."

She said Montgomery was driven by fear because she believed her ex-husband, Carl Boman, would expose that she was lying about being pregnant and use it against her as he sought custody of two of the couple's four children. A custody hearing had been set for January 2005.

"It's not pseudocyesis or post-traumatic stress disorder," Ketchmark said. "And even if you wrap them up and put delusions around them, it's not insanity."

Ketchmark said Montgomery plotted the slaying and abduction and took pains to cover up that planning after she was caught.

"She knows she's not pregnant," the prosecutor said. "It's no delusion. It's deceit and manipulation."

Montgomery had undergone a tubal ligation in 1990 after the birth of her fourth child. But soon after, she began falsely reporting a series of pregnancies. In 2004, she claimed to be due in mid-December.

Boman had become suspicious of her latest pregnancy claim and threatened to use it against her as he sought custody of two of the couple's four children. A custody hearing had been set for January 2005.

Montgomery's mother and sister also had been telling Montgomery's husband and his parents that it was impossible for her to carry a child.

As Montgomery's purported Dec. 13, 2004, due date approached, she began conducting searches on the Internet about Stinnett and researching different aspects of child birth. The defense portrayed those efforts as evidence that she believed she was pregnant. The prosecution called them proof of premeditation.

Prosecutors said Montgomery used a rope to choke Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant. But Stinnett was conscious and trying to defend herself as Montgomery used a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from the womb, prosecutors said.

Montgomery was arrested the day after the killing after spending the morning showing off the infant as her own in her hometown of Melvern, Kan.

Montgomery's attorneys and a spokesman for Stinnett's family declined to comment. Stinnett's baby is living with her family.

"The only good thing that comes from this tragedy is that little Victoria is a healthy baby and is reunited with her family," U.S. Attorney John F. Wood said.

After initially denying the crime, Montgomery told investigators she had taken a knife, rope and umbilical cord clamp with her to Stinnett's home. Montgomery said she had thought she was leaving the home when "something out of character" happened and "then this took place."

Attorneys are to start arguing Wednesday whether Montgomery deserves the death penalty.

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You see her mugshot??

What reason does she have to be frowned up?

She's still here.

A child has no mother.

Crazy my fo0t, who doesn't have childhood trauma?

The person who says they don't, would be the one to fear!

I say give her the same treatment she gave Bobbie Jo.

Life in prison is too easy--and i don't want to pay for her upkeep!

cutting a baby out of a womb?

yeahhh, she's crazy but she's not deranged.

I hope they stick it to her.

that girl was 23 years old...just starting to live.

*sigh*

OHHHHHH...HE....IS...GOOD!!

*smh*

You know what? If it wasn't for the eyewitness at the hotel, and the police officer on TV, I'd call Junie B a LIAR!! I'd say..."Junie B! don't be hatin' on Bishop T!" I'm telling you, it is my HUMBLE opinion, after viewing this video, that "bishop" has found himself. He exudes a confidence, and assurance that I thought only came from ridin on Junie B's coattail. And we all know neither Junie B, nor her makeup, nor her coattails are within 1,000 ft of "bishop T," ok? Either he has done some type of repentance, or he's got a serious mentor cuz this man seems to be "free!" (I choose "B")

Well, I guess he is free in a sense...he doesn't have loudmouth Junie B around to worry his nerves. If I saw this video(below) before the attack, I would've said the story is made up and HE DID NOT STUMP HER VA-JAY-JAY!! But they say-say he stumped her in her va-jay-, and that's soooooo not o.k.k.k.

Check him out yourself:

Ivent