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Republican John McCain delivered his toughest criticism so far of President Bush’s economic policies as he unveiled a new campaign stump speech that promised an energetic fight to reverse his slide in the polls.

The presidential hopeful also was set to unveil new economic proposals of his own Tuesday aimed at helping middle-class taxpayers weather the effects of the U.S. financial meltdown.

“Tomorrow, John McCain will address the ongoing financial and economic crisis, with a special emphasis on those most badly hurt: workers, homeowners, savers and seniors,” campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

In Virginia, a reliably Republican state turned battleground this time, McCain criticized Bush while pledging to enact new policies that would reverse the effects of the GOP president’s two terms in office.

“We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change,” McCain said while campaigning with running mate Sarah Palin. “The hour is late; our troubles are getting worse; our enemies watch. We have to act immediately. We have to change direction now.”

The Arizona senator insisted he understood the public’s concerns about the financial crisis, even as fears about the meltdown have moved voters firmly in Democrat Barack Obama’s direction in recent weeks.

The repudiation of the Republican incumbent’s economic policies came as McCain has struggled to find a message that would reverse his sagging poll results nationally and in some battleground states. Yet, McCain echoed a line from President George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, about Democrats “measuring the drapes” that proved ineffectual for the GOP in 1992 and 2006.

“Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi and Sen. (Harry) Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq,” McCain said, targeting the prospect of one-party government with references to the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush told a Houston rally when he went to the Oval Office he expected to find Democratic candidate Bill Clinton “there measuring the drapes. Put those drapes on hold, it’s going to be curtain time.” Clinton unseated Bush.

In October 2006, President George W. Bush said congressional Democrats “were measuring the drapes” and planning to take control of Congress. A month later, Democrats won the House and Senate.

McCain acknowledged Obama’s lead in the polls. “The national media has written us off,” McCain added. “But they forgot to let you decide.”

“What America needs in this hour is a fighter,” he said, adding that he knew Americans were worried about the direction of the country.

“I know what hopelessness feels like. It’s an enemy who defeats your will. I felt those things once before. I will never let them in again,” McCain said, a clear reference to his 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “I’m an American. And I choose to fight.”

He renewed his pledge to freeze federal spending, renegotiate distressed mortgages to help middle class homeowners, and cut taxes. He also vowed to bring more experienced leadership to the White House, because “the next president won’t have time to get used to the office.”

McCain compared Obama to Herbert Hoover, the Republican who was president when the stock market crashed in 1929 triggering the Depression.

“The last president to raise taxes and restrict trade in a bad economy as Sen. Obama proposes was Herbert Hoover. That didn’t turn out too well,” McCain said. “They say those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Well, my friends, I know my history lessons, and I sure won’t make the mistakes Sen. Obama will.”

In fact, Obama’s tax plan calls for reductions for people making less than $200,000 a year.

McCain’s retooled pitch comes as Republican campaign veterans say he needs to do more than just attack Obama in an economic environment that favors Democrats.

Obama leads in enough states to be within reach of the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory while McCain is being forced to defend Republican turf where polls show the race close. That’s partly because of Obama’s well-funded onslaught of TV ads and extensive network of field troops registering and canvassing voters; McCain trails on both fronts.

It was a measure of McCain’s troubles that he was campaigning Monday, just three weeks before the election, in Virginia and later in North Carolina. Virginia hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1964, North Carolina since 1976.

McCain’s visit to North Carolina was his first in six months, while Obama has spent considerable time and resources in the state. President Bush twice won North Carolina by double-digit margins.

The state’s May primary was expected to be an afterthought, but Obama’s extended race with Hillary Rodham Clinton for the nomination helped drive a boom in Democratic voter registrations. Since Jan. 1, new voter registrations in North Carolina have favored Democrats nearly 4-to-1.

Introducing McCain to the Virginia crowd, Palin sought to temper the sometimes volatile outbursts from supporters against Obama that marked the ticket’s rallies last week and incited the crowds.

When supporters started chanting “No-Bama, No-Bama,” Palin jumped in to say voter anger was driven by economic woes.

“There’s anger about the insider dealing of lobbyists. Anger about the greed on Wall Street. Anger about the arrogance of the Washington elite,” she said.

President Bush will make a statement Friday on the status of congressional negotiations on the $700 billion rescue plan for the U.S. financial markets.

The president’s statement follows late-night talks on Capitol Hill that pitted Democrats against Republicans who are not going along with the president’s proposal.

On Thursday, the president hosted a historic meeting at the White House on the financial crisis. It included not only Hill leaders but presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama as well. But that meeting was divisive, and more talks will have to be held in Congress.

he gunman in Finland’s latest school shooting likely bought his gun in the town where a teenager went on another rampage less than a year ago, police said Wednesday, adding to the growing list of eerie similarities between the massacres.

Matti Saari, 22, bought a .22-caliber gun at a store in Jokela, about 155 miles from his home, and on Tuesday killed 10 people and himself, police said. Last November, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen likely got his gun at the same store and went on to kill eight people and himself, they said.

The lead investigator said the shootings were so similar that the gunmen might have been in contact with each other.

“Their actions seems so similar that I would consider it a miracle if we did not find some connecting link,” Jari Neulaniemi was quoted as telling the Finnish news agency STT. But authorities did not know whether Saari went on his rampage to copy Auvinen’s earlier shooting.

Police said the two men likely bought the guns at the same store, but declined to say how they knew.

Earlier, police detailed the similarities between the two rampages: Both gunmen posted violent clips on YouTube before the shootings, both were fascinated by the 1999 Columbine school shootings in Colorado, both attacked their own schools and both died after shooting themselves in the head.

On Wednesday, the government pledged to tighten Finland’s gun laws and keep mentally unstable people from obtaining firearms. The move came a day after Saari opened fire at a vocational college, killing 10 people — including eight female students — before shooting himself in the head.

Police said there was no indication that women were specially targeted, they just made up the majority of students at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, 180 miles northwest of Helsinki.

On a visit to the college, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said it was time to consider restricting access to guns in a country with more than 1.6 million firearms in private hands.

“We need to study if people should get access to handguns so freely,” Vanhanen told reporters. “I’m very, very critical about the guns and during next few months we will make a decision about it.”

Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said the government was working on a proposal to restrict gun laws by giving police greater powers to examine gun applicants’ health records. Saari acquired a permit for his weapon in August, police said.

“(Police must) have the best possible information on the state of health of the applicant when deciding on the license,” Holmlund said.

Finland has deeply held hunting traditions and ranks — along with the United States — among the top five nations in the world when it comes to civilian gun ownership. After the previous massacre, the government had pledged to raise the age for buying a gun from 15 to 18 but never did so.

The government also called for an investigation into police handling of the case. After an anonymous tip, police had questioned Saari on Monday about YouTube clips that showed him firing a handgun. But he was released after questioning because police said they found no reason to hold him.

“We will obviously investigate what the foundation was for the decision to let him keep his weapon,” Vanhanen said.

Police were searching for a person who appeared to have filmed some of Saari’s YouTube clips but added there was no indication Saari had an accomplice. A video clip Saari posted on the Internet showed him pointing his gun to the camera and saying “You will die next” before firing four rounds.

In Kauhajoki, a town of 14,000 people, flags flew at half-staff for a national day of mourning. Grieving residents placed candles and flowers outside the school.

The National Bureau of Investigation said those killed were eight female students, one male teacher and one male student. Doctors said a 21-year-old woman that Saari shot in the head had two operations and was in satisfactory condition Wednesday.

Neulaniemi said there was no indication that Saari had singled out women and added he probably knew all those he killed, since most students were from the local area.

“Most of the students in this institution are female,” Neulaniemi said, explaining the high number of women killed.

Witnesses said panic erupted at the school, which offers courses in catering, tourism, nursing and home economics, as the masked gunman entered Tuesday and opened fire. He carried a bag of flammable liquids that he used to start a fire and burn some of the bodies.

Neulaniemi said Saari “really went out with the intention of killing,” leaving a message saying he wanted to kill as many people as he could. “He tried to shoot fatal shots,” he said.

John Edwards‘ political action committee paid his mistress $14,000 after she stopped working for it to obtain 100 hours of unused videotape shot for his unsuccessful presidential campaign, an associate told The Associated Press on Thursday. She already had been paid $100,000 for the programs.

The explanation — which Edwards’ advisers declined to discuss on the record — is the first effort to justify the payment in April 2007 to the woman, Rielle Hunter. That payment came months before Edwards’ chief fundraiser quietly began sending money himself to the pregnant woman.

Edwards last week acknowledged he had an affair with Hunter in 2006. The former Democratic presidential contender and senator from North Carolina has denied any knowledge of those payments to Hunter from Fred Baron, Edwards’ national finance chairman and a wealthy Dallas-based trial attorney. Baron also has described his payments to Hunter as a private transaction.

But the $14,000 payment to Hunter is significant because its source was Edwards’ OneAmerica political action committee, whose expenditures are governed by U.S. election laws. Willfully converting money from a political action committee for personal use would have been a federal criminal violation.

An associate of Edwards, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the $14,000 was paid to Hunter only after she relinquished about 100 hours of cutting-room floor videotape excerpts that were not part of four short Web videos she had produced in 2006 while working for Midline Groove Ltd.

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Taxpayer Assistance Centers

A more personalized approach is provided by taxpayer assistance centers. Should you wish to consult with a person instead of going on line or listening to pre-recorded voice messages, professionals in the TACs are available to render assistance in the preparation of your income tax returns and to answer any other questions you might have.

Community Volunteer Resources

Programs such as the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Tax Counseling for the Elderly, in cooperation with the IRS, offer free tax preparation services in various communities. These services are available to taxpayers with low to moderate income.

1. Absolutely!!

2. No. The President needs to be intelligent and powerful enough not to be a puppet.

3. Nope.

4. Oh my god no. She is the freakiest person I ever heard of. She makes absolutely no sense when she talks. She speaks in that government speak and does not make any sense. Have I mentioned she makes no sense?

5. Possibly, a black woman being president would be GREAT, but I don’t think there’s a chance she would ever run. She does seem to agree with EVERYTHING Bush does, other than that I think she could handle the job.

6. From what I have seen of her, I would seriously consider her as a viable candidate.

7. I would sooner vote for Condie than for Hillary

8. Helllllllllllllllllllllll Nooooooooooooooooooo!

9. It depends on who she ran against but she is definitely very highly regarded by me.

10. nope…no way …not a frig’n shot, she’s as bad as bush and darth cheney

11. Possibly, yes. IMHO, she’s the most qualified woman in America. However, she has never held an elected position in government. I say that she’d be a good VP running mate for the republican party … that would get Hillary’s and the democrat party’s panties in a bunch!

12. I would vote for her before I would Hillary Clinton. And with the way she handling foreign relations and the mid-eastern peace talks I think she would make a good president.

13. Maybe, depend on the other choice

14. She was so weak as the national security adviser and the Secretary of state that Donald Rumsfeld and the defense department bullied their way in to dictating what state department policy should be.

She would be a weak president.

15. depends on her stances and ideals, but i wouldn’t out right rule it out.

16. You bet. It’s nice to have a leader with class. And she’s tough and is a good speaker.

Joey, what a great idea!

17. No, since I never voted for her in anything in the first place. I want to know who the People get to nominate? All we get is a premade selection of choices that I would never make in the first place.

Theodore Roosevelt bull moose/republican party.

People’s opinions on what defines relevant news varies, and objective presentation, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Hyperbole is maligned by some, praised by others. It’s less a matter of what is objective than it is of who can determine what is objective.

Journalists have the duty to seek and present the truth, so inherently they must question authority, but their questioning must be based on contrary information, or to inquiry about verification. Challenging authority should never be about egos. Illegitimate questions come at the expense of integrity.

A) Ships always have reserve personnel on board to cover for any sudden shortage - and there are always three shifts so that things can run 24/7.

B) Aircraft carriers are not merely seaborne platforms for landing planes - they are floating cities. Think about it - a ship at sea needs to be completely self-sufficient. There are crews onboard to desalinate the water coming onto the ship and crews to clean the water leaving the ship. There are crews to run the generators to power the ship and crews to run the reactors to power the engines and crews to run the steam engines that power the catapults. There are galley crews to make the food and galley crews to clean the dishes and galley crews that ration out the food that’s onboard. There are tailors to fix uniforms and exchanges that sell sundry goods that the people onboard might need. And that’s even before we start talking about the people who run the bridge and the people in the engine rooms and the pilots and the flight crews and the airplane mechanics and the rescue chopper crews…

As you can see, the list goes on and on. The real marvel is that they manage to make the ships run with ONLY 5000 people onboard.