The Truth

* Just when you thought there wouldn't be any additional scandals and indictments from the previous Republican state administration, you read the Dispatch:

The manager of an investment that lost $216 million for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation tried to cover up that he previously had been fired from two banks after financial losses, authorities say.

In fact, before he was hired to manage bureau money, Mark D. Lay of MDL Capital Management in Pittsburgh lost nearly $1 million in foreign currency trading at Mellon Bank and nearly $800,000 at PNC Bank during a span of 14 months in 1988 and '89, according to a federal court filing......

....As a result, Lay is expected to face an additional fraud charge today in an indictment to replace the four-count federal indictment filed against him in June....

Here is the concluding paragraph of the Dispatch article, which I have highlighted:

...Lay is among 21 people to face charges so far in a sweeping investigation that started with revelations in 2005 that the bureau invested $50 million in a rare-coin investment managed by Thomas W. Noe.

Taft and his corrupt Republican administration have been out of office for nearly nine months but we continue to hear about the dirty deeds of those employed by Taft and his cronies. Ohioans are paying the price for an administration that concentrated more on getting their friends lucrative contracts than helping Ohioans find jobs. It is no wonder that Gov. Ted Strickland's, a Democrat, approval rating is so high, even among Republicans.

* Just a few days ago, President Bush said that the Anbar Province in Iraq showed the success of the surge (escalation). However, just like everything coming out from this administration about this war, it was not the truth.

Washington Post:

Four U.S. Marines were killed in fighting in Anbar province, and three soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in northern Iraq, the military said Friday.

The four Marines assigned to Multi National Force _ West were killed Thursday in combat in Anbar, a predominantly Sunni province west of Baghdad that has seen a recent drop in violence, according to a statement.

Three Task Force Lightning soldiers also were killed Thursday when a bomb exploded near their vehicle in the northern Ninevah province, the military said separately......

I'm unsure how Bush and his administration measure success. When you look at a comparison of U.S. deaths in Iraq by month, it does not appear that Americans are dying in smaller numbers. One American death is too much and almost 4,000 American military deaths in Bush's Iraq war is awful. Here is a chart provided by ICasualties:

US Deaths By Month:

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2003	0	0	65	74	37	30	48	35	31	44	82	40
2004	47	20	52	135	80	42	54	66	80	64	137	72
2005	107	58	35	52	80	78	54	85	49	96	84	68
2006	62	55	31	76	69	61	43	65	72	106	70	112
2007	83	81	81	104	126	101	79	84	18	0	0	0

When you compare January-August 2006 to January-August 2007, there were more fatalities in 2007 for each of the same months.

It is apparent that the Bush administration is just making up stuff as they go along just so they can continue to sell their war.