"Now it's 2007 and in my opinion, good US manufacturing and engineering jobs are all but gone - thanks to corporate greed.

"Not only that, but now our political leaders on both sides of the aisle, including the man which the Electoral College put in the office of President, are making statements that they need to legally bring in cheap foreign labor to do the jobs that American workers will not do.

"Bull#$%&$@ - what these greedy corporations and now their political mouthpieces really mean is that the American worker won't do those jobs for the meager wages that they want to pay to keep their fat profit margins.

"If these political and industrial leaders don't wake up soon, our country WILL be a 3rd world economy with us begging for help from those very countries that got our jobs - just as I had predicted."

Wallace Krebs [Wallacek@sealevel.com] has been "jonesing" for an iPhone:

"After reviewing the 20 minute demo video on the Apple website, the major thing holding me back is the fact that the battery is not user replaceable and that you're essentially paying $600 for an iPod Nano.

"If they had an SD expansion slot, I'd be one of the nuts standing in line to buy the first model. I love the integration with Google and for me (an existing AT&T customer), it's only $20 a month extra.

I'm not signing a two-year agreement to get an iPhone either. They either offer a one-year, or I'll wait until they do.

"Maybe I will wait for the generation 2 model, when they fix some of the quirks. Apple has definitely raised the bar on what a mobile phone should be. Sure there are phones that do what the iPhone does, but no one does it with the level of elegance and simplicity."

David Huffman [david.huffman@us.abb.com] made this comment regarding US Congressional lobbying and corruption:

"Congress is a key part of the problem. If the individuals in Congress would resist the temptations of the money and power and just do what the people voted them in to office to do, then perhaps a lot of the problems would go away.

"The Office of the President of the US today is a problem, and I suspect will continue to be a problem even after the 2008 elections regardless of who wins. But Congress has the power to begin to fix things internally by creating term limits, making lobbying illegal, and enacting a long list of other internal fixes. But who will do that?"