News From The Progressive States Of America
4/8/05
What was, was. What will be is up to us.
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This newsletter is from Freedom Strategies, Inc.,
an exciting new enterprise dedicated to searching the globe for important
underreported news and neglected commentary that significantly affects the
nation and the world, and seeks to raise awareness and promote discussion of
those issues.
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Right now, all the world leaders are headed to
Rome. President Bush flew to the Vatican today, and he told reporters he had
tremendous respect for Pope John Paul II. Then, here's the bad part, Bush
added, 'I was also a big fan of his dad, Pope John Paul I." --Conan O'Brien
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Bush, Congress Losing Appeal For Public, Poll
Finds
Will Lester, Associated Press
April 8, 2005 BUSHPOLL0409
http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5337387.html
WASHINGTON - —
President Bush's standing with the public is slumping just three months into
his final term, but Americans have an even lower regard for the job being
done by Congress.
Bush's job approval is at 44
percent, with 54 percent disapproving. Only 37 percent have a favorable
opinion of the work being done by the Republican-controlled Congress,
according to an AP-Ipsos poll.
Bush's job approval was at 49 percent in January,
while Congress was at 41 percent. "This is a pretty sour spring,'' said
Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion analyst at the conservative-leaning American
Enterprise Institute. "People are not very impressed by what Bush is doing
or by what Congress is doing —
Democrats or Republicans.''
Record high gasoline prices, nervousness about
the future of Social Security, the ongoing Iraq war and the Terri Schiavo
case are all contributing, political analysts said. Republicans in Congress
and the president moved quickly during the Easter recess to approve
legislation intended to prolong the life of Schiavo, the brain-damaged
Florida woman who died after her feeding tube was disconnected.
The number supporting Bush's handling of some
domestic issues dipped between March and April, to 42 percent for the
economy and 38 percent for issues like education and health care, according
to the poll conducted for The Associated Press by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
Support for the president's approach to his top
domestic priority, Social Security, remained at 36 percent, while 58 percent
oppose it.
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Note - - - No amount of bad news in the polls
seems to stop the Republicans from attempting to implement their regressive
programs.
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Too Sad To Be Funny
From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "The only
real way to fix Social Security is, over the long haul, to convert this
socialist wealth-redistribution scheme into a free-market, wealth-creation
program. And the best place to start is with the modest private accounts the
Bush administration proposes."
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"President Bush's approval is at an all-time low
of 45 percent. He's very concerned about this. In fact he's trying to get it
back up. He even asked Condoleezza Rice for a list of small countries that
don't have weapons of mass destruction that we can invade." --Jay Leno
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This is a prime example of local actions
reflecting upon a crucial national issue.
Voting Machines: The Next Generation
David Kogelman
President, Freedom Strategies
New York is poised to make a decision in the next
month on what kind of voting machines we will use in the future, electronic
touch screen voting machines that produce a voter verifiable paper trail or
easy to use paper ballots with a precinct based optical scan reader to count
the ballots.
Many problems with electronic touch screen voting
machines were reported wherever they were in use during the presidential
election, including lost votes and having George Bush's name light up when
touching the screen for John Kerry. And, the manufacturer's proprietary
software and willful refusal to produce a voter verifiable paper trail made
a meaningful audit or recount impossible.
Nevertheless, the voting machines bill recently
passed by the State Senate provides for the use of these machines without
meaningful controls to prevent their misuse, and makes no mention of systems
using paper ballots with an optical scan reader. In contrast, the Assembly
bill allows for both types of machines to be adopted.
The reason for the Senate basically giving the
electronic touch screen machine manufacturers a pass on meaningful oversight
and audit capability remains shrouded in mystery, but may well have
something to do with the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars
spent on lobbyists by the machine manufacturers.
The whole article can be found at
http://freedomstrategies.org/prepub/voting_rights.htm
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Whether you love or hate her, a hilarious Hillary
cartoon Contributed by a Progressive reader. Go to:
http://i.euniverse.com/funpages/cms_content/6660/2008cc1.swf
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Give them some credit
http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/plugin/template/dmi/ProgBlog/*
Resume, cover letter, references
-- credit history? According to the Houston Chronicle there's a growing
trend of employers using credit checks when evaluating a potential new hire.
In fact, according to a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource
Management, the number of employers digging into the financial history of
would-be employees jumped to 35 percent in 2003, from 19 percent in 1996.
Experts contend that employers are concerned
about overdue bills, high debts and other financial problems because "people
who are broke may be tempted to commit fraud not only against their own
employer, but potentially against their clients, employers fear.
They also could be unreliable and irresponsible,
private and government employers figure." Of course, many could just be
struggling to meet the rising cost of basic necessities in the face of
falling wages.
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"The nation's second-largest oil company, Chevron
Texaco, announced it was buying rival Unocal Corp. A spokesman for Chevron
Texaco, which made a $13 billion profit last year, says the new company will
be called 'Bend Over, America.'" --Dennis Miller
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Delta Gives CDC Passenger Data To Stop Disease
Spread
http://www.wftv.com/health/4355491/detail.html?rss=orlc&psp=health
Airline To Provide Lists On Test Basis
WASHINGTON -- Although privacy experts worry
about the government gathering personal information on airline travelers,
Delta Airlines is handing over electronic lists of passengers from some
flights to help stop the spread of deadly infectious diseases. The lists
will allow health officials to notify more quickly those travelers who might
have been exposed to illnesses such as dengue fever, flu, plague, SARS and
biological agents, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told a
congressional panel on Wednesday.
"The government is seeing that massive amounts of
data can be useful for any number of purposes," said Marcia Hofmann, an
attorney for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "There need to be
some regulations or restrictions on how airlines can share passenger
information like this."
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Note: Look to the government to use the recent
deadly outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever in Angola to add this issue
their legislative agenda. More to the point would be for the United States
to contribute the 3-4 million dollars the UN needs to contain this disease.
http://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/disease/marburg_virus_disease/en/
Better 3-4 million now than billions later if
this outbreak spreads.
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THE GOLD TOILET
Before the 2001 inauguration of George Bush,
George was invited to a get acquainted tour of the White House after
drinking several glasses of iced tea, he asked Bill Clinton if he could use
his personal bathroom. When he entered Clinton’s private toilet, he was
astonished to see that President Clinton had a solid gold urinal. That
afternoon, George told his wife, Laura, about the urinal. “Just think,” he
said, “when I am president, I could have a gold urinal too. But I wouldn’t
do something that self-induligible!”
Later when Laura had lunch with Hillary at her
tour of the White House, she told Hillary how impressed George had been at
his discovery of the fact that, in the President’s private bathroom, the
President had a gold urinal.
That evening, when Bill and Hillary were getting
ready for bed, Hillary smiled, and said to Bill....
“I found out who peed in your saxophone.”
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Tom DeLay's Corruption Disqualifies Him from
Leadership
Help His Colleagues Choose Decency over DeLay
DeLay's multiple ethics offenses make him unfit
to lead in the U.S. Congress. Does your representative support Decency, or
DeLay? Ask them to SPEAK UP NOW.
The U.S. Congress is perhaps the most potent
image of representative democracy in the world. Yes, sometimes its members
fail to act wisely, and sometimes they don't live up to our ideals. Still,
those two chambers filled with the delegates of the people are the heart of
what our country is about.
House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom
DeLay has dishonored the people's house. His pattern of unethical and
illegal behavior is an offense to democracy itself, and he must step down
from his leadership post. Ask your Representative to stand up against Tom
DeLay's abuses. Just go to:
mailto:http://www.kintera.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=irKQL0NSE&b=490463&action=2081&template=x.ascx
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"The Reverend Jerry Falwell is feeling much
better after being in the hospital last week. He's doing much better. Today,
doctors upgraded him from critical to judgmental." --Jay Leno
"Actually, there was one kind of embarrassing
moment when the doctors asked Jerry Falwell if he had an HMO. He said, 'No,
I condemn that lifestyle.'" -- Jay Leno
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Top Stories - USATODAY.com
Key Iraq wound: Brain trauma
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&e=1&u=/usatoday/20050304/ts_usatoday/keyiraqwoundbraintrauma
A growing number of U.S. troops whose body armor
helped them survive bomb and rocket attacks are suffering brain damage as a
result of the blasts. It's a type of injury some military doctors say has
become the signature wound of the Iraq war.
Known as traumatic brain injury, or TBI, the
wound is of the sort that many soldiers in previous wars never lived long
enough to suffer. The explosions often cause brain damage similar to
"shaken-baby syndrome," says Warren Lux, a neurologist at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington.
"You've got great body armor on, and you don't
die," says Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed. "But there's a
whole other set of possible consequences. It's sort of like when they
started putting airbags in cars and started seeing all these orthopedic
injuries."
The injury is often hard to recognize - for
doctors, for families and for the troops themselves. Months after being
hurt, many soldiers may look fully recovered, but their brain functions
remain labored. "They struggle much more than you think just from talking to
them, so there is that sort of hidden quality to it," Lux says.
To identify cases of TBI, doctors at Walter Reed
screened every arriving service member wounded in an explosion, along with
those hurt in Iraq or Afghanistan in a vehicle accident or fall, or by a
gunshot wound to the face, neck or head. They found TBI in about 60% of the
cases. The largest group was 21-year-olds.
From January 2003 to this January, 437 cases of
TBI were diagnosed among wounded soldiers at the Army hospital, Lux says.
Slightly more than half had permanent brain damage. Similar TBI screening
began in August at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., near
Washington. It showed 83% - or 97 wounded Marines and sailors - with
temporary or permanent brain damage. Forty-seven cases of moderate to severe
TBI were identified earlier in the year.
The wound may come to characterize this war, much
the way illnesses from Agent Orange typified the Vietnam War, doctors say.
"The numbers make it a serious problem," Lux says.
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Paraphernalia
http://www.cafepress.com/politicaldaze
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