U.S. poverty rate rose in 2004, even as economy grew

Boy, I guess a good ole war doesn't bale us out of recession the way they used to. How much longer will they use that for an excuse?

U.S. poverty rate rose in 2004, even as economy grew

By David Leonhardt The New York Times

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2005



WASHINGTON Even as the U.S. economy grew, income stagnated last year and the poverty rate rose, the Census Bureau has reported. It marked the first time on record that household incomes had failed to increase for five straight years.
The portion of Americans without health insurance remained roughly steady, at 16 percent, the bureau said on Tuesday. A smaller percentage of people were covered by their employers, but two big government programs, Medicaid and military insurance, grew.
The Census Bureau's annual report card on U.S. economic well-being showed that a four-year expansion had still not done much to benefit many households. Median pretax

'We will stay on "offensive' in Iraq", Bush tells troops

I couldn't read the whole article because it made me physically ill, but I have to admit it takes serious Hutzpah too not only claim we are on the "offensive" but to than compare himself to Roosevelt.....Either (for those who asked "which one"?)

BB
No, I didn't include the Roosevelt stuff, you'll have to read it for yourself. Below is just so you can see the direction he is going.
B



By John Marelius
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 31, 2005

CORONADO – With the 60th anniversary of Japan's formal surrender approaching, President Bush vowed yesterday to "stay on the offensive" in Iraq and appealed to Americans growing weary of the conflict to summon the resolve that sustained the nation in World War II.

"The men and women who served in World War II belonged to a generation that kept its faith even when liberty's ultimate triumph was far from clear," the president told thousands of sailors, Marines and World War II veterans at N

War Quotes from Republicans

Quotes from when Clinton committed troops to Bosnia:

"You can support the troops but not the president."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is
they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
--Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may
come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their
life?"
--Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military
might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit
strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will
cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long
they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound
foreign policy."
--Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

Pat Robertson Says U.S. Should Kill Venezuela's Chavez, AP Says

Not very "Christian" of the old fellow, is it?


``We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,'' ...

"Killing Chavez, who is visiting Cuba, would be cheaper than starting a war, "




Let us not forget that Chavez is a democratically elected official who enjoys the overwhelming support of his people.
Ah, no wonder Bush doesn't like him.
"Bush" you say? Why would I mention Bush. Well the above article touches on it and with a little work you can find other articles that can peice the whole picture together. Unfortunately I couldn't find one article that told the whole story. Let us say that it concerns the same commen denominator...Oil.

Conn. Challenges No Child Left Behind Law

Aug 23, 4:11 AM EDT
Conn. Challenges No Child Left Behind Law

By NOREEN GILLESPIE
Associated Press Writer





HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut became the first state to file suit against the federal government over the No Child Left Behind Act, claiming the Bush administration has not provided enough money to pay for new testing and programs.

From permafrost to permatan, Alaska basks in record heat

By David Usborne in New York
Republished from The Independent
Who says global warming is a serious issue?
If Americans are clamouring to beat the heat this summer, they had better not do the obvious and travel to Alaska. For the second summer in a row, the glacier state has been baking under sweltering skies, stirring anxieties about global warming and its impact on the polar region.
August is meant to be a scorcher in Dallas but not in Fairbanks, where temperaturesyesterday were in the mid-80s Fahrenheit (high 20s Celsius). The weather has been clear and hot over almost all of Alaska for the past week, due to an intense high pressure dome that is reluctant to move on.
“This is for real; it is not a meteorological joke,” said Ted Fathauer, who is the chief forecaster at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks. Over the past few days temperatures have topped 90F in some areas of the interior.

The Great American Jobs Scam

By Greg LeRoy
A tax scandal. A jobs scandal. A corporate and political scandal.
Lurking within the records of most cities and states in America there lies a scandal. A tax scandal. A jobs scandal. A corporate and political scandal.
It’s the Great American Jobs Scam: an intentionally constructed system that enables corporations to exact huge taxpayer subsidies by promising quality jobs – and then lets them fail to deliver. The other benefit often promised – higher tax revenues – often proves false or exaggerated as well.

The Parade of Seal Killing Fools

Update from the Farley Mowat – Captain Paul Watson

I have been campaigning against the Canadian seal slaughter since 1975 but never have I seen such a circus as my crew and I witnessed today.

It all began when the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen began to gather up sealing vessels like a mother hen guarding her brood.

These were the sealers who had been pleading for two days to be taken out of the ice.

They began congregating around noon and by 1600 Hours they were ready to be moved out. The Coast Guard had announced that they would escort sealers out of the pack ice.

The Amundsen passed close alongside the starboard side of the Farley Mowat with a string of ten sealing vessels following.

Canadian Seal Slaughter

Some environmental info. that we often don't hear about.

BB

The Power of Sports

Another beautifully well written article by Mumia.

enjoy.

BB

Buying Your Brain With Your Money For War

I recommend seeing the article. Notice the author.

Buying Your Brain With Your Money For War
by George Orwell Tuesday September 17, 2002 at 06:27 PM

Bush Administration Launches Unprecedented $200 Million Propaganda Campaign To Win You Over On Iraq War (using your money to do it!)

George W. Bush and his staff can get any and all media time they want simply by calling up a journalist and saying, "Hey, want an interview?" But the "Bullypulpit" has limitations, all the more so given the FACT that the case Bush and Blair have made is flimsy, at best.

Karl Rove's disturbing background

Rove's historical involvement is frightening for the future of our republic
Exposing Karl Rove
by WAYNE MADSEN

He's America's Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.

What Is The White House Hiding?

WOW! This Administration sure has a lot of papers it likes to hide.


Over the weekend, the White House quietly announced its refusal to turn over John Roberts' documents from his time as Solicitor General under the president's father. Wade Henderson, of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, was quick to respond, accusing the White House of "thumbing its nose at the American people." LCCR is now circulating a petition to urge release of key documents.

LCCR argues there is a "well-established judicial precedent for receiving similar documents from nominees, including materials from the Solicitor General's Office," and cited Sen. Orrin Hatch's position on the issue as support:

"Even Senator Orrin Hatch has sharply dismissed claims of attorney-client privilege by government lawyers, stating on the Senate floor: "No statute or Senate or House rule applies the attorney-client privilege to Congress. In fact, both the Senate and the House have explicitly refused to formally include the privilege in their rules. . . . This body cannot simply take the President's claim of privilege against Congress at face value. To do so would be to surrender an important constitutional obligation."

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Bush Official

The GOP...election tampering!!!! Why aren't we hearing about this in the news?

By JOHN SOLOMON
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 11, 2005; 3:08 AM

WASHINGTON -- Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.



James Tobin of Bangor, Maine, is seen is a Dec. 13, 2004 photo as he arrives at U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H.. Tobin, former Bush-Cheney '04 New England regional campaign director, has pleaded innocent and is scheduled to stand trial in September on federal charges related to a conspiracy of illegal phone jamming in a get-out-the-vote operation for Election 2002. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File) (Jim Cole - AP)
A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone

Similarities?

Does anyone find anything a little strange

Exclusive: CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away

Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border....

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there,

Wife wanted to cuddle; hubby wanted to watch sports

Well, I never thought I would have a link to ESPN on my blog but here you go, or should I say "Here's your sign"


PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- A man who got angry with his wife because she wanted to cuddle after sex when what he really wanted to do was watch sports on television was sentenced to death for killing her with a claw hammer.

Christopher Offord, 30, was sentenced Wednesday by Circuit Judge Dedee Costello, who said the brutality of the crime outweighed any mental problems Offord may have had.

"The defendant struck his wife approximately 70 individual blows after spending a happy interlude with her," the judge said. "Her desire to cuddle after sex does not justify the extremely violent, brutal response of the defendant."

Another campaign fundraising scheme

At least Sen. Crapo is living up to his name.
...sorry, I couldn't resist :-)


There's Always a Way
Exemptions From Ethics Rules Allow Lawmakers to Accept Almost Anything
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

\Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page D01

A lushly produced video on DVD arrived in lobbyists' mailboxes all over Washington this summer. In it, Sen. Michael D. Crapo narrates what amounts to a sales pitch for them to pay $2,500 each to party with him later this month in beautiful Sun Valley, Idaho.

"We shoot all day. We fish all day. We ride horses all day. And then we finish the day with the best barbecue in the West," the Idaho Republican boasts. "Frankly, I think this is the best event in the country."

A center at the University of Southern Mississippi is named for Sen. Trent Lott. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais - AP)
washingtonpost.com Talk
What do you think?
For many years, Congress has regularly responded to the public's anger over the power of moneyed interests by reining in campaign donations and limiting the ways that lobbyists can enrich the lawmakers they're paid to influence. But lawmakers and lobbyists have often found ways to get around the restrictions -- on "soft money," on gifts, on travel and the like. What lobbyists get is extra access to federal decision-makers that average citizens rarely have.

In Congress, the GOP Embraces Its Spending Side

Again please, who are supposed to be the fiscally conservative ones?

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page A01

GOP leaders this week sent House Republicans home for the summer with some political tips, helpfully laid out in 12 "Ideas for August Recess Events." Drop by a military reserve center to highlight increased benefits, the talking points suggest. Visit a bridge or highway that will receive additional funding, or talk up the new prescription drug benefit for seniors.

Having skirted budget restraints and approved nearly $300 billion in new spending and tax breaks before leaving town, Republican lawmakers are now determined to claim full credit for the congressional spending. Far from shying away from their accomplishments, lawmakers are embracing the pork, including graffiti eradication in the Bronx, $277 million in road projects for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and a $200,000 deer-avoidance system in New York.

Judge Roberts.... a liar....naahhh

Another stellar Bush nominee with corporate ties. Wow, this sounds familiar.

Nominee Admits He Registered as Lobbyist

By Maura Reynolds, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. acknowledged Wednesday that he had registered as a lobbyist for the cosmetics industry in 2001 — a fact he omitted on a questionnaire he delivered to a Senate committee Tuesday.

The omission was first reported in Newsday on Wednesday.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Roberts explained that his firm had registered him as a lobbyist because he met with government lawyers as part of his work representing the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Assn. At the time, the association sought to block a proposed labeling regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.