Quote of the Week

Statement by Jim Robinson Regarding the State of our Free Republic - October 20, 2003

"Then we all thanked God when Bush was finally declared the winner and off to Washington we went to celebrate at the Free Republic George W. Bush Inaugural Ball (I). "Then we all thank God again when after the cowardly attack on our nation by a gang of murderous international terrorists we realize how close we were to complete collapse and national destruction had the socialist U.N. loving Al Gore been in charge. Thank God for President Bush! "And I haven't even mentioned how evil I truly believe the official Democrat Party platform is. Here's a partial laundry list of what the Democrat Party supports and promotes: abortion; homosexuality; feminaziism; environmentalism; government control over every aspect of our lives and society; socialized health care; disarmament of the American people; subjugation of the U.S. to the U.N.; the complete elimination of our national sovereignty; complete destruction of our basic traditional family unit; loss of personal freedoms and individual liberty. In other words, complete destruction of our Constitution and Bill of Rights and our American way of life. "I came to the conclusion several years ago that there is no way this republic can survive if we allow the Democrat Party to maintain control over our government and other institutions. If America is to survive as we know it, Bill and Hillary Clinton and all the current democrat/socialist power mongers who share their philosophy and visions for a socialist America and socialist world must be soundly rejected and defeated at the polls. "And not just at the presidential level. They must be rejected and removed from both houses of Congress and from our State houses and local legislatures. For example, if we cannot remove them from the Senate, then there is no hope for reestablishing a judiciary built on the original intent of the Constitution and the rule-of-law. The liberals and socialists must be rooted out of our congress and our judiciary. Our free republic, our freedom and even liberty itself depends on it. "Just my humble opinion and why I act the way I do. I see the Democrat Party as domestic enemy number one of the Constitution and therefor it is my sworn enemy. And, in my eyes, anyone who helps to elect members of the Democrat party are aiding and abetting the enemy."

Gee, talk about a political spring cleaning. Where exactly do they want us to go? Bermuda?

Which Way to Vote???

36 Reasons To Vote For Bush and Republicans In 2004 - by James Boyne

"If you want to live like a Republican, you have to vote for Democrats" --- Richard Gephardt

SUPPORT THE STRIKES!

Jake Sexton sends Southern Californians, who are tempted to cross the strikers' picket lines, some useful information:

If you're in southern California and are tempted to cross the picket line of striking (and locked out) supermarket workers to get your groceries, here's a list of locations where you can shop and still honor the strike. They're mostly more upscale supermarkets like Gelson's and Whole Foods (who could use a union themselves, I'm told), so the food might cost a bit more. But if you can stick it out a little while, some low paid folks might be able to win against the grocery giants and retain health care benefits for themselves and their families.

In a story related to the California strikers' reactions to unfair increases in healthcare benefit costs, Left Coaster discusses a new poll on the public's feelings about universal healthcare:

And as I posted yesterday, the results of a new ABC News/Washington Post poll taken through last Monday show that Congressional Democrats should hold out for a Medicare drug coverage plan with no gaps. By nearly four-to-one margins, those polled supported a Medicare drug program, even if it meant higher taxes to pay for it. What’s even more eye opening, is the increasing public support for universal health care in the country. By a nearly two-to-one margin (62%-32%), those polled now would support a government-run universal health insurance program run like Medicare rather than our current system. A majority continues to support such a new approach, even if it means longer waiting times for nonemergency visits, or fewer physician choices. And if given a choice of holding down taxes and keeping the current system, or raising taxes and providing such a program, those polled chose a universal system with higher taxes by more than a four-to-one margin (80%-17%).

If you been politically passive up to now, here is an easy way for you to contribute to the welfare of your working neighbor: support the grocery workers' strikes! Besides, you'll discover some really good grocery stores in your neighborhood that actually treat you as a valued customer (and sell some damn good groceries, to boot).

Kucinich on Strike

Well here's a synergy of two events, the So.Cal. grocery clerks strike/lockout and the Kucinich campaign, both supported by Left is Right. Snippet (emphasis added):

Grocery clerks from three chains — Kroger Co.'s Ralphs, Safeway Inc.'s Vons and Albertsons Inc. — went on strike or were locked out of stores from San Luis Obispo to San Diego in a contract dispute involving the cost of health care coverage and other issues. Union members got a boost Saturday when Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich spoke to picketing workers outside a Ralphs grocery store in Venice. "Every worker who's ever had their wage knocked down must support your efforts, and every worker who's ever been asked to sacrifice their health care benefits must support your efforts," said Kucinich, an Ohio congressman. The walkout by grocery clerks coupled with a strike by transit mechanics in Los Angeles has created a spate of problems across the region: Hundreds of thousands of commuters are stranded. Freeways are clogged. Grocery stores are scaling back hours. And the already ailing economy has taken another hit.

Last week Kucinich also gave his support to striking grocery workers in St. Louis who are also trying to retain Health Care Benefits.

Jeanne on Strike

Jeanne d'Arc has some thoughts about the So. Cal. grocery store strike/lockout (snippets):

One little bit of sunshine I've had lately is driving by Vons and seeing the empty parking lot. I suspect a lot of people aren't crossing the picket line not because they support the union, but because it's hard to get caught hurting someone you deal with regularly. The checkers have an advantage other unions don't have. Customers know them. But with luck maybe a few extra people will remember this strike, learn something from it, and remember that crossing somebody's picket line is a cruel act, even if you don't know them. ..... And miracle of miracles, the San Diego Union-Tribune, which has always been a very conservative newspaper, has a surprisingly reasonable article about the grocery strike. This is the first article I've seen that really captures the importance of this strike -- "This is a strike about whether supermarket workers will be part of the middle class or the working poor" -- and acknowledges what two decades of union busting have done to the middle class in this country. The New York Times has a good look at the alternative if this strike fails -- Wal-Mart wages.

Go read the entire post and check out her links to the newspaper articles.

Honestly, we need to get the entire Bush Administration to take this drug daily.

Paxil CR Gets FDA Nod for Social Phobia NEW YORK (Reuters) Oct 17 - GlaxoSmithKline Plc on Friday said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its antidepressant Paxil (paroxetine) CR for treatment of social anxiety disorder. Paxil CR had previously been approved by the FDA for treatment of depression, panic disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Some 10 million Americans are affected by social anxiety disorder, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Paxil CR is the controlled release version of the British drugmaker's top-selling antidepressant Paxil, which is facing eroding sales in the United States due to competition from cheaper generic copycats. The newly patented Paxil CR is not yet affected by generics.

Scientific Breakthrough

Electricity from Water? You bet! Snippet:

Mon 20 Oct 2003 3:00am (UK) Scientists Generate Electricity from Water By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News A team of scientists has discovered a completely new way to make electricity from nothing more than flowing water, it was revealed today. The breakthrough, the first new method of electricity production for 160 years, could provide free, clean energy for devices such as mobile phones and calculators. On a large scale, it could conceivably be used to feed power into the national grid. Dr David Lynch, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Alberta in Canada, where the technology was developed, said: “The discovery of an entirely new way of producing power is an incredible fundamental research breakthrough that occurs once in a lifetime.” A “water powered” mobile phone would contain a small reservoir pressurised by a hand pump. Electricity is generated as the water is released and surges through an array of tiny microchannels. The system relies on the natural “electrokinetic” effect of a fluid flowing over a solid surface. An interplay of forces results in a thin layer of water – where it meets the surface – with a net electric charge. This region is known as the Electric Double Layer (EDL). Normally it goes unnoticed, but the Alberta scientists found that forcing water through a channel with a diameter similar to the EDL produces a flowing current. The amount of electricity generated by one microchannel is minute. But millions of parallel channels can produce enough power to operate electronic equipment such as a mobile phone.

Don't Cross!

Read Kevin Drum's assessment of the Southern California's supermarket strike. Left is Right fully supports the strikers and their attempts to prevent the grocery chain management from screwing the workers any further. Please do not cross the picket lines to shop at these union-busting stores. Support the strikers and, hence, the American working class (i.e. most of us). By the way, independent chain stores like Trader Joe's have great food - check them out.

So, How Does Bush Sr. REALLY Feel About His Son the President?

The Boston Globe has a story about the 2003 George Bush [Sr.] Award for Excellence in Public Service. This year the former President is giving his award to... SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY.

But the news from College Station, Texas, this week -- that the First Father, former President George H.W. Bush, has given his own most treasured award to Senator Edward Kennedy -- is nearly as astonishing. When it was announced (with amazingly little fanfare) that the pugnaciously anti-Iraq war Democrat Kennedy had been awarded the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service, so many jaws dropped all over Washington that usually voluble politicians were only heard swallowing their real thoughts. Since the current President Bush veered away from the real war against terrorism in Afghanistan and went a'venturing in Iraq, much to his father's dismay, just about everybody close to Washington politics has known of the policy schism between father and son. It was politically and philosophically obvious. But people around Father Bush, a coterie of traditional internationalist conservatives who protect him like a wolf mother does her cubs, would heatedly deny any family rift -- and nobody spoke publicly about it. Now it's all out. Father Bush has done it in his own preferred nuanced way -- the way Establishment gentlemen operate -- but he has revealed the depth of his disagreement with his impetuously uninformed son.

For your convenience we've alphabetized the entries in the FRIDAY FUN ARCHIVES links page. Enjoy!

From Buzzflash.com:

First I thought he was holding up someone's hideous-looking foot. Then it looked like his grotesque 4-fingered hand with a huge thumb (thus the anguished look on his face) and a wrist support. But I'll go along with some kind of stone, to which the caption refers.

Daniel Patrick Welch analyzes the potential of Kucinich as a major candidate. Sounds far-fetched? Read his excellent piece. Snippet:

Even white people are getting the message. The Nation ran a piece in May quoting the likes of former Silicon Valley moguls on how they may have changed their minds about the need for unions, limits on corporate power and the like. The Kucinich campaign seizes on one of these transformations, maybe with a little too much hope of Things to Come (but who's to say?), a disaffected voter who, after 22 years of being a libertarian, just switched to Democrat because he finally found "someone to vote for: thank you Dennis Kucinich!" The notion of elections actually reflecting the popular will is at the root of radical democratic thought, and provides the ground on which elements of radical democratic, anarcho-socialist, libertarian and anarchist ideas intermingle. Expanding democracy can only be a good thing. If the people's voice were truly free to be heard, would people really be against such things as raising the minimum wage? Providing health care and education? Limiting the influence of corporations, and the intrusive power of government in private lives?

FRIDAY FUN

Helicopter
College papers
Matrix XP
Killer Butterflies

More Electronic Voting Fraud

So, you still don't think electronic voting is a significant concern? READ THIS. Snippet:

There are two reasons why the United States is rushing to overhaul its voting systems. The first is the Florida débâcle in the Bush-Gore election; no state wants to be the centre of that kind of attention again. And the second is the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), signed by President Bush last October, which promises an unprecedented $3.9bn (£2.3bn) to the states to replace their old punchcard-and-lever machines. However, enthusiasm for the new technology seems to be motivated as much by a bureaucratic love of spending as by a love of democratic accountability. According to Rebecca Mercuri, a research fellow at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government and a specialist in voting systems, the shockingly high error rate of punchcard machines (3-5 per cent in Florida in 2000) has been known to people in the elections business for years. It was only after it became public knowledge in the last presidential election that anybody felt moved to do anything about it. The problem is, computer touchscreen machines and other so-called DRE (direct recording electronic) systems are significantly less reliable than punchcards, irrespective of their vulnerability to interference. In a series of research papers for the Voting Technology Project, a joint venture of the prestigious Massachussetts and California Institutes of Technology, DREs were found to be among the worst performing systems. No method, the MIT/CalTech study conceded, worked more reliably than hand-counting paper ballots - an option that US electoral officials seem to consider hopelessly antiquated, or at least impractical in elections combining multiple local, state and national races for offices from President down to dogcatcher. The clear disadvantages and dangers associated with DREs have not deterred state and county authorities from throwing themselves headlong into touchscreen technology. More than 40,000 machines made by Diebold alone are already in use in 37 states, and most are touchscreens. County after county is poised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on computer voting before next spring's presidential primaries. "They say this is the direction they have to go in to have fair elections, but the rush to go towards computerisation is very dubious," Dr Mercuri says. "One has to wonder why this is going on, because the way it is set up it takes away the checks and balances we have in a democratic society. That's the whole point of paper trails and recounts." Anyone who has struggled with an interactive display in a museum knows how dodgy touchscreens can be. If they don't freeze, they easily become misaligned, which means they can record the wrong data. In Dallas, during early voting before last November's election, people found that no matter how often they tried to press a Democrat button, the Republican candidate's name would light up. After a court hearing, Diebold agreed to take down 18 machines with apparent misalignment problems. "And those were the ones where you could visually spot a problem," Dr Mercuri says. "What about what you don't see? Just because your vote shows up on the screen for the Democrats, how do you know it is registering inside the machine for the Democrats?"

If that's not enough to grab your knickers, then read THIS.

>>>> BULLETIN <<<<

Additional $87 billion for Iraq not needed until next Spring.

OH . MY . god

Bush Administration Also Descending Into Chaos?

Left I points to a Philadelphia Inquirer story about the reactions of Bush to Republican Congressmen who want to "providing some of the money as a loan", the money being the $87 billion for Iraq currently up for debate in Congress. Snippet:

At one point, as he discussed the question of providing some of the money as a loan, Bush slammed his hand down on the table and said: "This is bad policy." When Collins tried to ask a question, the President replied: "I'm not here to debate it." One participant told The Inquirer that some of the senators, particularly those who have never been on the opposing side of an issue with Bush, were "surprised by his directness." It was clear he was not there to engage in any give-and-take, the participant said. Nevertheless, Bush failed to sway any of the pro-loan Republicans. That failure was in sharp contrast to the President's lobbying of House members last week. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican who had pushed a loan plan, backed away after meeting with Bush. "If his eyes had been lasers, mine would have burned out," Wamp said then. "What's most revealing is the extent of frustration taking hold," said historian Robert Dallek of Boston University, a biographer of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy. "It's really reminiscent of Johnson and Vietnam. Members of the Senate... and the media were giving him grief. It sounds like Bush is falling into that pattern. He's blaming the media, much like Johnson did."

APB from Steve G.

Posts by Steve Gilliard yesterday and today are very, very pessimistic about the immediate future of the occupation in Iraq. Unfortunately his justifications are dreadfully reasonable. It looks like U.S. soldiers are going to be caught in a maelstrom of excalating chaos starting at Ramadan. We need to start evacuating our military, our G. I. sons and daughters, NOW, if even half of what Steve says comes to fruition.