Wake Up America

...worth 5 mins. of your time...

Economy "up", personal income down

And again I say "the economy" doesn't matter. Every time someone is diagnosed with cancer, the "economy goes up." Every time there is a national disaster ala Katrina, "the economy goes up." Every time we spend more money on bad things, "the economy goes up." Because the economy does not distinguish between spending billions to recover from an earthquake versus spending billions to give all Americans base level health care.

Personal incomes plunged in July while consumer spending slowed significantly as the impact of billions of dollars in government rebate checks began to wane.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that personal incomes fell by 0.7 percent in July, the biggest drop in nearly three years and a far larger decline than the 0.1 percent decrease analysts expected.

Consumer spending edged up a modest 0.2 percent, in line with expectations, but far below June's 0.6 percent rise. When the impact of rising prices was factored in, spending actually dropped by 0.4 percent in July, the weakest showing for inflation-adjusted spending in more than four years.

The July performance for incomes and spending reinforced worries that the economy, which posted better-than-expected growth in the spring because of the rebate checks, could stumble in coming months as their impact fades.

Could we please stop talking about the magical "economy" and start talking about actual measures that really matter: health indices, mortality rates, educated citizens, engaged and informed citizens? I'm sure we can come up with many more valid measures. Like this one

One image says it all...

From WaPo
Let's hear how the "class warriors" spin this chart. Explain to me why we can't raise taxes on multi-millionaires so that we can give a break to the economy and middle class. Go ahead....

Don't know much...

Why is it OK for the Corporate Ruling Class to wage a class war...

but not OK for a Democratic presumptive nominee for President to mention it?

On the sidelines of a pre-convention Sunday event in Denver, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said that the "class war" charge -- often levied to good effect against Democratic presidential candidates -- has jumped the shark. Citing new polling numbers on the economy, which will be released Monday by the Change To Win coalition of unions, Stern told the Huffington Post: "People appreciate that power has been re-balanced away from them -- that economic fairness has come out of balance, and they can't figure out what's going to happen to their kids' [futures]. And so, I think someone saying corporations have way too much power and workers way too little is a message that everyone actually believes right now. And they may not have believed that 10 years ago."

Go ahead, mention "class war" to repubs and watch the steam come out of their facial orifices. "What, what?!?!?" Class war?!?!? Nonsense. We are just smarter than the 'poor people', so we deserve to have more."

When in fact the deck is stacked against those who don't fit the mold of white, male, smart, connected, heredetarily-wealthy. If you're brown, female, below-average intelligence, come from the wrong side of the tracks and/or poor, well, tough luck. It's not the wealthy people's fault. And they don't apparently have any responsibility other than making themselves richer and happier. Sometimes they do that by starting businesses whereby they try to pay as little as possible, have as little regulation as possible, get away with doing things as cheaply as possible and as a side effect, they might actually employ some people. And for that, we're supposed to be eternally grateful and worship at the altar of capitalism.

We're not supposed to complain that the laws are written by the people who pay for them to be written. We're not supposed to notice that money begets money. We're not supposed to notice that a person who is born mentally challenged will likely always be mentally challenged and is therefore consigned to a life of scraping by so as to not end up on the street. We're not supposed to call attention to ANY of that because if we do it's *gasp* CLASS WARFARE! Oh, the poor poor little rich people. How hard it must be to be them with their multi-million dollar per year income and all those mean dirty "little people" calling attention to class warfare.

Doctors have a right to "choice"; Women, not so much...

HuffPo

The Bush administration on Thursday proposed stronger job protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions because of religious or moral objections.

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said that health care professionals should not face retaliation from employers or from medical societies because they object to abortion.

"Freedom of conscience is not to be surrendered upon issuance of a medical degree," said Leavitt. "This nation was built on a foundation of free speech. The first principle of free speech is protected conscience."

The proposed rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors' offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

Abortion foes called it a victory for the First Amendment, but abortion rights supporters said they feared the rule could stretch the definition of abortion to include birth control, and served notice that they intend to challenge the administration.

"Women's ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology," Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.

And again religion trumps science and logic and reason. What of the police officer who refuses to arrest a wife-beater because in the officer's bible, the man is "head" of the household and therefore in the right? Where does it end when you put "personal beliefs" above the law?

"At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?"

McCain: At the moment of conception [and all the way through birth - then, it's on it's own - particularly if it's a child in Iraq or Afghanistan]



McCain is another fundie tool who'll say anything and do anything to get into office where he can do his real job: keeping taxes low on corporations and the wealthy.

Musings on America's lastest terrorist attack

Oh, that's right, when the perpetrator is white and the victims are liberals, they're not called "suicide gunners", right? People who read Hannity

The environment they create through their words is one of scapegoating, the deliberate demonization of other people and their points of view and “thingifying.” It is absolutely no accident that some of the reading matter found in the shooter’s home was “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Just as pre-World War II German and Austrian home libraries had Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to spur on their contempt of Jews, gays, Catholics, “uppity” women, and other “defectives,” our little ditto-heads whip up their hatred with similar bile in our own culture 24/7. Hatred is commercial in the US and is easy to focus on the “other.”

and shoot libruls are not terrarists. Only brown people in other countries are terraists. I keep forgetting.

Check this website before medical treatment

Christian Medical and Dental Association

You can search for doctors or dentists who are members of the Christian Medical and Dental Association. AND THEN RUN SCREAMING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION!!!!

Here's what the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice says about CMDA:

CMDA explicitly promotes evangelism by doctors to their patients and sponsors a program called “The Saline Solution,” a weekend seminar that promises to help doctors “transform your practice into a ministry” and “effectively share Christ with your patients.” CMDA Executive Director Stevens told American Medical News, “We teach our members how to raise ‘faith flags’—signals that patients are welcome to talk about their faith—within the first 15 seconds of a patient encounter.” CMDA claims that 6,000 practitioners have graduated from the seminar. CMDA’s website provides advice for doctors whose evangelism is rejected by patients or colleagues and offers a service to match like-minded doctors in building “groups of Christian doctors.” The association also recruits new members in medical schools and claims to have student groups at 95% of the medical and dental schools across the country.

CMDA is also part of a disinformation campaign to denigrate oral contraceptives and condoms. Medicine and science define pregnancy as beginning with the implantation of a fertilized egg. CMDA uses its own definition—that pregnancy begins at the moment an egg is fertilized—and recommends that doctors consider counseling patients that oral contraceptives may cause abortion. This disinformation campaign may have a direct effect on access to contraceptives. In 1998, then-Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK), an obstetrician, attempted to amend a bill requiring coverage of prescription contraceptives to exclude methods that “interfere with fertilization or terminate a pregnancy,” which would effectively exclude widely used forms of contraception—oral contraceptives, the Depo-Provera contraceptive shot, and intra-uterine devices (IUDs). Coburn also exploited a highly publicized study that said there was a lack of data on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases other than HIV to claim that condoms do not prevent AIDS. Coburn is currently the co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

Um, thanks but I'll take a medical practitioner who works in the realm of science and not beliefs.

Popular Mechanics backs Obama

From the source:

The average consumer could improve gas mileage by 3.3 percent by simply keeping his tires inflated to the proper pressure. For the average driver in the U.S. and his 15-gal. fuel tank, that's a savings of about $2.00 on every fill-up. Figure in the increased tire life from those correct pressures, and this is beginning to add up to a handy sum. Of course, if you—or your mechanic—have been diligent about keeping tire pressures set correctly, you won't save anything, which sounds like rewarding lazy people and penalizing the careful ones to me. But that's life....

According to the Department of Energy, underinflated tires alone cost the country more than 1.25 billion gal. of gasoline annually—roughly 1 percent of the total consumption of 142 billion gal. According to the Annual Energy Outlook 2007, published by the Energy Information Administration, offshore drilling would increase domestic production of crude oil by only about 1 percent.

We opened this discussion with Sen. Obama's assertion that we can offset the need to reopen offshore drilling—and save money at the pump—by keeping our tires inflated properly. He's right

Again. Duh.

Why can't freepin' McCain do a little legwork before he and his minions run around mocking the very types of little things that add up to BIG money? Oh, that's right. He's a republican and counts on the uninformed for their votes.

Stealth run around contraception

The Nation

Another dangerous feature of the proposed rules is that they redefine contraception as abortion. Standard medical authorities define abortion as something that takes place after you become pregnant, that is, after a fertilized egg implants in your womb and sets off a cascade of physical changes in your body. The HHS draft changes all that. It defines abortion as "any procedures, including prescription drugs, that result in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.'" According to these rules, you can have an "abortion" without even being pregnant. (The Pill,emergency contraception, and the IUD mostly work by preventing ovulation and fertilization, but anti-choice advocates argue that they prevent implantation, and it is not yet possible to say with 100 percent certainty that this never, ever happens.) These are the knots we get tied up in when religious ideology replaces sound science.

Don't let the Bush administration take away women's right to get legal reproductive health care in a timely and respectful fashion. Support Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray, who are leading the fight in the Senate by emailing your senators here . Better yet, send them a real letter, on paper. As for Congress, So far only 104 Representatives --fewer than one in four --have signed a letter protesting the changes. Call or write yours and demand that they join you in the 21st century.

Did you get the sneak there? "before or after implantation." So many many human beings (i.e., fertilized eggs) who end up on tampons and "feminine napkins", what of them? Do we have burials? Do we have to report these human beings? I mean the fact that a woman doesn't even know when an egg is fertilized because there's no f(#$*(ing evidence of it (no pregnancy test will confirm it, no physical changes that are measurable occur until after implantation), what of that? Do we treat all women who have sex as "potentially carrying a human being"? This is so asinine. But the Bushies and women haters will stop at nothing to keep women from having control over their own bodily functions. Yes, I know, third trimester abortions should be very rare and for serious reasons. So let's review:

Y2K figures for the US:
58% of abortions are before the 9th week
91% are first trimester

Forced-pregnancy advocates like to carry pictures of aborted third-trimester fetuses - never knowing the heart wrenching stories that led to those abortions; nor caring. As if women would choose to wait until the third trimester to have an abortion on a lark. As if a woman who chooses an abortion doesn't get the difference between making up your mind at week 4 or 5 and week 27. All the while, they know full well that the overwhelming majority of abortions happen long before viability; before brain stem development; before anything that looks near so much like a "human being." A mass of cells on a poster doesn't have near the same "punch" - in Mad-Men-speak.

Anyway, back to the insane proposal above. Why all this deference for health care workers. What if a male police officer doesn't want to arrest a man for beating his wife cause he believes that the "man is the head of the house?" Hmmm, where have I heard that before? Oh, that's right: 1 Corinthians 11:3. What do we do about that police officer? Do we allow him "freedom of conscience?" or do we tell him to do his f#($ing job according to the law and the rules of that job.

Why is this so hard people. Don't want to dispense birth control. DON'T BE A PHARMACIST!!!!!!!!!

And here's Slate's take: prohibition of abortifacients taken to the logical end

Nope, nothing suspicious here

McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

A former FEC official said that it’s possible that the Rocchios had the means to make those hefty contributions — their first reported donations to a federal campaign. But the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that their donations also could trigger a complaint or otherwise catch the eyes of the agency’s enforcement staff, tasked to ensure that companies or wealthy individuals don’t illegally circumvent contribution limits by using employees or other third parties as “conduits” for cash.

Nope, nothing at all. A couple of folks who live in an area whose median income is around $57,000, gave $57,000 to the McCain-RNC committee. Nope. Seems perfectly legit.

Barack Obama calls out Republican Idiocy

Yeah, god forbid we should have anything like efficiency in our energy plans. I mean, what does Exxon Mobile get out of that? Here's Climate Progress' take

This is easily the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee of either party:

* Increase Fuel Economy Standards: Obama will increase fuel economy standards 4 percent per each year while protecting the financial future of domestic automakers….

* Invest in Developing Advanced Vehicles and Put 1 Million Plugin Electric Vehicles on the Road by 2015: As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama has led efforts to jumpstart federal investment in advanced vehicles, including combined plug‐in hybrid/flexible fuel vehicles, which can get over 150 miles per gallon of gas… [more details below]

* Partner with Domestic Automakers: Obama will also provide $4 billion retooling tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic auto plants and parts manufacturers, so that the new fuel‐efficient cars can be built in the U.S. by American workers rather than overseas.

* Mandate All New Vehicles are Flexible Fuel Vehicles

* Develop the Next Generation of Sustainable Biofuels and Infrastructure

* Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard: … The standard requires fuels suppliers in 2010 to begin to reduce the carbon of their fuel by 5 percent within 5 years and 10 percent within 10 years.

Big oil profits are big

AP

Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell said Thursday its net profits jumped by a third to 11.556 billion dollars (7.409 billion euros) in the second quarter owing to record high oil prices.

But please, go ahead and remind me why we can't tax these insane profits at a higher rate? Because we have a surplus? No, that's not it. Because big oil is doing such a favor to humanity? No, that's not it. Because we really don't need the money to fund nurses and fire fighters and accountants to watch over the treasury? No, that's not it. Because big oil spreads the money around big time, especially to their republican friends?
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!