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Monday, August 9, 2004 |
FEATURED ARTICLES
- Ordered To Just Walk Away, The Oregonian
- 9 Million Lost Health Coverage Since 2001, Study Says, MSN Money
- McCain Condemns Anti-Kerry Ad, AP
- The Case Against George W. Bush, By Ron Reagan, Esquire,
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"It's one thing to get trashed by Michael Moore. But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos."
- - Ron Reagan (From today's Bottom Line)
KNOW YOUR HISTORY - August 9th
1945 -- The U.S. drops a 2nd Atomic bomb on Japan. In Nagasaki about 70,000 civilians die immediately. Russia gets Truman's message & the Cold War arms race begins.
1994 - International Day of the World's Indigenous People is proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly. The date marks the day of the first meeting in 1992 of the working group on indigenous populations of the sub commission on the promotion and protection of human rights.
MORE: http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2004/08/08/new29.html
2003 -- Canada: Clayoquot Ten Year Anniversary Gathering. Hundreds of Clayoquot arrestees return to the ancient rainforests of Clayoquot Sound this summer to mark the 10-year anniversary of the largest act of peaceful civil disobedience in Canadian history. 12,000 people participated in the peaceful blockade & 856 were arrested.
MORE: http://www.focs.ca/1newsreleases/030721.htm
RHINO HERE:
In an effort to reach out to fence sitting voters, today's Rhino's Blog has been created to be appropriate for forwarding to your Republican minded friends & relatives. Reasons to not vote for George W. Bush here range from their continuing lies about the Iraqi prison scandal, their mean spirited campaign dirty dealings, their failure to do anything about the millions of US Citizens who can't get decent health care, and a host of other thoughts laid out by Ron Reagan, son of former President Ronald Reagan in today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE. Soooooooooo.... "SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A REPUBLICAN!"
Ordered To Just Walk Away
by Mike Francis, The Oregonian, 8/7/04, via CLG (Citizens For Legitimate Government) www.legitgov.org
"...[A] team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days. In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices -- metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs. The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions. But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 -- Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S.-led invasion."
http://www.oregonlive.com/special/oregonian/iraq/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1091880082213032.xml
9 Million Lost Health Coverage Since 2001, Study Says
MSN Money, via Democrats.com
"The number of Americans with employer-paid health coverage fell dramatically from 2001 to 2003, with about 9 million people losing coverage, according to a national study released Aug. 2. The Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) said the proportion of Americans under 65 with employer coverage fell from 67% in 2001 to 63% in 2003. Public programs such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program took up the slack, preventing a big increase in the number of uninsured." And allowing Bush to conveniently hide just how critical the crisis is. Worse, this means that the "slack" was taken up by those who collectively paid the bulk of the US tax bill: Americans making less than $100,000 per year. "Latinos were the least likely to have employer coverage and the most likely to be uninsured. Employer coverage for Latinos declined from 46.7% in 2001 to 39.7% in 2003."
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Insurance/Insureyourhealth/P91042.asp
McCain Condemns Anti-Kerry Ad
By Ron Fournier, The Associated Press, 05 August 2004
McCain calls ad criticizing Kerry's military service 'dishonest and dishonorable.'
Washington - Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry's military service "dishonest and dishonorable" and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well. "It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me," McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press, referring to his bitter Republican primary fight with President Bush. The 60-second ad features Vietnam veterans who accuse the Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his decorated Vietnam War record and betraying his fellow veterans by later opposing the conflict. "When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry," one of the veterans, Larry Thurlow, says in the ad. The ad, scheduled to air in a few markets in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, was produced by Stevens, Reed, Curcio and Potham, the same team that produced McCain's ads in 2000. "I wish they hadn't done it," McCain said of his former advisers. "I don't know if they knew all the facts." Asked if the White House knew about the ad or helped find financing for it, McCain said, "I hope not, but I don't know. But I think the Bush campaign should specifically condemn the ad."...
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040805_751.html
8:48:25 AM 
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The Case Against George W. Bush
By Ron Reagan, Esquire, September 2004
It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn't hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply. I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, "but not this time." There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the "Orwellian language" flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son's misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people's eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent...
...None of this, needless to say, guarantees Bush a one-term presidency. The far-right wing of the country - nearly one third of us by some estimates - continues to regard all who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid (liberals, rationalists, Europeans, et cetera) as agents of Satan. Bush could show up on video canoodling with Paris Hilton and still bank their vote. Right-wing talking heads continue painting anyone who fails to genuflect deeply enough as a "hater," and therefore a nut job, probably a crypto-Islamist car bomber. But these protestations have taken on a hysterical, almost comically desperate tone. It's one thing to get trashed by Michael Moore. But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos. Does anyone really favor an administration that so shamelessly lies? One that so tenaciously clings to secrecy, not to protect the American people, but to protect itself? That so willfully misrepresents its true aims and so knowingly misleads the people from whom it derives its power? I simply cannot think so. And to come to the same conclusion does not make you guilty of swallowing some liberal critique of the Bush presidency, because that's not what this is. This is the critique of a person who thinks that lying at the top levels of his government is abhorrent. Call it the honest guy's critique of George W. Bush...
LOTS MORE AT: http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/040729_mfe_reagan_1.html
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6:53:56 AM
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