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Daily
Kerry photo
by
IseFire
- Wed 07/07/04; 9:03 pm EST
Kerry at play in Wisconsin last week.
White
House trying to keep vets in the dark
by
IseFire
- Wed 07/07/04; 8:57 pm EST
Via Misleader:
according to Knight-Ridder newspapers,
572,000
veterans nationwide "are missing out on disability payments
from the Veterans Administration" even though they are owed
those payments from their service. A large portion of these veterans
are not receiving their payments because they do not know about
them - a situation the White House has tried to perpetuate. In
2002, VA officials were ordered by the Bush administration "to
cease efforts to enroll new patients into its health care system."
The directive said it was "inappropriate" for local
VA workers to attend health fairs, open houses and community meetings
to educate veterans about what their eligibility and to enroll
them in health care programs.
Daily
Kerry photo
by
IseFire
- Tue 07/06/04; 11:27 pm EST
Between now and the Democratic
National Convention in Boston, I'll try to daily
post an Associated Press (AP) Kerry photo. Enjoy.
Anyone
can make a difference!
Or: How a class
of high schoolers stuck it to Tom Ridge
by
IseFire
- Tue 07/06/04; 10:07 pm EST
Wendy Jacques in the next issue of Amnesty International's Fourth
R (yet to go to press) writes in, "Radical Equations: Using
Math to Understand Civil Rights," of Tesha, a high school teacher
who finds ways to integrate human rights topics into her math
classes. Here's a sample:
Following
the 9/11 attacks, Tesha's students examined the Homeland Security
Department's claim that government data systems could identify
terrorists with only a three percent false positive. Using their
high school as a model, the students did the math and figured
out that not only did the claim not make sense mathematically,
but that a three percent false positive would unfairly affect
a huge number of people nationwide. Outraged, they wrote letter
to Congress opposing this type of data system.
This
story is inspiring. Go, Tesha! Maybe there is some hope for the
future of our nation after all.
Bloomie's
shrewd moves
by
IseFire
- Mon 07/05/04; 4:00 pm EST
NYC
mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is showing political savvy--no doubt
steered in part by his brilliant communications director Bill Cunningham--by
bucking
the GOP weeks before the convention here.
This
helps Bloomy's already-rising approval rating in overwhelmingly
Democratic NYC, yet doesn't necessarily hurt his standing with the
GOP. I think Bloomy realizes--and the Congress realizes--that whether
he or Giuliani or Tom DeLay were mayor, the GOP-controlled Congress
wouldn't be giving NYC a fair amount of Homeland Defense money.
The Republican Party, shortsightedly, is simply anti-city.
So, Bloomy figures he might as well score points at home by taking
a hard line against a Congress caring more about Wyoming cattle
than American lives in Manhattan or Brooklyn.
Plame
indictments? Who knows?
by
IseFire
- Mon 07/05/04; 9:10 am EST
Michael
Ruppert recently stated that soon White House officials
would be indicted for blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
One source
claiming to be in-touch with Ruppert said the indictments would
occur by Friday, July 2. But others, like Josh Marshall, have for
months cautioned
about expecting too much of Plame-related indictments. Two or three
other political observers I've spoken to, from a professional to
a dear 50something friend who's been an amateur but fairly shrewd
political observer since his days at Yale fighting for the admission
of female students, have told me they suspect there will be no indictments
at all, or at least none at the White House level.
Regardless, that someone blew Plame's cover is despicable, and that
they did so for purely partisan political gain makes their treason
even more disgusting.
Let's see what happens this week.... If anything.
HAPPY
4TH OF JULY! :)
by
IseFire
- Sun 07/04/04; 4:16 Pm EST
Returning
soldiers' mental illness reaches Vietnam levels
by
IseFire
- Sun 07/04/04; 9:56 am EST
One
in five troops returning from Iraq suffer from post-traumatic
stress disorder.
GOP
consulting group head guilty of jamming Democratic phone lines
by
IseFire
- Sun 07/04/04; 9:36 am EST
Has
it been noted that ALL of the conspiracies and dirty tricks we're
now becoming aware of from the 2000 and 2002 elections (and already
some pertaining to 2004) were done by Republicans? Here's
but the most recent revelation.
Allen
Raymond, former president of the Alexandria, Va.-based GOP Marketplace
LLC
.....
plotted with unidentified coconspirators to jam Democratic Party
telephone lines established so voters could call for rides to
the polls in Manchester, Nashua, Rochester and Claremont. Manchester
firefighters' union phone lines also were affected.
Watch.
Less than half of voters, most of whom with claim Christ as their
savior, (but, apparently, not a behavioral inspiration or model),
will care that this criminality happened. They'll care neither about
Bush's
Saudi connections; nor the documented lies
about Kerry's voting record made by Bush-Cheney '04;
nor Katherine Harris' immoral purging
of voters from Florida voting rolls. No immorality
of thought, word, or deed by Republicans will matter to the 50%
of voters who in the name of Christ have let their very faith fall
subordinate to political conservatism. They get their news from
a biased
media, lack a clear sense of the intellectual
history surrounding our nation's founding, and wallow
now in the filth of cognitive dissonance--terrified of being wrong--which
blocks from their eyes the light of evidence that they, and we as
a nation, have been led astray for four years.
Bush
covets church directories...
by
IseFire
- Sat 07/03/04; 1:36 pm EST
President
Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection
campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn
over church membership directories.
The move is arguably clever yet ethically questionable. Given the
low average response rate for direct mail (1%-2%) and the cost of
printing, postage, and database work, one could also argue that
this move seems desperate.
First, how proprietary are these directories? Many non-profit groups--religious
and non-religious--think of their directories as for the use of
members only. In fact, receiving a directory is often a benefit
of paid membership. In other words, just how public should church
directories be considered to be by a campaign?
What is more, I suspect that even in many conservative evangelical
churches, most members--even though nearly all of them are
likely to be Bush supporters--do not currently receive nor want
to receive political mailings. In my experience, a diehard conservative
is just as likely as anyone else to think of partisan direct mail
as unwelcome junk. Junk mail is junk mail (and spam is spam).
Yet...church-goers are more qualified as likely-donor leads than
segments of the population based on race, region, income, gender,
or age. As USA Today reported, church
attendance is now the single greatest measured
determiner of Republican leanings. (I suspect it isn't. I suspect
self-identification as gay is the single greatest determiner: If
you're gay and "out," you're highly unlikely anymore
to vote Republican. But, sexual orientation as a voting determiner
is still not well measured.)
The less ethically questionable act for Bush-Cheney '04 would be
to request that supporters themselves, not the campaign, write to
the people in the directory. (Let the congregant, not the campaign,
annoy the brethren.)
My
next question: Who will do all the data entry of hundreds of thousands
(millions?) of church members? My guess: the Indian employees of
Delhi-based firms that the task has been out-sourced
to! In other words, the same non-Americans who have made $10 million
worth of campaign solicitations already!
If
you sleep with dogs...
by
IseFire
- Sat 07/03/04; 5:22 am EST
NYC's
mayor, Michael Bloomberg,
has increased his contribution to the GOP's convention to more than
$10,000,000, according to the Daily News.
If you sleep with dogs you're going to wake-up with fleas. It's
idiotic that Bloomberg sends such mixed messages: one minute he
takes action
against an anti-city
GOP that cares more about cows in Idaho than Americans
in The Big Apple, and the next he's cozying up to them again. It's
as if he thinks the record on GOP trustworthiness makes Club Shrub
a good investment.
Nader
the ass
by
IseFire
- Thu 07/01/04; 7:11 pm EST
A
brilliant verification of the commonsensical observation that Ralph
Nader is an egocentric ass, Lisa Chamberlain's article
for Salon.com is a must-read. Some highlights:
"When
[Nader] announced [his candidacy in 2000] at a big gathering in
Washington, I was the first person to stand up and say, 'How can
you say there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans?'"
says Gary Sellers, who was one of the original [Nader's] Raiders.
"There was a big hush in the room. He had no response."
Nader was the best man at Sellers' wedding; they no longer speak
to each other.
While
Nader continues to campaign against corporate abuse, his own record,
according to many of those who have worked closely with him, is
characterized by arrogance, underhanded attacks on friends and
associates, secrecy, paranoia and mean-spiritedness -- even at
the expense of his own causes. If he were a corporate CEO, subject
to the laws governing publicly held and federally regulated firms,
there can be little doubt he would have been removed long ago
by his company's board of directors.
"He
puts himself out there as pure as the driven snow, and he's not,"
says [Nick] Jacobs. "He's paranoid, secretive and manipulative,
at best. It galls me that he talks about how corrupt the two-party
system is when he trashed someone to the FBI who was his best
friend."
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