Glibbertysmidgeon

Dear Inauguration Ceremony Donors:

Thank you for your generosity in providing over 40 million dollars to fund today’s gala event.
Can you please send some money to Iraq, so the troops can have some gala armor?

Thank you.

Dear Senator Schumer

I am writing to urge you to please vote against the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales for the post of Attorney General of the United States.

I am very concerned about the kind of message the US is sending to the world by nominating this man to such a high office. If we allow the notorious father of the Torture Memo to take office after the atrocities that were committed by US citizens and troops at Abu Gharib, how can the US seem anything less than barbaric?

In the eyes of the World, this confirmation would be a sign that the US not only perpetrates torture, but embraces and rewards it. Men like Alberto Gonzales should be stopped, not promoted to the highest posts in the land.

Please, sir, vote your conscience. Vote against confirming Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.

Thank you,

Contact the Judiciary Committe

“If I get sick, I don’t want to go to the doctor, I just want to die.” This is my father on health care. He has called me “…just to chat, while I still can.”

Dad hasn’t paid his phone or electric bills in a while, and expects them to come turn it all off any day now. I told my father that I worry, knowing that he lives like this. He assures me that he’ll go out and get a job soon. “The only time I think about money”, he explained with a chuckle, “is when I don’t have any.”

I didn’t find that answer very comforting. Since I didn’t know how to answer, I returned to the topic of health care.

“If only our country provided health care to everyone”, I complained, “Not just the people with good jobs, like Kris.”

“All those countries”, he responded, “like England and Canada and Germany, who have state health care-“

“All the first world nations except the U.S.”, I interrupted sourly

“The rich in those countries”, he continued with an air of pride, “come to the U.S. to get their health care.”

“I’ve heard that too,” I conceded, “maybe we do have the best doctors and hospitals in the world, but what good are they doing for Donna?” I told him about my sister’s mammogram, on which she made payments for most of 2004. What would she have done if it had found something?

Last week over lunch, some friends told me similar health care stories from their friends in France who are fond of complaining about how long they have to wait to get a doctor appointment, and how far they travel to visit specialists.

“But,” I answered, “can’t the wealthy just pay extra to get the best care, like they do here?”

My two friends admitted that, in fact, for people with money, the health care system in France is about the same as it is here in the U.S. “It’s just for the poor that it’s different,” they agreed. “In France, the poor can go to the doctor.”

I tried to explain to my father how frightening it is for me to know that my father, my brother, and my sister are all without health insurance. After working full time while going to college for 8 years, then paying on the student loans for another 10, I finally have a safety net of my own. I have a good job, and my husband has a better one. Kris’ job gives us both health care coverage. He gets paid vacation, paternity leave, dental and vision coverage. But these won’t help me if something should happen to a member of my family.

I picture my father alone in his small trailer house in the bitter Missouri winter. He is sitting in his easy chair with his little dog on his lap, smoking a cigarette in a room lit only by the fire in the woodstove.

How fragile my safety net feels to me with the weight of my whole family, heavy with possibilities, hanging dark over my head.

Today, everyone at Oracle corporation went home like any other Friday.
After the stock market closed, the company announced that it would lay off 5,000 employees.

Oracle said employees would learn if they are out of a job when they open overnight packages delivered to their homes Saturday.

New York Times

Right now, thousands of people are wondering what news tomorrow will bring.
I hope the corporate executives at Oracle will sleep as poorly as all of those families tonight.

Kris is playing songs for me like he used to do when we were first dating.

He sits with his hands in his lap, shoulders relaxed, and his face lit blue by the computer as he listens with his eyes in the distance. Folksy songs and sad songs interspersed with sunny Beatlesy-sounding songs that remind me vaguely of Jan and Dean. A modern Irish folk song. One piece is just the piano, with a brief harmonica solo, and the sound of dogs howling faintly in the distance. Eeerie and beautiful music, subtle and sweet- I’ve never heard of any of these bands. He is showing me a compilation CD he got for Christmas.

“Anne really knows what kind of music I like”

I smile and close my eyes. It’s Friday night, and I am stretched out on the couch letting the week seep out of my bones. It feels good to just be here, letting him take me on a field trip. He tells me about the Irish folk band, The Pogues- how they’re bringing their traditional sound to the younger generation much like the Dixie Chicks are doing with young country fans here in the U.S. If I stay here and listen, he will show me other new songs; Burning Flies by Looper, or a new CD from the Thomas Mapfumo band.

Kris’ taste in music is like his taste in food. His range is tremendous, but his palate is highly specific. He loves hiphop as much as he loves 80’s New Age, folk, pop and country- as long as it’s good. He would no more buy a Spice Girls album than eat at Applebee’s, but he loves the power of Christina Aguilera’s voice, and we do have some Dixie Chicks and Kimberly Locke songs in our collection.

Tonight’s field trip is really good. These songs are fresh and surprising- I wonder where he keeps finding out about this stuff.

Though I live in the largest, most diverse city in the U.S., when I spin the dial on the car radio I get Ashlee Simpson on four stations, and I’ve never heard The Pogues.

“They said if George W. gets elected, our seniors aren’t going to get their checks. That’s what they said four years ago. Please tell your friends and neighbors, George W. did get elected, and our seniors did get their checks. Our seniors will continue to get their checks.”
-George W. Bush
Saginaw, Michigan, 10/28/04

Contrary to his stated position, the Bush administration is proposing to cut Social Security benefits.

These cuts are hidden in his plan for changing the way those benefits are calculated. Today, the size of your Social Security check adapts to inflation. The Social Security Administration uses a wage index to measure how fast worker wages are growing, and then applies a proportional increase to Social Security benefits. This wage index ensures that though the price milk and bread goes up, your Social Security check will still buy you about the same amount of groceries that it did five years ago. Bush wants to change the wage index to one that grows at a slower rate, which means all Social Security beneficiaries- now and into the future- will slowly fall farther and farther behind.

In addition to this sly reduction in benefits, the president also proposes to privatize the Social Security system.

This notion of “privatizing” Social Security really means that we’ll all have to (it will be mandatory) place a portion of our wages into the stock market, rather than paying them toward Social Security tax as we do now. Sure, it’s great for businesses to have all these guaranteed investors, pouring money into their stock each month, but what about the investors? What happens when companies like Enron go out of business, and their stock is suddenly worth zero dollars? Sorry Mr. John Q. Public, but your retirement fund just disappeared.

Conservatives are working hard to scare us all into accepting this plan to privatize and minimize Social Security by swearing that the program is about to run out of money. However, the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds annual report states that Social Security will be safe until 2042.

We have had several such scares over the past 70 years, and have always been able to save Social Security without reducing benefits, or forcing private citizens to risk their savings in the stock market by “privatizing” it, so why republicans declaring a state of emergency right now?

Karl Rove’s deputy, Peter H. Wehner, provides some clues to the real motive behind the rhetoric:

For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win — and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country.

Memo to Karl Rove

What battle have republicans been fighting for six decades? Josh Marshall answers that much better than I can:

Clearly, this isn’t about ’saving’ Social Security. It is a battle to end Social Security and replace with something that Wehner clearly understands is very different, indeed the antithesis of Social Security.

This entire debate is about ideology — between people who believe in the benefits Social Security has brought America in the last three-quarters of a century and those who think it was a bad idea from the start. There is an honest debate to have on this point, a values debate. Only, the White House understands that the belief that Social Security was always a bad program isn’t widely shared by Americans. So they have to wrap their effort in a package of lies, harnessing Americans’ desire to save Social Security in their own effort to destroy it.

Talking Points Memo

We’ve got 37 good years left in the existing system. Let’s not allow these bullies and scare us and rush us into accepting this trojan horse of a plan.

Dear Senator Clinton,

I am very concerned about voting irregularities in Ohio and across the nation. I treasure my right to vote, and believe every person’s vote should count. This is why I am asking you to please support Congressman Conyers in his objection to the Ohio vote count tomorrow afternoon. Without support from senators like you, Congressman Conyers will not be allowed to voice his objections, and we will all be robbed of this opportunity to start a national discussion of the flaws in our voting system.

This is not a partisan issue, nor is it an issue that is limited to this one election. Irregularities, inconsistencies, and errors in state, local, and federal elections across the country are eroding our confidence in our entire electoral system. We need to rise to the challenge now, so we can start making repairs to this essential feature of our democracy.

Please help America start the dialogue that can lead to a stronger, more effective voting system, and ensure the voting rights of all of us.

Thank you,

Patti Aro

What went wrong in Ohio? .
Jesse Jackson on tomorrow’s vote
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