CitizensTruth

On Monday, Debra Sweet, the National Coordinator of World Can’t Wait / Drive out the Bush Regime, was a guest on the Meria Heller Show. With Meria’s permission, the audio from that segment of the show is posted here.

Debra talks about the coming demonstrations on October 5 that are to take place in over 150 cities across the country and talks about the latest WCW full-page ad in the New York Times [scheduled to appear Wednesday, October 4].

Arnold does his part to keep Americans sick and broke.

In three parts:

1. Terminator kills Californians’ bid for universal health care with SB 840 veto, appears unaware of the difference between socialized medicine and single-payer insurance.

Arnold Schwarzenegger
September 5, 2006

I commend Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s commitment and dedication to providing health care coverage for all Californians, but I must veto Senate Bill 840 because I cannot support a government-run health care system.

Socialized medicine is not the solution to our state’s health care problems.

http ://www.healthcareforall.org/kuehl.html

2. Aetna CEO rakes in annual compensation > $30 million. Now that’s free-market efficiency!

http ://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/12/NBHZ.html

3. According to Census Bureau stats released today, the number of uninsured as well as those slipping into poverty continues to rise.

Today, the Census Bureau announced its income, poverty and health insurance data for 2005. This data shows a serious erosion of income and health care security for working Americans. In this analysis, income and health insurance information from 2005 is compared to that from 2000 - the year before the last recession - to assess changes over the last five years.

The results are bleak: The number of uninsured Americans increased significantly, climbing to 46.6 million in 2005, up 6.8 million since 2000. Compared to 2000, median income is 2.7 percent lower in real terms, and 5.4 million more are living in poverty.

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/apps/s/custom.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=2041963

Satellite photo of fires on Earth
2006 July 26

Homeless Dying with No Escape from Record Heat
July 27
In Phoenix, Arizona, where the temperature regularly tops 100 …

California struggles with heat wave
July 26, 2006
56 possible heat-related deaths reported in California

Power Outage Sends Guard to St. Louis
ST. LOUIS, Jul. 20, 2006
The heat wave has been blamed for at least 18 deaths across the
country in the last week.

Europe’s Heat Wave Claims Five More Lives
July 18, 2006

Utilities Pay Scientist Ally on Warming
Coal-burning utilities are contributing money to one of the few
remaining climate scientists openly critical of the broad consensus
that fossil fuel emissions are intensifying global warming. The
critic, Patrick J. Michaels, is a professor of environmental sciences
at the University of Virginia, a senior fellow at the libertarian
Cato Institute and Virginia’s state climatologist.

Although I am no longer in medical practice, I share with Helen Caldicott the medical opinion that nuclear war is contraindicated for the health of the population. - hws

New Pentagon Doctrine: Mini-Nukes are “Safe for the Surrounding Civilian Population”
by Michel Chossudovsky, February 17, 2006

With Michael Brown in the spotlight again regarding Katrina, it’s time for a recap of some of the headlines:

Katrina investigation gets limited support. The Bush White House is now refusing to turn over Hurricane Katrina related documents or make senior officials available for testimony.

Going back a little…

George Bush Plays Air Guitar While New Orleans Sinks

Veep fishing for solution to Katrina

Condi Rice Shops for Shoes, Works on Backhand

Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist

Brown joked in e-mail as Katrina churned

Barbara Bush: Things Working Out ‘Very Well’ for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans

FEMA

• FEMA won’t accept Amtrak’s help in evacuations
• FEMA turns away experienced firefighters
• FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks
• FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel
• FEMA won’t let Red Cross deliver food
• FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans
• FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid
• FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
• FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck
• FEMA turns away generators
• FEMA “First Responders Urged Not To Respond”

Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker (R-LA) said, after the hurricane, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

by Sharon Sanders

We are now entering the sixth year of a presidency that is the scariest in my lifetime. Scary in the sense, we have a president who has tunnel vision and lacks curiosity about the world around him. He appears unaware of the issues, uneducated and inarticulate, and makes decisions based on his conversations with God. He removes himself from his constituency, has no understanding about the very Constitution that gave him the privilege of being elected, and surrounds himself with like-minded individuals who want to arbitrarily declare war, decide the morals for the rest of us, control our private lives, and see diversity of cultures and difference of opinions as a threat.
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HAVA (Help America Vote Act), the Diebold windfall, comes from the office of Bob Ney (R-OH), the same Bob Ney now embroiled in the Abramoff scandal.
(more…)

TNS Weekend
December 4, 2005

Media Analysis:
Corporate Journalists View Economy Through Bosses’ Lenses

by Brian Dominick

You could barely turn a page or channel last week without hearing some pundit disguised as a reporter or anchorperson beaming about how great the US economy is doing this holiday season. Indeed, recent indicators have offered a delightful early Christmas present to the privileged classes, who define economic health according to corporate profits and volumes traded in various markets.
(more…)

In response to feedback from the grass/netroots, we made some phone calls about placing billboards in locations with greater traffic (ie. Cincinnati). Then this morning, we got a call from Lamar Advertising’s Cincinnati district informing us, “I don’t like negative ads.” It wasn’t any more than twenty minutes later that the phone rang again, this time it was Lamar’s district office responsible for the ad in Portsmouth, Ohio. The message? They were going to deny placement of the billboard because the content was negative. Kos item.

Note Lamar was owned by Clear Channel until after the DoJ demanded divestiture in 2000. There are still plenty of Clear Channel billboards in the Chicago area keeping the discourse nice and safe.

President of the Royal Society to criticize Bush for renegging on climate change commitments.

There is a huge difference between daily fluctuations, and global averages sustained year on year; the difference in average global temperatures between today and the last ice age is only about 5°C.