Collective Sigh

GEORGE Bush has banned Camilla Parker Bowles from the White House - because she is a divorcee.

The unprecedented snub has effectively sabotaged Charles's plan to take his bride on a Royal tour of America later this year.

The trip would have been the pair's first official tour as a married couple.

But the US President - a notoriously right-wing Christian and reformed alcoholic - told aides it was "inappropriate" for him to be playing host to the newly-weds, who are both divorcees.

The decision was made even though the late President Ronald Reagan was divorced.

A Government insider said: "It was relayed to us from Washington that Mrs Parker Bowles would not be welcome at the White House.

"The Americans are aware that the visit will be subject to a lot of media attention and did not want the President drawn into what they view to be a public relations exercise.

As George W. Bush was first moving onto the national political stage, he often turned for advice to an old friend who secretly taped some of their private conversations, creating a rare record of the future president as a politician and a personality.

In the last several weeks, that friend, Doug Wead, an author and former aide to Mr. Bush's father, disclosed the tapes' existence to a reporter and played about a dozen of them.

Mr. Wead said he recorded his conversations with the president in part because he thought he might be asked to write a book for the campaign. He also wanted a clear account of any requests Mr. Bush made of him. But he said his main motivation in making the tapes, which he originally intended to be released only after his own death, was to leave the nation a unique record of Mr. Bush.

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Bill would require all Californians to have insurance

If you drive a car, the law requires you to have auto insurance. By the same token, shouldn't the state also force you to have health insurance?

That's the thinking behind legislation expected to be introduced this week that would require Californians to carry basic health insurance. Those who failed to comply would have their wages garnisheed or lose their tax refunds.

The bill's authors, Assemblymen Joe Nation, D-San Rafael, and Keith Richman, R-Northridge (Los Angeles County), hope a mandate will reduce cost burdens both on those who are already insured and on the doctors and hospitals that care for the uninsured.

"We believe a basic level of health care is a right, but we also believe it's a responsibility of individuals to take care of themselves and not be in a position where they require society to pay for the cost of their emergency room visit," Nation said.

Instead of making employers pick up the health insurance tab, the bill by Nation and Richman would put the responsibility on individuals.

While Nation acknowledged that affordability is a key problem, he also said that many young people don't have insurance because they think they can get away without it.

Unlike single-payer plans, such as one proposed by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, Nation and Richman's approach relies greatly on the insurance industry. Their plan addresses the affordability issue by streamlining the enrollment process for government health programs for the poor, including Medi-Cal and Healthy Families.

In addition, it would provide subsidies to help low-income people who do not qualify for Medi-Cal buy insurance.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible White House candidate in 2008, joined 2004 nominee John Kerry and other Democrats Thursday in urging that Election Day be made a federal holiday to encourage voting.

For President Bush Social Security reform tops a busy second-term agenda, but yesterday's stop on his campaign-style reform push brought little more than a collective ho-hum from Granite Staters.

White House aides collected empty chairs in an echoing Pease International Tradeport hangar before Bush took the stage since only about half of the 2,000 free tickets were taken.

"Certainly the personal account doesn't fix the system. There needs to be better reforms, more meaningful reforms than that."

A new study based on more than three decades of U.S. data suggests that giving flu shots to the elderly has not saved any lives.

Most of the 36,000 people who die each year of flu-related causes are elderly and the nation's strategy has focused on getting shots to them, as well as other high-risk groups.

if 70 per cent of schoolchildren were vaccinated, the elderly would be protected without flu shots. The strategy would require 42 million doses of flu vaccine. Even during this season's shortage, there were 57 million doses available.

U.S. intelligence officials warned Wednesday that the threat of al Qaeda or other terrorist groups attacking the United States was still imminent and likely would be in the form of a car bomb or other low-tech weapon.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday Syria was "unfortunately on a path right now where relations are not improving, but are worsening."

Rice did not blame Syria for Monday's bomb attack that, but she did challenge Syria's long-standing claim that its troops were needed in Lebanon to provide security.

"There is no doubt that the conditions created by Syria's presence there have created a destabilized situation in Lebanon," she said.

In a thinly-veiled jab at Washington, he said accusations that Syria is supporting terrorism are akin to claims, later disproved, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war.

Almost exciting live-blogging

I had planned to spend the evening doing some exciting, thrill-a-minute live-blogging of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, but was distracted when one of my own dogs developed a case of diarrhea.

At such times, I’m grateful I have Chihuahuas and not Great Danes.

I shoveled some Pepto Bismol into the dog, cleaned up the mess(es), sat back down just in time to see “Best In Show” and just in time to wonder why a damned rolling dust-mop Pekinese won the Toy Division…..again.

Here is a Chihuahua –





Here is a Pekinese –

Roomba!

I don't know what these judges are thinking.

The President has also signed into law health savings accounts (HSAs), which combine low-cost, high-deductible health insurance with tax-free savings accounts to pay for health care expenses and save for future medical needs.

New health plans worsen hospitals' bad debt
Because many new health plans carry higher deductibles, Baptist Health South Florida has found it more difficult to collect on its debts from patients.

The south Miami-Dade County nonprofit hospital system piled up $131 million in bad debt in 2004, an increase of 254 percent from 1999. With high-deductible health savings accounts (HSAs) being introduced with President George W. Bush's backing and studies showing employers shifting more health care costs to workers, Baptist and other Florida hospitals worry that the stack of unpaid bills will only grow higher.

"We see over time that, as patients are required to pay more out of pocket, our bad debt goes up," said Eric Shatanof, Baptist's corporate VP for managed care and network development. "There are a large percentage of the patient portions that people just don't pay."

If the guy hadn't changed his name and registered on gay porn sites, this would have been one of the dullest hullabaloos of all time. And besides, let he who has never registered with a gay military porn site under a different name cast the first stone.

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A security screener at Newark Liberty International Airport failed to spot a butcher knife in a passenger's pocketbook and was removed from the post for retraining, officials said.

Katrina Bell, 27, had cleared security and was waiting with her sister to board a flight on Saturday morning when she discovered she was carrying a knife.

Bell had put the knife in her bag "just in case" before going on a blind date earlier that week, her sister and travel companion, Tikisha Bell Gowens, 30, said in The Sunday Star-Ledger of Newark.

"She said to me, 'Oh my God, I have this butcher knife in my pocketbook,'" Bell Gowens said. "My first thought was, 'They're going to think we're terrorists.'"

The North Carolina women immediately told airport personnel, who summoned police and officials of the Transportation Security Administration, which employs the screeners.

The women were not charged.

The screener was removed from the checkpoint and will undergo remedial training, TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said.

The new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview this weekend that the war with the Israelis is effectively over and that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is speaking "a different language" to the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon's commitment to withdraw from Gaza and dismantle all Israeli settlements there and four in the West Bank, despite "how much pressure is on him from the Israeli Likud rightists," Mr. Abbas said, "is a good sign to start with" on the road to real peace.
"And now he has a partner," Mr. Abbas said.

(snip)

Mr. Abbas said the war with the Israelis would be over "when the Israelis declare that they will comply with the agreement I made in Sharm el Sheik, and today our comrades in Hamas and Jihad said they are committed to the truce, the cooling down of the whole situation, and I believe we will start a new era."

On the program that day we were discussing the report that some Europeans were disgusted with the Super Bowl commercial of American soldiers getting applause in an airport. The critics thought it too extreme in its patriotism and a possible incitement to further war.

Eight medical malpractice lawsuits have been filed by patients who said a doctor at New Hanover Regional Medical Center performed one type of gastric bypass when they had agreed to a different one.

(snip)

The lawsuits claim that Olchowski told patients he would perform a surgery called Roux-en-Y, but instead performed a minigastric bypass.

Both types of surgery make the stomach smaller and allow food to bypass part of the small intestine. Patients thus feel full more quickly and, by bypassing part of the intestine, fewer calories are absorbed and weight loss is achieved. The difference between the two surgeries is how the stomach and intestines are attached.

Health insurance often covers Roux-en-Y, which costs about $25,000, while it does not cover minigastric bypass, which costs $15,000 to $20,000, in North Carolina.

Attorneys Jennifer Umbaugh and Melissa Pollock, who represent six of the patients, said their clients had serious complications from the minigastric bypass, such as stomach ulcers and continual nausea and vomiting. All of them had a second surgery to convert the bypass into a Roux-en-Y.

(snip)

Olchowski, 57, resigned from New Hanover Regional's medical staff July 1, 2003. He now practices general surgery at Ionia County Memorial Hospital in Michigan.

Well, you have to get cleared. You have to -- just like anybody else that comes to the White House, you have to have your full name, your Social Security number and your birth date. So you have to be cleared just like anybody else.

”And I think everybody understands what the 'next steps' mean," Rice told reporters after a meeting with NATO foreign ministers and European Union officials.

Privatizers say the trust fund doesn't count because it's invested in U.S. government bonds, which are "meaningless i.o.u.'s."

Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They're spent on benefits and they're spent on government programs. There is no trust. We're on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system -- what goes in comes out. And so, starting in 2018, what's going in -- what's coming out is greater than what's going in. It says we've got a problem. And we'd better start dealing with it now. The longer we wait, the harder it is to fix the problem.

President Bush is coming to Raleigh on Thursday and bringing along U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole as an example of the rare politician who won office while pledging to change Social Security.

And, no way am I for privatizing Social Security. I support the concept of allowing workers to contribute small portions of their own Social Security in the market because it would negate the need to nearly double payroll taxes on future workers to fund benefits.

Bush will be host for an hourlong conversation with business leaders, seniors and young people who support his plan

But he picks a state where five of the seven Republican U.S. House members are lukewarm on the idea -- at best.

Only Reps. Sue Myrick of Charlotte and Patrick McHenry of Cherryville favor the accounts.

The others? Not sure. They are getting mail and calls from people who are worried about Social Security, especially the 900,000 members of the state AARP, most of whom worry that change would mean reduced benefits.

Rep. Howard Coble of Greensboro said he finds the idea of personal accounts "inoffensive" but does not see the system as in crisis.

Rep. Walter Jones of Farmville said he'll wait and see what comes out of Congress.

Even Rep. Virginia Foxx of Banner Elk, who praised Bush's State of the Union address as magnificent, is not sold on private accounts.

(snip)

Among the last to hear about Bush's visit were Reps. Bob Etheridge, Brad Miller and David Price, the three Democratic House members who represent the Triangle. They had not received tickets as of late Tuesday.

More than two-thirds of 1,010 adults contacted from Friday to Sunday said it would be a good idea to limit benefits for wealthier retirees and for higher income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all their wages.

You lose fourteen pounds
And what do you get?
Another year older
And deeper in debt….

If I haven’t lost at least another fourteen by the time I’m fifty-nine, feel free to call me the laziest, wimpiest critter on the planet.

Other hopes:
*Watching the kid receive her master’s degree and/or embarking on a satisfying, successful career.
*Bush and his neocon buddies thoroughly disgraced and out of office forever and ever amen.
*Peace on earth
*Good will toward men

Enough of this. I’ve got to go rest up so I can blow out all these candles.




Peace, ya'll

NY Times- President Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said Sunday.

The next time big bidness and/or the administration parade you around in public to show their hypocritical "support", it's time for something like this -

John McCain's 5 1/2 years of captivity in North Vietnam were divided into two phases. Early on, this son and grandson of high-ranking Naval officers was accorded relatively privileged status. Then he refused early release--which he saw as a public relations stunt by his captors--insisting that POWs held longer than him should be granted their freedom first. Thereafter, McCain was treated much more severely, but he also had an opportunity to bond with his fellow prisoners. Those experiences strengthened his resolve and eased his transition back into civilian life.

Bush said it was an improper use of government funds, and told a news conference: "I expect my Cabinet secretaries to make sure that that practice doesn't go forward. There needs to be independence."

Pentagon sites: Journalism or propaganda?

The sites are run by U.S. military troops trained in "information warfare," a specialty than can include battlefield deception.

(snip)

The Pentagon maintains that the information on the sites is true and accurate. But in a recent memo, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz insisted that the Web site contractor should only hire journalists who "will not reflect discredit on the U.S. government."

(We pause to reflect on the placing of the name "Wolfowitz" in the same paragraph with "true and accurate")

The Defense Department has hired more than 50 freelance writers for the sites.

Not only is the DoD spreading propaganda, they're hiring third-rate hacks to do it.

Fifty of them.

Back to square one.

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Social Security is the ultimate support system, a monetary cushion for grandmothers and granddads, but also a lifeline for widows, widowers, divorcees, orphans, and people with disabilities. For the average American over 65, Social Security makes up nearly 40 percent of their income. For about 20 percent, it is their only income. The system has worked well for some 70 years now with few adjustments. These days, it's on everyone's radar. That's because President Bush has put Social Security reform at the top of his second-term to-do list. He and many others argue that big changes are necessary if Social Security is to survive, much less thrive. But there are those, AARP included, who believe a radical overhaul could spell disaster - the end of Social Security as we know it.

"Under privatization, current workers will have to pay three times," says Certner. "Once to ensure the benefits for those currently at or near retirement, once for themselves, and once more for those whose investments didn't pan out."

"We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy; and chief among them is freedom from fear." ( SOTU, Feb. 2, 2005)

President George W. Bush's own re-election campaign assumes that Americans are and should be fearful and that safety will be found only in voting Republican. The bottom line has been, and will remain: "You are scared - trust us."

Fear has been used as a basis for curtailing freedom of expression and for questioning legal rights long taken for granted. It has crept into political discourse and been used to discredit patriotic public servants. Ronald Reagan's favourite image, borrowed from an earlier visionary, of America as "a shining city on a hill" has been unnecessarily dimmed by another image: a nation motivated by fear and ready to lash out at any country it defines as the source of a gathering threat.

An unrelenting and unending campaign of fear based on the searing images of September 11 2001 will, at the very least, undermine the optimistic spirit that has sustained America's progress during most of its history. - James Goodby and Kenneth Weisbrode, "Bush's corrosive campaign of fear," Financial Times, 18 November 2003

Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers with health insurance, researchers said Wednesday.

(snip)

"Our study is frightening. Unless you're Bill Gates you're just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who led the study. "Most of the medically bankrupt were average Americans who happened to get sick. Health insurance offered little protection."

(snip)

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a Harvard associate professor and physician who advocates for universal health coverage, said the study supported demands for health reform.

"Covering the uninsured isn't enough. We must also upgrade and guarantee continuous coverage for those who have insurance," Woolhandler said in a statement.

She said many employers and politicians were pressing for what she called "stripped-down plans so riddled with co-payments, deductibles and exclusions that serious illness leads straight to bankruptcy."

When it comes to spying, Donald Rumsfeld is an impatient man. The Defense Secretary hated having to wait for CIA spooks to make arrangements with Afghanistan's warlords before his special-operations commandos could infiltrate the country ahead of the 2001 U.S. invasion. These days Rumsfeld is even less inclined to depend on the CIA. Instead, he is pushing his generals to field a larger and more aggressive clandestine force to spy on terrorists worldwide and attack them.

Got your man right here, R -



Colonel Flagg, the nuisance from M*A*S*H

Colonel Flagg did everything he felt was necessary to protect "the American way of life" and win the war. For him, this task included selling penicillin for information and having a wounded North Korean operated on so that he could face execution later. Flagg always had his own ridiculous conspiracy theories and even more ridiculous plans.

"Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don't know what it is. I keep myself in a constant state of utter confusion."

He should fit right in.

"The fight over Social Security is, above all, about what kind of society we want to have."

Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for the last half-century.

In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers — instead of looking to employers for health insurance — would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible "catastrophic" insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.

"Health savings accounts all aim at empowering people to make decisions for themselves, owning their own healthcare plan," the president said. Consumer-driven decision-making is more likely to control costs than having bills paid by a third party, such as an employer, he added.

Abstinence-only sex education programs, a major plank in President Bush's education plan, have had no impact on teenagers' behavior in his home state of Texas, according to a new study.

Despite taking courses emphasizing abstinence-only themes, teenagers in 29 high schools became increasingly sexually active, mirroring the overall state trends, according to the study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M University.

"State of Union speech could have war theme"

"Past wartime presidents have framed it as enemy vs. us"

It is believed that Sir Nichol was connected with Wallace through the Hallidays. Thomas Halliday was a nephew of Wallace, and a friend of Rothirforde. Previous to the Battle of Biggar, as narrated by Harry the Minstrel, Halliday brought his uncle a welcome contingent of three hundred "wee armed" warriors from Annandale, led by "twa gud sonnis, Wallas and Rudyrfurd " Among the chiefs who remained faithful to Wallace was "gud Rudyrfurd, chyftaynlik" with a lordly air, who with sixty followers held his ground against the English in Ettrick Forest.

Sir Nichol de Rothirforde held considerable land located in several different counties. His land of Doddington Mill in Northumberland was seized by the English King in 1296 as Sir Nichol was declared a rebel.

Depending on the circumstances, he told the intelligence agency, some coercive methods could be legal, but he advised against others, the officials said.

This is a very dangerous winter weather situation. Travel in the warning area is not recommended from later this morning through Sunday afternoon. If you leave the safety of indoors... you are putting your life at risk. Accumulations of ice may result in widespread power outages. Preparations should be completed as soon as possible. Be sure you have enough fuel for alternate heating sources such as gas heaters and fireplaces. Make sure that any space heaters or candles are kept well away from flammable objects... and keep them out of the reach of children. Stock up on batteries and have flashlights handy. Be sure you have enough medicine and food that does not require cooking or refrigeration.

In a sign of the political dangers surrounding President Bush's plans for Social Security, a number of congressional Republicans said Thursday that their constituents had received anonymous, automated phone calls accusing the lawmakers of trying to damage the government retirement program by "privatizing" it.

House Republicans said the calls, which they labeled a "tele-scare campaign," had been made in more than a dozen congressional districts from Connecticut to Florida.

(snip)

On Capitol Hill, Republicans were outraged.

"They won't even identify themselves," Greg Crist, a spokesman for the House Republican Conference, said of the unknown backer of the phone campaign. "At the very least, they ought to fess up."

...the deal African-Americans get from Social Security turns out, according to various calculations, to be either about the same as that for whites or somewhat better. Hispanics, by the way, clearly do better than either.

Democrats should speak with conviction about an issue that has always animated them: the alleviation of poverty. "I think it is a moral issue; it's something we should be willing to fight about and stand up for," he says.

Those who counsel caution, he says, would let calculation push Democrats away from their historical commitments. "They think it's associated with some political label," he says, carefully avoiding the L-word himself. "They think that a lot of people who live in poverty don't vote and don't participate and so they don't think there's a lot of political capital there."

Edwards, who is planning to set up a center to study ways to alleviate poverty, is enough of a politician to insist that he wants to advocate not only on behalf of the destitute but also for those just finding their footing on mobility's ladder. But he offers the unexpected claim that the very voters who have strayed from the Democrats would respond forcefully to the moral imperative of aiding the poor.

"The people who love their guns and love their faith, they care about this," Edwards says. "There is a deep abiding feeling of moral responsibility people have about those who are doing everything right and are still having a hard time."

Has anyone on this application ever had sinusitis?

Mr. President: I have always believed that our responsibility to advise and consent does not mean that we have to agree with every opinion or every action that the nominee has ever taken, but that that nominee deserves the benefit of the doubt and that our responsibility is to determine whether the nominee is fit for the position for which the President has nominated him or her and whether the nominee, in our judgment, will serve in the national interest. And I conclude that Dr. Condoleezza Rice meets that standard, at least, and much more.

Secondly, this element of the context in which this nomination is put before us: we are at war. It is a war unlike any we have ever fought before. And here I speak of the world war with Islamic terrorism. It is joined on battlefield in places like Iraq, of course, but it is being fought in the shadows and corners against an enemy that is driven by a fanaticism and acts without regard to human life – others’ or their own.

I embrace the best tradition of American foreign policy that always has said that partisanship should end at the nation’s shores. And note that it doesn’t say policy differences should end. It doesn’t say ideological differences should end. It says partisanship should end at the nation’s shores, particularly so when our nation is engaged in a war – a global war on terrorism, a war in Iraq in which Americans have already lost their lives in the cause of freedom and in protection of our security.

The nomination of a Secretary of State in a second term of a president naturally is an opportunity, appropriately, for people to raise questions about the foreign policy of that Administration. But in the final analysis I hope it is also an opportunity around this very qualified nominee for us to come together and say to one another and to the world – both our enemies and our allies – that in the final analysis Americans will stand together, shoulder to shoulder, against terrorism – against the enemy – in pursuit of the freedom and liberty and opportunity that Dr. Rice spoke of in her opening statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and that President Bush spoke to in his Inaugural Address last week.

One of the great strengths that Condoleezza Rice will bring to the office of Secretary of State is that the world knows that she has the President’s trust and confidence and I respect the right of any of my colleagues to reach a different decision today and to oppose this nomination. But I hope and believe that the Senate today, across partisan lines, will resoundingly endorse this nomination and send the message to friend and foe alike that while we have our disagreements, ultimately what unites us around this very qualified nominee in this hour of war is much greater than what divides us.

In times like these it is important that the world not only knows that this Secretary of State has the ear of the President, but that she has – if you will allow me to put it this way – America’s heart. A heart that beats with the freedom and security and opportunity that we dream of for our own people and for the people of the world.

In August 2001, the Bush Administration set a new policy for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. President Bush declared that federal research funds could only be used on embryonic stem cell lines created before that date; at the time, several of the President’s scientific advisors believed that there were approximately 78 viable cell lines in existence and they would be sufficient for investigators to advance the embryonic stem cell field. President Bush argued that his new policy would prevent the creation and subsequent destruction of new embryos solely for the purpose of extracting stem cells. Moreover, in August 2001, researchers only had the technology to grow human embryonic stem cells using mouse “feeder cell” lines, therefore all the lines covered under the President’s policy are contaminated with mouse cells or mouse cell products. (link)

(emphasis mine)

The United States has still only spent a small portion of the $18.4 billion (9.8 billion pounds) it set aside for rebuilding Iraq and is being forced to reallocate funding from some projects because of the poor security situation, a new government report shows.

According to a copy of the Bush administration's latest quarterly update to Congress on Iraq obtained by Reuters on Thursday, as of December 29 only $2.2 billion of the funds had actually been spent.

Bill Pullman (President): I don't understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?

Judd Hirsch (Julius Levinson): You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation.

Nixon biographer Jonathan Aitken said the two hit it off immediately. Nixon, elected to the Senate in 1950, hired Woods as his secretary.

"She was intelligent, literate, clamlike in her discretion. Technically superb, she possessed the high-speed skills of shorthand and typing necessary to keep up with her boss's often frantic and always demanding schedule," Aitken wrote.

(snip)

She denied she caused the full 181/2-minute gap, testifying later that she inadvertently erased four or five minutes. The phone rang while she was transcribing the tape, she said.

She accidentally hit the record button. A picture in which she demonstrated her action -- stretching one foot forward while reaching back to get the phone -- became one of the most famous images of the era.