Survivors
The lack of aid for the survivors of the hurricane in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is DISGRACEFUL. The administration hasn’t a clue to the extent of the catastrophe in New Orleans. It has been 5 days since people had a drink of water. People are dying of thirst, lack of medicine and food.

Thugs are terrorizing the city of New Orleans. Hospitals are sending out SOS’s for aid, medicines and rescue... The few officials left in the city have been spread too thin to keep order. Many looters have been searching for food and water. The Dead are left to float in the flood waters. Those dying in the Convention Center of New Orleans while waiting for rescue are covered with sheets and left on the sidewalk as thousands sit in 100 degree heat and wait for help to arrive.

Busses are beginning to pick up survivors at the Superdome and transfer them to the Astrodome in Houston but instead accepting 25,000 evacuees as planned; the Astrodome can only accept 7,000. Volunteers are making an effort to help in anyway possible… but where is the military?

Frist
Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has endorsed federally funded stem cell research, switching his allegiance from President Bush to those who favor federal funding.

Intransigency is not wisdom. Bush says he will veto any such legislation that comes before him. Bush flaunts his stubbornness as if it were a virtue.

CAFTA
Bush will meet with House Republicans in a closed session today, Wed, July 27, 2005. He will urge passage of CAFTA,(the free trade agreement similar to NAFTA), with the U S, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and possibly Dominican Republic, If passed, it will be a disaster for small farmers, and workers in the U S, Canada, and Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost and family farms foreclosed.

Corporate domination will lead to privatization of resources and utilities in these South American countries, resulting in lower pay for workers while increasing the cost of living. Public interest laws are routinely and secretly overturned and challenged in NAFTA courts; pollution of the environment causes health concerns; job loss increases poverty. The Bush administration has already pressured Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina to accede to U.S. demands or be left out of the agreement.

To learn more about CAFTA go to Http://www.citizen.org/trade/cafta

I’m glad the democrats are waiting for the hearings to begin before voicing loud objections to Robert’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I hope Senators ask and demand candid and straight answers from him when he’s asked about questions affecting choices of women if he becomes an associate justice.

I’ve heard on the radio and TV news that Robert’s wife is a devoted advocate of the ‘right to life’. As practicing Catholics, her husband in all probability thinks the same. I don’t care what religion they practice, but I do care that if he sits on the Supreme Court, Roe v Wade not be overturned.

Sandra Day O’Conner has announced her retirement from the Supreme Court. When Reagan appointed her, I was pleased a woman was chosen, but leery about her ‘politics’. From all accounts, she has been ‘the voice of reason’, casting swing votes to stabilize the court’s rulings on abortion and affirmative action, but reverted to type when she cast the deciding vote that made Bush president.

I heartily support those Democrats gearing up to protest any appointment replacing O’Connor if they are considered too extreme in their views and threaten to over turn Roe v Wade.

John Irving tells about researching abortion at the Yale medical-history library in his book, My Movie Business. The book is a diary of re-writing the screen script for his novel, The Cider House Rules. John Irving’s grandfather, Dr. Frederick C. Irving, a famous doctor, and member of the medical-school faculty at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, a Lying-in hospital, also authored many articles on the subject.

Since the landing of the pilgrims, abortion had been legal for 226years. Most women had their babies at home with midwives attending. Midwives also performed abortions with the same degree of safety as doctors, but in 1830, a group of doctors in the American Medical Association decided midwives were making too much money performing abortions and they wanted some of it. They began to argue that it was safer in hospitals with only doctors being permitted to perform them.

After 1830 when women started having abortions and babies in lying-in hospitals, they were at great risk of dying from childbed fever, (puerperal fever). By 1840, doctors had taken the abortion out of the hands of midwives, but soon another group of doctors lobbied to make the performance illegal. In 1840, the state of Maine passed the Eastman-Everett Act making the performing of an abortion punishable by a year in jail or a $1000 fine, or both. Drs might also lose their license to practice. By 1846, abortion was illegal throughout the United States, remaining so for the next 127 years until 1973.

Irving writes that the underlying message of Right-to-Life is fundamental sexual Puritanism that ‘promiscuity’ should be punished by ‘paying the piper’. Religious zealots should let doctors practice medicine, and keep their religion to themselves. Religious freedom works both ways. We are free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us.

I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio today say that in Bush’s speech tonight, he will tell us the same thing he has told us before about the war in Iraq. E-GADS, I hope he isn’t going to tell us we are still looking for weapons of mass destruction!!!

Rumsfeld implies success in the war in Iraq doesn’t necessarily mean ‘domestic tranquility’. I thought when a war was won, hostilities stopped. If Rumsfeld is right, we should declare VICTORY and bring the troops home!

Good for Kennedy! We need more like him calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation! If General Abizaid is unafraid to contradict administration personnel and state the obvious, I believe the situation is already the catastrophe General Myers says the Iraq war will become if we don’t stay. We need an EXIT stratagem and we need it NOW.

The war in Iraq is going so badly, I wonder that the President and his administration can keep a straight face when they say we are winning. Even the CIA is implying that the ‘insurgents’ are capable of planning and executing world wide damage far exceeding that caused by our failure in Vietnam.

At least a few republicans are beginning to ask for an exit strategy.

They say Bush is ‘Resolute’… In my book that means plain stubbornness. He practically dares anyone to dispute him when he leans over a podium and smiles as he proclaims his policies.

Biden wants to be President…already campaigning to be the Party’s nominee. He needles Bush for not being forthright with the American public on how long our troops will have to stay in Iraq, but he seems to acquiesce with our being there. Didn’t he vote for the war? … Is he having second thoughts now that the war isn’t going so well? What’s his program to end the war?

STOP CAFTA!

STOP CAFTA! It doesn’t serve the interests of justice and the common good!

The Democratic Party should get back to being the true party of the working class and average Americans.

The House passed a bill to cut funds to the United Nations. WHAT’S THAT ALL ABOUT? Could it be the first step in Bush’s GLOBALIZATION plan? If Bolton becomes Ambassador to the U N, is that the 2nd?

G8

The G8 is proposing a tax on air travel. If passed, this would be the First Global Tax in history.

Today they have agreed to cancel $40 Billion poor countries owe the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank. Paul Wolfawitz at the World Bank wants to reform the World Trade Org. (WTO). Are these machinations designed to achieve GLOBAL GOVERNANCE.?

Halliburton is building a $30 million dollar facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, known as Detention Camp #6. It will hold 220 men. At present, there are 520 prisoners. The $30 million will become $500 million if all options are exercised. Today there are proposals in the House of Representatives to close the facility at Guantanamo. Do those politicians know that the defense dept is expanding this facility? If not, why not?

Welcome to Yellow Dog Rulz

Welcome to my blog.

I make no effort to be FAIR, BALANCE or UNBIASED! This is a place where I tell it like I see it and I make no appologies for what I put in here.

There will be interesting stories about whatever I have in my food bowl at the time, and I hope that you come back and help me digest the day's feeding!

Until suppertime then,

Yellow Dog Rulz