Merry Christmas, from Ronald Reagan!

"I'm sending coffin nails to all my friends, and the tobacco companies are glad to finance my campaigns to boot. What a laugh!"

Smoke all the Chesterfields you want, but will Mr. Reagan's party take care of you when you're old and dying of cancer? I don't think so. Dear Ron was one of the first to attack the original Medicare program as "socialized medicine".

The refrain still works today, apparently. Corporate welfare is fine; taking care of your citizens' deteriorating health when they use your products, like tobacco, well . . . that's positively un-American.

Remember how hard it was to fight the Big Tobacco lobby in the previous century, then think about how effective Big Insurance has been in defeating decent, affordable health care.

In case you had any doubts about who runs the show, see "Class War Is Over, Working People Lost".

Smoke Chesterfields, for a taste that's mild and soothing to your throat with no unpleasant after-taste. Doctor recommended!

22 Million Missing Emails from the Bush Admin "found"!

Hmm. Didn't Rosemary Woods, Dick Nixon's secretary "accidentally" erase 22 minutes of crucial White House tapes? What is it with "22"? It must be one of the mystical Republican numbers.

22 Million Bush Emails Recovered

The 22 million e-mails "would never have been found but for our lawsuits and pressure from Capitol Hill," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for CREW. "It was only then that they did this reanalysis and found as a result that there were 22 million e-mails that they were unable to account for before."

First Global Map of Mercury

Image: USGS. Large, Extra Large, and Ridiculously Huge version of this image available at the USGS Astrogeology Center.

Story Link: First Global Map of Mercury
from Wired.com

Posted using ShareThis

"Sarah Palin is Boring…Confused"

Martha Stewart sums up the Palin experience in the following clip. She wouldn't watch her "if you paid me."



Read the full story at Gawker and be sure to view the clip of Palin fans booing her with the same passion and hatred she inspired in them with her attack speeches.

Sarah Palin Now Pissing Off Everyone: Fans Boo Her, Martha Stewart Calls Her "Dangerous"

Join the Million Fax March NOW!

Who learned manners in school?

Grade school kids in 1959 were treated to this film, "Lunchroom Manners".


I ask you, did it make a difference?

Now take a look at what Conservatives for Patients’ Rights and the health care lobby have in store for us and you'll see that bullies never paid attention to anything in school.

Are you a conservative? Do you want to find conservatives who support healthcare reform? Join the AMA's Patient Action Group.

Healthcare in the U.S.A.

Call your Congressperson and insist they support the Public Option, please!

Some Days Are Just Like This

Support Torture Investigation

Newsweek reported Saturday that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate whether the Bush administration illegally tortured terrorism suspects.

A decision is expected in the next few weeks. Holder should investigate torture, and he should start with former Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal adviser David Addington.

Do yourself a favor and sign the CREDO petition to tell Attorney General Holder to assign a prosecutor to investigate torture.

Help restore America's values.

Help Ja-Naé Reach her Goal

Ja-Naé Duane is an artist activist, opera singer, musician and innovative entrepreneur who has done much to promote artists rights in Massachusetts and beyond. It's been a real pleasure working with her on the artist advocacy efforts we've been mutually involved with.

I'd like you to please consider helping her in a personal endeavor by looking at this pre-order offer for her new book through a unique fund raising channel called Fundable.

If you pre-order her book, How to Start Your Business with $100!, you will receive:

1) The book at the amount you donated (suggested price is $15)
2) FREE shipping of the book
3) An exclusive customized autographed copy of the book
4) A mention of your name through her website, twitter, and facebook accounts
5) The thanks of thousands of entrepreneurs and artists

And, if her modest funding goal is not reached, all money will be returned!

You can follow Ja-Naé on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/TheSunQueen

Thanks very much for your consideration.

God is My Doorman - Mark Sanford is SO boring!

Just a quick "Tweet".

God is My Doorman: Mark Sanford for Non-Christians

"Hemingway said that the problem with Henry Miller was that he got laid in the afternoon once and thought he invented it. Governor Mark Sanford got laid in Argentina two weeks ago and the way he continues to go on about it, you'd think he cracked cold fusion."

Enjoy more from The Huffington Post. :->

KBR negligence causes U.S. soldiers' deaths

"The former Halliburton subsidiary KBR is responsible for the deaths of 18 U.S. service members as a result of its shoddy and unprofessional electrical work. Instead of rewarding KBR with millions of dollars in bonuses, the Department of Defense must:

* Rescind the 80 million in bonuses already awarded to KBR
* Pursue criminal charges for negligent homicide against KBR/Halliburton officials who were responsible for the electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers
* Immediately suspend the awarding of defense contracts to KBR and/or any KBR/Halliburton related entities

Secretary Gates, we the undersigned ask that you hold war profiteers accountable and safeguard the lives of our soldiers."

Please sign the petition to Defense Secretary Gates.


Related Tags:

Shocking news! Waterboarding not good for you!

Soon to be released, a declassified 2004 memo that indicates "the techniques used to interrogate terrorist suspects 'appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture' and did not produce desired results."

OMG! We SO didn't know!

However, previously known and reported:

" '…in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency interrogator... applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose."

"Medical personnel at the detention facility protested the use of the waterboard in that form, stressing that "there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.' "

All the above quotes gleaned from the Huffington Post. Please read more at:

IG Report: Waterboarding Was Neither "Efficacious Or Medically Safe"

Americans, I ask you, are you going to snooze your way through this scandal?

How to Help End Torture - Impeach Bybee

Sign the petition. Impeach Bybee.

Sources:

1. "Pressure grows to impeach Bybee over 'torture memos,'" The Times of London, April 29, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51375&id=16033-9477049-Z23tvkx&t=5

2. "Podesta Calls For Bybee Impeachment On CNN, Delivers Your Petitions To Congress," Think Progress, April 26, 2009
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/26/podesta-impeach-bybee/

3. "The Torturers' Manifesto," The New York Times, April 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19sun1.html?_r=1

Why a Torture Investigation Matters

“…one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.”
Torture Was Used to Try to Link Saddam With 9/11

Those numbers were for one month, not the entirety of their confinement!!

You have to ask yourself, if waterboarding works, as claimed by Dick Cheney, then why the need for so many “treatments”?

New questions will now be asked.

Will Obama allow Cheney, Rice, and the rest of the “Torture Team” to be extradited to Spain, where a judge is currently investigating their actions under an international treaty signed by the U.S.?

Did you know the U.S. prosecuted Japanese who waterboarded their prisoners during WWII?

Did you know all the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used at Guantánamo were the techniques learned from the Chinese Communists during the Cold War?

You can hear the answers to these questions and more. You'll also get an idea how the torture story will likely be played out, and how it really is a scandal and a disgrace to our democracy. Listen to the link on Fresh Air, Spanish Court To Investigate Bush's 'Torture Team'

Don’t let the Torture Team slither away. Learn more and do all you can to bring them to justice.

We're America, We Don't Torture :-)

"I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture…"

President Obama? No.

This was June 26, 2003. President George W. Bush.

Read more.

So there it is. We should all be in agreement. Let's get to work and prosecute "all acts of torture".

According to a Fox News report, we'll be violating international law if we don't.


Please watch more here. :-)

Don't let them escape amid the chaos!

"He expressed confidence that files will some day be publicly accessible offering specific evidence that waterboarding and other policies he promoted — over sharp internal dissent from colleagues and harsh public criticism — were directly responsible for averting new Sept. 11-style attacks." - Politico

Extend the Statute Of Limitations
on Bush and Cheney's
Wiretapping and War Crimes

Please help Americans recover their values.

Help Convict Dick and W

The Bush cabal's time may be coming to a close, but their crimes will live on in history. Do your part to help bring them to justice, and show the world we care about atonement and correcting this foul time in America.

Follow the instructions below. Your message will go straight to Obama's people:

1. Sign in at http://change.gov/openforquestions and remember you have to set up a login for yourself at that site to vote.
   
   
2. Click on "Additional Issues" under "Pick a Topic" on the left.
   
   
3. The special prosecutor question started by "Bob Fertik" should be the one leading the top of that section (and now leading all questions over all topics with 16,000 votes).
   
   
4. Look right for the checkbox, mouseover it so it goes from white to dark, then click to cast your vote.

Please cast your vote as soon as possible, as the voting may close at any time. They may not work straight through holiday weekends, but we DO.

What this means is that Obama will now have to ANSWER this question on his official site, just as if he had accepted this question at a real press conference. And we're going to keep the heat on in every other possible way, just stay tuned.

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