wooden nickels

San Francisco becomes the first city in the nation to provide all residents with health care, regardless of employment and/or immigration status. It will be funded by the city, employers and income-adjusted premiums.

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here it is on the web...

A Little Perspective
By Michael Moore

If you can't get through this list without wanting to throw up, I'll understand. But pass it around anyway. This is the nail in the Iraq War's coffin for any sane, thinking individual, regardless of their political stripe. (Thanks to Tom Paine.com and the Center for American Progress.)

To get some perspective, here are some real-life comparisons about what $87 billion means:

• $87 Billion is more than the combined total of all State budget deficits in the United States. The Bush administration proposed absolutely zero funds to help states deal with these deficits, despite the fact that their tax cuts drove down state revenues. [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities].
• $87 Billion is enough to pay the 3.3 million people who have lost jobs under George W. Bush $26,363.00 each! The unemployment benefits
  extension passed by Congress at the beginning of this year provides zero benefits to workers who exhausted their regular, state unemployment benefits and cannot find work [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities].
• $87 Billion is more than double the total amount the government spends on Homeland Security. The U.S. spends about $36 billion on homeland security. Yet, Sen. Warren Rudman (R- N.H.) wrote, America will fall approximately $98 .4 billion short of meeting critical emergency responder needs for homeland security without a funding increase. [Source: Council on Foreign Relations].
• $87 Billion is 87 times the amount the Federal Government spends on After School Programs. George W. Bush proposed a budget that reduces the $1 billion for after-school programs to $600 million cutting off about 475,000 children from the program. [Source: The Republican-dominated House Appropriations Committee].
• $87 Billion is more that 10 times what the Government spends on all environmental Protection. The Bush administration requested just $7.6 billion for the entire Environmental Protection Agency. This included a 32 percent cut to water quality grants, a 6 percent reduction in enforcement staff, and a 50 percent cut to land acquisition and conservation. [Source: Natural Resources Defense Council].

There you go. In black and white. A few million of you will receive this letter. Please share the above with at least a half-dozen people today and tomorrow. I, like you, do not want to see another approval rating over 50 percent.

Yours,
Michael Moore
Filmmaker

An excellent review of Moore's new movie...
Roger Ebert on Michael Moore's New Movie...

...seen on my way to work...

If you can read this
You're not the President

The Daily Kos sums it up nicely:
"Start saying it and repeat it to whoever will listen: Republicans cannot compete with Democrats on message alone. That's why they must vastly outspend us.

If that wasn't true, Bush wouldn't need to raise $200 million to try and buy his 'reelection'. "

Yesterday, I checked out 3 of the new Bush ads that recently just came out (the media blitz has officially begun). One comment on BushOutTV states that Democrats should worry...the ads are good.

But when I checked them out, I found them pretty unimpressive. Quite unsurprisingly, there's very little substantive content and they're mostly made up of platitudes playing off 9/11 and knee-jerk patriotism.

Bush wants viewers to believe he's the 'everyday' (millionaire guy) who is "just like them." His message is that he knows and has what it takes to lead this country forward -- job seekers will find work, seniors won't be left behind, our children will be educated....Never mind that none of these visions have become reality after 3 years of his administration. In fact, "the Facts" show just the opposite (a visit to the Center for American Progress or the DNC's Kicking Ass is all one needs to get a glimpse at the "real" state of the nation....).

...It would be absolutely pathetic if "democracy" as we know it here in the US slowly morphs into "the idiot with the most money wins...."

...from TOMPAINE.com
Here are a few (of the many, many) classic quotes reaffirming the obviousness of Bush and his administration's equivocations on having portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat:

"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
President Bush, 7/17/03

"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."
President Bush, 7/17/03

"This is about imminent threat."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02

"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02