Some Weekly News Items
Nothing is what it seems with Goppers or their support base of millionaires and hate mongers. Walmart does not struggle to do a better job providing health care coverage to workers, but to rectify its sinking public image.
October 25, 2005
Wal-Mart: Discriminate to Save Health Care Cost
The day after Wal-Mart's fake PR offensive to portray themselves as concerned about their employees health care and wages, Stephen Greenhouse -- who proves the NY Times still has some decent reporters -- reveals this internal memo from Wal-Mart. The memo calls for Wal-Mart saving money by forcing more employees into part-time work without benefits and discriminating against the unhealthy and disabled:
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, [the memo] suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."...
"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."
Wal-Mart has hopefully bought itself a nice Americans with Disabilities Act class action lawsuit.
After 2 years of daily reading about health care in the US, I feel more than qualified to proclaim that this number is suspiciously low. Further, it does not discuss the health care problems of the chronically underinsured, such as those in HMOs, or the problems of those who don’t die but live with chronic illness and what that costs the system, and what the lack of universal public healthcare costs everyone in the country except those, like wall eyed turd sniffer Bill Frist, whose millions were made trading health care in the stock market.
Health inequalities in US kill 84,000 -expert
Thu Oct 20, 7:08 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Health inequalities in the United States cause about 84,000 additional deaths a year, more than the equivalent of a hurricane Katrina every week, a health care expert said on Friday.
David Atkins, of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in the United States, said the images of people clinging to rooftops made it clear that being poor and black in a poor southern state is hazardous to health.
"The gap in health between white and black Americans has been estimated to cause 84,000 excess deaths in a year ... a virtual Katrina every week," Atkins said in an editorial in the British Medical Journal.
But the victims die of illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer,
HIV/AIDS and alcohol or drug addiction so they don't grab the public's attention in the same way as the deaths caused by Katrina which killed more than 1,200 people.
And let us never forget, public health policy shaped by conservative twat rags under the RayGun administration BROUGHT US the AIDS epidemic to begin with.
"This may truly be a teachable moment about the impact of poverty and race on health," said Atkins.
The chief medical office of the AHRQ, an agency that coordinates all federal quality improvement efforts and health services research in the United States, said a comprehensive plan to protect the Gulf Coast from devastating storms and hurricanes had languished for years.
Now the U.S. government is facing a bill for the catastrophe that is expected to rise as high as $200 billion.
And let us never forget the US has the most expensive, most unfair, most corrupt, least efficient health care system in the world. If we could only provide health care with the same focus and tenacity with which we torture so called terrorists. Now that would be an accomplishment
Atkins called for funding to be available for prevention, not rescue, and said the infrastructure for public health must be strengthened.
He added that the failure in basic communication after the hurricane hampered early recovery efforts.
"In the rush to rebuild in the southern states, Americans should pause to think more deeply about what it would take to create more equitable and healthier communities in New Orleans and throughout the affected area," Atkins said.
The lessons from Katrina must also be applied to help people with poor health who languish out of the public eye, he added.
Poll: Bush would lose an election if held this year
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 6:52 p.m. EDT (22:52 GMT)
Someone needs to tell the ass lickers at CNN that Bush didn’t get elected in 2000 or 2004 either.
President Bush would not get re-elected if an election were held this year, according to a CNN poll.
(CNN) -- A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday.
In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.
Of course, Kerry is repulsive and didn't take postions very different from the ones Bush took, and still he won. But the fix is in with Diebold and ES&S and repiglikkkan secretaries of state, so it isn't like your vote matters.
Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.
The latest poll results, released Tuesday, were based on interviews with 1,008 adults conducted by telephone October 21-23.
In the poll, 42 percent of those interviewed approved of the way the president is handling his job and 55 percent disapproved. In the previous poll, released October 17, 39 percent approved of Bush's job performance -- the lowest number of his presidency -- and 58 percent disapproved.
However, all the numbers are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it's possible that the public's opinion has not changed at all.
More than half, 57 percent, said they don't agree with the president's views on issues that are important to them, while 41 percent said their views are in alignment with those of Bush on important issues.
Democrats preferred on issues
On separate issues, a majority of those questioned felt the Democrats could do a better job than Republicans at handling health care (59 percent to 30 percent), Social Security (56 percent to 33 percent), gasoline prices (51 percent to 31 percent) and the economy (50 percent to 38 percent).
Forty-six percent also believed Democrats could do better at handling Iraq, while 40 percent said the GOP would do better.
In 2003, 53 percent said Republicans would better handle Iraq and only 29 percent believed the Democrats would do better.
The only issue on which Republicans came out on top was in fighting terrorism: 49 percent said the GOP is better at it, while 38 percent said the Democrats are.
Who are the delusional who believe the GOP can do anything better than anyone else, other than lie, cheat and steal? If we had a better health care system, these poor sickos might get treatment.
And there was a dramatic shift downward in the latest poll, compared with September, in the percentage of people who said that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq.
This time, 49 percent said it was a mistake, versus 59 percent who felt that way last month.
Even the ultra conservative kitty box liner, WSJ, is getting in on the Bush Bitch Slap, while Bush gets ready to pin the whole thing on Cheney. That buck is getting mighty worn.
October 25, 2005
THE HARRIS POLL
Majority of Americans Say Military Action in Iraq Was Wrong, Poll Finds (click link to see poll data layed out in a nice table)
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 25, 2005
A new Harris Interactive poll shows American sentiment about the situation in Iraq remains generally gloomy, with fewer than a quarter of Americans saying they are confident U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful.
For the first time, a majority of Americans (53%) feels that military action in Iraq was the wrong thing to do, according to the survey of 1,833 U.S. adults, compared with 34% who feel it was right.
At the same time, 66% of U.S. adults now say President Bush is doing a "poor" or "only fair" job of handling Iraq, while 32% say he is doing an "excellent" or "pretty good" job. That's little changed from a September Harris poll that found 65% rated Mr. Bush negatively and 34% rated him positively.
BUSH'S IRAQ RATING
Sixty-one percent of Americans say they aren't confident U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful, slightly higher than 59% who lacked confidence in September. Additionally, only 19% of Americans surveyed believe the situation for U.S. troops in Iraq is improving, while 44% believe it is getting worse.
U.S. adults are split on where things are headed in Iraq: 38% believe things there are moving in the right direction, while another 38% believe they're moving in the wrong direction and 24% aren't sure.
See the full results of the Harris poll: athttp://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB113017755613077776.html
Hypocrisy is us!
It is my contention that if you split open all the GOP women from the bottom up, you’d find testicles that never developed enough to drop, but are infusing GOP women's thinking with Masculine values.
Oct. 24, 2005, 8:16PM
DOUBLE STANDARD
Texas senator who voted to impeach President Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice now calls such charges 'technicalities.Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
BACK in 1999 when the U.S. Senate tried and ultimately acquitted President Bill Clinton after he was impeached by the House, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas had no doubt about the seriousness of the alleged crime. Clinton stood accused of lying under oath and obstructing the investigation of his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
"What would we be telling Americans," Hutchison asked, "if the Senate of the United States were to conclude: The president lied under oath as an element of a scheme to obstruct the due process of law, but we chose to look the other way. I cannot make that choice. I cannot look away."
As news accounts indicate special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald might be preparing to bring perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Bush administration officials involved in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, Hutchison is taking a different view. Appearing on Meet the Press Sunday, she seemed quite willing to look away from such violations this time around.
The senator decried the tendency of prosecutors and district attorneys to "go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country." If Fitzgerald does return indictments, she hoped that they would involve a crime and not some "perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on a crime."
When Meet the Press host Tim Russert pointed out the contradiction between her past and current positions on perjury and obstruction, Hutchison responded that there were other charges against Clinton and, "I'm not saying that those were not crimes. They are." Hutchison went on to express sympathy for homemaking maven Martha Stewart, convicted "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."
One cannot pick and choose when a charge is justified. Lying to investigators and grand juries is not a technicality. Our system of law depends on the ability of law enforcement to get at the truth, both in interviews with investigators and in sworn testimony in court. The penalties can be personally devastating and often do not hinge on other crimes. Former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros continues to be dogged by a decade-long investigation set off by his admitted lies to FBI agents vetting him for a Cabinet post about how much money he had paid a former mistress, an act that was not a crime.
If Hutchison found perjury and obstruction reason enough to throw a president out of office, surely those offenses would be sufficient cause to charge people if they obstructed a probe of a potential violation of national security laws. The unmasking of a covert CIA operative can have life and death consequences for previous associates met over the years in countries around the world.
Public officials such as Sen. Hutchison do not enhance their stature when they seem to support one standard of justice for officials of the opposing party and another for their own. What was good for the Democratic goose in the Clinton impeachment trial should be good enough for the Republican gander in the Plame investigation.
October 25, 2005
Wal-Mart: Discriminate to Save Health Care Cost
The day after Wal-Mart's fake PR offensive to portray themselves as concerned about their employees health care and wages, Stephen Greenhouse -- who proves the NY Times still has some decent reporters -- reveals this internal memo from Wal-Mart. The memo calls for Wal-Mart saving money by forcing more employees into part-time work without benefits and discriminating against the unhealthy and disabled:
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, [the memo] suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."...
"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."
Wal-Mart has hopefully bought itself a nice Americans with Disabilities Act class action lawsuit.
After 2 years of daily reading about health care in the US, I feel more than qualified to proclaim that this number is suspiciously low. Further, it does not discuss the health care problems of the chronically underinsured, such as those in HMOs, or the problems of those who don’t die but live with chronic illness and what that costs the system, and what the lack of universal public healthcare costs everyone in the country except those, like wall eyed turd sniffer Bill Frist, whose millions were made trading health care in the stock market.
Health inequalities in US kill 84,000 -expert
Thu Oct 20, 7:08 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Health inequalities in the United States cause about 84,000 additional deaths a year, more than the equivalent of a hurricane Katrina every week, a health care expert said on Friday.
David Atkins, of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in the United States, said the images of people clinging to rooftops made it clear that being poor and black in a poor southern state is hazardous to health.
"The gap in health between white and black Americans has been estimated to cause 84,000 excess deaths in a year ... a virtual Katrina every week," Atkins said in an editorial in the British Medical Journal.
But the victims die of illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer,
HIV/AIDS and alcohol or drug addiction so they don't grab the public's attention in the same way as the deaths caused by Katrina which killed more than 1,200 people.
And let us never forget, public health policy shaped by conservative twat rags under the RayGun administration BROUGHT US the AIDS epidemic to begin with.
"This may truly be a teachable moment about the impact of poverty and race on health," said Atkins.
The chief medical office of the AHRQ, an agency that coordinates all federal quality improvement efforts and health services research in the United States, said a comprehensive plan to protect the Gulf Coast from devastating storms and hurricanes had languished for years.
Now the U.S. government is facing a bill for the catastrophe that is expected to rise as high as $200 billion.
And let us never forget the US has the most expensive, most unfair, most corrupt, least efficient health care system in the world. If we could only provide health care with the same focus and tenacity with which we torture so called terrorists. Now that would be an accomplishment
Atkins called for funding to be available for prevention, not rescue, and said the infrastructure for public health must be strengthened.
He added that the failure in basic communication after the hurricane hampered early recovery efforts.
"In the rush to rebuild in the southern states, Americans should pause to think more deeply about what it would take to create more equitable and healthier communities in New Orleans and throughout the affected area," Atkins said.
The lessons from Katrina must also be applied to help people with poor health who languish out of the public eye, he added.
Poll: Bush would lose an election if held this year
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 6:52 p.m. EDT (22:52 GMT)
Someone needs to tell the ass lickers at CNN that Bush didn’t get elected in 2000 or 2004 either.
President Bush would not get re-elected if an election were held this year, according to a CNN poll.
(CNN) -- A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday.
In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.
Of course, Kerry is repulsive and didn't take postions very different from the ones Bush took, and still he won. But the fix is in with Diebold and ES&S and repiglikkkan secretaries of state, so it isn't like your vote matters.
Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.
The latest poll results, released Tuesday, were based on interviews with 1,008 adults conducted by telephone October 21-23.
In the poll, 42 percent of those interviewed approved of the way the president is handling his job and 55 percent disapproved. In the previous poll, released October 17, 39 percent approved of Bush's job performance -- the lowest number of his presidency -- and 58 percent disapproved.
However, all the numbers are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it's possible that the public's opinion has not changed at all.
More than half, 57 percent, said they don't agree with the president's views on issues that are important to them, while 41 percent said their views are in alignment with those of Bush on important issues.
Democrats preferred on issues
On separate issues, a majority of those questioned felt the Democrats could do a better job than Republicans at handling health care (59 percent to 30 percent), Social Security (56 percent to 33 percent), gasoline prices (51 percent to 31 percent) and the economy (50 percent to 38 percent).
Forty-six percent also believed Democrats could do better at handling Iraq, while 40 percent said the GOP would do better.
In 2003, 53 percent said Republicans would better handle Iraq and only 29 percent believed the Democrats would do better.
The only issue on which Republicans came out on top was in fighting terrorism: 49 percent said the GOP is better at it, while 38 percent said the Democrats are.
Who are the delusional who believe the GOP can do anything better than anyone else, other than lie, cheat and steal? If we had a better health care system, these poor sickos might get treatment.
And there was a dramatic shift downward in the latest poll, compared with September, in the percentage of people who said that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq.
This time, 49 percent said it was a mistake, versus 59 percent who felt that way last month.
Even the ultra conservative kitty box liner, WSJ, is getting in on the Bush Bitch Slap, while Bush gets ready to pin the whole thing on Cheney. That buck is getting mighty worn.
October 25, 2005
THE HARRIS POLL
Majority of Americans Say Military Action in Iraq Was Wrong, Poll Finds (click link to see poll data layed out in a nice table)
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 25, 2005
A new Harris Interactive poll shows American sentiment about the situation in Iraq remains generally gloomy, with fewer than a quarter of Americans saying they are confident U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful.
For the first time, a majority of Americans (53%) feels that military action in Iraq was the wrong thing to do, according to the survey of 1,833 U.S. adults, compared with 34% who feel it was right.
At the same time, 66% of U.S. adults now say President Bush is doing a "poor" or "only fair" job of handling Iraq, while 32% say he is doing an "excellent" or "pretty good" job. That's little changed from a September Harris poll that found 65% rated Mr. Bush negatively and 34% rated him positively.
BUSH'S IRAQ RATING
Sixty-one percent of Americans say they aren't confident U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful, slightly higher than 59% who lacked confidence in September. Additionally, only 19% of Americans surveyed believe the situation for U.S. troops in Iraq is improving, while 44% believe it is getting worse.
U.S. adults are split on where things are headed in Iraq: 38% believe things there are moving in the right direction, while another 38% believe they're moving in the wrong direction and 24% aren't sure.
See the full results of the Harris poll: athttp://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB113017755613077776.html
Hypocrisy is us!
It is my contention that if you split open all the GOP women from the bottom up, you’d find testicles that never developed enough to drop, but are infusing GOP women's thinking with Masculine values.
Oct. 24, 2005, 8:16PM
DOUBLE STANDARD
Texas senator who voted to impeach President Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice now calls such charges 'technicalities.Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
BACK in 1999 when the U.S. Senate tried and ultimately acquitted President Bill Clinton after he was impeached by the House, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas had no doubt about the seriousness of the alleged crime. Clinton stood accused of lying under oath and obstructing the investigation of his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
"What would we be telling Americans," Hutchison asked, "if the Senate of the United States were to conclude: The president lied under oath as an element of a scheme to obstruct the due process of law, but we chose to look the other way. I cannot make that choice. I cannot look away."
As news accounts indicate special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald might be preparing to bring perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Bush administration officials involved in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, Hutchison is taking a different view. Appearing on Meet the Press Sunday, she seemed quite willing to look away from such violations this time around.
The senator decried the tendency of prosecutors and district attorneys to "go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country." If Fitzgerald does return indictments, she hoped that they would involve a crime and not some "perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on a crime."
When Meet the Press host Tim Russert pointed out the contradiction between her past and current positions on perjury and obstruction, Hutchison responded that there were other charges against Clinton and, "I'm not saying that those were not crimes. They are." Hutchison went on to express sympathy for homemaking maven Martha Stewart, convicted "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."
One cannot pick and choose when a charge is justified. Lying to investigators and grand juries is not a technicality. Our system of law depends on the ability of law enforcement to get at the truth, both in interviews with investigators and in sworn testimony in court. The penalties can be personally devastating and often do not hinge on other crimes. Former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros continues to be dogged by a decade-long investigation set off by his admitted lies to FBI agents vetting him for a Cabinet post about how much money he had paid a former mistress, an act that was not a crime.
If Hutchison found perjury and obstruction reason enough to throw a president out of office, surely those offenses would be sufficient cause to charge people if they obstructed a probe of a potential violation of national security laws. The unmasking of a covert CIA operative can have life and death consequences for previous associates met over the years in countries around the world.
Public officials such as Sen. Hutchison do not enhance their stature when they seem to support one standard of justice for officials of the opposing party and another for their own. What was good for the Democratic goose in the Clinton impeachment trial should be good enough for the Republican gander in the Plame investigation.
posted by TheFuriousGourmet | 6:14 AM
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