Pharyngula writes: Use this as an excuse to party
Today is the 148th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Enjoy those Thanksgiving leftovers!
Categories: evolution
When you see a headline that says “Bush friends dropping like flies …” the next logical question is “when will he?”
The latest pol to take a plunge is Australia’s prime minister, John Howard. Howard suffered a major defeat on Saturday, losing his reelection bid to Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd.
Howard’s defeat, after 11 years in power, follows that of José María Aznar of Spain, and political setbacks that lead to Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair’s resignation. And what to all these former-leaders have in common? They were staunch allies of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The world “gets it.” Even the electorate in this country gets it, sending Republicans packing in the last election. So when is the United States Congress going to “get it” and start formal impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney and then President Bush.
The citizen of this country deserve to see these two war-profiteers forced out of office in disgrace.
Why do you think campaigning began last summer for the 2008 presidential election? Because the American public can’t wait for this administration’s term to end.
Congress will be back in session soon. Email your Representative to tell them you are thankful to live in a democracy that includes an impeachment process to protect its citizens against fascist leaders — and urge them to use it!
Categories: 2008 election · Congress · impeachment
Is anyone in Washington, DC paying attention?
College women and poor women are now at risk for unplanned pregnancy because of a screw-up in Congress. A new change in federal law means poor women and students are now paying sharply higher prices for prescription contraceptives.
The New York Times reports:
The increases have meant that some students using popular birth control pills and other products are paying three and four times as much as they did several months ago. The higher prices have also affected about 400 community health centers nationwide used by poor women.
The change is due to a provision in a federal law that ended a practice by which drug manufacturers provided prescription contraception to the health centers at deeply discounted rates. The centers then passed along the savings to students and others.
Some Democratic lawmakers in Washington are pressing for new legislation by year’s end that would reverse the provision, which they say was inadvertently included in a law intended to reduce Medicaid abuse. In the meantime, health care and reproductive rights advocates are warning that some young women are no longer receiving the contraception they did in the past.
Some college clinics have reported sudden drops in the numbers of contraceptives sold; students have reported switching to less expensive contraceptives or considering alternatives like the so-called morning-after pill; and some clinics, including one at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., have stopped stocking some prescription contraceptives, saying they are too expensive.
“The potential is that women will stop taking it, and whether or not you can pay for it, that doesn’t mean that you’ll stop having sex,” said Katie Ryan, a senior at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, who said that the monthly cost of her Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, a popular birth control pill, recently jumped to nearly $50 from $12.
I just watched SiCKO yesterday, and reading this today is making me SiCKO again!
Abstinence only advocates love the change, but keep in mind this crowd thinks their parents rode to school on dinosaures!
Categories: Congress · reproductive health · things that make me crazy
Remember the good old days when an Evangelical leader’s claim to fame was that “God would call him home unless his followers sent money?”
In 1987, television preacher Oral Roberts made a dramatic appeal. If his supporters did not send donations totaling $8 million dollars within three months, he warned that God would “call me home.” There were those who complained that Roberts was extorting his viewers and using the Deity as an accomplice, but there was no doubting his charisma — or his results. Roberts received over $9 million, and God did not call him home.
It seems that Oral’s son Richard Roberts, who took over the reigns of Oral Roberts University when his father retired, has given a whole new meaning to ‘coming home.’
On Wednesday, the head regent at Oral Roberts University announced that the school is an astonishing $52.5 million in debt. This news arrived just three weeks after the revelation of a wrongful termination suit filed against the school by three former professors who claim that they were fired after providing the school’s Board of Regents with a report detailing moral and ethical lapses by Oral’s son Richard, who had inherited the school’s presidency from his father, and Richard’s wife Lindsay. Among the allegations: the Roberts had remodeled their home eleven times in 14 years with university money; they bankrolled one of their daughters’ $29,411 trip to the Bahamas with school funds; and Lindsay Roberts had spent the night in an O.R.U. guest-house with an underage male nine times.
Which was maybe a contributing factor for why Mrs. Robinson Roberts is alleged to have gone on a $39,000 shopping spree at one store. Victoria’s Secrets maybe??? (more…)
Categories: religious right
