** Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and perhaps share advice. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. :-)
thanks Elizabeth D

Let me start by saying this has not been the easiest diary for me to write. When I volunteered to take the slot I did so without thinking what it would entail. Generally speaking, I do not post diaries very often and for good reason; so many others have such a gift for writing that I sometimes just sit in awe of what I read on this site.

Low income families with children that make too much income to qualify for Medicare but cannot afford health insurance need your help. The Senate Finance Committee will be submitting a bipartisan new plan for the Childrens Health Insurance Program (pdf) with a surefire winning method to fund it: Increase the $.39 per pack excise tax on cigarettes by 156% to an even $1 per pack. After all, a dollar isn't too much too ask, is it?

Unfortunately for those of you non-smokers who like to have a few beers or a enjoy a good bottle of wine in your majority rules legislated non-smoking bars and restaurants, your generous contribution of an excise tax on your alcohol consumption does not apply. Even if it did, you would have to purchase 20 beers or about 5 bottles of wine to be in the same fine standing as a smoker who purchased 1 pack of cigarettes.

So if you want to help the kids, you need to start smoking. I'm sure that you won't let them down.

Fred Thompson, former senator from Tennessee and current Law & Order D.A. Arthur Branch will be the GOP presidential nominee in 2008. Why do I think this is true?  And why am I concerned?

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Zbigniew Brzezinski has an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Sunday titled "Terrorized by 'War on Terror'; How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America". He begins with this

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

It continues.

The president said 4 Years Ago Today

Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.

Interesting that the White House titles this forum Denial and Deception.

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As I read through this commentary on the Iraq escalation proposal reported to be unveiled by Mr. Bush next week, I keep asking myself why would Bush do this?

Next week Bush will unveil a new Iraq strategy that entails political, military and economic steps to win the war. The military solution, which has attracted the most attention and skepticism from Congress, is expected to include an increase in U.S. troops, possibly 9,000 additional troops deployed to Baghdad alone.

With the recent elections the American public presented Mr. Bush with a clear message that we as a nation wanted to change course in Iraq. Somehow Mr. Bush thinks increasing the troop level to enforce the occupation is what we meant.

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The Pakistani officials said Rashid Rauf met with al-Qaida figures inside Pakistan before his arrest last week.

They said Rauf, a British national of Pakistani descent in his 30s, had also been in contact -- through intermediaries -- with the purported No. 3-ranked al-Qaida leader at large in neighboring Afghanistan. The officials declined to give the al-Qaida leader's name.

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Well, I would think he would consult with his closest advisors and come up with a plan that has, in their view, worked charmingly well time and again.

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Democrats can point to the attempt to create an imperial presidency; the illegal NSA spying; the Plame investigation; the Abramhoff corruption; the plan to end Social Security as we know it; the failed Medicare reform; the Delay indictments; the Gonzales-led approval of using torture on detainees; the tax cuts benefiting mostly the wealthiest citizens; the assault on women's rights, homosexuality, and Hispanic immigration; the failures of Homeland Security and FEMA; the high cost of energy and the secret Cheney energy commission; the incompetence of appointed officials; the list goes on and on. Any one of these issues is worthy of serious concern, yet even collectively they pale to the one issue that everyone can understand; the failure in Iraq.

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I read a column by Charlie Cook where he advocates that Democrats would be better off by NOT gaining the majority in either body of Congress in 2006. The short version is that he believes any Democratic Party majority in Congress will be damned

The worst situation for any party in a legislative chamber is to have the responsibility to govern without the power to do so. If Democrats gain a majority in each chamber, they'll find themselves sharing blame with President Bush.

But wait! Democratic Party challenger to Jon Kyl has also bought into that same line of thinking

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For the sake of America's small businesses, workers, and families, we must also make health care more affordable and accessible. A new product known as Health Savings Accounts helps control costs by allowing businesses or workers to buy low-cost insurance policies for catastrophic events and then save, tax-free, for routine medical expenses.

I was struck more by the timing rather than the content of the opinions (wrong as they are).

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As previously announced, Sen. Harry Reid began his tour of western "red states" yesterday which included a stop in Phoenix to speak at a fund raising event for the Arizona Democratic Party US Senate candidate Jim Pederson. The focus of the tour is based on Republican corruption in Washington D.C.

I was curious to see how Reid's visit to Arizona would be covered by the local traditional media, which, imho, is decidedly right of center.

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We are arguably an evenly divided nation politically and unfortunately I don't see any substantial changes forthcoming in the near future. Polarization has become the norm where a simple majority, winner-take-all mindset and appears to be the new rule of the road when it comes to governing. Dubya mistakenly thinks of it as political capital.

The future will not be like anything we have seen in the past. Witness the Clinton bashing from the right that is still occurring, even though it has been five years since he was in office. Look at the spokespeople for the GOP and notice how they place their Republican partisanship above their citizenship when defending the assault on civil rights being conducted by the Bush administration. Watch and read the mainstream news items from reporters that are influenced by the watchful eyes of the large media conglomerates that write their paychecks. Lastly, listen to the supposed "ministers" of faith that are using their pulpit to chastise those that question a far right Republican political ideology.

It didn't used to be this way.

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In short, Kristol and Kagan continue to overestimate the effectiveness of our military presence by spinning wild speculation on what could happen if the US were to redeploy its forces from Iraq. It doesn't matter to them that all of their previous warnings of doom have been proven to be without merit. After all, this is their war

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Beyond offering some recycled GOP ideas for investment in the hurricane areas--like a Gulf opportunity zone or worker recovery accounts--how about using the "S" word: sacrifice? Granted, it hasn't been used before. "We're not into sacrifice," says one Bush conservative. "Sacrifice is what the other guy gets to do." That's too bad, because maybe, just maybe, Americans would listen to a leader who convinced them that we all share our nation's problems and that we can all be a part of fixing them. Early on after Katrina, the president offered his version of sacrifice: "Don't buy gas if you don't need it."

Newsweek

In Katrina's wake, the president's popularity and job-approval ratings have dropped across the board. Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Bush is doing his job overall, a record-low for this president in the NEWSWEEK poll. (Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of his overall job performance.)

President Bush's overall approval rating has dropped to 42%, his lowest mark since taking office. And while 36% of respondents said they were satisfied with Bush's explanation of why the government was not able to provide relief to hurricane victims sooner, 57% said they were dissatisfied.

Gallup interviewers entered each open-ended response -- verbatim -- into a computer. The sections that follow present these responses in their totality, in random order. The reader is urged to look through these responses carefully; they provide an excellent, more in-depth way to gauge the current sentiment of Americans on the war.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 18 - While suggesting that its decision might seem "callous and unfeeling," a federal appeals court here ruled Thursday that the Navy need not pay for an abortion received by a sailor's wife, even though doctors said the fetus had a birth defect and could not survive.

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