Posts from — June 2009

Ancestry tweeted today that:

We have been working on a few enhancements for the image page to make it easier for you to read what is on the page, and then to add your own knowledge about your ancestors to our indexes.

First, we’ve added some tools to help you find what you are looking for on an image:

• a collapsible index panel below the image will show you the transcription for each record on the image. This will help you locate your ancestor on the image as well as show you who else is on the page and what information was transcribed for each record.
• a collapsible source panel so that you can quickly view the source citation and learn more about the data collection
• a collapsible member connect panel so that you can see who has had something to add to this record, and who has been researching it.

[Read more →]

Arianna Huffington, of Huffington Post, may sound funny with her accent, but she is an astute observer of the political scene. Today she has an article headlined Lobbyists on a Roll: Gutting Reform on Banking, Energy and Health Care.

She sets out showing how lobbyists water-down, gut, or out-and-out kill ambitious plans for reforming Wall Street, energy, and health care.

She labels it “there’s been a change in the plans for change.”

Being an active worker in Obama’s Campaign for Change, still a supporter of President Obama’s efforts, I don’t like hearing about a change in plans for change. I remain an idealistic believer in the “Yes, We Can” motto.

But I’m not so idealistic as to believe that change is going to happen just because I voted for President Obama and he won the election. I know enough about politics and how it works to understand that electing Obama was just the beginning step. We are now in the really difficult part—actually making the change happen we sought in last November’s election.

Obama warned us that change won’t come easily and that we have to stick together and support his efforts. He sends out e-mails to us about keeping involved and engaging in community events and activities. Some of us do, many don’t, having decided to return to hibernation. [Read more →]

Barney Frank has filed a bill that would eliminate federal penalties for personal possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana. [WBZTV]
It would also make the penalty for using marijuana in public just $100. Frank said:

“I think John Stuart Mill had it right in the 1850s,” said Congressman Frank, “when he argued that individuals should have the right to do what they want in private, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else. It’s a matter of personal liberty. Moreover, our courts are already stressed and our prisons are over-crowded. We don’t need to spend our scarce resources prosecuting people who are doing no harm to others.”

On MSNBC this morning, Norah O’Donnell asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, “what needs to be in” a health care reform bill “for it to be bipartisan.” After saying it needs to be paid for, Grassley declared,

“We need to make sure that there’s no public option.”

By claiming that a public option would destroy bipartisanship, Grassley is ignoring the preferences of a strong majority of Americans. Earlier this week, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that a public health insurance option (which would lower costs and improve quality) is supported by 72 percent of Americans, including 50 percent of Republicans. [Read more →]

Somebody needs to change the Kool-Aid Republicans drink! Vitter, Craig, Ensign, now Sanford.

Photo: ABC photo. (Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)

ABC is reporting today that:

Apologizing profusely to his staff, family and friends for disappearing unexpectedly, a teary-eyed South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said he had been “unfaithful” and admitted affair with another woman in Argentina.

“I’ve been unfaithful to my wife,” Sanford said at a press conference this afternoon, adding that his affair was with a “dear, dear friend from Argentina.

Photo:

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is joined by his wife, Jenny, after winning the Republican gubernatorial nomination, in this June 13, 2006 file photo, in Columbia, S.C. Jenny Sanford said Monday she did not know the location of her husband. Sanford’s staff declined to disclose where he was. (Mary Ann Chastain/AP Photo)

Sanford also offered his resignation from is position of chairman of the Republican Governors Association. [Read more →]

ABC has a special scheduled to air today about reform of the healthcare system in the United States. It is called Questions for the President: Prescription for America. It will air today, Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10/9:00 Central Time. ABC promotes the special with:

As the country considers major reforms to the health care system, ABC News wants to hear from you. What question would you want to ask the president about health care? What story would you share?

It is a primetime event at the White House televised nationally.

The president will answer questions offered by audience members selected by ABC News who have divergent opinions in this historic debate, as well as some submitted via ABCNews.com.

ABCNews.com wants to hear from you. Please share your story by filling out the form below. An excerpt from your message may be used in a future ABCNews.com story or an ABCNews.com producer may contact you for more information.

[Read more →]

Even though 72% of Americans support a government sponsored health care plan, the GOP, Lindsey Graham in this clip are totally opposed to government intervention bringing up the tired GOP talking point, it would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Going over the economic cliff would be one heullva bigger nightmare.

Before:

After:

As most know, or should, women weren’t allowed to vote back in 1912. Historically, women were regarded as chattels. Had limited legal recognition and rights.

Like everyone before them, women had to fight for the right to vote in the United States.

In the 1912 photo above we find suffragettes in Kansas Governor Walter Roscoe Stubb’s automobile, going after the vote in Topeka, Kansas. The women are identified as: (l to r) Laura Clay, President of Kentucky Equal Rights Association; Lucy B. Johnston; Sarah A. Thurston; Helen Eacker; and Stella H. Stubbs. They were all members of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association. [Kansas Memory]

I’m convinced women are better at politics than men. They have more common sense. They have overwhelming power, too. Consider Lysistrata, a play written by Aristophanes and performed in 411 B.C. in Athens, Greece. Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace, a strategy however that inflames the battle between the sexes. The women wanted an end to the Peloponnesian War. [Wikipedia]

Withholding sex from men is a surefire way of making a political point.

Issues commonly associated with notions of women’s rights include, though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote (universal suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education; to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights. Women and their supporters have campaigned and in some places continue to campaign for the same rights as modern men.

Men have been stingy about recognizing that others, that is others than men, have rights, particularly rights like men hold. Men still are. Just this year Congress passed the Lily Ledbetter Act which grants women more equal rights in the workplace.

Those women in the car in the photo above were carrying on with a struggle for the right to vote that began in the United States in 1820. They did not win the right to vote until 1920, a hundred years later, when the 19th Amendment to the United States’ Constitution was ratified.

They didn’t win it easily. They had to get out and demonstrate and insist on it and, perhaps, used the lesson from Lysistrata. It is likely a lesson in today’s time that can be applied to win healthcare reform. If the wives of all the Senators and Congressman exercised the power of Lysistrata all the wrangling between Democrats and Republicans would come to a screeching halt. Congress would likely even be anxious to give up the river of corporate money that pours into their campaign coffers.

About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often. Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone.[Poverty.com]

AIDS kills over 2 million people a year, or about one person every 15 seconds.

Pneumonia and other forms of acute respiratory infection (ARI) kill more than 2 million children alone each year in poor countries.

Diarrheal diseases such as cholera and dysentery kill about 1.6 million people each year, almost all of them children. Diarrhea is most often a result of unclean water, unsafe sanitation, or poor hygiene. [Read more →]