All this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country's pride.

As many of you know, Teri Mills and the National Nurse Team have been working with nursing leaders in Congress for a bill. Representative Lois Capps (D-CA) has taken the lead and her staff spoke with us a few weeks ago, stating that the bill was headed to Legislative Counsel. We are asking Congress to create an Office of the National Nurse to focus on providing all Americans with preventive health care resources.

To read exactly what this proposal is about, please go to our website
www.nationalnurse.blogspot.com

Each of us can make a difference to help move the bill for a National Nurse forward. Please email Representative Capps’ office at jeremy.sharp@mail.house.gov or if you prefer, call Rose Gonzales, the Government Relations Specialist at the American Nurses Association (301-628-5000).

Simply tell Representative Capps and Rose Gonzales you support an Office of the National Nurse because it will: (use one statement from
below or you can also use your own words which is even better)

1. Focus Americans on preventive health practices.

2. Focus on reducing health care costs through prevention and education.

3. Complement government services already in place; help prioritize and deliver the health agenda to the nation.

4. Provide a trusted unified source for people to consult first when considering options for addressing their wellness needs.

5. Involve entire communities because nurses in the community they live in will provide services.

6. Continue the collaborative work nurses do with physicians and other health care providers in individual settings on a community and national level.

7. Develop National Nurse teams to serve as prepared volunteer groups in emergency situations.

8. Demonstrate the value of education as an important intervention to help decrease health care costs.

9. Focus national attention on the value of nursing; inspire entry into nursing careers, and enhance the value of practicing nurses.

10. Attract nurses to become educators by demonstrating teaching in action.


I would appreciate hearing the result of your call and/or email. You can reach me at teri@nationalnurse.info PLEASE sign up for our newsletter
to follow the progress of the National Nurse Team. Please forward this email to every nurse that you know.

Florence Nightingale declared, “I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.”

Your voice may make the difference in pulling the bill out of Legislative Counsel.

Thanks for your support.

Teri Mills
National Nurse Campaign Coordinator

I believe we need a national nurse, because nursing better represents the domestic needs of the people of the United States. The Surgeon General's office, even in name, is an office springing from a wartime mind set. Although we are at war (or something closely resembling it), our domestic needs are not for a wartime surgeon. In fact, the Surgeon General's office has been concerned with domestic policy for ages.

But it's health maintenance, not the trauma center, that are at the center of silent crises in this country.

Children are getting fat and idle -- not the young colts of prior generations, but tired, stressed, sickly children that will be a burden to themselves and the health care system.

Air quality, while under the control of the EPA, is likely causing childhood asthma in so many of these weakened youngsters.

Diet is at the root of a pandemic in youth and adults, likely responsible for a significant slice of chronic ailments.

Exercise habits are ceasing to be conditioned into children whose schools are cutting teaching positions and instruction time including PE and sports activities.

Stress management and anger management could improve the lives of Americans of all ages.

Simple monitoring of vital signs could stave off many health crises. Likewise, education in issues such as the recognition of the signs of heart attack, melanoma, and many other conditions could save lives and load on the medical system.

"Sustainability" is a word that we hear a lot these days. We need to make the health of American sustainable, to maintain, literally, our quality of life through hard times.

I encourage all people in DC to support the office of the National Nurse.

PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll reflects further erosion in
President George W. Bush's job approval rating, continuing the slow
but steady decline evident throughout the year so far. The poll --
conducted Aug. 22-25 -- puts Bush's job approval rating at 40% and
his disapproval rating at 56%. Both are the most negative ratings of
the Bush administration. Bush's previous low point in approval was
44% (July 25-28, 2005) and his previous high point in disapproval was
53% (June 24-26, 2005).

The major initiative in the Lyndon Johnson presidency was the Vietnam War. By 1968 the U.S. had 548,000 troops in Vietnam, and had already lost 30,000 of them. Johnson's approval ratings had dropped from 70 percent in mid-1965 to below 40 percent by 1967, and with it, his mastery of Congress. "I can't get out, I can't finish it with what I have got. So what the hell do I do?" he cried out to Lady Bird. Johnson never did figure out the answer to that question.

"Revenge of the Sith," it turns out, can also be seen as a cautionary tale for our time -- a blistering critique of the war in Iraq, a reminder of how democracies can give up their freedoms too easily, and an admonition about the seduction of good people by absolute power.

Some film critics suggest it could be the biggest anti-Bush blockbuster since "Fahrenheit 9/11."

'I didn't think it was going to get quite this close,' he said of the parallels between the Nixon era and the current Bush presidency, which has been sacrificing freedoms in the interests of national security. 'It is just one of those re-occurring things. I hope this doesn't come true in our country. Maybe the film will awaken people to the situation of how dangerous it is.'

Newsweek hesitated here, on the reasonable assumption that just as the magazine was wrong to proceed to publish the story without sufficient foundation, it would be wrong, without sufficient foundation, to take an Orwellian step into "retracting" it.

But, understandably, the magazine yielded the point, even though the difference between regretting a story and retracting it is more than merely semantic. Newsweek was not being asked to take the position that because blasphemy is wrong, a report that it had taken place was derivatively wrong. The author of the story, Mr. Isikoff, might have been reminded of the skepticism with which he was met when, seven years ago, he said that the president of the United States was having sex with an intern.

The underlying difficulty derives from the fact that infamous people are capable of infamy -- that the U.S. military could include, in Guantanamo, a soldier or two who behaved not as they should, but as other U.S. soldiers did in Abu Ghraib two years ago.

Conservative evangelicals control at least six national television networks, each reaching tens of millions of homes, and virtually all of the nation’s more than 2,000 religious radio stations. Thanks to Christian radio’s rapid growth, religious stations now outnumber every other format except country music and news-talk. If they want to dwell solely in this alternative universe, believers can now choose to have only Christian programs piped into their homes. Sky Angel, one of the nation’s three direct-broadcast satellite networks, carries thirty-six channels of Christian radio and television — and nothing else.

The NRB [National Religious Broadcasters, and note the TLA in the URL] has taken a number of steps to ensure it remains a political player. The most dramatic came in 2002, after Wayne Pederson was tapped to replace the network’s longtime president, Brandt Gustavson. He quickly ignited internal controversy by telling a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter that he intended to shift the organization’s focus away from politics. “We get associated with the far Christian right and marginalized,” Pederson lamented. “To me the important thing is to keep the focus on what’s important to us spiritually.”That didn’t sit well. Soon members of the executive committee were clamoring for his ouster. Within weeks, he was forced to step down.

Frank Wright was eventually chosen to replace Pederson. He had spent the previous eight years serving as the executive director of the Center for Christian Statesmanship, a Capitol Hill ministry that conducts training for politicians on how to “think biblically about their role in government.” Wright acknowledges that he was chosen for his deep political connections. “I came here to re-engage the political culture on issues relating to broadcasting,” he says. “The rest is up to individual broadcasters.”

[snip]

Many Christian broadcasters attribute the success of their news operations to the biblical perspective that underpins their reporting in a world made wobbly by terrorist threats and moral relativism. “We don’t just tell them what the news is,” explains Wright of the NRB. “We tell them what it means. And that’s appealing to people, especially in moments of cultural instability.”

Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Why did the administration want to invade Iraq, when, as the memo noted, "the case was thin" and Saddam's "W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran"? Iraq was perceived as a soft target; a quick victory there, its domestic political advantages aside, could serve as a demonstration of American military might, one that would shock and awe the world.

But the Iraq war has, instead, demonstrated the limits of American power, and emboldened our potential enemies. Why should Kim Jong Il fear us, when we can't even secure the road from Baghdad to the airport?

At this point, the echoes of Vietnam are unmistakable. Reports from the recent offensive near the Syrian border sound just like those from a 1960's search-and-destroy mission, body count and all. Stories filed by reporters actually with the troops suggest that the insurgents, forewarned, mostly melted away, accepting battle only where and when they chose.

Meanwhile, America's strategic position is steadily deteriorating.

I'm not advocating an immediate pullout, but we have to tell the Iraqi government that our stay is time-limited, and that it has to find a way to take care of itself. The point is that something has to give. We either need a much bigger army - which means a draft - or we need to find a way out of Iraq.

On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" [circular, eh? -- SN]

In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt—when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003—was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet."

He says he understands that some Vermont Democrats would like to run for the seat being opened by the retirement of Senator James Jeffords.

Dean says if Democrats agree not to run for the Senate, Progressives should agree not to run for other statewide offices like the U-S House and lieutenant governor.
from the above cited article

Q Different issue. There have been protests in Pakistan over reports that investigation over abuses in Guantanamo has found that guards have apparently put Korans in the toilet. And I'm wondering if either of you can comment on whether that's accurate, or whether the investigation has found that, and what's being done about it?



MR. DIRITA: I can't speak to any particular -- I've not seen the reports on that specific point. As we've said many times, we have conducted multiple investigations into the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere in the world, and we are facing an adversary -- in the case of many of these detainees, particularly at Guantanamo -- who are exceedingly well-trained in counter-interrogation tactics. And the procedures that are provided for by field manuals, as well as other authorization, have taken that into account. But I can't speak to a particular assertion about what may have happened.
DOD regular briefing, 5/11/05

Over the last 50 years, we've had to cope with an explosion of media, technologies, and interfaces, from the TV clicker to the World Wide Web. And every new form of visual media - interactive visual media in particular - poses an implicit challenge to our brains: We have to work through the logic of the new interface, follow clues, sense relationships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the very skills that the Ravens tests measure - you survey a field of visual icons and look for unusual patterns.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
TS Eliot, The Rock

Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

H. L. Menken, Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920

From April 8-17, congregations from different faith communities across the country will be taking part in a "Blessing of the Taxes" around tax day, April 15.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are committed to creating an equitable tax system that provides sufficient revenue to meet our country's human needs. Faced with a federal budget that includes massive tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthiest among us at the expense of the common good of our country, "blessing" our taxes allows us to reframe the national conversation about the role of government in society and its moral and spiritual imperatives.

What you can do:
* Lay hands on envelopes containing tax returns or copies of returns in worship, and pray over them; or create an altar for tax returns
* Weave the blessing into sermons or pastoral prayers
* Conduct special worship services
* Conduct prayer vigils at local Post Offices on April 15 (a great and easy way to get local media attention!)
* Distribute the blessing with attached information about how taxes are used and how citizens can contact their legislators

The message:
* Paying taxes is a moral responsibility of all people.
* Creating a just tax system used for just purposes is the responsibility of all people and institutions.
* Elected officials are entrusted with a greater responsibility to ensure that taxation hold as a primary concern the needs of low-income persons to prevent the entrenchment of poverty in society.
* Taxation must be used toward the organization of social structures to ensure that basic human needs for all people are met.
* Taxation must not inhibit a person's ability to meet their basic needs-the payment of a higher rate of taxation by those who have higher incomes or profits is just and good.

(Adapted from the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon www.emoregon.org)