Poor Families Not Allowed on the "Do Not Call" List? Bush Gives Poor Children's Telephone Numbers To Military Recruiters

After all the trouble that people have gone through to avoid being harassed at home by unwanted telephone calls, a national "Do Not Call" list was established. But guess how George W. Bush got around that? By slipping into his "No Child Left Behind" law a provision allowing the private family telephone numbers of CHILDREN who don't pass tests (the ones being left behind) to be culled from their school records by military recruiters. These military recruiters then hound these kids to join the military. Of course these are NOT the children of economically well-off families so the USA continues its tradition of shoving its poorest into the military, but now is even more aggressive. With Bush's No Child Left Behind Law, these children who have been left behind by conservative political policies all their lives so that their future are dim by high school, are then swept into the military after being persuaded that there really is no other viable option for them.

This aggressive violation of privacy authorized by Bush is also taking its toll on recruiters. who spend several hours a day cold-calling high school students, whose phone numbers are provided by schools under the No Child Left Behind Law.

So who is organizing parents at schools across the country to demand that their children's school records NOT be accessible to the federal government or military recruiters, that their telephone numbers not be culled from their children's school records and that their underage children NOT be telehoned by military recruiters preying on their children (whose lives have been adversely affected by conservative political and fiscal policies), hoping to persuade them to join the military????

Republican Politics and the Fear of Death

Ignoring that in the past seven years, this case has already been reviewed by more than three dozen judges and justices on both the state and federal level, congressional leaders proudly announced Saturday that they would pass a law moving Schiavo's case to federal court and effectively requiring that her feeding tube be reinserted while a new round of appeals begins.

So frightened of death are we in the USA that we play political and religious games to try to take the place of God and the cycle of life and death. When will Bush and his Republican gameplayers realize they are not God and that the Schiavo case is personal, not political?

Are We Surprised? Cancerian Dubya Calls His Mother to the Rescue

Moody, and with the strong potential to be oversensitive, pinchingly mean and isolationist, Cancer is also the sign of the Mother - so are we surprised? that Dubya has called her to push his Social Security plan that will give his rich broker friends trillions of dollars in fees?

I think not.

Hmm, Barbara Bush has never had to financially plan for retirement, nor rely on Social Security. What can she say that is of worth? Not one of the 17 grandchildren in the Bush family will ever see poverty because of their family inheritances, wealth and familial Saudi connections. So again, what worthwhile thing can she say? We shall see......

I also ponder this: did you notice that the plan says it "allows" people under age 50 to play the stock market to try to get some retirement income, rather than the truth - that it will FORCE them to play the form of gambling we know as the stock market?

Can forcing people to play the stock market game of chance be made a legitimate government law or policy?

Cooking on the Cote d'Azur - Les Petits Farcis

Mmmmm the smells of delicious Poulet à la Nicoise and strawberry tarts is wafting across the globe. I find myself running in the direction of thes wonderful aromas. The source? Les Petits Farcis, a wonderful short-term cooking class being offered in Nice, France by Rosa Jackson.

Ooh la la! It brings tears to my eyes to think of the pleasure of eating beautiful food in a beautiful place........... Eating good food is not only delicious to the palate, but healing to the soul.

If you are interested in learning how to make some delicious French dishes Rosa teaches friendly, hands-on half-day and full-day sessions year-round in the historic center of Nice sur la mer Méditeranée.

One of great joys I always experience when I travel to France is shopping at the markets. You can share this joy with Rosa! As part of her cooking classes, after shopping with her at the famous Cours Saleya market, students prepare a four-course meal in her beautifully renovated 17th-century apartment, two minutes from the market and the beach.

For those who want to savor some of the freshest and most tempting food in the world without spending time in the kitchen, she also offers market tours, gourmet food walks and an olive oil tasting with lunch in a restaurant.

Nice has its own international airport so it serves as a starting point for visitors to Provence and northern Italy, it is ideally placed for this type of flexible class.That's not the only reason why Rosa chose Nice, however. The city's unique history - it was part of Italy until the 1850s - has given it a fascinating cuisine that borrows from Italy while remaining distinctly French (Nice has its own version of pesto, for instance). Students will recognize some classics of Provencal cooking, such as ratatouille, but will also discover less familiar dishes such as tempura-style zucchini flowers, or fresh strawberry tart with homemade strawberry jelly.

A typical schedule I learned is

• Market tour with hands-on cooking class, four-course meal and wine,
  9.30am-3pm.
• Market tour, cooking class and lunch with wine, followed by an
  afternoon gourmet food walk, 9.30am-6pm.
• Market tour, gourmet food walk, olive oil tasting and restaurant
  lunch with wine, 9.30am-3pm.
• Afternoon gourmet food walk with tastings, 3-6pm.

Full details, including prices, are available on the website www.petitsfarcis.com. Rosa Jackson can be reached for interviews by e-mail at rosa@rosajackson.com or by phone at (33) 6 8167 4122.

Saturn in Cancer: Bush demands UN renounce all women's abortion rights

George Bush demands the United Nations renounce all women's right to an abortion.

Bush has steadily reversed Washington's support for such initiatives, blocking US funds to the UN population fund, and diverting cash towards programmes promoting abstinence and denying funds to organizations that offer sex education and information about abortion as an option.

Student Arrested as Terrorist for Writing About Zombies

Freedom of expression is not only being beaten to death, it now goes beyond the grave to ecapsulate the undead.

Stephen King, beware.

Uranus in Pisces: Physicist Wins Spirituality Prize

The revolution has been simmering for years and is increasingly bubbling to the surface. We do not live in a random universe one scientist is being rewarded for acknowledging that fact.

Saturn in Cancer: Relief for California Nurses

The pincer clamping down on women-dominated professions (teaching, nursing, home healthcare workers) in California is being pounded with a very heavy hammer to make it let go. The sigh of relief from the pain is being heard from the members of the beleaguered California nurses.

Uranus in Pisces - Dolphin Beaching Came After Navy Sub Exercise

The waters off Florida are a hub of activity and it is not because of an early college Spring Break season.

Scientists have a few theories on how sonar hurts whales and dolphins, including that it ruptures their sensitive ears, or that it scares them into rising too fast to the surface to escape the loud noise, causing a kind of marine mammal version of the bends. Yet the Bush Administration and the U.S. Navy want to continue even though they are the only apparent cause of dolphin deaths following their sub sonar exercises.

For some absurd reason they think that refusing to admit they used sonar when asked about it will make people think they have not used sonar. We all know that the U.S. government's "no comment" means yes, it did what it.

This use of sonar and its subsequent killing of marine life is nothing new. The Navy has already admitted it caused such damage in January 2005.

Once again the Bush Administration and the USA is outside of the international community and thumbing its nose at it, refusing to stop using sonar.

The environment, especially the forests and the oceans, continue to take a massive beating under Republican administrations. The Pentagon has already weakened the Marine Mammal Protection Act so it can do more military work in the ocean and kill the life that naturally is found there.

What will be the consequences when so many dolphins and whales have been stranded by sonar that they are virtually extinct? I think the consequences are going to be something horrific on land that we cannot imagine.

Saturn in Cancer: Women fear losing rights in new Iraq

Women fear losing rights in new Iraq

So, is THIS what U.S. style democracy means? Is this the democracy and freedom U.S. troops are there fighting for?

Saturn in Cancer: Picasso and Bacon

The last time Saturn was in Cancer, from 1973 - 1976, the great artist Pablo Picasso died. Now, 30 years later he is being celebrated anew in Paris along with Francis Bacon!

Saturn in Cancer: Take Back The Music

The problem, said Davis, is that the image of the black woman portrayed in many hip-hop videos has become the pervasive image of black women. And, according to Essence research, the main consumers of hip-hop are young, affluent, white men. She fears that society as a whole is getting a "sick" image of what black women are all about.

I heard this as I journeyed to Spelman College. This statement comes from Michaela Angela Davis, and editor at Essence Magazine.Her statement is part of the campaign called Take Back The Music that is being led by Esssence Magazine and some Black women who are fed up with overly sexualized and demeaning images being presented of Black women in hip-hop and American society in general.

This is going to be explosive. Thirty years after the attempt to get the ERA Amendment to the US Consitution, this movement will most likely have a lasting impact.

The series of articles, articles and dialogue taking place is not shying away from the hard acts and ugly truths. This is a woman's movement of significance. The fact that the main consumers are younf, affluent, white males opens the door to acknowledgement that this is how and why Black women are not seen as competent in the professional world and the workplace in general. These same Caucasian men get put into the hiring nad decisionmaking positions that judge who and who is not fit for a job, especially a high-paying high power job. If these men are spending their youth and young adult age viewing Black women as whores, prostitutes, sleazy dancers, strippers and purely mindless big breasted, nearly-naked and always primed for sex, they are NOT going to let them have equal opportunity in the business world/workplace.

Stanley Crouch of the New York Daily News makes it clear that this is hurting U.S. Black women, who are, as a result of the sick lyric and images of hip-hop, apporached outside the U.S. as though they are global prostitutes.

Dubya's Dumbing Down of a Nation

How a nation spend its money, where it spends its money, is very revealing about the nature of the nation. The largest cut in Bush's proposed budget is in education.

He wants to sink more money into his "No Child Left Behind" program, but other than that, a wide range of educational programs benefitting low-income children and families is being eliminated....such as HUD low-income community housing grants.....and foreign language learning is being gutted even as the military is bleeding for lack of linguists (because its "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy led most of the linguists to leave, as they tended to be homosexual. That is a post for another day, to talk about the implicatons of the fact that the most well-educated men in the military were deemed unfit to serve because of their sexual orientation. What exactly does that say about the education level of those who remain in the military?).

The USA barred Germany and Japan from building weapons after the World Wars of the 20th century, so those countries ploughed their money into education and whipped the pants off the USA in science, technology, mathematics, languages....and learning in general. They still beat the USA hands down today in science mathematics, technology and multi-lingualism. With the current budget and the upcoming proposals, nothing is changing, perhaps only getting worse.

How many US students graduate from high school fluent in at least three languages and well versed in mathematics and science? Do we care? Does the Bush Administration care?

Maybe we do not want to hear the answer....

Saturn in Cancer: The Big Crab, Secret-keeping and Silencing of Challenges

Cancer is a sign which can live up to its archetype - the hardshelled oversensitive Crab that hides within and uses secrets and secretive behavior to gets it own way and be in charge. Now we hear of Bush using a little known executive privilege - or as some would say, mis-using it - to get way with ethically troubling practices he advocates against those he sees as threats.
Doing this, he can unfairly end lawsuits that seek to take away the veil of secrecy which cloaks Bush, his advisors, his administration and his/its practices.

Today's revelation shows it has been used many times in the last few years by him to quash oppostion to things not related to his war on Iraq. This includes circumventing the Freedom of Information Act, racial discrimination in employment, Bush's suport of delivering people to other countries so they can be tortured, and more.

The Arar case, which involved the US shackling the Canadian citizen and then flying him to Jordan and then Syria where he was abused and imprisoned for 10 months.

National security is not in question when this privilege is being invoked; George Bush's Cancerian over-sensitivity and desire to hide his deeds as well as evade taking responsibility for them, is at the heart of it, so it appears.

Swift Boat Veterans/"USA Next" Attacks AARP

The momentous divide in the USA continues to widen. It appears the members of the Swift Boat Veterans who launched a PR attack on Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry on behalf of George Bush as now going after the AARP because it won't support Bush's stock market based Social Security scheme.

USA Next Chairman Charlie Jarvis, and United Seniors Association founder Richard Viguerie will be blending those direct-mail tactics with new Internet-based fundraising. Jarvis was executive vice president of Focus on the Family, a fundamentalist religious group that promotes fundamentalist political causes. Their most recent campaign was the one supporting Bush's Medicare prescription-drug program by using millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry.

Their plans: an initial $10 million campaign accusing AARP of a "shameful record of liberal activism," including backing what they see as bad: gay marriage. They have already begun with an Internet ad last week that asserted AARP supports gay marriage. It included a picture of two men kissing at what appeared to be their wedding over the words, "The real AARP agenda." The goal appears to be to tarnish the image of the AARP, one of the most influential voting blocs in the USA.

They've hired strategist Chris LaCivita and they are working on getting the same media firm that devised the Swift Boat ads, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm. Also, Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm that worked for the Swift Boat Veterans, and Regnery Publishing, which produced an anti-Kerry book for the Swift Boat group, also are supporting their efforts.


AARP says it has taken no position on gay marriage and dismisses USA Next's attacks. "We've deliberately not responded to erroneous accusations of USA Next because USA Next does not propose legislation, vote on legislation, nor does it sign legislation into law," spokesman Steve Hahn said.
Sen. Jon Corzine (news, bio, voting record), D-N.J., called on President Bush last week to repudiate the group. "The motive for USA Next's irresponsible use of such hot-button issues is not difficult to decipher; if you can't attack the message, attack the messenger," he wrote.

Do you think Bush will be saying anything to defend the AARP or dissasociate himself from the viewpoints and tactics of United Senior Citizens?