November 2008

Planned Parenthood in Indiana is offering gift certificates for health care and contraceptives:

The network of 35 clinics across the state announced it is offering holiday vouchers for basic health care services "or the recipient's choice of birth control method."

The organization decided to offer the vouchers because so many people are uninsured or are putting off health care because of prohibitive costs, said Betty Cockrum, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana. Nearly 800,000 Indiana residents don't have health insurance, she said.

Of course the right to lifers are not liking this one bit:

Opponents of abortion said Planned Parenthood was making a "mockery" of the holiday season.

"The tragedy is that almost 6,000 fewer children will be celebrating a first Christmas this year because they were aborted in Planned Parenthood's Indiana clinics," said Mike Fichter, president and CEO of Indiana Right to Life.

A “mockery”! Wooo. Glad no one else does that. Remember when Jesus said “to celebrate my birth, go to stores and give your money to the rich”?

Barack Obama has now said that executives of these failing banks should forfeit their bonuses:

Asked whether bank executives should forgo their bonuses, Obama said: "I think they should." He also said it would show they are taking responsibility.

"I think that if you are already worth tens of millions of dollars, and you are having to lay off workers, the least you can do is say, I'm willing to make some sacrifice as well," Obama said.

It seems like such a simple idea – one that makes sense. Well it is. The reason this is newsworthy is because you would never hear something like this from Bush or a Republican. They would feel that it was “interfering with the free market”. Of course when the free market is on life support from the tax payer, then those freedoms need boundaries.

That’s what California is working towards:

Recently the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States! This groundbreaking development heralds a nine-step plan that includes everything from buying fully electric vehicles for all government transportation to expediting the approval of charging outlets throughout the bay area, including those located on the street. The creation of this essential infrastructure marks a huge step towards the acceptance of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to those that run on fossil fuel.

This is the kind of infastructure enhancements we need on a national scale. Not only will it help our environment and decrease our dependency on foreign oil, but it will boost our dying economy. Think of all the jobs this will create. President-elect Obama – here’s a good thing to build upon.

Timeline fever is catching on, and now Afghanistan has caught it:

President Hamid Karzai demanded at a meeting with a UN Security Council team Tuesday that the international community set a "timeline" for ending military intervention in Afghanistan, his office said.

Karzai told a delegation from the Council that his country needed to know how long the US-led "war on terror" was going to be fought in Afghanistan or it would have to seek a political solution to a Taliban-led insurgency.

A US-led invasion ousted the extremist Islamic Taliban regime in 2001 and launched its "war on terror", which has brought nearly 70,000 mainly Western troops to Afghanistan, most of them under a UN Security Council mandate.

If Bush would have kept his eye on the ball, instead of being distracted by that shiney object called Iraq, then we might not be facing news like this today.