photocredit:  mattdesmondflikr.com

CNN has a show called, CNN  Heroes – truly all stories were amazing for people putting 100% of their lives into a worthy cause. One such story that struck me was Roger Foster. It made me think back to that idiot, FOX commentator, Billy Oreilly who denied homeless veterans were wandering our streets and told John Edwards that John’s head was living under a bridge if John thought there were a lot of homeless veterans.
The stats have been out there even if O’reilly ignores them. The last count is at between 130,000 to 300,000  homeless vets wandering our streets per day. And According to recent studies, Florida ranks third in the nation in the number of  homeless people, yet has one of the highest numbers of homeless veterans.
Bill O’reilly is a fool and should not be taken seriously, how FOX presents him as an authority on anything is blatantly perverse, BUT forget that horses ass O’reilly and concentrate on a hero by the name of  Roy Foster who himself was an addicted and homeless veteran.  When he was given help, he realized a mission to help other veterans to have a home, food and help for addiction and he did just that.
http://www.standown.org/
Voices like Roy’s are the authority that FOX should recognize on stats for homeless veterans. FOX lets a fool broadcast from within their ranks when they could have the truth tell the real story.
Go to Roy’s website and see for yourself a true hero.  If you don’t need anything for the holidays,  if you really have all you need, go to CNN Heroes, these are people are truly humanity. The organizations they form are all compelling and inspiring for their unselfish nature of giving back to society.  Give generously to those in need, as always, check all charities before you give money to make sure most of your donation goes to the charity and not the administrative costs.

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly ” homeless veterans, challenging John Edwards for saying that there are 200,000 such vets. Subsequently, O’Reilly pledged to help homeless vets:

If you know where’s a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it.

Yesterday, several homeless veterans rose to this challenge, protesting outside O’Reilly’s office. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reports that O’Reilly “cold shouldered” the veterans and “did not even have the courage to meet them”:

Instead, a producer asked the woman, whose group provides transitional housing for 83 vets, whether they have an appointment. … The producer took them into the lobby so cameras could not get a shot of O’reilly accepting their petition with 17,000 signatures. … Instead of meeting with those veterans, O’Reilly had [staff] tell the vets group, please leave a message, somebody will get back to you.

the segment:

Yep, Sarah’s 2012 presidential tour showed up here yesterday in the form of a book signing. People came to Orlando and  The Villages, a ’senior’ village where the conservative fires are stoked for their flame — Savior Sarah.
I can only express that the guy in the picture says it all, and I won’t blame the seniors having senior moments, (heck, I’m one), but, it’s anyone younger than 55 – don’t they even recall how they felt when Bush was the conservative they were all waiting for? He gave them Promises Promises, torture, debt, recession and going to war with God’s blessings – why are these conservatives so mesmerized by lack of substance in another empty $150,000 suit?

What a crock of shit! The elected whores really do love to screw us as they  work for their cronies best interests and not ours!
It’s obvious, there are no ethics in Florida as our legislators love to find loopholes to rip us off of taxpayer cash. Values? Those GOP lawmakers of ours have absolutely no values when it comes to looking out for our money, when they want to reward the richest state employees, they write an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ loophole meant to bring in younger people with lower salaries, but it works in reverse !

Double-dipping has steadily increased since legislators quietly amended retirement laws on the last day of the session in 2001 to allow some lawmakers to collect state retirement checks in addition to their legislative salaries. [from St. Pete Times, see below]
In 2001,  our elected officials decided to screw us royally by DROP, Deferred Retirement Option Program. This act of  “double dipping”, helps  someone like Ann McGee, (pictured above),  President of Seminole State College and latest DROP recipient to retire for 30 days, get a lump sum and then go back to work and collect their big salaries and pension at the same time. In her case, Ann collects $300K per year, and will get a lump sum of $409,000 and an annual pension of $160K – would you screw our taxpayers if you could get away with it?  DROP is a perk that screws taxpayers at a time when we are tightening our belts because, Florida is horribly cash strapped. But our legislators don’t seem to realize it!
From West Palm Beach Examiner – David Tilson:
The whole chain of events illustrates how Republican economic and tax policies have combined with rabid partisan political gamesmanship to make these hard times even harder for so many small businesses and displaced workers – their own constituents – struggling to survive this endless Bush-Cheney recession.
Then just days after the exploding unemployment tax story broke, a Washington, D.C. think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, issued a major new report on how each of the fifty states in our union rank when it comes to tax fairness. Much like its infamous bottom-tier ranking in Education, but worse, Florida comes in 49th out of 50 when it comes to having an equitable tax system. Let’s all give a shout-out to Washington State for saving us from ever so slightly worse shame.
Without going into too much detail, here’s the key statistic. Florida’s poorest citizens, those with annual incomes under $10,500— pay an average of over 13-percent of that income in taxes, while the richest folks, those with incomes over $2.4-million a year, pay an average of a sliver over 2-percent in taxes.
Ann McGee, can legally double dip on an already stressed system which doesn’t bother her a bit because our Republicans gave it their “quiet” blessing.  This is Bull shit, contact your local reps and tell them right away this law needs to be rescinded.  Please read articles below and become enraged that your money is terribly abused by the state lawmakers! When will we get any honesty and ethics in office??? When pigs DROP from the sky?
Read on a few examples!  Cut and paste this and tell your state Reps, legal eagle, Alan Grayson and Lee Constantine you’re mad as Hell and can’t take it any more!  Office of  Lee Constantine:
378 Centerpointe Circle, Suite 1268
Altamonte Springs, FL 32701-3442
(407) 331-9675
Senate VOIP: 42200

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/representatives.aspx

Congressman Alan Grayson
455 N. Garland Ave., Ste. 402
Orlando, FL 32801
Phone: (407) 841-1757
Fax: (407) 841-1754
—————————————————–

As the president of thriving Seminole State College, Ann McGee gets an annual compensation package worth $300,000, including a salary of about $230,000. You’d think that would be more than enough, especially when state colleges and universities in Florida are raising tuition and absorbing budget cuts. But you’d be wrong. This week the college’s board of trustees gave its blessing to Ms. McGee’s request to “retire” just for one month so she can collect a windfall from the state and eventually draw a pension while still being paid her salary. She’s due for a lump-sum payment of $409,000 and an annual pension of $160,000, according to the Florida Department of Management Services.
Ms. McGee is, in her words, “taking advantage” of benefits available to longtime public employees under Florida’s Deferred Retirement Option Program, better known as DROP. The program was created to encourage veteran employees with big salaries to leave the public payroll, but changes made by legislators in 2001 cleared the way for employees and elected officials to retire for just 30 days and collect lump-sum payouts before returning to their old jobs. After a year, they become double-dippers, receiving their government salaries and pensions at the same time.
Reports in the Sentinel and other Florida newspapers of elected officials and highly-paid government employees scoring six-figure pensions with their six-figure salaries finally shamed legislators into scaling back the program earlier this year. As of next July, those who want to double-dip will have to “retire” for at least six months before coming back. Their jobs can’t be held open for them in the meantime.
Those are improvements, though it would have been better for legislators to ban double-dipping. It’s offensive that some public officials or employees can still collect two checks, and particularly when 11 percent of working-age Floridians can’t line up one.
Meanwhile, it’s not surprising that someone eligible after just a month off to hit the jackpot under DROP like the president of Seminole State College would try to be “taking advantage” before the deal ends in July.
—————————————————————————

Officials Target Salary, Pension Double-Dipping

//

photo credit: News Corpse flikr.com

North Carolina, the home to whacky, senile, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, (reincarnation of Jesse helms), is having a guest and suppressing free speech at the same time on a US army base! Ft. Bragg is going to be having a book signing, at first it was not allowing media at all, can you imaging the army suppressing free speech? These military bases are not supposed to be political supporters of one point of view. And even though they said Palin could not give a speech, she can only sign her book, (which now is on sale for $4.97),  Ft. Bragg has decided to allow “limited” media access. So let’s see,  IF Sarah Palin really reads, we know she would allow, NewsMax, The Frontiersman, FOX, The Weekly Standard, National Review to her party bus, (don’t ya find it funny Palin could not even think of the Bible when Couric asked her for a list?).
Shame on Ft. Bragg for using their army base to suppress the media and also the rights their soldiers are fighting for.

I heard today it might be Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin in 2012, I say the Mayans were right, the end is near, bring on the Apocalypse, we deserve it if that happens…

photo credit: Homerhawks.com

How can this be in America?  How can so many people be hungry and sick within our borders?  How are we neglecting our own? I understand the mechanics of losing jobs and income, and how even  low wage earners make too much to have food stamps, but must choose food items carefully, even skip meals to make ends meet, still it seems wrong to read stats like that!
I don’t understand the mechanics of my own government anymore. For nine years it’s been unsettling since George W. Bush sold us out to Asia. He made his cronies rich while in office, but liquidated the small hometown manufacturing jobs as quickly as he chalked up debt and left our borders open. Obama is just continuing the trend — how are those stimulus dollars being used? Where are the infrastructure jobs that were promised? Who is making money off this government handout bailout that George W called for?
We are looking pretty pathetic these days, the headlines are depressing, why not call it what it really is for those of us struggling, it’s a depression!
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer Hope Yen, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins ago WASHINGTON – More than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted, much of it on questionable claims for tax credits and Medicare benefits, representing an increase of $26 billion from the previous year. In all, about 5 percent of spending in federal programs in fiscal year 2009 was improper, according to new details of a government financial report that were released Tuesday. Saying the overall error rate was similar in 2008, officials attributed the $26 billion jump to some changes in how to define improper spending as well as an increase in overall spending due to the recession.

Obama has got a lot of burden on those shoulders. And people are lacking for many things, but to think of the children going to bed hungry because of
skimping and skipping meals to make ends meet, is just wrong in America.
What do we do when we have become number 8 on the list of the richest nations according to their GDP for 2009?  Something is off balance?
We were sold out long ago to the lobbyists and executives of the banks, insurance and medical industries. They laugh at us as they board their yachts and private planes while increasing  costs and premiums to live their luxury lifestyles. It’s come down to the masses struggling to stay afloat from medical bankruptcies every ten seconds. Capitalism has suddenly become great for the rich in our country, but left the masses behind. There has to be a better blend of socialism with so many hungry and medically denied people.
The GOP hate that word socialism, scares them, but guess what? Republicans go hungry too!  And if they accept medicare, they accept government socialist handouts!
We have had veiled socialism for years, it’s called medicare, food stamps, medicaid, welfare, disability, words meant to conceal the “S” word.   Even the ‘tea-baggers’ are locked into the ’socialist’ medicare  network they bitch about, they could not afford insurance on their own without it, everyday they should be bowing to LBJ!
The stakes are high for Obama, the rich obviously carry the burden of taxes,  but something is broken in our system, when the majority of us are just getting by, not having money to put aside and so many going to bed anxious, hungry, and diseased and sick, we are sounding like a third world country in need.
What adjustments can we make to help feed, clothe and get a doctors visit in once a year to say nothing of the exorbitant cost of dental care?
Please, if you can spare extra can of food, or some spare change, feed someone by donating to the local charities that do this.
Donations are down, need is up. Please help out, and that means you tea-baggers, quit bitching about your own life and buy an extra can of something to donate to your local homeless shelter.  If you have the means, please help AND DON’T FORGET OUR ANIMAL GROUPS – THEY NEED DONATIONS TOO!  Look what Keith Olbermann did just by asking for donations on his show for the free health clinics, he raised over a million dollars, thousands of people were seen, several taken directly to hospitals.  Help each other and we help ourselves.

Reuters Health

Monday, November 16, 2009

By Charles Abbott and Christopher Doering

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 49 million Americans — one in seven — struggled to get enough to eat in 2008, the highest total in 14 years of a federal survey on “food insecurity,” the U.S. government said Monday.    While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of them occasionally went hungry. “The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the fact that we have extensive food assistance programs,” Vilsack told reporters. “This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this problem.”  About 14.6 percent of U.S. households, equal to 49.1 million people, “had difficulty obtaining food for all their members due to a lack of resources” during 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1 percent of households were classified as food insecure.
About 5.7 percent of households, or 17.3 million people, had “very low food security,” meaning some members of the household had to eat less. Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.
President Barack Obama called the USDA report “unsettling” and vowed to reverse the trend of rising hunger. “Our children’s ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential — and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation — depends on regular access to healthy meals,” Obama said in a statement.

USDA’s annual report was based on a survey conducted in December 2008, soon after financial markets slumped and when the jobless rate was marching toward its current 10.2 percent.  “The numbers are even worse than people otherwise believed,” said Jim Weill of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group. “We all know we have the worst downturn since the Depression.” David Beckmann of the anti-hunger group Bread for the World called for stronger federal anti-hunger programs. “The recession has made the problem of hunger worse, and it has also made it more visible,” he said.
Vilsack said the report represented “an opportunity here for the country to make a major commitment to end childhood hunger by 2015,” an administration goal. He called on Congress to make it easier for poor children to get free school meals and to improve the nutritional quality of those meals. Child nutrition programs, which cost about $24 billion a year, are overdue for renewal but Congress is not expected to act before 2010. The administration backs a $1 billion increase but has not found offsetting cuts at USDA to pay for it.  The number of Americans receiving food stamp assistance soared above 36 million for the first time in August, the eighth month in a row that enrollment set a record, the USDA said earlier this month.  As part of the stimulus package, food stamp benefits were raised temporarily through September 2010. Vilsack said it was too early to judge if the increase should become permanent.

(Editing by Jim Marshall)

0XD0f8jQW

I saw her for the first time last night, Sarah Elizabeth Cupp, conservative author and commentator.  I watched her and laughed my butt off! Just like Tina Fey is a dead ringer for Sarah Palin, so is S.E. Cupp the best impersonator of all Ann Coulter’s mannerism and speech, spot on!
She’s either a serious conservative who so sweats anorexic Ann that she  has taken to studying her ‘girlfriend’ Coulter  in depth, watching her on Youtube tapes to emulate her every move and voice inflections, then watching and probably taping herself hour upon hour to mirror each detail of Ann’s every move and all points of speech,
Or is she a scary stalker of Coulter and sweats her and is doing this to get closer to Coulter, because if I was taking Sarah seriously, it looks like S. E. has a mad, schoolgirl crush!
OR is she a terrific actress and SNL should hire her to play herself and Coulter in parody -
Personally, I laughed thinking she was spoofing on Ann Coulter – I could not take one word seriously!  Her act runs parallel to Coulters, especially all the the hair shaking and positioning. I wondered if Coulter was flattered or insulted?!
S. E. — if you read this – in order for you to be taken seriously, if you indeed are real and not just the faker or terrific actor you seem like, you must come up with a personality of your own.  I can’t help but laugh when I see and hear you now – I can’t look or listen with a straight face!  Your loud take on man bashing feminism is hysterical, it’s like watching Carrie Fisher describe in comedic detail her bi-polar, druggie drinking moments.  I just expect you to say this was all done in jest as a book project.
Thanks for the comic relief S. E. -   now go send a clip of yourself to SNL!

As FOX fake news blasts Obama for bowing in Japan, and brags that Cheney never bent over, they forget about this: Bush practically frenched the Saudi King!  Talk about someone who kissed ass! 15 of 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia – so Bush/cheney chose to bomb Iraq! FOX, your anchors are the assclowns of the news!  So easy to condemn, but forget that Google can bring the reality of the past!

02/06/2002 - Updated 06:29 AM ET Official: 15 of 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were SaudiRIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time that 15 of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens, but said Wednesday that the oil-rich kingdom bears no responsibility for their actions. America on alert • Full coverage index Previously, Saudi Arabia had said the citizenship of 15 of the 19 hijackers was in doubt despite U.S. insistence they were Saudis. But Interior Minister Prince Nayef told The Associated Press that Saudi leaders were shocked to learn 15 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

Today I was rather “down” after a lousy art venue that did not pan out until I turned on the news and put life into perspective.
I listened to the story about how many Afghan children are getting more addicted to drugs at very very young ages because opium/heron is being
fed to children to keep them warm during cold, to soothe aches and pains and to help curb hunger.   http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5226111n&tag=related;photovideo
Every week more and more children are becoming addicts.  Their mothers are doing what the tribal elders tell them to do and the children and their mothers are becoming the latest victims of drugs in the stone-age life in Afghanistan.
Below is story that is another sad tale of society taking a turn for the worst for a new generation of children that will fight addiction probably their whole lives.
I think back to the stories of the unwanted children that the police try to “eradicate” in South America so the tourists aren’t affected by the addicted, glue sniffing, begging orphans. These children are forced into lives of crime and debauchery and often sniff glue to eleviate their hunger pangs -

I see these stories and wonder still why there is no real war on drugs? Why  can’t there be some effort to somehow harness the abuse of Afghanistan’s opium over production? Oh, maybe because Karzai’s corrupt government can’t even keep Karzai’s own brother from dealing. And how does a “warlord run” country like Afghanistan ever get a hold on their illicit opium when that is their biggest money cash crop for the people besides weapons making?          Who suffers for this greed? The children of course, another generation lost to addiction and living life in squallor in “Flintstoneville”.
My life sounds like whining about a hang nail compared to the scope of reality in which children are given opium just to fake their little bodies into not feeling winters chill. What the Hell? And then again, in America we have an over abundance of  “meth lab” babies and children. It makes me ashamed that we place no real value on changing this plight, on actually controlling  drugs.  I suppose there is no hope to curb drugs.  Meth can be made cheaply and easily. Money is not available and even if it was, does anything change? Would legalizing drugs change anything? At least our government would make a lot of revenue through taxes. What’s the answer?
Children are the future – but in Afghanistan, many children will never make it to adulthood to lead a productive life  –and what is productive in Afghanistan besides opium/heroin/hashish???

Published On Tue May 27 2008-  The Toronto Star

Saliha, a 4-year-old opium addict, sits on a hospital bed in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province May 26, 2008 with his sister Hamida, 10, and their addicted mother Malika, 35.ROSIE DIMANNO/TORONTO STAR

 

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN–Saliha is a recovering opium addict.  He’s 4 years old. His 10-year-old sister is an addict. His mother is an addict.  Scratch Saliha’s tummy and the wide-eyed child giggles. Press just a little harder and he bursts into tears. “It hurts,” he wails.  This is the soreness that occurs with opium addiction, along with the nausea, the cramping, the diarrhea, the listlessness. Somehow, the youngster has retained his baby fat, not yet taken on the skeletal appearance of a chronic opium user. But his growth has been stunted and Saliha looks more like a child half his age, lying on his mother’s bed in the drug-recovery section of a local hospital.

In Afghanistan, rehab – for the very lucky, the very few – can start as young as this. One patient on the ward, now gone back to his village, was a 6-month-old infant. They are only children. They never made a choice to use opium. It was put in their mouths – usually by their mothers – to still them, keep them quiet and docile.  This is what parents had been instructed to do, by their families, by tribal elders, by well-intentioned but uneducated quacks who believed opium to be the benign cure-all, or at least helpful therapeutic intervention, for everything that ails a person, and so very handy. They just didn’t know any better. Opium for colic. Opium for labour pains. Opium for women’s troubles. And, routinely, opium as pacifier to soothe a baby fussing, as babies do.  “They use it as a medicine for all kinds of illnesses,” explains Dr. Mobien Sultani, 31, who runs the Counter-Narcotics Drug Recovery program at this 20-bed unit in northern Balkh province, one of only two such specialized hospital wards in the country.   “The mothers of these children work very hard. Most of them are Turkmen carpet-weavers. In order to work, in their homes, they need the children to be relaxed, to sleep for a long time. So they put opium on their tongues.”  The problem, Sultani continues, is particularly rampant in northern Turkmen villages, where casual opium use has been common for decades. It was simply part of their culture. In one particular rural town, social workers from this hospital documented 3,500 opium addicts – nearly the entire population. It was their normal.     “They were addicted. They just didn’t know they were addicted,” Sultani sighs. “We’re seeing now more and more teenagers turning to heroin. They do this for the same reason that young people use drugs everywhere in the world – for the pleasant sensation it gives them, at first; because they’re idle, they don’t go to school, they can’t find jobs. But this is killing our communities. With few people working, because everyone is sitting around smoking opium or heroin, the bottom falls out of the local economy. Families either hide their addicts in the home – especially the females – or sometimes throw them out on the street. Then these people become garbage. Men, teenage boys, have to steal, they will even kill, to support their addiction.”
Once a nation that merely produced and exported narcotics – cranking out some 93 per cent of the world’s heroin last year – Afghanistan is now becoming internally subsumed by drugs: 920,000 users, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, out of which 120,000 are women.
According to a 2005 study, Balkh alone has 110,000 opium addicts – and this is a province that cultivated zero poppies last year, as concluded by a UN survey.   In fact, says Sultani, cannabis use – hashish, primarily – is the top addiction in Balkh, followed by opium, alcohol (despite the fact Afghanistan is a formally dry Muslim country) and heroin, the chemically refined version of opium. “The communities tend to accept hashish use,” says Sultani. “But heroin makes young people depressed, as well as useless. Heroin addiction is a big stigma for Afghans.” Saliha’s mother, Malika, 35, says she began taking opium following the birth of her first child 14 years ago.
“This is the medicine that was given to me. I didn’t know there would be side-effects for me and for my children.”  She entered the hospital with her two youngest kids a few weeks ago and, together, they have coped with the dreadful withdrawal symptoms.
For most female addicts, however, there is tremendous shame attached to admitting addiction. So they hide in their homes, growing increasingly detached and isolated. There are only six female beds in this facility.
Sultani has pleaded with the Ministry of Public Health to establish more such hospitals and increase his bed capacity to at least 50.
In another bed by the window, Khurma tells the familiar story – addiction born from delivery of her five children. The youngest, 12-year-old Khudi Bardi, is also a patient. They share this narrow cot.     “I was spending ($2) a day on opium,” recalls Khurma, 45. That would buy about two grams of opium every 24 hours. Doesn’t seem like much, in the way of cost, but the average yearly income in Afghanistan is only about $400. “My family could not afford it any more. I had to stop.”  Her son makes a ball with his fist, to express the agony of opium stomach pains. By age 10, he was stealing rice from the village to purchase the drug and also trafficking in narcotics – selling mostly to local women.
“I can remember when opium made me feel happy. I liked that feeling. But then it made me feel sicker and sicker. I was sick when I took it; I was sick when I stopped.  “But I’ll never start again.”  The in-patient detox program lasts for up to 40 days. Before qualifying for the treatment, applicants must attend three times a week, on an out-patient basis, while tapering off their drugs. Follow-up supervision – the hospital employs five social workers – extends for a year. Sultani admits there is a 40 per cent relapse among those who complete the program.     The Ministry of Counter-Narcotics operates 11 drug-education clinics in the province but this is the only facility with patient beds and detox capacity. Since it opened in December 2006, 376 patients have gone through the program.
“It’s not much but we do the best we can,” says Sultani. “The most important thing, though, is education, getting into the communities and making people understand about the dangers of opium, about harm reduction. We go into the schools, talk to the elders, at the shuras and in the mosques.
It is a very big job, a major challenge. But on our side, we also have Islam, which forbids the use of narcotics. Our faith is our strongest weapon.”

Okay, I give in to all you who can now say, I told you so!
AND -

Dick Cheney gets an award for what?” For not having to reveal it was really him who outted Valerie Plame so he could go to war in Iraq? Cheney is a whack job who is desperate to change the Bush legacy.