My name is Catherine Morgan, I'm a writer, nurse, mother, and founder of "The Political Voices of Women". This is a blog dedicated to inform and educate the voting public through articles, ideas, and links. It's also a way of giving myself a voice, rather than just sitting back and watching politics and my opinion go by.
--- I am now also at the Care2 Election Blog.
Troop pullout may deliver the Latino swing vote, writes La Opinión, the Spanish-language newspaper in Los Angeles. “Editors of La Opinión assert the independence of the Latino electorate, saying they weigh the candidates and their proposals instead of voting blindly for either party.”
“The war figures highly in Latino voters’ concerns, above immigration. Nearly half (49 percent) prefer an immediate pullout of troops. About the same number (48 percent) know someone personally affected by the Iraq war; in 26 percent of cases the person is a family member,” according to a poll conducted by Hispanic media group ImpreMedia and market research firm Avanze.
In the five states with the highest Latino populations (California, Illinois, New York, Florida, and Texas), thirty-four percent of registered Latino voters do not report a preference for either a Democratic or Republican candidate.
Today’s American prison system creates a “revolving door” – inmates are released without any job prospects and in most cases, without any place to go. No one will hire an ex-con, especially one who has been convicted of murder, rape, etc. Released convicts therefore resort to living on the streets — increasing the crime rate and lowering property values. This is a common fact.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mothers in the U.S. military are stressed, poorly paid and need more help caring for their children, according to a report issued by Congress on Friday.
Nearly half of all women in the active-duty military have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and 24,475 women are there now, the report by the Joint Economic Committee said.
Yet child care services are not keeping up with longer and more frequent deployments, said the report, released to coincide with Mothers’ Day in the United States on Sunday.
Moreover, women get only 6 weeks of leave after the birth of a child, it found. — read full article
US Vice President Dick Cheney addresses The American Heritage Foundation 13 April 2007. Doctors examined Cheney’s left leg on Tuesday and found that a blood clot discovered last month after a nine-day trip to Asia was “gradually resolving,” his office said.(AFP/File/Jeff Haynes)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, speaks about funding for the Iraq war in Washington, DC. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Getty Images/Mark Wilson)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday of pursuing a defeatist strategy in Iraq to win votes in the next election - a charge Reid said did not warrant a response.
The two sparred hours after President Bush said he will veto the latest war spending bill taking shape in Congress, which includes a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.
Cheney, after attending the weekly Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill, lashed out at Reid. “Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics,” Cheney said. “Sen. Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election.
“It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage,” Cheney said. –read full article
It seems to me that it is even more cynical to assume people that believe the war in Iraq is lost, are only saying that to get a political advantage.
An unidentified person straightens a flag that tipped over due to wind and rain on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Tuesday, April 24, 2007. The flags, one for each American soldier lost in Iraq, were placed at the UNO Pep Bowl and names of the fallen were read, during a Tribute To The Fallen 2007 event. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Iraqi firefighters douse fire which swept over cars at the site of a car bomb that exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Joseph Eid)
Iraqi children walk past a three-mile-long concrete wall around Baghdad’s Sunni enclave of Adhamiyah. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Ali Yussef)
I remember the good old days…..when walls were coming down….now they are going up. What does that say about us? It seems we are going backward and not forward?
US armoured vehicles secure the area where two car bombs exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Dave Clark)
After months, the White House has announced the implementation of “Plan B” sanctions against Sudan to compel the government to bring an end to the violence.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Children in Sudan are press-ganged, coerced to join armed groups, raped and used as forced labor or sex slaves, according to a new report by humanitarian groups.
The report, Sudan’s Children at a Crossroads, concentrates mainly on Darfur, where a conflict has been raging for four years, and southern Sudan, emerging from 20 years of war.
“Children in Sudan continue to endure some of the most inhumane treatment found anywhere in the world,” said Kathleen Hunt, chair of the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, on Wednesday.
“Despite the end of the war in the south and recent signs of hope for a strengthened peacekeeping force in Darfur, many Sudanese children are not faring any better than they were four years ago,” Hunt told a news conference on the report, compiled by six humanitarian organizations. — READ FULL ARTICLE
Pictures and Links:
A refugee holds a barbed wire in front of the Turkish Red Crescent Hospital in the Darfur city of Nyala, February 2007. Gunmen killed five Senegalese peacekeepers in Darfur in the deadliest attack to hit the embattled contingent since it was first deployed in the western Sudanese region in 2004, a spokesman said Monday.(AFP/File/Mustafa Ozer)
Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) soldiers, seen here on 14 February 2007 in Umm Rai. UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday opens high-level talks here with the African Union (AU) on Darfur that could clear the way for deploying a sizable UN force in the strife-torn Sudanese region.(AFP/File)
The children of Sudan are its future - Save the Children — This photo is the “Pulitzer Prize” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine. The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards a United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.
The vulture is waiting for the child to die so it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, not even the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.
Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.
How many more years must Sudanese children and mothers suffer?
Radio personality Don Imus, right, waves goodbye to Rev. Al Sharpton, left, after they appeared face-to-face on Rev. Sharpton’s radio show, in New York Monday April 9, 2007. Imus issued another apology for referring to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as ‘nappy-headed hos’ on his morning show last week. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
As the dust settles following the controversy, it is time to confront the fact that Don Imus’ remarks go far beyond one bigoted commentator. They are further proof that we must change the media system itself if we’re going to reduce hate on the public airwaves, improve journalism and media content in general.
………less than 10% of TV and radio stations are owned by people of color or women. But instead of addressing this national disgrace, Bush’s Federal Communications Commission is actually trying to let the largest companies buy up even more stations.
According to one industry study, only 2.5% of radio stations have a person of color in the role of general manager, and only 4.4% have a racial or ethnic minority in the role of news director. The percentage of women in these jobs isn’t much higher. No wonder shock jocks like Imus have been able to keep their jobs for so long. – READ FULL ARTICLE AT THE HUFFINGTON POST
In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, the carrier rocket Long March 3-A blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province Saturday, April 14,2007. China successfully launched a navigation satellite aboard Long March 3-A early Saturday, part of the country’s ‘Compass’ navigational system, which is expected to provide services such as positioning in transportation, meteorology, petroleum prospecting, forest fire monitoring, disaster forecast, telecommunications and public security, to customers all over China and neighboring countries by 2008. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Li Gang)
The Most Heated Space Race Since The Cold War - China’s Missile Program Taking An Alarming Direction
TOKYO - Upstart China challenges the United States by blasting a satellite out of orbit. North Korea lobs a missile over Japan, prompting Tokyo to initiate a multi-billion dollar spy satellite program. India is readying a lunar mission, while rival Pakistan makes headlines with a new, improved warhead.
The most heated space race since the Cold War is under way in Asia, where countries are concluding that a space program is no longer just an expensive status symbol but a matter of national security. And they are scrambling to keep abreast. — READ FULL ARTICLE
CNN REPORT ON THE US VULNERABILITY TO CHINESE MISSILE
On Saturday, the country launched a Long March 3-A rocket that sent a navigation satellite into orbit as part of its effort to build a global positioning system, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The satellite is the fourth China has launched as part of the Compass navigation system, which is expected to be operational in 2008.
But some see the anti-satellite missile as evidence that China’s program is taking an alarming direction.
“The successful test of a Chinese direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon represents a new and dangerous phase of Chinese foreign policy,” said Tom Ehrhard, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a military think tank.
“Despite official statements about its ‘peaceful rise,’ China aims to challenge the internationally recognized sanctity and neutrality of the ‘commons,’ those areas like international waters, airspace, cyberspace and space itself,” he said. — READ FULL ARTICLE
U.S. President George W. Bush waves before speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington April 13, 2007. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)
PRESIDENT BUSH CONTINUES TO WANT STEM CELLS THROWN OUT IN THE TRASH — HOW IS THE PROTECTING LIFE????
This is a one minute video that demonstrates what is currently happening to unused frozen embryos “LIFE” from fertility clinics. These are the same embryos, that could be used to advance scientific research and to save lives……
WASHINGTON - President Buss at the national Catholic prayer breakfast, stressed his opposition to easing restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, a reference to a bill he’s threatened to veto.
“In our day there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person,” Bush said Friday. “When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others instead of their own inherent worth.”
……………………….”We must continue to work for a culture of life where the strong protect the weak and where we recognize in every human life the image of our creator,” Bush said. — READ FULL ARTICLE
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace brief reporters at the Pentagon in Washington, Wednesday, April 11, 2007. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)
Are Newly Elected Democrats Going To Cave To White House Pressure Regarding Iraq?
WASHINGTON - A memo from a top House Democrat says party leaders must not yield to White House pressure on Iraq and some cast President Bush as increasingly detached to public opinion.
Bush has said he will not negotiate with Democrats on legislation that would finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September if it sets an end date for the Iraq war. Holding only a narrow majority in Congress, Democrats do not have enough votes to override the president’s veto. — READ FULL ARTICLE - Top Democrats Urge Colleagues To Not Yield To White House Pressure On Iraq
Thick smoke rises from the site of an explosion at Baghdad’s Al-Sarafiyah bridge where a suicide bomber blew up a truck, 12 April, 2007. A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the Iraqi parliament canteen in Baghdad’s Green Zone, killing three people in a major breach of security at the country’s most heavily guarded site.(AFP/Ali Yussef)
BAGHDAD - A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up in the Iraqi parliament cafeteria Thursday, killing at least eight people in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone.
The blast came hours after a suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed. –READ FULL ARTICLE
Emergency services look for survivors next to a collapsed bridge in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 12, 2007. A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major al-Sarafiya bridge in Baghdad early Thursday, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars toppling into the Tigris river below, police and witnesses said. — AP PHOTO
KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) - A suicide car bomb killed 34 people near a revered Shiite shrine in Iraq’s pilgrimage city of Karbala on Saturday, exactly two months after troops launched a security crackdown in Baghdad.
Another suicide attack killed 10 people in the capital, while other violence left 18 more people dead, pushing the death toll to 62 in the latest carnage to undermine the Iraqi-US security offensive as it headed into a third month.
The Karbala bomb exploded in an area cluttered with market stalls around 200 metres (yards) from the Imam Hussein shrine, where hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims flock every March during the Shiite Ashura commemorations. — READ FULL ARTICLE
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, speaks about funding for the Iraq war in Washington, DC. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Getty Images/Mark Wilson) 
An unidentified person straightens a flag that tipped over due to wind and rain on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Tuesday, April 24, 2007. The flags, one for each American soldier lost in Iraq, were placed at the UNO Pep Bowl and names of the fallen were read, during a Tribute To The Fallen 2007 event. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Iraqi firefighters douse fire which swept over cars at the site of a car bomb that exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Joseph Eid)
Iraqi children walk past a three-mile-long concrete wall around Baghdad’s Sunni enclave of Adhamiyah. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Ali Yussef)
US armoured vehicles secure the area where two car bombs exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Dave Clark)
A refugee holds a barbed wire in front of the Turkish Red Crescent Hospital in the Darfur city of Nyala, February 2007. Gunmen killed five Senegalese peacekeepers in Darfur in the deadliest attack to hit the embattled contingent since it was first deployed in the western Sudanese region in 2004, a spokesman said Monday.(AFP/File/Mustafa Ozer)
Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) soldiers, seen here on 14 February 2007 in Umm Rai. UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday opens high-level talks here with the African Union (AU) on Darfur that could clear the way for deploying a sizable UN force in the strife-torn Sudanese region.(AFP/File) 
U.S. President George W. Bush waves before speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington April 13, 2007. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)
Thick smoke rises from the site of an explosion at Baghdad’s Al-Sarafiyah bridge where a suicide bomber blew up a truck, 12 April, 2007. A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the Iraqi parliament canteen in Baghdad’s Green Zone, killing three people in a major breach of security at the country’s most heavily guarded site.(AFP/Ali Yussef) 