Since the Bush Administration's recent rewriting of definitions of birth control (Did you know that according to them, taking birth control pills is having an abortion?) is pretty scarey, I thought it would be useful to shed some light on a story the WSJ printed this morning, albeit buried on page D6. Hey, at least they printed it.

Stephanie Simon's article is titled Study Fails to Find Link on Abortion, Mental Health [Aside: I love how these titles telegraph the agenda: We were looking for a link, dang, fishing everywhere, but just couldn't make the connection! aw shucks.]

Women's psychological reaction to the procedure has become a key issue in the abortion debate, with some judges and lawmakers citing mental-health concerns as reason to impose restrictions on abortion.

How do you keep power when you cede the political ground?

By holding the financial controls over a country's economy.

Think it couldn't happen here? -- have you looked at what the Federal Reserve has been up to lately?

Naomi Klein gives one example of how it can happen when the population is not astute to financial shell game. In her Shock Doctrine, Klein tells the story of South Africa and how the ANC basically won the government but lost all power.

How?

Some gremlins named Bronxdem, Roxy, Susie Dow and moi have been scurrying away behind the scenes to update the look of the ePluribus Media Journal using the open source content management tool -- Joomla!

It's not done nor even completely ready for prime time, but I was too excited by all the progress not to share.

Bronxdem has done almost all the hard lifting... take a look at the progress

A recent email alerted me to the plight of Paul Minor, who currently sits in prison convicted on the esoteric criminal act of "honest services mail fraud." Apparently, Minor arranged to loan money to Oliver Diaz for his campaign for Justice of Mississippi Supreme Court. Minor, along with a Republican co-owner who was not prosecuted, also rented an apartment to Justice Diaz.

Sources close to the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim sent us a copy of the following letter that asks Attorney General Mukasey for protection for Michael Connell and his family who have been allegedly threatened by Karl Rove. Rove is believed to be the strategic mastermind behind the Bush 2004 re-election campaign and the possible Ohio election improprieties. The alleged threats appear to be the result of the re-opening, through the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim, of the stalled investigation into the 2004 Ohio Elections.

For background information, below the fold are the links GreyHawk and others have amassed.

This morning's WSJ has a sobering page 1 headline: States Slammed by Tax Shortfalls. The article by Conor Dougherty, Amy Merrick and Anton Troianovski paints the bleaking picture:

The stumbling U.S. economy is forcing states to slash spending and cut jobs in order to close a projected $40 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year.

The article goes on to inform us that they, the powers that be, are worried [editorial comment duh] about inflation and cuts to services.

In my little town that has been happening for over a year, and from Defuning's comment in an earlier thread, it's happening all over.

Oh, but that's because we are not part of the top 1%. Those guys in the upper atmosphere are sucking up all the oxygen. According to another WSJ article, this time in yesterday's edition, entitled charmingly Richest See Income Share Rise by Jesse Drucker:

The richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the U.S. adjusted gross income in two decades as their average tax rate fell,the IRS said.

File under: How the poor pick up the tab for the rich; or is it, How the rich pick the pockets of the poor? You choose.

Hank Paulsen, U.S. Treasury Secretary, spoke to us all this morning. According to today's front page of the Wall Street Journal, Paulsen is "confident" that Congress will bail Fannie and Freddie out because:

... of their size and scope, Fannie and Freddie's stability is critical to financial market stability," he said in a speech at the New York Public Library. "Their continued activity is central to the speed with which we emerge from this housing correction and remove the underlying uncertainty in our financial markets and financial institutions."

That's a clue to a future grab at plenary power over the country's financial markets and matters.

Two other articles in the WSJ caught my eye over the past couple of days... The first, alluded to in the title, is Mark Gongloff's column yesterday, Like S&Ls? Paying the Tab for a Cleanup, about the possibility of the Government resurrecting a Resolution Trust Corporation to resolve the current Banking and Credit Crisis as its predecessor did to resolve the Savings and Loan crisis. The line about robbing the poor to pay the rich -- well, that's straight from NYU economist Nouriel Roubini. Don't believe him? Check out the numbers -- the S&L bailout cost the American taxpayer $76 billion dollars (according to the FDIC); the subprime bail out could cost us an estimated $1 trillion dollars -- 'nuf to make you gag on your godiva chocolate.

We are on the so-called budget plan for heating oil up in here in the Northeast. That means we spread the payments out over 12 months and have a capped price per gallon, but if the price of oil is lower, we pay that instead.

Part of the reason that this arrangment is attractive to us is that we are contractors, and our monthly cash flow is dicey enough as it is, fluctuating with our project work. Our heating oil tank is 500 gallons. With the cost of heating oil just recently reported at $5.30, a "fill up" would be a $2650.00 hit that could kill us in a month when our receivables are low.

So we do the budget plan and spread it out over 12 months.

Last year: $175.00 a month
This year: $480.00 a month
Increase: $305.00