Paul Luvera Journal

I admire Arianna Huffington’s clarity of expression, use of apt metaphors and her ability to go to the heart of issues. In her latest blog entry she discusses the ad Moveon.org ran about the testimony of General Petraeus regarding Iraq. The ad spells out clearly the concealment of facts and the false representations made at the time of his testimony. As a result, Rudy Giuliani was up in arms for "character assassination on an American general who is putting his…

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The State Children’s health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is under attack by George Bush. The program began in 1997 which provides federal funds on a matching state fund basis to give health care to children unable to afford it. It was directed at families whose income was too high for Medicaid, but too low to afford private insurance coverage. According to the New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 357:1036 September 6, 2007) it has been enormously successful. Some 6 million have…

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Nate (Nathaniel) Washington died recently (August 18th) at 93 years of age. (See obituary) Nate practiced law in Grant County with Jim Wickwire. He was a man of many accomplishments. He was born in Coulee City. His dad died in a drowning accident when he was young. While attending Ephrata high school he was captain of the football and basketball teams as well as student body president. He attended the University of Washington during the depression only with the help…

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I hesitate to add to the Senator Larry Craig story any more attention then the media frenzy now occurring, but Nina Burleigh’s blog entry about Ohio and the last election caught my attention. In writing about Republican hypocrisy and gays she reported something I didn’t know: "The Republican Party got Bush re-elected in 2004 by playing the homophobe card. In Ohio, their minions went door-to-door in Amish country and warned the historically non-secular inhabitants that if they didn’t get out…

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In 2006 the voters said they wanted politicians in Washington to clean up their act. They were tired of overpaid members of Congress not doing their job and their lousy ethics. They threw Republicans out not only because of Iraq, but because these were the people who assured the voters they represented basic family values and a return to a good moral code for America. The voters thought they represented integrity and their own values. But then, Mark Foley of…

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There has been so much already written about the resignation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General that I hesitate to even add a comment. However, as pointed out by Representative Louise Slaughter in her blog entitled "Restore justice to the justice department," what does bear further comment is the issue of the total lack of integrity the Bush gang has brought to our government. As she correctly points out his resignation is the product of a pattern we have seen…

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Jeffrey Simpson is a syndicated columnist in Canada who wrote a recent article about what he called "the three D’s." He said: "The United States under (Bush’s) leadership, spends more than it raises in taxes, imports more then it exports and uses more energy than the country can produce domestically." He went on to point out that if report cards were being issued, Mr. Bush would get three D’s: a fiscal deficit, a trade deficit and an energy deficit. Mr….

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"Bush’s brain" has left the building. Karl Rove, the paid consultant to Phillip Morris and propaganda minister to the Bush Whitehorse, resigned before the ship of state sank. I admit I have contempt for this man’s morals and ethics as well as for his total lack of character. I’ve commented about Rove lots of times, (3/17/07) but it’s to be remembered that this man continued as a paid consultant for the tobacco giant Phillip Morris even while acting as an…

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Letters to the Editor in the New York Times of August 8th captured my feeling of disappointment in Congressional Democrats as having no backbone at all when it comes to Iraq and the continued intrusion into America’s right of privacy by this administration. As letters in the Times put it: "To their shame, sixteen Democrats in the Senate and forty one in the House voted to hand the president monarchial powers that the signers of the Constitution had withheld. The…

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I’ve written about the oppressive policies of the Bush administration and that of Woodrow Wilson before https://paulluverajournalonline.com/weblog/2007/02/p.html. But, I was primarily describing the pre World War I situation and the Palmer raids. In fact,  the situation did not improve after the start of war in 1917, and instead became much worse. Not unlike the situation in this country after the Bush Administration rammed the Patriot Act through Congress. The Sedition Act was passed in 1918 while Wilson was president and…

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