Deschutes County

It's time for annual Democratic Party Summit in Bend and a bunch of us from Democracy for Oregon are off to join the festivities.

We'll have a booth at the summit throughout the weekend so if you are there, please drop by and say hello.

Please click on the full text of this blog for events this week in Medford (9/14), Eugene (9/15) and Bend (9/16).

If you live nearby, please join us at any of these events! Following the event details, you can find the latest legislative update. At these three press conferences, Oregon United to Protect Social Security will be releasing a new report produced by one of our national coalition partners, the Institute for America's Future, that shows just how costly the Republican Social Security privatization plan will be to Oregon tax payers while bloating the bureaucracy. This is in light of the continued effort by the Republican leadership to try to privatize Social Security, now even using the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina as yet another excuse to do so! (---White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy - 9/6/05)

Cindy Sheehan, to her credit, may never get elected to political office. But she should. She reminds me of a politician of my youth. Harry S. something. This quote is so true it makes you wonder why our "leaders" aren't saying the same thing. It's classic - so save it.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305X.shtml

George Bush has been an incompetent failure his entire life. Fortunately for humanity, he was just partying his way through school, running companies into the ground, and being an alcoholic and cocaine abuser for most of that time - and his incompetence was limited to hurting the people who worked for him and his own family. The people in his life who were hurt by his incompetence probably have been able to "get on" with their lives. Now, though, his incompetence affects the world and is responsible for so many deaths and so much destruction. How many of us did not foresee the mess he would make of the world when he was selected the first time? We saw what he had done to Texas. How many of us marveled and were so discouraged and amazed when he was "re-elected" the second time? We saw what he had done to the world. Dangerous incompetence should never be rewarded, let alone be rewarded so handsomely as in George's case.

Understanding the festering abscess known as the Middle East isn't easy. This helps a bit.

Settlements go down, settlements go upNew Settlement Puts Pressure on Jerusalem Palestinians

by Jon Elmer; New Standard; August 19, 2005

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=8550

Jabel Mukhaber, West Bank, Aug 16 - Situated on a hill overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem, the new Israeli housing development looks like it could be an upscale planned community in suburban North America: a billboard solicits buyers for "phase one" housing units; another shows the blueprint of the future community, complete with a daycare, a shopping center, a school, parks, a country club and, eventually, a hotel.

But Nof Zion, due to open in 2007, is not your average suburb. Built amid 10,000 Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem village Jabel Mukhaber, the 395 new housing units of Nof Zion will comprise a Jewish settlement in the heart of the area that every internationally recognized peace plan considers the future capital of a Palestinian state.

Senators identified 16 key cases that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts worked on in the Solicitor General's office during the first Bush administration. The cases dealt with fundamental questions about our Constitutional rights and freedoms. Senators asked the current Bush administration to release the information about Roberts's work on those cases -- just a few out of the hundreds that crossed his desk in that job -- but the administration has refused.

You can file a Freedom of Information Act request with thousands of other Americans to demand that they release the documents so the Senate can make an informed decision about John Roberts.