But I Regress . . . August 14, 2006March 4, 2017 ICE YOUR PHONE: In Case of Emergency Ken Ahonen, MD, FACEP: ‘Paramedics, Police Officers and Firefighters are trained to search the cell phones of people who are unconscious or otherwise incapacitated for ICE. They will call that number to notify someone and get more information. This is easy and extremely helpful. Sometimes patients are brought in to the Emergency Room and it takes hours to find a family member or significant other to help us. This new ICE system can help in a crisis. Do this right now. Get your cell phone and input a new speed dial with the name ICE. Then assign it the phone number of someone to reach In Case of Emergency.’ RE-PUBLICAN? OR RE-GRESSIVE? Joe Vecchio: ‘The radical right have demonized the term liberal, causing progressive to replace it. Well, they are anti-intellectual, anti-labor, anti-science, anti-stem cell research, anti-universal health care, anti-Project Head Start; anti-environment, anti-choice, anti-equal rights . . . they are taking us into the past, not the future . . . so from this day forward we should call conservatives who align themselves with Bush what they really are: regressives. Use ‘regressive’ instead of ‘conservative’ until we get this country back for the people.‘ ☞ Joe goes on to suggest that Jesus advocated social justice, not tax cuts for the rich and attacking countries that had not attacked us. And he directs us to Wikipedia entry for liberal. In key part: Broadly speaking, contemporary liberalism emphasizes individual rights. It seeks a society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on power, especially of government and religion, the rule of law, free public education, and progressive taxation, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports relatively free private enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of all citizens are protected. [2] In modern society, liberals favor a liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law and an equal opportunity to succeed[3]. ☞ Listen: There are tons of wonderful people who identify as Republicans but who, like Nancy Reagan, are deeply saddened that we are leaning against stem cell research rather than racing to the cures. Republicans who feel the government has no business in people’s bedrooms and even less business in Iraq – at least not without having a clue when we went in what might happen next. Republicans who, perhaps like you, are horrified that just three Republican presidents – Reagan, Bush, and Bush – will have accounted for $8 trillion of what will be our $10 trillion National Debt by the time the White House changes hands.* (Remember the promised ‘humble foreign policy’ from a ‘uniter not a divider’ who would dip into ‘budget surpluses as far as they eye could see’ in order to enact tax cuts – ‘by far the vast majority’ of which would go ‘to people at the bottom end of the economic ladder’?) And to those Republicans, we Democrats – like Howard Dean, who balanced Vermont’s budget in each of his six terms while cutting the state income tax twice and who was rated ‘A’ by the National Rifle Association every year he was in office – say: welcome to the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. At least temporarily, until you get your party back. We need you. *The annual interest on that debt, even at today’s relatively low interest rates, already eats up 40% of all the personal income tax we pay. Tomorrow: Still Uncertain About Evolution?