Month: June 2009

Michael Jackson in a Coma

Jon Ponder

Update: NBC News reports that Michael Jackson died today.

Unconfirmed stories say that Michael Jackson died this afternoon in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times reports that he is in a coma:

[Updated at 2:46 p.m.: Pop star Michael Jackson is in a coma and his family is arriving at his bedside, a law enforcement source told The Times.

Jackson was rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center this afternoon by Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics.

Fire Capt. Steve Ruda said paramedics responded to a call at Jackson’s home at 12:26 p.m. He was not breathing when they arrived. The paramedics performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation and took him to the hospital, Ruda told The Times.]

Aw, What the Hey?

Trish

“I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details.”

— Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) in an email to “Maria,” his Argentine lover.

Pandemic Update: Origin of H1N1 Flu Might Never Be Known

Buck Banks

From ProMed:

Contrary to the popular assumption that the new swine flu pandemic arose on factory farms in Mexico, federal agriculture officials now believe that it most likely emerged in pigs in Asia, but then traveled to North America in a human. But they emphasized that there was no way to prove their theory and only sketchy data underpinning it.

There is no evidence that this new virus, which combines Eurasian and North American genes, has ever circulated in North American pigs, while there is tantalizing evidence that a closely related “sister virus” has circulated in Asia.

American breeding pigs, possibly carrying North American swine flu, are frequently exported to Asia, where the flu could have combined with Asian strains. But because of disease quarantines that make it hard to import Asian pigs, experts said, it is unlikely that a pig brought the new strain back West. “The most likely scenario is that it came over in the mammalian species that moves most freely around the world,” said Dr. Amy L. Vincent, a swine flu specialist at the Agriculture Department’s laboratory in Ames, Iowa, referring, of course, to people.

The 1st person to carry the flu to North America from Asia, assuming that is what happened, has never been found and never will be, because people stop carrying the virus when they get better. Moreover, the officials said, the chances of proving their theory are diminishing as the virus infects more people globally. It has now reached more than 90 countries, according to the World Health Organization. Since some of those people will inevitably spread it to pigs, its history will become impossible to trace. “To tell whether a pig is newly infected by a human or had the virus before the human epidemic began really can’t be done,” said Dr. Kelly M. Lager, another Agriculture Department swine disease expert.

[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

So if it’s a cost problem, it’s easy: Get the people in a room who have the most and the most direct impact on cost, and do the deal. Do the deal. It’s not that complicated. If it’s an access question, people don’t have access to health care, then figure out who they are, and give them access! Hello?! Am I missing something here?

— RNC Chairman Michael Steele, guest hosting Bill Bennett’s radio show, explaining the simplicity of health care reform.

Breaking: Sanford Says He Was Also Unfaithful

Trish

Does it get any better with these Republicans? I can’t look away.

Now Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) says that in addition to “recharging” from his tough legislative session and not hiking the Appalachian trail, he slipped in a little extramarital affair while he was MIA. Which would explain why his wife wasn’t really into answering questions about his whereabouts.

Recap: Drove the state car to the airport and hopped a flight to Argentina to —

I can’t go on.

Crusty Lawyers Get All the Best Lines

Trish
William “Willie” N. Meggs

“Since the legislature is building airport hangars instead of funding FDLE, they’re a little behind.”

— Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs, when asked when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement would finish its examination of the computer used by former State House Speaker Ray Sansom (R-Destin). Sansom was indicted by a grand jury and forced to resign as Speaker for using the position to win a high-paying job at a community college and to build an aircraft hangar for a political patron at taxpayer expense. Full background story.

Nixon Had Sarah Palin’s Number

Trish

Nixon: “I noticed a couple of very attractive women, both of them Republicans, in the legislature. I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, God, let’s look for some… Understand, I don’t do it because I’m for women, but I’m doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not… So have you got that in mind?”

Bush: “I’ll certainly keep it in mind.”

— Audiotaped conversation recorded in 1973 between then-Pres. Richard Nixon and Republican National Committee Chair George. H.W. Bush after a visit by Nixon to the South Carolina legislature. The exchange was among many newly released by the Nixon Presidential Library.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

They never say Colin Powell lied. They don’t say Condi lied.

— Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, quoted in Time magazine, arguing that accusations that former President Bush lied about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction are unfair.

Another Republican Senator Insults Sotomayor

Trish

It is truly hard to imagine a Democratic senator announcing he’d already made up his mind to vote against him, and then refusing to meet with John Roberts when he was up for appointment as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Can’t you just hear the righteous Republican indignation? Come to think of it, it would have been completely justified indignation.

But according to Republican rules, when one of them does it, it’s A-OK. Or even when two of them do it.

First it was Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who said there was no point in meeting with Obama nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Can you imagine if Democrats had done this to a Bush nominee?

Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who previously voted against Sotomayor’s current post as a federal appeals court judge, told the Tulsa World Thursday it is a “foregone conclusion” that he would not support Obama’s pick for the high court…

“The reason is he already knows how he is going to vote and it’s probably best not to take up her time, she’s very busy,” Inhofe communications director Jared Young told CNN.

At least consideration for Sotomayor was the stated reason for Inhofe’s decision (although ThinkProgress points out he reached it 11 years before she was nominated).

Now it’s Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) who is too mindful of the clock to meet with Sotomayor.

Sen. Bob Corker blew off his meeting with Sonia Sotomayor last week. Hobbling along with her leg in a cast, she was 10 minutes late and he said he didn’t feel like waiting. “I decided to proceed on to the next meeting,” he told a Tennessee Press Association breakfast in Chattanooga.

This kind of treatment is insulting and shabby and reflects poorly on the high office these men hold. Common courtesy is the hallmark of the Senate, but these two dolts obviously didn’t get the memo.