In his own words: Using the George W. Bush Speechwriter, you can create new speeches for the prez. It’s an on-line drag and drop site where you can string snippets from actual speeches together to make new policy. Unfortunately, there’s no combination for “American troops will leave Iraq by June 2006.”
He really does not care: President Bush only roused himself to become engaged in the wake of Hurricane Katrina because it would have been political suicide to do anything less. But he has moved on, and, predictably, so has his government, leaving the citizens of the Gulf Coast to fend for themselves:
Less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, relief legislation remains dormant in Washington and despair is growing among officials here who fear that Congress and the Bush administration are losing interest in their plight.
As evidence, the state and local officials cite an array of stalled bills and policy changes they say are crucial to rebuilding the city and persuading some of its hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents to return, including measures to finance long-term hurricane protection, revive small businesses and compensate the uninsured.
“There is a real concern that we will lose the nation’s attention the longer this takes,” said Representative Bobby Jindal, a Republican from Metairie, just west of New Orleans. “People are making decisions now about whether to come back. And every day that passes, it will be a little harder to get things done.”
Officials from both parties say the bottlenecks have occurred in large part because of a leadership vacuum in Washington, where President Bush and Congress have been preoccupied for weeks with Iraq, deficit reduction, the C.I.A. leak investigation and the Supreme Court.
Congressional leaders have been scrambling to rein in spending, and many in Washington have grumbled that Louisiana’s leaders have asked for too much, while failing to guarantee that the money will be spent efficiently and honestly.
By contrast, many say, Washington’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks seemed more focused and sustained.
Now, with the holiday season days away and the 2006 midterm elections just around the bend, many Louisiana officials say they fear the sense of urgency that spurred action in September is swiftly draining away.
By the way, weren’t the Republicans going to investigate the fatal fumbling of the government’s actions during the story? What ever happened with that?
Just a gentle reminder to President Torture and company, this past Sunday was the 60th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg Trials. Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld may think that thumbing America’s collective nose at the International Criminal Court will protect them. Time will tell. It’s becoming increasingly clear that history will judge their crimes against humanity harshly, because the truth is finally getting out.
Several European countries have already launched formal international investigations into the illegal use of European soil and airspace for the CIA’s Club Torture facilities.
Not surprising: Why are Republicans such shameless liars? Even when they have to know their lies are easily proven to be false, they seem to be completely without guile about fabricating the truth. Latest case in point, Rep. “Mean Jean” Schmidt of Cincinnati, Ohio, who lied on the floor of the House of Representatives when she trashed Rep. Jack Murtha:
During Rep. Jean Schmidt’s (R-OH) shameful attack on Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) on the House Floor she said she was communicating a message from Marine Colonel Danny Bubp:
Schmidt: “A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body – that we will see this through.Bubp denies he said that:
Danny Bubp, a freshman state representative who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, told The Enquirer that he never mentioned Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., by name when talking with Schmidt…”There was no discussion of him personally being a coward or about any person being a coward,” Bubp said.
From the New York Times: China’s plans to vaccinate billions of chickens against avian flu could backfire and end up spreading the disease, poultry and vaccine experts warned last week.
Vaccination teams can easily carry the virus from farm to farm on their shoes, clothes and equipment unless they change or sterilize them each time, the experts said. That could be particularly difficult in a country like China, where the veterinary care system is underfinanced and millions of birds are kept in small flocks by families.
Also, experts said the task is likely to be overwhelming, because the Chinese eat about 14 billion chickens a year, so mass vaccinations would have to be repeated again and again, while the risk of the disease being reintroduced by migratory birds, in which it is now endemic, would be constant.
Bird vaccination campaigns involve a huge amount of labor because the animals must be injected one by one. China’s Agriculture Ministry said last Tuesday [Nov. 15] that it would inject all of the nation’s 5.2 billion chickens, geese and ducks with a vaccine.
In making its announcement on Tuesday, the Chinese government did not detail how it planned to vaccinate billions of birds safely.
How to Vaccinate 14 Billion Birds
Fourteen billion. That’s how many ducks and chickens are produced in China every year. To vaccinate all those birds against avian flu, as the government announced last week that it was planning to do, would require about 550 million injections a week.
Sound daunting? Here’s another number: 1.3 billion. With one-fifth of the world’s population, China has no shortage of people to accomplish the task.
G. Donald Ritter, director of health services for Mountaire Farms, a large poultry producer based in Selbyville, Del., said that, if any country could inoculate all its poultry, China was it. “It’s labor intensive,” he said of the process. “But they’ve got more people and labor than anybody.”
China has had more than 60 outbreaks of avian influenza among poultry in the last 2 years. While a widespread vaccination program can help control outbreaks, the usual procedure in most countries is “cull and quarantine,” killing all birds within a few miles of the affected area and quarantining all others in a larger area.
Airport insecurity: In a typically heavy-handed holiday message, the Transportation Security Administration has issued a “Holiday Checklist” (complete with holly sprig) that is billed as an attempt to help innocent citizens negotiate the long security lines between tham and Grandma’s house. As if the guys in rubber gloves and the metal detector weren’t scary enough, TSA provides the following ominous warning to family types:
When traveling with children, a discussion in advance of airport security may be helpful. At the checkpoint, children will need to temporarily part with such things as blankets and stuffed animals, and older children need to know that any comment suggesting a threat to an aircraft or its passengers is taken seriously by TSA security officers.
Sounds like they’re profiling short people with Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animals. On the other hand, it sounds like an good way to shuck that obnoxious adolescent who just can’t resist the smart-ass terrorist joke ….
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
