Tag: Conservative Values

Hope I Get Lucky in the Pandemic Lottery

Buck Banks

Vaccination vascillation: Lenny Bruce used to have a line he would scream out in the middle of his act: “We’re all gonna die!” While the essential truth of that statement hasn’t changed, if the avian flu pandemic becomes a reality, some — scratch that — a lot of us are going to die sooner than a few others.

The National Journal interviewed Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the Health and Human Services Department, about the nation’s vaccine supply. Overall, the news ain’t good.

According to Gellin, we can’t make enough vaccine right now to combat an avian-flu pandemic:

Because a pandemic will be caused by a virus that we’ve not experienced before, a pandemic vaccine is likely to be a much higher dose to achieve the immune response needed for protection. In studies that [the National Institutes of Health] conducted last year, we were sobered to learn that the vaccine dose was six times higher than what is in our seasonal flu shot and that two doses were required.

‘At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year.’ — Dr. Bruce Gellin

We estimate that if we were to ask Sanofi to dedicate their facilities entirely to H5N1 vaccine, they could produce approximately 30 million to 40 million doses of H5N1 vaccine in a year. At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year. Of course, this would also mean that the company would have to stop making next year’s flu vaccine in order to do this.

So how do we decide who gets the 15-20 million doses in the event the pandemic starts whipping up on us? Well, if it happens under the current president’s administration, poor people and people of color can forget it. Ditto old folks, gays and illegal immigrants. Here’s my prediction of how the flow chart of who would get the vaccine and in what order might look like:

1. First responders and all medical personnel
2. First family (extended), cabinet members and West Wing retainers
3. Four members of the Supreme Court
4. Most of the Senate
5. A little over half of the House of Representatives
6. White House press corps
7. “Wall Street Journal” Washington Bureau
8. All employees of Fox News Network, select CNN anchors and Bob Woodward
9. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell
10. Jackie Mason and Dennis Miller
11. Tony Blair and Gerald Ford
12. Straight military personnel deployed in Iraq

Have an idea of who else would be on the list? Leave us a comment!

Resurrecting Terri

Buck Banks

No rest in peace: A year ago today, Terri Schiavo shuffled off her mortal coil, ending a two-decades-long family saga that managed by turns to be tragic and ludicrous. There are two books out about the case, one by Terri’s husband, Michael Schiavo, and a competing one by the Schindler family. Now, a year after she died peacefully, blissfully unaware of the personal and political forces her persistent vegetative state had inspired, Florida conservatives are exhuming her for their political ends.

I received today a “Conservative Alert” (co-editor Trish does not understand how or why I subject myself to this stuff, but it helps to know one’s enemy, not to mention it provides content for the Review) from wingnuts William Greene and Randall Terry.

The letter begins this way:

It is hard to believe that today — March 31 — marks the one-year anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s brutal death by starvation. I’m still grieving over the fact that our elected officials allowed a tin pot dictator judge to starve an innocent woman to death.

Greene, who wrote the first letter, goes on the mention Terri’s “public execution” and her “struggle for life” as a way to introduce Randall Terry’s campaign for Florida Senate against the evil Jim King. According to Greene:

Senator King callously said, “I want her to die.” Senator King made it his personal mission to ensure that she was starved to death, and successfully recruited eight other Republican senators in his mission. If we had had just three of their votes, she would still be alive!

“We support the right to life! And that includes the right of all handicapped and severely injured people to live without fear of starvation!”
— Randall Terry, Republican

Then Randall Terry gets wound up in a letter that has no less than four — count ’em — four links to donate to his campaign:

Please understand this — the vast majority of the voters in the upcoming election were ardent supporters of Terri Schiavo’s right to life! Moreover, the vast majority of the voters in this district support the right to life of the unborn. My opponent, Jim King, is an ardent supporter of abortion on demand as well as the chief voice for Terri’s starvation.

I, on the other hand, am a strong supporter of the right to life.

And to add insult to injury — he supports a number of left-wing causes such as special rights for homosexuals, including the right for openly homosexual couples to adopt children!

And as if that is not enough — he is now under an ethics investigation for an illegal private plane ride to a major gambling casino in Canada. He is mired in scandal, and saddled with the burden of a record in the Senate that is against the values of the majority of the voters.

By giving Terry money, he says, you will be saying to the world, “We support the right to life! And that includes the right of all handicapped and severely injured people to live without fear of starvation!”

It was bad enough when the Florida legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush started passing laws to prolong Schiavo’s vegetative state, but then Senate Majority Leader and physician Bill Frist started diagnosing from the podium and George Bush came out of vacation to chime in to try and save the brain-dead woman. But for Greene and Terry to raise the dead in support of a hyper-conservative agenda is just, well, I suppose it’s just par for the course in a case that seems not to have a lowest point.

R.I.P. Terri Schiavo, if they’ll only let you.

The Perils of Cronyism

Buck Banks

The following is a statement from one of my favorite wingnuts, Richard A. Viguerie, posted on ConservativeHQ Alert:

“Fortunately for the Bush family, Ronald Reagan put a premium on loyalty to Republican principles, not to himself personally. Otherwise, Reagan would not have selected George H.W. Bush as his vice president, and the first President Bush could never have made it to the White House on his own.”
— Richard Viguerie

It’s good news that Andy Card has resigned as President Bush’s Chief of Staff.

The bad news is that President Bush’s DNA apparently won’t allow him to associate with anyone who is not a longtime Bush family loyalist – thus Josh Bolten’s appointment as Card’s replacement.

Fortunately for the Bush family, Ronald Reagan put a premium on loyalty to Republican principles, not to himself personally. Otherwise, Reagan would not have selected George H.W. Bush as his vice president, and the first President Bush could never have made it to the White House on his own.

America has been poorly served because both President Bushes apparently are comfortable only with those who have pledged lifetime loyalty to the Bush family.

“Personnel is policy.” Non-conservative personnel results in non-conservative policies. President Bush has not governed as a conservative and will not govern in the future as a conservative as long as he insists on surrounding himself with moderate to liberal big-business, big-government Republicans.

And, conservatives will only support President Bush if he actually governs as a conservative.

Huckabee Smears Rep. Barney Frank in Stump Speech — Nice, Reverend Mike

Jon Ponder

Why can’t Christian politicians behave like Christians?

Mike Huckabee, the governor of Arkansas, is campaigning to be the standard bearer for the religious right in the upcoming presidential primaries — sort of the Gary Bauer of 2008, I guess.

However, in his standard stump speech, Huckabee, who is also a Baptist minister, makes an unusually personal — and un-Christian — reference to a 25-year member of the House of Representatives who happens to be gay:

“We’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave It to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank.”
— Rev. Huckabee

“Let’s face it,” he recently told a crowd of Christian conservatives in Iowa… “In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave It to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank, from ‘Father Knows Best’ to television shows where father knows nothing.”

It’s interesting that Republicans feel free to say nasty things in about gay people today just as they openly made racist slurs back in the day. Equating Rep. Frank to Beavis and Butthead is beyond the pale — and, frankly, I don’t think Jesus would approve.

South Dakota Tribe to Build Planned Parenthood Clinic

Jon Ponder

Oglala Sioux to South Dakota governor’s ban on abortions: Not so fast:

In GOP parlance, I’m sure a “simple rape” is when the “girl” really wants it but pretends not to — or when she was wearing something provocative like a sweat shirt or a business suit.

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed [that South Dakota Republicans voted to ban abortions, even in cases of rape or incest]. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

Strong words from a very strong lady. I hope Ms. Fire Thunder challenges Gov. Rounds and the state legislators on this law that is an affront to all independent women.

There’s also this bizarre bit by some wingnut state senator:

When Governor Mike Rounds signed HB 1215 into law it effectively banned all abortions in the state with the exception that it did allow saving the mother’s life. There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. His actions, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli of Rapid City, SD, set off a maelstrom of protests within the state.

Napoli suggested that if it was a case of “simple rape,” there should be no thoughts of ending a pregnancy. Letters by the hundreds appeared in local newspapers, mostly written by women, challenging Napoli’s description of rape as “simple.” He has yet to explain satisfactorily what he meant by “simple rape.”

In GOP parlance, I’m sure a “simple rape” is when the “girl” really wants it but pretends not to — or when she was wearing something provocative like a sweat shirt or a business suit.

Demands of the Vice Presidency

Buck Banks

Backstage demands: When Veep Dick Cheney emerges from his underground bunker and ventures forth into this great land, he does so with a list his advance team must fulfill before he checks in to a hotel. It’s not as interesting as Alicia Keyes’, but it does give a dim glimpse of the Vice President of Torture and hunter of men. Oh yeah, check out his news sources — Pensito Review ain’t one of ’em.

From The Smoking Gun.

Robertson: College Professors Are ‘Communists’ and ‘Killers’

Jon Ponder

As my cohort Buck would say: “The time has come, Lord! Take Pat home.” Amen:

These [liberal college professors] are out and out communists, they are radicals, you know some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order and they don’t want anybody else except them. That’s why [Robertson’s own] Regent University for example is so terrifically important and why we’re setting up an undergraduate program that hopefully will see shortly 10,000 students, and then from there 250,000 because you don’t want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don’t want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission.

I Owe $30,000 — And So Do You

Trish

I just found out I’m deeper in the red than I thought. But at least I’m not alone. Every single American is right there with me, thanks to a Senate vote today to increase the national debt to $9 trillion. We’re all paying the price for Bush’s bad decisions, like tax breaks for the rich, pre-emptively going to war in Iraq and a delayed response to Hurricane Katrina.

It’s the fourth such move increasing the debt limit by a total of $3 trillion since Bush took office five years ago.

The measure allows the government to pay for the war in Iraq and finance Medicare and other big federal programs without raising taxes. It passed hours before the House was expected to approve another $91 billion to fund the war in Iraq and provide more aid to hurricane victims.

The partisan vote also came as the Senate continued debate on a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year that would produce a $359 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

…It’s the fourth such move increasing the debt limit by a total of $3 trillion since Bush took office five years ago.

So how much is $9 trillion? Well, it’s got 12 zeros, but…

“It’s hard to understand what a trillion is. I don’t know what it is,” confessed Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, this week when debating the government’s staggering fiscal obligations.

This is so going to screw up my credit rating…
Comment by: mikefromtexas

It doesn’t help that the standard hand-held calculator comes nowhere close to computing numbers in the trillions. About the best it can do is 99,999,999.

John Nolan, a mathematics professor at American University in Washington, said… “But in terms of practical numbers it’s just overwhelming.”

So he conjured up a spending spree, something Americans might be able to relate to. “If you spent a million dollars a day for a million days (2,739 years),” you’d hit $1 trillion, Nolan observed…

The federal government has been on a spending binge. Just since 2002, the Republican-controlled Congress has had to hike the Treasury Department’s credit card limit four times, for a total of more than $3 trillion.

Allowing Bush’s tax cuts in the first place was idiotic but continuing to squander America’s former wealth this way is criminal. The worst part is we’re all going along with it. Is it O.K. if I post-date my check?

When Abortions Become Illegal, Who Should Be Punished?

Jon Ponder

Now that abortions have been outlawed in South Dakota and with red states including Mississippi contemplating a similar move — and President Bush is just one justice short of packing the Supreme Court with anti-Roe votes — the debate about abortion must change to a serious discussion of what penalties the victorious anti-choicers want to enact against women and doctors — and maybe even the men who helped create the pregnancies — who break the law by seeking to terminate pregnancies.

10,000 Monkeys and a Camera has put together an overview of various views on the criminal sanctions, and who should suffer them, in the coming new era when state governments take control over women’s reproductive rights:

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