Duct Tape Blues

Isn't it ironic that the majority of conservative and independent Americans want science and technology to help them if the deadly avian flu mutates into human-to-human contagious form and yet conservatives feel have no issue with ignoring science when it clashes with AIDS, Intelligent design, and stem cells.
I guess they want their cake and eat it too.

My question is how many children from conservative families will become future scientists and engineers? I guess it will be up to those no-good-commie- pinko liberals to fill the gap within the scientific community to help save everyone's ass in the future.

A U.S. Marine is killed by an IED in Ramadi, a teacher is pulled out of his classroom and shot to death in front of his students, in Samarra, a suicide bomb kills a woman and child in Basra. 1,400 Maya Indians killed in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Stan, 20, 000 to 30,000 dead in Asia. After a while these deaths could make a person depressed. Hopefully for us many of these people will be faceless.
After all we can't afford be too empathetic, we have job security, inflation woes, high gas prices and so many other issues to keep us up at night.
Some of us are so self involved we don't even know or don't care about the disastrous events around us , some of us are close to becoming too empathetic for their own good, and then there are some of us are overloaded with information overload.
Our brains can allow just so much bad news into our brains and there's Mazlov's hierarchy of needs to deal with when our basic human needs are at risk. So one would ask where is our government, aren't they supposed to be there for us?
Unfortunately Bush's ineptitude has compounded what nature has already given us and Mother Nature has given us a plate-full of opportunities.
To be fair no one could have offset the damage a hurricane or what a pandemic can wreak on our country, the president may talk to his god but he is not god. But this President and Republican-led Congress have dared nature, ignored and even downplayed probable events at the behest of his base and big business.
Bush filled key government positions, responsible for the well-being of our country with the party-loyal instead of using the best people for the job.
He chose to fill the coffers of oil companies, drug companies, energy conglomerates, credit card companies, and other industries over assuming the mantle of "world leading advocate of human rights" while working with all nations to secure the world using effective negotiations rather than enacting preemptive attacks based on the psychotic episodes of a few malignant megalomaniac chicken-hawk neo cons. The result has been and will become even more disastrous in the next few years for the United States.
Maybe we should move the statue of liberty with that famous plaque which states "Give us your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to be free" to Canada's Thunder Bay. I can almost imagine future American immigrants arriving thru Ontario with their only possessions on their backs as they are processed in masse.

The White Sox win and by the way six marines were killed. Tomorrow many newspapers will tell us that White Sox swept the Red Sox. Right next to that article will be another article telling us that six marines were killed in a bomb attack. The juxtaposition of both of these stories shows the light and the dark world we live in.

I don't know if any of those marines were Red or White Sox fans. The one thing they definitely are is dead. Why are we still there?

Iraq is not salvageable, not by this administration anyway. The insurgents have won. All the talk about building schools, voting and the new constitution is just words that do not match up with suicide bombers, IED's, RPG's and a 1000 years of tribal differences.

If Bush thought he was doing us a favor by securing the oil fields for us, believe me It was no favor. He has motivated perhaps thousands of potential terrorists. Each one is salivating at the idea of striking the U.S. with something bigger and more deadly than 9-11. The Iraq war has guaranteed a generation of Americans living in fear.

The same paper will tell us about the recent state of emergency in New York subways, based on an unsubstantiated rumor. MSNBC had this story on their website . Suspicious soda can 
"National Guardsmen and police with dogs surrounded the transportation hub beneath Madison Square Garden as workers in hazardous material suits inspected the can. It was later sent to a lab for testing to see if it contained a toxic substance."

Yes, they will need distractions to keep their mind off of the "Bush's legacy." They will need headlines like "White Sox sweep the Red Sox" to take their minds off all the freedoms they have lost and the constant state of emergency they live in just like us.

A little know provision is sneaking around Capitol Hill.
The Pentagon is hell-bent on spying on U.S. citizens. They have subited, for a second time, a provision to conduct undercover intelligence gathering inside the United States without informing the public.
According to recent a Newsweekarticle. the DIA wants to spy within the U.S. They are also looking to add two amendments which allows them greater access to personal databases on U.S. citizens and to exempt them from disclosing any files under the Freedom of Information Act. All of this is being done without any apparent discussion or debate.

Hello 1984!

Bush's new I-really-mean-this qualification pledge may soon become, " If someone is charged by Fitzgerald's probe and whose last name begins with A thru K or M thru Q or S thru Z, they will no longer work in my administration.

Venezuelan President Chavez , must be getting ready to have more troubled times with the United States. Venezuela’s Central Bank director confirmed that several months ago the Bank transferred $20 billion of its slightly over $30 billion in foreign currency reserves from the U.S. to Basilea, the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. According to Central Bank director Domingo Maza Zavala “the U.S. Dollar has been depreciating relative to the Euro … it was thus considered convenient…” 60% of Venezuela’s foreign reserves are now placed in Euros and 40% in U.S. dollars, according to Maza Zavala.

This comes on the heels of a Texas immigration court's decision to allow Luis Posada Carriles, to stay in the United States. Carriles has long been sought by Venezuela and Cuba. Venezuela has formally requested extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, to be tried for the bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455, in which 73 people were killed on October 6, 1976. The Bush administration is refusing to honor the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Venezuela. Posada Carriles was a CIA agent, trained in assassination, explosives and sabotage.

Porter Goss, the Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency called Venezuela the leading Latin American nation to be alarmed about in 2005. And the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding “Global Intelligence Challenges 2005: Meeting Long-Term Challenges with a Long-Term Strategy”, Goss classified Venezuela as a “potential area for instability.” Do they mean Venezuela is unstable now or that the U.S. should destabilize Venezuela?

President Bush wouldn't attack a sovereign country for no justifiable reason would he?

Amazing! The FDA finally PROPOSED that certain cattle parts should not be in cattle feed. Europe has had this rule in effect since they had their deadly bout with "Mad Cow" years ago. I guess we just didn't believe them or maybe our Cattleman Association just didn't want anything to crimp their sales. It is no surprise that Canada is proposing a more comprehensive rule. Somehow they believe in doing more to protect their people. U.S don't want no brains

What's thee deal with the administration trying to get "ahead" of the avian flu? This is NOT their style. They are usually so reactive to situations. Has there been human-to-human transfer of a mutated virus? Ok, I am fitting myself for a tin foil hat, but you gotta ask yourself; when was the last time Bush was AHEAD of anything?

A pandemic is inevitable it is just a matter of time. It could kill a billion people worldwide, make ghost towns out of parts of major cities, and there is not enough medicine to fight it.

According to a government website "Cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) in birds have been confirmed in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Human cases of avian influenza have been reported in Thailand and Vietnam."
Different strains of avian flu were detected in the U.S. last year, and state officials destroyed hundreds of thousands of birds. The avian influenza strain were found in Delaware was (H7N2), in Pennsylvania the strain was (H2N2), and the (H5N2) strain was found in Texas.

Influenza infections in birds are divided in two groups on the basis of their ability to cause disease:

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI): causing serious disease with high mortality (up to 100%).
Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza (LPAI): causing generally a mild disease.

H5N1 mutates rapidly and has a history of being able to acquire genes from viruses infecting other animal species.

Birds that survive infection excrete virus for at least 10 days making it easier to spread the virus at live poultry markets and by migratory birds.

So when will the Army start with the quarantines?

There is a movie called "The Siege" made in 1998 that may be one more example of "life imitates art" if Bush has his way.

Even though Bush was a state governor he does not have a lot of faith in state and local police to take care of extraordinary problems which may come up.

It seems Bush is on a "use the military for everything mode" Today he suggested using the military to contain any epidemic of avian flu. Use the military

Bush has also recently mentioned that he wants to use the military for any hurricane disasters Use the military for hurricanes

This may sound OK to many but using the military to deal with the issues a disaster brings to bear, instead of using trained local and state authorities could easily lead to a major abuses of civil liberties. Wouldn't it be like using a sledge hammer instead of scalpel on a patient?

A lack of Imagination. It's a phrase we have heard with regard to the lack of preparedness on 9-11 and again during the Katrina Huricane disaster. How many more times will we hear that phrase. I shudder to think what would happen if we have a deadly pandemic flu in this country during the "Bush Years."

According to the Sydney news: "The number of the Iraqi Army's 86 battalions that can fight insurgents without coalition help has dropped from three to one, American generals have told Congress, ..."Iraqi Army all but gone

How many more Bush and members of his cabinet or major Republican power brokers need to be indicted before the American people begin to suspect that where there is smoke there may be fire? The Downing Street memos, Frist's questionable financial deals and Tom Delay's recent indictment on money laundering are just a few of the potentially criminal acts committed by members of the party in power and President Bush. Some of the others include the involvement of Karl Rove and Libby during the outing of a CIA spy, passing state secrets to Israelis by a State department official, force feeding Guantanimo prisoners who are held without being charged, and sending prisoners to be tortured to other countries. How much more does Bush think the World and the American people will forgive?