BZ
Appreciate Today
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In Memory of My Father: 1920 to 2009
We received the call at 3:33 this morning, Wednesday, February 11th, 2009.
You know, instinctively, that an early morning phone call is no good. It was my eldest brother saying that our other brother had gotten a phone call from the hospital. Our father had just passed away.
My father, Richard, was 88 years old. He had survived a world war, Korea, Vietnam. He was a US Army Air Corps bomber pilot. He trained aviators in the B-25 Mitchell at Mather Air Field, east of Sacramento. He married his sweetheart; they eloped to Reno for marriage. They had three children, including myself — Baby Boomers from the Greatest Generation. He made full bird Colonel in the United States Air Force. If it had rivets, he could fly it.
His wife, my mother, passed away on May 14th of 2002. She had COPD from smoking. Everyone smoked back then. She had just observed her 80th birthday at the time, and her anniversary of April 24th, 1942 — their 60th.
Dad was two months shy of his 89th birthday, April 13th of 1920.
I called my father’s brother at their Highland Park, Texas home early this morning. I woke up my Aunt Gloria.
Dad once told me: “All I want to do is be older than my father when he died.” His father was 80 when he died. He was in the front yard of their Texas home. He had a heart attack and fell dead. You made it, Dad. You beat him.
There is so much to do. So much to do.
Blogging may be sporadic. Or I may redouble my efforts. I can’t say.
I’ll bet my Dad’s flying high above the earth right now, in an open cockpit Consolidated Vultee BT-13, canopy slided back, where the skies are blue, the weather fair, and he’s young, strong and free. So free.
BZ
Emotional Cheese
In a recent New York Times opinion piece by Judith Warner on February 5th, she wrote that:
Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president (Obama).
Wonderful. Just wonderful. But this is not surprising.
Clinton and Obama are of a bit of the same cloth with regard to women (Conservative women, avert your eyes and dismiss one word, at this point — I make it only for emphasis).
Clinton already said he was our first black president in an attempt to garner alleged minority votes. And all womyn’s groups refused to repudiate Mr Clinton or his predatory ways during his administration. It was just fine that he was and always has been on the prowl for pussy other than his wife’s.
Not to worry. Women carried this immature adorative trait over from Clinton and applied it to Obama. That is to say, Venus vs. Mars.
It isn’t about solutions to problems; it’s just about if you’re good looking, have charisma, and pretend like you’re actually listening — though you really aren’t.
Yes, apparently the bulk of American women are this shallow. Mr Obama is, after all, occupying the White House. At least Mr Obama isn’t as craven and callow. Yet.
Further: Today, Mr Obama took his “stimulus package” bleat to the road and “happened” to land in Elkhart, Indiana on Monday, February 9th, in hopes of appealing to the most base of our emotions. Not logic. No. E-mo-tions.
This is national manipulation of an extent to make Josef Goebbels sublimely proud.
Mr Obama’s plea consisted of: “Yes, we know you’re hurting. O, how I can sympathize. Therefore you need more cheese. And not just regular cheese. Free cheese. Paid for by — well, it won’t be you and, after all, the source isn’t important. It’s just important that I look good for the womyn, I listen to you and nod my head regally at the important parts.”
From Mr Barone:
Barack Obama is speaking today in Elkhart, Indiana, which had very high unemployment (15.3 percent) in December, a record. But why does Elkhart have such exceptionally high unemployment? The answer is that it is, as a promotional website tells us, “The RV Capital of the World.” RV sales are down this year, and I don’t suppose they’ll be helped by the cap-and-trade system that Obama and most Democrats want to impose on our economy. Yes, Elkhart County trended hugely to Obama. George W. Bush carried it 70 percent to 29 percent in 2004, and, Obama lost it by only 55 percent to 44 percent in 2008. Obama made those gains because of what people in Elkhart County thought George Bush failed to deliver. Now Obama must deliver himself.
Mr Obama, I submit, appeals only to the most shallow and base in us all.
Shame on the politicians. Yes.
But shame on the electorate for buying into this bullshit. Shame on the young. Shame on women. Shame on your stupidity, ignorance, naivete.
We the Sheeple. We want our Free Cheese.
BZ
It’s Now In The United States
I wrote earlier about the Ebola virus and its very recent death-rate rise in Congo. Ebola is one of two members of a family of RNA viruses called the Filoviridae. The second of the family is called Marburg. Richard Preston wrote about Ebola and Marburg in his 1994 book, The Hot Zone.
Ebola, this highly infectious bleeding fever, is 80% fatal. Marburg is listed as 23% to 90% fatal. Recent cases (2005) indicate Marburg has a case fatality rate of 93% in Angola, which actually exceeds the Ebola virus.
Now, there is the first Marburg case ever documented in the United States:
WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. (AP) — The first U.S. case of Marburg hemorrhagic fever has been confirmed in Colorado, and authorities say the patient — who contracted the rare illness while traveling in Uganda — has since recovered.
The incubation period for Marburg is roughly 5 to 10 days.
Where did this person go in those 5 to 10 days? More importantly, where did that person go and with whom did he or she come in contact between the point they were communicable and then subsequently properly diagnosed?
Can anyone say index case?
BZ
P.S.
Related: see USAMRIID link.
This Is Sheer Insanity
Bloomberg News, known for its cogent summary of economics, penned this shocking article with the pull quotes I’ve illuminated here:
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.
The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.
Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed.
“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP?When? Why?”
Anyone, and I mean anyone who is advocating this so-called “stimulus package” is absolutely, certifiably insane and deserves, at minimum, excoriation, up to and including necessary and reasonable censure, blockage, protest, impeachment. There is no “stimulus” here. For this kind of money, shouldn’t there be certainty of results? Proof? Concrete historical evidence?
This is a debt that cannot be repaid. Ever.
BZ