Eeesh

Scientist Is Watched for Signs of Ebola (washingtonpost.com): "A scientist who works in a maximum containment laboratory at Fort Detrick has been placed in isolation after she accidentally stuck herself with a needle while working with mice infected with a weakened form of the Ebola virus.


The woman, whom officials at the Army base declined to identify, has shown no symptoms of the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever during eight days of medical observation in a special isolation facility, said Army spokesman Chuck Dasey. He said she was exposed to the Zaire strain of Ebola, the deadliest of the three types of the virus.


After the accident Feb. 11, the scientist was allowed to go home because there was no danger of her spreading the infection to anyone else at that time, Dasey said. The next day she moved into a suite with two 180-square-foot patient rooms adjoining a larger treatment room. The isolation suite, known on the base as the Slammer, hadn't been used since 1985.


The incubation period for Ebola is two to 21 days, but Dasey said officials planned to keep the woman in isolation for up to 30 days. She is allowed to have visitors because she has shown no signs of being infectious, Dasey said."

Right wing wacko to run for President?

Oh, if only ...
WorldNetDaily: Roy Moore for president?: "Ousted Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore is focused on trying to get his job back but will not rule out a third-party run for the presidency that could threaten President Bush's re-election chances.

At a recent speaking engagement, the man who became famous for his defense of a Ten Commandments monument was asked during a question-and-answer session whether he would run for president, reported Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund."

Barney Frank Dismayed by SF marriages.

Newsday.com - Rep. Frank Opposes Gay Marriage Effort: "'I was sorry to see the San Francisco thing go forward,' said Frank, an openly gay congressman from Massachusetts who shared his concerns with fellow Democrat and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom before the city began marrying gay couples last week.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Frank expressed concern that the image of lawlessness and civil disobedience in San Francisco would lead some in Congress to support a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Frank said he had hoped Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court decision upholding the right of same-sex couples to marry would serve as a national model for orderly, legal protection of gay marriage.
"

NYPress - The Gist - Michelangelo Signorile - Vol.
17, Iss. 7: "I happen to know that several major news organizations have for some time been looking into claims about portly conservative moralizer William Bennett and a leather-bound dominatrix bodybuilder in Las Vegas, a woman who has some very interesting narratives to recount. What news organizations? The top five that come to your mind are on the list. Some reporters have even traveled far and wide on this story."

Welcome to News Virginian: Serving the Waynesboro, VA region | The Occasional Ombudsman: "But ask yourself, are you better off today than four years ago? If you have to think about it, then go check your 401(k).


Clinton most certainly was a draft-dodger. But you have to give him this: He openly opposed the war he was dodging.


I also found it nauseating that Bush would spend thousands of tax dollars in a risky public-relations/political stunt. The USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier he landed on to gloat about major combat in Iraq being over, cost $4.5 billion. And since Bush’s tailhook landing, 400 Americans have died in 'minor' combat in Iraq.


I have a real problem with a man who dishonored the National Guard - but somehow got an honorable discharge - and now has no compunction about sending U.S. soldiers to their deaths. (I’m not against the war, although an exit strategy would have been nice.)


If George W. Bush had been the son of a textile-mill worker, he would not have been so honorably discharged. He would have been arrested and charged with desertion. Bush does a disservice to every man and woman who has ever served in the National Guard, including our publisher, Tim Stratton, who spent six years in the Guard and 'would still be in the brig had I pulled that crap.'


Our president’s middle initial apparently stands for 'Wonder,' as in the Wonder years: 'I wonder if I actually showed up for my Guard duty in Alabama?'


That conservatives could go ballistic over Clinton’s lies and then dismiss them under a Republican is hypocritical - blind sheep following their leader off a cliff because he’s a sheep."

SUV's -- More dangerous for everybody.

The New Republic Online: Easterbrook: "Actually, the National Academy of Sciences found in 2002, in a George W. Bush-requested study, that SUVs are safer for their occupants in some types of crashes, but are so much more likely than regular cars to cause rollover fatalities for their occupants that there exists no net safety benefit to those inside an SUV. Now Georgetown University professor Ted Gayer, writing in the March issue of the technical publication Journal of Risk and Uncertainty--which is edited by W. Kip Viscusi of Harvard, who is one of the nation's leading academic conservatives--finds that having lots of SUVs and pickup trucks on the road increases total fatalities, by causing more deaths not just in regular cars but more deaths inside the SUVs and pickup trucks, too.

People riding in pickups and SUVs are somewhat less likely to die in any given crash than people riding in regular cars, Gayer finds. But this statistic, on which defenses of the SUV as 'safe' are based, does not take into account whether SUVs and pickup trucks are more likely than cars to get into crashes in the first place. Gayer studied the question of whether SUVs and pickup trucks crash more often than regular cars, and he adjusted for the fact that bad drivers may be drawn to buying SUVs and pickup trucks. Even adjusting for this, Gayer found, SUVs and pickup trucks crash far more often than regular cars. Analyzing state-by-state data, Gayer determined that SUVs and pickup trucks are 2.6-4 times more likely to crash than regular cars. Using 'light trucks' to mean SUVs and pickup trucks employed for regular commuting rather than construction work, Gayer concludes that, 'A world of light trucks leads to substantially more fatalities than a world of cars.'"

Tutu to Blair and Bush -- Apologize.

News: "Archbishop Desmond Tutu will challenge Tony Blair and George Bush today to apologise for their pursuit of a counter-productive and 'immoral' war in Iraq.

In a scathing analysis of the background to the invasion, he will ridicule the 'dangerously flawed' intelligence that Britain and the US used to justify a military action which has made the world a 'great deal less safe'.

---

'How wonderful if politicians could bring themselves to admit they are only fallible human creatures and not God and thus by definition can make mistakes. Unfortunately, they seem to think that such an admission is a sign of weakness. Weak and insecure people hardly ever say 'sorry'.


'It is large-hearted and courageous people who are not diminished by saying: 'I made a mistake'. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair would recover considerable credibility and respect if they were able to say: 'Yes, we made a mistake'.'"

Evil and incompetent.

USATODAY.com - Prosecutor in terror case controversy sues Ashcroft: "— A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism.


Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino of Detroit accused the Justice Department of 'gross mismanagement' of the war on terrorism in a whistleblower lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court in Washington.


Justice officials said Tuesday they had not seen the suit and had no comment.


The suit is the latest twist in the Bush administration's first major post-Sept. 11 terrorism prosecution, which is now in danger of unraveling over allegations of prosecutorial misconduct."

Larry Flynt to publish details on W/abortion story.

New York Daily News - Daily Dish & Gossip - Lloyd Grove's Lowdown: Hustling up Bush charges: "Now the incorrigible Larry Flynt says he plans to market a Bush abortion story as genuine - in a book to be published this summer by Kensington Press.

'This story has got to come out,' the wheelchair-bound Hustler magazine honcho told the Daily News' Corky Siemaszko. 'There's a lot of hypocrisy in the White House about this whole abortion issue.'

Flynt claimed that Bush arranged for the procedure in the early '70s.

'I've talked to the woman's friends,' Flynt said. 'I've tracked down the doctor who did the abortion, I tracked down the Bush people who arranged for the abortion,' Flynt said. 'I got the story nailed.'

Flynt wouldn't disclose whether he plans to name the woman."

Frank Rich: My Hero, Janet Jackson

Frank Rich: My Hero, Janet Jackson: "You can argue that Ms. Jackson is the only honest figure in this Super Bowl of hypocrisy. She was out to accomplish a naked agenda — the resuscitation of her fading career on the eve of her new album's release — and so she did. She's not faking much remorse, either. Last Sunday she refused to appear on the Grammys rather than accede to CBS's demand that she perform a disingenuous, misty-eyed ritual 'apology' to the nation for her crime of a week earlier. By contrast, Justin Timberlake, the wimp who gave the English language the lasting gift of 'wardrobe malfunction,' did as he was told, a would-be pop rebel in a jacket and a tie, looking like a schoolboy reporting to the principal's office. Ms. Jackson, one suspects, is laughing all the way to the bank."

Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | Electoral arithmetic that binds Bush to bin Laden: "All this - liberal outrage, swing voters, gun clubs, the economy even - counts for nothing in the face of the country's Number One Foe - Osama bin Laden.

In a very real sense, he is Bush's greatest electoral asset. If he is captured or killed in the next nine months, Bush is probably a shoo-in. If he remains at large, Bush doesn't really need to present a case other than the one he made on Meet the Press last Sunday, when he said: 'I'm a war President. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.'

The rather chilling thing is to consider how bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants view the election. Would they rather have a President Kerry or Edwards, who would make overtures to Islam, embrace the UN and heed world opinion, or would they prefer four more years of a man who had done so much to isolate America from the rest of the world?

Osama needs George, and to a degree George needs the mystical fear that Osama evokes. And it is this fear that will see this second-rate, isolationist, spendthrift President re-elected to the White House.
"

The awful truth about Iraq

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / The awful truth about Iraq
"As the young Kerry was surely loath to apply the word 'mistake' to a conflict that had killed and maimed some of his friends, an American leader must be loath to make such an admission to the families of more than 500 dead US soldiers. Yet what they died for was clearly not the noble cause as defined by Colin Powell a year ago, nor the 'freedom' of which President Bush blithely speaks. Some American leader, in profound repentance, must acknowledge the awful truth to those families: 'Your sons and daughters died for a mistake.'

Only such truth-telling at home will make possible what must be done immediately in Iraq. If our getting into the unnecessary war was wrong, our carrying it on is wrong. The US military presence in Iraq, no matter how intended, has itself become the affront around which opposition fighters are organizing themselves. GIs in their Humvees, US convoys bristling with rifles, well-armed coalition check-points, heavily fortified compounds flying the American flag -- all of this fuels resentment among an ever broader population, including Saddam's enemies. It justifies the growing number of jihadis whose readiness to kill through suicide has become the real proliferation problem.

The occupation is its source and must end. 'The day I take office as president of the United States,' a true American leader would declare, 'I will order the immediate withdrawal of the entire American combat force in Iraq.'"

A-Rod to Yankees???

ESPN.com - MLB - Yanks, Rangers have A-Rod framework: "The Rangers and Yankees have agreed to the framework of a deal that would send Rodriguez and much of the $179 million remaining on his landmark contract to New York for Soriano and a player to be named, three high-ranking baseball sources told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.




Two sources said Texas agreed to assume about $67 million of what's left on Rodriguez's $252 million contract. The AL MVP also has agreed to defer some money by five more years -- pushing the last payment back to 2025
-- and at a reduced interest rate, one of the sources said.




Added together, the Rangers' savings 'could be $125 million,' that source said."

No, really, we are being welcomed in Iraq.

FT.com Home US: "A confidential report prepared by the US-led administration in Iraq says that the attacks by insurgents in the country have escalated sharply, prompting fears of what it terms Iraq's 'Balkanisation'. The findings emerged after a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the top US general in Iraq, John Abizaid, on Thursday.





'January has the highest rate of violence since September 2003,' the report said. 'The violence continues despite the expansion of the Iraqi security services and increased arrests by coalition forces in December and January.'

The report, which is based on military data and circulated to foreign organisations by the US aid agency USAid, diverges with public statements by US officials who claim that security in the country is improving."

Most Think Truth Was Stretched to Justify Iraq War (washingtonpost.com)

Most Think Truth Was Stretched to Justify Iraq War (washingtonpost.com): " majority of Americans believe President Bush either lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify war, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.


The survey results, which also show declining support for the war in Iraq and for Bush's leadership in general, indicate the public is increasingly questioning the president's truthfulness -- a concern for Bush's political advisers as his reelection bid gets underway.


Barely half -- 52 percent -- now believe Bush is 'honest and trustworthy,' down 7 percentage points since late October and his worst showing since the question was first asked, in March 1999. At his best, in the summer of 2002, Bush was viewed as honest by 71 percent. The survey found that nearly seven in 10 think Bush 'honestly believed' Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Even so, 54 percent thought Bush exaggerated or lied about prewar intelligence."

the Progressive Southerner | George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama

the Progressive Southerner | George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama: "    They also remember Bush's stories about how the New Haven, Connecticut police always let him go, after he told them his name, when they stopped him 'all the time' for driving drunk as a student at Yale in the late 1960s. Bush told this story to others working in the campaign 'what seemed like a hundred times,' says Red Blount's nephew C. Murphy Archibald, now an attorney in Charlotte, N.C., who also worked on the Blount campaign and said he had 'vivid memories' of that time.

    'He would laugh uproariously as though there was something funny about this. To me, that was pretty memorable, because here he is, a number of years out of college, talking about this to people he doesn't know,' Archibald said. 'He just struck me as a guy who really had an idea of himself as very much a child of privilege, that he wasn't operating by the same rules.'

    During this period Bush often socialized with the young ladies of Huntington College, located in the Old Cloverdale historic neighborhood where he stayed. Bush even dated Nixon's daughter Tricia in the early 1970s, according to newspaper accounts. Bush was described as 'young and personable' by the Montgomery Independent society columnist, and seen dancing at the Whitley Hotel on election night November 7 with 'the blonde, pretty Emily Marks.'

    During the 2000 campaign, the Boston Globe named Marks as one of Bush's former girlfriends. But she and several other women who dated him during that time refused to say anything bad on the record about Bush, now a sitting president.

    Many of those who came into close contact with Bush say he liked to drink beer and Jim Beam whiskey, and to eat fist-fulls of peanuts, and Executive burgers, at the Cloverdale Grill. They also say he liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the head for a line of cocaine. The newspapers that year are full of stories about the scourges of cocaine and heroin making their way into the U.S. from abroad in the early days of the so-called 'war on drugs.'
"

These people are really unbelievably inept.

They've got one friend in the world -- Tony Blair -- an they are screwing him.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Leak reveals ministers' fears over Iraqi contracts: "The British government, concerned about the failure of British companies to win reconstruction work in Iraq, is making a behind-the-scenes effort to lobby Washington.

Confidential documents seen by the Guardian show that ministers and officials are being mobilised to try to head off a domestic political embarrassment to Tony Blair.

Brian Wilson, the prime minister's special representative on overseas trade, and Mike O'Brien, the minister of international trade and foreign affairs, are both being dispatched to Washington next week.

Mr O'Brien is breaking off a family holiday in America to talk to US officials in the run-up to a new round of Iraq contracts being awarded next month.

Briefing papers seen by the Guardian reveal the frustration at the top of government over British companies missing out completely on the Iraqi oil rehabilitation deals on January 16."

Newsday.com - Bloomberg Fails to Ask Why: "On Friday, in the deep slush in front of church in the Bronx, in so much sadness in the rain, I could hear the past that got us here, of George Bush, just before we invaded Iraq, bringing up 'Dad' when he mentioned Saddam Hussein. 'He tried to kill Dad, you know.' He made it a personal family matter, and the Bushes clearly think they are a royal family and if you threaten one of them, then the entire country must take up arms.

And on the eve of invading Iraq, Bush made a speech that was a copy of the one made by Adolph Hitler in the hours before his army invaded Poland in September of 1939.

In a State of the Union speech, Bush said that Saddam tried to get uranium from the country of Niger and blow us away with a nuclear bomb. Afterward, the Bush people said the speech was essentially right although it had some wrong. It did. This could be put in three letters: Lie.

After that, from Washington there was one long, whining lie about weapons of mass destruction. If this Saddam had them, he would have used them in the first 20 minutes of the fighting. He had none. A man called Blix from the United Nations inspected Iraqi arms, including trucks found one week apart and empty. Nothing. Colin Powell got up at the UN and, reading whatever it was that Bush and his people gave him, he said the trucks were there on one day to carry away biological weapons before the inspectors arrived and that is why we have to bomb Baghdad.
"

I guess we are being welcomed in Iraq.

Yahoo! News - Top U.S. Commander Escapes Attack in Iraq
: "The top U.S. commander in the Middle East came under a bold attack Thursday by gunmen in the turbulent Iraqi city of Fallujah. No Americans were hurt, but a local police official said two Iraqis were killed in the shooting."

Simpsons to be on the big screen

Guardian Unlimited Film | News | Simpsons feature film planned: "Fifteen years after they first appeared on US TV screens, the Simpsons are to make their feature debut in a movie devised by the show's creators, Matt Groening and James L Brooks. The film will be backed by Fox, which also plays host to The Simpsons TV series.

At present the feature remains in its early stages. Chris Meledrandri, head of animation at Fox admitted that the team was 'very excited about the possibility of making a Simpsons movie. However, we are in the very early stages of developing an idea.'"

Cool -- an Apple Store on the right side of the river.

New Apple store sighted in Bethesda, MD | MacNN News: "A MacNN reader discovered today that a new Apple Store is under construction in the Westfield Shoppingtown Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. Apple has posted job openings on its website for the Bethesda store. The store is expected to open in the next 2-3 months, according to the mall's front office.
"

NEWSFLASH!!!! President lives Bizarro World!!

MSNBC - Transcript for Feb. 8thFrom NBC's "Meet The Press"

"Russert: On Iraq, the vice president said, “we would be greeted as liberators.”

President Bush:  Yeah.

Russert: It's now nearly a year, and we are in a very difficult situation.  Did we miscalculate how we would be treated and received in Iraq?

President Bush:  Well, I think we are welcomed in Iraq.  I'm not exactly sure, because the tone of your question is, we're not.  We are welcomed in Iraq."

hang 'em high (Warning: sports content)

Yesterday the Golden State Warriors scored only two points in the fourth quarter. AT HOME. Tony Kornheiser thinks that all of the players shoud be docked a day's pay. I disagree. I think they should be shot. TWO POINTS IN THE FOURTH QUARTER!!! Jesus.

Jumping Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.

American Airlines Pilot Plugs Christianity:

"An American Airlines pilot asked Christians on his flight to identify themselves and suggested the non-Christians discuss the faith with them, the airline said.

The case was handed over to the airline's personnel department for an investigation, spokesman Tim Wagner said Sunday.

``It falls along the lines of a personal level of sharing that may not be appropriate for one of our employees to do while on the job,'' he said earlier.

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American's Flight 34 was headed from Los Angeles to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Friday when the pilot asked Christians on board to raise their hands, Wagner said.

The pilot, whose name was not released, told the airline that he then suggested the other passengers use the flight time to talk to the Christians about their faith, Wagner said.

Passenger Amanda Nelligan told WCBS-TV of New York that the pilot called non-Christians ``crazy'' and that his comments ``felt like a threat.'' She said she and several others aboard were so worried they tried to call relatives on their cell phones before flight attendants assured them they were safe and that people on the ground had been notified about the pilot's comments."

Why is it a surprise to journalists that the Bushies lied about WMD?

The New York Review of Books: Now They Tell Us
"In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction— the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it. As journalists rush to chronicle the administration's failings on Iraq, they should pay some attention to their own."

Sally Jenkins on the incredible hypocrisy of it all.

NFL Exposed For What It Is (washingtonpost.com): "On days like this, I miss Howard Cosell. I miss his cold appraisals and scathing judgments, and I can't help wondering what he would have made of the halftime show. Instead, we had CBS announcer Greg Gumble's silence, broken by one sniggering attempt to cute-ify what had just happened on stage. I suspect that if Cosell were there, he'd have said that while the Super Bowl halftime was a piece of soft porn theater, it was perhaps no more or less offensive than, say, trivializing the Columbia catastrophe with a song and a dance and a phony astronaut planting a flag on a fake moon."

Bobby Knight, complete nut job.

ESPN.com - NCB - Knight, Tech chancellor have public confrontation: "N.com news services

LUBBOCK, Texas -- Texas Tech coach Bob Knight got into a verbal spat with the university chancellor at a grocery store Monday, prompting a review by school officials.


One eyewitness told the Lubbock Avalance-Journal that Knight raised his voice to Smith after the chancellor approached him at a salad bar to compliment the coach on his recent good behavior.


The witness told the paper that Knight flew into a rage and accused Smith of being a liar, saying that there had been nothing wrong with his demeanor this year.


Smith turned to leave the area, the Avalanche-Journal reported, but Knight followed. The chancellor then told Knight that he deserved more respect than Knight was showing him, according to the Avalanche-Journal."

My prediction

Not that anybody cares, but since everyone is picking either New England by a lot, or either team in a close game, I'm going to pick Carolina by a lot.

Who knew...

That Y.A. Tittle was still alive. It is a very cool thing having him toss the coin.

What the hell is this? (Superbowl edition)

Who is Josh Groban, and why is he singing "A Wind Beneath My Wings" ripoff about the Columbia astronauts? And who thought it was a good idea to have some clown walking around in an astronaut costume on a really cheesy-looking moon set?