X-Tra Rant

A few links to dump on ya, mostly political, a good chunk via the esteemed AmericaBlog.

First up, via Live Science: The Bird Flu could be bad and could caus e a recession. I wonder what it will do to chicken prices here if it ever hits our shores? I like chicken too much to have it become priced like veal.

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If you were a fan of the group Frou Frou and their album Details then you really should check out the solo effort by Frou Frou chanteuse Imogen Heap, Speak for Yourself. It is most excellent. (Via the TED Blog)

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If you use Hymn or JHymn to free your iTunes music from the DRM, you might want to know that iTunes 6 breaks Hymn… Damn.

Now on to the political, below the fold

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A memo from a top aide to Tom DeLay exposes the GOP strategy and how the use the Religious Right (and how they think of them). Tell me, both Christian Conservatives and fiscal conservatives, how can you support these jackasses?

“The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees,” Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. “Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.”

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I *heart* Molly Ivins. She finds $60 billion to cut from Defense without actuall hurting our national defense. If only those porkers in congress would do it….

Just for starters, is there anyone — anyone — who thinks we need more than 1,000 nuclear warheads in order to have a credible nuclear deterrent at this time? By cutting back to 1,000, we can save $13 billion right there.

Another $26 billion would be saved by scaling back or stopping the research, development and construction of weapons that are useless to deal with modern threats. Many of the weapons involved, like the F/A-22 fighter jet and the Virginia Class submarine, were designed to fight the defunct Soviet Union. All of this is according to Lawrence Korb, whose credentials are endless — senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information, former vice president of Raytheon, etc. The $26 billion does not include the old Star Wars program, now called missile defense, which could be cut back to basic research for a savings of $7 billion.

I’m trying to give you some sense of scale here. According to Korb’s research, we could take $60 billion out of the defense budget, 15 percent of the total, without remotely affecting military readiness.

But most of the peopel supporting our current warmongering don’t realize that this “War On Terror” isn’t your typical pre-21st centruy war. There isn’t a President Of Terrorism, or a Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development Of Terrorism, or a Congress Of Terrorism to defeat. And they certainly don’t have fighter jets, submarines or ICBMs.

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Actual emails written by disgraced former FEMA head around the time of the Hurricaine Katrina disaster.

“Can I quit now? Can I come home?” Brown wrote to Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs, the morning of the hurricane.

An hour later, Brown added: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god,” according to the congressman.

Melancon used an e-mail sent September 2, four days after the hurricane hit, to illustrate his point. On that day, Brown received a message with the subject “medical help.” At the time, thousands of patients were being transported to the New Orleans airport, which had been converted to a makeshift hospital. Because of a lack of ventilators, medical personnel had to ventilate patients by hand for as long as 35 hours, according to Melancon.
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Melancon said Brown didn’t respond for four days, when he forwarded the original e-mail to FEMA Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler and Deputy Director of Response Michael Lowder.

The text of Brown’s e-mail to them read: “Can we use these people?”

Heckuva job, Brownie.

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Could Karl Rove lose his security clearance? Possible. Now if only he’d lose his job.

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What to do when your approval rating hits 39% and national approval of GOP leadership is plummeting? Another tax cut!!! Of course we gotta get the money somewhere…. how about we cut 40,000 kids from school lunch programs (as well as cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, agriculture programs, food stamps…) Is anyone fooled anymore that these are givaways to the rich at the expense of the poor? (paging dad… dad… there’s a wakeup call for you on the white courtesy phone)

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Crazy Right Wing Christian Conservative James Dobson: Pining for the idyllic life of Lousisiana in the 40’s and 50’s. You know, before we had all those uppity blacks and women, not to mention homos. What a jackass.

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And finally, my favorite of the day:

Question: “If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.”

Adults (+/- 2.9% margin of error)
52.6% for impeachment
42.4% against impeachment

Likely voters (+/- 3% margin of error)
51.3% for impeachment
44.7% against impeachment

Independents (+/- 2.9% margin of error)
50.5% for impeachment
44.2% against impeachment

Yes, it was a partisan comissioned poll but it was carried out by Zogby and partisan or not shows a suprising support for impeachment.