Holy vote counters, Batman!
Arlen Specter, the lawyer who once upon a time became a District Attorney as a registered Democrat on the Republican ticket, has demonstrated once and for all that Washington maybe ought to take over the car business. After all, there is no one on the planet — not even the bond traders or mortgage brokers — who has a better handle on the ethics of used car salesmen than our top level politicians.
Some people say all men are pigs but I disavow all knowledge of swine flu.
My friend Towse wrote about the hype hype HYPE surrounding the swine flu.
“There is always some flu around and flu is always killing some people,” Towse wrote. “Even when a raw mutant flu manages to kill off more people than a shooting-war, flu has never ravaged whole cities as cholera or the Black Death can do. As awful pandemics go, flu is like the snotty-nosed little sister of awful pandemics.”
As of April 26, there were just 20 confirmed cases of Swine flu in the United States.
California, 7 cases. Kansas, 2 cases. New York City, 8 cases. Ohio, 1 case. Texas, 2 cases.
That said, the swine flu hype is probably justified.
Everyone in the medical community fears a rerun of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. To put it in the computer terms we all understand, “It’s not a question of whether your hard drive crashes but when.”
I came to know more about the 1918-19 pandemic through Vermont Poet Laureate Ellen Bryant Voigt’s narrative poem, Kyrie, This sequence of persona poems connects different speakers by their location in the pandemic. That epidemic killed more than 30 million people worldwide. Some of Ms. Voigt’s narrators “seem related to one another and form a kind of community. It was an amazing devastation,” she said, “encouraged by World War I. The movement of troops made it easy for the virus to spread.” The name Kyrie (pronounced KEER-ee-aa) is from the Greek meaning “Lord.”
The 1918 pandemic was better known as the Spanish flu. That bug killed more than twice the number killed in World War I.
CDC reports that the current “viruses contain a unique combination of gene segments that have not been reported previously among swine or human influenza viruses in the U.S. or elsewhere… It is not anticipated that the seasonal influenza vaccine will provide protection against the swine flu H1N1 viruses.”
The H1N1 viruses are also unique in that, having jumped from swine and birds to humans, they now make the jump from human to human. Modern air travel means they can travel to all corners of the world in days.
Today, the World Bank announced that there is not enough money on hand to underwrite treating a “simple” flu pandemic across the third world.
I had not planned to address the swine flu. After all, it’s not as if there isn’t already enough coverage. This is not a “little boy who cried wolf” issue. It is really a newspaper science versus real science issue. Even if this particular influenza outbreak peters out instead of pigging out on all our peeps, it’s not a question of whether there will be a pandemic but when.
Men cope better with emergencies if they practice practice practice their response. I hope they practice well on this one.
CDC reminded us of the everyday actions people can take to stay healthy:
- Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
- Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
And, perhaps most important, avoid close contact with sick people.
Let us, on this holiest of Earth Days, pause to consider.
“The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy,” President Obama told an Earth Day celebration in Iowa. Meanwhile the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide as dangerous to public health.
Carbon dioxide?
That would be the stuff we breathe out. Oddly, that would also be the stuff we breathe into drowning victims when we perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
What the President said today is good economics and good science. What the administration did today is bad economics based on bad science.
Global Warming is a good example of the politics of the Far Green overwhelming the truth of science. The popular press and the Congress would have us believe that all scientists agree on the causes and outcomes of Global Warming. And yet. And yet the National Climatic Data Center reports that global temperatures in 2006 were the third coldest on record. And yet 32,000 thousand scientists say “Hey, global warming doesn’t happen the way the politicians say it does.” In fact, as Weather Channel founder John Coleman wrote, “the climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.”
Thanks to the EPA ruling, synthetic trees that suck carbon dioxide out of the air could suck a trillion dollars per year out of the economy. That’s more than the Administration has sunk into Wall Street “banks.” A lot more.
Last month the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ordered the FDA to allow 17-year olds to buy the “Morning After Pill.” The ruling took the FDA to task for allowing ideology to trump the scientific evidence. The Agency had ignored its own scientists in creating the overturned regulations.
The court’s decision is the second major case this year that forces the government to put science ahead of politics.
I don’t like using a judicial decision to determine science but that does seem to be all the Administration understands. It is time for a court to tell the Administration what more than 30,000 scientists already know. It is time for science to trump ideology.
Or we could all hold our breath.
Today is Old Lady Monday at Beall’s Outlets.
Beall’s operates over 500 retail stores across the Sun Belt from its headquarters in Bradenton, Florida. The company is owned by the founding family and its employees. The family apparently pronounces the name as “bells” although the belled-A in their logo has always meant we say it “BE-als.”
![[Image]](http://www.DickHarper.com/images/bealls.gif)
I am usually the only man in a store mobbed by women on Mondays.
Having the Old Lady card is an odd feeling. My mom suffered a minor crisis on my fortieth birthday. She was about ten years older then than I am now but she saw a 39-year old woman looking out of the mirror every morning. Pretty tough for a 39-year old woman to discover so suddenly she has a 40-year old son.
According to Channel 10 News last week, an “elderly woman” named Barbara Epstein was loading her shopping bags into the trunk of her car at the Pembroke Lakes Mall when a man with a gun came up behind her and demanded her purse. The gunman grabbed the handbag and dragged Epstein across the floor of the parking garage. The purse eventually broke, and the gunman ran to a waiting burgundy Nissan Altima.
Barbara Epstein is “in her 60s,” the Channel 10 reporter noted.
Agism is a moving target. AARP, Be(A)ll’s, and others think senior moments start at 50. Retirement communities say 55. Social Security demands you attain 62. Or 65, 66, or 67 depending on your birth certificate. I cling to middle-age and figure that older folk are at least 70 and will always be at least ten years older than I am. Ms. Epstein is less than that on both counts.
Back to Old Lady Monday.
I admit I identify more with Graham_Kerr than Jeff Smith but I am pugnaciously parsimonious. I have membership cards at pretty much every grocery store and (free) discount outlet that offers them and I don’t mind trading my birthday for a discount. After all, we really “cheap bahstids” need to stretch a buck any way we can. More so now than almost any other time in my life.
I guess I’d better pay my AARP dues now. And head for Be(A)ll’s. They have magic dryer balls on sale this week. I never knew a dryer had balls, let alone that they could be magic.
The good news is that Be(A)ll’s also has Young Whippersnapper Fridays.
Pirates snatched a United States-flagged Maersk Line container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia. The crew beat off the brigands but the pirates managed to hang on to Capt. Richard Phillips who is from Underhill, Vermont, about 25 miles south of North Puffin.
The Navy arrived. The pirates threatened to kill Captain Phillips. The world watched while a lifeboat tethered 100′ behind its stern stood off the worlds most powerful navy.
The Navy passed the buck to the President to allow them to use deadly force against the hijackers. President Obama granted permission three times but “only if the captains life appeared to be in imminent danger.”
Darned if it didn’t appear that the captains life was in imminent danger. Navy SEALs did their job and there are three fewer lawbreakers adding to the genetic pool.
Other pirates in Somalia bristled and promised to kill Americans in future hijackings to avenge the deaths of their brethren under the skull and crossbones. “In the future, America will be the one mourning,” the New York Times quoted pirate Abdullahi Lami as saying. I have to wonder why the cops can’t find this guy if the New York Times can.
At first glance, the incident was a police action and the Navy handled it well. The pirates committed grand theft-ship and kidnaping. The response was exactly what any trained law enforcement officer would bring to bear in a hostage crisis.
Seizing a United States-flagged ship is not a bank robbery.
Any Navy skipper has similar responsibilities but much more authority than the average police commissioner. After all, the average police commissioner doesn’t have combat troops, 5″ cannons, more than 100 missiles, and, perhaps, nuclear weapons. The cop on the street would ask for a sergeant or a lieutenant for permission to use deadly force to resolve a hostage crisis. The cop on the street would never ask the police commissioner. And a Navy Captain is not a cop on the street.
President Obama usurped the role of a police commissioner by micro managing this hostage crisis.
That sends the wrong message to the bad guys and a bad message to the troops.
The USS Bainbridge is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer with the right equipment and the right crew. President Obama should have sent the following message to Commander Francis X. Castellano: “Take whatever action you need to. I have your back.”
Period.
Terrorists changed the Rules of War when they first sent irregular “troops” to fight soldiers by blowing up civilians. The new Rules are simple: “if you attack a United States citizen or a United States property or a United States-flagged ship anywhere in the world, you have committed an Act of War against the United States.” We get to kill you all and let your God sort out which of you get to be Ahmed’s virgins.
Shooting at a man on horseback while riding at a gallop is man’s second hardest physical feat (hitting a major league pitch is the hardest). The Navy SEALs aboard the USS Bainbridge performed far better than their superiors on land.