Roundup: Kansas Twister Edition
- Kansas governor says it’s been harder to deal with the recent tornado disaster because the war in Iraq has put such a drain on the state’s National Guard. Both personnel and equipment that should have been available to the state are currently tied up in Iraq. “Here in Kansas, about 50 percent of our trucks are gone. We need trucks. We’re missing Humvees, we’re missing all kinds of equipment that can help us respond to this kind of emergency … So we’re borrowing equipment from around, but National Guard are our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in. And it will just make it that much slower.”
- Bill Clinton works out a deal with Indian pharmaceutical companies to reduce prices of AIDS meds for 66 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
- Apparently there may be a shot at saving habeas corpus. Action alert is here.
- Greg Sargent takes apart the AP’s latest flailing attempt to make Nancy Pelosi look bad. These phony attacks are really getting old. First we had the silliness about the great big airplane that it turned out she didn’t request herself but was in fact requested for her because of security concerns. Then there was the trip to Syria that was supposedly a bad idea, except oops, all sorts of Republicans were also making trips to Syria at the exact same time. There was the mini-flap about Pelosi wearing a head scarf in a mosque, which was a scandal until photos surfaced of Laura Bush and Condi Rice doing the exact same thing. And of course, now this.
- I supposed it shouldn’t be any surprise that the Republicans are now clambering all over themselves to talk about Ronald Reagan given that GWB’s approval ratings are now 28% in the latest Newsweek poll. 28%? There are terminal diseases that get higher approval ratings than that. About 30% of the country thinks that Joseph McCarthy was a warm-hearted lug of a guy, and that mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. GWB’s ability to chip away at that bedrock is truly impressive.
- Mitt Romney is getting weirder almost by the second. It’s like his weirdness is mutating and branching off into little fractal clouds of subweirdness. He’s now claiming that French people get married for only 7 years at a time. This is not based in fact of course; it’s apparently based on something he read in an Orson Scott Card novel. Don’t tell him about the bug people.
- Here I thought RubberNun would be all over this before I had a chance to post it, but: Is Wal-Mart afraid of anything? Yes. It turns out Wal-Mart is afraid of nuns. Especially the kind who are focused on human rights.
- High school students in New Jersey stage a walkout in support of a popular teacher denied tenure after she refused to tolerate anti-gay slurs in class. Via Towleroad.
- When urban legends come true: Cracker Barrel pulls hamburgers from 313 restaurants after a customer cuts her mouth on a piece of razor blade that was hidden inside a patty.
- John over at Lost in the 80s is featuring INXS’s classic remix EP Dekadance, which has been out of print for 24 years. It includes the very lovely extended version of “To Look at You.”
- For Torchwood fans: Captain Jack wants to borrow Gwen’s top.
- Also, John Barrowman on the very funny comedy game show Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I like a game show where the game seems to be almost beside the point. Also featuring Phill Jupitus, whom I know of from my time spent in the dark underworld of Billy Bragg fandom. Watch for the “Ah, the Contessa has arrived!” moment.
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um, do both of kansas’s senators support the ‘war’ on iraq? well, if they do, and they were elected by the people in that state, then they have nothing to complain about.
and, at least one of kansas’s senators doesn’t believe in that e-volution ‘theory,’ so you know, maybe god got a little angry with kansas [maybe someone put ‘dust in the wind’ on his ipod and he’s always doing something with his hands when it starts to play so he has to listen to the whole damned song] and this was his way of expressing his rage, no?
That’s a great point…isn’t it funny that our leaders talk about how we’re willing to make “sacrifices” in the “war on terror,” but when the sacrifices are actually made, they end up not being so worth it?
I hope that they all remember this the next time President Bush vetoes a bill with a withdrawal timeline in it…then maybe we can get a 2/3 majority.