Thursday, April 30, 2009

Lunchtime


Funny & Angry - & right on the mark.


Yglesias: Normal Flu

If I were to say that this year 30,000 Americans would die from the flu, you’d probably think I was offering an alarmist take on the current swine flu outbreak. In fact, I would be offering an extremely optimistic take on influenza in 2009. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the country sees about 36,000 flu-related deaths in a normal year and around 200,000 hospitalizations. It’s standard for between five and twenty percent of the population to contract the flu in any given year.

Given all that, not only do we face the risk of an unusually bad pandemic of “swine flu” we also face a risk of panic. Apparently, very high levels of flu-related hospitalizations and deaths are actually pretty normal. But the media doesn’t normally cover them as national news stories. The heightened awareness of swine flu risks, however, means that anything flu-related is going to get dramatically inflated attention.


Terrific segment.
Obama meets the press April 29: Did President Obama interact well with the press during his primetime news conference? Rachel Maddow is joined by "The Ed Show" host Ed Schultz.

Benen: OBAMA IS GETTING THE HANG OF THIS GIG...
Perhaps the most memorable moment of last night's White House press conference was the president's last answer. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman noted, "You are currently the chief shareholder of a couple of very large mortgage giants. You are about to become the chief shareholder of a car company, probably two. I'm wondering, what kind of shareholder are you going to be?" Obama responded:

"Well, I think our first role should be shareholders that are looking to get out. You know, I don't want to run auto companies. I don't want to run banks. I've got two wars I've got to run already. I've got more than enough to do. So the sooner we can get out of that business, the better off we're going to be....

"I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy, you know, meddling in the private sector. If you could tell me right now that when I walked into this office, that the banks were humming; the auto were selling; and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting health care passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal.

"And that's why I'm always amused when I hear these, you know, criticisms of 'Oh, you know, Obama wants to grow government.' No. I would love a nice, lean portfolio to deal with, but that's not the hand that's been dealt us."

I've seen some who've described this as a presidential "gripe." That's missing the point. Obama was responding to a question premised on the notion of expanded government power. The president wasn't complaining; he was describing what was already on his plate. In other words, this wasn't "woe is me"; this was "why on earth would anyone think I'd want to take over non-governmental enterprises right now?"

Obama's answer drew some laughter in the room, and it was that kind of event. The president, despite all the pressing crises, seemed ... loose. His reputation for being almost preternaturally calm is well-deserved. Obama's only been in office for 100 days, but he demonstrated last night that he's very much in command -- confident, knowledgeable, at times even reassuring.

David Gergen, a Republican pundit, said last night, "I thought in terms of mastery of issues, we've rarely had a president who is as well briefed and who speaks in articulate a way as this President does. He's nuanced, he's very complete, he's up to speed on the issues."

Note to the right: now would probably be a good time to give up on the whole "teleprompter" talking point.

I won't even try to recap the whole thing; if you missed it, the transcript is online. I'd note, however, that Obama's comments on torture were very interesting; his response to a good question about the state-secret privilege was important but largely unsatisfying; and the president tipped his hand a bit on health care -- in a good way.

But it was Jeff Zeleny's question that will probably generate the most attention: "During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?"

Obama literally wrote down the question, so as to not miss anything, and went one by one. I found the question rather silly, but the president's responses were quite compelling.

By the time he got to troubled, Obama said, "I'd say less troubled but, you know, sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow. That there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we're in the middle of really big crises. I would like to think that everybody would say, 'You know what, let's take a timeout on some of the political games, focus our attention for at least this year, and then we can start running for something next year.' And that hasn't happened as much as I would have liked."

Congressional Republicans? I think he's talking to you.


GOP's hundred days April 29: As President Obama marks his 100th day in office, how are the Republicans doing? Rachel Maddow is joined by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN.


tristero: Call It Like It Is
La Vida Locavore informs us that the industrial meat industry doesn't like the media calling swine flu..."swine flu." Quoting from Meatingplace:
The North American Meat Processors Association, the National Meat Association and the American Meat Institute all issued statements asking the media to pick up on the phrase "North American flu" or other, accurate references to the hybrid A/H1N1 flu strain that is the culprit in the ongoing outbreak.
I totally agree. We need to describe this flu outbreak as accurately as possible. But "North American Flu" doesn't cut it; that's far too general a term. Courtesy Mark Bittman, I believe that this post can help us a good deal in the search for a proper name for this disease:
A report in the Guardian* links La Gloria, a small town in eastern Mexico 12 miles from the Smithfield plant, as the possible epicenter of the recent outbreak. The article cites that “60% of the town’s population…has been affected.”

Dr. Hansen [of Consumers Union] weighs in: “If 60% of the population of a town near a huge swine facility got sick with this flu and those are among the first cases seen (e.g. close to ground zero), then that really does point a strong finger that something in that area could be the problem. At the very least, there should be a very specific investigation of the Smithfield facility that involves significant testing of those pigs for swine flu.”
And there we have it. It seems possible that Smithfield's pig megafarm may have been at least one important breeding ground for this nasty bug. And thus, what we may be dealing with is a highly lethal Smithfield Industrial Farming Swine Flu pandemic.

However, as the post makes clear, it may be the case that this flu strain may have come from a smaller farm. In which case it would be totally unfair to Smithfield and industrial farming in general to blame the bug on them. Therefore, I suggest that, given the current state of our knowledge, that until further notice, the media should call this virus by the currently most accurate description we have: Swine Flu.

Think Progress: Rice Channels Nixon: Since The President Authorized Torture, That Makes It Legal

Recently, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with some students at Stanford University, where she is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute. When a student asked whether Rice had authorized torture, she refused to take responsibility, saying only that she "conveyed the authorization of the administration." She added that, "by definition," once the president authorized "enhanced interrogations," they were automatically legal:

Q: Is waterboarding torture?

RICE: The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture. So that's -- And by the way, I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency, that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department's clearance. That's what I did.

Q: Okay. Is waterboarding torture in your opinion?

RICE: I just said, the United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur, who obtained the video, said Rice "absolutely pulls a Nixon" in her answer. Watch it (Rice's answers come at 0:57):

Rice is attempting to hide her central role in approving torture, as the Senate Armed Services Committee report released last week highlighted. She gave verbal authorization to then-director of the CIA George Tenet to waterboard Abu Zubaydah in July 2002 -- one month before the Office of Legal Counsel gave the legal justification for such torture.

Rice's opinion that a presidential authorization -- "by definition" -- grants something legality is deeply disturbing. In fact, the United States -- and its president -- are bound by U.S. statute and international treaties that ban the use of cruel, humiliating, degrading treatment, the infliction of suffering, and the attempt to extract coerced confessions.

Memo to Rice: Bush may have been "the Decider," but he didn't have the authority to make an illegal act magically legal.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)