Notes from the world:
The Army has a problem, in that its soldiers keep getting old and unable to function properly— just like the rest of us.
Unlike the rest of us, the Army has a plan. They’re going to use Science to keep their soldiers young for, maybe, ever.
A soldier rendered forever young – because of red wine and bald rats? It has the makings of a Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, but research is moving so quickly that an anti-aging tonic could soon be on a store shelf. And expect a sell-out. As the Army so astutely observes, “vast numbers of civilians are old.
Remember when the GOP’s great nonwhite hope Bobby Jindal ridiculed the administration’s plan for volcano monitoring— only to have Mount Redoubt erupt in Alaska and show that he was, well, an idiot?
Now that the CDC has declared a health emergency, and the WHO has raised its pandemic alert level to 4 on a scale of 5, perhaps it’s worthwhile remembering that it was Republican Senator Susan Collins (cheered on by Karl Rove in the WSJ) who played a key role in stripping pandemic preparedness money from the stimulus bill.
Oops. They did it again.
Maybe they should rally the nation around them by calling Obama a socialist again.
And General Motors, once the largest corporation in the world, has now asked to be taken over by the U.S. Government and the auto workers’ union.
GM said that it will ask the government to take more than 50 percent of its common stock in exchange for canceling half the government loans to the company as of June 1. The swap would cancel about $10 billion in government debt.
Can we call GM socialist now?
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The Army has more than one problem. I was just watching the local news. Apparently many gang bangers are getting tired of not knowing the proper way to hold a gun. Their rather smart solution is to get as many of their members into the military as they can.
When they get out of the armed services they teach everything they can to their fellow thugs. The sad thing is they make the best solders, no fear and very good discipline. I am quite glad to know the next guy I see robbing a liquor store knows how to use a M-16 and plant explosives.
RE: Swine Flu.
I have heard several talking heads on TV say that the current Pig Flu is a mix of Swine Flu and Bird Flu. Sure, I will believe that when pigs can fly 🙂
Personally, having a guy in my squad that is fearless would simply scare the shit out of me.
Much hay is being made of the Republican resistance to pandemic-preparedness.
It’s important to remember, in all this self-satisfied smarmsturbation, that A: a stopped clock is right twice a day; if the H1N1 non-epidemic had broken out six months from now, nobody would have even remembered that pandemic money was in the stimulus bill at all. And B: Exactly how the FUCKING GODDAMN HELL does comissioning a small government study into epidemics provide any kind of “economic recovery”?
A: Bad timing. Ooops. And if not this outbreak, the NEXT one in 6 months.
B: It employs people who would otherwise have lost their jobs and they take their paychecks and spend money which stimulates the economy.
Bad luck for you I actually work at one of the facilities that is actively developing the diagnostic kits to detect this bug in 4 hours instead of 4 days which will help prevent the spread. That development funding was one of those nasty earmarks that our Republican senator (Sessions, R-AL) got in. The ~$200K he funneled into this research will allow us to eventually hire more than 8 people when the R&D is complete (actually it is complete, 4 days start to finish since we already had the staff and equipment in place due to the stimulus package) and a product is spun off for business development. The licensing fees will pay for those staff and their work.
$200K investment = 8 full time, long term scientist and technician positions. Plus a profitable commercial enterprise on the side. That bloody hell IS a stimulus.
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