TPM does the (flu/Specter) day in 100 seconds

Add comment April 28th, 2009

Figure out this poll for yourselves

1 comment April 28th, 2009

 

 For a change of pace, I’ve decided to pass along the results of a new Wall Street Journal/NBC political poll — without including any interpretation, analysis or characterization of the numbers.

 If you’re like me, you’ll enjoy plowing through the 27 pages of THIS REPORT to assess on your own what they say about President Obama, the Congress, the parties and certain issues.

 Let me know your take on this stuff.

Some wingnuts don’t understand that Stephen Colbert is mocking them

4 comments April 28th, 2009

 I don’t know if I should be surprised about this or not:

 A serious ACADEMIC STUDY conducted at Ohio State University shows that some conservatives believe that political comedian Stephen Colbert genuinely means what he says when he mouths right-wing rhetoric on his TV show.

 Such stupidity is reminiscent of the people in the early 1970s who actually didn’t understand that Archie Bunker was intended to be an object of ridicule.

 UPDATE: Speaking of dimwitted conservatives, Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is steadily carving out a reputation for herself as a world-class non compos mentis.

 She’s forever spewing nonsense about evil liberal schemes or historical parallels that are meaningful only to her and the (hopefully) few people who take her seriously.

 Bachmann’s latest lunacy is her SUGGESTION that flu-epidemic scares might be a sinister plot by Democrats.

Somebody throw a net over her, please.

Arlen Specter switching parties!

21 comments April 28th, 2009

 

 Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is SWITCHING HIS PARTY AFFILIATION from Republican to Democratic, a move that will give Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (once Al Franken is seated).

 UPDATE: Here’s Specter’s STATEMENT.

 UPDATE II: Paul Krugman REACTS.

 UPDATE III: Republican National Chairman Michael Steele REACTS.

 UPDATE IV: Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe SAYS Specter’s switch is a “devastating” blow to her party. She worries that the GOP has “abandoned” its core principles.

 UPDATE V: Nate Silver offers an INTERESTING ARGUMENT that Specter’s switch is “bad news for the Republican Party more than it is good news for the Democrats.” (Be sure to click on Silver’s link to his piece on the GOP’s “death spiral.”)

NYT’s new conservative columnist wishes Cheney had been the GOP nominee last year

1 comment April 28th, 2009

 

 Russ Douthat (above) is the replacement for Bill Kristol as one of two conservative columnists (David Brooks is the other) on the op-ed page of The New York Times.

 Douthat’s inaugural column in this role is a PROVOCATIVE ONE in which he argues that the Republican Party would have done better for itself if its presidential nominee last year had been Dick Cheney rather than John McCain.

Here’s how the lies of a former CIA officer created the impression that waterboarding is effective

11 comments April 28th, 2009

 

 Rush Limbaugh, among others, jumped for joy when former CIA officer John Kiriakou (above) told the story of waterboarding having produced good results in barely half a minute when it was used on suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah.

 But Kiriakou’s story WASN’T TRUE.

Looking back at the flu pandemic of 1918

19 comments April 28th, 2009

 

In the local history “Rockford — Big Town/Little City,” we see how quickly the flu pandemic of 1918 took its toll in this community, especially at Camp Grant (above), the sprawling Army training facility just south of the city:

Soldiers and sailors returning to the United States from Europe brought with them the Spanish flu, so-called for its nation of origin. In early September 1918, the bug spread westward from Boston. Within weeks, an epidemic exploded at Camp Grant, where thousands of men were confined in close quarters. Four thousand fell ill in two days, then thousands more.

Inevitably, the plague struck the civilian community, and death was everywhere.

Schools, churches, theaters and many businesses were closed. People on the street wore face masks. Emergency hospitals were established in the Rockford Boys Club, Lincoln School and the Knights of Columbus club. A downtown garage was turned into a morgue. Flag-draped coffins stood in huge stacks at train stations. Grieving families of dead soldiers poured into town to claim their loved ones.

The city faltered under the strain, taking little solace in the fact that most of the nation and the world were suffering, too. A new round of attacks on local German-Americans occurred as rumors spread that the Kaiser’s secret agents had deliberately started the pandemic.

By Oct. 3, the combined death toll for Camp Grant and the city stood at 63. In the next two days, it climbed to 234. On Oct. 10 alone, 218 soldiers and civilians died. When the epidemic ended a few weeks later, as suddenly as it had started, fatalities numbered 323 in Rockford, nearly 100 more in the rest of Winnebago County, and more than 1,400 at Camp Grant.

Worldwide, the flu outbreak killed 21 million people, more than perished in the war. The final American death toll was 548,000. It was by far the worst epidemic in the nation’s — and Rockford’s — history.

The city’s great emotional outburst on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, stemmed as much from the passing of the epidemic as from the end of the war. Church bells rang, factory whistles blew, and thousands of people poured into the streets, banging pots and pans and otherwise making what noise they could.

The evolution of John McCain

5 comments April 28th, 2009

How did THIS GUY ever become known as Mr. Straight Talk?