Here’s the link:

1918 RBD Polymorphsm in Ukraine H1N1?

They’re laughing so hard they’re pissing their pants in joy over Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics.

Conservative Joe Scarborough – not so much.  Calls Republican reaction “stupid.”

The violence that the Tea Baggers and Glenn Beck and Boss Limbaugh wanted has arrived.  A census worker from Kentucky was found hanged with the word “fed” scrawled on his body.

AP covers the story here.

As if that’s not bad enough, white supremacists are planning a rally in Belleville, Illinois, scene of the school bus beating last week that prompted Boss Limbaugh to call for re-segregating busses.

Chinese riot cops.

As much as I dislike China, more specifically the Chinese government, I have to admit they’ve been pretty consistent and candid about one fact:  They have to keep GDP growth at at least 8% or risk facing wide-spread social disorder.

In an article on the McClatchy News site, Tom Lasseter notes the unease Chinese officials and other observers are feeling:

Lots of export factories will be shut down, and a lot of migrant workers will lose their jobs,” said Ma Yang, the director of a Beijing-based migrant workers advocacy group called On Action.   Ma paused and considered his words: “If the government does not provide assistance to help them through this economic transition, it will create a lot of social problems.”

As a side note, this weekend I was in an REI store (not by my choice) and I happened to notice that all of the products on offer were made in China.  ALL of them.  At last, I found a flashlight made in the good ol’ USA, albeit with a caveat attached:  “Some” of the parts “might” be imported.  SIGH!

The Brothers – Lucio & Stefano

Lucio & Stefano

Close to HALF the Country could be infected.

Coming soon to an ER near you.

Read it and weep HERE.

NOW:

The carnage could start as early as next month, which is little comfort to those most at risk since a vaccine will not be ready until mid-October and it will take weeks to get people fully immunized, probably because it comes in a SERIES of shots. (Now they say two, but last week it was three.)

Then there was this reassuring quote from THE pandemic expert, the guy who wrote the book on flu pandemics:

“The Northern Hemisphere medical care requirements for the next six months are a train wreck waiting to happen,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis. “In the fall, even if nothing else changes in terms of the virus’s severity and our preparedness, it’s going to be a real challenge.”

Birthplace of our President. Really, no kidding.

According to a new Public Policy Poll, 10% of Americans either believe Hawaii is not part of the United States or are unsure about it. (See, Q4 on Page 2 of release.)  Jesus H. Limping Christ on a Fucking Raft!  We deserve whatever awful fate awaits us.  Perhaps the swine flus will kill off a lot of stupid people and ultimately save us from ourselves.  One can only hope.

Weimar Currency.

The top economist at Germany’s D-Bank says the green shoots are about to turn brown.

 ‘The World Is in Trouble’: Deutsche Bank Chief Economist

The global economy still faces turmoil as governments try to figure out how to move out of fiscal rescue packages, which could lead to another two downturns, Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Norbert Walter said Thursday. In addition, nervousness on the part of major dollar holders could pressure the greenback and lead to a very worrying 2010, Walter said. Norbert said recently in research notes “the world is in trouble.”

“I believe that the rescue packages brought on have been so costly for so many governments that the exit from this fiscal policy will be very painful, very painful indeed,” he said. “Some of us are already talking about a W-shaped recovery. I’d probably talk about a triple-U-shaped recovery because there are so many stumbling blocks here to get out of this.”

“There are a few countries that have not dismissed people, they had a dramatic drop in their sales but they kept on people because they believed the recession would be very shallow,” Walter said. “They now have to fire people. That will increase unemployment and they therefore, of course, may be endangering retail sales in some countries.”

If Australia hikes rates in September or October, markets “will certainly shiver” and cause zig-zagging at the bottom of the recession, Walter said.

 And while the White House struggles with issues like health care and puts a fiscal policy exit strategy on the back burner, there are big concerns of about the direction of the U.S. dollar.

“I’m deeply worried about the worries of those investors who have invested a lot, really a lot into the dollar” like the Chinese, Japanese, Arabs and Russians, he said.

“If they have second thoughts about the quality of this currency then the dollar is bound to weaken” which means higher long-term interest rates for a country where government debt is approaching 100 percent of gross domestic product, he said.

If that happens, “2010 could be a worrisome year for all of us,” he said.

To Battle Gog and Magog.

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

JAMES A. HAUGHT

Gog and Magog - what worried Bush the most.

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.

Think of Borat's home town. Yours could look like this sooner than you think.

I heard someone on the radio the other day who had a new definition of a “Gaffe” – you know, those verbalizations politicians make all the time and wish they hadn’t.  Vice President Biden owns the Gaffe Factory, for example. 

Well, the new definition of a Gaffe is when a politician screws up and accidentally tells the truth.  Turns out the Veep’s recent observations on Russian fall squarely into this new view of gaffsterism.  Biden got it right.  He just regrets saying it out loud.

This is what is in store for the good old USA.  Think I’m nuts?  Check out Dmitry Orlov’s Blog, Cluborlov.  He had a front row seat at Russia’s crack up.  He sees one coming for us, too.