The Dish

Finally, someone with backbone.

Some more details on what might be done. Right now, we have a not-too-great experimental vaccine and insufficient supplies of Tamiflu to try and limit the viral impact if you get infected. But there are other options. A specialist emailed me to point out the following:

Tamiflu is mentioned because it’s the only drug that works against both influenza A and influenza B strains. However, pandemic influenza is type A and the current “bird flu” H5N1 is also type A. For this we have two other drugs which are approved for treating type A infleunza – amantadine and rimandatine. Both are available as generic and are much cheaper/ should be easier to get.

Where are the feds on that one? Amantadine will not help avian flu as it now is – but a single new mutation could make the flu vulnerable to it; and it cannot hurt to have big supplies of it ready to go. Small things can cause big shifts in an epidemic’s reach. The Canadian government has stockpiled a big supply – which may save many lives in the early days of a pandemic. So have many other countries. Other possible drugs – to ward off flu in the uninfected and weaken it in the infected – include oseltamivir and zanamivir (the side-effects suck). According to this article, “The United States is doing nothing to assure an adequate supply of these drugs.” Given what we know of the Bush administration’s competence, why am I not surprised? At my next doctor’s visit, I’m going to request my own supply of all these drugs, just in case. You might think about it as well. In a national emergency in the U.S. under Bush, you’re on your own. Next time, we shouldn’t be shocked by federal ineptitude. We should just prepare to save ourselves.

My analogy seems to have hit a nerve. Powerline provides ten reasons Hewitt isn’t as slavishly pro-Bush as Blumenthal was slavishly pro-Clinton. One is that Sid was on the Clinton pay-roll. But Hewitt doesn’t need to be on the Bush pay-roll. He does it for free. He’d pay to do it. Which was roughly Sid’s mojo when he was a journalist as well. I know. I edited him. Sid worships the Democratic party, regardless of what it does; Hewitt’s own site once boasted as its guiding principle that the “Power of the Democrats Must Be Destroyed.” Hard to get more nakedly partisan than that. Then there’s this: “Hugh has a massive nationwide U.S. audience (sort of like Sullivan once did).” Hewitt’s radio show does indeed have a big audience and so does his blog. Good for him. But according to this blog traffic list, Hugh’s site gets around 44,000 visits a day and this blog – despite my attempt to piss off every conservative reader I’ve ever had – still gets 54,000. Add in my Time column – the biggest news magazine in the U.S. – and my Sunday Times column – the biggest Sunday circulation in the UK – and I’m not sure how Powerline believes that I have fewer readers than Hewitt has readers and listeners. But, hey, Powerline believes that the Iraq war has been conducted flawlessly and that the feds did a perfect job with Katrina. I should add one thing: I like both Sid and Hugh. I’ve never met Hewitt, but our interactions have always been civil and he seems like a perfect gentleman, as crazed ideologues go. But I don’t think even he would deny that he is one of the last true believers in the administration. Rove would abandon the ship before Hugh would. As with Sid, it’s admirable in a strange kind of way.

Accountability meets the NYT op-ed page. Money quote:

All Mr. Krugman has offered so far is a faux correction. Each Op-Ed columnist has a page in nytimes.com that includes his or her past columns and biographical information. Mr. Krugman has been allowed to post a note on his page that acknowledges his initial error, but doesn’t explain that his initial correction of that error was also wrong. Since it hasn’t been officially published, that posting doesn’t cause the correction to be appended to any of the relevant columns.
If the problem is that Mr. Krugman doesn’t want to give up precious space in his column for a correction, there are alternatives. Perhaps some space could be found elsewhere on the Op-Ed page so that readers-especially those using electronic versions of his pieces — could get the accurate information they deserve.
A bottom-line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times’s credibility more than having no policy at all?

Bottom-line answer: yes.

“You ought to give President Bush some slack. He has had to face more in his presidency than arguably any other in the last 100 years. He inherited a recession, 9/11 happened, the Iraq war and this hurricane. He is only human and I think he is doing better than most.
I don’t like the big spending nor the illegal immigration crisis. But I do believe the President is a man of integrity facing outstanding and overwhelming problems in his office.”

Here’s a classic New Orleans approach to disaster relief (er, yes, Dan Savage emailed me about it). Instead of begging the feds for cash, flash your boobs. The website Boobs4BourbonSt.com is asking women (or, even, men) to email pics of their bare titties. They’ve compiled quite a gallery. To view the gallery, you have to make a donation to one of several relief charities (a minimum of $5). So apposite. Go take your bra off now and get that digital camera out.

So the president spells out his post-Katrina policy: borrowing $200 billion to “clear away the legacy of inequality.” He gives no accounting of how the money will be found. His governing philosophy is: “It’s going to cost whatever it’s going to cost.” So we have the federal government engaging in a massive program of social engineering to reverse racial inequality in one state. But if we can do it in one state, why not all of them? Did we elect Ted Kennedy? I have just one simple question: When do we hold a formal wake for the end of conservatism?

That’s what the annual federal deficit will be by 2015 on the current Bush course. Merely to balance the budget by then, we’d need a 37 percent tax hike. Or we can cut spending. We should cut spending. The test of today’s GOP will be over which path they take in the future. God knows, this president won’t make the hard calls. It’s up to the Congress.

Yes, every now and again, the Sid Blumenthal of the Bush administration and I agree on a thing or two. Avian flu could be the next major disaster to hit the U.S. We have advance warning. We don’t have nearly enough vaccine for a flu with a 50 percent fatality rate. What is the federal plan to ramp up vaccine production and research? Why are we not vaccinating people now? And why do we have vastly insufficient stockpiles of Tamiflu, which is the only known effective agent against it? More here.

“Take heart that there will be a Republican and conservative answer to our bloated government. Democrats (only through implication) will seek to raise taxes as a solution; the Republicans will promise to take an axe to the government and reduce it to what the tax dollars bring in. Guess what position will win? (And why should the public believe the Republicans? Because they will believe a Giuliani or a McCain).
Believe me: a new Reaganism will be borne out of the Bush presidency; and it will be built on the best things that Bush accomplished (he kept us from spiritually becoming a pacifist Canada or a soulless EU, which is what the Left would have produced), and not simply as a reaction to failed presidency.”