Dear Santa,

Although I have been, --well, --a ‘pretty-good’ girl this year, I decided to ask you this Christmas for things for other people.

1. First of all, I’d like to ask you to send the Republican Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, some honey and red ants.  He’ll know what to do with them.  If he doesn’t know, I’m sure someone close to him will tell him.
2. Please, please, Santa, I’ve heard that President Bush is looking for a dignified way out of Iraq.  Could you give him the new X-Box game, “Conquering for Dummies,” and a new Lexus with GPS pointing only to Crawford?
3. Dick Cheney really needs a new black S&M leather jumpsuit studded with steely neck spikes.  He wore the old one out at those ‘undisclosed locations.’  And if you’re really nice you’d throw in some batteries too. Why, yes, of course, they’re for the pacemaker.
4. Karl Rove wants his brain back.  He’s getting into some trouble without it.
5. On her way to the airport for Europe, Condi Rice told me she needs several new pairs of high-heeled shoes or boots and some really snazzy power suits, as well as a cover story for those European secret prisons.
6. And Rummy, poor Rummy, he needs a new sneer.  The old one is getting awfully faded looking and is worn from overuse.  (And could you leave “W” a note telling him to lay off saying in prominent interviews that “Rummy’s doing a heckeva job!”)
7. Santa, please don’t forget poor John Ashcroft just because he is no longer in office.  I’m sure you must know that there are bare-breasted statues rampant in almost every civic location.  He needs a lightweight but opaque portable drop cloth to throw over them.
8. Please give Alberto Gonzales a conscience.
9. Laura Bush is still trying to rub Jacques Chirac’s kiss off her hand, so I think some really nice Lava hand soap would be just the thing for her.
10. Santa, Scooter Libby says, maybe, just possibly, he may need a pardon.
11. Colin Powell would like a miracle drug to make him forget.

Love and kisses,

Here is his letter to me.  Send money to get Texas out of the hands of the villains! Take a look at his website too!  Another great website by Kat.

http://www.gammageforgovernor.com/

Dear Sharon,

Texas is at a crossroads, and we face a crucial decision in November 2006. Today I filed to run for governor and made a brief statement about why I am running.

From the diaries -- Larry 

COMMENTARY: ALBERTA PHILLIPS

Austin American Statesman

Wednesday, December 14, 2005
 
If Ruben Cantu had been sentenced to life in prison, he would be a free man today.

He would have his freedom not because he served enough time to earn parole from the 1984 incident that put him behind bars. Cantu would be free because he would have been exonerated.

It now appears that Cantu did not rob and kill Pedro Gomez, a construction worker. We now know that Cantu had an alibi that put him in Waco, about 170 miles from the crime scene in San Antonio. We knew then that there were no fingerprints, DNA or any other physical evidence that tied Cantu to the crime. But there was an eyewitness. Juan Moreno, who was wounded in the attack, identified Cantu as the shooter. Twice Moreno failed to identify Cantu from photos police showed him. But the third time was the charm. Moreno, an undocumented worker in 1984, recently said he fingered Cantu because police pressured him to do so. Cantu had a bad history with police. Moreno came forward in recent weeks to clear Cantu's name and his own conscience. He told his story to the Houston Chronicle. The accomplice convicted with Cantu likewise has named another person as the killer. Even the former district attorney who prosecuted Cantu for capital murder has conceded that he, too, erred.

From the diaries -- Larry

During Katrina, I was a volunteer signed up to go down to the Austin Convention center and help people try to reconnect with their relatives via computer.  Unfortunately, I came down with a bad cold/flu the day after Labor Day and it took me out of the loop for three weeks, so I only served one day at the center.  However, I remained on the Yahoo group set up to schedule volunteers and I noted that a message came out asking if anyone could coach on computer usage a middle-aged female Katrina evacuee who had been relocated here .  She lived right in my neighborhood, so I volunteered to do it.

I recently reneged on my resolve to not watch CNN (after facing days and nights of FOX and the sorry MSNBC weekday night-time line up --excepting only Keith Olbermann): I did so especially because they were covering New Orleans again.  However, late last night while watching a rerun of Anderson Cooper, I saw this interesting interchange about the feasibility of pegging our withdrawal to Iraqi troop readiness. 

The dialogue speaks mainly to what Bush seems to be preparing us for, but it also speaks to one part of Wes’s plan, in that the avoidance of a timetable by partially pegging discontinuance of war efforts to troop readiness may not solve our problems.  Nor is Ware’s one-man assessment at all the final word on this subject of Iraqi troop readiness—but it does raise a red flag.

With thanks to Jonathon Edwards, who delivered this only slightly edited sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in Enfield Connecticut on July 8, 1741 thus lighting a fire to the evangelical Great Awakening in the 1740s.  Amazing how timely it can be with a little editing.

-Their foot shall slide in due time- Deut. xxxii. 35

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving neocons, who were God's visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God's wonderful works towards them, remained (as ver. 28.) void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the text. The expression I have chosen for my text, “Their foot shall slide in due time,” seems to imply the following doings, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked neocons were exposed.

As many of you know, I was, in my prior, unretired life, an HIV epidemiologist working in public health.  Although the now-dominant wing of the Republican Party attacks science-based decisions most malevolently when they are directly or indirectly related to sex, they also have pursued an aggressive campaign to negate science in policy-making in many other areas.  I think they do this to protect their hold on their special interest groups:  right-wing fundamentalists and large business interests.

They have especially singled out sexual, evolutionary biology, stem-cell research, and environmental issues to attempt to negate science.  But scientists from many disciplines have protested the Republican effort to subsitute ideological opinions for hard science.  See, for example, the statement by the Union of Concerned Scientists in February 2004.

I have been doing so on behalf of my 92-year-old auntie who is in a nursing home and who currently has to pay several hundred dollars a month for her prescriptions.  I think I will go mad trying to figure it out.  I'm posting this article from Forbes (consider the source while reading it--for them to even admit to any problems is somewhat unusual).  This is the result of Bush's attempt to gain favor among seniors while paying off his friends, the big insurance corporations.

It is utterly insane.  Most elderly people who need coverage cannot be expected to peruse the fine print and legaleze of 20 different potential insurance companies offering the drug plan, nor can they assess 20 different formularies.  Why in God's name did they not just make this a straight Medicare Program?  That would be difficult enough for people who cannot see or hear well to negotiate, but making them go though this much bureaucratic BS is tantamount to denying them service.  (And yes, insurance company bureaucracy is even worse than government bureaucracy.) My other aunt, who is 90 and NOT in a nursing home, just gave up trying to even understand it--luckily she has Tricare so she won't be hurt by not getting it.

This article tells of another study confirming that avian influenza of the H5N1 subtype often causes death through the mechanism of one's own immune system ramping up to the point of killing you--and thus that young adults and teenagers may be most at risk. 

This calls into question several things regarding policy. 

1. If a vaccine becomes available, just who are the priority groups to which it should be given?  Usually, it is the very young and very old plus first responders and health care workers.  But does this mean we should change that and give priority to those age 15-39?  I'm 62, my son is 35.  Which of us gets it if it is in short supply? Both his group and my group will be at increased risk.

I was curious about comments on supposedly declining traffic so started collecting names of those who logged on since about mid-October.  Incomplete and completely unofficial.  Who is missing?  Of course, since I am fairly new, I wouldn't recognize who might be missing.

aanonymous

amiel

AnitainTX

anon