pinions of buddy don: sumthin fishy

ye purty much eggspeck yer gummint to address the most importunt problems the people have, startin with the most importunt n then a'wurkin thar way down to thangs that dont hardly matter. thats why thays sumthin a lil fishy with whut our house of preresentatives is up to. lemme see ifn i kin count sum problems that mite rank high in the peoples bizness:

• alaskas meltin so ye better git thar befor thay aint no glaciers lef fer ye to look at:

  Alaska is changing by the hour. From the far north, where higher seas are swamping native villages, to the tundra around Fairbanks, where melting permafrost is forcing some roads and structures to buckle in what looks like a cartoon version of a hangover, to the rivers of ice receding from inlets, warmer temperatures are remaking the Last Frontier State.
  
  That transformation was particularly apparent at the visitor center here, where rangers were putting the finishing touches on a display that sought to explain the changing landscape of the country's northernmost state. The sign said, "Glimpses of an Ice Age past. Laboratory of climate change today," and it explained how the Exit Glacier has been shrinking over the years, and what scientists are learning as the state heats up.
  
  Out in the fjords, kayakers paddled into bays newly opened by other receding glaciers. They came to see the ice, a tour guide explained, to paddle around something that had been moving toward a tidewater destiny for thousands of years. And many of them were in a hurry. Glacial pace, in Alaska, no longer means slow.

• them thats spozed to perteck us frum thangs lack mad cow disease dont wonta use the tests that wurk n wonta delay reportin when they find mad cow:

  Although the Agriculture Department confirmed Friday that a cow that died last year was infected with mad cow disease, a test the agency conducted seven months ago indicated that the animal had the disease. The result was never publicly disclosed.
  
  The delay in confirming the United States' second case of mad cow disease seems to underscore what critics of the agency have said for a long time: that there are serious and systemic problems in the way the Agriculture Department tests animals for mad cow.
  
  Indeed, the lengthy delay occurred despite the intense national interest in the disease and the fact that many countries have banned shipments of beef from the United States because of what they consider to be lax testing policies.

• the amazin publickin deficits is threats to us all:

  The biggest risk we Americans face to our way of life and our place in the world probably doesn't come from Al Qaeda or the Iraq war.
  
  Rather, the biggest risk may come from this administration's fiscal recklessness and the way this is putting us in hock to China.
  
  "I think the greatest threat to our future is our fiscal irresponsibility," warns David Walker, the comptroller general of the United States. Mr. Walker, an accountant by training, asserts that last year may have been the most fiscally reckless in the history of our Republic. Aside from the budget deficit, Congress enacted the prescription drug benefit - possibly an $8 trillion obligation - without figuring out how to pay for it.
  
  Mr. Walker, America's watchdog in chief and head of the Government Accountability Office, is no Bush-basher. He started out his career as a conservative Democrat, then became a moderate Republican and has been an independent since 1997.

• publick broadcastin is under attack n bein cunverted to bein a piece of the publickun propoganda machine:

  That doesn't mean the right's new assault on public broadcasting is toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations - or thrilled to the "journalism" of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies - you'll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio.
  
  There's only one obstacle standing in the way of the coup. Like Richard Nixon, another president who tried to subvert public broadcasting in his war to silence critical news media, our current president may be letting hubris get the best of him. His minions are giving any investigative reporters left in Washington a fresh incentive to follow the money.
  
  That money is not the $100 million that the House still threatens to hack out of public broadcasting's various budgets. Like the theoretical demise of Big Bird, this funding tug-of-war is a smoke screen that deflects attention from the real story. Look instead at the seemingly paltry $14,170 that, as Stephen Labaton of The New York Times reported on June 16, found its way to a mysterious recipient in Indiana named Fred Mann. Mr. Labaton learned that in 2004 Kenneth Tomlinson, the Karl Rove pal who is chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, clandestinely paid this sum to Mr. Mann to monitor his PBS bête noire, Bill Moyers's "Now."
  
  Now, why would Mr. Tomlinson pay for information that any half-sentient viewer could track with TiVo? Why would he hire someone in Indiana? Why would he keep this contract a secret from his own board? Why, when a reporter exposed his secret, would he try to cover it up by falsely maintaining in a letter to an inquiring member of the Senate, Byron Dorgan, that another CPB executive had "approved and signed" the Mann contract when he had signed it himself? If there's a news story that can be likened to the "third-rate burglary," the canary in the coal mine that invited greater scrutiny of the Nixon administration's darkest ambitions, this strange little sideshow could be it.

• the army caint fill its ranks with volunteers:

  The all-volunteer Army is not working. The problem with such an Army is that there are limited numbers of people who will freely choose to participate in an enterprise in which they may well be shot, blown up, burned to death or suffer some other excruciating fate.
  
  The all-volunteer Army is fine in peacetime, and in military routs like the first gulf war. But when the troops are locked in a prolonged war that yields high casualties, and they look over their shoulders to see if reinforcements are coming from the general population, they find -as they're finding now - that no one is there.
  
  Although it has been lowering standards, raising bonuses and all but begging on its knees, the Army hasn't reached its recruitment quota in months. There are always plenty of hawks in America. But the hawks want their wars fought with other people's children.

• the communist chinese kin buy n sell us:

  There's nothing shocking per se about the fact that Chinese buyers are now seeking control over some American companies. After all, there's no natural law that says Americans will always be in charge. Power usually ends up in the hands of those who hold the purse strings. America, which imports far more than it exports, has been living for years on borrowed funds, and lately China has been buying many of our I.O.U.'s.
  
  Until now, the Chinese have mainly invested in U.S. government bonds. But bonds yield neither a high rate of return nor control over how the money is spent. The only reason for China to acquire lots of U.S. bonds is for protection against currency speculators - and at this point China's reserves of dollars are so large that a speculative attack on the dollar looks far more likely than a speculative attack on the yuan.
  
  So it was predictable that, sooner or later, the Chinese would stop buying so many dollar bonds. Either they would stop buying American I.O.U.'s altogether, causing a plunge in the dollar, or they would stop being satisfied with the role of passive financiers, and demand the power that comes with ownership. And we should be relieved that at least for now the Chinese aren't dumping their dollars; they're using them to buy American companies.

corse thays pleny more a'goin on, but ye git the idee. so whut is the house spendin its preshus time a'doon? thar takin keer of a problem that has been plaguin us fer years, a problem so bad that ye probly caint even member the last time ye saw the problem happen. whut problem? desecratin the flag! the solutshun frum the house of representatives? desecratin the furst amendment to the constitushun! heres a editorial eggsplain whut i mean.

tiz a fishy thang to do, witch i reckon they wonta proov how dimcrats dont luv the cuntry on a counta how they wonta perteck the ideals we stand fer n not the cloth symbols that represent us. (corse, this ignores how the proper way to dispose of a old flag is to burn it! "WHEREAS, The approved method of disposing of unserviceable Flags has long been that they be destroyed by burning").

fishy, firshy, fishy. reminds me of a cuple critters i tuck pitchers of this weekend. red top, the furstn, is frum a tank i have at wurk, witch a feller give it to me whenever he moved back to texas. secunt one name of new blue is frum the tank at home. bet ye kin figger out witchn is witch!