AND YET, ANOTHER BLUNDER

Hurricane Katrina blew and washed her way through New Orleans twenty months ago. My favorite city hasn’t been the same and its people continue to fight for their very existence. Katrina was an act of God and our governments’ response to Katrina was an act from hell. With all the reports of government waste, delays and assistance denials to Katrina victims, I thought for a hot minute there I had heard it all. But I haven’t.

More than 10,000 pages of cables, telegraphs and emails from U.S. diplomats from around the world were recently released to a public interest group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The watchdog group provided the documents to The Washington Post. The Washington Post staff writers John Solomon and Spencer S. Hsu wrote an article entitled “Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed.”

After reading the article, I had to close my windows so my neighbors wouldn’t hear me screaming. In summary, our allies offered $400 million dollars in cash and $454 million dollars in oil that was suppose to have been sold for cash, but only $40 million dollars has been used to help disaster victims or reconstruction. In a nutshell, our United States Government failed to collect most of the international cash assistance for Hurricane Katrina’s victims from our allies who made the offers.

Why? You go figure. But I think it’s more of the same incompetence that still has New Orleans waiting to be recovered; red tape and bureaucratic baloney.

Enough already. Click on the link below to read the article for yourself, and remember to close you windows so your neighbors won’t hear you screaming.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042801113.html?referrer=email

Research Study

Hello everyone,

I wanted to let everyone know that I was accepted in the new vaccine research study at the University Hospitals and Clinics here in Madison. The study is going to involve about thirty men much like me who have rising PSA levels with no presence of prostrate cancer. The study will take two years to complete and I will be participating for four months.

Monday, April 30 I meet with the research doctors to go over the details, sign the paperwork and get all my questions answered. Then on Tuesday I will go through the four hour leukapheresis procedure. During leukapheresis my blood goes through a machine, much like kidney dialysis, that separates and collects some of my white blood cells. The collected cells will be used to measure my present immune response. I will repeat the leukaphersis procedure again at the end of the study to compare the white blood cells before and after to see if my immune system responded to the vaccines.

I get the first vaccine on May 14 and one every two weeks thereafter, with the last vaccine on August 7. Anyway, that the low-down on the research study, and with that, hopefully that will bring you “Up To Speed.”

Later, I have a turkey I need to go shoot.