The Respectfully Republican Conversation

Here's my favorite part of that article, vivre ..

Yet Obama was tricky, not mentioning his phone call to Reid when talking to reporters Wednesday. He said Tombstone was the Senate's business, not his business.

"This is a Senate matter. But I know Roland Burris, obviously; he's from my home state. I think he's a fine public servant," Obama said, pulling a 180 on his earlier no-Burris position. "If he gets seated, then I'm going to work with Roland Burris, just like I work with all the other senators."

At least Obama had the good grace not to wag his index finger at reporters and bite his lower lip before announcing, "I did not have phone contact with that senator, Harry Reid, never, ever."

That's because he wasn't asked about Reid.

Obama almost wasn't asked anything about Burris on Wednesday. One reporter barely tossed it up at the end, after others asked him about the war in the Gaza Strip (Obama still can't comment about Gaza because he's not yet president) and the economy (though he's not president, you can't stop the guy from commenting on that one).

What Obama forgot to mention is that he ordered the Tombstone issue settled because it became his problem. So he told Reid to cave.

In political terms, Reid rolled up his sleeves, put on his favorite "Kiss the Chef" apron, got his fingers dusty with flour and baked himself a big humble pie. He scarfed it down in front of reporters Wednesday, without a fork, all but licking his fingers, that pie was so sweet and tasty. Mmm-mmm.

"For me, who had never met the man, it was very enlightening," oozed Reid, heaping praise on Burris after meeting him for the first time. "He is very engaging, an extremely nice man and he presents himself very well."

-------------------

Talk about a 180!!!

The article by John Kass was priceless. I bookmarked his site so I can read what he writes again. Not all of the media is so blindly biased.

So now home builders and the "adult entertainment" industry are wanting bail outs.......I think they should bail out personal trainers who own there own gym! 

In fact, I think they should bail out all small business owners since we are suppose to be the "meat and potatoes" in the middle class. 

For all the bashing of the Bush/es, I found this old quote from Laura Bush.  She was defending MO for the quote, "This is the first time in my adult life that I........" 

Mrs. Bush:  "I think she probably meant I'm more proud, you know, is what she really meant," the first lady said.  "You have to be really careful what you say, because everything you say is looked at and, in many cases, misconstrued.

I don't agree with Laura Bush, but still she is a class act.  And, seems strange the dems can't give President Bush credit for doing all he can to make this transition as comfortable as possible for the PEBO.

I find it funny that over <------------------------------ they're condemning President and Mrs Bush for moving into a nice gated community in Dallas.  Well, even Rev. Wright moved into a nice WHITE gated community with, if my memory serves me correctly, a house that has 10,000 square feet.  And, if my memory serves me correctly, his church paid for his mansion.  I didn't read any derogatory remarks from the ladies over <-------------------------------------- when the story came out about Wright and his house.

I'm sure that the Bushes will return to their ranch often.  Hey, their daughter got married there.  Guess they gotta complain about something.  Seems like President Bush will continue being criticized.  Kinda funny.

Shirley

Thanks Otter, I just borrowed the movie from my friend and I am looking forward to seeing it.

Did anyone catch the doc about Gary Sinese visiting Iraq on Fox? If this does not convince people that we did the Iraqi people  a big favor by getting rid of Sadaam, then they are just narrow minded idiots. The troops have done an amazing job of getting that country going. Sinese visits Sadams palaces and the soldiers who give tours to the Iraqis talk about how furious they get when they see what Sadam did while his people suffered. They talk about how Sadam would line up his contruction crews and shoot them if they did not meet his deadlines. A real DEADline. He visits schools where boys and GIRLS are now learning with school supplies donated by American schoolkids. There are no reporters from the MSM in Iraq anymore because there is no body count to report. I just hope that someday, the people of Iraq will get the chance to show the world how their country is changed for the better, by American troops and a gutsy American President who did not just talk about change, he actually made it happen when no one else believed it would.

ijl wrote

How many ladies here would even contemplate tatoo of Bush.

I would!  I love cowboys.  He'd have to be in a cowboy suit though.  Hmmm...maybe jeans would be okay.  Yeppers, I think he's cute!  And like Vivre said...GUTSY!

Nah, no tatoos for me.  I don't like pain!

Shirley

otter, I plan to watch that movie.  When I saw it advertised I wanted to see it.  Hmmm..you say long wait with Netflix.  Darn!

Shirley

ladies,

Talking about Amy on this thread would seem to be a violation of the rules.

just saying - show some self-control.

djd,

What rules are these ? Amy posted this on the other thread for all to see. Had  she mentioned it in her PM to me, then it would have been an OUTRAGEOUS violation of the rules. As it is,this is done purely for the entertainment.

I really wish people would just stop reading each others threads. I think the dems should be able to say whatever they want over they and we should be able to do the same here. But neither thread should be about attacking the other women. The dems have had 8 years to do their Bush bashing. They had their fun, now it is our turn. We all should be alble to criticize our politicians. That is what freedom of speech is all about. That does not mean we have to go after the folks who do not agree with us. So gals, how about everyone over here, making a New Years resolution to not read over there and vice versa. That way we can aim our ire at those who really deserve it- the POLITICIANS!

As I see it, we ought to be able to read whatever we want, wherever we want.  What we say about it might be a different matter (the First Amendment notwithstanding).

otter 

Been on vacation in Fla. away from the Internet as well as the cell phone.  Boy have you gals been busy! 

Your talk of tattoos reminded me of something I'd rather forget.

One of the bits during the campaign that made me cringe from the Daily Kos that I did not post was one about tattoos--- It may be personal thing but, as a Jew I found it extremely unsettling.

From Yid with a Lid

Posted at: 08:00 PM - 01 Nov 2008
One of the most disgusting sights in the world is a number tattooed on someone's arm. Its disgusting because it invokes memories of how the Nazis dehumanized people.

The Nazis tattooed prisoners in the camps because it was one of their ways to make them feel inhuman. They tattooed you and made you like everyone in the camps. They tattooed you so it was easier on them to count prisoners and keep track of you. They chose tattooing because they knew that Tattoos were banned by Jewish law. What they didn't realize is that Jewish law also realizes that there were things out of peoples control. Tattooing the arms of their concentration camp victims was just one more way of torturing them.


Now on the Daily Kos there is a story of an Obama Supporter getting number tattoos in honor of their Hero. Folks if Obama wins this is our future:

AIDS battle burnishes Bush's legacy in Africa

Many praise the president's $15 billion effort to prevent, treat the disease

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - In her AIDS-scarred South African township, Sweetness Mzolisa leads a chorus of praise for George W. Bush that echoes to the deserts of Namibia, the hills of Rwanda and the villages of Ethiopia.

Like countless Africans, Mzolisa looks forward to Barack Obama becoming America's first black president Jan 20. But - like countless Africans - Mzolisa says she will always be grateful to Bush for his war on AIDS, which has helped to treat more than 2 million Africans, support 10 million more, and revitalize the global fight against the disease.

"It has done a lot for the people of South Africa, for the whole of the African continent," says Mzolisa, a feisty mother of seven. "It has changed so many people's lives, saved so many people's lives."

Mzolisa, 44, was diagnosed with the AIDS virus in 1999 and formed a women's support group to "share the pain." In 2004 she received a U.S. grant to set up office in a shipping container and start a soup kitchen from the group's vegetable garden. She stretches her $10,000 in annual funding to train staff to look after bedridden AIDS victims, feed and clothe orphans, and do stigma-busting work at schools and taxi ranks.

Hundreds of projects get funding
Hundreds of similar small grass-roots projects are being funded by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, alongside higher-profile charities and big state clinics.

Bush launched the $15 billion plan in 2003 to expand prevention, treatment and support programs in 15 hard-hit countries, 12 of them African, which account for more than half the world's estimated 33 million AIDS infections. The initiative tied in with a World Health Organization campaign to put 3 million people on AIDS drugs by 2005 - a goal it says was reached in 2007.

Congress last year passed legislation more than tripling the budget to $48 billion over the next five years, with Republicans and Democrats alike hailing the program as a remarkable success.

But the task remains enormous. More than 1.5 million Africans died in 2007 (the U.S. death toll is under 15,000), fewer than one-third had access to treatment, and new infections continued to outstrip those receiving life-prolonging drugs.

In most African countries, life expectancy has dropped dramatically, and only a few, like Botswana, have started to turn the corner again.

And with no end in sight to the global financial crisis, there are fears about whether all the funding approved by Congress will be delivered.

There continue to be detractors who say the U.S. administration should have channeled the money through the U.N.; that it has placed too much emphasis on faith-based groups and abstinence; that it has trampled on women's health by shunning anything associated with abortions; that it has concentrated on AIDS treatment at the expense of prevention; and that it has diverted attention away from bigger killers like pneumonia and diarrhea.

Helen Epstein, an AIDS expert who has consulted for the U.N. and the World Bank, says both the U.N. and PEPFAR have failed disastrously on prevention by preaching abstinence until marriage and failing to recognize that in some African cultures it is the norm to have several simultaneous long-term relationships.

Critics say money could be better spent
She says the money would be better spent on strengthening African health care systems rather than focusing on a single disease.

Johanna Hanefeld at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says her research in Zambia indicated that the U.N. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria was more effective in using HIV programs as a lever to improve health care and staff training, rather than scattering cash among many non-governmental groups, faith-based or other.

PEPFAR ambassador Mark Dybul dismisses criticism that the funding is too narrowly focused.

"In Africa you can't tackle development goals unless you tackle HIV/AIDS," he says, citing the devastation wreaked on professions like nursing and teaching.

Besides PEPFAR, Bush has launched a five-year, $1.2 billion initiative to cut malaria deaths in 15 African nations by half.

Dybul also says it is unfair to accuse the U.S. of overemphasizing abstinence because PEPFAR is a major supplier of condoms to the targeted African countries. For instance, PEPFAR figures show 60 million condoms going to Zambia, 40 million to Rwanda, 145 million to Ethiopia in the past five years.

Some critics, like rockers-turned-advocates Bono and Bob Geldof, have become admirers.

"The Bush regime has been divisive ... created bitterness - but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives," Geldof wrote in Time Magazine as he accompanied Bush on an Africa trip last February.

"The administration and Bush himself deserve a lot more credit than they received for getting this job done," says Josh Ruxin, assistant professor of public health at Columbia University.

Hundreds of centers in Rwanda
Desperately poor Rwanda, where Ruxin runs a health care project, now has more than 100 centers where people can receive AIDS testing, counseling and treatment, up from just two in 2002.

"I am heartbroken overall by the Bush administration," Ruxin said in a telephone interview. "But from my perch here in Rwanda, it is impossible to deny the results and achievements of PEPFAR. Many Rwandans were made Republicans because this was the first administration that has taken an interest and done something here."

Ruxin hopes Obama will learn lessons from PEPFAR's first five years - in particular to end the emphasis on abstinence and start funding groups who work with prostitutes and carry out abortions.

PEPFAR's biggest single success story is the fortyfold increase in the number of Africans receiving life-prolonging medication in the past five years.

Populous countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia are still struggling to increase access to medication. But in Rwanda, 71 percent of those in need of AIDS drugs received them in 2007, up from 1 percent in 2003, and in Namibia the rate shot up to 88 percent, from 1 percent.

AIDS is no longer a death sentence for people like Ndaxu Mungunda, a Namibian diagnosed as HIV positive after the birth of her child. She, her husband and child were given AIDS drugs provided at all major Namibian hospitals, thanks in part to PEPFAR funding which has increased tenfold in the past five years to $109 million.

Four years later, at age 40, she and her husband look forward to something that is by no means a certainty in Africa's AIDS era - a ripe old age.

Hope restored to families
Jones Mubita, a Zambian policeman, had given up hope for his young daughter, a "mere skeleton" covered in boils when she was hospitalized. With the help of AIDS drugs provided by the U.S. government the child is now back at school, he says, beaming.

At a 22-bed clinic run by Living Hope, a church-based charity near Cape Town, 85 percent of patients now survive and only 15 percent die. A few years ago, it was the opposite, says Pat Ball, a retired teacher from North Carolina, and a volunteer at Living Hope.

The acclaimed mothers2mothers organization has expanded from about 40 locations around Cape Town to nearly 500 in seven African countries thanks to PEPFAR cash. Its network of more than 1,000 HIV positive women are trained as "mentor mothers" and paid to counsel the newly infected and ensure they and their babies stay healthy. Thanks to the growing provision of AIDS drugs to pregnant women, few babies in the m2m network are now born with AIDS, says co-founder Gene Falk.

In big South African government clinics, there is palpable optimism that AIDS infected newborns could become history.

Children are especially vulnerable as they are harder to diagnose and quickly pass the point beyond which medication can help.

In a sunny room furnished with toys and a play kitchen at the Soweto Hospice in Johannesburg, dying children are given a chance to enjoy what remains of their life.

"We want to give them their childhood back," said Louisa Ferreira, director of the nine-bed pediatrics unit funded by PEPFAR. "The hospice is not about death. It's about life."

Caring for orphans, vulnerable children
PEPFAR says its programs have helped care for nearly 4 million orphans and vulnerable children.

One of them is Frans Dobola, who at age 13 lost his parents to AIDS. Heartbeat, an organization helping AIDS orphans with $750,000 in PEPFAR grants, trained a neighbor to act as his foster mother, provided a daily meal, and an after-school program.

Dobola, 20, now works at Heartbeat, in a township near the South African capital, Pretoria, and dreams of a job in computers. Meanwhile, he grows beets and tomatoes at the after-school center's garden and gives poetry and dance lessons.

"I am giving back to the community what they gave me," he says, smiling.

South Africa is also the biggest single recipient of PEPFAR money - $590 million last year, more than it received during the entire eight-year Clinton administration, according to U.S. ambassador Eric Bost.

After years of denial about the AIDS crisis by former President Thabo Mbeki, the new government is finally serious about tackling the epidemic.

Francois Venter, an outspoken doctor who heads a PEPFAR-funded program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says because of its emphasis on measurable targets, "PEPFAR is different."

"A lot of previous donor projects were touchy-feely, fuzzy," says Venter, adding that U.S. funding helped boost the number of South Africans on medication to 700,000.

But with 2.5 South Africans becoming newly infected for every one put on treatment, Venter says that prevention remains a "black hole."

Prevention is weakest link
Supporters and critics alike agree that prevention is the weakest link in global AIDS initiatives. When he launched PEPFAR, Bush said he wanted to prevent 7 million new infections but it is hard to tell whether that goal has been met.

PEPFAR says its funds have provided drugs to 250,000 pregnant women to prevent them passing on the AIDS virus in the womb. In countries like Uganda, babies born with the AIDS virus still account for 15-25 percent of new infections and so the increase in therapy to stop mother-to-child transmission offers one of the few rays of hope in an otherwise bleak prevention outlook.

Another promising option would be male circumcision, which can cut transmission by up to 60 percent. But it has so far received little PEPFAR backing because any mass program is thought to be too complex for impoverished countries to undertake.

Most experts agree that prevention means a fundamental change of behavior - fewer sexual partners and mutually faithful relationships. "We are trying to change culture, tradition," says Mandla Ndlovu, project officer for Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa.

"It is not going to be a one-round fight," says Ndlovu, who runs a PEPFAR project to increase AIDS awareness among men in Carltonville, a gold mining town outside Johannesburg where men live in hostels away from their families and there are few pastimes besides alcohol and casual sex.

'He cares about people'
Bost brims with superlatives about the achievements of PEPFAR in South Africa, and believes Bush will be judged more kindly in history than on Jan. 21.

Dybul, a specialist in infectious diseases whose title is now U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, concurs.

"It's the largest international health initiative in history for a single disease," he says. "In any other circumstances, he (Bush) would be getting a Nobel prize."

Sweetness Mzolisa, overflowing with energy and enthusiasm, puts it more simply.

"He's got heart," she declares. "He cares about people."

Sherri,

I had a good laugh too and was going to say something but I see you handled it perfectly.  Ya beat me to it.

Thanks Otter for the movie advice.  I wanted to see that movie.

Moody or Rock, where's the Bible thread, I can't find it. 

Here's how I see it.  If my name is brought up over there I don't mind defending myself if I feel the need to do so.  I'm sure there are other ladies from over there that come over here and read BUT will NOT admit to it.  That's okay.  Can't keep everyone honest.

I really can't wait to see the movie, Otter.  I have GOT to finish watching the one I have so I can send it back.  I'll be needing some laughs!

Paulette, thanks for the great article.  I watched President Bush 41 and 43's interview tonight with Brit Hume.  It really was good.  If I drank beer I would feel very comfortable sitting down with President Bush 41 and just talk.  Oh, I forgot.  He doesn't drink stuff either.  I did have a martinee at my dd's during Christmas.    And I didn't get drunk!

Shirley