Crap Throwing Monkey

That you're imagining the taste of a skunk's ass doesn't do you a whole lot of credit either.

"This work of fiction isn't portrayed as fiction, so I'm upset by it." Sounds like the problem's on your end. Maybe you should deal with your own upset, and not blame it on Dan Brown's writing.

My mistake...I was thinking two of the three biggest fools in Congress.

Actually, if you count '80 and '84, Reagan got more votes. But at least Kerry got more votes than Mondale.

Why not? Even PETA kills stray cats. Their shelter in Norfolk euthanized about 3000 a year. No, I'm not making that up...

Do I have to choose just one?

Two of the three biggest. I wouldn't discredit Delay's foolishness by omitting him.

Can you address the information I presented, or is your only response "Oh, it's just DC Tom"? Never mind...stupid question. Of COURSE you can't address the information...you've already demonstrated that in this thread.

Marginally better. Bush is an idiot with a questionable foreign policy. Kerry was an idiot with an incoherent foreign policy reminiscent of the egregious BS generated by the Clinton administration (a Central Asian policy formulated not by the State Department, but by Unocol and Mavis friggin' Leno???? Yeah, that bit of genius worked out well...) Given a choice, I prefer policies I disagree with to policies that have no basis in reality.

Lugar aside, and not withstanding the fact that I think Bush is a moron as well...I'm SO glad that friggin' idiot Kerry isn't sitting in the White House.

No sh--, Sherlock. It's not like I'm trying to keep it a secret.

Screw perfect. Aspire to reach the lofty position of spelling your boss's title. And anyway...it wasn't a comment on you so much as an observation on the quality of teaching these days.

That's almost precisely what I said - transmission requires close contact with infected bodily fluids. I've read The Hot Zone. Anyone who considers it a primary or even acceptable secondary source is a fool. Anyone who considers it any kind of source at all on Marburg is an idiot, considering the book concerns Ebola. And it doesn't "propose the notion" of spreading by plane travel...it has a chapter, in graphic Preston style, discussing one individual on one plane who infects precisely no one else. And anyway...use some common sense, if you have any. Viruses that are actually optimized for aerosol spread don't even spread as effectively as you're postulating filovirii might. The 1917 influenza pandemic - one of the most infectious airborne viruses known - still had only about a 60% morbidity rate. Pneumonic plague is as infectious as influenza and more deadly than Ebola, and managed to kill 60 people out of a population of 2.1 million in Surat, India in 1994...and despite a mass exodus of people (about a half-million) from Surat via train and international flights didn't spread beyond Surat. The last major Ebola outbreak (of Ebola Zaire - the really deadly strain with 90% mortality) in Kikwit, Zaire killed 350 people in a city of 600k. Extraordinarily high morbidity (ten virus particles can cause a virulent infection), 90% mortality...and it killed one person in every thousand, in a city so poor that it had virtually no health care infrastructure whatsoever (one hospital bed for every three thousand people and one autoclave for the entire city). And you, in your infinite wisdom, think if one person with Marburg gets on one plane, 6.3 billion people are going to die. Right. Maybe you should read something other than Richard Preston.

Most previously identified Marburg cases have been in places where Western medical treatment has been available...thus, the roughly 30% mortality rate. In the middle of nowhere, Angola, where the per capita health budget is maybe $10 per person...sure, it's going to be close to 90%. Neither one of you is wrong. And for all anyone knows, this is a new strain of Marburg...there are at least four strains of Ebola with widely differing mortality rates, so it's not unprecedented. At least on that particular topic. On others...you're whacked. Known strains of Marburg and Ebola do not spread so easily that one person can take one plane and wipe out the world (the effective spread of either requires close contact with infected bodily fluids, which is why previous outbreaks and epidemics have been stopped cold by ending the practices of sharing needles and African funeral rites.) Marburg is not more deadly than Ebola, at least for being more treatable (anti-coagulants are very successful in treating Marburg, actually). Beads of sweat aren't highly contagious...but patients start to hemmorage through their skin, and their blood is highly contagious.

16 years as a teacher, and you can't spell "principal"?

I'd buy that if I hadn't flown on what was a brand new 737 (according to the flight crew, on its second flight) two months ago with no-smoking lights. Flight crew could have lied, of course...

So why is it that planes still have no smoking lights, anyway?

More of the story's coming out. Apparently the guy was a Chinese national here illegally...and wasn't entirely in his right mind anyway (insisted he'd only talk to the President). And the police identified a timing device and wires in one of the suitcases...which, when they detonated it, turned out to be a watch and a CD player. Though it should be sometimes, being stupid isn't exactly terrorism...luckily for some of the people here.

Or just bring a screwdriver. They typically don't mind (never confiscated any from me), and aside from being used as a screwdrive, it makes a pretty good shiv. No manicure scissors, though...THOSE they'll confiscate.

Yeah, he's a couple trees over. And what is it with that dickhead anyway? He tosses out enough monkey sh-- for four or five regular monkeys. Is there anything he doesn't pretend to know? He gives the rest of us crap-throwing monkeys a bad name.

Only fair points. I mentioned them for the sake of discussion, not to espouse a position of my own. Were I to espouse a position of my own, I'd say that any pharmacist that STOCKS a drug shouldn't have a moral objection to dispensing it, and that there is a difference between a pharmacist telling a customer "I won't prescribe RU-486", and saying "We don't stock RU-486." At the very least, the latter doesn't put the pharmicist in the position of invalidating a doctor's medical judgement...and reasonably, if a pharmacist refuses on moral grounds to prescribe RU-486 but still carries the drug in stock, he's a confirmed hypocrite.

Three weeks after 9/11, I flew first-class on TWA. Couldn't even get a plastic spork in the airport because it was a "dangerous weapon", the flight was delayed 40 minutes because the pilot was detained for trying to bring nail clippers on...but with the first-class meal I asked for and got a metal, serrated steak knife. Admittedly, things were quite confused those first few months (and I curse the "shoe bomber" with every breath when I fly...thanks to that dumbass's looney idea, I have to take my shoes off EVERY TIME I go through airport security), and things are a LITTLE more sensible now. But even so...visible security is less about security and more about PR. The stuff you CAN'T see, on the other hand...

"Patriotism includes shutting up at times" Anyone else wishing AKC were a little more patriotic in this thread?

It's ALWAYS a case of weighing the risks. Life is risk management. In this case...I can't help thinking the Capitol Police were precipitous at best (stupid at worst). Expressing surprise and fear at seeing people with suitcases outside public buildings that are popular tourist destinations a few blocks away from a major commuter hub is just a little short sighted.

Before you jump to any conclusions, consider that the Capitol is only a few blocks away from Union Station...the place where trains come in, lots of travellers come through with luggage, maybe with some time to kill...a nice day, sunny, temps in the 60's today...a short walk to the Mall... There's a very good chance this guy was just someone who arrived on the train with some time to burn before a meeting or hotel check-in...