Call It A Comeback
Perhaps I was short below.
There is an important element to the story I’m missing. A view that hasn’t been taken into consideration. There are vital reasons to block inspection of cattle for E. Coli. After all, what about the E. Coli? Don’t they have 4th Amendment Rights Against Unreasonable Search and Seizure? The cattle too? Aren’t they covered by ADA since it’s an illness? Don’t they have a right to be slaughtered and eaten?
Rick has a contest going to outdo the story. His first entry is pretty good
Forget Al Gore’s Assault on Reason, the administration is carrying out assault on parody:
Via Chicago’s own Rick Perlstein we find that the USDA is fighting to stop a company from testing all of its beef for E. Coli:
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.
A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect Friday, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal — effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.
Mad cow disease is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.
There have been three cases of mad cow disease identified in cattle in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.
The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn’t have the authority to restrict it.
The best line is this one:
The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry
I have about a billion snarky things to say, but really the straight story is the funniest.
However, while I fix the technical stuff and get life back to normal, Charles Franklin has ended classes and produced a fine piece of work on the prevalence of the name Monica since the Lewinsky scandal.
Also, while everyone has been getting hyped by plummeting Bush poll numbers, up until the last few days, there hasn’t been much movement. You can have your Pony now with the blue (more stable) estimator at 32.2% and red (more sensitive) at 31.2%.
As Charles says though:
The bottom line: The model is not yet unambiguously insisting on a new downturn in approval. And it would be well to remember that we’ve seen this kind of a dip more than once this spring, only to quickly see a return to the recent equilibrium. So before declaring that decline is a certainty, we should remember that such a prediction has been wrong recently.
He also gives some good discussion on why immigration is unlikely to hit Bush any harder since last year it didn’t have much of an effect. For Bush to go any lower he’ll need to significant losses in his base–so far he’s hanging around 70% approval amongst Republicans as Charles pointed out in comments.
I can imagine some scenarios where Bush loses more support as Republican candidates run against him as the election nears, but I think he’s hit the floor for now. That’s entirely speculation, but I just don’t see how the political environment leads to a true crack-up of the Republican base. I can also imagine a scenario where Bush’s approval stays the same throughout the election and Republican Presidential candidates who abandon Bush lose significant primary support thus creating the situation where the guy (and they are all old aging white guys) who wins has to figure out how to attract people other than the base while not distancing themselves from Bush. I’m thinking the best illustration of that would be the medieval stretching machines used for torture.
They win the Mitofsky Innovator Award
Interestingly, Charles labels the most recent Presidential Approval numbers as interesting because the demonstrate a level of stability that is amazing . I think it’s somewhat obvious, though certainly obvious conclusions need to be demonstrated, that the base of the Republican Party is remarkably solid and won’t change their opinion of Bush or unless he turns out to be an illegal Mexican immigrant performing abortions with his gay husband being his nurse.
Bush’s anti-terrorism propaganda channel delivers pro-terrorism/anti-semitic messages.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Incompetence.
Bob Kerrey just pissed me off far more than any lesbian jokes.
Iraq has nothing to do with an unusually tall Sunni Arab who is hiding out in Pakistan. It has a lot to do with a civil war between two sects after one sect being screwed for years by the other.
In Ann Arbor
Gibbs is on Hardball looking like he’s aged about 15 years in two months.
At the same time, Davis, a former Clinton White House official who had been named by President Bush to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, sent a letter to the White House and his fellow board members protesting the panel’s lack of independence. In recent months, Davis has had numerous clashes with fellow board members and White House officials over what he saw as administration attempts to control the panel’s agenda and edit its public statements, according to board members who asked not to be identified talking about internal matters. He also cited in his letters criticisms by the former co-chairs of the September 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, that the board had interpreted its mandate too narrowly and was refusing to investigate issues such as the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world.
ArchPundit