Scary News

Special Halloween edition of Mad Morris. The kids are in bed - my stomach hurts from too many Twix bars.

I noticed a few scary stories recently that didn't get huge coverage. The first one - the fake FEMA news conference got a little, but not much.

Read about it @ Huffington Post.

"FEMA's Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson conducted the event like a regular press briefing, assuring those in attendance that FEMA -- the agency that performed so poorly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- was responding well to the disaster in Southern California. Who were 'those in attendance?' Why, FEMA public affairs personnel, all afflicted by a simultaneous, apparently communicable, 'error in judgement.' FEMA's own press secretary was there, moderating this staged event."

More here.




Sweet lord. Moving on...

So pretend you are President of the USA and need to appoint someone to head the Health and Human Services Dept.'s family planning office. Who do you choose? Someone experienced, non-idealogical and non-partisan, taking into account the many different views on relevant issues and respecting them?

Hell no. Instead, you appoint a hardcore abstinence supporter and contraceptive critic - Susan Orr, who has called birth control part of the "Culture Of Death."

I mean I guess she has experience....in junk science and mis-directed right-wing harmful policies:

"Before joining the Bush administration (where she has served in the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at HHS), she was senior director for marriage and family care at the Family Research Council (a religious advocacy group founded by James Dobson of Focus on the Family), and director of the Center for Social Policy at the Reason Public Policy Institute."

Remember that Bush doesn't read the news or cares about doing what would make sense:

"Orr’s appointment, ironically, comes a week after a study by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute determined that in areas of the world where contraception was more widely available, such as Eastern Europe, abortion rates were lower than in other areas where birth control was not easily available."