Feline Warrior

How it came to this
July 31, 2005 ROVE

How it came to this: A timeline

February-March 2002: In response to concerns raised by Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, the CIA sends former diplomat Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. Wilson reports to the CIA that he believes the allegations are “bogus.”

Jan. 28, 2003: President Bush’s State of the Union address includes this 16-word sentence: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

July 6, 2003: New York Times op-ed piece by Wilson is published, beginning: “Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

July 8, 2003: Karl Rove discusses Valerie Plame’s CIA connection with columnist Robert Novak.

July 11, 2003: Rove discusses the same topic with Matt Cooper of Time.

July 14, 2003: In his syndicated column, much of which is complimentary to Wilson, Novak writes: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger.”

July 17, 2003: Cooper writes in Time about Plame’s CIA connection. Neither Novak nor Cooper describes her as an undercover agent.

September 2003: At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department opens an investigation into unauthorized disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA employee.

December 2003: U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Illinois is appointed special prosecutor.

July 2005: New York Times reporter Judith Miller goes to jail for refusing to testify before the grand jury. Cooper receives a waiver from Rove releasing him from his promise to maintain Rove’s anonymity as one of the sources with whom he discussed Plame’s CIA role.

From The Star Tribune, MN

National Council of La Raza: News: NCLR ANALYSIS HIGHLIGHTS ECONOMIC IMPACT OF LATINA WORKERS ON HISPANIC FAMILIES AND U.S. ECONOMY

An exerpt:

“It is troubling that Latina workers are earning less than other women in the same fields. I encourage the nonprofit, public, and private sectors to understand and address these disparities that hurt not only the Latino community but all workers,� advised Murguia. “We also know that access to health care and saving for retirement are not ‘benefits,’ but absolute necessities in our society if we want to foster economic security,� continued Murguia.

Between 2002 and 2012, it is estimated that the number of Latinas in the labor force will grow by 2.8 million, accounting for 28.8% of the growth for all women workers. “Given demographic changes and the growing importance of Latinas to their families and the U.S. economy, we must work together to ensure that Hispanic women have the same opportunities as other workers to enter the workforce and advance once they are there,â€? Murguia concluded. “

Here ’tis, as promised:

“The big three in the 5 minute rule: Stroke, heart attack and major trauma (i.e. car wrecks).

With the advent of clot busting drugs, time is the issue. We can either correct the damage or at the least minimize it. There is a thing called the golden hour in trauma cases. 90% of people who make it to the hospital in that hour survive. So when you see the ambulance you have no way of knowing if the poor slob in the back is at minute 5 or minute 55.

Perhaps the most important, someday it will be your sorry ass (not you personally, my dear) in the back of the meat wagon.”

Chicago Tribune | Teen who threw up on teacher sentenced

Clearly I need to be reading the Chicago Tribune more often.

Chicago Tribune | Family’s dark humor revealed in death notice.

My kinda family!

Family’s dark humor revealed in death notice.

Charles Storch, Tribune staff reporter
Published July 18, 2005

Paid death notices rarely have interest beyond a deceased’s family and friends, but not one that appeared July 2 in the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer. Dorothy Gibson Cully, 86, mother of four, had died peacefully June 3 while in the “loving care of her two favorite children.” “All of her breath leaked out,” readers were told — and lots more.

According to Ted Vaden, the paper’s public editor, the death notice became an instant sensation. Sharp-eyed readers began e-mailing friends about it. Within a week, “there already was a lot of talk,” he said.

On July 10, Vaden wrote a column about the death notice. Although the response from readers had been overwhelmingly favorable, he disclosed that his paper’s classified obituary manager regretted that the notice had not been edited before publication because it may have not met the paper’s standards for taste, decency and appropriateness. But, as Vaden wrote, “That would be a shame. It was a hoot.”

The notice was written by a son of the deceased, David Cully, 60, who works in property development in the Raleigh area. In an interview last week, Cully described his as a “very close, loving Irish family,” one with a touch of the poet and an irreverence about death.

“These are the things we talk about when death is at the door,” he said.

He said many people who contacted him and his siblings recognized the dark humor in the death notice, but others assumed, mistakenly, there was a bitter rift in the family. As you will see, he writes about his sister Carol being away at “a posh Florida resort” while their mother was dying. But Carol’s version, he said, is that “Mom was fine when she left her in my and [sister] Barbara’s care, and we killed her.”

Meet the Cullys, and appreciate their mom.

- - -

The death notice
(As it appeared)

On June 3, 2005 at 10:45 p.m. in Memphis, Tenn., Dorothy Gibson Cully, 86, died peacefully, while in the loving care of her two favorite children, Barbara and David. All of her breath leaked out. The mother of four children, grandmother to 11, great-grandmother to nine, devoted wife for 56 years to the late Ralph Chester Cully and a true friend to many, Dot had been active as a volunteer in the Catholic Church and other community charities for much of the past 25 years.

She was born the second child of six in 1919 as Frances Dorothy Gibson, daughter to Kathleen Heard Gibson and Calvin Hooper Gibson, an inventor best known as the first person since the Middle Ages to calculate the arcane lead-to-gold formula. Unable to actually prove this complex theory scientifically, and frustrated by the cruel conspiracy of the so-called “scientific community” working against his efforts, he ultimately stuck his head in a heated gas oven with a golden delicious apple propped in his mouth. Miraculously, the apple was saved for the evening dessert. Calvin was not.

Native Marylanders and longtime Baltimore, Kent Island and Ocean City residents, Ralph and Dot later resided in Lakeland, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va.. Several years after Ralph’s death, Dot moved to Raleigh in 2001, where she lived with her son David.

At the time of her death, Dot was visiting her daughter Carol in Memphis. Carol and her husband, Ron, away from home attending a “very important conference” at a posh Florida resort, rushed home 10 days later after learning of the death. Dot’s other children, dutifully at their mother’s side helping with the normal last-minute arrangements — hospice notification, funeral parlor notice, revising the will, etc. — happily picked up the considerable slack of the absent former heiress.

Dot is warmly remembered as a generous, spiritually strong, resourceful, tolerant and smart woman, who was always ready to help and never judged others or their shortcomings. Dot always found time to knit sweaters, sew quilts and send written notes to the family children, all while working a full-time job, volunteering as Girl Scout leader and donating considerable time to local charities and the neighborhood Catholic Church.

Dot graduated from Eastern High School at 15, worked in Baltimore full time from 1934 to 1979, beginning as a factory worker at Cross & Blackwell and retiring after 30 years as property manager and controller for a Baltimore conglomerate, Housing Engineering Company, all while raising four children, two of who are fairly normal.

An Irishwoman proud of and curious about her heritage, she was a voracious reader of historical novels, particularly those about the glories and trials of Ireland. Dot also loved to travel, her favorite destination being Eire’s auld sod, where she dreamed of the magic, mystery and legend of the Emerald Isle.

Dot Cully is survived by her sisters, Ginny Torrico in Virginia, Marian Lee in Florida and Eileen Adams in Baltimore; her brother, Russell Gibson of Fallston, Md.; her children, Barbara Frost of Ocean City, Md., Carol Meroney of Memphis, Tenn., David Cully of Raleigh, N.C. and Stephen Cully of Baltimore, Md. Contributions to the Wake County (N.C.) Hospice Services are welcomed. Opinions about the details of this obit are not, since Mom would have liked it this way.

———-

cstorch@tribune.com

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

May you never require the assistance of an emergency medical vehicle.

I truly do hope that you are never in need of an EMT. But what brings this thought to mind is a growing number of scenarios I’ve witnessed. In these scenarios, drivers of non-emergency vehicles simply toddle along, apparently unaware of -or even more disturbing, indifferent to- the flashing lights and sirens blaring behind them.

I believe the law states -pretty much everywhere in the US- that one is to pull to the side of the road to allow emergency vehicles with sirens and flashing lights the right of way. However, this is heeded less and less. What I see is one car after another zipping along, and others happily making turns, often right in front of the path of the oncoming emergency vehicle.

You already know how I feel about turn signals, but this is different. In Washington, DC, I remember a big deal being made about fire trucks, ambulances, and paramedics not arriving on emergency scenes in a timely fashion. As a longtime pedestrian in that fine city, I had an up-close view of exactly why those emergency vehicles took longer than expected to arrive at their destinations: Cars don’t move out of their way. And with this as the norm, the drivers of those vehicles must use extra caution in order to not cause an accident on their way to an existing accident, or other such emergency.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of the driver of the emergency vehicle: You’re on your way to help someone who has suffered a heart attack, or is maybe in the middle of one. Pretty serious stuff. You have to get to that person quickly in order to (a) keep them alive; (b) resuscitate a dying person; (c ) get that person to a hospital pronto; or (d) all of the above.

Safety is your goal, of course, but as you maneuver through traffic, you think, “Why in the hell am I having to maneuver through traffic?! I’ve got flashing lights and a siren; people are thereby alerted that I’m on my way to save someone’s life!”

Indeed. Why is your left turn more important than the safe and timely arrival of an emergency vehicle at its destination? Why is pulling to the side of the road for 3 seconds a waste of your time in this situation? If this trend continues, what will happen if you are ever in need of emergency care? Will the 5 minutes lost because the EMT folks had to go 15 mph -because nobody would move out of their way- cost you your life? Will those 5 minutes cost you the ability to recover from a stroke? Will you bleed to death in those 5 minutes?

I’m no medical person by any stretch of the imagination, so I can’t think of all the medical situations that could be altered dramatically in 5 minutes, but I imagine there are plenty. And I will ask several doctor friends to give me some scenarios, just to back me up.

The world is a busy place, our lives are filled to the brim with things to do, places to go, people to see. Yeah, I’m important - to me, that is. And I’m important to my loved ones, coworkers, acquaintances, and so forth. But am I so important that I can give myself permission to break the law? So important that I can be the reason paramedics can’t get to a wounded person quickly?

I don’t think I’m that important, but I would like to think I’d be that important if I were the person in need of the paramedics. But the way that I see it now, I would not be at all important if I needed emergency medical assistance. And neither would you. Maybe if we can start looking at it like that -”what if that ambulance was coming to get ME?”- people will open their hearts and pull over for 3 seconds. Is that so much to ask?