How the vaccine works:

Influenza vaccine is produced by growing the virus in eggs. The virus is killed and processed to create the vaccine, which is given by injection under the skin. The body then produces antibodies to the virus over the next two to four weeks. If the immunized person then comes into contact with the influenza virus, the antibodies attack and kill the virus before it has a chance to cause infection. The vaccine contains the 3 most likely strains to be active during the "flu season"

Why the shortage:

Almost half of the nation's flu vaccine will not be delivered this year. Chiron, a major manufacturer of flu vaccine, will not be distributing any influenza vaccine this flu season. Chiron was to make 46-48 million doses vaccine for the United States. Chiron is a British company. Recently British health officials stopped Chiron from distributing and making the vaccine when inspectors found unsanitary conditions in the labs. Some lots of the vaccine were recalled and destroyed.

Why is our vaccine made in the UK and not the US?

The major pharmaceutical companies in the US provided almost 90% of the nations flu vaccine at one time. They did this despite a very low profit margin for the product. Basically, they were doing us a favor. In the late 80's a man from North Carolina who had received the vaccine got the flu. The strain he caught was one of the strains in that years vaccine made by a US company. What did he do? He sued and he won. He was awarded almost $5 million! After that case was appealed and lost, most US pharmaceutical companies stopped making the vaccine. The liability out weighed the profit margin. Since UK and Canadian laws prohibit such frivolous law suits UK and Canadian companies began selling the vaccine in the US.

By the way...the lawyer that represented the man in the flu shot law suit was a young ambulance chaser by the name of John Edwards.

This, after all, is a country led by a born-again Christian, President George W. Bush, who believes he is an instrument of God and characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil. The highest law officer in the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft, is a dyed-in-the-wool follower of a fundamentalist Christian sect-the Pentecostal Assemblies of God-who begins each day at the Justice Department with a devotional prayer meeting for his staff, perodically has himself anointed with sacred oil, and subscribes to a vividly apocalyptic worldview that has much in common with key millenarian beliefs held by the Lafferty brothers and the residents of Colorado City. The president, the attorney general, and other national leaders frequently implore the American people to have faith in the power of prayer, and to trust in God's will. Which is precisely what they were doing, say both Dan and Ron Lafferty, when so much blood was spilled in American Fork on July 24, 1984.

Jon Krakauer
Under the Banner of Heaven

Ashcroft is, not to mince words, a lunatic. This would have been universally recognized at almost any other moment in American history. In the looking-glass world of "the war on terror," however, Ashcroft's religious manias haven't excited even mild censure from anyone in government. By all reports, Ashcroft runs the Department of Justice like a Pentecostal revival meeting, enjoining his staff to raise their voices in righteous hymns of his own composition.

News Release: Teacher Arrested!

At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction. "Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x'and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'." When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

Thanks to the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve and the fiscal policies of the government we are now facing an accumulated federal debt of $7.429 Trillion dollars, an increase of $1.755 trillion or 31% over the past four years.

Lack of vigilance and control of the weaponeers played a large part in bankrupting the economies of not just one superpower but two. We have entered the second nuclear age, one of burgeoning radioactive waste with no safe burial ground, one of proliferation and terrorism. Now anyone, anywhere, can build and detonate a nuclear bomb. Deadened by fifty years of nuclearism, we may have mutated into a nation of "good Germans" unwilling to see.

A war with Iraq would heighten security concerns and probably trigger more spending on protection on home. That would be additional money for guards, security devices and procedures that might otherwise be invested in production-boosting technology and workers who generate salable goods and services. `

"It's a dead-weight loss as far as the economy is concerned,'' said Vernon Smith, a George Mason University professor who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics.

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

Lawyers are also helping to bankrupt the U.S. by stealing your taxpayer money.

And your pension fund money!

Lawyers are like security: they contribute nothing to the GDP.

Bin Laden: Goal is to bankrupt U.S. (CNN) -- The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera released a full transcript Monday of the most recent videotape from Osama bin Laden in which the head of al Qaeda said his group's goal is to force America into bankruptcy. Al-Jazeera aired portions of the videotape Friday but released the full transcript of the entire tape on its Web site Monday. "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript. He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers." "We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said. He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration." "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said. Al-Jazeera executives said they decided to post the entire speech because rumors were circulating that the network omitted parts that "had direct threats toward specific states, which was totally untrue." "We chose the most newsworthy parts of the address and aired them. The rest was used in lower thirds in graphics format," said one official. U.S. intelligence officials Monday confirmed that the transcript made public Monday by Al-Jazeera was a complete one. As part of the "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan," bin Laden cited a British estimate that it cost al Qaeda about $500,000 to carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, an amount that he said paled in comparison with the costs incurred by the United States. "Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs," he said. "As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. The total U.S. national debt is more than $7 trillion. The U.S. federal deficit was $413 billion in 2004, according to the Treasury Department. "It is true that this shows that al Qaeda has gained, but on the other hand it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something that anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced. "And it all shows that the real loser is you," he said. "It is the American people and their economy." As for President Bush's Iraq policy, Bin Laden said, "the darkness of black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America. "So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future," bin Laden said. U.S. government officials said Friday that the tape appeared to be authentic and recently made. It was the first videotaped message from the al Qaeda leader in nearly three years.

Bin Laden Taunts U.S. Over Growing Deficit Terrorist boasts he bankrupted USSR and can do the same to America By DAVID MCHUGH The Associated Press Osama bin Laden claims to have bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as an Islamic guerrilla fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Could he do the same to another hated superpower - the United States? The al-Qaida leader's latest purported communication drove home the point by calling on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West and praising a Dec. 6 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil producer. In an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site Thursday, a man who U.S. officials believe was bin Laden accused Westerners of subjugating the Middle East to plunder its oil. "Go on and try to prevent them from getting oil," the speaker said. "Concentrate your operations on that, especially in Iraq and the Gulf." It was believed to be the first time a purported bin Laden tape in effect called for attacks on the oil industry. But he has flaunted the economic theme before, recalling in his most recent video how Afghan mujahedeen "bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt" and taunting the U.S. government over the size of its budget deficit - which peaked at $413billion last year. Security and terrorism experts suggest bin Laden's claims to be undermining the United States economically are largely propaganda, noting the flexible, market-driven U.S. economy is a far cry from the creaky, bureaucratic Soviet giant that disintegrated in 1991. Still, the economic argument gives bin Laden a tool he can use to rally his supporters and inflate his aura of success by claiming damage caused by other factors as his own handiwork. Spurred by the new audiotape, Muslim radicals using chat rooms on Islamic Web sites debated Friday what weapons could be used to attack an oil tanker in the strait of Hormuz in the Gulf. Bin Laden "sees us as poised on this precipice, and he's going to push us into the abyss," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand Corporation. As Bin Laden put It in his video aimed at Americans just days before the Nov. 2 presidential election: "The real loser is you It is the American people and their economy.'? Albuquerque Journal Sunday December 19, 2004

What are the vital facts about Osama bin Laden?
Born: July 30, 1957

Saddam Hussein and Payne are 20 years older than bin Laden.

We, of course, continue to deny that we are having too much fun. Perhaps megatons of fun?

Don't make lite of our visibility links.

Buehler told Payne on the phone, "Bill! THEY have nukes!"

If you don't believe what Payne says, then phone Buehler and ask him.

So may understand our advice. Keep upwind.

We know the entire system is crooked. Now you can see the details.

Q What are the crooks stealing?

The crooks include Sandia and Los Alamos National labs. What do the crooks at the National labs do? Little or nothing. They collect big salaries, then retire.

A Federal funds.

Q Where are the feds getting these funds?

A They are borrowing them.

Q Who is going to have to pay borrowed money back?

A The taxpayer.

Payne talked to reporter Larry Spohn of the Albuquerque Tribune for 22 minutes this afternoon.

Spohn said that the Trib is endorsing Kerry/Edwards.

Spohn commented, "Name one good thing that has happened under the Bush administration." Iraq? jobs? the economy? health care? federal deficit? energy?

They haven't settled with Morales and Payne yet too.