This year's hurricane season will reopen the argument by some people that global warming has nothing to do with the intensity or frequency of hurricanes. But focus junior. Regardless of what is causing them, the immediate issue is that hurricanes will be more intense and the insurance companies are betting on it.

NOAA's National Weather Service said this hurricane season will be another good year for plywood and a bad year for insurance premiums.

NOAA is not alone. The weather models calculated by RMS, a world-leading provider of products and services for the "quantification and management of catastrophe risks," stated "U.S. Hurricane Activity Rates will increase 40% in Florida Gulf Coast, 25-30% in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coastal regions." They expect these losses to persist for at least the next five years.

When major storms hit, people die, homes and crops are swept away, and hunger will prevail in hard hit countries. Billions of people are under threat of mother nature's wrath from the sea.

Australia has already been hit with two big storms. The most recent storm named Glenda, a category-four storm, made landfall on Western Australia just over a week after Cyclone Larry battered Queensland on the east coast with 180 mph winds. It wiped out farming towns, flattened banana and sugar cane plantations.

Financial institutions are ready this year. The World Bank said on Thursday "climate change is likely to significantly affect economies in the Asia-Pacific region, threatening the increasingly industrialized coastal belt and hurting the region's poor."

"Rising sea levels, more intense storms and greater extremes of droughts and floods will probably cause greater loss of life and threaten the livelihoods of millions; the Bank said in a report."

Insurance companies around the world including US companies like Berkshire Hathaway Inc. understand the risks as well. They were hit with almost $100 billion in insured losses over the past two years. Berkshire Hawthaway has boosted rates or dropped coverage after the hurricanes hit.

U.S. insurers have seen a 15-fold increase in insured losses from catastrophic weather events in the past 30 years. These humongous increases have far out-stripped growth in premiums, population and inflation over the same time period.

European companies such as Munich Re and Swiss Reinsurance Co., two of the world’s largest reinsurers, have long noted the increasing risks associated with climate change.

This is how I understand insurance companies work. Customers pay a premium for the privilege of betting on disasters taking place; while insurance companies take the yearly premiums and bet disasters won't happen. The premiums are based on the odds of the disaster occurring plus a handling charge of sorts.

The odds are calculated along the same lines Vegas bookmakers use to set up the odds on sporting events.

The last few years the insurance companies have been on the wrong side of that bet.

They bet on "no significant storm damage" and they lost big. The premiums they collected were insufficient to pay for the huge weather-related pay-outs.

This year they are hedging their bets by either increasing insurance premiums or refusing to insure high risk areas.

Mother nature may not get the best of them again, but we will all pay to hedge their bets.

Gasoline, natural gas, real estate taxes, education, mortgage rates, food, and now insurance premiums are all up. Everything seems to be up except the average middle-income American's ability to pay for it all.

Let the good times roll!


Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Who will be the next person to leave for personal reasons?

Replacing Andrew Card with Joshua Bolton's was really a non-move, since they are almost clones of each other.

Speculation is running amok, but I'm betting there will be a Snow removal.


I did not receive the normal thank you for writing auto-response from the White House.

Harper says he takes you at your word but he still wants to see the details.
That is a slap at your trustworthiness, and your honesty. You would think he lived in America to have those kinds of doubts about you.

Mexico and Canada both agreed you have been unfairly imposing more than $4.5 billion in tariffs on Canadian lumber companies since 2002. NAFTA panel also ruled in Canada's favor last August.

You keep harping the World Trade Organization said U.S.lumber mills are threatened by Canadian imports. Even though NAFTA is supposed to be the last word on the subject.

That's not my rule it's what you agreed to with NAFTA so don't yell at the messenger or spy on him either.

From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: March 28, 2006 7:54:52 PM CST
To: guzmatom@mac.com

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

I can almost see why you would even refuse to try fixing things anymore.

U.S. aid for Iraq reconstruction started at $20 billion, but it has dwindled down to $2 billion over the next two years. The funding was not reduced because the country's damaged infrastructure has been repaired but because you decided you have contributed enough already. You have informed Iraq and Iraq's neighbors they should pay for the rebuilding instead.

One would ask where the billions you gave Cheney's company went to. I am sure the money went to another worthy cause.

International experts estimate it will take $100 billion to repair Iraq's infrastructure. You have only kicked in $21 billion since you let the first bombs fly.
Yet, you gladly spend billions more to pay for more cool bombs and other hight tech toys.



One day when the local military is able to handle the situation on their own we will grant control to the country's military.

It takes a while to get Rummy to relinquish military control in a foreign country.

Just ask South Korea, even after 55 years he doesn't feel that country's military forces are strong enough to maintain stability. He is willing to grant them more and more responsibility over time but not right now.

Can you imagine what kind of hoops Iraqi military will have to jump through if Rummy feels 55 years is an insufficient amount of time for Korea to be responsible for its own military?


I did not receive the normal thank you for writing auto-response from the White House.

I am all confused because this means you can do pretty much do what you want, when you want to whomever you want without being bound by this law because you say so.

My high school government teacher said Congress makes the law, the Executive branch executes the law and the Judicial Branch interprets the law.

But, this "signing statement" just threw a wrench into my understanding of the whole process. I guess it is because the Constitution was written by old people with a pre 9/11 mindset that makes it fair game. Does the Patriot Law have an asterisk next to it in the law books?

You should think about changing your name to Judge George Bush, "the only Law East and West of the Pecos. Yiii haaa! Give them a fair trial and then hang em junior.

The only law East and West of the Pecos.



Hey amigo you really got it caught entre la roca y el lugar duro (between the rock and the hard place).

Your republican sidekicks in the House crossed the line when they sponsored and passed HR 4437.

You may want to put that number on the tombstone depicting the end of the republican-ruled congress.

HR 4437 among many other things, makes anyone who helps an undocumented immigrant in violation of a federal law. Those ignorant white men woke up a sleeping giant.
Hundreds of thousands of people recently staged demonstrations in more than a dozen cities across the country.

Today, Los Angles police estimated over 500,000 protesters as they stretched over 26 blocks. Many chanted or waved signs such as "Si Se Puede!, " "We Aren't Criminals " and The USA Is Made By Immigrants." The entire downtown filled up and the crowds overflowed into the surrounding areas. The crowd was the largest protest march in Los Angeles history.

The huge crowd of 500,000 must have been impressive to see and there are thousands more waiting for the call, waiting to be heard and perhaps waiting to vote out those other inept congressmen that intend to deal so harshly with undocumented immigrants and the people who help them make a living.


The Roman Catholic Church, and other religious communities have launched immigrant rights campaigns and LA's Cardinal Roger Mahony has urged his priests to defy the bill's provisions.

Hispanics are a large amorphous group which make them very difficult to characterize politically, but now the republicans have given them one a big fat reason to unite and shape a political agenda.


Your myopic brethren have practically handed this whole group and the support of a vast Roman Catholic network to the democrats on a silver platter.


I know you wanted to dedicate yourself to the Iraq disaster and allow domestic issues to either float or run on auto-pilot but well lets hope your Senate does a better job with this issue next week or else its adios muchachos this November.

I don't envy you. Meeting with Mexico's president, Vincente Fox, next week will be interesting. All I can suggest is, use 9/11 as an excuse for ignoring guest-worker issues the last five years. You use it for so many failed initiatives, what's one more?

From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: March 26, 2006 8:58:06 PM CST
To: guzmatom@mac.com

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

"Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools," the former President Bush's chief of staff Jean Becker said Thursday.
She had only one condition; the money she donated must be spent to buy educational software from her son Neil's company.

Isn't she a sweetheart. I love the way she always places her family's needs above everyone else.

Karla Faye Tucker was executed by the state of Texas on February 3rd by lethal injection.  The sentence was carried out sometime after 6:30pm and she was prnounced dead at 6:45pm.

She was the 145th person to be executed in Texas.

During your five years as governor of Texas, you executed 131 prisoners a record for the United States.

According to a Chicago Tribune investigation: "In one-third of those cases, the report showed, the lawyer who represented the death penalty defendant at trial or on appeal had been or was later disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. In 40 cases the lawyers presented no evidence at all or only one witness at the sentencing phase of the trial."

"In 29 cases, the prosecution used testimony from a psychiatrist who -- based on a hypothetical question about the defendant's past -- predicted he would commit future violence. Most of those psychiatrists testified without having examined the defendant: a practice condemned professionally as unethical."

"Other witnesses included one who was temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, a pathologist who had admitted faking autopsies and a judge who had been reprimanded for lying about his credentials."

This was a difficult case for everyone involved, everyone that is, except you.

The real George Bush accidentally let his guard down during an interview with Talk Magazine in early August 1999. You mentioned that you had watched Larry King's interview with Karla Tucker from Texas Death Row.

"I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it," you told the magazine. "I watched his interview with (Tucker), though. He asked her real difficult questions, like, `What would you say to Governor Bush?' "

The Talk reporter asked how he answered.
" `Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don't kill me,' " according to the magazine. Here's the relevant clip of the interview from the September 1999 issue of Talk Magazine.

Your cruel heartless phony christian soul finally came out. Those 12 words sum up the extent of your compassion for humanity. No wonder you are not moved by any show of dead and wounded.

Ordering the air strikes on Bagdad didn't bother any more than stepping on ants. You like war, you must feel so superior that you feel nothing while others weep over the death and destruction. I bet you smirk and chuckle at the fruitless efforts of ant-war demonstrations.
Yes, you will keep this war going. You will not be moved by anyone to reduce troop strength until there is some personal advantage and you are entirely capable of killing thousands more.

From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: March 23, 2006 4:35:07 PM CST
To: guzmatom@mac.com

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

• You, Cheney, Condi and Rumsfield all took turns proclaiming:
• "We do not have a guerrilla war in Iraq."

• "We are on the right track."
• "Our efforts in Iraq is making us safer."
• "American forces have been driven from Faluja."
• "American forces have driven insurgents out of Tal Afar."
• "In short, you see Bagdad coming back to life."
• "Iraqis have a better life today. "
• "Our coalition, along with our Iraqi allies, is moving forward with a comprehensive, specific military plan. Area by area, city by city, we're conducting offensive operations to clear out enemy forces and leaving behind Iraqi units to prevent the enemy from returning."
• "the terrorists are becoming marginalized."
• "The strategy is working."

A new report describes how the U.S. supplied weapons and looked the other way as Shuarto's troops raped, tortured and murdered their way through East Timor.

According to the CIA fact book, over the next two decades an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 East Timorans were killed.

An overwhelming majority of the people of East Timor voted in a UN-supervised popular referendum, for independence from Indonesia in August 1999.

• But before the multinational peacekeeping force arrived, anti-independence Timorese militias - organized and supported by the Indonesian military:
• killed approximately 1,300 Timorese and forcibly pushed 300,000 people into West Timor as refugees.
• destroyed the majority of the country's homes, irrigation systems, water supply systems, schools, and nearly 100% of the country's electrical grid.

• routinely get off the same bus stop as someone who is on the list could I be investigated as a potential terrorist as well?
• sit at a table in my favorite restaurant across from someone under suspicion am I under the same umbrella of suspicion.
• pass the ketchup to a middle eastern patron at my corner bar, would I earn a spot on the list?
• send you e-mails stating my views and your short-comings am I considered a terrorist?

So you pressed all countries that accepted U.S. training to exempt Americans from the I.C.C.


Twelve Latin American countries refused to sign this exemption of U.S. citizens from I.C.C. prosecution. They were subsequently subjected to American sanctions.

So the Chinese are training South American military troops and Chinese technology is showing up in South America as well.

The Senate Armed Service Committee is freaking out and wants to eliminate anything which discourages countries from accepting U.S. training.

Is there some part of the world where you are not playing catch up?



NATO commanders will take direct leadership of American GI's in Afghanistan.
American soldiers fighting under a foreign commander, who would have thunk? What happened to our great American military force?
British Army Lt. Gen. David Richards is slated to take command this summer. This will be the first time U.S. troops at war will report to a foreign leader since World War II.
Rummy said troop levels in Afghanistan will be reduced to about 16,000 this summer down from the 19,000 presently assigned there.

We are told around 5,000 to 6,000 will actually report to Richards, to help maintain stability and security, the rest of the American contingency will continue hunting Taliban and al-queda insurgents.

Rummy needs NATO because we are stretched so thin militarily. But, NATO does not need Iraq and has refused to partake in any large role other than to help with limited training of Iraqi troops.

This makes you look so needy junior.

You could have said the mission has changed to a police action. And our NATO allies will be there to mop up. So in the spirit of fighting this global war on terror with our allies, we will leave a few thousand troops to help with the transition. This will allow us to completely dedicate U.S. counterintelligence troops to bringing in Osama Bin Laden dead or alive.

This way you can completely avoid the issue of insufficient troop levels in Iraq. It also gives the false impression you are in control and this was planned all along.


Not only does Wal Mart pay substandard wages and force states to subsidize the company's substandard health coverage, China may be converting those cheap goods Americans buy, into guns and jet fighters.

China has added $35 billion to their military budget this year. They insists it is to improve troops living conditions, salaries, new equipment, training and higher fuel prices.

"Even when one day China becomes stronger, China will not interfere in others' internal affairs or have adverse impact on others," Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said.

Total defense spending is about 7.4% of China's total budget and China has the largest military in the world at 2.5 million members. Analysts say China has spent billions on submarines, jet fighters, high-tech weapons and hundreds of ballistic missiles.

Who is China expecting to fight with all that firepower?

Anyway China's premier has certainly eased my mind. After all what country in their right mind would impose their ideology onto another country when it is not asked for?



Isn't it odd that you want secular governments free of religious ties, in the Mid East, but here at home it is OK for you to:

• continually inject strong religious views into reasons for war.
• induct religious supporters to the Supreme court.
• provide billions of tax payer dollars to religious groups.
• politicize science with Christian doctrine.
• remove secular influence from government decision making.
• organize church groups for political purposes.
• use Christian teachings to guide foreign policy.

• totally rejected the Kyoto Protocol with other countries.
• refused to get involved with Israeli-Palestine relations.
• refused to be part of the International Criminal Court system
• disemboweled the nuclear disarmament treaty.
• chosen to go into Iraq without UN support.
• invaded a sovereign country without any consensus from the European Union.
• ignored Central and South America even when they elect leftist governments.
• ignored world hunger and genocide in Darfur.
• refused to contribute towards AIDS prevention unless countries disavow use of condoms.

• you were told the levees may not hold before they failed. Did you fib to us junior? I know I saw you on TV. You told us that no one could have thought this could have happened.
• you were told it would probably be an unprecedented disaster. But, it was not important enough to cancel your vacation.
• you didn't ask questions as if you didn't want to get too involved. You seemed detached yet ready with a politically correct comment.
• You did attend a birthday party, played guitar while 1300 people died.
• you still don't believe it's worth your time to visit the area or get more involved.

Why did you put such a wimp like Mike Leavitt in charge of Health and Human Services? The guy is yelling the sky is falling " all over the place junior! He's freaking just out because some chickens died on the other side of the earth. He actually said, "a pandemic was overdue."

I'm sure he was the one who got the governors all panicky yesterday. The pansy governors want their National Guard back because they say they can't handle any kind of pandemic if one hits us. Wha wha wha ! Tell them to stuff their concerns and that you are doing everything possible to deal with any possible health emergency. You've got a great record of dealing with emergencies. Everyone knows Katrina was Clinton's fault.

Doesn't it hurt when Hugo pushes his finger in your eye ?
"State homeless shelters and 20,000 people in Delaware will benefit from more than 1 million gallons of oil provided by CITGO under Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's heating oil assistance program."
Venezuela is showing the world how the world's largest capitalist system can't take care of its own poor.


Everybody wants to make you out to be a liar junior, and you only have yourself to blame junior.
You just had to tell everyone you didn't know Jack Abramoff and now Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit under the Federal Information Act to look at the White House visitor logs.

If they get those records what do you think they will find?

You can use the "Scooter" defense of "I have so many visitors I can't possibly remember them all" and "I am so busy ah ah ah I can't remember everything."
But, what about those pictures of you two together? When will they come out? If the Democrats are smart, they will let them leak out slowly between now and November.
Congratulations on India junior, you formally approved India's nuke's to "save oil consumption." Can Iran use the same line? Naw, I didn't think so.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: March 2, 2006 7:51:44 PM CST
To: guzmatom@mac.com

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.