Weekend Update - Semper Fi Edition

(Dear friends, today is Uncle Bob's birthday. He is greatly missed by his family and those who knew him. Today I plan on opening that bottle of VSOP brandy and toasting the Sergeant Major. To one and all, Semper Fi. -JP)

• Darth Cheney told "Fox News Sunday" that the DOJ interrogation misconduct investigation is "a terrible decision" and "clearly a political move." He even has the cahones to state that whether or not he speaks to the investigators will "depend on the circumstances." This man clearly is in need of some serious jail time. Here's more.


• Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina said “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” this being the health care overhaul. The NYT editorializes for Obama to get tough and go it alone without Republicans if he wants to get anything done. We couldn't agree more. President Obama needs to focus on why we voted for him in the first place.


• Blackwater is being investigated by the Justice Department for possible crimes ranging from weapons smuggling to manslaughter and by the IRS for possible tax evasion. It is being sued in federal courts by scores of Iraqi civilians for alleged war crimes and extrajudicial killings. And yet, despite these black marks, the Obama administration continues to keep Blackwater on the government's payroll. What the hell's going on?


• Is the federal government building secret camps to lock up people who criticize President Barack Obama? It's the end of August, and the Nutbags are in full bloom.


• Good News: Presidential shoe-hurler and former Bad Hat Person of the Month, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al Zeidi is finally being released from prison. Someone buy that man a drink, and put it on our tab.


• And Even More Good News: Not only does smoking marijuana NOT cause cancer, new research shows here seems to be something in pot that actually undermines cancer, instead of causing it. -- and the media are doing their best to ignore it. Far out, man.


• Idaho GOP gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell slipped and fell face first on his foot the other day as he confirmed Idaho's home-for-assholes reputation by saying he was going to sell "Obama (hunting) tags."

A Survivor, a Senator, and His Own Man

(Uncle Ted is gone. This column by Ellen Goodman touched us and we reprint it here. It says it all.)

SO THE FAMILY will be gathering again. No, not the family, the clan. That’s the word we always used to describe the Kennedys, as if they were the huge, sprawling, royal tribe of our political life. And they were.

Kennedy funerals have marked our history: JFK. RFK. Jackie. John Jr. And two weeks ago, Eunice. This time the death to be mourned is the youngest brother who became the oldest, the only male to achieve something tragically denied the others: longevity.

I first met him in 1962 when I was a student and he was a neophyte. My father, a JFK stalwart, was strong-armed into supporting this brother in his run for the Senate. The 30-year-old was so raw that when reporters asked him about an issue, he would excuse himself to check the notes from his handlers. The man who ran against him said bluntly and unwisely that if Teddy’s name were Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, the candidacy would be a joke. But he was “a Kennedy’’ in Massachusetts.

Like most Boston reporters, I have stories that come to mind this day but none so fond - if you will indulge me - as the time I was flying from D.C. with my young daughter. Having spotted the senator, she asked to meet him. I made her promise to just say hello and leave him to his peace. But Kennedy stood up in the aisle and talked to this 10-year-old about school and life for 10 minutes, while she warily eyed me to see if she had violated our agreement.

He was like that, less a patriarch than a father, most at ease and most himself with children, especially the children of his brothers. It was Teddy who showed up at graduations and weddings when their fathers were missing. It was Teddy who, tempered by loss, reached out to innumerable others in pain.

The obituaries say that Kennedy never achieved the dream of becoming president. But there is a difference between a family destiny and a man’s dream. When Teddy took on Jimmy Carter in 1980, he ran a desultory campaign, uncertain, floundering, bumbling. Some blamed the weakness on Chappaquiddick, some on the press.

As I followed him on the trail, one thought kept coming to my mind: He doesn’t want it. When I wrote this, my political colleagues laughed at my naivete in believing that “a Kennedy’’ wouldn’t want it. But then CBS’ Roger Mudd lobbed the softball question - Why do you want to be president? - and Teddy couldn’t answer.

The youngest brother closed that chapter with a convention speech that left his supporters in tears. But by running and losing, he had exorcised the family burden. He was no longer a President-Kennedy-in-waiting. He became a survivor, a senator, and his own man.

When Kennedy came to the Senate as the youngest brother, he was told by an older senator, “you measure accomplishments not by climbing mountains, but by climbing molehills.’’ As an insider for more than four decades, he climbed molehills. As “a Kennedy,’’ he bore the loss and burnished the legacy. As his own man, he never lost sight of the mountains.

Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman1@me.com.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Weekend Update - Long Strange Trip Edition

• All right, first let's get all scientific on everyone, okay? Whether or not marijuana is a "gateway drug" has been debated for decades. But could it also lead to total enlightenment? (Sure, just look at me...) Mark Morford reveals the truth behind the so-called Foundation for a Drug-Free World.


• A former CIA agent has testified that in 2002 the agency hired Blackwater in order to outsource assasinations. "What the agency was doing with Blackwater scares the hell out of me," said Jack Rice, a former CIA field operator who worked for the directorate of operations, which runs covert paramilitary activities for the CIA. Click HERE for the rest of the story.


• Joe Bageant writes, "There ain't any health care debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough."


• Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: "The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital." Johann Hari: Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason.


• While I never really enjoyed his magazine, Hustler, I've always liked Larry Flynt for his outrageous opinionated truth-telling. You don't have to agree with everything he says, but you've got to admit, Larry's got a point. Common Sense 2009.


• Are you a "proud right-wing terrorist?" Well God bless you, you're a great American, according to Rep. Wally Herger. Is there anyone on the other side still sane?

The Commonwealth Fund

We've had a good deal of nonsense said about healthcare reform, spouted by those who could be called "the usual suspects". Who are they? A motley crew of Congressmen and Senators on the take from the Insurance "Industry" and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Marketers, shills for the healthcare "industry" who are to some extent or a great extent disguising their affiliation with an interested party in this debate. Why is everyone raving about the concept of healthcare reform? Because health care, in all its forms, is an enormous private industry in this country.

Think about it. You might sort of like a new car, but that's a purchase you can usually defer. When you feel like you need a new liver, or you will die, that's not a "discretionary purchase". A lot of medical decisions that one makes are life-changing. Big Insurance and Big Pharma know that. While other industries have tanked in recent years, those involved in providing medical care and medical insurance have been blasting along at a rate that has been making the wealthy even wealthier, but in consequence the costs of medical care, be it through insurance and co- pay costs or through direct payments, has skyrocketed. Everyone loves skyrockets, right? Fourth of July, the Star Spangled Banner, it really is a part of our national belief system that things should go up and up and up; stocks, bonds, real estate, women's breasts, men's "parts"... and by Golly they should stay up (consult your doctor if you experience an inflationary bubble that lasts more than four years). We're a country that grows, that builds, that paves over whatever failed in the past and that likes to rewrite history to prove that we have always been winners. I feel better now, don't you? Let's all go out and buy some Health Insurance, to celebrate.

And in the addle-pated "debate" over healthcare reform, who ya gonna trust? Some Senator who sounds like a jerk? A paid flack? An aspiring sociopath from Alaska? You betcha. Fools and blaggards, the lot of them. Instead it might be worth reading this long and tiresomely-detailed report by a private foundation who have been tracking the issue for decades. Fair warning here, there be graphs and there be logic. If that is a deal-breaker, then just step back and don't go here. But if you feel adventurous, this may help put the issue into perspective. It does not answer every question or resolve every concern, but in one stroke it does a better job of laying out the issue than anything I have ever seen. I found myself nodding my head in agreement. I have SEEN and lived through some of what is discussed and I suspected some other parts. When I was growing up my mother was surprised to find out that her doctor and his wife used powered milk, to save money. That's another part of the puzzle. Doctors are a lot better paid these days. I think one thing we should consider is helping students through Medical School, so they can graduate without soul-numbing debts, which they are forced to charge high fees to repay, after which they feel that since they have suffered for so long, now it is time for them to be rewarded by being able to keep collecting those high fees. It's a vicious cycle, that we all pay the price for.

Arthur

More on the same topic:

How Health Insurance Premiums Are Eating Up American Middle-Class Incomes

Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday’s Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you’re right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine! Click HERE

Wednesday Weirdness

• Zygotes are people too! If the anti-choice movement has its way, the moment one sperm eats its way through an egg's outer shell would be the last moment in human development that wouldn't be covered by the Constitution. Unsurprisingly, it's a rather lucrative racket. Rates high on the "Oh Brother" scale.


• Whole Foods is the Wall Mart of "organic foods," and its "concerned" CEO John Mackey wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal decrying Obama's health plan. and he even quotes Margaret Thatcher. According to Mackey, if we could all just afford to eat organic food from Whole Foods we wouldn't need health care. Or something like that.


• Feeling depressed? Well, Mark Morford says that very soon now, maybe three, four or 30 years hence, just about every American and most of the planet, too, will be on some sort of narcotic, behavioral med, modifier, zinger or zapper or calmer or leveler designed to mollify or numb or dry up all your saliva, give you some really weird dreams and make you never want to have sex. Now, don't you feel better?


• Going Weird in the Middle East Dept.: Arthur gives us senior class chum Vinnie Grace Holderman who has her own web page, mp3, and radio show. Arthur explains: "she was much into theater, and hoped to have a career on the stage but that ultimately was not to be. She then became an evangelical and is now beaming ham radio messages of peace and reconciliation into the Middle East, which I rather suspect are used by Hamas as either recruiting tools or as a means of torture." We listened to a couple of her Mp3 recordings and found them not only delightfully weird, but actually somewhat disturbing. Click here.


• Wow. A large number of big-name advertisers have dropped Glen Beck's show like a frozen dog turd. Who's left? Penis enlargers and egg cookers. Here's the latest list of Glen Beck advertisers.


• Today's picture is of a tobacco smoke enema device, a remarkable device that...well, I'll let Wikipedia explain: The stimulation of respiration through the introduction of tobacco smoke by a rectal tube was first practiced by the North American Indians. In 1745, Richard Mead was among the first Western scholars to recommend tobacco smoke enemas to resuscitate victims of drowning. One of the earliest reports of resuscitation by rectally applied tobacco smoke dates from 1746, when a seemingly drowned woman is reported as being successfully revived after, on the advice of a passing sailor, the stem of the sailor's pipe was inserted into her rectum and air was blown into the pipe's bowl through a piece of perforated paper. Now given that someone tending to a drowning woman would seek advice from "a passing sailor," one can imagine the ensuing conversation. "Help, my wife is drowning!" "Drowning, is she? Arrgh. Turn her arse over and lift her skirt, I've got an idea!" Now envision the husband being restrained as the wizened old sailor deftly thrusts the stem of his Meerschaum into the helpless damsel's nether region. The stuff of legends.


• It never gets weird enough for us, but it's getting close....

Who Yah Gonna Trust?

Are you going to trust Glenn "Lonesome Rhodes" Beck of Fox News, shown in this clip (see below) interviewing a British Conservative MP, a player of the Tory "shadow government" whose comments were later rebuked by the leader of his Tory Party? Or are you going to trust our President and the progressive members of the Democratic Party in our country? Are you going to trust statistics posted by Fox News? Oh golly, only 43% of the British say their healthcare is "excellent"? Why, that's terrible, or is it? How many in this country would say ours is?

It turns out that our satisfaction ratings are surprisingly similar to the UK, though Fox News did not choose to confuse its viewers by mentioning that pesky fact: Click Here

But here is Beck, in full lying-eyes-mouth and other parts mode: Click Here

As Beck puts it, "You were warned". I would argue, based on Beck's lengthy record of public lies and the lively backlash currently being directed toward Beck's advertisers, roughly a third of which have pulled their advertising to steer clear of Beck's negative image, that what Beck's viewers have been warned about is... Beck. But this staged interview accidentally did the British voters a huge favor by showing them exactly what sort of a person a key member of the photogenic Tory leader's shadow cabinet really is. It also showed the Brits that Dannon is a complete dolt, who did not realized that his words would quickly be drawn up onto the Internet and Youtube, where everyone in the world will be able to see him profess himself to be an avowed enemy of a public medical system that there is no public interest in dismantling. Saying one thing in their own country and another abroad has come to be a bit of an intelligence test for political figures, one that Dannon just flunked. Britain says, "Thanks Glenn!"

(And More...)

You've got to hand it to the Republicans, they've done a tremendous job of vilifying healthcare reform. Our task is to educate ourselves and others and to push back. Some sort of a bill is going to be passed, but the strength of breadth of the reform is what is at stake here. If the changes make the tremendous differences that many of us believe it will, that will pretty could help sink the more regressive wing of the Republican Party. Click Here, and FAQ's.

Arthur

Weekend Update - Dumb Edition

• Did you know that Barak Obama and his evil group of health care reform Democrats want to KILL OLD PEOPLE!? Oh yeah Baby, and that's why we must not let them talk about health care and we must not listen to the facts because that would just confuse us. These people are just like the Nazis, and Pol Pot, all those other evil people who killed people. Death, Dishonesty, and the GOP.


• The idiotic shock jock and Fox host Glenn Beck, who has built a career out of stoking the paranoid delusions of the right-wing fringe, managed to outdo himself last week when he accused President Obama of hating white people.


• Well, I feel slightly better about ignoring my Facebook account, ever since Archbishop Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church of England and Wales stepped out from behind the drab, heavy curtain of a massive, dying religious dogma haunted by millennia of abuse and homophobia and scandal and misogyny and generally Getting it All Wrong Nearly All the Time Forever, to let the world know he is deeply concerned about kids today and their newfangled gizmongery and how it all just might be destroying social life and inviting death. Mark Morford reports.


• Mr. Obvious has been saying this for years: Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over ordinary food, according to a major study published Wednesday. It just costs more. Oh, and tanning beds cause cancer. Thank you, Mr. Obvious.


• President Obama's poll numbers are slipping. Not happy with the way he's handling the remnants of the Bushies mess? Here's an extraordinary Frank Rich column that brings it all home.


• Here's a quote directly from Sarah Palin: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. There are quite a few dumb people in America, and Sarah Palin is their queen.


• Here's an interesting yet scary story by Chris Rodda about the influence of "The Family." "C Street and the Military."

Weekend Update - August 2nd

(Arthur and I are fresh off attending last night's gala Hilton Hotel party honoring the 45th anniversary of graduating from our high school. Over a hundred old geezers were in attendance and a grand time was had by all. I passed out Bad Hat cards to several of the true believers in the room, and would like to welcome those of you who have taken the bait. And, by the way, Arthur has promised us a new column within the week. We shall hold him to it, assuming, of course, he can find his way back to the safety of Marin County.)

• We've always liked Jonathan Alter, but when he wrote recently "Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are," we ran off to load our gun. But then we realized he had tongue firmly planted in cheek.


• Our man SENATOR Al Franken is quickly growing a pair. Last week he berated that old gas-bag T. Boone Pickens for his role in the swift-boating of John Kerry. We think Franken's term is going to be a fun one to watch.


• According to her MySpace page, she's a big Glen Beck fan. "a Long Island mother of three -- armed to the teeth with an assault rifle and shotgun -- was arrested for scouting out and taking pictures of an Air National Guard base." The weird story of Nancy Genovese.


• President Obama calls it "a teachable moment." The NYT's Bob Herbert isn't too sure. He calls it being arrested for "Angry While Black."


• Hard-core Right-wingers are a sorry lot of late. Here's an eye opening little story that illustrates just how desperate these mental midgets have become. Brace yourself.


• Sweet Jesus I hate Bill O'Reilly. But it appears he's won a round in the feud between him and Keith Olbermann. Damn.


• And here's another Conservative Douche-Nozzle talk show host: Thankfully relegated to the low-ratings, low-significance Sirius Satellite Radio, he is nonetheless, with the exception of the moronic blabbermouth Mike Church, the most narrow-minded, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist buffoon on the airwaves. Who is he? Andrew Wilkow.


• Burning question: Is President Barak Obama an actual citizen of these United States? Lou Dobbs and the dumbing down of America.