Death of a "Gut Patriot"

Bob "The Prince of Darkness" Novak, has gone for the terminal dirt nap down in Washington DC.
Pat Buchanan (surprisingly alive and well as of this writing) just got off the Imus in the morning show where he manfully attempted to paint Novak normally an embittered angry little prick as a simpleminded god-fearing patriot, Cincinnatus in a pinstripe suit as it were.
In truth, Bob was a very common historic type, a former democrat who went conservative and then spent the remainder of his life punishing the liberals for being well...liberals. Washington is saturated with seething little ass-holes like this no matter which party is in power. Sadly, DC has been enabling this sort of behavior for over two centuries, win at any cost, don't betray - obliterate your friends and when in doubt wrap yourself in the flag like it was a mourning shroud.
Frankly Novak was building up all his life to outing CIA agent Valerie Plame anything to get back at people and institutions that had done him no material harm at all.

The answer to a hungry hungry bloggers prayer

Former Senator Rick "High Pitched Rich" Santorum is thinking about running for President in 2012.

If there is a Ghod of Mercy and Justice and Hilarity in Heaven above, then puh-leez make it so!
I couldn't be happier if Ming the Merciless opened a Presidential Campaign Headquarters in Council Bluffs.

Piyush Bobbby Jindal with that hangdog Bob Denver face of his, Mad Sarah Palin, Willard Mitt Romney groaning thru his spreadsheets, the cowardly lion Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee that kinder gentler Claghorn and at long last the Fred Van Ackerman-esque Rick Santorum nasty little whiny voice and all.
A madder tea party cannot be imagined, for a line up like this, a veritable Amway Convention in Hell, I'd move to New Hampshire. Just the notion alone of this gathering of robots and sky-grifters debating one another at say, Saint Anselm College, moves me to convulsions of mirth.
Run Rick Run, thass all I kin say!!

It is no coincidence to me that

that the "public option" teeters on the brink of annihilation in the current health insurance debate at the same time armed men are stalking the crowds at various health care forums around the country.
Now these armed men are not fools, they know full well there is no public safety danger to their persons at these events, why the one's headlining the President of the United States are some of the most secure public gatherings in the world.
No, this is an armed minority intent on intimidation and possibly worse things as well, plain and simple.
I've been to Mitt Romney events up in New Hampshire and saw no armed progressives stomping around fingering their six shooters.
But oh wait...Romney isn't our first African American President is he?
Imagine the shit-storm that would've blown off the op-ed pages of America if the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King's legions showed up at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 packing shotguns and huntint rifles?
We've had one hundred and forty-four years of nominal domestic peace in this country wheere few have felt the need to come on down to the big dee-bate armed for bear.
Two weeks of discussion on health care and suddenly everyone on the right is in fully red-alert mode?
The problem isn't healthcare, the problem is one of intimidation, and if we let them get away with it, worse things will come on their heels count on it.

In case you were wondering....

per Mike Barnicle (the Ambassador from Caucasiastan) on the Imus show today, the "Gates Affair" over in Cambridge "Is as much about class as it is about race".
Which is akin to saying that the weather outside is as much about the humidity as it is the heat.
Oh don't worry, Mike hasn't gone neutral on us, he snarked gamely about Dr. Gates' PBS bona fides and yet said nothing about Sgt. Crowley's particular class signifiers. Barnicle is after all a local color type columnist which means he is a cop-worshipper of a mindlessly reliable type.
HE also observed that 25% of those in the room at those congressional healthcare forums were crazed wingnuts the rest were "scared of losing what they have".
Fair enough, but what has Mike done to allay those fears or at least put the facts down on the table?
Nothing to be sure...Much as he may decry fear mongering it is the innate emotionalism of his audience that keeps this weepy old fraud in the business.

Mexican medical tourism

this article on Yahoo notes that something akin to a million Americans a year seek medical assistance in Mexico. What said article fails to mention is that Mexico has a public-option universal health care plan more or less on the public-private model currently proposed by President Obama.
Mexico has lapped us by a country mile simply by detaching healthcare from the workplace, you get it down there because you need it not because you have a job at the right company.
Funny how everyone at those congressional health care forums was screaming themselves hoarse about "socialized medicine" while their fellow citizens go sneaking off over the borders to Canada and Mexico and ghod knows where else to fill up on prescriptions or get a dental filling.
And THIS is Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney's idea of the perfect medical care system...the export of need??

Irony....

This article on Yahoo (which tries to gin up "populist rage"about health care reform) quotes a retiree who is fearful and angry about a government takeover of healthcare.

"They did it for prayer, they did it for abortion, and they're not going to do it for our health care," the 70-year-old nurse from Philipsburg, Pa., said Wednesday as she and her husband Robert, 74, a retired coal miner, waited in a long, snaking line for Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter's town hall meeting."

This woman and her husband are already collecting social security a HUGE government program and medicare, perscription drug benefit and all. Certainly Mrs. Snyder didn't go to that meeting to harangue poor Arlen Specter into abolishing either program and we can sure every social security check she and her husband collect are faithfully cashed.
So clearly it isn't about healthcare, it is about being angry, and these are people who have been angry about something since 1964, not much will appease them all you can do is let them vent and move on.

Condolences to the Kennedy Family

on the death of Eunice Kennedy that tireless crusader for the rights of the mentally handicapped, those who did good in this life are always missed most intensely.
Otherwise the lady's life was a monument to just how much you can accomplish if you won't have anything to do with running for public office.

Senator Kennedy looked perfectly devastated in some of the news footage last night, pray for strength thats all you can do at a time like this.