This is for Molly. With apologies to W. H. Auden, for changing the gender within his poem:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message She Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

From a September 2006 AP story:

She’s not just the leftist agitator with the 6-foot frame, she’s the leftist agitator with the 6-foot frame from Texas, and she never lets people forget it.

She’s published six books, among them four best-sellers.

Humor sustains her.

“I’ve always found it easier to be funny than to be serious,’ she said, seven years after she was first diagnosed with the cancer that then gave her less than a 5 percent chance of surviving.

This is her third bout with the disease. Chemotherapy has claimed her thick red locks. She’s feeling OK, on the whole, despite the balance problem and constipation.

She has yet to learn if the chemo and radiation treatments have finally eradicated the cancer cells from her body.

If she appeared a bit fatigued during the visit to her home in Austin’s trendy Travis Heights neighborhood, who could blame her. She was grappling with Richards’ death. And she’d returned less than a week before from an 11-day, 227-mile raft trip through the Grand Canyon, a trip which she said reduced her ego “to the size of a grain of sand.”

Her loyal assistant, Betsy Moon, had warned the 16 people on the trip that she was “a fragile case.” So you might have thought Ivins was the empress of China.

“People would bring me food and drink, and put up my tent,” Ivins said.

Then she laughed heartily. She hadn’t asked Moon to elicit sympathy, but she wasn’t complaining.

“I’m not above using cancer as the world’s greatest excuse,” she said.

She was born Molly Tyler Ivins in Monterey, Calif., but she tells people she was raised in “East Texas.”

Her father, Jim Ivins, a corporate lawyer, was a conservative Republican.

“She was going to be anything he wasn’t,” her bother Andy Ivins said. Father and daughter argued about civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the women’s movement.

Molly Ivins attended her mother’s and grandmother’s alma mater, Smith College, where she wrote for the student newspaper and where she read Betty Friedan’s just-released “The Feminine Mystique,” which was sweeping the campus. She spent a year in Paris before graduating and two summers interning at the Houston Chronicle, where she wrote up street closings and bridal news and recalls accidentally marrying off one bride to her father and writing that another had earned a “B.O.” degree.

The mishaps weren’t enough to keep her out of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, or from landing her first job at the Minneapolis Tribune, where she spent three years.

She returned home in 1970 to cover the Texas Legislature, became co-editor of the biweekly leftist newsmagazine The Texas Observer, gained some national prominence and then was hired away by the New York Times. Six years later she was fired by the same paper, a feat she brags about, because the top editor, A.M Rosenthal, didn’t feel she showed “due respect and deference to the great dignity of the New York Times,” Ivins recalled.

Returning home once more, she landed a job as a columnist and has stayed true to her roots ever since.

She writes from home, in the company of her black standard poodle, Fanny Brice. She never married and has no children. Her favorite targets: Republicans, Republicans and Republicans.

A year ago, she announced she would not vote for Hillary Clinton, and also had sharp words for the Beltway Democratic leaders. And here she attacks the compromise on torture. No blogger made that case so well.

If you ever heard her speak, while her wit was sharp as steel, her delivery and voice had the grace of silk. It’s been said that ‘diplomacy is when someone tells you to “Go to hell” and makes it sound like an enjoyable place to visit.’ Molly was no diplomat, but face-to-face in a debate, I’m sure her opponents felt like they’d just gotten beat up by Audrey Hepburn or Shirley Temple.

Consider what she wrote in September, the same month her friend Ann Richards also fell to the only foe that ever defeated Molly.

The earthy Texas humor in her writing gave way to an exquisite grace that was utterly disarming. Listen to her speak of Tom Delay, to understand what I mean about the grace in the way she spoke.

Teens develop mad crushes on rock stars and actors. I spent much of my adult life mad about Molly. It didn’t matter that she was tall and large and fit no conventional definition of beautiful. Because when she smiled, nobody smiled wider. She was, to me, the greatest columnist that ever lived. I will miss her.

My condolences to her family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, employers, every liberal in America, to Texas, to America itself and to the world.

If anything, I’m sure Molly would be about laughter now, not sadness. And encouraging us to fight on in her stead.

Sure, I’m sad, but there’s no time to wallow. In her honor, go needle a Republican. Then let’s go Chimpeach the Shrub.

Update: Daniel DiRito at Thought Theater has Molly on YouTube, in The Dildo Diaries.

Also, you might want to consider a donation to fight breast cancer, via the walking group - The Titsy Chicks - led by my longtime friend, Mary.

Her REAL university, where she was the magna cum laudest, was the Texas Observer, where they’ve put up a memorial and many of her writings.

And this is especially rich, from her NY Times obituary: “In 1976, her writing, which she said was often fueled by “truly impressive amounts of beer,” landed her a job at The New York Times. She cut an unusual figure in The Times newsroom, wearing blue jeans, going barefoot and bringing in her dog, whose name was an expletive.”

Hah!

The Lone Star State’s favorite daughter, columnist Molly Ivins, has finally passed away.

The latest screed from Jon Swift (a former poster at this site) is “Lower the Minimum Wage”:

Lowering the minimum wage would also solve our immigration problem. The minimum wage in Mexico is about 50 pesos a day, or $4.53. In an 8-hour workday, that’s about 57 cents an hour, a little more than one-tenth of the U.S. minimum wage. If we just set the minimum wage below 50 cents an hour, how many Mexican immigrants do you think will risk their lives sneaking over the border for that?

This blundering baby step is a perfect example of why I have to keep explaining to my fans that I am not a conservative at all, but a radical for corporationism. Even though Swift later gives lip service to the ultimate free-market approach (”… an even better idea: Abolish the Federal minimum wage altogether….”), he still lacks the vision to up the ante all the way. We should always consider political questions by pondering not “who benefits”, but “who suffers”. In this case, our entire labor system is set up to hurt our noble entrepreneurs.

Naturally, this doesn’t apply to my own circle, but ask yourself: how many people do you know who keep jobs they hate, or panic about finding new ones when they’ve been outsourced, only because of the health benefits? This should not be seen as a problem, but as an opportunity.

Those insurance payments the employers make are not free — they come right out of the company’s Invisible Hand-given profits. Why not make the employees pay for this? Yes, big corporations by their size can get large discounts on health care plans. If you want to get aboard, then turn your head and cough up from deep down in your wallet. We can even use the market’s marvellous pricing mechanism to end those tedious traffic-blocking lines of hundreds seeking new jobs, by letting prospective hirees bid against each other for the open positions.

To sum it up, let employees pay their bosses for the right to work at those companies. There should not only be no minimum wage. There should be no wage at all. If you want on the benefit train, then you need to sign up for the Negative Wage. The next generation will be bragging “I had to pay more than you to get my job.” The increase in per capita productivity by workers who want their jobs that badly will be nearly straight up. As the rest of us sit at the country club enjoying our skyrocketing dividends, we’ll laugh at the very idea that anyone ever expected us to pay them at all for serving the needs of our noble corporations.

According to the latest polls Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are leading in New York, John McCain is leading in Arizona, Barack Obama leads in Illinois and Newt Gingrich leads in Jiltedexwives.

Also yesterday, Obama introduced the 745th Senate resolution “to get Bush to stop fighting and stuff”, picking a different finish date than everyone else to show he really means business. And John Edwards was attacked for combing his hair before getting his picture taken, and for buying a big house with the money he earned as a successful lawyer, as rightwing bloggers prefer presidents who are ungroomed failures that live in a van down by the river.

The Oogah-Boogah-Boogah Propaganda Brigade is busy at it again.

“Oh deah! It just could not be Iraqis behind this dastardly scheme,” asserted General Lee Speekin, “this is just too clever by half.”

Double-dog-top secret evidence they’re saving for their Special Day of Double-dog-top Secret Evidence Releasing provides all the proof needed that the Iranians are dumping babydolls from incubators buying yellow cakes from Nigerians shipping in weapons of troop destruction, now that the explosive supplies Americans permitted the Iraqis to secure are running a bit low.

Iranian President Ivenevermetasinglejew has refuted the claim, saying “Evidence of absence is not absence of evidence” and “We’ll be guilty of something bad the same century Peyton Manning wins a Super Bowl,” while emitting a strange, greenish glow.

President Bush replied “If Iran escalates its military actions in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly,” then ordered six more carrier groups to be airdropped in a great big skydiver-like circle that will separate to land on Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while emitting a strange, greenish glow.

Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Ahmad Chalabi, still refusing to explain why he’s the only ex-pat Iraqi whose name doesn’t begin with Al, speaking confidentially as an unnamed official off-the-record, indicated that intelligence documents existed to prove Iranian students were still holding American embassy officials hostage while waiting for Colonel Oliver North to show up with a Bible hidden in a cake.

“Trust us,” he whispered, “we’ll pull out before conception can occur,” as our nipples grew taut and started throbbing while emitting a strange, greenish glow.

While I’m on hiatus for several months, the team here will rely on the site admin of an old regular, the indefatiguable archenemy of wussy lefties, Ayn Clouter, plus an old compadre from the defunct Open Source Politics, Tom Gevaert of The Funny Farm.

Links to each can be found in their posts below made earlier today (and you can always click on author names to reach their sites, as well.) Please forgive the lack of links within this post, as I’m juggling too much today.

I welcome both and am reassured to leave the blog in four such capable hands.

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with a few more changes ahead. By Spring, for example, we’ll have a bio section, to better acquaint you with everyone herein.

You are also likely to notice some staff transitions that have occurred already or will be occurring soon. All links to them can be found in one category in the left sidebar just below the ‘Patriots Act’ box.

Besides Ayn & Tom, other regulars remaining include: Clif, eRobin, The Talking Dog, Joe ‘The Heretik’, PZ Myers, Fearguth, Lance Mannion and the Bride of Acheron.

Earl of Prometheus 6 will continue handling tech needs and posting intermittently.

Intermittent posters will include: Barbara of Mahablog, skippy, Jude of Iddybud Journal, Emma, Melanie Mattson, Dave of Anonymoses, Dugan of Zencomix, Cindy Zawadzki, and Fred Henning.

On hiatus, besides me: Riggsveda and Karena.

Among those departing (or already departed) from the team: Corey Anderson, Randy Paul, Neddie By Jingo!, Yellowdog Sammy, Jill Miller Zimon, Arvin Hill, Flamingo Jones, and Hesiod. Their fine contributions will be missed, though most will continue their own blogs.

MORE CHANGES FORTHCOMING

In the past, we tried to position 21 regulars so every day would have a minimum of three posters. Going forward, we’ll offer two regulars per day. With our large group of intermittent posters, you won’t lack for lots of quality reading.

And some introductions are already in order, as well: Capeman, Eleene Herrera, Judit Corday and Old Blue are all spanking brand new who will also post intermittently (and have posted in recent days already) None of these four have their own blogs as yet. I can say that Capeman is my brother, Mark, a Massachusetts carpentry contractor and Old Blue is an Oregonian who used to be a freelance writer, and now likes to spend his time gardening while dreaming of Ecotopia. I’ll leave it to Ms. Clouter and/or Tom to introduce the two new ladies, as I’ve yet to meet them myself.

That’s ten regulars and 14 intermittents. Before I depart mid-to-late February, there’ll likely be a handful of other new recruits to introduce, mostly as regulars.

AND IN CONCLUSION

Bush sucks, okay? If that’s not apparent to you by now, seek help.

Hey hey hey hats and cats, I’d like to take a moment and introduce myself.

I’ve been out on the Fashionable Left Bank of Blogistan^TM since October 2002 or so - right after the 2002 BartFest in Las Vegas, NV introduced me to a whole new set of amazing beings that were, to varying degrees, sick and tired of the Republican’t imposed Illegally Installed Drunken Cokeheaded Usurper and his junta, and trying to figure out a way to maintain our stability while trying to function in the Modern Robber Baron Era. Other comically tragic figures caused repeated attempts to stop the frelling irony alert siren from going off to be unsuccessful until assuaged by blogspheric (y!sctroftw!*) postings. And here we are.

You will come to know and love me ’round these parts as the funnyfarmer. I’ll be trying to help out a bit with sweeping keeping up the Street, and amusing you with niblets of infotainment that you’ll probably see at most of the usual places (that are still around, of course).

Like, for example: I’m reasonably certain that Judy Judy Judy might have garnered some attention during the day. If not, then possibly some of the continuing David Addington testimony might have been more to your liking. Or you could have just viddied Christy’s early morning musings if you didn’t have the time to catch all of these posts over at Firedoglake.

Then again, maybe you’re not to keen on that sad spectacle, and you prefer the latest Daily Show** clip, or any of the fine videos that John Amato has patiently sifted through and decided were worthy of inclusion over at Crooks and Liars. I sometimes host these things as well, especially when the clips show the conservative media at its’ douchebaggiest. This - Is - Huge!.

Read the rest of this entry »

Maybee itz bekuz thay onlee rede shete muzak. Kase in poynt: The ‘Nob of Noxvill’, as Jane collz him, hoo seezez on prufe that sum soldyers frum Apatchee Kumpanee thinck wore opoenintz arnt rilly supporeting the trupes.

Hee kolld thatt ay ‘musst-sea vidyo’. Butt hee parentlee nevur red wut uthur Apatchee Kumpanee trupes sed 18 dayz uhgo.

Witch pruvez thatt trupes kin hav diffrent ohpinyuns. Hoo wooda thot?

Evin wurs iz wen a Senitorr-tipe hawk iz reeding-defishent, lyk Mistur Lugar:

The president’s plan is an early episode in a much broader Middle East realignment that began with our invasion of Iraq and that may not end for years. Nations throughout the Middle East are scrambling to find their footing as regional power balances shift in unpredictable ways.

At the center of this realignment is Iran, which is perceived to have emerged from our Iraq intervention as the big winner. We paved the way for a Shiite government in Iraq that is much friendlier to Iran than was Saddam Hussein. Bolstered by high oil revenue, Iran has meddled in Iraq, rigidly pursued a nuclear capability, and funded Hezbollah and Hamas.

But the pendulum of Middle East politics may be swinging back against Iranian assertiveness. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states and others have become increasingly alarmed by Iran’s behavior and by widening regional sectarian divisions. Because of this dynamic, U.S. bargaining power in the Middle East is growing. Moderate Arab states understand that the United States is an indispensable counterweight to Iran.

Soe alarmd ar thoez Arab stayts thatt, inn the vary saym edishun uv the vary saym paypur, wun kin rede:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia and Iran are working together to try to calm the crises in Iraq and Lebanon, the Saudi foreign minister said Tuesday, despite Washington’s efforts to isolate Tehran and limit its influence in the Middle East. The mediation is an unusual step by two rivals, Saudi Arabia and Iran, that compete for regional influence.

President Bush has rejected calls that the United States win Iran’s help in easing Iraq’s bloodshed and resolve the political crisis in Lebanon that erupted into violence last week. Instead, he has vowed to break what he called Iranian support for militants in both countries.

Saudi Arabia’s willingness to work with Iran likely indicates the growing alarm in the kingdom’s leadership over the two simultaneous crises, which have inflamed Sunni-Shiite tensions throughout the Middle East.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has given tepid support to a new U.S. strategy in Iraq but has expressed skepticism over whether it will succeed. Besides sending 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, the new strategy takes a tougher stance on Iran.

Parentlee, Saudi Arabia diddent gett the memmoh uhbout “U.S. bargaining power in the Middle East is growing”.

And anuther Arab stayt didddent git the memmoh uhbout thatt eethur azz, ollso inn the vary saym edishun uv the vary saym paypur, thayr wuz thiss:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Kuwait rarely rebuffs its ally, the United States, partly out of gratitude for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But in October it reneged on a pledge to send three military observers to an American-led naval exercise in the Gulf, according to U.S. officials and Kuwaiti analysts.

“We understood,” a State Department official said. “The Kuwaitis were being careful not to antagonize the Iranians.”

Iff thay “understand that the United States is an indispensable counterweight to Iran,” Mistur Lugar, thay syerr ar funnee inn the waye thay tipp the ballense.

Iff ohnlee hawks cood rede, thay cood spair uss oll frum uh hole lott uv redeing uhbout the majinairee frenz uv thayr deeluzeyunnul preznit.

I worked with Jordan during my brief participation on the now-defunct Open Source Politics blog.

Here’s a couple of good summaries of his works to date and his works ahead:

From Workday Minnesota.

From the man hisself.

It’s good to know he’ll carry on his public works as part of our government. Their gain is everyone’s gain. Of that, there is no doubt.

On behalf of the team at American Street, I’ll roll up my sleeve and bend over, as his dispensations have cured many a heart, at the very least, and will likely create advances for workers from his new position.

Good luck & happy trails, Jordan.

Timothy Noah (a good New and Old Testament name, there) over at Slate has begun The Obama Messiah Watch, “Introducing a periodic feature considering evidence that Obama is the son of God.” This is an excellent remedy to the patella-crushing celebrity sycophancy of the media. It’s also another great excuse to bring up again my favorite guitarist:

Roy Buchanan - The Messiah Will Come Again

Mr. Soul, The Campaigner

Deep Double Chin Secret Background

Impeachimp

Stop The Escalation of The War In Iraq

political, cartoons, political cartoons, parody, satire, Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld, Iraq War, Afghanistan, Military, Condi Rice,Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young

Zencomix

In addition to the post below this, consider how well the Vietnamization Iraqization process is going, with the attached article about a corrupt CPA official’s sentencing.

And then remember, we’re only at the tip of the iceberg in weighing our foreign policy effectiveness. And this iceberg’s still attached to the polar cap, the liferaft’s leaking and all the president’s men are dressed in their skivvies, burning your money to stay warm.

Anthony Shadid’s article coupled with Josh Marshall’s commentary is essential stuff to consider about our foreign policy and the political morons running it with the expertise and aplomb of the Keystone Cops, Maxwell Smart, the Pink Panther and Leslie Nielsen, all post-lobotomy.

We’ve heard and observed our President advancing perpetual war. What he left out of the storyline is how essential to the process is the continual shortsightedness and repetitive blunders of our federal government.

While the lion’s share of the blame rests on the Executive Branch of the Bush-Cheney administration, our CIA, military planners, think tanks, Congress and crony militarist corporate boards have each played significant roles in creating ripe conditions for the neverending war.

We can despair and declare everything we do as futile, or we can change that. I vote for the latter. No matter what hardships that entails, it’s time for rational adults to demand that the irrational ones grow up or go away.

Bush finally gets serious about tracking down Al-Qaida’s leaders.

In his political efforts, he exceeded the collective integrity of almost the entire Congress dealing with a rogue President… today.

Goodbye Father Bob.

Bush’s plan for a do-over in Baghdad has hit a snag. Just as he’s setting up for an April war against Iran for their covert support of Iraqis, the Iranian government went overt, offering to help Iraq with security, reconstruction and a financial institution.

This will certainly lead to accusations that Iran is meddling in Iraq’s business, which has formerly been a right reserved only to George Bush. And it’ll not be well-received by Sunnis, who have previously led the insurgent attacks on American troops. Which means Bush and the Sunnis will now be united more often than brokeback cowbuddies at a Ba’ath house.

Hiding in plain sight means Bush will be stymied, unsure of what to do with a government refusing to act in secrecy. I don’t trust either government to act in the best interests of Iraqis or their own citizens. Both share a penchant for denying holocausts. And both have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Princeton scientist Bernard Chazelle has written it: the Fall of America at the hands of a desperate man and his camp followers.

Nope, nobody has articulated more thoroughly nor as well.

(h/t to commenter Wigwam, at firedoglake, for passing that on.)

I have always been extremely healthy. At fifty, I’ve had no broken bones, no surgeries other than a laparoscopy for a busted gallbladder, no infectious diseases except for the usual winter flu. In spite of being at times severely overweight, I have a low cholesterol count and a steady blood sugar. I sailed through menopause, to the chagrin of girlfriends who wanted to trade gory tales of hot flashes and emotional outbursts. I have always active, going on photo treks to the Scottish islands, sailing in Alaska in a small trawler, and climbing hills in Umbria. So, when I was forced into an HMO plan by a 100% increase in monthly premiums of the choose-your-own-doctor plans offered by my employer it didn’t seem like anything would change much, except my primary doctor and I was not so much attached to the current one that I would fight to keep her. I figured I would have my annual checkup, hear the usual lectures from the doctor about my weight, and go back to my life until same time, next year.

The rosy scenario came crashing down on December 28th, when I took off my bra and discovered I could see a lump under the skin of my right breast near the aureola. To make it worse, if I pressed on it, a bloody liquid oozed from the nipple.

My mother is a breast cancer survivor and several friends and co-workers are breast cancer survivors. A friend of my family has had multiple surgeries to remove benign (so far) tumors. I had educated myself about breast health issues; I gave myself monthly exams. I kept up with my new treatments. I believed I knew enough about breast cancer to handle it in an intelligent, rational fashion if it came my way.

Bullshit. You want to know panic? I’ll take the sight of a loaded and cocked gun over the sight of that single droplet of blood.

My regular scheduled checkup in the first week of January took on new meaning. I knew that I would need a referral from my primary to see a specialist, but I was not willing to take his suggestions on faith and I didn’t want to take time to research the doctor after the fact, so I started to look into specialists and possible surgeons. It was then I discovered that very few doctors wanted to take my insurance. It seems that it had a reputation of creating massive amounts of paperwork, not to mention a great deal of second guessing about treatment from the (as one nurse memorably put it) the “actuarial pukes”. Finally, after much telephoning and emailing, I found an excellent doctor that would take me. I made my appointment for a week after the primary visit and sat back with a sigh of relief.

My visit to the new doctor was extremely enlightening. Did you know that some doctors’ offices now schedule a day without patients so that they can handle the paperwork generated by insurance companies? Fortunately, the doctor agreed with me on the spot about visiting the specialist, although he said that he leaned towards the idea of a fibroadenoma rather than a cancerous tumor. He wrote out referrals for mammograms, breast scans, and the specialist’s visits. Did you know that insurance companies put a limit on the number of times you can see a specialist? Mine is three, which I guess covers diagnostic, surgery, and followup. If you need more, you have to get another referral from your primary. The doctor’s assistant told me her day to do referrals was on Friday (this was Tuesday) and she was sure for a breast cancer possibility she would get the referral immediately.

It took two weeks. TWO WEEKS. The insurance company was balking at the breast scan and was holding out for mammograms only. Their reasoning was that since the lump was so noticeable, the mammogram would be enough to be able to make a determination and a breast scan was not needed. If there were other questionable areas in the breast tissue, then the doctor could order a scan. Finally, under threat of filing a complaint with the benefits department of my company (I found out later that this was a serious threat, as there had been a number of problems like this already reported to them), they approved both.

When I arrived at the outpatient center for the tests, it was discovered that I had the wrong forms. What was wrong? My doctor had written “screening” instead of “diagnostic” in the referral for the mammogram, and they could not do the breast scan unless the mammogram was specifically diagnostic. Then they needed the referral form amended to do scans on both breasts; they refused to do only one, “just in case”. I sat in a cold room waiting for fifty minutes while faxes flew between my primary and the outpatient center. Finally all the paperwork was correct and I was taken in for the tests. Paperwork, between filling in the outpatient center’s own and fixing the things I had brought with me: two hours. Tests: 25 minutes for both.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far: most of the medical personnel I’ve encountered seem buried under mountains of paperwork. The outpatient center has a large room divided into cubicles occupied by people whose only job is to fill, check out, and resolve problems dealing with insurance forms; my doctor’s office has a patientless day where they do nothing but process insurance paperwork. Insurance doctors feel free to diagnose over the phone and challenge the primary doctors over treatment choices. Testing centers feel pressured to do extra testing to make sure they are not held responsible for any misdiagnoses. It all turns into an expensive and inefficient paper-pushing mess where the health of the patient seems secondary or tertiary problem rather than the main issue. And yet, most of the medical personnel I’ve dealt with have been kind and concerned, and willing to subject themselves to massive annoyance to get the patients what they need.

I’ve talked to enough people to know mine is not an unusual experience…and everyone ends with a sigh and a “well, at least we have insurance”.

The system is broken beyond repair, folk. Patching this and patching that and giving tax breaks to people who can’t afford premiums in the first place is going to do damnall for the problem. We need to make some clear headed decisions about what we need to do to disassemble this mess and put in place something that lets people take care of problems and doctors take care of people. And to those folk that whine that having universal health insurance will mean that people will “overconsume”, let me tell you something: I will overconsume chocolates and champagne; I will overconsume trashy novels; I will overconsume Manolo Blahniks; but I will NOT, nor will any woman I know, overconsume mammograms and visits to cancer specialists.

The U.S. Department of Defense uses a version of the Flesch-Kincaid score to determine the grade level of reading material. Some helpful people have used this to compare all of the Presidential State of the Union addresses. You can find it (make sure you’ve got Java installed and turned on) at this site (spotted by Radley Balko).

For a few comparisons, the Declaration of Independence rates 15.1 (or a senior in college). The Gettysburg Address gets 11.17 (a senior in high school). To Kill A Mockingbird is only 6.0 (yes, that’s sixth grade).

Among the Presidential speeches, George Washington started off in 1790 with an astounding grade level of 22.4. That must be someone at a reading level higher than a PhD. Jefferson, usually considered much smarter, lowered the bar to 17.8 in 1801. It continued to generally drop over the years, to Lincoln’s 16.2 in 1861, Wilson’s 15.7 in 1913 (even though he actually had a doctorate), and Kennedy’s 13.2 in 1961.

George W. Bush? Isn’t he at the low mark of reading level? Well, perhaps, but his speechwriters at least are part of an upward trend. Bush’s SOTU this year scored 10.1 — which is also his average score for all those he’s made so far. That’s slightly higher than the supposedly much more articulate Bill Clinton, who averaged 9.8. What surprised me was how much of an increase that was over George H. W. Bush, who only averaged 8.5, and got a mere 7.6 in 1992. That is harder than Alice In Wonderland (6.3), but, still ….

This score only measures things like number of words in sentences, and number of syllables in words. Great masters of oratory like Churchill might well score at no higher a level than any of the last three Presidential sppechwriting teams. It would be more interesting to see W’s results on Blade Runner’s Voight-Kampff Test:

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that….

Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast has done some research:

Just in case you’re thinking you might vote for Chuck Hagel over, say, Hillary Clinton

Because I’ve been thinking I might quite possibly do that.

But here are some things you need to know about Chuck Hagel’s record before deciding:….

Barbara at Mahablog believes the Surge For Peace march yesterday was not an exercise in effectiveness.

I agree. I mean, who’s left to convince? Saudi shiekhs, the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and Exxon Mobil, Joe Lieberman, freeper fartbubblers, and Hillary-John McClinton?

Sure, there needs to be a maintenance of pressure to end the war, just to keep any Dem wafflers from signing on to the anti-democracy Bush’s Unabummer Manifesto. But there’s a looming war around the next corner in Persiancarpetland.

That one could trigger a response from mainstream Muslims globally and pit us against billions, solely for the benefit of the profiteers and royal imperialists.

If we congregate, let us add ten thousand ordinary citizens from the countries Bush is demonizing. Let us bring the Muslim Main Streets to the nightly news, to counter the Wall Street gangbangers.

And it can’t hurt to be more pro-active in support of repatriated combat veterans, especially the physically and psychicly wounded.

In short, let’s lead with progressive infomercials that utilize our Net-abled global interactivities, instead of re-fighting a propaganda war we’ve finally won.

Or any sufficiently fascist crony-capitalist oil-sucker that’ll nuke every Muslim into particulate-matter, but only if they’re foam-flecked mouth-spittle Republicans.

Traitor Joe’s, where the produce is organically radioactive.

Read the rest of this entry »

A little Sunday morning serenade…

Fie on those who disparage this as elevator music! Fie!

From a tribute concert to Gram Parsons, with a special guest star.

Sinkin’ Soon.’ A new cut from the 1/30/07 release. Very creative visuals and there’s a hint of Billie Holliday’s vocal qualities in the beginning of this fun cut.

The hauntingly lovely “Carnival Town” from her 2004 DVD, Norah Jones and The Handsome Band.

Still haven’t seen “My Dear Country,” her first foray into political song: “But fear’s the only thing I saw/ and three days later was clear to all/ that nothing is as scary as Election Day.”

And if you can’t appreciate the nuanced multiple musical abilities of Miss Jones, perhaps you can appreciate the Barefoot Contessa, who probably has the greatest pipes going of any woman singer today, in ‘Hallelujah’.

And let’s close it down with another one from Miss Jones’ 2004 DVD, the spiritual folksong, ‘Humble Me.’