Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Dead-on Colbert

Well this sure is a coincidence, given my post of only a few hours ago about Bodyworld 2! You can forget all of the happy talk on that radio show I recorded.

Leave it to Stephen Colbert to force my hand about the controversy surrounding Bodyworld 2. Watch the video clip, then click here. If that link doesn’t work for you, try this one. Here it is, folks! The dark, ugly side of the business of turning human corpses into plastic museum pieces.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Colbert/Colbert12-18-06.flv 400 300]
BTW, I know I haven’t posted much of Colbert lately. Partly because I was genuinely concerned about Comedy Central being on the warpath against its material being posted, but mostly because I haven’t been keeping up. Blogger fatigue, I guess!

Feeling Queasy

I’m sure you heard this bit of news …

WASHINGTON – Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson (news, bio, voting record) of South Dakota was hospitalized after becoming disoriented Wednesday, weeks before his party is to take control of the Senate by a one-vote margin.

The audio clip is of WBZ radio talk show host Pat Desmarais, an arch-conservative, who points out that if Senator Johnson is unable to serve in January, Governor Mike Rounds would undoubtedly appoint a Republican to the post. This is a prospect that makes me feel very uneasy.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/DEC06/WBZ.mp3]

At the moment, Johnson is reported to have not suffered from either a heart attack or a stroke. Perhaps they should check him for polonium-210 poisoning? 😉

Technical note: WBZ 1030 is an AM radio station in Boston with a great signal. But it doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as this 64 Kbps sound clip I captured. Live audio streams are getting very good. For a while I was thinking about getting an HD Radio for bedside use, but now I’m wondering if an Internet radio might be a better choice.

Leave Iraq Now

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Back on October 17 I said this about the situation in Iraq:

We’ve got to get out of there. Now. It would be far cheaper and safer to simply give Iraq the money it needs to rebuild. Send the National Guard home where it belongs, let half of the regular Army rest, and redeploy the other half to Afghanistan. I’m no military strategist, but this is obvious.

War correspondent Joseph Galloway is also saying that we need to leave. Now. Click here.

What we need to do is what none of the commissions and their reports dared to suggest: Begin withdrawing American forces from Iraq right now. Not in 2008. Not after the American death toll has crossed 5,000. Not just in time for a presidential election.

There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there’s only one way to leave Iraq: Load our people up on their trucks and tank transporters and Bradleys and Humvees and head for the border. Now.

Separated at Birth?

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Am I the only one who thinks right-wing columnist William Kristol — who gets everything wrong, but is still on TV — looks too much like Bob Woodward? Even more unsettling, Woodward’s politics look too much like Kristol’s.

Like George Tenet, Woodward traded integrity for access. Woodward recently attempted to salvage his legacy by distancing himself from Bush and his policies, but he did that only after it was obvious the Democratic tide was coming in.