Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Freak Show In Framingham

Last year I talked about an exhibit I saw called Bodyworlds 2. (Note: the item at that link includes an audio clip of the late Paul Sullivan on his Boston radio show. Sullivan was much more sanguine than I about Bodyworlds 2.)

I had ambivalent feelings about it, and after reading this article in The New York Times, I stopped being ambivalent. I think it’s an old-fashioned freak show.

Even if Bodyworlds, as Gunther von Hagens claims, presents only the bodies of people who gave their consent, the ‘Bodies’ show that Stephen Colbert highlighted uses unclaimed Chinese corpses; presumably including prisoners, political or otherwise.

The ‘Bodies’ show is about to open literally around the corner from where I work in Framingham, Massachusetts, but not without protest. There’s one lone voice speaking out against Bodies. The Metrowest Daily News has the story at this link. If the link is dead, click here. In keeping with the latest trend in journalism, the reporter posted a video on YouTube. Sort of blurs the line between print and TV media, doesn’t it?

My Iraq Faqs

  1. Who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001?
      2. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida
  2. Did the United States have a good chance at capturing Osama bin Laden?
      3. Yes, in December, 2001, in Tora Bora, Afghanistan.
  3. Has the United States captured Osama bin Laden?
      4. No.
  4. Did Saddam Hussein and Iraq have any involvement with September 11, 2001 or Osama bin Laden?
      5. No.
  5. What justification was given by President Bush for invading Iraq?
      6. Saddam Hussein was in possession of lethal weapons that represented an imminent, large scale threat.
  6. Did Saddam Hussein have any such weapons?
      7. No.

None of these facts are in dispute, are they? And they were all known before the election of 2004, were they not? Just checking.

Stephen Colbert On Meet The Press

Not being a blogger devoted solely to following Stephen Colbert, I post Colbertish things when it’s convenient and/or I’m inspired. Neither is the case at the moment, but my FiOS DVR happened to catch Stephen’s appearance on Meet The Press today. One interesting revelation is that in a past incarnation Colbert apparently wanted to look like Elvis Costello.
[flv:/Video/OCT07/MeetThePress.flv 400 300]

My Military Mind

Baghdad - October 10, 2007

In today’s NYTimes…

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

…and this is what I said a year ago.

    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.

If this was obvious to me a whole year ago, with no military experience whatsoever, what took the experts so long to start coming around to the same conclusion?