Category: Politics, Religion & Money

This week’s issue of Newsweek speculates on New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, no longer a Republican, as a wild card candidate for President. This raises an amazing prospect of the top candidates being a Catholic and a Mormon, a woman and a black man, and a Jew. It’s going to be a perfect storm of an election!

This quote from the article reminded me of something.

Landing at the Wall Street heliport earlier this year, after the mayor announced he was leaving the Republican Party to become an independent, President Bush gestured to Marine One and told Bloomberg: “That bird could be yours.”

It reminded me that my brother is one of the people who maintains Marine One. He and I do not share the same opinion of Dubya.

Mark Evanier’s friend Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls, and both Burns and Smiters on The Simpsons) puts some fun back into the sport of waterboarding.

The PBS series FRONTLINE has a program on the situation between America and Iran. This is a must-see explanation of how we got where we are. Is it any surprise that Bush has screwed up everything, at every turn? I have to conclude this was done intentionally because the policy from Day 1 has been to go to war. The only other explanation is outright incompetence. Of course, both intent and incompetence are possible.

Fortunately, it’s up to Congress to declare war, and there’s no way that’s going to happen. If Bush and Cheney act on their own, claiming coverage by the powers granted in October 2002, there would be grounds for immediate impeachment proceedings.

You can watch ‘Showdown With Iran’ either on TV or online.

Oh, look. It’s Richard Armitage. The man who compromised national security by revealing Valerie Plame‘s identity as a covert CIA operative to right wing-nut columnist Robert Novak.

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?

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