Thursday, April 27, 2006

No Nukes, Nowhere

This Dog wants to add his wee small voice to the rising protest against the very thought, the most fleeting fantasy of nuking Iran or any other place for that matter. Entertaining such a notion for even a nanosecond is a sign of sociopathy, of profound moral, ethical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual depravity. Have these people not seen the film from Hiroshimo and Nagasaki or read the accounts? Do they not understand that the moment they unloose a nuke, the world will explode--not just the Islamic world but also Europe, Asia, and the Americas? Governments will topple because the people of the world will not stand for such a grotesque violation of international law and human rights.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Where I Been

The Dog's been on forced holiday, due to an encounter of the worst sort with a palm seed on--you guessed it--Palm Sunday, but he said...well, he doesn't want to bring the forces of the donkey rider--a perfectly wise and gentle man, by the way, if given to delusions--down on his head. Just say he took literally one step out his door on his way to his morning swim and, in a classic pratfall landed in the ER at nearby Mount Sinai Hospital, where he spent 14 hours having a spiral fracture of his left femur diagnosed. I'll fill in the blanks later, but the bottom line is that the Dog is 'toe-touch' walking behind a walker with a titanium rod running the length of his left femur.

That said, the next blog will address the sheer, utter, reprehensible, irresponsible obscenity of the Bushbuckers even contemplating in passing throwing nukes at Iran. The donkey rider was a man of peace, something those who profess to act in his name should remember....

Friday, April 07, 2006

Health Care for All

Today's Diogenes Award--presented sporadically to the person or persons who holds the cold light of reason to official lies, foolishness, and to urban myths and legends--goes to Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Cambridge Hospital and Harvard Medical School for exposing the utter lunatic bogosity of the Massachusetts "universal" health care bill--the one requiring people to buy insurance--in today's tompaine.com. In so doing, they make the case for a single payer health care plan, citing the numbers, chapter and verse. We are facing another case in which the federal government--not to mention state governments--in thrall to big business is operating in direct opposition to the desire and best interest of the majority of people.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Bombs Away!

This Dog likes to believe that he can be neither surprised nor shocked by the arrogance and hypocrisy of the Bushbuckers, until reality leaps up and bytes him, today in the form of this report from the L.A. Times on the Bushbuckers' plans to ramp up nuclear bomb production--this in addition to a similar program to replace old and develop new nuclear warheads. So we're threatening Iran and North Korea, after taking out Saddam, over nuclear weapons--bogus charge in Saddam's case--while doing the wink, wink, nod, nod to the Saudi's nuclear program; seeking to abet India; standing by while Pakistan does whatever Musharraf damn well pleases; and returning our own nuclear program to the deepest, darkest days of the Cold War arms race. And the men in charge of these weapons of mass destruction are the same ones who snoozed through the run-up to 9/11, ignored specific warnings about Katrina, and in between managed to bomb Afghanistan into the pre-Stone Age while letting Osama bin Laden escape and to unloosed a blood bath in Iraq. The Dog feels real safe, knowing that his ethically challenged elected representatives in Congress are falling all over themselves to build a chainlink fence--not a Great Wall, not a Hadrian's Wall, not even a Berlin Wall--to keep out illegal immigrants. Well, nothing succeeds in American politics like an enema.....

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

DeLay Belayed, or Universal Health

The punster headline writers are having fun with variations on the theme of Tom 'the Hammer' DeLay being "hammered" or "nailed." Indeed, his right wing supporters doubtless feel he is being crucified for his righteousness. But R. Jeffrey Smith and Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post seem closer to the mark when they report that by resigning his seat DeLay is allowed to convert his roughly $1.3-million campaign fund into a legal defense fund. Given a choice, the 'public' servant opts for self-interest--that's the story of DeLay and his fellow Republicans, and the Hammer's belay from the House is not going to change its culture. But why pick on the House. My friend, C, a successful businessman says of politicians, "They are all the same. The only want to know, "What's in it for me?'" Civic responsibility--forget it. Ethics--get real. Courage of their non-convictions--only before a friendly audience of their fellow callous hypocrites. So the war and the torture continue while John McCain submits to Jerry Falwell and Hillary Clinton wraps herself in the flag and on and on.

Meanwhile, the other Clinton, 'Doublewide Bubba," the former president and oral fixation of Monica Lewinsky--how could we forget--but the four-legged dogs want to know, since they weren't there--Was he wearing his boxers or briefs--the Dog doesn't know--Bubba endorses, according to AP (this from Forbes), a silly and dangerous Massachusetts plan to require people to have health insurance and to subsidize private insurance companies to make sure some plan is available. Talk about 'big government!' Talk about a waste of money! Talk about a lack of civic or communal responsibility! It would be far cheaper for the state to set up a single-payer health insurance plan, and it would be even more efficient for the federal government to expand Medicare, which works, to include everyone--efficient and economical. Fact is that government does some things better than the private sector, and health care is one of them. Everyone who looks at the issue knows that; they don't act because the insurance industry is willing to spend much of its obscene profits to protect its right to make obscene profits.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Note to the Faithful

The old dog hasn't retired or lost his voice. He's been out tracking other game and watching the machinations of our officials with shock and awe, thinking if 'civilization' produces these thugs, perhaps we need something else. And then, like every lost dog, he realizes that there is no trail to such a place, and there is no guarantee that he would recognize it, even if it existed and he stumbled upon it--context being all.