Gratuitous Video Feed
John Hiatt performs his “Something Wild” on Austin City Limits.
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Dept. of Now He Tells Us
Sure, George Bush promotes only partisan loyalists to government office, but his chutzpah still raises eyebrows, as when in December he nominated Sam Fox to the post of US Ambassador to Belgium. Fox is best known as a major donor to the inaptly-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, purveyors of the lowest of smear campaigns in the 2004 election cycle.
In Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing for Mr. Fox, he faced questioning by his victim, Sen. John Kerry, he was quick to duck responsibility, even contradicting the Swifties he bankrolled:
Fox was a major backer of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a so-called non-partisan ‘527′ advocacy group that attacked Senator Kerry’s military service record in the 2004 election. In December, the group paid a large cash settlement to the Federal Election Commission for violating federal election laws. Fox gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat Vets group.
When Kerry confronted Fox on this subject in yesterday’s hearing, Fox criticized all 527 groups, and said “You’re a hero. And there isn’t anybody or anything that’s going to take that away from you. But yet 527s tried to.”
As Kerry followed up, Fox pleaded ignorance, suggesting that he wasn’t fully aware that he had given the large sum to the 527 group. When Kerry asked who had made the request that he give to the Swift Boat Vets, the nominee responded, “I can’t tell you specifically who did because, you know, I don’t remember.”
The senator then asked how he could rationalize giving to 527 groups when he abhors them as a concept and thinks they should be banned.
“I did it because politically, it’s necessary if the other side is doing it,” Fox responded.
Universal Health Coverage Now
Until America gets serious about health coverage, guaranteeing it as a right as do other industrialized nations, we are asking for more loss of life, as with twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver, who died of complications from an abcessed tooth:
Eventually, he was rushed to Children’s Hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery. He began to have seizures and had a second operation. The problem tooth was extracted.
After more than two weeks of care at Children’s Hospital, the Clinton seventh-grader began undergoing six weeks of additional medical treatment as well as physical and occupational therapy at another hospital. He seemed to be mending slowly, doing math problems and enjoying visits with his brothers and teachers from his school, the Foundation School in Largo.
On Saturday, their last day together, Deamonte refused to eat but otherwise appeared happy, his mother said. They played cards and watched a show on television, lying together in his hospital bed…
The next morning at about 6, she got another call, this time from the boy’s grandmother. Deamonte was unresponsive. She rushed back to the hospital.
“When I got there, my baby was gone,” recounted his mother.
Emergency rooms are not sufficient for medical care. If our so-called “culture of life” ever deigns to notice the invisible children like Deamonte, we will discover a world of suffering that the media, of course, would prefer we ignored.
Fewer than 16 percent of Maryland’s Medicaid children received restorative services — such as filling cavities — in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.
Dental coverage could have saved him, long before it became a medical emergency.
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“I will no more trust him when he leers than I will a serpent
when he hisses.” –Troilus And Cressida, 5.1.99-101
This Time, Nixon’s in the Clear
Everything old is new again in New Hampshire:
No, you’re not having a flashback to 1972 and the infamous event that ultimately led to the greatest scandal in U.S. political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon’s presidency.
Instead of Washington’s Watergate complex, this burglary took place at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s headquarters over the weekend. Neither police nor party officials will comment on what was stolen and whether the break-in was politically motivated.
Office workers reported the break-in to police on Monday. Concord Police Sgt. Mike McGuire said some items were taken, but he declined to be more specific. The assessment was the same from Kathy Sullivan, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party.
”Some things were taken, but I don’t really want to get into that right now,” Sullivan said on Tuesday.
Gratuitous Video Feed
If there’s a “Flight of the Bumblebee” in the world of bebop, it’s Charlie Parker’s “Donna Lee.” Watch viruoso Joe Pass and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen wend their way through it.
As long as we’re showcasing dead guitarists, here’s the late Lowell George leading Little Feat through “Rock ‘n’ Roll Doctor” in 1975. Compare it to what’s left of Feat (Shaun Murphy singing, with Fred Tackett and Paul Barrere splitting guitar duties) seen last fall, performing John Hiatt’s “Feels Like Rain.”
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“More validity, more honourable state, more courtship lives in
carrion flies.” –Romeo And Juliet, 3.3.34-35
Gratuitous Video Feed
The Academy Awards show may only be any good when it makes fun of itself. Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly at last night’s Oscars answered the musical question: “What are Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly doing at the Oscars?”
Did you know that the guitar is a percussion instrument? Australian wizard Tommy Emmanuel sure does. He can also mimic a didgeridoo (“Initiation”), or make sweet arpeggios like a harp (“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”).
Yet here’s a spot
They have a sense of shame, after all. Blogger Smintheus alerts us to the scrubbing of certain of Dick Cheney’s remarks from the White House web site.
“I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” —3/16/03
You won’t any longer find a link to this transcript on the White House website—nor, indeed, are there links to most of Cheney’s interviews from before 2006. Don’t believe me? Just do a search for that infamous sentence at www.whitehouse.gov.
The WH website evidently has been busy scrubbing links to interviews and perhaps other public appearances by top officials. The operation has proceeded somewhat unevenly, though aggressively. Pretty clearly the WH wants to make it much harder to research the administration’s past pronouncements, especially unscripted ones, and especially those pertaining to Iraq.
La Hora Marcada
Oscar-nominated Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro skewers Da Prez, cementing Hollywood’s reputation as a colony of commie-pinko-librulz. He
told a reception in Beverly Hills that he had been surprised to learn that his film, a fable about a little girl who retreats into a fantasy world in fascist Spain, had been shown at the White House…
“Having garnered praise from Stephen King, I felt it would be interesting to see what a true master of horror would think. Or a master of science-fiction if you think about the intelligence on Iraq.”
Del Toro said his film, which is set in post-civil war Spain in 1944, was particularly relevant in the post September-11 political climate.
“It’s good to remind people how things about your security and the good of your country can turn into absolutely horrid things,” Del Toro said.
