Culture of Life : National Healthcare is a Wet Dream

Sometimes you just have to get out of your own house and see what’s going on elsewhere. I haven’t been doing too much actual blogging lately, but I have a good excuse (I think)… I’ve been reading other peoples’ blogs and posting on other peoples’ message boards (hi Randi Rhodes!). Randi’s forums have been going offline for me lately due to server load, not quite sure what’s causing the problem, though. Randi’s just come back after a month of being laid up in the hospital due to a hysterectomy, poor dear. Elsewhere…

“If the Republicans believe their ‘culture of life’ requires the federal government to intervene and assure adequate medical care any time an American is at risk of bodily harm, then we can assume this ‘culture of life’ applies to other Americans when they too need critical medical care yet something stands in their way.” - AmericaBlog

I think he makes some good points.

Looks like John Edwards and the One America Committee have taken to blogging. Tomorrow, Edwards will participate for the first time in podcasting. His first podcast will be available at the One America Committee site. There’s also instructions there on how to get the podcast. The “Today Show” will also profile John Edwards and his work on poverty on Wednesday, March 23, 2005.

And then there was this interesting interview with Noam Chomsky…

“Oh, no, no, no,” Chomsky says, grinning at my naivety, “you can’t mention it. You can’t mention anything. You can’t read anything. All you can do is report gossip. So you heard some gossip saying that I was in favour of Pol Pot or I support Osama bin Laden. That I’m in favour of [Slobodan] Milosevic. And then you heard it at a dinner party so it must be true. My previous interviewer is doing a documentary mainly on Palestine. She just got a PhD at New York University. She was telling me that if she ever so much as mentioned my name her faculty members practically collapsed in terror. The idea that you could look at anything of mine was so frightening it couldn’t happen. Which is standard. You can’t think because that’s too dangerous. Or you can’t look at public opinion. You should see public opinion. It’s amazing.”

*grins* True, Noam, but the politico-corporate-media doesn’t really give a damn about public opinion except in what they can do to shape it in the form of infotainment, subterfuge, smear tactics, and gossip in the hopes of more money for advertisers which translates to media profits. This latest flap over the feeding tube was a well-rehearsed sleight of hand trick designed to draw attention away from other more important matters, such as the weekend’s world-wide peace demonstrations or the numerous investigations of criminal activity of such people as Tom Delay, who actually had the balls to lecture in Congress about ethics… something he obviously knows nothing about. I don’t think some people fully grasp the delicious irony of that.

Meanwhile, the military (all branches) is having some trouble meeting recruitment quotas. I’ve seen multiple stories about soldiers being required to serve several tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, which has not been the norm in previous wars (usually, one tour and you could pretty much count on getting duty outside of the combat zone). The U.S. Army, in an attempt to mitigate the recruitment and retention problem, has raised the maximum age for new recruits for the Army Reserve and National Guard by five years to age 39. It has also asked Congress to allow it to extend enlistment contracts by two years in order to “stabilize the force.” In reality, this would legally void all current military enlisted contracts, since this is not what these people signed up for, but of course, they’ll find some way to bullshit their way around that. What I’d like to know is, who was the genius in the Pentagon who thought this idea would retain soldiers and attract recruits? A longer enlistment is going to make someone want to sign up? I don’t think so. But, I guess this is why these people earn the salaries they do and I sit here unemployed, eh? Heh.