Gravel for President

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Bits & Pieces: This guy could be the next President of the United States

A weird video from ex-Senator Mike Gravel.

Genius or what?

I knew nothing about this man but I like his performance HERE and I like what he had to say to Queerty about Gays in the army:

I often think about Vic when I talk about the injustice of Don’t Ask. Here’s a guy who was much more dedicated to the army than I was, but because he liked men, his life long military career has been in constant jeopardy.

This is an outrage that the government has perpetrated for far too long on highly trained, committed gay and lesbian service people. We should be proud of their service and thankful for their sacrifice. When I am president I promise that I will immediately end the Don’t Ask policy and I will issue an apology on behalf of the federal government to each of the 100,000 service people who have been discharged because of their sexual orientation over the past several decades. I challenge all of my fellow candidates to pledge themselves that if elected, they will also issue a formal apology.

I hope that we can all join together in sending an important message to the American public that the days of second-class citizenship for Vic and all other lesbian and gay Americans must come to an end. When that day comes, I hope my old friend will be proud.




Mommy! I hurt my foot

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Advice Goddess Blog - 'If Uncle Sam Were Your Doctor'
See how well socialized medicine works in the U.K.! I got permission to post this incredible true story of an American going through the horror that is the British National Health Service. He's Don Miller, a 31-year-old American studying for a Ph.D. in ancient history at the University of Newcastle in the northeast of England. He'd sent the e-mail about his experience to friends. One of them forwarded it to me. 
In a nutshell the 'incredible' story that Amy Aklon reproduces goes like this. A foreign student goes dirt-biking in a field near Newcastle and, surprise, surprise, ends up hurting himself. His (British) girlfriend, Verity, phones the NHS (sic) and is told that ambulances are only dispatched in life threatening situations (good news for all UK ambulance personnel/paramedics who can put their feet up for most of the time from now on).

It took Verity 45 minutes to work out how to get a car to him as he was in the middle of a field. You might think (as he is a PhD student) that the possibility of an accident (maybe even a serious life-threatening one) might have occurred to him before he decided to play around in a field on a fucking motorbike but no, apparently, it's all the fault of the terrible NHS.

 'We drove to the nearest hospital (the shittiest one in the Newcastle area of course).'Why drive to 'the shittiest hospital' and then complain about the service? One of the points this student makes is that there were no private hospitals which he could have attended but, presumably, had there been one somewhere in Newcastle he would have got his girlfriend to drive him there, rather than the nearest one? But he couldn't apply the same logic to his choice of an NHS hospital. What's this guy's PhD in, for fuck's sake?

At the hospital he sees someone taking a piss against a wall outside and then gets upset at some bloodstained Kleenex left on the floor - AIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!  In fact he get's so upset, he end's up asking Verity to 'push me outside so that I could call my mom for advice on what to do.  'He's doing a fucking PhD and he phones his 'mom' to find out what to do?!. Sheeesh!

At this point I pretty well give up. You can read the whole silly email at Advice Goddess where, thankfully, plenty of Americans with more sense than Alkon comment on the equally shitty service/conditions they have experienced in US hospitals. Naturally there are still a few who comment supporting Alkon's main thesis which is that it's all because of that nasty BRITISH SOCIALISM.  Yeah, I fucking wish!

I commented:

"Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses. The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide...etc"  (source) A nasty British NHS hospital? No. It's the famous Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the patients hadn't just fallen off their dirt bikes either had they?
I could have added:
Lakewood, Colo. (July 27, 2004) – An average of 195,000 people in the U.S. died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of patient records that was released today.
Or this:
Uninsured and low-income Americans traditionally have had much more difficulty getting medical care than people with insurance and higher incomes. For example, uninsured people were more than three times as likely to report going without care as insured people—13.2 percent vs. 3.9 percent.
Or about a thousand others. The NHS is far from perfect but I'm not taking stick from a spoilt little student that whines like a baby when he hurts his leg and has to phone home to mommy for advice.


A little issue of bullying

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There's nothing like a good old-fashioned argument with security guards to get your heart pumping on a Sunday morning. Now, I admit, I like a row now and again but I'm not a trouble-maker. I hate bullies and petty officialdom and jobsworths and I have a terrible habit of refusing to let things go unremarked. It's the Irish rebel blood I'm afraid.

So I'm walking along Union Street, the main drag, when I overhear a store security guard harassing a Big Issue seller outside the entrance. I stop and back up, give the seller a couple of quid for a copy and casually ask 'what's going on mate?'. The guy says the security guard is telling him to move away from the store and has been rude and intimidating. Mmmmm. 'Why are you asking him to move?', I ask. 'Because he's outside the shop', says the guard. 'But this is Union Street, Aberdeen's main shopping drag, you can't stand anywhere and NOT be outside a bloody shop', I point out.

'Where does your curtilage extend to', I ask the bemused guard. 'Let me put it another way, are we standing on Primark property or are we, as I suspect, actually standing on a public thoroughfare, i.e. the fucking pavement?' 

'What's it got to do with you. It's none of your business', says the security man.  'Oh, but it IS my business', I say, 'because I've just made it my business, sunshine'.  'More to the point, what bloody business is it of yours what this, licenced, steet-seller does in a public place?', I respond. 'He is not committing an offence of any kind whereas YOU, on the other hand, seem to be coming rather close to doing just that by using threatening behaviour towards him.'  'If you would prefer him to move a few yards further down the street you could always ask him nicely like this...'  I then ask the seller if he would object to offering his wares a few yards away from the main entrance. It's not a problem, he says he would be happy to oblige.

Meanwhile the security 'supervisor' appears and I give him a quick earful before he decides to clear off inside taking the guard with him. 'Come on', he says, 'you're wasting your time with him.' 'Wasting your time?', I shout, 'wasting your time?' , you're a fucking security guard for PRIMARK, for fuck's sake, wasting your time is what you do all day!

The seller, shakes my hand. 'Thank you', he says in a heavy (Spanish?) accent. 'Don't let the bastards harass you', I say.

Have a  nice day!






If only they had burned album covers...

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Queen's birthday honours
Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after a fatwa was issued against him, has been given a knighthood for services to literature. Rushdie's latest novel, Shalimar The Clown, was long-listed for the Booker, but Midnight's Children is still widely regarded as his greatest work.
His literary career began inauspiciously in advertising, where he came up with the cream cakes slogan "naughty but nice". The Glastonbury mastermind Mike Eavis was also honoured. The 71-year-old Methodist dairy farmer, who established the music festival in 1970, has always shunned establishment values. But now the anti-nuclear campaigner has been created a CBE for services to music.

Rushdie gets a knighthood while Eavis just gets a bloody CBE. Go figure.



If These Old Walls

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Red Hot and Country


As well as transferring lots of old compilation audio tapes I've also got a few VHS tapes that need to be digitised. I dug the old VCR out of the cupboard but despite our best efforts it doesn't seem to want to play ball so I've had to order one from Ebay.

The first tape I'm going to transfer is Red Hot and Country, a recording of the wonderful country music AIDS benefit concert at The Ryman in 1994 with great names including John Hiatt, Waylon Jennings, Earl Scruggs Levon Helm, Carl Perkins, Vasar Clemens and Duane Eddy.

And this lovely version of the Jimmy Webb classic 'If These Old Wall's' sung by Nanci Griffith (with Jimmy Webb).

Beautiful!




'Corpsite 2.0' ?

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Web Strategy by Jeremiah: How to evolve your irrelevant corporate website

Jeremiah Owyang, has some interesting things to say about web marketing and the irrelevance of corporate sites.  Much of what he is saying could be applied to political websites. Unless you understand, incorporate and adapt to what is happening everywhere else on the web the chances are that your website, whether it's a faux 'personal' politicians 'blog' or the website of a political party will, at least to some extent, be behind the curve if not completely out on a limb.







Fill her up

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Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Pentagon as Global Gas-Guzzler
Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That's greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million -- and yet it's a gross underestimate of the Pentagon's wartime consumption.



Any time, any place, anywhere (not)... ...it's Martino

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 Vatican cardinal calls on Catholics to stop funding Amnesty
A senior Vatican cardinal said yesterday that Catholics should stop donating to human rights group Amnesty International because of its new policy advocating abortion rights for women if they had been raped, were a victim of incest or faced health risks. (emphasis mine)  Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, accused Amnesty of turning its back on its mission to defend human rights. (sic)
Boy, how I loathe the catholic church. I think I may go out and throttle a nun later.



Bejeebus

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How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads
In a series of lively essays, this pioneering book proves that US slang has its strongest wellsprings in nineteenth-century Irish America. "Jazz" and "poker," "sucker" and "scam" all derive from Irish. While demonstrating this, Daniel Cassidy simultaneously traces the hidden history of how Ireland fashioned America, not just linguistically, but through the Irish gambling underworld, urban street gangs, and the powerful political machines that grew out of them. Cassidy uncovers a secret national heritage, long discounted by our WASP-dominated culture.