Drowning out Dean

Watching Sean Hannity on television last night I was struck at how the right will encourage ignorance of an issue in order to get their way. Gov., Dr. Howard Dean, M.D., was holding a town hall meeting on health care, in northern Virginia. Sean Hannity's entire coverage, which included a reporter live shot from the place, after the fact, and video that apparently the reporter's crew recorded during the event. The video that they showed and the entire content of the coverage were outbursts from people in the audience who were screaming. One was ejected. Then Hannity's discussion turned to the ejected person's right to free speech. Not one mention of what Dean said about health care, not one.

Dr. Dean has been governor of a state, small, but whose total population is right under Alaska's. He has been at the forefront of discussions of the American health care system his entire adult life. His ideas are valid and worth hearing. We did not on Hannity last night.

So you encourage them to go to the rallies, you use them to divert from real discussion of the issue and you call it fair and balanced. This is not news. This is not public service. Actually it isn't really entertaining. Nerf news.

Boycott Scotland?

Before you take a stand against Scotland for releasing a dying old scapegoat from prison for alleged participation in the Lockerbie jet bombing, you might want to remember what else Scots have brought us. You can't call your friends to organize your boycott, or you'll use a telephone invented by a Scot, Alexander Graham Bell. As you go to the store remember that the tires on your car were invented by a Scot, John Boyd Dunlop, so you should walk. When you think about hitting the ATM on your way to buy non-Scot goods, remember it was invented by a Scot, John Adrian Shepherd-Barron.

When you bring those non-Scot goods home to put in the fridge, remember it was invented by a Scot, James Harrison in 1851. Don't microwave your food. It was invented by Scots. When you sit back to watch TV tonight, remember that John Logie Baird invented it, so turn it off. If you have an infection, remember that penicillin was invented by a Scot, Sir Alexander Fleming, so anti-biotics are out. And in terms of national security, our Navy, founded by John Paul Jones, a Scot, has plenty of radar systems, invented by Physicist, Sir Robert Watson-Watt. Should we boycott them?

Use your encyclopedia, invented by Scots, to look up exactly what you should be boycotting. Don't use decimal points, quinine, fax machines, anesthetics, antisepsis, food that was harvested with a reaping machine, banks, Buicks, golf, Halloween, historical novels, iron bridges, marmalade, raincoats, thermos bottles and, of course, whisky.

Or, you could read more about the actual case against Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and his medical condition and realize that boycotting Scotland is a mistake and we should appreciate what Scots have brought us, for Auld Lang Syne.

White Fang unleashed

Former Governor of Alaska and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has finally revealed why she quit her job mid-term. Her web comments calling the proposed health bill “evil” and referring to a fictitious “death panel,” I fear, are just the beginning. (Non-partisan factcheck.org calls the concept of a death panel “nonsense.”)

During the ’08 presidential campaign even some devout Republicans said that she was going too far when she boiled up her rally audiences to frenzies where such things as “terrorist” and “kill him” were shouted in reference to then candidate Barack Obama.

This latest web entry is like throwing scraps to a pack of starving dogs, the far right of our country. And the lead dog, White Fang, has been unleashed and is heading to the lower forty-eight.