My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

[Hat tip to Sherry Chandler for this particular find.]

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

The press, Michael Herr wrote in Dispatches, his book on the Vietnam War, “never found a way to report meaningfully about death, which of course was really what it was all about. The most repulsive, transparent gropes for sanctity in the midst of the killing received serious treatment in the papers and on the air.

The jargon of the Process got blown into your head like bullets, and by the time you waded through all the Washington stories and all the Saigon stories, all the Other War stories and the corruption stories and the stories about brisk new gains in ARVN effectiveness, the suffering was somehow unimpressive.” p. 146

For those of you who have seen Sicko, you know that at least one health wealth care organization started backpedaling even before the movie was made. Now that it’s out, executives are hiding their portfolios and spending money on covering their butts rather than saving the butt of some person who might actually be sick.

The following is the second paragraph of an internal Blue Cross memo:

You would have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore’s movie, he is an effective storyteller. In Sicko Moore presents a collage of injustices by selecting stories, no matter how exceptional to the norm, that present the health insurance industry as a set of organizations and people dedicated to denying claims in the name of profit.

Denial for treatments that are considered “experimental” is a common story, along with denial for previous conditions, and denial for application errors or omissions. Individual employees from Humana and other insurers are interviewed who claim to have actively pursued claim denial as an institutionalized goal in the name of profit.

I wonder if the unnamed (actually blacked out) Blue Cross executive caught the part about David Kaiser actually passing the word along to then President Richard Nixon that the function of the health wealth care maintenance organizations would be to deny claims in the name of profit. Don’t believe me? Listen to the tape (No. 450-23).

Notice that the Blue Cross executive doesn’t say that those individual employees from Humana and other insurers telling their stories about their organization’s pursuit of profit over fixing sick people is a lie. The executive only casts aspersions that those people are making claims.

President George has so seriously screwed up Iraq that it will probably not be a serious issue in 2008. Nobody, even Governor Jeb Bush, if he could be drafted, would take the position that following his kid brother’s policies makes sense.

Health care. Universal health care. Health care that would put the United States in the same bracket as the rest of the industrial nations instead of number 37 (just ahead of Slovenia and Cuba) has the potential to be the issue next year.

Charles: Three weeks down, only sixty-one to go! I was here before, in 2004-2005 for OIF II, and in the first few weeks of this deployment two things strike me: 1. Iraq in 2004 still had a “Wild West” sort of feel to it — temporary buildings, very sporadic communications, few creature comforts, not a lot of institutional “garrison” rules. Now, three years on, the…

We all know by now that the WMD argument was just game. The WMD evidence was not “slam-dunk” as Tenet has now explained. We misunderstood him. What was “slam dunk” was the challenge of persuading the American people in the wake of 9/11 that Iraq had active WMDs and was able to hand them over to terrorists. And, boy, was Tenet right about that one.

We all trusted them to be honest with us, suckers that we were, because we didn’t think that after a tragedy like 9/11, the president would scam us. oh well. He nearly got away with it. Can’t we just move on now? Scooter Libby has. Andrew Sullivan

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

0737 Marathon Pundit is heading to Kansas!

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning head scratcher I present: From My Dad.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

[Hat tip to Sherry Chandler for this particular find.]

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

The cause, sanctified by the dead, cannot be questioned without dishonoring those who gave up their lives. We become enmeshed in the imposed language. When any contradiction is raised or there is a sense that the cause is not just an absolute sense, the doubts are attacked as apostasy. p. 145

Eddie: haven’t posted much lately. On top of the heat, and sitting in a guard tower, and studying my ass off for this board exam I have in a couple days, I’m just plain exhausted, physically and mentally. I’m feeling good about the board, but I can’t wait to get it over with so I can finally stop studying and cramming my head full of information. A few nights ago we…

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

“Our Father, Who does art in heaven, Harold is His name. Amen.

“A little boy was overheard praying: “Lord, if you can’t make me a better boy, don’t worry about it. I’m having a real good time like I am.”

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

[Hat tip to Sherry Chandler for this particular find.]

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership of the group to which one belongs oneself.” p. 145

Today is the 7th of July in the year 2007 and people across the country, including a number of National Public Radio hosts that I would hope were of above average education, are demonstrating that they can barely count because they think that the number 7-7-07 is somehow special or even gasp unique in the century.

Why is 7-7-07 luckier than 7-7-17 or 7-7-27? They all have three sevens in them, right?

Or the real mother load of the century: 7 July 2077. 7-7-77. But we have to wait seventy years for that. Most of us will be dead. No news value there. Move along.

How lucky were the sevens in previous centuries?

Let’s see.

Well on 7 July 1777, ooo… five 7’s, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolution. Lucky, I suppose if you were British.

Robert Heinlein was born 100 years ago today on 7 July 1907.

Imogen Baily was born on a four sevens day — 7 July 1977. What? You don’t know who Imogen Baily is? Me neither.

You’d think that babies born on the luckiest day of a century would be all over the news, but no. All we get is a fashion model.

For the record, I won’t be out buying any lottery tickets today.

And remember, gambling is a voluntary tax on the mathematically ignorant.

The ruling effectively bars future suits from being brought: In order to prove injury, potential plaintiffs would need to present specific evidence that they had been targeted by the NSA-but the 1953 “state secrets” privilege prohibits that sort of information from being released or discussed in court. As the ever-literate LAT notes, it’s a classic Catch-22. Justin Peters

Eric Coulson: I have received a large number of letters here. Most are from Mrs. Badger 6, some from my parents and hers, some from friends from before my blog, and some from new friends I have made through the blog. Outside of the ones from my wife and the dogs (she sends the cards for them) the ones from the children are the most meaningful. They are…

In the case of the debates over the merits of a universal, government run, single-payer health care system, the signal that someone is not serious is when he or she trots out the waiting times for hip replacements in Canada as an argument about how the Canadian system is so terrible in comparison to the US. Mano Singham

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

An old man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his tomato garden, but it was very hard work as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.

Love, Vinnie

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

[Hat tip to Sherry Chandler for this particular find.]

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

“It is impossible to overrate the part played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent the first victim. It need not be anyone of particular importance, and can even be someone quite unknown.

Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership of the group to which one belongs oneself.” p. 145

The third explanation is that Cheney, and perhaps the president, fears that if Scooter goes to prison, and is staring at disgrace and 30 months away from friends and family, he may think he has been abandoned by people whose secrets he kept at the cost of reputation and freedom. An idle mind being the devil’s workshop, Scooter might sit down and write a book, or phone “Bulldog” Fitzgerald and tell him he just remembered something. Pat Buchanan.

J.R. Salzman: “The hardest thing that I’ve had to do [since the injury] was actually here,” Salzman said as he floated in full scuba-diving gear in Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s aquatic therapy pool in early June. “You have to tread water for 10 minutes. Treading water for 10 minutes with half a hand — that was so hard do do. So hard. A couple of times, I went…