Saturday Stuff

There are so many people of character IMO who didn’t make it to the century mark, but to me, it is an obscenity that “Dr.” Henry Kissinger has apparently managed to get there...this “Democracy Now!” report from Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez includes interviews with authors Nick Turse and Greg Grandin, with Turse focusing on Kissinger’s legacy in Cambodia and how our bombing helped to create a vacuum that was filled by the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot…I honestly didn’t know Kissinger recorded phone calls during his days with Nixon, but it doesn’t surprise me…kudos to Turse for putting human faces on the Biblical level of suffering authorized by Kissinger (and I felt like putting my fist through the monitor when I saw Kissinger swat away that question about being a war criminal, which he plainly is)…good point by Grandin about how we really don’t know what the hell he's done while running “Kissinger Associates”…and I always respected the late Anthony Bourdain, but I DEFINITELY did even more after hearing that quote (and in case you want to get MORE infuriated with Kissinger, this links to his “salted peanuts” remark to Dubya about drawing down and ending the utterly awful Iraq War II)….and there’s more on Reagan later in this post BTW…



Update: More from David Corn here...

...and returning to our current debt ceiling crisis (and leave it to those crazies running the U.S. House to just pack up and leave right in the middle of it), Chris Hayes tells us about the Repugs and their utterly deranged debt plan, including cutting development for COVID vaccines to combat what are likely to be future variants, as well as knee-capping funding for vax distribution around the world (and yeah, I know King Elon I and #DeathSantis pooped the metaphorical bed over the latter’s campaign kickoff for prez, but I’m not going to devote time and energy on that...sorry)...



...and I thought this was an instructive clip from Kyle Kulinski about how exactly the debt ceiling crisis is being reported, and as you can imagine, our corporate media is doing everything they can to give cover to the “R” party, because, as far as they’re concerned, the very worst thing you can do is piss off a conservative, and this is just another example...

...and by the way, I heard something the other day that I thought was merely a bad joke, but after doing some investigating, I found out that it was actually true, and that is that Wolf-Pac is trying to align itself with ALEC for a so-called Article V Convention to rewrite the Constitution, as noted here (I have a feeling I’m a little late to the party on this, since I also found an article about this from last August after doing some investigating over the last day or so). I should also point out that, to be fair, I don’t see Cenk Uygur’s name listed as a member of Wolf-Pac, so it’s possible that he isn’t involved in the group any more (though he has spoken out in favor of an Article V convention).

However, I should still add that this is utter madness. How many damn times does it need to be pointed out that WINGNUTS ONLY WANT TO PLAY US AND ARE NOT SERIOUS ACTORS WHEN IT COMES TO POLICY OR LEGISLATION??!! Uygur of all people should know that!...

...and I stumbled across this video form Leeja Miller, who gives us a fairly comprehensive history lesson on The Sainted Ronnie R (NSFW/H)...good job to tell the TRUE story of Linda Taylor, the “welfare queen” Reagan kept referring to; Taylor actually scammed about $8K instead of $150 per year as Miller points out...so many reasons to detest Reagan, one of which being the fact that, though he played an amiable dunce on TV, he was also a willful stupendous liar about government entitlements and a whole range of other subjects...one of my more infamous Reagan memories (there are many) is what happened to the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry for the mentally ill (just referred to as Byberry for short, named for a road near the facility)...as if by magic, the place closed and a whole bunch of people needing treatment ended up on the street, and yes, this happened during Reagan’s term in 1987 (it was officially closed by 1990...more here...I’ll have to keep an eye out for more content from Miller)...



...and I’m probably overloading everybody with policy stuff with these clips, but maybe you can pass the time watching them on (hopefully) the beach or if you’re able to get some much-needed-for-us-all down time elsewhere over the next few days...here is another long but important video from Second Thought aptly titled “The Myth of Capitalist Peace” (“Violence doesn’t just go away with free trade; it turns inward” indeed)...



...and for a bit of humor (arguably I guess), The Daily Show asks “When Was America Last Great?” (kind of sad and telling that we have to think about the answer, truth be told)...



...and I can think of absolutely no other reason to include this except for Kissinger’s birthday...



(And by the way, speaking of song parodies, I think the following should be remembered here.)

...and as luck would have it, Kissinger’s birthday falls on the same day that we fete this guy also, who I’m sure couldn’t be more diametrically opposed politically...I can only think of this tune above all others from his library when I consider the shameful legacy of “the good doctor” (a cartoon image of Kissinger shows up for a second).