They’re Playing Our Song

I see you checkin’ me
Out on the dance floor
I know you want me boy, but you got something I want more
See, these are troubled times
A bad economy
I got some health issues, and medicine, well it ain’t free

I don’t care about your diamond rings
I don’t need none of those fancy things
If you really wanna be my man
Boy, you gotta put me on your health care plan!

Let’s start a family
And you can be the boss
Just prove to me that you’ve got Aetna, Kaiser, or Blue Cross
I can’t afford a doctor
I need your MDC
When I get sick all I can do is go to WebMD
Well you don’t gotta kiss me
And I don’t need no hugs
Just gotta get a discount when I need prescription drugs!
I need a flu shot baby
I got a tricky knee
And I ain’t seen a dentist since September of two-thousand-three

I don’t care about your diamond rings
I don’t need none of those fancy things
If you really wanna be my man
Just let me get all up in your health-care plan

Wanna be my dependent, girl? / What you got? / I’m gonna break it down…

I hear you say you love me
I wanna know fo’ sho’
You gotta prove it ‘fore I put you on my PPO
‘Cuz my co-pays are modest
And girl you know that’s true
My pre-existing condition is I’m in love wit’ you
My coverage is extensive
They pin my policy
You want some Lasik, baby, I got full optometry
Shi-at-su massage—all day for you’n’me
Don’t sweat the payments, girl, it’s covered ‘cuz it’s therapy

Aaa-oooh! How much is your deductible / How much is your deductible / How much…
Want some acupuncture baby? How ‘bout podiatry? I’ll get you braces, girl…

The Bells Are Ringin’ Out on Christmas Day

Nothing says peace on earth and goodwill toward men like a Pogues song.

Running With the Pack

Caveat, that friend of all things four-legged (and two-legged) has added the Proprietor of this site to the ever-growing list of Superior Scribblers. She also says some preposterously nice things about The Opinion Mill.

As instructed, I have added The Opinion Mill to the roll call of history, and now I share with joy with five other worthy scribes:

Xpatriated Texan, aka Thurman “No Relation” Hart, who reconciles faith, politics and activism.

The Rix Mix, home of New Jersey’s most notable dj and seaside poet.

The Center of NJ Life, which is the same thing as saying the center of the universe. Albeit with traffic jams.

The One True Tami, because we have to weed out all the fake ones.

Blog-Sothoth, because where else can you find H.P. Lovecraft crossed with The Wire?

And, as lagniappe, here’s Verite Parlant and the view from New Orleans by way of New Jersey by way of New Orleans.

Refute Ben Stein’s B.S.

Some very clever people out there have figured out a way to add lie-correcting subtitles to Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the creationist propaganda film narrated by professional wingnut Ben Stein.

I wonder if a similar program is available for TV news and squawk shows?

Credit Where Due

I’ll always be proud to say I was one of the first to be hoodwinked by the most deadpan site in Blogitania.

Pre-Post-Mortem

My apologies. A crazed week leading to an even more crazed weekend has cut into my blogging time and scotched this week’s edition of Weekend Bookchat.

Meanwhile, as you know, it is an ongoing endeavor at The Opinion Mill to gauge the extent to which conservatism can be classified as a legitimate political philosophy, as opposed to a tax-scam for the wealthy, or a veneer of respectability for for Klansmen, religious kooks and corporate grifters. Here’s another blogger who’s thinking along the same lines andhere warns that while real political philosophies may die, cons will always be with us, and you can’t spell “conservative” without “con.”

But we are all smart people here, so I think we can take my point already, which is that into this decidedly conservative (by any rational measure you can name) American political environment came one William F. Buckley, to whine that it’s so hard being a conservative, it’s so lonely being a conservative, everyone is so impatient with conservatives, why can’t standing athwart history yelling Stop be an actual political philosophy instead of a mere child’s tantrum–and oh, p.s., which one of you nonwhite nonmales MOVED MY CHEESE?

Buckley, of course, had his list of prime cheese-moving suspects all laid out and ready:

NATIONAL REVIEW is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation.

Blah, blah, blah–what do I find so boring, so fatiguing about this?

Oh, right! It is essentially the same list of suspects conservatives are trying to haul up on charges TODAY. TODAY, 53 YEARS LATER. Except no one cares about the League of Women Voters anymore, so sub NOW in there; and Henry Steele who?–Well, anyway, Michael Moore is fat, Obama pals around with terrorists, professors are all dangeral, Reverend Wright is the real (not to say only) racist in this country, and won’t someone please think of Joe the Plumber?

I am telling you, leftybeans, you have all had amnesia. Every single piece of drivel you find in The Corner, every lulzy post at Bacon o’Playdough, every Goldsteinian meltdown and Instapunditious I-just-link, I-don’t-endorse oily oozy blob of propaganda, every Confederate Yankee conspiracy theory, every Patterician investigation of IP addresses and other ridiculous internet minutiae, springs from this half-a-century-ago source.

And that source is based upon one single, easily attacked premise: That white men in America are losing out on the American dream, and “those people”–be they queer, black, women, transgendered, latin@, disabled, or OMG all six at the same time!–are to blame for it. Thus must we stand athwart their lives and their bodies and yell, or beat into them, our message to STOP. Because what is history but the story of people?