Late Evening Coffee

Glenn Beck's neighbors in New Canaan ,Connecticut are squawking that he wants to raise the fences around his multi-million dollar home to eight feet in violation of the local zoning rules. I humbly suggest they just burn the home down as part of urban renewal. Beck, Newt Gingrich, and the whole crew of death panelists have targeted medical ethicist and oncologist Ezekial Emmanuel as the alleged mastermind of this fiendish plot. Emmanuel doesn't own a television and loathes the internet so he went off on vacation to Italy to do some mountain hiking. Glenn Beck, taking a page out of the Sarah Palin disabled relative handbook,cited his sister who suffers from cerebral palsy as one of those Emmanuel would euthanize. The problem here is that Emmnual's sister also has cerebral palsy.

If you read an account of his career in Time magazine, he is almost the opposite of who he has been portrayed--someone who has actively opposed euthanasia and is one of the leading ethicists about truly complex medical matters. Mr. Nazi is in fact an Israeli-American citizen. What's troubling about this is not just the falsehoods but the fact that the target of these attacks is simply the opposite person his critics portray.

The celebration of ignorance has become the hallmark of Glenn Beck. He warned his viewers that the wildly successful cash-for-clunkers program will enable the government to invade your computer. Something--as the way the program is designed--would be virtually impossible.

Not to be outdone, a Republican congressman from Georgia claims Nancy Pelosi wants to declare martial law. This would as interesting a constitutional turn as Dick Cheney ordering the military to invade Buffalo. Of course, Cheney actually wanted to do just that. Where were the Republicans when the Bush Administration threatened Congress they would have to declare martial law if the bank TARP funds were not approved? When the financial system collapsed in the fall, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson visited the Hill and told both the Senate and House banking committees that the situation was so dire martial law would have to be declared. At least now maybe Obama will get around to it.

Obama still hasn't killed Stephen Hawkings. In fact today he awarded him the Medal of Freedom. The claims that the British medical system would terminate someone like Stephen Hawkings provoked the scientist to come out in full-throated support of the UK Health System, which he credits as having prolonged his life. American attacks against foreign health care systems in the current debate have provoked interesting backlashes. Canada conducted its own poll about their system and found that between 80-90% give it high ratings. More pointedly, a poll of Canadians revealed that the most important historical figure in the country was in fact the man who invented the national health system.

More odd news. Next year over 6 million Americans will be leaving the country to seek medical treatment abroad--something we haven't heard in the so-called health debate. The figure is expected to grow in the years ahead. likewise, hundreds of thousands of Americans live abroad because of they have pre-existing conditions and can not get health insurance in America.

The Ed Show had a disturbing segment on the Southern Poverty Law Center's report on the rise of the militia movement. The panel included former Rep. Istook, now at the Heritage Foundation, who did the moral equivalence line that there exist kooks on both sides--Left and right. He made sure to throw in the Unabomber and the anarchist demonstrations against the World Bank. He said one constituent of his threatened him and was prosecuted--the man wanted marijuana decriminalized. The editor of the Huffington Post was also strange in saying that Barack Obama helped create the situation because of the bank bailouts and the stimulus pacakage didn't create a sense of fairness. And Ed went wimpy by asking the White House correspondent if there was anything the White House can do to calm these people. The entire panel just minimized the report and simply wrote off these people as a small fringe element.

Stay tuned folks because it's only going to get worst and the media is going to be oblivious until too late. I have been writing about the birthers since I began this blog. Only in the last month has the so-called corporate media paid any attention to this group and their conspiracy theory. The fact that a plurality of Republicans believe them should be alarming. What was interesting about the ED Show was the absence of any discussion about the report's finding that the militia ideology has become mainstream with the Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and others. That was what they found troubling. Of course, none of this was mentioned.