Keeping us safe from the horrors of free expression

The Simpsons tore the administration and the media a new one for their 400th episode last night:

Friends, the press and the government are in bed together in an embrace so intimate and wrong, they could spoon on a twin mattress and still have room for Ted Koppel. Journalists used to questions the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call the 6:00 News. Demand more of your government. Demand more of your press.

Commentator Kent Brockman went even further, revealing that the FOX network -- which has carried The Simpsons for all 400 episodes -- deliberately runs shows that will earn fines to funnel money through the FCC to the Republican Party.

Of course, Brockman couldn't bring himself to turn down the 50% raise to keep his mouth shut.

Earlier, Homer spilled a hot cup of coffee on Brockman, prompting the anchorman to blurt out "a word so vile it should only be uttered by Satan himself while sitting on the toilet." Asked why he was protesting, Ned Flanders replied, "Imploring people I never met to pressure a government with better things to do to punish a man who meant no harm for something nobody even saw."

Go watch.

Houston council candidate sued by his printer

I give Houston's most diminutive blogger a rough time, but in her capacity as MSM reporter she is quite often ahead of the curve the rest of us lowly keyboarders sit behind. She breaks this hilarious news:

Roy Morales, who is in the run-off race for City Council at large seat against Melissa Noriega, is being sued by a fellow Republican. And not just any Republican, he's being sued by the Bush/Cheney sign guy! Michael Franks, who is a big time R party printer for a gaggle of politicos, printed $1,700 worth of signs for Roy's LAST council campaign. A loss and a new election cycle later, Morales still hasn't paid him! At least according to court documents. There's a second suit filed as well, for alledged broken promise of giving Franks additional business. The amounts are small, both suits are less than $5,000 so they are in small claims court. I called the Morales campaign today, and its answer was: "What Lawsuit? We have no idea what you're talking about." Roy's campaign manager says neither he nor Morales had any idea what I'm talking about. The good news is, Roy and you can read the front pages of the lawsuits here, on my blog!

That this suit was filed in the middle of the runoff campaign season emphasizes how hapless the GOP is when it comes to municipal elections here.

Melissa Noriega is the only choice for my good neighbors (and the not-so-good ones, too).

E Howard Hunt said LBJ did it

But then denied it again before he died. Via Easter Lemming, Rolling Stone has the last confessions of E. Howard Hunt, which reveal more of the perpetually-rumored plot to assassinate JFK, which has also been reignited in the MSM recently ...

One evening in Eureka, over a barbecue meal, St. John (Hunt's son) explains how he first came to suspect that his father might somehow be involved in the Kennedy assassination. "Around 1975, I was in a phone booth in Maryland somewhere, when I saw a poster on a telephone pole about who killed JFK, and it had a picture of the three tramps. I saw that picture and I fucking -- like a cartoon character, my jaw dropped, my eyes popped out of my head, and smoke came out of my ears. It looks like my dad. There's nobody that has all those same facial features. People say it's not him. He's said it's not him. But I'm his son, and I've got a gut feeling."

He chews his sandwich. "And then, like an epiphany, I remember '63, and my dad being gone, and my mom telling me that he was on a business trip to Dallas. I've tried to convince myself that's some kind of false memory, that I'm just nuts, that it's something I heard years later. But, I mean, his alibi for that day is that he was at home with his family. I remember I was in the fifth grade. We were at recess. I was playing on the merry-go-round. We were called in and told to go home, because the president had been killed. And I remember going home. But I don't remember my dad being there. I have no recollection of him being there. And then he has this whole thing about shopping for Chinese food with my mother that day, so that they could cook a meal together." His father testified to this, in court, on more than one occasion, saying that he and his wife often cooked meals together.

St. John pauses and leans forward. "Well," he says, "I can tell you that's just the biggest load of crap in the fucking world. He was always looking at things like he was writing a novel; everything had to be just so glamorous and so exciting. He couldn't even be bothered with his children. That's not glamorous. James Bond doesn't have children. So my dad in the kitchen? Chopping vegetables with his wife? I'm so sorry, but that would never happen. Ever. That fucker never did jack-squat like that. Ever."

And this:

That time in Miami, with Saint (St. John) by his bed and disease eating away at him and him thinking he's six months away from death, E. Howard finally put pen to paper and started writing. Saint had been working toward this moment for a long while, and now it was going to happen. He got his father an A&W diet root beer, then sat down in the old man's wheelchair and waited.

E. Howard scribbled the initials "LBJ," standing for Kennedy's ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under "LBJ," connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that's never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer's name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer's name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales' name, with a line, the framed words "French Gunman Grassy Knoll."

So there it was, according to E. Howard Hunt. LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had long been speculated upon. But now E. Howard was saying that's the way it was. And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only shooter in Dallas. There was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the Corsican Mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in other assassination theories.

The Stone's political blog National Affairs Daily continues the conversation. This site reveals the assassination as a mob plot; it is maintained by the retired G-man I had crawfish with one afternoon in Beaumont. I thought there was a post somewhere in the archives about this but I can't find it. Will have to recreate it if this business gets any more traction.

Sunday Funnies

By a nose, at the wire

Calvin Borel, riding Street Sense (right) looks at Robby Albarado, aboard Curlin, as the two horses cross the finish line at the Preakness Stakes today. Curlin caught the Kentucky Derby winner at the wire to win.

In the end it was just two riders from Cajun country barreling down the stretch. Stride after stride, from the sixteenth pole, the two horses traded the lead, and when they hit the line together, Curlin bobbed his head in front when it counted most.

The day couldn't have been any more dramatic for Albarado, 33, of Lafayette, La., who won the first Triple Crown race of his career.

Two races before the Preakness, he fell off his mount, Einstein, in the Dixie turf stakes after stumbling over a fallen horse in front of him. The fallen horse, Mending Fences, suffered a broken ankle and was euthanized on the track.

Albarado walked away uninjured from the accident, but when the gate opened for the Preakness, he almost had another mishap.

Curlin stumbled briefly before Albarado righted him and worked hard to get involved in the race. Asked if his heart sank when he saw Curlin's front knees buckle at the start, winning trainer Steve Asmussen said, "Probably a little bit more than a little." ...

Borel, who grew up in St. Martin Parish, La., turned to Albarado just as they crossed the finish line and told his rival, "You got me," Albarado said.

"I had no idea where [Street Sense] was, but I thought he'd be coming," Albarado said. "Street Sense flew right on by me, but I got [Curlin] off his left lead and went and got him."

"I thought it was all over when I got by Hard Spun turning for home," Borel said. "I thought he was just going to gallop, but things happen. He just got to gawking 40 yards from home and he just got outrun."

Moore v. Thompson (and TIME vs. the Right)

TIME is really pissing off the Right lately (or at least this little guy, anyway).

A lengthy interview with Al Gore and an excerpt from his new book, and now this Q&A with Michael Moore about his new film SiCKO, on the health care and pharmaceutical ripoff industries:

TIME: With Sicko, do you think you picked an easy target? After all, you can’t find a whole lot of people who are happy with their HMO.

Michael Moore: This film does cut across party lines. Everybody gets sick; everybody has had a problem with insurance or the prescription drugs they’re supposed to be taking or an elderly parent who needs care. On the surface, it does seem that the only people who are going to be upset are the executives of insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

TIME: So if there’s no argument that the system is broken, why use your energies to start one?

Michael Moore: Because what’s even more broken is the fact that our Congress and White House are bought and paid for by these two industries, which rival the oil industry in terms of money and influence. They have a vested interest in maintaining their control. But they’re not dumb. They know which way the wind is blowing and that this is the No. 1 domestic issue with Americans. Their job now is to try to control it so that universal health care is run through them, so that they can still skim the money, make the obscene profits and keep their investors happy.

TIME: Of the declared presidential candidates, down to the Dennis Kucinich level, say, who do you think has the best health-care plan? Including Kucinich? We could include him.

Michael Moore: Then Kucinich, but he doesn’t go far enough. He supports what he’s calling a single- payer nonprofit plan, but from my read, it would still allow [private] entities to control things, as opposed to the government. What’s wrong with the government? The right wing and the G.O.P. have done a wonderful job brainwashing people that government doesn’t work, and then, as Al Franken says, they get elected and proceed to prove the point. [Laughs.]

TIME: So you think Washington could handle a program this big?

Michael Moore: Ask anyone on Social Security if their check comes on time every month. Like clockwork. And it comes through the so-called dilapidated U.S. mail. My dad’s check literally will come on the same day every month. The government has been quite good and efficient at creating a number of systems. If I tell people the administrative costs for a private health plan —advertising, p.r., executive pay —are 20% and ask them what Medicare’s administrative costs are, they’ll guess 50%, 60%. The fact is, for Medicare/ Medicaid, it’s 3%. The last figure I read for Canada’s [government] system is 1.7%.

TIME: Your movie paints an almost utopian picture of the Canadian system. You do show some American critics arguing that there can be long waits for treatments north of the border, and you refute them simply by interviewing a handful of happy, satisfied Canadians. Pretty unscientific, no?

Michael Moore: Canadians as a whole are pretty happy with their system. Yes, it’s a flawed system, and the main flaw is that it’s underfunded. The [in-depth] answers exist in articles and essays, and I’ll have them up on my website.

TIME: You also speak rhapsodically about the French and Cuban systems and travel to Cuba, where you interview Che Guevara’s daughter. France, Cuba, Che. Are you going out of your way to annoy the right?

Michael Moore: I give people more credit than the media and the political machine running this country do. The story line is: France, bad; France, cowards. What crime did France commit? We wouldn’t have had this country without their support in the Revolution. They gave us that statue that sits out in New York Harbor. They responded immediately after 9/11. And they remain eternally grateful for what we did during World War II.

As for Cuba, yes, when I’ve got a film crew there, they’re going to show us their best. But there’s a reason the World Health Organization ranks their health-care system [among] the best in the Third World and that people from Latin America come there for their health care. There’s also a reason Cubans live on average a month longer than we do. I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, “C’mon, we’re the United States! If they can do this, we can do it.”

TIME: What was the hardest thing about making this movie?

Michael Moore: Getting insurance. How do you convince an insurance company to insure a film about insurance? I finally found this guy who’s got a little company out in Kansas City. I think he’s the only Democrat who owns an insurance company.

TIME: Do you think people will accuse the movie of inaccuracy?

Michael Moore: I offered $10,000 to anybody who could find a single fact in Fahrenheit 9/11 that was wrong.

TIME: Have you had to pay anything?

Michael Moore: No, of course not. Every fact in my films is true. And yet how often do I have to read over and over again about supposed falsehoods? The opinions in the film are mine. They may not be true, but I think they are.

After Moore challenged GOP presidential wannabe Fred "Law and Order" Thompson to a debate, Thompson responded with a YouTube video that had the conservative blogosphere in an orgasmic frenzy.

Moore's response was a straight one-liner: "Why would a potential presidential candidate provide photographic evidence of himself committing a felony?"

That's a law-and-order Republican for you.

McCain still won't get my vote

... even though he apparently speaks for me:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hasn't spent much time in the Capitol this year as he seeks the GOP presidential nomination. But one of his rare appearances this week provided a pretty salty exchange with a fellow Republican.

During a meeting Thursday on immigration legislation, McCain and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) got into a shouting match when Cornyn started voicing concerns about the number of judicial appeals that illegal immigrants could receive, according to multiple sources -- both Democrats and Republicans -- who heard firsthand accounts of the exchange from lawmakers who were in the room.

At a bipartisan gathering in an ornate meeting room just off the Senate floor, McCain complained that Cornyn was raising petty objections to a compromise plan being worked out between Senate Republicans and Democrats and the White House. He used a curse word associated with chickens and accused Cornyn of raising the issue just to torpedo a deal.

Things got really heated when Cornyn accused McCain of being too busy campaigning for president to take part in the negotiations, which have gone on for months behind closed doors. "Wait a second here," Cornyn said to McCain. "I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line."

McCain, a former Navy pilot, then used language more accustomed to sailors (not to mention the current vice president, who made news a few years back after a verbal encounter with Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont).

"[Expletive] you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room," shouted McCain at Cornyn. McCain helped craft a bill in 2006 that passed the Senate but couldn't be compromised with a House bill that was much tougher on illegal immigrants.

Me to you too, Senator Box Turtle. With all the love in the world.