Our July 3 Paper, Free and Fully Readable in Your Browser

Friday, July 17, 2009 — We’re a bit perplexed ourselves. This should have been posted three weeks ago. [July 26.]This paper should have been posted July 17. In fact, we didn’t get it posted until late on Sunday, July 26.

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From the Fortnightly Rant:

Thank God for good old American self-esteem. Without that, the World Health Organization’s ranking of our health care system behind 36 other countries — including Costa Rica, whose annual income per capita is $5,800 — might be kind of embarrassing.

The U.S. health care system really is outstanding in many ways. Only in America, for example, would eighteen year-old Jessica Terry of Sammamish, Washington, be able to diagnose her own illness …


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From News Briefs:

Jail to the Chief’s Minions!

Well, finally! Someone who was involved in the 2000 Presidential election has gone to jail. Mary B. McCarty, 54, a former Palm Beach County Commissioner, will spend the next 42 months in the can.

During the 2000 charade, McCarty permitted GOP lawyers to use her office in their successful bid to pervert democracy. Sadly, though, that’s not why she’s going to the Big House. According to news reports, during the period while she was selling out democracy, she was also on the take from people and corporations doing business with the county …


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From News Briefs:

James Von Brunn: Former Granite Stater

The archived website of James von Brunn, the octogenarian charged with killing a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10, suggests that in addition to being a virulently anti-Semitic crazy person, von Brunn is a full-blown member of The Greatest Generation® by virtue of PT Boat service in WW II (“The Big One”), a member of the high-IQ society Mensa, and the holder of a Bachelor of Science in … ta daa — Journalism! He’s now in competition with Benito Mussolini for Worst Ex-Journalist Ever.

If a letter by one Gail Chadwick, published in the June 12 issue of the Washington Post, is accurate, von Brunn is also a former resident of Lebanon, New Hampshire …


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From Rodman Philbrick’s Moving Pictures:

Denzel Washington must have a portrait aging in an attic somewhere. Even padded and costumed to look like a paunchy schlub, he doesn’t remotely resemble a dude in his mid-fifties. Maybe it’s all that clean living as a devout Pentecostal, or maybe it’s just the gift of youthful DNA. Whatever the source, Mr. Washington’s inability to look shopworn and overweight could be to blame for his less-than-riveting performance in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Or maybe it’s just this reviewer’s twisted view that he’d have been better cast in the villain role occupied by John Travolta …


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From William Marvel’s Northcounrty Chronicle:

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts recently developed a means of testing arsenic content on the surface of the ground, and in an interesting collateral discovery they determined that the soil in “Civil War cemeteries” provides some of the most potent quantities of the poison. Apparently the embalming fluid of that era consisted chiefly of arsenic, which permeates the vicinity of the grave …


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From Mash Notes, Hate Mail, & Other Correspondence:

Our Socialist Armed Forces
To The Editor:
I’m tired of hearing the epithet “socialism” bandied about in an attempt to frighten folks who might otherwise agree that as citizens of the richest country on earth we all deserve the best basic health care available. Whether you label it a “public option” or “single payer,” we are the only western, industrialised nation that does not provide its taxpayers with universal health care.


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From Mash Notes, Hate Mail, & Other Correspondence:

“You Brought Them Into the World”
To the Editors:
Whenever the “Anti-Pregnancy Patrol” and “Anti-Choice” leagues complain about those on welfare and in our prisons and how we’d be better off without them, or that they should have never been born, why not use the rejoinder, “You brought them into the world!”


From Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide:

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June 29:
2006—”It was not always certain,” says George W. Bush, “that the U.S. and America would have a close relationship.”
1989—The Washington Times reports that high officials in the Reagan & Bush administrations are under investigation for involvement in a homosexual prostitution ring. The story quickly and conveniently evaporates.
1987—“We don’t care,” declares Reagan administration Attorney General Ed “Meese is a Pig” Meese, “about the political or ideological allegiances of a prospective judge.” His audience bursts out laughing.

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