Editorials and cartoons

Robert Herold wrote a recent "Inlander" editorial regarding the kind of president we would have should this country elect Governor Bush to the White House by 2000. There were clear warnings of who GW really is as he talked to a host of a talk show that Herold detailed at length. GW mocking a convicted killer, Karla Faye Tucker and in the words of the talk show host, had simply discarded her as a human being. Well now, doesn't that really reveal GW's lack of sense of humanity? His one assured success on the political stage has been to always discard his fellow Americans as human beings except when he needs them for votes and photo ops as well as stage managed "town hall meetings." Another factor of GW's lack of sense of humanity has been found in Gary Crooks, "Smart Bombs." Here is an example: An estimated 18,000 people die prematurely each year because they don't have health insurance, but the president can say, as he did last week, "People have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." However, GW turned power over to Veep Cheney to get some troubling polyps removed last week, at taxpayers' expense. How many people who are so poor that they can't afford health insurance have the luxury that GW has of getting the best health care that taxpayers provide through an "emergency room" treatment of cancer? Besides that, doctors aren't likely to misdiagnose the president who is personally wealthy and politically well-connected as they just might lesser folks. I know for myself that they misdiagnosed my COPD when I told them that no, I don't smoke. I can understand where Crooks comes from and yeah, at the time I developed COPD and was misdiagnosed, believe it or not, I did have a paltry insurance. It didn't do me any good as far as getting good health care is concerned.

Next, Cal Thomas v David Sarasohn on Senator David Vitter, a family values Republican with a penchant for prostitutes. Mr. Thomas went to great lengths calling it "sad" about the hypocrisy but only Sarasohn had the guts to call a spade a spade. One gets the impression about Thomas that he would defend if he could Senator Vitter, who was published as saying "God has forgiven him" for his particular sexual picadellos. But as Sarasohn noted, Vitters wanted Clinton removed from office as a man unfit to govern because of his affair with an intern. What's "sad?" Vitters figures "God forgave him." Vitters should read his bible a bit more thoroughly. Probably not.

Finally, 23 July edition of the Spokesman-Review (where much of the above was published/republished); Dave Oliveria was discussing "Cruisers" a Stateline (Idaho/Washington border town) bar and grill catering to bikers. Seems one of the bikers was missing a blow up doll. Published in the Roundtable opinion page, Glenn McCoy attacking Senator (and presidential wannabe) Barak Obama's sex ed agenda. McCoy must have stolen the blow up doll from the bikers at Stateline to give to Senator Obama for his sex ed plans for kindergarten kids. The juxtaposition of the editorial page "cartoon" and Dave Oliveria's discussion of events at "Cruisers" was just too good to pass up.