There's Backwards and there's . . .

BurkeWords

Monday, January 20, 1998

(I'm talking about a bullet.)

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else get the feeling that when they finally get around to exhuming Ron Brown, his head will be missing?

For that matter, does anyone else think that the New York Times and Washington Post will cite this as lack of proof that anything unusual happened to the former Commerce Secretary.

Will Mike McCurry blame it all on "hate radio"?

I'd love to know what kind of odds Vegas would put on such a bet, but before you laugh it off, remember that things, as small as photographs and as large of bullet-ridden but otherwise-solid doors, just happen to walk away with they're associated with the Clinton administration. In the relatively short time that Bill Clinton has been our President, two close associates (and one might add "friends") have died violent deaths, Ron Brown and Vince Foster. In both cases, X-rays and photos have disappeared from the case files.

But even stranger, in both cases, evidence suggests that sloppy investigative work had been done, and there are many more questions that answers, and one or both might have met with foul play before their bodies were found. But "friend" Clinton doesn't seem to care. Apologists claim that fringe groups are trying to discredit Clinton. Nonsense, many people are just interested in the truth. And the truth is that there is nothing that suggests President Clinton had anything to do with either of their deaths...

...except his reluctance to want to know the truth. Or is he afraid of the truth that will be found?

At this point in time, the head of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's forensic photography unit and three senior officials have gone on record saying that the investigation into Ron Brown's death was mishandled. At the very least, an autopsy should have been performed to discover what caused the hole in Brown's head. All procedures and guidelines state that an autopsy in Brown's case was mandatory and could not have been dismissed out of hand as caused by flying debris.

The mainstream media still ignores Brown's death as old news and dismisses all interested in the truth as either conspiracy nuts or right-wing Clinton bashers. I guess that makes Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Maxine Waters, and even former NYC Mayor Ed Koch and radio hosts Lynn Samuels and Dick Gregory "conspiracy nuts" because they certainly don't fit into the other group.

If anything, it's amazing the number of people from all parts of the political spectrum that have signed on to the call to exhume Brown's body and perform the belated autopsy and get to the truth.

Which, of course, will probably be that Ron Brown actually committed suicide before causing that plane to crash.

The Lunar Prospector spacecraft currently in orbit about the Moon will eventually crash into its surface when its job is complete. When it does, it will take with it to the surface an ounce of the ashes from the remains of Gene Shoemaker, a planetary scientist involved with NASA since the Apollo days.

A fitting tribute, right?

Wrong, according to the President of the Navajo Nation. Abert Hale claims that his people hold the Moon to be a sacred object and therefore NASA was insensitive to bury someone on one of their religious symbols.

This one is just too crazy to be believed. Exact that NASA actually apologized.

Isn't Mother Earth sacred to the Navajo? Should we stop burying people in the ground here? Or should we tell the Russians and everyone else on the planet, don't go to the Moon, you'll make the Indians unhappy.

Get over it.

For the first time, a sitting President has given sworn testimony in a case involving the First Genitalia. I shall endeavor to treat this matter with all the respect it deserves.

Attorneys from both sides of the case are subject to gag orders from the judge, which left James Carville free to speak his mind on the Sunday news show circuit. Oh, joy.

In this sensitive case revolving about the issue of whether the President exposed his private parts, nothing has leaked out yet. And for everyone's sake, let's hope it stays that way. It's a hard enough case to argue without worrying about premature eruptions from the media.

To be serious, the Presidential spin machine has always been of the opinion, "So what? Big deal." Now it is a big deal. He's given sworn testimony, and if he lies, and it can be proven to be a lie, that's perjury.

To make matters worse for the President, Jones's attorney will seek to establish a pattern of sexual harassment. The President can come clean about everything and still deny Jones's story, but only at great embarassment. The alternative is to deny everything and watch as everyone from Gennifer Flowers to Danny Ferguson are brought forward to testify. The very fact that the President has "bimbo insurance" paying his legal bills seems to indicate that they're may be something to some of these allegations.

Considering the President's actions this weekend -- his schedule released to the press included only his radio address and not his deposition, and somehow a dumpster and a tour bus appeared in the vicinity of his lawyer's office, obscuring many camera angles -- the President looks like he prefers to hide and hope he isn't noticed. I wonder if he'll try to put a dumpster in the court room.

Sometimes, when I don't know what I want to write about, I cheat. I just read what Lars-Erik Nelson writes in the New York Daily News because I fairly certain that whatever he's talking about, he'll get it wrong.

Take the Medicare issue, for example. He gets on the GOP's case because the GOP favors choice. Now, I know Nelson favors "choice" when it comes to a different issue, but not when it comes to Grandma getting the medical care that she needs.

Under current regulations, anyone under the age of 65 can see whatever doctor they wish to. Anyone 65 and older covered by Medicare cannot. The government tells them what treatment they can have. They must go to a doctor who accepts Medicare to get their benefits, and if the care they receive isn't enough, they can't ask for more and pay for it out of their own pockets. That's right -- you are not allowed to buy any more treatment with your own money. You have to settle for the sub-standard treatment that Medicare provides.

There is a way around this, and this is what that noble, caring citizen Nelson encourages rickety, old seniors to do. Go to a doctor that doesn't accept Medicare patients and hasn't accepted one in the past two years. There will be no limit to the amount of care that you can get.

Here's the catch: find one. Find a doctor within, say, a 50-mile radius of your home that hasn't accepted a single Medicare patient in two years. Hey, Lars, does the phrase "undue burden" ring a bell? It should -- you'd be screaming it from the top of the Empire State Building if such restrictions were put on the availability of abortions.

But that's not what's important to Lars. Bashing the GOP and telling the world that they hate the elderly and want to kick them out in the street is more important, even if it is a bold-faced lie. On the other hand, maybe Lars isn't lying. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, I already said that he's just always wrong. Maybe he actually believes this stuff.

Just when you thought that the budget might be balanced in the face of the looming Medicare financial catastrophe, President Clinton wants to up the timetable. After taking credit for cutting the deficit because the Republicans insisted on trying to balance the budget (something the President saw no need to do until re-election time), he wants to spend any savings he may have made expanding an unsound program to include even more people than it can handle.

Oddly enough, you may recall that the President was the one warning not to start spending the decifit savings because they haven't been realized yet. On the other hand, I can see where the President is coming from: unemployed 55-year-olds need health care. And in two years, the President will be an unemployed 55-year-old.

Just a co-incidence, really.

Once again, the divisive mainstream media deliberately gets it wrong so it can sensationalize the news. It's been reported in the headlines and in the TV news blurbs that the GOP wants a "litmus test" on abortion. This is not true. There is a movement to vote on a litmus test regarding partial-birth abortions, a procedure that even some Democrats and staunch abortion-rights supporters call "too close to infanticide".

That correction made, let me go on record as being against the litmus test. Besides being fodder for the media mills who will spit it back in the faces of the House Republicans during this fall's campaign, it's just bad politics. As one politician pointed out, people who agree with us 80 per cent of the time are not our enemies."

And only the politics of inclusion will keep the House in Republican hands. Denying funds to Republican candidates is akin to handing the seat over to the Democrats. That doesn't mean that we have to change our opinions on abortion, but if the GOP loses the House, look for more looney legislation from the left finding its way to the President's desk.

Al Franken can come up with a thing or two that's funny, but usually he's devoid of humor. Granted, the basis for this opinion are his appearances on Saturday Night Live and maybe a stint on Politically Incorrect. Let's face it, I'd only watch Al in something that was free. Lord knows, I wouldn't pay for it.

Some time back, on some comedy awards show, Al gave a reading from a book of his that actually made the best-sellers list after previous attempts had bombed miserably. Instead of reading something funny about the title character of his book, he started into an essay about NASA saving money by sending senior citizens into space, a bit that he apparantly regurgitated from a really old SNL bit.

Well, it's finally going to happen. NASA will send a senior citizen up into space. John Glenn is going back into space after more than three decades planetside. He'll be 77 at the time of the launch.

No word yet on whether Glenn will spacewalk wearing only aluminum foil.

In a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day speech, Vice President Al Gore stated that he had an eighty-five million dollar scheme that would blow a hole in the deficit (to paraphrase a well-know quote) to pander to his constiuents on the eve of his presidential race.

He also criticized those who believed in King's words and call for a "color-blind society" as wanting to turn back the clock on civil rights. Gore believes that we should continue to judge blacks by their color (and not the content of their character) and have that be the basis for all decisions, like college enrollment, jobs, etc.

Gore believes that we have it all backwards, and the audience applauded him. Mr. Gore, it's not backwards, it's BurkeWords.