Edwards: President & Congress Don’t Like Govt Funded Health Care? Then Take It Away From Them

Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan – CNN.com:

“I’m glad that, today, the architect of the 1993 plan has another care proposal — and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I’m flattered,” said Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina. “The lesson Senator Clinton seems to have learned from her experience with health care is, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ I learned a very different lesson from decades of fighting powerful interests — you can never join ’em, you just have to beat ’em.”

Edwards’ proposal would cut off health care for the president, Congress and all political appointees in mid 2009, if a universal health care plan for all Americans has not been passed by then.

I’m getting to like this Edwards guy. I mean, he’s taking an old Kucinich plank — that all Americans should get the government-funded single-payer health care that politicians enjoy, and given it a fighting twist.

I still support Kucinich over Edwards but I think Edwards would be better than most of the others. (Except maybe Gravel.)

Song of Seikilos

I’ve fallen in love with this song. It’s the oldest complete musical composition known. (There are older fragments but this is the oldest complete song.) It’s an epitaph on a gravestone, about 2000 years old.

Prefacing the tune are the words: “I am a tombstone, an icon. Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance.”

The translation Wikipedia gives, which is pretty good as far as my Greek can tell after all these years since school, is:

Hoson zes, phainou
Meden holos su lupou;
Pros oligon esti to zen
To telos ho chronos apaitei
While you live, shine
Don’t suffer anything at all;
Life exists only a short while
And time demands its toll.

I first found out about it though on the Amaranth publishing site, which has a really haunting midi of the song.

Via the Wikipedia article I found a good mp3 of the song (including singing), and a youtube video of a fellow performing it on a harp. I tried to learn how to play it on my ukulele (and sing along). After a lot of attempts I never got one without significant mistakes, so I posted one with significant mistakes as a response on youtube. Here ’tis.

Bush has bad day at Sydney Opera House – Yahoo! News

Bush has bad day at Sydney Opera House – Yahoo! News:

This is a real nostalgia piece. Remember when the worst thing you could say about Bush was that he was a bumbling idiot who couldn’t pronounce hard words? Before the torture, the unnecessary wars, the destruction of civil liberties, the executive-branch power grabs, the secret wiretapping of citizens, the extratordinary renditions, Guantanamo, nuclear threats against Iran?

Man, those were the days.

“Austrian” troops instead of “Australian” troops — what a hoot!