brainrow

When Richard Nixon died in 1994, there were demonstrators outside his funeral.

I never cared much for Mr. Nixon, but the idea of protesters picketing a funeral just seemed disgusting. “He’s dead, you morons! It’s over!”

Oh, but that was a more innocent time, and I was young and idealistic. Now we know that it’s never over, and death is only another opportunity to pick a fight.

An anti-gay minister from Kansas has gotten himself a lot of publicity by traveling around the country and protesting outside funerals — including the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

James Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the den.

Nearly three weeks after James Brown’s funeral, the “Godfather of Soul” is yet to be buried, and his former partner is contesting his will in a bid to receive half of his estate.

An old-time rock-n-roll star makes a comeback.

The son of “the Big Bopper” has hired a forensic anthropologist to try to answer questions about how his father died in the 1959 plane crash that also took the lives of famous rock-and-rollers Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

Bush signs a law to evict a dead veteran from Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of a man convicted of murdering an elderly Hagerstown, Md., couple will be removed from Arlington National Cemetery as part of a bill signed into law by President Bush. …

The bill … requires the Secretary of the Army to remove the cremated ashes of Russell Wayne Wagner, who was convicted of murdering Daniel Davis, 84, and Wilda Davis, 80, in 1994. …

An Army private who served during the Vietnam War and was honorably discharged in 1972, Wagner was eligible for parole at the time of his death, which made him eligible for an Arlington service. He was buried with honors in August 2005.

Even in Rome:

The doors at the neighborhood church remained firmly shut … while mourners stood on the square outside at a lay funeral for a paralyzed man who had a doctor disconnect his respirator. Hundreds kissed his coffin and tossed flowers on it.

The Roman Catholic Church denied Piergiorgio Welby a religious ceremony on the grounds that he sought to end his own life…

When I was young, the old folks would sometimes scold me about goofing off and say, “There’ll be rest enough in the grave!” Hah!

Many years ago, in their fake “Letters to the Editor” column, National Lampoon ran an irate letter claiming that modern medicine was a fraud designed to keep doctors’ fees high, that the human body was not a complex system of delicate organs, but “solid clean through like a baked potato,” and that the writer’s son needed surgery, which he would do himself “and save a bundle.”

My friends and I thought it was hilarious. Nobody could possibly be that stupid. But I’m starting to think that our current Iraq war was planned by the baked potato man.

Via Crooks and Liars, Larry Johnson reviews our options in Iraq:

We have four basic choices confronting us in Iraq:

1. Fight the Sunni insurgents (there are at least 15 separate groups) and risk alienating the Saudis, the Jordanians, and the Turks.
2. Fight the Shia insurgents/militia, which means we will engage 60% of Iraq’s population (and strengthen the hand of Shia-led Iran).
3. Fight both the Sunni and Shia and put ourselves in the middle of the civil war.
4. Retire from Iraq and let the Sunni and Shia sort things out among their various sectarian factions.

There really are no other logical options.  It looks like Bush chose Option 3.

Midway through an operation by the baked potato man, even the greatest surgeon on earth couldn’t find a “way forward” with a positive outcome.