Wow.
Steve Benson wasn’t always a left-wing nutter. Way back when, he would take swipes at everyone, not just the right. He once drew Sen. Kennedy in a car, underwater, saying “Bork would relegate women to the back seat.” He also once drew a huge rocking chair and huge cowboy boots, occupied by a miniature Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen, respectively – apparently he felt they couldn’t fill the JFK+LBJ roles.
But you could tell Steve didn’t exactly love the right, either. In April of 1987 he accused the Marines of leaking secrets from the US Embassy in Moscow. To the tune of the Marine Corps Hymn, from his collection Back at the Barb-B-Que:
From the halls of our own embassy, to the girls of the KGB
We pass our country’s secrets to break the monotony
first to let them bug our offices, and to steal the codes they’ve seen
you had better change the guard tonight – he’s a United States Marine!
He left Phoenix for Seattle, then came back shortly thereafter. Ever since then, he’s been a bit off-kilter – Bush and the Right have been his favorite targets since then. I’ve not enjoyed the change, and gladly welcomed Cox & Forkum as a replacement for his left-wing lunacy.
Here’s another reason to thank God for coffee.
Drinking coffee might help prevent liver cirrhosis among heavy drinkers, according to a study published Monday by Kaiser Permanente Oakland.
“For heavy drinkers, the more coffee they drank, they less likely they were to get the diagnosis of cirrhosis,” said Dr. Arthur Klatsky, an investigator with Kaiser’s Division of Research and lead author of the study.
Researchers followed more than 125,000 Northern California Kaiser members between 1978 and 1985. Participants, none of whom had liver disease at the outset, filled out a questionnaire that included their alcohol, coffee and tea-drinking habits.
By the end of 2001, 330 participants had been diagnosed with liver disease, and of those, 199 had alcohol-related cirrhosis.
Those who drank one cup of coffee per day were on average 20 percent less likely to have cirrhosis, despite heavy drinking. Drinking two to four cups of coffee reduced risk by 40 percent.
I’m not a heavy drinker, but I do have (and make) wine from time to time. It’s nice to know that, like all other things God has made, the use of caffeine and alcohol as He intended has positive effects. Of course, you could claim that about marijuana, but I don’t think God intended hemp to be used for its intoxicating effects. He probably intended it for use as rope, like we originally used it for.