Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by 12/19/2014. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #827.  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012 and con­tained FTR #748.)

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE. 

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

COMMENT: Some lis­ten­ers may be aware that inves­tiga­tive reporter Daniel Hop­sick­er had open heart surgery some months ago, account­ing for his absence from the blo­gos­phere. For­tu­nate­ly, he is OK and still with us.

Daniel has been a long-time guest on For The Record, and his arti­cles and books are impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to the body of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sci­ence.

With Jeb Bush hav­ing final­ly announced his can­di­da­cy, we have more need than ever for Daniel’s efforts on the fas­cist, nar­co-sew­er that is Flori­da, the state gov­erned by the pre­sumed “45.”

We hope lis­ten­ers will join us in wish­ing Daniel a con­tin­ued recov­ery and good health. He is a true Amer­i­can hero and deserves your thoughts, prayers and well wish­es.

“A Muck­rak­er’s Life, Inter­rupt­ed” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Madcowprod.com; 2/4/2015.

. . . . Last Fall, in ear­ly Octo­ber, I near­ly died. Or, as they say in the South, “I liked to died.”

Months ear­li­er, I’d noticed some short­ness of breath at a speak­ing engage­ment in Los Ange­les, been diag­nosed with bron­chi­tis, and pre­scribed antibi­otics. What­ev­er was caus­ing the wor­ri­some short­ness of breath, I assumed, was lung-relat­ed.

It wasn’t. Dur­ing a sec­ond vis­it to the doc­tor for more antibi­otics, he uttered this fate­ful line, “I want you to get an EKG.”

Long sto­ry short, in ear­ly Octo­ber my younger broth­er (we both live with our aging-yet-age­less Mom) drove me to the Emer­gency Room at Venice Region­al Hos­pi­tal. When the triage nurse at the admit­tance desk asked why I was there, I replied, truth­ful­ly, “Because I can’t breath.”

It was as if some­one had pulled the fire alarm. I’d appar­ent­ly just said the mag­ic words and was swift­ly dragged to the front of the line with what felt like unseem­ly haste. Min­utes after sham­bling through the Emer­gency Room’s slid­ing-glass door, I’d been admit­ted, placed on a gur­ney, and wheeled down a long fea­ture­less cor­ri­dor to the car­diac care unit, where one week lat­er I under­went open heart surgery to replace a faulty aor­tic valve.

 Breath­ing: It’s sim­ple. In. Out. Repeat.

Lat­er I began to become dim­ly aware of what a near thing it had been. I had (lit­er­al­ly) not had a moment to lose, the sur­geon told me lat­er, when he swung by on his post-op rounds.

When the oper­a­tion began, they dis­cov­ered my heart was weak­er than they’d thought, he told me, and it had inhib­it­ed the anesthesiologist’s abil­i­ty to sedate me, out of fear it might stop my heart. Whoa!

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the date of the oper­a­tion, Octo­ber 13th, is famous as the date of the West­ern World’s first extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tion. On Fri­day the 13th of Octo­ber, 1307, hun­dreds of Knights Tem­plar were arrest­ed in France, then moved to secret loca­tions (not on CIA planes), and tor­tured into con­fes­sions of heresy. Ever since, or so the sto­ry goes, Fri­day the 13th is con­sid­ered an unlucky day.

But the 13th of Octo­ber was not an unlucky day for me. (For one thing, it was a Mon­day.) Today, almost four months lat­er, I am enor­mous­ly grate­ful and hum­bled just to be alive, feel healthy, even fair­ly vig­or­ous. . . .