A "Deeming Vote" for the Dems?

As reported in The Hill on Tuesday:

"Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Tuesday defended a tactic that would allow the House to 'deem' the Senate healthcare bill passed without actually voting on the bill.

"Hoyer (D-Md.) said at his weekly news conference that a rule deeming the Senate bill passed is consistent with procedures and practices used by Republicans and Democrats alike, and that it’s appropriate for a bill that will be moments away from being amended anyway."

A "Deeming Vote" is a new term to me. When I first heard the term spoken on one of the cable news programs I was sure that the pundits were saying "Demon Vote" which of course would be utterly consistent with the way G.O.P. politicos have been characterizing Democratic plans to finalize health care reform!

I wonder if any of the Dems who are considering such a "Deeming Vote" know that Frederick Bailey Deeming was a mass murderer who killed his family in Rainhill, England, and then went to Australia with another woman whom he had romanced in England. Then he killed her too. Deeming, a confidence trickster who also went by the name of Baron Swanston, was found guilty of murder and hanged in Melbourne on Monday, May 23rd, 1892.

Newspapers of the day thought that Deeming could have been Jack the Ripper, the notorious but uncaught serial killer of London's 1888 "Autumn of Terror." Above is a press conception of Deeming with fifth canonical victim, Mary Jane Kelly, killed and grievously mutilated in her one-room lodging at 13 Miller's Court, Spitalfields, in the early morning hours of November 9, 1888. Certain it is that Deeming did have a thing for bladed weapons -- he had a collection of South African assegais among other nasty killing instruments.

Yet most Ripperologists discount Deeming, seeing him more as the family murderer he appeared on the surface to be. It is believed that the con man and killer was in South Africa at the time of the Ripper crimes.

He may not have been Jack but the Public Record Office of Victoria, Australia, have done an extraordinary job of putting on-line documents and information about Frederick Bailey Deeming. Check it all out by clicking on the title above.























With Jackie O and Joe Cocker at Union Station

Okay, so it wasn't Jackie O
-- a woman hustled by me with
an oil of the late Missus JKO.

And it wasn't Joe C -- a bloke
with Joe's pushed-in fizzog
and scruffy ponytail scuttled

thru with groupie toward the
U.S. Capitol dome, maybe to get
health care reform passed at last, pray,

"With A Little Help From My Friends."

Christopher T. George