All the President’s Enablers

I’ve been watching PBS’s Newshour every weekday night since the early days of MacNeil-Lehrer, and have been especially faithful to the Friday night conversation with two pundits, one from the right, the other ostensibly from the left, though actually a mainstream centrist. Though they’ve never had anyone close to my own views, I watch because they talk instead of shouting, and it all gives a reliable look into the mind of the ruling class.

The past couple years, however, the segment often provokes shouting — from me — as I listen to the designated rightie, David Brooks, defend the varied mistakes, incompetencies, frauds, and outright crimes of the Bush years. Last night was no exception, as Brooks repeated a familiar tirade, blaming the current state of bitterly-divided partisan politics on Harry Reid and the Democrats.

As if the 8 years of the Right’s war on Clinton never happened. As if such proudly partisan legislators such as Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Dick Armey, and Trent Lott weren’t in charge of Congress for 12 years. As if the compromise- and negotiation-averse Bush didn’t flush the hopeful post-9/11 national unity down his reelection toilet.

Brooks’ complaint of the moment is that the partisan dems are pushing for a fast withdraw from Iraq, when, in the interest of bipartisan comity, they should be supporting the Iraq Study Group recommendations.

Which, of course, they did, almost unanimously, last fall when the ISG report was released. And rejected with nary a comment by Bush.

So Bush and the neo-cons bamboozle us into a war, totally botch its execution, refuse the advise of a politically neutral group of experts, label any criticisms as treason, announce that a President-At-War is constitutionally impervious to any oversight by Congress, and when the opposition party finally scrapes up enough courage to push an alternative that a majority of the American people want — they’re being overly partisan.

First the Right destroyed the national conversation, with its proliferation of radio squawk-shows and cable TV screaming pundits. Then it went after our political system, undermining the legislative process and then inflicting the worst president in history on the nation.

And now, without admitting to a single error in all that time, they blame the mess on anyone but themselves. As Paul Krugman puts it:

You know, at this point I think we need to stop blaming Mr. Bush for the mess we’re in. He is what he always was, and everyone except a hard core of equally delusional loyalists knows it.

Yet Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nation’s security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it.

July 21st, 2007 || PermaLink

The Earthquake That Screamed “NO NUKES!!!”

As the whole world lurches toward a fossil fuels mega-disaster — if we keep burning them, we make the planet less habitable; if we stop burning them (voluntarily, or, soon enough, as oil reserves diminish), our oil-addicted economy tanks  — it has been both predictable and scary to see the nuclear industry attempt a comeback.

Like drug pushers saying, “Hey, we’re out of pot, so try some crack instead,” nuke-pushers seem oblivious to the fact that their so-called solution will only exacerbate our problems. But, because this the land of the denial-dumb, they’ve been building momentum with their nukes-are-green bushit. At least until reality intervened:

The massive earthquake that shook Japan this week nearly killed millions in a nuclear apocalypse.

It also produced one of the most terrifying sentences ever buried in a newspaper. As reported deep in the New York Times, the Tokyo Electric Company has admitted that “the force of the shaking caused by the earthquake had exceeded the design limits of the reactors, suggesting that the plant’s builders had underestimated the strength of possible earthquakes in the region.”

What a surprise! All of those sober assurances we’ve been getting from white-coated nuclear engineers over the years were … wrong. Or dishonest.

We should keep it in mind when the current crop of nuke-pushers spin their nonsense:

 There is only one thing we know for certain about this advertising: it is a lie.

Atomic reactors contribute to global warming rather than abating it. In construction, in the mining, milling and enriching of the fuel, in on-going “normal” releases of heat and radioactivity, in dismantling and decommissioning, in managing radioactive wastes, in future terror attacks, in proliferation of nuke weapons, and much much more, atomic energy is an unmitigated eco-disaster.

To this list we must now add additional tangible evidence that reactors allegedly built to withstand “worst case” earthquakes in fact cannot. And when they go down, the investment is lost, and power shortages arise (as is now happening in Japan) that are filled by the burning of fossil fuels.

It costs up to ten times as much to produce energy from a nuke as to save it with efficiency. Advances in wind, solar and other green “Solartopian” technologies mean atomic energy simply cannot compete without massive subsidies, loan guarantees and government insurance to protect it from catastrophes to come.

This latest “impossible” earthquake has not merely shattered the alleged safeguards of Japan’s reactor fleet. It has blown apart—yet again—any possible argument for building more reactors anywhere on this beleaguered Earth.

July 20th, 2007 || PermaLink

Fear-Based Governance

Listening to Bush/Cheney ramp up the Al Qaeda’s-gonna-git-you malarkey every time they need a political boost has become so business-per-ususal that one is tempted to just shrug it off. But watching just two minutes of Fran Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, recite the ever-more frightening talking points on Iraq = Al Qaeda was an ugly kill-your-television moment.

In the end, what we understand is, putting pressure on the enemy, staying on offense in the away game helps us prevent attacks here at home, and it underscores the importance of the fight in Iraq. Clearly we know from bin Laden’s statements … that if we don’t keep pressure on them, their intention is to use it as a safe haven to plan attacks, not only inside Iraq, but outside Iraq and here in the homeland.

Clearly, we know no such thing. Clearly, quite the opposite is the case: our brutal offensive in the “away game” is only adding to the danger at home.

Was there a link before the war between Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader in Iraq? Ms. Townsend refused to answer. “This is ground long covered,” she snapped.

Indeed it is. The answer is, “No.” In fact, Mr. Bush’s bungled invasion spawned a new terrorist army and gave it a home base. Now, the report said, those terrorists are the only ones affiliated with Al Qaeda that are “known to have expressed a desire to attack the” United States.

Clearly, we have nothing to fear but Bush-Cheney itself….

July 18th, 2007 || PermaLink

Death by insurance

I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room. —George W. Bush

In advance of a promised veto of legislation that would extend improved healthcare benefits to the nation’s poorest children, Mr. (well-insured by the government) Bush is off on an obfuscation bender. He’s repeating all the usual lies, his main point being that the worst thing for the American people would be “government healthcare”.

Paul Krugman answers Mr. (well-insured by the government) Bush:

The claim that the uninsured can get all the care they need in emergency rooms is just the beginning. Beyond that is the myth that Americans who are lucky enough to have insurance never face long waits for medical care.

Actually, the persistence of that myth puzzles me. I can understand how people like Mr. Bush or Fred Thompson, who declared recently that “the poorest Americans are getting far better service” than Canadians or the British, can wave away the desperation of uninsured Americans, who are often poor and voiceless. But how can they get away with pretending that insured Americans always get prompt care, when most of us can testify otherwise?

A recent article in Business Week put it bluntly: “In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems.”

Let’s say it again slowly, for Mr. (well-insured by the government) Bush and the rest of our (well-insured by the government) politicians — single-payer, universal healthcare will not lead to greater waits for critical healthcare.

And it will most certainly not lead to worse outcomes, as happens when insurance companies withhold care in order to increase profits:

Besides, not all medical delays are created equal. In Canada and Britain, delays are caused by doctors trying to devote limited medical resources to the most urgent cases. In the United States, they’re often caused by insurance companies trying to save money.

This can lead to ordeals like the one recently described by Mark Kleiman, a professor at U.C.L.A., who nearly died of cancer because his insurer kept delaying approval for a necessary biopsy. “It was only later,” writes Mr. Kleiman on his blog, “that I discovered why the insurance company was stalling; I had an option, which I didn’t know I had, to avoid all the approvals by going to ‘Tier II,’ which would have meant higher co-payments.”

He adds, “I don’t know how many people my insurance company waited to death that year, but I’m certain the number wasn’t zero.”

Death by insurance — the real crisis in American healthcare.

July 17th, 2007 || PermaLink

Lying Us Into War, Again

Bush/Cheney continue to prattle on about Al Qaeda’s presence in Iraq, and about the aid the supposed terrorists are getting from Iran and Syria — all lies and all part of the sales pitch for their final fiasco, an invasion of Iran.

Here’s a few key facts that we won’t be hearing from our war-mad leaders:

1. Of the more than 19,000 insurgents currently held in US prisons in Iraq, 135 are foreigners. So, if indeed it’s an Al Qaeda insurgency, then it is one entirely of Bush’s creation. Terrorists are not flocking to Iraq to join in the fight against freedom; rather, they were born and raised in Iraq and have rightfully turned against an unlawful, brutal, foreign occupation.

2. Of those 135 foreign terrorists in custody, nearly half are from Saudi Arabia. Few, if any, are from Iran.

3. Half of all those Saudi “can’t be terrorists because they’re our allies” come to Iraq as suicide bombers.

4. And lest we forget, all but four of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia; none were from Iraq or Iran.

As Juan Cole puts it:

Which country is providing a lot of foreign suicide bombers? US ally Saudi Arabia. Has any general or Bush administration official called a press conference to denounce Saudi Arabia? No. Has Joe Lieberman threatened it with a war? No. Everything is being blamed on Iran because powerful American special interests want to get Iran, regardless of the facts.

There isn’t any significant cadre of foreign “al-Qaeda” fighters in Iraq if this is all we could capture. They can’t take over the country because they are such a tiny group. Everything Bush and Cheney have said about the nature of the war and the supposed dangers of a US withdrawal is transparent falsehood.

Second verse, worse than the first…………

July 16th, 2007 || PermaLink

Bad War Makes Bad Warriors

Whatever you do, never criticize the troops. It’s been an inalterable and non-negotiable fact of American life since the 1980s when multiple-felon Oliver North became a media star and saved the Reagan administration by flipping off those who opposed Reagan’s secret and illegal war in Nicaragua, which had been financed with secret and illegal arm sales to Iran.

If ever there were a time to realize that “the troops” were perpetrating horrible crimes in our name and needed to be thrown in jail for a long, long time, that was it. Instead, the media went gaga over North, Reagan was let off the hook, and Bush Sr. would eventually pardon North and his fellow war criminals.

Soon after came the first war in Iraq and a nation desperate to bury “Viet Nam syndrome” once and for all collectively declared that “the troops” were perfectly noble, could do no wrong, and protestations from creeps like me would no longer be tolerated.

Fast-forward to Bush Jr’s fiasco, a war in which “the troops”  have been forced into the most unconscionable of acts and yet, nary a word of anything but SUPPORT THE TROOPS!! is allowed.

Leaving it for the troops themselves to tell the truth:

I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi … The soldiers honestly thought we were trying to help the people and they were mad because it was almost like a betrayal. Like here we are trying to help you, here I am, you know, thousands of miles away from home and my family, and I have to be here for a year and work every day on these missions. Well, we’re trying to help you and you just turn around and try to kill us.

— Spc. Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado

I’ll tell you the point where I really turned. I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg…. An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn’t crying, wasn’t anything, it just looked at me like–I know she couldn’t speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?… I was just like, This is–this is it. This is ridiculous.

—Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn

The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population that was supporting them.

—Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejía, 31, a National Guardsman from Miami

July 15th, 2007 || PermaLink

Health Care vs. the Profit Principle

The greatest contribution of Michael’s Moore’s Sicko is his direct and unambiguous attack on the profit motive in healthcare. Moore shows that since the insurance companies have turning a profit as their prime directive — rather than providing care for and healing people — they cannot help but keep adding to the ranks of under- and uninsured Americans.

But attacking the profit motive in America is so unamerican. SWe will need many more people making the case. Such as Barbara Ehrenreich:

I once tried to explain to a Norwegian woman why it was so hard for me to find health insurance. I’d had breast cancer, I told her, and she looked at me blankly. “But then you really need insurance, right?” Of course, and that’s why I couldn’t have it.

This is not because health insurance executives are meaner than other people, although I do not rule that out. It’s just that they’re running a business, the purpose of which is not to make people healthy, but to make money, and they do very well at that. Once, many years ago, I complained to the left-wing economist Paul Sweezey that America had no real health system. “We have a system all right,” he responded, “it’s just a system for doing something else.” A system, as he might have put it today, for extracting money from the vulnerable and putting it into the pockets of the rich.

Of course, transferring wealth from the poor to the rich is the whole point of American capitalism, so things will not be improving any time soon.

If government insurance for children (S-CHIP) isn’t expanded to all the families that need it, there is no question but that some children will die — painfully perhaps and certainly unnecessarily. But at least they will have died for a principle.

July 14th, 2007 || PermaLink