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It used to be the case that Republicans would rally around flag burning, gays in the military, assault gun bans and other non-issues that really don't affect our country at all. How many here have been personally harmed by assault gun bans? But now, in this election year where they are trying to paint the first African-American candidate for president as a terrorist sympathizer, they've decided such trivialities are just not up to the task.

So what have neocon conservatives decided to rally around this election year? You guessed it, the pressing need to torture prisoners and hold them indefinitely without trial.

Sure, they will still go after missing lapel pins, pledge of allegiance, and terrorist fist-bumping, because they are morally and politically bankrupt when it comes to policies, or priorities. But these Neanderthal, tribal tirades against Senator Obama and his wife are not resonating beyond the ditto-head, neocon authoritarian followers. They need something with a bit more edge than mere verbal association with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

No, this time around, they need to try a different tactic, and the one they seem to be settling on is to rally around ending habeas corpus, and legalizing torture. The recent Supreme Court decision (5-4 split) to uphold habeas corpus (the right to a trial by jury) for Iraq and Afghanistan detainees has sent the neocons into a fit. Supreme Court Justice Scalia called the decision to uphold the Constitution disastrous, devastating and tragic.

Last Friday on the nationally syndicated Diane Rehm radio talk show, a conservative commentator, I believe it was David Brooks, argued forcefully that waterboarding did not constitute torture because there were no lasting effects (except, of course, when it leads to actual drowning). It is doubtful that conservatives really believe that waterboarding isn’t a form of torture, or that indefinite detention without the right to a trial is constitutional. That's not the point. They need rallying cries to get their base motivated. They know that their base of authoritarian followers and ditto-heads aren’t well informed, and that they love the tough guy, red meat kind of issues that will quickly enrage them against the Democrats. Richard Samp, who is the chief counsel of the conservative Washington Legal Foundation, was quoted as saying; “as a political matter, it will help to rally those inclined to believe the Supreme Court is out of control.”

John McCain opined that the Supreme court; “rendered a decision yesterday that I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

So there you have it. As far as neocons are concerned, Supreme Court justices ruling in favor of the constitution are “out of control”. Ergo, “we must elect John McCain so that we can finish stacking the Supreme Court with more Antonin Scalias”.

Somehow, that seems more like a rallying cry for liberals, progressives and independents to elect Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States.

JRM

Scott McClellan, ex-White House spokesperson, has written a book about his experience as resident Bush administration propagandist. His main conclusion is that the Bush administration is in permanent campaign mode, and will lie, distort and manipulate to get its political way, even when going to war against a nation that did not attack the US.

The book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception”, is scheduled to be released on Monday. Scott McClellan was known for his “deer-in-the-headlights” style of press conference, constantly looking flummoxed and off balance. This turns out to be the case, as he describes how "I could feel something fall out of me into the abyss as each reporter took a turn whacking me. It was my reputation crumbling away, bit by bit."

So, as many have hoped over the last 7 years, it looks like some conservatives do have a conscience, and need to set the record straight after being forced to lie and deceive as a part of their job description. Let us hope further that this is the tip of the iceberg, and that more conscience-tattered administration officials end up spilling their guts to assuage their guilt.

There is really nothing new in the book that we haven't heard before, it’s just that we haven't heard some of the details straight from one of the perpetrator’s mouth. McClellan details how the Bush administration, through him and others, lied the United States into a war in Iraq: “Over that summer of 2002, top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

So McClellan confirms what the White House has denied since the run-up to the Iraq war, that it was a war of choice undertaken for political reasons. Untold thousands are dead as a result.

McClellan also confirms that he was lied to about Scooter Libby’s and Karl Rove's involvement in the CIA leak case. They were not only involved, they had private meetings at the White House in order to get their falsified testimony straight.

One of the more important confirmations in McClellan’s book is the fact that Bush is insecure and incapable of admitting mistakes. McClellan noted that a more secure person would have had the wherewithal to admit error. But not Bush Jr., who is so insecure and stubborn that he cannot change his mind, and cannot admit that he has made any mistakes. Combined with the unyielding, toxic political atmosphere created by Bush, Cheney and Rove, this intransigence has harmed the United States domestically and internationally in ways that will continue to play out for years to come.

Conservatives with a conscience? Bring ‘em on!

JRM

Problem: In order to fully control the oil supply from the Middle East the Bush administration needs to destabilize Iran, and then attempt to install a US friendly government there. The US military currently occupies Afghanistan to the east, and Iraq to the west of Iran, but as long as the US has little or no sway with the Iranian government, the US does not have full geopolitical control of Middle Eastern oil reserves.

The Bush administration's plan for geopolitical domination of Middle Eastern oil has always involved destabilizing the Iranian government, even if this means limited airstrikes under the pretense of eliminating the stalled, incipient Iranian nuclear program. Indeed, the Bush administration has spent untold billions flexing its muscles by moving the US military into and around the Persian Gulf, and using covert assets to undermine confidence among the Iranians.

However, the Bush administration's slavish adherence to supply side Reaganomics, and their stubborn insistence that it is best the way to a strong economy, may eventually be the undoing of their imperialist plans for Iranian oil.

The dilemma: Bush's military occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq, while simultaneously saber rattling at Iran, have had a significant impact on the price of oil over the last several years. Instability in the world’s most oil-rich region resulting from the US military occupations, lack of international dialogue, and demonization of political leaders in Iran and neighboring countries, account for the lion's share of increases in the price of oil. As the price of oil shot through $100 a barrel, and now resides above $130 per barrel, at the same time that the US dollar is nearing all-time lows against foreign currencies, the buying power of the average American family has declined precipitously. As the economy moves more certainly into a recession, and as home values continue to decline, the Bush administration's economic policies are becoming less and less popular with the public.

This leads to Bush's dilemma. Any air strikes against Iran directed at destabilizing that nation's government will immediately send oil prices above $150 per barrel. At this price, the recession will worsen greatly as energy costs bleed over into almost every other sector of the economy. But the status quo is barely better for Bush.

Because this is an election year, and the country is headed into a deeper recession, Bush needs to do something more than send out checks for a couple hundred bucks to taxpayers in order to turn the economy around. This is an essential aspect for any incumbent administration in the run-up to an election. However, they are also desperate to play the war card one more time to try and rally the American people again behind Middle Eastern adventurism in the name of fighting “terrorism”.

It's a Catch-22. If they don't attack Iran, they don't get the “rally round the flag” effect, but if they do attack Iran, they drive the price of oil even higher, further deepening the recession here at home. Is there a way out for Bush & Co.?

I am certain that the talk in the West Wing regularly turns to ways that the government can accomplish the incompatible goals of repairing the economy while simultaneously bombing Iran into submission. However I do not see any way to reduce oil prices other than to reduce tensions and instability in the Middle East. That not only involves negotiations with Iran but also negotiations with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Taliban, while simultaneously reducing the US military footprint throughout the region. This is clearly not going to happen on Bush's watch. As such, we will be heading into the next election with high oil prices, high tensions throughout the Middle East, and a sagging economy at home. This could drive Bush to desperate measures as the election approaches. Only time will tell if they can figure a way out of Bush's dilemma.

JRM

Federal officials in the US now say that the death toll due to adverse reactions to contaminated heparin coming from China has risen to 81, whereas Chinese officials dispute that any deaths were caused by the contaminant. In a tit-for-tat finger-pointing exercise, officials from both countries insist that they be allowed to inspect the manufacturing plants in the other country.

Currently, the US does not have an agreement with the Chinese government to allow inspection of Chinese food and drug manufacturing facilities. Chinese officials insist that this would only be allowed if Chinese officials were granted the reciprocal right to inspect all US food and drug manufacturing plants.

According to the NY Times, however, based on the current funding and staffing levels, the F.D.A. would take 27 years to inspect every foreign medical device plant that exports to the United States, 13 years to inspect every foreign drug manufacturing plant, and 1,900 years to examine every foreign food processing plant.

Congressman John Dingell, Democrat from Michigan, is calling for increased funding for the FDA, but has met resistance from the Bush administration which does not think that significantly increased funding is necessary. Funding for agencies that are actually tasked with protecting American lives, such as the FDA and the USDA, is not considered as important by the Bush administration as funding the military, supposedly to protect the American public from terrorism.

According to the FDA’s website, the FDA is requesting $2.4 billion for fiscal year 2009 to protect America's food and drug supply. This is approximately the same amount of money that the US government spends on the Iraq war every week. This puts Iraq war funding at approximately 50 times greater than the government's attempt to make sure the food you eat and the drugs you are given at the hospital are safe.

Clearly, as US citizens, we are not getting the types of protections we need from our government, and that we pay for with our taxes. The war in Iraq is costing American lives, not protecting them. Taking a single week’s worth of funding from the Iraqi budget and putting it into the FDA budget would double the FDA budget overnight. But as long as the Bush administration has any say in the matter, that will not happen.

Write your senators and congressional representative and ask them to support increased funding for the FDA. That money could easily be pulled from the Iraqi war budget if troop levels were dropped significantly. When the Bush administration tells you they are protecting you from terrorists, don't believe them. More people have died from tainted heparin in the last several months in the US (81) than have died from terrorism in the US in the last six years (0).

JRM

The NY Times was shocked, shocked! to learn that major news outlets have been spinning the Iraq war for 6 years using “military analysts” with direct financial connections to military contractors who were reaping huge war profits. I am certain they were also shocked to find out that one of those major news outlets that was spinning the war with the help of paid propagandists was the New York Times itself.

In a 7600 word account that had the feel of an article that had been written years ago, and shoved in a drawer to rot because managing editors didn't want to touch it, the Times details the nepotistic connections between military analysts featured in news reports and the military contractors profiting from the Iraq war. I wouldn't be surprised if the article was pulled from the drawer, dusted off, and updated before publishing this Saturday on the front page of the New York Times.

Some notable quotes from the article include:

“Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records … These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.”

“The Pentagon itself has made covert payments to Iraqi newspapers to publish coalition propaganda. Rather than complain about the “media filter,” each of these techniques simply converted the filter into an amplifier. This time, Mr. Krueger said, the military analysts would in effect be “writing the op-ed” for the war.”

Referring to the Vietnam War, Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007 noted:

“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.

“Some analysts said that even before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification for the invasion, but were careful not to express them on air.”

“Some e-mail messages between the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage. Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio whose consulting company advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006. “Recall the stuff I did after my last visit,” he wrote. “I will do the same this time.”

“The strategic target remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.”

“General, I just made that point on the air,” an analyst replied.

“Let’s work it together, guys,” General Conway urged.

“An analyst said at another point: “This is a wider war. And whether we have democracy in Iraq or not, it doesn’t mean a tinker’s damn if we end up with the result we want, which is a regime over there that’s not a threat to us.”

“Even as they assured Mr. Rumsfeld that they stood ready to help in this public relations offensive, the analysts sought guidance on what they should cite as the next “milestone” that would, as one analyst put it, “keep the American people focused on the idea that we’re moving forward to a positive end.” They placed particular emphasis on the growing confrontation with Iran.“

“A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article.”

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the entire sordid affair of turning the corporate media into a propaganda wing of the Pentagon and the Bush administration is that even when news outlets understood the connections between their analyst and contractors in Iraq, they went out of their way to avoid asking them any tough questions about conflicts of interest. What you don't know can’t hurt you, right?

Well we can certainly hope that this article will not just be a one time deal with the corporate media getting back in lockstep with the Pentagon Monday morning. They have lost all credibility now even with much of their own staff, and certainly with a large proportion of the American public.

It will also be interesting to see if there is any reaction from Congress in terms of investigating the links between military contractors and media outlets. My guess is, based on their past performance, that they won't touch it.

One thing you will never hear from the corporate controlled news media is the fact that they have been scooped time and time again for the last five or six years by liberal blogs and websites such as OpEdNews.com.

Mindwars indeed. Where do you get your news from?

JRM

If the Bush administration, the New York Times, and the Washington Post get their way, the US military will commence with missile and air strikes against Iranian targets before the November elections.

Articles this morning both the Washington Post and the New York Times reprised their roles in the run-up to the Iraq war by beating the drums for war against Iran. Al Qaeda is no longer their favorite bogeyman as their focus has shifted to the regime in Iraq's neighbor to the east.

Clearly, both the New York Times and the Washington Post understand full well that their unquestioning regurgitation of administration talking points in late 2002 and early 2003 were low points in their journalistic enterprises. As such, it is difficult to understand how both news organizations could be retracing the same journalistic mistakes they made before the Iraq war with highly unreliable reporting from the likes of Judy Miller.

Let's be clear, we are not fighting Iranians or Al Qaeda in Iraq. We are fighting the Iraqis who are trying to gain control and drive out the US military occupation force. Any marginal influence by Al Qaeda or Iran is irrelevant compared to dealing with homegrown, Iraqi militias.

This is always the case with protracted military occupations of foreign countries. We tried to blame Cambodia for the problems in Vietnam, and began secretly bombing that country during the Vietnam War. As long as the US military occupies Iraq, and sows the seeds of civil war in that nation by our very presence, we will be fighting Iraqi militias on both sides of that civil war. A civil war made possible by US military intervention.

Bombing Iran under the pretense that they are engaging in a proxy war in Iraq will not solve any problems, but will exacerbate all problems faced by the US military there. It is possible that the administration is bluffing in order to prod Iran to back down on a number of issues. But that does not seem to be the Bush administration’s style, which prefers riding in on horseback and shooting wildly in all directions. Don't even bother asking questions later.

Considering the now constant din of administration warnings concerning Iran it seems likely that they are intent on widening the war in the Middle East before the fall elections here in the US. With the help of news organizations such as the Washington Post and New York Times they hope to drum up enough support for such actions. But if the American people have any say in the matter, the US will pull its troops out of the Middle East, rather than widening and deepening the conflict.

JRM

Protecting America’s drug supply
March 24th, 2008

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the US agency charged with ensuring a safe food supply, and that drugs sold in the US are both safe, and effective.

According to a number of reports in the Washington Post, New York Times and elsewhere, understaffing and underfunding at the FDA has made them incapable of performing those tasks adequately.

We have heard quite a bit over the last year about toxin-tainted pet foods and children's toys containing high levels of lead coming into the United States from China's unregulated industrial system. Without pollution standards, work safety standards, or quality control standards, China's industries are virtually beyond any form of serious oversight at this point in time. In contrast with stories about tainted pet food and lead-filled children's toys, problems with tainted pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients coming out of China have gotten somewhat less attention, in part because most adverse reactions and deaths had occurred outside the US.

That is until a number of heparin-related deaths in the US were reported recently in the Washington Post. The number of deaths in the US due to tainted heparin coming from China is still in question, but the death toll ranges from 19 to over 40 since last Fall. Heparin is a complex carbohydrate containing large amounts of sulfur which has been used for decades to prevent blood clotting during operations, patient dialysis and when collecting blood. Heparin if found at high levels in certain tissues of the body, and pharmaceutical grade heparin is typically extracted from cow lungs and pig intestines.

How did seriously contaminated heparin end up in US hospitals when the FDA is supposed to prevent such incidents from occurring?

The story begins in 2006, in Guangdong province on the highly industrialized southeast coast of China. Pig farmers were noticing that their pigs were getting very sick. Pregnant females would deliver sick or dead piglets, and infected young pigs developed a number of respiratory symptoms, and characteristic skin and ear discoloration. The pathogen that caused the outbreak is apparently a virus known to cause “blue-eared pig disease” as farmers call it, and “porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome” as it is known to scientists. Most Chinese pig farmers call the new illness “high fever disease”. The disease spread rapidly among pig farms along the eastern coast of China throughout 2006 and into 2007. The Chinese government has not released statistics on the magnitude or scope of the outbreak, and initially they resisted all requests for virus samples from scientists around the world.

This particular viral disease was first identified in the United States in 1987, and then in several other countries in 1991 including the Netherlands and Canada. The original virus strains have now spread worldwide, but the those strains isolated in North America and Europe were usually not fatal for infected pigs. Based on genetic analyses, the outbreak of the virus in China appears to involve a much more deadly variant of the virus. Because it affects the pigs reproductive systems and respiratory systems more severely than other organs, the virus is known as PRRS, standing for “porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome”, as noted above. The newly mutated form of the PRRS virus arose in the same area of China’s highly industrialized southeastern coast (Guangdong province) that saw the rise of the mutated avian flu virus. As a scientist, this makes me wonder if industrial pollution in the food and water fed to livestock may be compromising the animal’s immune systems, and making it easier for viruses to mutate and spread throughout large, crowded herds with diminished immune responses. But I digress from the story.

As the disease spread, and pigs started dying in large numbers, Chinese farmers began to panic, and rushed the remaining animals to market. It is not known if the infected animals presented any risk to those who consumed the resulting pork products, but nonetheless, the viral epidemic that spread throughout Chinese pig farms has had far reaching consequences not only in China, but throughout the world.

The story takes a turn in 2007 as pig populations declined precipitously in China. It is not known outside of China how many pigs had to be destroyed in an attempt to prevent the spread of the disease to the entire country. But one estimate reported in the Public Library of Science estimated that over 2 million pigs were infected. Reports of the disease surfacing in nearby countries suggest that any effort to at containing the outbreak were unsuccessful. Pork prices in China skyrocketed and the decline in the size of pig herds led directly to the problems that surfaced in 2007 with tainted heparin produced in China.

Heparin is present in granules in cells of the body called “mast cells”, which are found in pig intestines in large numbers. The process of making heparin in China begins at small farms and larger slaughterhouses where pigs are processed for pork products. The intestines are collected and can be processed by steam or by chemical extraction methods which yield a crude heparin product that must be processed further before use in humans. As pig populations in China plummeted through 2007, a severe shortage of pig intestines threatened the heparin supplies.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal: “Wang Xiangyang, a factory director at the Zhaoyang Intestine & Casing Factory in Shandong, for instance, says his company has been forced to use sheep innards in addition to pig intestines because of a shortage of pig supplies. "We can't get enough pig intestines," Mr. Wang says. "There are a lot of people around who need them."

The company that produced the tainted heparin is “Scientific Protein Laboratories” (SPL), a Wisconsin based company that has supplied heparin to the US for 3 decades. In 1999, SPL partnered with a Chinese firm and set up a processing plant in Changzhou China to collect and process heparin locally. The plant was approved by the FDA to provide heparin to the US in 2004, despite the fact that the plant in Changzhou had not been FDA inspected. The FDA admitted last month that it had violated its own policies by neglecting to inspect SPL’s Chinese plant before approving the drug for sale in the US.

Most of the raw heparin supply comes from small, family-run workshops near slaughterhouses, which send the extracts to larger "consolidators" before they reach refining plants like the one owned by SPL in Changzhou, near Shanghai. It is still unclear where the problem originated, but it most likely began in the family-run workshops that extracted the crude heparin from hog intestines. As the supply of pig intestines declined in 2007 those family workshops more than likely had severe difficulty in meeting supply quotas. They were faced with the choice of informing SPL in Changzhou that they could not meet demands for the crude extract, and lose much-needed income, or they could try to find a cheap heparin substitute to spike the extracts with. This second option would be difficult unless the substitute purified and tested as though it were heparin.

The two graphs here are so-called “mass spectrograms” from the FDA of a tainted heparin sample (top) and an uncontaminated sample (below). In mass spectrometers compounds are ionized, and the ions separated based on their mass. Ions of different mass show up at different positions along the graph. The height of the peaks on the graph are proportional to the number of ions detected.

As you can see from FDA's own analysis of a tainted heparin product there is nearly twice as much of the contaminant (“additional feature”) as there is actual heparin. However, heparin and the contaminant are very near one another in terms of size so they come out very close to one another on the mass spectrograms. The fact that the compound was chemically similar to heparin, and did appear to have blood thinning properties, made it very difficult initially for the FDA to determine what the contaminant was. Obviously, someone along the supply chain figured out a way to make a heparin like substitute which was difficult to differentiate from the real thing.

After much additional work the FDA came to a conclusion about the tainted batches - the “heparin-like contaminant” is a highly sulfated form of chondroitin sulfate, a much less expensive extract of animal cartilage. Chondroitin sulfate is one of the main ingredients in many over-the-counter arthritis relief supplements. It is extracted from the cartilage of animal carcasses. It is chemically similar to heparin except that it lacks the high level of sulfur content. As such, the chondroitin sulfate  extracted from cartilage would have to be chemically modified to make it similar to heparin.

Now that the contaminant has been identified it becomes much simpler to outline a possible scenario for what happened. It is not known if the pig farmers who collected the pig intestines and processed the crude heparin extracts could have known enough to have produced the contaminant. However, it would be a simple matter of reacting the cartilage extract with sulfuric acid in order to increase the sulfur content to that found in heparin. It may be some time before we find out which portion of the supply chain from crude extracts to finished heparin that batches were spiked with highly sulfated chondroitin sulfate, but it is virtually impossible that this could have happened accidentally. To my knowledge there is no possible commercial use for sulfated chondroitin sulfate except that it would have heparin-like properties and be difficult to differentiate from real heparin. That is until it was injected into human patients, many of whom became extremely ill, while some became so ill they died.

The F.D.A. has received over 785 reports of injuries and serious adverse reactions associated with the use of tainted heparin in the US, with at least 19 deaths attributed to the contaminated blood thinner. As reported by the Washington Post, a series of independent assessments, including one by the FDA’s own Science Board, have found that the FDA is increasingly overwhelmed by its responsibilities, and is no longer capable of protecting the public from unsafe drugs and food, particularly those coming from China. There is a growing consensus on Capitol Hill that the FDA needs a rapid infusion of money if it is to protect the US food and drug supplies. Based on recent stories of toxic pet food, lead-filled children’s toys, and toxic pharmaceuticals, that is probably an understatement.

Final note: The US government under George Bush is spending billions of dollars a week to supposedly protect you from terrorism, while at the same time spending far, far less to protect American’s food and drug supplies. Obviously, the government’s priorities are not matched to the realities of our modern, globalized world.

JRM

Dear Editor,

I read with great dismay the opinion piece by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell supporting pending legislation on the administration’s spying program and retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that carried out the domestic spying.

What Mr. McConnell gave us was more of the same vague fear mongering, without any substantiation that spying on Americans without court order was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. There has never been one shred of evidence that spying on Americans is the way to protect America, nor is there any evidence that spying on Americans will stop future terrorist attacks.

Indeed, the administration had plenty of warning before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but failed to act, undermining the notion that acquiring information invariably leads to proactive deterrence. Intelligence agencies are awash in information from many sources, and can not possibly sort and analyze the data they are currently receiving. Adding to that flood of information with warrantless wiretapping will only exacerbate that problem. Intelligence agencies need better information, not just more of it, and you don’t get that type of good intelligence with blanket wiretapping of US citizens.

Mr. McConnell and the administration have not offered any evidence or rationale as to why they, and the telecom companies, should be above the laws of our nation. Playing the fear card is not a rationale, it is an appeal to emotion. If we are a nation of laws, then there can be no such thing as retroactive immunity for corporations that have potentially broken the law. Without congressional investigations, we would have no idea what we were granting immunity for.

Sincerely,

John R. Moffett Ph.D.
Gaithersburg, MD

JRM

The “Let McCain Win” Strategy
February 2nd, 2008

 
In the last couple of weeks, as it became more likely that John McCain would be the Republican nominee, and as Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards were tossed aside by early Democratic primary voters, a bizarre idea kept cropping up in my head. That Americans need to suffer significantly greater hardships before they will finally reject Republican political philosophy.

Listening to John McCain on the stump talking about 50 to 100 more years of war in Iraq, and more wars to come, it got me thinking that maybe a four year dose of McCainian hegemony is exactly what the US electorate needs to snap it out of its apathy and indifference. Just maybe, America will need to suffer a severe Republican tax cut, trickle-down economics-induced recession, and protracted wars across the globe before they will finally have had enough of Republican economics and empire building. Much more death and destruction meted out by the American military-corporate complex.

Maybe, and I have heard it from others, what America needs is four more years of unbridled, psychotic Republican rule and oppression, and just maybe John McCain is the right man for that job. Maybe Democrats who find the two remaining Democratic candidates much less than what they had hoped for in a progressive choice for president, should just sit this one out and let McCain win so that the bad times will continue to roll. Indeed, four years of McCain could be the final nail in the Republican Party's coffin. Like a drunk, or a drug addict, maybe America needs to hit bottom before it can start the process of recovery.

Then, after I regain control of my hypothalamus and limbic system, I find it relatively easy to suppress those urges. Emotional responses are really great when you're getting married or being chased by a lion. They probably don't play out so well when picking a president.

So without wasting any more of your time, I'll just quickly go over some of the rational reasons why almost any Democrat other than Joe Lieberman would be a better choice for President than John McCain or any of the current Republican candidates.

1)      John McCain thinks we can “win” the Iraq war by staying indefinitely

2)      Bolstering the five vote Republican majority in the Supreme Court

3)      American spending priorities will never shift from the military to the US infrastructure with McCain as president

4)      say goodbye to any kind of universal health care coverage

5)      say hello to even more regressive, pro-corporate tax policies

6)      forget about any kind of middle east peace accord

7)      paint a nuclear bunker buster bull's-eye on Iran

There are plenty more reasons, but you get the idea. Just calculating the number of lives saved by getting out of Iraq sooner is more than enough reason to make sure John McCain never becomes president of the United States. The Supreme Court has been handing down some terrible rulings recently, and that will only continue unabated if the court is stacked with more ultraconservatives.

So when that little voice in your head says, “maybe America hasn’t suffered enough at the hands of the Republican party yet”, take out that mental stick and beat your hypothalamus into submission.

JRM

Monday, January 14, 2008

Dear Congressman Van Hollen,

I am greatly dismayed at your response (given below) to my letter opposing HR 1955, a bill which has nothing to do with protecting America from any real threat. Stopping “domestic terrorism” requires standard law enforcement, and you don’t need to enhance the Bush administration’s citizen spying program any further. Even looking into ways that other countries spy on their citizens is not an acceptable approach. There is virtually no domestic terrorism, so “studying it” is a waste of time and money. That money could be much better spent on biomedical research, if your aim was to save lives.

It is time for the Democrats to forcefully reverse the anti-constitutional actions of the Bush administration, not further them. It is time to subpoena Bush administration officials, and make sure they appear, unlike Harriet Miers and Karl Rove. Congress is supposed to be a coequal branch in protecting and defending the Constitution from enemies, both foreign and domestic. Currently, the gravest domestic threats to our constitution do not come from terrorists, they come from the Bush administration’s disregard for US and International law.

I do not want the government to protect me from terrorists. That is not the government’s function. Your function is to represent your constituents in your legislative actions, and protect and defend the constitution, not help an out of control administration spy on Americans in order to “protect them”.

I hope that after hearing from more exasperated constituents, you will reverse your decision to support HR 1955. Simply bolster standard law enforcement agencies, and let them do their jobs, within the law and constitutional limitations. I am sick and tired of hearing about terrorism. More people die from drunk drivers in a few months than in all US terrorist attacks throughout history.

I am not sure that you understand how vehemently people oppose the Bush administration’s policies, and how that anger is rubbing off on the Democrats for going along with just about every aspect of these disastrous policies.

I am greatly disappointed with the Democrats, and my future political activism will be directed toward much more drastic change in the status quo than many of the current Democrats are offering.

I request a specific reply.

Dr. John R. Moffett

Previous letter from Congressman Van Hollen

Dear John :

Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to HR 1955, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. I appreciate hearing from you.

This bill seeks to provide mechanisms to gather information about domestic terrorism like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It sets up a Congressional Commission and a university-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States to research causes, motivations, and potential means of domestic terrorism. It also allows the Departments of Homeland Security and State, in cooperation with the Attorney General and other federal entities as appropriate, to look into methods countries like the United Kingdom , Canada , and Australia , have implemented to stop domestic terrorism and, if appropriate and permitted by the Constitution, develop similar solutions in the United States .

The bill is meant to explore motivations and means of domestic terrorism and provide legislative recommendations on how the United States can address it. It does not provide authorization for any action against people or organizations.

The bill also explicitly states, "The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prevent ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism as described herein shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents." It requires that the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer of the Department of Homeland Security monitor all actions under the bill to ensure that no constitutional rights are violated and report annually to Congress.

It is important that we understand domestic terrorism, as we must understand international terrorism. Ultimately, the bill gives us the means to learn more about domestic terrorism while protecting our vital constitutional rights .

Again, thank you for sharing your concerns with me, and please do not hesitate to let me know whenever I may be of service.

Sincerely,
Chris Van Hollen
Member of Congress

For the past five or six years the political winds, or the political pendulum if you will, has begun to swing back from Reagan era conservatism and trickle-down economics towards American populism and Jeffersonian democracy. This shift has not occurred among politicians, or the corporate media talking heads, but at the grassroots level of American politics. We the people.

Perhaps it required an unprecedented, and unconstitutional wake-up call from the likes of Bush and Cheney to alert the American electorate to the dangers posed by a government whose checks and balances have been thwarted by the executive branch. Just maybe, the Bush and Cheney administration’s blatant malfeasance is exactly the tonic that a somnolescent American public needed to stir them to political action.

When you hear politicians talk about change, listen carefully to what they say next, when they try to explain what precisely they mean by change. If that recipe for change does not include a serious challenge to the current corporate mentality that puts profits above people, economy above equality, and corporations above the law, then it may not be the type of change you had in mind.

Political movements don’t happen in a moment, even if heads are lost at the gallows. The Republicans worked slowly over the last 3 decades, step by step, to take the Congress and White House. The Democrats can’t expect to move the political pendulum faster than it can naturally go. Political mills grind slowly, but in the end, they produce the results that the majority dictates. Be part of the progressive political mill, and help the progressive majority grow. Once Democrats have control, then the political mill can begin to work on them to move the agenda to the left.

Political change doesn’t move like a bullet train, it grinds like a mill, seeming at times exceeding slow.

JRM

A small but well organized campaign staffed by volunteers is working hard to draft Al Gore in the New Hampshire Democratic primaries by write-in vote. Al Gore has not decided to run, but the Draft Gore campaign is designed to get enough write-in votes in the NH primary to convince Mr. Gore that there is massive grassroots support for him to run for president 

Let's go over the reasons for drafting Al Gore to run for president. First off, he actually won the 2000 election and had the presidency taken from him by five members of the Supreme Court, several of whom had been appointed by Pappy Bush. Righting this wrong will go a long way toward healing our nation 

Second, no one running on the Democratic side has anywhere near the level of experience in running this country that Al Gore has. If you want someone who is progressive in the White House, someone who cares about our Constitution and who knows what they are doing, you want Al Gore.

Third, if you are concerned about our environment and how it is being degraded on a daily basis, no other Democratic candidate even comes close to a total commitment to the environment as Al Gore.

Fourth, if you are concerned that your civil rights and freedoms have been eliminated one after the other, and this worries you, then you want someone like Al Gore in the White House who will work tirelessly to reverse the Bush administration's domestic agenda.

Fifth, if you think that far too many US tax dollars have been squandered in unnecessary wars overseas, and that that money would be much better spent in the United States on things like education and infrastructure, then you want a progressive like Al Gore in the White House.

Finally, if you think that the United States has shunned diplomacy and foreign relations over the last seven years, and you believe that this makes the United States less safe and less influential, then you want someone with a solid record in diplomacy as president. That would be Al Gore.

If you live in New Hampshire and you think that Al Gore should run for president, you can donate your time to help the draft Gore movement leading up to the New Hampshire primaries on January 8^th. If you don't live in New Hampshire you can still help by donating to the cause.

Al Gore's name will not be on the ballots in the upcoming NH primaries, but you can still vote for him by write-in vote. If everyone who is interested chips in time or money, and Al Gore gets more write-in votes than candidates like Biden and Dodd, it could just be enough of an impetus to bring Al Gore into the race.

You can help out here: Draft Al Gore NH

JRM

I have heard all the arguments about spineless, corporate Democrats in Congress, and I agree completely. They have let us, and the constitution, down. So what is our course of action for the next election? We work to unite the left behind the most progressive candidate possible.

The primary reason for needing to unite and work together now is obvious. The primaries are fast approaching. The candidate that the primaries choose will limit our voting options for 2008 on the Progressive/Liberal side to one. There isn’t going to be a viable Green Party or any other candidate, so you will be forced to vote for the Democrat, or no one. If you want to have any choice at all on who that person on the Progressive side is, you need to do something now, not in November 2008.

Now, while all of us who are not right-wing conservatives still have the opportunity, we need to work together to get the most progressive candidate nominated.

Here is an approximate ranking of the current Democratic candidates from conservative (first) to liberal (last). The order is very fuzzy, of course, because the issues and opinions are very diverse.

Biden > Clinton > Dodd > Richardson > Obama > Edwards > [Gore] > Kucinich

If you count Mike Gravel, he would be the most liberal of the bunch, but he is an even longer shot than Al Gore.

If you think that Ralph Nader or Michael Moore are going to win the presidency, you might as well just give up now. I’m not saying don’t work to build up third parties, I’m saying it is too late to try to field a viable 3^rd party candidate for 2008. That is a future project.

For Ron Paul fanatics… Ron Paul is not a liberal or a progressive, he is a right-wing, anti-government conservative. If you’re a progressive who thinks that government is (or is supposed to be) a critical and beneficial part of our society, you don’t want to have anything to do with Ron Paul.

If you want a sure bet, highly-qualified and honest progressive as president, just work your ass off to draft Al Gore and help get him elected. The deadline to get him to commit is fast approaching.

Short of that, work for and vote for your favorite progressive Democratic candidate, keeping in mind that the Joe Lieberman (DLC) wing of the Democratic party is very much like the George Bush (Neocon) wing of the Republican party as regards corporate ties and proclivities.

I think that any of the more progressive Democrats (Richardson > Obama > Edwards > Gore > Kucinich) would make a good, or maybe even a great president. I’m not so sure about the other, more corporate/defense industry friendly Democrats. They would be a lot better than Bush, but then again, that’s setting the bar really, really low.

All of us also need to research, and work to nominate the most progressive candidates in our state and local governments. It is critical that we all do the necessary research on our local candidates online, and in local papers, early in the process, so that we can work to make a difference. Waiting for the general election, and then just checking boxes or pressing buttons isn’t going to get you the government you want. You’ll need to put in some effort now, before your choices are both limited, and undesirable.

JRM

October 19th, 2007

Dr. James Watson of the famous Watson and Crick team credited with the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule is embroiled in controversy after stating in an interview that Blacks were not as intelligent as Whites.

Dr. Watson, now 79 and Chancellor of  the Cold Spring Harbor laboratory in New York, was quoted as saying that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.” And then continued “All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

Dr. Watson has had a somewhat controversial career from the beginning. Despite the fact that he and fellow scientist Francis Crick received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their work on the structure of nucleic acids, many scientists have noted that Watson and Crick did very little research themselves on the structure of DNA. Rather, they were known for schmoozing Dr. Rosalind Franklin in the early 1950s as she laboriously and carefully collected x-ray diffraction data of crystallized DNA molecules. Watson and Crick used the x-ray data, which gave the overall structure and dimensions of DNA, and then used ball and stick models to work out the precise structure of the DNA molecule. Dr. Rosie Franklin didn't even get a T-shirt that said “I did all the hard work, but they got the Nobel”.

Where Dr. Watson ran into trouble in his recent interview was with the age old canard that equates intelligence and test scores. The funny thing about testing is that it is done with tests. And where do you learn how to take tests? Usually at school. Anyone who is as intelligent as Dr. Watson should know all too well that testing shows how well you take tests, not how intelligent you are.

Overall, when ranking humans by so-called racial groups, Oriental people score highest on standard tests, Jewish people score high but slightly lower than Oriental people, Caucasians score slightly lower still, and Blacks usually score lower than whites on average. Such test results do not indicate that Oriental people are the most intelligent, it indicates that they have been trained better to take tests. It says nothing about inherent underlying intelligence. The rank order on test scores simply shows that different groups of humans receive different amounts of test training in school. If Whites were trained to take tests as thoroughly as Oriental children they would score just as high, and it works that way across all groups.

All that such test scores show is that education is not doled out evenly among the population. It is an indictment of education systems not a measure of innate intelligence.

Dr. Watson should know better than to give himself such a serious case of foot in mouth disease.

JRM

September 30th, 2007

According to some, the World Trade Center buildings could not have collapsed as fast as they obviously did, and therefore must have been destroyed by directed energy weapons which caused “molecular dissociation” of the building materials.

The latest hero of this movement is Dr. Judy Wood, formerly of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. Dr. Wood has a web site on her supposed evidence that the World Trade Center buildings did not collapse, but in fact were destroyed by energy beams.

After reading through the tedious article, which was filled with leaps of ill-logic and lots of photos that showed no evidence of directed energy weapons, or phaser fire, or “molecular dissociation”, I am amazed that people can so easily confuse science fiction with science fact.

I am not going to bother refuting the arguments anymore, that has been done very well by others. I am much more interested in what I feel is a concerted effort to divide, demoralize, and discredit the progressive movement.

For all you conspiracy theorists, this may be a new one that you had not thought of, which is much more plausible than the idea of phasers taking down the World Trade Center buildings.

George Bush and Dick Cheney were in charge during the worst attack against Americans on US soil in US history. They blew it as badly as anyone in charge could have blown it. They ignored all the warnings and did absolutely nothing to protect the country. As Democrats and progressives began scoring points against the administration by pointing out their extreme ineptitude and negligence, Karl Rove comes up with the idea of circulating wild 9/11 conspiracy theories all over the Internet to discredit detractors.

Everyone knows that hired Republican trolls prowl progressive websites and comment sections. It would be very easy for them, posing as liberal commenters, to begin spreading rumors that were outlandish to most people, but intriguing to some. The initial conspiracy theories suggested that pre-planted explosives and cruise missiles were involved in the destruction of the World Trade Center and the damage to the Pentagon. All sorts of details were eventually added, including who had access to the buildings in such a way that the detonation charges could have been planted, who might have actually pressed the button to detonate the charges, etc.

More recently, the conspiracy theories have turned clearly away from doubtful yet plausible explanations such as controlled demolition to the idea that top-secret military molecular dissociation energy beams were used to deliberately destroy the buildings. In case you hadn't noticed, this is precisely what phasers from Star Trek were supposed to do.

I am sure that many conspiracy theorists are well intentioned progressives, and are also very sincere, yet I have a very strong feeling that some small proportion of the 9/11 conspiracy movement includes planted conservative trolls. That's my conspiracy theory. And it's just a theory, not a fact. Their purpose would be to discredit all 9/11 conspiracy theories as outlandish. It also helps confuse the issue, and tarnish the left-wing progressive movement in general because the movement is composed of people who can not even agree on simple basic facts such as the fact that there are no such things as phasers.

If George Bush and Dick Cheney had taken the presidential daily brief’s warnings seriously throughout August 2001, and had implemented tighter security measures at airports, the disasters of September 11, 2001 could have easily been avoided. I believe that the conspiracy theory they wanted to distract everyone's attention away from is the one that seems most plausible. The administration was looking for a so-called “Pearl Harbor-like event” to galvanize the country behind a war against Iraq. The news that an attempted terrorist attack against the United States was imminent, maybe a small bomb on a Subway train for instance, might have actually been considered good news to Bush and Company.

Then came a Pearl Harbor-like event beyond their wildest imagination.

Think of the expression on George Bush's face as he sat reading My Pet Goat to a gradeschool class, and then was told about the second plane striking the World Trade Center. His expression was completely consistent with them expecting a small, ineffective attack, and just like everything else he has ever done, getting it completely wrong.

This is still the only 9/11 conspiracy theory I have heard that makes any sense whatsoever, and it is the one I believe they are trying to distract everyone from with the outlandish ideas being offered by people like Dr. Wood. Whether Dr. Wood believes these things, or has other motives, I can not say, but this type of conspiracy theory divides progressives, and tarnishes them all with an unfairly broad brush.

“Fire the phasers Dick!”,

“No Mr. President, the honor is yours”...

JRM

September 23rd, 2007

My colleagues and I went to the NIH the other day to meet with a doctor who is interested in trying an experimental treatment for a fatal genetic disorder. Our lab has been developing the treatment for several years. The meeting was to coordinate efforts to get rapid FDA approval for testing the treatment on one afflicted baby, who will die without treatment. What does this story have to do with nukes? Bear with me.

When we arrived at the entrance gate to the NIH we had to stop our car at a checkpoint populated with many armed guards and had to show our IDs, which indicated that we were from the military university across the street from the NIH. We were nonetheless ordered out of the car, and asked the deposit the contents of our pockets into trays before being herded through not one but two separate metal detector devices. The car was then searched as we waited. We were allowed to collect our belongings and given temporary NIH IDs, and then got back in the car and proceeded slowly down the road into the NIH campus.

We were stopped again a short while later and had to show the temporary NIH tags that we were just given. Preceding again into the NIH campus we got to the building where the meeting was to take place. We were stopped again and this time the steering wheel of the car was swabbed and the trunk of the car searched again. Finally, we were allowed to park the car and go to the meeting.

My point in bringing all of this up is that security at government and military facilities in the United States is at an absurdly high level. Far higher than necessary considering that the NIH is basically like a university campus, not a military nuclear storage facility.

And yet an article in the Washington Post today which details how six nuclear tipped cruise missiles were “accidentally” flown from Minot air base in North Dakota to Barksdale base in Louisiana chalks the whole incident up to lax security procedures… at a nuclear storage facility.

The official story so far goes like this. Minot air base stores nukes with non nukes in the same igloo bunkers. The type of cruise missiles that were being retrieved from the bunker were AGM-129s, which can only take two types of warhead; nuclear, or dummy nuclear. The nuke warheads are color coded red, and the dummies color coded silver. Silver good… red bad.

The munitions custodian officer who was in charge of retrieving the missile pods from the bunker reportedly “did not notice” that 6 of the missiles had red warheads, and proceeded to move them to the tarmac for loading onto the wings of an aging B52H bomber. After loading 6 nukes on one wing, and 6 dummies on the other wing, a flight officer reportedly only bothered to check the wing that contained the dummy warheads, and then without looking at the other group of missiles, cleared the plane for takeoff.

Separated from the rest of the world only by a chain link fence, the plane sat on the tarmac for 15 hours unguarded, with the unguarded missiles having the equivalent nuclear destructive power of  60 Hiroshima bombs. The next day, the nukes were flown to Louisiana in a plane that was not rated for transportation of nuclear weapons, creating what nuke experts call a “bent spear” incident, meaning an unauthorized movement of weapons outside the chain of nuclear command.

After landing at Barksdale air base, the plane and nukes sat unattended again for 9 hours before the nukes were “noticed” by one airman who was involved in removing them from the wings.  All in all, the nukes were out of authorized command and control for over a day.

The official story of confusion and negligence is very disturbing. If true, it indicates that our nuclear weapons supply is very poorly guarded, at a time when military security is supposedly at an all time high due to be so-called “war on terror”. The other possibility, that munitions officers and flight crews were ordered to move the missiles secretly, listed as AGM 129 cruise missiles with dummy warheads, is even more disturbing. Either way, something is very wrong here.

So, what does this all have to do with our meeting at the NIH? Security at the NIH was extremely high, and even though we had ID cards from a neighboring military university, the guards went through all the motions. Considering that nuclear weapons were involved at Minot, it is hard to understand how security there could have been so much more lax. The question remaining in my mind is, was it simply lax nuke security, which is terrifying, or was it ordered from higher up, which is even more terrifying? I wonder if we will ever have an answer.

Oh, and by the way. The FDA refused our request to try to save the baby with the fatal genetic disease.

JRM

September 19th, 2007

From the beginning, George Bush and friends have insisted that there was only one plan for Iraq… Plan A.

Nobody, not even Condi Rice, wanted to speculate about any Plan B.

So let’s go over plan A.

First, invade a beaten, sanction-starved and bombed-out country that happens to be sitting on the third largest oil reserve in the world, and then grab the oil fields, while letting everything else descend into chaos.

“Stuff happens” says Don Rumsfeld.

Then disband the Iraqi army and the police force, who might have been able to keep law and order in the chaotic situation, and then institute CPA order #17 which states that US military personnel and contractors can not be prosecuted under Iraqi law for crimes they commit.

Then, turn the previous leader over to a gang of thugs who hang him, and then start a multi-year occupation of the country, using strong-arm tactics on the population, and causing untold “collateral damage”. As things get worse, continue to occupy the country without end, killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, many being innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.

Then maintain the conditions for mass sectarian killings, low grade civil war, mass refugee movements, and further chaos everywhere. Let the local militias do whatever they want in their areas of influence.

Then tell the American public on the TV that a continued heavy-handed military occupation of Iraq is essential to quell the same violence caused by the invasion and draconian occupation of Iraq. Tell the American people with a straight face that leaving Iraq will result in the very same problems that invading Iraq caused.

Turn an oil-rich country into cauldron of death so that you have an excuse to stay there forever with your military. Cause all the death and destruction, and then warn that the obvious solution - ending the military occupation - will make the chaos you caused worse. This is akin to stepping on a hornets nest, but then refusing to back away from the swarm of stinging hornets because moving away will make the hornets angrier… “they might follow you home”.

Once you have made a total mess of Iraq, and allowed sectarian killing and mass displacement to go unchecked for years, then you could threaten to repeat the entire process in Iran to ensure you have an endless excuse to keep your military in the region… right near the oil.

So when someone asks you, “why would they consider something so crazy as bombing Iran?” You can reply “Plan A friend, Plan A”.

JRM

I have always wondered why so many Americans seem so completely disconnected from the political process, despite the fact that what politicians do can drastically affect their everyday lives. Laws that are passed determine your country’s direction, the wars we fight, your taxes, your freedoms and your family’s benefits as members of our society.

At some level, this disconnection from the political process is not unlike children ignoring their siblings, hoping they will go away and let them play the videogame. But your siblings dramatically affect your life as you grow up, and politicians dramatically affect your life, and your family’s wellbeing, every single day.

I have inquired among friends, both those vocal about politics, and those quiet on the subject, and rarely do I get any meaningful answers as to why they do not contact their congressperson or Senators about what is going on in our country right now. However, yesterday a good friend who is often vocal about politics, but who never contacts their representatives, admitted that he never contacts representatives or write newspapers because he did not want to be on some list with the FBI or NSA.

This got me to thinking in more detail about the age-old question of the government utilizing fear and paranoia to silence any opposition among the citizenry. Clearly, many Americans now fear their government sufficiently to remain silent.

Thinking back to pre-Kristallnacht Germany and the silence of the many, this is an ominous sign.

I do not know what can be done to rouse the courage of citizens, who rightly fear their government now, to make their voices heard by their representatives.

I do know that widespread fear-induced complacency is a sign of a serious societal malady.

There are reasons for silent Americans to take heart, and to finally speak out. First, there is safety in numbers. There are too many strong voices at play in America now, on the Internet, on the radio with hosts like Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann, and with journalists like Keith Olbermann, even on TV. It isn't possible at this point for the fear mongers to put the genie back in the bottle.

Also, the fear mongers are losing control. Their fear tonic is slowly losing its potency as they cry wolf far too often, and then point their fingers at sheep and cry wolf again.

Finally, the fear mongers organizational structure is breaking down. Between the pending court cases, congressional investigations, resignations right and further right, and in-fighting among the fear mongers as to how to maintain control, their ability to play the fear card is diminished further with every passing day.

There are many other reasons why Americans are disconnected from politics and their government, from pure apathy, to ignorance to just being too damn busy. But a significant proportion of silent Americans are afraid of their government, and don’t want don’t want to be put on “a list”.

If you have thought that your voice is not important, and that the politicians don't care, and if you have worried that writing Congress will put you on a list that you do not want to be on, but you nonetheless still have hope that America can be turned around, then do the right thing and tell your congressional representatives how you feel. Write them, call them, stop by their office, whatever you feel you can do.

As I have said before, the silent wheel gets the shaft. Don’t be a silent partner to some possible future American Kristallnacht. Become a squeaky wheel and help take your country back from the fear mongers.

JRM

Bush, Cheney and Rove say that the army supports the war in Iraq, and that our soldiers are getting all they need. But one statistic you won’t hear out of George Bush, Dick Cheney or Karl Rove’s mouth is that the active duty soldier suicide rate has reached a 26 year high.

Other statistics they won’t want you to know include that 20 % of our soldiers have symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, and that more than 1 in 3 returning soldiers have sought mental health treatment.

These findings, while possibly shocking to George A’W’OL Bush, will not be surprising to psychiatrists or mental health professionals, who understand that long term military occupations in the midst of insurgencies inevitably cause extreme stress, depression, and even suicide among the over-extended troops.

The Bush administration continues to declare that they have strong support for the Iraq war among our troops overseas, but the statistics tell another story. Suicide and PTSD rates don’t reach multi-decade highs when the troops are doing well, and when they support the government’s policies. They reach such highs when troops are demoralized, and see no end in sight - no hope on the horizon.

The two most obvious solutions to the problem are 1) Bring the troops home now, and 2) triple funding for the Veterans administration, and hire on many more health care professionals.

These things will not happen until George Bush is either impeached, or if the troops are very unfortunate indeed, in early 2009 after Bush is put out to pasture in Crawford. How he will then live with his conscience, if he has one, is another matter altogether.

JRM

Twenty five years later, I’ll turn it around for the sake of historical symmetry.

American business IS the problem.

Right wing think tanks, corporate leaders, media moguls and rich Republicans in the government have long been working together to grease the wheels of industry, but before they can fully realize that goal, they first need to finish the job of demonizing, hobbling, de-funding, disparaging and finally using the very power of the government to eliminate government functions, oversight and prosecutions.

They have nearly accomplished what they set out to do. From the Justice Department to the courts, and FEMA, FDA, and all other agencies, the US Government is dying.

Government records indicate that perhaps as many as 80,000 bridges in America are rated structurally marginal or poor. The electrical, phone, water, sewage, highway, port, railway, airport, education and even industrial infrastructures of this country are aging, and in many cases could be considered marginal, or poor. That includes not just decrepit bridges you may drive on every day, but also deteriorating nuclear power plants, octogenarian skyscrapers in earthquake zones, suspect water treatment systems, the pothole-ridden roads you drive on, the sub-standard levees in places like New Orleans, and the laughing stock power grid that fails everywhere on a regular basis.

The bridge collapse in Minneapolis is already being used by corporate America to push for privatization of the highway system. Just imagine toll roads everywhere, roads that will become even more decrepit over time in order to ensure maximal profits. Corporate reps ask defiantly, “why shouldn’t somebody make money on it?”

The government is always sluggish to do what is right, and what is necessary, but eventually, critical things often eventually get done, even though they may be a more than “a dollar long and a day late”. But ever since half of the American electorate, with the help of the Supreme Court, put government-hating businessmen in charge of everything for the last six years, the national infrastructure, public health, education and even our troops have been far more neglected than usual.

This neglect is not negligent, it is planned. Corporatists have endeavored for years to make everyone hate all politicians, hate the government and hate everything associated with them. As you can tell, the plan is working.

The complete and permanent marriage of government and corporations in America is not an inevitable fate. Government in America can be what the people make of it… if they work hard enough. It took blood during the Revolutionary war, and the reign of the Pinkertons in the Gilded Age, but it will only take organization and perseverance now if the people can unite against the Corporateocracy.

The uniting part is hard. Very hard.

Currently, business IS the problem. Until we return to the ancient and now quaint Aristotelian idea that the purpose of business craft is to excel at what they do, to serve their customers, make a fair profit, and to be a productive part of the community, we will be the victims of a perverted system that puts quarterly profits and shareholders above everything else, including the quality of life, and indeed, above life itself.

What can be done?

I suggest that progressive organizations coordinate rolling “buy boycotts” for various goods and services targeted at the large corporations that are part of the problem. This would focus initially on corporate media, and their advertisers. It would have to include letter writing and phone call campaigns to make our intentions unmistakable. It could move to energy companies and other sectors that have a stranglehold on our government, media and society.

This would only work if progressives were willing to do the hard work necessary. If  most progressives are too busy, and would rather not be bothered, then there is no chance that this could work. It would be both difficult, and time-consuming. But if you want to do something, I suggest that you pick your favorite progressive organization, join it, and work to coordinate with other organizations, local and nationwide, to plan and execute consecutive and effective boycotts. If this became a national news story due to the persuasive effects on businesses, it could help shift the debate and the political center of gravity to the left, and away from impending corporatocracy.

As I’ve said before, money doesn’t talk, it screams bloody murder. We’ve got to use our collective buying power as consumers to scream bloody murder. If you’re mad as hell, and don’t want to take it anymore, there is no better way to express it than what you do with your money. And besides, money is the only thing that the corporatocracy cares about.

JRM

As I was getting ready to write about how the Republicans have let the country’s infrastructure collapse, just like the 8-lane Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed yesterday at rush hour, I saw Stephen Crocket’s article on misplaced Republican spending. This got me all riled up about wasted lives and wasted money again.

It is difficult to pick apart the US budget in an itemized fashion, but it is undeniable that the US is spending a massive amount of taxpayers money on the military and secret programs… money that many Americans would most likely prefer to be spent other ways. Estimates of how much the US spends per year on the military, “homeland” security, intelligence agencies and secret projects (like the terrorist surveillance program) can not be accurate, because these figures are not fully public. But the number is between $700 billion and a trillion dollars (1000 billion dollars) per year.

Compare this with somewhere around $28 or so billion for The national Institutes of Health. That means that we spend about 30 times as much money on our military industrial complex as we do on biomedical research into potentially curable diseases.

As General Norman Schwarzkopf once said… if hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a foreign attack, we would mobilize the entire country to fight back. He then said that is exactly what happens every year when hundreds of thousands of people die unnecessarily every year from potentially curable diseases. But instead of putting more money into research, we put it into the military industrial complex.

Dollar for dollar, spending money on NIH saves many more lives than military spending, which actually takes lives, rather than saving them. There is no threat to the US now that is going to take even as many lives as are lost from a single type of cancer, let’s say breast cancer (about 40,000 per year).

Many Americans still have a love affair with the military, as though it were something romantic and majestic, rather than something destructive and harmful, even to the soldiers who serve. Biomedical research just doesn’t have that ability to capture people’s imaginations. But it is one of the most important things we can do with our tax dollars.

The horrific collapse of the Interstate Highway bridge in Minneapolis yesterday highlights the other major victim of our perverse military spending. The infrastructure of the country is crumbling, but we are trying to rebuild Iraq, rather than rebuilding America. The steam pipe explosion in Manhattan, the power blackouts, the repetitive explosions and fires at oil refineries all are symptoms of an aging infrastructure that needs immediate attention.

But as long as we occupy Iraq, we will be spending money that we don’t even have, money that we must borrow from foreign banks and will have to repay with interest, to keep the oil fields of Iraq in US hands. That money should be spent here in the US, on biomedical research, infrastructure, education and to meet other critical needs right here at home. By the way, we spend about 10 times as much to finance the debt every year as we spend on NIH research, just to put the debt in perspective.

To be honest, you shouldn’t write congress about this right now. Right now we need to push for investigations and impeachments, and to get out of Iraq immediately, so unfortunately, these other critical issues need to go on the back burner for now. Just keep in mind that your family members will most likely die prematurely from a potentially curable disease like cancer or heart disease, not from a terrorist attack.

JRM

The Third Pearl Harbor
July 31st, 2007

Speaking of the September 11^th 2001 attacks Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of  Nebraska said, “This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it,".

The Bush administration and it’s supporters wanted Americans to be afraid, cooperative and compliant. That is still what they want.

There has been quite of bit of discussion lately about Bush and Cheney declaring martial law and canceling the 2008 election. I personally don’t think they could pull it off, but the bits and pieces of information that have come out certainly makes the suggestion seem to have some merit. Many of these have been outlined is a recent