Walter Cronkite Is “Gravely Ill”

Former CBS News anchorman and broadcast news great Walter Cronkite is said to be gravely ill and nearing death.

Cronkite, once The Most Trusted Man In America according to a Gallup Poll at the time, is 92 and TVNewser reports that CBS began updating his bio last week. The network is said to be preparing a special on his life to be broadcast when he dies.

Cronkite, who anchored the CBS Evening News for 19 years until Dan Rather’s political manoeuvring inside the network’s news division forced him into retirement in 1981, brought America good news and bad, knitting the nation together during times of stress as well as happy times. He’s also the single most-important reason I decided to become a television news reporter when I was still in my early teens.

Uncle Walter, as he was affectionately called by friends and total strangers, always seemed to be there for us. When he told us about the Kennedy Assassination, he struggled to keep his composure because he knew if he lost his cool, the country would as well.



And, a few years later, it was Walter who again told America about another tragedy, the assassination of Martin Luther King.



Walter shared joyous times with us, as well, like when he became almost giddy at the moon landing.



Cronkite’s reporting from Viet Nam absolutely turned the tide of public opinion about the folly going on interminably in Southeast Asia. When he told America the truth about how badly the war in Viet Nam was going, and said Washington was lying about it, Pres. Lyndon Johnson turned to then-aide Bill Moyers to say, “If I’ve lost Cronkite on this, I’ve lost the nation.”




If Edward R. Murrow invented TV news reporting, then Walter Cronkite made it a force in America’s daily life. It was because he gave everyone who toiled in the fertile, green vineyards of broadcast reporting a compass, a direction, a role model to aspire to become. During the course of his nearly 20 year reign behind the anchor desk, television news – network and local – achieved its peak, not just of influence but, more importantly, of credibility.

He was a giant and, for countless reasons, his likes will never be seen again. Instead, we have nincompoops like Bill O’Reilly, Chris Mathews, Joe Scarborough and Sean Hannity bringing disgrace, disrepute and despair to a profession that Walter Cronkite made honourable.

And that’s the way it is.

h/t to Hoffmania

The GOP Keeps Trash Talking Health Care

Like when it rolled out its laughable 18-page “budget” five months ago that forgot to include any numbers, yesterday John “Man Tan” Boehner, Eric “Ralph Wiggums” Cantor and a handful of other Congressional Republicans unveiled a four page health care “plan” Wednesday that not only had no numbers, it had no substance, no ideas – good or bad – and the closest it came to being a plan was calling it one on the cover.

Not wanting to lose the spotlight to their colleagues in the House, three Republican Senators – John Kyl, Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts – were busy introducing the Preserving Access to Targeted, Individualized and Effective New Treatments and Services (PATIENTS) Act of 2009. Their bill would prohibit Medicare or Medicaid from using “comparative effectiveness research to deny coverage.”

In layman’s language, this means Medicare would be compelled to pay for useless treatments. This comes from the same claque that prevented Medicare from negotiating drug prices when Republicans controlled Congress and the drug benefit was being introduced.

The trio actually launched this idiotic piece of legislation with a straight face, not noticing it is the silliest thing to come along since Nancy Reagan’s astrologer told Ronnie when to make policy speeches. As Paul Krugman points out Thursday morning, there are four insane components to the Republican’s latest piece of garbage:

1. Republicans who rail against wasteful government spending are taking action to prevent the government from … reining in wasteful spending.
2. Politicians who warn that the burden of entitlements is killing the federal budget are stepping in to block the single most painless route to reducing the growth of entitlements.
3. They’re doing it in the name of avoiding “rationing of health care” but they’re specifically addressing taxpayer-funded care. If you want to go out and buy a medically useless treatment, Medicare won’t stop you.
4. These same politicians are opposed to expanding coverage because it’s evil for government to “ration care” by only paying for things that work; it is, however, virtuous to ration care by refusing to pay for any care at all.

“You’re assuming people watching CNN are thinking,” a staff member to a Republican Senator tells me this morning. “We’re simply trying to make the point that government-sponsored health care is a terrible idea.”

Which Bureaucrat?

Trash talk was heard all over Capitol Hill Thursday and Friday.

Wednesday’s GOP talking point was warning about “inserting bureaucrats between you and your doctor,” and it was repeated at least a half-dozen times by interchangeable Republican faces popping up on cable news and C-SPAN.

Uhm, shouldn’t Republicans watch something besides Fox News occasionally? It is insurance company “bureaucrats” who keep inserting themselves between patients and doctors, denying coverage or treatment for people who are ill. Earlier this week Keith Olbermann treated us to the latest outrage: AIG, US Airways liability insurer, is telling a survivor of the airline’s Hudson River crash that she and her three year old daughter would not be covered for psychological counselling to deal with the on-going trauma of watching themselves almost die.

Yes, it’s that AIG. The one we own. One of us should tell AIG that even the Pentagon finally is treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

As for bureaucrats and medicine, I’ve had three grandparents and two parents covered by Medicare between the time they turned 65 and when they died – some in their late 80s and early 90s. Combined, they enjoyed 130+ years of Medicare and not once were any of them ever told by a “bureaucrat” they wouldn’t be covered for treating one ailment or another. They never waited to see a doctor nor did a “bureaucrat” dictate to their physicians which treatment to use or what medication to prescribe.

Oh, and by the way, dear Republicans: Not even the strongest proponents of a universal, single payer health care reform package is suggesting that doctors, nurses and other health professionals will work for the government. So why are you comparing them to postal workers and the Department of Motor Vehicles the way you did Thursday? Are you crazy, stupid or just plain liars trying to scare Harry and Louise into opposing health care reform one more time?

“OK, so likening a public plan to the DMV is an exaggeration. So what? The point is to stop this thing cold,” the Republican staffer admits reluctantly. “No one likes bureaucrats and everyone hates the Post Office and DMV. It’s a good ‘word picture’ that people who watch cable news can understand.”

So the answer to my question is: The GOP is happy lying to scare people while they try scoring a false point.

Paying Billions Already

What the viewers disparaged by the GOP don’t understand is they’re already paying for universal coverage, of sorts. An article published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine reports that we’re already spending $43-billion annually treating the 50-million uninsured Americans.

But care is an uneven hodgepodge of federal, state and local programmes, and much of the money is spent poorly or in the wrong place.

The report, co-authored by Linda Blumberg and John Holahan says, “Care provided in this way varies considerably by locale and does not amount to continuous, comprehensive care for the uninsured, nor do all the uninsured have access to such publicly subsidized services.

“Once everyone has health insurance coverage, either public or private, these funds can be redirected to help finance a new system that includes income-related subsidies for care provided in efficient health systems,” the article maintains.

Blumberg and Holahan call for a mandated public system, noting that research shows that without mandates, many people will remain uninsured because premiums will gobble up too much of their income – as much as 30%, according to the article, or about the same as rent or food.

Conceding that some federal subsidies will be needed, “most will go to the poorest and sickest – those who are most likely to enrol on a voluntary basis. Thus, a mandate will (also) bring healthier people and those with higher incomes into the system at a relatively low incremental cost, as compared with a voluntary approach with the added benefit of government financing redirected from the programs that currently cover uncompensated care.”

Whatever talking point the GOP rolls out today in its fight to keep America sick, remember that Republican staff people on the Hill admit all the party is trying to do is create scary “word pictures” to frighten the average cable news viewer. Republicans have always been good at twisting emotions and playing on fear. It’s past time for progressives to borrow a page from the Republican playbook and talk emotions, not just facts and figures.

The Curious Incident Of A US Extradition In The Night

Guest post by Denis Campbell, editor of The UK Progressive.

Gary McKinnon of Crouch End, North London, England was branded a ‘cyber-terrorist’ by the US government and, in 2002, was arrested for hacking into Pentagon and NASA computers.

The US Justice, Defence and Homeland Security Departments have been fighting a seven-year long battle to extradite McKinnon to the USA where he is charged under the 2003 UK Extradition Act. If convicted on terrorism charges, he could face up to 60 years locked-down, 23-hour per day, in a US SuperMax prison. While many differ on likely length of sentence, this is the same kind of prison convicted shoe-bomber Richard Reid sits on a hunger strike hoping to kill himself. Gary openly admits his guilt of computer mischief and he did hack into US government computers.

Now before jumping to the obvious conclusion thinking “a (then) 36-year old man should know the difference between right and wrong” and setting your “fry him” righteous jaw and mind firmly shut, you need to look, Paul Harvey-style, at “The Rest of the Story.”

At 43, Gary has lived with an until-recently undiagnosed case of high-functioning autism known as Asperger’s Syndrome. The disease was first discovered and labelled in the late 1990s and was made famous in the 2003 best-selling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Until the book, where a low functioning Asperger’s sufferer teenager sets off on a journey to find his dead mother, few ever heard of this syndrome. Famous Aspergers sufferers include American actor Dan Ackroyd and acclaimed Scottish artist Peter Howson – both of whom have spoken out on Gary ’s behalf.

Aspergers sufferers such as Gary make diagnosis more difficult because they often possess very high intelligence in specific areas such as math, computer science or physics. They are mostly reclusive and can become hyper-obsessive. One thinks of Dustin Hoffman’s character Raymond in Rain Man as an example.

Gary’s mother, Janis Sharp, spoke of a Christmas dinner where he put a large computer on the family dining table and could not understand why everyone was so upset. His logical but insensitive response was “well it’s my holiday party too isn’t it?” Indeed, it is the honesty of an Asperger’s sufferer – “often to a fault” Janis said – “that can be to their own detriment.”

When Gary spoke to UK computer crimes authorities in 2002, he could only speak truth. This is also why plea deals are abhorrent because it means admitting guilt to something he feels is untrue. Without a lawyer present, he freely admitted to UK police to looking around in government computers of all kinds because, “They were very nice to him.”

At the centre of the growing row between the UK and US is a demand to have Gary stand trial in the US despite his diminished capacity. Many in the UK want him to stand trial here. They launched a successful UK campaign that Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of The Guardian, took exception to the media blindly taking McKinnon’s side in their coverage of the case. He objected to the myths of imprisonment in Gitmo, portrayal of US anger at his extradition fight and widely reported belief that US authorities wanted McKinnon to “fry.”

Not Innocent

No one is suggesting he is innocent.

They are talking degrees of punishment and the curious use of the 2003 Extradition Act, which gives the Crown Court little leeway and they must extradite UK nationals on ‘suspicion’ of terrorism; anyone the UK seeks for extradition residing in the US requires probable cause. Too, cases involving extradition normally involve someone who has committed a crime and has fled that jurisdiction and must be forcibly brought back to stand trial. Gary McKinnon never left the UK.

The problem is the Act has been used in the non-terror cases of Alex Stone, an alleged child abuser whose charges were dropped after spending 6 months in a US jail; Ian Norris of Morgan Crucible, whose original price-fixing charges were dropped but still faces extradition on obstruction of justice charges; and The NatWest 3, bankers extradited and found guilty of wire fraud – the government’s old mafia conviction standby charge. They currently serve 37 month sentences in US prisons.

Even David Blunkett, UK Home Secretary when the Act was negotiated and passed, never foresaw this level of interpretation and believes it should not be used in Gary’s case because, after 9/11, the Bush Administration labelled everything they could terrorism. Politicians here and in the US were not keen to attack these cases for fear of looking soft on terrorism. Too, this issue grabbed its biggest headlines after the Spanish and 7/7 London Tube terrorist bombings, so the issue was high on everyone’s mind.

Little Green Men

Gary McKinnon is completely obsessed with the existence of UFOs and convinced the government covered them up.

He is a self-described “bumbling computer nerd” who wanted to know more about them in the Pentagon files he hacked. He was a big fan of the 1983 feature film War Games where a youthful Matthew Broderick accidentally breaks into a Pentagon computer and nearly converts a war simulator into a real global thermonuclear war.

As a 17-year old boy, Gary wondered, could that really be done? When he and many others proved it indeed could be, especially after 9/11, McKinnon became the poster child for lax DoD computer security.

Many DoD and NASA computer systems lack firewall protections an,d as Gary has said repeatedly,“one could easily see the IP addresses of other hackers from China , Russia and other places around the globe whilst in there.”

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates noted that the Pentagon has thousands of cyber attacks daily on its systems. Gary became upset when he could not find what he was looking for and started leaving notes and traces of his entry calling the US government “liars” for discrediting the existence of UFOs and lax 9/11 air security.

His original UK charge in 2002 was not an extraditable offence. After passage of the Extradition Act and showing an unwillingness to plea bargain to a lesser offence, then federal prosecutors Scott Christie and Ed Gibson upped the ante claiming McKinnon caused more than $700,000 in damages, deleted passwords and put a Naval defence system at risk, all denied by Gary and his defence lawyers.

He was re-charged as a cyber terrorist when extradition prospects were seemed automatic under this new treaty.

Appeals to The House of Lords and EU Court of Human Rights were denied or not heard. This left Gary’s defence team with very few options.

But the Asperger’s diagnosis did two things: It opened the door for a judicial review of both the Crown Prosecution Service’s handling of the case, which was heard last week, and the Home Office’s recommendation of accepting such an unbalanced treaty.

Karen Todner of lBritish law firm Kaim Todner serves as Gary ’s lawyer. Mrs. Todner was tenacious on Gary ’s behalf and hired leading human rights solicitor Edward Fitzgerald. In his brief Fitzgerald said, "the decision (to extradite) is procedurally flawed and unlawful for it wrongly fails to consider and analyse important expert medical evidence concerning the effects of extradition on the claimant and his mental health."

This is the real game changer.

In many ways, Gary’s disease reveals an intellectually and emotionally naïve child locked in a man’s body. His mind is both his biggest friend and greatest enemy. As Scottish artist Peter Hoswon said in a Scotsman interview with Gerri Peev, "Gary has the more anxiety-prone form of Asperger's, which I fear means he will not be able to survive life in an American prison. I have to be blunt: he will not be able to cope and will turn suicidal. He is not a terrorist, nor a threat to national security, but just a vulnerable Asperger's man whose complex mind caused him to make a mistake. Individuals like Gary should be protected by us and nurtured, not made a scapegoat for the sins of our police state society."

Gary’s curiosity took him to the place of trying to see if he could do it. Aspergers sufferers tend to believe what they read or hear and their desire for truth is so strong it overcomes all other rational thoughts and emotions. Indeed as he became more and more obsessed with the UFO conspiracy, his then girlfriend became very concerned for his well-being as Gary stopped caring for himself, even stopping eating and bathing – all hallmarks of Aspergers.

The legions of supporters for Gary include Peter Gabriel, Sting, US Shuttle Commander Clark McCleland, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, former Iranian hostage Terry Waite, Peter Gabriel and Graham Nash of Crosby Stills and Nash, along with dozens of MPs and celebrities.

The US has a flawed history of understanding or even admitting mental illness in court. Because of this lack of understanding, prosecutors fight it tooth and nail. A defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity goes down in the loss column.

It taints a prosecutor’s record to have someone sent to an institution or psychiatric prison facility. A federal prosecutor speaking on condition of anonymity said, “Having a defendant found not guilty by reason of temporary or true insanity hurts the prosecutor. We need big winning records in high profile cases to move up the ladder politically or find top security positions when we leave …” (Indeed Gibson and Christie now run security across the UK for Microsoft Corporation).

“It’s tough to become a top paid white shoe firm white collar criminal defence attorney or be elected as a District Attorney or state Attorney General without a solid record of conviction in high profile cases,” this US prosecutor said.

As his mother, Janis, said, “People with Asperger’s are highly intelligent but cannot cross a busy road because it is so terrifying for them. Asperger’s is invisible in many ways and its sufferers can seem incredibly normal. The Pentagon had no firewalls or security, that’s an insult to the people who died on 9/11. How could the biggest superpower in the world not have firewalls? Gary was stupid, he left notes on the system but why extradite him because of a sense of embarrassment?”

If convictions are the yardstick upon which a prosecutor can strut, the question becomes should an impaired person be extradited to face horrific charges where a sentence in the UK would be more proportional?

“We Don't Have Mousavi Supporters; It's Now All Of Iran ...”

This is a report on Tuesday's demonstration for Mousavi in Tehran written by an eyewitness who lives in the city. It appears this morning at Informed Comment, the daily blog of Middle East authority Juan Cole.

Cole explains in an introduction, “I was sent this by an academic, but will not give the name to avoid any repercussions for the individual.”
______________________

Today, under slate skies and despite official warnings that the permit to march had been denied, against rumors that orders had been given to shoot to kill, they came. They came by the tens if not hundreds of thousands, marching east to west along the many kilometers of Enqelab Street to Azadi, or Freedom Square. "It would be dishonorable, na mardi, to not go," a young couple explained. "We have to go." Another man asks who is going, what is going on? He is told that the "Mousavi-chiha" are marching starting at 4. He laughs, "Mousavi-chiha nadarim, hame ye Iran hastand!" We don't have Mousavi supporters, it's now all of Iran...

That they came to Azadi, a place where thirty years ago the Revolution pivoted towards victory was fitting, for as much as the election campaign had been about who best represented the revolutionary values of Iran, Islam, and the late Imam, the push and pull of the past few days between opposition and Ahmadinejad forces has been a struggle to lay claim to authenticity. Authenticity that lies in the imagined and lived past, places, and practices of the Islamic Republic. It is as if whomever can get to the important places and rituals first and stay there, hang onto them, will win. So at night, beginning at 9 pm, we hear shouts of "Allah Akbar!" from the rooftops, just like in the fall and winter of 1978-1979. We have marches to sacred spots like Azadi and appeals by all sides to the memory of Khomeini...

In the crowd there are families, young and old. One cannot help but notice the large presence of women of all ages. The typical daily life of the capital is out here together, the homes, sidewalks and boulevards abandoned for this shared space. There is word that the crowd is millions strong; we know that it stretches eastwards to Imam Hussein Square. It is an incredible occasion - by comparison the state-organized 200,000 strong anniversary march that takes place every February starts from around Ferdowsi Square, several kilometers closer in to Azadi.

The mood in the crowd was positive, reminiscent of the joyous celebrations of the final week of the campaign. The chants are up-to-date, changed to reflect the new circumstances in Iran, the things that we did not know before Friday's vote. "Hale ye noor e ro dide, rai e mano nadide?" A reference to the light of the hidden Imam that Ahmadinejad claimed to have seen, roughly translated to rhyme, "If he saw that light, why didn't he see the vote we cast with all our might?!" And, "Ta in Ahmadi nejad hast, in ghaziye ijad hast!" Until this Ahmadi is here, this commotion will not disappear!

There are new signs as well. Written in English, "Where is My Vote?" (I can't help myself, the idea for an Al Gore-Mir Hossein Mousavi buddy film pops into my mind, "Dude, Where is My Vote?"). Another: 2 x 2 = 24 million, a play on the bogus economic measures touted by Ahmadinejad during the debates, now updated to reflect the equally dubious election results.

The procession passes through an underpass and just as there is great pleasure in honking the car horn in tunnels these many people send up an enormous cheer, echoing off the walls. From dark to light the crowd emerges from the underpass and looks back to see what they have done. There is above them stretching across the tunnel a dissonant sight, a sign with the visage and message of the Supreme Leader. He watches over this protest in the manner of TJ Eckelberg.

The crowd knots and comes to an absolute standstill. They are pressed against each other, Cochella and Woodstock in one. Slowly, slowly the people move forward and see that the cause for the standstill is Mehdi Karrobi. Karrobi whose almost 400,000 votes was the most telling sign that something was seriously amiss with the vote count (he counted more registered activists and supports in his campaign machine alone). Karrobi, a former member of Imam Khomeini's inner circle, who during the presidential race four years ago famously protested that "I was in first place during the vote count, took an afternoon nap, and when I woke up I was suddenly two places behind Ahmadinejad." The 72 year-old cleric stands atop a car surrounded by body guards, blessing the crows with blown kisses.

As I have noted before, what is remarkable about the Mousavi and opposition marches is the orderly disorder. These are not rallies or events in the manner that we are accustomed to in the United States. There are no official Mousavi volunteers guiding the crowd to the designated rallying points, college interns filled with coffee and day-old pizza. The movement is self-directed. Mousavi had asked his supporters to march but to march respectfully, to not give any excuse for violence. The crowd is abiding. Along the nearly kilometer length of a basiji base, the cry goes up: Shoar nagoo! Don't shout slogans! Hands are up held up instead. It is quiet. Here and there a voice, unable to restrain itself, begins to scream "Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!" He is met instantly with hisses and whistles - saket! saket! quiet! quiet! - and the voice falls silent again.

How do we know where to go? When to go? SMS or texting is down, the internet is spotty and cell phones have become unreliable. Still, Tehran has always been a city where information gets passed around easily. For all of the complaints and anxiety that life has become too modern, that people are living alone in great apartment towers instead of with their families in homes, the citizens of this city find ways to know, to be in each other's business. Conversations come easily even amongst strangers, more so now than ever. Men weave through the crowd, telling us what's next. "Come tomorrow to Vali Asr at 5! Tomorrow! Spread the word!"

Compare this to the Ahmadinejad rallies that we have seen. Yesterday, Mother's Day in Iran (an appropriate day given Ahmadinejad's persistent claim to be the "defender" of the vatan, or motherland) the Ahmadinejad groups held their own rally and show of force in Vali Asr Square in central Tehran. Their numbers are not few---the crowd filled the square and stretched south for at least a kilometer. But this action is more organized, mobilization by memo as one observer put it. Word goes out in the mosques, bonyads, and ministries that there is to be a gathering and they come, organized by section and arriving in chartered buses and vans. Unlike the Mousavi rallies, their Great Leader is present both in person and in stereo. Audio equipment is set up to so that we might hear his message and the speakers tell the crowd where to go afterwards. The atmosphere is no less festive, no less family-oriented than the opposition rallies. But the numbers are less and the movement less sustained. There is, perhaps, less to lose for this group, less sense of outrage and danger.

Back on Enqelab, the sun slips under the clouds and light begins to fall sideways across the crowds, hands turn golden in the last part of the day. Dasta bala! Dasta bala! Hands in the air! Hands in the air! All arms are up, spread into the familiar sign of victory. The crowd reaches the square but cannot enter, does not need to enter, this spot will do. On either side of a nearby underpass a call and response begins, arms and legs hang over the guardrail, bodies lean over the road that runs several meters below. From one side of the underpass: "Mir Hossein!" From the other: "Ya Hossein!" From one side: "Mir Hossein!" Now from the other: "Ya Hossein!" Cars and motorcycles raise the alarm, young men with green scarves over their faces ninja-style run and hop between the traffic. They urge the crowd and cars on, MC style. Two large passenger buses emerge from under the tunnel and the drivers lay on their horns, making the crowd go wild, they love it. It is all noise. The cheer goes up, "Gofte boodim age taqalob bishe, Iran ghiamat mishe!" We told you that if they cheat, Iran will explode!

We leave the square and head north along Jenah Expressway towards Ariashahr or Sadiqia Square. It is only at this point that the enormity of what is happening becomes clear. In the diminishing light there and stretching towards the rising foothills that mark the upper reaches of Tehran one can only see person after another. Cars and buses that have made the mistake of turning into this crowd have been engulfed.

The story takes a bad turn; all does not end well. Seeing the camera around my neck, several people rush up to me, frantically urging me to go take pictures, shouting that they are killing us all! Behind a wall, in an alleyway set off from the road, a confrontation is taking place between one spike of the crowd and basiji forces, holed up in a base. There is the unsettling pop-pop-pop of gunfire, a plume of black smoke rises into the sky. A crowd is gathering in the alley and men rush forward to throw rocks while others tell them to stop, stop, that's what they want! A police officer, alone, rushes in to help, brought in by part of the crowd. Suddenly he is surrounded, confronted violently by angry protestors. A great confusion ensues as water bottles and rocks are hurled at the cop; 10-15 men form a perimeter around the officer to shield him their hands up begging the crowd to control themselves to let this man pass, he has come to help. During the worst moment, we see the terrified policeman pressed against a courtyard wall, his hat has been knocked off, he shouts that he is here to help. Finally, thankfully, the situation is controlled, the police officer joins in the chanting, and he is allowed to go into the alley to help.

The chant goes up, the same as was used during the 1979 Revolution: "He who kills my brother, will be killed by me!"

The wail of an ambulance. A boy, he could not have been older than 14, is rushed through the crowd, carried sideways at the head and the legs by three men. Foam is coming out of his mouth and his eyes. There is no way of knowing for sure but there are reports that 5 to 7 people have been shot, have been killed right here in this spot. I see a young man hold up his right hand, it is covered in blood...

They found a way to make it last. Everyone says that in a few days the protests will be stopped, what's the point of going out, but when the moment comes everyone is here. To stop this now would take a tremendous display of violence and thus far, blessedly, that has not happened.

Still, at this point, the crowd remains uncertain...An apt if unimaginative metaphor would be a school of fish. Everyone moves in one direction, then suddenly shoulders drop and they run for their lives the opposite way. Riqdan! Riqdan! They're attacking! The mass looks back and sees that there are already hands held up beckoning the crowd to stop, to come back, to be brave and not run.

Fear. It would be an unfair mismatch if fear were to disappear. Do not believe the lie that this is a story of middle-class, urbane Iran set against the great multitude of obdurate peasants, the supposedly authentic Iran. That is a myth, what Juan Cole has called the "North Tehran fallacy," no different than the bogus notion that Middle America is the True America. Iran's heart and voting population lies in its cities as much as in the countryside. It was in the cities that the 1979 Revolution took place, and the 6-8 million new voters that showed up at the booth to vote, many for the first and only time in their lives, did not emerge from Iran's diminishing villages.

Tehran is fast becoming two. In the late afternoon and lasting until around dinner time it is a place of peaceful civic celebration, a disneyland of political action for the whole family to participate. At night, the mood shifts abruptly, and the capital becomes a battleground, a city in which fear stalks on motorbikes mounted in helmeted pairs.

It is like a dream. We wake up in the morning, our legs and voices sore, wondering if this is really happening, anxious for what will come next.

Walsh Is Right: Bill O’Reilly Is A Nasty, Vile Man Who Enables Crazies

The good news about Fox News blubber mouth Bill O’Reilly is that he speaks to only a teeny, tiny percentage of the country; the bad news is part of that small and dwindling group actually thinks he makes sense and then goes out and kills people because they believe his vile, hate-filled rhetoric.

Much as a woman who is battered by her husband but won’t leave him or press charges is an enabler of the brute’s actions, O’Reilly may not have pulled the trigger in the Holocaust Museum or in Dr. Tiller’s church but he – and others such as Operation Rescue’s heinous Troy Newman, the bulbous, bilious Rush Limbaugh, batty Michelle Malkin who’s on record justifying racial profiling and interning Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the just plain goofy Ann Coulter – are enablers who give voice and authenticity to crazy people who do the shooting.

It is time for all of us to call these loose cannons what Joan Walsh of Salon.com already did: Hateful, vile people whose words enable violence among the conservative fringe.

A psychiatrist tells me that the ranting, raging voices on the far right – like the killers themselves – all seem to suffer from a common, distorted view of the world, triggered by something called “insufficient attachment disorder.” Developed by Dr. John Bowlby in the 1960s, essentially the idea is that infants who do not develop a secure attachment to their parents early in life can end up as fuming adults who don’t trust others – especially those who disagree with them – and can feel some degree of paranoia, often lashing out angrily at the world in ways both socially accepted and, sometimes, unacceptable.

Like gluing doors shut on women’s health clinics, killing doctors in church, storming the Holocaust Memorial to kill everyone in sight, or spouting utter claptrap ad nauseum on television. Witness O’Reilly’s over-the-top reaction to Walsh Friday when she appeared on his show to discuss the Dr. Tiller killing:



Meanwhile, outfits like Operation Rescue continue to issue press releases that sanctimoniously proclaim it “… will continue to help lead the fight against abortion through peaceful and legal means.” The June 8 statement by Operation Rescue’s general counsel apparently means it’s alright for the organization to post home addresses and phone numbers, and e-mail contacts, on the internet of health professionals performing perfectly legal medical procedures so the crazies can target them.

These holier-than-thou words contradicted by the group’s hateful actions fit the definition of “enabler” held by every 12 Step group in the world.

For example, OR’s “senior policy advisor,” Cheryl Sullenger – who did federal time for being caught with explosives in her car – reportedly has been interviewed by the FBI in connection with Dr. Tiller’s murder since the supposed killer had her name and phone number sitting like a plastic Jesus on the dashboard of his car when he was arrested. Apprently, she’s said on television that she provided Dr. Tiller’s coordinates to the shooter.

Co-conspirators? Unlikely. Enablers? Absolutely.

If I were as crazy as the lunatics on the right, I’d post the residential addresses and unlisted phone numbers that I have of O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Malkin and Coulter with this article so people could go picket their homes. I don’t because, as Richy Brockelman used to say on The Rockford Files, “the thing of it is is this …” Progressives don’t hate the world so we don’t post people’s private information on the web for every lunatic to find and jump in their car with a shotgun under the front seat or explosives and firebombs in the trunk.

Even though O’Reilly et al are vile people who don’t deserve it, we do know where to draw the line. Too bad they don't.

Dealing With von Brunn: Not Getting Mad, Just Being Happy

One of the more unusual letters to the editor that I've seen for awhile is in today's Washington Post, from a Jewish family who bought Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn's house in New Hampshire.

To The Editor:

James W. von Brunn - racist, domestic terrorist and anti-Semite - never knew that when he and his then-wife sold their Lebanon, NH, home in 1982, they sold it to a Jewish family.

The von Brunns had moved to Maryland before we looked at the house and he was incarcerated when we bought it, imprisoned for attempting to hold hostage members of the Federal Reserve Board. When we moved in, we realized we'd bought it from an anti-Semite survivalist because he'd left behind several boxes of anti-Jewish books. We immediately added them to the trash.

Anyway, James W. von Brunn, we want you to know we took great pleasure in living there despite the hate-filled man who occupied it before we did. We celebrated Passover Seders, exchanged Hanukkah gifts and raised two wonderful Jewish children there.

GAIL CHADWICK, June 12 2009

Like living well, happiness is the best revenge.

Health Care Folly: Insurance Co’s Bet Big On You Smoking To Death

In so-called “public service” ads appearing on TV and radio, or in print and on the intertubes, many health insurance companies urge people to stay healthy by quitting smoking. The company that provides a supplemental policy to me that covers things not paid by Canada’s national health even e-mailed a helpful PDF brochure with a quit smoking plan.

Guess what? They don’t mean it. None of them do. In fact, they profit if you don’t quit.

A new study just published in The New England Journal of Medicine documents how major health insurance providers in the US, Canada and Britain hold billions of dollars in stock in companies that sell cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Wesley Boyd, the study's lead author, found that at least $4.4-billion in insurance company funds – which come from premiums paid by policy holders – are invested in companies whose highly profitable subsidiaries are major producers of cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.

"Despite calls upon the insurance industry to get out of the tobacco business by physicians and others, insurers continue to put their profits above people's health," writes Boyd, a Harvard Medical School faculty member.

Joining a loud chorus of people saying the same thing, Boyd concludes, "It's clear their top priority is making money, not safeguarding people's well-being."

Gee, ya’ think?

Billions Of Dollars

Collectively, the health insurance industry controls nearly $4.5-billion of tobacco company stock – a nice down payment on basic universal health care coverage.

Prudential is the worst offender. It has nearly $1.7-billion invested in big tobacco. Its insurance arm, which sells both health and disability coverage, has $814-million in British-American Tobacco stock and another $513-million sitting with Imperial Tobacco while Prudential Financial sits on $186-million of Philip Morris-USA stock, $69.4-million of Reynolds American and $8.8-million in Lorillard.

Canada’s Sun Life, which offers a wide range of group and individual supplemental health plans, is second on the “please smoke our investments and die” list. It has more than $1-billion invested in tobacco companies, including Philip Morris-USA and Lorillard.

Other insurance companies cited in the article holding big chunks of tobacco stock include New York Life and MassMutual. Northwestern Mutual, which sometimes calls itself “the quiet company” but it may have dropped the ad slogan when its wheezing and hacking, smoker’s cough got too loud, also makes the list with a comparatively paltry $253.8-million in stock in big tobacco.

The supreme irony in this is that the insurance companies make money both ways: It charges smokers higher premiums for buying the very products that profit the industry’s investment portfolio.

“Smokers lose twice over," Boyd writes with just a trace of irony.

Not Trustworthy

How can an industry that profits twice from people smoking themselves into ill health or an early grave be taken seriously when universal health care is being discussed?

By most common definitions, the industry has a very basic conflict of interest. And you don’t have to torture the definition of “conflict of interest” the way Yoo and Bybee tortured the word “torture” to reach this conclusion: The industry simply is not a trustworthy, honest negotiating partner.

No wonder I get a bad case of the creeps whenever I read that Sen. Max Baucus not only is negotiating with insurance companies about health care reform, he’s actually listening to them. This is akin to listening to Sarah Palin teaching teenaged girls on how not to get pregnant. Ronald Reagan lecturing Paul Krugman on economics. AIPAC helping negotiate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. It’s a total non-compute.

Baucus would be much better served listening to the wise words of the robot in the old TV series Lost in Space, who proclaimed at least once each episode, “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

So would we.

Obama’s Cairo Speech; Receives Standing Ovations (Video)

As the White House signalled in advance, Pres. Obama’s speech this morning contained no new policy proposals but did call for a new beginning in relations between the US and the Moslem world.

The White House website posts the text of the speech, and C-SPAN carried the speech live in the wee hours of the morning in the US.


Courtesy: C-SPAN

Goodbye, GM

A guest post by Michael Moore

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one - has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years.

GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers.

And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with - dare I say it - joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided.

Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war - a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me.

They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true - that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce - and most of those who have been laid off - employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

One hundred years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Micheal Moore can be reached at MMFlint@aol.com

A Simple First Step Towards Universal Health Care

The New York Times reports this morning that a major split is developing between Sen. Ted Kennedy – back on the Hill as he fights brain cancer – and Sen. Max Baucus over the shape and form of universal health care. Kennedy, long a proponent of a single payer system, is teeing up against Baucus who is negotiating with Republicans over keeping all of health care in the hands of private insurers.

Kennedy and Baucus chair competing committees, and each are racing over creating a plan.

Meanwhile, 47-million Americans remain without any health care while an estimate 20-million more working adults are under-covered. As we reported yesterday, in California alone 1-million people go to Mexico for treatment annually because they can’t afford seeing a doctor at home.

The Kennedy plan is relatively simple, the emerging Baucus plan sounds as if it is being written by Jackie Mason.

First, you take health plans that are tax free now and you make some of them taxable, but not all of it, and not for everybody. But who? We don’t know who! Then, a new tax deduction puts money in the pocket of the people who we don’t know who they are so they can take it out again and buy what they had for free in the first place. Next, the money the states use to pay for medical care for people who don’t have health insurance could be used to pay for people who don’t have health insurance which means they can’t get good health care. But we don’t know who they are, either. Well, maybe we know, but we’re not sure, so we won’t say. Then, three million people who don’t have any health insurance will have money from the tax deduction they didn’t want, to buy health insurance on their own if they have enough income to take advantage of a $15,000 deduction and can actually can buy a policy that provides coverage. There might be six people in America who can do this. So we’re taking money from here, and moving it over there, and then back to here, which where it was in the first place and now let’s have some tuna because I’m exhausted.

The fact is, there is already in place a hugely successful, low cost health care program that could be implemented quickly and efficiently.

Kids First

Put bluntly, as desirable as the goal might be, the reality is that universal health care isn’t going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to cover everybody who needs coverage on Day 1.

But there is a simple step forward towards universal health care and the basis for it already exists: The insurance plan that covers employees of the federal government, from President Obama to the lowliest entry-level file clerk at the Dept. of Agriculture.

The plan could start tomorrow, with few studies and almost no increase in cost or federal bureaucracy.

The first step would insure everyone under age 18 through the fed’s program.

Every uninsured child would receive immediate coverage. Children covered by a parent’s plan would be lifted out of the policy at the anniversary date of their employer’s policy and put in the federal insurance pool. Actuaries will love this because healthy, middle class, suburban kids don’t get sick as often or as seriously as children of the working poor and underclass from inner cities. So, the insurance risk gets spread across an enormous number of youngsters, lowering the cost for everyone.

Insurance industry sources tell me that it would take about 12-to-18 months to enrol every person under 18 in the country. Moreover, the federal plan offers some coverage choices which parents would need time to consider and select.

The cost would be paid by employers, as they do now. Instead of paying a premium to an insurance company on behalf of an employee, the company would pay the same amount to the federal insurance pool. Payroll costs would remain constant and might actually decline a bit: The federal “risk pool,” or number of people insured, would swell, spreading the actuarial risk of the coverage over millions more people. Premiums for the under-18 crowd would decline as a result, most likely eliminating the need for a worker’s contribution to the plan.

At the same time, state Medicaid and SCHIP money spent for covering uninsured kids could be diverted to other medical needs: Providing better treatment for uninsured adults, improving facilities at hospitals and clinics, increasing staff salaries; the list is as endless as the array of needs.

Uninsured Adults

Once children are covered through the fed plan, coverage could be expanded to all currently uninsured adults.

Covering children federally would account for an estimated 15-to-20-million of the uninsured 47-million. Let’s be conservative and assume that there would still be 32-million uninsured adults not covered.

The cost of insuring the currently uninsured would be carried by spreading the risk among all adults. No doubt some number of the uninsured cannot get insurance because of poor health. But many of the uninsured will be healthy, small business owners and employees – the very people politicians love to applaud – so the risk between healthy and unhealthy will be balanced. Small business owners would either divert their current insurance premiums to the federal pool or contribute through a payroll tax reduction made possible through tax credits.

Finally, the fed plan would replace private, employer-sponsored plans. As with dependent children, employers would pay premiums to the federal plan rather than to an insurance company.

Bonus! There are a number of major benefits beyond providing health care for everybody:

• It destroys the myth of “no choice” since people will continue to see their own doctors.
• It finesses potential objection from doctors, whose fees will not be negotiated or set by Washington – as they are with Medicare – but by the generous fee schedules of the current fed plan for doctors treating millions of government employees and dependants.
• Since the federal government plan involves insurance companies, its lobby would have the rug pulled out from under it by still be able to write policies.
• Coverage costs would decline because, in addition to the risk pool expanding to 330-million people, insurance companies won’t have “policy acquisition costs” – a fancy phrase for selling and renewal commissions plus production bonuses paid to agents, underwriting fees and other overhead charges.
• As the VA and Defence Department do already, Washington would be in a position to negotiate formulary prices for prescription medicine, the cost it will pay for medical devices including CT and MRI machines, hospital room reimbursement rates and other forces that contribute to ever-higher medical costs.
• As the VA and Defence Department do already, Washington would be in a position to negotiate formulary prices for prescription medicine, the cost it will pay for medical devices including CT and MRI machines, hospital room reimbursement rates and other forces that contribute to ever-higher medical costs.

The Downside

Admittedly, this idea comes with a downside.

Democrats, lobbyists, think tanks and the chattering classes who are stumbling all over each other to come up with health care ideas of their own, will be reduced to thinking about other important policy issues. Like ending the war in Iraq, dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan, coming up with a workable, multi-party plan for handling North Korea, fixing the economy and re-regulating the financial industry.

Oh. And reducing the obscene growth in annual health care costs.

Likewise, the Republicans and their insurance industry allies will be caught between attacking the proposal or coming up with an alternative that looks and sounds like universal coverage but won’t be because it will be designed by insurance companies whose principal interest is in not insuring folks who might actually have a big, expensive claim.

Obviously, the devil is in the detail.

But using the existing federal employee insurance program as the basis for universal, single payer, health care offers an approach that will allow the US, so fond of “rapid deployment,” to begin dealing seriously with the one-seventh of its population who have no health care coverage whatsoever.

The GOP Is Becoming A Bugs Bunny Cartoon

According to the loonie chorus on the right, we're all sons of bitches now.

When they’re not bashing Sonia Sotomayor for asking sharp questions from the bench – which would seem to be a pretty basic part of the job description for a judge – or wondering whether her taste in spicy food clouds her judicial judgment, they’ve started blaming Democrats for Cheney’s torture régime. Their argument runs something like this:

Because Democrats in Congress knew about torture and didn't object out loud even though doing so would violate federal law, it shouldn't be investigated now. Anyway, it wasn't illegal 'cause that noted legal scholar John Yoo said it was within the law if you ignore the word “torture” in the statute and international treaties the US signed.

Meanwhile, Alberto Gonzales is running around Washington yowling, "Torture? What torture? I was just White House counsel. I don’t know 'bout no stinkin' torture. Those memos were written to me? I thought they were drafts of law review articles. I just spell checked them."

This is the same crowd that says Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who was actually Portuguese, was really the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, not Sotomayor. Well, his name sounds Hispanic and it has that suspicious "ozo" combination at the end of his last name so, to Karl Rove’s thinking, this means he must have been a wetback.

Life may imitate art but the Republican Party is starting to imitate a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

A Tip Without An Iceberg: Americans, Not Canucks, Are The Real Medical Refugees

Once the Senate puts aside the irrational fracas over Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court – she eats spicy food, her name doesn’t sound American, she can be quoted out of context, she’s a secret socialist – and confirms her nomination, Congress can turn its attention to dealing with genuine problems such as providing universal health care.

Proponents will remind everyone that Canada’s national health covers everything from routine doctor visits to complicated brain surgery, from birth to death and at far lower costs than Americans pay. And sure as the earth is warming, opponents will scream that the Canadian system is so bad, massive numbers of Canucks flee to the US to obtain care because their own system can’t treat them.

In truth, the real flow of patients is from the US to Mexico, not into America from Canada.

Medical Refugees

A massive, peer-reviewed study just published in Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere debunks the myth that Canada’s system is so broken that massive hoards of Canadian medical refugees flee south for treatment. Eighty percent of US hospitals reported treating 10 or fewer Canadians annually during the five year period of the study; another 15% reported seeing from 10 to 25 patients; only 5% reported seeing more than 25. None – nada, zip, zero – reported treating more than 75 Canadian patients in a year.

The study finds that hospitals in three large US metropolitan areas combined saw 640 Canadian patients for diagnostic radiology services such as CT scans or MRI’s over a one-year period. By comparison, Québec hospitals annually perform 375,000 CT scans.

Put differently, Québec hospitals do twice as many CT scans of Canadians every day than all the hospitals in three large American cities do in an entire year.

Contrast this study with one just published in the journal Medical Care by the UCLA Center for Policy Research.

It reports that, because of unaffordable or unavailable health care at home, nearly 1-million Californians cross the border each year seeking medical treatment in Mexico. This doesn't include the number entering Mexico to buy medication. Add to this total who knows how many tens of thousands of uninsured and underinsured people from Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas scoot across the border to see a Mexican doctor and the real number of American medical refugees would populate a decent sized city.

If more Americans lived closer to the Mexican border, chances are high that the number of medical refugees heading south would swell.

Fixing Medicare

Meanwhile, the right keeps yammering about Medicare going broke in another few decades, using it as an argument against national health as well as for killing off Medicare itself. While all of us aging baby boomers will soon be filling out applications for the service, we aren’t the cause of the problem. The two biggest reasons Medicare has long-term funding issues is the obscene rate of increase in the cost of private health care and Congressional mandates prohibiting Medicare from negotiating prices for drugs, supplies and medical devices the same way as do the VA and Dept. of Defence.

No less an authority than the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reports that the VA’s cost-per-patient grew by only 1.7% between 1999 and 2005, after adjusting for inflation. That’s 0.3% per year and includes the enormous cost of treating thousands of service personnel hideously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan starting in 2002. Meanwhile, Medicare’s cost per patient rose a whopping 29.4% over the same period, or 4.4% annually.

It’s tempting to suggest simply turning Medicare over to the Veteran’s Administration – which clearly knows how to treat patients cost-effectively – and use the savings to expand VA facilities into more communities while hiring additional doctors, nurses and support staff.

Oh, wait: That’s socialized medicine. Republicans and their conservative think tank enablers believe Americans would rather do without health care – or go to Mexico – than have a government sponsored, single payer plan. Why does the right never mention the VA model while spouting myths as fact in the health care debate?

For that matter, why isn’t anyone in Washington proposing an expansion of the health care plan that currently covers all non-DoD federal employees to include all Americans? There’s a relatively easy way to do it without creating a bureaucracy, leaving both choice of doctors and the insurance industry alone, and not making physicians employees of the federal government.

I’ll write about this idea tomorrow. Meanwhile, don’t get run over by the 1-million-plus Americans racing to Mexico for their health care.

A deeply appreciative h/t to Paul Krugman

When Will The New York Times Stop Believing The Pentagon?

The so-called newspaper of record – and Judith Miller and Jayson Blair – did it again.

Someone at the Pentagon leaked a report about how many former Guantanamo detainees were released only to become active in terrorist activities. Citing the study, the New York Times warned front page readers on Tuesday that fully one-in-seven former detainee’s “reengaged” with al Quaeda, Taliban or other Jihadi groups after being released. That’s a scary 14%

Just one problem: It's not true.

Despite a constantly and wildly fluctuating number of passengers the DoD claims boarded the Gitmo-To-Terrorist express over the years, the Times’ breathless story not only takes the Pentagon at its word, it doesn’t do even basic fact checking. No critical assessment of the report appears in the original Times article:

• The Pentagon news release – and the original Times’ story – uses the term “reengaged” to indicate released detainees were terrorists before being captured. Yet none of the 530 released detainees were ever even hauled before a Gitmo kangaroo court so there’s no way of knowing whether they were “engaged” with terrorism before their arrest.
• The Pentagon report never mentions what any of the 74 alleged terrorists were doing before being disappeared into Bush’s gulag. In reality, many were butchers, bakers and candle stick makers who got sold to the US by bounty seekers, disgruntled lovers, angry relatives, business rivals, warlords extracting revenge for some real or imagined slight, criminal gangs and corrupt Pakistani police officers.
• While the DoD report includes in its survey men who are “suspected” of becoming terrorists, it gives no details on why they are suspected of becoming fighters, suicide bombers or plotters after their release.
• Former Colin Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson maintains that countless previously apolitical prisoners became radicalised while at Gitmo, having been swept up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, tortured and held on vague charges – often for years.

What happened to the once-irrefutable, indisputable and indispensable Times?

Starting with happily getting its knee tickled over WMDs during the run-up to the 2003 invasion and continuing through refusing to call the 2005-06 violence in Iraq either a “civil war” or “ethnic cleansing” involving Sunni’s and Shiites all the way to complicity in Cheney's plot to out Valerie Plame, not seriously reporting on what Wall St. was doing in the prelude to the global financial collapse and this week’s embarrassing revelation that former FBI director L. Patrick Gray gave a Times reporter the Watergate story long before Woodstein began unravelling the scandal but the newspaper didn’t think it worth covering, the paper became a disgrace.

The New York Times has become its nickname: The grey lady. Now withering, tottering and nearly senile, she still insists on being called Le Grande Dame of journalism. Perhaps this is what happens to une femme d’un certain age.

My apologies to The Nation’s ad slogan, but where is that liberal media bias that the right always accuses the Times of practicing?

When Nerds And Greasers Grow Up

When my Minneapolis high school class graduated about 100 lifetimes ago, a kid everyone called "Froggy" used the gift money given to him by relatives to buy and restore a Model T Ford. This didn't surprise anyone: Froggy was sort of a cleaned-up greaser anyway – he ended up in technology, which is simply an updated, more lucrative, version of being a greaser – so while many of us shook our head at his odd hobby, we weren't totally surprised.

Turns out that he not only kept and maintained the car over the years, he is joining 50 other Model T owners this summer to drive from New York to Seattle to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first cross-country Model T endurance race sponsored by Robert Guggenheim, then an obscenely wealthy industrialist and now of art museum fame. Yes, the roads are better today but the route will be identical. The group will avoid the interstate except in parts of North Dakota and Montana where the original highways have disappeared entirely.

It'll take roughly six week to cross the country – every four days they stop for rest and repairs – which is how Froggy will spend his summer vacation.

I think the first two or three days will be a lot of fun.

Then, as the group wakes up in, oh, maybe Montclair NJ on the fourth morning – about 40 miles from the starting point in Times Square – it'll dawn on everyone that they have another five-plus weeks of this hot, sweaty, bone-shaking ride and wonder what seemed so appealing about the drive when they signed up.

For those who’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll recall that my high school – now defunct but at the time run by the University of Minnesota – attracted many overly bright nerds and characters. Our class included a lot of weird, sometimes deeply disturbed, children of academics, the guy who went on to found the Utne Reader, a son of Minneapolis' mayor who became a blues musician backing up Bob Dylan for many years, and one of FDR's grandsons whose ambition in life was to own a small town gas station.

Add this information to what I’ve written about being raised by my specific set of parents and sister, and you can see why I ended up as batty as I am. Totally starkers, as the Brits say. Mad as a tick.

Wingnuts Take Aim At Supremes’ Nominee Sotomayor

The right wing was gearing up for this fight even before Justice David Souter thought about retiring. This morning, as Pres. Obama was naming – as expected – Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill Souter’s chair on the Supreme Court, conservatives were lining up to throw brickbats before the words were out of his mouth.

RedState.com is blubbering that Obama’s nominee means he is covering up for not launching an attack on North Korea after its nuclear test yesterday and the five missiles it test fired today: “No word yet on the reaction from Pyongyang” on the Sotomayor appointment, somehow conflating the two totally unrelated events.

Drudge is beside himself, linking to a New Republic article that questions her intellectual firepower without giving any supporting evidence. The author, Jeffrey Rosen, concedes that “I haven't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor's detractors and supporters to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths.”

Oh.

The Capital Research Center – which had nothing to do with the Capital, legitimate research or anything remotely connected to the center in American politics – fumes that she has “ties to a race-obsessed, left-wing grievance group/shakedown operation.”

The Conservative Comeback simply proclaims, “This chick scares the bejeezus out of me.”

Naturally, the wingnut blogs are giving wide replay to an out-of-context video in which Sotomayor says the Court of Appeals is where “policy is made.” A poor word choice but, uhm, that’s the point of an appeals court as it decides what the law means, not just what it says.



All of this thunder on the right sounds to me like pretty decent endorsements.

Meanwhile, the left is busy attacking Obama for not appointing a dogmatic, progressive liberal to the Supremes.

Yet two things seem to escape both the right and the left.

First, no one can predict how someone will decide cases once they’re on the Supreme Court. While at university about 100 lifetimes ago, I attended a seminar led by Justice Thurgood Marshall – as credentialed a liberal as ever sat on the Supreme Court – who said, “Until you sit on that bench, you cannot grasp the weight sitting on a Justice’s shoulders ever time a case is argued.” In other words, political leanings fly out the window once someone is confirmed.

Except for Clarence Thomas, that it, but I’m writing about people who actually think.

Remember, Dwight Eisenhower whined that his worst decision as president was nominating Earl Warren – a died-in-the-wool, right wing, California Republican governor – to be Chief Justice. Warren wrote the landmark Brown decision desegregating schools and opening the door to the entire civil rights movement.

Second, Thomas Jefferson – the Founding Father as far as I’m concerned and the leading intellectual among the Constitution's authors – wrote about what he saw as the Supreme Court’s future role. Basically, the idea of a “living Constitution” that breathes the air of the day is Jefferson’s, not some modern-day lefty interpretation.

So whether Sotomayor is far left, middle liberal or a moderate is almost irrelevant. Once the silk gown is slipped onto her shoulders for the first time, hopefully she will be a Supreme Court Justice who feels the weight and understands the import of her decisions.

Hot Docs In Cool Toronto

Its better known and slicker cousin, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), attracts the celebrities, glitterati, paparazzi and red carpets arched by searchlights circling the Canadian night sky. Held in September, TIFF kicks off the industry’s festival season that continues until Cannes, which concluded this past weekend. Coming first means that, over the years, TIFF screening rooms have debuted numerous major motion pictures – as Hollywood puts it – such as Sicko and Slumdog Millionaire.

It’s a must stop on the festival circuit for the world’s film industry, as important an event as any. But TIFF isn’t the only major film event Toronto hosts each year.

Less well known and considerably down market in glitz appeal than TIFF, the Toronto International Documentary Film Festival – known as Hot Docs – draws far more aging vans and beat-up clunkers than Beemer's and limousines to theatre parking lots. But it’s of much greater importance to documentary filmmakers than TIFF. Hot Docs marked its 16th anniversary this month, screening a remarkable line-up of 177 documentaries during its 11 day run from filmmakers working around the world.

Dazzling Films, Prestigious Awards

Unlike many big name film festivals, Hot Docs awards both jury prizes and awards voted on by the public, all 122,000 attendees – a whopping 42% increase in 2009 over 2008 ticket sales.

The 10 audience award winners in 2009 were:

1. The Cove (Director: Louie Psihoyos; USA)
2. 65 Red Roses (D: Philip Lyall, Nimisha Mukerji; Canada)
3. Inside Hana’s Suitcase (D: Larry Weinstein; Canada, Czech Republic)
4. Best Worst Movie (D: Michael Paul Stephenson; USA)
5. A Hard Name (D: Alan Zweig; Canada)
6. Over The Hills and Far Away (now titled The Horse Boy) (D: Michel Orion Scott; USA)
7. Winnebago Man (D: Ben Steinbauer; USA)
8. Burma VJ (D: Anders Høgsbro Østergaard; Denmark)
9. Rough Aunties (D: Kim Longinotto; UK)
10. Prom Night In Mississippi (D: Paul Saltzman; Canada)

Simon El Habre’s “The One Man Village” and Hubert Davis’s “Invisible City” were the recipients of the festival’s two big prizes. “Village” took the Best International Feature Award and “City” won the Best Canadian Feature Award. Special Jury Prize winners in both categories were Peter Kerekes’ Czech Republic-Slovakis co-production “Cooking History,” which won for International Feature. Kevin McMahon’s “Waterlife” won the jury prize for a Canadian Feature.

Ten awards, including those for films in competition and those recognizing emerging and established filmmakers, were presented. More than $60,000 in cash prizes were handed out to filmmakers.

Boosting Filmmakers

The festival is more than a showcase of the world’s best documentaries.

Hot Docs makes itself an intimate, on-going part of the documentary world, giving a major financial and educational leg-up to filmmakers. Underwritten by corporate media donors, it sponsors $4-million worth of completion and development grants each year, providing support to filmmakers facing financial gaps at critical stages of their projects.

It also hosts forums for filmmakers including “Doc Lab” and “Doc U.”

Doc Lab is intensive, five-day creative development workshop where 15 early-to-mid-career documentary writers and directors take part in a specially designed master class. Meanwhile, Doc U gives recent Canadian film school graduates an introduction to the workings of a large festival and how to market their project to distributors. It also helps co-ordinate scholarships and fellowships to aspiring documentary writers, directors and producers.

The Hot Docs website provides information on all of the festival’s programmes, including details on how to submit films and apply for funding, and a subscription form to receive e-mail updates.

Why TV Is The Pits

I am increasingly distressed by, and unhappy with, BBC Canada. And BBC America isn’t any better, based on the programme schedule on its website.

When BBC Canada launched as a stand-alone, speciality channel by subscription service several years ago, it offered a truly remarkable array of programmes. Now that it is established as part of a multi-channel, want-one-take-'em-all, package, it has become a warmed over re-hash of inexpensive British reality shows, cooking programmes, DIY makeovers, middle aged men driving cars, and bizarre housewife swapping extravaganzas.

What happened to the network that once offered a solid line-up of crime drama’s every Monday night? Cutting edge Britcoms on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Experimental drama’s on Fridays? Always interesting, sometimes weird, little films on Sundays?

Now, every weeknight, BBC Canada wedges just one prime time drama series it’s aired countless times before between episodes of profane, abusive chefs and dysfunctional, irritating families. It sometimes tops off the night with a talk show hosted by someone who is famous only for being famous who keeps his audience and guests tittering with anal sex references.

BBC America offers viewers even less.

The real BBC doesn't own either the American or Canadian networks. So, without much say-so from London, it seems evident that owners of the two North American networks main goal is to spend as little money as possible on programming and churn as much cash as possible from commercials. Worse, the network shows little regard for its “social contract” with viewers or its license agreement with federal regulators. Just because hosts speak with a British dialect and many have bad teeth does not mean it is showing “The best and boldest of British television” as it advertises.

Far from it.

BBC Canada and BBC America are living examples of the decline of network television; explanatory proof of what is wrong with so much of TV today. It explains why the medium continues to lose viewers to DVDs, the web and – for as much entertainment value as BBC Canada and BBC America offers these days – playing a game of Whist with a lonely, aging and incontinent auntie who smells of mothballs, feral cats and too much cheap perfume.

What it doesn’t explain is why my cable bill keeps rising.

Yes, the economy plays a role in television’s business problems. But idiotic and unfathomable programming decisions are playing as great, if not greater, role.

“Of Course (The CIA) Misled Congress. We Were Trained How.”

The voice of the former CIA briefer on the phone is strong and direct, unapologetic in either tone or words.

“Of course we misled Congress on torture. The White House and (George) Tenet demanded it, and we were trained how to do it without lying,” he says to me. “People (former Vice President Dick) Cheney sent over taught us how to do it without violating the ‘lying to Congress’ statutes.”

I ask the man, who – like the three others interviewed for this article – insists his name not be used because he still has a business relationship with various American intelligence services a pointed question: Does it occur to him that in avoiding committing one felony, he actively encouraged another, torturing prisoners of war.

“If that was going on, it was above my pay grade,” he replies with typically cold, bureaucratic indifference. “I was a foot solider. My job was to tell Congress what the top of the CIA wanted it to know, and the way they wanted to frame the information.”

All I can think of is the late John Banner, Sgt. Schultz on the old Hogan’s Hero’s TV show, insisting, “I zee nussing! I know nussing!” in that stage German dialect he perfected as he rolled and averted his eyes.

I inquire whether my source feels betrayed by his former masters, or has any remorse about his role in undermining the American political system. He pauses a moment to consider the question before revealing that his only worry was personal.

“My concern was that this might come out someday,” he says brusquely. “If it did, I wanted to be on the right side of the law.”

I realise I am speaking to a man as unrepentant and amoral as Dick Cheney himself.

Yet he is not an isolated example, a lonely, Joe Friday-like “Just the facts, ma’am” functionary who emerges from the bowels of the CIA’s huge Langley VA campus to spread the gospel to Congress as seen by Bush. Two other former intelligence officers and one current CIA employee confirm what he says – and go even further.

“I’m convinced that the so-called ‘timeline’ of what and when was told to Congress … was forged after-the-fact, probably fairly recently when the pressure was turned up,” a current employee reveals. “Otherwise, the dates and who was briefed would be accurate, the topics covered would be correct, and acronyms that weren’t created for another two or three years wouldn’t have been noted as being used at the wrong time.”

So is the CIA is scrambling fast and hard to cover its very exposed asses, and being careless about it in the process?

“It’s exactly what’s happening,” he assures me. Some assurance.

Pelosi And Boehner And Cheney, Oh My

Meanwhile, the only reason Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats are under attack by Republicans for accusing the CIA of lying to Congress is because she tripped herself up in a knotty web of facts before truly understanding what happened when, and who was told what by whom.

Even with several members of both parties in Congress and the Senate rushing to her aid with their own accounts of being misled, John Boehner demanded she apologise to the CIA – letting slide the fact that Mr. Man Tan himself admitted the CIA lied to him a few days later. And then said it wasn’t what he meant before re-stating how he was misled.

Muddling matters even further is Dick Cheney’s on-going, full-throated defence of war crimes including illegal torture which, it turns out, is still filled with his own lies.

After Cheney stood before the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday accusing Pres. Obama of libelling the CIA in Obama’s own speech on national security – actually, it would have been slander, which is spoken, and libel occurs in print; turns out Cheney doesn’t know those laws any better than he knows torture laws – McClatchy’s crack team of national security reporters, Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, fact-checked 10 specific lies Cheney told his audience.

“From what I could observe,” a former CIA insider tells me, “Cheney was both de facto president and the real head of the CIA. Tenet may have run things day-to-day but Cheney was the man in charge of everything, including torture. He got field reports every time someone was waterboarded, or was undergoing sleep denial and other of the ‘harsh interrogations’ that the vice president ordered.”

So did Vice President Cheney direct the CIA to mislead Congress in the intelligence updates mandated by law?

“I couldn’t swear to it in front of a grand jury,” a source claims, “but he was the only guy with the power to do it. Tenet would never go out on a limb on something like lying to Congress without Cheney ordering him to do it.”

A Growing Sense Of Anger At Obama – And Others

I’m so angry I feel like concealing a loaded hand gun and walking into a national park.

No, I’m not going postal. Once Pres. Obama signs the new credit card law, it will be legal for anyone to march around Yellowstone packing heat just for the fun of it. Although it’s usually angry, bitter, little men who need the security of feeling cold steel against their body, and I’m 6’2” and not bitter, I sure as hell am angry.

I am angry at Congressional Democrats – especially those in the Senate – who are so afraid of the National Rifle Assn. than they allowed the gun amendment to be tacked on to a consumer protection reform bill. Watch: As soon as some deranged lunatic toting an AK-47 wipes out half the crowd waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, the NRA will shrug its shoulders and claim it’s what the Founding Fathers intended.

I am furious at Pres. Obama for getting all testy, even shirty, yesterday when civil liberty and human rights advocates complained to him during a meeting in the Cabinet Room about reinstating kangaroo courts at Guantanamo and not investigating war crimes or crimes against humanity committed by senior members of the Bush administration.

I’m livid with Nancy Pelosi for not having her facts straight before speaking out about the CIA lying to her and deliberately misleading Congress about torturing prisoners of war – and who knows what else – thus handing the Republicans an issue to divert the nation’s attention from the real issue of who, what, when, where, why and how turned the beacon of liberty, freedom and the rule of law into a modern day equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, complete with self-righteous, all-knowing, high priests.

I am infuriated with Republicans for deliberately turning themselves into a late night talk show joke instead of being a constructive opposition party. The US needs two vibrant political parties yet the GOP thinks Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindahl are leading thinkers on its come back trail.

I am angry at Wall St. and the financial services industry for shuffling their feet while giving half-hearted apologies for plunging the world into economic chaos while shouting full-throated defences of its other-worldly compensation structure that encourages its executives to create a multi-trillion dollar trading scheme built on nothing more than computer entries.

I am furious with the medical business for saying one thing publicly but behind the scenes play lobbyist games over providing the nation with decent, affordable health care, allowing its surrogates to raise the same spectre of “socialised medicine” as the American Medical Assn. used back in the 1960s when Medicare was proposed.

I am incensed by a physician acquaintance in Ohio who is a highly regarded specialist with a seven figure income who complains to me that any of the current health reform proposals will cut his income in half, at least, as if his life would disintegrate if he had to live on only five or six hundred thousand dollars a year. Better 47-million people not have access to his training, skills and expertise than he drops one of his two country club memberships because of personal financial hardship.

Oh. And I’m really pissed off at my cable company – but who isn’t? My six year old remote fried its insides so I went to the cable store and it was replaced. Fine. But in the last six years, some buttonhead decided to move all of the buttons around on the remote, including where the on-off, channel, mute and last viewed buttons are located – the ones I use all the time. Why? What was the point? To make people angry and drive them insane?

I’ll cut this off here. A six hundred word rant is enough. I am increasingly angry at a lot of people right now, so much so that I’m reminded of the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal who once wrote, “The more I know of people, the better I love my dog.”

Obama Meets Netanyahu: Time To Tell Israel The Facts Of Life

For those too young to have been alive at the time or whose memories became fogged with age, in June 1961 – less than six months after being inaugurated – a very young Pres. John F. Kennedy met Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a summit in Vienna. By the end of the session, the wily Russian peasant concluded that the wealthy, well-bred Kennedy was weak, indecisive and accommodating.

As a result, Khrushchev decided he could alter the balance of power in the world by stationing missiles in Cuba aimed squarely at the United States as leverage to get the West to abandon Berlin. Fifteen months later, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Today, Pres. Obama meets Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, with nearly as much at stake. If Obama does not forcefully tell Israel the new facts of life in the Middle East, it is very likely there will likely be a region-wide war before the end of Obama’s first term, according to the authoritative Juan Cole.

AIPAC’s Long Shadow

The two men come to today’s meeting with very different agendas.

Obama wants to reach an accord with Iran to help ensure stability in both Iraq and Afghanistan, something that won’t happen unless Israel stops colonising the West Bank, reaches a peace deal with Syria so it stops meddling in Lebanon and backing Hezbollah, and becomes serious about negotiating a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu wants to destroy Iran’s nuclear potential, push Israeli settlement and control over the West Bank all the way to the Jordan River, ignore Syria, isolate Gaza and leave the Palestinians without a state to call their own.

Lurking unseen in the Oval Office making Obama’s situation even more complex than it is already is the ever-present shadow of AIPAC, the enormously powerful neo-con lobbying force that essentially dictated America’s Israeli policy all during the Bush presidency. It also has many friends – and recipients of its lush campaign contributions – on Capitol Hill.

As a result, AIPAC insists framing any Washington discussion of Middle East policy in a way that equates rationality with being anti-Israel. In effect, discussing Israel in any terms other than those mandated by AIPAC is akin to arguing economics with a Communist who insists that the debate begin with the premise that capitalism is evil per se.

That’s not a policy debate; it’s Kabuki theatre.

Notorious Bully

Obama has his work cut out for him. The president looks for common ground while Netanyahu is a notorious bully; indeed, Bill Clinton complained that Netanyahu thought that he was the superpower.

But one can support Israel’s right to exist – as I do – and still push it hard to adopt a more realistic view of the region. If the nation’s long-range goal is to secure a safe and lasting peace with its neighbours, then Israel has to be willing to see the world from the other side of the negotiating table as well as from its own. Not since Menachim Begin has Israel had a government willing to do so.

The first step would be to get Israel to tone down its rhetoric against Iran and stop making plans to attack under the guise of stopping President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supposed desire to wipe Israel “off the face of the map.” The problem is that Ahmadinejad never said any such thing. For one thing, an Iranian friend assures me there is no such idiom in Farsi. For another, the Iranian president was speaking of the ideological collapse of Zionism and he equated it to the fall of Communism under the old Soviet regime.

Contrary to the view of Israeli right-wingers, an attack on Iran would not bring about its collapse but engulf the entire region in flames. Hopefully, Rahm Emanuel will attend the meeting so he can use his penchant for colourful language – remember, at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner the night before Mother’s Day, Obama said Emanuel is not accustomed to using the word “day” after the word “mother” – to drive home forcefully a point Obama undoubtedly will make more subtly.

The key to today’s meeting is Obama getting Netanyahu to agree to negotiating a Palestinian state. This morning at his blog, Informed Comment, Dr. Cole writes:

“Netanyahu's talk of improving the economic lives of Palestinians instead of giving them a state is nonsense. Statelessness prevents economic security and progress. And people aren't just motivated by material things. Palestinians want a concrete manifestation of their national identity, just as everyone else does.

“Only a viable Palestinian state resolves this huge decades-long mess in the short to medium term. I think it may be too late but am willing to see what Obama has in mind.”

No doubt the joint news conference will be filled with conciliatory words and pledges of co-operation. But don’t be fooled by the diplomatic niceties: If Jerusalem will not budge on its denial of a Palestinian state, Washington’s hope for peace in the region will be short-circuited by Israel's short-sighted thinking and lack of courage.