Steven Jonas

First came the "Birthers."  President Obama is not a citizen.  He's a Kenyan, he's a Muslim, he's an Indonesian, he's a Kenyan-Indonesian-Muslim (dunno which is worse so might as well throw them all in), a Hawaiian (oops, didn't know that Hawaii is a US possession, OH, you mean it's a state!?!), a Martian (shhh!  He's blaaack).  Show them birth certificates, published birth announcements, nah, es macht kein unterschiedung (that's German for it makes no difference).  They know what they know when they know it.  And after all, they are egged on by a mass media that treat the "controversy" as a legitimate one, so why not?

Then came the "Deathers."  These folks include a former Lieutenant Governor from one of the largest states and a former Governor from one of the smallest (how's that for coverage and veracity?).  They were convinced that a provision for paying physicians for what many already do --- counseling for rational end-of-life care WHEN REQUESTED BY THE PATIENT OR THE PATIENT'S FAMILY --- was really a provision for government-imposed euthanasia.  Again, as Josef Goebbels was so fond of saying, facts make no difference when you've got a hot political message to exploit.  And again, the mass media gave them some traction by treating the matter as a legitimate controversy.

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BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH              

This week's cover of Time magazine screams "Washington is Frozen."  The New York Times News of the Week in Review for February 21, 2010 tells us that "Washington doesn’t work."  Evan Bayh of "Bayh, Bayh-Partisanship" tells us that he is leaving at the end of his term because there is just "too much partisanship in Washington" that leads to "nothing getting done" and is the fault of "ideologues on both sides.”  Nevertheless, on that score Bayh tends to finger (or is it give the finger to) the "far left" in preference to any sort of GOPer.  (Would that there were a "far left" in Washington, but that's another matter.)  So it's just all of that partisanship that's the matter.  Why people aren't even civil to each other anymore.  And again, that's the fault on both sides.

Well, there are two points (at least) that one can make here.  First, it ain't both sides that are primarily responsible for the partisanship, and there is indeed plenty of it.  Washington doesn’t “work” because the GOP doesn’t want it to and is doing everything in its power to make sure that it doesn’t.  “Washington working,” in the sense of major national problems like the failing health care delivery system, the crumbling infrastructure, and the rapidly declining education system being productively dealt with, significantly reduces the GOP’s political chances.  After all, they have been, and are being so at ever-increasing volume, the party that is against “big government,” even though the big problems we face precisely require big government if they are to be dealt with.  Every time that “big government” can do something positive reduces their chances of getting back into power so that they can, in the delightful Grover Norquist’s terms, “shrink it to the size of a bathtub and then drown it in the tub.”

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BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH  

The Daily Kos does a good deal of polling on a regular basis.  Not too many of their polls get much attention in the what now passes for the "Mainstream (otherwise known as the 'we make our choices very carefully') Media."  However, one that was published a couple of weeks ago (Feb. 2, 2010) got quite a bit of publicity.  It had surveyed a reasonably random sample of self-identified GOPers to see what their views were on a number of policy and political issues known to be dear to at least some GOP hearts.  Among the findings, not necessarily in order of anybody's ranking of importance, with brief comments from yours truly, were:

• 39 percent of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached, 29 percent are not sure, 32 percent said he should not be voted out of office.

Impeached for what offenses was not specified. Nor was there any indication that any of the respondents knew what the Constitutional requirements for impeachment are, even though presumably the bulk of these folks supported the impeachment attempt on President Clinton.

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BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH  

"NEW YORK (CBS, 1/12/10) Pat Robertson, the American Christian televangelist and host of "The 700 Club," said that Haitians need to have a 'great turning to god' while he was reporting on the devastating 7.0 earthquake that shook the island nation . . .'Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. . .        They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said "We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince." True story. And so the devil said, "Ok it’s a deal." And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.' " 

Actually, Pat, it was not (Louis) Napoleon III (1852-1870) against whom the Haitian slave revolt took place but the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1798-1815), but when you are making up stuff like you do, what difference do the facts make? 

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BUZZFLASH COMMENTARY

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH  

Dr. J.'s BF Commentary No. 131: There's a Ford in the DLC's Future 

As I pointed out in my Commentary No. 128, “President Obama and the Democratic Leadership Council," although I was taken in by the rhetoric as of last spring, I was right the first time (back in late 2007) about Obama essentially being a DLCer (Democratic Leadership Council, or the Democratic Right).  That became even more apparent in his State of the Union Message.  Although there was an occasional jab at the Republicans in Congress, and even at the Republican Supreme Court (with New Jersey Sam Alito showing just how classless virtually all Republicans, even Supreme Court Justices, are these days), on the policy side he was very DLC, that is Republican-light.  Yes, we actually do have a coalition government: Right (DLC) and Far-Right (GOP) although the latter cannot for a moment admit such a thing because they are so desperate to get the whole kettle of fish back just for themselves.

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There are many reasons to hope that the current health care deform monstrosity doesn't get through Congress just so that Obama/Emmanuel can say that they have produced "something." As a health care policy analyst for over 40 years, I know most of those reasons.

But one stands out and it has nothing to do with the health care system reasons for hoping for failure, which include: no public option (since one would never get past the Senate no matter what the House does and the latter will likely drop it anyway); a massive taxpayer subsidy to the private "health" insurance companies and their profits; the creation, by so doing, of a further stranglehold on the health care delivery system making it highly unlikely that any further changes will be accomplished until at enormous further public expense down the road the insurance companies themselves crash and burn under the ever-increasing cost inflation that this legislation does nothing substantive about; the taxation of the relatively "good" policies; the lack of any planning mechanisms, something that is essential if costs are ever to be brought under control; and finally the fact that even with all the public expenditures, not everybody will be covered and it will take until 2019 until everybody for whom the legislation aims to provide coverage actually gets it. As for the political weapons that the hydra-headed monster gives the GOP, well they are already licking their chops. Don't believe me? Just listen to Sean Hannity (and I do, after taking a suitable dose of Dramamine, of course).

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I was going through an old floppy disk of mine, mining some health-and-wellness columns that I wrote awhile back for text that I could use presently. I still do quite a bit of such writing and I found that some of that old text, edited and brought up-to-date, could still be quite useful to me. (If you are interested in that side of my work, you can check it out at my own Web site and on an English one on where I publish about a column a month.)

While I was browsing through that old disk, I came across a letter-essay on 9/11 and its aftermath that I had sent to a friend on February 19, 2002. How that essay came to be on that particular health-stuff disk I have no idea. But anyway, reading through it, I thought that I would share it with you here and add a few comments in re the current "Nigerian terrorist" situation.

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Many of us on the Left, whether the Democratic Party Left or the Real Left, are becoming increasingly disturbed, upset, concerned, what-have-you, with the behavior of the president in office. Obama came into office promising to be a different kind of president. Although certain of our compatriots were not so easily taken in, many of us (including myself, I must admit) thought that he would be, certainly in comparison to Carter and Clinton. But there were straws in the wind that he might not be. Earlier on, I had even noted some of them myself. However, for a while during the first few months of Obama's term, I did get caught up in the rhetoric. I should have paid a lot more attention to those earlier thoughts, as it has turned out, and will briefly review of some of them here. This brings us to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

The DLC is the right-wing organization that has dominated Democratic Party politics and policies since it was founded in the 1980s by the likes of Bill Clinton and Richard Gephardt, joined in the 1990s by the likes of Joe Lieberman. One of its prominent political positions was that in order to win elections Democrats had to look as much like Republicans as possible. This reversed the long-held mantra of Harry Truman that if someone wants to vote for a Republican, they will indeed vote for him (or her), not for a Democrat trying to look like one. It now is becoming quite clear that the Obama Democratic Party has become quite stuck in this mode. Strong criticism for the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson (much less any of the Republicans who have since the beginning of his Administration announced that they were out to "bring him to his Waterloo" [or worse])? Well, no. Personal, kill-the-messenger-type, attacks on the likes of Howard Dean? You betcha.

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As I noted in my last BuzzFlash Commentary published a couple of weeks ago, the previous Sunday I had been walking on a street in New York City when two stickers on the back of an old SUV caught my eye. One said "McCain 2008." The other showed the Obama "sunrise" logo with the old Soviet hammer and sickle symbol imposed upon it. That's a clear message, no? Obama is a communist, no, rather a commie, and likely a Kenyan Muslim one to boot. Of course when folks of this car-owner's ilk, the "teabaggers" and such, aren't calling Obama a communist, they are calling him a "Nazi."

In that last column, I mused about what Obama would have already done and would be doing if he were actually a (presumably secret) communist. A couple of the readers' comments on my Commentary said essentially that what I listed was a left-liberal, not a revolutionary, agenda. They were quite correct. As I was careful to point out at the beginning of that Commentary, I was using "communist" in the context of the program of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) back in its heyday, in the 1930s and the 1940s until just after the end of World War II when it was quickly deep-sixed as any kind of a political force as the U.S. moved quickly from the hot war (finally) against fascism to a resumption of what would eventually become the 75 Years War against the Soviet Union.

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Last weekend, I was walking on a street in New York City when two stickers on the back of a smaller, older, before bankruptcy, Chevy SUV caught my eye. One said "McCain 2008" (just McCain, no Palin). The other was of the Obama "sunrise" logo, with the old Soviet hammer and sickle symbol imposed upon it. That's a clear message, no? Obama is a communist, no, rather a commie, and likely a Kenyan Muslim one to boot. And oh yes, just in case you might think that New Yorkers don't harbor such thoughts, the car did have a New York State license plate.

Now there is really not too much evidence to support the "commie" appellation for the President, but I got to thinking. Supposing he were a communist. What kind of politics and policies would he have as President? Of course when folks of this car-owner's ilk aren't calling Obama a communist, they are calling him a "Nazi." But it is to answering the first question that the balance of this column is devoted. But before we get onto that one, we had better have a definition of "communist" to use because historically they have come in all shapes and sizes. Since Obama is a U.S. citizen, the wonderings and meanderings of putative GOP candidate for Senate and yes, maybe even for President, Lou Dobbs, and former House GOP leader Dick Armey, and their fellow "birthers" to the contrary notwithstanding, let us use the U.S. model of "communism" as our measuring stick. That is, we will use the U.S. model for the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) back in its heyday, in the 1930s and the 1940s until just after the end of World War II.

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