No Liability Bird-Flu Shot. Want One?

You can make the case that a pandemic vaccine will be virtually an experimental drug—

Kim Elliott, deputy director of the Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit advocacy group urging action on any pandemic threat.--Los Angeles Times, 11/17/05

The fear of a bird-flu pandemic is causing panic among lawmakers to promote a life-saving vaccine. In order to increase the incentives for vaccine development, republican legislators are trying to limit, if not eliminate, any liability on the part of the drug manufacturers for any adverse harm the vaccine may cause.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) wants to attach liability
protections to a must-pass spending bill slated for quick action, spokeswoman Amy Call said Wednesday. That would bypass the cumbersome process of committee hearings and floor deliberations in each chamber.--Los Angeles Times, 11/17/05

My wife just spoke with our friend, Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) which is a watchdog agency for safety regarding vaccines. Barbara was scheduled for one of her customary consulting appearances at a hearing on the bird-flu vaccine issue, but the hearing was cancelled. Just as with the scenario for pushing through the notoriously anti-civil rights Patriot Act, this add-on measure to protect big pharma is being ramrodded by Frist the same way.

I'm alarmed that something of critical importance is being discussed and handled in a back-room deal," said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), a senior member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee."It makes no sense to try to rush this thing through in the darkness of night," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).--Los Angeles Times, 11/17/05

When the huge lobbyists—and the drug companies are up there with big oil--in Washington put their minds to getting a program passed, nothing will stand in their way—certainly not the petty needs of public health and safety, vs. campaign contributions to happy-to-oblige politicians.

A knowledgeable immunologist, not yet brain-washed, or money-laundered, by the vaccine manufacturers’ assurances of the effectiveness and safety of their products, will tell point blank of the problems the flu vaccine can cause to the immune system, and the probability that it won’t help as much as make the system vulnerable to other viral problems.

The influenza vaccine that many Americans clamored for this year [2003-2004] was not very good at protecting people against influenza, colds and similar viruses… the study shows that people who were vaccinated against influenza came down with colds, flu and similar viruses at the same rate as people who were not vaccinated. This would presumably include true influenza.-- Study: Vaccine didn't protect against flu, Reuters, 1/16/04

The discussion of whether or not the “impending” bird-flu scare is justified already took place on this blog with this summation:

...right now, there is no value in scaring the public with Hitchcockian
bird flu scenarios. The public must be kept in the loop, but potential threats should be put into context. The worst case is not the only case.—Los Angeles Times, Siegel, 10/11/05

As for Frist and his devious efforts—you can’t keep a well-compensated shill for big pharma down. Just to be fair, there are informed members of congress who take a different stance:

"In today's political climate, almost every threat is exaggerated, and
legislators have to try to do everything possible to prove that they're doing more than anyone else in case something does happen," …Rep. John Duncan [R-Tenn] said Friday at a congressional hearing, the third of the week on bird flu.--KEVIN FREKING ,The Associated Press 11/6/05

That is, of course, when they were holding hearings about the bird flu—not the Frist add-on legislation which is shielded from that kind of scrutiny.

Ever since Bush pledged $7 billion for bird flu vaccine the rush to line up for the payout has developed into a stampede. In this case, the public’s best course of treatment is to run for cover, eat nutritiously, get enough sleep, wash hands often, and not press the panic button.

UPDATE -- 11/18

Barbara Loe Fisher email:

Drug companies making vaccines have used blackmail tactics before to try to bully Congress into letting them off the hook for vaccine injuries and deaths. They did it in the 1970's with the bogus swine flu scare that convinced Congress to immunize companies from all liability for the hastily prepared swine flu vaccine that ended up brain damaging many Americans, few of whom ever got the promised "government compensation" they were supposed to get.

Vaccine makers blackmailed Congress in the 1980's, threatning to leave the nation without any childhood vaccines if they were not given protection from lawsuits on behalf of children brain damaged from the highly reactive whole cell DPT vaccine. Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 that eliiminated almost all liability for doctors and vaccine manufacturers. It worked: there were four drug companies marketing vaccines in the U.S. in 1982 (Wyeth, Lederle, Merck, Connaught) and today that number has doubled to eight (Wyeth, Merck, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, Medimmune, Chiron, Bioport, Vaxgen).

Now big Pharma wants to cut off citizen access to the judicial system if they are harmed by experimental or licensed vaccines potentially mandated to be used whenever the Secretary of Health and Human Services declares a public health emergency and Governors follow suit (see NVIC letter to Senate staffer Kadlec at www.nvic.org). The Pharma bail-out by Congress will result in vaccine casualties who will be left to fend for themselves for the rest of their lives long after the "emergency" is over.

Guilty til Proven Innocent and Other Prejudices

My latest letter to the editor of the notoriously small-town right-wing rag, the Orange County Register, which has actually done admirable reporting on the local story of the Tesoro High School students:

Dear Editor:

As usual, the ignorance and illiteracy of readers of the Orange County Register speak for themselves. The most troubling aspect of the publicity of the story of the two Tesoro High School boys who are suspended for writing journals is the lack of understanding of the facts. Three letters from November 14 illustrate that rumors and gossip will always trump reality:

Dianne Weie, Ladera Ranch, writes, “My understanding is that these boys wrote journal entries for a class assignment that were so blatantly violent and obscene that their teacher now fears for her own safety.”

No one knows what was written other than the teacher and several administrators, as the contents have been sealed by the school district. If anything should be taught, it is that in these United States a suspect is innocent until proven guilty, not tried in the press.

Weie also writes, “…their teacher now fears for her own safety.”

Weie, and anyone else, doesn’t know that. All that has been reported is that the teacher is too upset to attend school or hearings regarding the students. This could be because she is embarrassed by her abrupt actions in turning in the journals to the principal, especially after she may have told the class they were to be kept private and she or anyone else would never read them.

Julie Grable, Lake Forest, writes “Shame on them [the boys' parents] for not supporting the school and not taking this time to teach the boys about the consequences of their actions.”

How are children supposed to learn from their mistakes with zero tolerance and expulsion immediately upon suspicion?

Gail Hetland, Rancho Santa Margarita writes, “What place does writing a personal journal have in the school curriculum, anyway?”

Any writing on a regular basis makes the writer improve, but hey, I’m no expert on this—is Gail?

The competent reporting on this case by the Orange County Register is not done justice by reading between the lines and making stuff up. But I forgot that in CAPOUSD [Capistrano Unified School District] the overwhelming constituency still believes Bush and company didn’t lie to get us into the Iraq War—people here make up stuff all the time to suit their pre-conceived notions.

Signed,
David Goldenberg

I'll let you know if it's published...

Update 11/21/05:

The above letter didn't get published in the Orange County Register. Surprise!!

However, The following one did on 11/19:

While I wholeheartedly agree with David M. Agrela's overall opinion in "Private writings, public punishment" [Orange Grove, Nov. 10]about the sad case of the two Tesoro High School football players, Scott McKnight and Sam Smith, I must point out the glaring omission in the discussion: The journal writings of the two boys that got them in trouble have not been released to the public. In fact, outside of some school administrators, no one but the students, their teacher and the principal has seen the actual wording of the journals
themselves.

Without first-hand knowledge of what was written, discussion of this case has to be based on hearsay and innuendo, which further exemplifies the "insanity" of overreaction by the school district and the teachers' union.

The methodology of the school board and the continued ruination of these two boys' high school careers are no doubt a sign of the times and the so-called policy of zero tolerance toward perceived life threats. I have zero tolerance for trumped-up judgment based on rumor-mongering and hysterical fear, which in the absence of the actual verbiage of the journals, remains just that - rumors.--Orange County Register Letters, 11/19/05

Missing Robert Scheer: Newspapers Turn to Mush

Journalist Robert Scheer has over thirty years of experience. Every Tuesday morning for breakfast I consumed his weekly op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times, which, along with Frank Rich’s clear explanation of the meaning of current events, in the New York Times every Sunday, allowed me the feeling that I had obtained a richer understanding of politics, reality, and our times.

Here's a portion of Scheer's biography:

From 1976 to 1993, he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, where he wrote articles on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. He is currently a contributing editor at The Times, as well as a contributing editor for The Nation magazine. Scheer has interviewed every president from Richard Nixon on through Bill Clinton. He conducted the famous 1976 Playboy interview with Jimmy Carter, in which the then-presidential candidate admitted to have lusted in his heart.—RobertScheer.com

As of today, Scheer is no longer ‘a contributing editor at The Times,”

On Friday I was fired as a columnist by the publisher of the Los Angeles Times… The publisher, Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq…

Starting Wednesday morning, my column will be appearing here
on the Huffington Post. --Huffington Post, 1/11/05

That means good news and bad news. For me, it’s 90% good news in that I can get Scheer’s take every week as usual. The 10% bad news, is the state of printed news in our time. The proliferation of cable news channels, the internet, and now of course, blogs, have reduced readership, circulation, and therefore advertising revenue to all time lows. Across the country big and small publications are in real financial jeopardy. This may be just the way business is trending.

In an effort to maintain business as usual, some publishers are acting as if retaining subscriptions and achieving a positive bottom line, are the most important elements of success—not promoting writing that inflames, antagonizes, or turns off readership—in other words, controversial.

That the antagonistic, controversial, or inflaming point of view is just that—a point of view—and not necessarily a turn-off to readership but actually an attraction, is all in the perception of the publisher and his needs and wants. In the case of Fox News, the agency simply caved to the commands of owner Rupert Murdoch and hinted right-wing conservative slants to everything from politics to economics to human interest stories, and then called it “fair and balanced.” That’s an extreme example where a dictator runs the show.

What is scary lately is the alteration of the bastions of great tried-and-true journalism—the newspapers that people read to get the more profound truth behind a story—to pander to the perceived demands of what readers are left. In the case of the New York Times, a publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, stands behind his reporter, Judith Miller, regardless of her lack of ethics and standards, or her ties to the Bush White House, and stains the reputation of a great institution from now on.

The Los Angeles Times may remain a world-class newspaper with its in-depth reporting and talent that only money can buy. But as an arbiter of opinion, what’s it going to do if it hatchets out the contributors, like Robert Scheer and others, who have a viewpoint worth reading?

The Tooth Fairy and the Drugs

Big Pharma paid a fortune to support Prop 78 in last Tuesday’s California special election. That was the proposal that offered voluntary discounts for low-income people based on the pharmaceutical company’s guidelines. Senator Boxer opposed this measure, along with most thinking people in the state and elsewhere—they supported an alternative Proposition 79, that would have forced the drug companies to lower their prices.

Both measures were voted down, mostly due to the confusion of the ads and a lack of understanding of which proposition meant what. People who have a life don’t follow this stuff that closely. They don't care or understand how the cost of their prescriptions may be affected by this vote in this election, on which California taxpayers paid $400 million because the governor, Arnold Schwartzenneger, wouldn't take "no" for an answer on several issues which he then submitted for referendum by the electorate. It was his choice and prerogative alone.

Just imagine what $400 million could have done for the people of California besides fund a special election: teacher salaries, homeless people's supplies, scholarships for deserving students--the list is endless.

Back to the expensive medicine and the greedy pharmaceutical firms:

After tens of millions of dollars spent by the big drug manufacturers on Proposition 78, which was voted DOWN, how do you think these drug company execs felt? Shitty?--no! Ecstatic?--Beyond description!

...drug executives are "dancing in the boardrooms" despite the defeat of their own measure, said Bob Stern, executive director of the Santa Monica-based Center for Governmental Studies. "They don't care that 78 went down…. They really wanted 79 to lose."--Drug Industry Wins Despite Defeat, Some Say, By Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times, 11/10/05

Why were they happy their $80 million plus campaign failed?

With most states eyeing measures to make drugs more affordable, political and financial analysts viewed the election as a key test of the industry's ability to fend off mandatory discounts.-- Drug Industry Wins Despite Defeat, Some Say, By Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times, 11/10/05

You still think the drug companies are more interested in your longer lifespan than they are in their shareholders’ profits? You must think there’s a real tooth fairy. Well, just ask your kids—there ain’t and they aren’t!

Zero Tolerance is a Substitute for Brains

Rachel KCAL Ch 9 11-5-05


Rachel's Car Supporting Football Players

…we are obliged to make choices without being able to foresee all their consequences, which we then must live with. —Movie Critic Richard Schickel quoting Director Elia Kazan, Los Angeles Times, 11/5/05

Spurious statements to the press, exaggeration by the media, rumor mongering, clandestine death threats, petty issues blown out of proportion, hearsay stories of vindictive recrimination, forays into sordid romantic liaisons, invasion of privacy, authority with no direction, courts meddling in legislation, --

This is

A) Bush White House and the scandal-ridden republican regime?

B) Two star players on Orange County, California’s Tesoro High School football team and the Capistrano Unified School District?

Answer: B

My wife’s cousin, Rachel, is married to Reed, who coaches the Tesoro High School football team. Reed is a remarkable young man whose natural talent to inspire the students he coaches has led them to consistent victories. The kids are also an admirable group of above-average students and as a unit—coach and players—could act as a role model for sportsmanship on and off the field.

Reed, a former NFL player himself, and a figure of substantial physical proportion to match his spirit, recently was accosted verbally by the misguided parent of one of his players during a weekend football game. The threatening abuse, regarding when and whether the boy should be put in the game, got so out of hand that Reed asked the school principal for a meeting with the parent to put an end to the issue.

At the meeting, Principal Dan Burch suggested to Reed that such verbiage and threats “go with the territory” of coaching high school football. The parent was suspended for one game and his $1200 contribution to the football fund was returned to him.

Punishment indeed.

That Tesoro High School football story did not get press coverage. The next one did.

Fast forward several weeks, to a couple of weeks ago:

Two south Orange County students could face expulsion from Tesoro High School after journal entries they had written were reported by a teacher to contain violent and obscene content.

The students, both seniors on the school's football team, wrote assignments for an English class in which they fantasized about the death of their teacher, said Mike Feyk, a teacher’s union representative at the school.

"They were basically plotting her murder in graphic fashion. One(entry) said he'd like to see everyone in the classroom dead; another had graphic sexual references to other girls in the class," he said.--SAM MILLER, Orange County Register 11/2/05

The press report is one point of view. Another angle has the virtue of having Cousin Rachel’s insider perception to help:

1. The “two students” facing expulsion maintain top grade-point averages, are the leaders of the fore-mentioned Tesoro High football team, and are considered throughout the school as being of the highest character.

"They realize they used bad judgment," said Matt Sciacqua, a close family friend of one of the boys and the father of a Tesoro student. "We don't feel it was anything worth being expelled for; the sheriff's department didn't feel it was dangerous to the teacher."--SAM MILLER, Orange County Register 11/2/05

Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s department, has said on TV interviews that the boys, and what they wrote, pose no problem for anyone.

2. The press reports have not stated whether Mike Feyk has actually seen the journals, or whether he is repeating what he was told by the school administration. No one outside the school administration has been given access to the actual written journals.

3. The students in the class claim the teacher told them the journals were to be written as an exercise, and would never be collected or read by anyone.

Petra Law, a family friend of one of the boys, said the students were only joking around and did not believe the journal entries would be read.

"I think it was a total joke, like them reading each other's (journals)and laughing," said Law, whose daughter was in Di Somma's class last year. "They were told the journals were personal and private and she would not read them. They were given freedom of expression. ... It's unfortunate, it's unfair."--SAM MILLER, Orange County Register 11/3/05

About two weeks ago, teacher Alyssa Di Somma collected journals from her fourth-period English class. Feyk said journal entries written by the two boys frightened her with what she perceived as threats. Feyk said Di Somma gave him permission to talk to reporters, but declined to comment herself.--SAM MILLER, Orange County Register 11/2/05

The speculation in the media this week about the content of the journals was reported on several TV news outlets: KABC Channel 7, KCBS channel 2, and KCAL Channel 9. Last Saturday night, at the latest Tesoro High football game, Channel 9 interviewed a mother of a member of the opposing team at the football game, who said it was better to discipline the youths since you never know if they’re kidding or not—"Columbine" type of thing, you know.

Then the camera turned on Cousin Rachel, who said journals were supposed to be private so this was a matter of invasion of privacy.

In the report on Channel 9, neither of these interviewees was identified—they might as well have been talking heads in a crowd. Rachel’s name was listed while she spoke, but it was misspelled, and she was not identified as Coach Reed’s wife anyway.

Here is what one former Tesoro High student wrote as part of an on line chat-room give-and-take:

“the real story about this whole mess also involves sam smith. apparantley, in their english class the teacher has them keep personal journals that are for them and are never going to be read by anybody. every so often they have to turn them in to the teacher so she can verify that they are doing what they're supposed to be doing. the two of them wrote a rap song between themselves about killing the teacher. she got wind of this and they are both expelled. it was originally going to be a 5 day deal, but now the principal is going for a full expulsion. regardless of what happens, they will most likely not be able to go back to football. it's really hard to think that they both did this with what the futures they could have, especially scott. i played with both of these guys in high school and they are great athletes. it's just a shame how the decisions they made ulitmately effected them forever. being an alumni and former player for tesoro, i still talk to the team and this is what i've heard so far.”

That doesn’t clarify everything for ya?

In case you’re wondering how much the media reports helped to fan the flame of rumors, Rachel’s cousin works in a pizza parlor and several of his friend came in earlier this week to tell him the buzz they heard—that the students who wrote the journals were threatening to bomb the school, and that there had been helicopters over Tesoro HS.

There were no helicopters and no threats. Police were called to the school the day the teacher turned the journals over to the principal.

The two students were suspended pending a school district hearing on their expulsion. Zero tolerance policy subsequent to 9/11 dictates that school districts take threats very seriously. The expulsion hearings take place on the last Monday of every month, which in this case was October 31. Halloween is a school holiday—in California the school districts would rather ignore the Halloween tradition of dressing up in costumes, which is now also a no-no in our post 9/11-Columbine fear-of-terrorism society.

So the two students will have to stay out of school an additional month to wait for their next hearing date hearing. They are missing so much school that graduating this year is in jeopardy, as well as are scholarships that both students were awarded for college.

Think this kind of threat-perception case is rare and isolated? Here’s what the police say:

Sgt. Brad Virgoe heads the School Mobile Assessment Resource Team, a unit in the Orange County Sheriff's Department that investigates threats of school violence. The team was formed in 2001 and was planned in the wake of the Columbine High shootings in 1999.

"This is our fourth school year, and we've responded to 200 or 300 threat assessments in a year. Typically, three to eight per day. You can have everything from a fifth-grade student who says he's going to get daddy's gun and bring it to school; kids who threaten other kids on the Internet; kids who threaten teachers. You name it, if they threatened to kill somebody or if it's school-related."

"It's very clear-cut: We look at every situation, whether or not a crime did occur. Every threat has to be considered credible until it can be assessed. That's the viewpoint we take. If a school district reports it, we'll go out and investigate it."

"We typically deal with kids, juveniles, and we're always trying to take the lowest level of (intervention). Try to work with the families, and avoid booking somebody in Juvenile Hall. If the person would benefit from just attending a diversion class where they receive counseling or anger management, we'll go that route. Try to work with the kid, with the family, and coming to the most appropriate level of intervention. It's extreme when somebody is booked."--Police Perspective, Orange County Register, 11/6/05

Now the two accused Tesoro High students have enlisted legal aid in order to protect their rights and because of the tremendous hoopla surrounding their plight.

Sam Smith’s family is said to be well-connected politically and socially in Orange County and Scott McKnight’s father is a Newport Beach Police detective. The two families hired Jeoffrey Robinson to help get their boys back on the field.

Robinson argued in court Friday that preventing the two boys from playing football would severely damage their future educational opportunities, especially for Scott McKnight, who is an all-county football player with several scholarship offers. Robinson argued that if Scott is not allowed to play football, he will lose those scholarship offers.—KCAL Ch 9 11/5/05

Even though a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the suspension, so the two could play in Saturday night’s game, the students chose not to play anyway:

Seniors Scott McKnight and Sam Smith have chosen not to play this week - California Interscholastic Federation-Southern Section rules might have forced the Rancho Santa Margarita-area school to forfeit tonight's game if they had - but will begin practicing with the team to prepare for next week's game.

Capistrano Unified officials and the teachers union decried the ruling.

McKnight and Smith may rejoin the team with restrictions:

They are not allowed within 300 feet of school property and may not contact school staff other than coaches;

They are allowed to practice on school property but only if escorted through a supervised gate near the field;

They must leave playing and practice fields immediately after play concludes;

They are allowed in locker rooms only under personal supervision of a coach.--Sam Miller, Orange County Register, 11/5/05

From the teacher, to the principal, to the school administration and the school district leadership—all these people have made daily news for the media and a major local story out of what should have been a run of the mill disciplinary problem. Two boys used bad judgment and made a mistake, and now there is all hell to pay.

Some questions:

Coach Reed was threatened by a parent in front of witnesses, and the principal told him “it goes with the territory.”

Vicki Soderberg of the teacher’s union wrote to the district superintendent: …that she was concerned the students would be allowed to return to campus or rejoin the football team.

"If this occurs, CUEA would consider the safety and well-being of the teacher who was the recipient of the death threats to be in jeopardy. ... It would send a message to all students that there are no serious consequences to death threats," she wrote.--SAM MILLER, Orange County Register 11/3/05

Why isn’t coach Reed’s security and well-being as important as teacher Di Somma’s?

Why didn’t media explain more clearly that what the journals contained was never told to anyone outside the school administration, and that all the speculation about what they contained was hypothetical?

Why weren’t the students’ characters better emphasized by the press—they are “A” students with impeccable reputations?

Seems like a rush to judgment. And we haven’t touched on what prompted the teacher to call in the journals in the first place, or who might have let the teacher know there was reason to go back on her reported promise of confidentiality and ask to read them.

Post 9/11 America is full of paranoia. Your neighbors are afraid of you. Authorities from top to bottom, from the US Department of Homeland Security, to your local sheriff, have let you know that a terrorist attack is imminent, that the killer bird flu pandemic is on our doorstep, and that any immigrant to our shores could be at worst our sworn enemy, and at best a carrier of some exotic germ menace.

“Zero Tolerance” is the watchword-phrase. Never mind the glaring stupidity of announcing the “b” word in an airport—children are not allowed the “luxury” of making mistakes to learn from anymore without the possibility of removal from society: expulsion from school, time in juvenile detention facilities, or jail if they’re old enough. No more reprimands from the school administration and some sort of probation—you blow it and you’re out, regardless of your shining, blemish-free past history.

On the other hand, if you’re the school district, or for that matter, the President of the United States, you can make all the mistakes you want with impunity.

The horrendous international policy, or lack thereof, and continued bungling US military presence in Iraq, are obvious examples of unbridled, major errors.

The Capistrano Unified School District opts to build a $250 million administration building with a view, while students attend blue-ribbon schools in portable units due to lack of funds.

What New York Times reporter Judith Miller knew, and who she told, and Libby’s stonewalling resulting in obstruction-of-justice indictments, and how Bush and Cheney play into the whole scheme—all are starting to look a lot more clear-cut than the Tesoro High School Football debacle.

Meanwhile boys will be boys, and teachers will be…or as I told my teenage tall handsome son, even if your cute-if-slightly-overweight high school English teacher takes a liking to you, ignore her. Don’t fall for the flattery. Zero tolerance, you know.

Not in My Champs D'Elysee

Disconnected from their past in the Muslim world and a future in Europe, they've come to see themselves as citizens of nothing but "Neuf-Trois," 9-3, the postal code for the outer edges of Paris.—Dickey, Newsweek International, 11/06/05

What are the arson fires in France, especially in the Parisian suburbs, about? My good friend Christopher Dickey, Newsweek Bureau Chief in Paris and expert on terrorism and the Middle East, wrote two weeks ago about the immigration problems arising in Europe with the huge influx of African Muslims moving north to look for a better life:

Most experts agree that over the long term better development programs are needed in North Africa and among the sub-Saharan countries where these new immigrants originate. "We know exactly what it takes" says Steffen Angenendt of the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. But that would require opening up more EU markets to such countries, especially for agricultural products, and there's no strong support for such a move in Europe.-- Dickey, Newsweek International, 10/24/05

The fires are just the beginning. And this could be a portent of the future of the immigration conundrum in the US. The difference is that Latinos make up a major plurality of voters in the US, and without oversimplifying, this may offer an easier method of change than outright revolution.

In both cases of immigration issues—American and European—the solutions seem to be held up by the same reasons: fear and bigotry. Until those populations trying to maintain fences are willing to see humanity as one, and its members as brothers and sisters, the conflagration will continue to grow.

The American poet Robert Frost once wrote, famously, that good fences make good neighbors. But when the neighbors are as desperate as the Africans storming the concertina wire at Ceuta and Melilla, no fence is good enough.--Dickey, Newsweek International, 10/24/05

I Got Your Bird Flu Plan Right Here!

"There is no pandemic flu in our country, or in the world, at this time,"—George W. Bush

The bird flu, though a potential large-scale danger, is not impending. An epidemic of overreaction by Marc Siegel, L.A. Times 10/11/05

President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu as a first wave of protection.

The president also said the United States must approve liability
protection for the makers of lifesaving vaccines.--MSNBC 11/1/05

Some elements of Bush's plan, which would not begin until 2010, are
expected to be controversial.For example, it would protect vaccine manufacturers from liability lawsuits but offer no compensation for individuals who suffered serious reactions to a vaccine.--L.A. Times 11/2/05

$7.1 Billion with no product liability—special interest political contributions, and in this case, the ultra-powerful pharmaceutical lobby in Wasington, pays off big time. Imagine G.M. making a car with no manufacturer liability? You’d have the entire top floor of headquarters in Detroit drenched in pants-pee. Yet that’s just what government, in this case the Bush tyranny, always proposes for the poor downtrodden drug-makers (I jest), in order to give them incentive to produce these ineffective and possibly harmful products for a fear-mongered public. In fact, this is nothing but a cash cow bought and paid for by that very taxpaying public, for those very profit-rich, and getting richer, drug companies.

"It's like predicting the Big One in California," said Dr. Arnold S. Monto, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan and a former president of the American Epidemiological Society. "We are overdue for another pandemic. But we don't know when it will hit."…

…Monto said genetic changes that made the virus easily transmissible could just as easily decrease its virulence."If it was easy for this to happen, it would have happened already," Monto said.He estimated the chances of an H5N1 pandemic at no more than 5%.—A Flu Pandemic is Expected to Happen Sooner or Later by Charles Pillar, L.A. Times 11/2/05

Speaking for the American Constitution Society on Sunday, November 9, 2003, Former Vice President Al Gore charged President George W. Bush's administration with a determination to "use fear as a political tool to consolidate its power and to escape any accountability for its use." [emphasis added]—Sourcewatch.com

New Yorker Editor "Agrees" with Essential Emmes

Not only do I like when my ideas are met with agreement, but what’s more flattering is when the agreement comes from an intelligent and accomplished mind, not knowingly or on purpose, of course, but still satisfying, nonetheless.

The use of similar verbiage further emphasizes how obvious is the fearful mentality of the Bush camp:

David Remnick, in Comment (p. 37), reports on President Bush's "Hell Week,"…

Remnick writes, "Bush had been unmasked in all his insularity, arrogance, and executive incompetence.... But the lessons that Bush is likely to derive from the complex of recent disasters will not automatically lead to a more considered, modest, and moderate Presidency."…

"in his anger, and after all his many failures, the President, quite suddenly, seems unpopular, alone, and adrift."[emphasis added]—Huffington Post 10/30/05

I wrote here, Thursday, October 27,

…what kind of mistake was [the nomination of Harriet Miers for Supreme Court Justice]? One of stupidity, haste, studied miscalculation? Or in the more sinister vein of the mindset of Bush, Rove and company, was it the arrogance and willful isolation of a dynasty in charge without regard to consequence? If Bush could get an inside crony like Miers onto the Supreme Court, what heights could he not scale?—[emphasis added]

My major concern remains—that Bush, in his anger and solitude, will lead this nation in an inappropriate and possibly dangerous direction. Two days after the indictment of a powerful and influential member of the White House machine, neither the CEO (Bush), nor the executive in charge (Cheney) have made a statement to the shareholders (we the people) about the accusations of immense wrongdoing and all of its ramifications at that level of government. In the awkward analogy of the Bush administration as a business, this silence on the part of the leadership should not be tolerated by the rank and file.

Evidently arrogance and insularity are in place to mark the pace of the continuation of this presidency until impeachment hearings are held.

Best One-Liner of the Week:

In the midst of national economic turmoil due to natural catastrophes produced by the worst swarm of hurricanes in history, Exxon-Mobil posts a ten BILLION dollar profit for the quarter, the biggest single-quarter profit of any company in history, from selling short supplies of fuel at inflated prices, so conservative republican Senator Bill Frist calls for congressional hearings to investigate price gouging in the oil industry.

Get it? Not Barbara Boxer -- Bill Frist.

I'd like to go for a drive, get some air, and think about it, but I can't afford the gas.

Thursday Morning Quarterbacking

The breaking news hadn’t finished breaking this morning when out trotted every pundit who could squeeze into an air slot to second guess why Harriet Miers quit. Miers had answered a set of questions for the House Judiciary Committee and one of the answers specifically showed such a lack of knowledge of the constitution antecedents to judgments that Republican Specter and Democrat Leahy both asked her for a “do-over.” The news of that humiliation so rocked any idea of Miers as a qualified candidate, it seemed just a matter of time as to how and when her extrication from the approval process would happen.

Still, the pundits weighed in all morning with guesses as to whether George W. asked his old friend and legal confidant for her resignation, or whether she did it on her own as a gesture to save any further embarrassment and hassle for the White House powers-that-be, who are already plagued by their own man-made conundrums, and out-of-their-control divine processes—perjury and hurricanes—as not to need a single hay-straw more on the “problem” side of the scale.

The overwhelming conclusion on the Miers selection comes down on the side of big Bush mistake, for many reasons enumerated everywhere. One question remains--what kind of mistake was it? One of stupidity, haste, studied miscalculation? Or in the more sinister vein of the mindset of Bush, Rove and company, was it the arrogance and willful isolation of a dynasty in charge without regard to consequence? If Bush could get an inside crony like Miers onto the Supreme Court, what heights could he not scale? He wasn’t even willing to produce documents the house committee asked for involving Miers work in the White House, sighting Executive Privilege.

Some of us caught on to the nature of mindless power, however, even if the statements were not so vitriolic:

I think it’s a mistake to recommend or nominate someone from your own staff, particularly someone as close to him [as Miers], because it raises all kinds of questions about executive power.

Secondly, when her major qualifications revolve around her service in the White House, and those papers are not able to be given to us, or the president refuses to give them, it sets up a dialectic confrontation between the two bodies right away.”—Senator Diane Feinstein, MSNBC Thursday, October 27, 2005 [From live broadcast]

In light of indictments about to drop on an unknown number of Bush players—at least Rove and Libby and possibly Cheney and others—it is interesting to note the psychology of Bush decision-making in action. It’s the cause of all the trouble in the first place, including and most importantly, the unnecessary and hugely costly in all its factors, Iraq War.

Kerry Won the 2004 Presidential Election

My wife, who is psychic, never veered from her statement that Kerry won the 2004 presidential election, before or after the ballots were cast. As reported in this blog several times, Congressman John Conyers, reporter Kieth Olberman, and author Christopher Hitchens among others, have questioned the results of the voter count.

Now there is a book, well-researched--Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). Mark Crispin Miller. Basic Books. $24.95. 284 pp.—which is reviewed by Timothy Dodson of the Florida Sun-Sentinel. It is clear-cut that Kerry did win the election, that the election was stolen by the now obvious criminal team of Bush-Cheney and company, and hopefully this coup pulled on the American people will soon be rectified.

From the book review:

Among other things, he recommends doing away with electronic voting, which he says "can never be entirely secure," and using standard paper ballots instead. He also would federalize the electoral system so as to replace "local bigots or politicos" with trained civil servants at the polls…

…reports of touch-screen voting machines flipping votes from Kerry to Bush but never the other way around, are hard to ignore, as are reports that the many anomalies that occurred in Ohio all favored Bush, defying the law of averages if not common sense.

…Post-election analysis found that Bush's "base" voted for him in about the same numbers as in 2000. But Democrats had been far more successful in registering new voters, particularly in Florida and Ohio. Both the polls and the registration numbers suggested a larger turnout for Kerry than for Bush, yet Bush won. It doesn't add up.

…if even half of what this book alleges is true, then a serious offense has been committed against our system of government and the American way of life.—Sun-Sentinel 9/23/05

In case you’re counting, that’s two presidential elections stolen out of two.—DG

(Thanks to Carolyn Kaye -- MakeThemAccountable.com.—for bringing this story to our attention)

Tax Evasion or Perjury? You Go to Jail.

I remember when I was a kid and the big news among my friends when we learned about Al Capone, was that he wasn’t put in jail for all the crimes he committed, because they couldn’t get him on the hard evidence. He and his cronies were too smart for that. So they sent him up the river on charges of tax evasion, which was easily proven through his accountant’s audit trail.

Then I grew up and wrote my master’s thesis on the case of Alger Hiss. Nixon’s first big fish was Hiss, a former high-ranking member of the Truman administration. Hiss was accused of passing classified secret information to Whittaker Chambers, an admitted Soviet spy during the 1930's, who then was editor in chief of Time Magazine and accused Hiss in the late 1940's.

Hiss was sent to jail for 4 years, and the multiple-choice test on the advanced high-school American History exam asks what he was convicted of—treason, espionage, or perjury? You guessed it!—perjury, for confusion over dates having to do with when he actually knew Chambers. Four years in prison, disbarred, and out of the loop forever for his dream job, Secretary of State. Perjury--not exactly a technicality according to Mr. Hiss.

Fifty years later there are still Republicans who think perjury is a very serious charge. When President Clinton LIED to a grand jury about not having sex with intern Monica Lewinsky, he was impeached and tried before the Senate and acquitted. Never mind about getting his country into a war under false pretenses—Bill Clinton said a blow job was not sex, and Henry Hyde, Tom Delay, and the rest of the high-minded republican congress who indicted him knew Clinton was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” as stipulated in the just-short-of-holy-writ Constitution of the United States. Have all the sex you want, just don’t LIE about it—that’s perjury if you fib to a grand jury, and that’s serious!

Not always serious, actually. Sometimes, depending on who’s lying and who’s listening, it’s not that big a deal. I know this now, because Texas Senator Kay Baily Hutchison ‘splained it on today’s Meet the Press, hosted, by the way, by the leading MSM shill next to soon-to-be-former New York Times staffer Judith Miller--Tim Russert:

"An indictment of any kind is not a guilty verdict, and I do think we have in this country the right to go to court and have due process and be innocent until proven guilty. And secondly, I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."—Huffington Post 9/23/05

One can only ask Senator Hutcison, have you no sense of decency ma’am, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

As far as wasting taxpayer dollars—soon there will be listed officially 2,000 dead soldiers in the Iraq debacle started by the neocons, led by Cheney and endorsed by Bush. In fact, there are thousands more American dead who were not killed on the battlefield in Iraq, but who may have died in hospitals in Frankfort and elsewhere, or in transit and due to sickness etc—in all it has been estimated as many as 10,000 Americans have died related to the Iraq war.

Then there are the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians--men, women, children--who have been killed in this unnecessary enterprise, conducted by wealthy American men and women with greedy motives, misguided, isolated from reality, and leading a willing nation of sheep.

Hutchison has the nerve to call perjury a legal technicality. Russert gives her the airwaves to do this, and doesn’t challenge her. Children are allowed to watch Meet the Press because it is not censorable as violent or risqué—yet it is as politically pornographic as if it showed the most depraved acts of humanity.

That’s why one of the comments on Arriana’s post seems so apt, if not completely off the mark and a total non-sequitor. It seems all the more appropriate in the context of the discussion of perjury as a technicality:

Sorry to say this Arianna on your blog, but another point about that
smarmy, reptilian KayBailey Hutchinson - her weird dress had two 4" white bands of cloth across each of her breasts, and on each band, there was some odd decorative device that I swear, looked like a ring, right where her nipple would be, so in another context that contorted, lying, wrinkled face was sitting there in the camera with nipple rings, trying to feed the Nation her lies and distortions. Again, I'm sorry, and yes my hatred of Bush and all his crony apologists is glaring thru, but there is something perversely Freudian peculiar about Kay Baily and that dress with those cloth bands and those strange rings. Maybe I'm just a sick pup, but also, watching these repuglican evangelical freaks brings out the worst in me!

Check it out you all, on the evening reruns.

Posted by: dynapro on October 23, 2005 at 09:00pm

Trust Your Doctor? Fool Me Once…

I take a large dose of lovastatin, the generic version of Mevacor, the first cholesterol-lowering drug in the “statin” class to hit the market almost 2 decades ago. I have a genetic predisposition to producing an abnormally high amount of low density lipoproteins, or L.D.L.’s, which are considered the “bad” cholesterol that can deposit plaque on arteries which causes heart disease blockage and heart attacks.

The advent of the statin drugs, which act on the liver to make it produce less cholesterol, was, for me, like the development of penicillin to fight bacterial infections—it meant hopefully living longer for those of us condemned to possibly developing early major cardiovascular disease from birth.

Or, so I thought since the late 1980’s. My personal health is an issue with an op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times:

IS POPPING A PILL the best way to reduce your risk of a heart attack?

That's the message Americans and their doctors hear almost every day. The Journal of the American Medical Assn., for instance, reports in its Oct. 12 issue that the growing use of statin drugs in the United States is largely responsible for falling cholesterol levels over the last decade. Coupled with new data showing that the number of heart disease deaths is falling in the U.S., it sounds like great news.

Unfortunately, putting those two facts together gives Americans the wrong prescription for the most effective way to minimize their risk of heart disease.

First of all, cholesterol levels in the U.S. actually fell faster before
statins entered widespread use in the early 1990s, as some Americans decreased their consumption of saturated fats. But, despite the falling cholesterol levels, National Institutes of Health [NIH] data show that the U.S. is still lagging badly behind most of the other industrialized countries in eliminating heart disease as a major cause of premature death.-- Pills to avoid heart attacks? Hard to swallow By John Abramson and Merrill Goozner

It’s not like I was ignorant of big pharma’s numero uno goal--as Michael Moore so succinctly nailed when questioned on a talk show about his next documentary venture into the multi-billion-dollar drug business—make money and increase the profit margin for the shareholders. (My apologies for not mentioning the untold numbers of others who have also publicly tried to make this truth abundantly public, and clear.)

In my own defense, I did write in this blog last April about the cross-purposes of several physicians working for the NIH and also being paid by drug companies who manufacture statins, to promote those statins in the media. At that time, I wrote,

When I last had my dosage of mevacor, a cholesterol-lowering statin “wonder” drug, doubled, I asked my physician if there was any concern long-term regarding cancer or any bad side effects. He replied, and confirmed what I had been reading, that statins were great drugs capable of many positive medical results, even including preventing osteoporosis and other unrelated benefits. He said it seems that the current news on statins was the “more the merrier,” and even those not afflicted with elevated cholesterol should consider getting on the band wagon. Everyone should take one of the wonderful statin drugs.—DG

Not so much has changed regarding the PR on statins, because of the enormous monetary gains to be made from the huge numbers of people being prescribed these statins, and also because of the enormous sums of money paid to advertise them. Here are some recent headlines:

September 29, 2005 CHICAGO -- In a large study of elderly, predominately male veterans, statin use was associated with a 36 percent reduction in risk of fracture when compared with no lipid-lowering therapy, according to a study in the September 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.—Science Daily.com


A study sponsored by Pfizer, reported last month, indicated that lower may be better. Plaque growth stopped in heart patients whose L.D.L. levels dropped to about 80 while it slowly continued in those with levels of about 110. Other studies are asking whether lower levels of L.D.L. lead to fewer heart attacks.--New York Times 12/2/03

Isn’t Pfizer helpful to test their OWN product?

In the latest research to show that the popular cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins are good for more than the heart, statins are good for more than the heart, a 10-year study of more than 30,000 men shows that statins may slash the risk of advanced prostate cancer in half.—Web Md 4/18/05

It just doesn’t get any better, all this PR about the new wonder statin drugs--what's next? Statins cure bird-flu??

Too bad those two guys writing in the L.A. Times have to throw cold water on all this hot statin stuff! Who are they anyway?

JOHN ABRAMSON is the author of "Overdosed America" (Harper Collins, 2004) and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. MERRILL GOOZNER is the author of "The $800 Million Pill" (University of California Press, 2004) and the director of the Integrity in Science program at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

As my 8 year old, about-to-turn 30, daughter would say, when confronted with the obvious, which she now wants to let me know she knew—“OH WELL, THEN”—here’s the emmes:

There's no doubt that statins can help some people, especially those who already have heart disease and men at very high risk of developing it. But the scientific evidence is clear: Most heart disease results from the way we live our lives, and there's no magic pill to help us change that.So why all the brouhaha about getting so many people on statins? It's an exquisite example of bank robber Willy Sutton's law: That's where the money is.[emphasis added]--John Abramson and Merrill Goozner

Monica : Whitewater = White House Obstruction : Plame

Wait a minute—if obstruction of justice i.e. Rove and Libby lying to a grand jury about who, what, where, spilled the goods on Valerie Plame as a CIA agent is PERIPHERAL to what prosecutor Fitzgerald was hired to do, then what was Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky when prosecutor Ken Star was hired to get to the bottom of a real estate operation in Arkansas called Whitewater?

The possible violations under consideration by Mr. Fitzgerald are peripheral to the issue he was appointed in December 2003 to investigate: whether anyone in the administration broke a federal law that makes it a crime, under certain circumstances, to reveal the identity of a covert intelligence officer.—New York Times 10/21/05

You mean like the peripheral investigation of Clinton's sex in the oval office to the Whitewater issue?

I got this latest from watching, by accident, TV hack Tucker Carlson on MSNBC, and he says he doesn’t believe any of it. The spin is in and the newsprint isn’t dry yet.

What no one really knows, and even Tucker would like to claim he does—is what prosecutor Fitzgerald plans to do. What is clear here is that the secretive machinations of a despotic regime are about to be put on trial. Based on my intuition of Fitzgerald as a competent and passionate patriot, of that, I am sure.

“Religious Right” is an Oxymoron

If POTUS said to me about a Supreme Court Justice nominee, “Let me reassure you that he’s Jewish,” I’m pretty sure that would NOT reassure me that he was therefore eminently qualified for the proposed job. Otherwise, why bring up religion at all? Well, Bush did just that with his choice of Miers for the high court. Of course, he didn’t say she was Jewish, he said that she was an evangelistic Christian, which somehow told his base that this was the choice for them.

As for her qualifications, Miers starts down that road with a poor showing on a questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Arlen Specter said yesterday, "Sen. Leahy and I took a look at it and agreed that it was insufficient and are sending back a detailed letter asking for amplification on many, many of the items."

This is the perfect time for the following letter to the editor in today’s Los Angeles Times which ties together a constitutional issue with Bush’s religious litmus test for Miers:

Your Oct. 17 editorial about President Bush's emphasis on Harriet Miers' religious beliefs as a basis for nominating her to the Supreme Court failed to mention the most important and disturbing aspect of this emphasis. His spotlighting her religion implies that if she were not an evangelical Christian, he would not have nominated her.

Article VI of the Constitution says "all … judicial officers … of the United States shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." But Bush has announced that there is a "religious test" and that Miers has passed it. This appears to violate the Constitution that Bush swore to uphold as president. The Times should not comment on the improper religious aspects of this nomination without censuring this violation.

ANDREW SUSSMAN

Rancho Santa Margarita

--One more abrogation of the oath of office to chalk up on the POTUS belt.
No doubt all of this focus on Harriet will take a back seat to the upcoming indictments, but it would be well to keep the Miers nomination interest active, since her confirmation could mean many years of inept and unwise decisions at the ultimate court of the land.