Eric Holder Pardon My Prejudice

Barack Obama's appointee US Attorney General Eric Holder threw down the gauntlet of challenge to the latest generation of Americans about our racist society:

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

This amazing statement was a matter of simple truth, yet so many pundits, politicians, and "experts" found it controversial and alienating.

Andrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, praised Holder’s general message but said the wording of the speech may alienate some. “He’s right on the substance, but that’s probably not the most politic way of saying it. I’m certain there are people who
will hear him and say, ’That’s obnoxious,”’ he said, adding that what was missing from Holder’s speech were specific examples of what painful subjects need to be addressed.

Picky picky--Holder's message was simple and provocative: "...to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul." As a Jew I could say yeah, but what about the Jews? Or as a champion of immigration rights, I could say, you left out the Mexicans. But that wasn't Holder's point. It was way more basic:

"Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."

I know exactly what Holder means, because I wrote a book about it several years ago, "Pardon My Prejudice: America's Excuse for Bigotry." No it hasn't been published, and yes it's a book whose time has arrived. The book's ironic title refers exactly to what Holder is talking about:

"...we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us."

The title "Pardon My prejudice" comes from my experience in retail where all sorts of average Americans walk through your life every day. I owned a store that rented videos among other things, and one night a gentleman and his wife came in to find a movie to watch. I had seen this man on other visits--a friendly older family guy who just wanted to pass the time and get his movie rental. At one point, one of my clerks, a young woman, asked if he would like to see a certain movie. The film had an interracial cast, and he said he didn't want it because of the--he used the "n" word--in it. The clerk was non-plussed. She had heard this sort of talk before. But it was an open and rude remark. The man's wife overheard the comment, and since she was unsure if her husband's obnoxious language would cause a problem, she approached my clerk to smooth things over. She said, "You'll have to pardon my husband--he's a bit of a racist."

This silly excuse was so bizarre, that's why my clerk wanted to tell me the story later. I had a habit of escorting customers out of the store who spoke out of line like that, so since I wasn't there at the time, I learned about the conversation from my clerk.

Now, with Holder's speech, it makes sense that this issue is not just confronting me, but it is in the psyche of our habits as a society. That's another reason Holder's remarks ring so true to me, as a child of the fifties and seeing first-hand the "breaking news" of the civil rights struggle, when he says,

"it is hard for me to accept that the result of those efforts was to create an America that is more prosperous, more positively race conscious and yet is voluntarily socially segregated."

My book is about experiences of prejudice and bigotry around us every day. It is not meant to point fingers of blame or judgment. I mean to remind us all of how much we see ans hear this mindless hatred all the time, and how little we react to it. Again, Holder's comments summon us to the call:

"Our history has demonstrated that the vast majority of Americans are uncomfortable with, and would like to not have to deal with, racial matters and that is why those, black or white, elected or self-appointed, who promise relief in easy, quick solutions, no matter how divisive, are embraced. We are then free to retreat to our race-protected cocoons where much is comfortable and where progress is not really made."

There is a solution, and it doesn't lie in complacency and inaction. We have to come to grips with the irrationality of our prejudices and beliefs about our fellow human beings. We have to stop fearing those who are not just like us, who have different beliefs, looks, even goals. Until we Americans understand that what made this country great, as a melting pot, is being crushed into the sand of ignorance and bigotry, we will never get out of our rut of hatred, fear, and economic deprivance. Those who understand what Holder was saying, will lead us all into a new light of tolerance, and prosperity.

Securing the City & Other Concerns

Christopher Dickey's book, Securing the City, is a fascinating report of how the New York City Police have become the 21st century FBI/CIA/homeland security all in one. Chris and I spent the day together yesterday--we have been good friends for almost 40 years and haven't visited in four years. Chris is travelling around the country on his book tour to promote and educate about the amazing global undertaking of the NYPD because New York City, as we all well know, is the numero uno target of any terrorist trying top make a big point in the world.

The simple fact that only Chris's book, and his talks, are publicizing the crusade of the New York Police to acquire human intelligence first hand throughout the world--just like the CIA is supposed to do--makes every word on the page of his book, and every speech he delivers, informative beyond any news service possible. Chris has ventured into the inner sanctum of what the NYPD is up to, including, but not limited to, the essence of the characters involved, most interestingly Ray Kelly, Chief of Police and mastermind of this new security force, as well as the high tech instruments of surveillance, especially the helicopter right out of the latest Batman movie:

"...state-of-the-art crime-fighting, terror-busting, order-keeping techno toy, with its enormous lens that can magnify any scene on the streets almost one thousand times, then double that digitally; that can watch a crime in progress from miles away, can look in windows, can sense the body heat of people on rooftops or running along sidewalks, can track beepers slipped under cars, can do so very many things that the man in the helmet watching the screens and moving the images with the joystick in his lap, NYPD Detective David Zschau, is often a little bit at a loss for words, “It really is an amazing tool,” he keeps saying."

Securing the City is a page-turning thriller about reality, terrorism, New York City, and how our lives have changed in the last decade. What fun!

But terrorism is only part of the latest fascinating news to inspire me to add a blog post after so many...full moons. The fierce spectre of big pharma has raised its ugly head again this week, with the decision of a court case from 2007 being delivered regarding vaccines as the cause of autism. In fact, the good news is that though the judges decided that autism is not caused by vaccines, those parents and advocates who know the opposite, are simply not deterred by the opaque and silly shenanigans of a so-called big-time government show.

Without belaboring here the details--and they are many and huge--of the holes in the government's defense (Note that the government is the plaintiff since the vaccine makers are off the hook for any liability), or the lack of any good studies showing the connection of vaccines to the development of all sorts of auto-immune diseases, of which autism is one special part--it is sufficient to point to the one intelligent remark of a parent, Rick Rollens, who has fought the battle to expose the dangers of vaccines for years, "Rollens and others said these verdicts won't make parents stop questioning the safety of vaccines, especially when parents witness changes in their children right after vaccination. "There's no denying what happens to your child when you see it first-hand," said Rollens, a Sacramento, Calif., resident. "Maybe we haven't asked all the right questions yet."

And then there's Barbara, our dear friend and the only expert to testify in Washington DC with no axe to grind--just the truth at her back:

“I think it is a mistake to conclude that because these few test cases were denied compensation, that it’s been decided vaccines don’t play any role in regressive autism,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center.

But really, as Rollens says, unless you're a parent and see it first hand--the obvious immediate change after a shot, and your instinct that tells you something really has gone wrong and it's not the air we breathe or the water we drink--then the reliance on anecdotal evidence will never be enough. But also, as Rollens says, the right tests haven't been done yet, and the right questions remain unasked--bad economy or not, would you want to risk the end of a billion+ - dollar cash cow like government-mandated vaccines? Even if the science is over 250 years old and arcane, and even if the exponential increase in autism, dyslexia, ADDH, asthma, childhood diabetes, SIDS--even if the increase in these syndromes exactly correlates to the increase in dosages of childhood vaccines--are these drug companies and complicit physicians that greedy? Or brainwashed? Or both?

Halfway Around the World is Halfway Home

Do you believe in coincidences? Do you think events happen at random? Do you feel alone in this big universe, with no direction and no meaning?

I emailed my sister happy Thanksgiving--"aren't you glad your daughter is not in Mumbai?" After the events of the last two days with over 160 dead and more injured due to terrorists in Mumbai, India, this greeting seemed appropriate, since my niece had spent last summer as a student from Princeton working on setting up housing in Mumbai. Yes my sister agreed, although in fact, at the time my niece was in Mumbai in July, there were a synchronized terrorist attacks in a nearby town, Ahmedabad, that now appears may have been a dry run for this week's horror.

At the time my niece was in Mumbai, my sister was "skype"--ing her from her laptop in a hospital room at Mass General, where my mom was about to undergo heart bypass and aortic valve replacement surgery. Mom was feeling pretty good, and didn't want to be constrained in a ward room in Boston when her favorite past time was to play several rounds of 18 holes of golf at her home in Palm Beach, FL. 80 years young, symptomless, and active, that's where mom bumped into her cardiologist who wanted to test some new fangled equipment for measuring heart blood flow in cardiac stress tests, and suggested while walking down the fairway that mom try out this equipment for free, on the house, 4 months before she was due for her regular cardiac check up. That's when they found the 2 life-threatening situations--clogged arteries and a very narrow aortic heart valve.

That's how the tall, handsome physician of Indian descent explained it to mom and me in the hospital room in Boston (I had flown in from Los Angeles in case mom needed extra moral support) the day before he was going to open mom's chest and "easily" repair the problem, which otherwise would "kill her momentarily." Seemed like divine intervention to me at the time, what with the cardiologist "bumping" into my mother on the golf course, and her not having any symptoms to make her run to the doctor's office for a checkup. The tall handsome Indian heart surgeon said she may have weeks to live without surgical intervention, certainly not months. If mom was ever going to hit the links again, she was going to have to have the surgery right away--they wouldn't allow her to leave the hospital.

I had heard about the terrorist attacks in Ahmedabad and decided not to mention it since my sister and mom might not have heard about it, and my niece was within shouting distance of the area of travesty half a world away in Mumbai. Meanwhile, this very busy and business-like heart surgeon said he just got off the plane from Holland; he had been at a medical conference in Eindhoven. He asked politely, expecting a "no" answer, had we ever been to Eindhoven, Netherlands? It just so happened that Mom had married a guy who ran a subsidiary company of the giant electronics firm Dutch Phillips, headquartered in Eindhoven, so she politely responded yes, she'd been there many times, and how was the doctor's trip, considering he was going to do lengthy surgery on mom the next day she hoped he'd had a comfortable and restful flight...How many Indian heart surgeons who had just been to Eindhoven were there at Mass General last July?

Then a young Doctor trepidatiously entered mom's curtained-off space, with permission from mom's surgeon, to ask if he could do a study during mom's open heart surgery about the accuracy of an ear thermometer--the most exact measurement of human body temperature comes from the chamber of the heart accessible directly during open heart surgery, which made my mother's upcoming procedure convenient for this young researcher's needs. He wouldn't be in the way, and only needed to take several dozen measurements of her heart temperature and compare it with the ear thermometer while she was under anesthesia and wouldn't know about it anyway. Mom definitely wanted to help advance the cause of knowledge in medicine considering the circumstance under which she would probably be dead shortly had it not been for that very same advanced medicinal knowledge to which she had the advantage. When the young Doctor said he was from India (another one!), after we asked about his obvious and almost unintelligible non-American accent, my mom said her granddaughter was there right now, and as I cringed about what was next on the conversational agenda, this nice young fellow asked had we heard about the awful violence going on over there right now, almost exactly where granddaughter/niece was? Oh well, my half-hearted attempt at keeping the international news secret was for naught, it might have popped up on the CNN news crawl on the TV hanging over mom's bed any minute anyway...

So I and my family had Thanksgiving lunch yesterday here in the San Fernando Valley at the rest home of my mother-in-law who has befriended an elderly man of 90 who comes from Boston, where I lived so long ago and met my ex-wife, who I haven't seen or heard from in 30 years. So we dined with my mother-in-law's pal's family as well. It turns out I found out recently that my mother-in-law's elderly friend had moved out to California from Boston a few years ago, is my ex father-in-law, whose only surviving daughter is (coincidentally) my ex wife, and somehow her dad and my mother-in-law became close friends in the rest home without knowing the former connection of their children, as well as the children not knowing either. As Spock would say, the odds of this chance relationship are astronomical, and as Captain Kirk would respond, the odds are always improving.

My ex-wife's present husband is an immigrant South African who as an attorney handles immigration cases--mostly Indians. He was explaining to me during our lunch about the value that these people bring to the United States, and how awful so many of them were feeling about the current events in Mumbai. My ex-wife's husband also said that based on his travels and experience, he felt that America is the greatest country on earth. His welcome of immigrants wouldn't be extended however to those from "south of the border," as he explained, because of the deleterious effect on the economy the huge numbers of "illegals" presented. I started to reply that US government statistics show an economic boost from all immigrants no matter of origin, but we were interrupted by lunch or whatever, and just as well, since I'm not about to change any opinions of the guy who married my wife during our first lunch meeting anyway.

I thought about the bigotry that surrounds us all the time, and of the tremendous anti-Muslim feeling throughout the world right down to my neighbors. I wondered about how many cross-currents and moments of serendipity we all experience, and pass off to coincidence, ignoring the underlying element of care and concern that the universe really contains for us all, regardless of our religions or nationalities. As we hear of events in South Asia, a place where most of us have never visited, and see Jews from New York being killed by murderers who aren't even clearly identified, and a major city in India under siege because it represents one of the biggest icons of freedom on earth, and the irrational increased hatred that will be engendered against Muslims because the killers may be Muslim, a voice of reason writes an op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times--Indian former undersecretary-general of the United Nations:

"If these tragic events lead to the demonization of the Muslims of India, the terrorists will have won. For India to be India, its gateway -- to the multiple Indias within, and the heaving seas without -- must always remain open."

Who may listen to these thoughtful words, and how many of us still believe in coincidences?

Welcome the Intellectually Elite Leader of the Free World

Obama's election is even the more remarkable because of the latent fear and suspicion aroused in the average American towards the intellectual elite. Obama is a supreme example of the educated, well-read, smart achiever who rises above the mediocre yet doesn't condescend to his audience. In fact, he is the ultimate teacher who asks those around him to rise to his level, while making them feel that it's possible if not inevitable.

The clarity of these aspects of his character--humility alongside of confidence--were clear in his first press conference today as President Elect. In his brief answer to a question about what he is reading to prepare for taking office, he simply stated,

"I have re-read some of Lincoln's writings, who's always an extraordinary inspiration."

What is fascinating about this remark is that, with all due respect to a good guess, Obama has probably read more than the reporter who asked the question, not to mention most of his fellow citizens. The reference to the Lincoln passages are assumed to be a throw-away line from a man who most likely devours more, in a single sitting, of articles and literature than most of us do in a lot longer amount of time.

So it came as no surprise in a short AP blurb in the Los Angeles Times to read that Obama is considered a peer among his fellow writers, including some of the greatest of living authors.

"Dreams From My Father" and Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" have each sold millions of copies and have been praised as the rare works by politicians that can be read for pleasure. Obama's student poetry was even lauded -- and compared to Langston Hughes' work -- by the most discerning of critics, Harold Bloom.

JFK, a speed reader and quick on his feet, and Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar and considered brilliant among presidents, were two who occupied the White House within memory who triumphed because of their intellect. No doubt Obama follows in this tradition, but even more obvious at this point in history, following the presidency of one of the prime examples of willful ignorance and stupidity, is the shining reason this country needs leadership of the true elite, intellectual as well as courageous. And we can take pride that's what we voted for.

McCain: How to Try to Win an Election Without Using Your Brain

The screamers are out there calling Obama a socialist and even a communist.

My Master's Thesis was a script for a documentary film about the Alger Hiss case. I was in the graduate program for film production at Boston University class of 1974, and the country was in the middle of the Watergate quagmire and the Vietnam War. Young readers might ask, "Who (or what) is Alger Hiss?" Younger readers still might not remember Watergate or Nixon at all.

During the days of Watergate hearings in the US Senate, and then the House Judiciary Committee debating articles of impeachment against then president Richard Nixon, I was researching the Hiss case because it had so many parallels with Watergate, not the least of which was the central character of Richard M. Nixon in both.

Alger Hiss had been a member of the Truman State Department in the late 1940's, and was later President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In the late 1940's, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), of which the young freshman congressman Nixon was a member, interviewed anybody they could find who would implicate democrats working in the government as communist agents for Russia. The plan, which often worked, was to paint, through association and innuendo, the named democrat as being friendly to Russia.

While Russia was a US ally during WWII, in the post war climate communism became as big of a threat as nazism in the mind of the American public. As a dictatorship under Stalin, Russia really was more of a totalitarian oppressive regime than it was a dedicated ideological expression of any such promise of political communism--if there was such a thing. But the demonstration of taint was enough to help republicans get votes because of the fear of the democratic party being more left-wing oriented and therefore closer to communism, and possibly even containing communists among them.

This highly-flawed and detrimental tactic proved so successful in getting republicans elected, that Nixon himself used it repeatedly from congressman, to senator, to VP and then president. When Nixon ran against Helen Gahagan Douglas, a respected democratic member of congress, for senator from California, he referred to her as "the pink lady," because communists were considered "reds," and he said she was "pink right down to her underwear." He won. Two decades later, Nixon won a huge landslide over democratic challenger George McGovern for president, partly by stating constantly that McGovern's left-leaning politics were dangerous.

The Watergate break-in of the democratic party headquarters, which initiated the exposure of Nixon's, and his aides', criminal activity, purportedly was to find evidence of funding contributions from foreign communist sources, such as Cuba, for the McGovern campaign. That way, the republicans would be able to continue to implicate democrats as tainted with communists.

The persistent denouncement of Barak Obama by John McCain as a "socialist" is more of the same routine now, 60 years after Alger Hiss first appeared before HUAC. Maybe younger folks don't remember the joke of McCarthyism and the ruination of careers and lives caused by mindless false accusations. Or maybe they're not paying that much attention to the details of another smear campaign, but there's no doubt some of this nonsensical finger-pointing has an impact, or it would not still be used. The host of the number-one-rated cable TV show, Bill O'Reilly, on the TV show "The View" called Obama a communist.

Pandering and fear tactics are one thing when used by a desperate politician like McCain, but one wonders about media mavens appealing to the lowest common denominator by repeating that Obama's a "socialist." After all these years of communist witch hunting, it would seem time has come to find a new issue to showcase--one with which we the people really need to grapple.

You Won't Get The Flu

You probably won't get the flu. You might get sick with some sort of systemic virus, but your doctor would have to swab and culture your throat to get a definitive positive result from a lab that you have one or another form of the 860 - plus influenza viruses out there. Most people don't do this, their doctor just says stay home and get plenty of rest, and patient assumes it was the flu.

That doesn't stop the big government snow job from the CDC saying there are 36,000 deaths from the flu every year. They haven't got a clue how many people die from flu, but there are vaccines to sell and big pharma lobbyists stuffing pockets of US government agents to stand in as shills:

A CDC spokesman, Mr. Curtis Allen told Insight Magazine

“There are a couple problems with determining the number of deaths related to the flu because most people don't die from influenza - they die from complications of influenza - so the numbers [of deaths] are based on mathematical formulas. We don't know exactly how many people get the flu each year because it's not a reportable disease and most physicians don't do the test [nasal swab] to indicate whether [the symptoms are caused by] influenza.”

The CDC also says

Yearly, adults can average one to three and children three to six influenza-like illnesses (ILIs). The vaccine does not prevent influenza-like illnesses caused by infectious agents other than influenza [strains found in the shot], and many persons vaccinated against influenza will still get the flu.

In the year 2004, when the flu vaccine shortage was a huge news item for months, the number of flu cases were lower than any recent year:

An unusually mild flu season in 2004 cut the flu death rate -- the number of deaths per 100,000 people -- by 7 percent. And it likely had a ripple effect by not worsening the condition of frail patients who ultimately died of something else, government health scientists said.

At a time when the government is asking the congressional representatives for a 700 billion dollar bailout of big banks and saying, "trust us or else," shouldn't we question everything we're told by these guys, like how important it is to spend $25 on a flu shot that doesn't work? And I had to hear Charles Osgood quote the CDC about this on the radio with not so much as a peep of skepticism. Journalists are now PR spokespeople for drug makers. Buyer beware.

Obama is the new Lincoln; Sorry JFK

Got an email from a friend I met in Trader Joe's who is "wary" of Obama's candidacy. "I just don't feel I can trust Obama..," she writes. She referenced a piece by David Brooks in yesterday's New York Times, "Where’s the Landslide?" which implies there should be one by now with Obama trouncing McCain in the polls. Couple of Brooks's notions:

His age probably has something to do with it. So does his race. But the polls and focus groups suggest that people aren’t dismissive of Obama or hostile to him....the root of it is probably this: Obama has been a sojourner.

Brooks is making a case of Obama being "removed" from the battle, an observer who is interested but not affected. My friend from Trader Joe's has a "funny" feeling and Brooks's piece struck a chord.

I don't know how it's possible for me to remember the 1960 election since I was 10 years old at the time, and I have trouble remembering the names of several of the members of my immediate family. But I remember clearly that John F. Kennedy was perceived as a neophyte, with little experience against the towering figure of 8 years Vice President Nixon, who was now going to slide into the office after his boss, Eisenhower, was done. That's how my family, friends, and schoolmates saw the process back then. Yet both Kennedy and Nixon were young, just like Obama. And the ultimate winner then was no proven entity any more than Obama is now. And then as now, Kennedy and Obama both make amazing, rallying, and inspiring speeches.

Brooks can write all he wants about the experience and back ground and whatever else about Obama, but I will let you in on a little secret--about American society, and elections, and human nature--the Obama doubts center on one thing and one thing only, and that is the inherent inability of my fellow citizens to overcome their natural instinct for prejudice and bigotry. "Sojourner" my ass -- Obama doesn't fit the comfortable mold of any one's mindset.

There was another candidate for President of the US who had a varied back ground and didn't seem fit for the job:

His family was forced out of their home.
He had to work to support them.
Failed in business
Ran for state legislature - lost
Also lost his job - wanted to go to law school but couldn't get in.
Borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business and by the end of the year he was bankrupt. He spends the next 17 years of his life paying off his debt.
Ran for state legislature again - won.
Was engaged to be married, sweetheart died and his heart was broken.
Had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months.
Sought to become speaker of the state legislature - defeated.
Sought to become elector - defeated.
Ran for Congress - lost.
Ran for Congress again - this time he won - went to Washington and did a good job.
Ran for re-election to Congress - lost.
Sought the job of land officer in his home state - rejected.
Ran for Senate of the United States - lost.
Sought the Vice-Presidential nomination at his party's national convention - got less than 100 votes.
Ran for U.S. Senate again - again he lost.
Elected president of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln. But you knew that. He was a young guy, with a weird sense of humor, prone to bipolar attacks of depression, visions, and not handsome to boot. But he was a wonderful speech writer, regardless of how he sounded when he gave the speech--and that seems to be a big plus in esteem and popularity: Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Reagan, and now Obama. Anyway, any thing's better than the criminal dolt who's in there now, or the absent-minded dufus who wants to take his place. They can't configure a sentence that's coherent.

A Renegade from Roots

Last week I had lunch in Boston for the first time since I left 30 years ago. I was having one of those political discussions with my 23 year old nephew where everyone agrees about the issues and values, and everyone is arguing about the details and methodology. This young man is brilliant, a recent graduate of Brown, and 4 years ago in high school he wrote what I consider to be a defining treatise on the back ground, development, and deployment of the Patriot Act, which essay is perpetually clickable on the left side of this blog.

I mentioned that my friend, Chris Dickey, was in the southern US preparing a piece on the South and the upcoming elections for his venue, Newsweek Magazine. My nephew proceeded to explain to me how bigoted and racist all those southern rednecks are, and how bad the whole business is compared to us sophisticated and tolerant native northerners.

Au contraire, my dear nephew--people are the same everywhere, specifically in regards to human nature, which based on the term itself assumes a rhetorical universality. I decided that a personal story of my last residence in Boston would best prove my point. I worked selling yearbook portrait contracts for high schools, and during that time, a court ruling ordered that a certain percentage of students in schools had to be white and African American. So one day, a program began of busing students from one area of the city to another in order to get the percentages right.

The day Boston school-busing integration began, I went to Charlestown High School, which is situated next to Bunker Hill, on top of which stands a huge obelisk similar to the Washington Monument in our capitol, in commemoration of the battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War. Even though the British won that battle, the cry of colonial patriotism that rang from that event was used in propaganda of the day to light the fire against the British and keep the cause of independence alive. Reminds you of that document with the words, "All men are created equal..."

As I parked my car on the incline and got ready to make my familiar trek into the hallowed hallways of this aging edifice--my company already had the contract for this school's business so I visited there often--I noticed some very unfamiliar trappings. There were overtly obvious police snipers lying in prone positions with rifles armed at the shoulder on the rooftop of the building, and instead of walking directly into the entrance, I had to stop and go through an airport-style archway of metal detector. There had been threats of violence and at least knife-wielding students, due to the disagreement with the court-ordered busing for integration purposes.

Later that day, I also had to be detoured in my car because police were setting up a tear-gas barrier at another intersection across town, where other unhappy and protesting Bostonians were expressing their opinions against integration.

Southern rednecks got nothing on north easterners when it comes to making your feelings known about whites and blacks being schooled side by side. That's the story I told my nephew, and even though it happened 30 years ago, I know not much has changed because I hear the degrading terms and tones used in daily conversation toward all sorts of ehtnic and national groups by all sorts of other groups, no matter where I go in our great land. I wrote a book about racism in America several years ago, which hasn't been published yet, but the title is the message about human nature and the issue: "Pardon My Prejudice -- America's Excuse for Bigotry."

Meanwhile, Chris's article is the cover story in this week's Newsweek, and Editor John Meecham eloquently expressed what to me is the cornerstone of Chris's in-depth interviews and experiences while he combed the route of Sherman's Civil-War march to the sea:

"The American South, to borrow a phrase from the caricature cupboard, just ain't that different anymore. It was once, but the Civil War is the exception that proves the rule that the South tends not to contradict but to exemplify, if sometimes in an exaggerated way, what much of the nation thinks and feels. Understanding America's politics, then, requires understanding the South's..."

As I wrote to my friend, Chris, I will state here--every school child in this country should read his article. And as for me, as a student of people and history and politics, I'm really glad I did!

You Can't Keep a Drug Maker Down

We're down on Merck. Have been for some time. Merck manufactures lots of drugs. Some are vaccines, which are mostly unnecessary and bad for you. Others can lower blood serum cholesterol, which in theory is a good thing for those with a high level of that ingredient, because statistics show that people with cardiovascular disease die earlier if they have high blood serum levels of cholesterol, than those who don't.

Why then are we "down on Merck?" Merck manufactures a brand drug called Zocor, which is a member of the family called "statins" (I take a generic form of one of them, Mevacor, which is lovastatin) which act on the liver in such a way as to limit the production of cholesterol, which in the blood stream can theoretically deposit as "plaque" on the sides of arteries and narrow the opening of these vessels for the flow of blood and thereby cause heart attacks and strokes. I use the term "theoretically," because there is no cause-effect proven action between serum cholesterol in the blood and cholesterol from ruptures in plaque causing heart attacks and strokes. The connection seems obvious and likely, but other factors in the "statins" may also inhibit cardiovascular catastrophes: statins reduce a form of inflammation in the system on which medical research is still tilling the ground. But this reduction of "inflammation" may be more related to the statistical lowering of early death rates due to heart attacks and strokes in patients taking statins, than the actual measurable lowering of cholesterol level on the blood. Or it may be a more complex combination of factors.

One reason there may be more factors than just cholesterol involved, is that the combination drug sold by Merck and Schering-Plough -- Vytorin -- which has Merck's statin drug Zocor along with Schering-Plough's "Zetia," has not shown any indication of additional lowering of death rates despite the measurable factor of lowered cholesterol in the blood. The "Zetia" factor in Vytorin blocks the uptake of cholesterol from the gut when food is eaten. "Zocor," or "simvastatin," the generic name, lowers cholesterol levels in the blood and has been proven statistically to lower early death rates, however it acts in the system. Zetia alone, or in the combination drug with Zocor, "Vytorin," has not shown the same results even though it lowers serum cholesterol.

In fact, a new study show that Vytorin is not better than Zocor, or simvastatin alone, and may even cause cancer, although that new study is quite controversial. What is definite is that the generic version of Zocor, simvastatin, costs a fraction of the brand drug Vytorin, and Merck and Schering-Plough stand to lose a literal financial fortune if patients buy simvastatin and don't buy one of the brands Vytorin, or Zocor, or Zetia.

Even more fascinating is the reason the tests were done in the first place, that have pointed to a cancer issue: Merck and Schering-Plough wanted to show in clinical tests that Vytorin is a wonder drug that could have a positive effect on aortic stenosis, which is a huge cause of heart operations, in which the aortic valve inside the heart is replaced because the valve has shrunk which inhibits its ability to allow blood to move from the heart to the body. Aortic stenosis can cause sudden death in patients, mostly elderly in which the disease is more common, because the heart muscle is overworked and can become damaged.

So in looking for a reason to promote this unnecessary combination brand drug, Vytorin, executives of Merck and Schering-Plough may have inadvertently pushed their companies' stock shares into figurative cardiac arrest.

Couldn't happen to a more honorable bunch of guys. Just kidding! Meanwhile, just because the Dr. went to school longer than you doesn't mean you can't do your own homework and bone up on your medical needs. You might save your own life, or, at least, your money.

How to Teach a Pediatrician to say F*ck You Nicely

OK sorry for the potty-talk. Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center doesn't put out newsletters with that kind of language, but the title of this entry is what she's telling us the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wants to do.

In another fit of pique aimed at the growing number of vaccine-educated parents questioning pediatricians about the safety of vaccines, the largest private medical organization representing medical doctors treating children - the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) - recently announced to its membership that it will fight doubting parents in their offices, in the media, on the internet and through a partnership with other wealthy and powerful organizations funded by a pharmaceutical industry committed to doing the same thing.

Unless there is an assumption of adversarial confrontation between parents and their childrens' pediatricians, why would the wording be so strong? What do the kindly children's physicians have to gain by being so heavy-handed? Essentially, having been brainwashed to believe that an unvaccinated infant is an incomplete human being, the doctor has his honor and soul to save, in his own eyes.

The brain washers--pharmaceutical vaccine manufacturers--have nothing like that on their agendas: their sole motivation is profit, and we're talking almighty mountain-moving profit, because vaccinations involve everyone's children, and that's a lot of shots!

In case you're confused by the mixed messages of doctors and drug companies--by that I mean that you or a family member or friend just took a pill that saved a life--let me explain the dichotomy. Take the case of lipitor, the cholesterol-lowering statin. This one little pill is worth $12 billion dollars a year to it's manufacturer, Pfizer Inc. It really does lower blood cholesterol levels which statistically has been proven to lower the incidence of heart attacks in the population. It can have pretty bad side effects on the liver and muscle, plus unknown time-latent problems on the human system that haven't popped up yet due to the short venue of lipitor's existence on the market. I can't take lipitor, for instance, because is really screws up my liver so I use a different, generic, statin.

Again we have all been brainwashed that the end--lowering blood serum cholesterol--is worth any means--taking a drug with possible adverse side effects, because the risk is worth the reward. I am not sure, as I said above, that we know all the risks, but the issue here is again not medical or public health--it's the money, honey.

Any company with a $12 billion dollar cash cow that is under threat of losing that income will do anything to prevent that from happening. I'd like to say "almost" anything, but I think I'd be understating the truth.

Pfizer Inc. and India's Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. agreed to keep copies of the cholesterol pill Lipitor off the U.S. market an extra 20 months, protecting $12 billion in sales for Pfizer.

Under the terms of a lawsuit settlement, Ranbaxy won't sell a generic version of Lipitor, the world's top-selling drug, until November 2011, New York-based Pfizer said Wednesday.

Analysts had projected Ranbaxy would enter the market when the main patent expires in March 2010, though Pfizer sued to block it until 2016.

The deal buys Pfizer Chief Executive Jeffrey Kindler time to find drugs to replace as much as $12 billion a year at risk when Lipitor copies reach the market. Investors doubt the former lawyer can offset losses by boosting sales of current products, cutting costs and speeding drug development. [L.A. Times 6/19/08]

You see no mention in this article of cost savings to consumers by having a generic alternative to Lipitor, or even saving the insurance company benefit payout for this high-priced prescription drug, although I highly doubt that price savings would be passed along to health insurance premium payers.

When I paid for lipitor it cost around $100 for a 30-day supply. My co-pay at the supermarket down the street for generic-equivalent drugs is $4.

One might argue that the cost of R & D on new drugs warrants the high mark-up of sales in the marketplace. It's true the cost of bringing a new drug to market is in the hundreds of millions of dollars for development, testing, and advertising. But 50% of the cost of development of new drugs comes from government grants--free money--which the drug companies would rather not publicize too much in case you and I catch on to the game.

So, getting back to the dichotomy--in the midst of developing any new drug that can add to the bottom line of a drug company, researchers stumble onto helpful and life-saving medicines as well as harmful ones. The difference is that when a drug company like Pfizer is about to lose its holy patent rights on lipitor, it scrambles to produce a "me-too" substitute, or combine a blood-pressure-lowering drug with a cholesterol-lowering drug, in order to put another high-priced patent drug on the market--that's when the public health issue becomes confused, commingled, and subsumed, by the money-mongers, and their means to the end is the same--dollars.

Green Our Vaccines=Filter-Tipped Cigarette

Remember those old I Love Lucy TV ads with Lucy and Desi describing how mild Philip Morris cigarettes were for your throat? Desi died of lung cancer. Then they told us filters would be healthy. The filters didn't really work. Now there is a movement quasi-titled "Green our Vaccines." On the Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) web site, there is this promotional explanation:

Please join Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey for the most historical event of 2008, the Green Our Vaccines Rally. Jenny and Jim are working hard to eliminate all toxins from our children's vaccines and have our national health agencies reassess the mandatory vaccine schedule, as our children are receiving TOO MANY, TOO SOON. While Jenny and Jim support the vaccine program, like many, they feel vaccines are too toxic. This country has the ability to provide a safer vaccine supply and schedule to our children and they ask you to join them to demand this for our country's greatest asset, our children.

No, this country doesn't have that ability, since the toxin in the vaccine is the very essence of what it's makers theorize makes it work: the germ itself. Granted, the proponents of a "safe" vaccine mean that removing such toxins as mercury preservative and other chemical additives including formaldehyde, would satisfy the "green" process. But the culprit in the MMR vaccine that causes harm to the immune system is the rubella itself, as proven by several studies which have been conveniently tossed by the medical powers that be both in the US and UK.

The NVIC is endorsing the above rally with this choice verbiage:

NVIC is endorsing the June 4 "Green Our Vaccines" rally in Washington, D.C. and the call by organizations representing children with autism to remove toxins from vaccines and allow more flexibility in administration of the 48 doses of 14 vaccines pediatricians give to children before age six.

48 doses of 14 vaccines by age 6--when I was growing up in the 1950's, we got a couple of shots and then what were called "booster" shots which were basically the DPT re-injections because one dose was not considered enough. The concomitant increase in dosage amounts and numbers so closely corresponds with huge increases of so many auto-immune dysfunctions seen in young children, that the logical assumption that vaccines cause the problem should be obvious. Only big money for big pharma keeps the truth murky.

Recently I was at my ten-year-old daughter's school at the end of a recess. Several of the children in her class ran from the playground straight to the nurse's office. I asked what was wrong and was told, matter-of-factly, that the kids were getting their inhalers. They all had asthma.

No one had asthma when I was in school. Asthma is a problem with the auto-immune system, one of which causes can be damage by toxin overload. It's not the water we drink or air we breath--it's in the 48 doses of vaccines children's bodies are bombarded with before their immune systems are ready for such an onslaught.

Greening vaccines is like putting a filter tip on a cigarette: sounds like a nifty idea, but in fact the human body wasn't meant to inhale smoke or have germs injected into the bloodstream.

Mumps Shot Doesn't Work

C'mon folks--why are we still doing this? Anybody see the "John Adams" episode with the rudimentary smallpox "vaccination?" How barbaric can this process be, and it hasn't changed in 250 years:

Most of the college students who got the mumps in a big outbreak in 2006 had received the recommended two vaccine shots, according to a study that raises questions about whether a new vaccine or another booster shot is needed.
The outbreak was the biggest in the U.S. since shortly before states began requiring a second shot for youngsters in 1990.

Nearly 6,600 people became sick with the mumps, mostly in eight Midwest states, and the hardest-hit group was college students ages 18 to 24. Of those in that group who knew whether they had been vaccinated, 84 percent had had two mumps shots, according to the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments.

That “two-dose vaccine failure” startled public health experts, who hadn’t expected immunity to wane so soon — if at all.

Autism, Asthma, ADD, Developmental Delay, Childhood Diabetes--exponential increase in the last 3 decades: Vaccine dosages--exponential increase in the same time period. If you can read this, you can think well enough to know you've been lied to by those who stand to gain the most--drug companies who manufacture vaccines that the US government has made MANDITORY for ALL children! Even Ford and GM don't get that kind of endorsement! plus the vaccine-makers are held free of liability through the Vaccine Adverse Injury system.

Enough is enough--and you can't wake up too soon!

Obama - Clinton Ticket or How I Changed my Mind

At the beginning of this month I made the case for ending the Obama campaign for president and having a Clinton-Obama ticket:

"The invectives flying from each democratic candidate to the other makes it increasingly clear that the campaign has completely deteriorated from one of issues, to a clash of personalities...I choose Obama for VP because after 8 years of seasoning as number two, he gets to run for President of the United States again at the ripe young age of 52."

It appears that Obama is ahead of Clinton by a nose, and that nose is growing into a football field. Of all the issues of concern to us as Americans, the number one is that we don't want another presidential term with Bush policies and ideologies, which is what we would get with McCain. How do the democrat leaders assure that this won't happen? By doing anything else than what they are doing now, which is infighting, name calling, and ego-stroking.

And it goes beyond the ego--it approaches fanaticism:

"We cannot go forward until Florida and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have the legitimacy that I think will haunt us," said the senator from New York. "I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we don't figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida."

Asked if there was a scenario in which she would drop out before the last primaries on June 3, Clinton said no. "I am committed to competing everywhere that there is an election," she said.

So I changed my mind--who cares if Hillary or Barack is inaugurated into office next January? As long as it's one of them and not John "stay the course" McCain. But it appears the democratic leaders are not on my side--Hillary and Barack do not want to give up the shot at being pres. And that alone is a disappointment of leadership to me. Either one conceding at this point would garner enough points to get nominated and elected as president next time around. And it would be one less day and who knows how many less points given to McCain because of the lack of clarity of his opponent.

So Hillary, with a win seemingly out of reach, it's time to bite the bullet and give a speech worthy of an Al Gore concession, and wait your turn not only for the sake of the party and the nation, but possibly for the whole world. The ball's in your court, let's see if you're worthy of my constant support.

Beyond 1984: My Free Country es su Free Country?

Barbara Loe Fisher, founder and head of the National Vaccine Information Center, has once again done our homework for us:

The discrimination begins, always, with the majority in a society pointing the finger at a minority for somehow endangering the public health and welfare. Individuals in the minority group are singled out as different - ethnically, biologically, spiritually, morally - from the majority. The human impulse to fear, judge, marginalize or eliminate those different from the rest has left a blood soaked trail winding throughout the entire history of man from the Great Inquisition to the Holocaust; from the killing fields of Cambodia to Rwanda, Serbia and Tibet; while the persecution of those with leprosy, TB, AIDS, mental illness, and handicaps continues in every society.It was with a heavy heart that I read the March 21 New York Times article, "Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines." Then I waded through the venomous comments posted on the NY Times website attacking parents of vaccine injured autistic children and those supporting informed consent to vaccination, specifically legal exemptions.

The letters she quotes are truly bizarre in their invective. My reaction is that it must be wonderful to be able to sit in judgment of one's fellow human without having to wear that person's shoes.

Teacher Layoffs = Homeland Security

Here's a bunch of dichotomies for ya--some might call it hypocrisy, but I'll defer to myself and take the higher road: California is a "rich" state. Put it this way--where in the world can you drive down a neighborhood street and see several Rolls Royce Phantom-whatevers, priced at $400,000 per auto, or any other of such enormous high-dollar (that phrase from a former client who sold upgraded RV's and had that southern drawl that made "high dollar" sound like melting dark chocolate in your hand) vehicles that you wonder how all that money got concentrated in such a small geographic area.

Then you read the latest piece of news about school teacher layoffs because the state income tax is down due to the economy, or whatever else the "state" needs to spend money on is leaving not enough for the requisite number of teachers, hence the layoffs.

Not that the school curriculum in its present form is any good, as anyone who's read this blog knows, but less teachers-per-student makes a bad setup worse.
One of those Rolls Royce's could cover 7 plus a fraction of teachers--not that I would begrudge a rich guy his perks. That's not my business--what is my
business is when my government chooses to spend money on a set of priorities that is not within the realm of reality. That's the question. What is
reality. I have the answer here--it's really that simple!

I thought I was under the safe assumption that all the money the US spends on weapons--military might, including planes, nuclear submarines, tanks, bombs,
bullets, you-name-it--was a necessary sacrifice with which we taxpayers have to go along in order to provide the sacrosanct security of our own backyards.
They can have that awful war in Iraq, but we'll keep Hill Valley immune from such awful events such as bombs, bullets, and destruction by paying dearly for
it.

Never mind the untold waste of defense contractors, who charge the US government ridiculous amounts for something like a pliers--$1,000--or a toilet seat and on and on--we've all heard and read about this business. It's all in the
name of keeping the homeland free from hassle.

Well, that isn't exactly how it works: the US military is occupying Iraq with a force of 150,000 troops. Could any country in the world effectively come
to US shores and bother this country like that? Not on this planet, in our lifetimes. Oh, but you say there are those pesky nukes.

Intelligent people have written about our misguided fears, guided intentionally by selfish interests, weapons manufacturers, and how much of taxpayer money has gone to greasing their pockets due to this fear mongering:

"America faces real threats that need no embellishment. But...politicians have often exaggerated threats for political advantage. "Fear is a very dangerous
thing," said British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin after World War I. "It is quite true that it may act as a deterrent in people's minds against war, but
it is much more likely to act to make them want to increase armaments...."

"...Paul Nitze, the principal author of the 1950 NSC report, intentionally exaggerated Soviet nuclear capacities and minimized those of the US in order to "bludgeon the mass mind of 'government' "—as Nitze's superior, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, admitted years later. Although the Soviet Union had lost at least 25 million people and half its industry in World War II, Nitze portrayed the
USSR as a fanatical enemy that, within a few years, would threaten
America with an estimated two hundred nuclear weapons. According to his report, the then American stockpile of 1,400 weapons would be insufficient to counter such a threat. Nitze's report came at a time when international events, including the Korean War, seemed to validate this dark vision. In response, Truman quadrupled the defense budget and began a strategic program that would increase the US nuclear arsenal to some 20,000 thermonuclear bombs by 1960 and 32,000 by 1966."

The money spent on armaments takes away from all of our domestic needs: health care, education, and all the rest. It has continued throughout US history:

"In 2000, the Rumsfeld Commission on space weapons again used a series of worst-case assumptions to conclude that the country faced an imminent "space Pearl Harbor." That report led to the current US strategy to deploy new weapons—such as orbiting interceptors to target other nations' satellites and missiles—for total US domination of outer space. In fact, no nation credibly threatens the vast US satellite system. "

So now when I read about teacher layoffs, in sunny Southern California, I think about the guys at the top levels in charge of allocating the money, and what
kinds of cars they drive. But only uninitiated actually drive cars--the fear mongerers are, and have always been, in the back seat with a chauffeur
handling the mundane traffic.