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By John Kelley (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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The corporate owned congress continues to feed its contributors and give the bill to the American people. Having passed bills that relieve corporate accountability for fast food and guns they now want to help the pharmaceutical industry. Stating that limiting liability is the only way to get companies to produce avian flu vaccines it is just a foot in the door to relieve them from any liability for future development of new pharmaceuticals.

All of these laws tote personal responsibility while totally ignoring the constant marketing barrage people are subjected to, starting in childhood to buy their products, the valuing of profits before negative impacts or outright deceptive practices used to increase sales. I wonder if my heirs can sue if the weight loss medicine I am using causes me to become so depressed I shoot myself.

The Growth of the Police State

Right now the President and Vice President continue to argue for the right to torture people at their discretion. The President continues to hold American citizens in seclusion without charges, trial or access to a lawyer. He maintains that the government continues the need to secretly invade American homes, search them and not tell anyone until much later. The man who advised the administration on how it could avoid war crimes prosecution is now the Attorney General and the head of the death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua is in charge of all intelligence foreign and domestic in the United States.

We learn that in addition to people being picked up and send to countries where they can be tortured by other governments our own government is now maintaining secret prisons abroad where they presumably are exempt from any standard of civil rights or humane treatment. In Guantanamo, 21 prisoners who have been held almost four years without charges or trial are being subjected to forced feeding through nose tubes while strapped to beds so they can't pull them out and choose death over their hopeless existence. Acts the Secretary of Defense calls some people chose to go on diets for various reasons.

Forget the battle over Chief Justice Roberts and nominee Alito's views are on abortion. That pales next to their well-documented beliefs on the supremacy of the corporation and the total faith in the dictatorial powers of the Presidency. These are the votes that can install the Divine Right of Kings and primogeniture succession in America. Add to that the international judgment that the United States ranks 22nd in its freedom of the press and you are looking at an increasingly closed society.

Last week the President states that his plan for dealing with the avian flu was to offer more liability protection and subsidies to pharmaceutical companies to gear up vaccination production. They at their humanitarian best said they didn't think it would be worth it for a one-time disease. A projected 200 million people would die in a world wide pandemic. Anybody need another reason for a national healthcare program.

Basically, the President said his goal was to get 20 million vaccines available for first responders including the military. If you include professional healthcare workers (7 million alone), medical support staff, firemen, police, military and their families that means the other 280 million people are on their own. One public health official put it this way (I paraphrase) local governments will primarily be on their own. A pandemic could last from 1-3 years during which time many people would be out of work, have trouble obtaining food and other basic necessities. Hospitals would be overwhelmed with schools and stadiums being used as makeshift medical facilities. Morgues would not be able to handle the numbers of dead. Estimates talk of deaths in the millions in the U.S. alone. The Presidents plan seems to be, put federal and National Guard troops around an infected area and let them ride it out.

Bush's Alcoholic Mastery of Denial Will Not Surrender

What the Democrats don't seem to understand is that by going to the wall on the Alito nomination is they can only lose on all accounts. While both sides can fill their coffers for the 2006 elections and unify their bases by a full scale fight, a democratic filibuster in the Senate followed by a Republican nuclear option it is a self destructive strategy. Between the enmity that it will create with moderate Republicans and the filibuster gone, the Republican arm-twisting machine will move into full throttle before the next election occurs. The filibuster will be useless on every other issue that comes up.

Once used the nuclear option will push the Republican party past the point of no return. The Republicans will be faced with the prospect of a Democratic majority using it in revenge or insuring the Democrats never come to power again. Republicans will hammer them with it on every issue. The corporations, the religious right and the neo-con militarists will want to push through everything they can in case there is a public backlash against the house, and the party will want to limit the ability for Democrats to win and be willing to push through repressive changes in the Voting Rights Act before the next election. Moderates will be forced by the need for contributions and base solidification to march to the beat of the far right. It will be a scorched earth policy.

A better strategy would be to thoroughly expose all of Alito's beliefs about abortion, executive power, corporate power and other views repugnant to the citizenry. Claim the moral high ground and vote as a party against him if that is what it takes to stake out a position to move forward from. There is still a majority to protect Roe vs Wade and we won't be powerless to filibuster even more repugnant legislation that the administration surely will try to push through if the nuclear option is used. Having not used the filibuster on the supreme court nominee the Republicans will be hesitant to use the nuclear option on anything less.

Secondly, the Libby/Rove prosecution/investigation is likely to be obstructed for years (anybody remember Whitewater). Claims of Executive Privilege and Classified information will stall the investigation and trial to a crawl. Libby may finally go to jail, but certainly with a promise of a pardon on Bush's last day in office which will be about the time he actually has to show up there and for Rove, the same. The Bush family has a history of being very forgiving of those who participated with them in crimes against the country. Even if Cheney resigns, possible but doubtful, Bush will probably stumble on to the end of his term alone, isolated and paranoid. That in and of itself is a scary scenario.

Over at the U.N John Bolton is going full speed ahead to destroy any official world opposition to U.S. policy in that body. Bolton and Rice are fomenting expanding the Iraq war to Syria and have driven Iranian leaders backwards into a theocratic frenzy suggesting to them that they have nothing to lose by becoming more militant. The Iranians are angry, paranoid and threatened. Their reactions are unifying the world along cold war lines with the U.S. again dominating the discussion and direction.

Opposite of Bush's promise, the Iranian hardliners have grown in power. They know a war with the United States involving Syria as well is their best chance of survival internally and would unite much of the Muslim war against the U.S. In response Bush has indicated a willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons. Even if used against buried military targets with limited loss of life and no collateral damage, it would outrage the world and explode the anger of a billion Muslims, many who would be willing to carry the terrorist war to America.

The history of the Bush administration is when questioned refuse to answer, when caught lie, when cornered get do something more extreme to change the subject, but never, never give up. Expanding the war to Syria and Iran, using massive bombing, nuking the Democrats in the Senate over abortion, pushing through a tax plan that favors corporations and the rich while further limiting their liability, expanding media consolidation and propaganda efforts while further crushing dissent are quite frankly all things that will gain support on the right among the radical theocratic, ideological and corporate bases.

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