Why is it that Unions are evil but groups like the AMA are not? The AMA is pursuing policies for its own narrow interest and not in the interest of the public. They push to limit the members in their "guild" by controlling the number of medical students and qualifications.

Regarding blog comments in the last couple of weeks:

Interesting interview with (75-year-old!) Gloria Steinem on MN Public Radio today. Steinem talks about activism, women/minorities in society, etc. I tuned in thinking it would be a bit boring. I was pleasantly surprised.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/06/15/midmorning1/

Now for something completely different:

Making Progress,

The article you pasted is certainly chilling. I have to think about it a little at a time. It's too scary to take in completely...

The AMA (whom I call the American Murderer's Association) was started as a Conservative political group and consists of the Doctors most incented by the Insurance Companies and Big Pharma. They are the ones who for money put their names on dangerous drug "research" and promotions and letters to medical journals. (That practice has been limited now to I think $2000 per letter). They are the ones who would only prescribe Premarin, the dangerous horse pee HRT to menopausal women because they got paid so much by Wyeth Aherst, etc. They are not the Doctors Obama can "count on to do the right thing."

So anti-illegal immigrants fanatics don’t kill legal residents, like former Minuteman Shawna Forde and her gang during a home invasion in a border town in Arizona last month in order to steal money and finance her “campaign,” which just now merits mention in the local Washington state papers because of her local connections? But I digress…

Larry King, who is Jewish, calls him a “friend.” Stephanie Miller refers to him as her “daddy.” Thom is “ambivalent” about him. The mainstream media in general is reluctant to challenge him. Fellow commentators allow themselves to be mollified whenever he throws them a bone, deliberately misinterpreting his sorties on behalf of the “white working class male.” But let’s be clear about one thing: Pat Buchanan is a white supremacist. He may not wear a hood, a camouflage military-style outfit, swastika tattoos or any of those accoutrements signifying that he is preparing for a “race” war. But taken in their totality, Buchanan’s various commentaries and opinions should be taken at face value, even if his friends in the media do not. There is no other honest way to describe him. His sister Bay (like Lynn Cheney) is the Lady Macbeth of the family, but we’ll leave the women out of it.

Of course, many people assume that Western civilization is superior to all others; whether or not this is true is a matter of opinion. The most obvious “gift” has been science and technology, which has given us many fine toys to play with. But the cost of those toys may be the destruction of the planet, and which at any rate threatens to shorten considerably humanity’s stay here on the Earth. But Buchanan, like other white supremacists, isn’t interested in science or technology, but “culture” and “society.” Meaning what? It means he disapproves of “race mixing,” and he has expounded on this subject many, many times. Take, for instance, the titles of some of his books, which are accurate reflections of the rotted guts within:

“The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization”
“State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America”
“Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.”

If Buchanan was just some unknown author on the fringes, we’d assume that he was some far-right fanatic with clear racist tendencies. But then again, he is.

Buchanan can seem jovial and collegial—when he is with other white people. He has nothing against white people, you see, but just against Jews, blacks, Hispanics and anyone else who threatens to disturb white rule. Presently, his main preoccupation is with Hispanics. A few years ago, as a regular panelist on PBS’s “The McLaughlin Group,” he declared entirely out of blue and off subject that “Hispanics are out to destroy America.” It wasn’t just the words that forged an uncomfortable silence among his co-panelists, but the nakedly ugly tone in which they were delivered. During the presidential race, whenever the Hispanic vote was mentioned in front him, he would become outwardly annoyed and say something like “Well, the ‘legal’ voters.” His contemptuous remarks directed at Sonia Sotomayor reflects his various and sundry bigotries; in front of right-wing audiences, it has been reported that Buchanan even deliberately mispronounces her name—odd, considering his habit of deriding Hispanics in toto for not being able to speak “properly.”

There is much information about Buchanan’s anti-Semitism. The late William F. Buckley, a man too deliberate to waste time consumed with hate, concluded after examining Buchanan’s various commentary concerning Jews that he was definitely anti-Semitic (but not toward Semitic Muslims). There is no room to go into detail here concerning his various anti-Jewish sophistry, but they are easy enough to find and go on and on, endlessly. Even the American Enterprise Institute declared that "Taken cumulatively, Buchanan's rhetoric about Jews pretty clearly betrays an underlying sense of grievance or irritation." Buchanan has questioned the Holocaust, insisting that gas chambers were too inefficient to kill very many people. He has many times praised Adolph Hitler, and has ashamedly defended former Nazis accused of crimes against humanity. He has scolded colleagues on the right who are reticent in embracing Holocaust deniers like David Duke.

Buchanan’s racism is usually couched in terms of infringement on white privilege—which, given the fact that whites dominate and control the political, economic and institutional levers of our society, is proof enough that he has an acute case of race on the brain. Presently, he expresses indignation and thinly disguised racism when confronted with the fact that a black man is president of his white country. Last year, on an episode of “Race to the White House” on MSNBC, he in an immoderate and abusive tone insinuated that Obama “stole” the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton, and implied that electing Obama president was tantamount to national suicide because he had “one foot in the far-left.” The fact is that Buchanan has never allowed an opportunity to pass in which to insult or demonize Obama with his brand of far-right propaganda.

Buchanan has in the past demonized Martin Luther King Jr.; he has opposed every major civil rights initiative; he supported South Africa’s Apartheid regime; opposed the integration of schools and other public accommodations: “The 'negroes' of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours." Buchanan famously stated "If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?” Needless-to-say, Buchanan’s penchant for hiring “assistants” and staff who have to ties to white extremist groups is well-documented and doubtless they provide “support” for such views.

Buchanan’s ignorance on race was much in evidence when he declared "How, then, can the feds justify favoring sons of Hispanics ( in regard to affirmative action) over sons of white Americans who fought in World War II or Vietnam?” The problem with that statement is that contemporary media tended to ignore minority soldiers, as if they didn’t exist at all. Hispanics fought in both those wars. Their exact numbers are not precisely known, since Hispanics—especially in WWII—were often classified as white, but studies indicate that their representation per their percentage of the population was higher than that of non-Hispanic whites in both wars. Like Lou Dobbs, Buchanan has little interest in facts if they get in the way of racist propaganda.

Buchanan, it should be recalled, was also one of Richard Nixon’s chief strategists and speech writers. He has admitted to assisting in Nixon’s “dirty tricks” schemes, as well as advising him on obstructing the Watergate investigation—such as simply destroying all tapes rather than deleting the odd embarrassing passage.

Behind the façade of "affability"—in the company of other white people—is a brutal bigot. Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Beck, Malkin, Coulter, Savage and others of that ilk cannot be taken seriously by thoughtful people—they prey on base emotions. But Buchanan is of a different breed. He has, beyond all comprehension, been given a measure of “mainstream” acceptability by being allowed sit at the same table as people who profess to speak for the public interest. In the face of his brutality, they quiver like jelly. Buchanan’s true place is in the margins, where he can sit at the same table with other hollow bigots.

Why would the US Chamber NOT want to support US (Local) Business?

US Chamber of Commerce pushes to end ‘Buy American’ rules
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/11/us-chamber-of-commerce-pushes-to-...

If the results of the Iranian election stay as they are now being reported, the United States should have no trouble recognizing Ahmadinejad as the winner. After all, we officially accepted two illegitimate presidential election results in our own country in 2000 and 2004. In fact, most of the world accepted those reported results. It should not be surprising that Germany, one of the countries that did not blindly follow Bush's march into Iraq is willing to question the outcome of the election in Iran.

Mark,

Here's a link to some information about Lyndon LaRouche. It's at the website of Political Research Associates and most of the articles are by Chip Berlet. I used to hear Berlet with some frequency on Pacifica Radio. If I recall, some "progressives" became upset with him when he questioned the validity of many of the claims the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Here's the link. They have several articles about LaRouche there.

It always amazes me how the petite bourgeois identify with the mega rich (as if they are really one of them).

Hey Thom,

I wanted to follow up on the caller who talked about the people at the post office with the picture of Hitler and Obama.

I also ran into those guys in Washington state they go to ferry docks and post offices. They are working for Lyndon LaRouche, Could you talk about him?

Who is he? They said he wis a Roosevelt Democratic is he a crazy lefty or a crazy righty?

Jeff,

My perception of MSNBC is that the "liberalism" (such as it is) is in the afternoon to evening talking head shows. The news department seems pretty much standard mainstream (center-right/center-center/center-left) TV news.

Bernie Sanders appeared on MSNBC to defend single payer / the public option before the President's speech to the AMA.

( A side note, notice how the public option and single payer are becoming conflated? The dreaded slippery slope to single payer! I actually think that's a good thing. It's an utterly ridiculous argument on its face: we can't even allow people the choice of single payer, because everyone will take it--because it's what everyone wants!--and that would be bad!)

But back to Bernie's appearance. The MSNBC (yes, the so-called LIBERAL network) host was fully stocked with right-wing talking points, just as well prepared as any FOX Newser. She even threw in the "isn't it interesting..." before making a comment. I think they let Bernie Sanders on and attack him in order to discredit him. Much like they did with Dennis Kucinich. (BTW, wasn't single payer a huge part of DK's presidential run?) Fortunately, Bernie is better at defending himself than DK.

And as soon as Bernie summed up his refutation of the Frank Luntz-scripted diatribe from the MSNBC host with the gem: "the private health insurance companies' primary goal is to make money." she quickly changed the subject and went to her next talking point. That line is a dagger.

But make no mistake, the TV networks also make lots of money (in the form of advertising) in the Health for Profit industry, In fact, far far more than they ever have. Huge money.

B Roll and Jeff,

Obama will be speaking to the AMA next hour. It will be interesting to see what he says about single payer, if anything.

BTW, fmr. Dem. senate leader Tom Daschle is in the news today for saying that this country needs to cut back on medical malpractice lawsuits. If he supported the single-payer option (which, as a health-care lobbyist, he doesn't want to do), there would be a dramatic reduction in malpractice lawsuits, since future medical needs would be automatically addressed. However, pain and suffering and loss of wages might still be issues.