Here in Wisconsin we are used to Republican outrages perpetrated by Scott Walker, but this is insane.  Which begs the question of whether “Republican” = “insane.”

Fifty medical doctors who favor a single payer health insurance system today urged the US Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate.

In a brief filed with the Court, the fifty doctors and two non-profit groups – Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy – said that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The individual mandate is the provision of the ACA that requires Americans to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies if they do not otherwise have coverage.

The doctors are challenging the government’s claim that the individual mandate is necessary to reach Congress’ goal of universal coverage.

“The court should decide the constitutionality of the individual mandate based on the best available evidence,” said attorney Oliver Hall. “That’s why it is so important that these medical doctors provide the court with the information in their brief, which demonstrates that Congress can address the United States’ healthcare crisis by adopting a single payer system.”

“It is not necessary to force Americans to buy private health insurance to achieve universal coverage,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. “There is a proven alternative that Congress didn’t seriously consider, and that alternative is a single payer national health insurance system.”

“Congress could have taken seriously evidence presented by these single payer medical doctors that a single payer system is the only way to both control costs and cover everyone,” Mokhiber said. “Instead, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chair of the Senate Finance Committee which drafted the law that became the ACA, had two of those doctors – Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris – arrested and thrown in jail. Those doctors are now two of the 50 who have signed onto this brief challenging the Constitutionality of the ACA.”

“If the US Congress had considered an evidence-based approach to health reform instead of writing a bill that funnels more wealth to insurance companies that deny and restrict care, it would have been a no brainer to adopt a single payer health system much like our own Medicare,” said Dr. Margaret Flowers. “We are already spending enough on health care in this country to provide high quality universal comprehensive lifelong health care. All the data point to a single payer system as the only way to accomplish this and control health care costs.”

“People will have the greatest control of their own healthcare if the insurance industry is removed from between doctors and patients,” said Kevin Zeese of It’s Our Economy. “And, people will no longer be threatened with increased premiums, decreased coverage and financial ruin caused by a health crisis.”

Both Kevin Zeese and Dr. Margaret Flowers are organizers with the National Occupation of Washington, D.C. (nowdc.org).

McConnell’s statement here that the cartoon is refrencing. Via.

This week we talk to the fabulous Jeni Decker about her new book I wish I were engulfed in flames: My life with two autistic sons. Filmmaker Drew Emery joins us to talk about his new film Inlaws and Outlaws.

Jordan Catapano from the blog and book This Girl Walks Into a Bar joins us with a special Valentine cocktail to woo your Valentine.

Click on over to Allies awesome show notes page for all the scoop on our great guests for this week at AWOP Radio.

It was in 2002 and 2003, when the drumbeats of impending war were being pounded by our political leaders and dutifully transcribed by most (though not all) of the supine bunch of stenographers we call the mainstream press.

Although many analysts at the CIA were skeptical, the dominant narrative in Washington was that Saddam Hussein not only had weapons of mass destruction, but he had stockpiles of them. You just about had to go to the “alternative” press on the Internet to hear any other side of the story.

The incessant drip-drip-drip from the Bush-Cheney propaganda machine, including allusions to the mushroom cloud, stirred up a witch’s brew of fear among the population. And that fear was constantly being stoked into hysteria, based on the certitude that Saddam Hussein played a big part in 9/11 – didn’t he meet with some al Qaeda agent in Vienna? — and the display of actual weapons parts by Colin Powell at the UN. And Colin Powell was a man we had all come to trust and respect, wasn’t he?

Well, I’m getting a feeling of deja vu all over again listening to Administration officials talking about whether Iran will have its bomb in a year or two years, the US assuring the Ayatollahs that no aspect of American power was off the table, the Israelis releasing their crop of “top secrets everyone should know” to talk about when and if they’re planning to bomb Iranian nuclear installations. Just listen to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who claims Israel “does not want to take military action against Iran over its nuclear program, but at some point may have no other option. The
Jewish state at this point did not intend to launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, but retained the option as a ‘last resort,’

And, in case you haven’t noticed, this main narrative is being burnished on a pretty regular basis by other scary-sounding developments by both sides, or all three sides. The Iranians hatched a plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to Washington in the U.S. Unexplained explosions ripped through one of Iran’s major nuclear installations. The Iranians sentenced an American to death for spying for the Israelis. Then they threatened to close the Straight of Hormuz, through which passes a big chunk of petroleum that’s shipped by sea. The Iranians were also busy discussing cutting off oil supplies to Europe, and the West was conjuring up ever more draconian sanctions.

But are we being sandbagged again? Doesn’t anyone disagree with the conclusions reached by the US and Israeli administrations? Well, yes, lots of them, but people’s misgivings are being reported in only a tiny fraction of the mainstream press, and they’re difficult to find.

For example, Whistleblower Sibel Edmunds’ Web site, Boiling Frogs, brings us an article by William Blum, for many years one of the most credible critics of US foreign policy.

“Is USrael (Blum uses this contraction to indicate the two nations’ singularity of purpose) actually fearful of an attack from a nuclear-armed Iran?” Blum asks.

He answers: “In case you’ve forgotten…In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [then Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.”

He goes on: In 2009, “A senior Israeli official in Washington” asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.”

And in 2010, “The Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, ‘believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons’.”

Early last month, Blum continues, “US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.”

“A week later we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts — the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz — all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: “People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.”

Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons. … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead.

Blum concludes: “Admissions like the above — and there are others — are never put into headlines by the American mass media; indeed, only very lightly reported at all; and sometimes distorted — On the Public Broadcasting System (PBS News Hour, January 9), the non-commercial network much beloved by American liberals, the Panetta quote above was reported as: “But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us.” Flagrantly omitted were the preceding words: “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No …”

Nobody (except Iran) believes Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a plus for Iran or its neighbors, or for the Israelis or the US. All the parties to this dangerous epidemic of saber-rattling ought to step back and take a deep breath.

Unless, on the other hand, it’s true that every American president needs to have at least one war on his watch to establish his street creds. Well, our current president is dealing with two wars, but maybe these don’t count because they were inherited.

President Obama has tried, early in his term, to extend a hand of friendship rather than a clenched first to the Iranians. Thus far, that approach has failed.

There are a few things that could reverse that situation. The IAEA is back inside Iran doing inspections. Let us await the IAEA’S report at the conclusion of its current inspection. Then perhaps the Iranians will want to sit down with the Quartet for a serious discussion, not only of the nuclear issue, but of a whole range of issues – notably to include human rights – that separate Iran from the other nations of the world.

Second, a bit further down the road we should be able to assess how effective the sanctions have become. If there are signs that the Iranians are beginning to feel the pinch, conversations and negotiations might be more practical than they have been in the past.

Finally, if Iran makes good on its promise to close the Straight of Hormuz, it will surely have shot itself in the foot. The simple reason is that Iranian oil has to move through these same waters to get to market. The prospective supply shortfall will likely result in a spike in oil prices that will help no one, save speculators.

There is and will be continuing political risk for the Obama Administration, especially in a presidential election year. Republicans will rail against any kind of dialogue with the Iranians. But they’ll rail whether we talk or not. And, if talks actually do take place, they could be a humiliating failure.

Is this worth the risk? Talking – or at least trying to get the parties to meet one another again – is preferable in every way to Shock and Awe. Just keep in mind how long it took us to extricate ourselves from the last Shock and Awe.

Originally published by Prism Magazine.

William Fisher has managed economic development programs for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere for the past 25 years. He has supervised major multi-year projects for AID in Egypt, where he lived and worked for three years. He returned later with his team to design Egypt’s agricultural strategy. Fisher served in the international affairs area in the administration of President John F. Kennedy. He began his working life as a reporter and bureau chief for the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Associated Press in Florida. He now reports on a wide-range of issues for a number of online journals.

Americans have always depended on the media to be their eyes and ears to monitor events transpiring around the country. Indeed, the Fourth Estate is allegedly a non-partisan watchdog that protects the innocent by exposing malfeasance in politics and in a greater sense, keeping tabs on undue influence by wealthy industrialists and corporations on the government tasked to conduct the people’s business. The Fourth Estate has transformed itself into the First Mistake.

Particularly, the lack of reporting on the Occupy movement that is protesting the influence wealthy industrialists, Wall Street, and corporate banking interests has on the government demonstrates the corporate-owned media’s complicit involvement in helping conservatives destroy the poor and middle class. Nearly every media outlet has failed miserably to report on and investigate the motivations and goals of demonstrators across the nation because they are controlled by the Republican Party who are in turn controlled by the wealthy and the corporations they own.

The outrageous assaults on peaceful protestors in Oakland are but just one example of the media’s refusal to report the police brutality and unconstitutional breaking up of American citizens who are exercising their 1^st Amendment “right to peaceably assemble to petition for a governmental redress of grievances.” One may wonder why a violent attack on the protestors in Oakland, California was omitted from newspapers in a city 70 miles from where riot police fired plastic bullets and tear gas at demonstrators who were assemble peaceably. The simple answer is the McClatchy Company owned chain of newspapers is a shill for conservatives and little more than an extension of the RNC. The newspapers are the epitome of hypocrisy for omitting reports about the Occupy movement when during the teabagger’s assemblies and disruptions of town hall meeting during the healthcare reform debates, readers received a daily dose of Republican rhetoric about the abject hatred the American people had toward President Obama and Democrats for attempting to help 30-40 million Americans get affordable health insurance coverage.

The media also failed miserably to report on citizens across the nation who spoke out against Republican efforts to push the Heritage Foundation’s Medicare privatization scam on poor, retired Americans. It is becoming painfully obvious to even the most ignorant American that the media in this country is controlled exclusively by Republicans and their front groups the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and the Koch-owned Americans for Progress. It is also worth asking if the editorial boards of newspapers around the country have to run their choice of stories by Karl Rove and the RNC.

The Occupy movement will continue growing despite the willful omission of reporting by the media. As the movement grows and more Americans learn the protestors share their belief that corporate control of the government is unacceptable, anger and retribution at the media for their complicity in Republican, Wall Street banks, and wealthy industrialists’ takeover of the government will spell doom for the nation’s corporate media. Americans deserve better from Republicans and their sycophants in main stream media outlets and as the last newspaper is forced to shut down their presses, they will have no-one to blame but themselves for acquiescing to conservative and Republican’s corporate-fueled devastation of individual freedoms and economic malfeasance.

Hang on to your emotions, hang on to your emotions

When a demagogue inside your head has taken charge
And by default what you say or do is criticized
And this litany of failures is recited a thousand times
You’d better

Hang on to your emotions, hang on to your emotions (Reed)

____________________________________________________________

Being that this is indeed Sunday, I thought it time for the resurrection of Sunday Lou, especially seeing as how original articles on my site have been few and far between the past two months. The tone of Lou’s song, Hang on to Your Emotions, from his 1996 album Set the Twilight Reeling (one of my personal favorites in his extensive catalog) is very fitting for my various frustrations and insecurities as of late. Of course, it is not my intent to turn this site into my personal forum for the occasional introspective and esoteric examination of my life, though there ultimately will be a bit of that, but by and large, constructive and pragmatic critique of our Imperialist State is what sparks my intellectual passions. Part of my frustration stems from so many recent assaults on our freedom and our common sense by the forces of said Imperialism. So for today, Sunday Lou will be a manifestation of my quips regarding recent political deeds and doings.

___________________________________________________________

Could it be you’ve never felt like that
That your mind’s a cage – inside the cage a cat
That spits and scratches all it can get at
And that’s you, and your emotions

Could it be you’ve never felt like that
Your mind’s a cage – inside the cage a rat
Rabidly trying to get it, you
And your emotions, you and your emotions

When your imagination has too much to say
When that facile voice inside your head says give your life away
You might think to ask – how it got that way
What books it has read – that make it that way
And where it got the right – to speak to anyone that way
You’d better

Hold on to your emotions, hold on to your emotions (Reed)

____________________________________________________________

The Sherrod Charade:

As anyone paying attention to the News Cycle knows, Shirley Sherrod lost her position at the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a snippet of a speech she gave — edited and released by Tea Party guru Andrew Breitbart — some time ago to members of the NAACP that made her appear to be insensitive to the plight of white farmers: A Racist!!

Considering many of my relatives make their living through farming (they happen to be white as well) and have to rely on the various subsidies through the USDA, I would be quite livid if they were denied fair treatment solely because of their race. Of course, this wasn’t entirely the case with Mrs. Sherrod as she would go on to explain in her speech — the part that mysteriously wasn’t released by Mr. Breitbart — that she realized that simply having blind disdain for a farmer simply because he was white made her no better than the white man who hates blacks simply because they are black. She overcame her irrational hate and actually befriended the farmer and his family and she became a better and more actualized person in the process.

This was a case study — through the personal story of Mrs. Sherrod — of the profound racial schisms that exist in this country and how every single person, regardless of skin color or ideology, is affected by our own misconceptions and lack of humanity and civility toward one another. The moral of the story was lost by the blind reaction of the propaganda and misinformation machine known as Mainstream Media (and yes, even so-called liberal outlets like MSNBC and others are included in that complex). Breitbart was justifiably vilified for doing what he does: distorting facts and reality to suit his ideological objectives. Fox News, as one can imagine, got in the act by doing what they do best and making the snippet of the speech headline material for their easily manipulated viewers. This in and of itself is nothing new nor newsworthy as most rational and objective individuals have long given up and bothering to care or even pay attentions to the crap that spews from Fox News and similar outlets of misinformation.

This whole incident was really a non-issue as anyone with a modicum of intelligence would dismiss the story all together or do some due diligence and find a copy of the entire speech and put it in its proper context to realize the poignancy of Mrs. Sherrod’s story.  Of course, that would have been asking too much from Obama and his Cabinet as Shirley Sherrod was unceremoniously axed from her position because lord knows our first President of Color couldn’t bare being labeled a racist by an objective “News” organization like FOX.

It’s really surprising to me the blind reaction and ignorance by the Obama Administration as this was a golden opportunity to open up a deeper dialogue about race antagonism in this country. If anyone remembers way back to 2008 during the Primary battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton, Obama, under fire for his relationship with Reverend Wright, gave an eloquent speech here in Pennsylvania relating his own personal experiences with being a man of color and his quest for finding his own racial identity and that relationship with the greater themes of a long history of racial antagonisms and schisms in this country. Rather than being a rational and pragmatic leader, Obama cowered to the reactionary elements of blind political divisiveness and further marginalized his own unique history to use Mrs. Sherrod’s speech — her whole speech — and personal story as a “teachable moment.”

In a speech shortly after the incident, Obama addressed the Sherrod firing and accepted some responsibility for his shortsightedness “saying the affair was a ‘bogus controversy based on selective and deceiving excerpts of a speech’ which ‘led to her forced resignation.’ Obama added, that ‘many are to blame for the reaction and overreaction that followed these comments including my own administration.’” (Wagner; Politics Daily)

Just taking some blame for the incident was more than I could have hoped for given the President’s previous patterns of eluding accountability for instances of ineptitude that he had direct influence of. Yet the fact that he added “…many are to blame for the reaction and overreaction that followed these comments…,” shows a complete lack of credibility and understanding of pragmatism and accountability. No one was responsible for Shirley Sherrod’s firing except Obama who failed to use common sense and have the many hundreds, if not thousands, of employees at his disposal to actually find the entire speech and realize what a great opportunity it was for not only his administration, but for exacerbating a greater dialogue about race in America; and also the best opportunity he will get to show just how hideous and underhanded his harshest critics actually are. All President Obama accomplished was to give undue credibility, power and influence to Mr. Breitbart and FOX “News.”

Considering the propaganda published and reported by the far right media, President Obama would have had to have fired himself about a hundred times by this point if he had given the ultra-right-media the same respect — in regard to himself — as he gave them in the Sherrod fiasco.

I am constantly shouting from the mountaintops that President Obama is merely the latest in a long line of Puppets who do the bidding for the myriad of large multinational Corporations that dictate our Democracy and Legislation for their Imperialist/Moneyed interests. But in the case of Mrs. Sherrod, President Obama proved himself to be less than merely a puppet of corporatism, but now a “leader” lacking common sense — and a modicum of intelligence — who will bow down to the reactionary ignorance of propaganda machines that themselves exist only to divide us and perpetuate the blind hatred and intolerance of individuals, like our President, who have a wealth of experience to share based on their diverse cultural backgrounds. Rather than just viewing President Obama as a tool for Imperialist interests, I now put him in the category of the common “Uncle Tom” who is willing to sell out his own unique cultural heritage as well as “We the People” for his Corporate Masters.

____________________________________________________________

Sing us away Lou:

When a night city’s breeze blows across the room
And a 5 am moon and sun start their swoon
You hear your lover’s breath
And not a moment too soon
You get to

Release all your emotions, you get to
Let go of your emotions, and now
Release all your emotions, you’d better
Let go of your emotions

Release, I wanna let go
I wanna release, now (Reed)

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