Rep. Earl Blumenauer chairs the House about three or four times a month from which position he observes the proceedings in much the same way a behavioural scientist observes the interactions of a pack of baboons. Recently, what transpired was more in the venue of an anthropologist observing what is termed an “atavistic endeavour.” To wit:

“Today, I literally watched Republicans become unhinged as they attempted to out-do one another on the ‘evils’ of programs being considered by President Obama and the Democrats in Congress. As the Republicans took advantage of the unlimited opportunities for one-minute speeches, dozens of them headed to the floor with competing tales of horror that are allegedly in the Democratic approach to health care reform.”

I’m just going to touch on a few of the sqwaks and brayings that emanated from the floor of the House as enumerated by Rep. Blumenauer. It was “thought” that:

4 to 7 million people would lose their jobs as a result of the health care plan. (well, for a start, I’d like to see the 200,000 unspeakable bastards employed by insurance companies to turn down or recise policy claims on the bread line…)

That 144 million people would lose their health care insurance. (No, you cretin - that’s the number of Americans that could possibly end up leaving private insurance companies for the public option - a figure estimated by the Lewin Group. Naturally, this would result in the loss of tens of billions of dollars to the private insurance pirates, to which I say “Good on ‘em, and screw you bunch of ethicless crooks!”)

That the Democrats want to socialize 20% of the economy. (which Rep. Earl thinks is interesting considering that health care is ‘only’ 16% of the GDP, as if that figure were acceptable)

That extending health care coverage to over 40 million Americans will somehow put “government bureaucrats” in charge. (as opposed to the accountants, MBAs and bean counters who are currently in charge of the system and who wield virtual life-and-death power over the hapless peons paying them billions a year)

That the Democratic plan will leave people no choice but to go to the Emergency Room. (yessiree, Bob - normally, when I get a limb whacked off, my first impulse is to tie up the stump, phone my insurance company and sit in the bathtub while I wait for them to decide whether or not they’ll cover the reattachment procedure)

Rep. McClintock (R-CA) stated his opinion that the same government that operates FEMA couldn’t possibly be trusted with running public health care. (Need we even comment on this particular piece of idiocy? Rep. Blumenauer was boggled. “I’m shocked that any Republican would bring up FEMA and the disasater of the Bush administration for an agency that, until the Republicans got ahold of it, was doing a great job in the Clinton years.”)

Rep. Broun (R-GA) loudly demanded “Show us the bill!” and “Don’t hide the bill!” (while at the very same moment, his partners in crime were waving the bill around in the air. Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Douchebag) then chided his colleges to read the bill, after which he proceeded to reference Section 1233 and lie his ass off about it. Rep. Blumenauer knows something of this section since, in his words, “…it’s a bill I wrote which was incorporated into the overall legislation. His statement was a complete fabrication.”)

And finally, (since this claptrap has a numbing effect and I feel like I’m losing my higher brain functions just transcribing it,) Rep. Virginia Fox (R-NC) rose to espouse the view that the ReThug approach to health care (which I previously assumed to be “Pay or Die”) was more pro-life. because it “would not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.” (That’s right - insuring over 48 million Americans will result in geriatric euthanesia. This statement is so monumentally obscene that I can’t even think of a rejoinder.)

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch…

Rep. Mike Pence, (R-IN) Chairman of the House Republican Conference, appeared on Andrea Mitchell’s show on MSNBC and declared, in the space of a few seconds:

“A government-run insurance option that the President’s insisting on is going to amount to a government take-over of our health care economy.”

And then, when challenged by Mitchell on his stance on Medicare, “Oh. no, I support Medicare and have supported the program.”

So this blithering fool professes no confidence in the public option because it would be government-run, but whole-heartedly supports and praises Medicare, which is … government-run. I think we can safely say that these half-witted buffoons have long since ceased to listen to what’s enamating from their own mouths let alone listen to anyone else.

And finally, (before I have to run to the bathroom and vomit) there are the words of wisdom of Senator John Kyle, (R-AR) who piously declared on the Senate floor Monday, July 27, “The health care industry is one of the most regulated industries in America. They don’t need to be ‘kept honest’ by the government.” (He then went on to declare that the banking and investment industry can police itself and that all federal and state laws should be rescinded since the inherent decency in the American soul would never sanction such immoral acts like murder, rape, assault, child abuse, etc… He then proposed to change the nation’s symbol from the eagle to the unicorn and that the national debt be paid off by finding pots of gold at the end of rainbows.)

On the dissenting side of the issue we see a Los Angelese Times article reporting on last months’ Congressional hearings.

“The documents show that one Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of ‘5′ for ‘exeptional performance’ on an evaluation that noted the employees role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million of health care. WellPoint’s Blue Cross subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by cancelling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said…

The committee investigation uncovered several recission practices that one lawmaker called egregious, including targeting every policyholder diagnosed with leukemia, breast cancer and 1400 other serious illnesses. Such investigations involve scouring the policyholder’s original application and year’s worth of medical and pharmacy records in search of any discrepancies.”

Hell - these insurance companies and HMO’s don’t need to be “kept honest.”

They need to be hanged.

And a small correction. It was noted by one of my faithful readers, Mlaiuppa, that the House vote that confirms Hawaii as the birthplace of the President, and hence, an American-born citizen, was not unanimous inasmuch as 55 members didn’t vote. This is entirely true. The vote was held later in the day due to lack of a quorum. The vote did pass ‘unanimously’ insofar as it passed 378-0, with all members who were present voting in favour. Thank you for pointing this out.

…They said any legislation that emerges from the talks is expected to provide for a non-profit co-operative to sell insurance in competition with private industry, rather than giving the federal government a role in the marketplace…. Individuals would have a mandate to buy affordable insurance but companies would not have a requirement to offer it.” If I read that last statement correctly, I take it to mean that a citizen wants affordable insurance, indeed, may be legally compelled to buy it, but the insurer can and will charge as much as they want. And that business about a “non-profit co-operative?” Hell, bubba - thet sounds lak commie-tawk t’me!

So, who gets to run the non-profit collective if not the government? A private company? Everybody just put five bucks into a big empty pickle jar? I also see no mention whatsoever about rescission or denying claims based on “newly discovered” pre-existing conditions, like the case of a woman recently who was turned down for cancer treatment because (i’m not making this up) she had been treated for acne as a child, or Linda Richardson of Washington DC who was diagnosed with a brain tumor, now in remission. This March, her insurance was “capped” at $150,000. She and her husband’s life savings are now gone and they still owe $100,000.

John Amato’s “Crooks and Liars.”

Leading this Gang of Six (three Dems and three ReThugs) is Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) who was quoted as saying that “The group of six really wants to get to ‘yes,’” the “Yes” apparently being, “yes, the uninsured and the underinsured can go f__k themselves. I got mine!”

Yes, Senator Baucus loves health care! He must; look how much money he’s taken from the health care industry:

Health care professionals - $1,162,613

Big Pharmaceuticals - $740,605

Hospitals - $568,491

HMO’s - $450,000

And, of course, the ubiquitous Lobbyists - $724,484.

Senator Baucus is second in taking handouts from the Health Care industry only to the biggest corporate health care whore in the Senate, Alan Specter whose pelf presently stands at $4,066,433.

With a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out showing 76% of respondents said it was either “extremely” or “quite” important to “give people a choice of both a public plan administerd by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance.” Over 55% of those polled would also pay higher taxes for such a plan.

Apparently the three Rethugs in the group trump the desires of 76% of the population, and the three Blue Dog Dems (which include Kent Conrad, D - ND and Jeff Bingaman, D - NM) have decided to drop their pants and cough.

Also on the health care front, anyone remember the Canadian woman Shona Holmes who was trotted out by Senator Mitch McConnell (R- Kentucky) to warn Americans of the horrors inherent in the Canadian health care system? Apparently, the poor woman had a brain tumor and because of the intolerable delays in the Canadian system, which she claimed would have killed her, was forced to journey to Arizona for her procedure for which she was charged $97,000.

Apparently, she’s also a liar.

The brain tumor, as it turns out, is not a tumor or neoplasm at all, but a condition known as Rathke’s Cleft Cycst, which is on her pituitary gland. It’s benign.

McConnell recently harangued the Senate about Canada’s health care system, using as his prime example Kingston General Hospital in Ontario. In his speech he stated that the wait for knee replacement surgery was 340 days. Statistics from KGH itself as reported by the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, show the wait to be 109 days or considerably less. McConnell cited 196 days for hip replacement at KGH. It’s average is actually 91 days. Mitch also opined about the three month wait for surgery for breast cancer. At KGH, it’s 23 days average.

One thing Mitch didn’t mention is that in his home state of Kentucky, one out of three people under the age of 65 have no health insurance at all, so for those people, the wait period for hip or knee replacement or breast cancer surgery is forever. And with an average state income of $37,186, there’s little chance of getting the surgery Ms. Holmes received.

In the Are You S__ting Me? category, the Department of Homeland Security (the beginning of man a horror story) has attempted to rush though a decision to locate a $700 million-dollar research facility, the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility, which would handle extremely dangerous and infectious pathogens, in Manhatten, Kansas.

That’s right - smack-dab in the middle of Tornado Alley.

The single and former site for this research has been located on a small island off the coast of the US specifically so the effects of any accident could be more easily contained.

The GAO issued a report on the DHS decision, stating that “Drawing conclusions about relocating research with highly infectious exotic animal pathogens from questionable methodology could result in regrettable consequences.” The GAO also found the DHS review to be “limited” and “inadequate” when it came to deciding whether or not any mainland facilities were safe, claiming that DHS’s conclusions were not “scientifically defensible.”

DHS immediately swung into action, declaring a Code Minty-Green Alert - danger! Congress may not rubber-stamp our proposal and we’ll lose the money! DHS officials met with members of a congressional oversight sub-committee to try and convince them that the GAO analysis, which might possibly have been based on logic and facts, was “unfair.” However, sub-committee chair Rep. Bart Stupak, (D-Mich) thought otherwise, and a hearing was scheduled for Thursday, July 30th.

It has also been found that Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts and the then-governor Kathleen Sebilius lobbied DHS for the lab to be built in their state. And, surprise! One of the Senators is a member of the subcommittee that sets DHS spending!

But don’t worry - if anything should happen - oh, let’s say a tornado relocating the lab to Wichita - the citizens of Kansas will merely click their ruby slippers together and they will magically be transported to … oh, wait … Kansas.

And on the brighter side of the news, on Mondya, July 25th the US Congress unanimously passed a bill introduced by REp. Neil Abercrombie, (D-Hawaii) which, in addition to commemorating Hawaii’s 50th anniversary as a state, confirms Hawaii as the birthplace of President Obama.

The resolution was brought to the floor under a procedure known as supspension of the rules. This implies that the legislation in question is not controversial and that debate for the resolution is limited and that the number of ammendments to the bill is also limited. The procedure also requires a two-thirds majority to pass. Fifteen other bills proceeded under the same conditions that day.

Earlier, the vote was postponed by Rep. Michele “Bats__t Crazy” Bachmann after she legitimately pointed out that the House at the time lacked a quorum. Later that evening, the bill was voted on and passed unanimously. (meaning, of course, that Rep. Bachmann voted for it as well) Even Senator DeMint, who gleefully anticipates “breaking” the President on health care reform, came out the other day to denounce the Birther cause, stating “I may disagree with (the President) on issues, but he is my president he deserves our respect and we need to forget this nonsense. He is not only a citizen, but he is our president.”

Hopefully, this will give the cretins in the “Birther” movement (including the lamentable Lou Dobbs) pause, since this is a tacit declaration that the Congress of the United States, including the Republicans, recognizes the President as an American citizen.

Unfortunately, he’s still black, and a Democrat and that’s the reason these wingnuts need.

And finally, Sarah Palin formally quit in front of a crowd who lauded her for not being a quitter. In the background, a band played “How Can We Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?”

“To get big bucks Congressional funding for space-control schemes, a threat to US space assets must be manufactured, and Hussien’s pathetic attempts to jam GPS signals seem to be the best (and only) evidence space warriors can produce to ‘prove’ that space ware is already underway.”

What Moore was referring to was General Lance Lord’s assertion that “The war in space began during Operation Iraqi Freedom.” This referred to Saddam’s attempt to block GPS signals to US guided munitions such as JDAMs using a ridiculous six hand-held ground-based jammers which US forces could have easily corrected for had they had the slightest influence on guided munitions. Which they didn’t. Also, using a GPS jammer automatically “paints” the jammer’s position, a situation manifestly hazardous to one’s health. Saying this was the beginning of a space war is like claiming … well, pick any of the favorite Republican straw-men that they claim will cause the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it: increasing taxes on the rich, universal health care, a Democrat in the White House… they all have equal credibility.

(Just as a short side-bar, currently, the US has a global monoploy on GPS but that’s about to change. The European Union is jointly funding a larger 30-satellite GPS system called Galileo whose satellites will have a life expectancy of 12 years as opposed to the 4-year life span of current US GPS satellites. The system will have greater urban coverage, atomic clocks that are ten times better than those on the US satellites, accuracy down to one meter, and faster fix time. It was no secret that the EU wanted a GPS system that couldn’t be shut down by the US. Bush wrote a missive to the EU parliament bitching that by ending the US’s ability to turn the GPS system off so as not to aid and abet a potential enemy, that the Galileo system would thwart the US ‘War on Terror.’ After the 9-11 attacks, sentiment was with the US, but after a year of Bush and EU support for Galileo was waining. Bush’s transparent plea for the maintenance of US hegemony put them over the edge. By 2002, all nations of teh EU were on board and the Galileo project was actually over-funded. The first satellite was launched in December of 2005 from the old Soviet facility at Baikonur and the final satellite will be up and the system functioning by the end of 2010. India, Israel and China have also signed on. The system, which will be under civilian control, naturally has a military function - indeed, the Europeans were loathe to rely on a US system that could be shut off at will.)

Let’s not pretend we’re talking chump change here. From the beginning of the “Star Wars” initiative in ‘83 to 2006, at least $130 billion has been spent on creating a system for dealing with enemy ICBMs that DOESN’T WORK. By 2015, it is estimated that all ground and space-based weapons systems, both deployed and in development will have cost the taxpayer $1.2 trillion - coincidentally the same amount as the Bush tax cut for the rich and incorporate. And all for a system that, if ever used, could deny all nations the use of Low Earth Orbit, and still not be an effective deterrent or defence.

Remember that Bush increased spending on the BMD system by 43% when he rode into office with his Gang in tow like the Youngers entering Dodge. Rumsfeld moved all missile and related programs into the classified neitherland and ended the regular reports to Congress, ostensibly to hide the cost-over-runs, delays and failures. He also cut over 2000 auditors from the Defense Contract Audit Agency. This reduction of outside scrutiny and Congressional oversight and control was a veritable invitation to corruption.

This offical corruption is a joint endeavour. The Pentagon and Air Force have joined forces with powerful lobby groups then lobby Congressmen who wish to bring space-based industries to their states or districts which in turn creates jobs that help ensure their re-election. For all intents and purposes, its similar to a series of lampreys all feeding off the same body - that of the American taxpayer. Inconceiveable amounts of money are being spent without public scrutiny or input. The estimated “black budget” requests for 2007 amounted to over $30.1 billion, 75% of which was slated for the Air Force. It is the nature of each branch of the service to be in a constant ‘turf’ battle with one another, fighting for the biggest piece of the tax pie. Whether or not the projects work or even make sense in our current reality is the least of the considerations. Remember the Air Force F-22 Raptor project which finally got cancelled due to cost over-runs. When it was finally completed, the plane, which had been originally conceived to counter a threat that no longer exists, had an avionics system that was technically obsolete before the plane even flew, guzzled fuel so badly that it could only maintain its full supersonic speed for 50 miles, and cost $190 million per unit, four times that of an F-15 Eagle.

The Air Force is no longer solely in the business of protecting the United States. It’s started a private side-line to create phony threats to justify its exhorbitant demands for an endless flow of money into its insatiable maw. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Air Force strategic planning has listed India, France, England, Germany, Japan and even Canada as potential enemies along with the traditional China and Russia. Space is no different. In fact, it has great sci-fi potential for scaring the bejeezuz out of citizens whose grasp of terrestrial problems is tenuous at best.

There is, however, another danger we should mention in passing. Regarding satellites, it is the Air Force’s policy to regard any failure of a US satellite, military or commercial, to be a potential enemy attack. As clearly elucidated by Major General Daniel Darnell, head of the Air Force Space Command’s Space Warfare Center at Schriever AFB, “The first response when something goes wrong should be ‘think possible attack.’”

This posture can have potentially deadly consequences if retaliation is premature. On January 25 of 1995, Norway and the US launched a joint research rocket from a Norwegian island. Norway had sent the Soviets a message regarding the nature of the launch, but it apparently never got to the right people. In the middle of the night, Russian radar detected what appeared to be a nuclear launch from a US submarine. The military immediately contacted Yeltsin (in whatever condition he might have been in…) who activated the Soviet version of DefCon and the Soviet Union’s 2000-plus nukes were put into launch status.

While Yeltsin was conferring with his advisors, radar showed the missile heading out to sea. The alert was cancelled and, for all real intents and purposes, WW III was prevented.

What makes this much scarier is that the current Russian Federation’s early-warning systems are in dire straits. While Russia requires 21 satellites to maintain complete full-redundancy in its defense network, as of 1999, there were only three functioning satellites.

Now - add to this equation the fact that, in response to the Bush BMD initiative (which can quite logically also be construed as a prelude-to-first-strike weapon) and the fact that the Bush administration defense posture advocated first-strike including the nuclear option, and that Bush and Cheney had abrogated pretty much every former treaty including the ABM treaty, the Russians have developed a new missile.

This missile, named the SS-27 Topol-M ICBM was first fired on Christmas Eve of 2004. Originally designed to counter Reagan’s batty ‘Star Wars’ program, it was never initially produced since the Soviets realized that they could easily and cheaply defeat any US BDM system by overwhelming it with decoys. Then came Bush, who, in June of 2004, killed off the ABM Treaty of 1972 and the missile was put back into development. On December 4th, 2005, Colonel General Nikolai Solotsov, commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, ordered a new version of the Topol-M which was to be an off-road deployable weapon. It is capable of carrying three independent-targeted warheads, plus four decoys, has a range of over 6,250 miles, can maneuver in mid-course and terminal phase, is hardened against laser weapons, and fast as hell. There is no known defense against it.

Its development was entirely based on Bush deploying a weapons system that doesn’t work. But Russia decided it couldn’t take that chance. China is now also developing, for the first time, ICBMs and the world’s largest class of SLBM submarine. Heck of a job, Bushie!

I suppose, if we’re lucky, the Air Force will simply continue to jerk the Congress around and volatize countless billions of dollars for weapons systems that don’t work to protect us from threats that don’t exist while ignoring the ones that do. That was the entire Bush defense posture. But the idea of one nation unilaterally controlling Low Earth Orbit will not be tolerated by other nations. The US certainly wouldn’t were the shoe on the other foot. But with the current “Fire, Aim, Ready” doctrine of the Air Force, it’s simply a matter of time before an overt response to a US satellite that failed from non-belligerent causes - like the failure of PanAmSat’s Galaxy IV in May of 1998 - leads to an incident that will have dire military repercussions. And as we see other nations re-arming due to the criminally ill-advised policies of the previous Bush administration, we can’t afford the possibility of such mistakes. Foreign policy cannot afford to be driven by irrational and ignorant fear or by delusional political demagogery. The potential for denying ourselves as a planet the safe use of LEO cannot be tolerated. Dependence on satellites has made us very vulnerable but protecting that vulnerability the current Air Force/Pentagon way is untenable. And Congressmen and women who receive campaign contributions who then create venues through legislation to allow military-industrial corporations to loot the public purse under the guise of national security is a disgrace.

One of the nice things about having time on your hands is that it gives you the ability to do your homework. I’ve always tried my best to provide honest, factual information in my posts, so if anyone wishes to check or contest my figures, please feel free.

First, there’s the Right Wing shibboleth that “no one in America dies for lack of health care,” to which I call bullshit! An article by Steve Stemberg in USA Today cited a 193 page report by the Institute of Medicine (the second of six proposed studies) “Care Without Coverage - Too Little, Too Late,” which examined 30 million working-age Americans whose employer does not provide them with health insurance and are also unable to qualify for governement medical care. It found that over 18,000 Americans die each year for lack of health insurance which could have provided timely diagnosis and appropriate care 18,000. (another source puts this figure at 22,000 but I can’t verify it) This figure included up to 600 women with breast cancer.

The report also pointed to the fact that uninsured sufferers of colon and breast cancer stand a 50% higher chance of dying,

A total of 37% ininsured trauma victims are likely to die due to being less likely to receive the full range of required services and care,

About 25% of adult diabetics without insurance limit their checkups to once every two years, thus risking blindness, amputations or death.

Well, I happen to be Canadian, and I can tell you from personal experience, including having been in a car accident a couple of years ago, that this, too, is BS. I also once worked as an ambulance medic and apart from Friday and Saturday nights when the ER got stacked up with drunks having fights and accidents, you aren’t going to die in the ER. Some septagenarian Senator recently stated in Congress recently that one out of five Canadians die due to our socialized system, to which lie I reply - “Show me the dead Canadians.”

It’s also axiomatic that ReThugs always leave out countries with socialized systems such as France, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Switzerland, etc. I lived off and on in France for four years and their health care service is easily the equal, in technology and care, of the US system (provided you’re ensured) and superior insofar as it is completly accessible. (And don’t give me the Lady Di argument. Princess Diana passed away because the French paramedics are required to stabilize patients before transport.) I was once working on a movie in Romania and had a stuntman injured on set. He was taken to the hospital where he went straight in - could’ve even gotten an MRI that very afternoon. There are waiting lists for certain diagnostic procedures in Canada, and for certain types of surgeries. But the main reason for this is that Canada is a nation of only 32 million people with no where near the number of hospitals as the US with a population of over 305 million. And besides - would you rather wait for two weeks for a CAT scan or MRI or not get it at all? Canadian health care is government subsidized so that everyone gets appropriate treatment and they aren’t bankrupted by the hospital like the uninsured or those whose insurance is cancelled when the HMO decides their cancer was a “pre-existing condition.” Canadian health insurance is free if you’re below a certain income level and those who have to pay, pay at rates incredibly lower than the average US citizen. There is no “pre-existing condition” nonsense since the system understands that those with pre-existing conditions are the very people who need coverage. You also get coverage through your unions. Canadians have no problem chosing who their doctor will be, and it has a defacto two-tier system. You can opt to go out of the country if you want and the government will even pick up part of the tab.

Senator James Inhofe (who, on Oct. 5th, 2005, cast the deciding ballot to vote down the Health Care for Veterans Ammendment that had passed in the House 398-19, and also voted against repealing the disabled veteran’s tax) recently proclaimed in Congress that under the Canadian system the mortality rate “is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cance, you know, they say why in the world would you emulate a system like that. This is life-threatening.” There’s one small problem with his statistics - they’re all bullshit.

Here are a few real statistics taken from a recent study by the World Health Organization. In Canada, the digestive disease deaths per 100,000 are 17.4. In the US it’s 20.5. Infant mortality rate per live birth is 5.08. In the US, it’s 6.3. Intestinal disease death rate, 0.3 - US, 7.3. Repiratory disease child death rate in Canada is 0.62. In the US, it’s 40.43. Heart disease death rate is is 94.9 to the US’s 106.5. And so on and so on… Does that sound like a system that’s allegedly killing people left and right?

There is another factor to the US HMO racket. Many Americans get driven into poverty after a serious illness especially if that illness caused them to lose their job because nobody will hire you afterwards because of the huge (in some cases, up to a million dollars) surcharge that the insurance company will extort from the company’s group health insurance plan.

Here is a fact: the 2006 per capita health care spending in the US was $6,714. In Canada, for that same year, it was $3,678. This isn’t surprising when you consider the fact that up to 60% of monies paid into HMOs go for administrative fees. Those same HMOs collectively employ around 400,000 people whose sole job it is to turn down claims. Some even give bonuses to employees who turn down the greatest number of claims. In 2007, $776 BILLION was spent on health insurance - roughly what it costs to fight the war in Iraq for one and a half years. A family with an income of $50,000 now spends 25% of that income on their family health care insurance. Health care spending in the US is now 17% of the GDP. The LA Times also ran a story in which it stated that one hospital admitted that roughly 35% of its overall profits were made on only 2% of it’s patients - the uninsured. One of the reasons ininsured people go bankrupt after nonelective surgery or catestrophic illness is that they are routinely charged at a rate approximately 3 to 5 times that of an insured person. That is usury at its most disgusting. It’s been observed that it’s not that the US has no healthcare system, its that its primarily function seems not to be delivering health care services but screwing every dime they can out of the suffering. Health care is not supposed to be about corporate profit, unless, of course, you’re a Republican.

Probably true - if you’re insured. If not, you may as well be in Bangladesh. Overall, the US system is rated 37th in the world. That’s not something to be proud of. The US now has fewer hosptial beds, fewer doctors and a higher infant mortality rate than it did in 1973. Huzzah! Let’s all celebrate! Don’t forget to save your gravey-soaked trenchers and table scraps for the poor… It also seems axiomatic that those who delight in making this grandeose claim have either never been out of their own country or have never had any contact with another Western 1st world nation’s health care system.

Would any of you discerning readers like to see the OBSERVER’S GUIDE TO THE RIGHT WING (in its entire and complete form) together with the collected RANTS in book form?

Please submit your comments.

“If, when the facts are in, we find out that through some convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him. But if he walked away from his post and his buddies at wartime… I don’t care how hard it sounds, as far as I’m concerned, the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.”

Interviewer Julie Banderas looked shocked but declined to question or comment on the fact that this microcephalic was just advocating the death of an American soldier.

In a previous article for the neocon Security Affairs, Peters offers a modest proposal:

“There will always be a hostile third party in the fight. but one which we not only refrain from attacking, but are hesitant to annoy: the media.

…there is a penalty for the intellectual’s dismissal of religion: humans need to believe in something greater than themselves, even if they have a degree from Harvard. Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the media.“I think you’re a little late on that, Ralphie Boy - the Bagdhad offices of the news agencie Al Jazeera were already bombed by the Yanks several years ago.

Now if I’m reading this cretin correctly, Peters apparently equates the free press, a Constitutionally guaranteed institution, with a hostile enemy force whose members are godless “neo-pagans” (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean) whose personal mission is to cause the defeat of US armed forces and the downfall of the nation. He also appears to be of the opinion that if you have a degree from a fancy-shmancy institute of higher learning (Harvard always appears on right-wing microcelphalics’ hit list for some reason) then they are “intellectuals” who, by virtue of possessing a higher education, axiomatically reject the “god of their fathers.” Frankly, I’ve met some Harvard grads who are stupid as a log, and this “god of their fathers” crap makes us sound like we’re still a tribe of desert-roaming nomads.

He also seems to forget that the media in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is so controlled by the military and censored by their right wing bosses that the only way we ever found out about things like the massacre of civilians in Fallujah came, by and large, from soldiers leaking it themselves. When you advocate physically attacking the free press, you are essentially declaring yourself on the side of totalitarianism. I also can’t see a scenario where any soldier would obey an order to kill a civilian journalist in the field, unless they wanted to be court martialled for murder. It is, after all, explicit in the Army Field Manual, that you are not permitted to follow a blatently illegal order.

And what evidence does he supply to support his theory that PFC Bergdhal was deserting? None - zip - nada. (And by the way, who the hell deserts in the middle of a war zone in one of the most desolate and isolated areas in the world, and one filled with hostiles?)

The fact that this babbling oaf has advocated the murder of a US soldier didn’t go unnoticed in the Halls of Power. A 22-member bipartisan group of Congressmen (apparently all vetrans) led by John Boccieri (D. Ohio) have sent Roger Ailes, CEO of Faux Noise, a letter expressing their outrage at Peters’ statement and demanding he issue a public apology.

Let’s all hold our breath for that to happen.

Walt Kelly’s Pogo was right: “We has met the enemy and he is us…”

There are three phases in which a missile can be intercepted: boost, mid-course and terminal. For a kill in boost phase, you have to be damn close to the launcher. The main weapon for this endeavour is the Airborne Laser or ABL. This weapon is a series of oxygen iodine lasers clustered in a Boeing 747-400F that generate a beam that is directed through a resonator which coalesces the multiple beams into a single beam. A packet of six lasers weigh over 180,000 pounds. Add to that the chemical storage, computers etc, plus crew in a plane designed to carry 248,000 pounds, then have it jostled around by turbulence when it’s trying to focus its beam on a missile long enough to damage it or burn through its shell, and the whole thing carrying a price tag of $5.1 billion per plane which would only have time to deal with ONE missile in boost phase out of likely hundreds (and these are land-based, not sub-launched) and you’ve got a boondoggle with the defensive capability of a pea-shooter. Plus, it’s got to be close to its target due to the limited range of the laser, so it, being a big, slow aircraft will need a fighter escort, and those fighters will need a KC-135 tanker for mid-air refuelling. And then, it has to actually get to close to the launch area in time to use its weapon, if the weapon actually worked, which it doesn’t. Think a 747 can fly to China in the few minutes it would take once the IR signature of a launch were detected by a spy satellite, or that the Chinese would let anything even remotely near their launch facilities in Xinjiang in Central China?

So boost phase is out. Now we have the mid-course interception option. This is where the current BDM system comes in. Problem is, half the tracking capacity for this system is based on huge X-band radar systems yet to be built. Also, the current system is stupid as a log when it comes to weeding out decoys from the real warhead. And, again, fudging the tests has become institutionalized. To date, not a single target missile has been taken down without having an on-board transponder giving the interceptor a lock or that the incoming’s approach vectors weren’t known. A rogue nation would have to inform us of their launch and provide intercept data that I suspect they’d be disinclined to do. To be effective, the missile system must be able to prove it can hit a target without any help from the target itself and so far it has not. Credibility zero. Neither has the launch vehicle for tests ever been the more powerful booster that would be necessary to kick it into space, nor has the Kinetic Kill Vehicle ever been tested in space where it would have roughly ONE MINUTE to sort out decoys from the real warhead and destroy it.

So now we have the GMD system to blast the descending warhead in terminal phase, which would last between one and two minutes. For this, the US would use the Patriot PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability) system built by - guess who? Lockheed Martin. Remember here that not a single Scud was destroyed by Patriot missiles in the first Gulf war of ‘91. Those Scuds that did come down were determined later to have simply run out of fuel. Not a stellar track record. Oh, but these are Advanced! To be fair, the tests have reached an efficiency of almost 45%. But these are short range missiles and would have to be deployed nation-wide in immense numbers.

But the most damning condemnation of this wastrel idiocy came in an article in the Boston Globe on June 15th, 2002. Penned by professor Theodore C. Postol of MIT, acknowledged to be the nation’s leading expert on missile defense, he had this to say:
“The current National Missile Denfense interceptor tries to identify warheads and decoys by ‘looking at them’ with infrared eyes. Because the missile defense is essentially using vision to tell which objects are decoys and which are bombs, this technique is no more effective thatn trying to find suitcase bombs at an airport by studying the shape and color of each suitcase. … The agency has no technical program for solving this fundamental problem. It has also been unable to provide any credible scientific evidence or analysis to show that it can ever solve this problem. So what it proposes to do is to classify the fact that the targets it is flying (in tests) have been preconstructed in ways that will allow it to tell one from another. This misuse of the classification system to hide the fact that the National Missile Defense System has no creedible scientific chance of working is a serious abuse of our security system.”
So there we have the Air Force policy in a nut-shell: when in doubt, cheat, lie or conceal the facts through the shibboleth of national security.

OK - I think all but the most poitically abstracted might agree that the current state of missile defense is abysmal at best, delusional at worst. The illusion of defense can often promulgate decisions of a strategic nature that are actually detrimental to national security. So here’s another prime example.

The Air Force is worried about protecting US sattelites in orbit. To this end, they have been planning to build and deploy satellite-killers, KKV’s that will vector in on what they consider to be dangerous foreign satellites and destroy or disable them by various means. This will cause debris. And this is the danger.

Low Earth Orbit is getting to be a garbage heap. Currently, the Space Surveillance Network tracks about 13,400 man-made objects in space down to the size of ten centimeters. This doesn’t count the over 100,000 pieces of crap around the size of a small ball bearing and at least a million pieces of junk down to the one-centimeter size, both which categories are untrackable. NASA estimates that in the last 45 years nations have contributed to around four million pounds of debris in LEO, and this stuff is all moving at 17,500 miles per hour. If it weren’t its orbit would have degraded and been pulled back into earth’s atmosphere long ago.

Astronaut Sally Ride, as a member of the presidential commission to investigate the Challenger disaster, recalled, on her first trip to LEO in ‘83, that the shuttle had acquired a small gouge out ot the glass of one of its view-ports. There was lengthy debate as to whether this pit might compromise the port’s integrity on re-entry. Later, after chemical analysis, it was determined that the pit was caused by the shuttle being hit by a paint chip. A paint chip travelling at over 17,500 mph. Now - consider what might have happened if the shuttle had been struck at that velocity by something the size of a baseball - something the SSN can actually track.

Joel Primack, professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz calculates that the degree of debris density in the 1000 kilometer area of LEO between 563 and 625 miles and the 1500 - 1700 K zone is already so great that there’s a real risk of what’s known as the Kessler Effect - that collisions between individual pieces of debris could set of a cascade of other collisions that could render those areas of orbital space untenable. The Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on Space Weapons reported that “Because the United States owns a significant majority of the world’s satellites, it would suffer disproportionately from any increase in the amount of space debris. … space weapons are not suited to the threats currently facing the United States in space or are outpaced by terrestrial alternatives.” Not surprisingly, the Air Force is conspicuously silent on the subject of space debris in any of their reports and studies; in point of fact, the AF Counterspace Doctrine does not mention it a single time. And yet they are still planning to deploy such anti-satellite weapons by 2012.

The Air Force has already put up ‘micro-satellites’ supposedly to conduct stealth inspections of other nation’s satellites, but are easily dual-use systems that could be used to collide with other satellites to take them out. The secret “Misty” series went up starting in 1990 and has so far cost over $9.5 billion. They were thought to be undetectable from earth. Apparently not so much - the first one up was almost immediately detected by amateur astronomers in Canada. A new version known as the XSS-11 series was launched in 2005, supposedly to inspect dead US satellites and spent rocket booster stages, but speculation is that the Air Force is using it to test anti-satellite intercept techniques.

We’ll wrap this whip-song up in part III.