Late-night wacky overdosed-on-Obamacare-MSM-chatter thought experiment…
Since the H1N1 “None dare call it swine” flu stubbornly refuses to disappear, even though we’re all really bored by the whole thing now, the Obama Administration Medical Death Squad uses a previously obscure provision of the Patriot Act to declare a national emergency. In order to prevent the next wave of the pandemic from completely overwhelming America’s aging and underfunding public health system, Secretary Sibelius announces that full Medicare coverage will be offered to any American citizen who agrees to be vaccinated against both the seasonal and H1N1 flu strains. Vaccination tents, staffed by volunteer medical personnel with the assistance of the National Guard, will be opened in every state and large city, and travelling medical caravans will also be dispatched.
The imminent-but-not-yet-available H1N1 vaccine is currently being <A HREF=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/health/30flu.html”> “prioritized”</A> for approximately half the population, including pregnant women, health care workers, children between the ages of 6 months and 18 years, those caring for children under the age of 6 months, otherwise healthy young people between the ages of 18 and 24, and those between the ages of 24 and 64 with pre-existing conditions medical problems like asthma, diabetes, and heart disease. Since healthy 18-24 year olds, adults with other medical issues, and the grossly underpaid people who work in daycare centers, nursing homes, and as home health providers probably constitute a good portion of the current uninsured 47/50 million Americans, extending Medicare coverage would presumably capture a lot of “volunteers”. People over 64 seem to have an unusual immunity to the new H1N1 strain, but those people are already covered by Medicare.
And of course there is the issue of whether “enough” doses of the vaccine can be produced in time to beat the predicted next wave… but since only about 40% of the target population gets the seasonal vaccination in any given year, either a similar percentage will shirk the new Pandemic Special, or we’ll discover there are a lot more people desperate for medical insurance than Betsy Mcaughey & Bill Kristol (http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/07/31/bill_betsy/index.htm) would have you believe.
P.S. Did we mention the vaccine is still “untested”? And it’s the first swine-derived vaccine since 1976 and the <A HREF=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/health/09vaccine.html?fta=y”>Guillain-Barré</A> scare?
Also, it will contain <A HREF=”http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/30/eveningnews/main5199450.shtml”>thimerosol</A>!
Mr. Tactful
Sleep, honey.
Please get some sleep.
monkeyboy
Is this an example of PWI (posting while …)?
SiubhanDuinne
I just woke up, fired up the BlackBerry (yeah, okay, I know) and find an Open Thread with ONE COMMENT? Wow.
I actually have nothing to contribute, on or off topic. Guess I’ll go back to sleep.
Robertdsc-iphone
It’s scary watching this unfold. I have strange visions of Captain Trips in slow motion.
SiubhanDuinne
Hi again, fellow insomniacs. Well, it turns out I do have something to contribute after all. Just saw an article in the NYTimes (and very sorry I can’t provide a link) reporting that MSNBC and Fox have reached an agreement that calls a halt to the long-running O’Reilly-Olbermann feud. Apparently the suits and shareholders were getting pissed. But here’s the beauty part: guess who brokered the deal!? None other than that little ol’ conflict negotiator . . . .
. . . are you ready? . . .
CHARLIE ROSE!!!!!
I don’t often burst out laughing at oh-dark-thirty, but this is just too rich not to share.
WereBear
Proof, as if more is needed, that’s it’s all one big hydra-headed Thing, and not news organizations.
drillfork
More on this. Apparently O’Reilly’s attacks on GE got MSNBC’s corporate parent to rein in Olbermann.
http://firedoglake.com/2009/07/31/late-night-elephants-on-parade-16/
Olbermann certainly has a range of faults, but I’ll always credit him for getting (and staying) on the air at the height of the
BushCheneypresidencycoup/debacle. And Maddow never gets an opportunity without Olbermann’s success. So what Keith’s done over the past 5-6 years as far as bringing a bit of balance to the news is important.That said, it wouldn’t surprise me if this account is correct. Certainly no one on NBC touches any story that even remotely involves GE. At this point I honestly kind of feel sorry for Olbermann. Sure he gets a ton of money, but he probably has to bend over for his corporate masters way more often than we’ll ever know. And unlike with his previous fallouts with Disney and News Corp., if he chooses to walk away this time, Maddow and a whole host of others are probably going down with him…
SiubhanDuinne
I agree Rachel wouldn’t have had her chance on MSNBC — let alone her own show — without Keith as her champion, but I think she’s enough of a brand now that she’ll stay, or thrive, or fail, on her own merits rather than any ties to the fortunes of Keith Olbermann.
I like KO. Yeah, sure, he’s way over the top a lot of the time and I truly wish he’d bring on the occasional guest with a different POV, but he was speaking truth to Bush-Cheney power when pretty much nobody else in network or cable news would dare. And even though his shtick can be annoying, I kind of like the way he turns into a dog with a bone about some things and refuses to let go (e.g. “XXX days since Bush said ‘Mission Accomplished'” or counting off each day that Hannity failed to take him up on the waterboarding challenge).
I just hope GE/MSNBC don’t muzzle all the KO out of KO.
raff
Yeah, I thought the name change was kind of silly too… until I actually caught H1N1. I now understand the utility of using H1N1 instead of telling people you have the Swine Flu.
Sidenote: since I’m a Canadian, once I was ambulatory, I called my doctor’s office on a Sunday morning, got an appointment for later that afternoon, waited 5 minutes to see my doctor, had a swab taken & received a prescription (which my (government) employer’s health plan covered). I got my test results the next day (the doctor called me at home to tell me I tested positive for H1N1) & was almost totally recovered after 4 days.
Yep, socialized medicine sure does suck.
WereBear
They would be stupid to do so, but not that it’s ever stopped them.
However, Olbermann’s great ratings led to Maddow and her great ratings. It’s the one check on their power that they ignore at their peril.
I know newspapers have been withering for a while; but turning over their comment and opinion section to the right wingers has to be a factor.
We can’t be the only ones who dumped a newspaper subscription because we were sick of the lies.
abo gato
Does this account for why KO has been on “vacation” for the past week or more?
SiubhanDuinne
@ abo gato
I was wondering exactly the same thing. The timing was interesting, and usually when the regular hosts go on vacation, don’t the guest hosts say something like “I’m filling in for Keith who’s ON VACATION this week”? (That said, KO did show up in a guest spot from Cooperstown earlier this week on one of the nights Howard Dean filled in.)
A Mom Anon
I thought Keith had said he wasn’t going to mention O’Reilly anymore unless he actually did something newsworthy several weeks ago. He stopped naming him “Worst Person” and hasn’t mentioned him (as far as I’ve heard) for awhile now.
Jennie
Raff, I gotta ask.
I’m not generally conspiracy inclined but since seeing the following the other day I’ve been wondering if we really are on a journey with Captain Trips: <a href=”http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/07/senate_pages_may_have_contract.html?hpid=news-col-blog”
“The pages do not have confirmed H1N1 cases, Gainer noted, because doctors have not tested them for the virus. “The test itself is uncomfortable and the results of the test will not alter the treatment plan,” he said, noting that most outside doctors are following this course.”
So is the test really that uncomfortable? Enough so that the medical community is justified in failing to get accurate stats about a potential epidemic? One that seems to be falling harder on kids and pregnant women?
Or is a little paranoia justified?
Jennie
Crap. I totally messed up the html in that comment. Any way to edit in an end tag?
A Mom Anon
@A Mom Anon:
Ack,never mind. The link got posted as I posted that response. Geesh,get old and the reflexes go all to shit. Moving on then…
mistermix
I’ll grant that GBS is worth being worried about, but who cares if it contains thiomersol? I hope it does, because I don’t want bacteria and/or fungus growing in the dose I get.
Va Highlander
OT, apparently even in an OT thread:
What’s going on in Honduras? Last I heard a bunch of right-wing thugs – with Clinton friend and advisor Lanny Davis lobbying for their cause – had deposed the elected president. Our elected president denounced the coup, but State seems to have done nothing since.
Any updates?
One rumor I’d heard is that President Zelaya had raised the minimum wage and Chiquita, et al, had him kidnapped and forced out at gun point.
geg6
Va Highlander: Good question. We have searches of Michael Jackson’s doctor’s house leading newcasts and corporate collusion to control talking heads’ content and wonder what the hell is happening in an outrageous military coup in our very hemisphere. It boggles my mind what passes for the press in this country. And Lanny fucking scumbag Davis in the middle of it all and on the wrong side as usual. We suck.
linda
@WereBear:
and it goes without saying that were olbermann and maddow not consistently the two highest rated programs on msnbc, they’d both be out on the street. somebody’s got to bring in the viewers for their advertisers. a recent story had cnbc losing a quarter of their viewership in recent months. g.e.’s media empire is hurting; as is their finance arm.
it will be interesting to see if olbermann addresses the oreilly issue when he returns.
Digital Amish
Oh Man! The image of a bunch of National Guard trucks rolling into town and setting up tents to innoculate the ‘citizens’. Oh, would that it happen just so I can watch Glenn Becks go into convulsions while his head explodes.
Mousebumples
@Jennie: Re: testing for H1N1
My understanding is that since swine flu is pretty much the only flu circulating at this time of year, many doctors are presuming that people who present with symptoms have swine flu, especially if there was a previously exposed case in the area.
I believe that the main reasons for not testing everyone who presents with symptoms are due to cost and perhaps a lack of availability of testing locations.
I read somewhere that Wisconsin (my state) has the highest number of confirmed cases in the nation – or did a few weeks ago, at least. However, we have multiple labs in the state that are capable of testing for H1N1 and getting results back within 1-2 business days. Not sure if it’s a “medical culture” thing that is resulting in more tests being run, but from what I have heard, Wisconsin is testing more suspected cases than other states.
geg6
linda: And don’t forget that Murdoch’s empire has been having some pretty major financial woes itself. Yes, FOX News is reaping the ratings of the damned, but much of his print empire is bleeding. And I’m not sure how well FOX (other than AI, which has seen rather large ratings erosion) and FOX Sports do financially. I get why it seems on one hand a good business decision. But it also undercuts what makes their brands unique. O’Reilly and Olberman end up looking like Dobermans that are all bark and no bite, a situation that does nothing but hurt their most saleable brands. Unless, of course, they thought they could keep it all secret. In which case, they are all just idiots. Which is probably the truth of the matter.
David
Don’t forget the Medical Marijuana Mandate clause on page 11,278,677 in the Obamacare Bill that makes it illegal NOT to be high.
Keith G
Happy August from a very warm Houston. Initially, I agree that RM can now stand on her own, but KO is not going anywhere. Money is money and its not like MTP is making any for GE. ttfn.
ps. Will there be a big August news story that comes out of nowhere takes over the news?
TR
Ot, but this is too hysterical not to share:
Paul Campos, the resident Mickey Kaus manchild of Lawyers Guns and Money, has a post up in which he insists that “fat rights” are the new “gay rights.” No, seriously.
As the commenters pile on, he nails himself to the cross of transfats as a martyr to his movement. What a pathetic douchebag.
linda
@geg6:
rupert loses tens of millions annually on the nypost; i don’t think it’s ever turned a profit in the years he’s owned it.
and it looks like he’s gradually degrading the reporting of the wsj (i know the editorial page is already batshit).
El Cid
In the USA Today weekend edition there’s a full page ad from the “Better Government Association” which basically repeats every one of the circulating right wing charges against Democrats — i.e., our economy collapsed because Jimmy Carter and Janet Reno made the government give homes to people who couldn’t afford them, blah blah blah. It’s like one of those full-page ads about the crazy dude who thinks he has the anti-Einstein equation or the “Natural Law” freaks.
geg6
OMG, I just saw the most stunningly stupid segment on the Saturday Early Show in CBS. It was marking the 6-month anniversary of the Obama presidency and a “bipartisan” group of pundits giving him a grade. The participants were Bay Buchanan on the right, Mark Halperin as the moderate, and (get this) Lanny fucking Davis! as the progressive. I hate our MSM.
El Cid
Oh, good, the nut squad has a website and a plan. And the full page ad is online here:
——————————————-
Better Government Association (BGA) to Launch Massive Ad Campaign
CANTON, Ohio, July 27 /PRNewswire/ — The Better Government Association (BGA), a newly formed 501 C4 non-profit association, announced today it will be making a huge splash into the debate on Cap-and-Trade, national health care and the socialist policies of the Obama Administration and the Democrats with a nationwide ad campaign using television, radio, newspapers, Internet and direct mail across the country.
The Better Government Association has been formed to counter the assault on conservatism and capitalism. The BGA’s stated purpose is to provide the organization lacking on the part of conservative capitalists to compete with the ultra organization of liberal socialists.
The Better Government Association has hired the best marketing experts in the world to produce advertising that will present the facts and persuade the public to turn against the socialized policies, including national health care, of the Obama Administration and Congress.
The mission of the BGA will be:
1. To inform the public on the fallacies of the information being spread by the liberal socialist organizations and the facts on capitalism versus socialism;
2. To promote conservative capitalist candidates for public office at all levels;
3. To file lawsuits against unconstitutional laws and actions by government and counter-lawsuits to those lawsuits filed by the liberal socialist organizations;
and
4. To form grassroots organizations to compete with ACORN.
Liberal socialists have triumphed over conservative capitalists in recent years because they are well organized through labor unions, government employee unions, public school teacher unions, the entertainment industry unions, radical environmental organizations, plaintiff attorney organizations, ACORN, Media Matters and Moveon.org.
They also get mega-funding from individuals like George Soros and have developed very advanced fundraising methods including internet fundraising.
Conservative capitalists lack this intricate network of support and are very poorly organized. The BGA will step into this void and provide the leadership and advertising expertise necessary to factually educate the public as to the benefits of capitalism versus the dangerous consequences of liberal socialism being promoted by Barack Obama, his numerous Czars and the Congress.
The initial media launch will be the first step taken by BGA to accomplish its mission. The BGA has planned an aggressive fundraising campaign to recruit millions of grassroots members who will join together to send a message to Congress and the Administration that the conversion from capitalism to socialism is not the “Change” we were promised. Membership in The Better Government Association is free.
If you are interested in learning more about The Better Government Association, receive a press kit or to book an interview with BGA Leadership, please contact Lance Davis at the number above.
Va Highlander
@geg6: And don’t forget the mini-beer bash on Pennsylvania Ave, last Thursday.
According to at least one source, that was a relatively eventful day in Honduras:
Thursday, Bloody Thursday in Honduras
Olliander
I thought this was hysterical (animal-lovers only):
http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Humor/otherhumor/dog_cat_diary.htm
A Mom Anon
@Va Highlander:
Holy Crap. That whole series of posts from Honduras is worth the read,I think. Hell,I never know who the hell to trust anymore on this stuff. Which is one thing our fucking worthless MSM is responsible for,after awhile it becomes difficult to know who the hell is trustworthy. I blame US media for that entirely. Assholes.
Now,is the Honduras war/unrest/uprising a direct or indirect result of US companies being the abusive assholes they often prove themselves to be? Chiquita doesn’t have a stellar record on this one,I doubt many other companies do.
Bill H
At age 66 I am not all that concerned about becoming autistic.
El Cid
Evidence will tell, but in my view, it’s probably indirect. The Honduran government, like Guatemala’s, is regularly described by scholars as having a civilian government which is like a “thin veneer” over an oligarcy-linked military.
People there — elites, oligarchs, multinational companies — generally don’t want the military asserting itself back into direct rule. And, look, whatever spin people want to give about this or that court order or post-violent-coup Congress vote, this was a violent, military coup d’etat and everyone there knows who’s really in charge.
Ideally the oligarchs and those with similar interests would rather have a freely chosen government to do what they want it to do. Zelaya’s government was greatly departing from what they wanted it to do, and Zelaya was also clownishly incautious in thinking about the likely and predictable (and predicted) consequences of his inept challenges of the elites and the military.
I think part of what you’re seeing here is that the military, government, and oligarchic opposition to Zelaya didn’t really think this through, either.
Va Highlander
@A Mom Anon: It’s difficult to say what’s going on, when there are so few reports in the English press and little informed analysis that doesn’t depend on coup-supporting sources. Larison seems to fall into that category, much to my disappointment. Justin Raimondo, at antiwar.com, seems to strongly disagree with Larison and conventional wisdom on this issue.
A Mom Anon
@El Cid:
Thanks, I kinda figured that was the case but don’t know enough about South America to have a real clue.
Comrade Darkness
@El Cid:
5. to call for an elimination of soçialist farm subsidies
6. to call for the elimination of ridiculous u.s. trade barriers on cane sugar and bananas (little of which do we actually produce)
… No? Oh, just another bunch of luzer hypocrites then…
Yawn! Wake me when the real conservative pro-capitalists show up.
Va Highlander
@El Cid: I tend to agree: looks like it’s mostly indirect US involvement. Some on the far-left in this country have suggested that the Obama administration was somehow involved in the coup, but that seems really far-fetched. If memory serves, even Castro and Chavez made no such claim, for what that’s worth.
Honduras is owned and operated by something like ten families. It’s the quintessential “Banana Republic”. Their constitution, such as it is, only exists because Carter insisted they should at least have some pretence of democratic rule.
rs
Amy Goodman has been covering the Honduran coup pretty much daily on Democracy Now.
Some good print/internet sources of information are Counterpunch, ZNet, Upside Down World, and Postcards From the Revolution.
To paraphrase Steven Colbert, the truth has a leftist bias.
Va Highlander
@rs: Thanks. Didn’t know about Amy Goodwin.
I knew about CounterPunch’s coverage, through Al Giordano.
JerseyJeffersonian
As someone who suffers from asthma, you can bet that I will try and get these shots, both for the H1N1 and the seasonal flu. Having had a bout of pneumonia (before I was diagnosed as an asthmatic), as well as experience with what even bronchitis does to me indelibly etched in my memory, I do not mess around with this stuff. Asthma + serious respiratory infections can equal death. Even if they flew the vaccine in in black helicopters, I think I’ll still be rolling up my sleeve.
Brachiator
@WereBear:
Probably not. Increasingly, people under the age of 40 simply do not read newspapers and this, along with the collapse of the old newspaper advertising model, is killing newspapers.
On the other hand, there are troubling signs that large numbers of people need the crutch of right-wing propaganda.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/07/28/fncs-ratings-continue-climb-msnbc-olbermanns-fall
And this little tidbit is even more discouraging:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/july_ratings_fox_news_beats_msnbc_cnn_combined_in_total_day_and_prime_122858.asp#more
By the way, I don’t think this means that the country is becoming more conservative; I just think it indicates that conservatives are becoming more desperate, and want to cling to those media outlets that reinforce their fears and fantasies.
Unfortunately, I think that this kind of thing encourages the corporate suits at NBC to play follow-the-leader on the basis of a superficial reading of the ratings. And so this makes them more eager to want to try to throttle down someone like Olbermann.
Cool! This is what I want to see from a science and reality-based Obama Administraton.
cosanostradamus
.
Everybody knows them vaccines is nothin’ but a gummint plot to turn everybody librul! I’d druther break out in tusky hawgs then vote socialite!
Here’s you some actual pitchers of secret signs put out in the darkness by the socialites! It proofs thet Obama is a e-legal alien being!
.
Blue Raven
Oh, now come on, y’all. Nobody got to the parody about the injections carrying RFID chips as our Mark of the Beast?
Sentient Puddle
@Olbermann/O’Reilly feud: I wouldn’t expect either to comment on it. Olbermann took a vow of silence after the Tiller murder, saying that to speak of people like O’Reilly is to legitimize them, and he didn’t want to be doing that anymore.
And O’Reilly thinks that speaking Olbermann’s name will summon Death Eaters.
WMass
@TR: Campos is a homophobic fat douchebag.
Comrade Darkness
You know, I’ve always wanted to see the anti christ. He sounds exciting. If the birthers are lying about this, I’m going to be sadly disappointed.
El Cid
@Va Highlander: FWIW, I am myself on the far, far, far, far left, but although I heartily endorse having natural suspicions about U.S. foreign policy establishment meddling in various areas, I also believe in carefully analyzing local power structures which have their own motives and capabilities, and I also would want to look at the evidence for or against the alleged existence of some U.S. policy.
For example, I don’t particularly think it’s in the U.S. FPE’s interests to have the clownish Honduran military once again governing and setting the precedent that any aspiring military officer who wants to overthrow his country’s elected government just has to get a friendly court order or maybe friendly legislative vote or maybe just a very publicly saleable argument about the un-Constitutionality of somebody’s actions.
On the other hand, they don’t particularly like having someone like Zelaya in office, either, and U.S. diplomats have repeatedly gone out of their way in this period to say that, hey, um, we don’t back this, um, not legal thing, the coup thing, but we ain’t exactly crazy about Zelaya’s actions either.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
Sounds reasonable to me. I could never understand why otherwise reasonable sounding people would always fall back on the simplistic notion that the US is the only player on the foreign policy stage, and everyone else is just their passive victim.
There appear to be some foreign policy … experts … who believe that it is important to make sure that democratic processes be kept in place and election results honored even when the head of state turns out to be ineffective or corrupt.
someguy
Um, because it’s often true? See, e.g. Iran 1953-54, Guatemala & Lebanon 1956, VietNam 1963, Cambodia 1969-1973, Lebanon 1979-1983, ah fuck it most of Central America from 1875 onwards, Iraq 1990 (we precipitated that one when our ambassador gave Saddam the go-ahead), causing the fractures of Somalia and Rwanda in the early 90’s, then funding and training and arming bin Laden, and then leaving him to his own devices once the Soviets slunk out of Afghanistan in abject shame (as we will no doubt be forced to do in the near future). The there’s that Iraq thing again, and our current meddling in Iran, and… do I really have to continue?
El Cid
That can surely be true.
But when you say something like that, you have to remember that that is only one particular dimension of using power to control the actions of another nation’s government.
Sure, they want elected governments these days, post-Reagan, but they also want to control what those governments do.
Brachiator
@someguy:
RE: I could never understand why otherwise reasonable sounding people would always fall back on the simplistic notion that the US is the only player on the foreign policy stage, and everyone else is just their passive victim.
Yawn. Funny how the Iranian government still resents past British involvement in that country, so much so that they arrested a few Brits during the last election crisis. And then we have French, Soviet, Chinese and even Catholic Church involvement in Vietnam.
Whatever it is that you are trying to say about Somalia and Rwanda is near-wingnut wrong. And we could have a field day just on the topic of the proxy wars that the US, the Soviet Union and Cuba waged in Africa.
You at least acknowledge that the Soviets slunk out of Afghanistan. But how did they get there in the first place? At the invitation of the United States?
You also omit Saudi and Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan and their support of bin Laden.
And in the case of Pakistan, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic (1965), Iraq (the Chalabi connection) and elsewhere, you have examples of local political figures playing the US for chumps, playing up the communist or terrorist menace in order to advance their own agendas.
I could go on. But why bother? You have helped make my point.
Jill
#14: Yay! Another fan of “The Stand”.
Sanofi-Aventis is running TV ads for the vaccine and actually mentions Guillain-Barré syndrome as a rare side effect.
MNPundit
THANK GOD! I HAVE ASTHMA! OBAMA HAS NOT KILLED ME AFTER ALL!
I was worried. I am a sickly person, but not due to an auto immune disease, I just have crap genes. I would be dead if I’d been born anytime before 1950 so I really really wanted this vaccine.
Thank God.
El Cid
@Brachiator: I think by this point we just have too many layers of sarcasm and self-reference in these back and forths for me to really figure out what points people are making.
All I can say is that when possible it’s necessary to point out the different motivations and actions of various players in domestic and international relations, but, as complex as it was, none of it would in the slightest improve the case for, say, U.S.’ involvement in the wars against civilians in Southern Africa, mostly in alliance with the apartheid South African regime.
Dan
Anne-
Are you really a Thimerosal-causes-autism person? While i am not a fan of mercury being in anything we put in our bodies, the causal link of autism and thimerosal stands well outside of accepted science at this point.
If the left is standing on science regarding Climate Change and rightfully laughing at those who find some scientist that says Global Warming is a hoax, then that blade cuts both ways.
http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3793/4705/20155.aspx
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jun/06-why-does-vaccine-autism-controversy-live-on/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=
Several countries that have totally eliminated thimerosal are still experiencing autitsm rate increases. It is time to look elsewhere for an answer. Listen to reason, protect the herd and get your children vaccinated.
El Cid
What if the vaccine contains thiotimoline?
Brachiator
@El Cid:
All I can say is that when possible it’s necessary to point out the different motivations and actions of various players in domestic and international relations, but, as complex as it was, none of it would in the slightest improve the case for, say, U.S.’ involvement in the wars against civilians in Southern Africa, mostly in alliance with the apartheid South African regime.
Wow. What can I say? I simply do not understand the world view of someone who would gloss over South Africa’s vile invention and maintenance of apartheid in order to talk about US involvement, which is at best secondary, no matter how evil that US support was.
This kind of nonsense also allows you to ignore (if you even know about) South Africa’s involvement in destabilizing neighboring African governments in order to keep the ANC and other groups weak and off balance, and its efforts to thwart unified South African nationalism by keeping the Zulus and other South African groups in conflict with each other.
And of course, it was British colonial policy which set the groundwork for apartheid in the first place (see Wikipedia for a quick reference):
But again: My main point was not to defend United States foreign policy, but to dispute the childish notion fully endorsed by someguy and others that the United States is the only nation whose foreign policy meddling matters.
Then it would represent the holy grail of homeopathic nuttiness.
El Cid
@Brachiator: But I didn’t ignore it or gloss over it. And yes, I know about South Africa’s actions, and a lot of other policies, and a lot of other struggles which were going on both inside and outside South Africa, so if you want to mindlessly dismiss me while you make fucking irrelevant points because you think they’re the most germane to the conversation you want to have, and you want to think I’m some moron cartoon, then go ahead, you fucking jerk.
You’re absolutely right about one thing — you obviously can’t understand the world view of someone able to talk about all the levels of policy simultaneously, so generally I’ll try not to waste my time on you, simpleton douchebag. I know that when I was talking to some ANC members right after the fall of apartheid, they were able to keep a variety of levels of policy in their heads simultaneously without using up a box of tissues crying about how guilty they felt that some dork somewhere might think them too leftist or too U.S.-centric.
You have said absolutely nothing, absolutely fucking nothing, in all the sneering comments, just empty suggestions that I’m some simpleton who fits nicely into your critique of monomaniacal leftists.
One reason that people often concentrate on the role and impact of the U.S. is because a lot of people live in the U.S. and give a shit what it does.
Whether you like it or not, or think it’s the main point to talk about all the time, U.S. foreign policy in Southern Africa mattered. And you don’t have to ask me — just ask the apartheid state itself, douchebag. Of course it wasn’t magic involvement which controlled the fall of every sparrow, as they learned from Cuito Cuanavale.
bjacques
I’ve always been bothered by the whole “the CIA armed Osama bin Laden and the Taliban” thing. Bin Laden wasn’t even a player when the US was shipping Stingers to the Afghan rebels(mid-late 1980s), and the Taliban didn’t exist then. The US backed psychotic scum like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other sleazy warlords.
After 1989, the warlords started^H^H^H^H^Hwent back to fighting among themselves. The Taliban turned up in 1995, long after the US lost interest in Afghanistan, and coming out of Waziristan, they were more likely to have been assisted by the Pakistan intelligence service ISI (which I understand to be the case) than by the CIA.
Bin Laden turned up later, after the Taliban had conquered most of the country. He had plenty of his own money and the Taliban had the ISI connections, so why need the CIA? But he never really got along with the Taliban, who saw him as an opportunistic city slicker. If he hadn’t offed that warlord on the Taliban’s behalf earlier 2001, they would have kicked him out of the country.
It’s like the story that Bush supported the Taliban and gave them $44 million. It was to get rid of opium plantations and the Taliban weren’t supposed to use it for anything else. With those restrictions, I doubt the money ever got sent.
But if anyone has linkies disproving the above, please post them.
brantl
Does anybody besides me know that there was a big deal about there being thimerosol in the vaccines for the animals we eat, and that all of those were taken out, while they left them in, for humans?
I hear loads of people making fun of the so-called anit-vaccine people (when many of them are really anti-thimerosol people, not anti-vaccine people) and they never mention this, nor the CDC study that RFK, Jr. got ahold of, that showed a much higher incidence of autism, when higher doses of thimerosol were present in young kids.
If thimerosol is so goddamn safe, why aren’t they giving it to food animals, anymore? And what was so urgent about taking it out of food-animal vaccines?
grendelkhan
I didn’t know that. But then I looked it up, and apparently there’s thimerosal in a standard tetanus vaccine for goats, to pick something at random. So it’s possible that I didn’t know that because it’s wrong.
This is likely for the same reason that folks make fun of creationists or other sorts of denialists–a mean-spirited desire to mock people who, when confronted with some pretty strong cognitive dissonance or a feeling of powerlessness, end up clinging vociferously to ideas that can accurately be described as incoherent.
It’s because the two categories tend to mesh. There’s synergy there.
Because they’re giving it to food animals, does that mean it is so goddamn safe?
If you’re wondering why the anti-vaccine movement is such an object of mockery, your post provides some clues–if you take a claim, fail to research it and start wildly waving your arms about how terrible it is, you’ll come off looking a bit foolish.