By Dave Lindorff

If you want to fix the disaster that is called the American
healthcare system, the first thing to do is to clearly point out what
its major failings are, and there are two of these.

The first is cost. America is one of the or possibly the most
expensive places in the world to get sick or injured. The corollary of
that is that it is one of the best places to make a killing if you are
in the medical business, whether as a doctor, a hospital company, a
pharmaceutical firm or a nursing home owner.

John Amato tries to watch as much TV news as he can, but even he is ready to throw in the towel on the Sunday talk show circle jerks:

I really can't take watching the Sunday morning shows anymore. It's infuriating to watch hosts like Bob Schieffer (not to single him out) just ask basic questions about the issues, have no facts on hand and rarely ask a follow up.

This week marked the anniversary of Tim Russert's death. I was no fan of Tim's - and give him considerable blame for projecting Cheney's pre-war lies - but at least he usually had "facts on hand" and asked follow-up questions. There's no one like him now.

Amato is right to call the Sunday shows "circle jerks." It's just the Beltway Elite masturbating each other.

So why should the rest of us watch? Let's all them we're not going to watch their "circle jerk." Instead we'll catch up with the best blogs of the week - or spend more time with our families.

Torture is what distinguishes civilization from barbarism. It is a moral issue that allows no compromise. Who supports torture, or refuses to oppose it?

Institutions 

Wall Street Journal (1/6/09)
Washington Post (1/7/09,1/10/09)  

"Pundits" and "Experts"

By Dave Lindorff

We’re been here before, many times.

The US causes massive civilian deaths through its indiscriminate use of heavy air power, and then tries to claim it’s the enemy’s fault for “hiding” among the civilians and “using them as shields.”

In Vietnam, where the US was fighting against a local revolutionary movement that was seeking to overthrow the puppet regime backed by America, American planes routinely bombed and napalmed villages, claiming that the Viet Cong were hiding amongst the peasants. Women, old men and children would die in droves—several million of them by the time that war was over--and we’d be told it was all the fault of the Communists, who, we were told, had no regard for innocent life.

On 12/10/07, ABC's Brian Ross reported as news the Big Lie by John Kiriakou (left) that one session of waterboarding "broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds."

That Big Lie convinced a majority of Americans that torture "works," even though there is not a shred of evidence that it produced life-saving intelligence.

By Dave Lindorff

As you’re mailing out that tax return again this year, it’s time to
remember once again how much of your hard-earned bucks are being devoted to destruction, imperialist domination, slaughter and
war, to funding ridiculous programs like the failed anti-missile
system, and also to supporting a massively bureaucratic and overstaffed
military.

Even with the current US budget predicted to hit a record $3.5
trillion, thanks to a whopping $800 billion, two-year economic stimulus
package, and with several hundred billion being poured into a group of
banks and the bottomless pit called AIG, the $800 billion budgeted for the military to date
(a figure that includes an $85 billion “supplemental” request for the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) represents 22% of total US spending.

By Dave Lindorff

When I was a 17-year-old kid in my senior year of high school, I
didn’t think much about Vietnam. It was 1967, the war was raging, but I
didn’t personally know anyone who was over there, Tet hadn’t happened
yet. If anything, the excitement of jungle warfare attracted my
interest more than anything (I had a .22 cal rifle, and liked to go off
in the woods and shoot at things, often, I’ll admit, imagining it was
an armed enemy.)

But then I had to do a major project in my humanities program and I
chose the Vietnam War. As I started researching this paper, which was
supposed to be a multi-media presentation, I ran across a series of
photos of civilian victims of American napalm bombing. These victims,
often, were women and children—even babies.

Our friends at FixCNBC delivered 20,000 petitions to CNBC HQ in New Jersey - after getting some last-minute support on Wall Street. Great work!!

By Dave Lindorff

For years, advocates of open government, mostly on the left, but
also on the right, have railed against the growing secrecy of the US
government. But the focus, particularly of left critics, has been on
the Intelligence budget, a $40+ billion “black box” that is completely
protected from public and even congressional scrutiny, and on large
swaths of the Pentagon budget, which are kept hidden allegedly for
“national security” reasons.

For the most part, the American public has adopted an ovine
attitude towards such secrecy, assuming that the “government knows
best.”

The "Bush Bust" is bankrupting many companies, including some big city newspapers. Some progressives, including Rachel Maddow, worry that layoffs of national reporters will diminish the amount of quality investigative reporting available to Americans. On Friday, she asked Greg Mitchell of E&P to "talk her down."