One of my favorite bumper stickers has this message: If you think you can trust the government, ask an Indian (Native American). It’s a good reminder.
Lately, the mainstream media has warned us against conspiracy theorists. Against distrusting government and media narratives. And yet recently (and finally!) the Wall Street Journal came clean in an article that probed President Biden’s declining stamina and mental health. The article is recounted here with venomous humor by Jimmy Dore.
I wrote in 2019 that Biden’s debate performance then, with his rambling about turning on record players and the like, suggested a diminishing capacity to serve as president. Many people shared those concerns, but the Democrats carefully stage-managed Biden, keeping him largely in Covid lockdown as he ran for the presidency and won. Over the last four years, we’ve witnessed many, many episodes of Biden’s continuing decline, most clearly during his debate earlier this year with President-elect Trump. Yet, until that debate, and even after in some cases, we were told not to believe our lying eyes about Biden’s sorry performance.
Now, with lame duck Biden slowly making his way out the door (assuming he doesn’t lose his way), we’re finally being told by the Wall Street Journal that he really wasn’t up to the job for the last four years.
I wonder why people don’t trust the government?
Another example: Recently, the government “discovered” the U.S. military had 2000 troops in Syria, not the 900 or so that Pentagon spokespeople had been telling us about for the last couple of years. What happened? Where did these extra 1100 troops come from? Not only can’t the Pentagon pass a financial audit (seven straight years of failures!), it can’t even count its troops.
Of course, the Pentagon knew all along that it had 2000 or so troops in Syria. They simply lied to us, full stop.
Will anyone be called on the carpet and punished for this lie? Of course not. When you lie for the government, you get promoted. When you reveal truth to the American people (Edward Snowden, for example), you get punished.
So, while not everything is a conspiracy, it’s always a good idea to question authority. Incredibly, whether led ostensibly by Biden or Trump, the federal government is something less than trustworthy. And if you don’t believe me, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to explore the white man’s many broken promises to Native Americans.
I caught this headline in the morning send-out for the New York Times:
It Can Be Lonely to Have a Middle-of-the Road Opinion on the Middle East
Some college students and faculty members are seeking space for nuanced perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war on deeply divided campuses.
See, it’s a “war” between Israel and Hamas, and what’s really needed here is “space” for “nuanced perspectives.”
Don’t you want to have “a middle of the road opinion” on genocide in Gaza? Don’t you want to explore all the “nuances” of Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza, where the death toll is likely to have reached 200,000 and counting? (Or not counting, since apparently Palestinian deaths don’t count for much.)
Here are some “nuances”: As Chris Hedges recently noted, the genocide in Gaza resembles that of Armenians during World War I. It’s happening in the open, unlike the Holocaust which the Nazis tried to hide, yet not enough people, especially in the West, are seeking to stop it.
In fact, the U.S. government is deeply complicit in the genocide in Gaza, arming Israel and providing military and diplomatic cover at a cost of scores of billions of dollars (when you factor in maintaining two carrier strike groups in the region as well as all the weapons shipments to Israel).
The intent is obvious: the creation of a Greater Israel in which Gaza and the West Bank cease to exist as lands for a Palestinian state. The “nuance” here is a “no-state solution,” as Palestinians are killed or forced from their land in the name of Israel’s “right to exist.” The fall of the Syrian government, meanwhile, sees Israel expanding into the Golan Heights and beyond, also in the name of protecting Israel.
It’s a land grab, a water grab, a gas reserves grab, a power grab, all for Israel and its big brother, the USA. It’s an illustration of Thucydides’ lesson that “The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.” Israel, supported wholeheartedly by the U.S. government, is strong; the Palestinians (and now the Syrians) are weak; so the latter suffer.
The New York Times article suggests I should be looking for “middle ground” here, but I have news for them: Israel has already seized and occupied it.
The new “Superman” movie trailer has dropped, and it hit me in the feels.
I grew up watching reruns of those old “Adventures of Superman” episodes starring George Reeves. Then Christopher Reeve came along and embodied the character to perfection in the 1978 film. (To me, Reeve will always be the definitive Superman, just as Sean Connery is the definitive James Bond.) I’ve seen other Superman movies and shows; my wife and I enjoyed watching “Smallville,” a coming-of-age story for the character that was generally thoughtful and interesting. More recently, Henry Cavill made a compelling Superman, though he lacked the easy charm of Christopher Reeve.
I don’t know what it is about Superman—he’s always been my favorite superhero. I think it’s his nobility, his grace, his compassion for the weakest among us. The new trailer shows a flicker of a scene where Superman rescues a young girl from certain death. That, in a flash, is Superman.
There’s one scene in “Superman” with Christopher Reeve that stays with me: when he tells Lois Lane (played with a perfect mix of wide-eyed wonder and hardboiled cynicism by Margot Kidder) that he’s come to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way” and Lane laughs, telling him he’s going to end up fighting every elected official in the country. In a post-Watergate climate, that line resonated with me then; it hits home even more so today.
As a teenager in the 1970s, I had hopes America stood for something, even after the disastrous wars in Southeast Asia, the crimes of Nixon and Kissinger, and all the rest. I thought my country aspired to be something better than what it was.
It’s exceedingly hard to entertain such notions in 2024. America’s war budget just hit nearly $900 billion as Biden/Trump and the Congress continue to support mass murder in Gaza.
I wish a real Superman existed to step in front of all the missiles and bombs we send to Israel that are being used to kill young girls and boys. Better yet, why can’t we be our own Superman and stop the flow of these awful weapons that enable the worst atrocities? Why don’t we act?
Truth, justice, and the American way: words that used to mean something to me. Words that can mean something again, if only we could channel some of the heart, the goodness, and the strength of will of a comic book character known as Superman.
It’s always the right time to stop building more weapons of mass destruction
William Astore and Matthew Hoh
[Note to readers: Back in early September, Congressman Mike Turner penned an op-ed for the “liberal” New York Times supporting a massive “investment” in new nuclear weapons. Matt Hoh and I quickly submitted letters to the Times to protest this op-ed and its arguments; the Times ignored them. We then wrote our own op-ed below, shopping it to various mainstream media outlets without success. Here it finally appears for the first time.]
*****
Representative Mike Turner’s essay on nuclear weapons in The New York Times (We Must Invest in Our Aging Nuclear Arsenal, September 6, 2024) is dangerously loyal to counterproductive US national security policies and narratives.
Turner’s lamentation over foreign nuclear weapons programs ignores destabilizing US arms control choices this century. The US spends more on nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined. Its $1.7 trillion modernization program (the Sentinel ICBM; the B-21 Raider bomber; Columbia-class nuclear submarines) has done little more than upset the decades-long nuclear deterrence balance among nations.
In his essay, Turner neglects to mention the US government’s unilateral withdrawal from multiple arms control treaties. Then-Senator Joe Biden rightly predicted the effects of George W. Bush’s abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty: “A year ago [in 2000], it was widely reported that our intelligence community had concluded that pulling out of ABM would prompt the Chinese to increase their nuclear arsenal tenfold.” The Chinese are now clearly headed in that escalatory direction.
To prevent the apocalyptic consequences of yet another nuclear arms race, the US should act to decrease “investments” in new weapons while cutting current arsenals by negotiating and enacting new arms reduction treaties. Together, the US and Russia already possess ten thousand nuclear warheads, enough to destroy life on earth and several other earth-sized planets. We need desperately to divest from nuclear weapons, not “invest” in them.
Consider as well that America’s current nuclear triad, especially the Navy’s Trident submarine force, is potent, survivable, and more than sufficient to deter any conceivable adversary.
Simply put, the US must stop building genocidal nuclear weapons. It must instead renew international efforts and treaties to downsize these dreadful and dangerous arsenals. Spending yet more trillions on more world-shattering nukes is worse than a mistake—it’s a crime against humanity.
Here we are haunted by the words of Hans Bethe, who worked on the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb during World War II. The first reaction Bethe said he’d had after Hiroshima was one of fulfillment—that the project they had worked on for so long had succeeded. The second reaction, he said, was one of shock and awe: “What have we done? What have we done,” he repeated. And the third reaction: It should never be done again.
That is the imperative here. The US must act so that future Hiroshimas will never happen.
It’s not America’s fate alone that’s at stake here, but the fate of humanity itself, and indeed most life on earth, as only a few dozen thermonuclear warheads exploding would likely produce nuclear winter and an eventual “body count” in the billions.
During the First Cold War, one heard it said: “Better dead than red.” That mentality remains, even as the “reds” today are more capitalist than communist. Meanwhile, the weapons makers for the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), in their greed, are the adversary within. From Israel and events in Gaza, we’ve learned the MICC will literally empower a people to commit mass murder. With more and newer thermonuclear weapons, the MICC may yet kill the world.
Higher quarterly profits will mean little when everybody is dead.
During the Vietnam War, a US Army major was heard to say: “We had to destroy the town to save it [from communism].” If America can destroy towns in Vietnam to “save” them from communism, if it can facilitate the destruction of Gaza to “save” it from Hamas, it can similarly destroy the earth to “save” it from China, or Russia, or some other “threat.” That is the indefensible (il)logic of building yet more weapons of mass destruction.
Contra Congressman Turner, there is no logical, sensible, defensible reason for America’s proposed “investment” in new nuclear weapons. But there are nearly two trillion reasons why it’s going forward, because that’s the projected total cost of modernizing America’s nuclear triad. Money talks—loudly, explosively, perhaps catastrophically.
Today, more than half of US federal discretionary spending is devoted to war and weapons. Americans, in essence, live both in a permanent war state and a persistent state of war. As bad as that reality is, a state of nuclear war is unimaginable and must not be allowed to happen.
At the height of the Cold War, one of us served in Cheyenne Mountain, America’s nuclear command center, and witnessed a simulated nuclear attack on the US. Even on the primitive monitors the Air Force had back in 1986, seeing Soviet missile tracks crossing the North Pole and terminating at American cities was unforgettable.
A generation earlier, Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” tragically noted in 1965 that it was 20 years too late to control nuclear arms. Those efforts, he said, should have been started “the day after Trinity” in July of 1945.
Let’s not make it 80 years too late. Congressman Turner is exactly wrong here. We must cut America’s nuclear arsenal and pursue new nuclear disarmament treaties. Never should our children be haunted as we were (and still are) by the darkness and doom of radioactive mushroom clouds.
William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and historian, is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network.
Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps captain and State Department official, resigned in protest in 2009 against America’s ill-conceived war in Afghanistan. He is Associate Director at the Eisenhower Media Network.
Private health insurers make money denying care–not providing it
Luigi Mangione, the young man who shot and killed a senior health insurance executive, is emerging as a folk hero of sorts in America. This requires some explanation for people outside of America.
Luigi Mangione
Most peer countries to the United States have national health care systems. Countries like Britain, Germany, France, Japan, New Zealand, and the like. These national health care systems, run by the government, are not perfect, but overall they are cheaper and produce better results for patients than the American system, where health care is basically wealth care for the rich and privileged.
America primarily has a privatized health care system where profit is the prime directive. (Programs like Medicare* and Medicaid are a public-private partnership and are government-funded; the former focuses on people 65 and older, the latter on the poorest of Americans.) Most Americans get their private health insurance with their job, else they’re required to buy private health insurance on their own nickel. These health insurance plans are expensive and often come with high deductibles and co-pays.
So, for example, when you visit a doctor for a routine appointment, your co-pay is likely between $50 and $100 per visit. If you get seriously sick, break a bone, etc., your health insurance provider may not start paying your bills until a certain yearly deductible is met, which may sit between $5000 and $10,000. Not surprisingly with these deductibles, co-pays, and the like, Americans often declare bankruptcy due to medical bills even when they have health insurance and are in theory “covered.”
A quick Google search reveals that an unsubsidized private health care plan for a family of four in America cost an average of $24,000 a year in 2023. Other figures suggest a cost of roughly $18,000 a year, but it depends on what state you live in as well as your age. The various plans that you can buy are quite complicated and include the aforementioned deductibles, co-pays, and other complexities. Employer-based plans cost less; perhaps in the neighborhood of $6000 to $8000 per year.
Again, health insurers’ #1 priority isn’t to provide health care. It’s to make money for shareholders—and for the senior executives in the industry. So their profit-driven approach to claims is the now infamous “deny, delay, depose (or defend)” strategy. As often as possible, they seek to deny claims outright, forcing sick and desperate people to fight an incomprehensible bureaucracy shrouded in fine-print legalese. Or they seek to delay payment on claims. Or they take Americans to court (“defend and depose”), forcing people to hire lawyers (quite expensive) while aiming for the quickest and cheapest settlement.
For the insurers, this strategy makes all the sense in the world. They are in this business to maximize profits and earnings, not to provide generous health care benefits.
Efforts to create a fairer and more just system for Americans have failed due to political corruption at the highest levels as well as propaganda (remember those rumored “death panels” if the government ran health care). The idea of a national non-profit healthcare system is nothing new; the Truman administration advocated for it after World War II, and various other proposals were floated by LBJ in the 1960s, the Clintons in the 1990s, and even tepidly by the ultimate sellout Barack Obama with his Affordable Care Act, which is unaffordable for many and less than generous with its care. These and similar efforts have failed as Big Pharma, the AMA, health insurers, and other forces have combined to exert tremendous pressure so as to prevent meaningful reforms that would cut into their profits, salaries, and market share.
Basically, the U.S. health wealth care system costs roughly double that of comparable countries with worse outcomes for patients. Again, this isn’t a surprising result, since the health and well-being of patients isn’t the guiding priority. It never has been. The U.S. system is all about producing the highest possible salaries and profits for Big Pharma, for health insurers, for privileged doctors (specialists often make yearly salaries in the high six-figures), and for all the other stakeholders (and shareholders) in the current system.
Here in America, the Hippocratic oath of “first do no harm” in medicine doesn’t apply. Our oath is the Gordon Gekko one of “Greed is good.” It doesn’t matter if people go bankrupt or die as a result. It’s wealth care, not health care, silly!
It’s unlikely the Trump administration will do anything to change this. Its top priority seems to be the expulsion of immigrants. Members of Congress are completely in the pocket of Big Pharma, the health insurers, and powerful medical lobbies, so don’t look for meaningful change there.
That’s why so many Americans, deeply frustrated with an exploitative system of healthwealth care, where costs rise year by year as benefits shrink, sympathize with Luigi Mangione, even if they disagree with his murderous method of expressing his anger and disgust.
Put bleakly, America’s health wealth care system is another way of enriching the few while impoverishing the rest. It is also a form of social control. (Act out, protest—lose your job, your health care, maybe your life.) Only the most revolutionary acts are likely to change this system. That is exactly why the government, the mainstream media, and corporate elites are acting to suppress sympathy for Mangione.
Consider this article by Ken Klippenstein about a mom who, frustrated with her health insurer, repeated “deny-delay-depose” while saying “you people are next” on the phone; she quickly apologized, but not before the police and FBI were called in and charged her with threatening “an act of terrorism.”
Know your place, Americans. Stay supine and obedient or they’ll take away your health insurance. Better yet, they’ll finally give you affordable health care—in prison.
Most people think Medicare is a government program. That’s only partly true. While Congress created Medicare, and continues to develop Medicare coverage and appeal rules, decisions to pay claims are actually made by private companies. The government does not make those decisions. This was one of the compromises made in order to pass Medicare in 1965 – and the public-private partnership continues to date.
Indeed, the entities granting or denying coverage, and those deciding whether or not to pay claims, are mostly private insurance companies. For example, Anthem is the parent company of “National Government Services,” one of the major Medicare claims administrators. Another Medicare administrative contractor, “MAXIMUS,” is a for-profit company that helps state, federal and foreign governments administer programs.
In addition, about 30% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in private “Medicare Advantage” plans. These plans are also run by private companies, mostly within the insurance industry, and they make Medicare initial coverage decisions for their enrollees.
We know that when Medicare is working right and covering necessary care, everyone is content. But, if coverage is denied unfairly… don’t blame the government. It’s probably not “Medicare” that made the decision; it’s most likely a private insurance company that’s paid by Medicare to make coverage decisions.
Thanks to a reader, Sally Moore, for pointing out the public-private nature of Medicare. It’s more complicated than I thought—I should have known better.
Update: A classic cartoon from Tom Tomorrow seems appropriate here:
The Stupidity of the Sentinel ICBM and the B-21 Raider Bomber
My fellow Americans, your government wants to spend nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal. Modernization, of course, is a euphemism. And the Pentagon actually uses the word “invest” rather than “spend.” The dividends on this “investment” go to the weapons makers, obviously, not to the American people.
Let’s first consider the Sentinel ICBM; the military wants to buy 400+ of these and stuff them in fixed silos in places like Wyoming and North Dakota. Land-based ICBMs were (among other things) obsolete by the 1970s; that’s why the MX was developed as a mobile system under President Jimmy Carter. Fortunately, the shell-game idea of moving nuclear missiles around by truck or rail was too dear and dumb even for the government. You don’t “modernize” that which is obsolete and redundant (and escalatory due to its inherent vulnerability). The smart move here is to eliminate land-based ICBMs.
Speaking as a retired Air Force officer, my old service will always want more of everything, including that which is obsolete. It’s all about budgetary share. No enemy is more to be dominated than the other services, who are also competing for money.
The B-21 Raider, with American flag (Northrop Grumman photo)
Similarly, strategic bombers to drop nuclear bombs (or even to launch cruise missiles) are not needed for nuclear deterrence. The whole idea of “penetrating” strategic bombers was obsolete by the late 1970s, which is why President Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber (it was revived by Ronald Reagan). We simply don’t need more strategic nuclear bombers–but the AF will always want them. If pilots can fly it (even if they have to do it remotely, as with drones), the AF wants it. Who cares if the B-21 will cost roughly $1 billion per plane when it’s finally fielded?
There is no need for the Sentinel or Raider. But the Air Force will fight until doomsday to protect its budgetary authority and the pilot and command billets that come with nuke missile fields and planes.
Let’s never forget the power of the industrial side of the military-industrial complex as well. There are hundreds—even thousands— of billions of dollars at stake here, so of course industry will fight to the end (of all of us) for the money. Weapons makers will spend millions on lobbyists, and millions more to buy politicians, to make billions in return. The profit margin here is better than crypto or most anything, actually.
They say alchemists were wrong that lead could be turned into gold, but every day the lead of bullets is sold, earning gold for the weapons makers, so alchemy is real after all. Now America’s weapons makers are turning radioactive uranium and plutonium into nearly $2 trillion in gold (or paper money, at least), the ultimate alchemical trick.
Liberals at The Nation Applaud Joe Biden for Lying
At The Nation, Elie Mystal has an article, “Of Course Joe Biden Was Right to Pardon His Son.” Mystal’s argument, such as it is, asserts that Republicans are worse than Democrats when it comes to hypocrisy and persecuting their rivals, so Joe Biden was right to shield his son from their partisan efforts to persecute him. In a nutshell, the argument is that Trump’s done worse, plus Biden is a “loving father,” so that makes the pardon justifiable.
He loves his son, Trump is worse, and that’s all you need to know.
It’s a mind-boggling “argument,” which got me to write this short note to the editor:
That Joe Biden was right to pardon Hunter isn’t as questionable as the nature of the pardon given. The pardon is sweeping, covering 11 years, and open-ended, covering just about every conceivable federal crime. It’s likely no accident it begins in 2014, when Hunter started on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, where he “earned” $1 million a year. The sweeping nature of the pardon suggests that much is being swept under the rug here, especially Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine and China.
More than this, however, is President Biden’s integrity. Time and time again, Joe Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son under any circumstances. That he trusted the justice system and jury trials. Those assertions now stand revealed as lies.
In his article, Elie Mystal says it’s all about power here. Perhaps he should think about justice and integrity as well.
I can see Joe Biden pardoning Hunter for specific crimes (like firearm charges) that he believes are overdrawn, but an eleven-year blanket pardon that coincides with Hunter’s highly questionable actions in regards to Ukraine? After Biden had sworn, again and again, he was not going to pardon Hunter for anything?
That Elie Mystal, the Nation’s justice expert (!), can applaud Joe Biden here is truly sad. Come on. Claiming that “Trump worse” or that Biden’s a “loving father” is no excuse for anything.
Like too many people, I sometimes make the mistake of talking about nuclear war, when it’s really annihilation and genocide we’re talking about.
Wars have winners and losers. In nuclear “war,” everyone loses. The planet loses. Life loses and death triumphs on a scale we simply can’t imagine.
Language is so important here. I grew up learning about nuclear exchanges. EXCHANGES! The U.S. military talks of nuclear modernization and “investing” in nukes when the only dividend of this “investment” is mass death.
One of the few honest acronyms is MAD, or mutually assured destruction. Lately, it’s an acronym that’s largely disappeared from American discourse.
More than anything, though, realistic images of a nuclear attack are perhaps the most compelling evidence against building more nukes, as in this powerful and unforgettable scene from Terminator 2:
To me, nothing beats that scene. That is nuclear “war.”
The U.S. has over 5000 nuclear weapons; the Russians close to 6000. That’s more than enough to destroy the earth and a few other earth-sized planets. Imagine the scene above repeated eleven thousand times on our planet.
The insanity, the immorality of spending another $2 trillion on new nukes … well, it boggles my mind. We’ve become like the mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, worshipping the bomb, acolytes of death and destruction.
If we all don’t end up killing ourselves and the planet in “an exchange,” we’ll likely degenerate into utter barbarism, as depicted in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. And even that grim novel has a life-affirming ending that is most unlikely.
Amazingly, after I wrote the above passages about nuclear “war” and “exchanges,” I came across Admiral TR Buchanan’s recent keynote address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he uses the word “exchange” in a remarkably banal (and frightening!) way.
BUCHANAN: Yeah, so it’s certainly complex because we go down a lot of different avenues to talk about what is the condition of the United States in a post-nuclear exchange environment. And that is a place that’s a place we’d like to avoid, right? And so when we talk about non-nuclear and nuclear capabilities, we certainly don’t want to have an exchange, right?
I think everybody would agree if we have to have an exchange, then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States. So it’s terms that are most acceptable to the United States that puts us in a position to continue to lead the world, right? So we’re largely viewed as the world leader.
And do we lead the world in an area where we’ve considered loss? The answer is no, right? And so it would be to a point where we would maintain sufficient – we’d have to have sufficient capability.
We’d have to have reserve capacity. You wouldn’t expend all of your resources to gain winning, right? Because then you have nothing to deter from at that point.
So very complex problem, of course. And as I think many people understand, nuclear weapons are political weapons. I think Susan Rice said that at one point.
The motto of Admiral Buchanan might be: We had to destroy the world in order to lead it. Buchanan here is less sane than General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove.
This admiral thinks we might have to have “an exchange” with Russia, and that, if we do, we could do so “in terms that are most acceptable to the United States,” and that even after “an exchange,” the U.S. can still “continue to lead the world.”
Truly this is the banality of evil. I like how even after “the exchange,” we need to have a “reserve capacity” so that we can nuke the world again.
This is madness–sheer madness–but it’s received as probity and sane “strategic” thinking by the national security blob.
This guy was promoted to admiral precisely because he thinks this way. He thinks without thinking. With no humanity.
Well, as General Turgidson says in Dr. Strangelove, we might just get our hair mussed during a nuclear “exchange,” but does it really matter as long as we can kill more of them than us?
Bracing Views 