Dr. J.’s Short Shot, 10-17-06: “What’s the Deal, Joe?”

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Yesterday, October 16, 2006, Joe Lieberman, Republicrat of Connecticut, engaged in a televised debate with the Republican candidate, an obscure (and being made more obscure all the time by the national Republican Party) nobody named Alan Schlesinger, and the Democratic Candidate, Ned Lamont, for the Senate seat currently held by Lieberman (New York Times, 10-17-06). It should be noted that during the Democratic Primary campaign won by Lamont, the latter had pledged to support whichever Democrat won. Lieberman refused to do so. (Since he is not a Democrat, he was simply being honest after all.) In an interview with the Hartford Courant the previous Sunday, in response to a question about which party should be in control of Congress, Lieberman said: “Uh, I haven’t thought about that enough to give an answer.” Unfortunately, Lamont did not pursue that subject at the debate. He should have.

Lieberman is receiving major Republican money for his campaign and top-level Republican political consultants are on his staff. The Republicans are not doing this for nothing. My guess as to the deal, especially in the light of Lieberman’s Sunday comment? Should he be re-elected (a strong likelihood since he will get most of the Republican votes and some Democratic as well), he will pull a Jim Jeffords in reverse and declare himself as an Independent. He will then vote with the Republicans to organize the Senate. Since in the Senate ties are broken by the vote of the Vice-President, in order to take over that body, the Democrats will have to get 51 seats, without Lieberman. That, my friends, will reflect the “moral values” that Lieberman has been so fond of lecturing us all on for so many years.

Dr. J.’s Short Shot, 10-19-06: “Christopher Shays, ‘Liberal’ Republican”

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

“What is a ‘liberal” Republican?” is a question on everyone’s lips. Christopher Shays, a Republican Congressman from Connecticut, is often presented as an example. He presents himself that way, in fact. His current political advertising uses the word “independent” frequently, and never uses the word “Republican.” But he is a Republican.

So let’s see what an “independent” Republican actually is.  Commenting on the current, ever-widening Foley Scandal, the other day Shays had this to say in defense of House (Republican) Speaker Dennis Hastert (who happens to be up to eyeballs in the cover-up that may go back as far as five years). “Well, at least he didn’t kill anybody as Kennedy did back in 1969.” Oh my. Shays goes right back to the Republicans’ favorite whipping boy before Bill Clinton came along: Ted Kennedy. All the way back to 1969, in fact. That Kennedy didn’t actually kill Mary Jo Kopechne (and a coroner’s jury, asked to go over the case a number of times by the organized Right-Wing legal beagles of the time, made that determination) is for Shays beside the point.

There is absolutely no excuse for what Kennedy did. He got very drunk at a party attended by many young political staffers and hangers on. He married at the time to be sure, rather drunk, got into his car with a young lady who was not Kopechne. He didn’t notice that an even drunker girl, Kopechne, had very sadly crawled into the back-seat and fallen asleep. Negligence of the highest order? Yes. Active killing, murder even, as Shays implied, surely not. But as I have often said, it just most unfair to confuse any reactionaries, Republicans and otherwise, with facts. But there went Shays, with the standard Republican mantra: “Two wrongs make a right.”  And all the way back to 1969, as noted. They have been doing it with Clinton and Monica (as if an affair between two consenting adults somehow is at the same depth of immorality as an adult male hitting on teen-aged boys, but what the hey). And here Shays shows that, being a “liberal” Republican, he is not to be outdone.

Dr. J.’s Short Shot, 10-20-06: “The Revolt of the Career U.S. Justice Dept. Employees”

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH 

If the Republicans do manage to lose control of even one House of Congress this year despite their massive Grand Theft Election machine, it will be for the following reasons: Iraq, the Foley Scandal, and the Republican Corruption Scandal. As to the last, here we are less than three weeks before the elections and the announcements of new investigations of corrupt and yes, even criminal, Republicans keep coming out of the Georgite Department of Justice. How could that be? History will one day record, I am sure, the Revolt of the Career Employees in the Department of Justice (yes, there are a few left). For surely, A.G. Gonzales, et al, are not really interested in the possibilty that Republican Congressman Weldon engaged in criminal influence peddling on behalf of his daughter or that Republican New York Sate Attorney General candidate DiPirro illegally bugged her husband, looking for a girl friend. Or a bunch of others. Both Weldon and DiPirro actually claimed that the investigations are “politically motivated.”

Well, in a way they are, but not on the part of Georgite politicians. You can bet your sweet pitooty that the few honest career professional lawyers and investigators left in the DOJ and the FBI, that first Ashcroft and then Gonzales tried to crush and force out of the Department but failed to, surely are. Yes indeed. It is the Revolt of the Career Employees.

Dr. J.’s Short Shot, 10-23-06: Pres. Ahmadinejad and Pres. Bush, Connecting Through God

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Back in 2004, the then Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, reported on a very interesting conversation he had had with George Bush. Referring to the “War on Terrorism” (otherwise known as the War on Flanking Maneuvers) Bush told Abbas that: “God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the US elections will come and I will have to focus on them (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y).” (Well, Bush hasn’t done squat all about the Israel/Palestine conflict since the US 2004 elections either, but let’s not quibble.)  On October 19 past, President Ahmadinejad of Iran told us that: “I Have a Connection With God, Since God Said That the Infidels Will Have No Way to Harm the Believers (MEMRI, Special Dispatch-Iran, as reported by Iran News, 10-19-06).”  And so there we have it, a solution to the “Iran Crisis.” Both national leaders talk with the one God. Hopefully, the one God they talk to is the same one. Hopefully he/she will now tell both of them, “cool it, brothers. You have got to talk this thing out.” And then hopefully, since Bush will now know that he and Ahmadinejad both talk with God, Bush will pick up the phone and say, “You know, after my latest conversation with the almighty, who sends his (or her) best regards, I now know that we must talk first, bomb later, rather than the other way round. How about lunch?”

Dr. J.’s Short Shot, 10-27-06: How to Uncover the True US Energy Policy

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

At the beginning of the Bush Regime, there was a famous meeting of “The Energy Task Force” between the Vice-President elect and the leaders of the petroleum industry. It has long been assumed that at the meeting the agenda was set for the entire Georgite energy policy and program, from the planned invasion of Iraq to secure the Kurdish oil reserves, to the withdrawal from the Kyoto Treaty on curbing global warming, to the domestic environmental policies that have ravaged the US environment for the benefit of both the oil and the other extractive industries. From the time that the occurrence of the meeting became known until now, Cheney has steadfastly refused to release any details of what went on at the meeting, along the way defying a court order to do so. So what would make him release those details? Well now we know.

Cheney endorses simulated drowning. by Mark Tran, dated Friday October 27, 2006, and published in Guardian Unlimited

“The use of a form of torture known as waterboarding to gain information is a ‘no-brainer,’ the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, told a radio interviewer, it was reported today.
“Mr. Cheney implied that the technique – a form of simulated drowning – was used on the alleged September 11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is being held at Guantánamo Bay.
“In an interview with Scott Hennen, a conservative radio show host in Fargo, North Dakota, on Tuesday, Mr. Cheney agreed with the assertion that ‘a dunk in water’ could yield valuable intelligence from terror suspects.”