Scattershot

The latest thing among the corporate kiss-ups in Congress (and around the country, in places like Florida and Texas) are indemnifying companies from being sued. This thoroughly un-American — and strictly speaking, illegal — activity amounts to nothing less than criminal racketeering. These so-called representatives take huge amounts of cash from the corporations, then write laws to protect them from their just desserts. The latest example is the bill being put up just now to indemnify the pharmaceutical companies who made mercury-laced vaccines, which evidence points to as causing autism.

Here in Florida, the legislators (a pack of slavering lapdogs for the monied interests) successfully passed several such laws, including one that protects Publix from being sued for its malfeasance regarding the poisoning of dozens of community water supplies with the waste water from its dry-cleaning stores



On Iraq -- abysmally wrong. On the economy -- shockingly wrong. On Social Security -- hideously wrong. Yet still the president and still the vice-president. And still strutting around and making statements like they're the smartest people on the planet. And still somehow respected by 40% of the (not-paying-much-attention or tragically brainwashed) citizenry.



In George W. Bush, we have a president who has no interest or proclivity for anything literary, anything artistic, anything philosophical or anything scientific. Hell, he even admits that he doesn’t read the newspapers either. So it’s finally happened. Alfred E. Newman has grown up and become leader of the free world!



We’ve heard a lot about the yellow-cake plutonium that was supposedly offered to Iraq, and turned out to be based on forged papers, but what was never really discussed was who perpetrated the fraud. And, since this was his area of expertise, what role John Bolton played in the matter, either in assessment of the original claims -- before the president used the information in his State of the Union speech — or before that (if you get my ... drift).

And, while I’m re-incited on the topic, it was Bush’s claim of nuclear danger in that speech, along with Colin Powell’s U.N. "exposition," of WMD facilities — based almost entirely on a disreputable source named "Curveball" — that propelled us into this costly excursion. So, come to mention it, since it was his area of expertise (top State Department official on WMD) what was John Bolton’s role in the Curveball fiasco?



It’s great how moviemakers can go back 30 years or so and find films and plots and re-do them for a new generation of audiences. What’s not so great is when the leaders of this country do a remake of Vietnam in Iraq and work the same plotlines that led to such a national humiliation in the 70's. "War of liberation," "patriotic duty," "support the troops," "not gonna cut and run," "be over soon," and Cheney's recent "the enemy is in it’s last, desperate throes" are all culled from the Vietnam debacle, which cost 58,000 American lives, 5 million Vietnamese lives, and emotionally scarred over a million American kids. (Quick facts: Over 100,000 Vietnam vets committed suicide; over 350,000 were or are homeless; over 70% had or have serious mental problems.)

Many of the returning soldiers now are similarly affected, and there are websites detailing the tremendous percentage of them with serious life problems, not to mention financial distress due to their extended service time.