Rush could have some real problems finding a place to live in the style to which he has become accustomed. The US is the only developed nation that does not supply universal health coverage, and I don’t think he’ll be happy with most other options. He could choose anywhere in Africa, with the exception of South Africa, the last developed country (not including the U.S.) to institute universal coverage. South America has a very few places: Columbia and Bolivia spring to mind. He could go to Kazakhstan or Mongolia.

Iraq would certainly have homes and palaces that would meet Rush’s needs, and many of them are currently empty, but alas, Iraq has universal health care. Universal health care provided by the United States. Your tax dollars at work.

Good luck Rush. Don’t forget to write. Assuming you find a country with a post office.

Rush,or course, experienced American health care first hand after going to a hospital emergency room with chest pains during a recent visit to Hawaii. During his hospital stay, which included an angioplasty that found nothing seriously wrong, Rush said he experienced the “best health care the world has to offer.” But he made a point of letting his audience know that he paid for it himself, and that he doesn’t have health insurance. According to Rush, his bill was “less than the cheapest car that you will go out and buy today,” and that using health insurance would have resulted in Rush paying an additional 30%. Because he paid cash, “there was not one bureaucrat determining whether or not [he] was gonna get treatment. There wasn’t a death panel here.”

(It’s not clear what Rush, who owns a number of cars, thinks is “cheap”. One hopes he wasn’t thinking about his Maybach 57S, which retails at about $450,000.)

You see Rush’s point. Medical care provided in an American hospital: “the best”; health insurance: expensive, bureaucratic, not so good. And his 30% figure is a good estimate of the additional amount he might have paid an insurance company for the same medical services, though the real number for Rush (who would likely pay the individual rate, as opposed to those in a group plan), might have been as as high as 40%. In other words, had he used health insurance, only 60 to 70 cents of every dollar Rush paid would be used to actually pay for health services.

Rush, of course, isn’t concerned with fixing health insurance. In fact, he’s against doing anything with a system that works so well for him. But his basis for deciding we have the best health care system in the world is clear. There are good doctors and good hospitals in this country, available to those who have access. This is what all those politicians, Senators John Barrasso, Richard Shelby, Tom Coburn, Congressman John Boehner and the rest, mean when they talk about the quality of health care in America. It’s fine, great, the best, as long as you can pay for it. But don’t mess with it, because you might screw that up. It’s the reason Tom Coburn thinks it’s relevant that Canadian Danny Williams, the Newfoundland and Labrador premier, came to the United States for his heart surgery. It’s more proof that America provides some of the very best health care that (lots of) money can buy.

In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that this point of view is held by so many opponents of changes to the present system. I was blinded though, by my assumptions about Senators and Members of the House. They’re public servants, after all, and I assumed they’d judge the quality of American health care the way most other people and organizations — the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the Center for Disease Control, me, and probably you — would judge it; by comparing the health of those who live in America to the health of people living in other countries. By that standard, our health care system is poor, at least when compared to other developed nations.

The proof is unassailable. According the CIA World Fact Book, America falls behind 47 countries in life expectancy of it’s citizens, and behind 44 countries, including essentially all countries in the developed world, in infant mortality. According to a 2008 report funded by the Commonwealth Group, America was 14th of 14 nations surveyed in the percentage of deaths that could have been avoided with proper health care for people under the age of 75. A 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that our primary care also falls short; the US has the highest number of hospital admissions for asthma and diabetes. Physicians in other countries manage chronic diseases so that they don’t become critical medical problems requiring expensive hospitalization. The OECD also point out in the same report that only the United States, Turkey and Mexico fail to provide universal or near universal care. Other OECD nations achieve better health care results for all citizens, allocating an average of about 9% of their GDP to health; in contrast, the United States gets substandard results for about 16% of GDP.

But there’s good news. Now that it’s clear what reform opponents mean when they talk about the “best” health care, we just need to explain what the rest of us think is important, and what we want them to do. So contact your representatives in Congress and explain that:

We agree that American medicine is fine. But we want everyone in the country to have access to it. Judge the quality of America health care by the health of Americans.

As to our children: some of you think they should have legal protection from the moment of conception on. Surely, we can all agree that our children’s health should be protected after they’re born, and that fewer should die in the first year of life.

Oh, and one more thing — cost. The rest of the world gets quality universal health care and pays a lot less than we do. Can’t America do as well?

Opponents to changing the economics of health care in American proudly proclaim their belief that America’s medical services are the best in the world. Tell Congress that we want them to do the work necessary to ensure that American citizens get the benefit of all that quality car, so we all have the chance to be as healthy as the citizens of the rest of the developed world. To fail to do this, to not even try seems, well, unpatriotic.

There came a time when the Nation’s economy was very, very bad.  The Nation had a very large deficit, mostly because the government had to pay for the wars it fought with other nations.  Many people were out of work and many were hungry. There were still Banks in the Nation that had lots of money, but they weren’t willing to lend it, even though lending it would have helped the people of the Nation.

The Nation’s government was like most nation’s governments..  Some of the politicians were rich and some were poor, some educated and wise and some ignorant and foolish.  As with all politicians, most were well intentioned.

Politicians and their advisers tried hard to solve the Nation’s economic problems, mostly by figuring out the Facts and trying to decide what was best to do. But the Nation’s money problems were made even worse by a world-wide economic problem that was caused by the failure of some Large Banks that had made foolish and risky investments.  The foolish Large Banks ended up making a very large Financial Bubble, which, like all bubbles, eventually burst.  The bursting Bubble, like all bursting bubbles, splashed all over.  Everywhere it splashed it caused more financial problems, and because the Bubble was a very large Bubble indeed, is splashed very far.

All of the Nation’s economic problems made everyone in the Nation very sad.  The smart people in the government still tried to solve the puzzle of the economy, so that the people would be happy again.  Mostly, they tried to solve the puzzle by thinking about Facts.  

After a while, many of the people in the Nation became angry that the smart people in the government hadn’t been able to fix that Nation’s problems. Some of them decided that trying to solve problems by making decisions based upon the Facts wasn’t working.  Almost all of these people were ignorant, because only an ignorant person ignores Facts, and they were all foolish, because even an ignorant person who ignores facts should be glad that the politicians in charge were trying to use Facts to solve problems, even when the problems were very, very large.

The foolish people were very mad, but they couldn’t do much about it.  Because they were foolish, they had no ideas about solving the Nation’s economic puzzle, so mostly they complained and said foolish and ignorant things, which were (mostly) ignored.

As it turned out, some of the politicians were much more interested in Power than they were in solving the Nation’s puzzle.  The Politicians who were interested in Power began telling the angry people about a time in the Wonderful Past, before there were economic problems and puzzles, and when everyone was happy. Those Politicians realized that the stories about a Wonderful Past gave all the foolish and angry people something to hope for, and that the foolish and angry people were angry enough to hope for anything, even if that something was a Magic story about a Wonderful and Make-Believe Past when everything was beautiful.  Many of the angry people supported the Politicians who told Magic Tales, which made the Politicians happy, because it made them more Powerful.

The days went by, as days always do, until one day a Very Scary Person began telling stories to the angry people. The angry people were told that the Nation was Special amongst all the other nations of the world, and that the people who were True Citizens of the Nation were also Special, and would do Wonderful Things.   But the Very Scary Person said that not all of the Nation’s people were True Citizens.  Some of the people living in the Nation belonged to evil groups that hated the Nation, didn’t believe the Magic Story, and wanted the Nation to fail.  Fortunately, the Very Scary Person said, these people were easy to identify. Many of these people looked different or belonged to a different religion than most of the True Citizens.  Some of these people were boys that loved other boys, or girls that loved other girls.  And, the Very Scary Person said, people who weren’t True Citizens believed in Facts and didn’t believe in the Magic Story.

The Very Scary Person said that if all of the people in the Nation believed with all their hearts in the Magic Story, and didn’t listen to Facts or to any people who weren’t True Citizens, the Magic Story would come true.  The Nation would once again be the most Special Nation in all the world, and the True Citizens would be recognized as the best and most Special people.  But they were warned that if there were too many people who doubted the Story or questioned the Very Scary Person, the Magic Story might never come true.

And the foolish people who were afraid of the Facts believed the Very Scary Person.  They tried their hardest to believe in the Magic Story and to chase away all doubts.  And when someone talked about Facts, or questioned the Very Scary Person, the foolish people would cover their ears, yell and sing songs about the Nation as loudly as possible, so that they wouldn’t hear any Facts that might make them doubt the Magic Story or the things the Very Scary Person told them.

It may be hard to believe that people could really think they could make something wonderful come true just by believing in it. But there have been people like this ever since there were stories to believe. And there are many stories that teach that belief can make wonderful things come true. There is the story of Peter Pan, who believed that fairies would be real if everyone believed that they were, and clapped their hands. And then there is the story of Dumbo, who believed that he had a magic feather that let him fly, and then found out that he didn’t even need the magic feather to fly because belief was enough! And there was Oral Roberts, who told people that a 900-foot-tall Jesus would kill him, unless enough people believed and showed their belief by giving Oral eight million dollars. There were enough people who believed that story that Oral got nine million dollars. And then there is the 700 Club. But there are far too many stories about foolish people to tell here, and, besides, we must find out what happened to the Nation and the Very Scary Person.

The Very Scary Person made the foolish people very happy. They liked to believe that problems could be solved by Belief, and they liked to believe the Magic Story would come true. They also liked knowing that there were some people who weren’t True Citizens who could be blamed when the Magic Story didn’t come true.

And so the Very Scary Person was elected leader of the Nation. But after a while, the Very Scary Person decided that maybe the rest of the world should be taught about how Special the Nation was and how Special the True Citizens were. And so the Very Scary Person got all the Nation’s soldiers together. And invaded Poland.

Moral:

Even people who remember history can be forced to repeat it if enough people don’t remember, don’t care and don’t want to listen;

Or…

In the real world, elephants who think they can fly always come to a bad end.

Republicans have concerns that the “Post-Birth Fetal Development Pro-Life Abortion Ban Act” is a legislative Trojan horse with potential consequences reaching far beyond the abortion clinic, perhaps as far as Iraq, but Rep. Goldwaithe dismisses these accusations. “A Republican who would vote against the Pro-Life Abortion Ban Act is clearly a closest pro-choice, anti-life satanist, and I know that voters will be smart enough to recognize that come election day.” Goldwaithe admits, however, that the new law would affect the war in Iraq:

It goes without saying that being placed in a war zone would threaten fetal life, but this is a secondary concern. President Bush recently pledged, ‘I believe human life is a sacred gift from our Creator. I worry about a culture that devalues life, and believe as your President I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world.’

The President expressed these sentiments to explain why he vetoed a bill that would have allowed federal funds for stem cell research. Embryos used for stem cell research consist of less than 200 cells. The vast majority will never develop into anything but freezer burn, and will eventually be destroyed. On the other hand, fetuses protected by the Post-Birth Act can be as much as six feet tall, and contain well over a hundred trillion cells. With proper care, all have the potential to become fully developed human beings. It’s inconceivable, pardon the phrase, that the President would refuse to protect the sanctity of life merely because it would interfere with military plans.

White House spokesman Tony Snow refused to comment directly on the proposed law, but did say that the administration would continue to support the right of a fetus to bear arms.

I’m proud that Massachusetts took the lead in recognizing the right to marry for same sex couples. The Massachusetts Supreme Court recognized that right on May 17, 2004. Despite dire predictions, the sky has stayed right where it is, and I’m not aware of any heterosexuals filing for divorce on the grounds that their marriage has been devalued. And now I’m proud again; yesterday, June 14, 2007, the Massachusetts legislature rejected a proposal that would have subjected the fundamental right to marry to a public vote.

 Under Massachusetts law, a proposal to amend the constitution must be approved by two consecutive legislative sessions, then by a majority of Massachusetts voters. The proposed amendment to ban same sex marriage was approved by the legislature in January 2007 with 62 votes, and would have been put on the ballot for a vote had the proposal passed again today. The proposal needed the support of 50 voters to pass. It lost, 151 to 45, thanks, in great part, to the leadership of Governor Deval Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray, Senate President Terry Murray and House Speaker Sal DiMasi. The idea that a basic human right should be subject to the whim of the majority has been defeated.

I was outside the Massachusetts State House along with hundreds of others to encourage the legislature to make the right decision. (Photos are posted here.) People on the other side of the street — and the other side of the issue — were fewer and less enthusiastic. That’s to be expected, I guess. We were supporting a community of people, couples and families. We’ve seen marriage make a real difference in real lives. Folks on the other side were concerned about an abstract idea, and a corrosive one at that. Their sense of morality is offended by the idea that two men or two women can care about each other in a relationship recognized by the state. It must be hard to be cheery about hating strangers.

“Attorney General Gonzales can be fully projected with voice and high-def 3D visuals anywhere in the Justice Building.” Appearing outside of a few blocks from his office, however, requires portable wireless equipment, and presents more of a challenge. “Just projecting the Attorney General outside the building takes a lot of bandwidth, limiting his ability to connect with his central processor. That can really interfere with the AG’s ability to access memory. Plus, he can look a little grainy when there’s a lot of cell-phone traffic in the area.”

Despite these problems, the silicon-based AG has out-performed initial expectations. “Most of us worked in Hollywood, so we were concerned about Gonzales’ ability to simulate sincere emotions. But lacking a full emotional repertoire turns out to be a plus in politics. And we were really surprised to discover that other technical problems can also be turned to an advantage. Gonzales is programmed with a limited number of responses to inquiries. As programmers, we’d call this a problem with his ‘cognitive display,’ but in politics it’s called ‘staying on message.’ Gonzales can ‘stay on message’ for very long periods without displaying the shame or embarrassment that would be inevitable in a flesh-and-blood person.”

During today’s press briefing, Tony Snow would neither confirm nor deny the humanity of the Attorney General, but did point out the irrelevance of the issue: “The President has full confidence in the Attorney General, and that won’t change simply because General Gonzales may not be a sentient being. I mean, think about it. Alberto Gonzales overcame the obstacle of his Hispanic-American background to become the number one man in the Department of Justice. He’s even more worthy of admiration if it turns out he is a non-corporeal computer simulation of an Hispanic-American.”

The response from both sides of the political spectrum was immediate. Senator Leahy, who questioned AG Gonzales at length during a number of Congressional hearings, admitted he had not heard the news but seemed unsurprised, noting, “It would explain a lot.”

Meanwhile, former-mayor and 2008 Presidential candidate, Rudolph Giuliani, approved of the idea, but said he didn’t think the present administration had gone far enough. “Most, if not all, of the Cabinet could be replaced by holograms. In fact, I believe that the heads of some agencies — the EPA and the Department of Education come immediately to mind — could be replaced with a voice-activated digital telephone system at great savings to the public.”

Former-governor Mitt Romney’s campaign office had no comment, further fueling suspicions that he himself is a computer-based life form. Pundits have previously suggested that this rumor, if true, could actually help Romney in the primaries: “The Democrats are trying to raise excitement with the possibility of running the first black or female candidate. Running a computer-generated Mormon for the top job would really steal the their thunder.”

In upholding the “Partial-Birth Abortion Act” (referred to here as just “the Act”), the Supreme Court’s new majority drew upon old lies about the emotional fragility of women, and the need to protect from their own decisions. The Court used this new/old lie to bypass forty years of precedent safeguarding reproductive rights. The Court allowed Congress to place political values over best medical practice, and to put women’s lives at risk. The lie at the center of Carhart could return to threaten our freedom to live according to our own values.

Read the rest of this post at Sex in the Public Square.

Cheney, unharmed but visibly shaken, said he would not alter his hunting strategy.

I will not give in to a few fowl terrorists. I will continue to shoot farm-raised birds released for my recreational pleasure from cages hidden behind bushes, and I will kill those birds. Quitting would render meaningless the sacrifice of my good friend, Harry Whittington, whom I shot in the face.

The Vice-President was in Chicago to speak at a function organized by the Heritage Foundation. The Vice President spoke about the importance refusing to set a specific date to withdraw from Iraq:

“It is impossible to argue that an unconditional timetable for retreat could serve the security interests of the United States. It would send a message to our enemies that the calendar is their friend, that all they have to do is wait us out, wait for the date certain, and then claim victory the day after.

Leaders of insurgency groups in Iraq responded with anger to the VP’s comments. “We must know the US withdrawal date in order to plan our victory-claiming celebration. The catering preparations alone will take forty-eight hours. And don’t even talk to me about making all those effigies.”

In other news, the President announced a plan to appoint a “war czar,” to finally achive victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. When asked for details, the President responded:

When I wish upon my czar;
Makes no difference who they are;
When I have a czar he’ll make my dreams come true.

President Bush then explained we could easily win in Iraq, but we all need to believe. He requested everyone present who believed in victory to clap their hands.

There were no additional questions.

Finally, on the human interest front, the winner of the Anna Nicole Smith baby contest was finally chosen from the group of finalists in the Bahamas. A disappointed crowd of men went home tanned, but empty-handed, when photographer Larry Birkhead was declared winner. Birkhead said he attributed his success to timing. “Anna asked me to set a definite time for withdrawal, but I refused.”

The Vice-President has not yet commented on Birkhead’s strategy.

It’s not that I anticipated reading lots more from him, but there was something pleasant about knowing he was alive, still smoking filterless Pall Malls and undoubtedly bitching at someone about something. (He once described smoking as “a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.)
I first read Vonnegut as a teenager, as I suspect lots of others did. I read the wonderfully funny and sad Slaughterhouse Five, Or, The Children’s Crusade, at the suggestion of a favorite high school teacher. I loved it most for the odd way it mixed the story of the bombing of Dresden (which Vonnegut lived through as a prisoner of war), with the tale of a man living happily with a starlet in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore. I’ve read Slaughterhouse Five a number of times since, listened to a really great audio version, read by Ethan Hawke, and if there was a copy right here now I’d probably pick it up and read it again right away.

Vonnegut was, in many ways, as engagingly contradictory as his novel about war and Tralfamadore. He was famously pessimistic, but with a humanist warmth that Twain lacked. For example, he wrote:

I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, ‘Please—a little less love, and a little more common decency.’

A direct and palpable hit on the institution of love if there ever was one, but then there’s the grudging hope in a plea for common decency.

Another contradiction: He was a socialist, but wrote Harrison Bergeron, a short story with a barb aimed at the heart of the idea of absolute equality. The Wall St. Journal published Harrison Bergeron a few years ago in its editorial section; not the kind of place you’d expect an admirer of Eugene Debs to hang out. (You can read Harrison Bergeron here.)

Over the past few years, Vonnegut became embittered about the direction the Bush administration was leading America. Once during an interview, he said he was going to sue Brown & Williamson, manufacturers of Pall Malls, because: “they promised to kill me. Instead, their cigarettes didn’t work. Now I’m forced to suffer leaders with names like Bush and Dick and, up until recently, ‘Colon’” But then in May of 2004 he wrote “Cold Turkey,” a diatribe about the follies of human beings generally and the US under President Bush specifically. In the middle of this bleak prognosis for mankind, he wrote about the inspiration of Confucius, Eugene Debs, Jesus, and of Vonnegut’s own his son, who, asked “what life is all about”, responded: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

So that’s my short tribute to Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who lived through the horrors of the bombing of Dresden, but still retained enough hope to rant pessimistically about a 21st century America, somewhat older, but not a whit wiser. Just one more favorite story…

Death was a subject Vonnegut wrote about a lot in that characteristically unimpressed way he had. In Breakfast of Champions, he described a short story written by one of his characters as:

..a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

Typically Vonnegut, it’s not a very pleasant view of life or death. But then, right there at the end, there’s that champagne.

Here’s the way Cheney put it recent speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2007 Policy Conference:

… when members [of congress] speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they’re telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out.

This argument was used by Bush for the first few years of the war in Iraq to avoid setting a time table for withdrawing troops. Agree with it or not, the argument meant something:

The situation is us versus the bad guys. “We” are the coalition and the fledgling democratic government in Iraq. Insurgency groups dedicated to destroying any US supported government in Iraq are the bad guys. If we tell the bad guys when we plan to pull our troops out of Iraq, the bad guys will hang back, save resources until our troops are gone, then come out of hiding to destroy the Iraqi government.

This argument allowed the Bushies to govern in their preferred way: completely ad hoc, no goals to meet, therefore no way to determine failure.

Whatever value this description of the war once may have had, it clearly doesn’t represent what’s going on in Iraq today. Even the Pentagon admits there is an internecine civil war in Iraq, fought among multiple groups with diverse interests. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (a non-governmental group of former intelligence specialists) provide a clear analysis in their recent memo Denouement on Iraq: First Stop the Bleeding:

The vast majority of the violence in Iraq is sectarian in nature and involves a multifaceted civil war mostly pitting Sunnis against Shias. However, the violence also entails secular Sunnis fighting Sunni extremists linked to Al Qaeda and secular Shias battling Shia extremists…. in other words, a rabid dog fight with our troops in between. The only thing the various factions share is unflinching opposition to US occupation. But the notion that there is a monolithic group of “insurgents” or “enemy” falls far wide of the mark.

The “we can’t set a time-table” argument falls apart under these conditions. There is no “them,” holding back waiting for us to leave. The various coalitions are in full-out battle against the provisional Iraqi government and against each other. We have met the enemy, and he is…. well, everybody.

We are used to Cheney’s lies, but this is something different and worth attending to. It’s a concrete example of the administration using empty phrases to shore up support for a misconceived and unpopular war. “Support the troops!” “Democrats want to cut and run!;” smoke and mirror language used for effect rather than meaning. Sweeping aside empty language can raise the quality of the public debate about the war; and a debate based upon facts is precisely what the administration is trying to avoid.

She has recently been asked by Jamaica to be their national “patron for abused women.”

What possible meaning of the phrase “patron for” applies here?

The current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is immoral because it openly requires dishonesty, and treats gays and lesbians as second class citizens. It is unconstitutional because it punishes by exclusion gays and lesbians, not because of what they’ve done, but because of who they are; this type of “status crime” was years ago determined unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

General Pace’s delicate moral niceties are archaic. Barry Goldwater, the bastion of all that’s conservative, and 37 year veteran of the military, announced years ago his support of the right of gays and lesbians to be in the military:

The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay. You don’t have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that’s what brings me into it…. why the hell shouldn’t they serve? They’re American citizens. As long as they’re not doing things that are harmful to anyone else.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, while Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush, called security concerns about gays and lesbians an “old chestnut” and referred to the idea that “a gay lifestyle is incompatible with military service” as “a policy I inherited.” These comments were made by Cheney just after his assistant secretary of defense, Pete Williams was outed as a gay man.

The world has moved on ahead of the US. There are at least 26 nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve, including Israel, Australia, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Columbia, and every country in the European Union, which requires all members to abolish any bans on open service.

Pace’s comparison with adultery is specious. According to files received by Salon pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request the military, under General Pace, is currently providing waivers for at least 17% of incoming recruits, accepting recruits with civilian criminal records including domestic abuse, assault, breaking and entering and auto theft. An outstanding article by Helen Benedict, also published in Salon, documents the pervasive threat of rape and sexual harassment women soldiers in Iraq live with daily. Perhaps General Pace should focus his moral concerns on matters of real substance existing within the scope of his responsibility.

The Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has let the world know what he thinks Department of Defense policy should be, based upon his morals. He has also provided encouragement and cover for the continued harassment and abuse of men and women by their fellows and those in their chain of command. Sounds pretty damn immoral to me.

Please note: I am personally against the action in Iraq and support plans to withdraw troops now. I am not advocating for the war in Iraq, but for the right to openly serve in the military without regard to sexual orientation. Tom

IMPORTANT: If you agree with me, write your representatives in Congress and the Senate as well as General Pace, and write your local papers. Register your disapproval with General Pace’s remarks and your support for changing military policy to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. General Pace can be reached at:

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman
9999 Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon
Room 4E873
Washington, DC 20318
Fax: (703) 697-8758

All or any part of this post can be used, with attribution, for any non-commercial purpose to help spread the word.

Still, it seems right, somehow, that her fame continues unabated after her death. Anna Nicole Smith, the person, had little to do with Anna Nicole Smith, the celebrity, and the former, if anything, tended to get in the way of the latter. Now, relieved of the burden of actual life, the flame of her celebrity can burn as pure and as hot as the sun.

Smith may still be dead, but vice-president Dick Cheney is very much alive. Cheney was completely unharmed when a bomb, apparently targeted at him by the Taliban, exploded near the compound he inhabited during his visit to Afghanistan. Twenty-three other people died in the attack, thereby strengthening the VP’s resolve to stay in the fight.

According to Cheney, the Arab bad guys plan on continuing to kill Americans, figuring that we’ll eventually tire of it and bring our troops home. But Mr. Cheney isn’t going to let us fall into that trap. Let ‘em kill as many Americans as they can, we’ve got plenty more. I’m not making this up, really. During his flight back from Afghanistan, Cheney was asked why he says nasty things about Speaker Pelosi and Representitive Murtha. Cheney replied:

They [the al Qaeda] know they can’t beat us in a stand-up fight. But they do believe — and I think there’s evidence to support this — that they can, in fact, force us to change our policy if they just kill enough Americans, create enough havoc out there. And they cite Beirut in 1983; Mogadishu, 1993, kill Americans, America changes its policy and withdraws. And Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri believe this. They talk about it. It’s not a mystery.

And my point was that if we follow what I believe Speaker Pelosi really wants to do in terms of withdraw, that that would validate the al Qaeda strategy.

And so, absent a real plan, we stay in Iraq for brinkmanship. They think they can kill and wound enough soldiers for us to back down? We’ll show ‘em.

I wish someone would tell Mr. Cheney: Adamantly refusing to consider loss of life in making military decisions is not good policy; and playing chicken with people willing to blow themselves up to kill us is not an effective strategy.

The following is a short comparison of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, with Karl Rove, special assistant to President George W. Bush. I hope that viewing this comparison is as enlightening for you as writing it was for me.

	Schlesinger	Rove
Education	Harvard University, 1938-42 Left following Pearl Harbor, without completing his PHD	University of Utah 1969-71 University of MD — completed half a semester, 1971 George Mason University, 1973-75 University of Texas at Austin, 1977 Never received his bachelor’s degree
War Experience	Volunteered for combat during WWII, turned down due to bad eyesight; spent 1942-45 in the Office of War Information, and the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA.	Maintained a student deferment during his semester and a half of college in Utah and MD; lost his deferment just prior to the end of the draft.
Youthful fame	Won the Pulitzer Prize at 29 for The Age of Jackson, a history of Andrew Jackson’s presidency.	Stole stationary from the offices of a democratic candidate for Illinois state treasurer, used them to produce handbills advertising “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing” at the opening of the candidate’s new campaign headquarters, and distributed the handbills at rock concerts and homeless shelters.
Significant Mentor	Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian theologian, proponent of the use of Christian values as a basis for politics and diplomacy, and one of the architects of modern “just war” theory.	Donald Segretti, a Nixon political operative. Rove worked under Sergretti during Nixon’s campaign, when Segretti obtained letterhead stationary from Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie and used it to produce a bogus letter falsely claiming that Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson had fathered an illegitimate child with a 17 year old woman. Segretti was later convicted as a Watergate conspirator.
What he said about his President	“… urbane, objective, analytical, controlled, contained, masterful, a man of perspective…”	“Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma – you know, wow!
Other significant achievements	Wrote twenty books, won two Pulitzer prizes, three national book awards, the Four Freedoms Award and the Paul Peck Award. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961. Served as Special Assistant for Latin America affairs and speech writer for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, 1961-64.	Ran George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, including during the S. Carolina primary, when a whisper campaign falsely claiming that opposing candidate John McCain was mentally unstable, had been a stoolie during the time he spent in a Vietnamese POW camp, and had fathered a black, illegitimate child. Rove, a political operative, served Bush as assistant to the president, deputy chief of staff, and senior adviser. Rove outdoes his mentor Segretti, giving testimony in the investigation of the Valerie Plame affair, and is not even indicted
Quotation	“If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.”	“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”