a Clear Politics article

by Victor Davis Hanson 

Barack Obama and John McCain are running neck and neck.

Impossible?

It would seem so. Republican President Bush still has less than a 30 percent approval rating. Headlines blare that unemployment and inflation are up -- even if we aren't, technically, in a recession. Gas is around $4 a gallon. Housing prices have nosedived. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has been indicted -- another in a line of congressional Republicans caught in financial or sexual scandal. Meanwhile, the GOP's presumptive candidate, John McCain, is 71 years old. The Republican base thinks he's lackluster and too liberal.

So, everyone is puzzled why the Democratic candidate isn't at least 10 points ahead.

read more here www.uniteddems.com

Would love some feedback on this!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he's doing this.  I mean, afterall, the Bush presidency, for the past 8 years, has been full of "create-it-as-we-go" government antics.  This presidency has foolishly deceived the American people in ways I once thought only capable of the corrupt governments in the emerging African nations! I think I'd be more surprised if Former White House Advisor Karl Rove HAD shown up this morning!  Talk about audacity!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25622771

As a nation, we have begun to make headway to reach across partisan lines and build something for which we can be proud.  Unfortunately, there are these little people like Rove with whom we must contend.  Just what should WE do with them?  Should we gamble and let the cards fall as they may?

It's amusing, one must laugh to avoid the anger, that the case may not be resolved before Bush's term ends in January. How convenient! Executive privilege, my butt! Frankly, I'm quite tired of government saying/arguing that internal administration communications are confidential and that Congress cannot compel officials to testify. Says who? This is OUR government! We are the PEOPLE! WE pay the TAXES! We vote the laws! WE run this ship!

We have got to take the helm from those who would otherwise turn us into a form of totalitarian government. We may have invaded Iraq to bring in democracy and bring down a totalitarian regime, but in the process our own system may be moving closer to the latter and further weakening the former.We are often referred to as a "superpower" which accurately symbolizes the projection of American power abroad, but it obscures internal consequences. Just imagine how odd it would be if we were to refer to the "Constitution of the American Democracy superpower." We know that "constitution" refers to the limitations of power, while "democracy" addresses the active involvement of citizens in government and how the government responds to its people. To even consider ourselves a "superpower," we'd be recognizing the surpassing of constitutional limitations and actual dwarfing of our citizenry. Is that what we've allowed Bush's presidency to do to our nation?

Consider this...The increasing power of the state and the declining power of institutions intended to control it has been in the making for some time. The party system is a notorious example. The Republicans have emerged as a unique phenomenon in American history of a fervently doctrinal party, zealous, ruthless, antidemocratic and boasting a near majority--till now (and Democrats haven't been able to really flex their majority muscles as we'd hoped). As Republicans have become more ideologically intolerant, the Democrats have shrugged off the liberal label and their critical reform-minded constituencies to embrace centrism and footnote the end of ideology. In ceasing to be a genuine opposition party the Democrats have smoothed the road to power of a party more than eager to use it to promote empire abroad and corporate power at home. Bear in mind that a ruthless, ideologically driven party with a mass base was a crucial element in all of the twentieth-century regimes seeking total power.

Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media's reports of rampant crime and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General and by their own fears about unemployment. What is crucially important here is not only the expansion of governmental power but the inevitable discrediting of constitutional limitations and institutional processes that discourages the citizenry and leaves them politically apathetic.

In the United States it is with the people where democracy is most alive--while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government. The basic elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers.

What's more, the whole scheme is fueled by an increasingly concentrated media and a well-funded, conservative propaganda machine. If we're not careful, our current tolerably free society will transform to something reminiscent of the extreme regimes of the past century. Are we ready for that? Are we going to hold Karl Rove's feet to the fire? Bush's? Our own? Are we going to take our government back? Or, are we simply going to fold our cards and cash in our chips already!

A Letter to our Congress and Senate

I'm a 22 year Marine Corps veteran and am hoping you will support whatever measures arise to end the use of our military as fodder in this useless "war on terror."  A fabricated 60-page dossier provided by Tony Blair's intelligence folks prompted us to jump head-first into a war where our troops have no real plan for success.  President Bush's failures cannot not be undone.  Lost lives can't be justified.  His mistakes, and those of anyone who follows blindly must have a penalty. 

The mere fact that even our military leaders can't agree on a path should be a clear sign that the facts are being ignored and so are the legitimate concerns of the American people.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that too many have seen this as an opportunity to profit or forward their careers.  Truth be told, upon whose back did they have to climb and how many dead bodies are beneath the heels of their dress shoes!

The young men and women currently serving in harm's way need to know our plan to succeed in Iraq and when they can expect to return home.  What's more, with broken families, stress and paranoia trailing closely behind them and uncertainty, they need to know how many times they are going to be sent back! 

These young people are volunteers...true patriots of our nation.  We cannot treat them as horribly as was done with regard to the Tuskeegee experiment many years ago.  Our troops, our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives, our mothers and fathers, are not expendible. 

Respect them and honor them by providing them with straight answers.  They know there are terrorists in the world, but are we going about it correctly?  Will we regret this war and look back with disdain as we do at the Vietnam Conflict?  Will we let Bush's war legacy continue to tarnish the world's view of us?

Please don't turn away from this stark reality.  Please demand answers and hold yourselves accountable to us, your constituents.

God bless you with your tough responsibility.  I pray you will be one of the ones who can honestly look in the mirror and know you did what had to be done.

Respectfully,

Donna Perdue
Akron, OH

It's time we all understand what this special day represents for a significant portion of Americans. Join me in celebration of Juneteenth which celebrates a most important event for African Americans, blacks - people of color--June 19, 1865.

Please read the following post at United Democrats.  Truly educational and moving!

http://www.uniteddems.com

 GO DEMOCRATS!!!   GO OBAMA!!!

This is absolutely appalling!  HOW DARE THEY!!!!? 

'Disposable Heroes': Veterans Used To Test Suicide-Linked Drugs

 An ABC News and Washington Times Investigation Reveals Vets Are Being Recruited for Government Tests on Drugs with Violent Side Effects

By BRIAN ROSS and VIC WALTER June 17, 2008 — Mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects, an investigation by ABC News and The Washington Times has found.

The report will air on Good Morning America and will also appear in The Washington Times on Tuesday. In one of the human experiments, involving the anti-smoking drug Chantix, Veterans Administration doctors waited more than three months before warning veterans about the possible serious side effects, including suicide and neuropsychiatric behavior.

"Lab rat, guinea pig, disposable hero," said former US Army sniper James Elliott in describing how he felt he was betrayed by the Veterans Administration.

Elliott, 38, of suburban Washington, D.C., was recruited, at $30 a month, for the Chantix anti-smoking study three years after being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He served a 15-month tour of duty in Iraq from 2003-2004. Months after he began taking the drug, Elliott suffered a mental breakdown, experiencing a relapse of Iraq combat nightmares he blames on Chantix.

"They never told me that I was going to be suicidal, that I would cease sleeping. They never told me anything except this will help me quit smoking," Elliott told ABC News and The Washington Times.

On the night of February 5th, after consuming a few beers, Elliott says he "snapped" and left his home with a loaded gun. His fiancee, Tammy, called police and warned, "He's extremely unstable. He has PTSD."

"Do you think that he is going to shoot or attack the police?" the 911 dispatcher asked.

"I can't be certain. I don't know," she said.

"He was operating as if he was back in theater, in combat theater," she told ABC News. "And of course, a soldier goes nowhere without a gun."

When police arrived, they found Elliott in the street, with the gun in the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. "Are you going to shoot me? Shoot me," Elliott said, according to the police report.

Police used a Taser gun to stun Elliott and placed him under arrest. It wasn't until three weeks later that the Veterans Administration advised the veterans in the Chantix study that the drug may cause serious side effects, including "anxiety, nervousness, tension, depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempted and completed suicide."

The VA's letter to the veterans, on February 29, 2008, followed three warnings from the FDA and Chantix' maker Pfizer, that were issued on November 20, 2007, January 18, 2008 and February 1, 2008. (click here to read the FDA warning and click here to read Pfizer's statement on Chantix)

"How this study continued in the face of these difficulties is almost impossible to understand," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Doctors at the Veterans Administration say they acted as quickly as they could.

"This didn't justify an emergency warning at that level," said Dr. Miles McFall, co-administrator of the VA study. Dr. McFall said there is no proof that Elliott's breakdown was caused by Chantix and he sees no reason to discontinue the study. Some 140 veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder continue to receive Chantix as part of a smoking cessation study.

Dr. McFall says the VA decided to continue the Chantix study because "it would be depriving our veterans of an effective method of treatment to help them stop smoking."

Caplan, one of the country's leading medical ethicists, said he was stunned by the VA's decision to continue the Chantix experiment. "Why take the group most a risk and keep them going? That doesn't make any sense, once you know the risk is there," he said.

Chantix is one of the drugs being used in an estimated 25 clinical studies using veterans by the VA. Pfizer maintains that "the benefits of Chantix outweigh the risks" and that it continues to do further studies on the drug. The FAA has prohibited commercial airline pilots from using Chantix because of its possible side effects.

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