The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Health Itself

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

This past week, in addition to once again trying to repeal health care reform, the Republicans who have recently come to power took aim against a new, even more pervasive foe: health itself.

It started when President Obama, speaking to Savannah Guthrie on “The Today Show,” threw down the gauntlet when asked about vaccination in light of the recent measles outbreak in the U.S.

“The science is pretty indisputable,” the president said. “We’ve looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not. …You should get your kids vaccinated.”

Well, the right wing wasn’t going to take that lying down, you betcha. Following the one ironclad principle of the right (“If’n one o’ them Obammy’s is fer it, we’s agin it”), Republican presidential hopefuls took to the airwaves to let us know that liberty includes the freedom to let your kids become tiny little germ weapons.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who, as you remember, tried to lock up a nurse for being in the same country as ebola, suddenly decided that inoculation against measles, a far more contagious disease, should be “optional.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made his bid for the coveted Michele Bachmann Professorship of Unsourced Pseudoscientific Claptrap by telling talk show host Laura Ingraham, “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”

Heard from who? Jenny McCarthy? Well, hey, who are a bunch of dumb old scientists to argue with a Playboy Playmate and the former host of MTV’s “Singled Out”?

Not to be outdone, our own Junior Sen. Tom Tillis decried the undue regulatory burden of requiring restaurant employees to wash their hands after using the toilet.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy,” Tillis said, “ as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restrooms.’ The market will take care of that.”

Of course, in the unregulated dream world where Sen. Tillis would have us all live, there’d be no one to ensure that the sign is visible, legible, or even in English. But, as the song goes, “Freedom’s just another word for wondering why the waiter’s hands smell funny.”

Later, as usual, both Christie and Paul had to, as they say, “walk back” their statements. The “walkback” is what wingnuts and the people who try to pander to them often find themselves doing when they realize that the codswallop they’ve been spoon-feeding to the rubes, goobers and haters on right-wing talk radio, and Faux News has actually been overheard by the non-insane, and they have to do some damage control before the editorial cartoonists start drawing them with tinfoil hats.

Christie’s office released a statement: “The governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection, and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated.” Rand Paul went even further and had himself photographed getting a booster vaccine for hepatitis A. Guess he figured that for him, the “profound mental disorders” train had already left the station, with him on it.

As for Senator Tillis, as of this writing, he’s still holding the line against the tyranny of mandatory hand-washing. This caused a Republican friend of mine to comment, “I would not shake hands with that man.”

Here’s the thing: Vaccines don’t cause “profound mental disorders.” The one study that showed a link between measles vaccine and autism was conclusively debunked a few years ago when it was revealed that not only did Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor conducting it, misrepresent and change the results of his research, he did so after taking thousands of pounds from lawyers hoping to capitalize on his dodgy “research” in lawsuits.

Wakefield was later stripped of his medical license, and the journal in which the study was published retracted the article.

Yet to this day, you will find people telling you with complete and misplaced confidence that children suffering from autism are “vaccine-injured.” To keep spreading this lie when measles is trying make a comeback is dangerous. For politicians to spread it for political gain is inexcusable.

As for the value of washing your hands after using the restroom: Ask your mom. If you’d rather believe Thom Tillis than your own mama, I don’t know what to tell you.

It's Ugly, Too

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

As I mentioned last week, one of the things Republicans always use to dismiss any idea that helps the middle class is, “How are you going to pay for that?” Infrastructure spending, help for college, getting more people insured — it’s always the same sneer: “How are you going to pay for that?”

Well, I have one idea that would help pay for a lot of good stuff: Junk the F-35 program.

In case you’re not familiar, permit me to indulge in a little aviation geekery. The F-35 “Lightning II” is a multi-purpose warplane developed by Lockheed Martin. The Pentagon intends to buy 2,400 of them over the next few years at a cost of $400 billion.

The Lightning II is intended to do it all: bombing, close air support of ground troops, air defense, recon — it’s like the Swiss Army Knife of aircraft. The naval variant is designed to operate from aircraft carriers. A version for the Marines has vertical takeoff and landing capability. The idea is that using one type of aircraft for multiple roles and branches of the military will standardize parts, repairs, etc.

On the surface, this sounds like a good idea, right? 

There’s only one problem: The bloody thing doesn’t work.

Last summer, the entire fleet of existing F-35’s had to be grounded because one of them caught fire on the runway. It’s the 13th time the fleet’s been grounded since 2007. Multiple studies have revealed a host of other problems. The pilot’s helmet-mounted display doesn’t work. The inertial navigation system doesn’t work.

It can’t land safely on an aircraft carrier because the tailhook doesn’t work. It doesn’t accelerate well because it’s so heavy, and using the afterburner for extra speed damages the aircraft. The main air to air missile doesn’t work, and no one can seem to figure out why. A new and sophisticated threat detection system can’t tell the difference between an incoming missile and the airplane’s own flares.

According to a report from the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, the “lift fan” that gives the Marine version the ability to take off and land vertically is so vulnerable to “catastrophic damage” from ground fire that a single bullet could bring the plane down. As the old saying goes, this thing’s so broke down, if it was a dog I’d take it out back and shoot it.

And yet the military seems determined to go ahead with this boondoggle, exhibiting truly Rumsfeldian arrogance in the process.

For instance, a test pilot who’d flown hundreds of hours in the F-35 expressed concerns that the cockpit design made it hard to spot threats from behind, which is more than a minor concern for a fighter pilot. So how did the program manager for the project respond? According to an article in Foreign Policy magazine, USAF Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told a group of Department of Defense bigwigs, “Put that pilot in a cargo aircraft, where he won’t worry about getting gunned down.”

In December, defense reporter Tyler Rogoway revealed an Air Force report that the plane’s finicky engine has problems running on fuel from trucks warmed by sitting in the sun (a bit dicey when you think about where these things are likely to be operating). The Air Force’s solution: Don’t fix the plane, paint the fuel trucks white.

They’re even fighting to retire planes that do work, like the venerable A-10 Warthog ground attack aircraft, to free up money and ground crews for a plane that isn’t going to be ready for years — if ever.

The other day, Iraqi sources reported that an A-10 attacking elements of ISIS in Iraq had four anti-aircraft missiles fired at it, “but that did not cause the aircraft any damage, prompting the remaining [ISIS] elements to leave the bodies of their dead and carry the wounded to escape toward the Shirqat district.”

So we’ve got a ground attack plane that can shrug off four AA missiles and send the terrorists scurrying, and that’s the plane the military wants to replace with one that catches fire on the runway.

We still need warplanes, but we need ones that work. We can save money modernizing and upgrading the ones that are proven able to do their jobs, rather than blowing billions on a lemon like the F-35.

That $400 billion will build a lot of roads and bridges. It’ll send a lot of young people to school. It’ll get a lot of people health care. So you want to know “where we’re going to get the money” for programs to help Americans? Let’s start by getting rid of a hideously expensive fighter jet that defends no one but the bank accounts of defense contractors and looks like it’ll kill more American airmen than the enemy will.

The Day Grows Ever Closer

As the return of the sparrow heralds the onset of Spring, the arrival of the author's copies tells up Publication Day is not far behind...

SOTU: If This be Liberalism, Let Us Make the Most of It

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama delivered some news the Republicans in Congress really didn’t want to hear: Things in America are a lot better, in objectively measurable ways, than they were six years ago when he took office.

An economy growing at the fastest rate since 1999. Deficits cut by two-thirds. Millions more people with health insurance. Soldiers coming home from two brutal wars. Lower gas prices. And much more.

“The shadow of crisis has passed,” the president said, “and the state of the union is strong.”

This, of course, did not sit well with those, both in the opposition party and the media, whose phony-baloney jobs (to quote the great Mel Brooks) depend on keeping Americans in a constant state of crisis, insecurity and fear. They need to keep insisting that nothing is getting better, that the state of the union is one of disaster and decay, that we’re doomed, I tell you, doomed, and we’ll be back to tell you more about it — right after this message from Cialis.

PBS commentator Mark Shields, for example, seemed amazed that the president didn’t slink to the podium dressed in sackcloth, deliver a mumbled apology for being alive, and stumble away under a hail of thrown vegetables and tin cans.

“This was not a conciliatory speech,” Shields said. “It’s amazing that the guy just got crushed in an election and he comes out very strong, very assertive.”

Well, Mark, maybe it’s because it wasn’t President Obama who got “crushed.”

In case you hadn’t noticed, Barack Obama wasn’t running in 2014. In the years he was actually running, it was Mr. Obama who did the crushing, as he noted in the night’s best line. When the Republicans responded to his statement that he has “no more campaigns to run” with derisive applause, Mr. Obama smiled the smile of a man whose opponent has just walked, serenely and all unaware, into a perfectly thrown and devastating left hook.

“I know,” he said, “I won both of them.”



That got a lot of laughter from the Democrats, but I’m wondering if it may have been partially directed at the ones who blew the 2014 elections so badly by forgetting why Mr. Obama won.

There were a lot of Democrats who were defeated in 2014. The thing that most of those candidates had in common was that they “ran away,” not only from the president, not only from his policies, but also from the fact that those policies are working to make life better for millions of Americans.

It’s a lesson the Democrats never seen to learn: When you try to position yourself as Republican Lite, the voters you need stay home, because they don’t see any difference worth turning out for. Mrs. Clinton, are you listening?

Having delivered the good news, the president set out to outline a program to keep the recovery going and make things better for the middle class. Things like: expanded child care for working families; a hike in the minimum wage, which would admittedly cost some jobs but which would lift far more people above the poverty level and put more money into the hands of the people most likely to spend it; free community college to train people for the future; paid sick leave; and tax cuts for the middle class rather than for corporations and millionaires who don’t need them.

I’m enough of a realist to know that these proposals are going to face probably insurmountable opposition in a Congress controlled by people whose knee-jerk reaction to anything that might help anyone other than their wealthiest donors is to snidely ask, “How are you going to pay for that?” Ever notice how they never ask that question when what they want is a fleet of new fighter-bombers that don’t work, or more tax cuts for rich people? We always find the money for the things we make our priorities.

I also know that the right is going to define these policies as “liberal.” Well, if those things, popular as they’re likely to be with the middle class, come to define “liberalism,” then I feel pretty good about the future of liberalism, especially when the other side’s “jobs plan” is taking away people’s newly acquired health insurance, cutting more rich people’s taxes, and building the Mystical Magical Keystone XL pipeline — which, to hear them tell it, will solve all our energy problems, provide us all with jobs, and give every American child a new pony.

These proposals may very well not pass this Congress. But they lay the groundwork for electing the next one, if the Democrats remaining can find their spines. Because fighting for the middle class isn’t just good political theater; it’s the right thing to do.

Yep, Je Suis Charlie, Y'all.

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

In the wake of the brutal murder of 17 people in Paris last week, a new catch phrase sprang up: “Je suis Charlie.”

It’s an expression of solidarity with the employees of the satirical tabloid Charlie Hebdo who were shot to death by self-proclaimed “jihadists” after the newspaper published raunchy cartoons featuring the image of the Prophet Muhammad.

Among the many ironies arising here is that one of the first people these religious thugs killed in their alleged “defense” of Islam was himself a Muslim, police officer Ahmed Merabet. In a related attack, several customers of a kosher grocery were saved by another Muslim, an employee of the store named Lassana Bathily, who hid them in the freezer.

In addition, the French Muslim Council, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Al-Azhar (Cairo’s thousand-year-old center of Islamic learning), the president of Egypt, the Arab League, and other Muslims around the world condemned the attack.

Heck, even Hezbollah said the “apostates” had done more damage to Islam than any cartoon, but that may have been more of a Sunni/Shia thing. If these goobers wanted to defend Muslims or unify them against the unbelievers, they did a mighty poor job of it.

Another irony is that, under normal circumstances, a lot of the people in the streets and in the media throwing their support behind Charlie Hebdo might very well be picketing them or calling for boycotts of their advertisers.

These guys were (and are) equal opportunity offenders. It wasn’t just drawings like the one of a naked and, shall we say, anatomically complete Muhammad with his behind in the air and a caption that’s so ugly I can’t even describe it via euphemism and expect to see it printed in this newspaper.

They also drew anti-Christian cartoons like the one of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost having sex with each other. Some of their caricatures of Jews are like something from ’30s-era Nazi propaganda. And so on. The lengths to which Charlie Hebdo goes to not just push the limits of good taste, but to gleefully explode them make the most vulgar “South Park” episodes look like “Barney the Dinosaur.”

One of their cartoonists, who goes by the pen name “Willem” (and who didn’t get shot because he missed the staff meeting) put it this way: “It makes me laugh. We vomit on these people who now say they’re our friends,” with “these people” explicitly including the pope, the queen of England and Vladimir Putin. Well, Willem, old son, all I can say is, resisting terrorism makes for strange bedfellows.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that, thanks to the outpouring of support, the magazine just printed and immediately sold over 3 million copies, by far their largest run ever, and put out new international editions in 16 languages, according to Reuters.

And their new cover is another picture of Muhammad, holding up a sign that says, you guessed it, “Je suis Charlie,” below a headline saying “Tout est pardonné” (“All is forgiven.”)

So, suis-je Charlie (am I Charlie)? Well, thankfully, I’ve never been shot for what I’ve written. At least not yet. But I have had people publicly express on this newspaper’s website that I deserve “a long agonizing death, not quick, but slow and painful,” or that I’d die soon and my whole hometown would celebrate, all over jokes I’ve made in this column.

Others have sent me emails telling me I deserved to be hanged for treason for questioning Mr. Bush’s disastrous war. So I do feel a certain solidarity, even though these hateful sentiments were expressed to me by people who would no doubt describe themselves as Good Christians rather than Muslims.

To paraphrase one of my literary heroes, Mr. Samuel Spade: When a writer is killed for what he writes, you’re supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was a writer, and you’re supposed to do something about it. Well, what I do is write. Writing is a small thing, I suppose, but it’s not nothing, or people wouldn’t be killing over it.

Therefore, wherever those so-called “jihadists” are spending their afterlife right now, I want to do what I do and tell them, in writing: You blew it, dimwits. You tried to silence Charlie Hebdo, and you utterly failed. You didn’t die martyrs. You died as ineffectual fools, and Charlie Hebdo lives and thrives. (Insert razzberry noise and extended middle finger here.)

Though some of their content makes me say it through gritted teeth, I have to say it: Je suis Charlie.

Here Comes JEB!

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Recently, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (or JEB! as his campaigns have referred to him) announced that he would form a “Leadership PAC” in January to “actively explore the possibility” of running for president.

After the announcement of the Leadership PAC, JEB! also announced that he was resigning from every private and nonprofit board of directors he sits on, according to stories in Politico and The Washington Monthly. Severing himself from all those corporate ties (which took effect on the last day of 2014) gives him a chance to characterize any slimy or damaging corporate connections as “long in the past” by 2016.

This may seem a curious attitude from the party who will be trying frantically to hang the 1990s-era indiscretions of Bill Clinton around his wife’s neck, but then, no one demands consistency from Republicans. Certainly not the national media.

In politician-speak, all of this means: “I’m totally running, but to announce this early would seem crass.” After all, the last thing someone running for the most powerful job in the Free World wants to appear is ambitious.

While I’ll probably never agree with JEB! on a lot of issues, I’ll give him credit for being at least reasonable on things like immigration reform and Common Core. He’s also miles ahead of many members of this party on the environment, according to statements I’ve read from both Democrats and Republicans from Florida. In fact, JEB! Is now a candidate for my small list of sane Republicans.

That’s going to be a problem for him.

See, there are two things that really grind the gears of the far right: (1) any proposal for immigration reform more realistic than “put a giant electric fence on the border and ship every single illegal immigrant home tomorrow, including the toddlers”; and (2) Common Core, a system of national education standards that they don’t really know anything about, but which Fox News has assured them is the thin end of the wedge for Islamofascistcommiesocialism.

JEB!, however, has stated that illegal immigrants “broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love.” Oh, the heresy! He went on to say, “It shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”

This is guaranteed not to sit well for those for whom “riled up” is their default state, especially when it comes to Those People.

As for Common Core, it’s been decried by other Republicans such as Jim DeMint, former senator and Heritage Foundation president, who says the standards “substitute an unaccountable federal bureaucracy for state, local and parental decision-making in education.” It has also been condemned by presidential hopefuls Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. But JEB! has vowed to keep pushing it, calling the standards “good for the country.”

So by 2016, JEB! will have two choices. He can stick to his guns on immigration reform and Common Core and lose primary after primary to one or the other of the jokers who’ll keep popping out of the Republican Clown Car to be the front-runner for 15 minutes before imploding in a cloud of racism, misogyny, or bat-spit craziness. Or he can pull a Romney and try to run from things he once championed, to convince the raging right he’s one of them, and then lose the general because neither side trusts him.

So far, JEB! has shown an admirable tendency to take the first option. He’s even said he’s willing “to lose the primary in order to win the general.” How he hopes to win the general election without getting enough primary and caucus votes to get the nomination has not, however, been disclosed by his campaign. It’s probably some kind of top secret “strategery.”

Or possibly, the wingnuts will be able to choke back their bile over immigration and Common Core and embrace JEB! as the one most likely to beat Hillary Clinton. After all, as governor of Florida, he did do some things they love. He cut taxes, of course. He signed the Stand Your Ground law, which effectively legalized the killing of young black men if you could convince a jury you were scared enough of their hoodies and Mighty Black Fists of Doom. He ended affirmative action in state college admissions.

The Teahadists love that sort of thing and, if they can find it in their hearts to compromise, just a leeetle bit, on a couple of issues …

Wait. What I’m I saying? They’ll never do that. JEB! is toast.