Season of Immigrant Discontent, Elvis and Michael's Legacy

Leon Panetta
John Avlon
Stephen Walt

"The CIA cannot speak publicly about its major victories -- the plots foiled, the terrorists neutralized. " - Leon Panetta

“The big battle is in D.C., with the radicals. They aren't liberals, they're radicals. Obama, Pelosi… they're not liberals, they're radicals. They are destroying our country.” - Allen Quist

"And what's troubling is the extent to which the Obama administration appears to be continuing many of the same activities that have inspired anti-American extremism and undermined the governments that do seem to like us, without much consideration about the balance of costs and benefits that this may involve." - Stephen Walt

The links to articles above are pretty interesting today, and the major point from Stephen Walt's piece is that Obama's foreign policy hasn't really changed much, it's an extension of George Bush's doctrine, and is doing the same thing that Bush did, recruiting more extremists to their cause and undermining the governments that are friendly towards us. And that will continue to happen as long as we are occupying Muslim countires and sending Joe Lieberman and John McCain over to them as our emissaries... One might try to answer the question that veteran journalist Helen Thomas asked at a White House press conference the other day: why is al Qaeda and its affiliates still trying to attack the American people? Of course, she got a song and dance runaround for an answer...


We have had discussions about illegal immigrants for over 50 years, and still have not come to any conclusions or made any new policies. When economic times are good, people pour across the borders, looking for work and a better life. With the wars in Southwest Asia and Africa, there is a large amount of people looking for places to settle down all across Europe. Inevitably, it creates a racist backlash. In Italy: "At least 300 African migrants have been transported out of a southern Italian town rocked by two days of clashes between the migrants, police and local residents.


Eight buses transferred the African fruit pickers on Saturday from Rosarno to a temporary shelter elsewhere in Calabria, the largely impoverished, agricultural region in the "toe" of Italy... Police said on Friday that at least 37 people had been wounded, including five migrants, 14 residents and 18 police officers. Three migrants were seriously hurt when they were beaten with metal rods, police and hospital officials said." Of course, politicians are laying the blame for this on Belesconi, that his policies have been too lax, and sound similar to criticisms about Obama being too lax concerning possible terrorist attacks. The difference is that Berlesconi's government is very right wing and it was the local citizens doing the attacking.

They seem to be having their own racial problems down under, in Australia: "A man of Indian descent was left with 15 per cent burns after he was set on fire in Australia, police have said. Authorities said there was no evidence of a racial motive after four men poured an unidentified fluid on the 29-year-old man and set it alight in a Melbourne suburb... The attack closely followed the murder of an Indian man, Nitin Garg, in the city on January 2." Oh right, it wasn't racially motivated, they just mistook him for a Buddhist monk from the 1960's and set fire to him so he could protest the Vietnam War... The local Indian newspaper ran a cartoon portraying the local police as members of the Klu Klux Klan, which is a universal symbol that Americans all over can be proud of... Enrollment in Australian colleges by Indian students have gone down for next semester by 20%, maybe they can transfer to the newly built university of science and technology in Riyadh for a healthier academic climate...

In Hong Kong, over 30 tourists were hurt from an acid attack: "Nine tourists and a child were among 30 people injured in an acid attack in a busy street in Hong Kong.
More than 100 people have been injured in similar attacks since December 2008 when bottles of acid were dropped from buildings in a pedestrian zone." This could easily be a vicious prank, but it is take a pot shot at foreigners season... And in Thailand, they are forcibly repatriating 4,000 Hmong tribesmen back to Laos, which means the tourists have been lagging in Northern Thailand and are not taking as many tours to those scenic ethnic villages...

I'm not sure if there's a point to this other than to illustrate the extreme acts of intolerance that is taking place around the world recently. Previously, immigrant camps in Russia were dismantled as well as in France. Maybe its the result of a wind-born virus, but I think it has more to do with the stress from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how fear can spread like a disease and it seems there is little we can do to stop it as long as the long wars continue.


elvis and michael's legacy...

I was watching two concert movies of Elvis Presley on television last night, their version of celebrating what would have been his 75th birthday. He had died in 1977 at the age of 42, as the result of an enlarged heart related to a habit of being addicted to narcotics and other prescription drugs. Years later, Michael Jackson died from overdosing on a drug administered by a personal physician, and it was learned that Michael had been taking powerful narcotics and sedatives for years.

In Elvis's case an autopsy revealed that: "A pair of lab reports filed two months later each strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported "fourteen drugs in Elvis' system, ten in significant quantity." ... Presley's main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, was exonerated of criminal liability for the singer's death, the facts were startling: "In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics: all in Elvis's name."

Both of these men were so talented and by their personal physicians abusing their medical privileges, essentially contributed to murdering them. And over the course of 30 years or so, nothing has been done to curb this kind of abuse by these kind of doctors. The only progression is that the physician who was supposed to be attending to Michael Jackson will be indicted with involuntary manslaughter...

I don't begrudge that rich folks and members of Congress can have personal physicians, what I do mind is that they throw ethics and their medical oaths out the window for the sake of money or rubbing shoulders with someone who is famous. What is really needed in the upcoming health care bill is a way to get rid of a quack. Many states have put caps on the amount you can sue a doctor for malpractice, and if one is just plain incompetent we are encouraged to put up with him because there's not much you can do to get their license removed. The AMA takes care of their own much better than any teacher's or labor union... I have seen quacks almost kill a 15 year old neighbor because he thought that the seizures she was having were a result of drug use, and not the epilepsy and grand mal seizures that almost killed her because he was a jerk. An incompetent surgeon almost killed my sister by screwing up sewing her colon back to her stomach after surgery, and he tried to open her up in her hospital room with a scalpel one afternoon, with the nurses all standing around with horrified looks on their faces. He's still practicing at our local hospital while she almost died and had to have two more corrective surgeries to fix his mess.

So, if the diseases don't kill you it looks like the doctors will, and we don't have any insurance for that...

"Jesus & Elvis" by Greg Brown

Jesus had some water, said "Wine'd be better yet".

Elvis picked up a guitar and made all women wet.

Elvis he died young - Jesus he died younger.

Elvis died of too much - Jesus died of hunger.

Jesus sang down through the ages: "Do like you'd have'em

do you".

Elvis rocked the universe with be-bop-a-lu-la -

Now here they are on black velvet, in a parking lot in

Missouri -

rocking my soul with rock'n'roll, soulful harmony.

Jesus went back to heaven to be the King of Kings,

but I hear the King of Rock'n'Roll is still restlessly

roaming.

Go on home to Jesus, El - he's waiting there you'll find.

You two can jam on old gospel songs - them are the best

kind.