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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY). He can be reached at , , and .
Dr. Jonas is a Contributing Author for the webmagazine The Political Junkies.net (www.thepoliticaljunkies.net ); a Columnist for the webmagazine BuzzFlash (http://www.buzzflash.com ); a Contributing Editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online (https://bestcyrano.org/ ); a Contributing Columnist for the Project for the Old American Century, POAC (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/ ); and an invited contributor to the weblog The Daily Scare (http://www.dailyscare.com/ ). He also has his own (currently inactive) weblog, “Dr. J.’s Short Shots, II” (http://drjsshortshots.wordpress.com/).
He is the author of The New Americanism (1992), available at . In this book, Dr. Jonas presents his proposal for that “new vision and mission” for the Democratic Party that so many, for so many years, have been urging it to find. He finds them, needed with increasing urgency as the Georgites drive our nation towards frank theocratic fascism with increasing speed and determination, in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He is also the author of The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022. Under the pseudonym "Jonathan Westminster" this book was originally published in 1996. It was republished with a New Introduction in 2004. Under Georgite rule, the “fictional non-fiction” scenario of this work of “future history” is, most unfortunately, becoming all too real. The 2004 edition is available at www.barnesandnoble.com (search with the book title) and www.xlibris.com (click on “Bookstore,” then “Search” with the title). Both versions are available at (go to "Books;" search with the title).
STEVE JONAS ARTICLES ON HAND (NOTE: THIS IS A RANDOM SAMPLER).
For a comprehensive catalog of this writer's essays, please do a sitewide search.
A Torturous Debate
One of the principal lessons that Karl Rove learned from his master teacher Lee Atwater was that he who controls the agenda wins the debate and, in grander terms, the election. Rove has been positively brilliant with this tactic, from 2000 onwards. True Bush policies and programs have never been on the agenda, whether in that first election or any of the subsequent ones. Rove has been able to do this on both the grand and the lesser scales. And so we come to the debate over torture and Judge Mukasey, and the agenda for that debate. I have no way of knowing whether Rove is still active on a day-to-day basis with the Bush White House. My suspicion is that he is, for these tactics have Rove’s fingerprints all over them.
Tom Friedman has been wrong before about the major issues of our time. He supported “globalization” and apparently still does, even though this is finally being revealed to be not at all about “free trade” (e.g., U.S. sugar), as some observers have known for quite some time. Rather it is about the free export of capital to places where it can make a lot more profit for its owners than it could in the U.S. Tom Friedman originally supported the War on Iraq, even though he wasn’t sure about WMD. And now Tom Friedman is wrong on Gore (for the most part) and on Bush
The US government use of torture is in the news once again, and as long as BushCheney are in power it will be, off and on. For they have made its use into US government policy. Of course, they describe whatever it is that is being done as “not torture.” They then go on to say that a) “we can’t give you any details because: a) it’s classified and b) anyone who spills the beans will be “aiding and abetting terrorism and terrorists” (as if such persons didn’t already know from first-hand experience with Georgite torture at the hands of either US torturers or those of allies such as Egypt).
The Permanent Republican Presidency: What the Democrats can do to ensure that it happens
Karl Rove originally set out to establish the Permanent Republican Majority (PRM), his version of The Thousand Year Reich. The disastrous results of Bush’s foreign military and domestic economic policies combined have likely put an end to any hope for the Georgites to achieve that goal in the foreseeable future.
The Rush Limbaugh Plan for Dealing with the San Diego Fires
Over the past couple of weeks, Rush Limbaugh has been holding forth on the San Diego fires. He has been particularly forthright on the difference between how they have been responded to compared to that of the Katrina Disaster. Rush Limbaugh is not, as Keith Olbermann likes to characterize him, a comedian.
I’m Shocked, Shocked (about the Libby Commutation), Not
In the famous Humphrey Bogart/Ingrid Bergman movie Casablanca, the character Captain Renault of the French police is famously played by Claude Rains. Upon walking into Rick’s (the Humphrey Bogart character) bar near the beginning of the movie, he famously says: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!” And so, the reaction among many on all sides of the political spectrum to the Libby commutation has been: “shocked, shocked” to find that it has happened.
