VietnamVet | Mar 4, 2016 4:55:47 PM | 57 — Re: increasing death rates among whites
NewsHour on PBS had an interesting look at the increasing numbers of rural community hospitals closing and the effects on mortality. There did not seem to be any hard data, but one interviewee said that people are dying due to lack of timely care from strokes, heart attacks, traumatic accidents, something I don’t recall. Doctors were rare in these communities or even nearby.
Mostly it was essentially anecdotal reporting, such as an elderly couple who had to make three hour drives to the nearest hospital to treat the husband’s blood disease, iirc, three times a week. The couple feared the day they could no longer drive themselves to doctors or the hospital.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/small-towns-watch-aging-hospitals-shutter/
The profit motive means these smaller hospitals are not “feasible.” Could Medicare for All turn that around, with small but up-to-date hospitals serve as triage before sending patients on to larger hospitals as necessary? People seemed to have lost a sense of security that health care would be there for them.

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 5 2016 16:15 utc | 104

Re: the national polls showing Sanders winning over R possibilities is being challenged by almost all in the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) as interesting, but not indicative of any election outcome, as the presidency is decided on a state by state basis, not overall popular vote.
I can’t tell you how often I hear that when Sanders’ poll numbers are discussed/

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 5 2016 16:38 utc | 106

With all the Hitler, Fascist commentary on this thread why is there no reference to the Weimar Republic? The parallels are unnerving with 911 being U$A’s Reichstag Fire.
“From 1930 onwards President Hindenburg used emergency powers to back Chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher. The Great Depression, worsened by Brüning’s policy of deflation, led to a surge in unemployment.[5] In 1933 Adolf Hitler became the new Chancellor of a coalition government, and Nazis held two out of remaining ten cabinet seats. Von Papen as Vice Chancellor was intended to be the “éminence grise” who would keep Hitler under control, using his close personal connection to Hindenburg. Within months, however, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 had brought about a state of emergency and wiped out constitutional civil liberties. Hitler’s seizure of power (Machtergreifung) allowed him to govern by decree without the involvement of the legislature. These events brought the Weimar Republic to an end, as democracy collapsed and a single-party state was created. The end of the Weimar Republic marked the beginning of Nazi Germany.”
In the year 2016 the same ‘power structure’ behind Weimar attacks the Constitution of the United States. The reality created by the mass medias is false. Just like what is happening in the Middle East today the truth is on the ground. Blut und Stahl. Same as it ever was.
Google ‘Weimar Republic’ book search …
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=book+about+weimar+republic

Posted by: ALberto | Mar 5 2016 16:57 utc | 108

While strictly constitutional government went out with Iran-Contra, there is still quite a way to go towards Weimar levels of political dysfunction. The fascists had their birth in the Freikorps used by the SDP to suppress the Communists after 1918, and open civil war ran until 1923. Weimar was pretty much one crisis after the other; Bruning’s government was already extra-constitutional. No political parties in the US were banned after September 11th.; “First they came for the Communists….”
Presently none of these conditions apply. Worry is justified, panic is not. “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

Posted by: rufus magister | Mar 5 2016 17:25 utc | 110

Better an honest reactionary than a faux-socialist.

Posted by: ruralito | Mar 5 2016 17:41 utc | 112

@jawbone 106, thanks that is helpful info.

Posted by: Bluemot5 | Mar 5 2016 17:48 utc | 114

The USA is not the same beast as Weimar was; but on the other hand, the Weimar Republic is not the only model of a descent into fascism. As the political season continues in the U.S., the outcome only concerns which president will be the administative head of the empire. The instruments of despotic power are already in place for a Trump or Clinton to declare martial law and rule by decree; and the underlying point of putting the PATRIOT ACT in place,was to create the climate in which such a thing could happen.
Weimar was born, in a psychological sense, out of Germany’s defeat in World War One.The United States has never gone through that kind of disruptive and traumatic experience of being utterly defeated and disarmed. We had our Civil War in which a section of the country was humiliated in that way. Also, another difference, is that there was vicious political fighting going on in the streets in Germany, gangs of the Left and Right killing each other. Weimar was exhasusted,in that it could not maintain much of a semblance of civil order in the streets.
We are painfully aware that in the US model of fascism, extreme instruments of surveillance, militarism expanded to the police, and control of message by corrupt media, as well as preparation of corporate control over local government and sovereignty, are all coordinated measures that are sufficient to define fascim in a country like this, and that those who have planned this have prepositioned the means to codify this and to make the takeover possible when the signal is given.

Posted by: Copeland | Mar 5 2016 18:21 utc | 116

How can Trump position himself to the left of anyone in American politics after his speech in Charleston? –where he told that story about General Pershing in the Phillipines War, and the the dipping of the 50 bullets in pig’s blood, prior to executing 49 insurgents? All the reprehensible crimes of the US in foreign military adventures were vomited forth in public view, in that one anecdote.

Posted by: Copeland | Mar 5 2016 18:35 utc | 118

in re 110
Srsly? As a heart attack.
They talked anti-bourgeois, but they were friend enough to business, with their hatred of the communists and unions, to gain their money and profit handsomely from rearmament. You’ll note they lost first Strasser and then purged Rohm. I don’t recall saying anything against Nader’s notion of a duopoly; see my favorable quotation from Brenner at 83. But isn’t fascism a one-party state? We’ll see if a Trump brand “Making America Great Again Republican Party LLC” emerges after the post-election Anschluss with Canada. All hail the Hairline!
Copeland at 116
Certainly, there are any number of models. Italy in 1921 is the original, Horthy, Franco, arguably a number of Latin American regimes, have all added their own flair. We saw how the Pravyi Sektor et al. did it in the Ukraine. Bertram Gross’ 1980 cautionary book Friendly Fascism offered an up-to-date version for American capital.
While I agree the risks have risen of late, the transition is not inevitable. Though it’s failed to derail him, the apprehension of the good Doctors Frankenstein of “mainstream conservatism” at their creation is a reassuring sign. To say nothing of likely resistance by Latinos and other of the right’s targets.

Posted by: rufus magister | Mar 5 2016 20:01 utc | 120

rufus @120:

…the apprehension of the good Doctors Frankenstein of “mainstream conservatism” at their creation is a reassuring sign.

Well, like most Zionist Hillary supporters, you naturally see it this way.
However, those who are more independent-minded see it the other way ’round. It is the establishment/duopoly that is the monster. As proven by establishment unity against democratic choice (first in Greece, now in the US).

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 5 2016 20:18 utc | 122

Penelope79
jawbone@104
Here are three more articles that discuss the issue of increasing mortality rate among the American poor.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/more-american-white-women-dying-prematurely
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/11/stunning-rise-in-death-rate-pain-levels-for-white-middle-aged-less-educated-whites.html
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/07/suicide-rates-rise-butte-montana-princeton-study
This comes from statistics generated the public health system. It definitely counters “this is the best of times” propaganda from the White House and corporate media. I doubt there is any grant money to study the causes. There has been reporting on the heroin and oxytocin epidemics but not of the consequences. The public health system is collapsing and the poor cannot pay the outrageous insurance and medical bills so they go untreated. I know persons who’ve killed themselves with alcohol and guns. My belief is the basic cause is joblessness and the resulting shame and despair that it causes. But, since providing jobs is counter the oligarchs get rich schemes, the problems are ignored. To me it explains the rise of Donald Trump.

Posted by: VietnamVet | Mar 5 2016 21:30 utc | 124

@122 Jackrabbit
Yeah, the Med seems to be where our technocratic overlords are trialling future measures for the greater good of the land.
Greece/Italy vs EU-SSR on Democracy
Cyprus vs EU-SSR on Bail-Ins
World’s best practice an’ all that…
@94 AnEducatedFool
…yep… top shelf rant. Fantastic stream of consciousness. If we wait for the deadwood to die, we will destroy ourselves. The planet will go on, inhabitable to many other forms of life – just not us. Tokyo gets its Godzilla with all the radioactive muck leaking into the Pacific. Cities not so much destroyed, dormant. Nanomonsters. The 3 eyed fish at the start of the Simpsons opening credit roll is a global phenomena…
World’s best practice an’ all that.
My addition to this musical thread…probly been posted umpteen times…the Empires’ vassal states watch on, they dont say much these days though… Silently complicit
US Forces (1982)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFT48Nl9rA
US forces give the nod,
It’s a setback for your country
…
..
Divided world, the CIA
Who controls the issue

Posted by: MadMax2 | Mar 5 2016 22:37 utc | 126

The NAZI model was not imported into the United States. America was the model that Hitler used for NAZI Germany. Hitler repurposed the tools of oppression used by the South and Corporate America to control Germany.
What has changed is that the US has brought the tools of oppression home instead of using them abroad. I can not remember the academic that discussed this system at length. I wish I kept a hard copy. I could never find the journal article again.

Posted by: AnEducatedFool | Mar 6 2016 1:07 utc | 128

@128 AEF ‘I can not remember the academic that discussed this system at length. I wish I kept a hard copy. I could never find the journal article again.’
Lots did. Sheldon Wolin is handy. Thucydides pointed out the return home of the imperial methods from abroad. Many people here have pointed to the Bush family’s – and the Ford’s and many others- involvement with Hitler prior to and – until they were forced to end it – during the war. Donny Gluckstein gives a good account of capital’s ‘war on fascism’. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz runs down the racist ‘strategy of annihilation unto unconditional surrender’ that’s been with us from the beginning and blooms in the Middle East and Africa against ‘Islam’, and in Ukraine and the Russian periphery in the present. Coming soon to China … if not imperial collapse first. The Thousand Year Third Reich lasted … what, 13 years? Depending on when we start the count, 9/11 or with the birth of the CIA in 1947, the US’ New American Century will be ‘lucky’ to have lasted sweet sixteen or seventy.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 6 2016 1:35 utc | 130

I would remember Wolin. He is up there with Chomsky, Zinn, Parenti, and Said.
The writer was a minor academic. I wish I could remember it now. He had a term for how the US would ratchet up oppression at home after honing the techniques abroad. He made a compelling case using the repression of the indigenous population in Central America in the 50s that fed into COINTELPRO and later using the techniques of Operation Condor domestically. It was an excellent article and informed a lot of my thinking about our relationship with Latin America and later the Middle East. I did not save the article and never found it again.
I’m not sure how to respond about the Southern Black comment.

Posted by: AnEducatedFool | Mar 6 2016 4:33 utc | 132

AnEducatedFool says:
The NAZI model was not imported into the United States
well, the NAZIS sure as hell were. you should brush up on operation paperclip…
and if you want a peek behind the curtain, check out this interview…
on this lazy sunday afternoon.

Posted by: john | Mar 6 2016 13:46 utc | 134

in re 125 —
Since you seem to have forgotten (or filtered out?) this major story, here’s the link you requested. Thanks for asking; I’d forgotten his paramour was a stalker.

As part of the plea agreement, Mr. Petraeus admitted that he gave his lover, Paula Broadwell, who was writing a biography about him, black notebooks that contained sensitive information about official meetings, war strategy and intelligence capabilities, as well as the names of covert officers.
According to court documents, he discussed the black books during an interview that Ms. Broadwell taped with Mr. Petraeus while she was working on the biography, telling her, “They are highly classified, some of them.”
Three weeks later, he gave her the notebooks.
In 2012, the F.B.I. opened a cyberstalking investigation after a friend of Mr. Petraeus’s reported to the authorities that she was receiving threatening messages from someone who appeared to know a lot about Mr. Petraeus’s whereabouts. It was later revealed that the person sending the messages was Ms. Broadwell.
During that investigation, Mr. Petraeus was questioned by F.B.I. agents at the C.I.A. headquarters, where he was serving as director. As part of his plea, Mr. Petraeus admitted that he misled the agents by telling them that he had not given Ms. Broadwell classified information.

Remember now? Not only leaked, but a self-serving leak to a fawning hagiographer.
Compared to what could happen (e.g., John Kiriakou, who exposed torture), not even a slap on the wrist.
Out of the military and into the private sector, where he will easily get the money to pay the $100K fine. That’s the way it works as a matter of routine for senior officials, so this was merely a slight acceleration of the timetable. He will no doubt slither back into the public limelight at some point, touting a self-serving bad idea regarding intervention somewhere. Perhaps even while on his one year of probation. Got to keep his pension, his rank and the perks that go with it.
It may not necessarily harm his future political prospects; I believe he is said to have ambitions toward the Presidency. Provided he goes Democratic, though. The bible-belt voters might not like a mistress.

Posted by: rufus magister | Mar 6 2016 16:11 utc | 136

in re 137 —
The fascist imports post-war were for technical reasons — largely knowledge of rocketry, and intelligence on the Soviets. Not for tips on governance.
German antisemites needed no lessons from the American South. And the Klan needed no lessons from the fascists. The racism and nostalgia for feudalism that helped fuel both are the common heritage of European civilization. As are the well-worn methodologies of the police state (see, e.g. Fouche, or Nicholas I). The concentration camp, for example, was a British invention during the Boer War.
States have long monitored the loyalty and compliance of their populations through spies. Our current methods of surveillance and control marry new technologies to long-standing practices and predilections. Like all forms of production under capitalism, they take a formerly labor-intensive process (large nos. of operatives needed) and make it capital-intensive. Mass-surveillance is now more “productive” and “cost effective.”

Posted by: rufus magister | Mar 6 2016 20:56 utc | 138

To AnEducatedFool and various others:
The American public relations / spin doctor Edward Bernays published a book “Propaganda” in 1928, detailing the psychological tools of persuasion and manipulation (nicked from his uncle Sigmund Freud) used on Americans to get them to accept, among other things, the idea of women smoking cigarettes in public. Bernays was later hired in the 1950s to sell the idea of a tiny Central American nation (Guatemala under President Arbenz) being an existential Communist threat to the US, to the American public to hurry them into supporting an invasion of that country, the overthrow of the Arbenz government and its replacement by a vicious military regime palatable to Washington.
Incidentally Joseph Goebbels was a big fan of Bernays and an avid reader of “Propaganda” and Bernays’ other book “Crystallising Public Opinion”, published in 1923.
http://www.amazon.com/Crystallizing-Public-Opinion-Edward-Bernays/dp/193543926X

Posted by: Jen | Mar 6 2016 22:25 utc | 140

The Nazis big innovation in propaganda was the use of the socialists techniques, such as the mass meeting and campaign, against the left in the service of the military and economic elite. They’re a paradox — a modern movement against modernity. They were the amongst the first to use radio, movies, and airplanes to campaign. rufus magister @ 141
Jonah Goldberg had a point in “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning”. Namely, the historical fascism, as invented by Mussolini and followed by Hitler and other was a “modern” movement with ambitions of progress and modernity. Comparatively, it is hard to assign any type of progress to GOP ideology, so in that sense Goldberg was right that in some respects, conservatives are further from fascism than liberals. Except they are very gung-ho on the highway system which is a Nazi invention, but trains are viewed on American right as satanic contraptions. Mussolini wanted trains to run on time and we will never had it here!
Modernity provides new possibilities and “embracing it” is necessary to compete. Like a hammer, it can be used for good and bad, but on the balance, humanity without hammers would be worse of: we would be driving nails with roughly shaped stones without handles, handles being a revolutionary invention that allowed to progress from Lower Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic. And sure enough, stone axes that were good enough to fell trees or dispatch mammoths could be used against other humans, and killing each other became a notch easier.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 7 2016 16:25 utc | 142

Judging by the pundits who are smearing Trump, and/or damning him with faint praise (the pro-Israel, pro-War on Terror, pro-R2P, pro-seamless carpet of bs crowd), Trump deserves to be popular purely because of the crooks & liars with whom he’s unpopular.
The control freaks are in the ironic position of knowing they need to stop giving him publicity but, used to being “opinion makers”, and incapable of shutting up, they’re becoming his most valuable election tool(s).

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 8 2016 16:22 utc | 144