The Green Party Alternative to the Decrepit Democratic Party

Guest is executive director of the Green Party of the U.S.A., Brent McMillan, in an hour long discussion of the state of the Democratic Party and Green Party strategies for creating a genuine progressive space in American politics. With corporatists, militarists and their shills dominating the Democratic Party and actively undermining the few genuine progressive elements of the party, and the feeble President Obama stuck in Iraq and expanding wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, threatening Iran over its legal nuclear program, facilitating the continuing theft of Palestinian lands and the inhuman blockade of Gaza by Israel, the institutionalization of most of the fascistic civil liberties violations of Bush & Cheney, the protection of Big Business economic domination and the failure to curb the excessive power of Wall Street, it is now time to seek alternatives to the Democratic Party.

Why the Left Must Now Confront the Democratic Party

Forget the Republican Party, we all know how utterly depraved it has become. What troubles me far more is the extent to which the Democratic Party has become a tool of the giant corporations that use public policy as a profit enhancement business strategy (so revealed by this year’s health “reform” charade), and the Pentagon-industrial and right wing foundation foreign policy establishment on a militaristic rampage throughout much of the world.

Except for a shockingly small number of individuals who genuinely believe in social and economic justice (and deserve our support), the Democratic Party is a degenerate, power-corrupted entity controlled by these corporate-militarist elites and their careerist politicians and promoted by clueless activists too loyal to their party and influenced by the Establishment media to autonomously perceive this reality.

This week’s Mark Weaver Show is developing a new strategy to hold the Democratic Party accountable by implementing “modes of confrontation”. Guest is Brent McMillan, director of the Green Party of the United States. Democrats, independents, please call in.

Just take a quick look at where we are under President Obama (I will reprise in detail on the Oct. 31 Mark Weaver Show). If you are unaware of all this, and are blindly promoting the Democratic Party, there is something very wrong with you. You need to examine yourself, your values and your very awareness of the world beyond your slavish unthinking devotion to the Democratic Party.

We now have more troops in foreign combat than we did on January 20th, and further escalation is imminent. Obama has dramatically escalated the Predator drone assassination campaign against Taliban and other fundamentalist Islamic militants in Pakistan with high civilian casualties which just yesterday drew a UN official’s call for transparency that could reveal war crimes by Nobel Laureate Obama. He has coerced the Pakistani army into two major assaults on Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan, driving over two million Pakistanis from their homes. All of this is pushing the relatively stable Pakistan under Bush-Cheney into a needless civil war. Aside from the surreal pointlessness of all this, Obama is committing hundreds of billions of dollars and condemning thousands of lives to a long debacle. And it’s all deficit financed. With his goofy impotence in confronting rightwing extremists on every issue, such as the fanatical government of Israel, Obama is leading us down a path to a war on Iran. By further assaulting and enraging millions more people, Obama is endangering our national security. President Obama and his Democratic Party are destroying this nation every bit as much as the Republicans did for eight years. The only differences are the kinds and emphases of the destruction.

And it’s not just Obama. It’s the party that created him. Virtually the entire party leadership backs this militarism. Kerry, Levin. In Florida, Kendrick Meek and Bill Nelson have already backed troop increases, before Obama has even made any decision. Alcee Hastings says he’s “not averse” to them. Only Allan Grayson, Corrine Brown and Alcee Hastings have even cosponsored a bill calling for a no-deadline exit strategy from Afghanistan that could be fifty years from now.

And it’s not just the wars. It’s Obama’s cynical breaking of dozens of his campaign promises, from union card check, to don’t ask don’t tell, to transparency, to his continuation and institutionalization of most of the Bush-Cheney power grabs such as the state secrets privilege, rendition and the rejection of habeas corpus rights to the retention of dozens of Bush-Cheney appointees in the Pentagon, the CIA, the national security apparatus and the appointment of Republicans such as Tim Geithner.

It’s time to hold the Democratic Party accountable for this mayhem.

Out of Afghanistan ... Obama's Preposterous Nobel

Obama Nobel preposterous and undermines anti-war movement ... McChrystal calling for 80,000 more troops in Afghanistan but right to go public ... Obama Afghan overhaul setting up an even greater disaster ... Guest is Patricia DeGennaro of the World Policy Institute on an Afghanistan exit strategy... Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Kendrick Meek back troop increase ... David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.com talks about his new book on creating real democracy: "Daybreak" ... Big Orlando anti-war march on Oct. 17th.

Statement on Obama's Pseudo Health Reform

The following is the original text of my “Statement on Health Pseudo Reform” delivered to the American people on the September 12th Mark Weaver Show

At its core the health “reform” spectacle we are witnessing – the town hall thuggery, the blatant lying, most notably of the woman who came within six percentage points and a heart attack of the presidency, the insult on the floor of the House by its #1 recipient of health industry money, the telling $150 million ad campaign of the price gouging pharmaceutical industry FOR reform, the preposterous shut out of single player advocates from the discussions, to the Blue Dog and Gang of Six insurance industry shills to the industry shmucking president and his resulting conflated messages to the nightmare patchwork of the emerging bill itself – is a war by the medical industry to maintain its hegemonic pricing power over our healthcare. And guess who is going to win.
Every event of this spectacle, every one, can be explained by this motive. It explains the emerging bill itself.
At its core the reforms preserve the main (though not only) cause of all our problems – the superfluous middle man health insurance industry with its high administrative overhead to fight billing claims, pay multimillion dollar executive salaries, stock dividends and profit margins. Eliminating this overhead is the Big Enchilada of health reform. It cuts costs $350 billion a year on wasteful paperwork alone, enough to cover all the uninsured and reduce premiums. All the squabbling about deficit neutrality and whether insurance subsidies should cost $88 or 90 or $120 billion a year is a false debate derived from the war to maintain the profiteering insurance industry. The U.S. is the ONLY country in the world, the only one, that allows a for-profit health insurance industry. This is the primary reason we pay the highest health care costs in the world. America is a country where a super powerful industry exploits its citizenry and President Obama is actively perpetuating that.

The verdict is still out on this health reform. We’re at S in the alphabet of the process and all the issues have yet to be decided. We know the broad outlines but the actual working system that is enacted is still unknowable. Even then, how the details are filled in over the next few years by the administration and how they are actually implemented will determine the fate of reform. Even then, the system is so complex that it will take several years after they go into effect in 2013, that’s right, none of this is going into effect for over three years, to know how things are working themselves out. We won’t know til 2015 if this was worth it.

But we do know that the improvements being proposed in this rapacious dysfunctional system have to be looked at in light of the directive to preserve this system of exploitation of our need for health. And there are some major major improvements. The insurance companies will no longer be able to reject people with pre-existing conditions, cancel them when they get too sick or jack up their premiums as you get older. There will be no more annual or lifetime limits on the payout of a policy if you get desperately ill. The House plan slaps a $5,000 annual maximum on an individual policy for out of pocket expenses. That means if you get cancer, the most you’ll pay in one year is five grand. This is all very big stuff. But there’s a catch, as there is with everything in this ticking time bomb of pseudo reform. These new claims and bigger insurance payouts are going to cost the insurance companies money and they will add these to everybody’s premiums. Nothing in the “reforms” controls the premiums the insurers can charge.
But wait, you say, astutely pointing out that millions of uninsured healthy people will now be required to buy insurance, that adds billions to the premium pool which will cover the costs of the ill and older. Don’t bet on it. The medical industry is riddled with greedy predators who know, who sense, who smell that a sick person is easy prey to charge what the market will bear, which is increasingly without limit. Just talk to the 900,000 victims of medical bankruptcy in this country each year, a phenomenon unheard of in most of the world. Fortunately, the reforms are going to dramatically reduce these bankruptcies. But the insurance industry is going to roll all these higher payouts into its rates. Premiums may actually go up under Obamacare, which is why it all comes down to the public option, how strong it is and how much pricing pressure it can put on the private insurance companies to curb their profits and executive salaries and dividends. The public option is on the ropes and even if it survives it will be too weak to reign in the insurance companies. The Blue Dogs have already forced the House plans to increase Medicare payments to doctors from Medicare plus 5%, which might have been reasonable, to whatever they can negotiate for new rates, which wipes out most of any pricing reductions in the public option. As we watch the public option/ insurance cooperatives debate unfold, remember, it’s all about the pricing power of the medical industry, to what extent there is going to be downward pressure on their pricing power – how much private insurance will cost us and how much the government is going to have to fork over to the insurance companies for the subsidies.
In a deeper sense, the predation of the medical industry is THE crux of the health reform spectacle. The shocking thing about Obamacare is that it is NOT going to substantially reduce the bloated costs that everyone says are the core of the problem. Obama admitted as much in his address to Congress. The only cost reduction number he cited was a one-tenth of one percent reduction per year in the rate of cost increases. Why? As with everything with these reforms, the answer is that the reforms are centered around preserving the profiteering medical industries.
While there are some long term cost reduction mechanisms in the bills, they don’t amount to much. Electronic medical records will take ten years to phase in but won’t cut costs that much. Malpractice tort reform, if it is ever meaningfully enacted over the campaign contributions of the Democratic Party trial lawyer lobby, would help, but it’s not among the really big contributors to the price of health care.
Obamacare will leave intact the 30% administrative paperwork overhead for filing claims with 1300 different insurance companies. The average doctor will still spend $64,000 a year on medical billing and hire one and a half clerks to do it. It’d be insane if it didn’t make perfect sense for the insurance industry. VERYTHING about health reform revolves around preserving the money making power of the medical industry.
Take the pharmaceutical industry. Obama negotiated a secret deal with them, despite his campaign promise to make the health reform process transparent. They’re gonna give a 50% discount to people in the ridiculous Medicare part D “doughnut” hole, that political compromise under W whereby people with moderately high drug expenses have to pay out of pocket but if your drug costs are lower or catastrophic you’re covered. Finally you’re gonna get a 50% break. That’s going to cost Big Pharma $8 billion a year. But Obamacare does NOTHING else to cut overpriced drug costs and profiteering. Nothing. Obama negotiated away the most important drug reform of all, allowing Medicare, and any public option, to negotiate volume discounts with the drug companies. The $8 billion “concession” by this price gouging industry that gets away with charging us far more for drugs than the same drugs cost in other countries is only point two percent of their annual revenue. That’s .2%.
Hospital costs? The industry has “promised” to pursue cost cuts of $15 billion a year, not much in the giant industry. It sounds good, but most of that will come from a decrease in the charity care it has to provide at discount or no cost to the uninsured and others who can’t pay their bills. This is an improvement in the insane system of tacking charity care costs onto paying patients and insurance bills. But its cost shifting to the government and people forced to buy insurance now. The reforms do little, other than some pilot programs which Medicare and Aid have been running for decades looking for more efficient ways of doing things, to ring the profiteering out of the for profit hospital and non profit act alike industry.
Most importantly, reform does not create the push needed for hospitals and doctors to move away from the gouging “fee for service” private practice system to integrated systems like the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics where doctors work for the organization and are paid annual salaries and collaborate on diagnoses and care. It takes the pressure off doctors to nickel and dime patients and insurance companies to cobble together an income. These clinics rank the highest in the quality ratings and the lowest in costs. It’s an essential reform. Many many experts say so, but it’s not in the “reform”.
Despite all these problems, the reforms are going to put a big dent in the number of uninsured, although they are probably only going to increase the number of insured people from 85% of the population now, to about 94%. Six percent are still going to fall through the cracks and they’ll still be going to emergency rooms and getting charity care which will get rolled into insurance rates. Still tens of millions of people are going to be added to the insurance rolls. There’s going to be a dramatic expansion of Medicaid to people making 130% of the poverty level. And there are billions of dollars in subsidies to lower income people making more than that to help them afford insurance.
All this is very good, but it’s unnecessary if we went to single payer and this is what’s so disturbing about Obamacare, like I keep saying, it’s all about preserving the profiteering. All of these subsidies are going to be paid to the insurance companies. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the insurance companies, the insurance companies with no price controls, the continuing 30% administrative waste, the bloated executive pay and the dividends. It’s insane. That’s why its important to watch who is going to pay for all of this. All Obama has committed to is taxing high end insurance plans. There’s still a gaping hole in the financing and there will be a big fight over who plugs it.
Why did Obama sell us out on all this? The drug industry agreed to spend $150 million of pro-reform advertising. It’s in their interest, not yours. Think of how many billions they’re going to make from the newly insured, much of which will come from the taxpayers in the subsidies. Obama’s deal is no deal. It’s a pathetic give away. If I had an agent bargaining for me like that I’d fire him, and sue him for malpractice. But the deeper reason Obama caved is that by keeping the industry flush it won’t spend hundreds of millions next year trying to defeat Democratic congressmembers, or Obama in 2012. And that illustrates the sickness of our political system, that they are able to get a way with that threat.
This gets us to the heart of America’s pseudo democracy. Why was Big Pharma and Big Insurance and Big Hospital Corporate Nursing Homes and Big Diagnostics and the AMA able to get away with all of this? It’s because they and the other financial titans – Wall Street, the giant corporations, the media corporations – have near total control of our society. We live in a corporate dictatorship and their domination is so pervasive that many of you reading this don’t even realize it, especially the ones who dumped this essay when it got too “militant” for them. These economic behemoths have no competitor to challenge their power in elections. They can pump billions into campaigns of their shill candidates like Bill Nelson and Kendrick Meek while the conservative corporate media brainwash the electorate into industry complicity, lead by the loud mouth wingnut TV and radio hosts. They have half the Senate and half of the House. Wanna run for Congress? Just make the rounds of the big business groups, shill for them and bingo you’ve funded your campaign.They own this sycophant president and they also have the Supreme Court including Sonia Sotomayor, who doesn’t have the vision let alone will to advocate powerfully for constitutional restraints on the unfettered political power of the giant corporations, which is to be expected from an appointee of this corporate stooge of a president.

UN Investigators Accuse Israel of War Crims in Gaza

UN accuses Israel of pervasive war crimes and violations of humanitarian law during Gaza assault, it's time to suspend U.S. military aid to Israel. We review Florida Democrats such as U.S. Senate nominee-designate Kendrick Meek's venal cheerleading for those crimes-in-progress last January; We need to shut down the vile Rush, Glenn, Savage, Sean + with massive boycotts; Left needs to buy TV network, radio stations and newspapers, otherwise we'll remain caught in the loop of getting beat up year after year after year by the Right. Iraqi shoe thrower tells of American destruction his shoes walked upon; Roosevelt and Obama; Great news! House ends student loan subsidy give-aways to private lenders and socializes student loans: Socialism on the march!!!;

Out of Afghanistan!

As you watch this, take notes. Then organize four people to meet with your congressmember and Senator. Ask them to stop voting for Afghanistan war funding and to sponsor a resolution directing the President to extricate all U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan within 12 months. Then call the show some Saturday morning and tell us how it went. Then recruit a good candidate to challenge the recalcitrant in their primary next year.

Iraq, Sex, Drugs, Rock, Roll and Woodstock

Certain to be one of the best Mark Weaver Shows of the year, the show starts with a wonderful "you were there" reliving of Woodstock 40 years ago today by journalist Julie Klein. But the show stealer is one of the best interviews I have ever done, as New York Stonybrook State University sociology professor Michael Schwartz regales us for an hour and a half on the shocking neo-colonization of Iraq by the U.S. The breadth and depth of Schwartz' knowledge of Iraq is breathtaking, but in a nutshell, the Obama administration is attempting to consolidate and perpetuate a U.S. client government that will implement U.S. economic and foreign policies in Iraq through U.S. civilian administrative control of Iraqi society down to candidate recruitment and funding, the school curriculum and neoliberal privatization policies, all designed to perpetuate a client government in the country "freely" elected by the Iraqis. So far the Iraqis have refused to enact the famous oil law that the U.S., and recently Biden, have pushed to open the oil industry to international oil companies and increase oil production to challenge OPEC and drive down the price of oil to benefit Western economic interests. All other oil rich Middle Eastern countries maintain state control of their oil industries with revenue financing the government. Schwartz expects the U.S. to maintain five "core" bases in Iraq with perhaps 50,000 troops over the long run, despite public rhetoric to the contrary. The military presence will maintain U.S. influence on the government and provide forward basing for U.S. operations against Iran and other Middle Eastern hot spots. He thinks Prime Minister al Maliki will eventually "ask for", under U.S. pressure, for a re-neogitation of the Status of Forces Agreement, whose referendum requirement has already been violated. Watch for a re-negotiation of the SOFA come summer 2011, or sooner if Israel bombs Iran and Obama uses the war as a pretext to maintain U.S. bases in Iraq. This is a show you should revisit in two years, if you can remember that long (make a note) to see how correct our analysis of these things is.

Democrats' Emerging Healthcare Fiasco, Part I

Note: this is a commentary, not a link to a show.

If you look closely, real closely, at the emerging Democratic healthcare “reforms”, you’re going to get nervous and you should become alarmed. The system in creation is a dysfunctional patchwork nightmare of unneccessary, over-bureaucratized, over-regulatory, mandates, tax subsidies to profitmaking insurance companies, penalties and fines, about which in part II in a few days. There is now a growing possibility that the plan has become so convoluted it will collapse under its own weight come the congressional vote. If it does pass, and the momentum is still in its favor, although the politicking of the August recess will probably determine its fate, we appear to be getting a system that is marginally improved for everyday people but so full of dysfunctions that the system will be an operational nightmare that might even fail and also be open to political attack from the right. This raises a central question for the Left now: do we continue to support reform for the sake of reform and push for the strongest public option, little of which is now even left, and other features or do we join the Republicans, for opposite reasons, and kill this monstrosity before it is born and start from scratch with a simple, efficient, elegant single payer plan. Ironically, regardless of what we do, this might be where events take us anyway.

And here’s another reason to be alarmed. These Rube Goldbergian health bills are everything the Right has always bashed the liberals for, discredited the liberal label and enabled them to dominate American politics for the past 30 years. The liberals are repeating that part of their history that discredited them and this could wreck the Democratic Party in the coming elections and make Obama a one-termer. But maybe that would be a good thing so that enough people are finally shocked into understanding how corporate liberalism keeps the Democratic Party stuck in a decades long cycle of arguing marginal issues with the Republican corporate party which results in see saw elections determined by a couple of percentage points or even the Supreme Court, or whether or not there’s an economic collapse at the time of the election. Maybe a collapse of the Democratic Party is what it is going to take for a progressive reformation within the party, or the ascendancy of the Green Party.

You can hear the discussion of these issues on this week’s Mark Weaver Show, Aug 1, now archived, with guest Tallahassee surgeon Raymond Bellamy of Physicians for a National Health Program.

The deeper I looked at the emerging legislation, the more it didn’t make sense. I swear. I didn’t realize what a mess it is. The impression I had had from the TV reports and cursory readings of the news articles was that we were on track for a much better, more coherent healthcare system. But we’re not. It didn’t make sense. How could these intelligent people be doing this? Slowly I had a revelation, that the reasons behind most of these absurdities wasn’t rational public policy, because it’s not rational, but politicized compromises designed to preserve almost in totality the for-profit middleman health insurance in this country that adds 30% to health costs in unnecessary adminstration and large profit margins , the only one in the world, I’ve heard, while trying to mitigate all of the problems this superfluous brokerage system has caused.

The responsibility for all of this, and the way out of it, lies with President Obama. Healthcare is one-sixth of the economy. This is a reform of historic proportions. It’s a major major effort and it’s hard. It requires a President in charge. Dr. Bellamy pointed out in my interview that Obama’s mistake was to hand health reform over to the congressional committees with little guidance. I agree. Congressional committees are parochial fiefdoms involved in turf wars and ego battles and subject to excessive influence from the business interests that fund their campaigns. A big issue like this requires strong, LBJ style unifying leadership from a President, and specifically a moderately detailed vision from the president of a future healthcare system. Obama has made the exact opposite of the mistake the Clintons made: they presented an overly detailed plan, derived in secrecy, to congress as a fait accompli.

And the vision Obama should have proferrered is single payer. Forget whether single payer is passable. It’s irrelevant. It should have been the foundation for the congressional negotiations. Far better for the nation through the media to have debated, and to have made compromises to a single payer plan, no matter how stinky they may have been to a lot of us, than to bargain away what the Democrats are in the process of bargaining away, whatever that was to begin with. Actually, the House, with strong LBJ leadership, could probably pass single payer by a narrow majority vote. How much better off we would have been, can you imagine?, if the conference negotiations this fall had been over a Senate filibuster-compromised for-profit system and a House socialized system. If health reform collapses we must besiege Obama to start over again along these lines, although that won’t happen. If everday people are to curb corporate power to set high prices for basic needs it is essential to have a strong, principled, committed leader as president. This sycophant Obama is not capable of that and we’re not going to change his personality. It is the great tragedy of his presidency and our country that he arrived at precisely the historic moment when genuine progressive reforms on the order of the Reagan revolution could have been enacted.

Democrats' Crazy Convoluted Health Reforms

Col. Reese memo: mission FINALLY accomplished, we can get out of Iraq within a year. Obama's destructive drone war in Pakistan often kills more civilians than fighters, generates enemies and must be stopped.

Guest is Dr. Raymond Bellamy of Physicians for National Health Program. With the conflicted Democratic Party, under the weak center-right neo-liberal leadership of President Obama, unable to challenge the superfluous profiteering middle-man health insurance lobby, the party is in danger of settling for piece meal reforms that leave the fundamental problems of our dysfunctional healthcare system in tact. This week’s Show features Tallahassee orthopedic surgeon Raymond Bellamy of Physicians for a National Health Program deconstructing the emerging health reforms such as the continuing illogic of mandating (with penalties) employer and individual health insurance, the cost inflating fee-for-service system, the problems with health insurance cooperatives and an enfeebled “public option” that won’t be able to “compete” with for-profit insurance companies and complicated subsidies, subsidies and more subsidies. All of these convoluted acrobatics to avoid a fight with the insurance industry, while still getting it, create lines of attack for the Republicans and others who want to preserve the privileges of the few in the current system.

Criminal Justice Reform Wave Builds

Eyewitness story of Stonewall Inn gay riots 40 years ago this week that led to nationwide wave of organizing in following months. Criminal justice reform wave building. Obama's timid liberalism. Teaching empathy. Raise the gas tax! Stop the oil speculation!

Orlando Congressman Emerges as Anti-War Leader

Guest is Congressman Alan Grayson (Orlando), Florida's Ned Lamont and the ONLY Floridian voting NO on continued funding of Obama's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, talking about an exit strategy for the 8 year war and the politics of extrication from quagmire. Grayson reveals that he is the #1 target of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee next year in the 8th district with a 2,000 Republican registration edge which he won last year from four term incumbment Ric Keller 52-48% in a self-financed campaign. Grayson says the U.S. is squandering trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives fighting 800 foreign Al Qaeda and other global jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Also, latest quadrennial National Intelligence Council concludes U.S. power in decline and nothing we can or should do about it as Earth shifts to multi-polar world with regional powers like Brazil, Iran, China, Russia and India asserting order in their spheres.

And, Florida and Obama Feds launch largest operation yet in war on drugs, arresting 144 people in raids in all 67 Florida counties on residential grow houses. In biggest crime of all they seize 15 children from their parents and put them in state custody.

Conservative Host Plays Back MW Show Soundbites

Hollywood, Florida conservative internet radio host David Allen (Independent Politic, 7pm weekdays) kills time editing 23 soundbites out of my show on Obama's Four Wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terror) nonsense, plays em back on his May 25th show .... and comments.

Allen's show gets off to a slow start with a lot of plugs and treading water but kicks into high gear after five or ten minutes and goes on for a riveting two hours. While some of his excerpts take me out of context and he at times distorts what I had meant, he does make a good faith effort to comment on my actual views. This isn't a disingenuous hatchet job.

Fascinating radio.

Guantanamo, Medical Marijuana, Obama's Two Million Pakistan Refugees & Black Homophobia

Guest is Kim Russell of People United for Medical Marijuana discussing Florida's initiative campaign. Obama's 2 million Pakistan refugee disaster & argument with Florida conservative talk host David Allen. Only 6 at Guantanamo are 911 involved. Netanyahu calls Obama "childish and stupid" after Oval Office talks. Black homophobia.

Obama's Vietpakistan Disaster

Forget the first 100 days, it took 120 for Republican President Obama to blunder into his first major disaster. First, U.S. troops bombed over 100 civilians to death in Afghanistan, the largest civilian slaughter of the eight year old war. Next, Obama, Holbrook and Company coerced the Pakistani military into launching a major offensive against the Taliban, driving 1.5 million Pakistanis from their homes in the largest internal migration in the history of Pakistan. Meanwhile, Florida Rep. Alan Grayson is the first to break ranks on the Afghanistan war and votes NO on the $70 billion Obama war supplemental. Weaver endorses Grayson for the U.S. Senate nomination.

Guest is Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy, who deconstructs Obama's Pakistan disaster.

Also, Mark explains the origin of life from ultraviolet light and reports on the ascendant atheist movement in the U.S. More.

Obama, Healthcare nonreform and Pakistan Quagmire

Guest is Richard Polangin of Florida Public Interest Research Group talking about the corporate campaign against affordable health care. Obama fomenting civil war in Pakistan, commits largest civilian massacre of Afghan Occupation. Depression of '09 is bottoming out!!!! Happy days are here again.

The Tragedy of Obama's First 100 Days

100 Days of Lip Service: The Tragedy of Republican President Obama: No Withdrawal Yet from Iraq, Escalating Afghanistan, Drone Attacks Worsening Pakistani Rebellion, Covering Bankers' Asses and Stalling Recovery, NAFTA Renegotiation Now Off Table, Gays in Military on Back Burner, Mortgage Relief? For it but Didn't Fight ....; also Launching "Mark Weaver Armed Forces Radio!"

Conditions for Normalization of Relations with the U.S.A.

(This is a commentary that does not link to any show).

With Emperor Obama declaring that “the ball is now in the Castros’ court” after his minimalist token easing of the Bush travel/remittance restrictions on Cuba and demanding that Cuba free all political prisoners, restore freedom of speech and press and end its 20% tax on remittances,

with ever-pandering and behind-the-curve U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, opposing even these token gestures and running for Senator of Hialeah,

all this despite Monday’s Bendixen poll showing a “stunning change of heart” in CUBAN-AMERICAN attitudes showing 67% approval for totally ending the trade and travel embargo ….

Mark Weaver, host of the explosive Mark Weaver Show, last Saturday (4/18) urged the Castros to hold firm and issued conditions for restoration of diplomatic relations with the U.S. of A.

1) The U.S. must return Guantanamo to Cuba since it is illegally occupying a sovereign nation on land it stole through force of war.
2) The U.S. must restore the freedom of travel to its own people and end their imprisonment north of the Florida Straits.
3) The U.S. must restore habeas corpus rights to all detainees on Cuban territory and at its Bagram prison and other prison sites and release the hundreds of detainees who are believed to have been innocently swept up in the War on Assymetric Tactics.
4) The U.S. must free its own people and establish a single-payer healthcare system that eliminates the predatory extortion and profit making greed of the American medical industry taking advantage of the sick, and re-socialize health personnel to care for the sick out of compassion rather than with Norte Americano dollar signs in their eyes, as Cuba has done.
5) The U.S. shall bring freedom of speech to the American Left who are shut out of any meaningful influence in Americano sociedad by the corporate profit making Mainstream media such as the Miami Heraldo, the Orlando Sentinel and the mere 60 radio stations that Thom Hartmann (the #1 progressive host) is on while Rush Limburger is on 600 stations, which is why people like Trish of the Pensito Review can be be ecstatic over Obama’s tragic minimalist center-right presidency and ready to work hard for his re-election and eight years of tragedy and opportunistic lost opportunities. Cuba will NEVER turn its media over to wealthy ownership and right wing domination.
6) The U.S. shall free the dozens of political prisoners who have been jailed on trumped up charges of “providing material support for terrorism” by making charitable donations to Mid Eastern charities that have working relationships with the elected governing Hamas and Hezbollah Parties of Lebanon and Palestine.
7) The U.S. shall fully fund and socialize its education system from age two through vocational school and college through progressive income taxes, as Cuba has done, giving us the best performing education system in all of Latin America according to the Stanford Professor interviewed last year on the Mark Weaver Show.
Cuba will NEVER end its 20% tax on remittances, dummy! That’s how we fund free health care and education for the people receiving the remittances!

Upon fulfillment of these conditions Cuba will
1) End its trade and travel embargo of the U.S. which has impoverished the Americano people.
2) Graciously allow the U.S. into the Organization of Americano States.
3) free any political prisoners who have not engaged in material violent subterfuge of the Cuban government
4) legalize all political parties and hold free regular elections within the context of a political system of working class control of the media and full public financing of elections based on nonpaid signature gathering with all private contributions over $100 to be banned
5) We might even be willing to work with those Cuban exile families who unfairly had their properties confiscated in the Cuban revolution, but only upon determination that these families had not extorted their properties through coercion and force, stolen them or exploited their employees or previous property owners to gain these properties or used ties with the Bautista dictatorship for same.

Futhermore, upon normalization of relations with the new Socialist States of America, we shall invite Mark Weaver to broadcast his show out of Havana, throw a ticker tape parade down the Malecon for uniting our two nations, and invite him and his friends like Betsy Angert, Benjamin Kirby and other Real Progressives to our finest hotel on our finest beach where they can all sip Mojitos.

U.S. Green Party's Highest Office Holder Talks

Guests are newly elected (80% win!) Arkansas State Rep. Richard Carroll (Green Party), and Florida Progressive Radio host SINFONIAN talking about his famous Keith Olberman, Pensacola Tea Party crashing video. Weaver joins in with what he would have said. Also, Obama's Pakistan policy eclipsing Iraq as #1 foreign policy disaster. Carbon dioxide causing ocean acidification and killing Florida's reefs. Latest on the New American Police State: Florida Keys teens charged by Taliban prosecutor with felony child porn and facing 15 years for videotaping legal sex in bedroom. Riviera Beach Taliban ban low pants, charge 20 young Black men. Public defender sues for violation of Constitutional First and Fifth Amendment rights.

The Green Party Alternative

The Bush Torture Memos and Obama's failure to investigate takes us another step toward a police state. Also, U.S. Green Party co-founder Greg Gerritt talking about Green Party campaigns, the war economy, the environment and the economic crisis. Obama's timid liberalism.

Obama Jumps Into Afpakistan Vietnam Quagmire

It didn't take him long. On Day 31 Obama made what may become the single most fateful decision of his presidency. Instead of getting out, he decided to jump into the quagmire by adding 17,000 troops (for starters) for $70 billion a year and escalate drone attacks in Pakistan, both of which will widen the war into Pakistan. Day 31, remember it. Also, how the U.S. is sinking into Depression and Obama's rudderless centrism is eroding decisive action; forced feeding at Guantanamo.