On Ukraine war, will Trump channel JFK or LBJ?

On Ukraine war, will Trump channel JFK or LBJ?

Donald Trump will inherit Joe Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine on January 20.

Biden has made clear he’ll never negotiate an end to his failed war that includes any concession whatsoever to Russian security interests. Biden is furnishing Ukraine with billions more in weaponry to prevent a Ukraine collapse on his watch. He’ll be damned if he allows a US defeat in Ukraine in his last year to bookend his accepting a US defeat in Afghanistan in his first year.

That presents a huge dilemma for Trump whose who routinely called for a quick end to this senseless war during his successful campaign.

 But just like in his first term, Trump may be trumped on negotiating peace and disengagement by the US war party. Trump achieved nothing in terms of détente with North Korea or cutting America’s bloated 34,000 troop presence in NATO Germany. He may also fall victim to the same dread Biden has of being president when Ukraine does sue for peace, losing four provinces, committing to neutrality between East and West, including no NATO membership as the basis for a ceasefire.

Trump’s situation recalls the dilemma both JFK and LBJ faced over US involvement in America’s lost war in Vietnam 611 years ago.

JFK inherited his predecessor Ike’s 700 ‘advisors’ and Vietnam and ironclad US commitment to keep South Vietnam free from communism. By the end of 1962 Kennedy hiked the advisors to 11,000, incurring over 50 deaths in their non-combat role.

But by spring of 1963 JFK, more a realist than fanatical Cold Warrior, understood that no US presence could save South Vietnam from defeat. He began to secretly plan for a full US withdrawal. In May, 1963 he had Defense Secretary Bob McNamara draw up a withdrawal plan. Kennedy made this plan official policy with his National Security Action Memorandum 263, dated October 11, 1963. It called for withdrawal of 1,000 advisors by December and rest of the now 16,000 personnel out by the end of 1965. The 2 year gap to complete the US pullout was due to waiting till after his reelection to avoid political pushback from Republicans that could jeopardize his reelection.

This was US policy on the day JFK died. Had Kennedy lived there is no basis for believing he would not follow through on his pledge to end US military involvement in Vietnam.

When Lyndon Johnson became president, he immediately cancelled National Security Action Memorandum 263. His administration, Congress, the military and compliant national media all rallied around the fiction of complete continuity between JFK and LBJ on Vietnam. Johnson began pouring in more advisors before pivoting to direct US warfare after he hyped the August, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident to militarize US action against North Vietnam. LBJ famously remarked ‘I’m not going to be the first US president to lose war’.

In so doing Johnson destroyed his presidency and his legacy, along with over 58,000 soldiers killed, 150,000 inured, of which 21,000 were permanently disabled.

That is the dilemma Trump most likely is grappling with today. Will he follow thru with his campaign pledge to end America’s proxy war with Russia without total victory for our Ukraine proxies? Or will Trump succumb to the tragic Lyndon Johnson syndrome of continuing to pour hundreds of billion in US treasure, if not US lives, into a lost cause America should never have provoked.

Based upon Trump’s sorrowful record of caving to the war party in his first term, the latter course is the safer bet. But we should all work to push President Trump on Ukraine to channel JFK, not LBJ.

US mainstream media missed biggest news story of 2024

 

US mainstream media missed biggest news story of 2024

 

As the year winds down, US media reviews the biggest news stories of the year.

But in selecting the biggest story of 2024, US media missed it completely.

 

Was it Trump’s improbable reelection after 4 years in the political wilderness? Nope.

 

Was it Trump’s avoiding imprisonments for committing dozens of felonies including an attempted coup to overturn his 7 million vote loss to Joe Biden? Nada.

 

Two hurricanes in 2 weeks that devastated the Southeast? No way.

 

How bout the unprecedented assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson which triggered a national discussion of our broken health care system? Faggedaboudit.

The lightening HTS insurgency which toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad within 2 weeks? Try again.

 

The biggest story of 2024 was America enabling the Israeli genocidal ethnic cleansing of 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Throughout ’24, America has supplied over $20 billion sending over 50,000 tons of bombs to obliterate habitable life in Gaza’s 139 square miles. Over 100,000 already dead with no resources left for the remaining Palestinians to survive. Nearly every Palestinian child believes death is imminent according to recent reporting.

 

But one could watch mainstream media 24/7 and not hear one word about US participation in the most grotesque genocide this century. Mainstream news has fallen in line with the Biden administration narrative that $20 billion and 50,000 tons of weapons, along with US vetoes of UN resolutions to end the genocide, are simply for Israeli self-defense.

 

There is no reporting on the horrific conditions in Gaza; the obliteration of all schools, universities, hospitals, livable housing, potable water, food supplies. Media ignores the wanton slaughter of their journalistic brethren trying to cover the genocide along with hundreds of aid workers seeking to keep starving Palestinians alive.

 

Tragically, media censure of the ongoing US enabled genocide is the one issue upon with both conservative and progressive media concur. Genocide and US lockstep participation in it is the issue that date not speak its name.

 

The US government is fully supportive in word and deed of the most monstrous war crimes imaginable. But when it comes to this inhumane policy…US mainstream media cannot even imagine it, much less report on it.

Speedy Alka-Seltzer never killed or gouged anyone

 

Speedy Alka-Seltzer never killed or gouged anyone

 

The assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson catapulted gargantuan health insurance company profits to the fore of critical societal issues in America.

                                                                                              

But besides direct medical costs, the other pillar of excessive profits borne by strapped consumers, prescription drug prices, must also be addressed.

 

Health insurance companies are also the gatekeeper in league with Big Pharma to prevent needy folks from getting proper drugs without going into debt if not bankruptcy. Time after time a new drug prescribed for me provokes this response from my pharmacist: ‘Prescription delayed due to insurance issue.’ Try as I might, I could never get my drug insurer to budge on the $590 cost for a single monthly shot of migraine headache medicine while my daughter in Germany pays $10.

 

The prescription drug ripoff takes me back 70 years to one of my favorite advertising characters from the 1950's: Speedy Alka-Seltzer.

 

Speedy was an antacid tablet come to life, promising 'speedy' relief from indigestion. Speedy, and his cohorts pitching OTC (Over The Counter) medicines were both engaging and harmless creatures; never once needing a sound over voice warning of heart attacks, strokes, internal bleeding, diarrhea, thoughts of suicide, even death rattled off by the winner of a fast talking contest. Nor did Speedy extol us to demand a prescription for him from ol' Doc Jones since we simply plunked down our twenty-five cents for Speedy at Friendly Pharmacy.

 

 

Then in 1997, Speedy was relegated to the TV advertising back shelf when the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Direct To Consumer Advertising (DTCA). This was a brilliant and pernicious scheme in which Big Pharma pitched their dangerous and colossally costly prescription drugs directly to consumers, who could only get them by demanding 'ol Doc Jones write them a prescription. It only takes a few hours to boob tube watching to endure a dozen or more such disgusting ads.

 

It has been a money geyser for America's leading drug pushers, worth many times the $8 billion spent annually enticing gullible couch potatoes to self-medicate.

 

On DTCA, America is an outlier. Only New Zealand joins America in the industrialized world allowing DTCA.

 

Research shows half of patients request a TV ad promoted drug and doctors meet two thirds of patient requests. Doctors are businessmen too; why risk losing a paying customer simply because he's determined to get his TV ad induced drug of choice.

 

Getting back to long gone Speedy. He never killed anyone or forced them into debt. And unlike many of the Rolls Royce priced prescription drugs being hawked on TV by Big Doc Pharma, Speedy didn’t need a barely discernable disclaimer warning of debilitation, possible death to score an unaffordable drug.

Horrifying response to United Health CEO murder reveals fractured US health care system, fractured US society

 

Horrifying response to United Health CEO murder reveals fractured US health care system, fractured US society

 

 

Within hours of the murder of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson, a Facebook (not a real) friend posted “finally some good news.”

 

 

That was just the start of the avalanche of vicious cheering over the 50 year old family man being shot in the back on a NY street about to enter a business meeting. The Highfivers took no pains to hide their identities as they gloried in Thompson’s death. Today 3 businesses in Chicago were defaced with the cry “Kill your CEO”.

 

 

Companies are recoiling from this onslaught by deleting personal executive info from their websites and taking other measures to protect their now vulnerable top officers. Many execs are likely beefing up their personal security systems as well.

 

 

Among the many millions of disaffected Americans rallying over this unprecedented tragedy, no doubt a few, maybe many, are planning a copycat CEO execution.

 

 

That alone should shock everyone involved in the worst health care system in the industrialized world to re-evaluate their contribution to both creating and maintaining America’s failure to provide its most crucial human service: full and affordable health care for all.

 

 

That must provoke a total reexamination of how affordable health care is provided by everyone involved: insurers, medical profession and especially Congress. It took President Obama 14 months to pass a watered down improvement to America’s heartless health care delivery system in 2010. Little has been accomplished in the past 14 years to improve Obama’s health care babysteps, while the opposition party tried dozens of times to abolish it altogether. Back in power…they just might succeed next year.

 

 

That obstruction keeps over 25 million Americans without any health insurance. Tens of million less affluent remain hostage to a bureaucratic, often conniving, greedy insurance colossus making hundreds of billions in profits from their Byzantine structure and practices.

 

 

With the likely perpetrator of Thompson’s murder in custody, we cannot waste another 14 years, 14 months 14 weeks, even 14 days before grappling with a people-made problematic healthcare system that than can be made humane by the same people responsible for it.

 

 

Sometimes a horrific murder galvanizes society into action to improve American life. I still recall the horror of JFK’s assassination 61 years ago. At the time Kennedy was struggling to pass comprehensive civil rights legislation as America teetered on the edge from a century of unfulfilled freedom and equality for blacks.

 

 

With his reelection bid just 11 months away, JFK remained stymied from achieving any civil rights progress by his Southern congressional opposition and his focus on reelection. After his assassination, southerner Lyndon Jonson took office and utilized both the enormous good will following the assassination and his unprecedented political muscle to achieve within 2 years what JFK may not have.

 

We must use that lesson from 61 years ago to finally join the rest of the industrialized world in delivering decent, affordable health care to all.