IF BUSH DID WANT TO CARRY OUT A COUP, I BET THERE ARE PLENTY OF GOOD GERMANS AMERICANS WHO WOULD HELP... WITHOUT BATTING AN EYE

Good Germans know what is expected of them

My first contact with another human being this morning-- not counting when I woke up and turned on the TV in time to see a Howie Kurtz discussion of McCain wearing "gay sweaters," while he boldly changed into a... gay sweater-- was an IM from a friend who works as an Air America host. He wanted me to read a blog post at Whatever about the unlikelihood of the Bush Regime being able to pull off a coup to perpetuate itself in office. Personally I didn't find it persuasive enough in an overall sense since it didn't take into account the catastrophe that the Regime could employ to trigger it-- something that would make the Reichstag Fire and 9/11 look like child's play, like a nuclear explosion in Manhattan or in Congress, something only the most illegitimate and heinous figures in American history could ever conjure. But let's leave that argument for another day. One of the premises of the post is that the Bush Regime is simply too incompetent to pull off a coup.

Assuming Bush did decide to declare martial law over the entire nation, how on Earth is he going to enforce it? The federal government, even at this late stage in the Bush administration, is not entirely composed of Regent University graduates; there aren't enough people in the government itself who would be willing to follow Bush down that road. And even if there were, does anyone believe the sort of people the Bush administration appoints-- folks who we know are picked for ideological purity over actual competence in their job -- are going to be able to administer a coup of this magnitude? For God's sake, it took them a week to find the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. It's on maps. Does anyone really believe that this bunch could manage martial law-- an infinitely more complex undertaking-- any better?

That makes sense but, I moved on quickly to my e-mails and the first one I opened was from an old pal who manages a band that's recording their new album in Europe. He wanted to call my attention to a story I had just finished reading in this morning's Washington Post, Bush Aide Blocked Report-- Global Health Draft In 2006 Rejected for Not Being Political. Now we're back at Regent University output. Actually I don't know if the dull-looking hack referred to by the Post is a Regent U. alum or not-- like Bush, he could have gone to Yale, for all that it matters-- only that he's the son of a right-wing Republican congressman from Wisconsin who once hired Cheney to be his intern, is Bush I's godson, and got his job through cronyism via former Wisconsin Governor/Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson. And his job is Director of Global Health Affairs.

You may recall a week or two ago there was another of those passing scandals in the Bush Regime that might have caused more of a stir in a less controversial context, a context, say, where there isn't an impeachable offense committed on a weekly basis. This particular scandal had a whole gaggle of Surgeon Generals complaining to Congress how the Bush Regime tramples science-- and the nation's health and safety-- in the name of extremist ideological purity, not unlike what fascist dictators who have been admired in the Bush family have done in the past.

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.

A few of the issues it focuses on, such as AIDS treatment and research, have been public health priorities for the Bush administration. But others-- including ratifying the international tobacco treaty and making global health an element of U.S. foreign policy-- are more politically sensitive. The report calls on the administration to consider spending more money on global health improvement, for instance. And it warns that "the environmental conditions that poison our water and contaminate our air are not contained within national boundaries... The use of pesticides is also of concern to health officials, scientists and government leaders around the world."

"Public health advocates have accused Steiger of political meddling before. He briefly attained notoriety in 2004 by demanding changes in the language of an international report on obesity. The report was opposed by some U.S. food manufacturers and the sugar industry." Bush appointed Steiger to be the U.S. Ambassador to Mozambique; he hasn't been confirmed.

Ex-Surgeon General Carmona had been trying to get the report that Steiger bottled up released-- but to no avail. "Thomas Novotny, a former assistant surgeon general who ran the global health office before Steiger, said, 'It's embarrassing, just ridiculous that the report hasn't come out.' Novotny, who served at HHS in the Clinton and in both Bush administrations, said that many nations have made health issues central to their foreign relations and trade policies, but that the United States has been reluctant to embrace that idea. 'It made perfect sense for the surgeon general to take up the issue because the U.S. used to be a leader in this field,' Novotny said. 'For the nation's top doctor to be unable to release the report shows that leadership is gone.'"

My pal over in Europe wrote that it's great that more decent people are starting to speak out. I hope it isn't too late. I suspect there are an awful lot of smiling Steigers out there, just waiting for their orders.