Month: May 2007

The Nyaah-Nyaah-Neh-Nyaah-Nyaah Defense

by tristero

Updated below

Kevin Drum’s exactly right:

In Thursday’s testimony, Gonzales made it clear that he just doesn’t care what anyone thinks. After all, if Democrats don’t like it, what are they going to do? Roll their eyes at him?

Yep.

I think when we see Gonzales testify, all we’re seeing is the unclean rump of a dog with stomach cancer. Sooner or later, it will start to howl in pain. My guess, though, is that while Gonzales is already a major pain in the ass to defend, he’s sticking around. He won’t go until the most politically expedient moment, ie when the campaign for ’08 gets really serious and his resigning will ease off pressure on something else.*

That is, Gonzales will go – yes, I sincerely doubt he will stay until Bush leaves – when it helps the Republicans the most. And he knows it, certainly. The only question is whether Democrats are prepared to preempt Republicans and perform some major exploratory surgery on the Justice Department. If so, exposing the sheer extent of the cancer will make Gonzales’ resignation happen on their schedule. Not the GOP’s.

But when this blows up, man…It won’t be pretty. Even for those of us who see no moral problem with schadenfreude when it comes to rejoicing at the comeuppance of the Bushies and the rest of the rightwing, what Gonzales has done to Justice will be so unbearably awful to behold, whatever glee we might feel will be tempered by anger that he was permitted to stay as long as he did.

[UPDATE: I normally don’t pass on rumors – it’s more effective to indict the Bush administration from reporting in the mainstream press, I think – but this is the kind of ugly stuff that I think will start streaming out of Justice:

Because of the recent oversight given to the Executive Branch, we now know that the Justice Department has circumvented the legal process and issued tens of thousands of ‘national security letters.’ These documents allow DOJ/FBI to forego getting a Judge’s approval for a subpoena. In other words, it allows bureaucrats to violate the Constitutional rights with no Judicial oversight. It is also done in secret.

But, there are indications that national security letters were issued in these campaign finance investigations. It is possible that this Justice Department abused the law to go on a crusade to investigate Democratic donors. So far, the Government has been unwilling to provide an answer to the question of whether or not this is true.]

*This, of course, is the cue for Gonzales to resign tomorrow, which would make me eat these words and not hear the end of it from commenters for the next twenty years or so. And y’know something, dear friends? If I’m wrong and Gonzales doesn’t stay but resigns tomorrow, I’ll gladly eat these words.

Ask Steph If It’s OK

by digby

Cliff Schecter makes an excellent point today that I think is worth looking at a little bit further. He writes:

4 in 10 Support Impeachment

I’ll offer this with little comment, because frankly, not much is necessary. Except that President Clinton had a 60% approval rating when they were trying to impeach him.

Meanwhile 39% of Americans think this is a fate befitting our current commander-in-chief.

More here.

Ah yes, the impeachment poll question. Remember this Washington Post chat (via FDL) with pollster Richard Morin from December of 2005?

Naperville, Ill.: Why haven’t you polled on public support for the impeachment of George W. Bush?

Richard Morin: This question makes me mad…

Seattle, Wash.: How come ABC News/Post poll has not yet polled on impeachment?

Richard Morin: Getting madder…

Haymarket, Va.: With all the recent scandals and illegal/unconstitutional actions of the President, why hasn’t ABC News / Washington Post polled whether the President should be impeached?

Richard Morin: Madder still…

[…]

[W]e do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion –witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in ’08 are calling for Bush’s impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls.

Has anyone asked George Stephanopoulos what he thinks about this, because it’s his opinion that really carries weight among our betters? From Media Matters:

A January 1998 Post poll conducted just days after the first revelations of Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky asked the following questions:

“If this affair did happen and if Clinton did not resign, is this something for which Clinton should be impeached, or not?”

“There are also allegations that Clinton himself lied by testifying under oath that he did not have an affair with the woman. If Clinton lied in this way, would you want him to remain in office as president, or would you want him to resign the presidency?”

“If Clinton lied by testifying under oath that he did not have an affair with the woman, and he did not resign, is this something for which Clinton should be impeached, or not?”

Morin was the Post’s polling director at the time, and he wrote the January 26, 1998, article reporting the poll results.

On the same day the poll was released, the paper published this breathless story:

In the whirlwind five days since the story first broke, nothing has been conclusively proven about the truth of the allegations that Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky, urged her to lie about it in an affidavit in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, and then lied about it himself under oath when questioned by Jones’s lawyers.

But it is a measure of the political and legal explosiveness of the allegations that they immediately provoked discussions of impeachment, a prospect raised the morning the story broke by former presidential adviser George Stephanopoulos and discussed at length on yesterday’s TV talk shows.

Back in the day all it took to turn the entire media establishment upside down with impeachment talk was George Stephanopoulos “raising the prospect” and a bunch of gossipy gasbags twittering about it on TV for the Washington Post to immediately started polling like mad. Today, it makes the polling director “madder and madder” to even be asked about the question and a rule has been set forth that it takes a call from Democratic members of congress or a “serious” presidential candidate for him to even broach the question.

Back in 1998, Clinton had roughly the same amount of time left in office as Bush does today and yet, as Schecter points out, had a job approval rating more than twice as high as Bush’s right now. The mere asking of the question by the Washington Post put impeachment on the table before anyone out in the country had even contemplated the idea. (After all, Clinton was “trashing” their sleepy little village with his naughty behavior and had to be stopped for our own good.) Today, other polls show that the president is dramatically unpopular, his war of choice is an unmitigated disaster and nearly 40% of real live citizens are in favor of impeachment without it even being raised by George Stephanopoulos. But that will not be worthy of discussion until someone “important” tells us it is.

It’s long been clear that we citizens are superfluous as far as the political establishment is concerned, but it’s always bracing to be reminded of it nonetheless.

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Time To Buy Stock In Popcorn Companies

by tristero

Skip Spidey 3. Now, this is what I call entertainment:

Top Bush administration officials lashed out at a pair of House Republicans at the White House yesterday after details about a contentious meeting between President Bush and GOP legislators were leaked to the media earlier this week.

The confrontations are the latest indications of an intensifying rift between Bush and congressional Republicans.

Reps. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) attracted the ire of White House officials for allegedly speaking to reporters about a Tuesday meeting between Bush and centrist Republicans on the Iraq war. Details of the contentious meeting first emerged Wednesday evening and attracted Page 1 headlines yesterday.

Sources said that Dan Meyer, Bush’s liaison to the House, confronted LaHood while White House political strategist Karl Rove rebuked Kirk. It is unclear if LaHood or Kirk were the originial sources for the stories, but LaHood was quoted in one of the articles.

Regardless, LaHood and Meyer got into a shouting match as emotions ran high and voices were raised yesterday morning in the White House while lawmakers were waiting to meet with first lady Laura Bush, according to two legislators who witnessed the exchange.

Heh heh heh.

Survey Says Redux!

by digby

by digby

If you haven’t filled out one of those ubiquitous Blog ad surveys and wouldn’t mind filling out mine I’d be grateful. This info is apparently something that helps with the blog-ad slaes and also helps us explain to politicians and others who the “Netroots” actually are. It takes about 12 minutes, you can skip the booze questions if you like. (I have no idea what they mean — I’m a beer and wine person myself.)

Thanks.

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The Mistakes You Make When You Can’t Read

by tristero

One of the most astonishing things about rightwingers is that, despite an often-professed interest in the time-honored classics and the like (the “Read Shakespeare, not Toni Morrison” crowd), many of them just can’t read. And that’s at all levels. Here’s a rather esoteric example having to do with gene expression, the genome, and differences between placentals and marsupials. I’d be the first to admit this is not the easiest of going for us civilians, but even before reading the explanation of the mistake, I could identify exactly how the creationists on the Uncommon Descent blog had thoroughly misunderstood and misrepresented the point of the article.

That’s how profound their literacy problem is (assuming it’s an honest mistake, and not deliberate propaganda, not an assumption I’d care to defend for very long). Even a total amateur can perceive they didn’t get it.

And that’s what makes “intelligent design” creationism so boring: taken purely as an idea about the way the world works, there’s absolutely nothing there but fundamental misunderstandings. As a scientist once said in a different context, it’s not even wrong.

Do You Suffer From LOW Blood Pressure?

by tristero

Well, then read this. Just be sure you’re near your local hospital before doing so. Oh, that your health insurance is paid up.

Tenet insists on equating two statements that are not at all the same: that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11 — which I never said — and that removing Saddam Hussein before he could share chemical, biological or nuclear weapons with terrorists had become an urgent matter, which I did say. He continues to assert falsely that the president’s decision to remove Hussein was encouraged by lies about Iraq’s responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Who Do They Think They Are?

by digby

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, “Don’t touch me.” … Unphased, Sheryl abruptly responded, “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us.” Karl then quipped, “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.” To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, “We are the American people…”

Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald thoroughly dispatched the absurd notion of David Broder being hailed as “the voice of the people.” This should be completely uncontroversial. The “Dean” of the Washington press corps cannot, by definition, be the voice of the people. It’s ridiculous on its face. Yet Greenwald gets this response from Joe Klein:

I don’t understand this. Is he saying that people like Broder and Ron Brownstein and me shouldn’t talk to people outside the Beltway?

Look, the blogospheric media critics have served a valuable function at times, and at other times it’s just vitriol for vitriol’s sake. I thought an essential part of the critique was that some of us are out of touch with reality…but now Greenwald is saying that any efforts to actually report what’s going on outside the Beltway are bad, too?

Greenwald replies:

It ought to go without saying that I argued nothing of the kind. My point was that Beltway pundits are far too insulated and detached from the people whom they baselessly claim to represent, not that leaving the Beltway is bad. The fact that it is supposed to be some sort of commendable or distinguishing attribute that Broder goes on field trips to America in order to study how the “ordinary people” think — much the way a zoologist travels to the jungle to observe the behavior of different species — illustrates that point.

I would actually take the argument another step and point out that Broder and others also venture out into the American landscape with a sort of pre-conceived notion of what defines “the people” that appears to have been formed by TV sit-coms in 1955. They seem to see extraordinary value in sitting in some diner with middle aged and older white men (sometimes a few women are included) to “ask them what they think.” And invariably these middle-aged white men say the country is going to hell in a handbasket and they want the government to do more and they hate paying taxes. There may be a little frisson of disagreement among these otherwise similar people on certain issues of the day because of their affiliation with a union or because of the war or certain social issues, but for the most part they all sit together and politely talk politics with this anthropologist/reporter, usually agreeing that this president or another one is a bum or a hero. The reporter takes careful notes of everything these “real Americans” have to say and take them back to DC and report them as the opinions of “the people.”

Meanwhile, someone like me, who lives in a big city on the west coast and who doesn’t hang out in diners with middle aged white men are used as an example of the “fringe” even though I too am one of “the people” as are many others — like hispanic youths or single urban mothers or dot-com millionaires or elderly southern black granddads or Korean entrepreneurs (or even Sheryl Crow.) We are not Real Americans.

This fetishization of that other mythical “Real American” seems to stem from a public epiphany that the previous “Dean” of the DC press corps, Joseph Kraft, had almost 40 years ago when confronted with the disconcerting sight of violence in the streets perpetrated by nice white boys and girls:

“Are we merely neutral observers, seekers after truth in the public interest? Or do we, as the supporters of Mayor Daley and his Chicago police have charged, have a prejudice of our own?

“The answer, I think is that Mayor Daley and his supporters have a point. Most of us in what is called the communications field are not rooted in the great mass of ordinary Americans–in Middle America. And the results show up not merely in occasional episodes such as the Chicago violence but more importantly in the systematic bias toward young people, minority groups, and the of presidential candidates who appeal to them.

“To get a feel of this bias it is first necessary to understand the antagonism that divides the middle class of this country. On the one hand there are highly educated upper-income whites sure of and brimming with ideas for doing things differently. On the other hand, there is Middle America, the large majority of low-income whites, traditional in their values and on the defensive against innovation.

“The most important organs of and television are, beyond much doubt, dominated by the outlook of the upper-income whites.

“In these circumstances, it seems to me that those of us in the media need to make a special effort to understand Middle America. Equally it seems wise to exercise a certain caution, a prudent restraint, in pressing a claim for a plenary indulgence to be in all places at all times the agent of the sovereign public.”

Joseph Kraft defined “Middle America” as a blue collar or rural white male, “traditional in his values and defensive against innovation.” Ever since then, the denizens of the beltway have deluded themselves into thinking they speak for that “silent majority.” (And what a serendipitous coincidence it was that this happened at the moment of a right wing political ascension that also made a fetish out of the same blue collar white male.) The converse of this, of course, is that they also assume that the “fringe” liberals from the coasts are way out of the mainstream, even to the extent that editors of Time simply make up data to conform to Kraft’s outdated observations.

It reached the zenith of synergistic absurdity during the Lewinsky scandal when the cosmopolitan beltway courtiers finally went all in and portrayed themselves as as the salt-of-the-earth provincial town folk who were appalled by the misbehavior ‘o them out-a-towners from thuh big city:

When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

On this evening, the roster included Cabinet members Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala, Republicans Sen. John McCain and Rep. Bob Livingston, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, PBS’s Jim Lehrer and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, all behaving like the pals that they are. On display was a side of Washington that most people in this country never see. For all their apparent public differences, the people in the room that night were coming together with genuine affection and emotion to support their friends — the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt and his wife, CNN’s Judy Woodruff, whose son Jeffrey has spina bifida.

But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their “town.”

And their town has been turned upside down.

Here you had the most powerful people in the world identifying themselves with Bedford Falls from “It’s A Wonderful Life” when the court of Versailles or Augustan Rome would be far more more apt. The lack of self-awareness is breathtaking. Thirty years after Kraft’s epiphany, this decadent world capital that had recently seen the likes of Richard Nixon’s crimes and John F. Kennedy’s philandering (and corruption of all types, both moral and legal at the highest levels for years), were now telling the nation that they themselves were small town burghers and factory workers upholding traditional American values. And even more amazing, the rest of America was now morally suspect and needed to be led by these purveyors of Real American values:

With some exceptions, the Washington Establishment is outraged by the president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The polls show that a majority of Americans do not share that outrage. Around the nation, people are disgusted but want to move on; in Washington, despite Clinton’s gains with the budget and the Mideast peace talks, people want some formal acknowledgment that the president’s behavior has been unacceptable. They want this, they say, not just for the sake of the community, but for the sake of the country and the presidency as well.

They were just defending their lonely little outpost against the interlopers:

This is where they spend their lives, raise their families, participate in community activities, take pride in their surroundings. They feel Washington has been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president.

“It’s much more personal here,” says pollster Geoff Garin. “This is an affront to their world. It affects the dignity of the place where they live and work. . . . Clinton’s behavior is unacceptable. If they did this at the local Elks Club hall in some other community it would be a big cause for concern.”

“He came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”

“This is a company town,” says retired senator Howard Baker, once Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff. “We’re up close and personal. The White House is the center around which our city revolves.”

Bill Galston, former deputy domestic policy adviser to Clinton and now a professor at the University of Maryland, says of the scandal that “most people in Washington believe that most people in Washington are honorable and are trying to do the right thing. The basic thought is that to concede that this is normal and that everybody does it is to undermine a lifetime commitment to honorable public service.”

“Everybody doesn’t do it,” says Jerry Rafshoon, Jimmy Carter’s former communications director. “The president himself has said it was wrong.”

Pollster Garin, president of Peter Hart Research Associates, says that the disconnect is not unlike the difference between the way men and women view the scandal. Just as many men are angry that Clinton’s actions inspire the reaction “All men are like that,” Washingtonians can’t abide it that the rest of the country might think everyone here cheats and lies and abuses his subordinates the way the president has.

“This is a community in all kinds of ways,” says ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts, whose parents both served in Congress. She is concerned that people outside Washington have a distorted view of those who live here. “The notion that we are some rarefied beings who breathe toxic air is ridiculous. . . . When something happens everybody gathers around. . . . It’s a community of good people involved in a worthwhile pursuit. We think being a worthwhile public servant or journalist matters.”

“This is our town,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president’s behavior. “We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton’s behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general.”

And many are offended that the principles that brought them to Washington in the first place are now seen to be unfashionable or illegitimate.

Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan, regards the scene with despair. “This is a demoralized little village,” she says. “People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They’re so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn’t quite as sordid as this.”

“People felt a reverent attitude toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” says Tish Baldrige, who once worked there as Jacqueline Kennedy’s social secretary and has been a frequent visitor since. “Now it’s gone, now it’s sleaze and dirt. We all feel terribly let down. It’s very emotional. We want there to be standards. We’re used to standards. When you think back to other presidents, they all had a lot of class. That’s nonexistent now. It’s sad for people in the White House. . . . I’ve never seen such bad morale in my life. They’re not proud of their chief.”

That “demoralized little village” was all a-twitter, wasn’t it? You’d never know that they were running the most powerful nation the world has ever known, would you?

Yet, even while they ostentatiously ranted and wailed hysterically with anachronistic notions of bourgeois American values, they still carried on as if the White House and the nation’s capital belonged to them instead of the American people, which is the very definition of elitism. What an achievement! The very rich and powerful (but we won’t talk about that) “bourgeoisie” now had to save degenerate “Middle America” from itself.

When the equally phony George W. Bush came to town it was love at first sight, and why wouldn’t it be? Here you had a man whom these people could truly admire — a rich man of the bluest blood, born into one of the most powerful families in America who nonetheless pretended to be some hick from Midland Texas. He took great pride in his phoniness, just as they did, and they all danced this absurd kabuki in perfect step for years each pretending to the other that they were all “just regular guys.”

You can see then why some of us have concluded that the Dean and his cadre of establishment courtiers don’t actually care much about what “the people” think about anything. And it should also be obvious why we are so skeptical of their reporting skills when they venture out on their anthropological expeditions to find only examples of Americans who strangely hew to their own Hollywood casting of themselves — an America of Sally Quinns warmly played by plucky Donna Reed and David Broder himself, brought to life by loveable Wilfred Brimleys. (“They came in and they trashed the place. And it’s not their place.” Can’t you just hear it?)

Of course political reporters should go out and interview Americans and write stories about what those Americans have to say about the issues of the day. But those interviews are not any more representative of what “the people” as a whole think than are the liberal blogs or Sally Quinn’s fictitious “small town” or the fans at a NASCAR race. This is especially true when it’s filtered through the phony bourgeois posturings of a bunch of highly paid reporters and insiders who have contrived a self-serving little passion play in which they are regular blue collar guys from Buffalo and corn fed farmers from the Midwest (Real Americans!) who just happen to summer on Nantucket and get invitations to white tie state dinners with the Queen of England. Pardon us fringe dwellers for being just a tad skeptical that these forays out into “America” are informing us about anything more the embarrassing neuroses of some very spoiled elites.

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Two Counts Of Making A Damning Disclosure

by digby

With the Queen coming to town this week, it seems like a perfect time to take a look at one of the principles that drove Americans to stage a revolution:

Tony Blair’s ill-fated war with Iraq claimed two more victims yesterday when a civil servant and an MP’s researcher were convicted of disclosing details of a secret conversation between the Prime Minister and President George Bush.

Last night, MPs, lawyers and civil rights groups described the prosecution as a “farce” and accused the Government of misusing the Official Secrets Act to cover up political embarrassment over the war.

David Keogh, 50, a Cabinet Office communications officer, was today jailed for six months. He passed on an “extremely sensitive memo” to Leo O’Connor, 44, a political researcher who worked for an anti-war Labour MP, Anthony Clarke. O’Connor was today sentenced to three months in jail after an Old Bailey jury found them guilty yesterday of breaching Britain’s secrecy laws.

At the centre of the trial was a four-page Downing Street document which recorded discussions about Iraq between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, held in the Oval Office in April 2004 in the run-up to the handover of power to the Iraqi government.

Keogh, who copied the document to O’Connor while he was working in the Cabinet Office, said that he acted out of conscience because he believed the document showed Mr Bush to be a “madman”.

[…]

The prosecution allege that the leaking of the document could have cost lives and insisted that in this case “secrecy is not the enemy of democracy”.

David Perry, prosecuting for the Crown, told the jury: “We live in a democratic society, not the Wild West. It is not for people to decide they are going to be the sheriff in town.”

But Keogh’s barrister, Rex Ted QC, said there was nothing in the document that related to British troop action in Iraq. He told the judge that Keogh had not acted for a political motive but had been following his conscience.

[…]

“I think we live in a society and operate under a system that values secrecy to an excessive degree.”

He said of Mr Blair’s letter: “He is obviously grateful on behalf of his friend George Bush. It makes you wonder what he is grateful for.”

Keogh was found guilty of two counts of making a damaging disclosure, O’Connor of a similar single count. The two men were granted bail and made no comment as they left the court but Keogh’s solicitor, Stuart Jeffery, said that his client would be “shell-shocked”.

Sentencing him this morning, trial Judge Mr Justice Aikens said Keogh’s ” reckless and irresponsible” actions could have cost British lives.

We don’t have an official secrets act because of the first amendment. But if the Republicans had had their way these last few years, we certainly would have adopted one, damn freedom of speech. (The constitution is not a suicide pact, don’t you know..) And Lord knows, “the Decider” has governed as if he were a monarch.

I continue to find it ironic that those who wave the American flag with such fervor and speak of “freedom” and “democracy” in reverent tones usually reserved for sports and Jesus, are just a bunch of forelock tugging subjects at heart. If their King George hadn’t turned out to be just slightly less mentally incompetent than the mad british King of the same name, our institutions might not have been able to keep this undemocratic movement from usurping our government all together. We may have gotten lucky by their extremely poor choice of both advisors and frontmen, but it makes me very nervous that they have come this close.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear those tapes, wouldn’t you? Judging from the rare occasions when Bush was caught unawares, he reveals an arrogance that does border on lunacy, particularly considering the fact that he is a failure of epic proportions. The world has a right to know if the president of the United States is a “madman.”

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Move Along People

by digby

…nothing to see here:

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

It’s a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country’s civil conflict, and at times it’s been difficult to arrive at a quorum).

Not that it matters what the Iraqi people want, but it seems as if this should be a big story. Guess not.

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HPV, Texans, And You

by tristero

Updated Below

Recently, in a post about the failure of Texas to mandate HPV vaccination, and in a follow-up, I opined that the issue has been so ludicrously framed by the Republican Representative Bonnen that it is impossible to discuss within such a frame. Let’s recall what this clown actually said:

“We should not and are now not going to offer the 165,000 11-year-olds in Texas up to be the study group for Merck to find out what the implications of this vaccine would be for these girls…”

I pointed out that rhetorically Bonnen knows he doesn’t have any reasonable objections. That’s because despite some faux precision – those 165,000 11-year-old Texan girls – Bonnen’s statement is so vague that it actually objects to nothing, just some “implications.” And what, pray tell, are we supposed to imply these implications are? Has the vaccine been tested? What are the ethics of forcing people to be vaccinated against their will, or their parents’?

Who can tell? Who knows what was in Bonnen’s brain? So fuck him. Meanwhile, let’s hear from people who’ve actually studied the vaccine and its efficacy and effects. Here are the results of some independent evaluations of the vaccine, called Gardasil:

“Investigators in these trials have hit their mark soundly: the vaccine showed significant efficacy against anogenital and cervical lesions,” Dr. George Sawaya and Dr. Karen Smith-McCune of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, where the studies appear.

“The vaccine also appears safe.”

…

One team of international researchers, led by Dr. Laura Koutsky of the University of Washington, studied 12,167 women aged 15 to 26 in 13 countries. Half got three doses of the vaccine and half got placebo shots.

The vaccine prevented pre-cancerous lesions in 98 percent of the women who had never been infected with the HPV-16 and HPV-18 strains over three years, Koutsky’s team reported.

Dr. Suzanne Garland of the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues tested 5,455 women aged 16 to 24 and found the vaccine was 100 percent effective against the lesions that can develop into cervical, vulvar, vaginal and anal cancers.

Now I’m no statistitician, but 100% effective sounds pretty good, yes?

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended the vaccine for 30 million women and girls aged 11 to 26.

But state proposals for mandatory vaccination have met with resistance, even though all allow parents to exclude their child.

So any parent who wants to can opt out, according to any of the state proposals.

The vaccine does not work after a woman is already infected and HPV is very common. By age 14 to 19, one-quarter of U.S. teens are already infected with at least one strain.

“Delaying vaccination may mean that many women will miss an opportunity for long-lasting protection,” Sawaya and Smith-McCune wrote.

And that’s one very good set of reasons to vaccinate women when they’re very young: it doesn’t work after you’re infected and by age 14, 25% of all teens are, in fact, infected.

But how bad, really, is HPV?

Cervical cancer is the second most common type of tumor in women and the leading cause of cancer deaths in some countries. Such tumors kill about 300,000 women worldwide each year, mostly in developing countries.

And how much does the vaccine cost?

$360 for three doses over six months

Any others do the same thing?

GlaxoSmithKline is also developing an HPV vaccine called Cervarix. A study released in April showed it protects women for more than 5-1/2 years.

In short, here is a vaccine that has been tested, in the reports mentioned here, on some 18,000 women. It has been shown to be nearly 100% effective. A report in the New England Journal of Medicine says the vaccine appears safe. The USCDC recommends females aged 11-26 receive the vaccine. And according to all the state proposals for mandating vaccination, any parent can have their child opt out.

But hey! Y’never know! All these people could be in cahoots with Merck, including the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine. And in making a decision as to whether Gardasil is a good idea, we really should assume they are. As for that 100% number, what if it fails just once? Hey! Y’never know! And for side-effects, did you notice? The article didn’t mention any, more proof that they’re all paid off by Merck! I’ll bet that stuff’s so bad for you it’s what caused poor Gregor Samsa’s horrible condition! Worse than thalidomide, for sure. Oh, wait:

542 adverse health complaints have been reported about Merck’s human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil, but agency officials said the side effects of the vaccine are minor and that the vaccine does not require additional warning labels, 42 adverse health complaints have been reported about Merck’s human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil, but agency officials said the side effects of the vaccine are minor and that the vaccine does not require additional warning labels…

Yeah, but that’s only on a mere 18,000 experimental subjects. How do we REALLY know how serious it is, HUH? Oh, wait:

…health officials estimate hundreds of thousands of women and girls have received at least one dose of the vaccine, but they do not have an exact count. According to CDC data, nearly 20% of the complaints about Gardasil involved soreness at the injection site and 9% involved fever or nausea. There were three cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, which is a paralyzing side effect that has occurred with other vaccines. About 11% of the complaints involved fainting or dizziness. There have been no deaths or serious injuries resulting from fainting reported.

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Health experts said it is common for teenagers to faint from other vaccinations, and the number of fainting cases related to Gardasil is not higher than expected. “There is absolutely no reason to think that there is anything in this vaccine, as opposed to another vaccine, that’s going to make people more likely to faint,” John Iskander of CDC’s immunization safety office said, adding that it is not “worrisome” to the agency that there is “any sort of association” between Gardasil and Guillain-Barre. Health officials have recommended that patients wait 15 minutes before leaving a physicians office after receiving Gardasil in case of fainting or other side effects.

Ah ha! But you omitted this which entirely changes the picture:

The National Vaccine Information Center on Wednesday issued a release about Gardasil’s side effects that said there was not enough research on whether Gardasil could lead to problems when given with other vaccinations.

You see? Who can tell what will happen if you take Gardasil and the polio vaccine at the same time? And who knows what the interaction with fluoridated water might be? Have they tested every single possible contingency? I thought not.

Folks, time for a little bit of that cracker-barrel philosophy. There ain’t no sure things in this world of ours beyond death, taxes, and idiot Republicans. But given a near-100% rate of efficacy on a potentially lethal cancer, given hundreds of thousands of administered doses with minor side-effects, given that any parent who wants to can opt their child out…

As for Gardasil being another thalidomide…yeah, right. Thalidomide was a horror, but horrors don’t happen that often. It is technically possible that some serious medical problems might arise with Gardasil in a population of millions, but balanced against the extraordinary efficacy – a balance which always must be made – puh-leeze.

As with objections to evolution and the evidence for global warming, objections to the mandatory programs for HPV are completely, utterly without any scientific substance whatsoever. But hey! Y’never know!

That’s right, y’never do. Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, Bush/Iraq could have worked out! And maybe, just maybe, Gardasil is the worst horror ever for western medicine.

Riiiight.

[UPDATE: Some medical concerns regarding Gardisil were voiced in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine:

The long-term side effects of the vaccine are unknown — the most recent study followed women for three years — and that earlier research hasn’t considered what effect the vaccine has on the remaining 13 strains of HPV that also cause cervical cancer.

It’s possible, McCune said, that the remaining strains may fill a “niche” left if the two most common strains are wiped out entirely. If that happens, the vaccine might not make any difference on overall cervical cancer rates, she said.

But while many doctors agree that there are still questions about the vaccine, they note that there is no question that Gardasil is effective at stopping the most common cancer-causing HPV strains.

Also, in comments, one commenter found the figure of 100% effective highly dubious and doubts about some of the details of the discussion. Regardless, apparently Gardasil is highly effective even if not perfectly effective.

There may still be serious objections to the vaccine, but nothing mentioned by the critics quoted in this update makes Gardasil “controversial.” At most, there are some small legitimate concerns – but even the critics tacitly admit there are no important side effects over the course of a three year study.

So what makes it controversial? Only one thing: Republicans have somehow gotten the insane notion that this vaccine encourages young girls to fuck. And it is for this utterly idiotic reason, a potentially life-saving medication has become fraught with an utterly bogus controversy.

It’s very simple, people. If this vaccine is as effective and as safe as claimed – and so far, I’ve seen nothing to say it isn’t – then it is simply criminal to withold this from young girls. There are always going to be doubts and dangers with any medication. So far, this one looks pretty damn good and so my daughter will be taking it next year.]