Today's Stories

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambition

Noam Chomsky
Exposing the Un-Democratic Face of Capitalism

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Adam Turl
Sheriff Tom Dart vs. the Banksters

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

John Ross
The Sky is Falling on Mexico, Too

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

Paul Krassner
Beat the Crowd in Denver: Cops and T-Shirts

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

David Yearsley
The Playlist for Election 2008

Julian Clec'h
The Soap Washing Through Saudi Arabia

Adam Engel
Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones Go Home, Again

Poets' Basement
Landau, Moser and Henson

Website of the Day
Sarah as Esther? New Video From Inside Palin's Church

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
October 10 / 12, 2008

CounterPunch Diary

McCain and Sarah Palin: Till Death Do Them Part?  And If So, How Soon? Is McCain A Lot Sicker Than We Know?

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

In the crucial final weeks of the campaign John McCain is mostly doing only one event a day. This is the man of whom his primary care physician at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, said to journalists in a  conference call last May 23: “At the present time, Sen. McCain enjoys excellent health and displays extraordinary energy.”  He looked tired and sick in the second debate in Nashville. As Sarah Palin rabble-rouses the crowds with calls for Obama to be forthright, she may be wondering, “how forthright has John McCain been with me? If he wins on November 4, will I be president in six months  or a year?”

But if McCain’s battle with melanoma  has suddenly turned critical, wouldn’t his doctors feel compelled to divulge their knowledge about the candidate? The answer is No. The legal penalties under HIPAA (the medical privacy act) for disclosure of protected health information, without that patient’s consent, are extremely serious.

No one is more under day-to-day scrutiny than the President. When Reagan ran for re-election he already knew he had colon cancer and that was kept quiet until after he won. In health matters, secrecy often wins out in the political crunch. What follows are the essentials of a story by Fred Gardner and myself in the latest issue  of our CounterPunch newsletter.

In the past fifteen years, John McCain has had four melanomas removed. The most dangerous was the one taken from his temple in 2000, classified by his doctors as an invasive melanoma, stage IIA, on a standard scale that makes stage IV the most serious.

The 2000 surgery left McCain not only with a puffy jaw but also with a scar down his neck.  Dr Eckstein’s public statement, released May 24 of this year, stated:

“Regarding his past skin issues, the Senator has received skin care at Mayo Clinic in Arizona since August, 2000. Four malignant melanomas were surgically removed in the past. Three of these were ‘in situ’ melanomas, meaning they were limited to the top layers of the skin and were not invasive. These three early melanomas on his left shoulder, left arm and left nasal sidewall, were removed in 1993, 2000 and 2002, respectively. A fourth melanoma that was invasive was removed from his left lower temple in 2000. 

“Each melanoma was a new primary melanoma and did not represent a recurrence of any previous melanoma. There was and is no evidence of recurrence or metastasis, meaning spread of the invasive melanoma nearly eight years after surgery. Other less serious skin cancers have been removed over the years without complication. These have been non-melanoma basal cell and squamous cell cancers.

“Many questions have been asked about the removal of the invasive melanoma from Senator McCain’s left lower temple in August 2000… To summarize, we continue to find no evidence of metastasis or recurrence of the invasive melanoma as we approach the eighth anniversary of that operation. This was most recently confirmed with his comprehensive examination and tests in March 2008 and with Dr. Connolly’s skin examination on May 12, 2008. The prognosis for Senator McCain is good because the time of greatest risk for recurrence of invasive melanoma is within the first few years after the surgery.”

A press conference at the same time received relatively upbeat treatment. The New York Times’ medical correspondent, Dr. Lawrence Altman, sharing a byline with Elisabeth Bumiller, informed readers the next day, May  24, 2008: “Sen. John McCain, 71, is in excellent health and shows no evidence of the recurrence of the melanoma skin cancer that led to extensive head and neck surgery in 2000, McCain’s doctors said Friday.”

The McCain campaign had just allowed three-hour access by a group of reporters to 1,173 pages of medical records. They were not allowed to make any copies or take any of the materials out of the room. Reporters did note that two pathologists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology who examined the melanoma specimen from McCain’s left temple in 2000 suggested there were two melanomas on his temple, not one, as his doctors had said publicly at the time.

"Two experts in the field, who reviewed the report,” wrote Altman and Bumiller “said it was unclear whether the melanoma on McCain’s temple had metastasized from another, or whether there was one new primary melanoma. If the spread was through the nearby melanoma, then there is greater risk to McCain than the public has been led to believe, said Dr. Lynn Schuchter, a melanoma expert at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mohammed Kashani-Sabet, director of the Melanoma Center at UC San Francisco.”

For stage IIA melanoma, the survival rate 10 years after diagnosis is about 65 per cent. But the outlook is much better, as McCain’s doctors noted, for patients who have already survived more than seven years.

Dr. Suzanne Connolly, McCain’s dermatologist at the Mayo Clinic, told reporters that there was “no crystal ball to predict with certainty” if McCain’s cancer would return, but she put the chance at less than 10 per cent at this stage in his life.”

On September 20, 2008, CounterPunch was contacted by a reader in Washington, D.C., reporting conversations pointing to a dramatic, recent worsening in McCan’s medical condition and prognosis.

Though pressed by CounterPunch the reader insists on remaining anonymous. Over the course of several exchanges with our reader, we can report the following. An official in the National Institutes of Health, well known to our reader, has confided to her that in an informal conversation with a doctor in a California hospital the NIH official  had learned that there had been a metastasis of McCain’s melanoma, and that this had come to light in a checkup in the past few weeks.

Urged to reconfirm this news and to provide further details, our reader pressed the NIH official for more details and reported back to us on September 26 that after she had asked the NIH official to verify the details, the official:

“decided this was important, and contacted her doctor friend to get what info she could. So here it is. John McCain recently was diagnosed with a melanoma recurrence, with a metastasis to the lymph node, in his latest, most recent cancer checkup, which took place at John Wayne Cancer Institute in California.”

Attempting to confirm this intelligence, CounterPunch  contacted four physicians, none of whom want to be identified. Two remarked the subsidence of swelling in McCain’s left jaw in recent months. A UC San Francisco cancer specialist said, “It looked to me like he had something going on in his left jaw for a long time, and then it appeared much less puffy in the last few months. My theory was that he had gotten some radiation therapy. It was way pooched out compared to what it is now. He used to not show his left side on camera. And then he appeared to be going head-on. So my guess was that he had had some radiation.”

An East Coast oncologist said of John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California,  “That would be the place he’d go because the world’s expert surgeon for melanoma, Donald Morton, is there.” Dr. Morton, while head of surgical oncology at UCLA, developed a technique that minimizes the number of lymph nodes that must be removed during biopsies.

A Los Angeles radiologist put the question of McCain being treated directly to two colleagues at John Wayne. “They said ‘no,’ but I had the strong impression they weren’t being forthright. I’ve known these guys 30 years and I sensed from their tone that they weren’t leveling with me.”

You can get the full article  by myself and Fred Gardner by subscribing  to our newsletter. So subscribe now.

Threat of Martial Law

On October 2, Representative Brad Sherman, a California Democrat and opponent of the bailout, stated in the House that members of Congress were threatened that “there would be martial law in America if we voted no.” A day earlier, here onCounterPunch, Doug Valentine had pointed out  that George Bush was equipped with such powers, having issued in May 2007 National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20. These directives gave Bush the authority to assure the “Continuity of Government" in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergency”— which resulted in, among other things, some extraordinary disruption of the economy.

By a pleasing coincidence amid these dramatic events, the Army Times reported on September 30 that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, lately in Iraq, would be employed October 1 on US soil "under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks." This new mission, wrote the Army Times' Gina Cavallaro, marks "the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom."

Obama helped arm-twist recalcitrant Democrats, particularly in the Congressional Black Caucus, to vote for the Paulson bailout,  in the national interest, the line urged on House members  by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank.

In fact it wasn’t in the national interest , nor in the interest of the Democrats in Congress. Until Republicans in the House rebelled and , with the help of 95 Democratic mutineers, voted the Paulson bill down on September 29, polls showed that the prospects for the Democrats wining a substantial number of new seats in the House were good. Not any more. Voters really hate the Bailout and think well of those who tried to beat it back. The Republicans are now within striking distance of recapturing the House, or so some poll show.

Sarah Palin’s Tax Returns

Professors of accounting are being wheeled on to denounce the Palins for improper deductions and unreported income. What mostly interests me is that the Governor Palin and the First Dude use H&R Block to prepare their returns. I’ll bet Joe Biden, always eager to assert his credentials as a regular working stiff, doesn’t use H.&R. Block. Biden claims he spends a lot of time at Home Depot and I doubt that too, because if he did he wouldn’t have shown up for his debate with Sarah. He ‘d still be somewhere halfway down Aisle 19 in a Home Depot,  waiting for someone to help him find the tile grout.

Anyway, Sarah should hire Arianna Huffington’s accountant, assuming the fellow has time for any other client.

McCain and Palin are whacking Obama for his ties with the Weather Underground. Obama’s defenders point out that at the time Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn were active in the 1960s, Obama was 8. So? I  remember an antiwar newspaper some time in the late 1960s featuring a photo of a young kid standing beside a railroad line holding a chunk of metal and the caption said something like,  “Youngster  holds the  steel pipe with which he derailed an arms cargo.”  Next, Palin will be reminding us that the Weatherfolk insisted that all participants  in the group have sex with each other.  My friend Ernie Eban was down on his luck in LA at that time and finally found shelter with a Gay Bikers Commune. Like the Weatherfolk the Bikers said the full Bedtime menu was mandatory. Ernie only got a reprieve from his obligations when he stuttered that  he was saving himself for Bob Dylan.

Is Sarah a racist? We had a piece on this site last week by Linn Washington Jr citing jazz musician Charles Greg Royal as saying in  the National Press Club in Washington, DC that in 1990, when performing with the Duke Ellington Band in Anchorage,  trombonist Royal struck up a conversation with a woman at a fast food restaurant who initially identified herself as Sarah. During that conversation, according to Royal. Sarah told him  her last name was Heath, He also says Sarah’s whole manner changed when fellow band members came over. He asked her if anything was wrong. According to Royal, Heath’s response to his inquiry was, “Excuse me, but I don’t mess with black men.” Royal says he told Heath, “I’m a black man” and Sarah responded, “But, you’re not really black.”  Royal, who told Washington he was trying to “hit on” Sarah, says he ended the conversation telling her not to worry about it and have a nice day.

Hmm. Eighteen years…  Young Sarah certainly made an impression on Royal. How much do you remember what you said  to anyone  after a concert eighteen years ago? And how does this charge of racism square Palin’s enthusiasm for the Kenyan witch exorcist?   On the other hand, her gubernatorial record on minorities and natives in Alaska is poor. Odd, considering the First Dude is a quarter Yup’ik.

I’ve had a few notes chiding me for seeming indulgence towards the governor of Alaska. My take is more or less that of a friend of Steve Conn, who quite rightly congratulated him for his excellent pieces on Palin on this site. The friend wrote to Conn:

Loved your recent piece on anti-Palinism in Counterpunch. I wish there were more people like you on the left.

I've been saying for a while that much of   the Palin-bashing is just bourgeois working-class-bashing.I was recently at a dinner party in Beverly Hills, where I listened to several very rich women (Hollywood execs and the wife of a real estate mogul) complain about Palin's accent, her hairstyle, her lack of education, etc. The capper, from the wife of the real estate mogul, who owns a chunk of Rodeo Drive: "I can't believe anyone likes her. She has NO CLASS."

The left needs to be as anti-anti-Palin as it is anti-Palin.

Biden  is the guy who pretty much singlehandedly, on behalf of MBNA -- the largest employer in Delaware, also the largest independent credit card company in the world, major contributor to Biden and sometime employer of Biden's son -- swung the Democrats in the Senate behind the credit card bill in 2005  which makes it impossible for Americans to go bankrupt and get clear of their debts. Think how many people are going to go bankrupt in the years ahead. As Eric Nguyen points out in an Friday NYT op ed:

Lenders have been foreclosing on about 250,000 homes every month this year — one every 10 seconds. And among the hardest-hit Americans have been families with school-age children. Many of those families file for bankruptcy; indeed, nearly two-thirds of those trying to save their homes in bankruptcy have young children. Yet our laws make it especially difficult for families to keep their homes.

Thank you, Joe Biden. Of that bankruptcy bill Biden said in the debate, "I though the glass was half full; Obama thought it was half empty." And then of course Obama voted against establishing interest rate caps and said of the bailout that it should NOT include bankruptcy reform.

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