It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

Back in early 1995, President Clinton had a problem. He needed to nominate a new Surgeon General and the Democrats did not control the Senate. However, the Republicans only had a slim 53 seat majority so the President felt he had a fighting chance to get his nominee through.

If he chose wisely...

If you have been following the National Nurse Campaign, you may know that it is not only still alive, but thriving.  However, if you haven’t been keeping up, here is a quick recap along with a You Tube video that provides a brief synopsis.

Matt Blunt, the wingnut governor of Missouri, shows such touching "concern" for woman who have abortions. He has convened a "scientific" task force that would determine the affect of abortions on women. Never mind that the article states that he has already started with the conclusion that it has negative effects on women -- contradicted by Ronald Reagan's own surgeon general, Everett Koop.

ThinkProgress speculates this morning that President Bush will give a recess appointment to James Holsinger, his bizarre and wildly homophobic nominee for Surgeon General.  For the White House, Holsinger's quackery and desire to "cure gays" not only makes him a very attractive successor to the disagreeable Richard Carmona.  More importantly, a recess appointment in the face of overwhelming opposition from the Senate Health Committee helps President Bush "ensure that I am relevant."  It's just another part of George W. Bush's strategy of maximum confrontation guiding the remainder of his enfeebled presidency.

         Yesterday I was listening to a story on CNN and the thought that the Bush Administration was falling apart. It led me to question a few things. I know it is normal for every Administration to have staff problems at the end of their tenure. However this is no normal Presidency or Administration. This is the worst in the history of the country and as such I see the end of his tenure as no normal ending or simple staffing or confirmation problem.
         In light of the fact that this is the first obvious liar I have ever seen as President in my life and he has blatantly pursued his new societal, middle east, and world order, requiring all those in his mis Administration to be proven liars faithful to a fault I expect impasse unless Bush does something underhanded. The Democratic Congress finally realizes this and is not going to willingly allow any questionable confirmations.
         Bush has just 17 months remaining. A lot of work to do ,not just in attempting to pursue his new order but trying to find the proven liars that will enable him to do so.

Some time back, I wrote a diary on Daily Kos expressing my opposition to George W. Bush's nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to become our nation's surgeon general.
In that diary, I questioned whether his hostile views on homosexuality made him fit to be the surgeon general of a secular nation like our own.
As it turns out, there's a lot more about Holsinger than just his anti-gay views, and all of it represents even more reason why his nomination should be rejected.
More below.

George Bush's nominee for Surgeon General has drawn a lot of heat for among other things, his crack-pot anti-gay views.  But a new report may finally sink his already controversial nomination in a sea of conflicts of interest that have marked his career.

There was this Bush appointee, someone who had absolutely no experience in an area, who...

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.

I would have classified this one under the "Anti-Science" heading, but what was going on here was more than just the continuing Republican war on science.  This was a fight over facts that run counter to the whole philosophy of the right.

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.

That correlation between being poor and being sick, and the idea that corporations have responsibilities to the communities where they operate, was enough to draw the ire of William Steiger, who runs the Office of Global Health Affairs.  Steiger's qualifications?  A degree in Latin American History and a long standing friendship with Dick Cheney.  His total lack of education or experience in health care didn't keep Steiger from being the Brownie in charge of Global Health Affairs, and also allowed him to label the report "inaccurate" without presenting any evidence.  

The focus of the report was one that should sound familiar to anyone who has followed the conversation on energy issues: the actions we are taking may seem to be limited to some distant area, but actually put our own nation at risk.

The hunger, disease, and death resulting from poor food and nutrition create social and political instability . . . and that instability may spread to other nations as people migrate to survive.

Despite all the concern we express over issues of politics and religion providing "safe havens" for terrorism, nothing provides as much opportunity for people to be radicalized as the effects of poverty.  Even ignoring the political effects, having a huge pool of people poorly served by health care provides a massive incubator for disease that could spread rapidly in our highly-connected world.  However, while it's permissible to point the finger at other reasons for disorder in the world, the idea that economic effects are a primary cause of problems, and that the application of plain old money can help solve these problems, is now so unthinkable we have to hide the evidence.

The UN has estimated that the costs of providing basic social services to the poor would run about $40 billion a year.  This means that spending on the Iraq War has now surpassed more than a decade of the cost of providing these services to the poor world wide.

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."

It's ironic that, four years into the disaster in Iraq, we continue to act as if we can set narrow limits on what does or does not affect our country.  We're willing to sell $20 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia, playing the same game of balance and counterbalance that we played in arming Saddam Hussein.  But we're unable to open our minds and our wallets to the idea that taking bold action on both poverty and energy might be much better investments for our own national security.

If the side effect of such a policy was a planet where people enjoy better health, less poverty, and a cleaner environment... well, I could live with that.

Note: YearlyKos Science panel descriptions can be found here.

Anyone know who the Surgeon General is? Trick question, really, because we don't have one. The last one to occupy that office (and supposedly the top public health officer in the US, the person who speaks directly to the American people about health issues that matter — smoking, for example) was Richard Carmona. Well, he didn't last and had a few harsh things to say under oath.

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 copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the "Call to Action on Global Health" while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration's frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist. At a July 10 House committee hearing, Carmona did not cite Steiger by name or detail the report's contents and its implications for American public health.

You may not know William Steiger. He's the same fellow that was interfering with the CDC's overseas appointments.

Only 166 of the CDC's 304 overseas positions in 53 countries are filled, according to the memo. At least 85 positions likely will remain unfilled until 2008, Blount said. Among the causes he cited: Delays at a federal human resource center in Atlanta and an additional bureaucratic layer that requires CDC foreign postings be approved by a senior political appointee's office in Washington...

William Steiger, director of HHS' Office of Global Health Affairs, was out of the country and unavailable for comment, said spokesman Bill Hall. Steiger has come under fire in the past for allegedly micromanaging the overseas work of the department's scientific divisions. Steiger, the godson of former President George H.W. Bush, is President George W. Bush's nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Mozambique.

Hall did not respond to requests for other department officials to explain the hiring policies.

Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, questioned why HHS officials in Washington are contributing to the CDC's hiring delays. "CDC isn't sending political people abroad to do global disease detection. They're sending scientists," said Levi, whose Washington-based group examines public health preparedness.

Levi said having CDC scientists overseas is important in creating a stronger global disease detection system. The vacancies create the risk that "we won't get the warning we need and we won't be as prepared as we should be," he said.

The Bush Administration interference with science has been pervasive and repeated. I'm glad it's starting to get a little more press. The next administration needs to be held to a completely different standard. This one's a lost cause, and needs to be exposed as widely as possible.

The draft report is here in .pdf. Here's an except on a topic of interest to me:

Avian Influenza H5N1 has gained significant international attention. Most experts today view the increasing possibility of a pandemic influenza as the most significant global health emergency on the immediate horizon. A pandemic is a global disease outbreak, and an influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza A virus emerges for which there is little or no immunity in the human population, begins to cause serious illness and then spreads easily from person to person worldwide. Historically, pandemics have traveled along sea-lanes, with global spread completed within six to eight months. Air travel has shortened this timeline considerably.

So why is the report blocked? Not enough about the wonderful science contributions of this administration, like abstinence-only sex education?

Evaluation of these 11 programs showed few short-term benefits and no lasting, positive impact. A few programs showed mild success at improving attitudes and intentions to abstain. No program was able to demonstrate a positive impact on sexual behavior over time. A description follows of short- and long-term impacts, by indicator.

I wonder why no one trusts these people.

Dr. Richard Carmona, the first US surgeon general appointed by GWB, told a House of Representatives panel that he was muzzled by the White House.
 
Well I'll be damned!  The Bush Administration?  No WAY!

Dr. Carmona said:

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,"...

He said that he was kept from talking about the science involved with issues such as stem-cell research and contraceptives.  He apparently also had misgivings about the Administration's "abstinence only" total B.S. approach to sex education (which has been proven not to be effective).  

To start out, I'm straight, happily married, and I've spent a large part of my life attending conservative churches, but what many in these churches don't understand is two things:

1. We live in a secular state, not a theocracy and...

2. There are a lot more issues of concern to those who attend these churches than just the ones the congregation's leaders love to talk about.

More below.

In Washington this week, former Bush Surgeon General Richard Carmona described what happens when radical conservative politics and ideology replace science at the basis for public health policy.  But one story this week - the surging over-the-counter sales of the Plan B emergency contraceptive - shows the benefits to Americans' health when those right-wing barriers are removed.

The surgeon general situation prove that if there's a person in the administration who is competent, Bush will fire them and replace them with an incompetent hack.

Reuters Will Dunham reports on the testimony of Dr. James Holsinger, nominated on May 24th, to be the New Surgeon General, before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

A firestorm has erupted over Holsinger, based on previous published studies which suggest that he is both anti-gay and anti-science.

This makes him a terrific fit with the other "science professionals" Bush has promoted to positions of national oversight.  We have a doctor in charge of women's health who hates women, a guy in charge of NOAA who doesn't like to hear about long range forecasts that upset his boss, and an FDA panel that approves drugs for release if Big Pharm says it's OK.

Anyone remember Roman Hruska?

Responding to criticism that [Nixon SCOTUS nominee G Harrold] Carswell had been a mediocre judge, Hruska claimed that:

"So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."[1]

Well, Bush certainly has taken that message to heart (Chertoff, Thompson), except when his choices have been disastrous (Rumsfeld, Brown, Gonzales). None have been "stuff like that there" and, alas, .James Holsinger Jr as the Surgeon General nominee doesn't break the mold.

From the Seattle PI Editorial Board:

Dr. Richard Carmona said that as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, he was censored on stem cells, sex ed, emergency contraception, prison health care, mental illness and global health. He said conversations with predecessors revealed that political pressure was common, but never to the degree he experienced.

We have seen the administration's arrogant disdain for independent science on environmental matters. But it is embarrassing to have a surgeon general so thoroughly squelched in a country where one of them, Luther Terry, had used the truth to help set billions of people worldwide free from tobacco addiction and another, C. Everett Koop, sounded the alarm about AIDS.

Bush has nominated as Carmona's permanent successor Dr. James Holsinger Jr., who wrote in 1991 that homosexual sex is unnatural and unhealthy. The choice is absurd. We'd be better off without a surgeon general than with one willing to rubber stamp ideology as science.

Carmona's testimony is here if you missed it. And the Senate can do us all a favor and not confirm Holsinger so we don't have to live through another disastrous pick pretending that "sound science" has anything to do with science (and here we need to remember Mark Twain):

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Sigh. Another Bush ideological pick to shore up his wavering base. Kinda makes you nostalgic for simply mediocre.

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona's admission that he was muzzled and subjected to political interference from political appointees in the Bush administration on important public health issues comes as no surprise to the Center for Reproductive Rights, given our experience in uncovering wholesale political interference with the FDA's (Food and Drug Administration) handling of efforts to make the emergency contraceptive drug Plan B (commonly known as the "morning-after pill") available over-the-counter so that women can avoid unwanted pregnancy.

A former surgeon general testifies that the Bush administration forced him to put politics ahead of science on issues like stem cell research, emergency contraception, and second-hand smoke.  

Not a surprise?  Perhaps not.

This is what struck me in the NY Times article:

In response to lawmakers’ questions, Dr. Carmona refused to name specific people in the administration who had instructed him to put political considerations over scientific ones. He said, however, that they included assistant secretaries of health and human services as well as top political appointees outside the department of health.

He served as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006. And the secretary of Health and Human Services for the first half of his term was -- Tommy Thompson.

Did Tommy sanction these restrictions? Will he claim he headed a rogue agency, with his top aides running amok? Or will he 'fess up and take some responsibility?  

I'm pretty sure we know the answer, but he's running for president. Someone just might want to inquire.

• Q: What do Anti-Terrorism & Special Olympics have in common?
• A: They were promoted by Democrats and therefore had to be ignored by the Cheney/Rove administration. Just because.

I know others have posted on the Surgeon General Carmona's testimony story.

I just want to highlight a relatively trivial yet telling point.