icetree's Blog

Holder Stepping to the Plate

2009-08-26T18:58:51Z

Holder to Appoint Prosecutor to Investigate CIA Terror Interrogations - - By Carrie Johnson of the Washington Post

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move.

Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

Durham's mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.

The attorney general selected Durham in part because the longtime prosecutor is familiar with the CIA and its past interrogation regime. For nearly two years, Durham has been probing whether laws against obstruction or false statements were violated in connection with the 2005 destruction of CIA videotapes. The tapes allegedly depicted brutal scenes including waterboarding of some of the agency's high value detainees. That inquiry is proceeding before a grand jury in Alexandria, although lawyers following the investigation have cast doubt on whether it will result in any criminal charges.

Word of Holder's decision comes on the same day that the Obama administration will issue a 2004 report by the then-CIA Inspector General. Among other things, the IG questioned the effectiveness of harsh interrogation tactics that included simulated drowning and wall slamming. A federal judge in New York forced the administration to release the secret report after a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Follow the link for the complete article.
xxx
Back in April I wrote a post that suggested that Obama might have pushed Holder toward this move. Maybe it's happening? Wouldn't that be lovely?

The Truth Is Out: Obama Hates Gays

2009-08-19T00:57:26Z

Emma Ruby wrote for the Huffington Post:
"Yesterday, the Obama administration filed a follow-up brief in the Smelt case -- the couple in California challenging DOMA who were the recipients of an imprudently written reply brief back in June. This time, it looks like some liberals in the Justice Department got their hands on a copy of the brief before filing. There are some nice words in there aimed at smoothing hurt feelings.

"But the brief also argues for a new and dangerous interpretation of the rational basis test.

"The rational basis test is applied by the court to laws that violate the equal protection clause, but do not implicate certain protected groups. In other words, if the law does not discriminate on the basis of race or gender, it will likely be upheld if the government can find any rational reason why the law exists. These reasons can be invented on the spot and are usually not tested very vigorously."
See here for the complete article.
xxx
So, after his disastrous comparison of gay marriage to incest and the marrying off of children, he turns around and says, "Oh--well--gay marriage is just too hard to do anything about! Forget it, then. So what if people are denied their rights? That's just too bad for them, then, isn't it?" And he scoops up his marbles and goes home.

To which my response:
"Voting for Obama is just too hard! Forget it then. I'll find someone else--surely someone doesn't see finally allowing people their rights as too difficult a task for the president to do."

The Facts About Canadian Care

2009-08-11T21:45:58Z

Heard on National Public Radio
These days, we can hardly turn on our TV's without seeing political ads telling us how horrible Canadian health care is.

Now, just so you know, no one in Congress or the White House is suggesting that the US adopt the Canadian design. [Though why they aren't, I don't know--it's a great system. Oh--that's right--the insurance companies don't want it. I forgot.]

Sarah Varney, reporter for NPR member station, KQED, decided to check out health care north of the border. See what you think.
xxx
Varney opened her piece with a visit to a doctor's office. She interviewed John Riley who was being treated for colon cancer in a small doctor's office in a gritty, working class neighborhood. He and his wife have been seeing the same doctor for over twenty years. They are allowed to choose their own physician.

Varney asked John if he had been required to wait for treatment. "Nothing but good. Everything has been going bang, bang, bang."
Did he have out-of-pocket expenses? "Other than gettin' there. No. Everything is good. I'm covered. I'm covered."
xxx
So, how does the Canadian health care system work? It's paid for by income tax and sales tax. All Canadians are covered and can see any doctor they want, anywhere in Canada with no co-pays or deductibles.

Some things aren't paid for: optometry, dental care or prescription drugs. Some people carry additional insurance to pay for those--others pay out-of-pocket for them.

American opponents to a new health plan like to call Canadian health care "Socialized Medicine [HORRORS!]." That's not an accurate description. Actually, it's socialized insurance--meaning that the risk is pulled together and paid for by the government.

While individual provinces and territories set their own overall health budgets and administer the health plans, the delivery of the actual care is private. Doctors run their own practices and bill the government rather than the patient or a 3rd party provider.

A physician Varney interviewed [Dr. Barsalai] told her that doctors earn a good living in Canada and don't have to handle the hassles involved with dealing with hundreds of different insurance policies--each with its own rules.
The article didn't say so, but I would imagine the issues of pre-approval or preexisting conditions don't come up.

Barsalai said that medical costs in Canada are half of what they are in the US. Infant mortality is lower. Life expectancy is longer. Obesity is lower and accessibility is higher.
Canada must be doing something right.

The Commonwealth Fund, a respected and non-partisan health research organization surveyed the 19 top industrialized countries in regards to deaths that could have been prevented had appropriate care been available. Canada rated 6th in positive outcomes while the US rated last.

Steve Morgan, a health economist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said, "I think a lot of it has to do with access. Canadians who need to manage a chronic condition or are faced with an urgent situation don't think about their pocketbooks. They seek the care and, more times than not, they get the care they need."

Varney met with Morgan and his colleagues at the UVC Center for Health Policy Research to find out what the data they've collected over the years reveal about the Canadian health system. Varney advised them of what the American public is told about the Canadian process: that health care is rationed, there are long waiting lists and a government bureaucrat gets between the patient and his/her doctor.
Professor Bob Evans, one of the grandfathers of the health economics field, said, "An illusion has been created that there are long lines of people who are near death waiting for care. That's absolute nonsense!"
Evans has been studying the two systems [Canadian and American] since they were founded about the same time during the 1960's.
He went on to say, "Are there people lined up not getting the appropriate care they need in appropriate times? Of course there are. It's a huge system and a very complicated one. And things do go wrong. But, as a general rule, what happens here is: when you need the care--you get it. We're not a third world country! [He sounded downright incensed.]

When federal funding for health care declined when a recession occurred during the 1990's, lines for nonessential services [and even some urgent ones] grew. The Canadian Supreme Court did find that, in some serious cases, patients had, in fact, died as a result of waiting for medical services. Stories of the deaths and of people traveling to the US for medical care dominated Canadian news. As a result, the Canadian government poured billions of dollars into reducing waiting times in the areas that were the most critical including cardiac care, cancer and joint replacement surgery.
As a result, the amount of wait time has been dropping. Most provinces now report waiting times on publically available websites. No such data or accountability is available in the US.

That's not to say there aren't frustrations regarding waiting for health care in Canada. At BC Children's Hospital, Jocelyn Tomkins, a young woman born with a condition similar to spina bifida, stated, "I haven't been able to walk since I was eight. I've had lots of surgeries and interventions but, beyond that, I hold a job and I live a pretty much normal life."
Jocelyn credits an army of doctors and physical therapists for that normal life but she admits there have, on occasion, been roadblocks.
"Of course there were some times when I had to wait for care and those were always the most frustrating moments."
A few years ago, when she was on a wait list for a pain clinic, she traveled first to Seattle and then to Texas. The care she required cost $1,800.00. Very few Canadians do go south for health care. It's a bit like getting struck by lightning--it's rare but, when it happens, everyone talks about it.

On some occasions, provinces pay for people to receive specialty care in the US. One such instance is the fact that a shortage of neonatal beds in Canada leads some women with high risk pregnancies to travel to the US [at Canadian expense] to deliver. It doesn't happen often and polls show that the vast majority of people are happy with their health care.

A few people would like to purchase private health insurance. Currently that is not allowed.

Canadians share some anxieties with their counterparts south of the border: a concern regarding their aging baby boomer population; overuse of emergency departments and a shortage of primary care doctors. But what Canadians don't worry about are: losing their health insurance or going bankrupt because of a health crisis.

Marching Resolutely Backward

2009-07-29T14:03:30Z

This morning I was watching a documentary on the History International Channel about Tudor/Stewart England [video of What the Tudors Did For Us the second third here and the end is here].
Adam Hart-Davis, the host, talked about educational, medical, scientific and industrial strides made in 16th century England as a direct result of the theocracy that was going on in Europe at the time.

In mainland Europe, accepted astronomy said that the Earth was stationary and the universe revolved around it. The Church had finally, reluctantly, accepted the idea that world was round, at least--but it still maintained that we were the center of everything. Anyone who said otherwise was silenced and imprisoned and, possibly, burned.

Dissection of human bodies was forbidden--so what medical practices were not founded in superstition were based on the anatomy of a pig.
Galen had been of Greek origin though he practiced in Rome. He had developed the theory of the 4 humours and dissected pigs and apes. In the 1500's the Church still adhered to the theories put forth over 1300 years earlier.
If you got sick in the 15th century you were likely to be purged, bled and fed a potion made of the ground up carcasses of dried mice.
Dried snakeskin was another favored medication. One method of use was to cover the affected area with the snakeskin, sprinkle it with holy water and intone the words: 'In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.'

Across the Channel, Henry VIII wasn't just a blood-thirsty tyrant who was wont to kill his wives. He established state education which rewarded merit. So sons [no daughters yet, of course] of tradesmen and miners could hope to better their positions for the first time in European history.

Any forward thinkers were fleeing Italy, Holland, France, Belgium, Spain and Germany. They took their new ways of looking at the world to Britain where their observations would be tolerated, even welcomed.

In 1572, the Elizabethan astronomer Thomas Diggs saw a bright new star in the sky. He was shocked. This could not be. Heaven, where God resided, was eternal and unchanging, wasn't it? But, there it was--a new star--undermining everything Tudor England believed in.
And, there was a printing press--brought to England by William Caxton, a Brit who had traveled in Europe and brought it back with him. So it didn't remain something that was kept bottled up for only the powerful to know about.
Today, we know that that 'new star' was a super nova. But in 16th century England it was a bombshell. That one sighting of "something that shouldn't be there" ushered in observational science: the practice of seeing reality rather than relying on what one believes to be true because "that's how things have always been."
What do you want to bet that France, Germany and Italy saw that star as well? But only England published the fact.

The understanding of human anatomy was revolutionized by Andreas Vesalius following the legalization of human dissection.
William Harvey, the son of a cobbler, discovered the arteries and veins that circulate blood.
Modern medicine began from the alchemist, Paracelsus, who had fled Switzerland and sought sanctuary in England. He believed that minerals and chemicals could be used to treat diseases and ushered in modern medicine.

Today, Europe is striding forward looking at the world as it is rather than as the Church would have it be. It is in America that people are harking back to a time of intolerance toward science.
It has been a long, long time since Victorian newspapers published editorial cartoons that declared that Darwin's ancestor may have been an ape but the rest of us were created by the hand of God. In Kansas, however, people want to return to that view and drag the rest of the world with them.
In the Southern and Midwestern United States people would stop science in its tracks--bequeathing Alzheimer's to their parents and spina bifida to their children rather than allowing research that could bring us cures for those conditions.
It is well said that the only life in this country that is worth protecting is life within the womb. Well, I take that back. If you are a vegetable lying in a hospital bed being fed with tubes and being breathed for by a machine -- THEN your life is sacred -- assuming your family can pay for your care.

Well, we can clearly see what happened in mainland Europe when it held to those viewpoints. Those who perceived the world AS IT IS moved to England and created the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.
Our brief time in the sun seems to be over--not because Europe is leaping ahead so much as because the US is willfully falling behind.

I'm watching as Europe sails toward the future and the US sits in it's stagnant swamp. Good luck to you, Europe, and more power to you. We have abdicated--you may now take the crown.

Well, So Much for the Stimulus

2009-07-11T10:43:50Z

Heard on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
Hartford Connecticut is poor. Two years ago, it's kids scored among the lowest in the nation on performance tests. Connecticut also has some of the richest communities in the country. As a result, the state has the widest performance gap of all the states among its students.

One district in Hartford did a massive overhaul of its schools. With no new money, it redesigned its systems to include 4 separate 'academies' within each school. The campus that was profiled had the Freshman Academy, the Law Academy, the Green Academy and the Nursing Academy. Except for the Freshman Academy which serves as an introduction to high school, each provides the basic high school curriculum as well as focusing on its own core area of study. For the first time in a long, long time, 2008/2009's test scores began moving upward.

The kids who were interviewed by the NewsHour reporter sang the praises of their school saying that, for the first time, they believe they have a shot at attending college.
When the stimulus came along, the 4 principals of the school were elated. They intended to hire a school nurse, a counselor, a health teacher, a math teacher as well as raising salaries across the school in order to entice better teachers to come to their system.

I believe any reasonable person can agree--an increase in college attendance and graduation would, more than almost any other development, serve to bring Connecticut [or any other state] out of its economic doldrums and jump-start the economy. It's too bad the governor of Connecticut cannot be counted among the reasonable people of the world.

True to form, Jodi Rell cut all programs the stimulus would affect by the exact amount of the expected infusion from the Federal Government. What do you want to bet she refunded $300.00 to each of her constituents?
Goodbye, new money--hello, status quo. And so long, prospects of bringing in new teachers, raising salaries, adding support staff. In other words, so much for creating new jobs. Gee, thanks, Governor Rell.

I guess she's looking out for her and her neighbor's kids. After all--we can't have just any riff-raff in those poor towns going to good schools and getting into college. What if the rich children can't get into those good universities because their poorer counterparts make better grades than they do? And, what will those rich kids do for jobs in such an Alice-In- Wonderland world?

Of course, another possibility is that this Republican Governor has joined forces with Rush Limbaugh and simply wants the stimulus to fail. To hell with the country, to hell with her own kids' future if we can see to it that Obama falls flat on his face and we can elect Sarah Palin in 2012.

Obama and the Human Rights Council. Uh-- Mr. President, Did You Forget Something?

2009-07-04T01:29:09Z

Today I received a petition from the Care2 Petition Site asking me to sign a petition thanking President Obama for reversing the previous administration's policies regarding the U.N. and joining the Human Rights Council within that body.

While this is good news in the matter of our standing among the nations of the world, it is another slap in the face to the 1.5% of the population in this country who are still waiting to have their basic rights acknowledged.

So, I have an idea:
Right now the Obama administration is, most likely, congratulating itself for taking this stand and supporting the U.N.'s Human Rights Council. They are absolutely correct that the only way to make a difference in this extraordinarily important matter is by taking a seat inside the council and working to make changes from the inside. Scolding from the outside has less than no effect.

However, this is a terrific time to remind Obama that a disastrous human rights injustice is happening right here every day.
When people's careers are being ruined by our government's misguided policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell as a matter of course; when our Department of Justice puts out a statement comparing gay marriage to incest and the marriage of children, how can our country possibly act as an arbiter of justice in the U.N? The short answer is it can't.

So, I appended a personal message to the petition and sent a personal email to the White House to that effect. I attach it below. Please copy and paste it or edit it as you please or write your own and send it along to them.

Now, while they're focused on worldwide human rights issues, is the time to remind them that they need to get their own house in order before trying to tell other countries how to conduct their affairs, right?

Here's my letter-- please use it as a jumping off point for your own.
And, won't you pass this ms along to your email friends, too? Thanx.
xxx
I add my personal gratitude for your reversal of the former administration's policies regarding the U.N. in general and the Human Rights Council in particular.

Now, will you please also address the human rights issue here at home that is still languishing, waiting for your attention?

Please tell the Pentagon to stop enforcing Don't Ask Don't Tell until Congress gets around to addressing this miscarriage of justice.
And please speak out against the insult to all LGBT's put forth by your Justice Department last month.

Human rights are essential for dignity and freedom from fear. The people of the LGBT community still labor under fear for their own safety in this "land of the free". Maintaining their status as second class citizens and publishing misinformation about them do nothing to lift that fear-- in fact such measures increase it.

Thank you for turning your attention to this profoundly important matter.

Sarah Palin Revisited

2009-07-01T03:59:18Z

The August Issue of Vanity Fair featured an article by Todd S. Purdum:

It Came From Wasilla

Here are some excerpts:

Palin is at once the sexiest and the riskiest brand in the Republican Party. Her appeal to people in the party (and in the country) who share her convictions and resentments is profound. The fascination is viral, and global.

Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away. What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party--long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics--keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics--with a fine appreciation of life's injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor--ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

[Personal insert: There is one answer that will cover the last two questions, at least: Neither McCain nor the Republican Party at large wanted to win the election. Palin was not in on the joke. Just my personal take on the disaster that was the last Republican presidential campaign.]

In the aftermath of the November election, the conventional wisdom among Palin's supporters in the Republican establishment was that she should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers. She has done none of this.

Palin is a cipher by choice. When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth. Her singular refusal to have in-depth conversations with the national media . . . has compounded the challenge of understanding who she really is. There has been Hollywood talk that Palin could star in a reality-TV show about running Alaska, but nothing has come of it yet.

[**Personal note: Oh, please, oh please do, Sarah! What an efficient method for destroying your next campaign! Please! Please! Please!]

Little Shop of Horrors

The caricature of Sarah Palin that emerged in the presidential campaign, for good and ill, is now ineradicable. The swift journey from her knockout convention speech to Tina Fey's dead-eyed incarnation of her as Dan Quayle with an updo played out in real time, no less for the bewildered McCain campaign than for the public at large. It is an ironclad axiom of politics that if a campaign looks troubled from the outside the inside reality is far worse, and the McCain-Palin fiasco was no exception.

By the time Election Day rolled around, the staff had been serially pummeled by unflattering press reports about the gaps in Palin's knowledge, her stubborn resistance to direction, and the post-selection spending spree in which she ran up bills of $150,000 on clothes for herself and her family at high-end stores. The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin . . . were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a "diva" and a "whack job."

[I]n a recent series of conversations, a range of people from the McCain-Palin campaign, including members of the high command, agreed to elaborate on how a match they thought so right ended up going so wrong.

After she was picked, the campaign belatedly sent a dozen lawyers and researchers, led by a veteran Bush aide, Taylor Griffin, to Alaska, in a desperate race against the national reporters descending on the state. At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum . . . . Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn't really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness--about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered--persisted on questions great and small.

In regards to the debate with Biden:

Palin worked hard, and the results were adequate. Palin's winking "Can I call you Joe?" performance against Biden was nothing like a disaster. In fact, it seems to have emboldened her enough that the next day she openly voiced disagreement with the McCain team's decision to pull out of active competition in Michigan. When orders or advice from McCain headquarters began to conflict with her own impulses, aides told me, she simply did what she wanted to do.

xxx

Immediately, Jim Geraghty of the National Review Online came out swinging.

He wrote an article entitled, Reading and Mocking the Palin Profile So You Don't Have To.

He led off with, "To go through the 9,800 word profile/excoriation of Sarah Palin by Todd Purdum in Vanity Fair and Fisk it line by line would take an enormous amount of time and space, and probably more time than you're willing to devote to reading it. So for now, the low-lights:"

Isn't it beautiful? In one fell swoop he dismissed his readers' need to check the source and helped them feel virtuous for choosing to remain ignorant of what the article actually said. That's quite a skill. "There, there, dears. Don't you worry your pretty little heads about what's in that nasty old article. Uncle Jim will tell you everything you need to know."

He then goes on to argue against the hyperbole [of which there is plenty, I admit] and the opinions [ditto]. However, he mentions very few of the facts outlined in the article, and pretty much refuses to dispute them. I would imagine that is because he could not disagree with the factual statements as they were all true. Indeed, he simply glossed over most of them. Best not to put them before his readers' eyes, after all. They might get to know some of the more unsavory bits about their princess. Probably not a good idea.

His article reminds me of the Lawyer's First Rule: When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, call the other lawyer names. Does this remind you of any campaign of recent history? Geraghty continues this great tradition. In his case, he sneered at Purdum while ignoring the truths in the article.

His fancy footwork was amazing. Again--he displayed a great deal of skill. The fact that he used it to lull his readers into complacent bobble-headed acceptance of an altogether unprepared person who may well be seeking the presidency is pretty frightening, to my way of thinking.

[As I was rereading the last paragraph, what popped into my mind's eye was Richard Gere's/Billy Flynn's tap-dance during the trial of Roxie Hart in CHICAGO. That little link scared the bejeebers out of me. We're not talking about a fictional character who killed her lover in a passionate frenzy here, but about a woman who very likely has her eye on the Oval Office.]

Geraghty adroitly used opinions put forth by Purdum about Palin as chances to take digs at Obama and even Bill Clinton. I counted two against Obama and one against Clinton. Uh, this is a response to an article about Palin, remember? He did, however, quote a fairly funny joke made by Obama during a speech. I guess that's supposed to make it all OK.

He claimed that Purdum intimated that Palin won the debate against Byden. I watched that debate. I'll bet you did, too. Tell me, who do you think won?

Geraghty wrote, "She has been living in the eye of a hurricane since last August, and has become one of the few figures subject to the scrutiny of both the political media and the celebrity-industrial complex manifested in People and Us Weekly. Almost overnight, she's gained millions of devoted fans and furious enemies. That has to be a horrific environment to make tough decisions in."

To my mind, this statement makes Palin out to be some sort of innocent bystander--not the person who has orchestrated the media frenzy from the beginning of her campaign until the present--notwithstanding the attempts by her handlers to get her off the stage where she just keeps damaging herself in the public eye.

Geraghty did make one cogent and truthful point: "Palin may run for president in 2012, which could very well be a mistake. Her current public reputation and support is probably just enough to win the GOP nomination and then generate similar electoral college results as 2008. As a GOP strategist put it to me a few months ago, 'The perception of Sarah Palin will change when the reality of Sarah Palin changes.'" Ummm, how soon do you expect THAT to happen? Me neither.

Another skill Geraghty displayed was changing the subject so dexterously that I almost missed it.

Note Purdum's statement in the original article:

"Also with Coale's help, Palin formed the grandiosely named Alaska Fund Trust, to defray a reported half million dollars in legal expenses arising from a slew of formal ethics complaints against her in her home state--prompting yet another formal complaint, that the fund itself constitutes an ethical breach."

And Geraghty's response:

"The fact that Palin is now 15 for 15 in having those "formal ethics complaints" dismissed as groundless would seem to be somewhat relevant.

Purdum wrote about the Alaska Fund Trust and the reason it was created--to offset Palin's legal costs. He did not suggest that the ethics complaints had merit. He DID say that the Fund itself turned out to have been questioned as to its own ethics.

However, Geraghty ignored the point about the Fund and focused on the merit of the complaints. Nifty knitting? Yes. Answering the point brought up in the original article? No.

Finally, he went on to say, "I find my toddler son exhausting; I can only imagine a life running a state while caring for a son with Down syndrome and a son in Iraq and a daughter who is a new mother in the sharp glare of the public spotlight and a grandson and another daughter suddenly appearing in David Letterman's routine. This may not be the right time for another go-round in a multi-year process in which vast swaths of the political world will aim to see her torn down to nothing."

Once again: "Poor widdle Sarah. She's such a victim. Feel sowwy foa her."

And he ended his piece with that most vapid of statements: "But it's her call, and time will tell."

Oh, really? The rest of us hadn't figured that part out. Thanks for explaining it to us mindless ijits.

O-betray

2009-06-19T23:10:40Z

O.K. So last year, Obama said he supported gays. In fact, he said he DID NOT support Don't Ask Don't Tell [DADT] and would get rid of it if he got to be POTUS. As a result of that and other statements, a lot of gays supported him. And worked for his campaign. And voted for him.

What a difference a year makes. Here we are, almost 5 months into his presidency and DADT is still very much the law of the land. Still enforced. Two hundred fifty three people have, since Obama took office, had their military careers destroyed--just like they did under Bush and Clinton before him.
These people want to serve their country. And he kicks them in the teeth.

Change We Can Believe In. Uh huh.

Then, last Friday the Justice Department took out the trash [a concept you're familiar with if you religiously watched (as I did) the TV drama, The West Wing.]
In case you didn't, here's the idea: on Fridays, the government releases information it doesn't want people to notice.
The weekend is coming up and fewer people read newspapers on Saturday and Sunday. So, if you want to put out a story --so you won't be accused of hiding stuff-- but you want it to be used only to line the bottom of the birdcage and nothing else, you sit on it till Friday and release it along with a whole slew of other stuff --all at once.

Only, this time, people noticed.
Oops.

Here's what was supposed to leak out under the radar --only it didn't:
A statement was released by the Justice Department supporting the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA].
~~~
Here are excerpts from the Act:
Powers reserved to the states:
No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.
Definition of 'marriage' and 'spouse':
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.
~~~
Last Friday's brief was authored by a Bush holdover. A Mormon. And it shows. It equated gay marriage with a marriage between uncle and niece. It equated gay marriage with marrying off children.

Do you see why they wanted to release this piece of garbage on Friday? It could just have easily have come from the Bush administration. Except Bush would have been proud of it and released it on Tuesday morning with a flourish of trumpets.
They were right in one way --the correct thing to do with it was to line the bottom of the bird cage.

Last Friday evening Rachel and others speculated that Obama didn't know this filth had been released. Even that he doesn't agree with it.
I'm sorry, but I'm of the mind that he is, after all, the president. And I'm with Harry Truman--if he didn't know it was coming out, he should have known. It's his buck.
It looks from here as if, when it comes to gays, Obama is an empty suit.
xxx
So, fast forward to today:
All of a sudden, Obama makes the announcement that he is giving 'many of' the same rights to gay federal employees and their partners that 'opposite' married people have enjoyed forever and ever.

This is another of those little items Obama had promised--but not delivered. Now, he's using it to sop up the egg that's dripping off his chin.
Oh, and by the way, what does 'many of' mean?

Nice try, Barry. But you're offering too little too late.
For one thing, this tidbit had come out so precipitously and so recently that Rachel and her staff and the guest she discussed it with didn't yet know what form it had taken. Was it a resolution or a memorandum? I hadn't known the two types of statements existed--let alone the implications involved.
Here's what it boils down to: A resolution becomes standard operating procedure --it remains in effect unless and until a later president repeals it-- and that requires legal action.
A memorandum remains in effect for as long as Obama is president. Once he's out of office it immediately dies.

Maybe I'm being really, really cynical here--but that seems to be pretty nifty if you're trying to bribe a certain constituency to vote for you come 2012.
I don't know how many federal employees are LGBT but, it's a fair number, I imagine. Since 1.5% of the general population is LGBT and since there are a lot of federal employees--it's a good guess that the same percentage of federal employees are LGBT. Add to that number their spouses--who certainly aren't all, themselves, fed employees--well, let's call it 2.5% of the number of feds. Not enough to swing the election, of course, but still--a welcome voting block come 2012.
So, suppose you're one of the people who suddenly had your basic rights acknowledged. And suppose those rights will expire in January unless the guy who [however expediently] signed the measure that recognized them gets reelected. Well? Who are you going to vote for? Yeah. Me too.

But laying all that aside --Mr. Obama, your administration just delivered a deadly insult to a group of people that worked for you, got the vote out for you, voted for you and whom you have ignored since November:
First you invited Rick Warren to offer an invocation at your inauguration. When the understandable hoopla ensued, you hurriedly invited Gene Robinson, too. Shame on you.
During your campaign you promised to repeal DADT.
Even supposing it would take some time to do that, you could, with a stroke of your pen, tell the Pentagon to stop enforcing it. You could stop the practice of ruining people's careers. It would take ten minutes.
You haven't bothered. Shame on you.
Also, during your campaign, you promised to address gay marriage. And THIS is what you did. You ignored it. Then you insulted 1.5% of the population. Then you backtracked by giving the ones among them who work for you "many of" the rights enjoyed by the straight married people in your employ.
Gee, thanks, Mr. President.
And shame on you.

Here are some related articles:
The Village Voice, The CBS Blog, The New York Times, and an article whose headline:'Dept. of Justice defends DOMA, Obama wants it overturned', all by itself, gave me whiplash-- The Catholic News Agency.

By the way, that last article lead off with this statement:
'Although the Department of Justice filed a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) last week, the Obama administration has made it clear that promoting same-sex "marriage" will be an important focus of its political agenda.'

Errrrrrmmm--when?
Oh, and that hoity-toity, holier-than-thou Catholic newspaper can remove those condescending quotes around the word "marriage", too.

Why the Hate of the Other? Why?

2009-06-12T17:09:52Z

I found this post on Genocide for Jesus by Emproph.

I read this sort of thing and start reciting my mantra:

"Picture a circle outlined by dots.
No one of those dots is any better or worse than any other dot.
Each is necessary in order to complete the circle.
Each Soul is exactly where it needs to be
along the path leading back to the All that Is."

But, oh, it's hard to believe, sometimes. This is one of those times.

Telling myself, "Maybe it's karma. Maybe it's balancing the universe to suffer torture and death because you happen to be perceived as outside the norm," doesn't help me get past the gut wrenching disgust I feel toward my species. It just doesn't help.

Our Surrender

2009-06-10T20:06:21Z

The Bush Hangover: Guantanamo Undercuts Our Protests of North Korea -- by Mitchell Bard
George W. Bush has been out of office for more than four months now, but I fear that the damage done during the Bush years has inflicted serious injury to the American psyche and reputation, and it will take years, if not decades, to recover.

I woke up this morning to the chilling news that two American journalists had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor by a North Korean court for the "crimes" of illegally entering the country and committing "hostile acts."
^^^
[T]he international community has to stand against the heinous actions of the North Korean government. Clearly, the United States should be at the head of such international action.

But today, I also read about Lakhdar Boumediene, and the truly disturbing story of what happened to him after the 9/11 attacks. An Algerian man living with his wife and two children in Sarajevo, Bosnia, he was working for the Red Crescent in October 2001 when he was arrested and charged with conspiring to blow up the American and British embassies in the city. An investigation revealed no evidence of his involvement in any plot, so a Bosnian judge ordered him released, but the Bush administration intervened, and in January 2002 he was shackled and flown to Guantanamo Bay.
^^^
In the end, Boumediene was held for 7 1/2 years in Guantanamo, during which time, he says, he was tortured. He says he was kept up for 16 days straight, beaten, "stretched" (pulled up from under his arms while his feet were shackled to a chair) and forced to run while chained to guards, and if he could not keep up, he was dragged until he was bloody and bruised. After he began a hunger strike, he had food tubes put up his nose and, he claims, soldiers would purposely poke IV needles into the wrong parts of his arm, just to induce pain. But the one thing that was not done to him? Nobody asked if he was involved in a plot to blow up the U.S. and British embassies in Sarajevo. Rather, all he was repeatedly asked was about his connections to al-Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden (he insists he had no connection at all to the terrorist group).

But there was one thing in the article that not only amazed me but brilliantly illuminated why the U.S. should never torture, and why it is so important that we repudiate what happened during the Bush years and chart a clear and unequivocal new path forward, one that reflects the country's traditional values. Boumediene said:
"I thought America, the big country, they have CIA, FBI. Maybe one week, two weeks, they know I am innocent. I can go back to my home."

In other words, Boumediene had faith that a country like the United States could not possibly keep an innocent man prisoner with no way to contest his guilt. His view of America is one that many in the world shared before the Bush years . . . .
That is supposed to be the difference between a country like North Korea and a country like the United States.
Click here for the complete article.
xxx
This says it all. The US willingly surrendered what high ground we had had before.

Of course, even before Bush, our 'high ground' had been tenuous at best:
A country founded on genocide and slavery.
Jim Crow and, even now, capital punishment and imprisonment that allows strikingly different statistics depending on race.
The sham of The War On Drugs.
The only western country which does not offer reasonable health care to its citizens [unless they happen to hold high government office].
That has 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' as a very real law and denies marriage to 1.5% of its population.
Whose education is falling apart.
That tolerates children going to bed hungry every night.
That accepts the fact that some of its people still kill in the name of God.
Whose people are urged to take their guns to church----
All this doesn't leave us a lot of room to talk, does it?

Still before Bush was appointed president, we had slightly more room than we do now.
And Cheney just goes on telling us how right he and his cronies were all that time--spouting the lie that 'torture saved lives' just as if that were the question [which it is not].

But, today, the real issue comes home. Two of our citizens are being illegally and immorally held by another country and we are powerless to even raise our voice in protest--all because we have done the same thing--and right recently.

In Doctor Tiller's Name

2009-06-01T04:54:43Z

Hey folks-- I was reading the Article at Huffington Post about the assassination of Dr. Tiller and someone made the suggestion of making a donation to Planned Parenthood in his name.

It sounded like a great idea, to me, so I went to the site and donated. It didn't offer a way to donate in the name of a particular person but I figure they'll probably get lots of donations today -- and they'll know why.

So, I just wanted to pass on the idea to everyone here. And please pass it on to your blogs and email address books, won't you? Thanks.

Global Warming Rethunk

2009-06-01T03:48:53Z

I just had an 'Aha! Moment.'
For the last decade or more I've believed every word the scientists said about Global Warming. After all, the politicians immediately came out swinging, smearing the scientists and declaring their findings 'pseudo-science.'
I mean, who would YOU have believed?

I just watched a documentary I'd seen before--but, this time, I noticed something that had escaped me the first time around.

I had known for many years about the Little Ice Age that began around the year 1000. It ushered in such innovations as chimneys, multi-roomed dwellings with staircases [the gentry lived upstairs where it was warmer] tapestry-hung beds, buttons on clothing, rotation of crops, an increase in animal husbandry as a result of the mass failure of cereal crops while animal feed crops were better able to survive the cold, etc. etc. etc.
The Black Death arrived about the same time and preyed on a population already weakened by the change in climate.
The European mindset became paranoid. Surely, the Almighty was calling on the populace to clean up its act. The Church and governments turned on Jews and women and the witch hunts and purges of the Jews brought about thousands of violent deaths.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the Vikings' great experiment had been underway for several generations.
When they arrived, Greenland was a lush and green place--not the glacier-covered mass we're all familiar with today. For the first century or so of the European settlement, the newcomers derived 80% of their sustenance from the land [goats, sheep and cereal crops] and 20% from the sea. After the Little Ice Age began, that ratio gradually reversed itself and the Vikings, who had never learned the technique of winter-fishing used to tide the Innuit over during hard times, died out.

This is the history of the early Little Ice Age. The earth actually began that cycle with a considerably warmer climate than we see today.
xxx
The part I hadn't put together before was the length of the cycle we're talking about, here.
The Little Ice Age didn't last for two or three hundred years, as I'd always assumed. Its effects, in fact, were being felt when the Pilgrims arrived in the New World in 1620. They were still going on when George Washington crossed the Delaware River in 1776. All that ice in the painting wasn't included for effect. It was really there as diaries of the time attest.
In 1816, when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, ice imagery abounded in the novel, reflecting conditions outside as she wrote. In short, the Little Ice Age came to an abrupt end in 1850--probably fueled, at least in part, by industrialization.

The fact remains, though, that the earth has not, by any means, warmed to the level it was when the cycle began in approximately the year 1000--when Greenland was actually green and England harvested grapes every summer as a matter of course.
xxx
But, here's why this whole argument [the 'natural warming' the politicians postulate] is irrelevant:
No matter the cause, we are faced with a major crisis or even series of crises as a result of the warming we're undergoing at the moment.
After all, with Greenland locked up in ice for almost a thousand years, with the arctic and the antarctic massively larger than they were 1000 years ago, we've been building on coasts that have been dry for considerably less than that amount of time.
Whole cities have grown up on land that was covered by ocean before the Little Ice Age began [I live in one of them]. Therefore, it would behoove us to keep the Little Ice Age that we're currently living in stable--or face violent social upheavals as the climate returns to the level that may be the actual 'norm' [assuming there is such a thing] and our coastal cities drown.
I guess my point is--if conditions that existed prior to the year 1000 were the norm--and we are currently living in a waning Little Ice Age which may, now, be drawing to a close--whether or not we are responsible in whole or in part for the warming--we may be fighting a losing battle as we attempt to stabilize the climate, no matter what we do.
If we're lucky, we are the sole cause of the warming and we can slow or stop it if we clean up our acts [given our political situation, a pretty big IF.]
But, if we're not lucky and the earth just wants to warm up, my guess is she's gonna do it.
In a battle between us and Mother Nature--guess who's going to win? And those of us who live along the coasts had better invest in swim fins.