ThoughtCrimes.org

I think if they succeed in a government take over of health care the situation may be irreversible. It will be like government schools. I mean you can never just, with another piece of legislation, change it. Senator Jim DeMint, on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America, via Thinkprogress

Because, as we all know, private schools just don’t exist any more.

The rising tide of cognitive dissonance is about up to our chin these days. First we’re being told, “The public option would be terrible for the ‘health consumer’” and then, in almost the next breath, “It would be so popular it would destroy the health insurance industry!” By talking as though private schools have gone the way of the dinosaurs, Senator DeMint has merely added yet another layer of weirdness.

We’re hearing these ridiculous “arguments” because the true rationale behind opposition to the public option is too ugly to state outright. Nobody wants to say, “Tough luck about those untreated, potentially deadly health problems you peons! We’ve taken too may donations from Health Insurance Companies to do anything about it.”

Thus, people like DeMint simply throw out any rationalizations that come to hand at the moment.

After all, people just aren’t likely to understand the free-market superiority of a system that allows them or their children to die from treatable illnesses.

“We are always looking for the very best of the industry, which happens to be people who are still employed.” restaurant owner Bobby Fitzgerald

You know all that stuff about how if we support the free market, jobs will result? Well, forget that. According to this piece in The Wall Street Journal online, many employers don’t want to hire someone who’s currently unemployed:

Charlie Wilgus, managing partner of executive search for Lucas Group, based in Atlanta, says a manufacturing client looking for a division president recently refused to consider a former divisional president at Newell Rubbermaid Inc. whose department had been eliminated. The client doesn’t want candidates who have been laid off, Mr. Wilgus says.

But never fear, says the WSJ! If, for some unaccountable reason, you find yourself unemployed in the current economy, a sufficient amount of groveling, (“calm an employer’s biggest worry about out-of-work applicants: that your termination was the result of poor performance”) “strong records of recommendation” and, being “flexible on your salary or title,” just might get you a job.

Not the same job, and with a lower salary of course, but hey, what else do you think you deserve, you jobless bum?

Via Media Matters, Michael Scheuer holds out only one hope for America…

“The only chance we have, as a country right now, is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States, because it’s going to take a grassroots, bottom up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans…Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.” Michael Scheuer, June 30, 2009, the Glenn Beck Show

Is any comment really necessary?

Officers arrived at the Rainbow Lounge to conduct the scheduled inspection. Some officers remained outside while some entered the club. While walking through the Rainbow Lounge, an extremely intoxicated patron made sexually explicit movements toward the police supervisor. This individual was arrested for public intoxication. Another intoxicated individual also made sexually explicit movements towards another officer and he was arrested for public intoxication. A third individual inside the lounge assaulted the TABC agent by grabbing the TABC agent's groin. He was escorted outside and arrested for public intoxication. Fort Worth Police statement on last weekend’s raid on a gay bar that put one bar patron in the ICU with a fractured skull.

And of course, the first thing a gay man in Texas does when he sees a bunch of surly male cops is grope them.

This sounds a lot some homophobic good ol’ boy’s paranoid nightmare about how gay men act.

''Some of the people are funny looking and ugly, to be blunt,'' he said. Florida resident on why he enjoys the public posting of mugshots

Uh, yeah, I’m sure they are. Most of us wouldn’t exactly look our best while having mugshots taken, whether the arrest were warranted or not. It’s kind of a stressful moment.

I’m reminded of a passage in a book I once read by an evangelical preacher who was going on and on about the unredeemed state of most of humanity. As an example, he cited the hopeless and empty expressions he saw on the faces of people leaving international flights at the air terminal.

No doubt it’s loads of fun looking at picures of locals who’ve been arrested that week, but this Miami Herald article on the trend of newspapers like the Palm Beach Post publishing mugshots cuts to the nub of the problem in the following paragraph:

While The Post, like most newspapers, notes that those featured in the daily blotter are innocent until proved guilty, there is no follow-up. There is no subsequent report if the charges are never filed, are dropped or if the person is acquitted at trial -- all things that happen in at least 25 percent of all felony cases and a far higher percentage of misdemeanor cases, which represent the bulk of the arrests.

Posting a pious disclaimer about innocence until proof of guilt does nothing to alter the fact that publishing someone’s mugshot is an act of deliberate public humiliation. An example of the meaninglessness of that platitude comes from Tim Burke, the Executive Director of the Post who said, in defending the practice of posting mugshots, “…we're still telling readers (and now users) who broke the law. We still think arrests are of significant interest to the public. [emphasis added]''

Innocent until proven guilty. Right.

And of course, the outcome of such arrests, which may include the vindication of the “funny-looking and ugly” people whose names and faces have been posted online are not “of interest to the pubic.”

“The Chicago convention in 1968 was marked by protests and violence…” ABC7 Chicago.com

Actually, the Chicago convention in 1968 was described by a federally commissioned report as a “police riot,” and involved the police attacking demonstrators, bystanders, and reporters indiscriminately. I was a kid then, but not so young that I can’t remember watching the footage of that night, and seeing the pictures in magazines and newspapers that followed. In particular I recall a photograph, taken by a journalist, showing a cop bearing down on him, club raised.

And apparently veterans of that sterling example of mass police brutality decided to hold a reunion so they could reminisce about those glorious times.



The snotty tenor of the above ABC-7 report reminds me of a Harlan Ellison piece from The Glass Teat, written after the 1968 convention. He describes how television cameramen would, before that night, typically either focus on only the most outrageous looking peace demonstrators, or turn their cameras away when the police began beating people. As I recall, Ellison took no joy from the shots of demonstrators being beaten. But the reporters…

Let’s just say that was my first exposure to the Yiddish word, “kvell.”

When I read that piece back in the eighties I was shocked, but after seeing this ABC-7 report, I’m a lot closer to understanding Ellison’s reaction.

Anyways, this commander of his called me often, telling me that “if you accept Jesus Christ as your savior, then things will go better for (husband’s name withheld).” He went to the brig– yes, the judge sent a (rank withheld) to the brig for 45 days–and then asked to pray over my husband, telling him if he just confessed his “sins” to “Jesus Christ” then he would find things getting better for him. Of course (husband’s name withheld) gave his commander permission to pray over him as he was terrified to say no: because we believe all of this stemmed from my husband’s stance on the illegality of evangelical proselytising in the (service branch name withheld).from a letter to Mikey Weinstein, head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Via Mark Crispin Miller’s News From Underground

Sometimes it really seems to me that atheists and agnostics have a greater respect for religion than evangelicals who try to bully us into lying about our beliefs.

I mean, come on, how “reverent” can you be if you tell someone, “bow your head, declare yourself dedicated to Christ/Allah/whatever, pretend to pray, or we’ll destroy your career/deny you parole/dislocate your legs and shoulderblades?” Do they really imagine that someone who complies with this demand is praying to “God?” rather than the very temporal threat hanging over their head?

Don’t imagine for one moment that most of the evangelicals currently trying to hijack our military would draw the line at this kind of intimidation. That’s exactly how petty and ugly their “god” is -- a deity who would look with approval at someone trotted before him as a captive, forced to mumble prayers and genuflect. Anyone who’s lived in the Bible Belt for any length of time knows that intimidating people into “converting” is considered by these bullies as, not just all right, but clever, godly, and just.

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.
- Mark Twain, Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888

Another example this week of current war against language is NPR Ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard’s whiney attempt at justifying NPR’s morally bankrupt avoidance of the word “torture” when the victims are Middle Easterners and the perps Americans:

It's a no-win case for journalists. If journalists use the words "harsh interrogation techniques," they can be seen as siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer. If journalists use the word "torture," then they can be accused of siding with those who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration.

And that’s just one of the half baked justifications she offered. (Hey, here’s an idea! If it’s a “no-win” situation why not just fall back on the truth and use the word “torture” to describe torture?) This article should be followed by a brisk chaser of the comments that resulted, a unanimous chorus of justified contempt, and Glenn Greenwald’s excellent evisceration.

Ms. Shepard left town immediately after posting this. An intern has assured everyone in the comments that she’ll respond to the overwhelmingly negative reaction when she gets back. We’ll see.

"Good Luck." Former Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) to 62-year-old woman with diabetes

"...if you can find a job with a major employer they're not going to be able to reject you under those cases. I don't think you'll find...probably be able to find and uh...some health insurance benefits with a small business or you going out on your own. It's difficult at this point. There may be a government plan or a private plan that are mandated coming out of this, that may be able to help you. But Diabetes is, particularly adult onset is controllable if you watch your weight, if you exercise, watch what you eat and continue, I guess, in this case, to take your medication and I don't know any reason why you shouldn't be able to find something out there, but you want to look for an employer that has a healthcare plan, and good luck."

It's a later caller who puts it best when he observes that Davis' comment "encapsulates the entire Republican party's attitude towards any problems that are facing the American people."

"It wasn't a 'good luck, you're on your own' type of thing," Davis insists.

Like Hell it wasn't Mr. Davis. You tell a woman in her 60s, in today's economy, that the solution is for her to get a job with a major corporation? And oh by the way, she should watch her weight and exercise and, presumably, do without that expensive Diabetes medication while she's on her no doubt long, possibly permanent job search?

How is that not telling her she's "on her own?"

Members of Congress without the moral clarity to recognize this equivalence will be condemned by history. Their spinelessness and lack of will when confronted with the power of the insurance industry is just as morally bankrupt as the American congressmen who bowed to Southern slave-owners. Glenn W. Smith, "Slavery and the Healthcare Crisis," Firedoglake

This pretty much sums up the utter stupidity of not just Republican leaders who are trying to block healthcare reform, but blue dog Democrats who are doing it.

Anyone who fails to see the rank immorality of a healthcare system based entirely on profit is as blind as those unable to see the immorality of slavery.

Like slave traders, the healthcare profiteers of our ethically bankrupt system stand as an example to us of just how low human beings can go in the pursuit of wealth. Any politician who does not recognize this is either being deliberately obtuse or is so cynical that they are willing to build their careers at the expense of human lives.

"You know I wasn't born yet so I wouldn't know." Meghan McCain responding to a point Paul Begala made about Ronald Reagan, on Bill Maher's Real Time.

"...and you think you know everything, and I'm just a sweet little blonde girl sitting here not doing anything to you and now you're being mean to me..."

Note to Bill Maher -- get over the "Awwwww I'm gonna-protect-the-poor-little-girl" crap. If she can't handle debate, she has no business being on your show.

"I was told that it had been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn’t 'working' anymore," said Froomkin. "Personally, I thought it was still working very well, and based on reader feedback, a lot of readers thought so, too. I also felt White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online. As I’ve written elsewhere, I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That’s what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I'll have to try to do it someplace else." Dan Froomkin, Quoted in Politico, 6/18/09

Kristol stays.

Froomkin goes.

And they wonder why print media is dying.

It bears repeating. This video is hard to watch. The woman being strip searched by cops, both male and female is not a dangerous criminal. In fact, the original 911 call had been made because she was the victim of an assault. She ended up locked naked in a jail cell because she got into an argument with the cop about the id she'd given him.



What's always interesting about cases like this involving white, middle class victims of police brutality is what such incidents reveal about the cops' sense of impunity. There's nothing furtive about any of this. It all unfolds in front of the security cameras installed in the jail. Male cops helping to strip a female assault victim naked and locking her in a cell is apparently business as usual.

How many times had this already happened to people too poor and/or too intimidated to contact a lawyer afterwards?

” How dare he? When he has a bastard son! And a slut for a wife.” Protestor at the Fire David Letterman Rally

Jonah Green’s video of the small protest yesterday in front of CBS studios reveals something anyone familiar with the far right already knows. This brouhahah over a Letterman joke is not about defending women and children. It’s about getting a nice hard hate on against a perceived liberal and his family.

Some people take the time off but feel bad about doing so, out of loyalty to bosses and colleagues left to carry the workload. Others work quietly — and sometimes openly — through furloughs, because they fear for the long-term safety of their positions and hope their self-sacrifice impresses the management. NY Times 6/14/09

The relationship between working and being paid for working seems to be getting a bit shaky.

This is not a good sign.