Bang, Bang, Hug, Hug, Shrug, Shrug

Renny Cushing, Anti Violence Advocate

Welcome to America, where summer gives way to Fall, baseball finishes and football begins, mowing lawns yields to raking leaves to shoveling driveways and some maniac with guns mows down a score of school kids.  Just part of the American tapestry now. 

Just now part of what is predictable in American life.  Kids on a playground, kids in a classroom or a library or a cafeteria, and some, slightly older, usually white male appears and pulls out a gun and starts shooting.

Afterward, the news media swarm and photographers take pictures of people hugging and the local police get on camera and mouth some formulaic stuff about the shooter was found dead and the investigation is ongoing and President Obama fumes about the long list of events which no other country in the developed world has.  Of course, in Africa, Mexico, the Middle East people are killed violently every day--it's hardly news. 

At the hospital we have always had certain "codes" which come over the PA system to alert doctors and nurses and members of various cardiac or resuscitation teams--code blue in the ER, means cardiac arrest team is needed. We now have a code black, "Active Shooter." I'm not saying I've ever heard that code come across the PA, but the very fact we have that now says something.

I have no solutions. I wish I could believe it would be effective to pass laws but we are talking about deviant behavior here. The argument that our current system puts guns within easy reach of mad men is the animating idea about gun control. 

I'd love to believe this would be effective, but much as I hate to agree with the National Rifle Association, I doubt any law restricting access to guns will help much, if the episodes we all remember are any guide. Most often it's been semi automatic hand guns, not AK15 attack rifles,  and the guns are the street guns which any reader of George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle) or viewers of "The Wire" will know has no impact on availability of guns to crazies.  As Chris Rock once suggested, the most effective ploy might be limiting or taxing heavily the bullets.  

My father-in-law, a lifetime member of the NRA but a man who used guns to hunt not to strut, once noted there are already so many millions of guns out there in the USA you could stop sales tomorrow and there would be hardly a pause in the use of guns.  Guns are not like cars--they don't age out. And the number now cited is 1/3 of American homes have a gun. I was talking with some friends in Hampton, saying that number, 1/3 of all homes, has got to be wrong. Where do they get such a number and one, piped up, "Oh, I believe it. We have guns in our house."  And this is a liberal Democrat. Her husband owns guns. 

It's getting so you can't tell the liberals from the conservatives.
Mad Dog himself finds he is not as liberal as he thought. Doubting that gun laws are the answer on one hand, and now a crack has appeared in his attitude toward immigration, despite the presence of the Donald, who should be pushing everyone into massive sympathy for immigrants.

BUT...there was a piece on NPR this morning about Texas being sued because illegal immigrants who have come across the Rio Grande and had their babies in Texas and Texas towns refused to issue birth certificates to the kids, so now the babies are stateless. 

One of the plantiffs, who refuses to give her name because she is undocumented, but she is part of the lawsuit against Texas, complains that she cannot enroll her baby in Medicaide or in school because there is no birth certificate. Am I the only one thinking--Wait, this woman feels offended because the state of Texas refuses to pay for her child's medical care and education, although the entire family is in Texas illegally?  

Have I just stroked out and turned into Paul LePage or am I beginning to see that even our most wacko crazies might have a point?  How crazy does the world have to become when Mad Dog finds himself gravitating toward Paul LePage.

Please tell me this is all just a bad dream.

What Is Planned Parenthood?

The Republican party has, over the past decade, been very good at one thing: Selling a delusion. In essence, that delusion is that tax and spend Democrats want to take your hard earned money and give it away to undeserving, free loading immigrants, poor people and welfare queens because Democrats are, well, feeding on these people to keep themselves in power, which is why they push Medicare and Social Security, those unconscionable  welfare programs for the incompetent and effete who cannot invest in a smart way in the stock market.

But now they are trying to market a new delusion.  Watching the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee pillory Cecile Richards, the image they are trying to sell of Planned Parenthood is this is a nefarious organization right out of a  Robin Cook novel, which exists to profit from the sale of fetal parts got from late term abortions. All that contraception, sexually transmitted disease screening and treatment (for welfare queens and prostitutes), breast cancer, breast feeding are just a cover for the real business, which is selling baby body parts.  It's just the way they launder the money, all that other 97% of their income is just a screen. The real money is in baby body parts.

The outraged Republican members of the committee proclaimed:  1/ Abortions have nothing to do with women's health  2/ Planned Parenthood hands out exorbitant salaries and spends lavishly on parties and travel perks and behaves like the most despicable Russian oligarchs. The wonder is they did not show photos of the luxury cars driven by Ms. Richards (if she owns a car.)   3/ Planned Parenthood dupes the federal government into paying for abortions by using the Medicaide reimbursement money the government pays for contraception and screening so they can free up money to do abortions.

But wait, if Planned Parenthood's true profit center is its abortion baby body parts mill, then how have they make it look to the auditors that only 3% of its income comes from abortions?   

To say Republicans have vilified Planned Parenthood would be an understatement--they have said if Planned Parenthood is allowed to exist, it will so destroy the moral fabric of the nation, we will all perish, so we have to stop everything to attend to this urgent moral imperative. It's the 21st century equivalent of slavery--so important, we have to stop doing all other work to address it.

One might ask, what if Planned Parenthood said, "Okay, we'll stop doing abortions.
We'll split our organization into an abortion wing and an everything else wing," then what would the Republicans say?

Unlike the slave owners of the 19th century, Planned Parenthood could easily stop doing abortions, from a financial point of view.  But then we'd still have these overpaid, wine drinking, contraceptive distributing reprobates at large. What would the Republicans say then?

The major problem with the Republican campaign is there are literally millions of women and some men, who have used Planned Parenthood and who love Planned Parenthood. So the Republicans are trying to denigrate a beloved enterprise.  Liberals had trouble with Chic Filet for precisely the same reason: A lot of people love what they make, what they do.   

Trying to kill Planned Parenthood is like trying to kill McDonalds--you may not approve of it; you may think their food makes people fat, causes obesity and heart attacks and despoils the environment and you make think McDonalds underpays its employees, but people vote with their feet, their wallets and they may think it a guilty pleasure but they love it.

Okay, Don Draper, you've got this account:  How do you sell Planned Parenthood to a voracious nation?

Congressional Hearings: The Face of the Enemy Planned Parenthood vs Republicans

What would we do without CNN?  We would not see that spectacle which Mark Twain described as a pack of jackasses, the elected representatives of the people, engaged in that favorite Congressional circus called the "hearing"

Anyone who has ever watched his kid looking at pitch after pitch and never even swinging in little league, striking out  time after time, will know what it feels like watching Cecile Richard, president of Planned Parenthood, testifying before the House Committee on Oversight. Agonizing does not begin to describe the effect.

This morning,  I caught only 40 minutes (while on the treadmill) of 5 hours of testimony, but that was enough.  

There was that Republican from South Carolina or Alabama or someplace South asking Ms. Richards if she could understand how he felt when he thought about partial birth abortions, if she could understand the depth of feeling he had about that.  And she responded, brightly, that the phrase partial birth abortion is not a medical term.  What you wanted to hear her say was:

"Congressman, I, like you, am appalled by the idea of infanticide. The difference is, you may believe life begins when a single cell, the sperm, penetrates the egg.  Destroying those two cells may strike you as infanticide.  I do not agree, but that does not mean I think less of you.  You may also believe God instructed Abraham to murder his son. I do not.  You may draw your line at where life begins at two cells, I may draw the line at  21  weeks, or even 8 weeks, but as President of Planned Parenthood, I am not the one to draw the line. That has been done by Congress and by the Courts. Planned Parenthood follows the law of the land. I respect your right to disagree."


Or the Congresswoman who asserted abortion is not a healthcare procedure. 

"Congresswoman, you may not consider abortion part of a women's health clinic, but then again, you may never have seen the results of abortions performed outside healthcare facilities, the sepsis, the death."

Or the crafty Republican from Ohio who asked her what she understands the term "Over head" means. This is all part of the Republican strategy to say that any federal taxpayer  money given Planned Parenthood, whether it's used to pay the receptionist who schedules the appointment or to the doctor who performs the abortion is all the same because it supports the organization which, whatever else it might do, also performs abortions.

"Congressman, you are talking about 'mingling' of funds, but as anyone who ever read George Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara' knows, there are those, not accountants but philosophers, who would argue there is no such thing as 'clean' or 'dirty' money in the world. In company which makes airplanes, there must be a janitor or a secretary who opposes war, who draws a salary which sends her children to school, which pays her mortgage, and yet that company may make airplanes which drop bombs on a village in Iraq, a village where her grandparents still live. You would use accounting tricks to separate guilt, or to indict. I would say we follow the law of the land at Planned Parenthood. We pay lawyers to be sure of that.  You are in Congress. You don't like the law, you can try to change it."

And there was the congressman wearing only a shirt, not in his Congressman's suit, who asked whether anyone from the Justice Department or from the White House had contacted anyone at Planned Parenthood since the infamous videos of selling fetal parts surfaced.  

"Congressman, we have ten thousand, seven hundred some employees. Has anyone  from Justice or the White House called?  I wouldn't know. Nobody has called me from Justice or the White House about the videos, although it seems like everyone else has.  I did sit next to a young man on the Metro yesterday, however, whose photo ID said 'Department of Justice' and he grinned at me and said, 'Illegitmus Non Carborundum,' and I went to college once, and recalled enough Latin to know that meant, "'Don't let the bastards grind you down.'  I didn't catch his name. But you might think he was talking about the videos or maybe he was talking about these hearings. Hard to be sure."

Ms. Richards almost rose to the occasion when Congressmen prodded her on how much money Planned Parenthood had contributed to Democrats vs Republican congressional candidates. She said Planned Parenthood would be happy to support any candidate who supports women's health. But she could have said:

"Congressman, Planned Parenthood would be happy to contribute to your campaign or to any Republican candidate's election if we could only find a Republican candidate for federal office who cares enough about women's health.  But your party has become a party of extreme positions and extreme candidates.  We'll support Republican candidates,  just as soon as we can detect signs of real concern for women's health, rather than the bombast we see evident today among the Republican members of this committee who persist in trying to destroy the most vital force in women's health in this country."

Several Republicans said if there were no Planned Parenthood women could easily be served by the many other health care facilities which exist in every state to serve women. 

"Congressman, you and your Republican colleagues are often quoted as saying that free enterprise and the marketplace ought to determine which enterprises survive and which perish. Well, as you have noted Planned Parenthood is just one of many options for women seeking health care, and yet we have survived, no we have flourished over the past fifty years, despite the large number of alternative clinics which you have noted exist as alternative sites for women's health care. Doesn't that say something about the value our patients, or you might call them our 'customers' place on our services?"

Oh, those are the kinds of answers we wanted to see.  Instead, we got infinite patience and courtesy. 

Where is Barney Frank when you need him? 

Republican Attacks High Earning Woman

Well, here's an interesting development: A Republican Congressman attacks a witness because he thinks she makes too much money as the CEO of a large organization.

Will wonders never cease?

Jason Chaffetz thinks it's a shame for a woman to be making $500,000. 

Of course, Cecile Richards was visibly unprepared for this tactic, unfathomably, given the telegraphing of this new meme from the Republicans who are not capable of independent thinking. 

But where does this new tactic lead? Will every CEO appearing before Congress, say the head of Right to Life or Liberty College or the Southern Baptist convention have to provide their pay stubs for some Congressman to shake his head about how overpaid they are? 

Oh, wait. I get it. Planned Parenthood is all about profit--making money from selling fetal parts. How could I have been so dim?

Mobil Oil, on the other hand, is a clean company, especially when it  provides jobs to Republican districts. And the companies that make missiles and armaments in the districts of Republican Congressman--those CEO's earn every dollar they get.

Before Congress, Mr. Chaffetz worked for Nu Skin international, whose CEO this year made $10 million. Did he chastize the Nu Skin CEO for that?  What does he think of the salary made by the head of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?

Well, I never thought I'd see the day when big salaries are seen as shameful by Republicans.

Planned Parenthood vs. Republican Loonies

Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, is testifying before Congress today. Republicans are trying to defund Planned Parenthood and are threatening to shut down the government to do this. 

Republican representatives have embraced the phony videos which do not show Planned Parenthood officials selling fetal tissues for fun and profit, do not show a living fetus with a beating heart dying under the hands of Planned Parenthood doctors, do not in fact show Planned Parenthood at all. 

Having been somewhat deflated by revelations that the fake videos are, in fact, fakes, Carly Fiorini notwithstanding, Republican congressmen are now saying oh, well, but Planned Parenthood is evil anyway because they spend money on high salaries and lobbying for "Democrat" congressmen. 

I've only caught snatches of Ms. Richards testimony, but so far she's simply been patient and firm. I'm hoping she's brought a few zingers which will make the evening news, like:  "Congressman, you claim to be unhappy about abortions. Well, I'm unhappy about abortions, too.  I wish, from the bottom of my heart, we never had to do another abortion at Planned Parenthood or anywhere else in this country. Abortion is the last thing any woman wants to have to choose. And that is why I go to work every day, so we can prevent unwanted pregnancies. You and your Republican brethren would shut down the one organization which prevents more abortions than any other, by providing for contraception. I'd like to ask you, Congressman. Are you against contraception? Do you want to go back to the days when contraception was limited?  Do you not know that in every state where access to contraception has been denied, like Texas and Louisianna teen pregnancy rates have sky rocketed?  In what century do you want to live, Congressman?"

Or words to that effect.

Republicans: The Mad Men Effect

Before Chris Rock takes his lines national, he tries them out on local audiences in New York to see what works and what doesn't.  New Hampshire serves the same purpose for candidates for national office. They come to small towns like Hampton and give their stump speeches to audiences of a few score of citizens and see what lines elicit a response and what kind of response. And they get questions from the audience, often questions they did not expect, like the one Donald Trump got in Rochester from the guy who knew President Obama is a Muslim and not born in the United States. 

So it was yesterday, listening to Lincoln Chafee and Lawrence Lessig. There were surrogates for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, who already have their stump speeches.  

As I listened to each I kept thinking of how these would play during a debate on national TV and how they would play with various audiences. Bernie Sanders has several hurdles to leap:  1. He is too old  2. He is detached from reality--how could he possibly pay for free college for everyone?  3. He would be as alien as Obama in red and even purple states.  His surrogate clearly recognized all this and answered each.  Tax Wall Street and the money is there for free college. And so on. 

 Hillary has been accused of being too cold so her surrogate, the estimatable Congresswoman from New Haven Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro,  told warm and fuzzy stories about Hillary, how she could have gone straight for the big money out of Yale Law School but instead went to work for an advocacy group for women's health.  Rep. DeLauro is a very impressive speaker, but what was most impressive is she drove the four hours up and the four hours back on a gorgeous Saturday, when she could have been enjoying the Connecticut shore, just to speak to fifty people at a Hampton, NH picnic. 

Lawrence Lessig spoke the essential truth: Money and its pursuit has so corrupted our political life it has undermined and poisoned democracy to the point the citizenry has lost faith in government. His problem is that very few people think there is anything which can be done about that. He is seen as Don Quixote tilting windmills. Delusional, lovable but not a threat to the status quo.

The problem each of these essentially decent candidates has is not with the strength of their ideas but with the perception about what these ideas mean, with the marketing.

And that is exactly the problem the Republican candidates do not have. They have great marketing for really dreadful ideas.  They can sell you just about anything with the right slogans and ad campaigns--they are the Mad Men of our political system.

Here's the Republican product: Government is bad. We do not need it. Well, we don't need it except to build armaments in various congressional districts, to maintain the armed forces and to keep women from having abortions or most forms of contraception and to "protect our borders" and keep out those venal immigrants who want to rape and pillage and give birth to their children here so they can forever suck at the teat of our social welfare state.  And, oh yes, Obamacare has been a "disaster" and the only thing our economy needs is to get the government regulators off the back of entrepreneurs and big business and unleash the horses of private enterprise--like those guys who build diesel Volkswagons or who send peanut butter jars filled with Salmonella downstream or who run coal mills or drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness or offshore. 

Here's one example from my own experience here in New Hampshire. In the Live Free or Die state there is a movement to make the state a "Right to Work" state. Now who could be against the right to work?  But what Republicans mean by this is no worker who works in a unionized plant where the union has negotiated a benefit package for all workers has to pay union dues. Of course, if you don't have to support the union but you benefit from its labors in your behalf anyway, why would you pay for it? It makes unions sort of like public radio--you can listen to it whether or not you send in your check. 

The Democrats have never come up with a response to this slogan. They've tried, "Oh,it's the right to starve" or "Right to get screwed" but nothing has matched the original phrase. Republicans really are good at this game.  As Don Draper once observed: "Everyone thinks it's easy. They all think they can do it. But they can't."

Oddly, the same Republicans who want to free workers from the onerous obligation to pay the people who fought for them, they are all for New Hampshire companies which force new employees to sign "non compete" contracts, which stipulate that if you quit the company, you cannot work within 25 miles of any work site owned by the company.  So, the company, in a sense, owns you just as surely as the union might be said to own you.  Want to leave your job at the clinic?  Fine, just sell your home and move your kids out of their schools or resign yourself to the exile of a long commute to your next job. In the case of doctors, the contracts often spell out the concept that the company "owns" the patients in the doctor's practice.  He cannot solicit them or even tell them where he is headed because the patients "belong" to the company.  Republicans are not, in fact, for unleashing the free market system; they are in favor of big business controlling the destinies of the company and the workers and that often means thwarting free competition, which really is the wild and wooly marketplace in action. 

You would think all these details would be a problem for Republicans, who are supposed to be all for unleashing the stallions of the economy, but it does not because they have, brilliantly, dreamed up a great phrase we can all latch on to: Right to Work.

And so the "Estate Tax" on the rich becomes the "Death Tax."  The "Affordable Care Act" becomes "Obamacare" and you know where that man comes from...Mars most likely, or worse yet, Kenya.

If they say it often enough, "Obamacare has been an unmitigated disaster" then all the statistics which show it has insured more people than anyone anticipated, that it has brought down costs rather than, as anticipated, raising them, that it has been hugely successful are for naught.  The classic example of marketing over reality is Kentucky where the state Obamacare program, Kynect, has been hugely popular but polls reveal the good citizens of Kentucky believe Obamacare has been a disaster.  It's the old "Keep your friggin government hands off my Medicare."

Makes you wonder what the Democrats have to do to win the hearts and minds. Where is the Don Draper for the Democratic campaign?

Give him this: He can sell 

Looking better all the time

The Iman's Curse

Law is not always justice

When I was 8 years old, walking down the right hand side of the hallway at Abington Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, I was smiling, talking to a friend when  a hall patrol, wearing his white belt with its shiny badge, pulled me over and said, "You've had 3 warnings. You have to go to Patrol Court tomorrow."  

I protested I had never had a warning, ever, to no avail. The patrol insisted I had and there was no arguing. What the charge was, I had no idea and neither did he. It could have been anything. Walking down the left side of the hallway. Murder. Anything.

Patrol Court was a fearsome place. There were stories that after brief trials the principal spanked kids in front of everyone and kids cried just knowing they were being swept up into that maelstrom.  I had had experience defending myself in our family courts at home, for various infractions, like leaving the milk out but I had faith in the justice of family court, even if it was my father, an implacable judge, who was sitting in judgment. I had no such faith in patrol court.

It was Mid-May and there were only six weeks left in the school year before summer vacation and that summer I would be moving across the Potomac to Maryland. So I was determined to hide from that patrol. I would wait until the patrols left their posts before running into my school room, and got socked with multiple "tardy" notices. My mother was notified and asked me why I was late. I walked to school every morning and had for three years and never been late before. I just shrugged. I had to give up my cherished softball team because the patrol played on another team and I'd be sure to be spotted. 

It never occurred to me to tell my parents. Why, I cannot say.

Weeks of hiding in the shadows taught me what it must be like for anyone who fears the authorities. I could  identify with those old movies about Jews hiding from the Nazis, creeping along streets, trying to stay out of sight. 

Our move that August to Maryland was a huge relief. I had successfully avoided capture and now was carried to the promised land, for a new start, free from patrols, in Maryland. 

In one of those odd random scenes which happen in life, later that summer my brother remarked, "You know, when you smile, you look exactly like Danny Sullivan." Danny Sullivan was a well known bad actor at Abington Elementary School, always in trouble, defiant, a kid who likely spent a lot of time in Patrol Court. So that was it: a case of mistaken identification. The cop on the beat got it wrong. 

So it was with a special sympathy I read Evan Osnos's New Yorker article(Sept 21) about the Khan family which had two sons and the father arrested by the FBI and accused of materially supporting terrorism, specifically the Taliban in Pakistan, by sending money. 

There were many things which made my blood boil in this piece:  the punishment of the defendants which began before any trial:  Repeated strip searches, including rectal exams, solitary confinement;  publicity from the FBI which labeled them terrorists intent on jihad, so that when the two accused sons were ultimately freed for lack of evidence, they found notes on their cars and homes "No jihad in our neighborhood," and jobs and homes and cars were lost.  It all reminded me of a toned down version of Abu Garaib prison in Iraq played out in Florida.

American confronts Islam

Give the FBI, the police, any school yard bully a badge and put him in a position where he can hurt someone with no risk of being hurt himself and you've got the essence of governmental terrorism.

Early in the article Osnos mentions the way the father, who was ultimately sentenced to prison until he is 98 years old, would erupt over minor transgressions with major invective: A child would not stop crying--"May God just make her dead"--his son left his daughter in law at home to cook--"May he be run over by a truck."  This sort of thing is, apparently, a hyperbole not uncommon in the Pashtun culture:  "May you be destroyed beyond recognition into the abyss of oblivion."  These are all the powerless have for a venting.  When it is first mentioned, you wonder why but as the trial progresses you see this mode of hyperbolic expression proves to be the father's undoing. Put that Pashtun habit in front of a jury of Americans and you've got a frothing, wild eyed terrorist intent of blowing up schools for girls.

So when, at his trial, the father's invective is read to the jury it sounds as if he really has it in for the Pakistani government and, by implication, that he really does support the Taliban. Of course, the government prosecutors do not present the invective the father levels against the Taliban--that would have hurt their own case.

The really disturbing thing about the story, beyond the destruction of a family by government bureaucrats who go home at night to dinner with their own families feeling smug and righteous, is the nature of the accusation. Nobody ever even tried to prove the Khan sons or father actually ever did anything violent or did anything more than express anger or send money to relatives. The offense was in having bad ideas and expressing them offensively. 

The father had cursed the Pakistani government for killing the wrong people in an incompetent effort to kill the Taliban.  The Pakistani soldiers were incapable of shooting Taliban, so they just shot the little people who got in their way. That provoked the father: "May Allah destroy them...[and] hit them with his shells of wrath."

Oh, that is certainly worth 25 years without parole. 

The government never showed any of the hundreds of dollars the father sent to relatives ever reached the Taliban.  A juror later told Osnos he had voted to convict because the defense "Couldn't prove that he didn't do it."  

Now there is a concept for you.  You are not presumed innocent; you are presumed guilty unless you can prove you didn't do it.

So, maybe, as an 8 year old, I was on to something, when it came to Patrol Court and the justice I could expect from my fellow citizens. In my case, I was able to escape across the river to the liberty of Maryland. 

In the case of the Khan family, they escaped the chaos of Pakistan to America, but as one son says, "You advertise it to the whole world: Hey, we're the best country, we're the best nation, we're the best justice system. If you think about it, the whole purpose of this country was to protect people like us."