Politics Plus

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

What a week.  Trump signs executive order to eliminate insurance rules, undermine marketplaces.  The United States withdraws from UNESCO, … citing anti-Israel bias.  And don’t even get me started on Puerto Rico.  The war on the planet just got so bad that my alternative energy company sent me an email about it – well, at least that wasn’t in itself bad news; they’re not going out of business.

It kind of makes me wonder how many people in 1930’s Germany did in fact speak out, but their voices were drowned by the juggernaut of Hitler’s regime.  In eighty years, will they know how we spoke out?  Those of us who weren’t able to attend protests in person?  And even those who were?  Or will the juggernaut of Trump’s regime hide that from view?  Now, that’s depressing.

 This is depressing too.  Did you know that among other Congressional perks, they had an on-site pharmacist?  It was news to me.  And he (of course it’s a he) has even worse news for us.

Mike Kim, the reserved pharmacist-turned-owner of the [Grubb’s] pharmacy, said he has gotten used to knowing the most sensitive details about some of the most famous people in Washington.

“At first it’s cool, and then you realize, I’m filling some drugs that are for some pretty serious health problems as well. And these are the people that are running the country,” Kim said, listing treatments for conditions like diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

“It makes you kind of sit back and say, ‘Wow, they’re making the highest laws of the land and they might not even remember what happened yesterday.'”

OK, it’s not quite true that the pharmacy is on-site.  What it does is deliver pretty fast to the Office of the Attending Physycian, which is on-site.  And is really, really secretive.  More so than HIPAA requires.  Which probably has something to do with the fact that the fees for members are relatively low – always a hot topic when health care is discussed.

The Office of the Attending Physician itself was formed in 1928, after three members of Congress died in their offices within months of one another – more than 50 years after Grubb’s first opened its doors.

But the pharmacy services at the Capitol may go back even further – a 1911 text on senatorial privileges describes an “assortment of drugs and viands, tonics and recuperatives” on hand and “readily accessible” for lawmakers. Back then, reportedly, senators took tablet after tablet and vial after vial of quinine, pepsin, and calomel, “endless supplies of cough drops,” and something described as “dandruff cure.”

I do realize that some drugs used to treat Alzkeimer’s are also used to treat conditions other than Alzheimer’s, so this pharmacist’s revelation that Alzheimer’s drugs have been filled does not necessarily out anyone in congress as having Alzheimer’s; he was just speculationg, and the fact that it certainly would explain a lot is just coincidence.  But it certainly would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

Megaera, really the only way to make the costs and delivery of prescriptions fair is Single Payer Health Care – which just took another kick in the groin.  Good luck.

Now, this story, from Philadelphia, shows pretty well why I am essentially no longer asking police departments to fire murderers:  they just don’t stay fired.

Philadelphia police officer Cyrus Mann stood on a rain-slicked road, pointed his gun at a moving car and pulled the trigger five times, hitting the driver.

The next year, he chased an unarmed man down an alley and shot him in the back.

Two years later, he fired his gun four times at a man he had stopped for a suspected traffic violation.

Most officers will never fire their weapons while on duty. Mann, a nine-year member of the Philadelphia Police Department, shot three people in just over three years. The shooting in the alley, on Aug. 9, 2012, would prove fatal and prompt the police commissioner to try to fire Mann.

Like many police chiefs across the nation, he would fail.

The “Reader’s Digest version” of this is that the Union fought for Mann, it went to arbitration, and the arbitrator reinstated him.  Well, at least the arbitrator wasn’t racist.  I guess.

But many who are not reinstated to their own jobs still return to law enforcement after “geographic therapy.”  Police forces just do not have enough qualified candidates, or enough HR to weed out the others.  Unless charges are pressed, and successfully pressed, there is no certain way to keep a known murderer out of law enforcement permanently.  And that isn’t the call of the chief or the commissioner, but of the district (or whatever) attorney.  Who has to work with police on every case in order to get a conviction.  So how is that going to work out?

We desperately need law enforcement reform, and wherever we turn, we are hampered in getting it.  Tisiphone, would you look into this and see if you can come up with anything?

Now – I promised to try for follow-up information on cases referred to the Furies where there has been at least mild success.  On September ninth, I asked Alecto to look into the case of a rogue cop, and to help in making her findings widely public.  Well, she did.  She did that so well (making it public, at least) that Jim beat me to it, in a comment on Thursday’s Open Thread.

In view of the Washington Post story above, however, I’m not terribly impressed.  So Payne has been fired.  Well, that takes the heat off his (now former) department, which was going to come under FBI investigation – no more Payne, no more problem.  And also no guarantee Payne will not get hired elsewhere as a law enforcement officer.  He was also fired from his second job as an EMT – but I didn’t see anything about stripping him of his qualifications for that, so that also is likely not a closed door.

Don’t give up on this one yet, Alecto.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

This story is over a week old, but I am still shaking my head over it, because it is so unprovoked, so off the wall, so out of nowhere.  Well, of course, it isn’t – we know where this kind of behavior comes from – but two years ago, even one year ago, can anyone imagine this happening?

The detais of the incident are so surreal that it may be anybody’s guess what actually happened.  Some details, I suppose, could be getting withheld to protect the integrity of a criminal case, and far be it from me to interfere with that!  But, as best as I can reconstruct looking at multiple sources, here it is –

Emily Bailey was driving near the intersection of Little Road and State Road 54 in Pasco County, Florida.  Another car, driven by Alicia Scarduzio or Kelly Gemberling, was attempting to pass Ms. Bailey’s car (and was being driven aggressively by whichever woman was the driver) when a light turned red, and both vehicles stopped.

Ms. Bailey honked her horn.  She was under stress so it may not even have been intentional.  But, regardless, the two other women “kept screaming at me, telling me they wanted to f****g kill me.  I just wanted the light to change.  I never thought they would get out of their car and run toward me and pull me out of my vehicle.”

But they did.  They dragged her out of her car by the hair.  They beat her.  They banged her head on the ground.  They broke her nose.  They eventually knocked her unconscious.  All the while Scarduzio was yelling “Stop hitting my mom.  Quit hitting my mom.”  (Do I hear echoes of “Stop resisting”?)

A deputy arrived about the same time a man from another car dragged the aggressors off of the victim.  The aggressors claimed they were the victims.  But there is video and there were witnesses.  They have been charged with burglary and aggravated battery.  They were booked into detention the noght of the incident.

Although we know this was not a racist attack (all three women are “white,” and obviously the expression “batshit crazy” must come to everyone’s ind, I still can’t imagine reading this a couple of years ago.  When rage is unleashed, it is unleashed.  It can go anywhere.  Tisiphone, I hope you can follow up on this case and help achieve justice.

In other news – well, I guess it is hardly news that Republicans still do not grasp the concept of “consent,” and Republicans in Louisiana are no exception.  I can’t tell this any better than the Times-Picayune:

A former Tulane University enrollee accused of raping a fellow student on Election Night 2015 received a two-year suspended sentence and was placed on two years’ active probation Monday (Sept. 18) after pleading guilty to two lesser crimes.

Spencer Schneider, 23, had faced up to 25 years in state prison if found guilty as charged of third-degree rape. But under a plea agreement crafted with the help of his high-powered legal team, Schneider resolved the rape case by pleading guilty to a felony count of obscenity and a misdemeanor count of sexual battery.

The obscenity conviction eventually can be expunged from Schneider’s record, but the misdemeanor sexual battery plea cannot. Neither requires Schneider to register as a sex offender.

Criminal District Judge Robin Pittman imposed the sentence after being assured by the state that the accuser in the case had no opposition to the plea agreement, nor to Schneider being placed on probation. The accuser, who later spoke to The Times-Picayune under condition of anonymity, said she accepted the outcome despite some dissatisfaction.

“Although two years’ probation and an obscenity felony is a far cry from what I think would be just, as he deserved to be convicted of rape and registered as a sex offender, I do believe that this was the best that could be done,” the woman said. “In today’s climate, college rapists are rarely even indicted. I am grateful for any sort of conviction.

Just to clarify a little, the obscenity charge is a felony, but can be explunged.  The sexual battery charge, a misdemeanor, cannot.  Two years is damned little, and two years “active probation” is even less, but I would bet a generous sum that it won’t be nearly two years before he is in court trying to get out of it, because he will find it onerous.

Megaera, can’t we start doing better than this?

I’m not trying to pick on the South today, and certainly a state which can produce a Reverend Dr. Barber and a John Pavlovitz is not devoid of real Christians.  However, fake ones are everywhere, including North Carolina.

Word of Faith, a “church” which has about 750 members in rural North Carolina and maybe 2,000 more combined in Brazil, Ghana, Sweden, Scotland, etc., has been under investigation for multiple abuses, such as “exorcism” by means of punching and chioking, luring non-citizens to the U.S, and keeping them in “virtual slavery, and who knows what all (in this case, they definitely are being reticent about the investigation to protect criminal cases, so I won’t press for details) for years.  But the newest allegations to come to light may make even Republicans a little nauseated.

When Randy Fields’ construction company faced potential ruin because of the cratering economy, he pleaded with his pastor at Word of Faith Fellowship church to reduce the amount of money he was required to tithe every week.

To his shock, Fields said church founder Jane Whaley proposed a divine plan that would allow him to continue contributing at least 10 percent of his income to the secretive evangelical church while helping his company survive: He would file fraudulent unemployment claims on behalf of his employees. She called it, he said, “God’s plan.”

The word “venal” somehow springs to mind.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is how the Dominionists would govern – by theft.  Alecto, theocracy is very old, but it has always been horrible.  Even though the people who need to be convinced probably will not be, since they are accustomed to a level of cognitive dissonance way beyond what we can tolerate, it is still important to prove – again – that crime like this does not pay.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

This article is 10 days old, but I haven’t seen it anywhere else, and it needs to be known.  Especially for you science types.

Alabama Republican Rep. Rogers DESTROYED Key Hurricane Monitoring Satellite

Let me be clear that Congressman Rogers did not go out and shoot this satellite up with an AK-47, although, as an Alabama Republican, he probably has several.  And the destruction didn’t just happen ten days ago; it was a result of the 2016 budget.  It has hit – not the news, but the professional journals – recently because of the use of Weather satellites in tracking our recent rash of hurricanes.  We were able to do that pretty well, but next year may be another story.

The Air Force has maintained a series of weather satellites with microwave imaging since the 1960’s.  It was called the F-series.  Currently in orbit are the F-16, the F-17, and the F-18.  There was an F-19, but it malfunctioned.  The F-20 had been built but had not been launched – they had built multiples at the same tome to save money on building (although saving money on beuilding translates into spending money on storage, it was considered a good trade-off.  So, there it was – it had cost $518 million to build and millions more to store – when the F-19, as I said, malfunctioned.

Congressman Rogers was the chairnman of the House Armed Services strategic services subcommittee when, in 2015, the Air Force asked for $20 million to launch the F-20 in, say, 2018 (the three that are currently orbiting have some overlap, which is why our Harvey and Irma predictions were as good as they were.)  But the F-19 had malfunctioned.  (It had also been keeping track of the losses in sea ice, of course, and Congressman Rogers didn’t like that at all.)  So Congressman Rogers declared that “Congress has lost confidence in the Air Force’s ability to run” its legacy program.

“We could have saved the Air Force and the Congress a lot of aggravation if we put a half of a billion dollars in a parking lot and just burned it,” he said. …

Instead, he said, the money set aside for DMSP could have been spent on other national security priorities, but now the satellite is “going in the trash. I presume it’s going to be made into razor blades.”

Ha ha ha.  A real comedian.

But that’s why “FishOutofWater” titled this story “Alabama Republican Rep. Rogers DESTROYED Key Hurricane Monitoring Satellite,” and, even though Rogers didn’t physically lay a hand on it, I think the title is fair.  What do you think, Tisiphone?

Moving to a little bit newer government issue, things are happening within the CIA which may give us a taste of what the country would look like if enough Dominionists get into power.

According to an investigation by Foreign Policy into changes in the intelligence community under President Donald Trump, the CIA has set aside plans to diversify and has become more white and more Christian under new director Mike Pompeo.

Noting the Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas,  is a self-professed evangelical, the report states that the new director once claimed, Islamist terrorists will “continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior is truly the only solution for our world.”

Barf.

In my not-so-humble opinion, REAL Christians don’t want to exercise temporal authority, and certainly not to impose their beliefs on others.  Real Christians know that forced conversopn is no conversion at all.  “A man convinced against his will/Is of the same opinion still.” (attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Dale Carnegie – so, probably actually an old proverb)

A spokesperson for the CIA defended the move, saying, “Director Pompeo is a man of faith. The idea that he should not practice his faith because he is Director of CIA is absurd.”

Well, not so asburd if by “practicing his faith” he is violating the Constitution – which apparently he is doing on a daily basis.

According to Michael Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, he is being flooded with complaints about the creeping evangelical Christianity that is beginning to pervade the intelligence agency.

Weinstein notes that insiders are afraid to speak up, stating, “They don’t typically file formal complaints within the government. But certain things are making them especially uncomfortable, such as officials signing off with the phrase ‘have a blessed day.’ That’s something “straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Yes, The Handmaid’s Tale is about a lot more than sex slavery.

It’s not as though theocracy were anything new in the world.  It has been around since forever.  Surely, Alecto, it’s time to put a stop to it?

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I don’t have a link to the first thing I wasnt to share; I am just quoting from an email.  The email is from Mark Kelly (“Mr. Gabby Giffords,” but don’t tell him I said that), and the only link it has is to a donation page.  But following and fighting the gun lobby is Mark and Gabby’s life, so I am confident he know whereof he speaks.

Congress returns next weekend from recess and the gun lobby is ready for them to pass their “concealed carry reciprocity” legislation that will allow almost anyone to carry a loaded, concealed firearm in public places.

How ready are they? How close do they think they are? How certain are they that this is coming?

The gun lobby is so certain that they just held a three day event promoting concealed carry accessories. They sold INSURANCE in case the member erroneously shoots someone with their concealed weapon and is held liable. And the day ended with a literal “Concealed Carry Fashion Show,” complete with a runway and models, to show off the latest gear.

I’m sorry, I am speechless.  Megaera, can you cope?

In New Mexico, they seem to have the right idea on dealing with a situation like the one they have – a situation where one black girl in a high school class was singled out by a threatening photo which was posted on Snapchat – on the school’s official Snapchat group.

Firstly, they realized that the photo did not represent a real event – that it had been digitally altered (not that that was difficult – it only took me one glance, and I’m no expert).  So they did not overreact against everyone in the class.  They looked for and apparently quickly found the actual perpetrators, who were suspended.  One was also kicked off the football team (an action too often neglected).  Charges against them for a hate crime are also still being contemplated “because it’s this serious.”

Serious it is.  Humor is a serious thing.  Humor can hurt.  Humor can kill.  I have often seen parents laugh at their children for something they find amusing which the child is too young to understand.  I have seen parents, not just laughe at their children, but set them up to be laughed at with prompting and interrupting until the child is so frustrated that they can find it funny.

Allow me to quote from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters:

Humour is for them the all consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is ‘mean;’ if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer ‘mean’ but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke…  

Alecto, am I being unreasonable to demand that we need to teach children how humor can be used to hurt instead of to heal?  And teach them not to do that?  And to call out the wrongness of it whenever it is done?

This last piece of news is, to me, though shocking, yet still good news.

23 August 2017 – The United Nations body monitoring implementation of the global convention on prohibiting racial discrimination has called on high-level politicians and public officials of the United States to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville and throughout the country.

In a decision issued under its ‘early warning and urgent action’ procedure, the Committee, which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, stated “there should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality.”

Friends – fellow resisters – what we are suffering is real, and visible to objective outside observers, who will help as best they can by calling it out.

Hopefully, the humiliation of having our beloved nation held up to the world publicly as a bad example will some day turn out to have been a small price to pay.  Hopefully.  Tisiphone, please help us in any way you can, if not to eliminate the disease, at least to get it out of government.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.