on the eighth anniversary of 9/11

From the talking dog (.com)"...but as a psychic matter, realize that we are hardly passive victims... we are still members of the most powerful society that has ever existed, and can, if nothing else, publicly express our outrage at what has been done in our names. Well, some of us can, anyway.

We can, for example, express our outrage that purported Constitutional Law teacher Barack Obama proposes to be the first President to introduce a bill providing for "preventive detention" to Congress (the arch-reactionaries Coburn and Graham love it). OK: I expressed mine."

And now I've expressed mine. It might not help but it behooves us to do so.

O NY Times you do make me mad!

"Bioethicist Becomes a Lightning Rod for Criticism
By JIM RUTENBERG
Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, President Obama's special health
care adviser, has come to personify the most intense
attacks on the president's plan."

No he does NOT personify the attacks; he personifies the complaints. If he personified the attacks, he would be an attacker.

And how about today's story about "the respectful questioners
like Bob Collier -- those expressing discomfiting fears and
legitimate concerns -- may have the most impact" on the health care debate. This is a man who fears his wife might have to wait in line for care if everyone had health care. This is a legitimate concern? Please. He thinks only his wife deserves care, no one else (apparently). The whole issue is so revolting. Where is Obama? On the Vineyard, cavorting with the stars, all of whom presumably have no health care problems.

At Last!

An oped piece by Richard Dooling, author of the novel Critical Care, reminds us of all the money spent on "people who will never leave the hospital." People, in other words, who are very old and mostly unconscious, who nevertheless receive intensive, incredibly expensive care--one more procedure, one more surgery, one more "life-saving" device. And if that were eliminated (or at least curbed) there would be more than enough money to pay for children's health care (about 8 million children don't have it). Can we ever agree to some kind of health-care "rationing" for old people? I hope so, but I think what this guy leaves out is the need to change attitudes. A whole different way of looking at old age is necessary--an end to this desperate attempt to hold on to "life" at any cost, even if it's a "you call this living?" kind of life.

People I know pay at least lip service to the idea that they don't want to live forever at any cost, that they don't want their doctors to "strive officiously to keep [them] alive." But they do seem awfully involved with health services. I think I've heard of one other person who refused Lipitor, for instance, as I did. Oh how I loved the quote in Dooling's piece from "Sir William Osler, widely revered as the father of modern medicine." who said, “One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.” Probably I'm being unfair because I've been so lucky and so healthy. We'll see sometime, I'm sure, whether I actually refuse medicine, etc. that I think is excessive when I'm sick.

Protests Flare in Tehran as Opposition Disputes Vote

That's the headline on the lead story in The Times today. Oddly,it seems to me this is how a free people react to a stolen election. Will they settle down and "get over it"? Probably they'll be forced to by the authorities, but at least they'll remember that their votes were taken from them. In the past, we've felt superior to voting riots in places like Iran. Anymore,not so much. Americans simply laid down and let the vote stealers have the White House. And look what happened. Really I'm not sure which way is better, as long as the Army follows the powers that be and not the people. And I'm not sure an Army that thinks for itself is the best solution. Especially with all the arms our population has.

How can this be?

I see that Obama has appointed some woman to HHS' Office of Faith-based Initiatives who is not only anti-choice but anti-birth control. I'm at a loss to even respond to this, which supposedly is to help us all achieve some absurd notion of Common Ground. As far as I'm concerned, the choice position is common ground. Women get to CHOOSE what they want to do with their bodies--they want a child, fine; they want an abortion, fine. Who else's business is it? I never feel this is put clearly enough: Pregnancy is a unique condition calling for unique response. A living thing grows inside another living thing; it can't live w/o that container but that container is just as alive and much more independent than the foetus, so obviously the "mother" has first priority. I know these anti-choice people do understand the point; they just prefer to ignore it so they can have control over women. I would expect all of us to lose our marbles one of these days over these outrageous anti-choice people and just fall to the ground kicking and screaming, frothing at the mouth and screaming What the F do they want? But Obama, appointing such a woman... I'm speechless and frothing at the mouth simultaneously.

The Health Industry

Why in god's name we the people of the United States should be forced to continue supporting the health insurance companies and their stockholders, I do not understand. How can they expect that? Capitalism, fine (I guess), but this monumental greed is not supportable. Life and death issues should not be subject to the profit motive. But another story in the Times inspires me to wonder, why can't people just kill themselves when they get very old and sick? Their aging children absolutely ruin their own lives taking care of their parents, whose lives are not exactly fun either. Maybe there should be some public option for people like this but I'm betting a lot of them wouldn't go to a nursing home of any kind anyway. I do understand this death option would have to be a bit sub rosa, but couldn't it be made a little bit easier? I know no one wants to talk about it publicly, but we all talk about it privately all the time, it seems to me, after we reach un certain age, no?

It's a sickness

Why is it that we haven't heard (in the mainstream press anyway) the word sadism in connection with our torturing leaders? To my mind, it's the only word that explains their behavior. All the evidence (not to mention the law) weighs (and weighed) against their use of torture. When those memos were first written, when the government first started treating human beings like dirt, everyone already knew the facts. These "techniques" were illegal throughout the world, they didn't work, they put our own troops in jeopardy, they were viewed by civilized people as anathema--on and on it goes--plus they'd been getting good information by other means. Cherchez la raison, oui? Sadism is all I can think of. They got their rocks off, I think is the technical term, by knowing people were forced to submit to such "techniques" by their order. Isn't that what we assume went on, often at least, with the Nazis? These people either lived through the Second World War or had read about it, surely. Whether they knew it was torture or not is not an open question. It's hideously sick and they need treatment, although it's probably way too late for them to change.