My friend Dan will love this.
In Scrooge McDuck’s first **named** appearance in a cartoon (his first actual appearance was in Spirit of ‘43) he teaches Huey, Dewey and Louie about the economy, from the origins of the types of the currency to taxes to inflation, budgeting and investing.
It’s good stuff. Great primer on finance for all ages.
Available in HD.
(I notice in 1967, Scrooge’s budgeting pie didn’t include health care… hmmmm.)
Nick
Congratulations, Regina Benjamin!!
I couldn’t think of a better candidate for Surgeon General than Dr. Benjamin, and I was surprised and pleased that someone from my old hometown that I am familiar with hit the big-time!
President Obama announces Regina Benjamin as his nominee for Surgeon General
Dr. Benjamin works in a clinic in Bayou La Batre just south of Mobile, Alabama (where I’m from). As far as I know, she’s the first Surgeon General to come directly from the trenches caring for the poor, not a hot-shot surgeon who never sees the outside of a hospital, a public health administrator, or a leading health care CEO well-known among country club political donors. ALL Surgeons General should be from the hands-on world, with experience with the hard realities of getting appropriate health care for America’s poor majority.
No one knows these tough realities better than Regina Benjamin, who is one of the only doctors in the small shrimping town of Bayou la Batre along the Gulf of Mexico, where old French Catholic and old Anglo Catholic families have fished and shrimped for centuries, and South Vietnamese (Catholic) shrimpers fled as war refugees after the Vietnam war ended. Bayou la Batre attracted many Vietnamese families because it’s one of the only rural shoreside shrimping villages in America similar to theirs back home, where they can live in a similar environment and work with fishing nets in the ways their families have for millennia, no need to re-train for a new job. The Vietnamese shrimpers and fishermen have increasingly edged the old shrimping families out of the business with their willingness to live on their boats all season, and a seemingly infinite capacity for thrift, bartering fish for gasoline to run their boats and other clever ways of lowering costs. I once knew an ex-army medic and LPN who’s a direct descendant of Joesph Bosarge, the French-born guy who founded Bayou la Batre with a land grant from Spain in 1786, and he told me a lot about the area. I’ve visited Bayou la Batre a few times. I’ve also talked to several Vietnamese kids about it (some of them I went to high school with; despite being poor they were always #1 in the year-end academic rankings, way ahead of me, though I was high up there). My point is, I know exactly where Regina Benjamin is coming from, and it ain’t the same board rooms and government offices where they found most of the previous Surgeons General. She runs a free clinic, and treats poor whites, poor blacks and poor Asians (often by having one of the English-speaking schoolkids translateinterpret her medical instructions into Vietnamese). Like an early 20th century country doctor, Dr. Benjamin does house calls, and accepts whatever patients can pay, even if they can’t, or even if all they can do is barter her part of their catch. This is a doctor who has risen to the top not through the usual cutthroat tactics, not through being the best at what everyone else is doing, but by charting a different path, advocating for and caring for the most needy, showing us what the focus of the medical world should be, public service.
I first became familiar with Regina Benjamin when I was fighting my famous two-year campaign to get Alabama Medicaid to stop stripping home care coverage for people like me just because we turn 21 (full story here). Local WPMI TV news interviewed her about my fight (as she then was director-designate of the Alabama State Medical Association) and she made supportive comments and said of course Alabama Medicaid should cover those who really need it, and that they’re obviously overlooking some gaps.
Regina Benjamin advocating for Nick's Crusade, August 2001
I don’t know of any other doctor who would stick her neck out for justice for kids she’s never met. Dr. Benjamin is a special person, exactly the kind of person who should be put in a powerful position to affect change. This nomination is one thing President Obama is doing RIGHT.
Bayou la Batre is one of the few remaining Catholic fishing communities that still does the annual Blessing of the Fleet in hopes of a bountiful catch that year. Dr. Benjamin is Catholic also, and likely has strong moral convictions that have led her to devote her career to the poor. Her clinic, along with all of Bayou la Batre and much of Mobile (including our backyard), was wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. She rebuilt the clinic, only for it to burn to the ground the night before its grand reopening. Then she rebuilt again. Like a heroine in a Biblical fable or something, each crushing tragedy made her stronger, gained her more support and attention, only pushed her higher. She was awarded the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice by Pope Benedict XVI for exceptional service to the people of her diocese.
Incredibly, now Dr. Benjamin has the far-right fringe calling her “baby killer” because she’s never taken a hard-line against abortion (which is understandable from a doctor in an impoverished community that sees too many rapes and pregnancies endangering the mother). Even dumber, people are attacking her for her weight! These critics have probably never been to the Deep South; she is svelte by Alabama standards! And they’re also clueless about the expectations black men have for the women in their community re: size (maybe I should do a post about the differences in cultural expectations).
Anyhow, the haters need to get a grip. This nomination is going to sail through faster than a shrimp boat in a hurricane!
Regina Benjamin is probably Obama’s best nomination yet.
Nick
44 years ago, Congress passed several historic amendments to the Social Security Act, the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Back then, there were no home ventilators, there were few medications for managing disease, there were no home Hoyer lifts, and Congress couldn’t imagine the elderly and disabled living at home successfully and independently. The technology and possibilities for independent living have been available for over three decades now, but the law has not changed. The feds only mandate that state Medicaid agencies cover long-term care in nursing homes and other institutions. Basically, Pharaoh will only allow you care in a prison-like setting. People with disabilities are forced every day to leave their taxpaying jobs and families behind to go into these prisons. It’s the only way they can get the care needed to stay alive. “Give up your freedom or give up your life,” is no choice at all.
The Pharaoh is now drafting his plan to reform America’s insane health care system, but has said that long-term care, which Medicaid is the number one provider of, will not be reformed in this package. How can they reform health care without addressing long-term care, one of the biggest expenses straining state budgets and bankrupting American families? It is bizarre that legislators and voters could ever see this as a separate issue, when it is one of the worst examples of how badly the system is broken. Institutions cost the most of any long-term care option, but are enshrined in law as mandatory, while home care services, the least expensive option, are slashed to the bone by states because they are “optional.” States are still forcing people with disabilities into institutions, the most costly option, because of the antiquated and discriminatory institutional bias in federal Medicaid law that both parties continue to choose to ignore.
The Democrats created the institutional bias when they drafted Medicaid 
law 44 years ago. Now, amidst their push to overhaul the system, they are ignoring calls from activists to rectify this injustice. On Tuesday, ADAPT activists, after months of letters and phone calls did not produce results, visited 25 Democratic offices around the country to demand that meetings be scheduled to hear their concerns, and that the Democrats apologize for 44 years of unjust policies that have stolen billions from taxpayers and stolen millions of productive lives from their communities. Here is a video clip of activists visiting Senator Baucus’ office in Missoula, MT and stating their case. Other activists were camped out at the DNC headquarters in Washington DC, keeping vigil until their demands are finally heard. 44 years is enough of this injustice; it’s time to change.
IT’S TIME.
We all owe ADAPT our support. They are putting themselves on the line, facing arrest, threats, getting carried out of the DNC by police, their accessible portable toilet was confiscated, but they’re still speaking up when no one else will, for those in nursing homes that are not being heard. Pharaoh, LET MY PEOPLE GO!
Go Down Moses – Louis Armstrong
Nick
If you’re like me, you’ve been closely following reports of the attempts at “soft overthrow” by “Green Revolution” protesters clogging the streets in Iran (properly pronounced E-ron, though I admit even I mangle it frequently). Twitter, bloggers (Nico Pitney blogging at HuffPo, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic) and various print news web sites (TIME, Reuters) have provided much more coverage of these historic events than the perennially shameful television news media, who only bring us vapid “infotainment.” As the first street revolution in the Islamic world since the Cedar Revolution (Lebanon) and the Tulip Revolution (Kyrgyzstan) in spring of ‘05, both of which forced their regime to resign, it should’ve garnered much more TV time than it did. As keepbreathing said on the Respiratory Therapy 101: Just Keep Breathing blog “If only the Iranian police had killed Michael Jackson, maybe the world would pay more attention to the travesties going on in that formerly great nation.”
Just as in Kyrgyzstan’s revolution, in Iran, mostly young people, tired of decades of authoritarian rule, took to the streets en masse to overturn a fraudulent election that had ratified the rule of a dictator. In Kyrgyzstan, the protests were so loud, the people so united, that old Soviet boss Askar Akayev saw his power base erode to the point that continuing in office was too risky and untenable; protesters seized the presidential offices, and he ended up escaping to Russia. In Iran, this didn’t happen; the regime didn’t budge. Why? Because the entrenched support base loyal to the regime, especially the Sepah (Revolutionary Guards) and the Basij, wouldn’t allow it.
A photo of Basij volunteers drilling in their drill uniforms. (Credit: Vahid Salemi / AP)
Who are the Basijis? The best way for an American to understand them is as a combination of the Boy Scouts, the revolutionary Minutemen, the Taliban and the legend of the Persian Hashshashins (Assassins) who would take themselves out with their foes. The Basijis are a volunteer militia operated as an auxiliary of the Sepah, and take orders directly from Sepah commanders and the Supreme Leader, not the president. The Basijis are mostly religious youth, and they are charged with protecting the regime, along with Shia Islam and its people’s “virtues.” To show their Islamic virtue they may work in mosques, help elderly people cross the street, give gasoline to people stranded in their cars on the side of the road, or, on the other side of the coin, intimidate and assault Iranians dressed in “immoral” attire, and haul suspected dissidents into the nearest police station. The Basij responds to threats to the regime within and without; they played a key role in the Iran-Iraq war, with mass “human wave” martyr attacks by teenage Basijis to clear minefields and terrify Saddam’s troops, and they have often crushed Iranians citizens’ demonstrations, most notably during the uprising that followed the June 12 rigged election of this year, and the student protests of July ‘99.
The founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini founded the Basij (pronounced BAH-siege) when he became leader of the new Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. It was a shrewd move. Khomeini knew that he would always have a lot of enthusiastic extreme-fundamentalist young men on his hands, and it’s smarter to protect your Right flank, honor them and harness their energy to protect the regime, than it is to let them fester ignored until they become something that could overthrow him. In Persian, the Basij (literally, “Mobilization”) are also called Basij-e Mostaz’afin, “Mobilization of the Oppressed,” and there is a clear “class warfare” element to them. The Basijis are mostly poor, young, and fundamentalist, and they are often pitted against the mostly secular, modernizing upper class. President Ahmadinejad was a Basij, with the Basij culture and chip on the shoulder, and he framed the rich elite as decadent, corrupt, and “oppressing” the hard-working, pious, rural poor.
Ahmadinejad and fellow Basij veterans, in ceremonial uniform
For Iran’s rulers, this has them sitting pretty: in addition to having the judiciary, military and local officials firmly behind them, they can rally a religious proletariat to the defense of Islamic government whenever needed, with angry young Basijis as the head of the spear. Despite dissent from other Ayatollahs (Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, Ayatollah Mohajerani, Ayatollah Rafsanjani), the government’s lessened legitimacy and growing feeling in Iran’s cities that the current regime’s enforcers (Sepah, Basij, local police) are no better than the Shah’s brutal secret police (the SAVAK) that they united against in 1979, this regime is deeply entrenched, and the Persian people* will likely be watched over by Ayatollah Khomeini’s evil glare everywhere for years to come.
For more information on the Basij:
The New Yorker: Jon Lee Anderson: Understanding The Basij
Basij Violence In The News:
LA Times: Tehran’s streets erupt after a key cleric speaks
From The Miami Herald, a cartoon showing "New Boss, Same As The Old Boss," the Islamic Republic attacking their own people just as the Shah did
Contrasting brave Iranians willing to protest despite very real risk to life and limb with couch potato Americans doing little for their freedom, I feel like I’m in a nation of proles. Like Iranians, we Americans used to be a proud and revolutionary people. I hope that isn’t completely dead.
Nick
*For the uninitiated, Iranians are sometimes still referred to as “Persians,” and their country was called “Persia” by outsiders from the 5th century BC up until 1935, when Reza Shah Pahlavi issued a decree requesting everyone use Iran, meaning “the land of Aryans,” which Iranians had been calling their country since about 1000 BC. For more information, see Iran Naming Convention. Iranians are an Aryan/Indo-European people, and in physical appearance, look little different from the related Caucasians in the nearby Caucasus region. They are white people. Too many Americans lump Iraq and Iran together and say “bomb all them A-rabs,” which couldn’t be more wrong. Iranians are not Arabs, have a proud history and culture totally distinct from Arabs, speak a language (with grammar similar to many contemporary European languages) unintelligible to those who only understand Arabic, and Iranians’ bitter rivalry and wars with the proto-Arab and Arab peoples of the Fertile Crescent span back to the first written records of the region recorded by Sumerians. Saddam Hussein was infamous for his hate of Persians.
This song fits Gov. Sanford so well:
“you keep on tellin’ me
‘baby I love ya,’
but MARRIAGE
just ain’t your gameYou tell me I can have anything I want
but whhhyy can’t I have your name?LYIN’
BACKSLIDIN’callin’ each other brother
with your hand in his pocket
hypocrisy! yeah“
–Millie Jackson, singing her song “Hypocrisy” on Soul Train to promote her “It Hurts So Good” album, 1973.
Gov. Mark Sanford admitted last week that he "created a fiction" about where he was. He was actually in Argentina committing adultery
Cartoon by Rex Babin, Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2009
This is the same Mark Sanford that, when asked about philandering Republican Congressman Bob Livingston (who resigned when his extramarital affair was exposed right before officially taking over for philandering Republican Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House), said “I’m sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out the president lied under oath, [Livingston's] situation was not under oath. But the bottom line is, he still lied. He lied under a different oath and that is the oath to his wife. So it has got to be taken very seriously.” (video proof)
Mark Sanford built his career on his moral rigidity and finger-pointing at those who weren’t as “upright” as him. Anyone who stepped outside the box became fodder for Sanford’s sanctimonious grandstanding. Especially gays. Sanford is one of the gay-hatingest politicians in America. One of his primary campaign platforms was how urgent it is to “defend marriage” against the gay threat. Were you “defending marriage” when you repeatedly begged your wife for permission to cheat, governor? (she refused to condone such behavior). Why is it that the “red states” most eager to “defend marriage” make up eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates? (according to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract)
Cartoon by Dwane Powell, Raleigh News and Observer
Democrats cheat just as much as Republicans, but they don’t campaign for office with Bible-beating messages attacking those less righteous than them. That Bible they are waving actually contains many more condemnations of adultery than condemnations of homosexuality, which, if you listen to some conservatives, sounds like the ONLY thing the Bible talks about. The sages understood how destructive adultery is to families and communities. Unfortunately, politicians don’t.
These are men who love themselves deeply, need to be recognized and relish approval. These are men who adore getting praise and who often are surrounded by swarms of sycophants. These are men who, in some cases, need to exercise power and sometimes can become drunk from it. These are men who think the rules don’t apply to them and who think they’re untouchable.
Source: AP: Analysis: Why do politicians cheat?
There’s a culture of infidelity in every state capitol. I saw it in the Senate offices in Montgomery, AL; with the way Senators’ secretaries look at their Senators and how they interact like spouses, you’d have to be really oblivious to not notice what’s going on. State legislatures take some of the most arrogant and entitled men in a state, and, for half a year, assemble them in the capital city, far away from their wives. With scumbags like politicians, some infidelity is inevitable in that situation.
Next time a politician is presenting himself as moral arbiter, remember all of this.
Nick
Related Bloggery
This topic occurred to me after reading Larry Kramer’s long rant in the Huffington Post claiming that because men outnumbered women 6 to 1 in the original Jamestown colony in 17th century America, that lots of gay sex had to be going on, and that historians are erasing gays from history out of homophobic bigotry. I don’t dismiss the issue of whitewashing history; that IS a real problem. But I think Kramer is angry, verging on hysteria at times, more activist than historian, and he is often reaching–asserting conclusions without enough evidence to back it up. And is his crass language really necessary?
My history professor friend Bridgett and I discussed this on her blog post about Kramer, “Same-sex sexuality in 17th century British North America,” and she explains that real historians can’t “out” people from the past as gay without definitive, absolute proof, or they’ll be filleted by critics, discredited and risk their careers. Not a problem for Kramer, as he has no historian cred to risk.
To me, his biggest fallacy is that simply because no wives were available for many Jamestown colonists, they would “turn to each other.” It’s not something you can CHOOSE like that, and he of all people should know that. I could no more choose attraction to males amid a girl-shortage than Kramer could choose attraction to women.
Does anyone really believe that whenever there’s a scarcity of women in a society, large amounts of men will “turn to each other?” This made me turn my thoughts to China. 
Recently, a gay family member told me because of the lack of females in China and the fact that, mathematically, tens of millions of men will never be able to find women to marry (true) that millions will turn to gay sex. I don’t think that’s what will happen — it’s not A CHOICE!
Numerous articles about the gender imbalance in China (caused by abortions of potential girls and infanticide after birth) have been written. I recommend:
In this Washington Post op-ed, Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer, the authors of “Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population,” wrote:
The old saying goes, “When you pick up one end of a stick, you also pick up the other.” When a society prefers sons to daughters to the extent found in parts of contemporary Asia, it not only will have fewer daughters, but it also will create a subclass of young men who are apt to have difficulty finding wives and beginning their own families. Because son preference has been a significant phenomenon in Asia for centuries, the Chinese actually have a term for such young men. They are called guang gun-er or “bare branches,” because they are branches of the family tree that will never bear fruit. The girls who should have grown up to be their wives were disposed of instead.
We have already seen in China the resurrection of evils such as the kidnapping and selling of women to provide brides for those who can pay the fee. Scarcity of women leads to a situation in which men with advantages — money, skills, education — will marry, but men without such advantages — poor, unskilled, illiterate — will not. A permanent subclass of bare branches from the lowest socioeconomic classes is created. In China and India, for example, by the year 2020 bare branches will make up 12 to 15 percent of the young adult male population.
Should the leaders of these nations be worried? The answer is yes. Throughout history, bare branches in East and South Asia have played a role in aggravating societal instability, violent crime and gang formation.
Though the existence of sizable numbers of bare branches is not a necessary condition for instability — the sex ratios of Rwanda in 1994 were normal, for example — it plays a significant role in the amplification of levels of instability and threat.
Consider the fact that in the mid-1800s, a predominantly bare-branch rebel group in the north of China called the Nien, in combination with rebel groups farther south, openly attacked imperial troops and forts, taking control of territory inhabited by 6 million Chinese citizens before it was quashed by the government years later.
More recently, Indian scholars have noted a very strong relationship between sex ratios and violent crime rates in Indian states, which persists even after controlling for a variety of other possible variables. And worldwide, more violent crime is committed by unmarried young adult men than by married young adult men.
According to sociologists, young adult men with no stake in society — of the lowest socioeconomic classes and with little chance of forming families of their own — are much more prone to attempt to improve their situation through violent and criminal behavior in a strategy of coalitional aggression with other bare branches.
Historically, governments facing a growing population of bare branches find themselves caught in a dilemma. They must decrease the threat to society posed by these young men but at the same time may find the cost of doing so is heavy. Increased authoritarianism in an effort to crack down on crime, gangs, smuggling and so forth can be one result.
At some point, governments consider how they can export their problem, either by encouraging emigration of young adult men or harnessing their energies in martial adventures abroad. There are very few good options for governments that find that their greatest threat emanates not from an external source but from an internal one.
Years ago I saw Hudson and Den Boer’s book discussed on CNN, and in that segment, they argued that the explosive growth of Islamic conquests…
This map shows the expansion of the Islamic Caliphate. In dark red, is territory conquered by Mohammed himself (from 622-632 he consolidated all of the Arabian Peninsula), in pink are the territories conquered in 632-661 by the "Patriarchal Caliphate" (all of the Levant, Egypt, present-day Libya, Iraq, Iran and present-day Georgia in the South Caucasus) and, in beige, the lands taken during the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750; much of Central Asia, including Samerkand, present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all of the Maqreb of West Africa and Spain).
…in the 7th and 8th centuries wasn’t just “to spread the faith by the sword,” but, because the prevalence of polygamy on the Arabian Peninsula made it impossible for large numbers of angry young fundamentalist males with swords to ever find wives. Large groups of them invaded Egypt, Persia, etc., where the population of widowed women had just grown considerably from the war. Hudson and Den Boer suggested a similar phenomenon may happen in China.
We are already seeing the consequences of gender imbalance in China that Hudson and Den Boer’s research predicts: increased sex trafficking, prostitution becoming more widespread and more lucrative. Will we see China invading neighboring countries as well?
What do you think? Please comment below.
Nick
Director of HIV/AIDS Policy and a senior disability advisor on the Domestic Policy Council, Jeff Crowley, speaks at a Candidates' Form at the George Mason Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics
Jeff Crowley from the president’s Domestic Policy Council met with the board of the NDRN (National Disability Rights Network, formerly NAPAS1) this week and a summary of how Crowley conveyed the administration’s views on the Community Choice Act was leaked to several listserves online. The disability community deserves to know what the thinking inside their government really is, so I am publicizing this text:
Jeff Crowley from President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council came to our NDRN Board meeting this week. I am certain many people on this list know him but this is the first time I’ve seen him. Here is a summary of what he said and how he said it.
He certainly confirmed that it is the administration’s intent to offer the initial health care proposal without including long term care.
He went on the express his regret at the outcome of the ADAPT action two weeks ago. He described himself as having “worked with ADAPT in the past” and certainly assumed no sense of apology or responsibility for the arrests or the dismissive comments of his colleague, just “live with it.”
In a very guarded and cautious way he expressed the desire to deal with long term care in the second session of this Congress. He described CCA as ‘one way to deal with it.’ But he also said there were other ways. As I said I never saw him before and maybe he’s always this taciturn. But his comments about CCA were lukewarm at best.
Several times he cautioned against ‘high expectations’ and was >generally very flat and careful in his delivery.
Others have more experience and insight in this but my impression was that if we are to succeed with CCA the thrust is going to come from Congress and that the administration is being very cautious.
For what it’s worth …
1. The National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems (NAPAS). .I won the “2003 Advocacy Award” from NAPAS and traveled to Washington, DC to receive the award and deliver an acceptance speech.
The Reality: Sotomayor is a moderate, who sometimes makes liberal decisions that anger conservatives and sometimes makes conservative decisions that anger liberals, like ruling against abortion clinics in the “global gag rule” case, and the loathsome ruling that public schools can punish a student for free speech written on a blog off campus. My beef with that is the freedom-crushing precedent it set, opening the door to much more freedom squashing in the future.
But overall she’s a moderate “pragmatist,” in the Obama mold.
Sonia Sotomayor LOLz
The Far-Right Crazy Land Place: As I reported yesterday, Glenn Beck suggested that empathy is bad and can lead to Naziism, so Obama’s “empathetic” judicial nominees should be rejected. Sean Hannity called her a “radical.” Rush Limbaugh compared her to David Duke. Some are concerned how “platos de arroz, gandoles y perni,” her Puerto Rican foods, will affect her judging, and Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic allowed an anonymous source to attack Sotomayor as “not that smart” (because, obviously, doofuses can graduate summa cum laude from Princeton).
The corpse-esque visage of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell takes the podium (alongside Sen. Ensign and Sen. Cornyn) to demand that Supreme Court appointees only show empathy for state authorities and multinational corporations
With the public opinion of Sotomayor high (polls show 45% of likely voters saying the Senate should confirm her, and only 29% who say they should not) this process will be more about trying the Republicans than her. How badly will they shoot themselves in the foot?
Bush holding his phone upside-down, and the caption "You're Doing It Wrong"
Glenn Beck is stupid.
Several weeks ago, I slapped down an idiotic routine from Beck, and now, he’s at it again.
This time, he’s making outrageous comments and going completely off the rails about new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
The rallying cry of the Republicans against Obama’s nominations has been “EMPATHY IS BAD!!!” This from the same group that spent the last three decades beating us over the head with their holy book that commands love and empathy. They don’t want empathetic judges! They want automatons that will apply the LETTER OF THE LAW without “gay” things like “feelings” or “considering the situation.” And if you break away from this particular party line, you’re THE ENEMY, on par with Hitler.
Beck cites Hitler example to state that “empathy leads you to very bad decisions”
Right, Glenn, when I think of empathy, the first person that comes to mind is HITLER.
Glenn suggests that Hitler’s extermination program to cull people with disabilities (he calls it out by name, Action T-4) was borne of empathy, and thus no judge with empathy should be on the bench.
Hitler’s euthanasia program had nothing to do with “mercy” or “ending suffering,” and everything to do with their sicko “racial hygiene” policies to achieve a “pure” master race. The notion that the Nazis were “empathetic”–does he think there’s something warm and fuzzy about old Adolf?–puts Mr. Beck decidedly aboard the Crazy Train.
Beck has focused his show lately on beating the drum against empathy. In a very unfortunate move, he mocked people wanting diversity in our system, joking, “we need a blind, deaf, handicapped Asian woman!” for the Supreme Court (source). He just has to continue his tradition of mocking disability.
And he really misunderstood the Hebrew Bible. He tried to make a point, and really failed. Dude, you’re doing it wrong.
YES, King Shlomo was empathetic! Because he knew that by pretending to expose the baby to danger, the real mother would reveal herself, and the dispute would be settled. Come on. Someone who recovered from alcoholism through Mormonism should know a lot more about the Bible than that.
As I posted before, Iraq is now killing homosexuals at a startling rate, and since many can’t blend in, are forced into hiding. And three safe houses have now closed for want of funding.
PaulCanning forwards an urgent request from IRAQI LGBT:
IRAQI LGBT started to establish a network of safe houses inside Iraq in March 2006.
As of today, we have only one safe house, we had to consider closing down three of them in the last couple of months, because we are unable to keep paying the rent and other expenses.
The members of our group inside Iraq urgently need funds to open at least five safe houses. These funds will allow us to keep the five safe houses running, and provide safety, shelter, food and many other needs for our LGBT friends inside Iraq. Any funds we receive that go beyond what we need for these five safe houses could be used to open more safe houses in the near future. We desperately need to add more because we have so many urgent cases in other cities. We receive requests for shelter every day, but we are not able to help yet.
Source: http://paulcanning.blogspot.com/2009/05/support-safe-houses-project-for-lgbt.html
In recent months, Iraq’s mullahs have directed a vicious purge of gay Iraqis. Evidently, the Sadrist movement (who have plenty of supporters within the current regime) and the Iraqi government reached an agreement, and if gays aren’t simply shot by militiamen, they are jailed, executed, or tortured to death by the authorities. Many have died via extrajudicial execution, while others were officially imprisoned and executed by hanging. Still others (about 200 in Baghdad) are on death row awaiting hanging.
Activists will protest for the human rights of LGBT Iraqis Sunday outside President Obama’s home in Chicago, and implore him to act.
This year in Chicago, the Gay Liberation Network (GLN) is organizing the city’s IDAHO event as a protest against the Obama administration’s continuing silence about rampant anti-gay violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq. The protest will take place at 2 PM, Sunday, May 17th outside of the Obamas’ Chicago residence at the corner of Hyde Park Boulevard (5100 S.) and Greenwood (1100 E.).
Over the past month, several news outlets have reported an escalating, officially sanctioned campaign to torture and execute gays in Iraq, promoted both by Shi’ite clerics and by the Shi’ite-dominated government which is closely allied with the United States.
As the New York Times reported April 7, “In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge [Baghdad] Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word ‘pervert’ in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.” And as the Huffington Post reported May 3rd, “According to Iraqis and human rights workers interviewed for this post, some sort of understanding was reached between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army to ‘cleanse’ Iraq of homosexuals.”
Tortures committed reportedly include gluing the anuses of gay men shut, and then force-feeding them diarrhea-inducing medications which cause agonizing pain followed by death.
Back in 2005, the country’s leading Shi’ite cleric said that gays and lesbians should be “punished, in fact, killed” and that “the people should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.” After some protests this language was removed from the cleric’s website, and the anti-gay campaign appeared to subside.
However, over the past month, the campaign in Iraq to murder gays has ramped up again as “Sadr City’s Muslim clerics have reportedly urged the faithful to destroy homosexuality in Iraqi society and police have undertaken an effort to arrest and jail gay men,” said United Press International.
Source: LGBT asylum news: Chicago protest about anti-gay pogram in Iraq
Nick’s Crusade, strongly believing that disability rights activists shouldn’t be stuck in their traditional “silos,” but should be supporting the inalienable human rights of all people, endorses this protest Sunday. Obama should take heed, and, if he can’t pull strings in Baghdad, at the very least he could grant asylum in the U.S. to those who are now hiding in fear.
I don’t have any money (I know; I’m a charitable case myself) but if I did, helping LGBT Iraqis who’re running for their lives is a very worthy cause. For more information, see the IRAQI LGBT blog.
Regardless of your opinions on the gay issue, if you have friends and family that are gay (I do) and wouldn’t want them killed, you should pay attention to the persecution of gays around the world, and raise awareness.
Nick
