Sotomayor Needs to Back Off - Remove Emergency Stay on ACA Birth Control Provision

After weeks of fighting the Repukes - after the new healthcare.gov website didn't live up to expectations, Obama and his administration now are confronting someone they saw as an ally: Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor (appointed by Obama).  Sotomayor, acting on a request from Catholic nuns based at the Denver Little Sisters for the Poor Home for the Aged,  granted an emergency stay for the implementation of the ACA birth control feature- which had been denied earlier in the day by a federal appeals court.

Apart from the fact that Sotomayor - appointed to the highest court- has as her first mandate to be objective and not allow ideological bias to sway her, it is also bad form to be seen appearing to appease the Catholic Latino demographic bloc.  Thus, the Obama administration has rightfully called on Sotomayor to dissolve her stay, arguing (correctly):

"With the stroke of their own pen, applicants can secure for themselves the relief they seek from this court -- an exemption from the requirements of the contraceptive-coverage provision -- and the employer-applicants’ employees (and their family members) will not receive contraceptive coverage through the plan’s third-party administrator either,"


Why is Sotomayor doing this? Perhaps either because she's overlooked the fine print that allows a practical out, or has been driven to make this decision by pressure from the Latino Catholic demographic. (Which we know is the fastest growing in the nation, and which she - as a the first Laino on the SC- would dearly love to appear to attend to.)   As for the "Little Sisters of the Poor", one can't help but suspect they've been put up to this by the same front group rabble that put the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) up to their own challenge to the contraception provision of the ACA In other words, all the Catholic groups are willing and compliant puppets to the machinations of the conservative shadow players and organizations who want to derail Obamacare.

In the case of FOCUS, it was the Alliance Defending Freedom calling the shots, who claimed:

Faith-based organizations should be free to live and operate according to the faith they teach and espouse.”

 

Adding:

“If the government can fine Christian ministries out of existence for keeping their faith there is no limit to what freedom they can take away.”

As I noted in response to that babble, there is no attempt whatsoever to “fine Christian ministries out of existence” – only to have them adhere to the standards of all other employers in the public sphere. If then the Catholic Church operates as an employer in the public sphere – never mind it’s a religious institution – then it’s bound to adhere to public standards pertaining to the Affordable Care Act, which all other public employers at other institutions, corporations are also bound to accept.  Hence, the only thing being “taken away” here is the Church employer’s ability to take away secular employees’ rights to the same standard of health care as all other secular employees’ in the public or private sphere.  The Church, meanwhile, is quite free to morally legislate its own members’ do’s and don’ts to its heart’s content. NO one is taking away that right. 

If the Church sees fit to deny its own members’ as employees access to birth control or the morning after pill, or abortion, then fine. It is well within its purview. But it can’t extrapolate that to secular employees and retain tax-free status as a peculiarly religious institution.

The specious 'Alliance Defending Freedom' argument also went on:

"The (ACA) mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.”

Which, again, is total bollocks. There is no such violation because Catholic employers – whether in schools or hospitals or whatever – are quite free to set whatever moral standards they wish for their OWN Church members who are employed in such venues. What they are not free to do is to set those standards for secular employees!   If they still wish to, however, they can follow the path laid out by the Justice Dept.,  especially as a "church plan is not required to provide contraceptive  coverage".

Never mind common sense, we can be sure that more attacks will be readied with the ACA in Right wingers sights, despite the fact that millions of citizens desperately need the ACA to secure some kind of health care. But does the Right care? Not any more than they do about the unemployed losing benefits, or the economy diving into the crapper because of it.

But at the very least, we ought to expect Supreme Court justices not to be played and exploited in these political battles, and hence Sotomayor needs to remove the temporary stay post haste.

As Usual - Dems Good At Posturing, Not Delivering!

The news that the US economy is losing up to a billion dollars a week because of the “fiscally irresponsible” decision to end long-term unemployment benefits,  ought to have any sane American's attention - especially those still invested in the bubble (stock) market. What it means is we are looking at a likely major impetus for a new recession and financial meltdown given the current market status is not disposed to any stability.


The news comes from a Harvard economist, Professor Lawrence Katz, who said his assessment is based on official forecasts of the impact to the economy of 1.3 million jobless Americans losing benefits. The benefits, which apply to people who are unemployed for longer than six months, expired last week after a bipartisan budget deal on federal spending for the next two years failed to include a reauthorization of the program.

As I earlier noted, this deal  (named the 'Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013')  was only "bipartisan" in the sense that it provided another opportunity for the Gooprs to do a "date rape" on the Demos - as anti-tax stooge Grover Norquist defined it. The misbegotten deal reduced the blanket sequester cuts by $63bn over two years, split equally between defense and non-defense spending, although Republicans also succeeded in negotiating a further $20-$23bn in  domestic deficit reduction.  In other words, the Reeps succeeded in raping the Demos to the tune of an additional $20-23b on their side, while not paying any new taxes!

Much of this comes by their refusal to extend unemployment benefits at the end of this month - leaving millions in the lurch at the worst time of year. Kids have done without Xmas presents, and now also food - since the SNAP program was cut, and  more food stamp cuts loom over the next ten years (amounting to $40b ). Reepos haven't budged from that.   The purpose was clearly to enable the Reepos to keep an additional $20-23 b for their pet defense projects while kids go hungry.

Of course, those who yap and complain that "any unemployed person who doesn't find work in 6 weeks doesn't want it" are certified idiots. They lack the necessary IQ to grasp that if there are 2.9 people chasing every job there won't be enough jobs to go  around. These are the sort of mentally backward people who can't process that 9 gallons will not fit into a 2 gallon container.

They'd also likely laugh at the plight of one letter writer to the press, who wrote:

"As one who lost his benefits I can tell you one thing, I will be homeless and spiraling downward without an extension. Place as much blame on me as you feel but remember the end result. Just because somebody gets themselves stuck in the mud, it does not mean somebody can't help them out! I've never in 38 years been on unemployment and I am shocked by the hard time I'm having getting a job. NO one will even hire me to dig ditches, collect garbage or clean sewers! What am I to do, starve?"

Needless to say, stupid pig GOOps would merely dismiss the guy's worries and insist he still "isn't trying hard enough".  (Interesting that many who say so are themselves sitting fat and pretty - gorging on gov't benefits!)


And what are Democrats doing about it? 

Democratic leaders in the Senate are planning to fast-track legislation to extend unemployment insurance, a move that would provide a lifeline to more than a million jobless Americans who lost their benefits five days ago.

The bipartisan bill provides a three-month extension the the federal benefits program, a temporary fix designed to allow Congress to work on a solution for the long-term unemployed, who have seen their support vanish.

And what are the chances of passing? Slim and None!

Though Democrats have launched "a sustained push"  to reintroduce the federal program, and a Senate vote on a bipartisan bill to restore the benefits for three months is expected early next week, there  certainly will be no passage in the Tea Party -contaminated House. The time to have fought for preserving the benefits was when the sequester and budget deal were being hashed out LAST month. What the Dems propose is roughly equal to trying to close the barn door after the cows have escaped.

It's stupid, and merely amounts to posturing after the fact, to try to show the unemployed that  this other corporate party still cares for them.  Meanwhile, on Friday, Democrats in the House of Representatives released a state-by-state breakdown of Labor Department figures, showing the number of people who lost federal benefits when they expired on Saturday. The 1.3 million affected Americans are losing on average $305 per week. In total, Democrats said $400m had been “taken out of the pockets” of job seekers across the country.

Dems should have fought for the little guys, the unemployed who likely will now lose homes and reap heartaches when they had the leverage to deal- LAST MONTH.

Now, all they have is  cheap, fulsome rhetoric - and that won't put food on the table!

  .

The Bernie Madoff Victims - Or, Were They Caught in a 'Monkey Trap'?

"You don't need to belong to a country club, or drive an expensive car or buy expensive jewelry. You certainly don't have to own three separate dwelling places. It's all pretty obvious." = Joanne Meerow, one of Bernie Madoff's victims, in The New York Times (Madoff Victims, Five Years Wiser, Dec. 8)

In the Caribbean, in places such as Barbados, there is what is called a "monkey trap". It's needed now more than ever as the monkey population on the island has exploded and the varmints invade properties to steal fruit, especially paw paw, figs, and even breadfruit and mangoes. They are also wasteful - in that they often just take one bite and amscray.

There are different monkey traps but one commonly favored is to use a hollowed out breadfruit with a small hole in it - just wide enough for the monkey to insert his paw- and place a small, sweet fig (like a small banana) inside it.  To egg the monkey on, a tiny piece of banana or mango may also be placed just outside the gourd opening. If the monkey were to just heist the tiny morsel he'd be okay  - but it's not in their nature. The monkey wants more....more, more, more, and like too many humans ....it goes for the gusto. But once it grabs hold of the prize inside, he finds that the hole is now too small to withdraw it.

The monkey is trapped. For the proud human trap springer, there will be monkey meat to eat - a real dividend considering how food prices on the island are soaring through the stratosphere.  The monkey trap works because the monkey is unable to properly process the cost of grabbing his interior fig. It's not that he's stupid, only that he's programmed by evolution to snatch first and ask questions later. He must then, as we say, "repent at leisure".


Now, let's switch to the "monkey trap" sprung by Bernie Madoff on thousands of humans who - like the monkey - allowed their own greed and desire for more to trap them when the cost was intolerable financial pain, and loss.

How is it that so many of Bernie Madoff's victims had more $$$  than they needed already, and yet grasped for the fake promise of even more riches?  Answers given in a December New York Times piece may hold many clues, especially coming from one couple, the Meerows. As seen from Mrs. Meerow's quote above, they certainly didn't have to expand their wealth more than it was - they had quite enough to have a very comfortable retirement - more than 99% of Americans.

Other comments made - especially by Mrs. Meerow- shed even more light. For example, she cites a recent visit to their "old country club"  for a wedding, and observes that all its trappings on display "underscored that its society were all about things and jewelry and all that silly stuff." 

Adding: "That's not who we are anymore. Besides, if I had never walked into that club I would never have heard the name Bernie Madoff."

She was saying a mouthful there. An upper one percenter enclave, where baubles and money likely mattered more than anything else. A perfect place to play on members' innate greed to grab even more.  "Hey, you know, there's this guy Bernie Madoff who could really make you a lot more money!"

Another victim, author Geneen Roth, perhaps spelled out the core of what snookered so many Madoff victims into a "monkey trap" partly of Madoff's making, and partly of their own greed. As she put it:

"You can feel stuffed and full after binging on food, but there seems to be no amount of money for which people feel full"

She added:

"Anorexics who think they are fat are no different from those who have all money for all their basic needs but still worry they don't have enough."

And therein lies the trap. The yen for more! The inability or unwillingness to be more conscious of what it was they were getting into and above all, ignoring the old saw "if it sounds too good to be true it probably is".

I too had seen offers come in for high yielding CDs, other vehicles in the 9-12% range nearly a decade ago, but in the low interest rate environment on offer I ignored them. I didn't try for more because I felt we had enough to at least be comfortable. I wasn't afflicted by the American disease of "not enough money" insecurity - driving people to take inordinate risks. For the same reason, I've been out of the stock market since 1996. I have merely observed while it's gone on its roller coaster rides - alternatively wiping the suckers out before the next batch comes in - while I stick with my low earning money markets.  None of Bernanke's games with quantitative easing will get me to jump into this fool's market based on cheap money and financial hucksterism.

In this sense, it's hard to sympathize with Madoff's victims. They let their yen for more obscure their thinking. Even those who weren't necessarily wealthy, still wanted more than what the existing environment offered and thereby laid their own monkey trap.

In the memorable words of Geneen Roth:

"I do feel that my part in this was my own lack of consciousness about money. ....Would I like to get that money back? Yes!  But do I feel that what I've gotten since losing it has given me more wealth in a way, than anything I had before? Yes."

And another thing she's gotten is the ability to see clearly through any future monkey traps!

For the rest of us it means consistently being able to put our long term interest over any short term gains. Can we do it?

To learn more about monkey traps and avoiding them check out this link:

http://www.godlessinamerica.com/monkeytrap.html

Yes, People Should Fear The Woodland Park Fundie Invasion!

"I grew up in Woodland Park and still live in the area. My family and I will not want to engage any of these people on the street trying to convert us. Besides doing our banking from a drive-up window, I do not foresee us doing any business in Woodland Park again. I would rather not support a town that in turn supports a man who believes HIV people should be put to death.

Additionally, the fact that he believes (according to the article) that he can make dead people come alive is absurd"   - S. Platt in Colorado Springs Independent, Dec. 25, p. 4


The letter writer was referencing the setting up of a "bible college" (probably like 'Smokehouse Online Bible College' in FLA) in Woodland Park, not far from us. It is being pushed by one Andrew Wommack, best known for instigating a 'kill the gays'  bill in Uganda (since revised to 'only' life imprisonment).   If it had passed, the original form of the law would have allowed  the execution of all HIV-positive LGBT people in that country. It would also punish friends, family members, and co-workers who don't report LGBT people to police within 24 hours. This is what we secular folk are supposed to "tolerate"  of our nutty Xtianoid Fundie brethren. But, as anyone knows, the basic premise of tolerance is that one is not obliged to tolerate intolerance, especially as evinced in the pending Uganda bill. That is the paradox of it.

The letter writer himself is correct to be concerned, because if Wommack's entity is spawned it means the little burg will be directly supporting extremists and nuts who seek to spread "knowledge" but are really spreading bunkum about "demons", "conversion" and other bollocks. The paradox of the fundagelical morons is that they can't even see the paradoxes of their own bible-based morality. For example, they rant and rave about abortion and "preserving life", yet are willing to pass a law to permit gays (born that way on account of genetics) to be executed.

These fundagelical reprobates actually believe their Bibles contain their moral answers. But if they knew the actual content, I can’t see why they’d do that! For instance, 2 Kings 2, 23:24 allows children to be slain by wild animals if they insult their elders or any authority  (in this case a prophet).  Thus, the Bible is not offering any kind of absolutist moral teaching, but rather more plausibly regurgitating the bloodthirsty thoughts of the vengeful, limited-minded human who wrote it.  Why can't fundies see that? Likely because, like Andrew Womack, their brains are as bloodthirsty as the OT writers.

Similarly, by Deut. 22:22 both John Edwards and his former girlfriend (Riele Hunter) would have been stoned to death. The bible fails here by flouting the absolutist code for 'No killing' (in the 10 commandments) and even worse, allowing it for adultery.

Meanwhile, by Deut. 21: 18-21 we read[1]:

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,  then his father and mother shall seize him, and that,  when they chasten him will not hearken unto them; Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place. .  And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die; so shalt thou put evil away from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear,

So, any insolent or intemperate son would have to be taken to the outskirts of a city by his parents who'd let the elders stone him to death. While the modernist may think this insane, there are actually fundamentalist Christian apologists who seek to parse it in a way that makes it palatable! The Website for The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry  (CARM) claims, for example[2],

"In the Old Testament God appears harsh for three reasons. First, it was to demonstrate the exacting requirements of the Law, a perfect and demanding standard. Second, it ultimately demonstrates the need for grace that would eventually be manifested on the cross. Third, should rebellion take root the very heart of the gospel would be at risk since the prophecies of the Messiah coming to and through Israel could be undermined should rebellion become rampant and society fall apart causing the prophecies to fail. Therefore, we can conclude that this harsh requirement was a necessary legality to instill and designate the necessity of family order and respect and to ultimately provide another safeguard that would ensure the sacrifice of Christ."

But these rationalizations amount to nonsense. ”Exacting requirements of the law” is in reality no different from the harsh Muslim Sharia law where thieves get their limbs hacked off or women are whipped to death for adultery.  Just because “God” allegedly proclaimed it doesn’t make it morally right and indeed, this is a justifiable basis to question whether this is any real God at all, as opposed to a phantasm percolating in the temporal lobes of an ancient brain. Somewhat similar to the modern schizophrenic or psychotic who claims: “God told me to kill that child!”

The appeal to “grace” is also fulsome and not required, nor is any invocation of "the cross", since even if a historical Jesus actually existed and suffered crucifixion there’s no evidence of a God-man or Savior[3].  The obsession with rebellion and family order isn’t compelling either, given multifold alternatives existed that didn’t require slaying the son. In addition, one can rightfully argue that the apologists are resorting to a slippery slope logical fallacy with the claim that a simple family issue would metastasize into a national rebellion and putatively “failure of prophecies” if the extreme sanction hadn’t been enforced. In any case, the matter of the reality of biblical prophecies also must be questioned, especially whether their fulfillment is always in terms of ex post facto confabulation by zealous scribes using already existing Old Testament pointers.

My point is that the bible cannot be an arbiter of moral authority, far less absolute authority. A more serious and adult take on the whole issue of the biblical God is offered by Lloyd Graham in his 'Deceptions and Myths of the Bible':

"Man owes God nothing, not even thanks. Whatever is, exists because of necessity and not divine sufferance. And whatever exists suffers because of nondivine Causation. Our world is full of suffering, tragedy, disease, disaster, pain; we demand a better reason than religion has to offer. "


Perhaps for this reason, Graham insists that it is the de facto creations – humankind- who are the genuine authors of workable morality (dynamic justness not moral justice) not the claimed Maker portrayed in the Bible. Religious scholar Elaine Pagels makes much the same point in her book, The Gnostic Gospels,  pointing out that the Gnostics regarded the biblical deity as a degenerate sub- being which they called demiurgos..

Again, both Graham’s epigenetic god and the Gnostics' demiurgos are crude God-concepts, hence must be viewed in the light of limited human brains, deficient in their own aspirations to truth or even testability. The danger is that when moral or ethical testability is absent, then uncontained absolutism can result  - with devastating consequences.  Jacob Bronowski has maintained that because human knowledge is limited, and further - the human brain is limited in its processing capacity- one must temper expectations and especially refrain from absolutist moral judgments.  The reason is that only partial aspects will be glimpsed and then invoked to fabricate a false or pseudo morality. As Bronowski has put it:

"The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once and for all the realization that all knowledge is limited."

 The question is how long it will take for those like Andrew Wommack to get this into their thick craniums.

---

[1] Deuteronomy, The Old Testament, 321 (The Authorized King James version)

[2] See, e.g. http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/stone-rebellious-son

[3] This is the take of Biblical scholar and member of the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan, with whom I concur when he refers to the historical Jesus as a Mediterranean “peasant Jewish Cynic”. Such Cynics were “hippies in a world of Augustan yuppies”. See: Crossan: The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, 421.

The Tragic and Heartbreaking Case of Jahi McMath

According to assorted news accounts, little 13-year old Jahi McMath was afraid she might not wake up after her tonsillectomy at Children's Hospital Oakland on December 12th. As it turned out she did wake up and also got to eat a popsicle (the sort of fare patients are able to eat) for a half an hour before something went amiss.  In this case, she began to bleed profusely from her nose and mouth to the extent her visiting mom had to get cups to catch the blood and nurses had to be called in. Transfusions were prepared but they weren't enough to save the little girl who shortly thereafter went into cardiac arrest and then experienced brain death (as determined by EEG signal).

Make no mistake that even a "routine"  tonsillectomy is no walk in the park.  I had one in 1978 at the age of 31,  after repeated bouts of tonsillitis going back to my childhood. 'Enough was enough' as they say. I was fortunate to have one of the best ENT  surgeons in Barbados, but even so the blood loss after I emerged from anesthesia was significant. As I came to in the ICU I saw and heard nurses screaming at me "No! No! Don't spit up the blood!" They were referring to how it was collecting in my mouth and my  instinctive reaction to spit. The alternative was to swallow it and block my breathing passages. However, spitting wasn't the solution as it risked bursting the sutures. (Bear in mind I was still under the influence of the anesthesia).

After some hours the bleeding stopped and I was able to eat a small cup of vanilla ice cream, but could only make hand signals and write on note paper to communicate to my smiling wife.  I wrote:

"HURTS! Like HELL!"

But let us understand that despite over one hundred media reports, Jahi McMath did not have an ordinary tonsillectomy.  In this case, we have yet another instance in which our corporate media dropped the ball and either believed the actual operation was too complex for the public to grasp (disrespecting the intelligence of their readership) or they deliberately misrepresented it  as a "routine tonsillectomy"- for whatever reasons.

According to Brandon Peters, M.D. at About.com


“There is a paucity of known facts in this situation. The family and their lawyer have released few specific details. Oakland Children’s Hospital, bound by the privacy restrictions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), has offered even less. Jahi underwent three surgical procedures for the treatment of her sleep apnea. This included a tonsillectomy, uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP), and removal of nasal turbinates. Though initially described as a “routine tonsillectomy,” this degree of surgery in children is not routine. It is extensive. When performed on a child, the risk is high. “


Readers can see more here and on uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (or “UP3″) and its indications and further information on the associated risks here. It should be apparent that with the paucity of facts available it is  too early to begin speculating what went wrong in Jahi’s case and what kind of medical negligence - if any-   might have been involved.

What does seem clear is that brain death has occurred and according to California law this qualifies as actual expiration. The technical term used is known as a permanent vegetative state, or PVS. It means basically that when the patient is hooked up to an electro-encephalograph (EEG)  no brain activity is registered, or recorded.  The person, for all practical purposes, is a vegetable and there is no going back to any normal state. The only way the person can be kept alive is by extreme life support systems, e.g. respirators.

The PVS state is not to be confused with being in a coma. A statistically significant number of people have come out of prolonged comas, but no human in recorded medical literature has ever returned to functional consciousness after being in the PVS state. It is right here where the debate over Jahi's future care resides, especially after a California judge extended until Jan. 7 a deadline for letting the hospital turn off the machines oxygenating Jahi's body. 

Jahi's parents are fighting to keep her sustained as they believe she is still alive on account of sporadic motions when they're with her. But as medical specialists have pointed out such nerve responses don't prove functional consciousness. Despite that, the family has its staunch defenders.

Wendy Patrick, a prosecutor and a working minister who is versed in the theological and legal arguments of the debate, has said the issue is particularly pointed because of the number of cases over time in which individuals have "revived after being declared dead".  But let us again bear in mind those were medical errors since no one can return after being literally dead or brain dead. In those cases then, the "declarations of death" were premature and the person wasn't really in PVS.

Patrick went on to cite a 2007 case in which an Arizona man "came back to life after being scheduled to have his organs removed for transplant. And of course, all Christians know that Lazarus was raised after four days in the grave.”

But again, this is nonsense. No one comes back to life after being genuinely dead, and we know the Lazarus story,  like most biblical accounts, was a myth - designed for spiritual inspiration not factual ingestion.  Can a person in a coma return to consciousness? Of course! But this is not the same as "returning from the dead".

What is needed then, is a final determination of Jahi's condition by medical professionals in the field of neurology, neurological function and PVS. 

Interestingly, even the more educated religionists believe this case is closed. According to the Rev. John Paris, a professor of bioethics at Boston College:

“She’s already dead but he (the California Judge) is  hoping her heart stops so then the family says, ‘Well, the heart stopped and we accept God’s will,"


Father Paris is  also doubtful that an appeals court would step in, because "there's no legal issue." In other words, once medical agreement is that the girl is in the PVS state, it meets the California definition of legal death.   The divergence of opinion in Jahi's case, says Fr. Paris, should force greater legal clarity about what constitutes death. 

Indeed. But PVS is certainly a pretty clear condition once the EEG is properly interpreted and there is confirmation.

The last hope for Jahi McMath to be kept on a ventilator (past Jan. 7th)  may come from a former Long Island hairdresser who runs a brain-injury treatment center dedicated to Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman whose case sparked a fierce nationwide end-of-life debate lasting almost 15 years and which was final resolved nearly a decade ago. (On Tuesday,  the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network said publicly for the first time that it has been helping Jahi's family for weeks to find a place to transfer her.)

Meanwhile, the news of Jahi's  possible transfer came as the California Department of Public Health confirmed Tuesday it is investigating Children's Hospital Oakland and its handling of the Oakland 13-year-old after her tonsil surgery and two other procedures to remove throat and nasal tissue, complications from which left her brain dead.

Let's hope that no other family has to endure such a medical and ethical morass engendered by assorted advances in medical technology, i.e.  in maintaining life while pushing our boundaries – moral, legal, and practically – of the concept of death.
 

What 2014 Holds: More Climate Disasters

Massive fires, and now floods, seem to be more and more in the future of Colorado with each passing summer - the rest of the nation will see havoc too - ramping up this year.

As 2014 dawns the question on many people's minds is what sort of events it will bring. While the political and economic landscape remains somewhat uncertain, as well as the geopolitical (including the global surveillance system) we can pretty well predict that climate will continue toward chaos. We already got a taste of it last year with hundreds of massive wildfires, burning areas the size of whole states while pumping ever more CO2 into the atmosphere. We also beheld torrential rains and epic floods such as here in Colorado. All indicators point to even more climate instability this year with devastating tornadoes in the spring, followed by even more extended heat waves and wild fires and floods.

Are we at a tipping point? It's hard to say but we are certainly close. Climate scientist Bill McKibben notes there are three numbers we had better keep close track of if we want to preserve even a semblance of a livable world ('Mystery of the Three Scary Numbers', UTNE Reader, Jan-Feb, 2014, p. 18):

- 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6  degrees Fahrenheit

- 565 gigatons or 565 thousand million tons

- 2, 795 gigatons


The first number is the highest we can afford the global mean temperature to increase over this century without seeing the planet go into the crapper. We are talking the cusp of the runaway greenhouse effect, though many scientists don't want to scare too many people by outright saying so. They don't want to induce panic. According to McKibben, even a 2C increase is fraught with danger and passing that threshold will make our current wildfires, floods etc. look like a walk in the park. It's a number we don't wish to surpass or shouldn't. Many of us won't be around if it is surpassed (mainly baby boomers) but we do owe it to our offspring and their offspring to give a damn.

The second number represents the peak of humanity's carbon budget. It's the most carbon we can afford to pour into the atmosphere without triggering the 2 C temperature increase.  For reference, humans poured some 30.6 gigatons into the atmosphere in 2011 and it is projected that unless massive carbon cuts go into effect we will pass the 565 gigaton threshold in 16 years. That means we will likely trigger the 2 C increase in that time - with all the havoc that implies. Think of no more seasons, wilting heat in the high 100s lasting for most of the year for most of the country and regular tornadoes, storms that make what we saw last year look like minor ripples on a pond.

The third number is perhaps the most worrisome of all and the one that instills fear into most who know what the future portends if we don't stop our reckless foolishness -including the fracking craze. It represents the total stored reserves of carbon held by coal, gas and oil companies. It was first highlighted and brought to global attention by the Carbon Tracker Initiative - a group of London financial analysts and environmentalists.  It is what the fossil fuel industry plans to exploit in the future by its whole spectrum of methods, whether deep sea drilling, oil shale fracking or natural gas fracking.

It is, in other words, five times more carbon than will already blow a gasket in our world and send it toward runaway greenhouse perdition. Can you picture this scene unfolding everywhere and never ending:


In other words, as the UTNE piece observes:

"Burning those fossil fuels we would enter a world of science fiction dystopia: a rise in sea levels not seen in human history, species extinction, droughts, super storms, heat waves from hell....and consequences you cannot imagine".

What does McKibben say?

He states clearly and emphatically just because the reserves are there, we are not to use them! We need to "leave at least 80 percent of the fossil fuels in the ground"

Humans have a choice: either survival (even then barely tolerable) or being cast into a finite and terrestrial version of 'hell' if they can't control their energy demands.

This year may be the last in which we can actually exercise a degree of choice!

No, Nanette, Government is NOT Your 'Friend' or ' Daddy'!

Right: Nazi defendants wait to be tried at Nuremberg. It was the 'good Germans,' who saw no evil after Hitler came to power , who were responsible for the chaos the 3rd Reich caused.

"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for the purpose of a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open." - Thomas Jefferson, in 'Notes on Virginia'.

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED." - Thomas Jefferson, 'Notes on Virginia'.

Yesterday, our dear friend 'Nanette' visited from Aurora, and we had a really good breakfast before having a heavy conversation about Snowden, the NSA, citizens and rights.  'Nanette' like so many 'Muricans, felt in her heart of hearts that Snowden had "betrayed" his country  and merely created hysteria about the NSA mass surveillance programs like PRISM. There was nothing whatever to fret about and the NSA was merely carrying out its mission to protect us from the millions who want to kill us. If you didn't do anything wrong, NSA wouldn't be tracking your every move. Just be a 'good guy' and move on, oh, and stop complaining!

When I mentioned the 'continuity of Government' (COG) program given teeth by the  Bushistas through Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act, and how it provided for domestic protestors (like Occupy Wall Street and anti-frackers) to be labeled "terrorists" - and noted  how the Occupy demonstrators were tracked and hounded-  she merely shrugged her shoulders:

"I don't protest or complain so I have nothing to worry about."

When I told her that the same Sec. 215 allowed federal agents to break into a home and rifle through computer files and other documents without having to tell you, she just smiled - that was for others to worry about because she had nothing to cause any alarm. Only photos of her two kitties.

When I noted the 'Main Core' program and how 8 million innocent Americans were already listed under it, people who'd done nothing except perhaps speak out against the Afghan adventure and the waste of money involved, she just laughed. It doesn't mean a thing and no one is going to do anything with it. She would become a true believer if people started to get arrested and their doors get knocked down.

To her it was quite fine and dandy and not worth worrying or fretting over because, after all, government was good to us, our "friend" or at least 'Daddy': it paved our roads, it paid our benefits - like her Social Security and Medicare- and it regulated her foods so there were no salmonella infections, and supplied money for our schools (ok, at least the better ones through 'No Child Left Behind' and 'Race to the Top') and it protected us from all those bad guys that Clapper and Alexander keep warning us about.

When I cited the stat - from a Gideon Rachman Financial Times article, e.g.






and that "the average American had only a one in 500,000 chance of being killed in a terrorist attack", compared to  a one in 346,000 chance of being annihilated by a large asteroid (> 0.5 km dia.) she again just shrugged. She still knew in her heart of hearts that the government was protecting her.

When I informed her the same gov't she praised for paving her roads also started wars that couldn't be paid for, she was mostly speechless. Finally, she agreed I had a point. When I added to that those unpaid for wars (as well as tax cut for the rich) meant cuts to her domestic S.S. and Medicare benefits she said she'd "wait and see". I added that, in case she forgot, the Supreme Court in a ruling some years back stated that no benefits are enshrined and the government could reduce them or even eliminate them.

In other words, her image of a benevolent government largely depended on who was in power:  which party - and who in that party had what agenda in the Executive branch. It was certainly not a 'slam dunk' that in each election cycle we'd get the government we need or want. (And no one can dismiss the power of money to trump our votes,  negating her argument that "we" get the gov't we deserve via our voting choices.)  It could be a malevolent one with no citizen rights at heart, and no incentive to "promote the general welfare" as stated in the Preamble of the Constitution. As for the Bill of Rights, it was a truism that if people didn't use them then they'd lose them.


'Nanette' in this sense did appear to see the paradox of the NSA going ape shit to reign in terrorists with its mass surveillance dragnet (that didn't discriminate good guys from bad)  but not attending to the millions of cockeyed gun owners with their AR-15s, Bushmaster .223s and other weapons - all 2nd amendment rights aficionados, when thousands of times more people were murdered than killed by terrorists each year.


But then these gun zealots - unlike 4th amendment civil libertarians - might go bonkers if threatened with the remote loss of any of their current rights.. At least she saw the divergence in government obsession between protecting 2nd and 4th amendment rights. The 2nd amendment folks struck fear in the heart of government, but not 4th amendment rights folks. (As I noted in an earlier blog post, protecting 4th amendment rights is always more difficult because they are largely intangible and people don't see when they're losing them. By contrast a gun owner can instantly see when he's losing his Bushmaster or Glock 9mm).

I tried my best to show Nanette it is the citizen's job to oversee and pay attention to what the government is doing, and not be asleep at the switch. I read to her Jefferson's quotes (above) and indicated that a real citizen had to treat government more or less like a toddler of immense power that might wander off the beaten path at any time -depending on political winds, or outside agents.

As MIT's Noam Chomsky put it in a recent interview:

"Governments are power systems. They are trying to sustain their power and domination over their populations and they will use what means are available to do this. By now the means are very sophisticated and extensive and we can expect them to increase. So for instance, if you read technology journals you learn that in robotics labs for some years there have been efforts to develop small drones, what they call “fly-sized drones,” which can intrude into a person’s home and be almost invisible and carry out constant surveillance. You can be sure that the military is very much interested in this, and the intelligence systems as well, and will soon be using it."

So true.  The saddest part of our exchange is the extent to which I realized that Nanette was like the millions of good Germans who, had they paid attention and done their homework, might have averted the catastrophe of the Third Reich - by not turning a blind eye to what was going on. (In Nanette's view that'd never happen today since we're more "civilized". Hmmm... I reminded her that the Germans with their Goethe and Bach also fancied themselves to be).

Ironically, we Americans - who had to sacrifice so many lives to liberate Europe from Hitler's grasp- had no tolerance for any of the 'good Germans' - a historical point many 'good Americans' today would do well to ponder.  Go back to the end of World War II and the American occupation of Germany in the years after 1945. We assailed the “weak” German people and mocked them for not standing up to the growing metastasis of Hitler’s Reich which they obviously saw but did nothing about. Hell, too many sided with Hitler, praised him and embraced his ideology while turning a blind eye to the wrongs. The last straw was the Enabling Act (1933) which essentially obliterated the last vestiges of the Weimar Republic. Our military also dragged out these “good Germans” and trotted them into the remnant concentration camps to see first hand what their Fuhrer and his minions did. They were marched in and forced to look at the naked, gassed bodies stacked like cordwood until they puked.

Meanwhile, our then military leaders rounded up the remaining high profile Nazis, including Hermann Goering (see photo) , and dragged them before a Tribunal to be accountable for their actions. (Read the book, ‘Judgment at Nuremburg’ or see the movie). Though they gave the excuse they were only “following orders” we didn’t buy it. We demanded a higher moral standard that NO one is obliged to follow orders to serve such vile ends and there exists higher moral law that trumps “orders” or “oaths”.

The U.S. insisted instead that violating a government order was mandated by the principle (VI) that the United States trumpeted in the Nuremberg war crime trials. Principle VI came to be known as the Nuremberg Code and clearly states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to orders of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."


Note this Principle’s injunction is exactly analogous to what Edward Snowden followed. He had allegedly binding orders and “oaths” by which the government found it expedient to limit his actions, but he saw (as the U.S. military leaders did at Nuremberg) that the option of a higher moral choice dictated he inform the American people – whose liberties were at stake and threatened – of what was being done in their name. As Robert Scheer noted in a June 25 blog, ‘The Good Germans in Government’:

Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation

I ended our conversation (moving back to more light-heated fare)  by suggesting to Nanette that she read the 4th amendment again and carefully, and take note that mass warrants were not permitted. The government had to seek out and issue individualized warrants specific to the perpetrators and context. It didn't matter if this "took time", or was "inconvenient" - that is what the amendment stated.

Why, I asked her, should we empower the government to take away our 4th amendment rights any more than the gun owners allow the government to take  away their 2nd amendment rights?

She had no answer, but she promised to read the Bill of Rights again as her first resolution for this year. Let us hope millions of our fellow citizens do the same, in between their shopping excursions, instagrams and Facebook-ing.

Meanwhile, the fathead fool and dickhead Peter King (R- NY) has flipped out at the NY Times editorial board calling them "apologists for terrorists"- for calling for clemency for  Edward Snowden. See,

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/02/gops_peter_king_flips_out_on_the_new_york_times/

This asshole still claims Snowden is a “traitor” -  despite the fact Ed has done more to protect this nation's honor and principles than the fat bag of blowhard gas has done in all his years sitting in congress.  The real traitors are pigs like King, and we need to call them out and say so!