Category: Best

Posted on

Remember the Idiots at the Alamo

It will be placed in a Mylar sleeve, mounted between sheets of antireflective plexiglass, placed in a crate and transported from Austin to San Antonio by a fine arts shipper with an escort of state troopers. It will be displayed in a custom-built case that will filter most ultraviolet light. Officers known as Alamo Rangers, private security guards and plainclothes off-duty police officers, will patrol or stand guard. The project will cost more than $100,000, the majority of which will be private donations.

NY Times, October 3, 2012

The document in question is a letter from William Travis sent from The Alamo in the days just before Santa Ana arrived with the Mexican army. It is a relic and this hysterical worship of it is ridiculous. Travis writes “Victory or death!” Rick Perry repeated the phrase, with a straight face, when he ran for president last year.

The purpose of the security precautions, with the “Alamo Rangers”, off-duty police, and private security guards is to try to convince you and I that there really is something very, very important about this letter. There really is. It is so sacred, so holy, and so monumental, that nefarious persons all around the world would take it if they could. It must be guarded by very straight-faced armed men. It must be transported in a special vehicle with an escort of state troopers.

The board that overseas the archives commission was not impressed with these precautions and warns that it might not approve the transfer of the document to San Antonio to be displayed, in February, at the Alamo.

Lt. Col. William Barret Travis was an idiot.

Travis sacrificed something of infinite value– his own life– for a brief and bloody flip through a fringe way-station on the path to manifest destiny. The fight was not about freedom: it was about taking land from Mexico on behalf of American speculators and slave-traders. These people were not fighting for freedom of religion or expression or the right to vote or join a union or put up a Christmas tree. They were fighting to perpetuate a land distribution system that allowed a select few to accumulate very, very large swatches of land through trickery and deceit so they could resell it to “pioneers” at inflated prices. The pioneers could then use slave labor (illegal in Mexico) to farm their lands.

They always cry “freedom, freedom” and they always take your gold, your oil, your wheat, your children, your drugs, your land. They cry “freedom, freedom” while protecting your pimps and casinos. They sing glorious praises of freedom, freedom, as they sell you out to Exxon or IBM or Shell.

General Sam Houston didn’t think much of the Alamo in terms of strategic importance– for reasons that became obvious– and chose to abandon it. This was a perfectly rational, sound decision. He wasn’t surrendering to Santa Anna: he was conducting a strategic retreat so he could regroup his army and fight again another day, on better terms, and with less needless sacrifice of lives. Houston was an oddity for military commanders in his day: careful, prudent, cautious. He eventually prevailed, at San Jacinto, but he took some heat in the meantime.

Needless? Texas, you may not know, was a part of Mexico in 1821 (it was originally part of the Spanish colonies). The United States negotiated a border with Mexico which confirmed Texas as Mexican territory. However, American settlers ignored the agreement and violated the treaty by moving into the territory. Santa Ana, in the meantime, had rescinded the Mexican constitution and made himself dictator.

Eventually, the American settlers organized, formed an army, and declared independence. One of the reasons? Mexico had outlawed slavery.

The Battle of the Alamo took place February 23 – March 6, 1836. The decisive battle of the war was fought shortly afterwards in San Jacinto.  The Mexicans were badly routed there and Santa Ana capitulated and signed a new treaty. He had been captured dressed as a common soldier, but was given away by his own men when they acknowledged him as “presidente”, apparently.

In 1845, Texas, having completed the charade of independence,  was granted statehood.

The monument in San Jacinto says this: “Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world…” It would have been fun to sit on the meeting that chose that phrase. I would have liked to hear their ranking of “decisive battles of the world”.  Come on– tells us.  Waterloo?  Stalingrad?  Marathon?  Gaugamela?  Metaurus?

Houston, as I said, didn’t think it was smart to defend the Alamo against a vastly superior force. He sent James Bowie to the fort to remove the artillery and destroy the entire complex. It was Colonel James Neill who decided that the men under his command should honor his own ego with the sacrifice of their lives. Then he left.

Bowie, Travis, and Davy Crockett stayed. Travis and Bowie argued over who was in charge. Neill returned to settle the dispute and then left again. This was a wise decision.

When the Mexican army arrived, Bowie tried to negotiate a surrender. Yes, he did. Travis, mad for self-abasement and morbid glory, disagreed with Bowie and fired a cannon at the Mexican camp, and sent his own hard-liner to meet with the Mexicans.

The Mexicans, in any case, were not in the mood for taking prisoners. Apparently there is a kind of flag you raise if you intend to murder prisoners. They raised this flag.

Most of what you have heard about the Alamo since is blather. The Americans seem to think that out-killing the Mexicans from within a fortified compound was the most incredible awesomest achievement of any army anywhere in the entire history of the entire world. The movies and the bombast are intended to encourage today’s young people to sign up for more bloodletting when required, as when our oil supplies are in question.

Glory, glory, hallelujah.

Posted on

Corporations are People: Yes they are — psychos.

Corporations are people, my friend.  Mitt Romney

As Michael Kinsley observed,” a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth”. And so Mitt Romney inadvertently– and unapologetically– spoke the truth. The truth about what he believes, that is. This election is about dumping the 47% out onto the streets. It’s about getting rid of the old ball and chain. It’s about traveling light, free and easy, without being dragged down by losers and weaklings. And that’s why Ann Romney can’t understand why people don’t think her husband is the nicest guy there is.

Ann Romney thinks people would change their opinion of Mitt Romney if they only knew about the very nice things he has done for families and friends within his social and professional class. And indeed, by most accounts, Romney has been an exceptionally nice guy. But he reminds me of Ronald Reagan, of whom it was said, he would give you the shirt off your back, and then sit down at his desk in the Oval Office and sign a law that took away school lunches for two million poor children.

Nice guy.

What Romney and Ryan probably are not going to tell you is that they don’t even believe in Medicare or Social Security, or Medicaid. When you hear so-called moderate Republicans like David Brooks declare that the U.S.– unlike every other developed country– can’t afford Medicare, can’t afford Medicaid, and can’t afford Social Security, you realize that there may not be any thing as a “moderate” Republican any more.

What Brooks really means, of course, is that the rich don’t want pay taxes for anything other than ensuring our ability to kill other people, presumably to take their oil, if necessary.

If Romney wins, I suspect he will actually turn out to be a bit of a pragmatist. Confronted with a budget crisis in Massachusetts in 2003, due largely to unfunded medical costs for people who did not carry insurance, Romney hired some smart people from MIT and analyzed the problem and came to a rational conclusion. And thus Obamacare was born. If this is a model for what he would do as president it would be interesting. But even more interesting is the fact that the Tea Party wing of the party will be expecting marvelous things from Mr. Romney and he will, I’m sure, consider long and hard the costs of gratifying them balanced against the possibility of a second term.

Posted on

Breaking Bad: The Read-Ahead Actor

In a scene from “Breaking Bad”, Year 3, Episode 10, Walt and Skyler are having a conversation about laundering money. Skyler offers to manage a car wash Walt is considering buying for that purpose. He has to buy it because, he says, the manager has to be in on the scam, and the only way to control the manager is to own it.

Somehow the conversation turns to their divorce and Walt says to her something like “but we’re divorced?”.

Skyler has been after him to sign the papers for several episodes. She has been resolute that there is no future in their relationship because of his chronic lying. In a previous episode, in a moment of moral clarity, he finally did sign, with a flourish.

Now, “Breaking Bad” is a brilliant TV series, exceptional in almost every respect. But I was not as happy with this episode as I had been with the earlier ones and this scene was emblematic of a problem beginning to creep in. (Maybe it stops here, maybe it gets worse: I don’t know). Walt reads his line as if there is some question about whether or not they actually are divorced. He almost makes it a question: “we’re divorced?”. “Right?” “Aren’t we?” But in this story line, we find out that Skyler never filed the paperwork after Walt signed it. She notes that married couples can’t be forced to testify against each other. This is important because Walt makes methamphetamine.

In my opinion, Bryan Cranston gave away a plot element in his reading of this line. The character, Walt, has no reason to believe that Skyler had changed her mind about the divorce, and every reason to believe she would have rushed out the minute he signed the documents and filed it with the court. He should have said, “but we are divorced” as if it was final, settled fact. But the actor, Bryan Cranston, knew what was coming next. He tried to set it up, perhaps unconsciously.

Fans of the show and of Bryan Cranston’s otherwise impeccable work on it might argue that Walt may well have suspected that Skyler hadn’t filed the paperwork. Maybe, maybe not. And if it had been the only instance of read-ahead acting in this episode, I would have ignored it. However it was, by my count, the fourth and maybe fifth time in this episode that a character had reacted to knowledge held only by the audience, or a secret known only to the character they were talking to. The conversation between Jesse and Walt about the night Jane died was utterly portentous because of this flaw: Jesse was filmed as if he was about to receive a piece of shocking information, though he could not possibly know that there was anything shocking or even important about Walt’s nattering. He should have continued his tasks (cleaning the equipment) without paying much attention to what Walt was saying at all.

In real life, in fact, we often don’t even hear information that we don’t expect to hear.

These are quibbles, relatively minor quibbles. I just don’t like to see flaws like that creep into what is a very, very good TV series.

There is one other problem I have: it is clear that the series has become invested in the actors playing the major roles. None of them are going to die any time soon. I know it and they know it. This does deflate the drama of some of the tension that should be there. I have long believed that good dramas should plan to kill off major characters along the way just to make sure that the audience doesn’t come to the sedate feeling that no matter what crisis confronts our heroes, they are going to live. They are under contract.

It diminishes the effect.

Posted on

Professor Sullivan’s Faux Pas

A professor named Prof. Gregory F. Sullivan was showing a video (the article in NY Times doesn’t say if it was a film or video) in his classroom at Merchant Marine Academy in New York the other day. After he turned the lights out, he said “If someone with orange hair appears in the corner of the room, run for the exits.” That’s it. That’s what he did. That is the entirety of the controversy.

Mr. Sullivan did not bilk thousands of people out of their retirement savings. He did not buy thousands of rounds of ammunition at a gun show, for no obvious purpose. He didn’t launch a failed war on a foreign country on the basis of falsified intelligence documents. He didn’t provide a legal justification for torture to the U.S. justice system. He did not pollute anyone’s drinking water or steal the oil under someone else’s property or destroy any wildlife habitat.

Now, just because someone did not do a number of enumerated things wrong does not mean that what he did was not wrong. I’m just curious about our public culture that destroys the careers of people like Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer while allowing the people responsible for the banking debacle to continue to make huge profits destroying other peoples’ livelihoods without consequence.

While somebody gets all hysterical about a lame joke like, “If someone with orange hair appears in the corner of the room, run for the exits.”

Professor Sullivan did not know that the father of one of his students died in Aurora in the attack by the orange-haired Mr. James Holmes. When he found out, he immediately apologized to the student.

So what’s the big freaking deal? Why are they now talking about firing this prof? For a single tasteless but inoffensive remark? What is offensive about the remark? It’s a lame joke, without the slightest overtones of anything that would be unduly offensive to any identifiable minority, except, maybe people with orange hair.

People need to get a life.

Posted on

Rob Reiner Trashes a Scene

It was cheesy anyway.

There it is again– in a brief biography of Nora Ephron at the New York Times– a reference to the allegedly memorable “fake orgasm” scene in “When Harry Met Sally”.

At least the Times has the good taste to describe it merely as “probably best remembered”. I am thankful for small things. You have probably heard, many, many times, that this scene, in which Sally tries to prove to Harry that women can convincingly fake orgasms, is the funniest scene in the movie, and, maybe, the funniest comic bit ever filmed.

It’s not true. It’s not really very funny at all. Rob Reiner, who directed it, kept asking Meg Ryan to do it over and over again, bigger and broader each time, until it was what you saw in the film: a ridiculously over-the-top caricature of actual humour, perfectly adapted to the talents of Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey.

If it ever was funny, it’s not funny by the the time Reiner has had his way.  It’s not funny. It would have been more amusing if it hadn’t been ridiculous. And the allegedly funny riposte by the woman at the next table– Rob Reiner’s mom– is poorly delivered by –Rob Reiner’s mom. “I’ll have what she’s having.” Do you need to ask why she was chosen to deliver this funny line? Yes, it is a good line. It’s a hint: that scene could have been very funny.

The truth is, that scene would have been much, much funnier if Ryan had made the grunting and moaning and yelping believable, and the camera could have picked up Harry suddenly realizing an unpleasant truth that had been hidden from him for years and years. You might also have seen a few faces at nearby tables, mildly aghast, or befuddled.

The point was lost: if that is what a “fake” orgasm sounded like, nobody would ever have been fooled. Reiner destroyed the funniest element of the scene. The best comedy is revelatory– that could have been a brilliant moment for the film, but Rob Reiner trashed it. He slapped custard pie all over it and made into something feeble and crass. He made it into something you love to quote around the water cooler but really isn’t that funny as you are watching it.

I imagine a richly imagined, subtle, teasing rendition– with that intimation of resistance and the loosing of reserve and the building intensity, all while Harry — in recognition– signals increasing anxiety. Maybe, at the end, he is incredulous: “That was fake?”

Come on– that’s funnier.

Then, a real actress does the line: “I’ll have what she’s having..”

What Rob Reiner did to that famous scene is what Gary Marshall (“Happy Days”) did to Fonzie: you like that “EEEEHHHH!”? You do? I’ll do it again. And again. And again. And again. Ten times an episode. No, twenty, thirty… no forty times! And at every public appearance. And on every talk show. And ….

What? You’re sick of it already?

Incidentally, “You’ve Got Mail”, also written (and directed) by Ephron, was also about as bad as “Happy Days” in it’s worst moments, monumental in it’s simple disregard for any kind of plausibility or psychological insight.

More recently, “Julie & Julia” was moderately amusing, enlivened, as it was, by Meryl Streep’s performance.

All right– you want a really funny scene: rent “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” and watch for the scene at the airline car rental counter with Steve Martin and a brilliant Edie McClurg. Yes, it’s rude, but it’s more inventive and original than the fake orgasm scene because McClurg sounds close to believable as the clerk. You recognize the attitude, the manners, the “I don’t think I like the way you’re talking to me sir.”

I would have loved to hear her do the line in “When Harry Met Sally”: “I’ll have what she’s having”.

It would have been funny.

 

Posted on

Privatizing Abuse

I am not a lawyer. I am a citizen. As a citizen, I vote for a political party at election time hoping that the party I vote for wins. The party that wins has a mandate from the voters to govern. We all generally accept that even if I didn’t vote for the winning party, I will respect the fact that this party has a mandate to govern. In the process of governing, this party can hire individuals to perform certain tasks and functions on behalf of the government. One of those functions is the justice system. The government can hire police who then have the authority to arrest a person if the police have evidence that this person has committed a crime. If convicted of breaking the law, a person may be locked up in a prison and guarded by other individuals hired by the government for that purpose. If you assault a police officer or guard– unless, as is sometimes likely, you have a good reason– you are essentially assaulting a legitimate representative of the government. These representatives of the government have the authority to use physical force if necessary to enforce the law.

They swear to it. And they swear that they will serve the constitution and the laws of the state — not the will of any political party or business or church.

I have never understood why it is believed in some quarters that  such authority can be transferred to a private company. I have never accepted that this can be done, that it can be legitimate in the strict sense of the word, or that we owe the slightest respect to the “authority” supposedly held by any such individual.

In fact, I think I do understand. It is a lie.

In my humble opinion, a private company cannot be given the authority that is normally vested in the government. A private company cannot have the legitimacy to enforce public laws and statutes because a private company is fundamentally exactly what it is: a private company. It does not have a public mandate. It was not elected. It does not swear allegiance to the constitution or to the laws of the nation.

The employees of this company cannot be responsible both to their employer and to the government. They are paid to provide a profit-making service to their employer. They are not paid to “enforce the law”. That is ridiculous– they don’t get fired if the law isn’t enforced. They get fired if they fail to help the company make a profit. They are not accountable to elected representatives of the people: they are accountable to shareholders. If an employee of one of these companies violates the constitution by using force to detain a citizen, he doesn’t get fired; he gets outsourced.

In my opinion, the government cannot contract out it’s own mandate; it cannot sell it’s legitimacy. It cannot attach it’s authority to anybody but itself. No moreso than it can sell the nation out from under your feet to the highest bidder, pay itself huge bonuses, and retire to the Cayman Islands.

A government cannot outsource it’s own constitutional accountability.

Imagine, if you will, that an election is held, and, say, George Bush wins the election. He has a mandate to govern. Suppose he says, now that I’m president, I’m going to appoint James Dobson to the presidency. And then suppose James Dobson goes around issuing orders, raising taxes, dumping people off welfare and Medicare, and appointing justices to the Supreme Court, and ordering the arrest of witches. Would a court uphold a trial of a witch because James Dobson is the president of the United States and has the authority to order the arrest of witches? No. Not, of course, without a good deal of corruption.

In my opinion, anyone imprisoned in a privately owned facility that the government has contracted with to hold prisoners, has a legitimate right to use force against the staff of that prison, for the staff are kidnappers. A prisoner could rightfully say, I will respect the right of a police officer or a duly appointed state official to arrest and detain me. You are not a police officer. You may not use force against me. If you do, I will charge you with assault.

We do “allow” soldiers to kill during wartime. You could argue that that right is dubious as well, but let’s humour the militarists for a moment and accept that there can be a legitimacy to a “war”, like, say Iraq (which was not an act of self-defense). What authority to kill they do have comes solely from the fact that they are representative of a nation that is legally at war with another country. No business entity can be in such a state. There is no legal framework for a business to declare war on a country. If a business did declare war on a country, it’s leaders and owners would be arrested as… .terrorists, actually. At the very least, they would be regarded as criminals.

Do the privately contracted individuals carrying out military duties in Afghanistan have any legitimacy? How can they possibly have the right to kill people when they do not represent the government?

You probably think, I’m sure the top legal minds in the country have had a look at this issue before the government went ahead and started contracting out all these services and functions. You might be wrong. The move to privatize prisons and war and other government functions was largely driven by (corrupt) political ideology. (I say “corrupt” because, over and over again, this outsourcing ends up being a financial bonanza for well-connected private firms and don’t save the taxpayer any money at all– look at Blackwater.)

I would also note that the Supreme Court in the U.S. no longer has much authority itself: it’s dominated by a bunch of hack Republican appointees who virtually never vote against the party line.

Posted on

Locard’s Exchange Principle and Dr. Sam Sheppard

Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool mark he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects. All of these and more, bear mute witness against him. This is evidence that does not forget. It is not confused by the excitement of the moment. It is not absent because human witnesses are. It is factual evidence. Physical evidence cannot be wrong, it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value. Paul Leland Kirk, describing Locard’s Exchange Principle, 1953.

Dr. Edmond Locard, one of the pioneer’s of “forensic science”.  He allegedly solved several high-profile cases through the rigorous application of his Exchange Principle, particularly applied to clothing fibres.

That does not sound unfamiliar. It sounds like something you might hear a Crown Attorney tell a jury after having provided for them an entertaining “analysis” by an expert “microscopist” proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that a fibre from a sweater owned by the accused was found near the body of the victim. Or that a tiny, invisible pin-head-sized dot on a car door is actually, possibly, almost certainly, human blood, maybe. Or that the baby could only have died as a result of incredibly forceful shaking by the only person with the baby at the time of death, with a 99% degree of certainty.

I have a feeling this is prevailing mythology around police investigators and prosecutors in North America. As such, it is extravagantly misleading. It answers a question that does not need to be asked– the real question is, does a “matching” fibre really provide an exclusive match to the material in question? Does it prove that the suspect and only the suspect could have committed the crime?

What exactly is a “match” anyway? You might be surprised to know that the answer is somewhat religious: I know because I know. There is no objective criteria for what constitutes a match because there is no “science” of microscopy– check it out: there isn’t. There is no research or systematic investigation that shows how and where and why fibres travel or are found. There is no statistical proof that any particular fibre is unlikely to match any other fibre from any other article of clothing of similar characteristics…

Locard is right in one sense: at any given crime scene there will be multitudes of “evidence”, of fibres, of blood, hairs, saliva, skin flakes, whatever. The question is, what does any particular sample prove?

About the silliest comment in the entire quote is “physical evidence cannot be wrong”. No one said it could. Indeed, no one ever accused a fibre of lying. But when a “microscopist” tells a jury that he has some kind of rational calculation to tell them about the odds of that particular fibre coming from someone else’s sweater– he is lying.

If you are intrigued by this, you might want to read the blood spatter testimony of Dr. Paul Leland Kirk, who claims to be an expert in “criminalistics”.   Yes, that’s a made-up word, for a made-up science.

Yeah, I used to eat this stuff up too, but when I read it now it almost sounds farcical. Well, all right– it’s not entirely farcical. At least he did some experiments and testing which, even if it was ridiculously specious and capricious, at least gave some empirical heft to his testimony. I’m not hard to please: I would have loved to see a well-funded defense team record on film some of their own experiments and then try to persuade Dr. Kirk to analyze the results and compare his conclusions to the actual record.

I’m not ridiculing science here. In fact, it is precisely because I value real science highly that I think our criminal justice system has to start filtering out the junk science that tries to pass for the real thing. Kirk’s testimony at the Sam Sheppard trial is a classic case: he mixes in real scientific facts and research with rather startling conclusions that don’t really have a tight connection to the evidence. His statements about the arc of the swing of the attacker’s arms, the angle from which she was struck, and the source of various blood spatters strike me as dubious at best. It provides a patina of “science” to a lot of conjecture, the signal conjecture being that Marilyn Sheppard was murdered by someone who was left-handed (Dr. Sheppard was right-handed).

The truth is there may have been an element to the crime that no one has thought of yet. If you think Dr. Sheppard’s explanation of what happened is a little difficult to believe, that is precisely because we are not likely to imagine, before hand, the sequence of events he describes. And we all know how often the police create suspects out of people who do not behave the way they expect after a traumatic event, including Lindy Chamberlain.

Sheppard’s account:

According to Sheppard, he was sleeping soundly on a daybed when he heard the cries from his wife. He ran upstairs where he saw a “white biped form” in the bedroom and then he was knocked unconscious. When he awoke, he saw the person downstairs, chased the intruder out of the house down to the beach where they tussled and Sheppard was knocked unconscious again.  From Wiki.

There are good sciences, like DNA analysis, that do inspire confidence. So far, it is most famous for exonerating people who were convicted based on evidence like that given by Paul Kirk.

Weird Detail: Sam Sheppard later married a German woman named “Ariane Tebbenjohanns” who was half-sister to Magda Goebbels, who helped murder her five children in Hitler’s bunker in the waning days of the 3rd Reich, rather than leave them alive in world without her beloved Fuehrer.

Even Weirder Detail: Sam Sheppard later established himself as a professional wrestler (I am not making this up).  Later yet, he returned to surgery where his incompetence caused the deaths of two patients.  He died of alcoholism April 6, 1970.

 

Posted on

The Supreme Strippers

The Supreme Court, featuring the immortal Clarence Thomas, has just ruled– 5-4, of course, (Republican Appointees vs. Democratic Appointees), that the police may strip search an individual even if he has only been charged with the most trivial crime. And that is not an exaggeration: the justices were explicit. Overdue speeding ticket? Walking a dog without a leash? Litter? Literally, even the slightest offense.

I am amazed that five adults could conclude that the a strip search is a rather trivial price to pay for a procedure of dubious efficacy applied to people who just don’t seem likely to be much of a threat to law and order. Again, the justices were explicit: the police don’t have have to have any particular reason for believing that a suspect might be in possession of a weapon or other contraband. They can just do it. For fun, if you will.

The internet is a creative conduit for civil discourse: there really ought to be a group created to monitor the Supreme Court justices at all times. It should be coordinated on Facebook or a private website. People can volunteer and take turns following the five justices around, taking pictures and video (which can then be posted to the internet) to make sure they aren’t doing anything illegal. These volunteers should absolutely observe the letter of the law. Hoo haw! Make way for the new “reasonable”!

At what point do you think a Justice might complain that he doesn’t like being followed or observed or recorded or spied on? What right would they have to complain? It is perfectly reasonable to infringe a little on someone’s privacy in order to accomplish a greater good. It is clearly in the interests of the citizens of the United States to make sure that their Supreme Court Justices are not doing anything to besmirch the reputation of the courts.

One of the rationales for this ruling is that the court should not interfere in the practice of law enforcement unless absolutely necessary because that would be “judicial activism”. Like repealing legislation enacted by a duly elected congress. Like Obamacare.

Another reason given– this one is a real gem– is that any of these people arrested and strip searched might turn out to be Timothy McVeigh or one of the 9/11 hijackers. And…. so, a strip search might have revealed that McVeigh was packing 2 tons of explosive fertilizer? He might have been planning to blow up the prison? A strip search would have stopped him?

Or Mohammed Atta might have had a box-cutter hidden under his scrotum?

And he might have littered or jay-walked just prior to boarding the aircraft?

That would surely have tipped authorities off to the plot…

It should surprise no-one that Chief Justice John Roberts ruled the way he did: this is the man who ruled that it is not unreasonable for a large policeman to take down a child and handcuff her for eating a French Fry on a subway platform.

Posted on

Hurray for Death Panels: I Mean it!

By the Republicans definition, any attempt to prevent people from choosing expensive but ineffective treatments, is a “death panel”.

It is a tribute to how badly outfoxed on public relations the Democrats have been: the public associates “Death Panels” not with congressmen determined to prevent them from accessing health insurance, at a sustainable cost, but with the Democrats who want to provide it. That is an amazing accomplishment.

As far as I can tell, the Republicans greatest concern about health care is the rising costs. It has been rising, rising, rising for fifty years under the Republican system: private insurance. Did I say the Republicans are concerned about these rising costs? Yes they are. They have a solution. Do nothing. As Ross Douthat in the New York Times admits, the conservative solution to the uncontrolled cost of health care is “modest reforms that would help the hardest-pressed among the uninsured”. Isn’t that inspiring? That covers a multitude of nothings.

As the health care industry expands to meet it’s central dynamic: we are a society that looks at itself in the mirror and says, “we believe life is more valuable than money”. Therefore, if someone’s life needs saving, we will spend as much as necessary to save it. The health care industry understands this. There is no reason why they should ever find cheaper, more efficient treatments: it is contrary to their fundamental interests.

It is not contrary to the real interests of the government and the people they represent to place some reasonable controls over how much should be spent on any particular disease or injury. But it’s something all the parties have to agree on or else one particularly stupid or ruthless party can exploit the fact that most people appear to refuse to believe what they see. An unfortunately large percentage of the population can be led to believe that one party can provide all the health care they want and need without bankrupting the country while cutting taxes.

So I’ll bet more than a few rational Republicans — if any are left– regret the choice of the word “death panels”. Because they have attached the phrase to the idea of limiting the relentless increase in health care costs. Because the potential cost of health care is infinite. The last twenty years of astonishing increases have proven it.

Come on, Democrats! Seize the term and turn it on the Republicans! They are the party that doesn’t want you to have affordable health insurance. They are the party of war, of unregulated industry, of tort reform: they are the Drop Dead Party.

The Republican approach will inevitably lead to a system where only the rich can afford proper treatment. By the Republicans definition, any attempt to prevent people from choosing expensive but ineffective treatments, is a “death panel”. Any attempt to limit treatments performed on people who are going to die soon anyway is a “death panel”.

Do you want to be the politician who tries to explain to the American people that too much health care is provided to people in the last few months of their lives, and that this is making the whole system unsustainable?

Here’s the naked truth: what the U.S., and most western countries need or already have, is something the Republicans have labeled as “death panels”.

As Douthat correctly noted, health care costs rise at astronomical rates. New treatments come on board constantly, new drugs, new techniques, and pharmaceuticals and doctors and hospitals charge enormous sums for these goods and services. Unfortunately, all this new technology has had the opposite effect that it had on computers: medical costs have risen steadily. Why? Really, in a nutshell, because people will pay anything to get better. Anything. Whatever it costs. People will sell everything they own to pay for it because nothing you own matters to you if you’re dead. And the medical industry knows it.

There really as an infinite amount of money we can spend on health care. Unconstrained, it will eventually consume most of the financial resources of the entire nation.

The health care industry also knows that people don’t go shopping around the cheapest cancer surgery, to see if they can get a discount. They don’t turn down an incredibly expensive operation just because they also have cancer and failed kidneys and diabetes and a heart condition, because they are 80 years old, or because they are Republican.

With this logic in place, there is no ceiling on medical expenditures, and eventually it will consume more and more and more of the economy, until it breaks. Or until Republicans, having created an unsustainable system, declare that no system is sustainable and announce their new policy for the uninsured: drop dead.

Most other developed countries simply negotiate what they will pay for particular treatments, which treatments will be available, and how much over-all spending will go into health care. What the Republicans call “death panels” are really nothing more than educated people trying to balance needs against resources, and so far it works pretty well in Europe, Australia, and Canada.

I have no problem accepting a system that declares that it will not spend an infinite amount of money on health care. I have no problem believing that we can still have a pretty good system that provides effective essential treatments for almost every illness. I accept that when I am 80 years old and suffering from all the ailments a typical 80 year old suffers from that I will not be a candidate for a kidney or heart transplant.

The only way to have a sustainable and effective health care system is with death panels.

The essence of the American debate was captured for once and always in this exchange:

Someone reportedly told Inglis, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

“I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,'” Inglis told the Post. “But he wasn’t having any of it.”  Huffington Post

Posted on

Laura Ingall’s Doctor

When the Ingalls family came down with malaria, they were treated by Doctor George A. Tann, who may have saved their lives.

Forget all about him. In “Little House of the Prairie”, the Ingalls very, very kindly help the son of a former slave named Solomon find refuge and an education. Did that make you feel kind-hearted and virtuous? I’ll bet it did. I’ll bet you thought– those wonderful Ingalls– so progressive!

How would it have struck you if the African American had been the doctor who came to their house and actually lived with them for a time while treating their malaria? You would have thought– come on!

IN 1870!

Are you mad?

For those of you who can’t understand why some people just can’t love “wholesome” television or movie programs, this is why: TV refused to show you that Dr. George A. Tann was an African American doctor who treated the Ingalls for malaria.

It would have been disturbing in some way to a large portion of the audience. It would have been disturbing to a large number of potential customers of Wonder Bread to think that perhaps their attitudes towards race were not what they thought they were.

One of the most popular shows among the denizens of the Republican heartland.

So, is anyone surprised?