“If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people – their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties – someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.'”
JOHN F. KENNEDY, DEMOCRAT (5/22/1917-11/22/1963)
Author: pygalgia
Dot Connecting
Children’s books often include exercises to “connect the dots”. If you connect them properly, a clear picture emerges. Of course, if the dots are connected improperly all you get is a meaningless jumble.
In the investigation of the Ft. Hood shootings, the question that keeps being repeated is “was there a failure to connect the dots?” (For this post, I’m ignoring the issue of terrorism vs. mass murder. The problem of ‘dot connecting’ is the same regardless of motivation.) Could the slaughter have been prevented? Were there enough warning signs that authorities should have taken action?
We go through this process whenever a massive tragedy occurs. After the Virginia Tech shootings, there were revelations that the shooter was deeply disturbed. The investigation of 9/11 revealed that there were many pieces of evidence that the plotters were working up to something big. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing reams of evidence came out that Timothy McVeigh had spent months building up to a massive anti-government act. In all these cases there were many pieces that in hindsight were “dots”; the question is whether they should have been “connected” in such a way as to reveal the picture that would prevent the ensuing tragedy.
During the years that I worked as a mental health counselor, one of the most important parts of my work was suicide prevention. The population of psychiatric clients includes a very high percentage of people at high risk for suicide. Sadly, despite our best efforts and ‘expertise’, some clients did commit suicide. When a suicide did occur, the treatment team would meet to review the case; to try to “connect the dots”. While the goal was to hopefully find ways to prevent future suicides, there was the natural human tendency to assign blame: somebody failed to “connect the dots”.
As I’m watching the process unfold (again) with the Ft. Hood shootings, I’m remembering how difficult it is to actually connect dots. In hindsight, here are a whole bunch of disturbing signs; do they add up to a clear picture of impending violence? Is there enough evidence to take action to intervene? Is the goal to prevent future incidents, or to blame somebody for the incident that occurred?
Example: You have a neighbor, “Mr. X”; he’s anti-social, often angry. He blames “Y” for all that is wrong in his world. He might have weapons. What signs would be clear enough for you to call the police about “Mr. X”? How do you differentiate between an eccentric crank and a potential killer? Remember that our society respects an individuals freedom (in theory, anyway), and that “Mr. X” hasn’t done anything yet. How many dots connect and what picture (if any) do they reveal?
Intervention is a very inexact “science”; you never really know what might have been “prevented” because there is no way to measure a “non-incident”. Maybe a tragedy has been prevented, but maybe prejudice and hysteria have needlessly disrupted a persons life or deprived them of there individual freedom.
I don’t have any answers; I hope the investigation will focus on trying to find ways to prevent future tragedies by helping people who are deeply disturbed, rather than degenerating into finding someone to blame. The reality is that life is full of uncertainties and that tragedies occur daily. Preventing atrocities is an admirable goal, but not all dots connect into a clear picture.
(cross-posted at http://pygalgia.blogspot.com/
I’m Sold on Sotomayor
So Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court; all I can say is: great choice! As President Obama pointed out, Ms. Sotomayor’s credentials include one of the most important decisions of my lifetime: she saved Baseball:
WASHINGTON — Federal judges are rarely famous or widely celebrated. Yet during a brief period in 1995, Judge Sonia Sotomayor became revered, at least in those cities with major league baseball teams.
She ended a long baseball strike that year, briskly ruling against the owners in favor of the players.
The owners were trying to subvert the labor system, she said, and the strike had “placed the entire concept of collective bargaining on trial.”
After play resumed, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that by saving the season, Judge Sotomayor joined forever the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams. The Chicago Sun-Times said she “delivered a wicked fastball” to baseball owners and emerged as one of the most inspiring figures in the history of the sport.
We all know that the right wing is going to do everything they can to trash her (or any other Obama nominee), as they’ve already told us (and Booman has written about so well):
This month, as it appeared increasingly likely that Sotomayor would be Obama’s nominee, the judge has been the target of a whisper campaign, and many leading far-right activists — including Limbaugh and Fox News personalities — started the offensive against her weeks ago.
For what it’s worth, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said earlier this month that Sotomayor would face stiff GOP opposition if she were nominated for the high court. Since that would be true of any Obama nominee, it hardly matters.
So whenever a winger starts attacking, we should immediately ask them “Why do you hate Baseball?”; and by extension America. Ask them if they also oppose ‘Mom and Apple Pie’. Maybe I’ll start a new PAC: “Baseball fans for Sotomayor”. Who’s with me?
(Cross posted from http://pygalgia.blogspot.com/)
Not Quite the Strangest Proposal I’ve Read
This is certainly among the stranger proposals ever made to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (it’s never going to happen, but it is an amusing idea):
A 12-year-old Iranian schoolboy who hopes to unseat hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed that, if elected, he will resettle Israelis in Hawaii, The Scotsman reported on Friday.
“I will buy Hawaii, Obama’s birthplace, from the United States and lease it to the Israelis who will go to live there – so that they don’t kill children in Gaza,” the Scottish daily quoted presidential candidate Kourosh Mozouni as saying.
The paper said Mozouni made the comments to reporters after he turned up to register holding his father’s hand and waving a written campaign manifesto.
I didn’t know that twelve-year-olds were even allowed to run for President in Iran, but lets face it: he’s probably more mature than Ahmadinejad.
(cross posted at http://pygalgia.blogspot.com/)
Another Casualty
It started out a fairly typical local crime story. There was a car-jacking at the Grand Canyon. Later it was learned that this was on the heels of an apparent failed suicide attempt by driving into the Canyon. Two days and a cross state police chase later two men were dead.
Then the human side of the tragedy came out. It was collateral damage from the war in Iraq. Former Marine Staff Sergeant Travis N. “T-Bo” Twiggs was one of the dead. Shaun Mullen at Kiko’s House (http://kikoshouse.blogspot.com/) has the details:
Twiggs went AWOL from his job at a Marine Corps laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
He and his beloved brother, Willard, 38, drove to the Grand Canyon, where their car was found hung up in a tree in what appeared to be a failed attempt to drive into the chasm.The brothers then carjacked a vehicle. They ended up several hundred miles away at a southwestern Arizona border checkpoint on May 14 and took off when they were asked to pull into an inspection area. Eighty miles later, the car was sighted on the Tohono O’odham Native American reservation, its tires wrecked by spike strips.
As tribal police and Border Patrol agents closed in, Twiggs apparently fatally shot his brother and then killed himself.
His PTSD was diagnosed, but not effectively treated. He had even met with shrub on behalf of veterans:
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Last month, Marine Staff Sgt. Travis N. “T-Bo” Twiggs went to the White House with a group of Iraq war veterans called the Wounded Warriors Regiment and met the president.
Twiggs had been through four tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and months of therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder in which he said he was on up to 12 different medications.
“He said, `Sir, I’ve served over there many times, and I would serve for you any time,’ and he grabbed the president and gave him a big hug,” said Kellee Twiggs, his widow.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hD0tzsn2RZuCtbFu5SdtwUgYZevgD90NGBP81
Making the case even more tragic is that Sgt. Twiggs was trying to get treatment, but the system is inadequate.
“All this violent behavior, him killing his brother, that was not my husband. If the PTSD would have been handled in a correct manner, none of this would have happened,” she said in a telephone interview from Stafford, Va.
Travis Twiggs, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon, wrote about his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette.
The symptoms would disappear when he began each tour, he said, but came back stronger than ever when he came home.
He wrote that his life began to “spiral downward” after the tour in which two Marines from his platoon died.
“I cannot describe what a leader feels when he does not bring everyone home,” he wrote. “To make matters even worse, I arrived at the welcome home site only to find that those two Marines’ families were waiting to greet me as well. I remember thinking, ‘Why are they here?'”
Weeks later, Twiggs “saw a physician’s assistant who said that was the severest case of PTSD she’d seen in her life,” his widow said.
He began receiving treatment, but the Marine wrote that he mixed his medications with alcohol and that his symptoms didn’t go away until he started his final tour in Iraq.
When he came home, “All of my symptoms were back, and now I was in the process of destroying my family,” he wrote. “My only regrets are how I let my command down after they had put so much trust in me and how I let my family down by pushing them away.”
Kellee Twiggs said her husband was “very, very different, angry, agitated, isolated and so forth,” upon his return. “He was just doing crazy things.”
She said her husband was treated in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Medical Center and then sent to a Veterans Administration facility for four months.
Most recently, Travis Twiggs was assigned to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, a job he said helped him “get my life back on track.”
“Every day is a better day now,” he wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette. “…Looking back, I don’t believe anyone is to blame for my craziness, but I do think we can do better.”
Twiggs urged others suffering from similar problems to seek help. “PTSD is not a weakness. It is a normal reaction to a very violent situation,” he wrote.
Kellee Twiggs said she can’t understand why her husband was not sent to a specialized PTSD clinic in New Jersey.
“They let him out. He was OK for a while and then it all started over again,” she said.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hD0tzsn2RZuCtbFu5SdtwUgYZevgD90NGBP81
This is only one of many tragedies resulting from shrub’s Iraq disaster, but one that is growing rapidly. We have more soldiers coming home in need of treatment, but the system is woefully unprepared to meet their needs. Shaun ends his post with a call for volunteers:
If you are not in denial and have some time to spare, there are opportunities to help
returning and troubled veterans at your local VA hospital or military base, or through church and community organizations.These opportunities include helping fill out paperwork, finding lost forms, acting as a driver for doctors’ appointments, and just visiting and listening. Connecting with the right people can be a multi-layered process, so be patient. A good start is to ask for Volunteer Services.
While I support Shaun’s call for public help, I strongly believe that it is the Federal Governments responsibility to provide proper treatment to those who’ve served. It’s going to be expensive, but Congress needs to fund PTSD treatment at an unprecedented level. Shrub’s misguided war is creating new victims every day. We, as a civilized society, need to help these people in order to prevent future tragedies.
Not Again, Ralph
So Ralph Nader has launched an exploratory website, looking at the possibility of running another vanity campaign. Ralph, please don’t. As much as I’m disappointed in the choices left for president, another Nader campaign will only help the Republican candidate.
I would love to have a viable progressive third party candidate, but Nader isn’t one. My view might be different if Nader spent the years between elections building a party or supporting a movement. Instead, he only shows up in time for the election touting his activism from decades ago. There’s no hard work, only a very large ego looking to be stroked.
Here’s the basic problem with a third party candidate in a two party system: they usually draw votes away from the more popular candidate, and help the less popular candidate. This presidential election will be (I’m afraid) much closer than many people seem to think. The Democrats are not a sure thing, no matter how it looks right now. Nader’s entry will only help the Republicans.
Don’t do it, Ralph! (I’ve sent him that message, and I hope you will too).
Business vs. Populism
Some of the presidential candidates are running on “populism”, putting people ahead of corporations. But don’t worry, the corporations are ready to fight back:
WASHINGTON — Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.
“We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,” chamber President Tom Donohue said.
The warning from the nation’s largest trade association came against a background of mounting popular concern over the condition of the economy. A weak record of job creation, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, declining home values and other problems have all helped make the economy a major campaign issue.
Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.
Although Donohue shied away from precise figures, he indicated that his organization would spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it spent in the last presidential cycle. That approaches the spending levels planned by the largest labor unions.
The chamber president is scheduled to announce the broad outlines of the organization’s plans for the 2008 election and beyond at a news conference here today. Donohue also plans to fire a rhetorical warning shot across the bow of candidates considered unfriendly to business.
“I’m concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media,” he said. “It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits — and who it is that eats them.”
Well, at least he’s honest about his plan. Remember who owns the media that will inform a lot of the voters. The corporations aren’t going to give up their power without a fight, as John Edwards has said many times. Look for the phrase “anti-business” to be used in ads attacking the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is.
Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” has been perverted into government “of the rich, by the media, for the corporations.”
(cross posted at http://www.pygalgia.blogspot.com/
Pygalgia)
Opening Day
Today’s the official opening day of the 2008 election season, with the first game being played in Iowa. I confess to being a political junkie, and I’ll be taking a hit off of the “caucus” tonight. But it really is a silly game that’s being played. First, the “rules” for a caucus are completely different from the “rules” for the rest of the “season”. Second, the “game” will be played in Iowa, which is really a minor league state at best. Third, the “umpires” in the media have already decided what the final score should be, and they will spin the numbers to fit their narrative.
The population of Iowa is a small percentage of the country, and only a small percentage of them go to the caucus. Then, there are the arcane rules which are different for Democrats than they are for Republicans. The Democrats have the equivalent of the “designated hitter” rule, where if your candidate does poorly, you get to substitute a more successful one.
For sheer entertainment value, you can’t beat the “umpires”. Those “unbiased” media pundits who will be keeping score and declaring the “winners”. They’ve already decided who will be the “stars”, and what constitutes a “good game” or “bad game” for those chosen stars. The players who are not chosen “stars” will be ignored, no matter how well they play the game.
Most of the audience will only see the box score and hear the pundits reports of who had a good game. Only the political junkies will dig deeper into the play-by-play. The pundits will do their best to claim that this is “the most meaningful game of the season”, but as I wrote a few days ago in “On A Limb”, I have a feeling that this season could be much longer.
It is a ridiculous system, but as a junkie, I’ll say “play ball.”
On a Limb on the Primaries
With the Iowa caucus coming this week, all the political pundits are busy explaining “if X wins, Y is out” and pointing to various past elections as examples of why their “wisdom” is so “wise”. There are a brazillion different polls the pundits point to, to “prove” that their “wisdom” is truly “wise.”
I think they’re wrong.
This election cycle has a very different dynamic that the traditional blowhards appear to be ignoring: the schedule.
In previous election cycles, the primaries and caucuses stretch out over months, and early momentum was the deciding factor. But the schedule has changed, with 20 primaries on February 5th. This creates a very different dynamic, where any lead from Iowa or New Hampshire can be overcome (this is true for both parties). The “main” candidates merely need to survive the early states with a semblence of credibility to focus on the larger states of their choice on “mega-super-Tuesday”, where the nominations are truly at stake. Money will certainly be a factor, but the application choices of that money could be a deciding factor. The candidates who do the best job of targeting their strong states could end up in the lead.
I’m not going to attempt to predict who the new dynamic favors, but I’m tired of the beltway pundits trying to declare the winner after the first inning (or quarter, depending on your choice of sports metaphor). Looking at all the polls, what stands out to me is not who leads which poll, but that in each party no candidate has a clear lead. Which means that a majority of voters in each party will be making a second choice as the field narrows. That is where it will get interesting. The delegate split after Feb. 5th will either reveal a clear nominee for each party, or if it’s still close a scramble during the later primaries.
As I said, I’m not going to predict who this favors. But I will predict that the vast majority of beltway pundits will be proven wrong. Not that they’ll admit it.
AZ-01: Supporting an Outsider
My congressional candidate, Howard Shanker, has a nice statement about his position as an outsider. The regional Democratic party has chosen to throw their money behind an insider, so he’s facing an uphill battle:
My campaign is generating tremendous grass roots support from concerned citizens across the country. With wage earners and laborers digging into their pockets to donate $15-$50 during tough economic times and a holiday season. The fact is, the people need a voice in Congress. My goal is to be that voice. My only agenda is to do what is best for the Country and the District. My agenda, however, does not appear to be in line with the plans of Democratic party insiders who have “anointed” an “insider” candidate for the seat. The “anointed” candidate was a state legislator who apparently “paid her dues to the Party.” I invite readers to review this former state legislator’s record and compare it to my accomplishments as a private attorney. She quit mid-term to run for Congress. She has yet to provide any substantive positions on important issues — her people are “working on her policy statements.” I have clear positions posted on my website. If there is an issue not addressed call or email me and I will address it.
Even without substance, however, the Party’s heir apparent has raised approximately $400,000. My goal is not to bad mouth or demean my opponent. Indeed, she appears to be very pleasant. I do, however, question the very fundamentals of our Party and our processes. These times call for candidates with vision, as well as the ability and willingness to oppose the status quo. Yet we elect good fund raisers, not leaders. We complain when our elected officials pander to deep pockets. Both the Republican and the Democratic parties understand this lapse in our collective sanity and take full advantage of it to promote their own. Whether out of some misguided sense of loyalty or simply political sinecure, make no mistake, they do have “their own.”
We are mired in an unjust war of our own making with no concerted effort to
implement an exit strategy. As a nation, we are borrowing money from Saudi Arabia so we can buy oil from, for example, Saudi Arabia. We are faced with a national health care crises — we don’t have coverage. Our population is aging without adequate savings at the same time we have floundering Social Security and Medicare systems. Our government is rife with corruption — already infamous for selling off essential government functions on a no bid contract basis. We do not have adequate infrastructure or services in place to meet the needs of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Our elected officials continue to talk about global warming as if it is a political issue, rather than a scientific fact. We even have a viable Presidential candidate who rejects the theory of evolution. The list goes on. The system is broken. We need people to fix it, not to be part of it.The question is, “Do the political insiders have a strangle hold on power?” The answer is, “Only if we let them.” The problems facing our country are too important to hand off to political machines whose wheels are greased by cronyism. We need leaders with vision and the ability to stand up for what is right in the face of overwhelming odds. That is what I have to offer. Help me bring democracy back to the Democratic party. If you have read all the way through this message — Thank you. I invite you to Google me, “Howard Shanker”. Even better, check out my website at www.Shanker2008.com . Please contact me with your suggestions and thoughts. I have a proven track record of standing up against the federal government and big corporate interests to protect communities, families, the environment, and the freedoms we all hold dear. Help me give the people a voice that doesn’t march in
lock step with party politics as usual. I hope you all have a good holiday season.Howard Shanker
I have made no secret of my support of Howard, as I see him as a refreshingly honest candidate who will represent the people, has honest principles, and expresses strong, intelligent positions on the most important issues. I’m looking forward to some serious grassroots campaigning in the coming year.
(cross posted at http://www.pygalgia.blogspot.com/
Pygalgia