July 1, 2018

Now, More than Ever, We ALL Need to Listen to Civil Rights Icons

Fifty years ago, Blacks had to march and picket and protest and get "uncivil" to get their vote counted.

This year, all of us are being targeted by the GOP "Block the Vote" machine. Expect to see white people in massive numbers stripped from voting list for the first time. Expect to see polling places in predominantly white, urban areas denied access to functioning machines. Expect to see lines of white folks waiting until midnight or later to cast a ballot. And poll watchers challenging whites--especially elderly whites---for the first time in their privileged lives. And vote tabulations that do not match the number of votes cast.

If you do not want be unpleasantly surprised in November, then you had better be prepared to become confrontational now. I say listen to Maxine Waters. She is better guide through what is ahead of us than many of her fellow "polite" Democrats.

June 28, 2018

Latest Trump Plan to Kill the VA

http://prospect.org/blog/tapped/trump-administration-moves-forward-on-va-privatization

The plans is simple. Say you want to prevent veteran suicides. Everyone in Congress will vote for that. Then, pass a law requiring the VA to use it’s existing budget to provide unlimited mental health care with the private sector psychiatrist of his or her choice with no VA oversight. That means if the nation’s psychiatrists want to start seeing veterans three times a week for intensive Freudian psychoanalysis the VA pays. If they want to prescribe rest cures at mental health spas for up to 12 months, the VA pays. And since none of the private sector mental health providers wants to have a patient commit suicide, everyone who has ptsd depression and other severe illnesses will be punted back to the VA which will have no money left to treat veterans in need because all of its money will go for private sector waste and fraud. No insurance plan in this nation provides unlimited any kind of care without oversight—-because it is a recipe for grand larceny (Trumps kind of business). We have all seen it with Medicare and Medicaid and they have strict oversight. What will happen when those who send in the bills do not have to prove that anything useful was done? A whole lot of money will be paid to people doing nothing.

If this goes through, the VA will quickly go bankrupt and veterans who rely upon its currently vast mental health service will have no help at all. Right now any veteran can walk into any VA mental health facility and be seen now. There is a well staffed 24 hour emergency line. There are social workers who will find you a place to stay. It is easy to get admitted for inpatient drug and alcohol rehab (try doing that with a private insurance plan)

I’ll bet that some enterprising Wall Street Bro somewhere is already setting up a chain of bogus mental health clinics designed to milk the VA for every dollar it has. Because that is the kind of value Trump stands for—-steal from those in need like our veterans and give to those who write big campaign deals nation checks.

June 21, 2018

Look Out DU: Trump Is Trying to Bury Evidence of Child Abuse by Holding on to the Victims

From the New York Times:

And a Health and Human Services official said that more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under the president’s “zero tolerance” policy will not be immediately reunited with their families while the adults remain in federal custody during their immigration proceedings.

“There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases,” said Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Wolfe said the decision about the children was made by the White House, but he added, “I can tell you definitively that is going to be policy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/trump-immigration-children-executive-order.html?WT.nav=top-news&action=click&clickSource=story-heading&hp&modref=HPCommentsRefer&module=a-lede-package-region&pgtype=Homepage&region=top-news&target=comments

Why not? In signing the order, Trump has admitted that ripping these young children from the arms of their parents and tossing them into jail cells with no one to comfort them except snide, laughing ICE agents, no beds except blanket on the concrete floor, no one to change their diapers except other children-----he has admitted that this is wrong, and that American will not stand for it.

So, why is an official at Health and Human Services promising to hold on to the 2000 plus children who have already been kidnapped, psychologically and possibly even physically tortured?

I know why. They are afraid that a doctor may examine them. They are afraid that someone in child protective services may question them. They are scared that someone will uncover crimes--neglect, abuse--that were sanctioned by the highest officials in the Trump administration. And therefore, they plan to keep the children hidden until their bruises fade, until there is flesh on their bones again and until they either forget their trauma at the hands of ICE or are persuaded that if they talk about, they and their loved ones will be cast into hell. Or at least until after the midterm elections. Four more long months of suffering.

The cover up is beginning folks. I call upon Democratic members of Congress to demand to speak to these kidnap victims. I call upon state child protective service workers to do the same. Demand that the children be given back to the care of their parents. Demand that their home embassies be contacted, too, since as foreigners who have been victimized on US soil, they have a right to be represented by their own governments. These children are guilty of nothing except being children and therefore vulnerable in a battle being waged by vicious thugs who take delight in persecuting the weak.

It makes as much sense to leave these kids in jail as it would make to leave victims of the Holocaust in their concentration camps after the allied liberation. The innocent should not be made to suffer to cover up the crimes of the guilty.

June 20, 2018

Will criminal charges of child abuse be filed

Against ICE and the others who have neglected, abused and, in some cases “misplaced” (I.e sold) immigrant children? What about the 2000 Missing children? Will they be found or forgotten? This is not over anymore than a genocide is over when power changes hands. There still needs to be a reckoning, otherwise it could happen again, this time to YOUR children when you are hauled away in handcuffs for a political crime.

June 19, 2018

Get Your Wiccan On at Midsummer, June 21. Protect the Children.

Midsummer, the longest day of the year is approaching. This is the day when protection magics and magics aimed at change work best, so gather your bonfire making tools, your nine herbs, your coven (or friends , family, familiars) and meditate long and hard about how we the people of the United States who tried to form a more perfect union have instead ended up with kids in concentration camps.

Light a very real fire under the fascists. These guys do not think that they are superior for being "white". These folks hate themselves, feel little and weak and the only solace they know is stamping their great big jack boots down on the necks of tiny children of color. Do not pray for their destruction--they are destroying themselves from within already. Pray that they will wake up in time to reclaim their humanity, before their lives on this earth are over.

Love can move mountains if we just love hard enough.

June 19, 2018

Trump's Fatal Blunder: the "Bandit King" Does Not Victimize Children

Look for Trump's support among America's self styled outlaws to plummet. That is because the Bandit King--Robin Hood, Pretty Boy Floyd--the mythical man of the people who defies the establishment and breaks the law to lift up the little (mostly rural) people who have been forgotten must follow a few simple rules. And one of them is protect the mothers and children.

Yes, the fascists and the neo-Nazis and Stormfront are mighty pleased. This is ethnic cleansing at its finest. Yes, any rich pedophile hoping to snag a immigrant child for his own perverted pleasure and any rich Trump donor in need of a docile domestic "slave" to hand rear is more than pleased.

But these folks are not members of the SSAO--the Self Styled American Outlaws. The self styled outlaws--the people who like to imagine that they are Sons of Anarchy--- are watching in horror as the man who promised to drain the swamp is using the swamp to bury the bodies instead. Tiny little bodies, of children whose faces are contorted in fear as their mothers' are dragged away.

It is now official. Trump is going down. I expect his Russian handlers will try to play their last card--persuade him to go with the Bob Roberts option and use a less than expert marksman and hope that Trump makes a better martyr than he did a Bandit King. But Trump is self serving above all else. He will never put himself in the line of fire.

And so, everyone is going down with him. Which will be yet another way in which Trump will fail to live up to his hype as the Bandit King. The Bandit King makes a big self sacrifice in the end. Trump will do whatever it takes to hang on to power, even if it means blowing up a friendly target in order to drum up an excuse for war. Who will die so that Trump can prosper? He does not care. The man has no heart, no soul. If he can do that to children, do you imagine that he would hesitate for a moment to murder you,a grown up American citizen for his own political gain?

June 16, 2018

Why the VA is Better than Private Sector: A True Story of a Little Piggy that Got to Come Home

True story. Diabetic develops sudden infection in his foot. Over the course of three days the lateral/distal part goes from basically normal with a small chronic wound to red/swollen/fifth toe bluish. He goes to the ER. Blood counts are up, sed rate is up (infection), xray shows no bone infection. A podiatrist—foot surgeon—is consulted. His prescription---schedule surgery to remove half the foot, because obviously there is a infection in the bone and part of the fifth metatarsal and all of the fifth toe have got to go. He cancels the MRI request. He does not need an MRI to know that there is a bone infection. Nope. In the last four years he has taken off 4000 of these lateral fifth metatarsals (foot bones) for infections…

Patient is ready to sign on the dotted line, except a friend with medical training says “Hold on sec. Why not get the MRI? Just in case it isn’t a bone infection? Maybe it is a cyst instead. It sure sounds like a cyst. Maybe you can save your fifth toe (which you don’t really need to walk) and half your foot (which you really do need to walk)?”

So the diabetic decides to be a bad patient. He demands the MRI that his surgeon refuses to order.

“It’s a waste of a $1000. It will only tell us what we already know.”

“I’ll pay for it myself,” says the diabetic.

“Oh, I am sure you’re insurance will pay for it,” admits the surgeon grudgingly. “If you want it, ask the internist to order it. I won’t do it.”

The diabetic asks his internist to request the MRI, a very easy to obtain, reliable test which can show right away if a bone is infected. Plain xrays may take up to two weeks to show the changes of osteomyelitis (bacterial infection of bone). The MRI reveals….

An infected skin cyst just as the friend with medical training suspected (there were clues which the surgeon refused to consider). No bone infection. Seems that the surgeon’s xray eyes failed him. Or maybe he was just eager to lop off half a foot along with the fifth toe.

To make a long story short, the diabetic fired that surgeon, got another surgeon, the infected cyst was removed, the metatarsal was saved, the fifth toe was also saved, and that Little Piggy got to cry “Wee, wee, wee” all the way home.

Now, why is the VA better than private practice? At least in my experience, the VA will do everything possible to save a foot even if it means a long hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics. Might have something to do with the fact that no one at the VA has a financial incentive to do unnecessary surgery and every incentive to keep veterans healthy.