A Mind is a Terrible Thing

When people want to know why I’m down on the Obama Administration, it’s because stuff like this is just part of a pattern — whatever they promised, we get the opposite and a whole lot of happy talk about how we liberal lefties should just shut up already.

FDL Action » White House ‘Official’ Bad Mouths Labor Leader For Expecting Obama To Keep His Promises
Looking back at Obama’s campaign health care plan, it is shocking how many promises he broke without a fight. Obama promised:

* A new national health exchange open to all Americans
* A new public plan available to all Americans to compete with private insurance
* An employer mandate to provide health insurance
* A minimum medical loss ratio for insurance companies
* To allow people to import cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe
* To repeal the ban that prevents the government from directly negotiating with drug companies

Note none of these promise are part of the Senate Finance Committee bill. Obama has made no effort to fight for the inclusion of some of these (public option, employer mandate, minimum medical loss ratio) and months ago even made secret deals vowing to actively work to kill drug re-importation and direct drug price negotiation.

During the election Obama actively campaigned against two policies. One was the individual mandate favored by Hillary Clinton (and the health insurance industry) and the other was a tax on employer-provided health insurance which was also supported by John McCain. These two issues are now part of the Baucus bill. Since taking office, Obama has spent dramatically more time and political capital fighting hard to include these two provisions that he opposed than he has spent trying to include top progressive/labor union priorities that he supported, like the public option.

(emphasis mine)  Hey, nobody likes being lied to.

Anthrax detector can spot H1N1 virus | KRQE News 13 New Mexico
A device developed during post-9/11 anthrax scares can quickly and simply detect the H1N1 swine flu virus, according to University of New Mexico and Sandia National Laboratories scientists.

In recent years, UNM scientists have modified the device to instantaneously test for other viruses such as HIV and hepatitis A and B.

This is just one of the many reasons why we need to spend more on science and research.

Orly Taitz Fined $20,000 – Judge Land’s Order
It’s here! Judge Land took his time with this one. For a history of the case, see these previous diaries. He begins by quoting Justice Cardozo:

Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions. [A lawyer is] received into that ancient fellowship for something more than private gain. He [becomes] an officer of the court, and, like the court itself, an instrument or agency to advance the ends of justice

(h/t stef on Daily Kos)

It’s a pretty long post, but well worth the read.  Judge Land’s order is a judicial smack-down of the finest kind.  He methodically, with ample references to established law and legal precedent, exposes to the entire world the embarrassment that is Orly Taitz trying to pretend she knows how to practice law like a big girl.

This is gonna get very expensive for her, and I predict an expedited disbarment from the California Bar Association.  I’m still holding 4:1 odds she’ll lose her license by the end of the year, or 1st quarter next year at the latest.

I’m loving this guy.  The Democratic party had damned well better not give in to the GOP’s and wingers’ hissy fit and blatantly hypocritical bleatings.

Grayson on ‘die quickly’ quip: ‘I apologize to the dead’ | Raw Story
US House Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican who introduced a motion condemn Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson for saying that the Republican health care plan amounts to hoping that the sick “die quickly,” said he would withdraw the motion to give Rep. Grayson (D-FL) a chance to apologize.

Well, Grayson has apologized — just not to the Republicans he offended.

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,” a defiant Grayson said on the House floor Wednesday.

The “holocaust” Grayson was referring to was the 44,000 Americans that a recent study says die each year because of inadequate access to health care. The representative cited the Harvard study (PDF) in what appeared at first to be an apology, but quickly turned into a retort.

The number of dead “is 10 times more than the number of Americans who have died in Iraq and who died in 9/11,” Grayson said. “But that was just once. This is every single year. That’s right. Every single year.”

(h/t RawStory)

No health coverage tied to 45,000 deaths a year – Health care- msnbc.com
Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

Think about that: Every 12 minutes, someone is dying because they do not have medical coverage.

Every.  Twelve.  Minutes.

Still think America has the #1 healthcare system there ever was?

Every 12 minutes that goes by with a congressman/woman saying “we need more time to work on this reform thing” — they are indirectly consigning another American citizen to death.  It’s sickening.

Orb FAQ — ASSAP

Judging by the number of web sites dedicated to orbs, they fascinate many people. And yet, if you ask any serious paranormal researcher, they will dismiss most, if not all, orbs as photographic artifacts. Indeed, many of the web sites dedicated to orbs admit as much. So why do orbs continue to exert such interest?

One reason must be that they are relatively common and easy to produce. For every picture apparently showing a ghost, there must be thousands featuring orbs.

If someone shows you photos with ‘orbs’ and insists they’re angels or some divine phenomena, check the site above.  Or look at the Wikipedia entry.  Hell, just run a Google search and you’ll find dozens of websites not just debunking such photos but showing exactly how anybody can shoot them with nothing more than a cheap digital camera and easy-to-duplicate conditions.

In virtually every instance of people swearing they’ve captured pictures of angels or ghosts or half-phased plasma aliens or whatever, I can just about guarantee the following*:

• The camera is a short focal-length small digital camera (not a D-SLR or 35mm film camera)
• The picture was taken in low light conditions or at night
• There is dust, rain, smoke, or fog in the air (usually it’s dust)
• Flash was used (and on these small cameras, the flash unit is right next to the lens, providing maximum perpendicular reflection)

(*Notes: It is possible to create orb photos without flash, but these are more rare, requiring a strong light source (such as the sun) behind the camera.  Occasionally you can get lens flares or dust reflection images with SLR-style and larger cameras, but it’s harder and the fact it’s just an optical artifact is more patently obvious.  The odd semi-discernible patterns in the small camera-produced orbs are actually caused by the LCD chip and how it translates incoming out-of-focus photons into a recorded digital image; they’re not magical floating Om symbols or sacred geometry yantras.)

Seriously, if you show me a picture with a crowd at night, in the middle of a bark-shred covered field, and a bunch of reflection orbs above them, don’t expect me to dispense with my college-level education in photography, optics, physics, and the simple application of Occam’s Razor.  You’re just shooting a large cloud of dust particles, thrown up in the air by all those people shuffling around.  If it’s a big party or gathering, there will also be moisture from people’s breath and perspiration, rising in the heat generated by dozens of human bodies in close proximity.  The closest dust particles look big because they’re close and the most out-of-focus.

It’s not magic or a miracle — it’s science.  Not just an unproven hypothesis either, but a rational explanation which is demonstrable in a repeatable fashion using rigorous scientific methodology.  I trust the scientist who not only can explain to me why these orb images occur, but also why they have the specific features and visual artifacts they commonly display.

The other day I joked to my spouse that I ought to take my little Olympus digi-cam to the immense cattle pens near Coalinga, California, next to I-5.  Vast acres of bovines raising a cloud of dust so extensive it creates traffic hazards on the nearby highway if the winds are right (or wrong).  (It’s also a place where you really, really want to have your vehicle’s ventilation system set to recirculate… trust me on this.) “Oooh, look! Hundreds of angels for each cow!”  Yeah right…must be morbid angels, because that’s a beef processing facility.

Insisting such photos are full of angels or spirits hugely undermines a person’s credibility with those, like myself, who know how stuff actually works. You might as well be trying to persuade me that a team of giant invisible swans hauls the sun across the sky each day.  You want to believe it, go ahead — but don’t expect me to buy into your fantasy or to act like I’m amazed.

Furthermore, when someone espouses this kind of junk-science / pseudo-spiritualism as evidence supporting their belief systems, I am very unlikely to give credence to anything else this person might say, especially with regard to the rest of their non-scientific philosophical, religious or spiritual ideas, however sensible, enlightened or profound.

Why?  Because if someone insists I accept the miraculous origins of their ‘angel-orb’ pictures, despite the otherwise perfectly rational and scientifically provable explanations, how can I trust anything else they say?  I’ll be asking myself, ‘Are they just as credulous about their beliefs?  How do I know it isn’t all just something ridiculous they chose to believe without question, understanding, or proof?  Or maybe they’re just making it all up to see how much rank foolishness I’ll swallow…’

I can forgive an honest mistake or someone reaching the wrong conclusion because they did not have all the information.  But to continue to insist something is a miracle, magical, or paranormal in the face of obvious, rational evidence of ordinary-world science displays a degree of willful self-ignorance I simply won’t abide or tolerate.  I’ll tell you you’re wrong and why; if afterwards you still insist you’re still right, I’ll conclude you’re an idiot.  I may be kind enough not to tell you so to your face, but I guarantee it will be what I’m thinking.

If you’ve wandered here and happen to be one of the fervent angel-orb believers, and haven’t turned away in offended anger already, please allow me to pose a few questions to ponder:  First, exactly who told you the orbs were absolute evidence of something supernatural?  Are they an actual authority on the matter and can they prove their claims, or might they too have been misled by bad information and a desperate desire to believe in something ‘magical’ despite ample physical evidence to the contrary?  Secondly, do your deeply held spiritual beliefs truly depend on believing something that is easily debunked by anyone with the curiosity to perform a simple experiment and a willingness to learn a little about the physics of optics & digital cameras?

With so many actual, genuine miraculous events in the world, we really don’t need to make ourselves look foolish, uneducated, and disreputable by ignoring rational, accurate scientific explanations for ordinary, non-miraculous phenomena.  Even if it looks pretty.  Or happened in a place, at a time, when far more subtle and powerful miracles occurred well away from the error-prone reach of cheap digital cameras.

The Brunswick News – Home Page
“Every individual has the right to choose their own doctor and that’s why I’m opposed to universal health care,” (Senator Saxby) Chambliss said. “There will come a point where the right to choose your own doctor will be made by the government and not the individual, and that is fundamentally wrong.”

Apparently Senator Chambliss has never heard of Preferred Provider Networks, HMOs, PPOs or those dreaded words “out of network.”

He still has this quaint notion that insurance companies don’t already tell people which doctors they can and can’t see.

Cheney Offers Sharp Defense of C.I.A. Interrogation Tactics – NYTimes.com
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday sharply criticized the Obama administration’s decision to investigate the abuse of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency as he delivered a forceful defense of the full range of interrogation techniques used by intelligence officers.

Never mind the fact that what Cheney’s defending — torture — is illegal, felonious, a war crime, and a moral abomination.

I don’t care what the excuse is.  The deliberate inflicting of torture on someone is evil — and worst of all are those who justify and order it.

I would not want that man’s karma, nor wish it upon anyone else.

Via McClatchey today:

Cheney, who strongly opposes the Obama administration’s new probe into alleged detainee abuse, was asked in the Fox News interview whether he was “OK” with interrogations that went beyond Justice’s specific legal authorization.

“I am,” the former vice president replied.

“My sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks,” he said. “It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well.”

“Enhanced interrogation techniques” refers to waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and nine other tactics — some of which are considered torture.

Which, incidentally, is a felony crime under U.S. law and signed treaties.  Numerous laws and treaties.

Torturing someone to death, as happened on many occasions to prisoners in U.S. custody, is a crime that can earn the federal death penalty.

Cheney also said that Obama, who declared at the beginning of his term that he wanted to avoid revisiting Bush-era policies, should’ve been more involved with Holder’s decision. The White House has said the probe, a preliminary review, was properly an independent decision made by Holder.

“The president of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer in the land,” Cheney said. “I think he’s trying to duck the responsibility for what’s going on here. And I think it’s wrong.”

Funny… it used to be George W. Bush’s job to be the chief law enforcement officer in the land, and his administration seemed to spend all of its time writing memos exempting themselves from any responsibility to uphold or adhere to the very laws they were charged to enforce.

Cheney is an evil, evil man.

Just some random wonderings and wanderings in today’s crazy world:

• I truly wonder how stupid and uneducated someone has to be not to know that Medicare is a government-run single payer medical program.  Same goes for the V.A. health system.  And TriCare is a gov’t run health insurance program.  And every single government employee — federal, state, and local — is actually receiving government-provided, mandated, and regulated health insurance.  Yet there are people out there who still think private insurance is suddenly endangered.
• I also wonder why it hasn’t occurred to a smart Congresscritter (but then I probably note my contradiction right there) to introduce a bill that simply says, “Every American citizen and legal resident shall be eligible for Medicare coverage, regardless of age or income.”  How to pay for it?  Just repeal the irresponsible Bush-era tax cuts and remove the upper income cap on SSA taxes.  Ending a couple of wars, both of which have run twice as long as WW2, would also help.
• I’d rather have my government setting insurance benefits, because ultimately it answers to us, the voters.  This, as opposed to an insurance company bureaucrat who gets bonuses based on how many claims they reject and how many policies are canceled.  Let’s face it, the gloried Hand of the Free Market wants (1) to take as much money as possible from healthy people who don’t need much if any actual medical care and (2) for chronically and/or seriously ill people to die quickly so as not to cost them profits.
• Unfortunately, what I fear we’ll get from these latest ‘reform’ efforts is (1) a requirement everybody buy health insurance, but (2) no requirement for companies to actually sell that insurance to a given person, (3) no requirement that insurance cover anything, and (4) no laws to stop private insurance companies from denying coverage, refusing to cover ‘pre-existing conditions’,  or retroactively canceling a policy.  Why?  Because the GOP leadership has gone rabid and far too many of the Dems are utter paid-for shills for the healthcare industry lobbyists.
• The GOP spokesweasels and ‘leaders’ are lying so much about literally everything, like the ’stupid’ I referred to a few weeks ago, the falsehoods threaten to become a singularity of mendacity.  Now, as Michael Steele (GOP party leader) has shown in the last day, he’s had to argue that Medicare must be protected from the evil Dems — and that it’s such a bad program it ought to be privatized ASAP.  The increasing factual dissonance literally makes my fillings hurt.
• For those who think it’s okay to torture and inflict pain on prisoners, including detainees who are merely suspected of committing or contemplating ‘acts of terror’, I wonder if they actually believe such treatment would be acceptable if inflicted on captured American troops or citizens — the waterboarding, the stress positions, the sleep deprivation, the sado-sexual assaults on dignity, all of it.  There are reasons, good ones, why every single treaty and law on the subject forbids torture and mistreatment for any purpose whatsoever…and yet, there are people who think themselves good, just, and ethical, who think it’s fine to threaten a guy with having his mother raped in front of him, and where an ‘accidental death’ due to torture is merely a ‘whoopsie’.  How the hell did we become so bloodthirsty and sadistic as a people?
• I wonder how someone can reasonably be declared “an illegal enemy combatant” when, from their point of view, they are defending their own country against an unwanted invading force.  I’m not saying they should be let go, but what was so inadequate with the tried-and-trusted ‘Prisoner of War’ status?
• Related to that, how can we possibly claim to represent freedom, liberty, justice, presumption of innocence and the rule of law — unless one is accused of being a terrorist, a status which automatically conveys a sentence of indefinite detention and treatment that breaks the mind, body, and soul?  No proof needed, no trial, just an assertion from those who’ve already proven to be liars and scoundrels.  When I grew up, it was always the evil, tyrannical regimes that would snatch someone off the street, disappear them into a dark cell, hide them from the Red Cross and perform unspeakable torments on them.  People were tried and convicted not just for inflicting the torture and illegal detentions, but those who ordered it were held even more responsible.  Look what happened to Pinochet.  Anyone remember the Nuremberg Trials anymore?  Now, America is doing it, and justifying it not with morals or ethics, but through ridiculously solipsistic self-justifying garbage legal memos.   A reminder: “I was following orders” wasn’t a valid defense, and those who wrote such orders received the harshest sentences of all.
• Side thought:  I wonder if Cheney, Yoo, Addington, Gonzales, Bybee, and Rumsfeld know they’re at risk for arrest if they travel abroad.  If we don’t investigate and prosecute, some other nation or international court will eventually.
• A genuine terrorist is just about by definition an evil person.  Yet how we treat them reflects on who and what we are as a people.
• If the imprisonment forever and torture of terrorism suspects becomes accepted and ‘legal’, it is only a matter of time before petty crimes are reclassified as terrorism… as well as posts like this one (dissent).  It might take a generation or two, but it is an almost inevitable progression.  (Already, certain drug-related crimes are being reclassified as terrorist conspiracies.)
• Those who are shouting the loudest now about our government having Nazi policies sure were damned quiet and content back when wearing the wrong t-shirt or having the wrong bumper sticker on your car could get you arrested at GOP political events.  I wonder how those pistol-toting tea-bagger protesters would feel about being herded off to a cyclone-fenced “Free Speech Zone” corral half a mile from Democratic political events.
• Shouting down the opposition is not Free Speech, nor is it winning the debate.  It is the tactic of thugs.
• We Americans are a remarkably gullible and easily manipulated people.   So many of us are led by fear and lies, and we don’t even see for ourselves when those lies are blatant.  Anyone remember Iraq’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, which turned out not to exist at all?  Or this ‘Death Board’ nonsense, when it was the GOP leadership who originally insisted that end-of-life counseling be covered?  Or how poll after poll has shown that 3 out of 4 Americans want a public option healthcare system, and still countless Representatives and Senators (both GOP and Dem) insist we don’t?
• Senator Ted Kennedy:  Rest in Peace.  I’m sorry we didn’t manage to pass real, comprehensive healthcare reform before you passed over to the hallowed shores…
• I know this was kind of a wandering piece, but I was just following a kind of stream-of-consciousness.  I think there is a connection between the lack of empathy we have towards each other, and what seems to have become acceptable behavior from our government and between ourselves.  We, as a people and a a culture, really need to stop feeding on the negativity, the anger, and the fear, else it will one day soon destroy us utterly.