Reliable Reaction: Who? One of Us?

.
This morning on Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz talked to Bill Press and Kathleen Parker about whether Bill O'Reilly is accountable for the murder of Kansas women's health doctor, Dr. Tiller.

I won't bore you with the apologist, he's one of us--talkers--attitude coming from all three about O'Reilly. At least Bill Press offered some caveat about being mindful of one's words.

No one disagrees that ultimately the killer [I will not name him, I will not add to his notoriety and cause celebre...] is accountable.

However, here's what's missing from the conversation. Where among all these talkers is the woman speaking out, telling why a late term abortion was a necessary medical choice for her? No, the talkers all accept as default that "late term abortion" is wrong without having any understanding of what medical conditions are at issue.

Speaking out takes courage, as one woman writing to the Minneapolis Tribune this weekend showed in describing her infant who starved within days because of a solid esophagus and intestines that were a fibrous mass. A Catholic, she chose not to terminate the pregnancy against doctor's advice. But she had the choice.

Speaking out also takes a media environment that treats

Welcome to America

.
Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.

Emma Lazarus

An old man, tired, weary, a Baptist minister, flees danger in Haiti and comes to America, seeking political asylum. Instead of freedom, America greets him with a detention center, and, when he falls ill, deficient medical care, and finally, hospitalization, where he dies alone.

His family here in America are not permitted to visit him.

A young woman from Somalia, fleeing a country where her family were killed, comes to America, seeking political asylum. Instead of freedom, she is detained and put on heavy duty antipsychotic medicine until a human rights group can arrange for her care and release.

Watching Scott Pelley's 60 Minutes report last night, the old man's niece recounting his last days, the frustration, and ultimately the sorrow, I wondered again, what have we allowed America to become?

60 Minutes collaborated with the Washington Post's singular genius reporter, Dana Priest, to report on the detention centers the Bush Administration has set up around the country to house warehouse immigrants seeking political asylum. They are not pretty places.

A middle-aged woman sits awaiting a life-and-death determination of whether she'll be deported. Since last August. Meanwhile, the lump in her leg continues to grow. From the Post:

Harvill is one of 33,000 immigration detainees in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, on any given day. They are locked up in a patchwork of out-of-the-way federal detention compounds, private prisons and local jails. This unnoticed prison system was built for a quick revolving door of detainees -- into custody, out of the country. But often, people linger in detention for months or years.

These detainees, like other prisoners, are by law and regulation entitled to medical services if they are sick. But Harvill's journey through immigration detention provides a glimpse into a medical system that often fails those who need it most. It is an upside-down world where patients have no say, doctors and nurses on site have little power to administer timely treatment, and a managed-care system in Washington operates from a rulebook that emphasizes what is not covered rather than what is.

Immigrants...detainees...the line is blurring as the bureaucracy and the social compact of this country breaks down under the combined weight of the Bush Administration/Republican way of governance, its policies and incompetence.

"You know that there are people watching this interview who are saying to themselves, 'Castaneda was an illegal immigrant. He had a drug conviction. The people of the United States owed him nothing,'" Pelley remarks.

"I'm sure there's people out there that think that," Doyle acknowledges. "But that's not what the law is. And that's not what a civilized society does. And you know, if it's true that you judge the degree of civilization in a society by entering its prisons, the United States has a long way to go on this particular issue."

It would be too quick, too easy to say "after 9/11, everything changed." Because really, 9/11 long since has ceased to be an event and instead become an enabling excuse. The Bush/Republican way of governance was etched in stone long before those Twin Towers crumbled that morning. That was just the shock and awe that gave Bush and his neocon Big Oil war machine cronies an opportunity to rape, pillage and plunder this country in a manner so brazen it is stunning.

Well, yes, but what does it matter, Prairie, if a few sick people who aren't even real Americans don't get medical care?

What does it matter, indeed. In a similar context, I wondered that earlier last week at the report that the Indiana voter fraud blocked a group of real desperadoes from voting—nuns in their 80s and 90s.

And another poem filled my mind:
They came for...

You know it. If you don't, google Niemoller, it's past time you did.

But after watching 60 Minutes last night, and musing on this whole business of Sundays, and Mother's Days, and then reading Dana Priest's first in a series "Careless Detention," another mother came to mind.

A young girl, pregnant, unmarried, forced to travel from one land to another to be counted. And the child she bore. Oh, there are loads of self-righteous fauxes who call themselves "Christian" and "compassionate conservative" and.... And they rule this land right now, they're entrenched in the bureaucracy of the government and the tony addresses on K Street, and the gleaming white bastion of SCOTUS.

And their prisons and their detention centers define them. And the rest of us. Never forget that. They define us, too. As Barack Obama has noted, "the fierce urgency of now"...it compels us all to be better than we have been.

Because, whatsoever ye do unto the least of my brethren, ye do unto me.

Playing for Pride

This being Super Bowl weekend, there’s much talk of the Patriots’ undefeated season. Why even bother to show up, Giants? Oh, yeah, it’s the Super Bowl, you suit up and get out there and kick A. Or try.

By the end of the football season here in Prairie Country, there’ve been a lot of teams, high school and college, about whom it gets said: they’re playin’ for pride.

Except, pride’s taken a lot of hits of late.

Because of pride—hubris, stubbornness, “gut instinct,” I’m gonna do it my way and nobody’s gonna tell me otherwise and I’ve made up the intelligence to prove it and besides Cheney says its all right.

Because of pride—we’re right so we’re going to ram thru our Republican-controlled Congress for years whatever we damn well please, and then we’re going to appeal to the pride of one of yours, and even if you Dems are in control we’re going to show you who’s really runnin’ the show.

Because of pride—hey, look at us, we’re preachin’ the gospel of prosperity on Wall Street and in the megachurches and we’re flyin’ high in our corporate jets on the fumes of glory.

Mr. Sunshine linked me to an essay at MarketWatch that had something interesting to say about pride. Now, I’m presuming since this is a columnist writing on ethics I’ll have no trouble finding similar strong-worded commentary about the role of the bankers [due diligence anyone?] and the money lenders and the money bundlers and the lack-of-oversight by government regulators and…what’s this? Just brush that aside with a broad brush?

But still, there is this:

It would be better if people looked at their homes as a nice place to live and a good place for their kids to grow up and not just as an investment. They'd stay put longer and maybe gain some pride.

Right now pride is at a low point in this country. We need to stand firm and tall—not walk away. And it seems to me that our homes are a good place to start restoring that pride.

Pride is really out of whack lately, battered by the twin forces of wretched excess—hubris on the one side and shame on the other. We’ve been led down the path that was promised to be strewn with roses and too many of us still don’t want to look at the truth. And too many in power have a vested interest in not telling us the truth.

Or telling that part of the truth that serves their interests.

Do they take pride in their work? How’s that taking a cold hard look in the mirror thing workin’ out, Tim and Chris and Brian and Charlie and Katie and…I almost tucked in a Fox name or two, but they have no pride over there that isn’t so tainted I don’t even want to include ’em. And huzzah, the era of the right-wing radio screeders seems to’ve peaked. Wrap their pride in a cigar wrapper and set ’em out in the sun ’til they’re done.

We’re winding down the season on Team Bush. But it’s not over yet. And we’ve been lied to and cheated on and the refs have had sand thrown in their eyes and some have taken a little something in the back pocket and it’s a pretty dirty game out there these days.

For seven years we’ve been led by a cheerleader catapulting the propaganda and trying to draw our eyes from the real games that are going on.

And so we must suit up. And get on the playing field with honor and enthusiasm and, yes, pride.

Pride for team, and home…and country.

Let Them Eat Mud Cookies

This morning in Prairie Country, the usual parade of honkin’ big Hummers and SUVs bearing one parent-one child were on their way to the school we pass by daily. This being Country, there’s plenty of talk around here about energy costs, and are those out in the western oil patch a getting a fair price for their crude, and should we build a refinery…hey, we have our own state-owned bank and state-owned mill. That’s us, a little bit Red State, a little bit shhhhh “socialist.”

Will there be a surge in gas prices again this spring? Will it hit $4 a gallon? How’s that going to affect the farmers growin’ for biodiesel? Yeah, there’s a whole lotta talk about energy around here.

This day in Haiti, mothers will be making mud cookies to feed themselves to keep from starving. Yes, “cookies” made from dirt, a bit of shortening, and water. Think about that the next time you’re bellyin’ up to the drive-thru lane at McDonalds…or belly-achin’ about the high costs you pay for grapes this time of year, or the cost of gas at the pumps.

The local daily, part of a network of family owned newspapers, published the same story as you’ll find at the link to National Geographic News. Funny thing, though. Apparently they figured we readers couldn’t understand the story without a third of a page photo of the “cookies.” Unfortunately, something had to be cut…and for them it was the section about the impact of Big Oil prices on food in the Caribbean.

So for any readers out there who live in Prairie Country, here’s what you missed:

Food Prices Up

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation, and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places. [Credit: Associated Press]

For too long we’ve been led around by a business philosophy that neatly—for themselves—looks at the quick fix, short term profit numbers and ignores the real costs of doing business. And that’s not just about people starving because their food costs are too high because Big Oil is profiteering from their puppet in the White House. Remember, it was George himself who described the “haves and the have-more’s” as his base. He should’ve called ’em the Vampire Capitalists that they are. Sucking the lifeblood from people literally and economically.

These guys are feeding off themselves, though, too. And that’s the bitter pill that will ultimately catch up on all of us unless something changes. While poverty festers around the globe, the fat hogs of Big Oil and the Tweetymedia, which divert attention from reality with American Idol-style tracking of political campaigns, take away from what could be savvy business for the long term.

Bring people up out of poverty, here and abroad, and you create a global population of consumers who can afford to buy your products. Sustain the planet with wise use of resources and innovative technologies, and you can begin to reach out to the stars…literally, not just in nostalgic replays of “one small step for mankind….” Or the latest sequel to Star Trek.

We lost the hemp industry to timber lobbying crying crocodile tears about marijuana menace—a big lie, and now renewable crops/agricultural income are lost. Vast swaths of timber are razed to make paper that crumbles into dust within short years while the air breathes a little harder without the trees’ recirculating power.

The cycle repeats itself now with Big Oil with its grotesque profits and still we subsidize and the President holds hands with the subsidizers of those who have already tumbled our Twin Towers and want to do worse.

At the end of the day, all these issues are interwoven. There is no energy policy without impact on food. There is no trade policy without impact on the pockets of Main Street and no street.

The president’s favorite philosopher said: whatsoever ye do to the least of my brethren. And Do Unto Others. So, how’s that Stewardship of the Planet thing workin’ out?

Yesterday was a disappointing day because John Edwards suspended his presidential bid. But my disappointment is tempered with the fervent hope that the Vampire Capitalists out there—and the politicians and media who harbor them—will have a lot more to fear from John Edwards, the proven champion already, as Paladin fighting poverty than as President sitting in the Oval.