Image: American flag with these words written in the white stripes: Freedom isn’t free. It requires you to be cool that not everyone agrees with you.
Freedom isn’t free
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The Guardian: Decision to deny surgery to obese patients is like ‘racial discrimination’
The group said it had taken the decision because it was the “best way of achieving maximum value from the limited resources available”.
No, really, this is a great idea. Let’s change perfectly legal human behavior ex post, as we say in the law biz, by refusing to treat them when this (did I mention perfectly legal?) behavior requires it, and save a boatload in hospital costs, as well.
- Injured in a car accident because you weren’t wearing a seat belt? Before we stitch up your head and set your leg, you’ll have to wait six months and take a driving safety course.
- Too many G&Ts and now your liver is shot? We’ll wait til you sober up and then treat you.
- Gout? You’ll have to spend six months on a macrobiotic diet before you can even get an appointment.
- Sports injury? Seriously, that is all your fault. Spend six months vegging on the sofa with a book like the good Lord intended, and maybe we’ll see to your torn ACL.
- Shot by a jealous spouse/lover? Probably should have thought about that before stepping out on them. Six months of counseling and we’ll be happy to help you with that gun shot wound.
And the great thing, costsavingswise, is that most of the time, you’ll be dead by the time you are eligible for treatment, which is a huge savings.
Source: Decision to deny surgery to obese patients is like ‘racial discrimination’ | Society | The Guardian
Mother Jones: I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump’s Biggest Fans. Here’s What They Won’t Tell You.
The deep story was a feels-as-if-it’s-true story, stripped of facts and judgments, that reflected the feelings underpinning opinions and votes. It was a story of unfairness and anxiety, stagnation and slippage—a story in which shame was the companion to need.
. . .
We may never know if Trump has done this intentionally or instinctively, but in any case he’s created a movement much like the anti-immigrant but pro-welfare-state right-wing populism on the rise in Europe. For these are all based on variations of the same Deep Story of personal protectionism.
My sense is that we should not be making fun of Trump voters. I depart from Elizabeth Warren on this. If we are going to be stronger together, we need to include these folks — not by pandering to their fears and prejudices but by respecting them as people (if not their views) and figuring out how to build a future that includes them.
Source: I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump’s Biggest Fans. Here’s What They Won’t Tell You. | Mother Jones
What Did Donald Trump Imply? (Guest post!)
I’m not a lawyer. I’m a mom. More specifically, I’m Amy’s mom. She’s swamped with work, so I’m pinch-hitting. [Thanks, Mom! – ed.]
Like many people I was appalled by Donald Trump’s apparent incitement to violence as part of the speech he gave in Wilmington, N.C. on August 9. On August 10, both the Washington Post and the New York Times led with reports on the implications of this speech, and both papers editorialized about it.
With a hat tip to linguists professor Geoffrey Pullum for the context, here’s what Mr. Trump said:
Hillary wants to abolish
— essentially abolish —
the Second Amendment.
By the way,
if she gets to pick her judges… [long pause]
Nothing you can do, folks. [long pause]
Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.
Many people, myself included, felt that this was a call to assassinate Hillary Clinton. In political speeches, as in stand-up comedy, timing is everything, and Professor Pullum’s insertion of the pauses is important. After Mr. Trump says, “Nothing you can do folks,” he pauses, as if he were thinking about what he had just said. As if he were saying to himself that possibly there is something that can be done [about his ridiculous claim that a president can single-handedly abolish part of the U.S. Constitution]. He then says, “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is [something you can do], I don’t know.”
The Trump campaign says that interpreting this as incitement to violence is nonsense. He was merely saying that people who value their Second Amendment privileges should be sure to vote in November. But if you watch the video of this passage of the speech (there are dozens on YouTube), you will see someone (red t-shirt or polo shirt) sitting behind and to the left of Mr. Trump whose jaw drops. He can’t believe Trump just said that. If you keep watching, you’ll see that this same guy breaks into a big smile and turns, laughing, to the woman sitting next to him. What’s Mr. Red Shirt thinking? “Wow! Did Trump just give us permission to go out and shoot Hillary?” Or is he thinking, “Yeah, he’s right. We gotta remember to vote on November 8.” As the sportscasters sometimes say, “You make the call.”
The Washington Post editorialized as follows: “If Mr. Trump were not a major-party presidential candidate, his comment Tuesday might have earned him a stern visit from the Secret Service.” The New York Times’s editorial reminds us of the New Hampshire delegate to the Republican Convention, Al Baldasaro, who said that Ms. Clinton should “be put in the firing line and shot for treason.” “That comment,” says the Times,” wound up on the Secret Service’s radar. Mr. Trump’s comment should as well.”
What does the law say about these kinds of remarks? Check out 18 U.S.C. § 879, which says
(a)Whoever knowingly and willfully threatens to kill, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon- [(1), (2) and (4) a former President, member of the former President’s immediate family; President, Vice-President, President-elect and immediate families; a person protected by the Secret Service…]
And then there’s subsection (3):
(3) a major candidate for the office of President or Vice President, or a member of the immediate family of such candidate
Ms. Clinton qualifies under three of the four subsections: immediate family of a former president, major candidate for president, and a person under the protection of the Secret Service.
So what’s going to happen to a person who “knowingly and willfully” threatens to kill, etc. someone listed in sections 1 through 4?
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
Two things are pretty clear to me and to many other people: Donald Trump threatened the life of Hillary Clinton, and such threats are illegal and subject to fines, imprisonment, or both. Two major newspapers have said or implied that Mr. Trump should be at least investigated under 18 U.S.C § 879, but, somehow, I doubt that he will be. I would be investigated if I said that. You would, too. But probably not Donald Trump.
Flossing and the dental hygiene paradigm of race discourse | Nonprofit With Balls
As always, Vu Le, at Nonprofit with Balls, says it best:
Flossing and the Dental Hygiene Paradigm of Race Discourse
[Quoting Jay Smooth:] “We don’t assume, I’m a clean person therefore I do not need to clean my teeth. Being a clean person is something you maintain and work on every day […] And when someone suggests to us that we’ve got something stuck in our teeth, we don’t say, ‘I have something stuck in my teeth?! But I’m a clean person!’”
Undoing racism and other forms of injustice is a practice we must do every day, like brushing our teeth, according to Jay Smooth. We must look in the mirror constantly. And like brushing, on some days, we’re better at it than on others. On occasion, we don’t spend enough time, and we still have bits of gross stuff stuck in our chompers even though we feel minty fresh. Sometimes we’re lazy and just gargle with some bourbon and call it a night.
…
With all the injustice out there that we are trying to fight, let’s give each other some grace. Let’s admit we don’t know everything and we can’t be perfect. Let’s all lower our defenses and see each other as imperfect human beings trying hard to do some good in a complex world. And when someone says, “Hey, you got a little bit of racism (or sexism, or ableism, or ageism, etc.) stuck in your teeth,” we thank them, do some looking in the mirror to remove it, and continue forward to make our world better.
Source: Flossing and the dental hygiene paradigm of race discourse | Nonprofit With Balls
If people stopped throwing things away, this would lead to less anxiety for garbage collectors, who are only trying to do their job.
how about people stop breaking the law. this might in turn lead to less anxiety for the police who are only trying to do their job.
If people stopped breaking the law, there would be no job for the police to do.
It is their job to deal with law-breakers. Preferably non-lethally. The problem arises when they (demonstrably) deal with similarly-situated law-breakers breaking similar laws (CD/cigarette sales; traffic violations) or similarly-situated citizens not breaking any damn laws at all (driving with a legal concealed-carry permit; being a behavioral therapist trying to prevent harm to a client) based (demonstrably) on the color of their skin or their disability.
“They were breaking the law” is not an excuse for the unequal application of lethal or even non-lethal force by the police. “Do your damn job,” is the appropriate response to this excuse.
I get that it is a hard and dangerous job, and I deeply respect the good people who have stepped up to do it. But it is a job in which we as a society trust you and give you — yes, give you; it’s not yours without the badge that we give you — the right to use force when appropriate. If you’re not up for doing that fairly — regardless of how brave or heroic you may be — it is not the job for you. Take your biases to a job where they are less likely to cause physical harm and death.
Hostile Environment; or Stained Glass What the Fuck?
For generations, African-American employees and students have had to eat in the dining hall of a residential college — named, then and (stubbornly) now, for slavery advocate John C. Calhoun — and stare up at this stained glass window:
It simply defies comprehension that this was allowed to remain. The thought of trying to work, learn, teach, or even eat in the presence of this rights-erasing, humanity-denying decor makes me disgusted beyond words. It would be like having a stained glass window of a gas chamber, torture device, or sanitarium.
I have previously blogged about Things That Are Inexplicably OK, like tenured Princeton professors advocating infanticide of disabled kids or a sports team in our nation’s capital named after a racist epithet. This is way up there with all that. Another respected institution of higher learning, this one decorated with a depiction of slavery.
Until today! Yale dishwasher and civil rights action hero Corey Manafee stuck a broomstick through it. Window smashed; problem (at least the decor problem) solved.
“I took a broomstick, and it was kind of high, and I climbed up and reached up and broke it,” he said. “It’s 2016, I shouldn’t have to come to work and see things like that.”
“I just said, ‘That thing’s coming down today. I’m tired of it,’” he added. “I put myself in a position to do it, and did it.”
Damn right you shouldn’t have to come to work and see things like that. My view is: every African-American who has had to work or study in that space has a hostile environment claim.
But Corey Menafee enters my personal Civil Rights Getting Shit Done Hall of Fame, along with Bree Newsome, who climbed up a flagpole and took down the Confederate flag, and the mayor of New Paltz, New York, who started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples (for a brief time until he was ordered to stop) in 2004.
Don’t wait for permission to do the right thing; just get shit done.
