Spread Out

Wanted to send a quick shout out to Amanda at Blogger Buster for helping me convert my super crowded sidebar into a neater three-column display.

What do you think?

UPDATE:
Very happy with Amanda's template. Only one small catch. I didn't want the AddThis bookmark to appear under each post. Here's how to get rid of it.

1. Sign into Blogger.
2. Click on Layout, then Edit HTML.
3. Check Expand Widget Templates.
4. Press CTRL-F and type in AddThis. This will take you to the marker signifying where the AddThis bookmark begins. It looks like [!!--AddThis BEGINS]. Remove this code. However, the rest of the code is separated.
5. Search for AddThis again (or click "next" in search box). Scroll down. You'll see a tag reading [p class = post-footer-line-3] where the AddThis bookmark HTML continues. Starting from the p class, highlight all the HTML from this point to the terminating /p tag.
6. You should delete about six lines of code total. The deleted section will include the p class opening tag, the div align for the bookmarker, and the image source and link for the bookmarker. The last thing deleted should be the [!!--AddThis ENDS].
7. Preview your template. If it looks okay, save it.

I don't knock the AddThis service, so I just went back to their website to get button code that I could put elsewhere on my blog. I placed the button in the Subscribe area on the right. Should you do the same, when it asks what kind of service you use, don't select Blogger. Select "Website," your button, then "No analytics" (since I use StatCounter for that), and you'll get one simple line of code to put wherever you like.

CODE REMOVED:
STEP 4:
[!-- AddThis Bookmark Post Button BEGIN --]

STEP 5:
[p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'][br/]
[div align='left'][a expr:href='"http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?pub=4QVQQ2TM5XDPAYVN&url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Bookmark using any bookmark manager!'][img alt='AddThis Social Bookmark Button' height='16' src='http://s5.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif' style='border: 0px; padding: 0px' width='125'/][/a][/div]
[!-- AddThis Bookmark Post Button END --][/p]

UPDATE 2:
Simplified and clarified directions, heh. Thanks, Roxanne!

Stories on Health Care

UPDATE: Do you have a health care story you would like to share? Let me know. Feel free to leave a comment in this entry, send a Tweet, or shoot me an e-mail.

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A story from a new blogging friend T. over at Wood Not Wood regarding some of her sentiments on her current HMO. To be fair, the story came out serendipitously. She left a comment on my last entry and I asked for some follow-up.

All I want is one great Doc who doesn't abandon us when they find that the insurance won't pay as much as they'd like for a procedure -- or try to fit treatment into what the insurance company will cover. It's as if the HMO is telling the doctors what they can and cannot do. And it has nothing to do with what's best for the patient, but rather, what's good for the HMO.

I was in the Army and health care was never a concern. We went to the doctor whenever we needed to and, not surprisingly, we didn't need to go often. I think we'd save a lot of money if people were getting regular and preventative healthcare instead of waiting until illnesses become dire and then paying ER costs or worse, needing hospitalization at the taxpayers expense.

I lived for 5 years in Germany and their healthcare system was incredible to me. Nobody there was freaking out about having to pay for the healthcare of the homeless or the jobless because everyone received the same health care. It didn't matter whether you were a millionaire or a street sweeper, you were entitled to good healthcare.

I wonder sometimes if American resistance towards this type of across-the-board care is related to our derision of Communism? The whole idea that everyone pays in equally and receives equally? But this is about life and death. Surely that should be an inalienable right to all of us as human beings.

If it is just about money then common sense and past experience dictate that preventative care is far less expensive than emergency care. As the taxpayers who are footing the bill we should demand the least expensive solution over the long haul. I'd love to think of my kids growing up in a world where no 'company' has the right to decide who is worthy of good health or how physicians can treat their patients.

There's a lot of good stuff in her narrative that speaks for itself, so I'll just stick with a general comment that has been on my mind lately. Obama stuck it to the conservative dissidence by questioning openly how competition between the government and the private sector would yield a subsequent meltdown of capitalism.

Here's a second one. If front-end investment yields bigger long-term savings, then when it is not a good idea to back that up? The rhetorical kneejerking might sound (to some extent) wonderfully reminiscent of a young child's temptation to blow a sum of money to satisfy some immediate gratification -- a cool outfit, maybe a new video game -- rather than stash it for the long haul. (Never mind savings interest.) If the public option makes it easier for people to access health care and motivates them to seek checkups ahead of time, we get the ease in burden on the back end. Healthier people now equals less of the heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, and chronic conditions that weigh down the system. Healthy people yield greater work productivity, decreased chronic stress, and increased success at balancing life tasks. Rather than learning how to just "deal" with illness, we can actually treat it and get over it and get on successfully.

If I hear Tom Tancredo wail some nonsense like "biting the Socialist apple" one more time, I'm going to lose it. Just like he lost that former job representing Colorado. (Zing!)

To wrap up, my friend Caroline added a few good quips about her experiences. Originally calculating how even a few extra dollars in income would disqualify her from public assistance, she has since changed job tactics. Wherever she works will pay off health care expenses for her son -- that's it. Needless to say, unless she lucks out securing (typically) full time work with health benefits, it would be difficult to build any meaningful net income.

But it was when she mentioned the sharp contrast in treatment and consideration from medical staff after her pregnancy that I caught notice. "White trash," the idea that presenting Medicare evokes an indifferent smirk and waiting in line. Somehow, laying cash on the table for a co-pay somehow verifies the right to receive care. Are credit cards given that same level of scrutiny? Does your right of treatment relate in any way to the amount of liquid income on hand?

I hope you're trying to consolidate that high balance. And if you can't get care or try to tough it out in the meantime, I wish you luck. It's probably easier to cough up some incessant phlegm than to persuade, trick, and lie your way into getting your health insurance company to cooperate on a claim.

Where is the Audacity?

Yesterday evening, members from the group Tucson Community for Change organized a peaceful demonstration for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The group is asking the representative to support a public option in health care reform. A representative for Ms. Giffords collected the flowers, upon which the organizers tied letters and personal stories in fighting for adequate care.



I have not had much in the way of health insurance throughout much of my life. I was fortunate to have military coverage in early childhood. When my parents divorced, however, my mom's employer did not offer health care coverage and I remember needing to tough through many illnesses with bed rest, chicken soup, and hot tea. The last time I received any kind of significant health care was in high school when I had suffered a seizure in algebra class. I underweat CAT scans and saw a neurologist at our nearby hospital. Several hours of "treatment" and a number of puzzled looks later, I was handed a bill and sent along my merry way. After my mom had been threatened by a collection agency to repay the balance right away, what little I had saved up for school books for the following semester went immediately toward the debt. Only in health care can you get no treatment or meaningful service and are expected to pay for a job well done.

Health care was a very popular issue during last year's presidential campaign with the debate over whether a free-market tax cut or a more thoroughgoing government effort would be necessary in establishing health care reform. Haunted by the dispatch of Clinton's efforts for reform, Democrats today are, if anything, fearful and hesitant. Politicians are strongly divided whereas the American public could not be more clear: the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that a combined 83% of those sampled somewhat or strongly favor a government-run public option in health care.

I cheered when Obama issued the following statement (thanks, Lean Left), point blank:

Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

Obama just proved in one fell swoop that, despite his assumption of the office of President, he has a rather common-sense way of looking at the issue.

"Change!" "Choice!" Despite the path to get there, everyone seemed in agreement last year about how important it is for Americans to be able to shop and get coverage suitable to their needs. McCain deluded himself into thinking that, like car insurance or that spiffy new album available on iTunes, health care providers would provide all the details, information, and pricing on the front end and that we could make our picks accordingly. The real irony in the words "free market" is that those driven by profit would do well to constrain information and accessibility, thus compromising the quality of choices we do have.

This is the same free market that doles out hundreds and thousands of pages of fine print they hope the populace won't read. This is the same free market that executes economic leverage, absorbs competition, and skirts around monopolistic practice. So, why should I put any less trust in a government-run operation when the private sector already left disproportionate numbers of the lower income, poor, minority designation a long time ago?

In all seriousness, I don't know the answer to that question. Bureaucracy in any set of stripes is problematic at times.

I am thoroughly frustrated that the same doctors and nurses and medical staff who uphold Hippocratic principles to do no harm petition the lobbying agencies who bed the politicians and court them into resistance with the promise of campaign financing. The people get them elected, but the money continues to do all the talking. Every now and then, people like Obama get fed up with the nice talk and say, what gives? A Senator gets an incomparable level of health care in return for years of service and a rather cushy job, whereas everyday blokes like myself have to scrounge up co-payments when we get tired of soup and tea. Conservatives place hands over breasts before the altar of the free market, yet are unwilling to offer a true test. And we're not innocent either. We are duped into believing the horror stories about Canadian and European services which are certainly not perfect, yet we are the only first-world industrial country that continues to lag behind Costa Rica and Haiti.

Seriously. Just an inch above Slovenia.

Recommended reading:
Pew Research poll on health care (courtesy of Daily Kos)

Twitter

I finally jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. By the way, let me know if you're on Twitter so I can check you out. Wish me luck!

Ten or Fifteen Hours

Leaving a small footprint about a topic I may want to explore further. I wonder if any of you have insight or information for me regarding the nature of part-time work what with the economic downturn of the past year.

I ask because I talked to someone online today who just moved out here from the East Coast and craved an overall change of life and pace. He mentioned not having much work, and explained that, as of now, he works only a few shifts at a local restaurant while facing rejections of being overqualified for government jobs. I know very little about hiring at the Davis-Monthan Air Base, and I imagine that companies are trying to minimize their labor. Tucson is that much the worse for it since so much of the population leaves during the summer months. Thinking of my own stress in hunting down gainful employment, I imagine that people across the board have had to compromise and seek out whatever they could find, which often requires taking fewer shifts, being less successful in negotiating pay per experience, and being deprived of health and medical benefits often reserved for full-time workers.

Then again, you are talking to someone who has worked multiple jobs for years. Perhaps the food service and retail industries are more prone to underemployment than in other sectors. With that in mind, I can hardly remember a time that my employers were not consumed with profit margins -- always mentioning how sales in a particular week were "down," or that our per-person check averages were too "low." It was as if we were always on the brink of some adverse circumstance, that we were a few dollars above having to let someone go on the staff. This was as recent as the past year when, despite the acknowledgment of fewer people shopping for clothes or treating themselves out for a good meal, no one saw the depression coming.

The easy answer is that businesses are hardly ever on the side of the employee when pitted against profit. The employee is, ultimately, expendable. It is often unclear the extent to which assistant management and higher management are asked to make sacrifices and to take pay cuts in the face of decreasing profit.

Unfortunately, that leaves little recourse for people struggling to generate income, pay bills, relieve debts, or build savings. In a personal finance class, the instructor recommends that people meet financial goals by either reducing expenditures or increasing income. To that end, the first option is limited. We can reduce luxuries, go out to dinner less, cook more meals at home, stay in, and skimp on the premium changes. It is that much more difficult, however, to ask for a pay raise or to manage working multiple jobs. To do multiple jobs would require cutbacks in benefits that, in and of themselves, build security and wealth.

What are your thoughts? Can we expect more of the same until the "economy turns around?"

Depression

I finished an entry for my new blogging friend, Dea, whose blog, Journey to a New Found Me, features practical advice for managing stress, depression, and psychological troubles. She conducted an interview with me about depression. Be sure to send feedback and suggestions her way. She would greatly appreciate it as would I.

Oh my!

I was getting ready to turn in for the night. Before I logged off BlogExplosion, this screen appeared.

Users have a chance to earn increased traffic just by visiting different blogs in random rotation and clicking the correct number to earn credits. Now, I found it odd that I won 10 bonus credits twice this evening, but this is the first time I have won this high a mystery credit amount. Fifty! Holy crap!

Splash pages like the one above pop up every so often, and the credits earned result page views for your own blog. Since I have spent a bit more time this summer on my blog, BE has helped drive up my web traffic and serendipitiously enough putting me in touch with blogs that I might not otherwise visit. Thanks to web traffic services, my feed subscriptions have doubled in a month and I am getting more comments and helpful feedback.

(You'll have to excuse A Gust of Wind for suggesting that eating butter prior to drinking will aid in alleviating premature drunkenness, though.)

In the meantime, if you want to boost your traffic, try BlogExplosion. I enjoy the service and highly recommend it.

More Monkey Business?

The last time anyone made public reference to Obama being related to a monkey, it was in a vindictive political cartoon depicting the stimulus bill clutched by a chimpanzee shot thrice by police. The cartoon, created by Sean Delonas and rife with racially insensitive overtones, appeared originally in the New York Post with defense, and later retractions and apologies from staff.

So, a certain GOP activist in South Carolina decided to up the ante. Transitioning from printed negligence to a posting on Facebook (that has since been removed) and, for the meantime memorialized with television coverage, Rusty DePass compares First Lady Michelle Obama to a gorilla that had escaped a Columbia zoo the other day. CNN offers up details in the footage below.



"I'm sure it's" -- the gorilla that got away -- "just one of Michelle's ancestors -- probably harmless."

DePass apologized if the joke offended anyone at first, but then later justified the joke as something that Mrs. Obama had stated in a speech. Forgive yourself the need to overstretch your limbs on this one. He says that the First Lady made a remark about how humans are descended from monkeys, yet the particular escapee has its name written in the Presidential family tree on the maternal side. Got it.

Conservative critics are batting, by my count, at least five to nothing on the taken-too-far jokes. While Palin's busying herself with an insistence that Letterman apologizes to young women all over the country in alphabetical order yet failing to think twice about the length of her own skirts, they're equally hushed about all this monkey business. Obama food stamps are mistaken as food. Watermelon on the White House lawn is a poor laugh. Oops, I forgot to forward the e-mail to my closest friends, not the entire listservice.

I strain to wonder why the politicos keep the roughshod humor to themselves as opposed to the entertainers who actually have latitude to crack the jokes.

Be that as it may, African-Americans have weathered a long history of unfavorable comparisons to primates and sub-human species. I just ran a Google search on "black people are monkeys" and the first hit leads to ChristWire.org. Check out the headlines appearing right around President Obama's inauguration.

Black peoples [sic] DNA is closer to monkeys DNA.

Appreciably so? As I recall, humans and chimpanzees share roughly 98% of their genetic material in common, and for any statistically significant racial differences to show up would require strong testing. A strong test does not include a side-by-side screen capture of a chimpanzee face and a given African-American face with similarities elucidated regarding nasal structure, the distance between the eyes, lip fullness, and so forth. No source links are included.

Would you advise black women giving up on black men and start going exclusively with white men?

I imagine the trend wouldn't catch on too well the deeper in the South we go. The statement begs the question of any discernible quality white men have by virtue of their racial identity (and that other ethnic groups cannot have) that black women would desire. Beyond statistically significant patterns of higher economic standing, money alone cannot make, create, or change personality characteristics that are more relevant to success in dating and marriage.

Is rap music nothing but monkeys trying to make themselves feel important?

Okay, I suppose that black man/monkey comparison has been successfully proven. I would ask Eminem's opinion first, maybe include Asher Roth. Let me know how that goes for you.

In all seriousness, Terence Mbulaheni pens a prolific account of the history of stereotypes linking African-Americans, jungle barbarism, and likeness to primates, detailing the pernicious and scathing continuation of the stereotype even today. Whether hung up on appearances or overplaying interpretations of sexual prowess and animalistic instinct, black people answer to this cultural indignation and no such white counterpart exists. While Curious George sits aloft sarcastic slogans in Obama's (successful!) presidential run, white persons have no such corresponding charge.

Perhaps a unicorn is appropriate? After all, they are depicted as purely white, holy, sacred, mystical, and worthy of adoration. Monkeys are busy scarfing down bananas, grooming each other for lice, and flinging feces. The real trouble with racial stereotypes is that even if the insulted minority group chooses to stoop to that same level of insensitivity, the stereotype loses its sticking ability. Even from charged commentators like Katt Williams or Cedric the Entertainer, white people are given generic names like "Paul" or "Peter" topped with a nasal accent and overly enforced enunciation. They like golf, Parcheesi, cannot control liquor. But, ultimately, they're still human and the jokes have largely remained isolated with given comedy clubs, and Barnes and Noble has to apologize for creating an Obama display with a monkey book in the middle.

Maybe it would do us all some good if the insensitive would quit doing stupid things and offering half-hearted apologies. Seriously. Take some notes already. If Rusty DePass can't do it, you can't either. When in doubt, assume that it will piss someone off. Assume that guys like me who care about race are going to blog you to death. Imagine how that would look if a big, mean monkey African-American walked by. Don't be surprised if you get nailed with a pair of interlaced knuckles pounding downward from overhead.

Considering the economic crisis, I suppose professionals who offer diversity workshops and sensitivity training are still in high demand.

Two Incidents, Eleven Days

Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported 88-year-old James W. von Brunn approaching the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum armed with a rifle and opening fire within moments of entering the building. A security guard and six-year veteran, 39-year-old Stephen Tyrone Johns, intercepted von Brunn right away. Both men sustained injuries. Johns died later that evening, and von Brunn stunningly survived a blow to the head. At last report, he was in critial condition and is now charged with murder. Von Brunn had been known to the federal justice system. In 1981, he sought to detain executives at the Federal Reserve under "citizen's arrest" and served six years for the activity.

This second incident, following the murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion practitioner and obstetrician in Kansas City, took place a week and a half later.

Sources indicate that the Kansas City women's center in which Tiller worked will close permanently. The real gall, however, is in Operation Rescue's president stating a willingness to make an offer on the clinic. "We need a bigger office," he said. Meanwhile, reporters, commentators, and citizens with half a shred of decency at the Institute of the Maddeningly Insensitive and Inappropriate requested that the bronze statuettes dedicated to heroes of vigilantism and twisted logic not be erected... at least not right away.

Here is some footage of Rachel Maddow's interview with Jennifer Boulanger, an executive director for the Allentown Women's Center, a Pennsylvania medical group for abortion and women's reproductive health. She reports an increase in malicious telephone calling, threats, and protests, and believes that the numbers were already higher with President Obama's election, and a decisive emboldening following Tiller's murder.

Boulanger makes an incredibly intelligent point about the failure of federal and local law enforcement. She states at the end of her interview that more direct measures should be taken to protect patients, clients, and employees of the women's clinics, such as the creation and enforcement of buffer zones and improved training at the local level. During a memorial event for Dr. Tiller hosted by her agency, federal marshals advised her to cancel the ceremony and to stay at home. Her response was unequivocally clear. Rather than ask her to hide and to not do her job as an executive director, the marshals should spend more time following leads and prosecuting. Start with the malicious phone calls. Trace them to their originating phones, get the telephone numbers, and charge for criminal mischief. Capture license plates of vehicles and protesters that are obstructing legal treatment and counsel and cite those individuals for trespass.

The troublesome question remains: Is the brazenness of these activities a sign of more domestic terrorist activity to come? Criminology and sociology professor, Jack Levin of Northeastern University offers his commentary on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown."

Levin understands that the problem of extremist behavior is part situation and part cognitive distortion. In a time of economic uncertainty, jobs lost, real incomes falling, and immigration activity, some segments are already destabilized even on a good day. Couple with this damning, unspecialized ideologies -- anti-Jew, anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-gay, etc., etc. -- and the backdrop of "threat" has passed the violence threshold. Extreme behavior necessitates a belief system that any means necessary, including violence and murder, is no longer the choice of last resort but rather a desperate cry to regain some footing and security in current times.

Moreover, the same political groups that chastised the original right-wing extremism report from the Department of Homeland Security, and demanded that Napolitano apologize for it (for which she did), are now having to answer to a current call for expediency. Meanwhile, supporters and lambasters are now busy stuffing themselves with crow. Conservative commentators like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck are cited here for pushing the narrative that von Brunn was a "lone gunman nutjob," and are decrying von Brunn's far-right political stance even though the man claimed it readily in his Internet history. Media Matters reports that Fox News trails significantly behind its competition in mentioning the Holocaust Museum incident.

Even more appalling, Beck recently interviewed a representative from the Ayn Rand Institute. This gentleman agrees with Rush Limbaugh that von Brunn really was a leftist extremist because any type of hate speech that comes from a collective group must be leftist because right-wing people only believe in individualism. Even though Beck called this guy a "lone" nutjob, which describes an individual taking extreme action on his own, which is what... right-wing nutjobs do? When your brain unties itself out of that knot, let me know.

So, we go back to that original question. Two incidents in eleven days. Whatever is circulating out there on the Internet, two lives have been taken in vain, all to push some sick ideology to illogical extremes. The population that encourages, valorizes, and nearly bastardizes freedom to score political points with a base are the same ones remaining silent about the atrocities of these crimes. We are free to be of a particular religious persuasion, to practice our sets of beliefs, to speak freely and openly, to resist inappropriate censure, and to resist inappropriate intrusion into our daily lives.

While it's okay to knock on the doors of otherwise happy, healthy, protected, legal, and free gay citizens to ridicule their orientations and to deny them the same rights and privileges of marriage as their straight counterparts, no one is too worried about knocking on the doors of whackos with a known history of supremacist behavior. We have technologies to map where the sex offenders live and they are required by law to make their whereabouts known at all times, but we are less willing to put a spotlight on individuals who hang Obama effigies for laughs. We can track and trap predators on the Internet. Brian Williams confronts these guys and gets the serious television ratings. But law enforcement is too squeamish and uncomfortable about visiting supremacist websites and hate groups, and follow tips and leads for a set of individuals already on the edge. Paul Jennings Hill and Carrie Prejean, certainly not comparable for their deeds, of course, become equally martyrized by a deluded public. Never mind what they said; it's the courage to say it that counts. Yet, no one can really cogently explain the courage involved in shooting up people and no one is willing to ask the question.

I'll end this with a joke. How many instances of domestic terrorism does it take to frighten an American public?

Calibrate

In the midst of seeking summer employment, I have been hanging out around here more often during my down time. I have minimized some ads, cut down on some fluff, and added some details where appropriate.

I expanded the welcome statement and, shock, included a photo. (In all fairness, photos of me turn out rather goofy and silly, and I found one that actually looked pretty decent. So, there you are. You get my grinning face greeting you on every page load.) I have expanded the Sharing section since getting active again on the StumbleUpon service. Finally, I have reorganized my blog links and my tags into categorical arrangements for easier viewing.

About FACE and Reciprocation

Continuing to cover the aftermath of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, Rachel Maddow airs a fourteen-minute segment on Roeder's connections to Operation Rescue, a troublesome history with clinic vandalism in Kansas City, and an explanation of the FACE Act. FACE stands for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, established in 1993 which declared intentional damage and destruction to an abortion facility as a federal crime. This statute recognizes that unlike other petty forms of vandalism, that damage and destruction done to an abortion facility is rooted in intentions to "shut down" otherwise legal, medical services and to terrorize the community at large over a hot moral issue.

Again, I find it very difficult to understand the cognitive acrobatics necessary to permit damage and destruction of a legal business, believed to be in consult when and only when the women who sought Dr. Tiller's (and other abortion practitioners) service did the requisite soul-searching. Abortion cannot be likened to some sort of quick convenience service. "Keys made with every dirty coat hanger!" It is insufficient to simply raise one's hand or issue forth a mocking gasp of horror. "We don't support vigilantism," they say, and yet the reality that a certain segment of the public receptive to panic and terror does not slow the flow of anti-abortion propaganda.

A few months ago, I covered a demonstration on the university campus featuring a grotesque moment of graphic photos, inappropriate analogies, and highly dated scientific claims about the risks of abortion. It was hard to stomach at the time, and I imagine that that sentiment has not since changed. But what donned on me earlier is that the debate of the values, morals, and ethics behind abortion has been long reduced to the shock-and-awe. Anything pertaining to context, to real life situations, to personal choice, and beyond this to the implications for women's reproductive health and choice is gone. These elements are unnecessary. These elements are troublesome. These elements inject too much reality into what would otherwise be farcical and ridiculous.

Believe me. I am all for political debate, for issues debate -- even moral debate. (Morality is not a contest of right and wrong, but rather a conceptualization of what gets someone to the moral decision on the record.)

Because if equally hardened left-leaners committed extremist behavior -- bombing of megachurches, vandalizing religious institutions, even threatening harm (and exacting it) to pro-life protestors -- the police would be all over it. The news would be all over it. The right wing would be all over it. Fox News would host Given Kitchen Stuff Relevant to Lefty Terrorism Three Point Oh. And not to play down the philosophies of some of my anarchist readers out there, but I believe the biggest threat they would offer is requisite window-busting. Maybe with Guy La Roche masks. Certainly with bandannas covering everything below the eyes.

When people want to do something about a bothersome social condition, that is when the fundraising, the networking, and the mobilization come into play. Protests take place (which is perfectly okay even outside of an abortion clinic), people write letters and urge citizens and elected officials to act. Even in our most cynical moments, we recognize the real beauty that a mobilized, educated, and aware public -- whether they side with us or not. Even the Proposition 8 supporters did what they did through the legal and appropriate channels to effect change, just as gay marriage supporters will reconvene in the near future or when other states open up legalization on their own avenues.

But what makes a bomb, a knife, or a threat so dangerous is that that kind of opposition ultimately silences people, whether it is done through terror or the sheer brutality of taking an innocent's life.

I am convinced that our country has not experienced in recent history a threat so great -- even Islamic terrorism, I dare say! -- that it would require resolution through bloodbath. Not even September 11. That day is a painful marker in our generation's history, of course, but it is the horror that comes with understanding, sympathizing, and pining away for the innocents being killed. The idea that if we only had a terrorist in our sights, a baseball bat, and five minutes unsupervised would slake some deep guttural, primal instinct to exact revenge as retribution.

To what end? That's the problem with vigilantism. Vigilantism assumes that justice (or some other given lofty ideal) can only be satisfied through the execution of suitable drastic behavior, but it begs the question of sufficience. When do you stop? How many lives? What needs to be done, what more can be done to achieve the desired end? Is the immigration "crisis" extinguished when militiamen successfully detain or slaughter every person who illegally crosses the border? If a loved one of yours was killed on Flight 175, how much revenge would set things right again?

The immediate answer is that there is no answer. One highly improbably to calculate (though best efforts to derive it would be appreciated scholarly as such).

The pertinent answer is that there should be no answer, and that any justifications made should recognize the futility in promulgating an answer for an entire populace. The popular citation from Exodus 21, "an eye for an eye," became fodder for criticism from the respectable Mahatma Ghandi. Retributive justice, taken to a gross extent, "makes the whole world blind." To think that if abortion and anti-abortion activists were so minded, that those killed on one side would be slain for the other. And for what purpose this feud?

The message becomes lost. Life is sanctified no longer.

Another Day of Domestic Terrorism

Yesterday afternoon, the Huffington Post released a story about Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, a physician who was one of only three who performed late-term abortions, who had been killed while attending church services at Reformation Lutheran church. According to his Wikipedia entry, Tiller studied medicine at the University of Kansas and finished his degree in 1967 and had intended to go into dermatology, only to take over his father's practice. Tiller resumed the practice after learning how a woman had died while procuring, at that time, an illegal abortion.

Anti-abortion activists have long held prayer vigils and condemned Tiller for his occupational choices, culminating in clinic vandalism, exposure to death threats, and being shot twice by Shelley Shannon in August 1993. Tiller has also spent time answering to legal charges about professionalism and the Kansas law requirement to seek secondary opinion when assessing the appropriateness of a woman seeking an abortion of a viable fetus. No charges had ever been filed against Tiller, unlike Shannon who served an eleven-year sentence for the attack plus an additional 20 years for her connection to arson attempts as part of ongoing attacks against abortion clinics. Kansas City police detained the suspect in the shooting, Scott Roeder, and now have him in custody.

Frank Schaffer represents the guilty side of the culpability divide, writing in his conclusion, "The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as 'murderers.' And today once again the 'pro-life' leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility." Various news outlets including Salon.com and Media Matters have compiled clips of Bill O'Reilly's ongoing campaign against Tiller dating back to 2005 and occupying segments in up to 29 episodes -- referring to him as "Tiller the Baby Killer," citing a figure of 60,000 fetuses aborted through his tenure, and denouncing the conditions under which women had consulted with him in the first place.

Keith Olbermann issued the following response.

To his credit, O'Reilly denounces vigilantism at the onset of his most recent Talking Point segments, only to predict with Cassandran omnipotence, "Pro-abortion zealots and Fox News-haters would attempt to blame us for the crime" and to condemn liberals for "exploiting" this murder.

Indeed, another day of domestic terrorism -- the idea that beliefs can be so strong and fortified that it would merit and excuse doing the very same crime under complaint unto another. That the cause of pro-life, of anti-abortion can only go further when the persons who perform abortions are, themselves, aborted, by any means necessary. Protesters engage in vigils, petition for investigations, present legal cases that merit court appearances, and nothing worked. The solution came at the end of a barrel shot at point-blank range. The real irony is the permission and the acceptance of the murder of a medical professional in the name of stopping the very same "murder" of the unborn in the guise of protecting the innocent. Using murder to stop murder for the sanctity of life, of course.

In his, yes, "rant," he referenced Daily Kos editor, Markos Moulitsas, asks who will be the next person to be killed, thus fortified by the "ire" of commentators like O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, and so forth. (O'Reilly simply remarks that Moulitsas' rant appears next to a scheduled interview with Bill Ayers, capitalized by a smug "Perfect.")

Too much.


A screenshot of a Google search for too much Fox News.

Too much grapefruit might have killed a woman. Too much caffeine might have killed Anna Nicole Smith. Too much sex might make someone a nymphomaniac. The real question is, what are the effects of too much suggestive media exposure? What is the extent to which someone of a given psychological profile can digest talk radio and nightly news programming before opinions begin to take shape or change? How much "paranoid, anti-government rhetoric" can one tolerate before succumbing to its effects?

I'm not entirely sure, but I am willing to bet that under continued duress of disappearing economic opportunities, increased chances of home foreclosure and mounting debt collections, ambiguous evidence of the termination of our current recession, and uncertain futures, that threshold certainly begins to fall. Continuing with the aforementioned irony, how might Michelle Malkin respond now to her original complaint that Homeland Security is willing to target conservative commentators and their role in promoting extremist behavior? If anything, there is a genuinely compelling tapestry: visions of the lone blogger, the lone commentator on television and that megalomaniacal icon of his or her hands wrapped around the entire world of broadcast outreach, only to slink back into nothingness when tied to some potentially dangerous and disturbed people.

I can see Beck guffawing this very second. "I didn't do anything," indeed. No, you didn't pull a trigger. You just released the whereabouts of some bullets and an impressionable rationale, that's all.

As it stands, a doctor is dead, and a news network is in denial. What we don't know is the extent to which the anti-abortion movement becomes bolstered by this injustice and continues to call out some murderers while excusing others. What we don't know are the creative interpretations of biblical scripture that would allow such acts to take place. What we can't know is the depth of psychological disrepair evident that would allow the notorious Paul Jennings Hill, executed for murdering an abortion doctor, to claim in a statement:

In a statement before his execution, Hill said that he felt no remorse for his actions, and that he expected "a great reward in Heaven". During his trial, the judge did not allow Hill to use an affirmative defense of justification. Hill said he viewed the acts as defensive rather than retributive. Hill left behind a manuscript manifesto which his backers promised him they would publish. That manifesto and his address to the jury that convicted him echoed the words of John Brown, who had attempted to incite a violent insurrection to end slavery in the United States. Hill was not apologetic for the killings, and in his last words he encouraged others who believe abortion is an illegitimate use of lethal force to "do what you have to do to stop it".

Yet, when Islamic male suicide bombers make that same case, we can condemn them as terrorists.

What cognitive and spiritual acrobatics that take place to filter the reality that even we Americans, we pillars of morality and justice, use to excuse and to deny the same brutal injustice we put forth. No job, no profession, no spiritual system is so great, so grand that it would demand taking someone's life. None. And the person that could argue the opposite, I would applaud you in the first place, but I would kill you in the second. Because I could. Because, in America, we can survive contradictions and practice what we fail to preach without even batting an eyelash.

Recommended reading:
Cultivation Theory