F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

So, we’re back to THAT again. Swell. Here’s the update on the man’s challenge in court-he’s still being forced to undergo "treatment" for his own good.

Angela Davis is coming to Lincoln, Nebraska to lecture on the prison system and predictably, people are freaking the hell out-but here’s the thing; they’re freaking out less than they used to.

This isn’t her first visit here, but in the past the comment thread at the paper would be filled with the typical "commie/millitant/bleeding heart" type insults. There’s still some of that, but much much less. I’d like to think this reflects open mindedness but it is probably just evidence of the population getting younger and they have no idea who she is.

I’ve started and deleted this post a few times today not knowing how to approach it. The story unfortunately isn’t unusual- a woman (in this case, elderly) Dixie Eggers, dies in horrible pain of treatable disease in jail where she was doing time for petty theft. There are so many things wrong-the woman was in therapy to deal with her shoplifting problem. She was 70 years old. Eggers was told to lie on a bare mattress on the floor and when she couldn’t get back up, was told by guards to go ahead and soil herself. When she was finally transferred to the hospital her children were not allowed to see her, and on her deathbed they tried to deny her a visit from a priest. All of this, the brutality of the way this woman was treated in her last days to the way a judge thinks a 70 year old woman with a psychiatric problem is going to be rehabilitated by being sent to prison to lie in her own faeces and die suffering double pneumonia, a staph infection, kidney failure and in horrible pain-what point is there in any of it? To teach her a lesson? I’ll bet that showed her!

But it’s OK-they investigated themselves and found no grounds for a lawsuit by her family. You know, she was a sub-human criminal just asking for it. Well, the state didn’t say that outright, but it sure is implied by stating that sort of treatment is acceptable. That would be bad enough, but the comment section at the newspaper had a lovely comment from someone purporting to be one of her jailers voicing pretty much that same opinion. If you’re out of your mind, elderly and poor, it is perfectly acceptable to let you die in a manner that would have charges brought were it an animal.

I’m as responsible for this poor woman’s death as the guards that let her lie there in her soiled clothing moaning in pain. I pay taxes and my taxes pay those guards, build the prisons and salary judges that are deluded enough to think any justice is served by treating human beings this way. You know this isn’t an isolated case. We’ll forget about it until the next one slips into the news and then disappears unnoticed-like the way inmates are treated-just an object taking up space that one day isn’t there anymore. We shrug, figure that it wouldn’t happen to us (though with incarceration rates rising for things that shouldn’t even be valid misdemeanors it is more and more likely that at some point, we’re all going to be locked up for something) and go looking for the next distraction so we don’t need to think about how depraved and brutal we’ve become-at home and abroad.

This time it is white college kids in Virginia. This is pretty over-the-top, and I’m glad people are calling bullshit-but still. How many people did they frighten enough not to register? Even if they are forced to change the information on the website, a good deal of damage has already been done. For many people, it is enough to say "No, you can’t" and it will not be questioned further.

People are being preemptively arrested because they might protest at the RNC convention. Since it is getting no coverage in the mainstream media I sort of feel obligated to post links here for the three or four regular readers.

 I wish I could say I’m shocked, but I’m old enough to have seen all of this before. Unfortunately, most of our protections against this sort of thing have been so eroded that it is easier for them to get away with it now.

As an aside:

I saw two Homeland Security cars marked "Federal Protective Services" peeling out of a Dairy Queen in West Omaha yesterday. Maybe there were vegans nearby. Note to Homeland Security-there isn’t an actual Queen to protect. I’m sort of doubtful there’s much actual dairy either, but at any rate, no royalty in need of protection. Well, at least West Omaha is in safe hands.

THIS has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve heard of late. Students who wore t-shirts on the first day of school that read, "RIP" in memory of a classmate that was killed last spring, are being suspended-something like twenty three of them. The school’s argument is that it is distracting and they have grief counselors available. The ACLU’s argument is that we still have protected speech in this country and that the administrators are out of line.

Fremont, Nebraska is the latest community to try and run out the undocumented workers through laws prohibiting harbouring or helping them. You know, the ethnic diversity is the only thing that city really has going for it-it was kind of a dump before the Mexicans started moving in and opening businesses in the historic downtown district. Instead of vacant storefronts, there are taquerias, grocers, and variety stores. You know, thriving businesses-the sort of thing time-passed-by towns on the prairies need to survive.

The entire situation frightens me-not just here, but across the country, as human beings are routinely dehumanised to the point where members of a high school football team feel free to beat a man to death for being Mexican. I suspect we’ll see more and more of this.

Listen to some of the language being used and tell me this does not strike you as completely Nazi:

"Kotas, a grandmother, said she also worries about the potential for illegal immigrants to spread disease."

I’m pretty sure that one was used quite successfully in Germany. Maybe she can organise a group of thugs to go smash windows in their shops and steal their piñatas. Or, borrow a high school football team from rural Pennsylvania.

I’m just sick over this.

Don’t download information about terrorist groups from government websites, particulalry if you have a non-Western sounding name.

Yeah, I think that’s going to have an impact on academic freedom.  

Children up to 18 months of age can now be incarcerated with their mothers so they can bond properly. Yes, nothing promotes infant development like incarceration in the American prison system.