Racism Part 1: The Law and Justice

Watch these three videos, if you can stomach it - they're pretty brutal...
(trigger warning, etc...)

The PUBLIC EXECUTION / POLICE MURDER of John Crawford III:


The DRIVE UP EXECUTION / POLICE MURDER of Tamir Rice:


The CHOKING THE LIFE OUT OF / POLICE MURDER of Eric Garner:


...And then contrast these to Steve Lohner...

...or the KID GLOVE handling of Joesph Houseman:


Seriously?! This obviously, openly, armed, angry, belligerent, RW asshole yells at the cops for almost 10- minutes strait?! Tamir Rice? John Crawford? The cops gunned them down, on sight, in under ONE SECOND.  And I'm supposed to believe that race doesn't play a factor?  I'm supposed to believe that these cops were acting appropriately?!  And then I'm supposed to believe the cop, and the lone, white, racist witness in the Michael Brown case?! BULLSHIT.  This is not only criminal, it's indefensible. The Grand Jury, in every case, didn't see that way, so fuck them.  The Prosecutors consistently shit-canned their own cases, so FUCK THEM.  Gerlado wants to tell me that BLACK PEOPLE are the problem? FUCK HIM. And if you can't recognize the problem here? THEN FUCK YOU.

And if you're still even thinking of telling what a threat these people were, let's not forget that they somehow made the effort to take THIS GUY alive:

James Holmes, remember him? Killed 12 people, was carrying a Shot Gun, a Semi-Automatic Rifle, a Hand gun and Tear Gas Grenades?  Imagine for a moment the mentality it must take to take the time, effort and risk to take this piece of shit alive, and yet the men above had to be put down like dogs in under a second.

Go ahead. Try to argue with me on this.  It's not a question of whether we have a police-state problem, or a race problem, it's only a question of how many people, black AND white (and every other color) need to DIE before something constructive is done about it.


And if you're still skeptical, how about some crushed testicles?

And before anyone wastes any of my time telling me that these are isolated incidents, here is a list of UNARMED Black Men killed by the police since 1999. (And from my own research for past posts, I can assure you that this is FAR from an exhaustive list.)

Oh, and let's not forget that nearly bottomless scum pit of a prosecutor who thought that an abused woman firing a warning shot at her abusive ex-boyfriend deserved SIXTY YEARS in prison for it.
Yeah. No problem with White Privilege or Male Privilege here, is there?  By all means, let's keep "standing our ground."

And even after all that, if you don't understand why they riot, especially in THEIR OWN neighborhoods? Well, THIS GUY explains it, and gives you different perspective on it.  It's his opinion and perspective, not mine, but the more I see of just how much we have a problem with racism in this country, the less inclined I am to judge ANY of these folks.

(And more on all this in my next post.)

(CORRECTION: In the video, I referred to JOSEPH Houseman as JOHN, and JAMES Holmes also as JOHN.  My apologies.)

(After all, the last time anyone saw JOHN Holmes in a theater, he was armed with something completely different.)

Amen!

I've always believed that morality exsists independantly from Religion, but I've never seen it put so perfectly.

Capital Punnishment

NOTE: I've written this an re-written it, three times in total, and it's still a disjointed, disorganized mess.  What can I say? It's a complex issue with a LOT of considerations to balance.  BUT, I'm just going to post it as-is becuase there's other things I want to write about, and if I let it go too long, I'll never get around to putting this up.

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Although I did not intend for that one throwaway comment in my Casey Anthony post last week to turn into a death penalty discussion, many thoughtful, principled and pragmatic comments about the death penalty ended up in the comments section as a result of it. And, after reading them, I was motivated to do a little digging, a little exploring of the issue, and maybe clarifying both to you all and to myself where I really stand on it.


Although politically ironic, but from my own POV logically consistent, my position on the Death Penalty, as a general practice, is almost a perfect mirror to my position on abortion. With abortion, I feel that the practice is completely immoral in all cases (yes, you read that right) where the life of the mother is not in immediate jeopardy.  BUT, as this is just my opinion - and since I don’t share the Right’s mental illness that compels them to force everyone else to live according to their opinion - I have no desire to see abortion made ILLEGAL, just becuase I see it as IMMORAL. With Capital Punishment, it’s kind of the opposite: I do not oppose the practice on general moral grounds. BUT… as a PRACTICAL MATTER I do see much that is wrong with how we go about administering it. So I never cheer-lead for it, as some do. And I do see a reduction in executions as a good thing. But I stop short of a complete abolitionist stance, based on moral objection.

This puts me immediately at odds with posters such as jlarue, who feel it is simply an immoral practice. And you know what? You’re absolutely right. I’ll concede on all moral points right now: It’s wrong. And yet, I still feel the way I do. And, going back to the abortion parallel, I’ve never heard an argument, EVER, that convinced me that abortion was ever morally justifiable (in any case in which the life of the mother was not in imminent danger.) But again: What we believe to be moral and what we will support the legality of are not always the same. This happens to both Liberals and Conservatives, and hits me up from both sides of both of these two issues. The bottom line is that the execution of someone who has taken the life of another? Just does not bother me enough to change my opinion. If that makes me a bad person? Then so be it. For what it’s worth, I concede the moral high-ground to your admittedly more principled position. 

(Just an aside: In admitting that being “pro-death penalty” - one of a very few Conservative positions that I hold - is a moral failing on my part, it’s funny to me just how many Conservative positions in general (almost all of them, in fact) can be described that way.)

So… morally I concede, though that doesn’t change my position. What about those practical concerns? The administrative details?

Poster ClassicLiberal gave me a pretty good quote, about how “the government can’t even keep potholes filled” so he’d not going to trust them with such grave matters. That’s a nice sentiment, and while I have no intention of arguing that the practice is air-tight, I will point out that this is the same basic argument that Conservatives use to argue against a Nation Health Care system, so you’ll have to better than that. Fortunately, he did: The politicization of the Judiciary.

Now, I hear you when it comes to the ELECTION of judges. Hoo-boy, that’s a HUGE problem. And it affects so many aspects of our society. There’s just SO MUCH worng with that, in particular the very perversion of our Democracy that you describe the pro-industry and pro-corporatist groups doing. But, much as with our disagreement on filibusters, it still sounds to me (rigth or worng) like you are opposing a practice IN GENERAL because of how ONE GROUP has decided to abuse it. (And let’s please take up the filibuster/reform issue again another time, because I’ve been sitting on a counterargument for your loast post on that for like a year now,  but just haven’t felt like writing about it.) Anyway... IN THEORY, the election of judges shouldn’t be done on Political grounds. Of course, that’s gone completely by the wayside, but I’m not sure what else we should do. APPOINT them? To LIFETIME terms? NFW. And as counters I submit that Federally appointed Circuit and Supreme Court judges are every bit as politicized as local judges, and there’s an additional problem: WE CAN’T EVER GET RID OF THEM! What’s more, the judiciary is meant to act as a counter-balance to the Legislature and the Executive branch. But how will we get that when the judges are nominated, confirmed and appointed by the very bodies they’re meant to be opposing? I’ll see you and raise you two Scalia’s and a Thomas that this is a much worse way to go. This way, electing them? If a judge REALLY SUCKS? The will of the people, and the power of Democracy can be mustered to fix the problem. I just cannot belieev that because industry and corporations pervert Democracy, this is a reason to scrap the practice. Much as with terrorism, we must RESIST those forces, not allow them to trick us into dismantling our Democracy. If you have a third alternative, I really would like to hear it, but the immediate alternative, to me, seems like it can only be worse.

But it bring us to the crux of the matter, at least for me: Has this politicization, inefficiency, prosecutorial maleficence or any other factor actually led us to execute an innocent man?

Unlike Conchobhar, I have not served on a jury. In fact, I’ve only been in court three times in my life: Once when my parents finalized my sister’s adoption, once for a traffic ticket and once when I was being sued. (I won, if you’re wondering.) (OK, and I was called in for jury duty once, but I wasn't selected.) And our history, much like the UK’s, is rife with examples of officially administered injustice. And convictions are overturned ALL THE TIME when examination of the DNA evidence after the trial completely proves, beyond any doubt, that they had the wrong guy. (Remember: With a match, there’s STILL a 1 in 20 Million chance you’re wrong, but with a MISMATCH? Unless the lab-tech bled onto the sample, you KNOW the right answer. )

And you certainly have a good point, arguably THE point, when a verdict comes down to nothing more than which witnesses appear more credible: The guys who’s facing life or death and is on the stand for the first time in his life, facing a suspicious and skeptical jury; or the career law-enforcement officer (and trusted, heroic public servant) who’s in court every week, has testified hundreds of times and faces no personal or professional risk if should the case go one way or the other. And because “real-life” is never as neat and clear-cut as Television’s CSI shows, perception will thus determine reality. And that’s a huge problem, as matters of perception and personal feelings inevitably end up being given a weight disproportionate to their accuracy or value.

But there’s another side of that perception vs. objective evidence coin. It has been suggested that the preponderance of legal shows like CSI, Law and Order, etc… has had the effect of making us more skeptical as a people. That juries expect cases to look a lot neater and air tight before convicting. Now – I don’t KNOW if that’s true. Admittedly, I can’t find the original piece I had read. (I think it might have been a Slate piece.) And for all I know it could have been written by a disgruntled prosecutor who just came off of losing a big case. But as useless as anecdotal evidence is, case like Anthony (and O.J. Simpson and many others in between) do see, to suggest that there are juries out there for whom “erring on the side of caution” means an acquittal, when in doubt. Which… is exactly as it is supposed to be!

As I looked into this, I came accros a few other things, that can be interpreted in different ways…

For the years that I could find data for reasonably quickly (2006-2009) there were 186 executions in the U.S. In that same time period there were 65,642 murders. Now, committing the same error as when they calculate the divorce rate, that works out to a 0.3% execution rate for murderers. I find the size of that number – being so small – striking in a few different ways. If were trying to be a “tough-on-crime” Right Winger (never! LOL) I might cite this as evidence that we need to DO MORE to prevent violent crime. (NOTE: I’M not saying that. I’m just saying that you could imagine someone making that argument.) A death penalty opponent might use it to point out that very little would change if we DID eliminate the practice: It would result in an almost imperceptible uptick in prison populations, in exchange for KNOWING we NEVER executed an innocent person. Which is a pretty good trade off, I must admit! And a moderate supporter, like me, looks at it and is inclined to view it as a relatively small problem: 1 execution for every 357 murders? I don’t know. I guess I just thought it would be a LOT higher, by at least an order of magnitude. (BTW, my numbers were taken from a few different sources, which is why I haven’t linked them. If you have different figures, I’ll freely admit that I just grabbed the first set of data I could put together.)

I also found that, due to the (thankfully) small number of people we execute, trying to determine what kind of “deterrent” effect this has, if any, is impossible. One rather disturbing study showed that there’s only a discernable deterrent effect is places with very high execution rates. Meaning that, for this to work, we got to start executing MORE people. I might support the Death Penalty in theory, but putting that kind of reasoning into practice is just psychotic.

But putting aside any “benefits” we might see, no one should accept the possibility of executing an innocent man. So I did some poking around, looking first at overturned convictions. Of course, there are TONS of stories out there, and an interesting (though rather incomplete) list could be found on Wikipedia. I went through this list, trying to focus only on case where physical evidence exonerated the suspect, rather than them just being posthumously pardoned or something like that. (Where there was doubt of guilt, but not proof of innocence.) And there certainly is no shortage of cases where people sat on death row who were UNDENIABLY innocent. And one can certainly look at all of these MISTAKES and argue that such an imperfect system simply cannot be trusted. BUT… every conviction that gets overturned is also evidence that the system WORKS – that if someone is innocent, then the truth will come out. That may sound weak to some, and I’ll gladly admit that I’d feel better if we got it right the first time, every time, but it is significant that there ARE so many self-correcting mechanisms. The imperfection is mitigated by the fact that we recognize it.

BUT… Do they work? Was there ever a case where we KNEW we executed the wrong guy?

Well… A couple of names on that list jumped out at me.

First, there was Charles Hudspeth. He was hanged for the murder of her lover’s missing husband, who was found – ALIVE - a year later. Thing is? That was in 1892! And I have a hard time imagining a scenario like that happening today. So… it’s an EXAMPLE, but I’m not sure it’s still relevant. We’ve made SOME progress in the last 120 years.

There was also Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian Anarchists convicted in 1920 in what many considered to have been a show-trial, rife with anti-Italian prejudice that was more common then than it is now, and executed in 1927. But at this point it’s impossible to PROOVE that they were innocent. A bad conviction? Well, Governor Dukakis certainly thought so, when he pardoned them in 1977. And I AM inclined to agree with him. But a definite “execution of the innocent?” Impossible to say.

Going from there to the wrongful execution article, I found a few more examples. There were several from the U.K. and Australia, but nothing from the U.S. The closest was Ellis Wayne Felker, who’s DNA evidence was re-evaluted after his execution. Butthe results we’re found to have been “inconclusive.” And that’s too frustrating. It’s not that I’d celebrate an innocent man being put to death, but putting aside that absurd result from 1892, at least ONE BONA-FIDE example of the State executing an innocent man would pretty much change me over to the abolitionist camp. That’s it. Just one. There are many cases where there has been doubt of guilt – and I DO NOT support the Death Penalties use in case like that – but so far no indisputable examples where we can prove innocence. And that means that it cannot be PROOVEN that our system is so profoundly flawed.

There was a case like that that got my attention many years ago, and that became very emotionally involved with.

The suspect’s name was Roger Keith Coleman. He was a coal miner in Grundy, Virginia, not far from where I was going to college at the time. And based on what the media presented at the time, I was convinced was innocent. Oprah had him on her show, and I found him to be very persuasive. At a minimum, the questions he raised and the apparent incompetence of his lawyer suggested that a new trial was appropriate. And he might have gotten one: Had that very same, publicly appointed lawyer, not filed his appeal ONE DAY AFTER the deadline to file had expired. Which, IMHO, pretty much speaks right back to that Public Defenders own incompetence! In any case, I was convinced he was innocent and beyond that convinced beyond any doubt that his original trial was flawed. But Virginia’s piece of shit Governor at the time, Democrat Douglas Wilder, (sorry, I really HATE that guy, and so does DW) refused to grant clemency, a even stay to allow the appeal about the appeal to go though. Coleman was executed and on that day I was convinced we had executed an innocent man. 100% convinced.

So, a decade later when Republican Governor Mark Warner decided to re-open the case and examine the DNA evidence which had NOT been presented at trial, I followed the story in anticipation that Roger Keith Coleman would finally be exonerated. Instead, the DNA evidence put him at the scene of the crime. He was lying. FUCK. I was angry, not so much because I WANTED to have seen an innocent man put to death, but because I had become so emotionally involved with his story. I got “sucked in,” if you will, and he was nothing more than a liar, and a murderer.

Anyway, I realize that our system of justice is imperfect. All of those overturned convictions DO point to mistakes of ALL KINDS being made. (Though over-zealous, political-motivated prosecution seem to be at the heart of many of them.) But saying that something COULD happen, is different form saying that it HAS. Finding errors, and the potential for errors, and FIXING THEM when they are found suggests that we have to have safeguards in place. Are they adequate? It’s a hollow sentiment, but so far? In this country? They appear to be.

Is this really "the problem" with the system?

Unless you live under a rock, or your TV is broken you probably heard the news yesterday: Casey Anthony was found "not guilty" on all charges directly related to the death of her two year old daughter Calee in 2008, save only the four counts of providing false information to the police.

(Which, let's face it, is something that probably been done by every single human being ever accused of a crime since the beginning of human history.)

My boss actually had a news feed up on his computer, so we heard the verdict pretty much as it came out.  Several of us were "following" the case, so naturally there was a lot of interest. (No, we don't work in a law office.) And I should say that I haven't been "following" the case, so much as I was bombarded by it.  There were 16,442 people murdered in the United States in 2008, but I'll be damned if I can name a single other case off the top of my head.  But hey: An attractive white woman, acting strangely I might add, a cute white kid, weird circumstances and answered questions? That's NEWS (I guess.)

I'm not trying to say that Calee doesn't deserve justice, nor even that I don't think Casey did it. (I DO, but more on that in a minute.)  The thing is, those 16,442? Are based on CONVICTIONS. How many OTHER cases of dead people in 2008 went uncovered by the media? How many OTHER victims didn't get justice? How many OTHER people got away with it?  That's the first thing that annoys me about these kinds of stories.

Another is NANCY FUCKING GRACE.

Oh my Holy Lord in Heaven, is there any other human being anywhere on this big and beautiful planet MORE ANNOYING and MORE GRATING that Nancy Grace?!  Holy crap, I honestly think I'd rather have Ann Coulter on my jury!  And I AGREE WITH HER! I don't even really have a problem with he JUDGEMENT in this case! I think she's basically got  it right! I just can't stand listening to her!

Here's the thing...  A few weeks back, CNN had a prominent defense attorney on air to discuss the case and he basically said, "Here's what the prosecution will try to say. Here's what the defense will counter with. And here are the issues that the jury will need to sort out." There may have been something in there about the states burden of proof, but it was basically a balanced, objective summary of the case, for the benefit of those who've managed to otherwise avoid or miss the massive coverage of it. Then they turned to Nancy. Her response, and I'm paraphrasing here, was something like this:

"THAT'S A LOAD OF BULLSHIT, MARK.  THE BITCH IS GULITY AS HITLER, AND DESERVES TO DIE - AT LEAST TWICE - IN THE MOST INHUMANE WAY POSSIBLE. ACTING LIKE SHE DID PROVES BEYOND ANY DOUBT THAT SHE'S A LOUSY DAUGHTER, A LOUSY MOTHER, AND AN INHUMAN, MURDERING PUDDLE OF POND SCUM!"

...Which is what I guess passes for objective reporting on what Conservatives refer to as the "Communist News Network." (Or, as I call it, "Chicken Noodle News.")

And understandably, there were some pretty strong opinions being expressed around the office when the verdicts were announced.  A betting pool was immediately drawn up on Casey Anthony's life expectancy, and one of the more prominent opinions was: "THIS is what's wrong with our system."

Now… These were conservative guys. Not morons, professional people I respect, but conservatives. And what they were feeling was that (1) she was guilty and (2) she was let off. So (3) “the system” doesn’t work. We also got into a discussion about the 4th Amendment and how it’s bullshit that evidence obtained “illegally” was automatically inadmissible, particularly when it revealed the TRUTH of the matter. Now, I LOVE taking on Conservatives in these kinds of discussion, because I can do so from [their own] libertarian point of view, without having to wear my politics on my sleeve.

I simply asked them: How else can you protect our rights? You wouldn’t even know the person was guilty until AFTER you violated their rights! So what good is any protection of privacy and private property if there are no repercussions to the state for violating it? What else would you do? Punish the Cops?! Throw them in jail or sue them? Sure. And good luck getting any more cops to search shit from that point forward. It wouldn't work. So, flawed as it is, this the best you can do and not live in a police state.

And the whole reason we were even talking about that was that I said that I wanted to get an idea of the disparity between the case that was presented to the jury and the story that was told to us by the media. Sure: We’re all torqued up about this woman’s guilt because that’s how the media wants us. (And to anyone who thinks they always get it right, I have three words for: Jean Benoit Ramsey. And you and Nancy Grace owe her later-mother an engraved apology! Big time!) And who knows…? Maybe they even had some inkling as to where this case was heading. So by presenting one side, they might be able to milk this story even longer. Who knows? In any case, this case, for better or worse, is clear evidence trails are NOT tried in the media or the court of public opinion, and I for one think that’s a VERY GOOD THING.

Also… As you may know I like to think of things a little bit differently. I kind of have a “freakanomics” way of looking at the world, only with a progressive / liberal bias. And the one other Liberal in the office asked an interesting question to that end:

Do you think she might have been convicted, is she was being tried in a state that did NOT have the death penalty?

And honestly? I DON’T KNOW. It’s hypothetical, and there’s no way to prove it one way of the other, unless one of the jurors were to come right out and admit it, but it’s certainly one of the more effective, if somewhat more cynical, arguments against the death penalty that I’ve heard; A point that I never really considered: Could abolishing it end up in MORE convictions?

And just FYI: I SUPPORT the Death Penalty. Not blindly, of course, and not in all cases that it's been applied, and not the system that currently administers it. But the practice, in general? I’m basically OK with. And before anyone gives me the Liberal arguments against it, don’t bother. I’ve heard them before and I don’t care. But don't worry... I don’t get much love from Conservatives on the issue either. Because I don’t buy their bullshit about it anymore that I care about the far more fact-based arguments being presented by Liberals. I support it, yes, but I’ll happily admit: It’s a vice. It’s a vice that satisfies the sin of wrath, nothing more. Someone is dead, I’m angry about it, so someone must die. As long as it’s the RIGHT person? I’m basically OK with it.

Which brings me back to the case at hand: Did she do it?

Well, she certainly ain't winning any ‘mother of the year’ awards. She seems guilty of gross parental negligence at a minimum. (Something she wasn’t even CHARGED with!) If my kid were missing for three minutes I’m panicking. And after thirty? I’m calling the cops. But thirty DAYS?! Holy crap! So her first story was bullshit. I get that. So she’s also a liar. But there is an established burden of proof that the state MUST meet to convict someone of a Capital Crime. And in the absence of being able to establish either the CAUSE or the TIME of death? That burden gets very difficult to meet.

And so, unfortunately, since real life is not like CSI on TV, they had no case; just the least sympathetic defendant who didn’t yell “Allah Akbar!” at the time of the crime.

And here’s where my freakanomic thinking comes in… If you’re a Conservative, arguing with a Liberal about the Death Penalty, or tougher prison sentences, or anything else that falls under the “cruel and unusual punishment” venue, isn’t the fact that Casey Anthony got off PROOF that the system DOES in fact work? Doesn't it PROVE that we can’t possibly falsely convicting that many people if even a terrible, terrible person like her got off? Should this silence all of the Liberal critics of our legal system? If the Right wasn’t so blinded by their own anger, they might realize that this is actually a VICTORY for them! Kind of like how O.J. Simpson getting off (the first time) is proof that the system isn’t racist!

Even though... People are shown by DNA evidence to have been falsely convicted ALL THE TIME.

And Blacks are more likely to be executed, and receive tougher sentences than whites convicted of the exact same crimes.

But… I guess they’d still rather execute a couple more people than to be able to argue that the system works. See? I TOLD you it was a VICE!

BTW… If you ever have someone say something to the effect of “I’d rather send an innocent man to prison than risk letting a guilty man go free,” PLEASE hit them in the head with a brick that has the word “MORON!” engraved in it. And once they come to, ask them: If an INNOCENT MAN (AKA: NOT THE GUY WHO COMMITTED THE CRIME) went to prison, what happened to the guy who ACTUALLY COMMITTED THE CRIME?! (Um… I’m pretty sure he went free, FUCKWAD!) See… The guilty guy goes free either way! But these jack-holes would rather compound this legal cluster-fuck by sending THE WRONG GUY to prison on top of it! That’s how they want the system to “werk,” I guess.

The real problem here is how the media chooses to cover these things, and how they choose the cases they want to cover at all.  And this is compounded by the public's belief that they can draw any conclusions about our legal system from the media: An entity that focuses on one case at a time out of TEN THOUSAND (or more.) (16,442 in 2008!) By definition ANY case being given this kind of coverage the media can onlybe the exception: It's 1 out of 10,000+ after all!  You don't learn about significant trend with a NON-RANDOM sample size that small.
One last thing… There was a couple of great articles in Crack about bullshit the media thinks is news, and how the media makes bullshit look like fact. Worth a read. Oh, and here’s some GOOD NEWS that nobody’s talking about! (That last one has a little bit of conservative bias to it, at least the way I see it, but still: Good news is good news!)

"Baby Killer" is what now passes for civil discourse.

I was going to finally get around to doing that elementray course on Keyensian economics when I ran accross THIS BULLSHIT.  So Keyenes will have to wait.  First I HAVE to deal with these funny-mentalist, anti-aboprtion, pro-"life" (pro-DEATH really, and I'll explain why) anti-abortion fucks.  I am sick and tired of the lying, right-wing, hypocritcial, uber-christian BASTADRDS.  And they have now elevated themselves, officially, to the status of "MURDERERS."  Here why...

No one, and I do me NO ONE - not Glenn Beck (because he's an idiot) and not ClassicLiberal (to give the opposite example - liberal and well-infomred) can deny that this health care bill will SAVE LIVES.  And I've said many times now that Classic is absolutely right on his FACTS, (unlike the Glenn  Beck crowd.)  And I hope that everyone read what he had to say, because it IS important. But for every flaw he's found, I'm sure even he would have to admit that, relative to the STATUS QUO, this bill will SAVE LIVES.  And it does so by elimintating the PREEXSISTING CONDITIONS.  I know, I know... not soon enough, 'kids only' for the next four years, $100 a day fine, yeah, yeah... Like I said, 'If you want the flaws, READ HIS BLOG.'  Good points all. And I don't claim it's perfect. But I'm not comparing it to what MIGHT HAVE BEEN.  Compared to WHAT WE HAVE NOW, this bill will SAVE LIVES.  How many?  Well, Harvard says 40,000 die every year from lack of coverage, but this bill doesn't cover everyone, so I don't like that number.   But potentially, it's every Cancer, Aids, Diabetes, Lupus, Transplant, etc... patient that ever changes jobs, loses their job, has their policy cancelled or wants to find a new policy.  Because, in each case, if you are denied medicine, you start DYING.  And if you're denied insurance you're denied medicine. (These thigns are EXPENSIVE.  I know Ruch Limbugh thinks that every pulls down AM Radio Talk Show Host money, but that just ain't the case!)  And if that medicine comes too late, you either DIE SOONER, or you live with whatever complications arose while you waited for that medicine.  So, bottom line... if you claim to value LIFE, you MUST. MUST. MUST. Support this bill on those grounds.  Whatever flaws it may have, long term, it gets rid of preexisting condition.  And THAT will SAVE LIVES.

So I find it ironic that some of the loudest opponents of this bill are actually people who call themselves "PRO-LIFE." Now... Let's take a look at their logic: Right now there are X number of Cancer, Aids, Diabetes, Lupus, Transplant, etc... patients - actual, grown, living Amercian Citizens - who are DYING, RIGHT NOW for lack of medical care and medicine simply because they are being denied coverage by their insurance companies (or being cancelled outright) for no other reason than... THEY'RE SICK.    BUT... according to these psychopathic Right-Wingers, we CAN'T extend coverage to them, or guarentee the coverage they're PAYING FOR, because doing so MIGHT mean that SOMEONE ELSE might ONE DAY have an abortion.  That's right: The PRO-LIFE position is to let thousands of ACTUAL, LIVING PEOPLE DIE because they're might be a slight uptick in the number of abortions that happen.  (Note: Passage or non-passage of this bill will have NO impact, whatsoever, on the millions of abortions that happen every year anyway.)

Well... seeing as how abortion is LEGAL, I think there a word or two that would describe someone who would sacrifice thousands of people over an essentially unrelated political point.  Personally, I think  MURDERER says it best.

So we have DEATH PANELS, folks.  But they're not in this bill.  They're in the boardrooms of the insurance companies and the in the form of every politician who opposes this bill on any grounds not covered over on Left Hook.  And since I support the death penalty - rare, for a liberal, but I DO - I can say right now, that I honestly believe that any politican who opposes this bill on ANTI-ABORTION grounds deserves to HUNG BY HIS NECK UNTIL HE BE DEAD, unless he is arguing for a better system. (Kuchinich, under this clause, gets a pass.)

And don't be overly concered for them: Most of these same 'pro-lifers' fully support the Death Penalty.  So fine: Let's give it to them.  The blood of every person who would die from lack of coverage, due to prexsisting condition is on their hands, should they chose to deny them on "pro-life" grounds.  Saying "No" to a cancer patient because helping them MIGHT lead to someone else possibly having an abortion at some point in the future is MADNESS. Or, more clearly: It's MURDER. 

There are reasons to oppose this bill.  I don't oppose it, personally, but I DO acknowledge the legitimate concerns that are out there.  ABORTION is not one of them.  GROW UP, you stupid fucks: It's a LEGAL PROCEDURE.  That you've been unable to change the law is not a legitimate reason to KILL EVERYONE WHO THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY DEEMS TOO EXPENSIVE TO SAVE.  The PRO-LIFE lobby has now MADE THEMSELVES into the de facto DEATH PANEL. 

They must be so proud.

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And besdies... we all know that the Republcians don't REALLY want to outlaw abortion.  If they did? What reason would all that white trash then have to keep voting for them? (Well Gay Marriage, maybe, but I digress.)  Without the abortion wedge, people might start voting in their economic interests again, and that's the LAST THING the Republicans want!