NEON GODS

America's Number One Problem

Sobering facts:

With approximately 2.3 million people in prison or jail, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—by far. Our per capita rate is six times greater than Canada's, eight times greater than France's, and twelve times greater than Japan's. Here, at least, we are an undisputed world leader; we have a 40 percent lead on our closest competitors—Russia and Belarus...African-Americans are 13 percent of the general population, but over 50 percent of the prison population. Blacks are incarcerated at a rate eight times higher than that of whites...nearly 60 percent of all young black men born between 1965 and 1969 who dropped out of high school went to prison at least once on a felony conviction before they turned thirty-five. And the incarceration rate for this group—black male high school dropouts—is nearly fifty times the national average...

For an entire cohort of young black men in America's inner cities, incarceration has become the more-likely-than-not norm, not the unthinkable exception. And in part because prisons today offer inmates little or nothing in the way of job training, education, or counseling regarding their return to society, ex-offenders' prospects for employment, housing, and marriage upon release drop precipitously from their already low levels before incarceration.

I can only imagine what the current recession is doing to the inner city communities, but I suspect it will only increase the number and percentage of people of color in our prisons.

I believe this is the number one problem in America, the lack of education, the crime rate, the resulting incarceration rates of inner city people, and our refusal to try to rehabilitate those who end up in prison.

David Cole reviews two new books that have some answers.

--Trakker

Rush, the Race-Baiter

Conservatives are furious that their patron saint, Rush Limbaugh, has been blocked from being a part owner of the NFL's St. Louis Rams football team because they claim his public statements are too divisive.  Specifically, Rush has a bad habit of trashing African Americans and other minorities on his radio show to a mostly all-white audience.

Conservatives claim Rush is not a racist, he's not divisive, and that most of the racist quotes the press attribute to Rush are lies.

Fortunately Conor Friedersdorf (a right-leaning blogger) did some fact checking.  He looked at transcripts of Rush's shows from just this year.  He diplomatically concludes: 

If you're sympathetic to Mr. Limbaugh, but don't often listen to his program, perhaps you're surprised by how often he invokes race, racism, and racial victim-hood. Suffice it to say that knowing his program, it is utterly contradictory to complain about race-baiting and to hold Mr. Limbaugh up as a thought leader.

It is also understandable that a professional sports league wouldn't want to associate itself with someone who so frequently plays the race card. That doesn't mean Mr. Limbaugh is a racist. I take him at his word that he isn't. He is merely a racial provocateur whose ire at being called a racist doesn't prevent him from affixing the label to others with stunning frequency.

What concerns me is that many on the right don't recognize Rush's race-baiting as divisive and offensive.

--Trakker

"The only good liberal is a fkn dead one..."

Yesterday Harold Meyerson wrote the following on the WaPost blog PostPartison:

Think about that. The public option has been demonized non-stop for the past half-year; it’s the key to the Republican charge that instituting such a program is tantamount to bringing socialism to America. They have clearly rallied the Republican base to this position, just as they rallied the base to fear the coming of death panels and publicly-subsidized immigrant care. But whereas pluralities of Americans simply said they didn’t know enough to believe one thing or the other about death panels and immigrant care, virtually all Americans not in the Republican base support the public option. [emphasis mine]

In the comments section were two comments by someone called LiberalBasher.

Public option over my dead body.

I don't own a gun, I will buy one if this goes into affect.

I never have understood milita's. I definatly will embrace them if this goes into affect.

public option equals civil war. I will be the first to arm myself to be a part of that war.

go for it, bring it on. Be warned, you will not need death panels if you put in a public option.

Posted by: LiberalBasher | September 25, 2009 4:31 PM

And 15 minutes later, responding to another comment, LiberalBasher wrote again:

We should go with a public option. Doctor's fees are out of control. INOVA Fairfax billed me $5,369.30 to circumcise my son. Thank God my wife and I can afford insurance - we ONLY ended up paying $845.60 of that bill.
---
Thats right, someone that saves your life should not make a decent living.

When your loved one dies because you got a cheap doctor, don't blame anyone but yourself.

Truthfully, I hope its you that dies at the hand of the cheapo. But, who cares.

As long as its a liberal first.

Hope you die slowly like Ted Kennedy.

Whats it matter. You will get your death pannels, staffed by underpaid people who are not qualified. Every death will be your fault and nobody else's.

Again, hope its you and all of your loved ones.

Die liberal. Or better yet.

Want my address? I live in ohio.

Want me to help you die?
Not a threat, just a fact. I don't want an underpaid doctor. I want one that knows he is worth every penny he charges.

fkn liberals. I hate your guts.

I am not racist. I am prejudice. I hate ALL liberals. Black, white, asian, ... what ever. men, women, young, old. doesn't matter. Your liberals. I hate your guts and everything you stand for.

The only good liberal is a fkn dead one and I will glady help do that when you take my life into your hands with your goverment run health care.

Again
die liberal

every one of you

die

Posted by: LiberalBasher | September 25, 2009 4:46 PM

"The only good liberal is a fkn dead one..."  This was written in the comments section of the Washington Post, and it's still there the last I looked.  Ya' know, I'm getting really pissed at being targeted by the loony right.  I sometimes wonder if our country is going to erupt into open warfare.  Many on the right seem to be spoiling for an armed insurrection. I was skeptical that the census taker's death in Kentucky was a hate crime directed at the government, but the comments above by LiberalBasher reminds me the depths of the hatred harbored by some on the right.

--Trakker

How many people showed up for the teabagger's protest?

How many people showed up last weekend in Washington, DC, for the teabagger protest?  Was it 60,000? 75,000?  Or Michelle Malkin's outrageous claim of 2 million?

It's hard to count large crowds, for one thing many leave early and others come late so the crowd fluctuates from minute to minute.  If you have an aerial photograph showing 50,000 at the time of the photo it's likely another couple of thousand either left before the photo or came after.

Since demonstrations on the National Mall require a permit that in turn requires an adequate number of porta-potties be provided, I've always thought that the best way to estimate crowd size would be to weight all the porta-potties after the event. It wouldn't give you a number of attendees, but it would be a good measure of the relative sizes of each crowd.  Of course that wouldn't have worked for last weekend's teabag protest because they're so full of shit...

I liked Mark Adam's point in Dispassionate Liberal, especially given the right's hatred of liberals and government:

...Glenn Beck fans gathered in Washington DC during their union-created weekend, arriving on liberal funded public transportation to a publicly maintained park, to protest, uhh ... something ... taxes? Czars? Fixing health care? Commies, Fascists, Kenyan Presidents who look like Alfred E. Newman with a Hitler mustache? Democrats? I don't really know what they were protesting to be quite honest.  Fluoridated water maybe? Who knows.

There's no doubt about the seething anger we're seeing in these teabaggers, but 95% of them have no idea how much of their quality of life is government-provided, especially the middle class.

--Trakker

It's Time to Decriminalize Drug Usage in the U.S.

Last November Massachusetts voted to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.  Andrew Sullivan, who summers on Cape Cod, went to the beach one day to enjoy a toke, assuming no one cared much anymore.  Much to his surprise (and dismay) a park ranger showed up and ticketed him for it.  What Andrew didn't realize was that he was smoking on federal land (Cape Cod National Seashore) and possession of even small amounts of marijuana on federal land is still a crime!

Fortunately for Andrew, the U.S. Attorney dismissed his case, but NOT the cases of the other three who were arrested with him.  On the surface it looks like favoritism, because Sullivan is famous and the other three aren't but the real reason the U.S. Attorney threw out Andrew's case is more sobering (and surprisingly compassionate).

The bottom line for me is this, it's time to stop this damn nonsense, wasting law enforcement's time and energy arresting pot smokers and further clogging the legal system.  Far more lives have been ruined by the arrests and prosecution of pot users than the drug itself. I recall reading about jail sentences of 5 years, 10 years, even more for those caught with even small amounts of marijuana.  Thankfully those days are largely over, but given the percentage of people who admit to using pot even occasionally and the lack of evidence of any real harm to society, it's time to decriminalize possession of pot and even harder drugs.  For the harder drugs we need to send those with a drug problem into treatment centers, not to jail (use jail only as a last resort).

I'm writing this as a 64 year old who has never used pot or any other drug.

--Trakker

Mom tased during routine traffic stop

via rawstory.com

This is a disturbing video of a mom being tased on a city street with her two children in the car.

According to the mother's testimony she was pulled over for talking on a cell phone, but she insists she wasn't. The conflict gets out of control quickly. Unless the driver said something extremely ugly that we can't hear, this seems to have been a gross overreaction by the police officer (and even that would not be grounds for what we see in the video).

When I was a kid growing up in a small city of about 35,000, the police spent most of their time confronting minor crimes: burglaries, stolen bikes, fist fights, drunk and disorderly, etc. Every contact I had with them was mostly positive. Now, 50 years later things have changed and I see police becoming more isolated from the people they serve and protect. I see a "us vs them" mentality. Police today seem quicker to judge and react (and sometimes over-react).

Sometimes I go to a small restaurant that the police also frequent for breakfast. They sit by themselves, which is understandable, but they make no eye contact and speak to no one else while in the place. I think they feel disliked and distrusted in a public place when in uniform. People avoid them, and I think that is what they want.

The brother-in-law of a close acquaintance is a cop in a big metropolitan city. He has a violent temper and has been convicted of assault and battery (not while he was on the job) and yet still remains on the police force.

I think our police and justice system is badly in need of an overhaul. Given the staggering numbers of our citizens in prison on any given day It's obviously not working.

[h/t Bitburg Guy]

--Trakker

"...and that's the way it is: Friday, July 17th, 2009"

Sadly, Walter Cronkite passed away this evening.  He was the anchor of CBS News from 1962 to 1981.  Back then the day's news was summarized and reported a half-hour each evening on the two major networks, CBS and NBC (I'm not sure when ABC started their evening news program).  That was it, and people all around the country tuned in religiously every evening to one of those channels to find out what happened during the day.  In the early 60s NBC had the most viewers, but by 1970 CBS with Walter Cronkite had become the most popular news program in America.

Walter anchored the news during some of our most tumultuous times in our recent history: the assassination of John Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the race riots, the first human to step on the moon, Watergate, and the Iran hostage crisis.

We were fortunate that Walter Cronkite was the anchor during those years.  He was scrupulously honest and he reported the news that he believed we needed to know that day, not the frivolous stuff that passes for news today.  He took the news seriously and wanted everyone to know what was going on in our world.  When he gave the news he had an amazing ability to make you believe he was talking directly to you.  By the late 70s Walter Cronkite was without a doubt the most trusted man in the country.

--Trakker

Obama

Life has gotten busy lately so I haven't had time to write much, but I've bookmarked some items I'd like to comment on.  Hopefully I can post a few today, since I will be out of town tomorrow.

After watching Obama for a few months now, I'm beginning to get the feeling that his writing and rhetorical skills have been largely responsible for getting him where he is today, not his leadership and legislative skills, which have yet to be developed.

Unfortunately, he made campaign promises that he now feels he cannot keep (e.g., DADT, transparency and openness).

Anyone who is paying attention knows that he is overly deferential to Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats, and contemptuous of the left.  In his heart I believe he is afraid that a majority of voters still lean strongly conservative and hate the left, thus he is doing everything he can to convince the MSM that he is not a liberal.  To do this he has decided to throw his LGBT constituency under the bus.

It was frustrating watching his recent meeting with the LGBT leaders the other day.  He said all the right words to the enthusiastic cheers of the leaders who still want to believe him, but it was all bullshit.  Take DADT (don't ask; don't tell) in the military.  Since Obama took office over 200 highly skilled gay military men and women have been kicked out of the military, and more are going every week.  President Obama says this is wrong, but he claims he can't do anything about it yet because the military brass at the top is resisting letting openly gay people serve under them.

Evidently Obama prefers to ignore the fact that HE is now Commander-in-Chief.  He is their boss. If he abolishes or suspends DADT, they had better salute and accept it or leave the service.  This is what Harry Truman did as C-I-C when he told the military brass that they WILL accept his order that blacks be allowed to serve as equals in the military service.

It's possible that the brass at the top are resisting this because they are all loony Christian fundamentalists and are threatening to leave the military en-mass if Obama allows openly gay people to serve.  Good, their exodus would only make our military better, especially when we're at war with Muslim nations.

--Trakker

A Father's Abuse Haunted Michael All His Life

My wife was a bit taken aback when I complained that after 24 hours of non-stop news of Michael Jackson's death it was time to move on.  "You've got to be kidding.  It's Michael JACKSON," she said.  "He was a legend, he will be remembered as one of the most talented performers ever."

That's true. So why didn't his death have as big an impact on me as it did on everyone else?  I stopped to think, when was the last time I've ever been shocked to tears, to feelings of deep sadness and extraordinary loss by the death of a singer or actor or athlete or the breakup of a group?

Never.  Maybe the closest I've come to something like that was when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, but I was a young kid then and that was when I finally learned that baseball is a business, not a game.

But just when I was beginning to think I was a freak or something, my son called and said, "Don't know about you, Dad, but I'm tired of all the news about Michael Jackson."

What saddens me most about Michael Jackson's death was that for all his talent and fame and personal wealth, he was never very happy. Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings posted a clip from Wikipedia about how badly Micheal was abused as a child.  It was so bad that Jackson claimed there were times when the sight of his father would make him nauseous.

The irony is that some of that abuse probably made Michael a better performer at a very young age.  Would he have become the star he became if his father hadn't been so brutal?  The better question is, would Micheal have had a longer, happier life if his father had been more encouraging and less of a tyrant, even if he never became a star?  Certainly, if Michael never became a star we would have never known his sweet voice, his blockbuster songs and stunning videos.

But to be honest, I think most of us would happily give up the great things Michael Jackson gave us in return for a loving, supportive father and a happier childhood - and hopefully adulthood - for Michael.

--Trakker

A Frightening Change for the Worse?

The Tweets coming out of Tehran today sound like the government violence against the protesters is growing, to the point where it sounds like the government intends to kill as many civilians as it takes to stop the uprising (copied from the Daily Dish).

they pull away the dead into trucks - like factory - no human can do this - we beg Allah for save us -

Gunshots Being Heard From Aazadi St.

Lalezar Sq is same as Baharestan - unbelevable - ppls murdered everywhere

they catch ppl with mobile - so many killed today - so many injured - Allah Akbar - they take one of us

in Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher - Allah Akbar

Reports: Young Girl Who Shoted in to chest Near Jomhori St. By Army Forces, Died In The Hospital (not conf.)

they dont allow people to help shooted girl

Reports: At least 2 ppl was shot incl. 1 young girl at Jomhori St. (not conf.)

If true (and there is really no way of confirming any of this), it sounds like Supreme Leader Khamenei has decided he would rather rule the nation by force, making the rest of Iran's government a sham, rather than risk change.  Any elections from now on will have to be rigged because given a choice, the people will vote for change.

But if Khamenei manages to beat down the opposition and take complete control of the nation by force, won't it embolden the American neo-cons and Israel to make a case for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities to ensure this madman Khamenei isn't able to develop nuclear weapons (If he is willing to brutalize his own people, imagine what he and Ahmadinejad would do to Israel!)? 

--Trakker