The outdoor tank serving as the home for a family of harbor seals was relatively quiet.  Only a few straggling tourists wheeling strollers filled with cookie-crunching toddlers were pointing fingers at the slowly lolling seals.

The very oldest, Smoke, swam by, her blue-white cataract eyes open, and her well-worn pattern through the water predictable and safe.  Always safe. She glided to the far end of the tank and diffidently sank to the bottom where sleep awaited.

One of her offspring stood silent sentry upright in the water above her. As vigilant and expressionless as a Buckingham Palace guard, his gaze never faltered, his posture never changed.

I wrote an essay yesterday titled, Collateral Damage. In it I opened with the same photograph reproduced three times of a pre-teen Iraqi girl mouthed ope’d in horror, clinging to herself, with the image of spattered blood puddled and dripping on the wall to her right and her father’s dead, bare feet to her left.  Someone’s hand is seen reaching to touch her father.  The little girl is alone in her own world of horror.

An astute reader alerted me to the need to place advance warnings on images of this type to allow people not to look, should they be disturbed.

Of course, I will honor that request, as I wish never to inflict pain or distress of any kind on anyone.

But I also have very mixed feelings about this.  Is it moral to be able to distance oneself from what is happening in Iraq?  Is it acceptable not to know and to experience what is being inflicted on victims of violence, whoever they may be, and for whatever societal sanctioned reason?

On this first Iraq Moratorium day, I’d like us to discuss the morality of immersion of and identification with the victims of violence.

  Photo courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

She’s next to her father.  You fill in the rest of the story.

The recent essays about freedom, the use of police force (tasering) a student at a public speaking event, the failure of the Senate to restore habeas corpus, the continued use and sanction of torture, etc. led me to this morning’s thought process.

We have not only lost our way, but we’ve forgotten our common history.

John Carr, the former president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association is another whose whistle-blowing cost him his job. He writes an absolutely riveting blog called The Main Bang. You don’t need to know a thing about air traffic control to like it.

Why?

It’s all about worker safety and passenger safety.  It’s all about Republicans gutting the air traffic controllers’ safety provisions.  It’s all about Dems fighting back.

It’s all about legislation that needs your support right now.  This week.

It’s all about Americans remaining safe in the air and on the ground.

It’s all about how the FAA has acted in bad faith, aided and abetted by the Rethugs.

Here.  Have a look. You’ll feel the need for speed (dialing your Congress member, that is.)

After a long time of staring at the compose essay blank screen and trying to write something cogent, I realize that this isn’t the right community for me.

This is my fond farewell.

I dipped my toes in the water here, and I really enjoy the excitement that people bring to it.

But what I came in search of doesn’t seem to be here.  I am seeking a community of progressive policy wonks.  People who want to write about and discuss policy over campaigns; programs over partisan politics; common good over political sway.

While there are occasional essays touching on policy, and I appreciate them, overall, that doesn’t seem to be the overarching focus of the “serious” content component of the site.

And that’s what I crave.

I’d like to thank buhdy and the admins for creating such a neat site. And buhdy’s “Be excellent to each other” dictum is one I hope is honored. Thanks, too, for the folks who provided commentary and feedback for my essays. That helps me, and I appreciate it.

So bon voyage, safe trip, and have a great time!

I wish you all the best here, and I hope you all enjoy your ponies, pooties and other precious creatures.

Support Central

I’ve been blah-ging a lot about health care.  I’m outraged at knowing what happens in the board rooms, in patients’ rooms, in the operating rooms and in the emergency rooms.

But I also try to help people empower themselves so that they have the tools and skills they need in order to make the best decisions about their health for themselves, their families, their communities and our country.

This evening’s offering is simply an introduction, of sorts.  Share a little about your own health questions, your questions, and your needs.  As a community, it’s important that we identify what’s needed, and then figure out how and where our own talents can support each other and move our agenda forward.

There have been a growing number of essays which address the feelings of overwhelming powerlessness to affect change by Congress in the restoration of habeas corpus, the ongoing insult and assaults on the Constitution, the failure of Congress to do the will of “We, the People,” and of course, the absolute failure to end the Iraq occupation, not to mention the onslaught of oppression and egregious domestic policies that are raping the environment, burdening the burdened, and robbing from the poor.

I’ve been guilty of writing essays that chronicle outrage after outrage with only a glancing nod to action and problem resolution.

So in atonement for that glum outlook, I’d like to put forward a plan that will bring everyone who want to take action the ability to do just that – in community – and using the resources of the will of we, the people, the oversight ability of the collective progressive community and the strength of numbers to affect change.

In light of the new numbers calculating the Iraq civilian death toll to be 1 to 1.2 MILLION people out of a total pre-US invasion population of what I thought to be 31 million, but is more likely to have been 24 to 26 million I wrote a comment last evening on the inestimable nightprowlkitty’s post about us needing to do THE MATH to make some sense of that number.

What was the original Iraq population? 

I’m thinking perhaps around 31 million?

Let’s compare – California has what, 37 million citizens?

What cities in Cal. have a population of 1.2 million (the same percentage of 1 million out of 31 million)?

San Jose is at 950,000, and San Diego is at 1,200,000. San Francisco is at about 750,000.

Can you imagine San Francisco gone?  San Diego a memory?  San Jose just a cinder pile?

On a national basis, the number would climb to 10 million dead.  No New York AND Boston AND Hartford?

The numbers aren’t real because we don’t translate them into what we know.  Time to do – as Karl Rove says – THE MATH.

This morning, the NY Times’ Bob Herbert speaks to what is being termed a humanitarian crisis.

When the U.S. launched its “shock and awe” invasion in March 2003, the population of Iraq was about 26 million. The flaming horror unleashed by the invasion has since forced 2.2 million of those Iraqis, nearly a tenth of the population, to flee the country. Many of those who left were professionals marked for death – doctors, lawyers, academics, the very people with the skills necessary to build a viable society.

The Iraq Ministry of Health reported that 102 doctors and 164 nurses were killed from April 2003 to May 2006. It is believed that nearly half of Iraq’s doctors have fled. The exodus of health care professionals in a country hemorrhaging from the worst kinds of violence pretty much qualifies as nightmarish.

While more than two million Iraqis have fled to other countries, another two million have been displaced internally. According to the Global Policy Forum, a group that monitors international developments:

But a crisis is not a permanent condition.  It is, by its definition, a critical point in time which requires resolution.

cri·sis  (krss)
n. pl. cri·ses (-sz)
1.
a. A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.
b. An unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.
2. A sudden change in the course of a disease or fever, toward either improvement or deterioration.
3. An emotionally stressful event or traumatic change in a person’s life.
4. A point in a story or drama when a conflict reaches its highest tension and must be resolved.
[Middle English, from Latin, judgment, from Greek krisis, from krnein, to separate, judge; see krei- in Indo-European roots.]
Synonyms: crisis, crossroad, exigency, head, juncture, pass

I believe that what is occurring in Irzq has gone well beyond a crisis and is a full-on disaster – of genocide.

I’ll let the facts of the actions speak for themselves in that argument.

But for now, I’d like to share with you a bit about how it is to try to be a nurse in Iraq.  I posted this during the week in May which is celebrated – sort of – in the US as “Nurses’ Week”. I tried to give a flavor for the difference in nursing between military nurses at a CSH in Iraq and their native Iraq civilian counterparts.  I haven’t been able to connect with any nurses in Iraq directly, so if you have contacts, please share or forward this so they know they aren’t forgotten.

Welcome.  Glad you’re here.  Consider this a virtual office visit. I have all the time in the world for you.

What brings you here today?

How do you feel?

What are your pressing health concerns?

Are you aware of what you should be doing to keep yourself healthy?  Do you have the resources to do those things?

How’s your relationship with the professional who care for you?  Do you have a primary physician or nurse practitioner?  Are you happy with the diagnostic services available to you?

Instead of my daily dharmaceutical (thanks, homo neurotic, for that fabuloso name)outrage rant, I’d like to open this up as a free-for-all about the issues you would like to have explored about health, health care, health policy and progressive action.

{Crossposted on To Us!  Permission to use noncommercially with attribution.}

Open post to Brian Williams of NBC News:

In response to this from your Daily Nightly blog, in which you wrote

A number of television journalists gathered for lunch with the president at the White House today — a practice becoming more and more common when this president has a major speech to deliver. The following is a review of my notes, and is offered here under the ground rules established by the assembled White House senior aides. Vice President Cheney attended but did not speak.

I realize that you don’t publish my comments, pointed and critical as they are, but I hope that you are at least reading and considering them in the spirit in which they are offered.

I’m still trying to figure out this place and the DDharmiacs who inhabit it.  As I always wanted to know what it was like to be a DD, I have to say, it isn’t what I expected.  *g* 

I’m a novice health wonk, and as I learn more, my outrage-o-meter simply reads HIGH-OUT-OF-RANGE now.  So I’m relying on you, DDharmiacs, to let me know if I’m terminal or if there’s hope for a cure. With that, here’s what consumer-driven health care means in the free-for-all market:

CNN reported a story of consumer-directed health care – the mantra of the Republicans.

A man threw his seriously ill wife four stories to her death because he could no longer afford to pay for her medical care, prosecutors said in charging him with second-degree murder. According to court documents filed Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court, Stanley Reimer walked his wife to the balcony of their apartment and kissed her before throwing her over.