A Day Off

I'm feeling decidedly punky, so I'm taking the day off.  There's still plenty of superb content out there on the intertubes, however, like

Ifthethunderdontgetya for superb nature photographs;

Echidne for snake goddess wisdom;

Phoenix Woman and Charles for solid analysis.

You'll enjoy them all.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow.

Mental Health Day

Sorry, folks, but I don't have the energy to do any substantive blogging today.  I just don't have much to say.

Here, however, are some good people with some great stuff:

Avedon

Jack

Hecate


Enjoy them and the day!

Mental Health Day

I couldn't get it together last night and this morning to do any news reading, so I got nothing.

But plenty of other people do, and I suggest you check them out:

People like Jack,

Or Avedon,

Or Hecate,

Or Phoenix Woman and Charles,

Or, if you need a cartoon or two, there's always the crew led by Tom Tomorrow.

Hopefully something more substantive tomorrow.

Mental Health Day

I don't have much to say today, but that doesn't mean other people aren't saying good things.  Check out their blogs:

There's Digby,

Or Echidne,

Or Ronni

Or, for some fabulous photography.

Friday Cat Blogging will be up at 2:30 PM PST.

Oh, and enjoy the day.

Merry Christmas!

I just don't feel like doing any substantive blogging today.  Instead, I'm going to enjoy my friends and neighbors and be grateful for the good things which still do happen in life.

I wish you the same kind of day.

I will return to bitching and kvetching tomorrow.

A Day Off

I've been feeling pretty punky the last couple of days, so posting anything substantive isn't possible.

Maybe tomorrow.

Mental Health Day

Because of the unremitting heat and the offshore winds lighting up my allergies, I've got nothing today.  However, other folks have plenty.

Like Libby Spencer.

And Susie Madrak.

And Ronni Bennett.

Go check them out.

Hopefully tonight's meeting of the master debaters will inspire me for tomorrow.

Mental Health Day

(Maybe later. Or not.)

Mental Health Day

(Allergies. Maybe later.)

Mental Health Day

(I'm taking the day off from substantive blogging. I suggest you go visit Libby, Ronni, and Susie. You'll be glad you did.

Bonus Critter blogging will be up at the regular time.)

Mental Health Day

(My phone service keeps cutting out, and since I am on dial-up, posting is real iffy today.)

Mental Health Day

(I had a rough night, and right now I've got nothing. Maybe later, certainly in time for Friday Cat Blogging.)

Mental Health Day

(Just taking a day off from blogging to enjoy the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl game and the gorgeous weather.)

Mental Health Day

(Rough night, but maybe something later.)

Mental Health Day

Mental Health Day

(Once again, copped from Marcellina at The Practice Room.)

Recommended Reading

James Carroll has an intriguing column up in the Boston Globe, one that had me scratching my head for quite some time. His thesis is that because of a decade of being at war, we, as a society, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. It is clear from his essay that he is not speaking metaphorically, that he believes that we are all manifesting symptoms of this psychological disorder.

In describing what he calls “PTSD and the ruins of character,’’ psychiatrist Jonathan Shay cites an official definition of the disorder as it affects individuals. The characteristics include “a hostile or mistrustful attitude toward the world; social withdrawal; feelings of emptiness or hopelessness; a chronic feeling of being ‘on the edge,’ as if constantly threatened; estrangement.’’ The catastrophic experience of war, to put it most simply, can completely change the personality.

But it is impossible to read that catalogue of symptoms belonging to traumatized persons and not recognize notes of the contemporary public scene in the United States. Political discourse — “hostility, mistrust’’ — suffers from the same ruins of character. A general “social withdrawal’’ into the solipsism of, say, Twitter is matched in the blogosphere by infinite self-expression for its own sake. “Hopelessness’’ attached to economic dislocation goes even deeper than worries about mid-life job loss or the vocation stymied at graduation. There is no “emptiness’’ to compare with the loss of a feel for the purposefulness of work. ...

But looming over all unease is the shadow of American wars that are, at best, hard to justify, difficult to understand, and steadily going, by every measurement, from bad to worse. The generals buckle. The president mystifies. Troops come home in bags or wheelchairs. Individual PTSD is back. An ever-growing population of far-off strangers equates America with Satan. The killers among them are empowered. And how could our quietly traumatized nation not be screaming, even if, at this point, the nation is still only screaming inside?

My first inclination was to dismiss Mr. Carroll's column as interesting, but overblown, with rhetoric a bit too purple for my tastes. Yes, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have had an impact on the nation in many complicated ways. The drain on our treasury is the most obvious one: if we hadn't spent billions upon billions on wars we didn't need to engage in, and shouldn't have by any measure, our economic collapse might not have been quite as severe. If we hadn't authorized the use of military force after 9/11, there wouldn't have been the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay with all the shameful horror that involves. Still, the profound uneasiness of the American populace is not simply the result of two misbegotten wars running at the same time on parallel tracks.

That said, I also decided that Mr. Carroll is on to something if one shifts his assertions a bit. The wars themselves then became symptoms of the psychological malady we seem to be suffering. Yes, the 8 years of the Bush administration did unspeakable damage to our democracy, but the wars were only part of that White House's agenda: the de facto suspension of our Constitution played a large role, as did the hastening of the transfer of power from the electorate to the monied interests, a transfer that has been going on far longer than the Bush era, also played a significant if often ignored (deliberately forgotten) role.

It is as if our own government has declared war on us, its citizens, the ones who allegedly are the real source of power. That we are not the source, and perhaps never were, and that we are subject to the whims and desires of those who own everything in the country including us is deeply unsettling.

The mark of a good essayist is that he/she challenges the reader to consider matters in ways that the reader would never have otherwise. In this respect, James Carroll has succeeded brilliantly. I urge you to click on over and read the column in its entirety.

Courage Comes In Several Varieties

Having never been part of the military, the awards that are given to combatants have never been part of my experience. This morning, though, I see an op-ed that makes me just sad for my country. It seems our military thinks that the only kind of suffering that requires courage is physical.

Many of the wounds of the kind of battle that involves military against civilian populations are mental affliction. The suffering of our troops involves more than physical pain and disabling. Confronted with the injustice they are required to inflict cannot help but hurt their stability, and self-esteem.

When I was in Iraq, the most common wound behind the many Purple Hearts we awarded was the "perforated eardrum," an eardrum punctured by the concussion of a nearby explosion. In the vast majority of cases, no blood was ever shed. Seldom did these Marines ever miss a day of full duty. And yet they were all awarded the coveted medal.

A year later, back at Camp Lejeune, N.C., I was making calls to the families of wounded Marines – a difficult duty even when the wounds are minor. But I noticed during that time that I never once made a call to a family about a Marine's psychological wounds. I never got a casualty report for post-traumatic stress, despite the rising number of veteran suicides. Never once.

Why, I asked myself, if a combat wound is a combat wound no matter how small, shouldn't those people suffering from the "invisible wounds" of post-traumatic stress also receive the Purple Heart? Difficulty of diagnosis is one of the central justifications the Pentagon has given, citing the concern that fakers will tarnish the medal's image. Spilt blood cannot be faked.

But this seems an unconvincing argument not to honor those who actually do suffer from post-traumatic stress. For example, the possibility of fakers has not prevented the Department of Veterans Affairs from awarding disability payments to service members who have received a diagnosis. Why should the military itself be different?

The distinction, I suspect, lies in the deep-seated attitude toward psychological wounds. It is still difficult for many members of the military to truly believe that post-traumatic stress is, in fact, an injury and not the result of a weak or dysfunctional brain. The same culture that demands tough-mindedness also encourages skepticism toward the suggestion that the violence of war can hurt the healthiest of minds.

What we require of military service should be very much the major consideration for awarding service awards. When we produce veterans wounded deeply in ways that are not physical, we should be ashamed not to honor them. Mental suffering is real, and many of us have experienced it. We need to leave our prejudices aside in evaluating what is worth our respect.

The fear of being recognized for mental suffering is a part of the affliction trauma victims are subject to, and giving them the respect they've earned would be a step toward easing that suffering.

Mental Incompetence

Watching the spectacle of the worst administration ever in the throes of leaving, I have to agree with the First Lady, and Condi Rice, that we will appreciate the cretin in chief more when he's gone. In fact, that condition cannot begin too soon.

Increasingly, the sheer inability to govern anything becomes horribly evident.

US President George W. Bush's top women advisers -- wife Laura and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- fought back Sunday against critics who say his presidency was one of the worst ever.

"It's ridiculous," Rice told CBS in an interview recorded Monday. "Generations pretty soon are going to start to thank this president for what he's done. This generation will."

Both Rice and Laura Bush assailed the news media, with the top diplomat repeatedly dismissing "today's headlines" as meaningless to the task of governing and the first lady bluntly calling reporters unfair to her husband.

"Do I think the press is fair? No, absolutely not," Laura Bush told Fox News Channel in an interview also taped Monday and broadcast while the president was set to usher in 2009 on his Texas ranch near this tiny town.

Asked about critics who say her husband's presidency was a failure, Laura Bush replied: "Well, I know it's not. And so I don't really feel like I need to respond to people that view it that way.

"And I think history will judge and we'll see later," she said.
(snip)
Rice defended Bush's Middle East policies, notably the talks revived in November 2007 at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland -- negotiations which failed to yield a hoped-for agreement before 2009 and have yet to resolve any of the core issues.

We don't need to wait, we see the greatness already. This is the absolute bottom, and there is no direction to go except up.

There is a real advantage in having seen the occupied White House commit one disaster after another, indeed. We have material enough for several textbooks on the way to destroy a prosperous, well-constructed, solidly performing country. We have the ultimate proof of George Santayana's adage that "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

The price for all these great benefits is one that the country will be paying, and suffering from, for some time to come.

Does anyone else occasionally remember the parents' excuse for avoiding helping their son, in "Rebel Without A Cause"? They often looked at a totally messed up household and trilled "We'll all look back on this in ten years and laugh." That has stayed with me, and the dysfunctional executive branch seems to have adopted it as their creed lately.

The redemption of the constant stumblings has been too hard to face. What we have leaving the highest offices is a whole segment of our government that is in shock, and unable to face the reality of how complete a failure they have brought about. The entire ideology they held to has been irrevocably disproved. That ideology is the one on which they were going to base their foundation, the Freedom Institute, at SMU. How daunting it would be to face that your future plans had been completely shown up as absurd. They are choosing the opposite course, to refuse to accept the obvious.

The constant revisions, the claim that invading Iraq was caused by Clinton's administration, the imitation of a triumph that infuriated an Iraqi news reporter to the point of pitching his shoes at him, the wincing smirk, these are just part of mounting evidence that the departing national catastrophe has lost all hold on reality. This happens in events so stunning that a person can't deal with them. Treatment will be difficult, but I am confident it will be necessary make life bearable around this psychotic cabal.

The treatment that the government will need is real, thorough, revision, especially the rooting out of the remaining ideologists the psychotic administration just past has installed where the nation's business can be damaged. Our actual 'homeland security' depends on eliminating the remnants of the past executive branch that has so eminently served the country only in showing what really, really doesn't work.

Like Diane - and as she was cited by Glenn Greenwald in his treatise on crime and punishment - I look forward to the prosecution of the crimes against the U.S. that have run rampant for eight years now. Without consequences, crime is encouraged and will repeat itself. The leftover criminals in this White House, that President Ford pardoned for crimes under Nixon, are the proof that crime must be punished to be prevented from recurring.

As a nation we need to contemplate the lessons of this severe distress the country suffers from the emotional instability of its leadership. It might be good to establish minimum standards of mental competence for the office of president. If that can be accomplished, we will indeed have a legacy of this White House that is worth having.

Another gem of observation that the departing maladministration has proved is this from Aldous Huxley: At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

I would guess Huxley underestimated the percentage, perhaps because he lived before the full gamut of what he feared was in office from 2001 to 2009.

Twenty-two more days.

Calling Nurse Ratched

The state schools in Texas are losing too many students for even the Department of Justice. Its growing population of those who have been committed to institutions has strained the facilities that the state supports. The result is damage and destruction, and that has offended those who are still the adults in charge in Washington.

Texas' institutions for people with mental retardation fail to provide adequate care and protect residents from harm — failures that have been fatal in dozens of cases, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation has found.

In the past year statewide, at least 114 residents of state schools died, 53 from preventable conditions such as respiratory failure that are "often the result of lapses in care," according to the findings. Federal officials documented incidents that included residents' swallowing Swiss Army knives and a delay of days in the reporting of a resident's rape allegation.

"We have concluded that numerous conditions and practices at the Facilities violate the constitutional and federal statutory rights of their residents," said a letter sent to Gov. Rick Perry this week by Grace Chung Becker, an acting assistant U.S. attorney general. "While specific findings vary among the Facilities, we find that there are systemic deficiencies throughout the Facilities."

The findings come after federal officials documented grim conditions at the Lubbock State School two years ago and later expanded their investigation.
(snip)
The latest federal investigation found that:

• Psychiatrists do not adequately consider residents' medical issues. Earlier this year, a state school resident was praised by her psychiatric medication review team for losing weight. What the team did not seem to know was that direct-care workers had observed the resident purging.

I am not going to resist pointing out that the grand jury indictment against Cheney and Gonzales for their roles in mistreating prisoners has just been quashed. They had this sort of example to follow, providing inadequate care for public money. The state is red, remember, we don't do humane stuff.

It's good that even the low standards at the Department of Justice were not being met, and the lowhanging fruits there protested. I am sure that damages that could be claimed from victims were the reason, rather than the damages done to institutionalized people.

Okay, there are some employees at DoJ who are not appointees of the present maladministration, and I do applaud them. The scandals that have happened in incarceration, particularly of the youthful offenders, here are a lesson to all of us. We are making more problems by 'putting away' our problems. It has been too much temptation to the greedy, when the Darth faction is running around loose.