Why do children have to die for common sense laws?
Abigail Taylor died Thursday from injuries sustained last June when when she sat on a wading pool drain; the suction so strong that it suck out part of her intestines. It is always a tragedy when a child dies, and always there is some knee-jerk reactions, some good and sometimes even some not so go. But when it happens for something incredibly stupid, it is all that much more infuriating.
On the heels of this incident, in December Congress approved legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of drain covers that don’t meet anti-entrapment safety standards.” It was called the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act [pdf], the named for the granddaughter of former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, who was killed when she was trapped by the suction of a drain in 2002!
Now, I don’t understand why this wasn’t already a law, because it seems so brain-dead obvious to me as a parent, but can somebody explain to me, even after the first incident, and when people started lobbying for this law in 2002, it took 5 freakin’ years to get this written into law? Now, I am willing to bet if I left it at that, I would have somebody come along and say “there’s a war on and Congress had ‘more important’ things to contend with.” But if that is the case, then can somebody explain to me why Abigail Taylor had to die when over those same five years Congress sat back, played IM games with Pages, stuffed freezers full of cash, taking bribes, and making medical diagnosis via videotape. They had “the time” to do it, but it seems unless there is enough dead children for them to stop taking donations from corporations that are too cheap to manufacture these things safely, they just allow it to go on.
Propoganda: Not just for foreign countries
It has been long known that the U.S. Military (along with many others, this is not a American phenomenon), uses propaganda in times of war. Planes littering villages with leaflets, buying of air time and ads in newspapers in a sort of psychological warfare. But tactics like these are (or were) supposed to be strictly controlled; as a matter of fact by trying to be more coy about it, the United States came under fire when they admitted they were planting stories in Iraq newspapers as “news articles.”
But it certainly seems that those days of propaganda planting being kept out of our news streams is history. Oh sure, it has been blatantly obvious for some time that the Faux News Channel is little more than “right wing mouthpiece” and tries to twist things to fit that image, but certain talk shows hosts aside (*cough* Hannity, O’Reilly *cough*) the data is usually twisted but not typically made up. Not so in this recent false article planted in Time Magazine. Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com has done a nice job of comparing the unsubstantiated (false) claims in the Time article piece, with something that the author of the Time article couldn’t be bothered with, facts and numbers.
It is really sad, that you now have to be critical about everything you read. It is at a point where I trust very few sources of information outside my blogroll. I may not agree with all of you all the time, but at least there, I know if people don’t know, they don’t know, they don’t just make up the facts as they go along.
It really is a sad place we are in right now.
New Data, same excuses
It was a bit more than a year ago that I was thrilled to see the release of a vaccine for HPV since this is the leading cause of cervical cancer, though I was completely dumbfounded by the controversy that it stirred up. Now in all fairness there were some excellent points brought up, such as this from Mr. Big Dubya over at Dadcentric, and I can certainly understand people feeling leery these days about drug companies and their rushing products to market. What I don’t get, is the religious nuts that try to claim that having a girl vaccinated is tantamount to giving her the green light for sex.
Now, I guess I was stupidly hoping that when I saw this report that stated 1 in 4 teens have a sexually transmitted disease, that perhaps people would wake up and realize that “Just Say No” didn’t cut it for Nancy Reagan and the war on drugs, and it isn’t working for this either. I was hoping, but of course I should have known better. I should know that there are clowns out there like Wendy Wright over at “Concerned Women for America” (no I am not linking to the hypocritical group of activist women, that somehow believe women don’t belong doing the things that they are doing… like being activists maybe). Anyway, apparently Ms. Wright (I can’t even type that without laughing) decided that the reason for this is because there are actually some programs out there that don’t strictly teach abstinence. Good Gravy, when are these people going to get a clue.
I guess the “concerned women” couldn’t be bothered reading things in the story like:
Blame is most often placed on inadequate sex education, from parents and from schools focusing too much on abstinence-only programs.
or maybe
“This is pretty shocking,” said Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital in New York.
“To talk about abstinence is not a bad thing,” but teen girls — and boys too — need to be informed about how to protect themselves if they do have sex, Alderman said.
No, I guess that wouldn’t fit their agenda. I just can’t help but wonder, if they aren’t concerned about young women and their health, just who are the Concerned Women for America really concerned about?
Yes, I realize I have wandered a bit, but it is these types of people that continue to defend the indefensible. Of those girls that had contracted an STD in the study, the most prevalent was HPV!
Teens were tested for four infections: human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer and affected 18 percent of girls studied; chlamydia, which affected 4 percent; trichomoniasis, 2.5 percent; and genital herpes, 2 percent.
And this is the leading cause of cervical cancer, and 18% of the girls studied are infected? I don’t like those “odds” at all. Certainly not enough to take a flyer on my daughter’s health. Sure, I HOPE she will save herself for marriage, and I HOPE that the man that she marries is ALSO saving himself, so that he can not give her the virus. But you know what? I am sure as hell not going to take a roll of the dice with her health and tell her that “Just Say No” is all she needs to know. I will take any steps I can, and I will educate her for the steps that I can’t take for her, to give her the best chance possible. To me, that is the only logical conclusion, and in my not so humble opinion, this studies shows that the odds are too great to play it any other way.
Break the law, buy a Senator, get immunity
Yesterday the U.S. Senate voted on a measure that would have stripped out immunity for the telcos that illegally assisted the government in spying on United States citizens. It seems that in today’s day and age, you can break the law all you want, so long as you own enough politicians, becuase then they can say you do not have to face any penalties for commiting those crimes.
The White House’s argument has been that the 40 some odd law suits currently pending in the courts could cause finanacial hardship for the telcos. Well gee, how does the old saying go? Don’t do the crime if you can’t pay the fine? (yea I know, I am paraphrasing). Perhaps they should have thought of this before they went ahead and broke the law.
So what Senators do the telcos own? (And if your Senator is on this list, you may wish to contact him/her and ask Why they are supporting and providing immunity for criminals!)
Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Carper (D-DE)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Mikulski (D-MD)
P.S. Regardless of what your political leaning are… YES! The Telcos are criminals. If they weren’t, they would not need the cover of being given immunity.
Wow, that was scary
In 1988, I was a young “rebel.” Rebel, in a Alex Keaton kind of a way. I didn’t understand politics nearly as well as I thought I did, and (at the time) certainly thought that Ronald Reagan was far and away better than anything that the Democratic Party was offering in the way of leadership.
That was not the scary part. Stay with me here.
1988 was also the year that I got a letter to the Editor published. Fine, it was in the Jersey Journal, a local newspaper that barely has a readership in its own area. But I was happy about it anyway. So, apparently was my mom, who unbeknownst to me, kept a copy of the paper that the article appeared.
Several months back, she had given me a box of different papers and such that she had saved over the years (since my father’s passing in 2004, she has slowly been “getting ready to die” by ridding herself of things that she had saved over th years and given them to me or my sister). In there were old report cards, clipping from sports stories about Little League, “reviews” from local play productions I was in, and among that I found the letter to the editor.
I won’t bore you (or embarrass myself) by revealing everything the young naive version of myself wrote at the time. But in there was little snippet that I thought was quite interesting (and scary in its accuracy. The emphasis added is mine now, and not in the published letter). “… and Geraldine Ferraro was a complete embarrassment. Not that I saw anybody else that could help Mondale actually win the hearts and minds of the country to a point that he would’ve stood a chance, but if I were a woman, I would have be absolutely flabbergasted by this. She is going to throw the woman’s movement back so far, that it will be 20 years before a woman can actually hope to run and have any real chance at the White House.”
And here we are exactly 20 years later.
Update: I should have been clearer on this. The article was written in 1988, in reference to Michael Dukakis, but went back and referenced this as series of lousy contenders put forth by the Democratic Party. (Now you know why there is a discrepancy in the years. Thanks to those who e-mailed me for clarification)
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