I just had a gut feeling that they would get away with it.

Nevermind DNA on the baton.

Nevermind an actual fellow officer coming forward to “rat” on one of his own.

Nevermind behavior from the victim completely consistent with the wounds he suffered.

Nevermind a hospital report which found a significant wound in the victim’s anus.

Nevermind the blood on his hands.

Don’t ask me how I knew that the perverted sicko New York cop, Richard Kern, would get away with sexually assaulting Michael Mineo in a Brooklyn subway station in October, 2008.

And don’t think I jumped to any conclusions based on press accounts. I followed up with the actual trial testimony as well as the physical evidence. Testimony from friends and complete strangers who happened upon the scene. The hospital report. There was not one piece of evidence or testimony, other than from the accused, which was in any way inconsistent.

In other words, there was no other story for the evidence to add up to.

Not to a New York City jury, not when it comes to cops versus a Hispanic, pot-smoking tattoo artist.

The jury’s one sentence statement:

“We found reasonable doubt.”

I want to know what 5 million times $30,000 is. I think it’s $150 billion.

30 times 5 million is 150 million. A thousand millions is a billion. Yup. That’s right.

Let’s see. TARP cost $900 billion. The Recovery Act cost $700 billion.

That’s 1.7 TRILLION dollars, my friend. Stack those dollars as high as the moon.

For One tenth of that we could pay 5 million people a $30,000 salary. With $20 billion left over for incidentals.

I’m no economist but I know that labor is roughly one quarter of the cost of doing business, so we would actually need $600 billion for our “company”, which is still about one third of TARP+Recovery.

Now, what will our company do with all this labor and capital?

- Rebuild the national electric grid to improve on the senseless amount of energy lost in transmission, and to bring clean sources such as solar and wind from places like the desert to where it’s needed.

- Build a national network of reservoirs, aquifers and pipes to capture enough precipitation to keep the entire country flowing with water, no matter how “dry” their conditions may become.

- Build a network of waste water treatment plants, which produce two important things: clean water and fertilizer. Build enough of them at a high enough standard to return it to the water cycle.

- Build solar. Build wind. Build nuclear.

- Build fast train tracks. When fast trains are quicker than planes and can run on renewable energy, we will be able to wind down our reliance on jets, which are expensive and require fossil fuels.

- Construct new buildings and rehab existing buildings to become as energy efficient as possible. Require existing government buildings to have these makeovers.

There are others. Feel free to add your own. Increase and decrease the size of the work force as economic conditions change.

Put workers who want to work back to work. Rebuild this great country. Leave our children in better condition than the world was as we found it. Learn the lessons of a civilized people and adapt accordingly.

Get stuff done!

Who’s with me?

This post was originally going to be titled “Keith Olbermann Is A Fat Stupid Idiot”, because he wrote and then recited this tripe.

Then along came Stephen Baldwin.

Aren’t white people going all stupid over The First Black President. Which is funny because if you ask Black Folk, he ain’t Black Enough. Forgot his roots and all.

Which is, of course, much more accurate. I never did see a whole lot of black in Obama, and he seems to want it that way.

Lest we forget, blacks make up about 20% of the population, not enough to elect a president. Obama had to appeal to all in order to have any chance.

The word is “homogenized.” Who could argue?

I wonder what prompted Keith Olbermann to get out of bed one morning and declare all white people racists. Fair enough that he feels that way, but then he has the hubris not to chalk it up to his own inadequacies, but to throw, oh, THE ENTIRE WHITE RACE into the pit of racism with him.

In case he got lonely, I suppose.

Not likely that K.O. will ever get lonely. He’s his own favorite company.

As to the substance of his remarks, K.O. just couldn’t wait to paint conservatives as the true racists. Why are there no blacks at the Tea Parties? K.O.’s “quaint” explanation is that people are confused like his granddaddy was. Actually K.O.’s point is that we shouldn’t be so confused 60 years after Jackie Robinson, or something like that. We should all be better by now.

Except that he “admits” that white equals racist, a statement that I find so offensive that I almost wish the man harm. And except that he acknowledges that tribalism is in all likelihood a primitive trait. After all, black folk prefer their own company, same as white folk do.

What racism has always been about is not who we choose to associate with, but a belief that others are not our equal because their skin is darker than ours. K.O. mushes everything together into a stew of senselessness. Never has a man flung himself off a cliff more spectacularly.

You will know that there is a strong liberal bias in the media if K.O. is not brought to account for this flagrant violation of sensibility and sensitivity.

And might I add, sanity.

Mr. Olbermann, I never met Ed Murrow, Ed Murrow was never a friend of mine, but this I know for certain: You, sir, are no Ed Murrow. You’re not even a David Strathairn.

I’m pretty sure Stephen Baldwin knows better than to take himself seriously, although you never can be sure. But one thing I guarantee: A lot more people know about his conservative radio program today than a few days ago. I don’t know how else to explain his decision, with a video camera in his face, to refer to President Obama as “Homey.”

Seems to me he had to know it would be seen as offensive. Seems to me that must have been his point. I only bring this up because (a) we don’t need this crap in our lives and we should tell people like Baldwin to stuff it, so maybe the next guy knows it’s not a free pass; and (b) because somebody might say it proves Olbermann’s point.

No, it only proves that Stephen Baldwin is also a Fat Stupid Idiot.

This post goes out to Nobody.

It’s assumed, somewhat accurately, that Nobody reads this blog.

That’s OK. It gets captured somewhere for posterity. And anyway, I get it off my chest and then I feel better.

There are people who say stupid things. I will venture that in fact that number comprises 100% of the human race. Saying something stupid is simply part of being human. We have jaw muscles and they sometimes work faster than our brain muscle.

Sometimes we really just want to take the whole thing back, think about it a bit longer, and try again.

Isn’t it somewhat ironic that people judge each other for such slips? After all, none of us and I mean none of us wants to have to defend every single thing we utter.

What’s the basis of all of this? John Mayer and Morris O’Kelly.

Mayer, you probably know, said some stupid and insensitive things in his Playboy interview, most of which would have been ignored within a few days, except he had the unfortunate lack of wisdom to invoke race.

Morris, an African American man, is almost always quick to pounce on stupid things white people say which invoke race.

He likes to use words such as “inexcusable” and “unacceptable.” Which I take to mean: He isn’t inviting Mayer over for Sunday chowdowns anymore.

No, of course, Morris’ larger point is that we as a society cannot permit people to get away with being insensitive to the black experience.

Hey, I’m down with respecting the black experience.

AND I’ve been known to be stupidly insensitive. I once told a black guy I was playing Monopoly with that it was cool that he could get to be the plantation owner.

Off the chart stupid. I got called before the commander for that remark. I was 19.

Old enough to know better but far too inexperienced to realize that there are some places you just can’t go.

Ah, but I learned. Those singed fingers have a way of conveying a lesson.

Morris either misunderstood Mayer’s remarks to Playboy, or Morris deliberately twisted those words, because what Mayer said was this:

Someone asked me the other day, “What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?” And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, “I can’t really have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’”

The headline of Morris’ first post on this was: “JOHN MAYER SAYS HE HAS A ‘N***** PASS’”

Well, no he didn’t, as I explained to Morris. Morris did not change the headline. So at that point, whatever the original intent, it became a lie.

So, Mayer said some really stupid things and Morris lied about it. Morris also published several other posts on the topic, and as of Monday, February 15 he was still Tweeting about it.

I have no issue with those who were deeply offended by Mayer’s remarks, including his invocation of “white supremacy.”

He thought it was clever. Like I did about the plantations.

He wasn’t clever, he was stupid. It wasn’t funny, it was offensive.

And so we learn.

But to listen to Morris, not only is Mayer beyond redemption, but it is clear to Morris that Mayer actually disrespects black people and may be a racist.

So he responds to being offended by being offensive.

I abhor this zero-sum approach to life lessons. There does not have to be a dead body in order for us to learn from an experience. It is not necessary to pillory Mayer in order to make the larger point that words matter.

No sane, rational person can possibly conclude that Mayer has the slightest malice toward blacks, based on the Playboy interview or any other source. It becomes a massive cheap shot as well as an ugly smear to “go there”.

Morris will argue that Mayer “went there first.”

No, Morris, he didn’t. He tried to be clever, said something stupid, had no intention to cause the mess he caused and would really like to clean it up.

Morris will say “He hasn’t tried hard enough.”

But wait a minute, Morris: Weren’t those words “inexcusable” and “unacceptable”? So what could Mayer say to win back your respect?

“I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE!!!”

Would that do it?

There is a man in New Hampshire, name of David Ridley, who makes videos which I find on YouTube. He’s one of the bravest people I’ve seen in a while.

What Ridley does is this: He defends his rights. He defends his right to videotape police activity, he defends his right not to cooperate more than required by law, he defends his right to open carry a firearm.

What he’s really defending is his franchise. His free agency.

We concede all sorts of power to the government, which is only too happy to take things from us. Most of us pay grudging respect to this reality. People like Ridley look for the line and make sure they stand right up against it, to defend it from further encroachment and to make the point that we’d like some of our freedoms back.

Some of Ridley’s videos demonstrate impressive courage. It can’t be easy to refuse to produce identification or to give your date of birth. It can’t be easy to answer questions with questions. It can’t be easy knowing that at any moment the police could simply take you into custody and destroy the evidence.

Ridley doesn’t come across as a glory hound nor as a loonie; he’s not exactly mainstream, and that’s a good thing. Different is good. It reminds us, or attempts to, that we don’t have to settle for assigned roles. It’s good to be reminded of that from time to time.

Believe it or not, there exists a place called Kermit, Texas, hard by the corner of New Mexico out in west Texas. It’s a small city, the county seat, surrounded by prairie and long roads. It’s hard to get doctors and surgeons to come out to Kermit. They like to keep the ones they get.

But what to do when the doctor is incompetent? That’s what two nurses had to decide. They’d seen the doctor use questionable methods and perform unapproved procedures.

The doctor is Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr., the nurses are Vickilyn Galle and Anne Mitchell and the hospital is Winkler County Memorial Hospital. The nurses had a combined 47 years of service at the hospital when they were terminated without explanation, after a police investigation revealed that they had reported to the Texas Department of State Health Services some of the problems they had observed with Dr. Arafiles. The nurses had previously reported the doctor to the hospital administration, which had not yet taken action on those reports. The nurses decided to take the next step because, they pointed out, the doctor was still practicing and thus patients were still at risk.

Dr. Arafiles countered by denying the charges and instead accusing the nurses of a personal vendetta. This led to a raid on their computers and then to a charge against Nurse Mitchell for misuse of public indormation. A felony.

Nurse Galle was not charged.

The Winkler county sheriff is a close personal friend of the doctor.

The prosecutor insists he can make the charge stick. The case is headed to court, and there are other actions pending as well. The lawyer for the nurses has taken an aggressive posture toward the county, suing them for vindictive prosecution.

Nurse Mitchell faces ten years in prison if she’s found guilty. Neither nurse has been able to find work. They were, by all accounts, fine nurses. They acted in, they assert, the manner their professional ethics and state law require.

The prosecution says it can prove a vendetta. I say that the case had better be slam dunk. They need to explain why the nurses went to the hospital first if their intent was to make things up. Wouldn’t the hospital know if these charges had any basis in fact? The prosecution will have to demonstrate that the information provided by the nurses was erroneous, and then they have to prove that the errors were intentional. If the nurses’ allegations are substantially true and corroborated, how can the doctor be defamed with facts?

Only if the nurses broke procedure would that be possible. They did not. They reported him privately to the state board. That it has come into the open is not their doing nor their fault.

What this case is sure to do is chill any thoughts any other medical service provider may have about reporting something which they think may be a problem. When the incentive is to keep your mouth shut or face a felony charge, a lengthy, expensive trial, loss of your job and ability to obtain another one, and ten years in state prison if convicted…

Would you stand up to that much authority?

Did you know that the Democratic health care overhaul could become law?

Did you know that the replacement of Senator Kennedy with a Republican, which destroyed the Demcratic super-majority, did not kill health care?

No? Then what, you ask, did?

A President who is running from his mandate.

President Obama was elected as an agent of change, “Change we can believe in,” if I remember the catch-phrase correctly. Obama swore to change the culture of Washington, swore to uphold the peoples’ will, swore to get down to business, swore he would get things done.

And for most of that time he has shrewdly played Mr. Inside within the body politic, expertly working Congressional committees to propel the legislation forward. At the same time he has kept up the appearance of Mr. Outside with the populace, venting his anger, presumably shared with The People, over bank bonuses and other examples of “unfairness.”

And he has bailed out the auto companies, saving thousands of jobs, and he has implemented a stimulus plan, saving more jobs while investing in forward reaching policies.

All good stuff.

But we all sense that Health Care is the Great White of this administration. Bag it and you are a hero; fail and you are an empty suit. It’s that stark and that simple.

Obama himself has implored us to understand that the budget cannot be balanced in future years without health care reform, without “bending the cost curve.” He has warned us that we could be the next who cannot afford premiums; who can be denied care because of a loophole in our policy; who can be bankrupted by catastrophic illness. He has laid out the reasons that health insurance should - must - be available to all, regardless of ability to pay. He has made it clear that these changes are absolutely necessary.

There is little dispute.

There is only an opposition party which intends to live up to its name: They intend to oppose anything that can be seen as a victory for this President. It will be interesting to see how willing they are, in an election year, to assist him in his current efforts at bipartisanship. To the extent that they believe they are better served in the coming election by continuing to weaken the President, they will refuse this offer. I expect that they by and large will do just that.

So where does that leave Mr. Change? Pleading for little boys to act like grownups?

This just in: He still has secure majorities in both houses.

No, an omnibus health care bill cannot pass without 60 votes. But budget reconciliations pass with a simple majority, and those bills can and always do contain amendments, which also require only a simple majority.

So, any Democratic Senator can propose an amendment to any budget bill and can get it approved by a majority vote. Now that it’s a part of the bill, it can be passed into law with only a simple majority.

Some call this an “end-around”, and this is presumably why Obama has as yet not thrown his weight behind it. On the other hand, when the minority party has chosen a path of pure obstruction, who is committing the end-around?

At this moment, the country has expressed its determination that both houses of congress as well as the Presidency are to be controlled by Democrats. This means that the country, at this moment, prefers Democratic policies to Republican policies. This means that the country, at this moment, wants Democratic bills to become law.

Once this majority has done what it can, the voters will render approval or disapproval.

So, what is this President so afraid of? Is he afraid that Republicans will say even worse things about him? Psst: They’re going to attack him no matter what he does, and why should he be in any way scared off by the prospect that his political enemies will treat him with hostility?

Is he afraid that voters will see this as a power play and reject Democrats at the polls come November? Then he is selling short his own persuasive powers, because how difficult can it be to explain to the people that:

(a) You put me in charge to make decisions, not to be constantly thrown off course;
(b) You put Democrats in charge of both houses;
(c) Majorities in both houses passed these bills;
(d) These bills are good for the country, and here’s why.

If he can’t do that, then not only is he unqualified to be President, he doesn’t even measure up to the potential he showed on the campaign trail to inspire with his words.

Unless Obama is trying to win a “Least Effective President” lifetime achievement award, and unless he wants to codify the Republican playbook by handing them the win without even putting up a fight, and unless he wants to see the causes in which he believes so deeply, and the people these policies are supposed to help, wither away from lack of support…

Then here is the message:

LEAD, Mr. President.

Just lead.

So these ten missionaries from Idaho, apparently led by a woman named Laura Silsby, show up in Haiti last week, in the devastating aftermath of the massive earthquake which leveled most of the capital city.

Their mission: To stock the orphanage they are developing in neighboring Dominican Republic with children who were left orphans by the quake. Silsby quickly makes contact with a local religious leader who just as quickly sends out the message that there is a humanitarian group preparing to take children to safety and better living conditions. The families are told that this is a camp, not an orphanage, that their children are not to be given away and that the families will be permitted to visit them.

Thirty three children, from several months to teenagers, are rounded up and placed on a bus, along with the missionaries. Silsby is apparently warned by a Dominican representative that she doesn’t have the required Haitian paperwork. She does have Dominican paperwork.

When the bus reaches the border, guards search and soon discover that the bus is loaded with undocumented children, who Silsby declares to be orphans headed to their new home. Interviews with some of the children reveal a different story, and the entire group is detained.

A few days later the entire group of ten are charged with attempted kidnaping. They remain in Haitian custody.

The pastor of Silsby’s church said this:

“We believe that the very best thing that could happen - not only for our loved ones who we miss dearly, but also for the people of Haiti - is for their government to release them as quickly as possible, allowing the world’s attention to be focused where it should be, on helping a nation that experienced a devastating earthquake.”

Former President Clinton said this:

“I think what’s important now is that the government of Haiti and the government of the United States to get together and go through this because the government of Haiti, as I understand it, is not looking for a fight. They just want to protect children.”

First, the government of Haiti is getting exactly what they want and need from all of this publicity: Awareness of the awesome and awful problem of child trafficking. Nefarious agents swoop into situations just like this one and steal children away to lives of labor or much worse.

Silsby and her cohorts had no such motives, of course. No, their motive was much more pure: To take as many children away from the world of Voodoo religion and bring them over to the world of Christianity. They weren’t “technically” orphans, but wouldn’t they be so much better off in a different place, learning proper religion? Weren’t Silsby and her cohorts on the side of Right, on the side of God?

Laura Silsby, where is your God now?

What sort of sick, psychotic God would let you get all the way to the border, inches from Dominican soil, where you would be free to enact your plan - only to have you instead detained in primitive and hostile conditions, indefinitely, charged with serious crimes?

Oh, what a sick God He is. What a terrifying prankster.

Or perhaps he’s locked in an existential battle with Satan, represented in this case by the Haitian government, protectors of the Voodoo religion. Poor Silsby and cohorts, stuck in-between God and Voodoo, left to fend for themselves, seen by both sides as important chips in a game which is so much larger than these mere humans.

Who were, after all, only trying to do Good.

So the children get brought back, re-united with their families. Silsby and her cohorts find themselves locked in one of the few buildings still standing, the local jail. Oh, the irony. And murmurs start to gain strength: These are people of God. They meant no harm. Their intent was to save children. Who can fault that? They should be freed.

There’s been talk of failed bribe attempts. A lawyer has been fired. This mess seems to get deeper by the day.

On the other hand, there is some sort of fairness in Silsby and cohorts being stuck in a Haitian jail. After all, ALL Haitians are stuck in the quake’s aftermath; ALL Haitians have instantly been transformed into the most primitive of humans, lacking access to even the most basic elements of civilized life: food, shelter, waste disposal, electric power.

It is somewhat fitting that Missionaries who considered Haitian law to be non-existent are now caught up in the reality that they were wrong about that. Haiti gets to demonstrate their sovereignty, their ability to protect their citizens and defend their borders. They get to demonstrate national pride. They get to kick somebody in the ass.

Silsby and cohorts should go through the proper Haitian legal process, however long it takes. And the government of Haiti should enjoy the immense publicity this case has brought them, to allow them to remind the world that this is still a viable, functioning society that, much like New Orleans a few years ago, just needs some time to get back on its feet.

Military leaders have begun to come out in support of President Obama’s stated intention to lift the current ban on openly homosexual members of the military. Essentially, this would mean that you could continue to serve even if you were openly gay, discussed being gay, engaged in gay behaviors or sought to marry a member of the same sex.

And the question is, are we ready?

I know that other nations, notably Israel, do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. They’ve done it that way for a long time. We have not. The United States of America still exhibits homophobia routinely.

Especially in athletics and especially in the military.

Why? Because men live and work in close quarters in both cases, and because men have a fear of being confronted by a physically superior man who wants to violate them. We aren’t afraid somebody will kiss us on the cheek, slap us on the ass or make a pass. We’d be disgusted and annoyed, but not frightened. No, we fear a monster, somebody who takes what he wants. We fear being made helpless.

When we know that we are surrounded by men who prefer women, we have nothing to fear (unless we go after the same woman, but those are normal male battles) from each other. We can unite in a common bond, a brotherhood, something physical, emotional and chemical, with no fear that somebody in the group is having a different hormonal reaction than we are.

It’s complicated and it is of course primitive. We can, in our thinking brain, rule out the basis for the fear. We know it’s not catching. We know there is little chance we will be the victim of sexual aggression. If we work on it and work on it and work on it, we can get there.

But can we flip a switch? That’s the unknown.

Can we revert from a peer pressure which insists on conformity and swift justice to a peer pressure which insists on respect for diversity and tolerance? That’s enormously unclear.

It’s the “right” thing to do. Is it the correct thing to do? Will it be properly handled by all sides? Will men become demonized for failing to adjust rapidly enough to the sudden change?

I see rough sailing ahead.