Category: News

When Abuse Becomes Murder

One comment

I can’t wrap my head around a parent doing this to a child: 

The boy was tied to a chair with duct tape, a sock stuffed in his mouth, and he was beaten with a stick or blunt object in the basement of their Guilford Street home, near the Broadway Market, authorities said.

The stepfather was angry because the boy, a fifth-grader at the International Preparatory School on Clinton Street, had fallen behind in his homework, law enforcement officials said.

The Buffalo News’ report reveals that a neighbor encountered the boy literally running for his life, on the street, from his father. The neighbor is wracked with guilt because she intervened and the father caught up with the boy, who was brutally murdered just a few hours later. 

I look forward to Buffalo’s right-wing commentariat blaming the perpetrator’s heritage or religion; he has an Islamic name, so they’ll suggest that it’s Jihadism to blame, and snidely refer to the “religion of peace”.  (Of course, the man’s religion didn’t swing the blunt object that killed Abdifatah Mohamud, and not every Muslim father beats his kids to death or beheads his wife).  Sometimes, people like Ali Mohamed Mohamud are simply monsters, without regard to their faith.

 

 

Discovery's Last Flight

5 comments
Space Shuttle Over DC

Courtesy mringlein on Flickr

Yesterday, a NASA Space Shuttle took to the skies for the last time in history. The Shuttle program came to be during the 70s, as I was growing up. Apollo missions to the moon had ended earlier that decade, and we were sending missions to Skylab, but the Shuttle held the promise of regular space exploration for decades.  It didn’t look like a spaceship or a capsule – it looked like an airplane – an everyday thing. 

I vividly recall watching the first Shuttle mission takeoff, and by 1986 they were so routine that our high school didn’t wheel out the TVs to watch the tragic Challenger explosion until after it had happened. 

But with all of this, it’s downright disappointing that the Shuttles have been mothballed, and NASA has nothing new in the pipeline to replace them. Certainly the technology to create a reusable spacecraft has improved since the mid-70s, and certainly we oughtn’t rely on the Russian space program to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, and the private carriers are suborbital, not equipped for complex missions. 

Yesterday, the Shuttle Discovery was ferried aboard a 747 from Cape Canaveral to Dulles Airport in Virginia. Adjacent to Dulles is the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum annex hangar, which houses all manner of historic aircraft from the time of the Wright Brothers to Concorde. It’s massive, majestic, and pure eye candy for a fan of airplanes. Discovery will replace a replica Shuttle that’s been there since the facility opened. 

Before landing in Virginia, the Shuttle flew by Reagan Airport and along the National Mall. People poured out of their offices and shops to watch the spectacle, and applauded.  It was a bittersweet event.  

We should have something new to applaud. I echo the sentiment expressed last night by comedian Lewis Black. 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/TheLewisBlack/status/192384427840643072″]


Discovery’s Last Flight

5 comments
Space Shuttle Over DC

Courtesy mringlein on Flickr

Yesterday, a NASA Space Shuttle took to the skies for the last time in history. The Shuttle program came to be during the 70s, as I was growing up. Apollo missions to the moon had ended earlier that decade, and we were sending missions to Skylab, but the Shuttle held the promise of regular space exploration for decades.  It didn’t look like a spaceship or a capsule – it looked like an airplane – an everyday thing. 

I vividly recall watching the first Shuttle mission takeoff, and by 1986 they were so routine that our high school didn’t wheel out the TVs to watch the tragic Challenger explosion until after it had happened. 

But with all of this, it’s downright disappointing that the Shuttles have been mothballed, and NASA has nothing new in the pipeline to replace them. Certainly the technology to create a reusable spacecraft has improved since the mid-70s, and certainly we oughtn’t rely on the Russian space program to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, and the private carriers are suborbital, not equipped for complex missions. 

Yesterday, the Shuttle Discovery was ferried aboard a 747 from Cape Canaveral to Dulles Airport in Virginia. Adjacent to Dulles is the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum annex hangar, which houses all manner of historic aircraft from the time of the Wright Brothers to Concorde. It’s massive, majestic, and pure eye candy for a fan of airplanes. Discovery will replace a replica Shuttle that’s been there since the facility opened. 

Before landing in Virginia, the Shuttle flew by Reagan Airport and along the National Mall. People poured out of their offices and shops to watch the spectacle, and applauded.  It was a bittersweet event.  

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615

We should have something new to applaud. I echo the sentiment expressed last night by comedian Lewis Black. 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/TheLewisBlack/status/192384427840643072″]


!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);

Komen Fights More than just Cancer

10 comments

As the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation steps deeper and deeper into a steaming pile of its own bullsh*t, consider that all of this is a very calculated political move. What this is is a grave betrayal of Komen’s mission statement:

OUR PROMISE: To save lives and end breast cancer forever by empowering people, ensuring quality care for all and energizing science to find the cures.

Planned Parenthood is under attack from the right because it has the audacity to provide clinical medical services exclusively to women. Most of Planned Parenthood’s mission has to do with reproductive health and services, and yes, 3% of what they do involves abortion services. Because it performs legal, safe abortions in a clinical setting, and because the Republican platform prefers that abortions be done like they were in the old days – by quacks with hangers in alleyways, or abroad – Planned Parenthood must be destroyed.

But Komen and its former funding of PP had nothing whatsoever to do with abortions or even contraception. That’s how we know this is not principled, but political. How is Komen empowering people or saving lives if it de-funds breast exam and mammography services at Planned Parenthood?  The Angry Black Lady sums it up nicely: 

In a press release today, Planned Parenthood announced that The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation will no longer provide Planned Parenthood the more than half million dollars in grant funds which Planned Parenthood uses to provide breast health education, screenings, and referrals for mammograms.

Turns out that Komen’s new Vice-President of Public Policy, Karen Handel, is a Forced Birther, and even ran for governor of Georgia on a platform of defunding Planned Parenthood.  Thus, it seems that Komen for the Cure, the purpose of which is to help women, has been taken hostage by Karen Handel and her right-wing Forced Birth views which undermine women and women’s reproductive choices.  In her own words, “Since I am pro-life [anti-choice] I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.”

The mission of Planned Parenthood? Lady, what are you talking about? Themission of Planned Parenthood is to provide health services, including breast cancer screening and education to primarily poor women who otherwise cannot not afford such services.  That is 90% of what Planned Parenthood does. The “mission” of Planned Parenthood aligns with the “mission” of Komen for the Cure — or, at least, it did.  Abortion comprises approximately 3% of the services Planned Parenthood provides.

Furthermore, just as the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion services, I presume that the Komen grant money previously provided to Planned Parenthood is used specifically for breast-health, and not for abortion.

This is part of the Republican effort to do to Planned Parenthood what they did to ACORN – destroy any foundation that exists to help the poor obtain some sort of services or rights. Exactly correct. When Komen isn’t busy pimping out the color pink, advocating against legislation to provide free breast and cervical cancer screening, and trademarking, then aggressively litigating any use of the term “for the cure”, it’s plotting to disassociate itself from Planned Parenthood for nakedly political reasons.

Komen’s official line on the reason for cutting off funds to Planned Parenthood was a newly-instituted rule that declared that the organization was not to give funds to organizations under investigation at the local, state, or federal level. According to Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, former employees of Komen told him that the rule was, in fact, designed to single out Planned Parenthood.

If the new policy is to de-fund organizations that are under some form of investigation, then we ought to all eagerly await the imminent withdrawal of Komen’s $7.5 million for the health clinic at Penn State – an institution that is under administrative investigation arising out of charges of child rape. Komen’s new Vice President in charge of Public Policy is right-wing anti-Planned Parenthood activist Karen Handel, who re-tweeted (then quickly deleted) this:

The backlash has been swift and pointed. People are abandoning Komen in droves, and Planned Parenthood has already more than made up the lost funding through donations. 

There are thousands of national, regional, and local anti-cancer charities out there, but there’s only one Planned Parenthood. If you divest your women’s health organization from providing cancer screening for the poor and the underprivileged, you risk painting yourself unnecessarily into a political corner.  Komen may now become a sweetheart of the right-wing, but it will have long ago stopped fulfilling its mission. 

Komen isn’t so much a charity as it is a business, and it’s now firmly positioned itself as a business that’s right-wing-friendly and a footsoldier in the culture war. Breast cancer doesn’t discriminate based on race, political affiliation, or voting history. That’s why Komen politicizing itself so blatantly is so shockingly sad and unnecessary. 

Congratulations

One comment

Congratulations to Councilman Richard Fontana, who is the new President of the Buffalo Common Council. Time will tell whether his tenure in that position will be as friendly to the Brown Administration as has been presumed.

Congratulations to Erie County Legislator Betty Jean Grant, who is expected to be elected Chairwoman of the Erie County Legislature today at 2pm. She wasn’t in the running, really, and emerged as a consensus candidate among legislature Democrats, who were eager to leave two years of acrimony behind. The pick renders false the breathless speculation by some that key Dems would align with the Republicans, and Grant’s selection seems symbolic, as her most recent predecessor and she would get into extremely heated arguments during the last session. With a new administration and a newly downsized legislative body, there’s a chance that the legislature will feature significantly less bickering, and they’ll just do their jobs.

And then we can discuss a complete abolition of county government as a separate deliberative entity, seeing as only about 10% of its budget is at all discretionary.

Congratulations to Channel 4’s Melissa Holmes, who will be replacing the departing Marissa Bailey at WGRZ-TV Channel 2.

Congratulations to Ted Shredd and Tom Ragan from 103.3-FM WEDG (“The Edge”), whose show will be moving to morning drive. Shredd & Ragan is that rare radio talk program in Buffalo that (a) isn’t almost exclusively devoted to sports talk; (b) doesn’t feature elderly reactionaries; and/or (c) doesn’t feature short-statured mulleted half-witted omniphobes.

Congratulations to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy Party will be permitted to participate in the upcoming election. The Burmese military leadership has been liberalizing that country’s politics in recent months, as Burma has become an economic and social backwater due to economic sanctions, while many of its neighbors’ economies have been thriving.

1 2 3 4