I must admit to watching "The Biggest Loser" on Tuesday nights. Its one of the few shows I watch but there are a lot of things about it that bug me ( the constant crying!, the endless commercials, the replaying of what they just showed you before the commercial - just make it ONE hour, instead of TWO!...) I don't really even care who wins but the physical transformations are quite riveting- its motivating to see those changes every week...
Besides the physical improvements and what I hope would be a better mental outlook by not being depressed about not fitting into clothes as I'd like to... there was even more health news announced yesterday that ups the ante... Big bellies lead to a higher incidence of dementia years later.
Must go on a diet... lose 20 lbs!! Given what I learned in one of my previous jobs, which entailed reviewing 1000's of medical records of people that have died, I think that besides cancer, the two worst health problems to have are diabetes and Alzheimers. Suffer now or suffer worse later! Yikes. Just do it!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Update on "Jane Doe" inquiry IDOC
Update on Previous Posts:
I received this email reply today from Roger Walker, the Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections:
" Dear Ms. Z___:
Thank you very much for your correspondence regarding the newspaper articles you reference in your note. Please know that I share your concerns regarding the safety of inmates in our custody. I would like to make one thing very clear, I do not and will not condone the type of behavior that is claimed in the Tribune story. During my tenure as director we have been aggressive in following up on allegations of sexual misconduct, we have also been aggressive in prosecuting these cases as well. I wanted to respond to your note to let you know I will not tolerate this type of behavior.
Sincerely,
Roger E. Walker Jr.
Director
Illinois Department of Corrections
1301 Concordia Court
Springfield, IL 62794 "
I received this email reply today from Roger Walker, the Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections:
" Dear Ms. Z___:
Thank you very much for your correspondence regarding the newspaper articles you reference in your note. Please know that I share your concerns regarding the safety of inmates in our custody. I would like to make one thing very clear, I do not and will not condone the type of behavior that is claimed in the Tribune story. During my tenure as director we have been aggressive in following up on allegations of sexual misconduct, we have also been aggressive in prosecuting these cases as well. I wanted to respond to your note to let you know I will not tolerate this type of behavior.
Sincerely,
Roger E. Walker Jr.
Director
Illinois Department of Corrections
1301 Concordia Court
Springfield, IL 62794 "
Here is my email to him, sent March 18th:
Dear Mr. Walker :
I have contacted Gov. Blagojevich and my local state Rep. Sandra Pihos (House district #42) and Senator Durbin to express my deep dismay at the atrocities alleged to be committed by male guards against female inmates at Dwight. I hope that you will do everything possible to ensure that this never happens again. I hope that you will act immediately to institute policies to safeguard women who make future allegations, instead of putting them in seclusion/segregation where they are even more vulnerable to abuse! Those guards need to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. WHy do you want criminals working for you? This is a travesty and a shame upon our state. Please abide by the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, respect the taxpayers of Illinois and ensure that justice is carried out in a fair and humane manner.
Sincerely, L____ Z_____
forwarded
From: lz___
To: community@sandrapihos.comSubject: questionDate: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 11:22:25 -0600
Hi Sandy: I just sent this letter to the Governor, and a different email to Senator Durbin about an article I read in the Tribune on Tuesday:
" As chief executive law officer in our state I would like to bring this to your attention:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-prison-rape-04mar04,0,739400.story
Do you know this warden Mary Sigler, or Roger Walker the person who runs IDOC. Do you have confidence in their leadership? It appears that this tragic woman and perhaps many others are being illegally submitted to "cruel and unusual" punishment -- by that I mean, repeatedly gang-raped and impregnated (!) by state officers. Can you do anything about this?? This is beyond horrendous.... Please look into this and make sure that prisoners are not being tortured under the incarceration of the State of Illinois. This level of abuse IS torture, plain and simple. I beg you to clean up IDOC. I don't even know anyone in prison but there must be some basic level of sympathy and compassion for women who have had to endure this.
Sincerely,
L___Z____
Is there a committee in the IL House that has oversight on these kinds of issues? Can you please ask them to investigate this. It defies explanation. This topic is yucky to say the least, but I think as officials in our state you and your colleagues have a responsibility to ensure the safety of the citizen's in the State, ESPECIALLY if they are under the "lock & key" of the State! All of these guards need to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, not just the one whose DNA matches the baby. The management of these facilities needs to ensure that there is NO ABUSE. ( Follow the law, the EIGHTH Amendment!). If the wardens and IDOC managers can't do that, then they need to be removed from those positions of authority.
Thanks,
L____
Friday, March 21, 2008
Iraq War - 5 years on
A brilliant retrospective by Andrew Sullivan on the 5 year anniversary of the war. Yesterday I forced myself to watch this movie online "Leading to War" so I could remember and understand why I was not really against it when it started. ( If you too are feeling guilty about being optimistic about the war this will make you feel somewhat better... it was a deliberate PR campaign of lies. But even now I still feel that I should have been more skeptical at the time!
" I certainly never believed that a conservative would embrace torture as the central thrust of an anti-terror strategy, and lie about it, and scapegoat underlings for it, and give us the indelible stain of Bagram and Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and all the other secret torture and interrogation sites that he created and oversaw. I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom - the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture. To distort this by shredding the English language, by engaging in newspeak that I had long associated with totalitarian regimes, was a further insult. And for me, an epiphany about what American conservatism had come to mean.
I know our enemy is much worse. I have never doubted that. But I never believed that America would do what America has done. Never. My misjudgment at the deepest moral level of what Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld were capable of - a misjudgment that violated the moral core of the enterprise - was my worst mistake. What the war has done to what is left of Iraq - the lives lost, the families destroyed, the bodies tortured, the civilization trashed - was bad enough. But what was done to America - and the meaning of America - was unforgivable. And for that I will not and should not forgive myself either."
Meanwhile, our VP says, ... "So..?" when asked how he feels when told that now over 65% of Americans are against the war.
When asked how that assessment comports with recent polls that show about two-thirds of Americans say the fight in Iraq is not worth it, Cheney replied, "So?"
"You don't care what the American people think?" Raddatz asked the vice president.
" I certainly never believed that a conservative would embrace torture as the central thrust of an anti-terror strategy, and lie about it, and scapegoat underlings for it, and give us the indelible stain of Bagram and Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and all the other secret torture and interrogation sites that he created and oversaw. I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom - the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture. To distort this by shredding the English language, by engaging in newspeak that I had long associated with totalitarian regimes, was a further insult. And for me, an epiphany about what American conservatism had come to mean.
I know our enemy is much worse. I have never doubted that. But I never believed that America would do what America has done. Never. My misjudgment at the deepest moral level of what Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld were capable of - a misjudgment that violated the moral core of the enterprise - was my worst mistake. What the war has done to what is left of Iraq - the lives lost, the families destroyed, the bodies tortured, the civilization trashed - was bad enough. But what was done to America - and the meaning of America - was unforgivable. And for that I will not and should not forgive myself either."
Meanwhile, our VP says, ... "So..?" when asked how he feels when told that now over 65% of Americans are against the war.
When asked how that assessment comports with recent polls that show about two-thirds of Americans say the fight in Iraq is not worth it, Cheney replied, "So?"
"You don't care what the American people think?" Raddatz asked the vice president.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Organ donation- selling kidneys
This is an interesting post and 10 min. video on Organ donation and presenting the option of selling kidneys, which is currently illegal. I don't know if this is the right solution, but I know that the waiting list is NOT going down, its going up - over 70,000 people... these people are suffering and dying way too early. Not fair.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Abu Ghraib photo background
Fascinating piece about the Abu Ghraib soldier/photographer in the New Yorker (by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris )
Its been awhile since I've thought about "the photo", why it was so iconic since many of the abuses were even so much worse than that... this excerpt strikes me as very relevant during Holy Week
Harman was right: there were worse pictures than Gilligan. But, leaving aside that photographs of death and nudity, however newsworthy, don’t get much play in the press, the power of an image does not necessarily lie in what it depicts. A photograph of a mangled cadaver, or of a naked man trussed in torment, can shock and outrage, provoke protest and investigation, but it leaves little to the imagination. It may be rich in practical information, while being devoid of any broader meaning. To the extent that it represents any circumstances or conditions beyond itself, it does so generically. Such photographs are repellent, in large part because they have a terrible, reductive sameness. Except from a forensic point of view, they are unambiguous, and have the quality of pornography. They are what they show, nothing more. They communicate no vision and, shorn of context, they offer little, if anything, to think about, no occasion for wonder. They have no value as symbols.
Of course, the dominant symbol of Western civilization is the figure of a nearly naked man, tortured to death—or, more simply, the torture implement itself, the cross. But our pictures of the savage death of Jesus are the product of religious imagination and idealization. In reality, he must have been ghastly to behold. Had there been cameras at Calvary, would twenty centuries of believers have been moved to hang photographs of the scene on their altarpieces and in their homes?
The image of Gilligan achieves its power from the fact that it does not show the human form laid bare and reduced to raw matter but creates instead an original image of inhumanity that admits no immediately self-evident reading. Its fascination resides, in large part, in its mystery and inscrutability—in all that is concealed by all that it reveals. It is an image of carnival weirdness: this upright body shrouded from head to foot; those wires; that pose; and the peaked hood that carries so many vague and ghoulish associations. The pose is obviously contrived and theatrical, a deliberate invention that appears to belong to some dark ritual, a primal scene of martyrdom. The picture transfixes us because it looks like the truth, but, looking at it, we can only imagine what that truth is: torture, execution, a scene staged for the camera? So we seize on the figure of Gilligan as a symbol that stands for all that we know was wrong at Abu Ghraib and all that we cannot—or do not want to—understand about how it came to this"
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Easter Blues
Ditto - I've been feeling this way lately to0
"Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous -- I've been one myself -- the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.
So I will sit in the doubter's chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there. "
Unlike Garrison Keillor, I'm not a bass though...alto. Sometimes its the music that keeps me connected when nothing else is getting through the "skepticism/the world-is-going-to-hell-in -a-handbasket" filter...
Even though its STILL grey and cold, I was really cheered up by The Speech today though. Hopefully my prayers will be answered in November....
"Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous -- I've been one myself -- the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.
So I will sit in the doubter's chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there. "
Unlike Garrison Keillor, I'm not a bass though...alto. Sometimes its the music that keeps me connected when nothing else is getting through the "skepticism/the world-is-going-to-hell-in -a-handbasket" filter...
Even though its STILL grey and cold, I was really cheered up by The Speech today though. Hopefully my prayers will be answered in November....
No Torture. NoExceptions
Wow - this should about cover every possible reason to end torture - NO TORTURE. NO EXCEPTIONS from the Washington Monthly- I'm going to read as much as I can. Maybe I will buy a copy and send it to Rep Roskam.
(h/t Matt Yglesias at The Atlantic)
(h/t Matt Yglesias at The Atlantic)
Corporate Welfare
This is a good post on HuffPo about the Bear Sterns bailout:
" So, what are the answers? First, if the government is going to bail you out, then the government should be regulating you to make sure you're not going to need a bailout. I'm not a fan of over-regulation (but we're nowhere near that), but no regulation at all is just as dumb, if not dumber.
Second, shut the fuck up about bootstraps. If you're going to keep bailing out the largest companies in the world, you better be prepared to do the same for the average American when they run in to some trouble. Laissez-faire my ass. This is rank hypocrisy.
Third, you need balance, whether it's a hand up for the common guy or a regulation for big business. Too much of anything provides the wrong incentives, but too little leaves people hanging in the wind. We need some welfare and some regulation. Not too much, not too little.
Finally, when someone tells you about their ideology of free markets unfettered by any government intervention, they better not come crying home to mama when they need help from that same government they've been bashing for the last sixty years."
" So, what are the answers? First, if the government is going to bail you out, then the government should be regulating you to make sure you're not going to need a bailout. I'm not a fan of over-regulation (but we're nowhere near that), but no regulation at all is just as dumb, if not dumber.
Second, shut the fuck up about bootstraps. If you're going to keep bailing out the largest companies in the world, you better be prepared to do the same for the average American when they run in to some trouble. Laissez-faire my ass. This is rank hypocrisy.
Third, you need balance, whether it's a hand up for the common guy or a regulation for big business. Too much of anything provides the wrong incentives, but too little leaves people hanging in the wind. We need some welfare and some regulation. Not too much, not too little.
Finally, when someone tells you about their ideology of free markets unfettered by any government intervention, they better not come crying home to mama when they need help from that same government they've been bashing for the last sixty years."
Obama's speech
I must admit I left my office upstairs to go downstairs to watch THE SPEECH on race by Barack Obama. As usual, Andrew Sullivan says everything I feel (and more!) with much more eloquence then I'll ever be able to muster in a 1000 years. Please watch the whole speech. I am absolutely convinced Senator Obama is going to be our next President. He is the Right man at the Right time. No politician has EVER been this candid! It was emotional for me and I can only imagine what significance it has for the African-American audience.
Sullivan: " But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.
And it was a reflection of faith - deep, hopeful, transcending faith in the promises of the Gospels. And it was about America - its unique promise, its historic purpose, and our duty to take up the burden to perfect this union - today, in our time, in our way."
Friday, March 14, 2008
Telecom immunity- voted down in House
Abortion & Torture
I think this is an interesting post (h/t Andrew Sullivan) . Read all the comments too -some smart people over there... will have to go back and visit this site, very philosophical... I've thought a lot about this recently, wondering to myself "why" am I so obsessed with this torture issue? I had a feeling like "I bet this is how pro-life protesters feel about their cause... like, WHY aren't more people UPSET about this??!! "
" Yet--have I missed something? I did, after all, attempt to separate the "monstrousness" of an act from its ultimate evil. I believe, after all, that wrong-doing requires intention. Killing someone accidentally is a fault, but not the same wrong as killing someone intentionally. Is it different, then, for a woman who does not believe she is killing a human being to abort a nascent child than for a soldier to torture someone? I think it is. Dramatically so. Many women believe they are acting out of compassion (however mistakenly); is it possible for a torturer to hold similar beliefs? To put it poetically: how blackened are the souls of all involved in torture? How blackened are the souls of all involved in abortion?
I think torture is the most manifestly destructive to all human goodness, because it is less possible to commit the crime through simple error. It requires significant subversion of a person's humanity to make him into a torturer (even if it is frighteningly easy to do), whereas it requires significant attention to specific arguments to convince someone of the evil of abortion. As such, I think we need to pay greater attention to obliterating all instances of torture than to obliterating instances of abortion."
RTWT! This also reminds me about a book I finished a couple of weeks ago..."Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq". The author Tony Lagouranis details the devolution of torture and how easily it spreads... how it doesn't WORK to get good information and mainly how it had such a horrible effect on his psyche knowing that he was capable of evil in these circumstances. The soldiers have to deal with this there and when they come back.... Good summary story from the Chicago Reader
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Precinct Committeeman
So I found out today that even though I didn't get all my write-in votes during the Primary on 2/5, that the Milton Township Democrats have officially appointed me to be the Precinct Committeeman for my precinct!
Yeah ! - I guess that at the next meeting there will be plans announced for our strategy to gain more Dem votes in the fall election. I'm excited to get started! I need to get an email contact list together. I already know at least 2 neighbors in my precinct who want to help out too.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Dwight Correctional Center - sexual abuse by guards
Update on previous posts
"For the second time in two weeks, a female former Dwight Correctional Center inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging prison officials failed to investigate sexual misconduct by male guards.
Shawntay Wright, 30, contends she was punished with six months in what she describes as solitary confinement after she reported a guard's sexual advances toward her in April 2006.
Prison officials apologized months later, after the same guard allegedly assaulted two other female inmates and was fired, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Chicago"
I hope there is justice with these cases soon!
"For the second time in two weeks, a female former Dwight Correctional Center inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging prison officials failed to investigate sexual misconduct by male guards.
Shawntay Wright, 30, contends she was punished with six months in what she describes as solitary confinement after she reported a guard's sexual advances toward her in April 2006.
Prison officials apologized months later, after the same guard allegedly assaulted two other female inmates and was fired, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Chicago"
I hope there is justice with these cases soon!
Follow the Money
Gee I wonder where all the Iraqi oil money is going? Rebuilding the country or swiss bank accounts for when the !*&$ hits the fan and we pull out?
Bush doesn't even know how much a gallon of gas is going to cost this summer, $4 !
3 trillion and counting RTWT.
Libby MT
I was glad to hear about this on the radio this morning:
" W. R. Grace & Company, a worldwide chemical company driven into bankruptcy by hundreds of millions of dollars in asbestos poisoning claims, has agreed to pay the federal government $250 million for environmental cleanup around its mining operations in Libby, Mont. ....
The settlement announced on Tuesday takes account of that payment and directs that future payments be directed to a special E.P.A. account to be used to clean schools, homes and businesses in Libby that are contaminated with carcinogenic asbestos dust.
The material came from a vermiculite mine and processing plant the company operated in and near Libby from 1963 to 1990. The vermiculite, which is used in insulation and other building materials, was contaminated with high levels of asbestos.
Asbestos is known to cause lung cancer and mesothelioma, a fatal tumor of the lining of the chest and abdomen. Exposure to asbestos also causes scarring of lung tissue."
There is still a criminal case pending... I saw a documentary about this case awhile ago. Its probably on Netflix now. As much as I am for environmentalism and health, I also have a fondness for small-town Montana and Montanans because my sister was born there and we lived there a little while when I was a young child.
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