Category Archives: Law

GOP Beating The Tom-Tom For Tribalism

Feminism, Justice, Law, Multiculturalism, Politics, Republicans

The Republican National Committee’s makeover manifesto reminds me of the questions posed to butcher Jodi Arias by her jurors: wordy and worthless.

The “The full 100-page Growth and Opportunity Project report from the RNC” has 219 prescriptions, many of these beating the tom-tom for party directed tribalism.

From the Table of contents:

Growth & Opportunity Project

Table of contents
1

Introduction

Messaging
1. Some People Say, “Republicans Don’t Care”
S
2. America Looks Different
3. The Way Forward

Demographic Partners
1. Growth and Opportunity Inclusion Council
A
2. Hispanics
3. Asian and Pacific Islander Americans
A
4. African Americans
5. Women
6. Youth
…

TECHNOLOGY AND DATA

ASIAN AMERICANS

WOMEN

VOTE BY MAIL/EARLY VOTING/ABSENTEE VOTING

AFRICAN AMERICANS

YOUNG VOTERS

HISPANICS

VETERANS

[SNIP]

Blah, blah, blah.
More of this banality here.

In case you wondered, jurors asked Miss Jodi some 200 voyeuristic questions. Shades of the deliberations in the Casey Anthony case. The clever quorum on Casey’s case decided that, “If it wasn’t uploaded on YouTube you must acquit.”

Only Following Orders

Ethics, Healthcare, Law, libertarianism, Morality

Forgive the hyperbole, but the, “I was only following orders” excuse for evil action or inaction comes with hefty historical baggage.

It also conjures the nurse at Glenwood Gardens, a California retirement home, who refused to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on an “87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.”

The woman was later declared dead at Mercy Southwest Hospital, officials said.

At the beginning of the 7-minute, 16-second call on Tuesday morning, the nurse asked for paramedics to come and help the 87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.
[the 911 operator] pleads for the nurse to perform CPR, and after several refusals she starts pleading for her to find a resident, or a gardener, or anyone not employed by the home to get on the phone, take her instructions and help the woman.
“Can we flag someone down in the street and get them to help this lady?” [the 911 operator] says on the call. “Can we flag a stranger down? I bet a stranger would help her.”

The relationship between the parties—the ruthless healthcare worker and the deceased—is governed by contract. By following her cruel heart, the nurse was also following the law—and this includes the libertarian law. There is no duty to act, as far as I know—all the more so if the contract by which the two parties were bound stipulated this pathetic policy: We don’t do CPR.

One can only hope that other elderly residents up and leave Glenwood Gardens, if they can, and that the facility is forced to change its policies for fear of bankruptcy.

Listen to the pitiful 911 call and you hear a 911 dispatcher (Tracey Halvorson) with a heart; a healthcare worker without one.

There is not much you can do to change someone without a heart. Name and shame says I.

UPDATED: Blade Runner Still Walking On Water

Celebrity, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Pseudoscience, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, South-Africa, Sport

A high-profile murder involving a class of people whose role in South Africa’s endemic crime is statistically insignificant occurred last week. The two wealthy white South Africans involved, however, will become a perfect foil for the hypocritical tele-twits of the West. The latter have said nothing about the carnage of crime in that country—and they’ll continue to say nothing meaningful at all.

Crime in South Africa should have been making news headlines across the world throughout South Africa’s overnight transition from minority to majority rule. It hasn’t. Blade runner Oscar Pistorius’ run-in with the law has occasioned the first such mention that I can recall by anchor-personality Megyn Kelly of Fox News, and her colleagues in the industry. (The killing fields of South Africa are dissected in “Crime, The Beloved Country,” a chapter in my book).

A statistical outlier, an anomaly—the murder of a (white) South African celebrity (Reeva Steenkamp) by another (Olympian Oscar Pistorius), allegedly—has newsmen in the West mentioning a subject they’ve so far submerged.

Steenkamp was a South African model. Pistorius is also a celebrity whose fame comes from being a tenacious (and talented) track-and-field annoyance. An annoyance, because most hardcore track-and-field fans want able and disabled Olympians segregated. (Yes, this is an intentional play on “loaded” words. Call the PC police!) The separation why? So as to allow fans (me) to enjoy the sport without the accoutrements of technology and the incontinent gushing that accompanies Pistorius whenever he makes a run for it.

In any event, how PC and TV perfect is this crime? (This or any other crime should never be called “a tragic circumstance,” as such vague language implies that bad deeds are invariably caused—never committed. And that they are caused by factors outside the perpetrators. (See “Rah-Rah For Rioters.”)

I wager that next, Anderson Cooper or Piers Morgan will call on the actress Charlize Theron to comment about the relevance of her pet campaign to stop violence against women in our former homeland, and its relevance to this case.

There is no relevance. Violence in the “Rambo Nation” is unidirectional: black on black and black on white. Violence against women—at least the kind that causes more than hurt feelings—follows the same pattern.

Meanwhile, the blade runner is still walking on water. Oscar Pistorius is receiving “overwhelming support” from his fans. Or so his agent informs the fans and the press.

UPDATE: FROM the Facebook thread. It’s just as I said. The Guardian is turning a statistical anomaly in this group (well-to-do whites) into a generic statement about violence against women in South Africa.

Messiah Stood Up By Media, Momentarily

Barack Obama, Fascism, Journalism, Law, Media

The saving grace of Big Media’s excruciating blow-by-blow coverage of the stand-off with LAPD officer and Navy veteran Christopher Jordan Dorner is that it made the network nits forget about their date with Barack Obama.

That Obama’s fourth State of the Union extravaganza promises to be excruciatingly boring we already know. One other thing known about this SOTU—also the secret to his success—is that, as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, and “for the [fourth] straight address, the President’s State of the Union message will be written at an eighth-grade level.”

“‘You Can’t Fix Stupid.'” Last year, a “Smart Politics” study seemed to back Ron White’s aphorism.

A “Stalinesque extravaganza” that ought to offend “anyone of a republican (small ‘r’) sensibility” is how National Review’s John Derbyshire has described the annual State of the Union address. “American politics frequently throws up disgusting spectacles. It throws up one most years in January: the State of the Union speech,” writes Derbyshire in “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism,” in which John (he’s a friend) goes on to detail how “the great man” is announced, how he makes an entrance; the way “the legislators jostle to catch his eye” and receive his favor. (This year, the most repulsive among the representatives staked out aisle seats for themselves, starting early in the morning.)
“On the podium at last, the president offers up preposterously grandiose assurances of protection, provision, and moral guidance from his government, these declarations of benevolent omnipotence punctuated by standing ovations and cheers from legislators” (p. 45). The president of the USA is now “pontiff, in touch with Divinity, to be addressed like the Almighty.”
The razzmatazz includes a display of “Lenny Skutniks” in the royal box. These are “model citizens chosen in order to represent some quality the president will call on us to admire and emulate.” Last year it was the family of the girl who was murdered by the Tucson shooter. This year’s “Lenny Skutnik” was Debbie Bosanek, Warren Buffett’s secretary. Bosanek is supposed to embody the Barf(fett) Rule, described by the Divine One thus: “If you make more than a million dollars a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”

More about this monarchical, contrived tradition in “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein: Spawn of the State.”

Here’s MSNBC’s “coverage” of Il Duce’s address.