The Automatik

I was just tipped off by a friend on the Internet to this article from Cristina Page on an alleged proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to define contraception as abortion.

(Note: For some background on why contraception might be considered abortion, please see my May 7 piece called “Women Are Soldiers In The Misogyny Army.” )

I worked with HHS for eight years and spent a lot of time reading and interpreting regulations, so I wanted to see the source data for this article. It was not linked in Ms. Page’s post, so I did some digging.

A Google search for “HHS Contraception Abortion” yielded several pages of results, most of which were boilerplated from Ms. Page’s article.

However, this one, from Reproductive Health Reality Check, provides a link to a PDF of the leaked HHS document. Here is the linked PDF.

Please note that this document doesn’t have a title or a designated section in the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations). It also bears the text “Draft” and “This is a confidential, deliberative, pre-decisional document and does not necessarily affect current policy efforts or plans. For official use only.”

So what is the Code of Federal Regulations anyway?

From the United States Laws and Legislation Guide:

What’s the difference between the U.S. Code and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)?

As you’ve discovered, a few words are used in several different publications. However, with respect to legal issues, “code” refers to a set of currently valid law or regulations arranged by subject. The U.S. Code contains laws - what you’re supposed to do - and the CFR contains regulations - how you’re supposed to do it.

Every regulation in the CFR has to have an “enabling statute” or “statutory authority”. Despite the way it might seem sometimes, agencies cannot just create regulations because they feel like it - there must be a law in force that requires the regulation. That law is the enabling statute. Only after an enabling statute has been created can a regulation be developed.

Therefore, the U.S. Code and the CFR represent different kinds of law and different stages in the legislative process, with the U.S. Code preceeding the CFR.

Please note that because this proposal document does not have any USC or CFR sections listed in it, it means it is in its infancy (pardon the pun) and may not even ever come to light.

According to this article in the New York Times, this proposal circulated in HHS on Monday July 15.

Christina Pearson, a spokeswoman for the department, declined to discuss the draft. “We don’t normally comment on whether we are considering changes in regulations,” she said.

Despite the fact that this is NOT official legislation at this time, I feel that it is very important to keep an eye on this. Unfortunately, without a designated section in the USC or CFR, there isn’t a way to find it.

However, if you ever want to look things up on the CFR, you can go here: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/CFR/INDEX.HTML

Title 45 CFR, Public Welfare can be found here:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/cfrassemble.cgi?title=200745 It covers the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) General Administration, as you can see.

The “Church Amendments” referred to in the PDF of the proposal are at 42 USC (United States Code) 300a - 7. The USC page is here:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/

I found this Cornell Law Site by Googling “42 USC 300a.”

Here you can see that it’s actually Title 42, Chapter 6A, Subchapter VII, which can be found on the USC page here:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title42/chapter6a_subchapterviii_.html

Hopefully this will be helpful in looking up this data when monitoring this proposed document.

In the meantime, please contact your insurance providers and health care providers to let them know how you feel about this.

Planned Parenthood is also on the case. If you go to their site, you can see more about this proposal and how to express your feelings on it.

“Please people, take down
your American Flags if
a Hurricane is coming!”

This is a long article, but I urge you to read the entire thing. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and according to AlterNet. . .

. . . he gave this gave this keynote address on Wednesday, May 28, in Furman University’s Younts Conference Center. The address was part of protests by faculty and students over the South Carolina college’s decision to invite George W. Bush to give the May 31 commencement address.

When it was announced in May that Bush would deliver the commencement address, 222 students and faculty signed and posted on the school’s Web site a statement titled “We Object.” The statement cites the war in Iraq and the administration’s “obstructing progress on reducing greenhouse gases while favoring billions in tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies that are earning record profits.”

This address does not just cover the war in Iraq, environmental issues, or oil companies, but also. . .

. . . the dark and turbulent world of globalization where there are only masters and serfs, where the American dream will be no more than that—a dream, where those who work hard for a living can no longer earn a decent wage to sustain themselves or their families, whether in sweatshops in China or the decaying rust belt of Ohio, where democratic dissent is condemned as treason and ruthlessly silenced.

Please note that Mr. Hedges does not absolve the Democratic party from his accusations, but does find that the Republican party has committed particularly egregious sins at the hands of President Bush.

I used to live in a country called America. It was not a perfect country, God knows, especially if you were African American or Native American or of Japanese descent in World War II, or poor or gay or a woman or an immigrant, but it was a country I loved and honored. This country gave me hope that it could be better. It paid its workers wages that were envied around the world. It made sure these workers, thanks to labor unions and champions of the working class in the Democratic Party and the press, had health benefits and pensions. It offered good public education. It honored basic democratic values and held in regard the rule of law, including international law and respect for human rights. It had social programs from Head Start to welfare to Social Security to take care of the weakest among us, the mentally ill, the elderly and the destitute. It had a system of government that, however flawed, was dedicated to protecting the interests of its citizens. It offered the possibility of democratic change. It had a media that was diverse and endowed with the integrity to give a voice to all segments of society, including those beyond our borders, to impart to us unpleasant truths, to challenge the powerful, to explain ourselves to ourselves.

Read the rest at AlterNet.org.

Thanks to Resist Racism for posting this video.

It is powerful stuff. The whole thing is fantastic, but it gets really good around 5:30 and then gets even better. Stay for the end; it’s a whopper.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON RESIST RACISM.

From This Pop Life:

“The Oppression Olympics” refers to the idea that somehow, you can deny someone their suffering in order to posit your own. People who play the Oppression Olympics get so hung up on their own entitlement to being the Chosen Ones of Fucked Up History that they’re defensive that anyone else would try to lay claim to that legacy, even in what is clearly a show of solidarity.

Or as someone on the LiveJournal community Debunking White put it: “the I’m-oppressed-so-you-can’t-be game.”

Graphic by Bint Alshamsa from her blog
Click on the graphic for a larger version.

Forget the Beijing Olympics and tune in instead to this year’s Democratic Presidential Nomination Badwill Games.

Gloria Steinem, in a recent debate with Melissa Harris-Lacewell, said the following:

“I think one learns a lot from parallels, and so it would be interesting to try to project what would have happened to Barack Obama in his life if he had been a female human being.”

But in her now-infamous New York Times Op-Ed piece she said that, “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.” She went on to ask why “the sex barrier [is] not taken as seriously as the racial one.” Steinem claims that she is “trying not to choose between race and gender.”

Here’s the thing, Ms. Steinem: you don’t have to.
Read more

In light all of the recent outrage about Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, I would like to weigh in.

Until today, I had not seen the Reverend preaching, although I had heard snippets of what he had supposedly said.

Here is a clip of Wright talking about how “Hillary has never been called a n***er.”

And here is a montage of clips from Fox News.
(I have to laugh at the irony of Bill O’Reilly warning of “offensive” content.)

I’ve watched both of these and I must say, I don’t understand what everyone is so upset over. Then I have to remind myself that for a lot of white people, there is only one America and that’s the great melting pot that espouses freedom.

But for millions of people of color, America is anything but a representation of freedom. How can it be when America was founded on the enslavement of African-Americans? For everyone who would cry, “My family didn’t own slaves” or “Can’t they get over it already?” I will add the following:

Racism isn’t the guys in the white hoods burning crosses on your lawns. It is a systematic oppression that has been so woven into the fabric of life that many white people don’t even realize they benefit from it. And that is called white privilege. Owning slaves is just the beginning of it.

Keep in mind also that slavery was legal in America until 1865. Even after it had been abolished, African-Americans still did not enjoy the same benefits as white Americans under the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race. Before that, separate water fountains for African-Americans and white people were the norm.

Think of it in numbers. For the first hundred years of America’s existence, slavery was legal. And then for another hundred years, discrimination based on race was allowed under the law. That’s two hundred years of oppression. It’s not something you just “get over.”

So Reverend Wright is understandably upset. And while I am not a religious person, I agree with his indignation and his anger and his passion about these issues. Reverend Wright is not lying when he says, “Hillary has never been called a n***er.” But that isn’t the only face of racism.

Tim Wise has a great article on this called “Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth: Of National Lies and Racial America.”

“But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.”

Please read the whole thing. And then, if you are a white person, think about it. Get mad, deny it, call me a racist, a traitor, or a bitch, but THINK ABOUT IT.

Many news sites are reporting that a Pentagon study has confirmed there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

A March 10 McClatchy newspaper article on this subject is being quoted by other news sites. The original piece states:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

On March 12, the same website reported that:

The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.

Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won’t be posted on the Internet.

The March 12 2008 story from the ABC News “Rapid Report” reiterates the idea of the Pentagon not making the report available online, but provides a link to a nine-page extract from the report.

Page two of this report notes that it is a “redacted version of the original Iraqi Perspectives Report—Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, Volume I dated January 2007. Page ES-1 from the Executive Study states:

This study found no “smoking gun,” (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.

Other websites have provided links to a longer version of this report. ABC seems to be the first blog to provide a link to a 94-page—yet still redacted—version at 2:44 p.m. on March 13.

Websites like Hot Air and The Weekly Standard, find the claims of “no connection” misleading and provide links to the longer version of the report.

Hot Air reported on March 14 (with several subsequent updates) goes into great detail about the various connections between Saddam and al Qaeda such as the Army of Mohammed and Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, stating:

Nor was that Saddam’s only support for an AQ subsidiary. Saddam put money into Egypt’s Islamic Jihad. The IJ opposes the Hosni Mubarak regime for a number of reasons, but primarily because of Egypt’s shaky diplomatic relations with Israel. One leader of IJ that Westerners can easily name was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became Osama’s chief deputy and primary mouthpiece to the world.

Hot Air provides links to The Weekly Standard article, The National Review’s post on The Corner called “CONNECTED: Iraq and al Qaeda” and The New York Sun which calls its analysis, “Report Details Saddam’s Terrorist Ties.”

The New York Sun article again mentions Saddam’s connection to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and states:

The report concludes that instead Iraq’s relationship with Osama bin Laden’s organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market.

Both Hot Air and The New York Sun article highlight the following passage from Extract 34:

One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes.

The Corner and The Weekly Standard print the abstract of the report from page 93:

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some way, a “de facto” link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

These four sites seem to find all of the above extracts to be proof of specific connections between Saddam and al Qaeda, stating the following:

The Weekly Standard: Really? Saddam Hussein “supported” a group that merged with al Qaeda in the late 1990s, run by al Qaeda’s #2, and the New York Times thinks this is not a link between Iraq and al Qaeda? How does that work?

Hot Air: So we have Saddam supporting at least two AQ subsidiaries, one of which had open aspirations to attack American interests, and evidence from these captured materials that Saddam planned to use his terrorist capabilities to conduct war on the United States. Perhaps in the world of the mainstream media the big news from this would be “no smoking gun” connection to an actual attack, but for the rest of us, it shows that Saddam needed to go — and the sooner, the better.

The Corner: Once you read [the report], you might ask yourself (if you didn’t already know where the New York Times and the rest of the MSM are coming from), how anyone could read it and conclude “no link.”

The Sun: The report also undercuts the claim made by many on the left and many at the CIA that Saddam, as a national socialist, was incapable of supporting or collaborating with the Islamist al Qaeda. The report concludes that instead Iraq’s relationship with Osama bin Laden’s organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market.

The Sun also goes on to quote a “long time skeptic of the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq and a former CIA senior Iraq analyst, Judith Yaphe,” who says:

“I think the report indicates that Saddam was willing to work with almost any group be it nationalist or Islamic, that was willing to work for his objectives. But in the long term he did not trust many of the Islamist groups, especially those linked to Saudi Arabia or Iran.” She added, “He really did want to get anti-American operations going. The fact that they had little success shows in part their incompetence and unwilling surrogates.”

Additionally, they quote a “former Bush administration official who was a member of the counter-terrorism evaluation group that analyzed terror networks and links between terrorists and states, David Wurmser,” who says:

“This is the beginning of the process of exposing Saddam’s involvement in Islamic terror. But it is only the beginning. Time and declassification I’m sure will reveal yet more. Even so, this report is damning to those who doubted Saddam Hussein’s involvement with Jihadist terrorist groups. It devastates one of the central myths plaguing our government prior to 9-11, that a Jihadist group would not cooperate with a secular regime and vice versa.”

Yet these two quotes don’t include statements that either of these folks believe in specific coordination between Saddam and al Qaeda, only that there are specific connections between Saddam and terrorism.

In fact, the extract that The Corner and The Weekly Standard quote says that the documents “do not reveal direct coordination and assistance” between Saddam and al Qaeda, but that Saddam would “use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda” and that “Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims,” creating the “appearance of and, in some way, a ‘de facto’ link between the organizations.” (emphasis mine)

Let’s review exactly what many news sites are saying:

McClatchy: “no evidence of any operational links”
ThinkProgress: “no evidence of any operational links”
NPR: “no direct link”
Rolling Stone: “no pre war operational link”
CNN: “no connection between the two”
Tehran Times: “no link” and “no direct link”
The Raw Story: “no evidence of operational links”
Arab News: “no link” and “no direct link”
The Guardian: “no direct ties”
Fox News: “no link” and “no operational link”

Although the uses of the term “no link” does appear (CNN, Fox, Tehran Times, Arab News), three of the uses also include the terms “no direct link” and “no operational link.”

The extract seems to support their claims when it says, “no direct connection.” Furthermore, Hot Air et. al. charge the other media sites with putting out misleading information, but their own articles on the subject only manage to link Saddam with anti-American terrorist groups. Their own articles, despite quoting the 94-page report, cannot provide specific evidence that Saddam was in league with or collaborating with or directly supporting al Qaeda nor can they prove that he was a part of al Qaeda.

They talk about his connections to terrorism and anti-American sentiment. No one should be shocked that Saddam Hussein had connections to terrorism and no one should be shocked that terrorists with anti-American sentiment would share interests. No one should be shocked that Saddam Hussein had anti-Israeli sentiment (and this would certainly explain his support of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad).

The Iraq war was not initiated because Saddam was a terrorist or sympathized with America-haters. According to what Vice President Dick Cheney told Rush Limbaugh (full text on the White House website):

Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated — after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He’s the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in 2004, “I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”

President Bush said in 2002:

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

A July 9 2005 letter purported to be from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was released on October 11 2005 and only discusses “expel[ling] the Americans from Iraq”.

So why all the dissenting voices about there being connections between Saddam and al Qaeda?

Let’s look at Hot Air and The Weekly Standard’s position on political affairs.

Hot Air considers itself “the world’s first full-service conservative Internet broadcast network!” There are eleven “Right Channels” links on their right menu bar and only three “Left Channels” links, however, closer inspection reveals more conservative links in other categories, such as Olbermann Watch, Drudge Report, Fox News Radio, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, etc.

The Weekly Standard has an article called “Character is Destiny” about the Elliott Spitzer scandal in which it refers to “the liberal media.” Another article about the Pentagon report casually mentions its connections to the President, stating:

If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam’s terror connections. But they’ll tell you (off the record) it’s too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they’ll say.

The Weekly Standard does not indicate which people in the Bush administration they spoke with, nor how “we,” the readers, are considered part of the “you” in the statement, in other words, they do not detail could someone who is not in the journalism field could have access to those in the Bush administration. “We” don’t, therefore, “we” rely on the media to give us their sources.

Where is the full version of this report? Crooks and Liars has a 230-page report from the Iraqi Perspectives Project on their website.

A search of the report reveals not even one mention of al Qaeda. Clearly, this is NOT the same report. We need to see Phase 2, not Phase 1.

I don’t know if I can order the full report because I live in Canada (although I am an American citizen) but I will post a link to the full report once I find it online. Any American residents who want to order this report, can do so by going here.

In a development reported in multiple Internet news sites and blogs, “a federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.” (1)

It’s difficult to get one’s head around the idea that any state would consider sex toys a threat, but apparently that is the case. According to Statesman.com:

The state also argued in a brief that Texas has legitimate “morality based” reasons for the laws, which include “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation.” (2)

This implies that it is not merely the termination of a pregnancy—abortion—that is construed as murder in Texas. We should also include sperm and eggs as victims of the Great American Holocaust. After all, according to the U.S. Government, I am pre-pregnant, “regardless of whether [I] plan to get pregnant anytime soon.” (3)

Feasibly I could rack up one murder a month per annum; the unfortunate male members of my species will be charged as serial killers.

And the weapon of choice? “[A]n artificial penis or vagina [used] ‘primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs’.” (4) Thankfully, there is always an exception, in this case, “for instances in which the purchase meets a ‘medical, psychiatric, judicial, legislative, or law enforcement’ need.” (5)

I’m trying to imagine what police officers, lawyers, and judges, might need a sex toy for in the course of their chosen professions, None of the scenarios are anything less than horrifying and all involve the word “rape.”

As for doctors, I suppose they invoking the long-standing tradition of Dr. Freud’s favorite, hysteria, when the woman in question was herself under threat of strangulation by her own uterus (6) and needed the “manual stimulation of the [her] genitals by the doctor to ‘hysterical paroxysm’.” aka orgasm. (7) Now what exactly is a threat here? Oh right. . . sex toys.

It’s not bad enough that one would want to self-pleasure in the privacy of one’s own home; the statute also indicates that, “[a]nyone in possession of six or more sexual devices is considered to be promoting them.” (8) Let the War on Dildoes begin in earnest! (Kids, remember: JUST SAY NO. . . orgasm.)

However, thankfully, a brave soldier in this ongoing battle, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, has recently asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case, yoking masturbation to those old chestnuts, bigamy and incest, (9) the same nasty things that threaten to run rampant in a world where homosexuals are allowed to exist and engage in sexual interaction. (10)

Personally, I’m grateful that Mr. Abbott is so dedicated to this cause because without him, I might try to rise above my station and seek sexual pleasure for its own sake. I’m indebted to him and his brethren for instructing me on what to do with my sexual organs since I honestly had no idea what to use them for! With him around I am reminded that I am after all, a woman, nothing more than a baby-making machine, a vessel who willingly and gratefully accepts the tool of the state.

1. Stephen Kreytak, “Court overturns Texas ban on sex toys,” Statesman.com, February 14, 2008.
2. Ibid.
3. January W. Payne, “Forever Pregnant,” Washingtonpost.com, May 16, 2006.
4. Bonnie Goldstein, “The Texas Dildo Massacre (NSFW)”, Slate.com, March 3, 2008.
5. Ibid.
6. Wikipedia, “Female hysteria.”
7. Ibid.
8. Stephen Kreytak, “Court overturns Texas ban on sex toys,” Statesman.com, February 14, 2008.
9. Bonnie Goldstein, “The Texas Dildo Massacre (NSFW)”, Slate.com, March 3, 2008.
10. Sean Loughlin, “Santorum under fire for comments on homosexuality,” CNN.com, April 22, 2003.

Photocollage by The Automatik

CLICK FOR IMAGE DETAIL

I’m posting the most adorable photo I could find. I’m posting this because if and when you click the link below, you’ll need this photo.

CuteOverload.com

From Wired.com:

As an expert witness in the defense of an Abu Ghraib guard who was court-martialed, psychologist Philip Zimbardo had access to many of the images of abuse that were taken by the guards themselves.

DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK if you are at work. Please. These are extremely graphic and disturbing images.

I got to the second photo and I started weeping and couldn’t stop.

This website started as a place to talk about music and films and pop culture. But all of that seems so trivial in the face of what I’ve just seen.

When Hurricane Katrina happened, I wasn’t in my native New Orleans, but in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, having moved away five months earlier. I was working a contract job as an Executive Assistant. Not my ideal job and not my ideal workplace, but I needed the money.

Seeing the video footage of Hurricane Katrina victims trapped at the Superdome and corpses in the street filled me with the most overwhelming sense of sorrow, anger, and shame. I went into the bathroom and cried. I didn’t really know anyone in the multi-story building, the one which housed a major financial institution. There was no way I could stop the grief and I sure didn’t want to share it with any of those strangers.

But I’m sharing this grief today because I’m once again filled with sorrow, anger, and shame. I’m ashamed to be a human being and I’m ashamed of my countrymen and women who would do these things.

In the early 1990s, my film class watched Night and Fog and Hiroshima, Mon Amour, documentaries by French filmmaker Alain Resnais about the Nazi atrocities and the bombing of Japan, respectively. I’d never seen anything so revolting in my life. In the first film, there were photos of piles of skulls and hair and of lampshades made from human skin. In the second, there was footage of the shadows of people evaporated by the bomb blast and those who survived, only to have their flesh rot from radiation.

The sensation of sickness and shock was more than I could bear and I’ve never been able to watch any more footage of this type since. But I’ll never forget those images.

And I’ll never forget these.

When I was younger, I was silent when faced with racism, sexism, and homophobia. Now I think that being silent is the same thing as condoning such behavior.

I can’t be quiet about this kind of thing anymore. Life is too short. . . and in the case of the above atrocities, nasty, brutish, and short. Put me on a list; I don’t care. I’ll be proud to be on the same list with those who would speak out against such things, because those things are WRONG.

I ask again: what went wrong, America?

Last week one of my online friends pointed out some disturbing comments on a blog that may or may not have been made by Jack McCain, son of Republican senator John McCain. I did several Google searches but couldn’t find anything online.

So I sent the link to one of the political blogs which I read every day in the hopes that they could investigate it, but they never replied.

Today, I did some more of my own research into this. I sent the information to another political blog, but have yet to hear back from them or see the item posted on their website.

I’m rather unsettled by the idea that Jack McCain may have made these posts and no one in the mainstream media or the political blogosphere has mentioned it, and frankly, I’m tired of waiting to find out the bottom line on this issue.

Perhaps someone out there can confirm whether or not the “Jack McCain” who made these horrific, racist comments is in fact, John McCain’s son.

Here’s the story. Please note that there are offensive and graphic racial slurs below, which I am quoting directly from the postings.

One of my online friends found this blog by a guy named Jimmy O’Connor after doing a Google search on John McCain’s family.

The May 14 2004 entry has a quote from someone named “Jack McCain” at the beginning of the entry which says, “allah akbar my f***in c**k.” )

Additionally, a comment on that post by “Anonymous” but also signed “Jack McCain” says, among other things, “kill all towel heads, camel jockeys, sand n***ers, and dune coons.”

My friend also pointed out the link to the January 19 2005 post called “My last post” with several photos of Jimmy O’Connor and his friends.

The one that mentions Jack McCain (and he appears to be in several of these photos) says, “Jack McCain- F***ing Drinking in Sedona, smoking cigars, strip bars, chasing a**, and making fun of your small asians cars. good luck at Annapolis.”

A Google search of “John McCain + Sedona” yielded a link which states that John and Cindy McCain have a cabin in Sedona, Arizona:.

Another interview/article I found on Jack McCain indicates that he started at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis in July 2005, which would support O’Connor’s statement of “Good luck at Annapolis.”

I’ve been comparing the photos of Jack on O’Connor’s blog, the Navy Scout site, and another site and they appear to be the same person, though again, I cannot be 100% sure because they were taken several years apart.

If these racist comments did indeed come from John McCain’s son, I think someone needs to ask Senator McCain about them.

IF these comments were made by the senator’s son, it can be argued that they don’t prove the senator himself is a racist because John McCain did not say these things. However, other candidates (like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee) have had troubling questions raised about their own sons during the last few months.

Yes, these comments were from four years ago, but that does not excuse them. In my experience, someone who makes such grotesquely racist comments rarely “grows out of it.”

What really bothers me is the fact that this sort of vile behavior is not congenital; it is learned.

I don’t want to think that the senator or his son have these beliefs. I would like someone to settle this issue once and for all.