How many of these can you justify? (And still sleep at night)

At what point do we say enough? [Link]

Links for anyone interested… I have many more pages of links to these stories of cops killing innocent unarmed people, and cops never get in trouble (at worst let go from the job)….

Cops murder Kelly Thomas, a gentle homeless man with schizophrenia, because they didn't want him sitting in that area and threatened to “f--- him up” before killing him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KU0Imk2Bstg

Cops threw flashbang into baby's crib (with children's toys all around the yard of the house and with no police work to justify the warrant).http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/a_swat_team_blew_a_hole_in_my_2_year_old_son/http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/05/30/drug-task-force-that-burned-a-toddler-this-week-also-killed-an-innocent-pastor-in-2009/

Cops shoot and kill a 7 year old girl who was asleep during a midnight home raid (while film crews were filming for TV): http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/11/aiyana-stanley-jones/#

Cop kills unarmed man holding baby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMDIK4bOpwk

Cops shoot to kill without even identifying the target: http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/04/11/john-winkler-shot-dead-police-mistaken-identity-tv-producer?hpt=hp_t2

Cop shoots and kills homeless Albuquerque man for no reason:http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/10/albuquerque-ordered-pay-6m-wrongful-death

Cop kills innocent, unarmed father in a stairwell because he claimed the stairwell was dark:http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/21/us/new-york-police-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Cop’s record cleared for accidentally shooting boy in head: http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=44700

Cop shoots boy in chest when he answered the door, mistaking a Wii controller for a gun:http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/attorney-teen-was-shot-having-wii-controller-hand/ndSrL/

Cops beat delusional man to death as citizens watch: http://atlasleft.org/washington-man-cries-for-help-as-hes-beaten-to-death-by-police-video/

Cops unleash attack dog on innocent college kid already being restrained on ground by numerous officers, no punishment to officers: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/02/us/police-beating-video/

Cops shoot and kill elderly man in his own garage at night while checking out the wrong address:http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/27/police-shoot-dead-grandfather-72-while-searching-the-wrong-home-for-burglar-blame-poor-lighting/

Cops shoot at man in streets in NY, hit bystanders: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/justice/times-square-police-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Cops lied to obtain a no-knock warrant and shot and killed a grandma in her own home, then planted drugs to cover up the crime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting

Cops shoots and kills honors student at college campus: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2519842/Valedictorian-honors-student-shot-dead-college-campus-cop-routine-traffic-stop.html

Cops shoot and wound man getting cigarettes from his own car at his own house for no reason at all:http://gawker.com/unarmed-man-shot-by-deputies-inside-his-own-car-outside-949237195

Cops kill man by compressing him while arresting him while he was distraught:http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/26/justice/oklahoma-arrest-death-video/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Police shoot diabetic man after his wife called for medical help, they claim he picked up a knife:http://reason.com/blog/2013/10/07/woman-says-she-called-911-for-an-ambulan

Cops shoot man holding a toy gun in walmart with no warning and lied in their report.http://www.whio.com/news/news/crime-law/special-grand-jury-selected-john-crawford-case/nhRwM/

Covert officers assault girls for buying bottled water, cops thought it was alcohol:http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/02/198047492/felony-arrest-of-student-who-bought-water-riles-many-in-virginia

Cop shoot elderly man reaching for cane: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/03/14/mxp-sot-deputy-shoots-elderly-mane-reaching-for-cane.cnn.html

Cops kill man with garden hose using a shotgun and no warning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6S7LRrCru8

Florida man survives 13 shots by officers while sitting in his car: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/21/us/florida-shot-by-mistake/index.html

Cops almost shoot and kill a hospital-worker in her own home with a warrant for an entire apartment complex and screaming at her door: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130718/COLUMNIST/130719612/2256/NEWS?p=1&tc=pg

Cops raiding small friendly poker games with militarized tactics, accidentally killing people-- dying man says “Why did you shoot me, I was reading a book.”:http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/

Cop beats handcuffed teen and is acquitted because video ‘should only be used to protect cops, not prosecute them.’ http://intellihub.com/2013/07/05/judge-finds-cop-not-guilty-of-assault-after-refusing-to-watch-video-of-assault/

Cop purposely holds onto door handle so he would have the right to shoot and kill a Sunday school teacher who was driving away from the cops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BSPhC916GQM

Cops use dubious excuses to justify lethal force: http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/border-patrol-used-dubious-tactics-to-create-pretext-to-justify-shootings-cbp-tried-to-bury-scathing-report-140302?news=852571

Cop shoots homeless man who was deaf and doing woodcarving: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/22/us/44-officers-are-charged-after-ohio-sting-operation.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Cop shoots man in back several times, then stands over him and shoots again to kill him—questionable whether the man actually was armed or not—conflicting evidence given. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=159PM7ZKcv0

Cop attacks random people in crowd and punches NY judge, judge shocked that cop not charged:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/judge-thomas-raffaele-attacker-charges_n_1822928.html

Drunk NY cops shoot at people: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/three-drunk-nypd-officers-shoot-at-people.html

Cop with dismal record shoots 12 year old boy with toy gun: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/03/officer-who-fatally-shot-tamir-rice-had-been-judged-unfit

Cop shoots and kills handcuffed man: https://news.vice.com/article/el-paso-releases-video-of-cop-executing-handcuffed-man-wheres-the-anger

Edit: Whoa never got gold before, thank you very much, unfortunate that it is for such a sad post. Also, just to clarify, I don't seek these stories out, but they began to disturb me and so I just began pasting them in a document when I read them on the news. There are many more pages of links that also involve police corruption and abuse of various sorts. I only posted some links here because these mistakes and abuses have gotten out of control and few people seem to recognize it. Thank you.

Angry Mob Silences A University Panel In The Name Of Free Speech

When did shouting down someone you disagreed with become an expression of free speech? [Link] 

A mob of angry protesters hijacked a panel discussion at Portland State University, loudly chanting, “We will not be silenced in the face of your violence,” over and over again until organizers had no choice but to cancel the event.
The panel, intended to discuss police brutality, drew the ire of the mob by including Kristian Williams, an anarchist author who has clashed with feminists by suggesting that sexual assault allegations should be studiously investigated, rather than automatically assumed to be true.
That statement was deemed to be hate speech by the mob, who accused him of “survivor-shaming” victims of sexual assault, according to Campus Reform.“You will be held accountable for all the people who feel unsafe by the words that you choose and say, and the way you cast doubt on people who have survived traumatic issues,” said one protester.
The mob loudly repeated the phrase, “We will not be silenced in the face of your violence,” which had the intended effect of silencing the panelists.
Protesters said that they would only allow the panel discussion to continue if Williams left. When the panel refused these demands, the angry shouting continued.
“Fuck Kristian Williams and fuck you trying to silence us,” hissed one of the protesters, who was part of a movement specifically designed to silence the panelists. He was cheered for his remarks.

What makes some men do this?

When does this stop being the standard for online disagreement with women? [Link]

“I think this woman is wrong about something on the Internet. Clearly my best course of action is to threaten her with rape.”

That’s crazy talk, right? So why does it happen all the time?

Honest question, dudes.

That women are harassed online is not news. That women in comics and the broader fandom cultures are harassed online is not news. That these women are routinely transmitted anonymous messages describing graphic sexual violence perpetrated upon them for transgressions as grave as not liking a thing… that is actually news to me, and it’s probably news to a lot of you guys reading this.

But it’s not news to a lot of women I know, and to women whose work you’ve read here and around the Web. I know it’s not news to them because of the way they write about it. They describe the latest rape threat as plainly as a man like you or I might complain about a late train. It’s just a another lousy thing that happens. You know, life in the big city.

“I will find you. I will hurt you. I will physically violate you… for being wrong about Spider-Man.”

Can you imagine, gentlemen, receiving that threat from a potentially dangerous man whose identity you have no hope of discovering but who knows your name, what city you live in, what you look like and where you work?

Now imagine receiving messages like that from men so frequently that you’re no longer bothered by it.

Now understand how f*cked up it is that you’re no longer bothered by it; that you’re no longer bothered by men’s anonymous threats of brutal sexual violence, because they’ve become just as common as a train not arriving on time.

If you’re like me, you’re now beginning to understand the depressingly huge scope of this problem.

The Internet is a boon to humanity. It is also terrible. That is its special nature. Every cogent thought put forth has a dark, mindless twin — sometimes these twins are legion — ready to feed on a person’s idea and process it into the toxic waste found at the bottom of virtually any website you care to visit. We call them trolls, and anyone reading this site or others like it knows that popular art and its surrounding fandom attract a particularly nasty strain of them.

I’m not just talking about the trolls. I’m not just talking about the mischief makers, the haters, the contrarians or the pedants. What I’m also talking about is something much worse and heretofore all but invisible to me and many other men like me. I’m talking about this:

Women in comics are the deviation, the invading body, the cancer. We are the cure, the norm, the natural order. All you are is a pair of halfway decent tits, a c*nt and a loud mouth. But see, it doesn’t matter how loud you get. It doesn’t matter how many of your lezbo tumblr and twitter fangirl friends agree with you and reinforce your views. You can be all “I’m not going to be silent about misogyny so f*ck you!” all you want. In the end all you are is a pathetic little girl trying to effect change and failing to make a dent. You might as well try to drain the ocean of fish. That’s the kind of battle you face with people like me. We won’t quit. We won’t stop attacking. We won’t give up. Ever.

I’ve encountered such sentiments before, but it’s only recently that I’ve learned how common they are.

Those remarks were sent to Janelle Asselin, a ComicsAlliance contributor, professional comic book editor, and academic researcher. She posted them on her Facebook page, to which she’s restricted public access for obvious reasons. I’ve republished the message here with her permission.

Ironically, the missive was transmitted anonymously via an online survey Janelle created to gather data on the prevalence of sexual harassment in the American comic book industry.

The man who wrote those words doubtlessly discovered Janelle’s survey by way of the misogynistic response to an article she wrote for another website critiquing the appeal of a superhero comic book cover. In her characteristically straightforward fashion, Janelle justified her opinion — that the cover was bad and spoke to a systemic badness with respect to marketing and audience — with reason and persuasive creative insight honed over years of professional experience. She pointed out, among other things, that the anatomy and costume of a teenage girl on the cover seemed off from both a biological and marketing perspective and suggested this might have a part to play in narrowing the book’s potential readership.

Janelle’s points deserved to be considered given her background not just as a professional editor and researcher who backs up her ideas with experience and logic, but also because she’s a woman. Agree or disagree with her conclusions; the fact remains that in 2014 it’s still relatively rare for women’s views on such topics to be represented in the comics media, and Janelle’s thoughtful and honest piece adds to the comics discourse.

Part of discourse is of course good faith disagreement, and that avenue is always open to anyone who wishes to take issue with the published opinions of anyone of any gender.

Drug Warriors Kidnap and Sexually Assault a Woman After Getting Permission From a Dog

What. The. Hell. [Link]

The lawsuit, filed yesterday by the ACLU chapters in Texas and New Mexico, says the plaintiff, a 54-year-old New Mexico resident identified in the complaint as Jane Doe, was crossing the bridge between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso after visiting a family friend last December when she was chosen at random for "additional screening." This "secondary inspection" involved a pat-down during which an agent "inserted her finger in the crevice of Ms. Doe's buttocks"—a rather startling incursion inasmuch as the agents at this point had no basis to suspect that the woman was carrying contraband. But they were just getting started.

The agents instructed the plaintiff to stand in line with other people who had been selected for additional screening and walked a dog past her. According to the lawsuit, the dog handler "hit the ground by her feet, but did not hit the ground by any of the others in the line," and "the dog responded by lunging onto Ms. Doe and landing its front paws on her torso." Why did the dog do that? "Because Ms. Doe did not possess any contraband," says the complaint, "the dog either did not alert or the response was not a proper alert." Yet this possibly manufactured and in any event erroneous alert was the basis for all that followed.

First the agents strip-searched the plaintiff, examining her anus and vagina with a flashlight. Finding nothing, they took her to the University Medical Center of El Paso, where they forced her to take a laxative and produce a bowel movement in their presence. Again they found no evidence of contraband. At this point one of their accomplices, a physician named Christopher Cabanillas, ordered an X-ray, which likewise found nothing suspicious. Then the plaintiff "endured a forced gynecological exam" and rectal probing at the hands of another doctor, Michael Parsa. Still nothing. Finally, Cabanillas ordered a CT scan of the plaintiff's abdomen and pelvis, which found no sign of illegal drugs. "After the CT scan," the complaint says, "a CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] agent presented Ms. Doe with a choice: she could either sign a medical consent form, despite the fact that she had not consented, in which case CBP would pay for the cost of the searches; or if she refused to sign the consent form, she would be billed for the cost of the searches." She refused, and later the hospital sent her a bill for $5,000, apparently the going rate for sexual assault and gratuitous radiological bombardment.

Foxes Policing the Henhouse

Hollywood cover up of animal abuse in media. the 'no animals were harmed in the making of ' label apprently means nothing. [Link]

According to an in-depth and potentially game-changing expose' in The Hollywood Reporter, the credit  you see at the end of movies and television shows that reassures with "No Animals Were Harmed," is nothing close to reliable. Corruption, cover-ups, and outright dishonesty plague an American Humane Association (AHA) that has apparently allowed itself to be co-opted by a Hollywood that is much more concerned with getting it on film than protecting innocent animals.

THR's reporting is filled with report after report of individual animal abuse and horrifying negligence. Dead horses (HBO's Luck, Spielberg's War Horse), punched dogs (Disney'sEight Below), squashed chipmunks (Paramount's Failure to Launch), exploded fish (Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean), etc. Most damning, though, are the statistics surrounding enforcement. Because there doesn’t seem to be any.  

In California, AHA monitors are licensed law enforcement officials. If they witness any kind of animal abuse or negligence, this means they have the power to make arrests or issue citations. According to THR, not a single citation has been issued in over thirty years. Not one over 35,000 productions.

The conflicts of interest between Hollywood and the regulators charged with looking out for the welfare of animals involved in film and television production is literally impossible to believe:

Charges of improper coziness between the AHA and the entertainment business have been raised before. The arrangement by which the Film & TV Unit’s budget has been mostly financed — through what is currently a $2.4 million grant administered by two trade groups, the recently merged SAG-AFTRA actors’ union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers via its shared Industry Advancement and Cooperative Fund — long has been criticized for the inherent conflict of interest present in Hollywood bankrolling its regulator. (The IACF is endowed as part of the producers’ obligation to the actors’ union.)

This unique compact, in which a nonprofit has taken on the role of a regulator of industry in lieu of more traditional, government oversight — and therefore is not subject to public disclosure laws, allowing its work to mostly remain shrouded in secrecy — means the AHA is accountable only to Hollywood itself.

According to THR's sources (current and former AHA employees; leaked documents and emails), this coziness has resulted in more than just looking the other way; cover ups are standing operating procedure and one AHA official alleges she was fired for attempting to protect animals from mistreatment on the set of the HBO series Luck.

Naturally, the AHA disputes almost all of this, but what they do not dispute is that the "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer is awarded to films where animals were in fact harmed. What the disclaimer really means, according to the AHA, is that no animals were "intentionally hammed" or injured while cameras were rolling.

For example, although horses were repeatedly injured during filming of Disney's "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," (14 on a single day!), the film still received the "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer.

In other words, the  "No Animals Were Harmed" credit is the AHA's version of "If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance."

Waitress who got anti-gay 'tip' gives donations to fellow soldiers

This is both, 'what the hell is wrong with people?' and 'this restores my faith in humanity'. [Link]

Dayna Morales, an ex-Marine and server at Gallop Asian Bistro, was handed a restaurant check with an apparently anti-gay message scrawled in the margin. She said she has been "overwhelmed" by the show of support" she's received since the incident last week.

Morales said that on Wednesday, she served the customer her entire meal without incident, but when Morales picked up the bill, she saw the tip amount space crossed out and the words "I'm sorry but I cannot tip because I do not agree with your lifestyle and how you live your life" written by hand in the margin of the check.

Morales said the support from customers and even non-customers dropping by to donate the amount of the tip for the original check has already topped $2,000 and is still coming in. The money will go to the Wounded Warrior project, which helps severely injured veterans. Morales' employer has decided to match every donation to the cause.

African diamond mining on the backs of medical aid

Color me surprised that Pat Robertson was up to no good. [Link]

Officials from other aid operations said that Operation Blessing was not anywhere near the first or largest groups working in Goma. Jessie Potts, the operations manager for Robertson in Goma in 1994, told Mission Congo that the medicines that did arrive were not of great use in fighting the cholera epidemic.

"We got a lot of Tylenol. Too much. I never did understand that. We got enough Tylenol to supply all of Zaire. God, I never saw as much in my life," he said.

Then, Potts said, suddenly everything changed. "Operation Blessing, several weeks into the operation, decided not to send any more medical teams," he said. The flights to Goma dried up.

Robert Hinkle, the chief pilot for Operation Blessing in Zaire in 1994, said he received new orders. "They began asking me: can we haul a thousand-pound dredge over? I didn't know what the dredging deal was about," he said.

The documentary describes how dredges, used to suck up diamonds from river beds, were delivered hundreds of miles from the crisis in Goma to a private commercial firm, African Development Company, registered in Bermuda and wholly owned by Robertson. ADC held a mining concession near the town of Kamonia on the far side of the country.

"Mission after mission was always just getting eight-inch dredgers, six-inch dredgers … and food supplies, quads, jeeps, out to the diamond dredging operation outside of Kamonia," Hinkle told the film-makers.

The pilot said he joined Operation Blessing to help people. Of the 40 flights he flew into Congo, just two delivered aid. The others were associated with the diamond mining. "We're not doing anything for those people," he said. "After several months I was embarrassed to have Operation Blessing on the airplane's tail." He had the lettering removed.

Robertson ordered an airstrip carved out of the bush next to the town of Kamonia, 800 miles from Goma. On his television show he left the impression this was part of his aid operation.

The televangelist was also raising donations for Operation Blessing's other activities in Congo. These included a 100,000-acre farm near the town of Dumi, which Robertson claimed had produced a large harvest of corn and was a "tremendous feeding station".

"The soil is unbelievable. You stick anything in the ground and it grows. You put a shovel in and it starts sprouting," he said in appealing for donations.

In fact, the farm at Dumi had already failed. The soil was of poor quality and Operation Blessing brought seeds from the US unsuited to the region.

To this day, Robertson continues to solicit donations on the back of the project, on the grounds that although the farm failed, it left a legacy with a school that established a "foundation of education" in the town. 2011 posting on the Operation Blessing website described the school as "thriving".

"Despite the turbulence over the years, the children of Dumi still gather to learn and grow in the little school house on the plateau," it said.

Yet Mission Congo visited the Dumi school at the same time and filmed it abandoned, stripped of its desks and falling down.

Similarly, local leaders in Kamonia said that they were promised schools, roads and a hospital by Robertson's mining company – but none of it materialised.

Robertson's activities in Congo were initially exposed by a Virginia newspaper, the Virginian Pilot, in the 1990s. The investigation by Bill Sizemore prompted the attorney general in Virginia, where Operation Blessing is registered, to order a probe by the state's office of consumer affairs.

Its report concluded that Robertson made "fraudulent and deceptive" statements with claims to be ferrying doctors and medical aid to Goma when he was delivering diamond-mining equipment. It accused Operation Blessing of "misrepresenting" what its flights were doing, and of saying that the airstrip at Kamonia was part of the aid operation when it was "for the benefit of ADC's mining operation".

It also said Robertson had falsely portrayed the Dumi farm as hugely successful when it had already failed.

"Pat Robertson made material claims, via television appeals, regarding the relief efforts. These statements are refuted by the evidence in this case," the report said.

But the Virginian authorities declined to prosecute Robertson, describing his misrepresentations as a "blemish". Mission Congo notes that leading state politicians were recipients of large donations from Robertson.

Robertson has been embroiled in mining controversies elsewhere in Africa. He supported the then president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, during that country's civil war without revealing at the time that he had an $8m investment in a Liberian gold mine. Taylor was already indicted by a UN war crimes tribunal at the time and was later convicted of crimes against humanity.

The End of Kindness

On the Internet, it can be dangerous to be a woman. [Link]

In 2007, Sierra was one of the most visible women in tech. She taught the Java programming language at Sun Microsystems. Her books on software design were top sellers on Amazon. Her blog was on Technorati’s top 100, a list that included other blogging pioneers, such as Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington, and Om Malik. Her writing focused on design and coding and included very little that could be considered controversial. So, why would anyone wish her dead?

In March of that year, some visitors to Sierra’s blog called "open season" on the now 57-year-old. Hundreds of commenters on her blog made rape and death threats. "I hope someone slits your throat," wrote one person. People posted photoshopped images of her with a pair of panties choking her, or a noose near her head. She had enraged scores of men for supporting a call to moderate reader comments, which is of course common practice now. Sierra went public about the threats, writing on her blog, "It’s better to talk about it than to just disappear."

But disappear is exactly what she did next. Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, a well-known provocateur, hacker, and anti-Semite, circulated her home address and Social Security number online. He also made false statements about her being a battered wife and a former prostitute. Not only did Sierra find herself a target for identity theft, but all the people who had threatened to brutally rape and kill her now knew where she lived. So, she logged off and didn’t return to the web until two months ago. She gave up the book deals, speaking engagements, and even fled her home. An anonymous internet group had chased her off the web and out of tech, and it finally managed to hijack her offline life.

Tech conference kicks off with TitStare app

Are they all 12 year old boys? Even better (worse), there was a 9 year old girl there to present her app at the conference. Way to provide a hostile environment. [Link]

As a lovely followup to recent discussions of gender inclusivity in tech, here's the first presentation from the AOL-ownedTechCrunch Disrupt 2013 startup conference: an app called Titstare, presented by two grinning Australian dudes, exactly as tasteless as it sounds.

The stunt—which the Sydney duo claims was just a "joke"—
was done before to an audience who paid for the opportunity to watch what was essentially a shitty routine pulled from the boys' cabin at sleepaway camp. Some in attendance actually laughed and cheered, so I suppose part of the crowd thought they got their money's worth.

The difference between summer camp and TechCrunch Disrupt, of course, is that Jethro Batts and David Boulton are grown men, ostensibly adults, on a stage at a hugely prominent technology business conference—-a conference that saw these two jackasses and invited them up on that stage. TechCrunch proceeded to tweet a link to Titstare from its official Disrupt account, but decided that was perhaps unwise, and deleted it, settling for this instead:

We apologize for two inappropriate hackathon presentations earlier today. We will more carefully screen from now on.

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) September 8, 2013

If only there had been some way to foresee an adverse reaction to "Titstare"—perhaps a "screening" app of some sort is in order. Pandora for common sense?

If you'd like to feel worse today, here's another "demo" from the same "hackathon" "presentation," which is basically a guy pretending to jerk off before a crowd that included a 9-year-old girl.

Americans use the Internet to abandon children adopted from overseas

What the hell is wrong with people? [Link]

Todd and Melissa Puchalla struggled for more than two years to raise Quita, the troubled teenager they'd adopted from Liberia. When they decided to give her up, they found new parents to take her in less than two days – by posting an ad on the Internet.

Nicole and Calvin Eason, an Illinois couple in their 30s, saw the ad and a picture of the smiling 16-year-old. They were eager to take Quita, even though the ad warned that she had been diagnosed with severe health and behavioral problems. In emails, Nicole Eason assured Melissa Puchalla that she could handle the girl.

"People that are around me think I am awesome with kids," Eason wrote.

A few weeks later, on Oct. 4, 2008, the Puchallas drove six hours from their Wisconsin home to Westville, Illinois. The handoff took place at the Country Aire Mobile Home Park, where the Easons lived in a trailer.

No attorneys or child welfare officials came with them. The Puchallas simply signed a notarized statement declaring these virtual strangers to be Quita's guardians. The visit lasted just a few hours. It was the first and the last time the couples would meet.

To Melissa Puchalla, the Easons "seemed wonderful." Had she vetted them more closely, she might have discovered what Reuters would learn:

• Child welfare authorities had taken away both of Nicole Eason's biological children years earlier. After a sheriff's deputy helped remove the Easons' second child, a newborn baby boy, the deputy wrote in his report that the "parents have severe psychiatric problems as well with violent tendencies."

• The Easons each had been accused by children they were babysitting of sexual abuse, police reports show. They say they did nothing wrong, and neither was charged.

• The only official document attesting to their parenting skills – one purportedly drafted by a social worker who had inspected the Easons' home – was fake, created by the Easons themselves.

On Quita's first night with the Easons, her new guardians told her to join them in their bed, Quita says today. Nicole slept naked, she says.

Within a few days, the Easons stopped responding to Melissa Puchalla's attempts to check on Quita, Puchalla says. When she called the school that Quita was supposed to attend, an administrator told Puchalla that the teenager had never shown up.

To Train Up a Child

I almost cried while reading about this and feel sick to my stomach. What the hell is wrong with people? How is this book still sold? [Link]

Book:  To Train Up a Child

Authors:  Michael and Debi Pearl of No Greater Joy Ministries

Type of Book:  Instruction manual for beating children

Availability:  Not linking to it.  You don’t want to buy it.  If you do want to buy it, I will not abet such a bad decision.

Comments:  This is one of the wickedest books I have ever read and, given who I am and what I read, that is saying a lot.  This is a book so vile, written by a man so degenerate, that there is literally no way for a moral person to discuss it with anything approaching neutrality.  It is a book written solely with the intent of breaking the wills of small children, beating them into submission, and it has become a text used by witless Christian parents to beat their “willful” children to death.  And Michael Pearl is okay with that because he says those parents didn’t beat their children with love in their hearts or they wouldn’t have struck their children repeatedly with plumbing line until their muscles broke down and clogged their kidneys with biological debris, killing them.

This book is deeply problematic beyond just the content, which we will get to in a moment.  This book upsets me so much because though I am an atheist, I know excellent and fine Christians.  My grandfather was one.  He would have rebuked a man like Michael Pearl and if Pearl beat a child or a dog with a piece of wood, a belt, or plumbing line in front of him, Pearl would have found out what it is like to be at the mercy of a larger, angry man.  That is not because my grandfather was some sort of vengeance seeker.  Far from it.  He was not a man who looked for fights.  He would have rebuked Pearl because genuine believers cannot stomach the harms done by True Believers.  Many Christians today have the same reactions to the Westboro Baptist Church.  This book is so deeply problematic because in fundamentalist, legalistic circles, people use this book in the place of their own judgement as Christians, parents and decent human beings.

This is not a condemnation of Christianity.  It is a condemnation of Christians who use Michael and Debi Pearl’s disgusting book of abuse, a book so profoundly horrible that if it was used against prisoners it would be illegal and if it was used on POWs it would be considered war crimes.   So if you want to defend Christianity, don’t do it here.  Christianity is not what is being discussed here.  What is being discussed here is child abuse in the name of Michael Pearl, not God or Jesus, and the way that unthinking faith leads people to do terrible things.

The purpose of To Train Up a Child is to use Amish horse training methods on children, and even then the Amish would likely turn their backs on Pearl if they knew how their methods of taming wild animals were used on children.

Don’t get lost in the details.  Pearl in Chapter One lays out a bunch of explanations of how it is that he is not disciplining children, but rather continually training them so he does not have to discipline them.  He uses Proverbs 22:6 as his rationale:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Fair enough, but when “training” consists of pulling a nursing infant’s hair, hitting them continually, deliberately putting them in harm’s way to show them they must obey all commands, even those that make zero sense on any rational level, hitting them if they do not obey quickly enough for your satisfaction, what you are doing is brainwashing your child to follow your demented ideas, not any sort of Godly path.  Mindless, shattered, fearful automatons will never depart from the path you put them on.

Michael Pearl (and I refer to him mostly because even though his wife is a co-author, the book is written by him in first person, his wife referred to in the third person) gives a lot of lip service about how one must be calm when beating one’s children.  But as he says that a parent must be calm when training their children, he also goes on to say many times that a child must be trained until they are submissive or broken (he actually uses that word).  He recommends a course of whippings wherein the whippings continue until the child submits.  So as he gives lip service to the notion that a parent must have their head clear when engaging in his training methods, he also insists that training continue – sessions of whippings – until the adult feels the child is broken. The child’s physical welfare is never a part of the parent’s clear mind.  In a way, a clear and “Godly” minded person doing this to a child reeks of sheer sadism.

Why should you “train” your children?  To make them blindly obedient in all situations, of course.

Training is the conditioning of the child’s mind before the crisis arises.  It is preparation for future, instant, unquestioning obedience.

The last quality I would want in any human being is unquestioning obedience but Pearl insists this is to make a child happy because obedient children who have limits are happier.   There is truth in this – children with boundaries live happier lives, but Pearl does not teach boundaries.  In fact, as I will discuss, he doesn’t even permit them in his home.  He insists his children are the best examples of his methods being sound, but when we are finished discussing this book, I will discuss Pearl’s children, one of whom is living a hardscrabble life, engaging in bizarre prophetic visions, barely able to feed her children because her shattered mind and blind obedience made her prey to a man like her father.

People may find this hard to believe, but Pearl advocates beating children when they are infants. Here’s what Pearl did when his babies were able to crawl:

Place an appealing object where they can reach it, maybe in a “No-No” corner or on the apple juice table (another name for the coffee table).  When they spy it and make a dive for it, in a calm voice say, “No, don’t touch that.”  Since they are already familiar with the word “No,” they will likely pause, look at you in wonder, and then turn around and grab it.  Switch their hand once and simultaneously say, “No.”

Pearl says to switch lightly but when you have an implement in your hand to strike an infant, I posit you, the adult, may have little idea what it feels like to have your hand “switched.”  On his site Pearl says to test the implement on yourself but given that he recommends repeated whipping sessions, the adult can easily lose track of how hard he or she is hitting.

Worse, Pearl is setting up his children.  He deliberately entices them to behave in a manner he considers wrong and hits them.  In fact, that Pearl is instituting these rules before the children can speak, before they have the capacity to reason, means they have no idea what is happening.  They just lose all curiosity in life until they are willing to sit on a blanket and not move – called blanket training – lest they be hit.

Disabled people with special-needs trusts

A machine for making money for trustees and banks. And what about the person it's for? [Link]

Before her stood lawyer Harvey J. Platt, who was petitioning to become the legal guardian of Mark Christopher Holman, a severely autistic teen who lived in an institution upstate.

Holman had been left an orphan nearly three years earlier after the eccentric millionaire who adopted him passed away. According to doctors, he had the communication skills of a toddler, unable to bathe, dress, or eat by himself.

But before Judge Glen would grant this seemingly perfunctory petition, she had a few questions for Platt.

"How often have you visited Mark Holman?" she asked the lawyer.

"Since his mother died, I have not visited him," said Platt.

"And when you say you haven't visited him since then, how often had you visited him prior to that?"

"I haven't seen him since he was eight or nine," responded the lawyer. "His mother used to bring him to our office with his brother, just to show him my face and so forth and so on, so I haven't seen him probably since 1995 or 1996."

It was around that time that Platt helped Mark's mother, Marie Holman, draft her will and create trusts for him and his older brother. A decade later, when she was dying, Platt promised Marie he'd apply to become Mark's guardian.

"And have you visited the institution which he currently resides in?" Glen asked.

"No, I intend to, but I have not as yet," Platt said, sounding weary. "I don't think even a visit has much significance anyway. He's totally nonverbal—he's never spoken a word. He's potentially aggressive."

This didn't sit well with Judge Glen. When it came to signing away the rights of disabled people to guardians, she was perhaps the most cautious judge in New York. But what came next would floor her.

Platt informed her that Mark's trust had reached nearly $3 million. But while his trustees—Platt and JP Morgan Chase—had collected thousands of dollars in commissions, they hadn't spent a penny on Mark. Medicaid covered his basic care at the institution upstate, but neither the lawyer nor the bank had considered how his mammoth trust might further aid his quality of life.

"Whether there is a cure for his autism or not, the question is: Are there things that could make his life more pleasurable or fulfilling?" Glen asked. "If somebody took him out to the movies once a week, or somebody took him out to lunch, or what he really likes to do is watch football—I don't know. There's always something that could make people happier, and I don't think you could know that without really visiting him and knowing what's going on."

As she spoke, Glen could not have predicted that the case would become a five-year obsession for her. Or that she was about to disrupt a lucrative trade in which some trustees sponge commissions off wealthy disabled people—while doing little to enhance their care.

"They're lazy pieces of shit," says Glen. "It's a business. They collect their commissions, and they think their only responsibility is to invest the money and keep the money safe with no regard for the beneficiary."

Any remorse from the trustee? What do you think?

In her opinion, Glen demanded that JP Morgan and Platt provide an updated accounting of Mark's trust. She also recommended that both have their commissions denied or reduced.

"This is very upsetting to me," Platt says. Now 81, he sounds exhausted when he speaks of Mark's case from his Upper East Side office.

"I never gave her any reason to have such a harsh opinion," he says. "It's not pleasant, especially with the career that I've had, and I'm going to make sure that I continue to do what I'm doing. I will never, ever let anyone criticize me."

Asshole.

No Showboating at the Benghazi Hearings, Please

Good advice. The cover-up is always worse than the 'crime'. 4 people dead, 2 of whom were alive for hours while those who were in a position to rescue them were prevented from doing so. Why? [Link]

Dear Republicans on the House Oversight Committee:

Please do not grandstand. Please do not take the time before the television cameras to tell us how outraged you are, even though what you are investigating is, indeed, outrageous. There will be plenty of time for that after the hearing. All day Wednesday, give us the facts, and then more facts, and then more facts.

Just ask the questions of the witnesses. Let them speak and don’t cut them off. Do not give the Obama administration any cover to claim that this is a partisan witch hunt from unhinged political opponents. Don’t waste time complaining about the media’s lack of interest or coverage so far. Just give them — and us — the facts to tell the story, a story that will leave all of us demanding accountability.

Sheryl Attkisson’s excellent reporting for CBS gives us a sense of what to expect, with three big issues.

First: Leading up to September 11, why did the State Department keep reducing the amount of security protecting diplomatic staff in Libya, in light of the increasingly dire requests from those in country?

The former deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya, Gregory Hicks was interviewed by congressional investigators on the House Oversight Committee in April. He told them, “We had already essentially stripped ourselves of our security presence, or our security capability to the bare minimum.”

Second: Precisely what happened that night? Was there a time when a rescue could have been authorized, but wasn’t? Were any forces told to “stand down” and not attempt a rescue?

From Hicks’s interview:

A: So Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, who is the SOCAFRICA commander, his team, you know, they were on their way to the vehicles to go to the airport to get on the C-130 when he got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, you can’t go now, you don’t have authority to go now. And so they missed the flight. And, of course, this meant that one of the . . . 

Q : They didn’t miss the flight. They were told not to board the flight.

A: They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it. So, anyway, and yeah. I still remember Colonel Gibson, he said, “I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military.” A nice compliment.

Wait, there’s more from another witness:

On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a “whistle-blower” witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.

That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Third, what happened afterwards, and was there an effort to lie to the American people about what happened?

Hicks, again:

Greg Hicks: . . . The net impact of what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world has basically said that the President of Libya is either a liar or doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The impact of that is immeasurable. Magariaf has just lost face in front of not only his own people, but the world . . . my jaw hit the floor as I watched this . . . I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career as on that day . . . I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate. Chris’s last report, if you want to say his final report, is, “Greg, we are under attack.” . . . It is jaw-dropping that — to me that — how that came to be.

Finally, did the previous efforts to investigate this amount to a cover-up?

Jed Babbin:

Last week, we learned that the State Department’s Inspector General is investigating the Pickering-Mullen “Accountability Review Board” for, among other things, its failure to investigate and get statements from the Benghazi survivors. Before there were whistleblowers there were survivors, yet the comprehensively misnamed “Accountability Review Board” didn’t question them.

Which isn’t a surprise. The ARB did what it was paid to do: limit the damage and blame people under Hillary Clinton for the failures of leadership and management. It was, simply, a whitewash. We’ll probably wait a long time for the IG to report the facts — 2017 sounds like the right time frame.

In the press conference announcing the report, Adm. Mullen said something that’s been bothering me ever since. He said that no military assets could have been deployed in time. In time to do what?

Jed makes a good point here: Just how did the U.S. military and diplomatic folks outside of Benghazi know how long they had to rescue anyone? How did they know how long our guys would be able to hold out, or how long the attack would go on? After the fact, you can calculate that not enough forces could have reached the site in time, but how did they know that as the events were ongoing?

If that means, in Clintonian terms, that they wouldn’t have been in time to save Ambassador Chris Stevens, that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have been in time to save the SEALs.

If you parse Mullen’s words — as we learned we must when Hillary’s hubby was president — he almost certainly meant that the ambassador was killed in the early moments of the attack.

Fake Kidnapping Service

What the hell is wrong with people that this exists? [Link]

Romeo slapped me hard across the face, much harder than I had been slapped all night. Then he shocked me with a stun gun. Then Cody doused me with cold water, which was the worst part by far. When you get hit with a stun gun, it lasts a second. When someone throws cold water on you, it makes you miserable for hours. I hadn't thought about cold water before this. I had thought about guns and billy clubs and knives. It never occurred to me how desperately I would want to stay dry. Now I would have gladly taken another jolt from the stun gun in exchange for a fresh T-shirt.

"I know this was originally meant to be a fake kidnapping," the voice said.

That's right.

"And I know that you guys did your homework on me, and that you know I went to prison for a while."

I do know that.

"But there are other things about me that you don't know, Drew. And the reason you don't know them is because you never asked."

Oh shit.

That was the moment it felt real. That was the moment I was paying for.

Dumbass.