How low can she go?

OK, I get it right-wingnuts take a break from the personal responsibility meme long enough for Sarah Palin to blame Barack Obama for her son putting a beat down on his girlfriend.

Let's forget, for a minute, that Palin's son Track (yes, that's his name), was drunk, and that he never saw "a second" of actual combat before his alleged PTSD.

This is just more of Sarah Palin doing the unthinkable: Using her own children to score cheap political points and create sound bites for her fatuous base.

Instead of Palin denouncing domestic violence and the horror that comes with it, she blames the president for her son's cowardly actions.

Poor John McCain must be full of regret for introducing the country to Glen's former jump-off. I know his daughter is. Watching Palin endorse a man who said that her father was not a war hero had to have been hard. But she can take comfort in the fact that it was Sarah Palin. A woman who has become a national joke. And she is so much of a joke that it's hard to differentiate between her and the actual comedian who plays her on television.

Finally, did you hear the one about the James O'Keefe wannabe who tried to go undercover and film alleged scenes of Planned Parenthood selling body parts? Of course you did. Conservatives were all over it this past summer.

Well as it turns out it wasn't Planned Parenthood that was breaking the law. 

"HOUSTON — A county grand jury here that was investigating allegations of misconduct against Planned Parenthood has instead indicted two anti-abortion activists who made videos of the organization. 

In a statement, the Harris County district attorney, Devon Anderson, said Monday that the director of the Center for Medical Progress, David Daleiden, had been indicted on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to purchasing human organs.

 

Another center employee, Sandra Merritt, was indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record.

 

The Center for Medical Progress had covertly shot videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the provision of body parts from aborted fetuses for research. Mr. Daleiden, 26, had posed as a biotechnology representative to infiltrate Planned Parenthood affiliates and surreptitiously record his attempts to procure tissue for research.

The activists have claimed that Planned Parenthood has engaged in the illegal sale of body parts — a charge the organization has firmly denied.

 

Ms. Anderson said in the statement that grand jurors had cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing. She did not specify in the statement what record or records were allegedly tampered with.

 

“We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast,” Ms. Anderson said. “As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us. All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case.”

 

The case started in August, when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican and an outspoken opponent of abortion and Planned Parenthood, asked the Harris County district attorney to open a criminal investigation into the organization. His request came after the release of an undercover video taped at a Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast office in Houston with a research official for the organization. Mr. Patrick said the video showed the group “discussing the gruesome and barbaric work of Planned Parenthood and what appears to be its profiteering from selling body parts from aborted babies.”' [Source]

 

Hi David, my name is Karma.  

 

*Pic from slate.com

 

The "urban veteran."

A couple of incidents during the course of the day influenced me asking the following question:

Can just living in the "hood" expose you to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

I ask because I had some professional interaction with a gentleman today, who informed me, in no uncertain terms, that he cannot work, or even think about keeping a job, because as an "urban veteran", he suffers from PTSD.

" I am sorry sir. Were you in the military?" Oh no Mr. Field, but I live in Southwest, and as a black man, yourself, I am sure you understand what I go through on a daily basis. After you reach a certain age, a lifetime of living in the hood takes its toll on you and you just can't function." "Sir, I don't want to sound insensitive to your position, but have you ever considered moving?"

I know I know, that was kind of harsh, but I was having a bad day.

Still, I have been thinking about what that man told me, and you know.....hey, the guy might have a point. I am not a psychiatrist, and for professional reasons I can't get into too much more of what went down with the guy, but let's just say that the guy had some legitimacy to him. And before any of you reading this go thinking that the guy is full of it, think again. There are others out there legitimizing what the guy was saying.

Then,to top it off, I saw this story from Detroit. It's urban tragedies like this one ---which plays itself out in so many cities in A-merry-ca on a daily basis--- which led me to the question I asked in the second sentence of the post. We know about the knuckleheads running around and destroying our communities, but what about the people who have to live among them? How is the senseless and random violence and the fear of living with it affecting them?

Veterans coming back from the horrors of foreign wars fall victim to PTSD all the time. Does living in an A-merry-can city and surviving the mean streets that come with them qualify the survivors as veterans as well? Military veterans suffer from various forms of emotional trauma. Apparently urban veterans do, too.