Dreaded diseases dwindle with gene testing
Wider screening curbs inherited disorders such as cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs

Some of mankind’s most devastating inherited diseases appear to be declining, and a few have nearly disappeared, because more people are using genetic testing to decide whether to have children.

Births of babies with cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs and other less familiar disorders have dropped since testing came into wider use, The Associated Press found from a review of studies and interviews with numerous geneticists and other experts.

Uh-oh, I thought to myself. Because, you know, the screening itself doesn’t have any directly curative or preventative effect at all on inherited genetic disorders…what it does is allow people carrying genetic disorders to either decide not to reproduce or, more commonly, decide to abort any pregnancy with an embryo or fetus that carries the defective genes. Now, I personally have no problem with this; I am pro-choice through and through. However, I figured that there’d be a sizable contingent of folks out there who would have a b-i-g problem with the idea that giving out access to information that might influence someone to abort could ever, under any circumstances, be regarded as a good thing.

Yep, all I had to do was nip over to the “Comments” section after the article, and what was the very first comment..?

Very ironic and sad that a method touted as a “life-saving effort” is what gives an excuse to kill a baby.

Because of course, you know we are all on the lookout for excuses to kill babies. It’s a lot like being on the lookout for excuses to eat chocolate or go shopping!…sigh.

I can always console myself with the possibility that the hordes of people who are making remarks like that are just ignorant. Or stupid. Or both. But then, linked to the article, is another article written by some dude who presumably is not ignorant or stupid, given that he describes himself as Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.:

Disability-free world may not be a better place
Screening means fewer Down babies, but are we missing out?

A fascinating probe by the Associated Press suggests the reason. Genetic testing is leading to birth of fewer and fewer children with Down syndrome and other genetic disease in the United States.

The “fascinating probe” he refers to is, indeed, the article that originally caught my eye. And you can tell by the way he goes on in the article that he did actually read some of it, because he spends a little time talking about Tay-Sachs disease and Cystic Fibrosis. But his main point, the one he keeps returning to over and over again (after a few sops thrown out acknowledging that children born with Tay-Sachs, for instance, die by age 4) is

As some families with a Down syndrome child have noted, fewer kids with Down may mean fewer public programs, fewer resources in schools and for housing and less political clout.

On a trip to Ireland a few years ago, I was struck by a number of faces among the crowds. They were children with the tell-tale look of Down syndrome. What struck me was the realization that I hardly ever see these young faces out on the street in the United States.

…Down Syndrome, which can’t be detected at all through parental screening, which is what the original article is all about, because it’s caused by a mutation in the reproductive cells themselves, not in the parents’ cells. Rinse, repeat: Down Syndrome is not an inherited genetic disorder.

But since the heartstrings clearly get tugged the wrong way by discussing babies born with Tay-Sachs disease–it’s a hell of a lot harder to paint the prevention of that occurence as parents on the lookout for excuses to kill their babies–I suppose Concern Troll PhD couldn’t really use that as his handle, huh?

The history here is well known to everyone interested in politics but worth summarizing. For most of the first 190 years of the country’s operation, U.S. Senators would, in unusual circumstances, try to delay a vote on measures they opposed by “filibustering” — talking without limit or using other stalling techniques. For most of those years, the Senate could cut off the filibuster and force a vote by imposing “cloture,” which took a two-thirds majority of those voting (at most 67 of 100 Senators). In 1975, the Senate adopted a rules change to allow cloture with 60 votes, and those are the rules that still prevail.

The significant thing about filibusters through most of U.S. history is that they hardly ever happened…

…as the chart below shows, the huge increase in threatened filibusters came from the Republican minority, after the Democrats took back the Senate in 2007. Since the time covered by this chart, the number of threatened (Republican) filibusters has shot up even more dramatically.

In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system “dysfunctional,” riddled with “brain-dead partisanship” and permanent campaigning.

In this morning’s interview he noted that just two weeks ago, Republicans who had co-sponsored a bill with him to rein in the deficit turned around and voted against their own bill.

The Internet is abuzz with accounts of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s confrontation of Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill) on NBC News’ Meet The Press (MTP), Sunday.

Rachel Maddow, in pointing out that Rep. Aaron Schock criticized Democrats for economic stimulus spending programs, then shows up for ribbon cuttings of facilities funded by those same programs, embarrassed the neophyte GOP congressman from Illinois.

Rachel Maddow said:

…just this week you were at a community college touting a $350,000 green technology education program, talking about how great that was going to be for your district. You voted against the bill that created that grant.

Sarah Palin as GOP nominee in 2012? Don’t laugh it off

After weeks of working the book-promotion circuit, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin seems to be getting down to the serious business of selling herself as a viable presidential nominee for the Republican Party in 2012.

She told Mr. Wallace on the Fox Sunday talk show that “it would be absurd” not to consider a presidential candidacy if the cards fall right for her and her family and that she will not “close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future.”

“I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.” –George W. Bush, on what he hopes to accomplish with his memoir, as reported by the Associated Press, Calgary, Canada, March 17, 2009

These are the 10 US senators who voted against the Patriot Act Renewal of March 2006. The senators in bold type voted in favor of the Patriot Act in 2001.

NAYs —10
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Byrd (D-WV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Murray (D-WA)
Wyden (D-OR)

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin was the only senator who voted against the Patriot Act on October 24, of 2001.

U.S. House of Representatives Vote on US Patritot Act 2001 & 2006

House Vote Roll Call for the Patriot Act 2001 of October 24, 2001: Democrats in Italics

—- NAYS 66 —

Baldwin
Barrett
Blumenauer
Bonior
Boucher
Brown (OH)
Capuano
Clayton
Conyers
Coyne
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Dingell
Farr
Filner
Frank
Hastings (FL)
Hilliard
Honda
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (OH)
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
McDermott
McGovern
McKinney
Meek (FL)
Miller, George
Mink
Mollohan
Nadler
Ney
Oberstar
Olver
Otter
Owens
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Peterson (MN)
Rahall
Rivers
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Schakowsky
Scott
Serrano
Stark
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Velazquez
Visclosky
Waters
Watson (CA)
Watt (NC)
Woolsey
Wu

House Vote Roll Call on 2006 Patriot Act Renewal on March 7, 2006: Democrats in Italics

—- NAYS 138 —

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Baca
Baldwin
Bartlett (MD)
Becerra
Berkley
Berman
Bishop (UT)
Blumenauer
Boucher
Brady (PA)
Brown (OH)
Brown, Corrine
Butterfield
Capps
Capuano
Carson
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Conyers
Costello
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dingell
Doggett
Doyle
Duncan
Engel
Eshoo
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Frank (MA)
Gordon
Green, Al
Grijalva
Hastings (FL)
Hinchey
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Inslee
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (NC)
Jones (OH)
Kennedy (RI)
Kildee
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kucinich
Lantos
Larson (CT)
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Lofgren, Zoe
Lowey
Lucas
Lynch
Mack
Maloney
Manzullo
Markey
Matsui
McCollum (MN)
McDermott
McGovern
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek (FL)
Michaud
Millender-McDonald
Miller, George
Mollohan
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Otter
Owens
Oxley
Pallone
Pastor
Paul
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Rohrabacher
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sabo
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sanders
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Slaughter
Solis
Stark
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Towns
Udall (NM)
Velázquez
Visclosky
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Woolsey
Wu
Young (AK)

But in the midst of my aimless perusal of Men’s Rights-type sites, I stumbled across this article: 10 Lies Men Tell Themselves in Order to Stay in Abusive Relationships with their Wives or Girlfriends. I was struck by how very many of the Lies Men Tell Themselves appeared to be very similar, if not identical, to the Lies Women Tell Themselves in Order to Stay In Abusive Relationships. Perhaps not a dazzling revelation–abuse is abuse, regardless of the demographics of the abuser and abusee–but then, that’s also too simplistic of a statement to make. Some forms of abuse really don’t happen much without pre-existing factors that facilitate them; for example, while both parent-on-child and child-on-parent physical abuse does occur, it occurs far more often in the former case due to size disparity, economic imbalance, psychological dominance overwhelmingly in favor of the parent, etc. etc.

So I Googled a list for women and thought I’d look at them together, and see what similarities and differences did crop up in your typical Top Ten Lies list.

Reasons that are identical for both genders

1. I’ll lose my home, my kids and my money and assets.
2. Love conquers all.
3. Even living in a relationship without sex or affection is better than being alone.

Not very surprising. For number 1, what you are more likely to lose more of from that list can be influenced by your specific gender, but regardless of your gender the unpleasant reality is that if you leave an abusive partner, you are going to lose at least some of one or more of those things.

For number 2, self-delusion is hardly gender-specific, and our culture h-e-a-v-i-l-y romanticizes and encourages this particular point of view.

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t understand number 3 at all, but I know that a huge number of people do feel that way. I find it far worse to be lonely in the same room with someone than be lonely when I’m actually alone in the room; having someone there that’s supposed to love and desire you but doesn’t is the most miserable tease in the world.

Reasons that are similar for both genders

1. Male version:I made a commitment and I honor my commitments.
Female version:It is my duty to make my relationship work.

2. Male version:If I just work a little harder at the relationship, it will get better.
Female version:He can change if I’m just committed enough.

3.Male version:My kid(s) are okay because she doesn’t yell at them.
Female version:I need to keep our family together for the children’s sake.

The differences are not large in each statement–they are interesting in the ways each illustrates the culturally ingrained male/female mindsets, but the central theme in each is the same. For number 1, domestic harmony is a woman’s responsibility and domestic prosperity is a man’s (of course I don’t agree with that, duh! but that is the prevailing meme). But the central theme of a reluctance to fail in one’s life-role responsibilities crosses the gender line.

For number 2, the interesting part is that both genders see the man as the active partner and the woman as the passive partner–the man must work harder on his actions/ the woman must stand back and allow the man time and space to work harder on his actions. Both, of course, are mistaken for the same reason–the abusive person is not abusive because of anything you are doing, not because you are either not doing enough or doing too much.

For number 3, both sexes view the children and mother as an inseparable unit; for the man, that she abuses him has nothing to do with their children, and for the woman, that if she leaves him their children will automatically lose their father. The central fallacy is that it’s better for children to grow up in a home where one parent abuses another than to grow up with two divorced parents–this unfortunate notion, even after being pretty thoroughly debunked in recent times, continues to persist in our culture.

Reasons that are the same thematically, but the angle of approach is 180 degrees opposite for the genders:

Male version: I’m strong. I can take the abuse, and The abuse is not that bad.
Female version:He may seriously injure me or kill me if I try to leave.

I think the reason behind this one is that men are on average taller, heavier, stronger and faster than women. Men simply aren’t as likely to fear severe physical damage at the hands of a woman, and also are far less likely to actually experience severe physical damage at the hands of a woman–even those who argue over the gender-based incidence of physical abuse in relationships don’t argue that when it does occur, the woman is far more likely to end up really hurt–and in terms of domestic murders, the number of women done in by their current or previous man far, far exceeds the opposite dynamic. And of course, men are socialized to trivialize physical violence committed against themselves, whereas women are socialized to disproportionately fear it.

Reasons that are really gender-specific, with no opposite-sex analogue:

Male: All relationships have conflict. Conflict is healthy.

Female I’m so awful that nobody else will ever want me; I may even deserve this.

This is a total guess, since I was surprised to see this on the list at all given the prevailing cliche that men are deeply allergic to drama in their romantic relationships with women–but if this is truly a common male justification, I would think that perhaps men are more likely to regard a certain amount of conflict as normal because it characterizes so much more of their everyday interactions with everyone else. If you’ve ever spent any time around heavy-majority male groups, you know that there is a lot of posturing, challenging, insulting and so forth that goes on as a routine activity. Men are accustomed to fairly open fighting for their place in the hierarchy of whatever unit they happen to be in, so when it happens at home, I’m guessing they’re not as horrified as your average woman, nor as immediately convinced that it’s a sign of a serious problem.

For women, it does indeed often boil down to self-esteem issues. Women definitely have a tendency to rate themselves internally based on what the men in their life think of them–I’ve done it too often myself subconsciously (and it’s an unpleasant realization when it finally surfaces to the conscious level that that IS what you’re doing) to be able to pooh-pooh it away. Men don’t seem to have such a problem with internalizing things like this, with the glaring exception of personal sexual ability.

Anybody else have any thoughts about all this..?

American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism, and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.

Hmm…could mean anything…keep on reading…

There is no limit to the topics appearing on American Thinker. National security in all its dimensions, strategic, economic, diplomatic, and military is emphasized. The right to exist and the survival of the State of Israel are of great importance to us

Ha! Neocon!

Hey, it’s my big chance to find out what the Neocons are up to/really caring about now that their Big Cheezes are out o’ office!

A scattering of the gems on this site:

Democrats, Meet Your Biggest Nightmare

That was actually George W. Bush, but they’re pushing for the nomination of Scott Brown. I can’t agree because he was extremely hawwt in his Cosmo nude spread.

Barack Obama and Corpse Man

Barack Obama finally mispronounced a word, which doesn’t bother the author nearly as much as the fact that he’s familiar with the Creole dialect, Haiti and how Pakistanis themselves pronounce “Pakistan.” I think what she’s trying to say is that George W. Bush’s stupidity was endearing and honest and that even though Obama’s stupidity is now proven by his mispronounciation of a word, nevermind his clumsy and feeble attempts to hide it by frontin’ like he knows Creole or whatever, his stupidity makes him repulsive and cunning. But it’s kind of hard to tell.

Toyota response to crisis an object lesson for business

The way Toyota has handled the sticky accelerator debacle is heroic because their CEO both (a) bowed during a press conference that finally had to be called when all their attempts at total subterfuge on the subject over the past at least two years failed and (b) didn’t blame George W. Bush for anything.

I know it isn’t a parody site, but it really should be.

…lol.

Maybe I should consider moving on to something, or someone, a little more challenging.

Remember this?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Rahm Emanuel called liberal activists who wanted to run ads against conservative Democrats “f—— retarded” in a closed-door meeting at the White House. On her Facebook page, Palin likened Emanuel’s “slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities” to using the “N-word,” something she deemed “unacceptable” and “heartbreaking.” Emanuel later issued an apology to Special Olympics chairman and CEO Tim Shriver.

However, Palin’s conservative cohort Rush Limbaugh took offense to people, presumably including Palin, protesting Emanuel’s remark. On his radio show, Limbaugh lamented that “our political correct society is acting like some giant insult’s taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards.” That comment caused Greg Sargent to request a reaction from Palin’s spokeswoman.

Yesterday, when asked for comment on Limbaugh’s use of the “r” word in a recent broadcast, Palin spokeswoman told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, “Governor Palin believes crude and demeaning name-calling at the expense of others is disrespectful.”

BUT!

Today, Stapleton claims the statement was meant generally and she was not specifically referring to Limbaugh.

…I mean, if he’s gonna tirelessly promote her new book after also tirelessly promoting her for Veep during the 2008 elections...it’s not like he’s some kind of nasty, sneaking D-e-m-o-c-r-a-t, after all!

Aww, that’s such a romantic pict–! hmm, wait. Isn’t that guy about twenty years older than that barely pubescent girl..? I mean, I can see some serious crepe-like flesh going on under that manly-man jawline there–oh, well, it’s not like even the most superficial perusal of internet porn won’t immediately inform you that “barely legal” is an overwhelmingly common male fanta–uh, wait again. Is that hairy old dude that sweet little sex kitten is being manfully embraced by HER DAD–?

Now, now, maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe this is really meant to portray the pure innocence and beauty of the father-daughter bond, and I just have a dirty, corrupt mind. I’m sure another picture from the very same photo shoot will absolutely clear up any doubt I could possibly have about the theme of this particular series of Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus publicity photos–

Yep, that definitely cleared that up.

But this is old news! The new news is that the sexualization of children shown above is apparently way, way too subtle. The message has not been gotten across, dammit! And Billy Ray Cyrus clearly ain’t gonna let that happen. You know, he has another daughter, and to eliminate the confusing nature of using the daughter that might have actually entered puberty sometime around the date of the photo shoot, this one is clearly nowhere near even the beginnings of sexual maturation.

Because 9-year-olds need a sexy line of lingerie!

..little 9-year-old Noah Cyrus is set to become a lingerie model.

She’ll be teaming up with her pint-sized best friend Emily Grace to launch a children’s lingerie collection for ‘Ohh! La, La! Couture’.

The company’s website describes The Emily Grace Collection as having a “trendy, sweet, yet edgy feel, reminiscent of Emily’s true personality.”

Emily’s collection will appeal not just to little girls – the line also has an exclusive Teen Collection available to a size 14.

Goodness, I suspect you’re right about that. This collection won’t just appeal to little girls.

…or something like that.

Since the “death panel” strategy didn’t work…you know, I don’t feel sorry for Trig Palin because he has Down Syndrome. It’s always hard to have a disability of any description and I of course do feel compassion for anyone who has to struggle with one, but any perusal of the writings of the parents of Down Syndrome kids will quickly show you that the mere fact of having Down Syndrome is in no way a guarantee of a miserable existence. But I admit I do feel sorry for him for his mother’s relentless shoving of him into the political limelight as an inanimate talking point.

A restavec (or restavek; from the French reste avec, “one who stays with”) is a child in Haiti who is sent by their parents to work for a host household as a domestic servant because the parents lack the resources required to support the child. (wikipedia)

I came across this article today, about a 9-year-old restavec named Sende Sencil.

Beaming, and in clean clothes for the first time since the earthquake, Sende, who was thought to be an orphan, returned to the hospital’s tents with the doctors.

As they walked, a man approached them on the street and reached out to grab Sende.

“I’m looking for her. She’s my family,” the doctors remember the man saying in broken English. “I’m taking her home.”

Pediatricians Tina Rezaiyan and Liz Hines, had been looking forward to the day when Sende’s parents might come to claim her, but this was not what they’d anticipated.

“She was trembling and hiding behind us. She was so scared of him,” said Hines, a second-year pediatric resident at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Flashback to 1982: Walking home from school with my best friend, Sheila.* We’d been best friends since the first grade; we walked home from school every day together, hand in hand–though not that day, because one of her arms was in a cast and she needed the other one to carry her books. My eight-year-old self didn’t even notice the cast; it had been there for a few weeks, it was part of the scenery. Only my thirty-six-year-old self stares at it, remembering how Sheila got it.

“So can you spend the night tonight?” Sheila asked me.

I could, and I did, though even my eight-year-old self dreaded it a little. Not a lot, because Sheila was there and she was my best friend and we always had such fun–putting her mom’s 45s on the plastic record player upstairs and setting it on “78″–who needed an actual Alvin & The Chipmunks record when you had a stack of 45s and a record player with a “78″ setting? And eight-year-olds think that what they see and live is the way it is for everybody–they don’t resist the system because they aren’t even aware that there is one. But the night Sheila’s stepdad broke her arm was still fairly fresh in my memory, and I had no cozy feeling that I was entirely safe from him either–he’d hurt me before too, though nowhere near to the degree he hurt Sheila.

But Sheila did need a lot of help–there were all the newspapers to fold and rubber-band, stacks and piles and mountains of them, for her paper route the next morning, and there were her little brothers to take care of, and there were dishes to wash and the bathroom to scrub and all the floors to vacuum–I especially hated the dishes. The water was thick and sludgy; it reeked and clung to my hands, wrists, arms–it made my stomach heave, the look and the smell of it.

Nobody there ever cleaned anything but us, Sheila and me. When we got to her house, I had to step around a mushy, skidded-up pile of pancakes on the floor–I only knew they were pancakes because I’d seen one of her little brothers, in a tantrum, throw them there the weekend before, the last time I had spent the night. We cleaned those up, of course, while we were cooking dinner (spaghetti, with ketchup because we couldn’t find any cans of sauce and neither of us had the faintest idea how to make anything else to put on it).

Sheila’s alarm clock went off at 5 am–it was pitch-black outside and freezing. I helped her strap the newspaper bags on, two of them, then wrestled my own up over my shoulder, balancing my backpack with my schoolbooks and hers both stuffed into it on the other shoulder. We slogged out of the house and set off on Sheila’s route. I never, ever wanted a paper route of my own.

“I can’t wait for summer vacation,” I puffed–Sheila had tireless legs and even though I was the faster runner, I couldn’t compete with her ability to walk, walk and keep on walking at the same steady, unwavering pace. “I can’t wait for summer.”

She was silent, then she said, “I have to go visit my dad.”

“Not all summer?” I was horrified–I couldn’t go all summer without seeing her!

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I have to ask my mom.” Silence again, for a while–I was getting too breathless to speak much anyway, between Sheila’s soldierly pace and the need to hurl a newspaper every fifteen yards or so. But something did occur to me–

“He doesn’t–” I skipped forward a few paces, to catch up with her. “He doesn’t–hurt you like your stepdad does, does he?” There was a curious taboo in ever really articulating these things, even though I’d watched them and she of course knew I had watched them happen–but the taboo was there. Impossible to explain it.

Her face was pale and cold under the streetlamp. “He doesn’t hit me,” she said. She quickened her pace; I fell behind, despite my best efforts. “When I’m twelve,” she said to me, over her shoulder, “I’m going to go live with my grandma.”

“Oh really?” I asked. Her grandma lived in town–I brightened. So she wasn’t going away, at least. “You can do that?”

“When you’re twelve you can pick who you want to live with,” she said. “My grandma already said I can come live with her.”

I couldn’t imagine my mother letting me go live with my grandmother, and I would really miss my little sister anyway–it never occurred to me that Sheila might miss her little brothers, though. It wasn’t even remotely the same situation. Her brothers didn’t love her–they treated her like a not-particularly-valued nursemaid and mostly all they ever did was get her into trouble.

Following the earthquake in Haiti some people have been pushing for adoption of Haitian children by folks in the global north. This includes Penny Young Nance, CEO of the anti-choice, anti-feminist organization Concerned Women for America.

A group called the Adoptees of Color Roundtable has issued a Statement on Haiti written from the perspective of a group of adoptees of color who oppose international adoption of Haitian children.

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion…

…about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption. (via)

Not that Sheila was a restavec, of course. Besides the fact that she wasn’t Haitian, the people working her like a dog and physically and sexually abusing her happened to be her own parents as opposed to second cousins or aunts and uncles. Would anyone have been horrified at her loss of the unique American cultural upbringing and knowledge of her own genetic peoples’ history if she’d been “saved” or “rescued” by adoption into a wealthy, stable Haitian family..? Would she have been?

Even if Sende is doing okay now, some doubt whether anyone in Haiti — a poor country with few services to protect children even before the earthquake — will keep track of her to make sure she hadn’t been sent again to the man who terrified her.

“The agencies will fail in looking after her,” said Dr. Art Fournier, associate dean for community health at the University of Miami, who met Sende at the hospital. “I would have kept her at the hospital until they brought the mother forward and they could get a detailed history of Sende’s circumstances.”

Fournier, who’s been doing medical missions in Haiti for 15 years and is author of “The Zombie Curse,” a book about the country, said he worries the parents will give her away again.

“The parents aren’t bad parents. These are the survival choices they have to make, and desperate times make for desperate survival choices,” he said. “Hopefully Sende can make an impassioned plea not to be sent back to the godparents.”

Because impassioned pleas made by children in these circumstances have any impact at all, whatsoever, on what decisions their parents make about the uses they are being put to..? If that’s the plan, Sende’s pretty much fucked. And I find the attitude about the parents not being “bad” parents interesting. I am a parent, and I would sell myself long before I sold one of my children to someone else into a situation where the best outcome appears to be “house slave but allowed to drink a Coke every day and go to school.” I don’t remember Sheila getting Cokes but I do recall all the Kool-Aid she could drink being one of her perks, along with, indeed, elementary school. We were very good at making Kool-Aid by the 5-gallon jug. I can still remember the big sugar scoop we used to make it–just what every growing kid needs most!

I do understand the concern the self-identified adoptees of color have with the concept of “adoptee farming” and the long history those of Western European descent have of essentially committing cultural genocide by kidnapping all the kids and declaring them “orphans” or “better off faux-white” so they can be “brought up properly.” After all, I’m a quarter Native American myself and not only am I a blue-eyed blonde, I wouldn’t know a word of any Apache language if it bit me in the ass and I have only the haziest notion of the history and culture of any of the Apache tribes. (In short, I’m a great living example of how successful these programs of cultural and racial genocide can be.) However, I wonder how many of these adoptees of color were restavecs themselves.

We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti.

Just as long as we keep the relative ordering of the hierarchy of needs firmly in mind, people.

*Not her real name.

Obama makes appearance at annual GOP retreat

Just two days after giving the State of the Union speech, President Obama stepped into the lion’s den at the GOP retreat in Baltimore Friday to make a fresh start with House Republican leaders. Obama accepted the invitation from the Republican leadership to discuss upcoming legislation initiatives and to participate in a question and answer session about some contentious public policy decisions.

(If you haven’t seen it yet, you can get the whole series of videos here.)

I did watch it, and I should also note that I didn’t really watch the State of the Union address other than a few snippets here and there. I suspect I could have just as easily skipped out on watching both of them. President Obama is a great speaker and clearly a very intelligent and articulate man who performs with admirable coolness under fire–but I already knew all that, dating back from before Obama was actually President. I do admit that it is a pleasure to have him be the official face of America both at home and abroad–I spent most of Bush’s eight years in office cringing every time he opened his mouth.

But I wasn’t too impressed by the activity itself. Really, more even than being unimpressed, I found myself wondering why on earth it was occurring at all. To promote bipartisanship..? Not likely. As anyone who has actually dealt with groups of people who disagree while simultaneously being necessary to whatever final goal is being attempted knows (and if you’ve spent any time in corporate America at anything above the level of absolute peon, that’s you), the only way to get people to really cooperate with you is to air your dissention with them in private. Doing so in public will only work if you somehow have their nuts up against the wall anyway so it doesn’t matter what they think or feel. Basically, if you’re doing so in public with someone or someone who has any real power to screw up your agenda, your purpose is actually not to advance your agenda, but either to (a) make yourself look good to your stakeholders or (b) make them look bad to theirs, as publicly as possible.

It is important to realize that, because otherwise you might find yourself wondering why Obama would feel the need to kiss the GOP’s ass with this rather supplicant-scented meeting–my boy Jon did a pretty funny takedown of that attitude a week or so ago, in reference to the Massachusetts special election:

…because you know, if Coakley loses, Democrats will only then have an 18-vote majority in the Senate…which is more than George W. Bush EVER had in the Senate when he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do. In fact, the Democrats have a greater majority than Republicans have had since 1923.

I did go shopping for conservative commentary on the Obama/GOP retreat Q&A, because I found myself wondering if any of them believed it really was ass-kissing, towards them!–turns out that yes, they do indeed believe this.

Michelle Malkin:

But the session has been most compelling — the most transparency and openness we’ve seen since the start of his term.

Good on the House Republicans for throwing the doors open.

And, yes, I’m going to compliment the president: Good on him for taking part.

Yet another dividend of the Massachusetts Miracle.

Forget the staged dog-and-pony campaign rallies…

Redstate:

The GOP is touting the benefits of having the president say – on the record – that they have offered substantive proposals. They also argue that this appearance puts Nancy Pelosi in a tough position: the president promised bipartisanship, and she’s delivering none. They see the chance to knock her down a few more pegs…Republican Members were delighted after the presentation.

Ace of Spades:

It’s funny how our Post-Partisan President only gets around to addressing Republicans when he needs their votes. Funny how he didn’t do that for a year…And it is this asshole — President “I Won” — who has staked his young and now failed presidency on nothing but winning and steamrolling the opposition and ignoring critics and demonizing dissenting voices, all to “win” on this issue, to prove he could win, and so to prove that he was El Supremo Jefe and we all had to buckle under his benevolent dictatorship.

It is this asshole who has denied himself the wiggle room to compromise, and so it is this asshole who is now attempting to persuade us to compromise, because he can’t.

That was the majority response…though not all of ‘em are quite that stupid:

Althouse:

Okay, I will be looking for the strengthful nuance that knocks down all arguments.

More than the State of the Union — or on top of the State of the Union — this may be a pivotal moment for the future of the presidential agenda on Capitol Hill. (Democrats are loving this. Chris Hayes, The Nation’s Washington bureau chief, tweeted that he hadn’t liked Obama more since the inauguration.)

Got it. The Prez’s people loved it. Maybe this wasn’t really about inspiring bipartisanship but firing up the base.

…bingo? I don’t really follow conservative bloggers much, but this chicky may be one for me to watch in future.

All-in-all, color me “meh.”