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News/Politics 6-22-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. How the media spun the horrific murders in S.C. into a fight over a flag. 

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “It took less than two days for the press to take a story about a white South Carolina man who shot and killed nine black churchgoers, and turn it into a story about the Confederate battle flag flying outside South Carolina’s state house.

For media, the flag as a supposedly influential symbol of racial oppression and hate represented an issue that required immediate attention and hours of coverage. By Friday, the press’ focus on the flag was intense.

“S.C. Confederate flag back in the spotlight after massacre,” CNN noted, tracking the public furor over the state’s choice to display the Civil War leftover.

The Huffington Post featured an op-ed titled simple “Take It Down.”

The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates echoed these sentiments in a separate article titled “Take Down the Confederate Flag—Now.”

“The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed,” the article declared.

The alleged terrorist, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, claims he targeted nine parishioners who had gathered for a prayer meeting Wednesday evening at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church because they were black. Pictures of Roof quickly circulated that showed him standing next to a car with a Confederate flag plate. The image stuck, and controversy over the flag found its footing.”

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2. While the media is busy with their agenda, a much bigger angle to the story goes mostly unreported. 

From WND  “As WND has reported, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof was a known drug user who was caught with the powerful mind-altering narcotic Suboxone when apprehended by police during an incident on Feb. 28.

Suboxone is used to treat addiction to opioid drugs such as heroin. It’s adverse effects include anxiety, irritability, depersonalization, confusion, suicidal thoughts and irrational, sometimes violent behavior.

Other drugs linked to mass killers have more often been geared toward treating mental illness. According to a data set of U.S. mass shootings from 1982-2012 prepared by Mother Jones magazine, of 62 mass shootings carried out by 64 shooters, the majority of the shooters (41) were noted to have signs of possible mental illness — the precise kinds of mental illnesses that psychotropic medications are prescribed for.

It is a well-documented fact that in the 1980s, a shift occurred in the direction of treating the mentally ill. Rather than institutionalize them, the preferred method was to “mainstream” them, encouraging them to function in society while being treated with a mind-numbing array of new anti-depressants being developed by the pharmaceutical industry.

WND has compiled a list of killings committed by persons who had used mind-altering drugs or recently come off of them at the time of their crimes:”

The list is long, and it just keeps growing. 

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3. The Obama admin and the VA continue to fail our soldiers. 

From TheNYTimes  “One year after outrage about long waiting lists for health care shook theDepartment of Veterans Affairs, the agency is facing a new crisis: The number of veterans on waiting lists of one month or more is now 50 percent higher than it was during the height of last year’s problems, department officials say. The department is also facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall, which could affect care for many veterans.

The agency is considering furloughs, hiring freezes and other significant moves to reduce the gap. A proposal to address a shortage of funds for one drug — a new, more effective but more costly hepatitis C treatment — by possibly rationing new treatments among veterans and excluding certain patients who have advanced terminal diseases or suffer from a “persistent vegetative state or advanced dementia” is stirring bitter debate inside the department.

Agency officials expect to petition Congress this week to allow them to shift money into programs running short of cash. But that may place them at odds with Republican lawmakers who object to removing funds from a new program intended to allow certain veterans on waiting lists and in rural areas to choose taxpayer-paid care from private doctors outside the department’s health system.

“Something has to give,” the department’s deputy secretary, Sloan D. Gibson, said in an interview. “We can’t leave this as the status quo. We are not meeting the needs of veterans, and veterans are signaling that to us by coming in for additional care, and we can’t deliver it as timely as we want to.”

Since the waiting-list scandal broke last year, the department has broadly expanded access to care. Its doctors and nurses have handled 2.7 million more appointments than in any previous year, while authorizing 900,000 additional patients to see outside physicians. In all, agency officials say, they have increased capacity by more than seven million patient visits per year — double what they originally thought they needed to fix shortcomings.

But what was not foreseen, department leaders say, was just how much physician workloads and demand from veterans would continue to soar — by one-fifth, in fact, at some major veterans hospitals over just the past year.”

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28 thoughts on “News/Politics 6-22-15”

  1. On 1 and 2, Dr, Moore thought the flag was an issue, and he is a Southerner from Mississippi. If the discovery of this website with the photos of Roof holding the Confederate flag and the racist rant turns out to be authentic, then it would seem the flag is part of the issue, at least in the mind of the killer. Furthermore, a person who can write such a long screed with fairly good grammar, is not likely to be operating under the influence of psychotic inducing medication while writing it. Finally, in all the recent shootings of young black men, their previous drug related convictions have been used by the right wing media to prove that they were criminally minded and likely to be a threat. Now, the same right wing media is using a previous drug conviction of a young white man to argue that he killed under the influence of those drugs, thus insinuating that he wasn’t fully responsible for his actions. Really?

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  4. Kim has a comment about the Charleston thing on the Daily Thread, and I commented yesterday about how Roof misjudged the people he attacked. He thought the norm was rioting and pillaging. He didn’t understand that the norm for Christians, is holding hands, fellowship and prayer.
    As for the flag. They are making an issue of a non issue because that is what they do. The Confederate flag had nothing to do with this. But they had to find something. If they took the flag down, it would be something else.
    There is no end to it.

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  5. Roscuro,

    No one today was, or owned slaves. It’s time to get over it. It’s part of southern heritage. We may not like it, but it is. Blacks may see it as a sign of slavery, but they aren’t the only ones with an opinion. As a northerner, I see it as a sign of rebellion, nothing more. While Dr. Moore may have an opinion, so does everyone else. Why should his matter to others who don’t think as he does any more than anyone else’s does?

    He was a racist, that’s pretty obvious, but the flag isn’t what makes him one, his heart is.

    And no one is saying he alone isn’t responsible for his actions. Medication may have played a part, but no one is blaming just the medication. And no one is saying he alone isn’t 100% responsible. But why ignore an obvious piece of the puzzle? Of course past usage/convictions of drugs are relevant, in all cases, regardless of the color of the perp, as is what mind altering substances, legal or not, that you might be on when you commit a crime.

    You tell me which was more likely to influence his behavior. The flag, or the drugs?

    And just because someone takes them doesn’t mean they’re incapable of proper grammar usage and writing.

    While you seem to have some issues with what you call “right wing” media, much of the source for that piece was from Mother Jones, hardly a “right wing” source. Now you just sound like a leftist. 🙂

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  6. I thought Moore’s piece and point hit home, particularly with regard to the church. The flag has long been a lightning rod and I can understand how black Americans would not feel particularly warm and fuzzy seeing it.

    The national debate will go on — and, yes, some of it, sigh, will be driven by the blind left, gotta love ’em, living in a world of easy answers politically imposed on the rest of us. Get rid of guns and our problem is over. Get rid of the flag, our problem is over. Pass a bunch more laws, our problem is over. Not quite (as deleted points out, the root issue in all of this is man’s sin, but then they don’t believe in sin, so there you go).

    And there’s a freedom of speech component, obviously (and free speech is often if not almost always offensive to someone). I can hear both sides in this debate.

    But …. strictly speaking of it as an issue within the church … I would hope Christians would/should be willing, voluntarily, to let go of anything so superficial and worldly/secular — idolatry? — in deference to one’s brothers and sisters.

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  7. And while I’m quick to criticize my industry, the coverage I’ve seen in the Charleston case has been generally well done. I’ve watched mostly CNN, some FOX News, and followed social media posts (the worst of the worst, people, mostly on the left, frankly, in a flat-out, blind rage).

    I’d give the Charleston newspaper the most credit. The people covering the story there are those who have lived and worked in the that community already, they know the people, they can be trusted (I think) to have the fairest vantage point.

    The others all parachute in for a few weeks, and they’ll be gone again.

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  8. Like I said, it means different things to different people……

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420060/confederate-flag-should-stay-charleston-shooting-debate?LV4iqbpZyUPOOrll.01

    “Like many Southern families’, my family’s military story didn’t end with the Civil War — it continued on to World War I, the European theater in World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then to my own recent deployment during the Surge in Iraq. The martial history of our family is inseparable from the family story, and it includes men in gray.

    So I’ve followed this most recent round of debate over the Confederate battle flag with perhaps greater than normal interest. In the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, there is always a demand to “do something.” Always, that demand involves gun control — typically, gun-control measures that wouldn’t have actually stopped the shooting in question. But often there’s something more. In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, the Left demanded “civility” — despite zero evidence that the barking-mad perpetrator was motivated by any form of political discourse. Now the demand is to remove the Confederate battle flag from a Confederate memorial in South Carolina (and presumably elsewhere). The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, with characteristic vehemence, says, “Take down the flag. Take it down now.” His call — and others — have resonated around the web.

    There’s a disturbing habit on the Left of trying to find the position that renders one especially virtuous in their identity politics culture — regardless of its real-world impact — and then sneering from that high ground at all who dissent. But that’s certainly not everyone’s motive, and it’s certainly not the motive of those calling for the flag’s removal at National Review. It’s simply undeniable that the Confederate battle flag is a painful symbol to our African-American fellow citizens, especially given its recent history as a chosen totem of segregationists. So it’s critical to respond to the argument in good faith. And just as the history of the Civil War is personal to me, so is America’s present racial reality. As I’ve mentioned before, my youngest daughter is quite literally African-American (born in Ethiopia and now as American as apple pie), and when she’s a little bit older, we’ll no doubt have many tough conversations about history and race.”

    “But there are other difficult truths. Among them, when the war began, it was not explicitly a war to end slavery. Indeed, had the Union quickly accomplished its war aims, slavery would have endured, at least for a time. When hundreds of thousands of southern men took up arms (most of them non-slave-owning), many of them fought with the explicit belief that they were standing in the shoes of the Founding Fathers, men who’d exercised their own right of self-determination to separate from the mother Country. Others simply saw an invading army marching into their state — into their towns and across their farms — and chose to resist.”

    “It is telling that the South’s chosen, enduring symbol of the Confederacy wasn’t the flag of the Confederate States of America — the slave state itself — but the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee’s army. Lee was the reluctant Confederate, the brilliant commander, the man who called slavery a “moral and political evil,” and the architect — by his example — of much of the reconciliation between North and South. His virtue grew in the retelling — and modern historians still argue about his true character — but the symbolism was clear. If the South was to rebuild, it would rebuild under Lee’s banner.

    Since that time, the battle flag has grown to mean many things, including evil things. Flying it as a symbol of white racial supremacy is undeniably vile, and any official use of the flag for that purpose should end, immediately. Flying it over monuments to Confederate war dead is simply history. States should no more remove a Confederate battle flag from a Confederate memorial than they should chisel away the words on the granite or bulldoze the memorials themselves.”

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  9. The Real, what Donna said about the flag. I agree with her that taking the flag down does not solve the problem of racist violence, but Dr. Moore’s point, and his was one of the earliest posts about the flag, was that it is a possible needless cause of division between Christians. Rod Dreher, another white Southerner conservative, agrees with him: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/down-with-the-confederate-flag/.

    Speaking of needless divisions, I used the term right wing, because the article was from a right wing publication, and the articles which assumed the worst of the young black men were also from the right wing media. I’m more conservative than any other political point of view, but as my father has often said, the extreme right and the extreme left meet. This may be seen in the far-right WND article which quotes the extreme left Mother Jones (a publication which I consider unreliable).

    My point about the shooter’s ability to write was based on knowledge of speech patterns displayed by the psychotically delusional. The rant, written in cohesive sentences and paragraphs, does not display any of the characteristics of someone experiencing a psychotic break, such as flight of ideas (typical in drug-induced psychosis) or loosening of associations. It is important to remember that taking a medication which may induce psychosis does not automatically mean that a person will be psychotic because they take the medication. Case in point: I’m taking a medication which may cause suicidal thoughts in rare cases, but I am not experiencing suicidal thoughts. In order for a person to plead insane, there must be solid testimony from psychiatrists that the person is not mentally capable. As nearly every criminal lawyer will ask for a psychiatric examination, I sincerely doubt that such mass killers as Anders Brevick and others listed in the article could be serious candidates for the insanity plea simply because they may have been taking certain drugs. In fact, it is pretty safe to assume that if the case came to trial and conviction, insanity – drug-induced or otherwise – was ruled out.

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  10. NONE OF US has a right to tell South Carolina what to do about the flag. It isn’t ever the REAL confederate flag. If the people of South Carolina want it down then take it down, but I, living in Alabama, you living in Canada or other parts of the United State do not have a vote in it. THAT;s what the DANG war was fought over anyway!!!!! State’s Rights.

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  11. Kim made the point well.
    If you don’t live in SC, you don’t have a vote. Mind your own business.
    The only reason for this brouhaha is agitation. It has been somewhere on the state house grounds since 1960 and it always comes up when someone wants to agitate.
    Leave it alone. You can use it again when some idiot takes another picture.
    Meanwhile, people are killing and destroying property in Baltimore.
    If you want racial peace, go south.
    The Confederate flag will always be somewhere in Columbia that agitates people.

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  12. Kim, when I first read Dr. Moore’s post, I did not know that the South Carolina legislature had such a flag flying (I have since learned that is the case). I just knew that sometimes the ‘stars-and-bars’ flag was associated with white supremacist groups. What Dr. Moore and Rod Dreher seemed to be saying was if you might offend your brother, don’t display the flag, especially in churches. [Incidentally, I’m not in favour of a church displaying any national or political flag.] So, for me at least, it isn’t a matter of telling the South Carolinians what to do. In fact, if the flag at the legislature is actually at a Civil War monument, then the argument could be made that it is just a historical display.

    As I said on Friday, I do understand the dichotomy of good, well-intentioned people like General Lee getting mixed up in a war that had many other issues as well as the moral issue of unjust slavery. Therefore, I do not immediately assume the worst of those who fought for the South in that conflict, nor those who identify strongly with the Southern viewpoint of the war. However, I don’t quite understand the insistence that the war happened because states and citizens rights were violated. As I understand it, the constitution gives citizenship rights to all born in the U.S. and these rights were in place long before the Civil War. The Americans banned the slave trade from Africa in 1807, so by the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, one would assume that almost all slaves were born in the U.S. Yet, they were denied the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, even the right to life by their masters. So while I understand that the Civil War was not just about slavery, I am puzzled at the idea that it was just about rights.

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  13. For those who missed seeing Moore’s original piece, it’s reprinted here along with the introductory Ed Note below. (PS: I just saw a tweet by Jake Trapper saying the “stars and bars” phrase does not actually refer to the confederate flag that’s under discussion lately)

    http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-cross-and-the-confederate-flag

    Editors’ Note: Later today, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is expected to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds. Because of this news and the recent controversy related to the flag in the wake of the shootings in Charleston, we’ve decided to republish this article by TGC Council member Russell Moore. This article originally appeared on Moore’s personal blog.

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  14. So it looks like South Carolina is taking the lead, which (agreeing with Kim) is as it should be:

    Jake Tapper ‏@jaketapper
    reports now that Haley (Post and Courier), Graham (CNN) and Scott (ABC) are going to call for flag to come down

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  16. Oh, I guess it worked.

    I’m also opposed to flying any kind of a national flag in a church, a position our denomination also holds I believe, though it may be left to individual churches.

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  17. So, if that is the real ‘stars and bars’ flag, and if, as Kim said, the one flying at South Carolina’s legislature isn’t the Confederacy flag, what is the origin of the one flying at the legislature/monument?

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  19. Fox News ‏@FoxNews
    .@nikkihaley: “The fact that it causes pain to so many is enough to move it from the capitol grounds.”

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  21. They (and we) are all getting there 🙂

    News to me, too, the more common Lee’s Army flag is the one most of us all know today.

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  22. Roscuro, the cross has also been used by White supremacist groups. Do all of those need to go as well.
    Anyway I say they should take it down and replace it with a smaller, lower Stars and Bars. It has been seen by many as just a sign of Southern Culture. but it is time to stop dividing white Southern culture and black Southern culture. I have more culturally in common with a black southerner than I do with a white northerner. Many in other parts of rest of the country don’t want to see racial peace in the South. First, it would rob them of someone to look down and two; when black southerners and whiter southerners get together you get cool, hard to beat things like Rock and Roll and the Crimson Tide. but it is up to South Carolina.

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  24. Hi KBells, it’s good to see you. But you come in with that Crimson Tide bit when everyone knows it’s Gamecocks.
    Strange though, Gamecocks don’t play an Alabama team this year. Maybe in the playoff’s.

    😉

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  25. KBells, I didn’t suggest taking down the flag. I wouldn’t have dared have the gall. I just agreed with a couple of Southerners that it might be a good idea, as you do.
    As to the cross, wasn’t it the burning cross which the KKK used? So, it was the destruction of the cross which was a racist symbol, not the cross itself.

    P.S. My church doesn’t even have a cross. Not that we believe it’s wrong, it just isn’t important to have such symbols.

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  26. I can put up with socialists impoverishing the country. I am growing accustomed to Organized Perversion calling the shots in our governments, businesses and culture. I am getting used to a culture that praises criminals and attacks police officers. Perhaps it is wrong to display the flag under which our ancestors fought in such a slothful, depraved and perverted land. When the U.S. collapses under fire and brimstone and/or an attack by a foreign power and/or the weight of its own debt and decadence, then our children will again fly our old flag and begin to rebuild.

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