Category Archives: drawing

Moral Injury

The concept of moral injury arose in the military. It was used to describe the horror and hopelessness felt by soldiers who had followed immoral, even if not strictly illegal, orders. It was a loss of faith — in themselves, their ability to know right from wrong, their ability to trust their leaders and their fellow humans to act with moral decency.

The concept is useful to describe the communal injury we all (well, about 67% of us) are having inflicted on us continually as billionaires seek to control all of our life decisions in the service of maximizing their already unnecessarily exponential profits. Here’s our billionaire president, addressing leaders of the other 192 member nations at the UN yesterday:

In his speech today, President Donald J. Trump, reading haltingly off a teleprompter, said: “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” source

Threatening to commit a crime against humanity is a crime against humanity, under international law. Except in the Bizarro World these supremely determined moral injury inflicting psychopaths inhabit.

Example of a direct description of moral injury:

A moral injury is a deep, persistent wound to our sense of justice, of right and wrong, our faith in our fellow humans. It involves a crippling loss of faith in our own judgement and sanity and that of our leaders and those who purport to protect us. Victims of moral injury frequently feel suicidal from the hopelessness that comes from their loss of faith in human goodness. We are, all of us, in this overwrought moment in history, deliberately subjected to moral injury at all times in our 24/7 age of instant influence, concentration of power and assertion of anti-consensual, corporate control as the party in power tries to “own” everybody else.

Our elected government asserts its right to kill foreign nationals in fishing boats far from our shores, on mere suspicion of drug running, and execute the wounded survivors of the boat strikes with drones; explode girls in their classrooms in Minab, mistakenly targeted by AI for a US Tomahawk missile strike, kill more girls in a follow-up strike and claim their own leaders killed the girls with US missiles; to shoot, point blank, in the back, in the face, American citizens who pose no threat to masked federal agents and claim the murdered citizens were terrorists; to keep “illegals” guilty of no crime in concentration camp conditions, cramped, without decent food and water, medical care or sanitation, brutalized by guards; we get to annihilate Iran if the leader wants to; sadly the list continues for longer than I can sit here tapping at the keyboard (without vomiting).

All of these things, done in our names, inflict a moral injury on a large sector of the population.   This injury is compounded by the feeling of helplessness imposed by the constant aggressive assertion of the right of the privileged elite to act upon the rest of us without our consent. 

If you can shoot a woman in the face, point blank, and as her dying body slumps on the gas pedal and the car veers off to crash into a tree, call her “fucking bitch” at the end of the video you made of the entire murder — and your government immediately claims that the murdered woman was a domestic terrorist attempting to kill an agent righteously performing his duty, who shot her three times in self-defense while 100% immune from prosecution anyway, try to imagine something worse that one person can do to another, that a government can do to its citizens.  If that kind of cold-blooded murder by a government worker is “perfectly justified”– then, literally, any atrocity you can think of is fine.

This is always the tactic of fascists. The state has a monopoly on the use of deadly force. If you can ensure the state is fascist, a rigid hierarchy controlled by an all-powerful, unscrupulous, unaccountable elite marshalling the citizens for spectacle and war only, the game for absolute control of everyone is won.

As for our moral injuries, we are told to be quiet and not whine about them. Our supremely intrusive non-consensual government, committing its many heinous crimes openly, brazenly justifying them, calling murdered victims the perpetrators, dead perpetrators righteous martyrs, millions in compensation paid to their families, is bascially telling us to take our moral injuries somewhere quiet and go fuck them.

The academic approach to defining moral injury  (which explains why so many hate academia):

Moral injury (MI) is characterised by persistent psychological distress following events that violate moral beliefs. There has been a lot of interest in moral injury particularly over recent years given our increasing knowledge that MI is linked with adverse mental health outcomes including PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), depression, and suicidality. Whilst we know that potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) can cause moral injury, there is no agreed definition of what a PMIE is. Often discussions on this topic suggest that PMIEs should be ‘high stakes’ events although there is no agreed threshold as to what events are high stakes and what events are not. source

With all respect — fuck you, Doc. You will perhaps gain insight into the parameters of legitimate PMIEs, and the predictive track of their MI-derived adverse mental health outcomes, once you lose funding for your essential research into the exact nature of MI.

The rest of us know a moral injury by experiencing the pain of it, even if we don’t know what to call it.

Seven NY Times Takeaways from Trump-a-Palooza

Conspicuously, the NY Times did not find space to mention that the president asked everyone at his “convention” to raise their right arms and take an oath to cheat at the polls because, according to his “abuser is actually the victim” ideology, the Democrats are trying to rig the election. You can read the Grey Lady’s seven takeaways here.

You won’t find the biggest takeaway reported on. What is wrong with “legacy media”? It is corporate, and being a corporate “person” means never having to admit you’re wrong, or that anything that could possibly benefit you is wrong. Nothing wrong with this, apparently (at least he wasn’t wearing a tan suit, or being demented, like Biden at the debate!)

Please raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can’t even breathe. That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way — I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do. There’s never been bigger cheaters. They don’t care. I am going to go out and I’m going to get my friends, my family. And we are going to vote on Nov. 3, or we are going to vote before that.

Because I can’t stop banging my head against the wall sometimes, I wrote to the article’s authors just now:

I read your article and was dismayed that one of the takeaways was not the president asking the crowd to raise their right hands and take an oath to commit voter fraud.

How is this not mentioned?

Please raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can’t even breathe. That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way — I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do. There’s never been bigger cheaters. They don’t care. I am going to go out and I’m going to get my friends, my family. And we are going to vote on Nov. 3, or we are going to vote before that.

The Times does some valuable reporting, particularly the investigative pieces.  I don’t understand the timidity of tone in addressing serious, serious issues raised by having an incompetent, erratic, destructive, divisive, vindictive, increasingly demented, president with complete control of the federal government and one of our two political parties.   One who has also done, or is trying to do, everything on the far-right Heritage Foundation’s anti-democratic Project 2025 checklist.  Your takeaways suggest some kind of normalcy.

To borrow a phrase as deeply cynical (in the context of its use) as “arbeit macht frei” (though actually true) “democracy dies in darkness.”

Any explanation for the omission of the takeaway above would be greatly appreciated,

I’m likelier to get an email from Mr. Trump himself than from either of the two New York Times reporters, I’m pretty sure.

To suggest the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, a bullet from an assault rifle miraculously missing the anointed presidential candidate’s brain by a fraction of an inch, ripping his ear and killing a man behind him, was staged? Ugliness! Ungraciousness!!! Disgusting lack of decency! Treason! Nobody in either party or the media dared to suggest the obvious at the time — even after no medical records were released, after the instant killing (and expedited cremation) of the shooter seconds after the shots were fired, even with no scar on the victim’s ear (further proof of God’s grace toward his chosen favorite, no doubt). A year after Trump miraculously survived a deadly assassination attempt that killed a bystander, a retired police detective posted this, which seems so obvious it should have been pointed out the day after the shooting. Here’s Snopes with the whole story — you be the judge.

Come on in, the water’s fine

No cover-up!

“I don’t have to cover anything up, I am the boss. Sick, deranged, smelly, corrupt communist activist judges don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“I didn’t shit my pants, you shitted in my pants!!! What kind of sick people do such things? I will kill all of you disgusting traitor fucks, watch!”

Photographic proof!

As you can plainly see, God spared his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, while causing only a small wound on his ear, like a stigmata of the ear, because God so dearly loved him that He deflected a deadly bullet and gave an innocent member of the audience, seated behind the president, a quick pass to heaven, so that His imperfect vessel could be miraculously spared and go on to be reelected as the most righteous president, the most righteous leader of any country, in human history. Amen.

Meanwhile, vicious critics continue to attack him, without mercy, seemingly every second.  Thankfully, he can defend himself, including against those who brutally gouged a 250 foot long gash at the bottom of the beautiful reflecting pool in DC to destroy his donor’s perfect work restoring the historic pool to its pristine 1922 beauty:

Friday night, Trump blamed “Radical Left Lunatics, most likely Dumocats [sic], who have spent their lives trying to ruin our Country,” for “some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool.” By this evening, he was blaming “multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Poll [sic]. Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.” Source

Who is David Gentile? What a surprise:

David Gentile (* 1966) ist ein US-amerikanischer Unternehmer und Gründer sowie ehemaliger CEO von GPB Capital Holdings, einer Private-Equity-Gesellschaft mit Sitz in New York, die 2013 gegründet wurde.

The NY Times reports:

The investigation, which has not been previously reported, had begun examining whether improper payments were made to help facilitate the commutation awarded to David Gentile, a private equity executive who was convicted in a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of mostly mom-and-pop investors, some of whom lost their retirement savings.

The clemency grant freed Mr. Gentile last November less than two weeks into a seven-year prison sentence, and wiped away the possibility of forfeiting more than $15.5 million to the government.

Within a few months, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, where Mr. Gentile’s conviction had been secured, opened an investigation into how the commutation came about.

Among the evidence they gathered was information about jailhouse communications in which Mr. Gentile discussed making payments of $2.5 million or more to people or companies to help facilitate his clemency, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it.

One of the people who came under scrutiny by investigators was the Rev. Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest from Queens who is friends with Mr. Trump. In an email sent to The New York Times, Father Mann denied having anything to do with the clemency. But people with knowledge of the prison communications say that the priest corresponded with Mr. Gentile about lobbying the president on his behalf. . .

. . . Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach to clemency has spawned a seamy cottage industry in which lawyers, lobbyists and others with ties to the president have collected millions of dollars from pardon seekers who would not necessarily qualify for second chances under the Justice Department’s criteria for identifying and vetting worthy recipients.

One lobbyist was charged in March by Mr. Nocella’s office for attempting to violently extort $500,000 from a client who received a pardon from Mr. Trump last year. source

Corporate Social Safety Net — Medicare edition

Medicare, the health care partnership between private insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and the government to protect the health of people over 65 (or with certain disabilities) is promoted as the solution to health care coverage for Americans of all ages. At 69, and dealing with Medicare now for a few years, I find this idea appalling, especially since the only solution to protecting the health of the old and the sick is a single payer system that cuts out all the parasitic middle men who profit off disease and our legitimate fear of death.

Citizens of a democracy deserve decent health care as a right of citizenship, like in every other wealthy economy (and formerly Iraq, Libya and other third world “shitholes”). But, lest I forget, America is exceptional.

Every year, between October 15 and December 7 (a day that always lives in infamy now, thanks to Medicare) purchasers of Medicare insurance are urged to shop on the marketplace and find the best suited plans for themselves. You can compare prices and, in some cases, actual coverage. It is no fun navigating the website, shopping for the best “deal” that should be provided to you automatically as a lifelong tax payer. Each of us should get the best deal available from our government, the one we fund, the one that is supposed to watch out for our best interests.

The economic reality is that, in a consumer society, if you need a few pills, you will pay 50 cents each. If you buy a billion pills, the price is 3 cents each. This is simple capitalism, economy of scale. The more you buy, the less each one will cost you [1]. Medicare buys a trillion pills a year, but is prevented, by a right wing/corporate law signed by Dubya, from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies based on that economy of scale leverage.

And so old people are forced to enter this kind of virtual mall, after October 15th of each year, where you can search for the best deals before the annual December 7th final deadline comes crashing down and you can choose nothing until the following October 15th rolls around because, fair is fair and rules are rules.

Part D of the alphabet soup that is Medicare is the prescription drug plan and every Medicare recipient must choose a Part D plan (or get it included in the problematic, loophole-ridden, insurance company sponsored Medicare plans known as Medicare Advantage). Prices for Part D vary wildly. In 2024 I chose the cheapest drug plan available, Aetna Silverscript, for $31 a month. Then:

You see profit margins here that would make Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk insanely jealous. Over 100% price increase in 2025 and then, a tic below another 100% price increase the following year. All perfectly legal here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, as long as you get a letter from that corporation informing you that your premiums will double and you will get only slightly less coverage.

A billionaire named Mark Cuban set up a company called CostPlus that will mail you prescription drugs, at 15% above cost plus handling and mailing. You can calculate the approximate cost on their website. The four generic prescription drugs I take will cost under $100 every three months, less than $400 for the year. No deductible, no insurance, just the prescriptions. I signed up online. There is a form for my doctor to submit to them, and the drugs will be shipped to me every ninety days.

I called Aetna to cancel my Part D with them, after visiting the marketplace and seeing annual prices, under our American “freedom of choice”, from $1,000 to $3,000 for the identical drugs (cost of drug copays plus premiums). My once modest $31/month plan was now up there with some of the most expensive. The woman I spoke to at Aetna was lovely, but she was not a trained disenrollment specialist, she explained, and so couldn’t take my cancellation order. She gave me another number to call to speak to a “Medicare disenrollment specialist”, and after checking, at my request, confirmed it is a 24/7 number.

In the wee hours of the morning I decided to make the last aggravating December 7th related call of the year and get that particular pile of steaming scats off my plate. When I called the 800 number it came up like so:

Who the fuck is Valley Organized Physicians? Fuck if I know, but they answer the phone “Medicare”. The person I spoke to patched me through to a disenrollment specialist named Kevin. Kevin and I wound up talking for almost an hour. He somehow had instant access to every prescription drug I’d bought in the last three years. His job, apparently, was to sell me a Part D plan, as I learned when he read me the complete list, suggesting that some, if not many, would be hard to get without insurance.

Kevin warned me that unless I enrolled in a Part D program with creditable coverage that met the minimum standards of Medicare, I’d be subject to a potentially large lifetime monthly fine that would add several dollars, or even a hundred or more, to my monthly premium in perpetuity should I need Part D coverage in the future.

I told Kevin I had no idea what “creditable” meant in that context and he explained. If the prescription drug program you enroll in is not recognized by Medicare, it’s not creditable and you will pay a monthly fine for the rest of your life if you cancel a creditable plan at any time during your years on Medicare. Way to watch out for the old and vulnerable, you fucking corporate psychopaths, I thought. But since Kevin was being so nice, we continued to amiably bat the ball back and forth.

Kevin laid out the worst case scenario to make me understand the risk I was taking by going with a non-creditable plan. Say in five years you decide you need Part D, for some expensive medication, let’s say (which, admittedly, Part D might not cover, but exceptions can sometimes be made for medical necessity). Well, currently the penalty is 39 cents a month times twelve (since you can only fix this once a year). That penalty number keeps going up. So in five years time, Kevin told me, I could be looking at a penalty of maybe $50 a month, maybe $100.

I pointed out that if I realized it was a mistake to opt for CostPlus and bought a Part D plan at the next available date (October 15, 2026) I’d pay $4 a month penalty for the rest of my life. Meantime, Aetna had increased their premium price for their basic plan 100% one year and 100% the following year. I asked him how it was possible that an insurance company can double its rate year after year with no regulation by Medicare.

Kevin had an answer worthy of a Republican congressman speaking to a FOX audience, there are many factors, market forces, which are impossible to regulate, or predict, or even consider, he told me. In other words it’s hard to say and above our pay grades to understand or do anything about. I told him it was not hard to say that costs for Aetna had not increased 200% in two years.

I expressed dismay that Medicare imposed no regulations on what private insurance companies could charge. He agreed that it was not unreasonable for me to be dismayed, but that there was a reason, somehow, beyond our feeble human understanding, apparently, that corporations can’t be regulated but consumers must be charged lifetime penalties for not buying creditable plans from approved insurance companies providing benefits consistent with the minimum standards of Medicare Part D.

Kevin told me to look for a zero cost Part D plan, then checked and said there were none available in my area. He tried to sell me a $35 a month plan, from Healthspring Assurance, which, with the drugs, would cost me only about $720 a year. He agreed there was no guarantee that Healthspring wouldn’t double its premium next year, but that’s why there is a period to compare prices once a year and the requirement of a letter informing the customer that the price was about to double.

He was trying to help me out, he said, after explaining he could have disenrolled me as soon as I called, but he was warning me of the potentially dire consequences of uncreditable disenrollment. I said that in dollars and cents, the difference between $300-400 a year for generic prescriptions, and even the bargain price of $720, would seem to more than offset the penalty for a year or two.

Eventually, after a long chat, he told me he would disenroll me. There was no confirmation number, no proof we’d ever had a conversation of almost an hour (except on my phone, but again, who the hell is Valley Organized Physicians?), I’d get a letter from Aetna confirming I’d been disenrolled, he told me. We bid each other a polite goodnight.

We got off the phone, it was now 4 a.m., and my head immediately fucking exploded. Every narcissist I’ve ever known has told me I’m too sensitive. Maybe the despicable freaks are right about that. I was unable to tune down my outrage enough to get to sleep, the pill I took at 5:00 allowed me to finally drift off around 6:30 a.m. for a few hours of sleep. I’m too sensitive, goddamn it, and it’s messing with my health.

[1]

Why the Orange shit-bomber keeps Congress shut down

There are several compelling reasons, including enabling President Project 2025 to make unilateral, “plenary” decisions on everything in government (illegal demolition breaking a promise, another mass firing spree, $40,000,000,000 to his fascist buddy in Argentina, $172,000,000 for Kristi Noem’s two private jets, $250,000,000 for the Marie Antoinette Ballroom, $230,000,000 for him, restitution for the Biden witch hunts), since he alone is up and running, having ordered MAGA Mike to shut everything down and keep lying that the Democrat (sic) party is to blame.  Trump’s criminal behavior can’t be questioned (see 6-3 Trump v. US), not the destruction of the east wing of the White House, not the international war crime of murdering now at least 34 unarmed noncombatants he has designated narco-terrorists, also not the release, pardon and hiring of countless heavily armed January 6th rioters, in masks, employed by ICE to act as Trump’s lawless shock troops in American cities. 

Number one on this grotesque giant baby’s list of concerns is delaying/preventing the release of the infamous Epstein files. Recall that Kashyap Pramod Patel reassigned 1,000 FBI agents to 24 hour shifts to search for and delete Trump’s name from the files, proving the Orange Polyp had absolutely nothing to hide. Adelita Grijalva, vote number 218 in the House to get release of these files, elected a month ago, has had to sue Mike Johnson and the Hump administration to get sworn in so she can represent her majority Hispanic constituents.

MAGA Mike, a brazen liar as relentless and prolific as the man he loves, has spouted a series of angry talking points, making as much sense as his demented, mad boss. He blames Pelosi, Democrats and a series of demons, as evil as the personal ones that keep the cherub-faced liar up sweating at night. PBS, who his boss defunded in the “clean budget”, notes, of Johnson’s month of stonewalling the swearing in of a duly elected member of Congress:

On April 2, Johnson swore in Republican Reps. Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine, both of Florida, less than 24 hours after they won their special elections, during a pro forma session.

Johnson says the circumstances were unique because the House had unexpectedly gone out of session that day. Patronis and Fine had already arranged for their families, friends and supporters to be in Washington.

Fuck that twerp puto.

Meantime, in a cosmic bit of timing, the memoir of Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein sex slave who ended her life at 41 (demonstrating once more that the harm of being raped lasts forever) came out the other day. Here’s a slice:

Giuffre writes, quote, “In my years with them, they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people. I was habitually used and humiliated — and in some instances, choked, beaten, and bloodied. I believed that I might die a sex slave,” she said. Virginia also details how she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times, beginning when she was 17. Virginia also said she was beaten and raped by a “well-known prime minister.”

Virginia Giuffre died reportedly by suicide earlier this year in Australia at age 41. Nobody’s Girl was completed just before she died. In the book’s foreword, her collaborator, Amy Wallace, describes an email from Virginia shortly before she died that read in part, quote, “The content of this book is crucial as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders. It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness. In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that Nobody’s Girl is still released,” she said.

source

I hope to God that the “well-known prime minister” was not fucking Bibi Netanyahu (oy! it appears to be former prime minister Ehud Barak…). Could things get any worse for the Jews right now? Could there be more fuel for antisemites? If a Jewish prime minister was one of Epstein’s “partying,” girl beating, minor-raping buddies, how much worse for the Jews would that be? Not bad enough we have an actual fucking Jewish Nazi, psychopathic vampire Stephen Miller, in charge of vilifying, humiliating, terrorizing and harshly punishing people guilty only of being brown, speaking Spanish and being hardworking day workers. As Mafia strongman Meyer Lansky observed, “it’s hard to be a Jew.” Dig it.