Republicans Face “Birthers”

Buried among ranting comments, mostly from obsessive bloggers, this piece from the New York Times summarizes the anti-Obama “birther” conspiracy fringe movement, and the problem it presents to Republicans:

The group who keep insisting that Obama was born not in Hawaii, but Kenya, and is thus ineligible to be president — were a consistent side plot to the 2008 election. But even with Mr. Obama firmly ensconced in the Oval Office — and even with copies of Mr. Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate in circulation — the birthers’ passion does not seem to be fading away. Just ask Delaware Representative Mike Castle, a moderate Republican who faced an angry town hall meeting full of people who insisted Mr. Obama was Kenyan-born. MSNBC posted the video on its “Hardball” program.

Legislation has already been introduced in the House that would compel presidential candidates to prove their American citizenship; Chris Matthews recently interviewed Representative John Campbell, one of the legislation’s sponsors. (For his part, Mr. Campbell said that the bill was not about Mr. Obama, and pressed by Mr. Matthews, said he believed the president was a U.S. citizen.)

Now, Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh are getting behind the birthers. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder takes a look at the Republican party’s choices when it comes to the group: “If they give credence to the birthers, they’re (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.”

Those who cannot accept, for whatever reason, the fact of a convincing electoral victory last November by Barack Hussein Obama continue to pursue what amounts to a conspiracy theory

Trading Costs

The collapse of the economy in many areas has affected budgets private, corporate and governmental. Lack of money is an absolute, making cuts across all strata of society necessary, so hard choices and reduced standards are inevitable. All reductions in costs, especially in those levels of society with the fewest resources and greatest needs, are not necessarily actual reductions. Sometimes cuts in services by government simply shift the costs into areas not as recognizable as taxes or fees.

Collateral Damage

Sometimes, when dealing with persons suffering from severe mental illness, those in the mental health field find themselves swept into the psychological battlefield that is the mind of their patient. Such a thing happened to my wife the other night. A new arrival at the hospital suddenly lunged at Babs, who was dealing with another patient – it was a busy night. Grabbing Barbara by the hair and throwing her to the ground, the patient was immediately restrained by security personnel.  Barbara was very shaken, her elbow was bleeding, some of her hair was torn out and her head and shoulder had hit the floor with force.

I answered the phone shortly afterwards at home, to hear a tone in my wife’s voice that immediately alerted me to something wrong. When Barbara told me what had happened, I told her I was coming to pick her up and taking her to the doctor. She vetoed this idea, said she was not that badly hurt. Almost an hour later, after nurses at the hospital had looked at her injuries and insisted, Babs called me back and I went. We spent an hour and some at an emergency room, the X-rays showed nothing broken, just some apparent deep contusions in her shoulder and back. Drugs and a prescription were issued, we went home and two days later Barbara is still in pain. Shortly she will go to a bone specialist for follow-up.

For as many years as Barbara has worked with mentally ill people, this was the first physical violence she has suffered. Collateral damage in the internal wars that torment so many of the tortured souls for whom she has such great empathy. She will go back to work tomorrow, pending the doctor’s verdict. Barbara continues to love her work. Many, many people she has touched with her compassion and knowledge have benefitted. I hope there is no more violence in her future.

All the Broken People

Last week, PBS presented a Frontline show on the problem of mentally ill people housed in prisons, released with little support to continue treatment for the illness which often is key to the offenses for which they are recycled through the prison system.

Estimate of prisoners to be released in U.S. this year: 700,000 +-. Number of these with mental illness: 350,000.

Small amount of cash, two weeks of meds, tell them, “You’re Free! Good luck.” Back within months. And folks complain about the homeless wandering the streets, panhandling, peeing in inappropriate places. I watched most of the show and had to bail out as yet another paranoid schizophrenic earnestly declared that he was not mentally ill, it was those doctors who were trying to make him so.

The problem, of course, is how to pay for outpatient followup and monitoring. My beloved Babs watched part of the show late in her shift at the state mental health hospital here. The early evening had seen a rush of admissions from counties as far away as a two-hour drive for the sheriff’s deputies who usually bring the most broken of people in – Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute has about a twelve-county catchment area – and things had slowed down enough for her to watch the show. She couldn’t watch past the fourth or fifth hopelessly delusional patient. She sees the same thing nightly.

With budget cuts and the drying up of foundation funding, along with drops in other sources of individual giving, mental health finds itself at the latter part of a very long line of supplicants for money. People in the field want the best for their patients, but reality bites.

All the broken people, where will they go?