A white bison calf drinks water at the Mohawk Bison farm in Goshen. Photo / AP
Good Morning!
Say hello to the little symbol of hope, a white bison named Yellow Medicine Dancing Boy.
Lakota, others celebrate rare white bison at Conn. farm, name him Yellow Medicine Dancing Boy
Credit Courtesy of Peter Fay
Dozens of Native Americans wore the traditional garb of their ancestors, sang songs and beat drums on a western Connecticut farm Saturday in celebration of the birth of one of the world’s rarest animals — a white bison.
The miracle calf was officially named Yellow Medicine Dancing Boy at the elaborate ceremony at the Mohawk Bison farm in Goshen in the state’s northwestern hills. It was born June 16 at the farm of fourth-generation farmer Peter Fay.
Many Native Americans consider white bison a symbol of hope and unity; some consider their births sacred events. Experts say white bison are as rare as one in 10 million.
They did DNA testing on the calf, he is not an albino and he does not have any cattle blood, he is pure bison.
Boston Boomer sent me this link late last night, so I am squeezing it into the post…Doctor of Colorado suspect had been disciplined by medical board
Dr. Lynne Fenton, the University of Colorado psychiatrist who was treating James E. Holmes, according to a court filing by his attorneys, was disciplined by the Colorado Medical Board in 2005.
State records show Fenton was reprimanded by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners, received a letter of admonition and was required to take a documentation course. Records detailing the discipline were not immediately available Saturday. Neither Fenton nor Colorado medical board staff could be reached for comment Saturday.
Fenton was self-prescribing drugs, as well as writing scripts for others, and not keeping a record of them.
According to 7News, which cited state records, Fenton was reprimanded for prescribing medication to herself, her husband and an employee. The medications, prescribed in the late 1990s, included prescriptions for Vicodin, Xanax, Lorazepam and Ambien, according to 7News.
Fenton was also reprimanded for failing to maintain a medical chart or to enter appropriate entries for the charts relating to herself, her husband or the employee, 7News reported.
As part of the reprimand, Fenton had to complete more than 50 hours of medical training and to promise not to prescribe medications to family members or employees, according to 7News.
You may remember that Holmes was on Vicodin when he was arrested just after shooting 72 people…More at this link from a local Denver News station here, it also goes into some discussion on patient confidentiality rights:
Psychiatrist Treating Shooting Suspect Previously Reprimanded
It’s not known if Fenton prescribed any medications for Holmes while she was treating him.The revelation that Holmes was seeing a psychiatrist came Friday in a legal motion filed by defense attorneys for Holmes regarding leaks to the news media about a package the suspect mailed to Fenton, an assistant professor at CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.Fenton, who has done award-winning research on schizophrenia, is also medical director of the campus Student Mental Health Service, according to her professional biography on the CU website. Her psychiatry practice includes providing medication and psychotherapy to five to 10 general psychiatry patients, the bio said.Her CU bio was removed Friday afternoon from the university website.A campus web page about mental health resources for students, says Fenton and other medical staff, “provide confidential evaluation and treatment for the full range of psychiatric difficulties, including depression, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, suicide, eating disorders, anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia, and relationship difficulties.”Seeing a psychiatrist, even for a serious case of mental illness, would not trigger any of the safeguards for gun purchases, which are governed by federal law, said Daniel Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“There are no federal restrictions on the purchase of firearms for the mentally ill unless the person has been adjudicated by a court as being dangerously mentally ill,” he told the New York Times.
That is something I am shaking my head about…damn! Anyway, the article continues:
Fox News first reported that Holmes sent a notebook full of details about how he was going to kill people to a University of Colorado psychiatrist before the July 20 attack. Fox News also reported that the notebook contains violent images and notes.University officials said two packages were seized on the campus Monday, causing brief evacuations of two buildings three days after the shooting. One of the packages contained the notebook Holmes sent to Fenton, according court papers filed by attorneys and prosecutors.Sources familiar with the investigation told 7NEWS that Aurora police and the FBI believe the notebook sent to the faculty member contained “important information.”In the motion, Holmes’ defense attorneys state they want the names of law enforcement officials who examined the contents of the package and may have leaked information to the news media in violation of a gag order issued by a judge barring police, prosecutors and the defense team from releasing details of the criminal investigation.The defense motion says the leaks are a breach of Holmes’ confidential and privileged communication with his doctor and violate his constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial.
But in answer to the defense motion, the District Attorney says that the information being “leaked” is not correct.
…inaccuracies in the Fox News reports about the notebook indicate that whoever provided the information didn’t know the facts of the case. Instead of law enforcement sources “leaking” details about the notebook, Orman wrote that the news media may be getting information from “hoaxers, fraudsters,” or maybe news reporters fabricated the information by “creating fake ‘law enforcement sources’ out of whole cloth.”"To put it bluntly, the People are extremely dubious of the media assertions that ‘law enforcement sources’ exist,” Orman wrote.Arapahoe County District Judge William Blair Sylvester has set a hearing for Monday morning where he will consider defense attorneys’ and prosecutors’ arguments on the discovery motion.
As far as that notebook is concerned, and the question of patient rights:
Dr. Wojciech Zolcik has 15 years experience working with psychiatric patients and is medical director with Community Reach Center in Thornton.”You really have to have a specific threat made against someone. You need to have somebody say, I’m going to go and kill, ‘Blah blah blah…’” said Zolcik.”But that, ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ has to be a specific person’s name?” asked Zelinger.”Correct. Yeah, that’s the only way we can actually report a threat to anybody,” said Zolcik. “Definitely, when someone comes to you and has a specific plan as to what they would to, then yes, it would be something that you would report; I would report.”When it comes to the package delivered to Fenton, the contents could be considered confidential unless specific threats are identified.”Any communication that goes between the doctor and the patient is confidential, as long as it does not affect the welfare of the patient himself or herself or anybody else,” said Zolcik. “When there is a suspicion of a threat to someone else, confidentiality goes away.”
Maybe more information will come out about this later today. If it does we will update you all in the comments.
Okay, back to the post already in progress…
Let’s go from a white bison to a white racist…White Baptist church in Mississippi bans black wedding
A black couple in Crystal Springs, Mississippi says that a predominantly white Baptist church refused to let them get married because of their race.
Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson told WLBT that the day before they were to be married, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs informed them the ceremony would have to be moved due to the reaction of some white church members — even though the couple had attended the church regularly.
“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if [the pastor] went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” Charles Wilson explained.
“He had people in the sanctuary that were pitching a fit about us being a black couple,” Te’Andrea Wilson added. “I didn’t like it at all, because I wasn’t brought up to be racist. I was brought up to love and care for everybody.”
Dr. Stan Weatherford, the church’s pastor, was forced to perform the marriage at another church after he was taken by surprise by his congregation’s outrage.
That the church pastor was taken by surprise doesn’t jive with me…
“This had never been done before here, so it was setting a new precedent, and there are those who reacted to that because of that,” Weatherford said. “I didn’t want to have a controversy within the church, and I didn’t want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te’ Andrea. I wanted to make sure their wedding day was a special day.”
Church officials said they would hold meetings to decide what to do if another non-white couple wanted to use their facility in the future. They insisted that all races were welcome at the church.
“I blame the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, I blame those members who knew and call themselves Christians and didn’t stand up,” Charles Wilson said.
It is disgusting that this outrageous racism is considered by Weatherford as, setting a precedent. It should never have been accepted in the first place.
Now another form of racism, we have this from North Carolina…Farmers are wary of possible farm labor shortage
North Carolina is a top producer of tobacco, sweet potatoes and other fruits and vegetables – but in the near future, farmers might not have enough workers to pick them.
Across the nation, the number of seasonal agricultural workers is shrinking, costing billions. That’s largely the result of a diminishing number of migrant workers coming from Mexico.
So far, North Carolina’s farmers say they aren’t experiencing a significant shortage. But harvest season has yet to peak in the state, so it’s difficult to tell whether the state will experience a lack of labor, said Larry Wooten, president of the N.C. Farm Bureau.
And imagine, North Carolina’s immigration laws are not as strict as some states. According to Kristi Boswell, labor and immigration congressional relations director for the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington:
“If they don’t feel it yet, the likelihood of them feeling it soon is probably high,” Boswell said.
A significant labor shortage could have a considerable impact on the North Carolina economy, which draws more than $70 billion – about 20 percent of the state’s income – from agriculture. And because the state is a leading producer of numerous crops, a shortage would affect local and national produce costs. The Farm Bureau Federation recently projected that national agricultural labor shortages will cost $5 billion to $9 billion in annual losses.
“If we don’t have an adequate supply of labor, the crops are going to rot in the fields,” said N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. “And eventually it’s going to affect prices.”
There is nothing I can say about this, we have talked about the immigration issues for months…
Another issue we have spent time on is centered around women’s rights. South Dakota Doctors Ordered To Say Abortions Lead to Suicide
A federal appeals court this week upheld South Dakota’s law requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions that they will face “increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide.”
The “informed consent” law, which required doctors to read a formal script to all women seeking an abortion, has been in litigation since it passed in 2005. (The state drew much of their ideas from the legal writings of Harold Cassidy, who was profiled in Mother Jones last year.) A court had previously upheld other portions of the script, but the part about increased risk of suicide—a claim based on dubious medical research—was the last portion stuck in legal wrangling. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 7 to 4 to uphold that part of the script. From the Star Tribune:
“On its face, the suicide advisory presents neither an undue burden on abortion rights nor a violation of physicians’ free speech rights,” the court wrote in its majority opinion.
In September, a three-judge panel upheld U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier’s decision to overturn the requirement following a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood. The decision Tuesday by the full 11-member court grants judgment to the state and vacates the permanent injunction against enforcing the provision.
It is coming down to the wire…hanger with these PLUBs.
Most of the research out there has not found a causal relationship between abortion and increased risk of suicide. But the state presented articles claiming that there is, in fact, a “statistically significant correlation between abortion and suicide.” But as Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check points out, there are major problems with the paper that is most often used to support that claim. We wrote earlier this year about a new study totally debunking its flawed research methods that didn’t distinguish whether the women had had mental health problems before seeking an abortion. And yet abortion foes still regularlly flog the paper.
Planned Parenthood, the only abortion provider in South Dakota and the plaintiff in the lawsuit, released a statement noting that it is “extremely disappointed” in the court’s decision. A spokesperson told Mother Jones the organization is exploring any further legal options it might have.
Let’s look at some positive news items, because this is getting depressing.
Sing Sing inmates perform, change their lives with music
Some of the most hardened criminals at Sing Sing Prison are learning to replace their destructive behaviors with the help of music. As part of a Carnegie Hall outreach program, select prisoners are playing instruments and writing songs with renowned artists. Seth Doane took viewers of “CBS This Morning: Saturday” inside the walls of the maximum security prison.
Video at the link. When I read that headline, I thought of the last scene in The Producers...with the song Prisoners of Love.
Now lets turn to a good old-fashioned rant. Where’s the Outrage?
Are too many Democratic voters sleepwalking away from our democracy this election cycle, not nearly outraged enough about Big Money’s undue influence and Republican state legislatures changing the voting rules?
We all know the answer!
It seems so.
A Gallup poll released this week found that: “Democrats are significantly less likely now (39 percent) than they were in the summers of 2004 and 2008 to say they are ‘more enthusiastic about voting than usual’ in the coming presidential election.” Republicans are more enthusiastic than they were before the last election.
Some of that may be the effect of having a Democratic president in office; it’s sometimes easier to marshal anger against an incumbent than excitement for him. Whatever the reason, this lack of enthusiasm at this critical juncture in the election is disturbing for Democrats.
Read the rest at the link.
One more politics link: In a U.S. Senate Runoff, Texas Republicans Spend to Agree
Republicans Shout Their Agreement While Democrats Whisper Their Differences
Nearly nine weeks after crowded Democratic and Republican primaries for a rare open United States Senate seat were pared down to each party’s top two vote getters for Tuesday’s runoff, the races have become a study in opposites.
Read the analysis at the link if you like.
Time for a few articles on Syrian issues.
Russia has doubt about Bashar Assad’s ability to hold on in Syria
Russian officials, who have strenuously resisted U.S.-led efforts to push Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, are beginning to question whether the beleaguered leader can hang on, but say they have little influence over him as rebels take the fight to his country’s biggest cities.
Even though Russia has been a close Syrian ally for decades, officials and analysts acknowledge that they have limited insight to Assad’s true situation and mind-set. Although some fear that Russia missed a chance to help find a solution to the conflict, now in its 17th month, others say that it never had that kind of clout.
Robert Fisk: Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy
Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy? A war of such cowardice and such mean morality, of such false rhetoric and such public humiliation? I’m not talking about the physical victims of the Syrian tragedy. I’m referring to the utter lies and mendacity of our masters and our own public opinion – eastern as well as western – in response to the slaughter, a vicious pantomime more worthy of Swiftian satire than Tolstoy or Shakespeare.
There is new information about Northern Ireland: Republican dissidents join forces to form a new IRA
A masked member of the Real IRA at a republican Easter commemoration ceremony in Derry. The Real IRA is merging with other dissident groups in an escalation of the threat of violence against security forces. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
Three of the four main dissident republican terror groups in Northern Ireland are to merge and reclaim the banner of the IRA, in an escalation of attempts to de-stabilise power sharing.
The Real IRA has been joined by Republican Action Against Drugs, which has been running a violent vigilante campaign in Derry, and a coalition of independent armed republican groups – leaving only the Continuity IRA outside the new group.
In a statement released to the Guardian, the new organisation claimed it had formed a “unified structure, under a single leadership”. It said the organisation would be “subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army”.
This is the first time since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that a majority of the forces of dissident republicanism has coalesced.
Republican sources told the Guardian that the new paramilitary force included several hundred armed dissidents, including some former members of the now disbanded Provisional IRA who have been conducting a campaign of shooting and forcible exile of men in Derry City whom they accuse of drug dealing.
In Hungary: Hungarian Nazi’s original trial documents found
Original documents from the 1948 Nazi war crimes trial in absentia of Laszlo Csatary, now under house arrest in Hungary, have been found in Slovakia, a historian there was quoted as saying on Friday.
“The National Memory Institute (UPN) archives in Bratislava possess a legal dossier from the death sentence of Laszlo Csatary,” handed down on June 8, 1948, Zoltan Balassa told the Hungarian state news agency MTI.
The documents from the trial in Kosice, at the time in Czechoslovakia, include witness testimony stating that Csatary was a “very high-ranking political officer” in the town where he was in charge of the Jewish ghetto during World War II.
And now, a little entertainment news. Y’all are well aware of my disappointment in Dark Shadows…the next film I am looking forward to hopefully will reach the high level of my anticipation Slave revenge & ‘Django Unchained’: In film fantasy, slaves finally give the master his just deserts
“The black guy dies first” is probably one of the oldest tropes in American cinema. It’s right up there next to the “sassy black woman gives her white girlfriend a pep talk” and the “black people do something awesome, but still fail in end” narrative.
I suppose these motifs makes sense when over and over black people, no matter where they’re from, are cast in fiction as society’s victims. Like all horrible stereotypes, there’s a hidden truth behind it — the reason blacks so often fall prey to victimization. It’s the the reason why there are people of African descent throughout the Americas and the Caribbean: the dirty business of the transatlantic slave trade. We were transgressed against in a particularly brutal and vulgar way, and we’re still dealing with the vestiges of this history today.
You’d think there’d be a lot more revenge fantasies involving African-Americans in our cinema, because who loves a revenge fantasy more than a) Americans, and b) people who’ve been royally screwed. Given that, it might seem strange that Django Unchained will be the first film of this kind, unless we unpack what “revenge” in America is really about.
So, sorry about the link dump, but as I write this, the men’s gymnastics is on TV and I guess I was a little distracted by those muscular bodies. So, what are you up to this Sunday?