The New York times ran a story on economic inequalities in access to treatment for obese children, of which there are nine million in the United States.  While this figure has tripled since 1980, there is a dearth of comprehensive, effective, or affordable programs to address the issue. Summer weight loss programs are generally costly (some cost over $1,000 a week) as most seek to turn a profit.  Furthermore, most insurance providers do not cover this cost. Dr. Walter J. Pories, a gastric bypass surgeon, calls the lack of insurance and government financing for such programs "the single most frustrating problem in dealing with childhood obesity."

Today's Washington Post addresses a generally underreported phenomenon: the detention, harassment, and even deportation of U.S. citizens and legal residents by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. I feel that this is an incredibly disturbing precedent being set, especially at a time when 300,000 are detained each year by the ICE. This latest development is but one out of many nefarious results of the post-9/11 American security-state. As always, it disproportionately targets those with darker skin and negligible incomes.

In this diary, I will list numerous cases in which the due process rights and legal niceties many of us take for granted are denied for those who do indeed have every right to be here. They are legally documented residents, and thus should be treated with dignity and be considered innocent until proven guilty.

"Prose is a museum where all the old weapons of poetry are kept." -- T.E. Hulme

Words often possess latent power, but that power is wasted in careless use. The most potent source of word power is metaphor.  The very word "metaphor" itself is metaphorical:  it's Greek roots mean "to carry over". Metaphors do the heavy lifting (as it were) of persuasion.

This week, we will examine a common word that is almost exclusively used metaphorically.  We will examine that metaphor in hopes of harnessing its power more effectively.

This week's word is "travesty"

Congress has passed a few bills targeting immigration: E-Verify, a voluntary government program for employers to verify whether or not employees are legally able to work, was re-authorized by the House for only five years.  This suggests that the House feels E-Verify may be a flawed system.  The House Immigration Subcommittee passed a bill recapturing employment and family-based immigrant visas that had not been allocated under existing ceilings due to bureaucratic inefficiencies. It also passed a bill that could make it easier for military personnel and their families to be naturalized.

There was a very important diary posted here last night through much of today on the death of Hiu Lui Ng.  It was by Gorette, and if you missed it: http://www.dailykos.com/...

You should also check out the original New York Times article on this incident, which is one of the most horrific stories of human cruelty I've heard in a long time: http://www.nytimes.com/...

Keith Olbermann addressed this awhile ago on his show, and his words--dripping with anger--summed up how I felt about this last night.  Here is my original comment in that diary: http://www.dailykos.com/...

Here is another immigration nightmare. This is not the America I know.
My friend's husband will be deported in 90 days.  Her husband was born in Thailand and adopted as a child.  Somehow the adoption paperwork was never finalized, his parents died, and he did not even know he was not a citizen.  He had a felony conviction as a teenager, served time, then turned his life around; married, had kids, worked for Texas Instruments for 16 years.  When he applied for a college loan, he was found to not be a citizen, was arrested by ICE and put in jail (February 2007).  

A detainee, a computer engineer working in the Empire State Building, living in Queens. Jason's wife is a citizen and he has two sons born in America.

He died in US custody. Held in New England, his body riddled with cancer. Had a fractured back as well. He was denied medical examinations and treated horribly until a few days before his death.  Even though he was told he didn't have much time to live, once he finally was able to be examined, they made it difficult for his family to visit. He was barely able to see his little boys, ages one and three. Shame, shame on America.

nytimes, "Ill and in Pain,"  

Once a robust man who stood nearly six feet and weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old.

I can't believe this hasn't been diaried yet.  Today's print edition of the Wall Street Journal has a story on the front page regarding denial of passports to Hispanic citizens in Texas.  Details below the fold.  

Ok, ok.

I can hear it now.

"There is no way this question can be answered"

"You are too linear in your thinking"

"It is not an either / or question"

Too that I say

<More after the break>

In several quarters Sen. McCain is not just a 71 years old veteran and over 25 years of legislative membership as a senator of the United States of America, but as an experienced, reliable, and bi-partisan congressman with lots of wisdom, understanding and knowledge to lead the nation as the commander in chief. It is not therefore surprising that he has sorted to be the presidential flag bearer of the Republican Party as far back as the year 2000, in which he lost the nomination to the incumbent President George Bush.

Crocodile tears and calls for "discipline" from ICE chief Julie L. Myers:

The head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will ask Congress to consider taking disciplinary action against one of its members for a statement he made equating ICE agents with the Gestapo, a senior agency official said Wednesday.

Luis V. Gutierrez , vice chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee that handles immigration, has called for a moratorium on ICE enforcement actions until Congress passes a comprehensive overhaul, something it has failed to do in each of the past two years.

In a column written for Politico, Gutierrez, D-Ill., commenting on recent ICE arrests of illegal immigrants in Iowa, said: "You know who is in charge now? The Gestapo agents at Homeland Security. They are in charge."

A senior ICE official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Julie L. Myers, the assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was "absolutely appalled and deeply angered" by the statement. The official said Myers would send a letter to senior members of Congress asking that disciplinary action be taken against Gutierrez’ for his remarks.

Oh noes!!! Julie Myers is "appalled and deeply angered."

Glass houses, my friend:

Democratic lawmakers yesterday accused Julie L. Myers, an assistant secretary of homeland security, of misleading Congress after photographs emerged of Myers at an office Halloween party honoring a white employee dressed as an escaped prisoner with dreadlocks and makeup that made him look African American or Hispanic.

Myers, whose Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency runs the nation's 32,000-bed immigration detention system, was on a three-judge panel that gave a "most original costume" award to the worker at an ICE charity event Oct. 31. Myers subsequently apologized, saying the costume could leave "a negative impression" of ICE's respect for people whom it detains and explained that she learned only the next day that the man was wearing makeup.

My advice? Stick to disciplining your own branch. You've got no business looking outside your own agency -- and some would say none outside your own behavior, quite frankly -- much less outside your own branch. The executive has done quite enough meddling in the legislature, thank you very much. The last thing we need is petty bureaucrats with their own ethical rap sheets whining to Congress about which legislators do and don't need disciplining for huwting your widdle feewings. I can appreciate a boss's desire to stand up for the integrity of her team, but seriously, were you really thinking this was a task you were cut out for?

Do your own lifting, Myers. I know that as an Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security, you have no authority to punish a Member of Congress yourself for his remarks, so you need to call on Congress to do it for you.

But then again... as an Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security, you have no authority to punish a Member of Congress for his remarks.

That's actually a feature, not a bug.

Keep your nose in your own branch, please. You don't have oversight authority here. And maybe keep your thoughts about who needs to be disciplined for appalling behavior a little closer to home.

•    An article titled "Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals" appeared in the magazine section of The New York Times on Sunday.  By telling the story of Luis Alberto Jiménez, it documents the disastrous consequences that are the result of inherent failures in the American immigration and health care systems. Below is an excerpt from the article:

 There are heinous things that reactionaries do in the Deep South that no one is supposed to talk about. The consensus is that we like to have our little hate fest privately, but we know deep down that it's evil, and we sure don't want the outside world to know about it.

 While photographing racist graffiti vandalism in Madison, Alabama, a driver with Kentucky plates honked at me and gave me a dirty look. Hey! That's for us to look at.

 A pastor in Ardmore told me that, during the civil rights era, the white fundamental churches were not involved in segregationist violence. There was a lynch mob in southern Mississippi, just across the Pearl River from Bogalusa, that killed a black man and was led by a Baptist preacher.

 The political climate around Huntsville is so degenerate that you can't tell anybocy anything. People are speaking some kind of postmodernist nonsense language, and can't understand anything. But I'll be gosh-swoggled to tarnation if I'm going to let them rewrite history.

I just watched this video at The Raw Story site.  It is a video that needs to be made available to as many people as possible, because we will never see it on any traditional media outlet.  (Notice the use of traditional media, kos, because I ain't no outsider, dammit.)

The walls that we are building in Iraq, and on our border with Mexico, are simply inhumane.  Have we just quit trying to communicate and solve our problems with diplomacy?  Have we asked the Iraqis' to do the same thing?  Is building a wall the only solution this administration can come up?  

This video certainly answers that last question.

Watch the video after the fold.  

With a little under 100 days left in the campaign, John McCain has yet to tell the American people exactly where he stands on the volatile issue of immigration and immigration reform.

Since securing his party's nomination back in March, McCain has toned down some of the more strident rhetoric that marked his noticeable shift towards the right on the issue during the primary contests, yet he still remains firmly planted on the fence when it comes to discussing the specifics of what  his presidency would mean in terms of immigration reform.

According to the winds of political expediency, or the particular interest group he's speaking to on any given day, he's vacillated between claiming himself a champion for comprehensive reform on one hand to disavowing any connection to his previous legislative attempts to repair our nations broken immigration system on the other.  

This has left those on both sides of this thorny debate scratching their heads, wondering where the self- proclaimed "straight talker" stands on this vital issue.

From The National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, a non-partisan movement working to ensure that our courts protect and preserve equal justice, fairness, and opportunity.

Here's why local police departments shouldn't be allowed to enforce federal immigration laws: Nashville officers forced Juana Villegas to give birth while shackled to a hospital gurney, and then separated the mother from her newborn. Villegas' breasts soon become infected and the infant  developed jaundice. Juana, a 33-year-old undocumented immigrant, was arrested and thrown in jail for the misdemeanor charge of driving without a license.

(Cross-Posted at Silence Isn't Golden)

What is Labor Day?

Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September. The holiday originated in 1882 as the Central Labor Union (of New York City) sought to create "a day off for the working man".

It's a day in which we honor the workers who are the backbone of the American economy. It's not just a day off from school and from work in which we get to have picnics and set off fireworks.

From the Barnes Campaign:

Survey USA, a national polling firm, released its latest poll in the 6th Congressional District  showing Kay Barnes and Sam Graves virtually even as the General Election begins. Graves held a slight lead, 48-44 percent, within the margin of error. In Survey USA's last poll in May, before the race began in earnest, Graves, the four-term incumbent, led by 10 points.

"Throughout the 6th District, voters are embracing Kay Barnes' call for change. After 8 years of Sam Graves hiding in Washington, the voters of Northwest Missouri are now holding him accountable for his failed policies that have left our nation with skyrocketing gas prices, rising unemployment, unaffordable health care, and out-of-control spending. Washington is broken and Sam Graves cannot be part of the solution, but Kay Barnes will be," said Campaign Spokesman Steve Glorioso.