Emergency care

About 10 days ago I was brutally beaten by a Pittsburgh Police officer while I was covering the G-20 summit.

First, I am not comfortable with the term brutally beaten, but when a group of police come up behind you and push you with their bicycles, and when you video tape one of the officers beating a young woman and when a small group of officers begin beating you with nightsticks, it seems likely that some sort of brutality will ensue. It is hard to judge ones own beating. What I saw the police do to the young woman is easily described as brutal. Hitting me repeatedly with night sticks, trying to beat the camera out of my hands, knocking me to the ground, hitting my body some more, in retrospect it seemed brutal at the time, so let's stick with that.

After the brutal beating I asked a paramedic on the scene if I should go to a nearby hospital and he said he should give me a ride, but for some reason I felt safer walking back through the police action and finding the hospital on my own. This decision made little sense, especially as I review my actions of that night.

I did find the hospital, a UPMC hospital just a few blocks from the beating. At first they wanted me to strip and walk through a decontamination tent set up outside, because people were expected to be coming from the riots and police were using tear gas. Upon closer inspection by a doctor/nurse (not sure what he was) I was told I did not smell dangerous enough for the tent. Then it was back to the emergency room entrance, where I had my bag checked out and walked through a metal detector. I should say that while my camera and tapes were in the bag, so were three spent canisters of the smoke police had been using on protesters. This was not tear gas canisters, but rather, spent smoke canisters that police had left in the streets and I had picked up to give to the photo crew I had been working with.

Once inside the hospital I was seated in a triage area where another male (doctor/nurse) was taking my vital statistics, temperature and blood pressure. While these tests were started a small group of three large men showed up in front of me. They were some sort of hospital security group and the angriest of the three asked what was in my bag. I told him that there was a camera, some tapes and 3-4 empty canisters. He asked to check it himself and I obliged. It did not take long for him to look up with a canister in his hand and ask me what that was. I told him, he found the others and announced he would be taking my bag. I told him that was not going to happen, I had just been brutally beaten by my own police department to save a camera that showed police brutally beating others, there was no way anyone was taking that camera away from me.

What happened next is possibly the most loathsome thing that has ever happened to me in my life. He gave me a choice, in his position of power. I could give up my bag to him, or I could leave. That was my option. Keep in mind, both hands, wrists and arms had been hammered with nightsticks as was my left hip. The pain was incredible, the swelling obvious and kind of scary. The hospital wanted to treat these wounds, but the security guard cared little about my health and only about my camera bag. He gave me the two options, not any sort of compromise, such as, he take the canisters, I keep the camera. Or he bag the canisters, or even the entire bag, and leave it with me. Or put everything in a secure location. No, either everything goes with him, or I leave.

I left.

I found a paramedic tent that was filled with paramedics doing nothing more than preparing for injured people. They gave me ice and I went back to my car and waited for my photographer compatriots to finish, then we went in search of another hospital.

Today I spoke with the head of security for the entire group of UPMC hospitals. What I found most inspiring is that he was sorry for the way I was treated. He kept saying that he wanted me to know that this is not the policy of the hospital or the security personal who are employed by the hospital. He was sorry for the way I was treated. I tried to be understanding, admitting that the city was on edge from the protests and the police action. I got that. What I could not understand, what i still do not understand, was how an emergency room in a major city would allow someone so obviously injured from a brutal beating to be removed from the hospital by a deranged, power hungry security person.

I am sure that someday I will get an official report that says something to the effect that something has been done and how sorry the hospital is for my discomfort. I am patient, I can wait.

Why am I not surprised

I remember many years ago, the Bush administration used a police of intimidation linked with patriotism and direct lying about intelligence and threats to get basically every non-thinking member of congress to pass a war resolution. There were hundreds of protests with millions of people taking to the streets and still congress chose lies over logic.

Once the lies were found out and the depth of the deception was understood, I think a collective understanding was realized that we would never allow an elected leader to mislead, lie and twist facts to get his/her way. We had been lied to the last time.

Billions upon billions have been lost, as well as over 4000 American soldiers lives, in a war built on lies. There should be no greater shame. Yet, right before leaving office with a smug childs look on his face, Georve W. Bush found a way to crank up the volume for one more patriotic lie.

Strange how the first one made millions, if not billions, for right wing industries, like Haliburton. Months before leaving office, at least according to a new Troubled Asset Relief Program report, billions upon billions were shuffled into the hands of bankers and investors who had shown an amazing penchant for losing money. When you find someone who can lose and mis-invest billions of dollars, the very last thing you should do is justify giving such a bonehead more cash.

As the economy was teetering on insolvency, back in the spring of 2008, the Bush propaganda machine went into overdrive to scare congress into allowing hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent to bailout bankers. Stupid bankers at that. Congress, showing the same brilliance it did when debating the Iraq war, fell back into a familiar pattern. If they voted against this resolution, they would be branded as unAmerican, or worse, a socialist. Or something. It didn't matter, by that point in the Bush administration, they puppeteers knew exactly how to play the puppets. In a very short span of time, congress gave the Bush treasury department access to over 700 billion dollars.

So, a new report from the TARP inspector is finding that the Bush administration overseers gave out checks to friends, campaign supporters and other crooks. This is not surprising to anyone who is paying attention to the ways of Bush and company, but what is shocking, shameful and cynical is how the democratic congress gets played at will by the bully republicans.

A war

Economic news

OK, so it is obvious to me that the government has no plans to do anything about the banking industry that brought the world economy to its knees about a year ago.

So, with dithering lawmakers unable to do much of anything and Wall Street idiots happily running back to the casino they call employment, do we all just stand back and watch? If we are just going to watch, what should we be watching?

I know, how about the impending bankruptcy of the most prosperous state in the history of the United States? Of course this story is being closely monitored, in London. Click here for a chance to get an idea of what is happening to California.

Better yet, take your time to digest the concept of California going bankrupt with this nugget, the FDIC would like some lender to give people having trouble paying their mortgages a break. Here.

But wait. How about the concept of fighting against financial idiocy with actually regulating idiocy out of the picture? Who would fight such a plan? I wonder.

Sexy times

Oh my how puritanical we all become when a beloved television host admits he likes to have sex. Maybe it is sex with assistants, or interns or people other than our respective significant others that really drives people wild, I am not sure. Maybe it is just the idea that others are flaunting societies rules. Which is why we can never allow the gays to marry, they will flaunt their hedonistic lifestyles all over the place and make us all crazy.

First, who has not wanted to have sex with a co-worker? It happens. I forget the study and the exact numbers, but men in general think about sex every few minutes, except when you are between the ages of 18-25, then that is all they think about. I imagine women are the same way, but I have never been a woman (yet) so my experience inside that particular head is limited at best.

Sexing a co-worker is fun and can be healthy. Much like I can not remember the exact number of cars I have had in my lifetime, I can no remember the number of co-workers I have accidentally slept with. I say accidentally, because for the most part, sex with co-workers does not involve dating and classic seduction. Again, I would be speaking from my own experience here.

I grew up a week or so before we all became aware of sexual harassment and using sex as some sort of career enhancement. I grew up at a time when sex could be an intimate communication between two people overwhelmed with attraction, a way of defining and enhancing love, or a way to bring a smile to your face. All were fine, all were acceptable. I slept with my boss at a news organization and it was nothing more than having the office to ourselves while we edited stories. I did not get a promotion and she did not get fired. We both survived and it was swell.

So David Letterman likes to have sex and sometimes that involves people in his office. I still do not see a problem. I am a sex positive person, I believe sex is natural and healthy. I never got into the shame game. The religious fanatics who hate sex and hate people having sex and hate anything anyone else is doing in the privacy of their bedroom or boardroom. These are the same badly dressed morons who protest at abortion clinics, healthcare debates and cry out loud and demand impeachment of a president who lies about blow jobs. Of course, these badly dressed hypocrites do not demand the same of a president lying about wars, a senator who has sex with prostitutes or one who pays almost 100 thousand dollars to the aide he was boffing.

Why is sex so fun and yet so filled with shame and danger?

I am trying to raise children with a positive attitude toward sexuality. We have had frank talks about how wonderful sex is, how natural it is to communicate in an intimate way with sexuality and what a wonderful expression sex can be when linked with true love. The fact is, everyone discovers sexuality in a platform that they find comfortable. The job of having your own intimate life is that you get to define how you want to act and react in a sexual fashion. So if you want to lay back and think of England, that is fine, or if you want a gag in your mouth and a swinging sling in your dungeon, all good by me. Better yet, if you have a private office with an even more private "meeting room" and you and your willing associates like to slip away for some discrete adult play, more power to you.

I have never been charged or even investigated for any sort of sexual incident. I have never charged anyone with taking advantage of me, or using their power to get me in the sack. Neither has David Letterman. Most of us are willing partners in the sex game. Most of us are adults with passion and time. Do I care who sleeps with who and what they do? Not likely, unless there is video I need to review. What I do care about are the hypocrites who one day decry blow jobs as an impeachable offense and the next day want to make sure that anyone enjoying anything sexual must be a deviant, unless it is their particular deviancy, then it's OK.

What say we just let people be sexual in all the ways they are comfortable being sexual? I won't tell the senator from Nevada not to screw around on his wife (same with the senator from Louisiana) and they will not tell me who and what I am allowed to do in bed, or in marriage. Sounds fair.

Deregulated idiots

"Oh my god," a year ago, that's all we could say. Those lucky enough to have substantial savings or retirement accounts looked up to see 50 percent missing. The value of our homes dropped just as quickly, everything we had planned on suddenly did not appear to be real. The headlines were filled with Ponzi schemers who soaked gullible millionaires for billions. The world, as we knew it, was in deep trouble and everyone was fretting over it.

Well, everyone who does not receive a government paycheck that is. Barney Frank pranced around Washington proclaiming an end to years of under regulation and a lack of any real policing of Wall Street and the investment community that had laid waste to the world economy. Things were going to be different the congressman from Massachusetts lisped.

Things did get different. A new president was elected, a lot of talk (and by a lot of talk I mean lots and lots and lots of talk) was used to describe in detail how new laws, regulations and government oversight was going to bring about the change we need. Almost a year later, nothing has changed, no massive new regulation, no police force roaming the money pit of Wall Street, nothing. Even sugar plum Barney Frank, who just last year was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal along side of Clint Eastwood in Brokeback Mountain.2, has grown strangely quiet. Oh sure, some days he throws a fit and screams from his perch on basic cable TV that his committee is working on something, will do something, something will come of all of this.

In the meantime, banks that just last year were too big to fail have grown even larger. Which means of course that they are even more likely to fail and then more desperate to seek public funds to keep them afloat because, really when you think about it, they really are too big to fail. More banks have been closed and taken over by the federal government and while the stock market is back up and running, there are plenty of economists who continue to shake their collective economic heads and wonder how that is happening while homes are being foreclosed and businesses search for new bankruptcy codes to hide behind.

Yet these is always a sense of possibility in the United States. While some states threaten to succeed and others teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, there is always a sense that this too shall be dealt with, we will develop news cars that will run on air and toothpaste, we will rebuild New Orleans and Detroit, we will be able to get on a train in New York and arrive in Los Angeles in 17 minutes. We are a hopeful and optimistic people. We landed on the moon, we developed an automobile industry a generation after moving out of caves, we created foods that not only have no nutritional value, but are fat filled and in some biochemical fashion they make you hungry after eating them. We can do anything, except regulate the industry that has been driving this society since 1776.

Pretty people

It still hurts to type, which is why there are fewer and fewer posts. I used to joke with friends that as long as I had a workable finger I could edit video and type stories and make a living. I may have been wrong.

That said I was in a room with successful lawyers again today, not really paying attention, but paying enough attention that I noticed things. One thing I noticed is that it is better to be obese and rich than it is to be poor and fat. See, rich people do not use the term fat, they are heavy, or obese as this gentleman was. He could also afford to have clothes made to fit his outrageous body, which was beyond ample, although I am sure it would be word he would use in his personal ad.

That said he was super smart. I like smart. I like smart more than I like most things, although I am still shallow enough to totally enjoy beauty.

So I am sitting there on the 45th floor of this amazing building, in a perfect cabinet room with rich people talking about the tales that rich people fret over and I notice this woman. She is probably about 40 and she is a bit tired because she has some young child at home. But she is fit and sexy and she smiles this smile that makes you, or me, want to kiss her. Which is a great smile. She did not spend much time smiling at me, but I laid in wait for that smile to appear, someone would say something funny, or silly or absurd and that smile would appear and all I could think of was how nice it would be to see that smile a lot.

Then, after hours of talk it was her turn to discuss the finer points of making money, or something, because after hours of talk my brain had shut down to the point that I was about to forget to breath. She sat up, collected herself and began to speak and ask questions and do the things lawyers do. I watched every move. She was like a beautiful cat, every movement had a purpose, every bit of energy was reserved until something important had to be done. I watched this show as if I had never spied a beautiful confident sexy woman before. Then it happened.

She was asking another lawyer something important, probably even in english, but I had long ago lost interest. As the other lawyer started to speak, her hand ever so subtly began to run against her left breast, first on the outside of her stylish black jacket, then inside the jacket, as if she had an itch and then, much to my surprise and enjoyment, inside the shirt. She did this without thinking, without as much as acknowledging that she was even aware of it, just a touch, then a longer touch, then more interest and then she was done.

I was of course mesmerized because this is the type of thing that always gets my attention. First, because as far as I could tell this was a completely natural thing for her to do, just checking things out, nonchalantly touching herself, not in a sexual way, but there was a sexyal overtone to it that certainly made me pay attention. It ended as subtly as it started, she rearranged her jacket, picked up some papers and was done, never to return to that nipple, at least not in my presence.

What am I to make of this? I once sat in a friends living room and my friend was breast feeding her first born and out came this beautiful breast and onto it went the babies mouth and apparently I was staring and she called me on it, saying, "why are you staring at me?" and I said because you are hanging out your breast for me to see and I am seeing.

The lawyer today did not put on a show for me, but then, she did. I watched, she performed and we all ended up somewhat better for it.