The Founder of Modern Gynecology, AKA The American Mengele

J. Marion Sims is regarded by the medical cummunity as the "founder of modern gynecology".

He was also, quite arguably, the American Mengele. Both men conducted medical experiments on people that they regarded as sub-humans. Sims bought or rented slaves to experiment with in order to develop a procedure to repair vaginal fistulas. He operated on at least one woman thirty times or more. All of Sims's experiments were conducted without anesthesia, which was then known to the medical community, even in Alabama. As noted, even his contemporaries were advising him to back off of his human experiments. Sims had none of it. (He also performed medical experiments on infant slaves.)

When he perfected his procedure, he performed repair operations on white women, and under anesthesia.

Andrew Jackson is being removed from the $20, in part, because he was an unapologetic racist who flouted the law and was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in his campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Confederate battle flag has been coming down because it was the flag under which the fight was waged to preserve slavery. The honors given to pro-slavers are under debate.

To this should be added J. Marion Sims, M.D., who built his reputation on the bodies of his enslaved victims. Whether or not his statue is taken down, his victims, the slaves upon which Sims conducted his experiments, should be prominently remembered next to the memorials to the American Mengele.

Did Donald Trump Run a Sweatshop Employing Illegal and Underage Immigrants?

That would seem to be the allegations surrounding some sketchy operation known as Trump Model Management. The like slumlord that he stated out as, Trump had no problems with charging extortion-level rents to young girls who had not alternatives.

But hey, don't worry. The Trumpanzees won't give a shit.

Oh, This is Just Too Rich; Hateful Bastards Edition

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an organization labeled an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, was left homeless by the destructive flooding that has ravaged southern Louisiana this week, killing 11 people and destroying an estimated 40,000 homes.

Perkins, who has claimed that God uses natural disasters such as hurricanes and flooding to punish people for sinning (in particular homosexuals and their supporters), had his own home destroyed by the Lord Almighty.

Of course, when it's his own home that gets destroyed, it's a "spiritual exercise", as opposed to punishment when the home of somebody ol Hatemaster Tony disapproves of.

Fucking typical.

Trump's Surrogates are as Dumb as He Is.

Donald Trump’s new campaign manager once insisted that rape could be eradicated if women were “as strong as men.”

Kellyanne Conway was discussing the roles of women in the military on a 2013 episode of PBS’ “To the Contrary,” a roundtable discussion show featuring an all-women panel, when she made the baffling, victim-blaming declaration.

“If we were physiologically — not mentally, emotionally, professionally — equal to men, if we were physiologically as strong as men, rape would not exist,” she said. “You would be able to defend yourself and fight him off.”

Right. And where there are all-male environments, such as in prisons, rape just doesn't happen.

Oh, wait.

How to Destroy the American Tech Industry in One Easy Step

Give the FBI a back-door key to everything. They still want the ability to come and rummage through your electronic shit whenever it pleases them to do so.

Even if the FBI promises that they would never, ever look at your shit without a court order, the NSA is not so hindered. Which will mean that the international market for American devices, such as iPhones, will decline precipitously once everyone knows that those devices come with a FBI/NSA-enabled back door.

And if you travel overseas, the same "we doan need to cho you no steenkin' warrant" rule applies to the lovable goons who rummage through your underwear when you enter the U.S. They could use the government-mandated back-door to look through your phone, tablet or laptop. (Which is why seasoned travelers take sterile devices with them.)

As for the FBI's promises that they'd never, ever look at your shit without a court order, I submit that we all know what such assurances have been worth in the past: Absolutely nothing.

It would be like giving a copy of your house key to the cops if they promise that they never, ever would even think of coming by without a warrant, or any of the pasta-gazillion warrant exceptions that let them enter on their well-testilied whims.

Shocker of the Day: Big Corporations are Tax Cheats!

Apple has to pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) - plus billions more in interest - in back taxes to Ireland after the European Union found Tuesday that the U.S. technology giant contributed almost no tax across the bloc's 28 countries for 11 years.
...
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that a three-year investigation found Ireland granted such lavish tax breaks to Apple that the multinational's effective corporate tax rate on its European profits dropped from 1 percent in 2003 to a mere 0.005 percent in 2014.

So, if you made sixty grand, under Apple's tax rate, you'd pay three bucks in taxes. No wonder the Euros are not happy.

Warm up the tar and grab the pitchforks.

The Affluenza Rapists

Brock Turner, the former Stanford University student and swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman in 2015, is expected to be released from the Santa Clara County Jail this Friday, September 2, after serving only half of his six-month sentence.

And, one time-zone to the east:

A University of Colorado student convicted of sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman will not have to serve a prison sentence, a judge ruled on Wednesday with a decision that has sparked outrage from victims’ advocates and closely resembles the case of Stanford swimmer Brock Turner.

A jury convicted Austin James Wilkerson, 22, of sexually assaulting a “helpless” woman on 15 March 2014 when prosecutors say he “isolated and raped the half-conscious victim” after he had told his friends at a St Patrick’s Day celebration that he was going to take care of her.

As I have said before, if these clowns were Dwayne from the 'hood, they'd each be doing ten-plus years in their respective state pens.

Rape is a crime of violence. But as we've seen before, if you're a white with a good legal team, you're not going to do much time for your crime. Hell, even Robert Durst got to allegedly whack a number of people without being convicted (yet).

No Additional Comment Required in This Election Year

(From here, of course.)

Greed and Pharmacology

Whether it is bribes to pharmacy benefit managers (or extortion by them) or greedy pharma companies, the price of insulin is skyrocketing.

Some of this shit reminds me of a story Bill Mauldin told about when the Army in 1943 sent over supplies of cold-weather clothing and boots for the front-line soldiers in the Italian campaign. By the time the REMFs and the garritroopers helped themselves, there wasn't enough to go around for the GIs on the front lines.

The insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are leeches. And since they all have the very best congressmen that their money can buy, fat chance anything will be fixed.

(H/T)

Well, Fuck. Gene Wilder is Dead.

Gene Wilder, the frizzy-haired actor who brought his deft comedic touch to such unforgettable roles as the neurotic accountant in "The Producers" and the deranged animator of "Young Frankenstein," has died. He was 83.

Wilder's nephew said Monday that the actor and writer died late Sunday at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, from complications from Alzheimer's disease.