The Bill Cosby rape allegations. The story I don't want to blog about, but feel I must.

Just in case you have been living in a cave, with no access to any television or internet whatsoever, here is what is happening with Bill Cosby:

The rape-allegation maelstrom swirling around Bill Cosby rages: Three more women accused the comedian of sexual assault on Thursday, while producers behind The Cosby Show claimed ignorance. Actress Louisa Moritz, who played Rose in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, told TMZ that Cosby forced her to engage in oral sex before a 1971 Tonight Show appearance; Carla Ferrigno (Lou Ferrigno's wife) told Rumorfix he attacked and grabbed her at a party in 1967; and Therese Serignese, a Florida nurse, told the Huffington Post that he drugged and raped her in 1976. She is one of 13 women who were set to testify against Cosby in a 2005 lawsuit before the case was settled.

I have been purposefully avoiding this topic because, well because I fucking love Bill Cosby.

I remember like it was yesterday when my elementary school teacher allowed me to listen to a Bill Cosby album for the first time, once I had finished my work before all of the other kids.

She brought out one of those listening centers, which featured an adapter with eight headphone jacks on it, and the other end stuck into an old school phonograph that was playing the comedy album.

I don't remember which one it was, but holy crap was it funny.

I laughed so hard and so long that the teacher had to unplug me because I was disturbing the other children, though she promised I could finish it later in the day when the other students were not taking a test.

After that I listened to ALL of his comedy albums, and followed his career obsessively.

I of course was also a big fan of the Cosby Show, which I naively believed was a depiction of his actual life.

So to be honest, I just don't want to hear this. Not do I want to talk about it. I just don't want to.

However there is one name mentioned above that has changed my mind.

Carla Ferrigno.

Now she may not be well known to you, but in my teens I was an avid bodybuilder and a big fan of Lou Ferrigno. So I know all about his marriage to the incredibly sweet and supportive Carla.

So for some reason the fact that she has come forward with a story about being attacked by Cosby, kind of broke the emotional dam for me, and I feel that this is now something that simply cannot ignore.

It is NOT that I did not believe the other women, because I did. It is because until I felt a personal connection to the story I just felt it was something better left to others to cover.

It's not about Alaska, it's not about politics, it's not about religion, and it's not about Sarah Palin so I guess I thought I could give it a pass.

Not anymore.

And part of the reason I feel that way has to do with Sarah Palin.

You know how we are always bitching about reporters ignoring babygate because talking about it makes them uncomfortable, or they would really rather not know the truth? 

Well that was what I was doing with this story. I don't like the facts that I am hearing so I don't want to report on them.

Same thing. And that makes me a hypocrite.

Well not anymore.

Bill Cosby is now a 77 year old man, but that does not mean that what he did should be swept under the carpet. Nor should it mean that he can continue to pretend to be a person that has little resemblance to who he is in real life.

If this were one incident in his youth, perhaps this could be chalked up to a drunken episode that he never repeated again. But this is not that. If the evidence is true, and there is no reason at this time to doubt that it is, than Cosby is a serial rapist who used drugs, alcohol, and sometimes force to take sexual advantage of young women. And THAT makes him the worst possible kind of man.

Here is the AP interview that everybody is talking about.

Did you see that? He not only refused to discuss these allegations, but he then attempted to bully the reporter into not releasing the video.

Clearly this is a tactic that has worked well for him in the past, and he must believe he can continue to suppress these stories and live the lie that he has lived all of these years.

In my job I have worked with quite a few sexual predators in the past and this is how they operate.  They blame the victim, they minimize the actual assault, and then they attempt to bully people into silence.

Bill Cosby's accusers deserve justice. And Bill Cosby should not be above that justice.

If we impeach Presidents for using executive privilege to alter immigration laws, then how did these avoid a similar fate?

Courtesy of Pensito Review: 

Pres. Dwight Eisenhower: 

1956 

By executive order, circumvented immigration quotas to allow 900 orphans to join their adoptive families in the U.S. 

1956-1958 

By executive order, allowed 31,000 Hungarian anti-Soviet insurgents to emigrate. 

1959-72 

By executive order, allowed 600,000 Cubans fleeing Castro to emigrate. 

Pres. Gerald Ford: 

1975 

By executive order, allowed 360,000 refugees, mostly from from Vietnam, to emigrate. 

1976 

By executive order, allowed 14,000 Lebanese nationals to emigrate. 

Pres. Ronald Reagan: 

1981 

By executive order, allowed 7,000 Polish anti-Communists to emigrate. 

1982 

Allowed 15,000-plus Ethiopians to emigrate. 

1987 

By executive order, rescinded deportation of 200,000 Nicaraguans. 

1987 

By executive order, deferred deportation of undocumented children of 100,000 families. 

George H.W. Bush: 

1989 

By executive order, deferred deportations of Chinese students. 

1989 

By executive order, reversed visa denials of 7,000 Soviets, Indochinese. 

1990 

By executive order, deferred deporations of previously amnestied citizens’ 1.5 million spouses and children. 

1991 

By executive order, deferred deportation of 2,000 Gulf War evacuees. 

1992 

By executive order, deferred deportations of 190,000 El Salvadorans. 

George W. Bush: 

2002 

By executive order, expedited naturalization for green-card holders who joined military. 

2005 

By executive order, deferred deportation of students affected by Hurricane Katrina. 

2006 

By executive order, enabled 1,500 Cuban physicians to seek asylum at US embassies. 

2007 

By executive order, deferred deportation of 3,600 Liberians.

Strange but I remember hearing nothing about impeachment, or the threat of impeachment, concerning any of these "amnesties." 

Is it just the fact that they are Republicans that protects from conservative anger at their "shredding of the Constitution?"  Or is there another differnce that I just can't quite put my finger on right now that sets President Barack Obama apart from his predecessors?

Bristol Palin, or at least the woman who plays Bristol Palin on the internet, is horrified by mother of 47 year old Down syndrome son saying she wishes she had aborted him.

Okay so just for fun I tool a jaunt over to the Brancy's blog to see what's up in the land of denial.

As it turns out Nancy French and Bristol, assuming Bristol has read what it printed under her name, are very, very upset at an article in the Daily Mail about a 69 year old woman's heartbreaking admission that she wishes she had never had her Down syndrome son, now 47 years old.

Here is what Brancy had to say:

I can’t even believe what I just read. Gillian Relf, the mother of a 47-year-old man with Down syndrome, publicly said she wishes she’d had an abortion. Her son has made her life so difficult, she wishes he had never been allowed to live. 

Can you actually claim to love someone and wish they were dead at the same time? 

If that’s not horrifying enough, she spoke “in support of the 92 per cent of women who choose to abort their babies after discovering they have Down’s syndrome.” Parents of children with Down syndrome (including my own parents!) have shown the greatest demonstration of selfless love I’ve ever seen. To read this mom’s statements that are so opposite is just stunning.

Actually I think that any person who has sat at the bedside of a dying loved one knows exactly what it is like to love somebody and wish them dead at the same time. At some point their pain is just impossible to endure and all you want is for them to find peace, even if it means you will never have them in your life again. 

Brancy goes on to say this: 

My family probably wouldn’t have chosen to have a child with Down syndrome. But God gave us Trig – and our family wouldn’t be complete without him! Now, I realize that kids with Down syndrome are amazing and wonderful – we are soooooo blessed to have him in our lives.

Actually that is a lie. Her family absolutely DID choose to have Trig in their lives. He is not Sarah's child, and I have no reason to believe that he is Bristol's child, so yes he was absolutely brought into the family as a choice. (Hopefully I will have more on that at a later date.)

By the way the woman, Gillian Relf, anticipated this response and this is what she said in the article:

But I'd challenge any one of them to walk a mile in the shoes of mothers like me, saddled for life as I am, with a needy, difficult, exasperating child who will never grow up, before they judge us. They should experience how it feels to parent a grown man, who is no more able to care for himself than a toddler - and at a time of life when your children should, all things being equal, be taking care of you. They should know how it feels to live every single day under a crushing weight of guilt. They should know how it feels to watch Stephen's constant suffering and witness the almost daily destruction wreaked on all our lives. 

As you all know I actually work with children and parents who are dealing with Down syndrome, FAS, ADHD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, PTSD,  Mental Retardation, etc., and I can tell you that wishing not to have had a child with such complicated and disruptive issues is almost universal among the parents.

They don't always say it out loud to support staff, but they certainly discuss it in private, and sometimes you can simply see it written all over their faces.

The idea that all babies are a gift from God and that HE will provide you with the strength to deal with any complications which might arise is happy holy horseshit.

The truth is that sometimes these parents simply have to give up and walk away, and put their children into residential facilities or foster homes. Sometime they mistreat their children out of sheer frustration, even though they realize it is not the child's fault. And sometimes they contemplate, or actually follow through with, plans to take their own lives. (One of the worse cases I ever dealt with.)

We have already seen that Sarah is having significant trouble parenting Trig, and let me tell you that is only going to get worse, especially when he hits his teen years.

I predict right here and now that Trig ends up in a facility, either in state or out, that will care for him within the next ten years or so.

Simply put neither Sarah Palin, or any of her family members, have the intelligence or patience to deal with a Down syndrome child for the long haul.

And that is why judging this poor woman, who has spent the last 47 years selflessly putting her child's needs above her own, should never be done by the likes of Bristol Palin.

OR her internet doppelganger.