Nuts.

In response to the Copenhagen Climate Summit, some other "scientists" are holding an alternative meeting down the street, where they are telling The Real Truth about global warming. One of them apparently is advancing the shocking thesis that the Earth is warmed by the Sun, rather than by the rays of light from Jesus' heart.

One thing I've never understood about skeptics of global warming is that their conspiracy theory involves vast sums of money. One Graeme Capper of some nutty organization says, ""There are people who know they are lying and do it simply for money and others who think they are doing good," he said. "But they not good scientists."(I don't know whether to put sic there or not, since I don't know if Graeme speaks pidgin English or if it was just poorly transcribed.) My right-wing boss once gave me a "book" called The Green Conspiracy, or something like that (there's no way I'm looking this up), and the premise of the book was that all these scientists were making scads, tons, piles of money by taking part in this conspiracy. To which I say, quoi? Do these people have any idea what the academy pays? Do they not understand that people who get Ph.D.s have voluntarily chosen to spend 6-8 prime earning years making slightly less than a gas station attendant?

In this alternate reality, liberal elitists with all their fancy book learning are making millions of dollars lying to ordinary people, just cold forcing people to recycle and not dump sewage into streams even though the Founding Fathers SAID WE COULD SHIT WHEREVER WE WANTED IT'S IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS PEOPLE. Meanwhile, those oil companies who are booking record profits every quarter? Just altruistic truth-tellin' Real Americans, clearly.

Men in Dresses

I've been reading the book Hitler's Pope by John Cornwell. It's a fine book, though it really can be boiled down to: Pope Pius XII could have done something other than collude with the Nazis, but he didn't, and here are 100 examples. It does not make me regret leaving the Catholic Church.

I haven't been to a Catholic church since 1997 or so. At some point I realized: 1) A lot of unmarried and (officially) childless men, wearing dresses, were talking very earnestly about the importance of traditional gender roles and the nuclear family. This just seemed somehow a bit off. 2) More importantly: a lot of these preachy moralizing men were actually abusing children, lots of children, over many years, and the church hierarchy was often complicit in these abuses. The church actively sought to protect abusive priests (though much of the attention has been focused on pedophile priests who abused boys, I think it's vital to remember that many girls and women were also harassed, raped, abused, and exploited by priests). Around the time that this scandal leaked out, the pope-before-this-pope got all shirty about the possibility of women becoming priests, like it was just totally unthinkable and wrong and wasn't going to happen on his watch, etc. Aha, I thought, this is it: pedophile priests, okay, women priests, totally not okay. Now we're all clear, and I can do something else with my Sunday mornings.

A recent and lengthy report in Ireland details sadly familiar abuses and cover-ups. Meanwhile, the current pope, Pope Very Scary German Man IX, goes about the place acting as if the last 1500 years of history (and in particular, the last 100 years or so) have never happened at all and we should all just forget about trifling things like birth control and women's rights and the HIV epidemic in Africa, but make sure to send money to those nice men in fabulous hats and red leather shoes, c/o The Vatican, Rome, Italy. It's as if he has seen Somewhere in Time, and he hopes that if he and the cardinals just dress up in period clothes and concentrate really really hard, we'll all wake up in a previous century.

And now, for something completely different.

I have made the heroic decision: I will avoid writing about Sarah Palin in today's blog post. I will instead write about how the world is ending. You're welcome.

As all of the leaders of the developed world have decided to treat the Copenhagen Climate meeting as a nice junket amongst the beautiful Danes, rather than a chance to press forward with meaningful coordinated action, this seems like a good time to find out that climate change is quickening. Scientists have been concerned about a feedback loop for some time, realizing that as the ice at the Poles and elsewhere melted, more dark surface area of the Earth would be exposed, absorbing rather than reflecting heat. This would in turn mean more of the sun's heat was retained, melting more of the ice, which would again decrease reflective surfaces, which would make the Earth warmer, and so on, and so on. As this happened, the time in between each of these things would get shorter, causing everything to cycle more rapidly, increasing the pace of climate change. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a series of wrist-slitting articles about this in New Yorker a while back, in case you're interested, but your time might be better spent building a boat/moving to high ground/deciding to believe in Jesus, just in case.

So anyway, yeah, that worst case scenario is now the actual scenario. But what's cool about this is it's not like voters in 2100, as they paddle to the polls, can rectroactively punish politicians from 2009 who failed to act by unelecting them...unless that large hadron collider in Bern has some more interesting applications than we currently know.

Update 11/25: Obama will, after all, be traveling to Copenhagen and will be offering a specific commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

Doing the Right Thing: The Democratic Edition

So it's no secret that I hold the Republicans in the House and Senate in near-universal contempt. At best, they are pork-rolling blowhards; at worst, they are misogynistic racist hypocritical blowhards. There are several who seem to me to be actually, perhaps certifiably, crazy, and then there's the orange one. Finally, all of them commit the unforgivable sin of being boring (a sin for which their Democratic counterparts must also confess, and do penance, hopefully involving watching their own speeches on the House or Senate floor on a repeating loop for all eternity).

But the Democrats, the fucking Democrats. I loathe the Republicans, but I don't have to vote for them. Great! But I also loathe the Democrats, and I do have to vote for them. Fuck! Democracy in this country seems to have come down to a choice between batshit insanity (seriously, "Creationism"? "Death panels?" "Glenn Beck?") and corporate sellouts. Now that they might start debating the Health Care Reform bill (seriously? again. Didn't everybody already have a chance to get up with some pretty charts and pictures their interns made for them and say crazy shit, like our friend Virginia Foxx from right he-yah in Nor' Carolinah) suddenly there are a bunch of Democrats who see this as a chance to hold the bill hostage in order to loot the treasury for their own state. Mary Landrieu, for instance, has inserted into this monstrosity of a bill language that gives a bunch of money to her state, Louisiana, without actually calling it "Louisiana." Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas has courageously come out against the public option, American Hero that she is.

And Joe Lieberman, I can't even TALK about Joe Lieberman, because there aren't enough drugs in the house to sedate me afterwards. All of these politicians are using a bill which should help tens of millions of their fellow citizens (who are, in fact, human beings who deserve health care as much (or more!) than these assholes in Congress) to do the kind of thing Americans already hate them for--porkbarelling, power-hungry, lobbyist-driven politics. Rather than actually considering what might be for the good of the nation, they are using this for their own personal and political gains.

A plague on both their houses.

All Palin, All the Time...

Is not what I'm intending this blog to be. Nonetheless, between Palin lashing out at the Newsweek cover as "sexist" and The Guardian writing an article about Michelle Bachman ("The new wave of female firebrands striking fear into the heart of liberal America") I just couldn't resist. It's like a mild ongoing irritation, somewhat similar to eczema--an itch that begs to be scratched.

Anyway. It makes my little women's head spin when I consider these two radical Christians (let's not call them conservatives, because they do not want to conserve anything, they want to make things other than what they are, to make reality conform to some fantastic fiction in their mind of What Should Be and How People Should Act) get to have it both ways. Not in a fun, sexy way, although since they are Christian Republicans, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out they were having things many, many ways, but the whole "Women's libbers have ruined Merka and motherhood and killed babies" sacred-unchanging-gender-roles thing, coexisting with getting to scream sexism about any criticism leveled at them. Nonononononono, you don't get to do that! You think people should be sexist! You think people should be defined by their gender and sexual orientation! You can't (Sarah Palin) take advantage of your femininity (you think Bill Kristol liked you for your appreciation of French film and your subtle critique of Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht? Think again, sister) and then be all offended when people comment on your looks and femininity. If you weren't all about having it both ways, you wouldn't have dragged your kids, Basket, Hamper, and Window, hither and yon to prove that you were a nice, soft, vagina-endowed American and not a scaaaaary, mean, castrating and possibly secret-penis-having lady like Hillary.

In short, as I may have mentioned in this blog one or a hundred times before, it is just so irritating (scratch scratch scratch) that these women who are themselves power hungry harpies walk through the doors that the women's movement and women themselves have pried open and then just shit on everything the women's movement has stood for and done. Like they would have gotten where they are without the women's movement. Like Sarah Palin would have been anything but a question in Alaskan Trivial Pursuit if it wasn't for Hilary Rodham Clinton and her hard work and accomplishments. It was Hillary who scared the Republicans enough to even think about nominating a woman, and Hilary has paid the price for being who she is--a tough, highly educated, highly achieving, non-cookie baking woman--over and over again. The scrutiny and insults that Hillary has endured are a price that Palin is unwilling to pay. She wants her medals of honor without having ever seen battle. I call bullshit.

Update: Here's a quote from Going Rogue that I would have added to my "Actual Student Quotes" list, had it been turned in to me: "In national politics, some feel that Big Business is always opposed to the Little Guy. Some people seem to think a profit motive is inherently greedy and evil, and that what's good for business is bad for people. (That's what Karl Marx thought too.)" And everyone knows that Karl Marx was wrong about everything!

And, yes, I fixed the spelling of Hillary's name.

Rogueish

So Sarah Palin "wrote" a book. Her continued relevance astonishes me, but then, so do the Birther/Teabagger people (recently seen on a bumper sticker: TEABAGGING IS FOR NUTS). For example, this whole thing in the NY-23 race, where the Republican candidate--who was leading in the polls--was pushed out by her own party in favor of a "real conservative" who promptly lost the race, giving the Democrats a seat they had not won in 100 years. (Thanks!) Amazingly, this loss was then claimed as a "victory" by the grassroots crazy movement.

Perhaps if mental health care was better funded in this country, some of these people could get the help they so evidently need.

Media Matters is having a good time documenting the inaccuracies in the book and in Palin's public appearances. One thing that continues to bother me is Palin's valorization--both by herself and by Christian conservatives such as James Dobson--for choosing to have her baby even after learning that he had Down Syndrome. The key point here is choice, and from Palin's perspective there should have been no choice other than to have the child. So she should not be lauded for that decision which was no decision. Without choice there is no virtue.

So, Funny!

For the laffs, I tried to find out how much it would cost certain people (that is, Senators, who currently have just fantastic awesome healthcare: John McCain, Joe Lieberman, various idiots from Alabama/Arkansas/Alaska) how much it would cost for them to buy health insurance on the "open" market. Hahahah, though, the first three Senators I tried all qualify for Medicare. So even if their lush, single payer, publicly provided, taxpayer supported health care were to suddenly be taken away because the American people suddenly became rational and voted them out of office (note to self--do Senators/Congresspeople get health insurance even after leaving office? If so, consider running for Congress--2 years of work for a lifetime of free health insurance? Deal.) they would still get single payer, publicly provided, taxpayer supported health care.

Oh. The hilarious. It burns.

Sorrows

"We wasters of sorrows!
How we stare away into sad endurance beyond them,
trying to foresee their end! Whereas they are nothing else
than our winter foliage, our sombre evergreen, one of the seasons of our
interior year,--not only season--they're also place, settlement, camp, soil,
dwelling".

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Weeping Weemens, Part One

There have been a number of articles recently about the happiness, or lack thereof, of women. In this case, the discussion has largely been spurred by a Wharton study that showed that women today are less happy than they were in 1972. This is supposedly a counterintuitive finding, since apparently one would expect that women today would be ever so much more fulfilled, what with being allowed to be in the workplace without having their asses pinched and so forth. That hoary old anecdote about Freud ("After all zeze years, I still do not know vat vomen vant") has been giving a good airing. Then there's the inevitable anti-feminist smugness on the right: "Okay, so you got what you wanted. Happy now? No? Well, hafuckinghahaha. P.S. God hates you."

Which brings me to today's topic: "Why I stopped studying feminist theory." Basically, it's this: feminist theory has not come to terms with the fact that what we've "won" as women in the last 30 years seems to be only the right to work harder and longer than before. It's right to point out, as many women of color have done, that the stay-at-home mother model (the source of Friedan's discontent in The Feminine Mystique) was a distinctly middle class model. Few women of color had the opportunity to develop the malaise of the suburban housewife. Still, feminist theory, and feminism, is dead today because it fails to address this issue: apart from almost all women having to participate in the workforce (because of the decline in real wages and the astronomical increase in costs of living over the last 30 years, making it very difficult to support a family on one paycheck) not much has really changed and not much is all that much better. Whereas in the 1970s there was recognition of the essentially inegalitarian nature of society, there was also a concurrent hope that this, too, could be remedied. Now, we are bankrupt of this hope. Having won the "right" to work in jobs that are often mind-numbing, bereft of actual human meaning and purpose, for 40 hours a week, and then continue to do all of the work we always had to do of caring for our partners, children, and households, seems like a fucking hollow victory.

In the meantime, some people have taken some parts of feminism to heart: men. Feminism has liberated men from the idea that they are or should be responsible for the fiscal well-being of their family. It has freed them from feeling that, before they have or start a family, they need to demonstrate their capability and independence, their reliability and consistency: in other words, that they need to have, and keep, a J.O.B. These are now considered quaint notions. Thanks, feminism!

In the meantime, most men have not felt a concurrent increase in responsibility for other forms of care for their family and household, namely, doing the fucking dishes. What has happened, it seems to me, is that now it all falls to women: financial caring and physical caring. Men know if they do not do it--whatever it is--well, someone will; and women know that that someone is them. This is an incredible burden, and it is hard to see the upside. Most women don't feel more happy because most women don't feel more free.

Perhaps it is (in fact, it just is) unfair to lay this solely on a failure of feminist theory. Perhaps the absence of real, material social change after the Third Wave is exactly why feminist theorists now spend most of their time tinkering at the margins, hanging out in postmodern world where things aren't things at all. Especially in the United States, women's roles have changed but society (and consequently government) has adamantly refused to accept that this is the case. Women would be happier if they had help and support: subsidized day care, paid parental leave, a functioning educational system and, you know, universal goddamn healthcare. This is at least in part why our sisters in Sweden and Denmark are happier than we are.

Instead, American women, with an energy that is truly incredible, keep trying to hold it all together. For the most part, they succeed--but it leaves little energy for advocating for a more just and equitable distribution of resources.

(Image at top is a magnet by Ann Taintor.)

Seekers

In California, one becomes accustomed to the fact that a certain number of people one meets (say, one in ten) is on a quest of some kind. They are searching for something--many things--and they go through books and gurus and retreats and crystals, only to remain, usually, in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. It's modern ennui, but draped in purple batik wall hangings and scented with incense. It's essentially the American Dream of total fulfillment, with a spiritual rather than a material end.

So these are the people who would pay $9,695 to attend a "spiritual warrior" retreat in Sedona led by some guy who apparently made 9.4 million dollars in 2008 by selling snake oil. Snake oil being, in this case, videos, books, CDs about getting everything you ever wanted, but doing so by manipulating the universe to your own ends (that is, a variation on The Secret*). Three of the participants in this particular sweat lodge actually died, which reminded me of two things: one, Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority, and two, the lengths to which Americans will go to get everything, the denial of the satisfaction of low expectations (as the happiest people in the world, the Danes who are interviewed often say that they benefit from having low expectations--they just want a normal, comfortable life). There is something so childish, it seems to me, about this idea: that we can have everything we want, all the time; that the universe exists to fulfill our wishes.

It makes me sad to think of these people literally killing themselves to try to get somewhere else, to be someone else, to find answers when there are none.

*For the best review I've ever read on Amazon, scroll down to the first review for The Secret, by one Ari Broullette. Sir, I salute you.

Obam-over-it

Flipping through my cell phone, deleting old--very old--text messages, I came across the texts from Election Day last November. Although I was not an Obama supporter at the level of many of my friends, among whom there was a lot of Hoping and Believing and Can-Doing, I was rather proud that the U.S. had pulled it together and voted for a black man with a funny name. The Republicans made it easier, of course, by nominating McGrumpy and the Wasillabilly (so, thanks!).

I knew that Obama was not going to be the second coming of FDR, and that if we were lucky, he would land one-cigar's-width to the left of Clinton and hang out. But--and here's where I was standing in my own puddle of lukewarm hope--I did think that maybe he would be assertive in his leadership. Okay, okay, actually, of course what I wanted was for him to kick the Republicans in the teeth, a la Preznit "I just won 50.9% of the vote? That's a mandate, dammit! Let's invade another country! Whatsay, Dick?" [Cheney: "Sure, George. Here's your little wooden horsey. Giddyap."]

Instead, it's all "We definitely will have universal health care...or maybe that's a little strong...maybe we'll just have a public plan people can pay for themselves, on the market...maybe we'll just give children doctor's visits every other Thursday in November...well, perhaps we can just mail out coupons for free thermometers, and some band-aids"* or "Stockbrokers should definitely not do this!...or, okay, well, so they shouldn't have done that, but we will talk very sternly to them about it and ask them to count to at least ten the next time they decide to tank our economy. Okay, count to three. Can we just count to three?"

I saw Strobe Talbott, of the Brookings Institution, give a talk last week. He said that it was crucial that Obama win the vote on health care, so that he can claim it as a victory and then move on to other pieces of legislation that are pressing--climate change and arms control. These two issues--global warming and the proliferation of nuclear weapons--were, he felt, the two threats that endanger the future of humanity. I certainly agree with the second assertion; I'm less convinced about the first. Is something better than nothing? If the bill is bloated, and costly, and doesn't give many people a tangible benefit, I fear we will lose not only 2010 but possibly the White House in 2012. Not only will the Obama administration be tagged with all of the failures of the bill, but they will also be painted as wishy-washy, the party, once again, that can't seem to engage all of its gears at once. Or even any of its gears at all. If Obama does pass a weak bill, something like the Baucus bill, then he better hope that he can get through cap-and-trade in a hurry, before the midterm punishment happens.

*Cf.: ""I favor a public option. We're going to do our very best to have a public option. But remember, a public option is a relative term," Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday."

The Obama Blitz

Probably not the best word to use when referring to this particular President, but away we go anyway. Over the weekend, President Obama made the Stations of the Cross, going around to talk shows to try to 'splain 'splain 'splain about this here socialistic whatchamagummit. The Times reports that "Obama Insists that Insurance Will Be Affordable". Apparently, middle class families in the $66,000 to $88,000 range--essentially two parents working, with average jobs--will "only" be asked to pay up to 11 to 13% of their income for insurance. I mean, what the hell, that's only tuition at a relatively good state school for little Johnny or Suzy, am I right? And, by the way, is this 11-to-13% of pre-tax income? Even better. It's like tithing! Only to the insurance industry.

Again there was some talk of "subsidies" for people who couldn't afford to pay the premium, but not a peep about price controls other than "expanding competition." Perhaps we will all buy our insurance through ebay! Or the drug market. I can just see the black market of health insurance right now: "You want your low co-pays? I got your $10 office visits right here..."

The whole thing about subsidies without price controls is weird--it seems to me like the government will then be on the hook for a whole lot more than they're bargaining for, and more than it would cost to just give people insurance. If we have to subsidize the amount that the insurance companies will charge parents of children with special needs, for instance, then we're going to be into it for something like $5000 a month, when we could have, you know, just allowed them to buy into Medicare. Oh, AND the subsidies are in the form of tax credits, which I somehow hadn't caught before, so you'll still have to pay your tithe up front, and then you'll get a store credit for it. With which you can buy an F-22. I hear they're cheap these days.

But the fun part, for me, was reading this quote, from the same article: “Right now, everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance,” Mr. Obama said on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on ABC. “Nobody considers that a tax increase.” Here, Mr. President, is one disgruntled citizen who does realize that that is a tax increase, a particularly regressive tax, a massive transfer of wealth (let's say it again) to private, for-profit companies. I have to pay GEICO so that I can pay the state to register my car. It's a great system.

I remember when they made car insurance mandatory, my mom thought it was ridiculous. She thought, why not just charge everyone a penny more per gallon, and provide basic insurance coverage for everyone with a license? If people wanted more insurance, they could of course buy more. This would take largely take care of the problem of uninsured drivers as well (which, in my part of California, meant another $10-$20 a month for people with insurance, because there were so many uninsured people driving). And, fairly enough, the people who consumed more gas, and who were therefore on the road more and more likely to be in an accident, paid more. Mom's current idea is that we tax toilet paper to pay for health care--an extra 5 cents a roll, and health care for everybody.

On Craigslist

Ah, Craigslist. Like the proverbial little girl-with-the-curl, when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's horrid. Idly scanning through housing listings, I have discovered a few things. In our area, most of the postings are by apartment complex managers, who seem to post multiple times a day with slightly varying descriptions ("Fantastic Carrboro apartments!! Only one left!" and then a few postings down, the same apartment complex: "Multiple floorplans available! Convenient to everything!"). I believe I have discovered a Craigslist law, to wit: the more exclamation points in the description/title, the less likely it is you want whatever it is that is being titled. The amount of exclamation points in listings for housing, for example, seems directly proportional to how depressing the apartment complex actually is. If it's in ALL CAPS and with EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! then there has probably been a murder/suicide in the complex in the last month--but your drug dealer will be CONVENIANTLEY [sic] NEARBY!

No Public Option, Then Just...No.

I listened very carefully to the President's speech last week. Here's the thing that I find really unnerving, and no one seems to be asking questions about it: what about price controls? The whole rhetoric of "no one will be denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition" [applause applause] "because we're going to outlaw it" [applause applause]...well, here's the thing. Really, no one is denied insurance right now because of a pre-existing condition. I bet that if you're willing to pay $25,000 a month, you could probably get insurance no matter what kind of chronic illness you have. Of course, it would then probably cost more than you would pay out-of-pocket for your treatments, but whatever. It's meaningless to say that insurance companies won't be able to do this, that, or the other thing, when they can easily say, "Oh, no, we offered Parents-of-Child-With-Leukemia coverage, and they didn't take it" when the Parents-of-Child-With-Leukemia were offered a totally unaffordable premium. Not one person in the Obama administration has said word one about capping what the insurance companies can charge people who are now required to purchase health insurance.

This makes me deeply suspicious. After all, I have had to pay auto insurance for the last 15 years--required to do so in order to get a license and register my car--and I therefore consider this a tax that I pay for which I have yet to receive anything. Now, I'm sure that as I type this a tree branch is swinging threateningly over my car and I'll have to come back and xxxx this sentence out, because of the karma. But the point is, I, and a hundred million other people, have been forced by the government to support private, for-profit companies. It's fucking lame, is what it is, and now we're seeing the lamery repeated on a much, much larger scale. I don't care about paying taxes to a democratically elected government who I can (theoretically) hold accountable for services which I, or my loved ones, will receive. I am a big fan of the post office, public schools, public libraries, municipal water and sewage treatment facilities, public immunization programs, and so on, and so forth. I am much much less a fan of being forced to essentially tithe my income so that a C.E.O. of some insurance company (who is totally unaccountable to me or any of his customers) can buy that vacation home in St. Bart's for his third trophy wife.

Is anyone else at all concerned about this? Does no one else hear the insurance companies fappity-fapping away at the thought of the tens of millions of people who will now be their unwilling dupes--er, "clients"--at whatever rates they choose to charge? And that this is why they've been so surprisingly docile during this whole carnival?

Oh, Obama did say that if one couldn't afford this new mandatory help-the-rich-get-richer charity donation, then one could get a waiver. Not, my fellow Americans, a waiver of payment, or a voucher for insurance. No, you could just get a waiver so that you wouldn't get in trouble for not purchasing your overpriced bullshit SupraEcono(trademark!) Insurance Plan. Which, it seems to me, does not actually solve any problems for anyone at all--those who most need health insurance will still not get it. They will just have to fill out paperwork now, showing why they cannot afford the thing the government requires them to have, but for which the government will not pay.

So, fuck it. No public option (p.s. still pretty lame--it will start happening in fucking four years, on some insurance exchange whatever? By which time who knows how many people will have actually died because they didn't say that they once had a blister this one time, during band camp?) no fucking dice.

Irrationality

The reluctance of the American public to accept even the option of a public health care system (which, after all, should only increase competition and make the market more efficient: if government run programs are as inefficient as critics claim, then the more efficient private insurers should easily win out, right? There is little evidence, it seems to me, for the idea that private industries are less wasteful than public utilities, but whatever) seems so odd. After all, ultimately, they are being offered something, which they may take or leave, but why does it seem so threatening?

This highlights an essential fact which neither economists nor political scientists have fully assimilated: people are not particularly rational most of the time. I'm reading Kahneman's paper/lecture on "Bounded Rationality" and in it, he says: “The value of a good to an individual appears to be higher when the good is viewed as something that could be lost or given up than when the same good is evaluated as a potential gain” (Kahneman et al., 1990, 1991; Tversky and Kahneman 1991). This explains, in part, the resistance to the change. The good that people have--in this case, half-assed insurance provided through employment by companies which have a monopoly on a particular market--suddenly seems much more valuable because people believe they will lose it. Whereas previously, anyone who had any experience with filing a claim with their health insurance company should be aware that the private insurance offered is just, simply, not very good.

Of course, this leaves unexplained the people who do not have any kind of insurance who are opposing this reform. Perhaps they think that the good they might one day have will be taken away from them even before they have it?

The Los Angeles Times had an interesting piece up today about the way firefighting serviced used to be privately provided. People in a certain neighborhood would pay a subscription for the support of a firefighting company. Soon it became apparent that this was a public good (fires not being great respecters of imaginary lines) and that if your neighbor's house caught on fire, your own was at risk. We all pay for the lack of public health care in this country, which creates a system of perverse incentives for everyone involved.

The Need for Boldness...and Universal Coverage

It is so frustrating to see the Democrats rocking back on their heels, once again shocked, shocked by the misinformation and outright lies about the health care plan. As usual, they look like kids who are new to the schoolyard and keep trying to give the bullies lunch so they won't get beaten up. So they give the bullies their lunch (and their lunch money, and their favorite sweatshirt) and guess what happens? They get beaten up anyway.

The Republicans were never going to support this health care reform, period. What they are doing is coyly holding out the idea that if only certain changes are made, certain things are stripped from the bill, then maybe they'll consider voting for it. And the Democrats, who seem to want to do this bipartisan bullshit (why? who cares? what's the electoral upside to this? I bet you a hundred fucking thousand dollars that no one in America votes based on whether or not someone is "bipartisan") keep falling for it. But what is really going on here is this: the Republicans will dangle their meaningless promises, and get the Democrats to effectively castrate their own bill. Any meaningful change will be eviscerated, and what will be left is a bloated, incomprehensible cluster of fuck that will do nothing, but somehow cost a kazillion dollars. All of the Republicans will still vote against the bill. Then, in the 2010 midterm elections, the Republicans will point to this bill, rightly call it bullshit, say "Government is not the solution to problems, government is the problem" and point out how they staunchly voted against it, because of the freedoms. Then the goddamn Republicans will win back the Senate and proceed to fuck the Democrats six ways from Sunday.

And all the Democrats will be shocked, shocked, that the Republicans are such mean old bullies.

The only health insurance reform worth contemplating is a system of universal coverage. It is the only way that Americans will have a simple answer to the question: what's in it for me? It is the only way to undercut the current propaganda which says that some people (some brown people) will get something at the expense of other people (some nice old white people). With a universal plan, everyone gets a health insurance card in the mail next week that they can then use to get actual health care. Just like Medicare. For everybody.

Sadly, though, it's party politics like it's 1999. Where once again we are reminded that Democrats too are corporate shills, bought and paid for, and they're not about to go against the insurance industry or the pharmaceutical industry. Even if it's better for people, better for the society, and essential for American businesses to remain competitive in the global market.

Thanks for the change, Obama. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

The Prosperity Gospel

I find Christian fundamentalism (of the American flavour) fascinating, and from time to time have lost myself in the woods of the Internet, following a breadcrumb trail about things like the Quiverfull movement, Proverbs 33 Women, male religious groups like the Promise Keepers, the Dugger family, and so on. Mentions of the "prosperity gospel" picked up a couple of years ago, but my plate was already pretty full with learning about how Proverbs 33 women escaped from the cruel shackles of "feministic thinking," so I passed.

The New York Times occasionally throws up these pieces of How the Religious Among Us Live, and today they had another article about more prosperity preachers. This couple, the Copelands, have a ministry worth 100 million dollars a year. They get this prosperity through the grace of God, of course, who moves lower-middle-class people to send them $2000 to get a new Gulfstream. So that they can fly around the world ministering to people, of course: because a merciful God would never want you to fly coach (actually, I think that this is true, and that airline travel will convince anyone of the absence of God).

I should get worked up about this, but it just makes me sad. And it also makes me think, not for the first and not for the last time, that the real racket is religion. I should start one of my own. The Eternal Church of Mockingness and Cynicism.

Howl.

So Sarah Palin (who has obviously become a bugbear of mine) recently posted to her Facebook page this gem: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Such a system would be 'downright evil,' indeed! It would be as if certain people had jobs which were rather arbitrarily decided to be worthwhile and deserving of healthcare (i.e., 'productive'), like C.E.O.s and Governors of Alaska, and others were equally arbitrarily decided to be not deserving, like the caregivers at daycare centers helping children with special needs.

This quote has been passed around the Intertubes, and Timothy Egan mentions it in the NYT today. I read Egan's post, and then scrolled down to the comments, expecting liberal solidarity, if not even groupthink. Instead, I found THE HORROR, THE HORROR, Real Americans:

'TJ': Yet, being an illegal citizen, who doesn’t even have the right to be in the US in the first place, will be eligible to have free health benefits, off the taxpayer’s money."

'Barbarian': Just attack the messenger, the only one with the spine to look at the fine print and the implications for privacy rights and human dignity...Personally, I don’t want my government, that also taxes my estate, getting involved in recommending a living will. LOL." [Is your estate worth a lot more than most, these days? Because the Estate Tax was basically repealed by your friends, the Republicans. I'm just sayin', LOFL.]

'Ogre' : "I see the combination of Obama, the Democrat Senate & Democrat House as a real danger because there is no real debate, no balance to hold the reins of a government that is growing, gathering power and repressing more & more personal rights." [ What a fascinating time to become concerned about all three branches being controlled by one party. It is CERTAINLY unprecedented.]

And, The One Who Made Me Stop Reading, because I do not have nearly enough hard alcohol in the house (let alone anti-depressants, which I can no longer get because I don't have healthcare, but what the hell, I'd be the last to say I'm a productive member of society) brace yourself for: 'Nancy Rody,' who writes,

"You still don’t get it. We are NOT Abortionists or Euthanasia supporters. We are Christians. We believe ALL life is sacred from the moment of conception. All life weather useful to society or not. It is that special quality that defines us as human beings.

God’s people are those who reach outside of themselves to love and care for others. I do not consider this a health bill but a death bill. A bill that sets up a commission to decide on who will live and who will die. It is promoted as being good for all Americans but it is a lie pushed on the American people by supporters of “Planned Parenthood” and other groups that helped form this legislation.

This comment may end up on Obama’s email blacklist. Put there by a politician who has not read the bill or a “Death Care” supporter but I would rather be on that list than to stand before God and say I did not fight back against this legislation. Also, please make sure my name is in bold extra large lettering. I admire John Hancock for putting his life on the line by signing the Declaration of Independence in a bold and large hand."

Writerly Envy

I wish I had written this, (in re: Sarah Palin): "It's like Peggy Noonan, Jack London, and William Faulkner wandered into the woods with three buttons of peyote and one typewriter, and only this speech emerged."

New Social Dilemmas: Facebook

To announce a relationship on Facebook or not: that is the question.

New Theory: The Entire State of Alaska is a Trailer Park

No, look, I know, it's supposed to be a beautiful place, despite the blackflies and the mosquitoes and the locals. Caribou and salmon and endangered wilderness and wildlife and whatnot.

And yet...Sarah Palin continues to give evidence that what I believe to be true is true, to wit: that it is amazing that no tornadoes have made their Wrath of God-ful way through Alaska yet. After all, we're talking about a family values, conservative Christian whose seventeen year old daughter was [allegedly! don't have your lawyer send me a letter] impregnated under her very own roof. And apparently everyone in Alaska knew about this little family matter before Palin was even selected to be McCain's running mate (oustanding due diligence, there. I imagine the people in charge of investigating her background are now crack analysts at the CIA...but at least they're not gay.)

What a nut.

I was not going to post about this (because why add my voice to the shrieking chorus, etc.) but then she just had to go and say this: "If she were in the White House, she said, the 'department of law' would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.'I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out,' she said. I particularly like the sotto voce snideness of the next line in the article: "There is no "Department of Law in the White House."

Unclear on the Concept

The California voters, in their usual good sense (this is what democracy looks like!), refused to raise taxes or borrow money from Wall Street in order to close the state budget deficit. The arc of tax cuts is long, but it bends towards bankruptcy.

This is a direct result of Ye Olde Voter Referenda, a direct democracy project that really sounds a lot better on paper than in practice. Prop 13 effectively froze property tax rates in California, so many people living in Malibu, for example, are still paying the same amount of property tax as they were in 1980. This is nonsense. People have therefore abrogated their responsibility to the community--and yes, I do believe that taxes are a civic responsibility. Prop 13 means that California is disproportionately dependent on income taxes and sales taxes for revenue, which in turn means that when the economy gets flushed down the Toilet of Capitalism everyone gets hit with the shit.

So now The Governator is going to cut...wait for it...food for children, health care for children, education (again!) for children. You know, because those mouthy little brats should really pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get to work already. No one is saying word one about cutting the budget for prisons, which is the state's largest expenditure other than education and social welfare. The Governator (and the Legislature) pushed through a bill for a $12 billion prison expansion--when? oh, in January. Interestingly, while crime rates overall have been declining dramatically, the California prison population has exploded. I'm sure that there are no significant campaign contributions coming from the people who benefit from the prison industrial complex to anyone in California state politics. Oh, my, no. So fuck the children. They don't pay for media buys.

Also, really really charming comments on the San Jose Mercury website. Just lovely thoughts like:

• "By eliminating CalWorks and other welfare to work programs, it will force Americans to finally do those jobs that they have turned their noses at. It will force many illegal workers to return to their country of origin as welfare recipients are forced to finally do the work that is available for them. Remember that Americans were those workers that worked in hotels, did construction and performed janitorial services, but welfare and workfare programs made too many lower income Americans lazy and it resulted in expanded welfare roles and induced illegals to come her to work these jobs."
• "We cannot afford to support the losers who cannot hold a job; and we shouldn't have to educate their loser children." [because an uneducated populace is good for everyone! and certainly won't hurt our competitiveness in the global market.--Ed.]
• "What about the laid off workers?" you ask? Try moving to another state. Or another country. The real question to be asked is:"What about the 90% of the people who have job(s), pay their debts and are being taxed to death to support lazy welfare queens and even lazier state employees feeding from the public trough?" [Why, I pass dead people on the streets everyday, done to death by taxes. I can't believe more attention has not been paid to this pandemic.--Ed.]

There are more. Enjoy.

New Theory: The Onion is Running the Republican Party

What else, really, could explain the hilarity of "Teabagging?" And this:

And then we have peerless reasoning like this, courtesy of the NYTimes' new Bill Kristol (apparently not an improvement, but with a funnier name) Ross Douthat. In his "column" he writes about how the tricksy tricksy left, led by Obama, is going to Gay Marry everybody after everyone gets Free Abortions (and a lollipop! This is socialism!). See if you can follow the reasoning here: "But as Peter Berkowitz noted in a prescient essay for Policy Review in 2005, the gay marriage movement is working with the grain of American political history, in which the expansion of rights 'steadily erodes the limits on individual choice established by law and custom.'" I see: giving people more rights destroys other people's ability to make choices. Interesting. So, for example, when African-Americans won rights, that just totally destroyed the individal choice that individual white people were making to enslave them. What a bummer.

this feeling

In German, I'm sure, there is a word for this feeling: wanting to be wanted. And another word for: wanting to want.

Iowa, Vermont

This was a banner week for gay rights activists--the Iowa Court finding that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, and the Vermont state legislature overriding the governor's veto to make same-sex marriage legal. Vermont is particularly important because it is the first time that same-sex marriage was made legal by legislation and not by a judicial ruling.

Perhaps because homosexuality was presented to me by my parents as a simple statement--that some people love people of their own sex, and some love people of the opposite sex--I've never fully understood the anger and resistance that this issue seems to engender. It is not simply a religious issue--Prop 8 wouldn't have passed in California if only religious people voted for it. There seems to be a deep uneasiness about this issue, and I wonder if it doesn't come down to gender and our ideas of what a woman is, what a man is, and what they do together in a marriage. If it doesn't threaten the idea that marriage is an institution that is primarily of benefit to men and for the protection of male lineage and property.

Opponents of gay marriage are always saying that gay marriage threatens or devalues heterosexual marriages, and I've never understood this until I thought of it this way. In a way, gay marriage does undermine the traditional marriage--which is inherently unequal.

Michael Steele, Exit Stage Left

Well, that was quick. Apparently Michael Steele, the putative head of the RNC, gave an interview in which he suggested that abortion was a personal choice for women to make. He also seemed to indicate that all gays might not be doomed to eternity in a fiery pit.

Now he will be forced to leave, as the entirety of the Republican party platform can be summarized thusly: weemens in the kitchens, sodomy only with strangers in bathrooms, and tax cuts.

Something For Nothing

Whenever I talk to my Orange County Republican relatives, I notice this disconnection in their thoughts about government, taxes, and resources. Specifically, they take almost any opportunity to complain about paying taxes--any kind of taxes, local, state, Federal, property. These taxes, they all believe, go to welfare mothers who have children just to get more benefits, lazy people, and Mexicans. Simultaneously, they all expect the following: good public schools. Firefighters. Police (oh, they love the police!). Roads and highways in good repair. And more roads and highways being built so that they don't have to sit in traffic. They also seem to take for granted: clean water coming from the taps. A sewage system that is not the gutter in front of their million-dollar homes. Air that, in Southern California, is cleaner than it was fifty years ago, despite the fact that there are millions more cars on the road.

They seem to expect that the government should be able to do all of these things for them, while asking nothing from them. They want something--the infrastructure and benefits of a civilized society--for nothing.

This Deep Thought post was inspired by Republicans in the California State Legislature, who have blocked the passage of a budget for over 100 days now. Apparently a lot of them took some kind of bullshit "no tax hikes" pledge that supercedes the well-being of their constituents or the social stability of the state. I wish there was some way to isolate these communities of no-new-taxes assholes and say, all right, fine: you don't have to pay taxes. In return, if your house burns down, well, here's a goddamn hose. Good luck. P.S. Enjoy homeschooling your children.

Unclear on the Concept

John Boehner, in opposing the stimulus bill: “The president made clear when we started this process that this was about jobs,” Mr. Boehner said after the vote. “Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. And what it’s turned into is nothing more than spending, spending and more spending.”

Yes. Well. How is it, exactly, that one creates jobs without spending money? Oh, right, tax cuts for the wealthy. Then they can hire more nannies, and--hey, let's just go 18th century--scullery maids. You'll get one half-day off a week, 12 pence in spending money, and hand-me-downs on Boxing Day.

Even if one were to give tax cuts to the middle class (Republicans guffaw, puff cigars) that still wouldn't create jobs. The idea--if it can be so called--is that you give people tax cuts, and they immediately hie themselves off to Best Buy and get stuffs. This, in turn, makes manufacturers make more stuffs! For which they need to hire people, and thus, tax cuts=jobs.

There are just a few little problems with this virtuous cycle. One: most people are so screwed, economically and otherwise, right now, that they will not be taking their pittance and spending it at Best Buy or Wal-Mart or wherever. They will be using it to pay down their debt, or pay their mortgage, or keep themselves afloat while they look for new jobs, since everyone has been fired. Two: even if people did decide to spend money on stuffs rather than milk, most of these factories are overseas. So Americans buying manufactured goods does not translate into American jobs. It may help the Chinese, or the Indians, but not us. See? Three: Even if, in a sort of [then a miracle occurred] way, tax cuts did magically rebound to create American jobs, this would still take a while. And we don't have a while, okay? We need to hire people immediately, post-haste, and the only entity apparently capable or willing to do that is the Federal Fucking Government.

Can we make intelligence tests a pre-condition for being a member of the House or Senate? Can we require some basic courses in economics? Biology? History? Jeebus.

I Now Think

Whenever Maureen Dowd is talking about "America," she is actually talking about "Maureen." Example: "Once upon a time, America thought Prince Charming would glide in and kiss her, reviving her from a coma induced by a poison apple of greed, deceit, carelessness, recklessness and overreaching."

What is the Sound of One God Laughing?

The god named Irony, who has been tirelessly working lo these past eight years, takes another swig of scotch and, voila: Unemployment Offices Cannot Process Claims Because All Government Offices Had to Fire People. That's right, the people who process unemployment claims are themselves unemployed, due to the notable lack of, oh, what is it again, cash money.

Zen Mind Says: Fuck These People

So, the G.O.P., in a desperate ploy to increase their marginal status, has decided to oppose some things in the stimulus bill. Which is cute, since they're not going to vote for it anyway, even if they all got their own personal taint washer/bidet.

Here are things that Republicans think Real Americans don't need:

• Functional sewers. Since we'll all be living in the gutters anyway.
• Museums. Because they're elitist.
• Computers. If Granpa did without 'em, you don't need 'em.
  
• Wildland fire management. We want California to burn. Burn, baby, burn.
• Centers for Disease Control. Only brown people and gays get diseases, everyone knows that.
  

Having Doubts

About whether or not humans should have litters of children. Disturbed by this quote: “Her stomach was huge, indescribably huge,” Dr. Henry said. “At a certain point, we don’t even measure.” Also interesting is the fact that the woman's partner is not mentioned anywhere in the article. Please, dear god, tell me this woman has help: 1 infant is a full time job. Eight is a day care center.

Watch It If You Can

And drink a toast: though we are not now what we have been, that which we are, we are...etc.

"We wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself.”

And the answer is: probably not. A Czech artist was commissioned to head a team of 27 artists, each representing one member state of the European Union, to create a large scale piece of art to mark the 6-month term that the Czech republic will be head of the Union.

What he did instead was get a couple of his friends together, get high (that's just a guess on my part) and make a map of Europe in which Bulgaria is represented by hole-in-the-floor toilets, the Netherlands is under water, the German Autobahn is shaped like a swastika, and France is on strike.

I might mention in passing here that the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, is, shall we say, not one of the more E.U. friendly politicians around. He resents and has spoken openly against what he perceives to be further encroachment by the E.U. on national sovereignty. And he thinks climate change is "a myth" and says that "other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice."* There was concern on the part of the European establishment that his tenure as putative head of the E.U. would be controversial and contentious. This seems like an excellent opening salvo.

*These quotes were taken from some conservative blog that came up when I googled Klaus. I'm too lazy to track down the original site, and I refuse to link to someone that refutes global warming by saying: "Look, it's snowing outside!"

"I Think I Inhaled Her"

From the Land of Amazing:

*Found on Crooks and Liars

It's a Class Issue. Also.

Sarah Palin, who makes me giddy with happiness (though not in a "OMG dude she was tots winking at me!" Sad Virgin-at-35 Republican way) keeps on keepin' on. She gave an interview to the guy who told Nate Silver to fuck off, and it's full of gems about how the mean LIEbrals all stole the election, you betcha.

In this alternate universe, Caroline Kennedy has been treated with kid gloves because she is part of the ruling elite, whereas the ruling elite were all: "Suck it, Mayor-of-Methtown" to Sarah Palin. All because Sarah Palin is just all blue collar and down home and so on, so it's a "class issue."

And, now that I think on it, I kind of agree. It is a class issue. As in, she has none. The end.

Just: No.

Alberto Gonzales, who hopefully will have to whore himself out during the New Great Depression (oh, wait, he already did that), says: " [F]or some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

I really don't even know where to go with this one.

What If?

(A New Year's Hypothetical Scenario)

Sarah Palin gave one of her daughters (which one is the fourteen year old? Hamper? Window?) to Rod Blagojevich, in grateful appreciation for getting everyone to stop talking about whether her shopping spree cost $180,000 or $300,000 or (in the current economic climate) three cans of Planter's Peanuts and some rifle shells.

This child would be invincible! It would be convinced of its intelligence and superiority and general awesomeness, no matter what evidence was presented to the contrary! It would have fantastic hair!

It would also frequently walk into closed sliding glass doors and forget the way home from school, but that's neither here nor there.