Mission Control

The first visit to the gym went great. The treadmill .. Wow. It's not a workout, it's mission control. Built-in fans and cupholders, constant readout of your heart rate, a chart telling me the sweet spot (target heart rate) to focus on. How appropriate - for a mission that's never really accomplished.

Easy to see how people get into this and overdo it. There's a lot to try and it's not all torture. I wanted to be sure and leave still able to walk and have a desire to come back. So on that, FIRST DOWN!

Football and Fitness

Happy new year.  We all have our resolutions, I suppose. Published or not, there's a cleansing feeling in seeing a blank January. We can try again. We can turn a page. It's more than a new month. It's a new beginning.

I've been watching a LOT of football and you have to admire one genius thing about the game. You go on the field knowing you need to score, but the game is structured to break that big goal into smaller ones. First downs. Take four plays. Get at least ten yards and you can keep the ball. Move the chains. Smart.

I think it's the often welcome disruption of routine that the holidays deliver unto us. By January, we are yearning for the daily grind to come back - resetting the calendar resets the alarm, the promised diet and exercise commitment. I usually go through that "miscellaneous" pile on my desk and discover something I started looking for during the previous Easter weekend.

This year, it's time to deploy stage two of the getting into shape plan. The first stage was fixing a lifetime of bad news in the knees department and boy oh boy did THAT turn out to be more complicated than planned. Bilateral knee replacement (2 knees on same day) is never going to be a picnic but my experience added some ugly setbacks including a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis during my recovery - cause, yeah, I relish challenge.

Ok fine. I have this. I'm living with it. I've beaten it into remission now, so ... What's next?

One thing is, this year must feature regular visits to a gym to work on machines. I told myself I'd get enough physical activity without doing this. I was wrong. Way wrong. So new year, new opportunities. Off to the gym we go, hubby and I.

It sounds like way more fun than cleaning the house. Unfortunately, gotta do that too. But we're joining and doing this stuff together.

First down, ten yards to go.

Affording Care

I completed my enrollment via Healthcare.gov on Sunday afternoon (12/1). On Monday, BCBSNC generated a letter and payment coupon. On Tuesday, They mailed it. Today, (Thursday, Dec 5) I got it. When they process my payment, I should expect my welcome kit and insurance card. I'm guessing that'll take a week.

So, THAT happened.  

No screaming headlines, just the government doing what it promised, the health insurance provider responding efficiently and now I can expect to be insured on New Year's day for LESS than I paid for my previous coverage.

Also, this ... the word "Obama" did not and will not appear anywhere on my  insurance materials, because the government is not providing my insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield is doing that.

The fact is, though, that without the Affordable Care Act I would have to remain as I am now - without health insurance (my COBRA has expired). So, for all my friends and relatives (and you know who you are) who berate the president and embrace the "repeal Obamacare" chant from the GOP citing nonsense about "the government takeover of healthcare", you can now continue expressing yourself knowing that you are advocating for me to be uninsured and unable to pay for my insulin and the many medicines I take daily to manage other conditions. Not that much of a stretch to call that a death panel, is it? 

If it sounds like I take it personally, I do. A misinformed electorate could cost me my life.

Finally, if you're inclined to tell me about young healthy people getting into the insurance pool, please save your breath. I know that, probably better than most people. I'm an insurance baby, born in Hartford, Connecticut. It's the family business. I'm grateful for the ACA. I mourn for people who have suffered and died due to its lack in the last 30 years. As a nation, we should be ashamed that this has taken so long.

McCrory's Dog Whistle

I call our Governor "McNugget" because he offers only empty, unhealthy calories.

If it's my paranoia, please tell me, but I read Gov. McNugget's outrageous editorial explaining his signature on North Carolina's new "Voter ID" bill and thought this was a cannonball headed for NorthEast Central Neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina. In his third paragraph the Governor writes:

Even if the instances of misidentified people casting votes are low, that shouldn’t prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place. Just because you haven’t been robbed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lock your doors at night or when you’re away from home.

He says that a law to stop/prevent in-person voting fraud didn't have to wait for the actual problem to exist, but I think it's it something else and much more sinister.

I think the governor is not accidental in his language. He's not a lawyer (neither am I), so maybe he doesn't know that if someone breaks into your house when you're not home, it's a burglary, not a robbery. He does know, with certainty, that those most affected by his reduction in access to voting are African American, elderly, disabled and/or poor. Northeast Central Durham, a democratic party stronghold, and it's ground zero for this law. There's a bullseye on the Bull City. The GOP has a storied history of disrupting voting in Durham to win elections. We hear the dog whistle.

In explaining his reasons for reducing access to voting for low income, vulnerable people, McNugget wants to reminds us about scary crime - specifically home invasion.

I find no coincidence in it - just as I didn't think he was tone deaf at all when he brought cookies out to women who were protesting to keep the keys to their own wombs. One should know when one is being arrogantly insulted. He wasn't clueless, he was showing the extreme right that he knows where women belong.

The one good thing about what the GOP is up to in Raleigh is that they have abandoned all sense of subtlety or appearance of interest in the public good or responsible governance. They are nakedly pursuing the agenda that the national GOP is grasping for with manifest desperation:

Restore Us To Power Because We Should Be In Power. We have money and connections and we'll know what to do. 

ALL of their strategies for accomplishing their return to power are predicated on one thing - NOT THEM (Democrats). NOT THEM because they're non-white. NOT THEM because they're women. NOT THEM because they're gay, poor, disabled. Just NOT THEM.

They have no real platform or cohesion to what they are doing or why (in terms of an actual philosophy or policy). It's almost literally as through the left hand doesn't know that the right hand already robbed that bank.

A moment after state employees demonstrate their displeasure at going yet another year with raises, the Department of Health and Human Services gives raises in excess of $20,000 each to two "leadership team" members who are obviously patronage appointees from the McNugget campaign.

Ricky Diaz and Matthew McKillop, both 24 years old, were bumped up to annual salaries of more than $80,000.  Without an amazing fastball or a .380 batting average, you cannot justify those numbers.

And they have no intention of justifying those numbers, because elderly, disabled, poor African Americans or teachers or families that won't be covered under a passed-up Medicaid expansion are too busy struggling to figure out the political action that's necessary to slow the process of the rich getting richer.

And the governor wants us to equate making it easy for low income, elderly, disabled citizens to vote with the careless practice of leaving your house unlocked when you go out - an invitation to violation and theft.  Governor, you're as subtle as a sticky doorknob, with half the charm.

It's not paranoia when they're really after you.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/12/3102124/gov-pat-mccrory-why-i-signed-the.html#storylink=cpy

To My Representatives: A Call for Action

I attended elementary school at Keeney Street School in Manchester, Connecticut. This school is still operating and if you were to visit, you'd find little difference between it and Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. In my adult life, I've been a North Carolinian. When my children were in school, I volunteered to serve on a Safe Schools task force and as a result, I wrote a winning grant to launch a school violence prevention program in Orange County in the 1990s. This program has produced significant results, but it wasn't without controversy.

I mention this because I know the pressure to stop school shootings and violent incidents had reached a near fever pitch in North Carolina (and elsewhere). We all hoped that taking a community policing approach within the schools would be effective and to an extent, it has been. My point is WE ACTED. Wringing our hands and hoping it would go away was not an option. This was about protecting children.

With that said, our country is suffering from a devastating level of ongoing loss from gun violence on a daily basis. Losing more than 11,000 citizens every year is not a level of violent and preventable deaths that we can allow. We could never tolerate a foreign influence that delivered this kind of damage to our nation. The deaths from one year's gun violence exceeds those from The September 11th attacks and the wars that followed ... Combined. During the years since those attacks, we have lost more than 100,000 citizens to this insidious cause of death. This is a shameful failure of leadership and human compassion. How is it that this is not viewed as a threat to our national security?

I'm writing to you today to ask that you support legislation to regulate the ownership of deadly force - the possession of particular firearms and ammunition. The measures that make sense in our society are universal background checks, restrictions on high capacity magazines and a ban on the sale of military grade assault weapons.

I'm writing to you today to simply say that you represent me and these measures will be before you for a vote. I want you to support them. I will remember if you don't.

Thank you for your service. If I can be of service to you in supporting these legislative initiatives, please let me know.

It's the Policy, Stupid (Party)

The GOP is doing a lot of thinking lately, or at least they're trying to take on that appearance. With conflicting messages coming out of CPAC (We must change, We must not change) the RNC is struggling to get to center stage, throwing sharp elbows and expecting them in return. It's ugly to watch.

Although we Democrats relish the image of the sometimes insufferable Republicans thrashing around, trying to find a message they can agree on, the fact is ... it helps no one for one party to be so completely rudderless. We ached about it when the GOP was disciplined and the Dems were all over the place and now the reverse is true. The left finally remembers what it's FOR and how to fight the good fight, but we can't slug it out with an opponent who doesn't seem able to explain his/her own position beyond "It's how I was raised. It's what my church tells me," as House Speaker John Boehner explained is unwavering opposition to marriage equality.

For the record, Mr. Speaker, Americans reject the notion that a leader in the federal government cannot change a political position because of what his church tells him. (See: Kennedy, Catholic, 50+ years ago)

The only answer to this problem, it seems to me, is for someone to tell these desperate Republicans what the genuinely conservative positions are on the issues of the day. As a one-time Republican (yes, Chapel Hill, it's true) I can offer these broad principles -- for the sake of the nation, I hope somebody reads them and gives this some thought.

It's not the messaging or the wrapper or the lipstick on the GOP pig. It's the policies on the GOP for the last 20 years or so that have brought the party to its knees. Perhaps just a reminder of what the genuinely conservative positions are on these issues will help you think it through.

Here they are -
Top 10 Conservative Arguments for a Modern GOP 

Marriage Equality - Yes
This one is probably the easiest, so let's start off with it. To be conservative is to believe in a minimal role for government. That is, the federal government shouldn't lead social policy or be in the business of inventing "special rights." True! So, strip this down to the country's declaration document - the one that told old King George we are endowed by our creator with INALIENABLE rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. There it is, right there. The pursuit of happiness and liberty. These rights cannot be taken from us without due process and no one can identify a due process of law that denies marriage to any class of people.

(Loving v. Virginia) Chief Justice Warren: Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

GOP, be practical. When the court reverses the Defense of Marriage Act and declares that California PROP 8 is unconstitutional (they will - Republican attorney Ted Olsen has a great case), that's the time to jump ahead and declare victory because it's the law of the land. Conservatives respect the law.

Then, LET IT GO.

Climate Change/Environmental Protection - Yes
Again, this one's easy. Pick up a book if you need to or Google "Teddy Roosevelt." He's one of your own. To be conservative is to seek to minimize to expense of resources, natural and otherwise. Protecting the land, air and water is an obvious expression of these principles. Even Tricky Dick Nixon saw this when he created the EPA in the 70s. Beyond this, your religious right supporters should be happy to accept that you are protecting the land that God made, rather than drilling, strip mining and fracking your way to your next election. Smart, efficient use of natural resources and responsible stewardship of our investments in clean energy is a conservative course. It isn't trendy or the work of any "fringe" group to ask what today's policy decisions will do to Americans born in the next decade, who will die after 2100. Lincoln thought that way about us when it came to slavery. You can do that too.

Reproductive Rights - Yes
This one's a little counter-intuitive, but yes, the GOP loves to talk about the constitution as a near-sacred document. Well, that document clearly states that the rights of Americans convey those BORN in the U.S. or naturalized. This is where the Republican party is going to have to undergo a fundamental shift in posture -- into one that assumes that women don't want abortions. Until you take that fact on board as your operating assumption (you haven't) you simply will not be able to resolve this issue. And until you can speak credibly about the need for responsible women (and men) to have easy access to birth control, NO ONE WILL LISTEN TO YOU. This is the world you're in. Adapt. Accept. Take a position on protecting the right of responsible adults to access safe, effective birth control. That will prevent more abortions than anything you've done to date. But you'll have to accept something - consenting, responsible adults want to have sex outside of marriage. As conservatives, you should be interested in protecting children from predators, and protecting the rights of consenting adults to be left alone. Remember your roots -- LIBERTY, PURSUIT of HAPPINESS. Keep the government off our backs -- especially when we're home alone in our bedrooms.

Public Education Reform - Yes
As a means of providing good stewardship of the taxpayers dollars, Conservatives should stand strong for public schools that are properly and equitably funded. That means throwing OUT the property tax model for funding public schools. Create a commission to reinvent the funding model that will deliver the same quality in Bumpkin, Idaho as it does in Beverly Hills, California. Have students design a pilot program. Experiment, document, learn. Education is the one area that can be expected to reinvent itself. That's the business of education.

Champion Charter Schools. If they can achieve similar results with less regulatory burden (as they have so far) they have proven their worth. Make them dare to explore more unusual approaches. Build in incentives for special education to innovate and attract partners from the high tech sector. Empower exceptional students to drive changes in requirements and curriculum. Find a way to set high achieving students free, allowing gifted students to graduate early and surge forward into higher learning more effectively. Be FOR this. LEAD this. We need a lean, hungry clicking-on-all-cylinders workforce. Its lack is a national competitive disadvantage affecting trade and security.

Single Payer National Healthcare - Yes
Seriously, this is so simple. Follow the money.  If you were inventing the healthcare system today, using all the data and experience from the last 50 years, single payer is what you'd invent. It is by far the most cost effective to the nation (regardless of source). Conservatives want efficiency, fairness, even outcomes and proper stewardship of dollars. With doctors on salaries and outcomes driving the treatment process, prevention can get more resources (because it delivers better results) and the use of data-driven programs to target high-risk patients (for diabetes, hypertension compliance and prevention, for example) will be the easy and obvious path to a healthier, more effective workforce. This could be paired with raising the social security  retirement age to 70 (in 25 years) because it can reasonably be expected to positively affect life expectancy and quality of life.

Gun Control - Yes
We control alcohol, use of automobiles and access to kittens. In many communities, we must be screened for the possibility that we'd be cruel or irresponsible with a kitten, but we can buy a gun and a trunk full of ammo while barely revealing anything personal to the seller. Screening for criminal history of assaulting a former employer or family member doesn't amount to infringing on one's rights. It amounts to living in a society that values law and order. That's a conservative value, isn't it? Law and Order?

More accurately, this should be called "deadly force control."  Protecting police and first responders from being vaporized by a criminal with a military-like arsenal including gasses, biological agents, shoulder-mounted missiles ... we want to protect law enforcement from these kinds of weapons, right? Yeah, see ... we already HAVE some control, we just need to tighten things up. We need to review what criminals are using and we need to adapt, adjust and move forward. That's what intelligent beings do.

A couple of U.S. Senators were having a meltdown recently over four employees of the diplomatic service getting killed in the line of duty. A thousand civilians a MONTH are being killed by gun violence in the United States. There is nothing Conservative about allowing that to go on. So, Senator McCain ... don't you CARE about a thousand civilians getting killed every month?

Review/Restructure/Reduction of Military - Yes
Outgoing President Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex and his caution has proved its worth. If Medicare is the "third rail" of politics, then the military must be the fourth ... somehow. Again, this comes down to facing the facts of America's resources - in blood and treasure. We are already a military power so great that a conventional invasion of our shores is out of the question. Mission Accomplished.

Now, we have to become more agile and prepare for high tech attacks, more terrorism and the ongoing prospect of losing our way on the world stage. We must make the world safer through influence and leadership and our disputes over how to do this must stop at the water's edge.

That's the conservative view -- an American view. One nation. Indivisible. Preserving our country's national identity and respecting that we have one president at a time on the world stage is a position consistent with respectful conservative values. All Americans want a safe, free domestic life -- one with the tranquility promised in our founding documents. Protecting citizens -- including protecting their peaceful way of life -- is a critical American value. With our world domination well-established on the military side, even the Pentagon agrees, the health and better education of America's youth is a new focus needed for the sake of national security. If we promise to listen to commanders on the ground overseas, shouldn't we listen to them from Washington?

Infrastructure Investment - Yes
Previously not controversial, this one's pretty easy.The Acme Construction Company cannot go out in the marketplace and start building roads on speculation, then sell their use to drivers. Building roads, tunnels, bridges, dams -- this is work that government must do, contracting through competitive bidding. Conserving our resources means doing these repairs and upgrades that must be done now, while borrowing money is at its cheapest. Do we have to wait for a relative to sail off a crumbling bridge to get this done? No, we do not. You don't wait for your water heater to stop working before you replace it. You do the needed maintenance. You monitor efficiency. You watch your energy usage. And when you have two pennies to put together or rates are low for borrowing, you replace it. That's the conservative approach. That's what American families DO.

Equal Pay for Equal Work - Yes
The GOP is generally a pretty big cheerleader for the free market. In that market, the best mousetrap usually outsells its competitors and the entrepreneur wins over the bureaucrat, right? Equal pay for equal work is not affording anything special to women. Instead, it says to all workers -- go forth and compete for opportunity and may the best qualified or hardest working win -- on the merits. Period.

Women excel at some areas of business, it turns out. We are good team leaders, effective managers and creative problem solvers. Whether they enter/leave the workforce for child bearing doesn't usually matter for the work that's in front of them TODAY. Besides, equal pay for equal work is the LAW and Conservatives respect the law.

Minimum Wage Increases - Yes
Last, but never least. A higher minimum wage (which costs the government nothing) moves low-skilled workers closer to self-sufficiency and reduces their risk of dependency on government subsidy. Despite the fact that GOP leaders famously point to increases in minimum wage as a job killer for small employers, there is NO evidence of this. None. Like tax cuts for the rich causing economic growth, it's an unsubstantiated theory. The Conservative approach is to take actions that have been PROVEN to work, not stand blindly defending theories proven to fail. That's delusional and extreme. It is NOT Conservative.

Conservatives are going to have to get used to a term that's been in the business world for a while and is now in the mainstream of the political lexicon: data-driven decision-making. That means that you study the facts of what's actually, provably happened and try to base your decisions on a universe of fact, free of emotional speculation or wishful thinking. It produces much more stable, predictable results.  It accepts that failure is the price for trying. It studies failure for its lessons. "Failure," said Henry Ford, "is the opportunity to more intelligently begin again." 

It's based on SCIENCE. When doctors are "conservative" they take a course in treating a patient that involves the least risk, is least invasive, will likely do the least harm. At least, that's what GOOD doctors do. These days, that means that orthopedic surgeons try physical therapy first and GOOD cardiologists send their patients to a nutritionist and recommend medical intervention (if their condition allows) instead of surgery. They take the long view.

THAT is the Conservative view -- the LONG view. Good luck, GOP. May the force be with you.

VETERAN’S DAY

My dad is 84 years old.  He served as a military officer (in National Intelligence in Washington) during the Korean War.  November 11 was Veteran’s Day – the day the nation honors those who have served their country through military service.  This year, it was to be the time when he and my stepmother would depart on a week-long Caribbean cruise. 

They had pre-registered several weeks earlier, including full passport information. Unfortunately, my stepmom accidentally packed two passports that had expired in 2006 instead of their current passports.

Now I know that cruise ships are pretty strict on the passport issue but they are not perfectly uniform about it.

Their old passports clearly showed that they were U.S. citizens.  They had  photocopies of their current passports and the data from current passports was in the ship’s database. They also had current driver’s licenses.  Taken together, it was totally clear who they were – U.S. Citizens and repeat Royal Caribbean customers.

Representatives from Royal Caribbean told Dad and Anna a couple of things of interest.

1)   Too bad this was on a Sunday, they said, not a Monday. Had it been Monday, they could have verified their birth certificates and they’d be on their way.

2)      Royal Caribbean, they said, is subject to the port’s security rules

Rules are rules, right?  The Port Canaveral rules clearly state that to cruise out of that port, one should have proper identification: “U.S. citizens need proof of citizenship in the form of a passport (valid or expired for less than 10 years)”

Royal Caribbean rules? “Royal Caribbean International strongly recommends that all guests travel with a passport that is valid for at least 6 months beyond the end of the cruise.”

I’m not Perry Mason, but I do know that the term “strongly recommends” is less than “must.”

So here is my Dad, on Veterans Day – flags flying at the port. When he sees a soldier (like my nephew, a marine officer) he stands up a little straighter. He’s proud of his service and rightly so.

Royal Caribbean has nothing to be proud of in this situation. They misrepresented the regulations involved and ignored their own discretion. That’s shameful customer service that caused my 84 year-old father tremendous emotional upset. That’s not the business a cruise line is in.

Uncle Joe

Lots of families have a creepy uncle. You never feel right about him, don't want to be alone with him and wouldn't bring your friends to visit him.

Now, it appears that Penn State has had one for the last 61 years, but didn't know it. Footbal icon, Coach Joe Paterno was rightfully fired last night by Penn State's Board of Trustees because, well, they don't want a Grand Jury to start looking at them and making comparisons with the Catholic Church and its monsterous worldwide criminal pedophilia organized crime family.

Grown men weep on television when discussing this sickening case of serial rape of children, because it's bringing down Uncle Joe. That one coach who everyone thought was above reproach -- he always ran a clean program. Well, now we know that ... no, no he sure didn't. He ran a dirty, disgusting, tainted program that facilitated the rape of children.

Bye-bye Uncle Joe. Good Riddance.

Now, the question turns to why-oh-why did it take a Grand Jury so long to report on this? The Justice Department should get involved here as it appears that a criminal investigation was obstructed. Penn State's season should be over as of right now and they should make no plans for next year. Instead, the numbskull who walked in the rape of a 10 year-old boy, did nothing to intervene immedately and waited a day to report it, will be coaching Saturday against Nebraska. That game should be a default win for the Cornhuskers but it won't be. I hope that whatever network is airing the game will be listing child abuse hotline numbers throughout.

It's a hope I have.

OMG, GOP

What in the WORLD is happening with the Republican party? So askew are you, GOP, that I find myself with progressive columnist Dana Milbank (Washington Post), who said last night on MSNBC, "I never thought these words would pass my lips, but Karl Rove is exactly right."

Seriously. Seriously. If it's so bad that Rove states what is blisteringly obvious, then it can only mean one thing ... the GOP is now officially the Goofy Oddball Party.  Maybe for keeps.

Rove was talking about Rick Perry trying to re-ignite the Birther nonsense for having heard it from His Majesty, the Donald. Desperate, pathetic Donald of Trumply.  Karl Rove is now openly concerned that crazy people are noticeably running the republican party. Raising money off the wing nuts is one thing, but having them drive policy and coming down from the attic to speak to the public -- wow that's a big problem.

So, yeah, I never thought I'd hear myself say it, but Rove is right -- pairing up with these nuts is bad for the country. Of course, it was always bad, but now it's on Main Street, so I reckon it's worse.

Dear Mr. President

Dear President Obama,
I'm writing today to tell you that we did try to buy American when it was time for a new television a couple of years ago. Couldn't do it. Nothing made in America.

But as I wanted a new car, my husband and I talked extensively about features, about brand, about quality. If it doesn't get 30mpg on the highway, it's out of the question, I said.

Months of looking, WANTING to buy American, we held firm. Safety. Quality. Features. Good mileage. Great service. Not negotiable.

Mr. President, we were not going to take second place. And we didn't. We bought a Chevy Equinox. They say it gets 32 mpg on the highway! But I find it's more like 35 mpg.

We bought a car from a great American company whose course you corrected. Good call.

AZ Shooting - The Ultimate Hate Speech

Did you ever hear the expression "to send a message"? He slammed the ball through the hoop - that really sent a message. It's something we often hear in sports and in politics to indicate that someone's actions are emphatically communicating - usually serving to push back and intimidate the opposition.

Jared Loughton, the Tucson shooter, went to Rep. Giffords' "Congress on the Corner" to "send a message." His actions are speech - hate speech - and to suggest that there is no relationship between this speech and the Republican culture of violent political speech is a child's "nu-uh" argument. Specifically, the Alaskan Quitter-in-Chief has made herself such a reputation for provocative rhetoric, she welcomes the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" and gleefully compares herself to a pit bull (with lipstick). She and her running mate, Senator McCain, were only too happy to benefit from their campaign crowds screaming their heads off when Palin referred to candidate Obama as "palling around with terrorists" and claiming that he, a sitting U.S. Senator posed a threat to the security of the United States. I know you've seen this, but watch as an elderly woman confronts McCain and says she's afraid of Obama. McCain is nodding in affirmation. Then she says she thinks he's AN ARAB. McCain's only response is no, no, he's a decent family man (was that supposed to refute his being an Arab?). He retakes the microphone to get back to the stage and away from specifics. His supporters were so extreme (two of them saying they feared Obama) that McCain is in the ridicuous position of spending his campaigning time talking about the fact that a U.S. Senator is not an enemy of the county. And he does so, by the way, rather superficially.

So is it speech? Was a message sent? Recall, painful as it is, when JFK was gunned down. Was that a statement? How about his brother, Robert, then a sitting U.S. Senator? How about Martin Luther King, whose birthday we observe today? How about San Francisco Mayor George Moscone? Harvey Milk? Rep. Leo Ryan, murdered in Guyana while investigating the Jonestown cult?

Do you see a pattern in those names? Do you notice the progressive tilt? This helps to explain the red-faced anger and sentitivity on the part of progressives when it comes to modern day political assasinations. With the notable exception of Ronald Reagan (who very nearly died when he was shot) and the attempts on then- President Gerald Ford, this practice has been one that has pushed back and sent a message mainly to the political left >> sit down, be quiet. Not now, not yet.

When the Quitter-in-Chief invokes the term Blood Libel, it is no accident due her ignorance. No, indeed. Her accusation stated plainly is that the Jewish-owned and run media is taking the shooting of a Jewish Representative and the killing of a young child and others and using the blood of that crime to "feed" the media beast, directing its hungry attention to chewing on her, America's most successful quitter. Hence, the stain of that ugly lie is continued in the modern age, via Facebook. Like dropping leaflets from an airplane, there's no talking back. It's a one-way message.

When she claims innocence in the AZ shootings, I am reminded of another group that uses inflammatory language and the anonymity of numbers to do the work of spreading their ugliness, then claiming that they didn't light the match that burned the cross on your lawn. That's right, the Klan is great at this stuff -- spreading malicious, racist lies in ways that tend to be protected by the first amendment and are attributable to the "atmosphere" rather than recognized for being expressly incendiary. You know the problem with these things usually is that you can't demonstrate that the speech that was made was clearly a threat, was construed as a threat and was specific enough to act on as a threat.

And certainly we would not typically find a television interview featuring the victim (who was being interview because her office was vandalized) talking about how this "hit list" being posted for all the world to see HAS CONSEQUENCES.

My good friends in the mainstream media are quick to say there's "no connection" between Palin's crosshairs graphic and this shooting. They likely mean on the most literal level that nobody thinks she ordered a hit on a Congresswoman.

If Loughton were at large and you found that list in his apartment -- just a list of names of 20 members of Congress -- after one of them had been shot ... I think the other 19 would be on lockdown. But that's just me.

Still ... is that the standard now? We cannot prove she personally tried to KILL a member of Congress, so leave her alone? You know what? I don't think we will.

About John & Elizabeth and John & Elizabeth and Being a Hero

Such an unlikely collision of similarity and diversity – all at once.
I’m tired of hearing the standard caveat when John McCain is introduced … that he’s some indisputable hero. He’s not. He may have behaved heroically once, while being psychotically tortured as a prisoner of war, but that’s all. Has he conducted himself in a manner since then that even approaches a description of “hero”? No. His modern political life and description of his personal conduct reverts back to another word – bully. Watch video of him as he’s confronted with the irrefutable fact that the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy has caused hundreds of fine officers to be tossed out of the military on account of their status (not for conduct, for status) and you’ll see a belligerent, repetitive, stubborn son-of-a-bitch insisting that “it's not the policy,it's not the policy,it's not the policy,.” No matter. The policy doesthat and he knows it.

Contrast this with Elizabeth Smart, who (like McCain) was a kidnapping victim. She, too, was psychotically tortured; abuse of her body and her mind is now public record. There may be, in fact, much more similarity in her time of captivity and that of Sen. McCain than has ever been publically acknowledged. But Elizabeth has shown nothing but courage since her rescue, bravely facing her abuser in court and addressing the public after the trial to tell other victims that they are not alone. You can go on, she said. You can live your life – it belongs to you, not your attacker. She has demonstrated the mature presence of mind that is credited for her survival and eventual escape from captivity and torture.
As a Senator, McCain has failed to stand up for veterans (yes, those closeted gay solders), insulted the intelligence of every military leader on the topic of DADT, looking much like he is on the brink of a tantrum or threatening to hold his breath until he gets his way … his homophobic way. What a shame and what an incredibly lucky thing that we kept this guy away from the Situation Room.

Then we have John & Elizabeth Edwards – a collision of human weakness and exceptional strength. Let’s be gentle … John simply lost his way. He may have behaved heroically once or twice – fighting like a pit bull for his clients and winning them millions – but when temptation came knocking, he rolled over, then lied and lied about it. He’s human. People lie to cover their mistakes in judgment. It’s not fair to call it natural, but it’s fair to call in understandable. Unfortunately, he forged ahead in denying his paternity of an out-of-wedlock child, likely because he wanted to preserve the possibility of being a candidate for the Obama administration’s VP or attorney general slot. What a shame. That was an opportunity to step forward and own his mistake. Instead, he looked around himself and said “Who, me? Naw, that’s tabloid trash …”

For Elizabeth Edwards, there were some bad decisions, too. Let’s be real (she’d insist). She, too, concealed her husband’s failings in nudging him to continue his campaign after learning her cancer had returned. She knew he’d been unfaithful and thought they could control (keep quiet) that information. But the campaign decisions aside, her story is all about what she did when confronted with irrefutable facts – another woman’s baby, paternity results, a continuing deception and oh, yes, the cancer. She took charge, made real-world assessments and bold choices. She spoke of the other woman’s child and said that her children needed to have a relationship with her … they were family, she said, they have the same father. The child, after all, was innocent in all this. They’d work it all out, she told a stunned Oprah.

And that’s the other part – telling Oprah. She not only had to face all this, she did it under an amount of public scrutiny that’s pretty rare for a private citizen. She understood the meaning of this outreach and not being overtaken by the grief of losing something dear – your son, you husband, your health, your privacy. She, like Elizabeth Smart, owned her survival and would tell her own story. She lived inside its organic value – to her. She knew that this pain and the scar tissue that would form from these injuries are what made her Elizabeth and that choosing to give up any part of it would make her less than what she was – a fully realized human being – the genuine article.

That is heroic.

Customer Go Home

It’s become a Saturday night ritual. I send a text message to my son and daughter-in-law: “10:00 @ AMF?”
He replies: “Yep” and most Sundays for the last six or so months, we have met at that time and place (on Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd.) to bowl two or three games, then go out for lunch.
We’ve done this because we’ve come to enjoy bowling and we’ve done this because games during that time are $1.29 each – far less than the usual freight.
When we started going every week, we practically had the place to ourselves. We told everyone we know about this recession-busting special, especially friends with kids or those facing employment challenges. This was one of the few options available for family fun that was affordable. Now, the place is jumping with activity. Lots of families ... especially with young kids.
But this weekend we learned that AMF has apparently added a Highway Robbery Division to its organization chart. In two weeks, they will discontinue the $1.29 Sunday rate and open bowling will be $6.00 per game.
When I inquired about the change, the person at the “service” desk confirmed that starting in two weeks, yes, $6.00 per game. No explanation, no apology, no other special offer (frequent bowler miles) to mitigate the pain.
This is no simple rate change for understandable reasons. This is pure hostility. Message received: Dear Regular Customer – please go home and don’t come back.
We will.

The close of our most cynical year

What? Chest pains for Limbaugh?

I mean, can you STAND the thrilling irony of him being in a hospital in Hawaii (yep, the same one where Obama wasn't born) and is admitted for chest pains that my have indicated a heart attack.

Hey, I've been around for this stuff. It's scary. We've lost dear friends who didn't act quickly enough. If your chest hurts, take an aspirin and get thee to a hospital.

So, now Limbaugh emerges, all okay, holds a press conference to announce that because they found nothing wrong, America's healthcare system needs no fixing. I don't rall when, in the debate of '09, anyone suggested that medical care needed reform -- you know -- that nurses and doctors were bumbling fools who couldn't tell a rash from a tumor. I thought it was the funding -- the insurance aspect that needed reform, so that a millionaire got the same basic treatment as the groundskeeper at his hotel. I must have missed something while watching balloon boy coverage or the Tiger-tree-tramp channel.

Doesn't he care that this same hospital was part of this long conspiracy to give us a Kenyan as our president?

How does he conclude that there's no need for reform? Because they ran tests on him, found nothing and he didn't die?

He forgets, I guess, about the many examples (Chicago mayor Harold Washington comes to mind) who walked out of their doctor's offices with a clean bill of health and then dropped dead of a heart attack.

This was a stunt, kids. Complete fakery. Rush has no proof and, since he ripped my president even after he provided proof FROM THE SAME HOSPITAL, I will reject any/all proof that may subsequently flow.

He will blow hard on this for months if not the whole year. I'll never believe he was in distress. Never believe this was ANYTHING but a publicity stunt from a guy with absolutely no ethical standard. None.

Happy New Year Rush!

Healthcare Reform

Can you make sense of this debate anymore? I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself. I don't claim to have any special knowledge or insight on the topic of making it affordable for people to get good healthcare, but I will say that before they take away my Jell-o, I have moment of clarity I'd like to share.

What insurance is and isn't
I'm 51 years old. When I was a kid, my mother took me to a pediatrician. She paid on the way out, I imagine. Point is -- my dad worked for an insurance company -- one of the giants. They weren't in the transaction. You had health insurance for the unfortunate event of your being in the hospital. It was hospital insurance.

That's because being in the hospital was extremely expensive -- something you need insurance for -- like you house burning down or a devastating car accident. Insurance is meant to be what's called an aleatory contract -- one that depends on a contingency event. The truth is that in life insurance school they describe insurance as a bet.

In life insurance, the company's betting that you're going to live to be 100. You're betting that you'll die tomorrow. It's a crazy business.

Somewhere along the way, the notion came along ... during the 80s and early 90s, it seems to me, that a new financial model should exist for delivering healthcare. Just as Hillary and Bill were talking about reform, the industry declared that it was innovating. Welcome, managed care.

And then, something happened. Your health insurance company was in every transaction. They decided whether or not you needed a specialist. They decided how many visits it would take to treat you. It was a big game of "Mother, May I?"

And with their involvement came the main reason that insurance companies make money -- administrative cost. When I came to North Carolina in the late 1970s, Blue Cross and Blue Shield pridefully shouted that they were terrific because they had administrative costs of five or six percent. Their top executive at that time certainly made under $200,000. Middle and lower managers made in the $25k range -- about one tenth of what the CEO made. At that time, in the Triangle area of NC, you could buy a nice house for $50,000 to $65,000. A palace for $125,000.

The CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Bob Greczyn, is retiring. In 2005, he made over $2 million. Last year, he made just under $4 million. My guess is that he can smell the fresh breeze of reform and thinks that this may affect his exit strategy (parachute). Best to get out quietly while there's still enough hot air to get the chute open.

In the late 1970s, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina operated as a non-profit, a status that it technically maintains today. The culture among its workers was essentially that of a non-profit -- that no one was working there expecting to get rich. It was like working for the public schools or a community hospital. It was doing work that served the public and doing it for cost.

It was the public option -- non-profit health insurance. That administrative cost 30 years ago? It was five percent, remember? Now, it's about 30 percent. Top execs making millions of dollars while jacking up rates year after year? Politicians who will not prohibit this with regulation?

Take it all apart. Pull out the playbook from long, long ago. Go back to hospitalization coverage. Go back to the insurance model (and dump the health management model). Who gets hurt? The Four Million Dollar Man.

Let's not call 911, shall we?

A humble U.S. President - imagine that

From the president's comments today:
"Good morning. Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, 'Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!' And then Sasha added, 'Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.' So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective."

The Founding Fathers? Really?!

The other day I caught a few seconds of video from one of this summer's town hall meetings. In particular, this was that numbskull woman at Rep. Barney Frank's town hall in which she made refernece to Obama being a socialist --- blah blah blah --- and the they showed clips of her and several other women casting fists of outrage ... all about how Healthcare reform is not what the founding fathers intended.

And then it hit me. I mean really hit me -- right between the eyes. I mean ... the founding fathers? These pristine politicians? These guys couldn't pass a declaration of independence without selling out to the southern states on the subject of their "peculiar institution" of slavery. Well-known was John Adams' opposition to slavery, but he signed the declaration for the sake of the country, leaving the struggle of institutional inhumanity for another day, another generation.

How could I have missed it before? Oh, my GOD, they are so right. And we should definintely act on this right away -- we must do only what the founding fathers wanted -- expressly intended to do, right? We must reverse this trend away from life in 1776.

So, let's start with you, loudmouth-lady-at-town-hall-meeting. Indeed, let's focus only on you. What the hell do you think you're doing speaking at a public political meeting? You have no right to do that. We're going to have to take that up with your husband and we will expect him to beat you for your outrageous and shameful behavior.

And he'll have every right to do it. Every legal right. You are, after all, his chattel. That's right - his property. Oh, the African Americans made all the headlines as slaves, but women were chattel transferred by marriage. Hence the term of the father "giving away" his daughter. She was his to give.

Healthcare? Honey, you don't have the right to refuse sex to your husband. It doesn't matter if this 11th pregnancy will kill you at 35. The man has his entitlement. You cannot own land and you're more than a hundred years from being able to vote. But yell at, argue with or otherwise speak out publicly to an elected official? Oh, no ... this would NEVER happen.

Such tools are these women who would do this bidding for the dopey right wing. These people who would, given the chance, revoke the 20th amendment, reverse the Voting Rights Act, reverse the Civil Rights Act, end Social Security, end Medicare and who would not stop at reversing Roe v. Wade ... oh no. They would go all the way back to Griswold v. Connecticut and wind it all back.

Well, sorry loudmouth lady, but your right to say stupid crap like this in public is much too important to the rest of us.

The Klan is Loose

If you haven't had the privilege of marching against racism or confronting KKK members face-to-face, you may have trouble with this -- they look like regular people. They don't glow in the dark. They're shopping in the next aisle at Wal-Mart.

SC Rep. Joe Wilson is but the most obvious (and perhaps most recent) example of what the political divide really is over President Obama - it is that element in our society that reduces down to "Can't you see he's black?"

As I've written before, when I first talked to my boss, who is African American, about Obama, I said that one of the things I love about him (as a politician and an admirable figure) is that "he's as much mine as he is yours." He laughed. We agreed.

When you hear the robots chanting whatever Beck and Limbaugh tell them to say, it's all about bankrupting the country, big government and freedom -- presumably from tyranny. Yet they had no worries over 7 years of "emergency" war funding that cleaned out the treasury, no concerns over illegal wiretapping of citizens, and attribute torture to trusting Jack Bauer (a fictional guy from the TV series "24") to do the right thing in the infamous and equally fictional "ticking bomb scenario."

Don't chase down the details that reveal what those torture sessions really did. They did what Cheney wanted them to do -- elicited false confessions. More sand to throw in the umpire's face.

But it always comes back to an intense effort to keep Americans afraid of what Obama "really" wants to do. Sinister motives about ruining the country, "indoctrinating" children and killing senior citizens. And John McCain sits quietly, yet his leadership could really matter right now, on these points. He and Lindsay Graham, who are great friends and used to show signs of caring about some level of simple respect for the presidency, could single-handedly save their party from the lunatic fringe. They could take to the floor of the Senate and say, for the record, that they are disgusted by these tactics and all calling for ALL Republicans to cease and desist or risk being called out by Obama for lying and being called out by them -- for the record, every time. Graham would be the front runner for 2012 overnight and McCain would take a position in political history that he wants - Statesman.

But instead, he sits, Twittering and refusing to apologize for exposing the country to the possibility of Sarah Palin being near an important button. Even more important than "send."

And the Republican party has the bark stripped off it, revealing that those who remain and who support and allow these egregiously racist threats to our president ... those who continue to call themselves "Republicans" or even "Conservative" are now the so-called Christian Knights of the Republican Party. They are to Christianity what binLaden is to Islam.

They are dangerous and they are neither crazy nor stupid.
It's so much easier to dismiss people who you think are "limited" in the grey matter department. That's not what we have here. We have White Supremacy, secret societies (see C Street). Convinced of their superiority, they do not fear jail or disgrace. They fear only the non-white becoming powerful.

Don't dismiss them. Stay with the facts. Be like Barack -- who looked like Jackie Robinson at the podium on Wednesday night. You don't answer a heckle like that. You stare, shocked that the white hood slipped off briefly, revealing the face of hatred. Barack said everything by saying nothing, but oh, my, what must have run through his mind ...

Mr. Wilson, you're no Strom Thurmond.
Mr. Wilson, you dropped your torch and pitchfork. Please see the Sargent-at-Arms on your way out.
Mr. Wilson, thank you for making the pro-choice argument better than I've ever heard it.

How can we miss you if you won't go away?

Okay, the first guy who blames the media's intrusion in SC Gov. Mark Sanford's life for the breakup of his certainly doomed marriage gets a fat lip. We're supposed to admire his candor, right? We're supposed to appreciate his sincere apology, right?
Naw. I just want one thing, one thing only -- please, Governor, shut the hell up. I don't want to read your blog or listen to you blubber about your self-indulgent, self-inflicted wounds. I want you to be decent enough to resign from a job that you ran away from and start caring more about your children's experience in this humiliating exercise than you do about your political future.
Another apology? SHUT UP man!
But before you go ... how about a check for all that booty call travel, huh? South Carolina's roads suck, the schools probably stink (obviously more Civics in high school is needed -- to elect better governors) and there are certainly many better uses for that money than your travel bill.

Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough

Hitting the bed last night, I reminded my husband that my life is the envy of three of the biggest stars in our culture. Certainly, this brought around his interest. "Huh?" he queried.
I explained:
In August 1958, four stars were born. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Sharon Stone and ... well ... me. We all know why the first three are considered iconic. Michael was in another orbit, though when we were both kids (Michael and I) my dad assured me that his singing fame would be fleeting. As soon as his hit puberty, he assured, his career would be over.
Message: study your Algebra.
But last night, I explained that I have what those four have only dreamed of having, and have suffered for its lack.
I have loved the same person for 32 years and he still loves me back. We have two beautiful children from that union and (most of the time) they love us back, too. I attended the college of my choice. I got a degree in a field that I love. In my paid work, I am privileged to, every day, help vulnerable people. in my volunteer work, I have been even luckier to do more of the same.
My life? My ordinary life? That's the real Thriller.