First Draft

Health Bill Passes: What You Get

Here.

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The American People are Good and Decent

Listening to hours and hours of nitwittery today, between C-SPAN and MSNBC and reading along on Twitter, it's easy to think this country just completely sucks. I mean completely. Between the teabagger theatrics and Stupak's self-serving horseshit you had to start wondering if the eco-terrorists were right and human beings really were a curse on the planet.

But even in the midst of this crisis, even faced with indisputable evidence that many of our beloved countrymen are total assholes, there is proof many of them have always cared about people poorer than they are:

Long ago I was a young welfare mother, who ran like a crazy woman with my barely breathing little daughter in my arms, …I had run out into the street and hailed a cab, Denver General! We screeched into the drive at hospital, I ran out of the cab without paying, and the cabbie bellowed Pay me!

I didnt look back, I ran like Johnny Unitas holding my daughter with her legs and arms limp and bobbing madly, up the stairs, ran like a crazed animal right past the check in desk at the Emergency room, the clerks yelling Stop! Stop! Security codes suddenly booming on the intercoms, and me runnning, running, screaming Help me! help me! Help us, dear God, please help us!

running running running down crazy mouse-maze corridors, sidestepping janitors with rolling barrels, until I hit the nurse’s and doctor’s station and they, angelic souls, asked no questions, just took my daughter from my arms and gave her oxygen and saline, and my child recovered from the first and last sudden asthma attack she’d ever have, but one that had turned her face deeply gray, and left her with only tiny breath.

And after, when I was assured and assured my child would live and I was led by security out to the front desks again where I would have to tell them I had no insurance and no money… the big unshaven cabbie was standing at the door of the ER… ‘I have no money to pay you,’ I sobbed. I felt I could fall down from the shame.

“I didnt come for the money,” he said, “I came to find out if your daughter is ok.”

I shook my head, was I in a dream? “But, you yelled,” I told him, “You yelled Pay me!”

And this brute of a man said, “You were running too fast to hear the rest. I yelled Pay me ….someday….”

What is pay for my cabbie who is likely now all these nearly forty years later gone from this planet, is this setting out of ‘yes’, whenever I can, for the The Quiet People. On that day, long ago, I saw and never ever forget the nurses and doctors and residents, underpaid and overworked at a big city hospital, such good souls. The Quiet People, It’s written on me: the cabbie who probably had several teenage kids at home and long hours on the road… his soul said ‘the child, the child, the child, came first. The child came first. The life of the helpless came first.’

The Quiet People, all of them, anywhere, any nation, any one, should be able to come in peace to a hospital or doctor or nurse, to not have to break the law to get the medicine or the help with health that they need for themselves and their loved ones to live to the best of one’s ability and to be educated and supported in self-care and especially much preventative care as well. Health and education first for strength, education again and again to rise up and remain strong.

The Quiet People and all people should be able not to suffer secondary trauma from watching their loved ones be tormented because they cannot afford care. I think of my friend L who sat in a recliner with known testicular cancer, and in such pain, for the three month ‘no care’ period before his new health insurance kicked in before he could seek help without losing the roof over his family’s head, how his children and wife suffered with his profound suffering.

The Quiet People who are in severe pain themselves, The Quiet People who are struggling to help their own and others… for them, ‘Health care for all’ is not a poltical document.

Health care for all is an imperative of the soul… the soul most often being the only wise inhabitant of the vulnerable ark of the body.

Via the Balloon Juice comments, which have been awesome all day today.

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Steve King is in MORTAL KOMBAT

Guys, Steve King is a major hardass:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), on racial and gay slurs being hurled at Democratic congressmen: "I just don't think it's anything. ... There are a lot of places in this country that I couldn't walk through. I wouldn't live to get to the other end of it."

And you know, I'm sure if somebody asked him, he'd say that there was some mythical black or Hispanic neighborhood someplace where his pasty, privileged ass was in danger. Because I can look at that photo and hear the minivan's automatic door locks ker-thunk into place as he drives past anywhere that has a sign in Spanish. It wouldn't be unusual for him to think he'd be unsafe there. Many white folks do consider themselves unsafe in minority neighborhoods, and it's because they have never spent any real time there, but that's another post entirely. 

However, there is ample historical precedent for large angry groups of straight white men getting very seriously violent with any minority, woman, hell person who crossed their straight white angry path. It's not about there being a place where you'd feel strange. It's about getting a bunch of assholes together, hopping them up on political crack, and then setting them loose on the people you've just tarred as wanting to destroy their way of life. There are many, many ways that that has gone bad. It's not the same thing as taking a wrong turn down an unfamiliar street.

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Bart Got What He Wanted

Nothing of substance, of course: The current batshit insane law will be applied to any new things created, until such time as all Republicans stop calling Democrats babykillers, which will happen any old day now.

No, Bart got what he wanted, which was lots and lots and lots of attention. What a penile implant he is. Go run for president now, Bart. Go let Tweety suck you off. Go run back to your district, Bart, and talk about how you're the epitome of principle and righteousness for holding out until the very last minute so that you could get your face on TV.

Seriously, this is the sweeping regulation of abortion he wanted? This? This is hardly some epic change to the status quo. It's more along the lines of an IF YOU DIDN'T GET IT WE SUCK OKAY kind of explanation of existing law, which does absolutely nothing for anybody, least of all Bart.

If we took Bart Stupak at his word, and I see no reason not to, he wanted Barack Obama to pinky-swear that no dirty sluts would get abortions on his particular individual dime, I mean his physical dime. and he was willing to scuttle an entire domestic agenda to make that happen. And all he managed to do was get somebody to put on paper that we're gonna do the thing we already do, some more.

So, great. Way to go, Bart. You know what awaits you now? Absolutely nothing. You're some speaker at the Future Douchebags of America conference, a frequent guest on shows nobody watches for about two months. After that, you're a fucking trivia answer. Your fifteen minutes of fame will be up in 5. More people will remember Lady Gaga in 10 years than will remember you, and she goes around without any pants on. 

Schmuck.

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Oh, They're Considering a Correction

Thank God:

Here is what I found: O’Keefe almost certainly did not go into the Acorn offices in the outlandish costume — fur coat, goggle-like sunglasses, walking stick and broad-brimmed hat — in which he appeared at the beginning and end of most of his videos. It is easy to see why The Times and other news organizations got a different impression. At one point, as the videos were being released, O’Keefe wore the get-up on Fox News, and a host said he was “dressed exactly in the same outfit he wore to these Acorn offices.” He did not argue.

But Breitbart told me that, after doing his own examination, “I am under the impression that at no time was he ever dressed as an elaborate pimp” in the offices. Because O’Keefe was apparently carrying the hidden camera, he is generally not visible in the videos, but he is seen briefly entering the Baltimore office wearing a blue shirt and chinos.

I could not reach O’Keefe — who is facing federal criminal charges of tampering with a Democratic senator’s phone in a different attempted sting — or Giles. But I am satisfied that The Times was wrong on this point, and I have been wrong in defending the paper’s phrasing. Editors say they are considering a correction.

There's so much mealy-mouthed bullshit in here it's hard to know where to start, but I'd like to begin with the bolded text. CONSIDERING a correction? Really. How awesome of them. How kind of them to open their overstuffed brain-attics and allow such a thought to enter and breathe the dusty, stifling air. Considering. By "considering," he'd better mean "considering exactly how abject on a scale of ten to fifteen thousand" because YOU DONE FUCKED UP, SON.

Good God. Considering a correction. Considering a correction for believing Fox News and conservative dickbags were right about anything, and extending the benefit of the doubt to said News and said dickbags rather than to an organization that helped thousands of people in poverty and disaster. Considering a correction for being donkey-punched out of one's journalistic principles and the supposedly sacrosanct agenda-setting privileges newspapers claim for themselves by a bunch of screaming teabag pussies. Yeah. I'd be considering a correction too. A correction along the lines of selling all my shit and moving to another country, preferably somewhere they've never heard of the New York Times.

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WHOA

I mean WHOA:

Rove: "This thing is paid for with Bernie-Madoff-style accounting. ... It's a gigantic disaster."

Plouffe: "Karl and the Republicans would be familiar with that."

Rove: "You will bankrupt the country if this bill passes. ... For God's sake, will you stop throwing around epitaphs [sic] and deal with the facts for once, David? ... We will fight the election on this,. and the Democrats will have significant losses in the House and Senate as a result of this bill."

Plouffe: "If Karl and a lot of Republicans want to call the election already, they ought to break out that 'Mission Accomplished' banner."

That'll leave a mark.

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'We're a Day Away'

Obama today:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fuck these racist fucks:

"It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, a large former police officer who said he wasn't frightened but worried about the 70-year-old Lewis, who is twice his age. "He said it reminded him of another time."

Kristie Greco, spokeswoman for Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said a protester spit on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who is black.

Clyburn, who led fellow black students in integrating South Carolina's public facilities a half century ago, called the behavior "absolutely shocking."

"I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus," Clyburn told reporters.

That'll play well in November. Good luck with that, Republicans. In the past eight years you've started two unnecessary wars and fucked over kind of the entire world and made everybody who loved America in 2001 fucking hate us now. While Obama hasn't ended those wars or entirely unfucked the world, he has as his major piece of domestic legislation attempted to get people health insurance. We can argue all day over the details but that's going to be the narrative. Good luck with that. Should be a real barnburner.

I've had my problems with this bill. I've said, over and over, that it does too little too late. I've said, over and over, that political cowardice is so ingrained in Democratic party machinations that we're not so much activists as therapists, telling them it's okay to be brave and fly without their magic feathers. I've wished for so much more from our leadership. Much as I said back in October 2008, when I said electing Obama wasn't enough, that we're so fucked that electing a centrist dude — even if he is a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama — wasn't enough, passing this bill tomorrow won't be enough.

It's never enough, though. We're never done. We're never as far as we want to be. That's no consolation, sure, but I'm not saying it as consolation, or as condemnation, or excuse. Simple fact, nothing more, nothing less. The fight always goes on. And getting pissed and throwing the ball down and declaring the game over feels so fucking good, but the fight goes on anyway, with or without those who've decided it's time to end their part in it. I can't tell you how many epic "it's all over this time" moments I've had in the past five and a half years. The war, Kerry, FISA, Plame, the Military Commissions Act, looking forward and not back ... they go on forever.

It was supposed to be better than this by now. But here's the thing: No matter how good it gets, that's always going to be the way to look at the world. It's always supposed to be better than this. The anger and disappointment I feel about this bill is necessary because without that anger and disappointment there would be no reason to speak, no reason to call, no reason to write, no reason to march, no reason to vote. No reason to work. What Teddy meant, when he said the dream shall never die, is exactly that. 

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Princella and the Accidental Congressman

My temporary Congressman, Joseph Cao, has been back in the news this week. As you may recall, Cao voted *for* HCR the first time it passed the House but he's looking more and more like a no this time around. He's wavered and temporized a bit because he's so polite to whomever he talking to but he was a Jesuit seminarian before deciding he wanted to get married. In short, he'll do what the Bishops tell him to do absent some major changes in the bill's abortion language. It would be wise for him to change his mind since it would increase his eeny weeny chances to win re-election but all the reliable info in NOLA is that he's voting no as of this writing. 

Anyway, Cao's former top aide, Princella Smith, is running for Congress in Arkansas. Princella is sort of an oddity: an African American woman who's a protege of Newt Gingrich. My friend Kevin Allman has an interesting piece at the Gambit tabloid blog about, you guessed it, Princella and the Accidental Congressman.

Weekend Question Thread

What do you do on the Internet when you're not here?

I have to confess, I read a lot of fanfiction.

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Saturday Blogwhoring Thread

Post away.

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Our Parents Do More Drugs Than We Do: Caprica Thread

Jacob:

What bugged me about BSG and continues to bug me with Zoë, though, is that while her methods are correct, her real/fake judgment is wrong. It's a false analogy. Like Stephin Merritt explains about music, electric distortion synthesizer music and live acoustic recordings are the exact same amount of lie. One of them just seems more legit. And what I've never seen -- except in the Eights, and maybe Gaius at the end -- is anybody grasp that fact. I'm known to rant about it myself, but it seems integral to Zoë's scarier ideas (and Barnabas's even moreso) that she cannot grasp the fact that "nature" is a scam. That the infinite variety of the Matrix isn't any faker than the infinite variety of the Twelve Worlds -- just a newer and more malleable version of the reality to which she always clung. As the noted philosopher Courtney Love says, the key is to fake it so real that we're beyond fake: Pow! Clarice and Tammy are down with that, clearly, but Zoë and Barnabas seem to find it sticky, and that's already presenting as a problem.

This used to drive me wild when I was younger, mostly because I was working so fucking hard, but people would constantly say, "When you get out in the real world ..." They meant when I graduated college, I think, or got a higher-paying job or moved out of my psycho singleton apartment or whatever, but it drove me absolutely nuts. Your world may not look like my world but it's still REAL, what I do in my life still matters, and by the way, fuck you. Because it's all the real world. It's all one thing. This makes me fucking crazy. It's all the world. We're all people in it. We don't speak separate languages and dividing us into camps is stupid. You are not from Mars and she is not from Venus. We all live in the real world.

High school, college, your parents' house, red states, blue states, I have friends that think I'm still not in the real world (as I sit here poking 40 with a short stick, with a mortgage) because I don't have kids and a yard and I bike to work, I mean, you can't win. And I've never heard anyone say anything prefaced with "Well, in the real world ..." that wasn't the most utterly condescending, vile, pathetic excuse to suck. If what you mean is, "Your life is fake because you're making choices I want to make but feel I can't because I am a giant pussy, and that makes me ashamed of myself so allow me to distance myself by saying we live on separate planets," you should just say that, and stop saying things that are insane.

This show is aggressively reconnecting me with my inner judgmental pissed-off 19-year-old, and I'm not sure everyone would consider that a good thing, but I sort of feel like she was my Best Chick, so I'm going with it for the purposes of these threads.

About that show.

Malaka Of The Week: General Jack Sheehan

This week's "winner" is retired Marine Corps General and former NATO Commander Jack Sheehan. The General is not only against gays serving openly in the military but has claimed that nelly Dutch soldiers were responsible for Serbian atrocities at Srebrenica:

The Dutch government and military responded with anger and contempt after General John Sheehan, a retired marine corps officer who was Nato's supreme commander at the time of the 1995 atrocity, told a US Senate hearing that gay soldiers in the military could result in events like Srebrenica.

In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces overran the Bosnian Muslim enclave under the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers and killed 8,000 Muslim males, making the event a traumatic national disgrace for the Dutch.

Following recent remarks from Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, that Europeans had gone soft, Sheehan argued that changes after the end of the cold war had reduced Europe's appetite for combat.

"They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military – that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war," he said.

"The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs. The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them. That was the largest massacre in Europe since world war two."

He added that the Dutch chief of staff had told him that having gay soldiers at Srebrenica had sapped morale and contributed to the disaster.

"Total nonsense," said General Henk van den Breemen, the Dutch chief of staff at the time. The Dutch embassy in Washington dismissed the US officer's argument as worthless, Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch foreign minister said that it was not worth commenting on, and the Dutch defence ministry voiced incredulity. "It is unbelievable that a man of this rank is stating this nonsense, for that's what it is," said the ministry.

"Scandalous and not worthy of a soldier," added Eimert van Middelkoop, the Dutch defence minister.

So, were they too busy doing their nails and trying out for Project Runway or something? This is patent nonsense: the NATO rules of engagement were notoriously weak  in Bosnia and even John Wayne would have had a hard time defending Bosnians from homicidal Serbian irregulars. Bad example: John Wayne was a WW II era chicken hawk so he never fought anyone except onscreen.

General Sheehan should be ashamed of himself for making up this shit and spouting it on his hind legs at a Senate hearing. There have *always* been gays in the military and there always will be.  A desire to have same gender sex has nothing to do with courage or willingness to defend innocents from atrocities. Sheehan's slur on the Dutch military is what used to be called a blood libel and I'm glad the Dutch government is calling him on this egregious malakatude.

It's one thing for Sheehan to express his bigoted opinions to the Senate even though he's wrong, wrong, wrong. It's entirely another thing for him lie like a rug in order to support his Neanderthal views. Fuck you, General Malaka and the fucking tank you rode in on. You should hang your head in shame but instead you'll probably go on FOX and get fluffed by your fellow malakas Beck and Bill-O.

We're All Somebody Else

Health care to pay for filthy immigrants, sluts, crackheads, welfare queens and anchor babies:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most Americans believe the healthcare reform plan in Congress would help the poor and the uninsured, but say it would be less likely to benefit other groups including themselves, according to a poll released on Friday.

The March 17 Gallup survey of 1,009 U.S. adults, which coincides with President Barack Obama's final push for approval in the House of Representatives, also found large minorities of Americans who worry the legislation could make things worse for middle-income families and the United States as a whole.

Fifty-nine percent said the plan would help uninsured Americans, while 56 percent would expect a benefit for the poor.

But only 28 percent said they believe the Obama plan would help their own families, while 37 percent said it could make things worse for themselves. Twenty-nine percent said it would make no difference.

Forty-four percent said the plan could make things worse for the United States and middle-income families. At the same time, 39 percent saw a benefit for the country while one-third predicted legislation would help the middle class.

I am thinking of getting a tattoo, on my fucking forehead: ANECDOTES ARE NOT DATA. Because that's what the entirety of this debate has always been about: This one slut I knew who had four abortions in high school. This family that lives down the street from a cousin of a brother of a friend, and they live 14 to a house and nobody has a job (I know this because I see them sitting on the porch all day ... while I'm sitting on the porch ... wait). This guy who said he needed money for food who I saw going into a liquor store.

The entire debate has been about making you afraid of some imaginary (or even real) person who'd make you feel like a fool for trying to take care of him, because that's the real lizard fear of the supposed middle-class, feeling like you got taken. Feeling like you played by the rules and somebody else didn't, and he's better off and you're fucked.

And there's a lot that goes into that. Like the idea that you really don't want to play by the rules and you'd like there to be proof it's better after all, like the knowledge that even though you paid your taxes and raised your kids and saved your money you're still completely fucked and cannot figure out why. Like the fact that you can't control everything and some people are going to be assholes who will game the system no matter what. And dealing with that last takes the ability to calm down and have a fucking beer and not worry so much about what other people are doing, which for us these days is basically impossible. 

So now here comes some news to the north: Most Americans think other Americans are lazy, undeserving assholes and this program, like every other program on the planet, will enable them to get ahead while hard-working real-murricans suffer. Wow, slap my ass and call me Shirley, you've got to be kidding me. It's only the constant refrain of the past 30 years. The only thing more constant than that is the knowledge that "needy" will never apply to you, when you're standing around at the bar with your friends bagging on lazy hambeasts buying Honey Comb with their food stamps.

But we're all somebody else. And I'm not talking in the future when something shitty happens to us, I'm talking now. To wealthier acquaintances I'm sure my stories of needing to pay off credit card debt or save up before I can replace the cracking plaster in the living room or buy a new(ish) car could inspire snide commentary about how I just ought to have spent less money or bought cheaper cuts of meat or taken care of "my own family" first or something. I'm as vulnerable to judgment as any of us are.

Most Americans think health care reform will end up benefiting the poor and needy? GREAT, they're not wrong, so long as they keep in mind they're always likely to be in that category themselves.

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Friday Ferretblogging

Puck makes a nest in a box of shredded paper while the other two chase through their favorite tube:

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“It never goes away…”

Kurt Dussander: To the whole world, I am a monster... and you have known about me. Go ahead, call the police. But just remember this: when I am caught, when those reporters stick their microphones in my face, it will be your name I will repeat over and over again. "Todd Bowden... Todd Bowden. Todd Bowden, yes that was his name. For months, almost a year, he wanted to know everything. That was how he put it... yes... everything."

Todd Bowden: You're crazy. They'll never believe you.

Kurt Dussander: It doesn't matter. And besides, lying to judges and reporters isn't as easy as you think. You have to be brilliant! Can you do that? I know I can. And in any case, do you know what such a scandal can do? It never goes away.

-Apt Pupil

 

This week, two fringe candidates in the Georgia governor’s race had a door to the past opened that I’m sure they would have preferred remained shut. In unrelated incidents, Ray McBerry Jr. and Carl Camon had been accused of in appropriate relationships with female students while they were teachers. In both cases, the men denied wrongdoing and yet resigned shortly after the allegations surfaced. In Camon’s case, he noted that the girls involved were concocting stories about him due to bad grades, noting that at least one had promised to “get you.” McBerry noted that he had been trying to counsel a student who had substance-abuse issues when the student became attached to him.

I don’t see enough written about this to make any kind of intelligent determination as to if either man was guilty. To be fair, anything is possible and if either of these guys committed these actions, they deserve what they get from both their employers and the public. However, on the other hand, most people who get accused of something like this have a track record of this type of behavior. Thus, when the first person finally breaks the wall of silence, usually many others follow with similar statements of incidents that took place over a long period of time (see: Woods, Tiger and Waitresses, Truck Stops). That didn’t really happen here. In either case, that’s not what concerns me.

As an educator, I do my best not to think about it, but when something like this comes up, it freaks me out. A career built over years of study, work and determination can fall apart in a vengeful instant. A student who doesn’t like you, a grade someone feels is unfair or more could bring you crashing down. A student’s Machiavellian maneuver borne of anger, frustration or some other under-thought reaction can yield a lifetime of misery for the target of their spite.

We rightfully protect our children, as they are the most precious things we have. They are also vulnerable and the damage that can be done to them by vultures, con men and other evil doers can reverberate for decades. A damaged child is one of the most painful things to see because you know they hurt and yet there’s nothing you can do about it.

And, yes, there are creepy bastards out there who get an overdeveloped sense of ego and entitlement. It’s the 30-something, balding, fat coach (or conversely, the guy who was a “total stud” in high school and now feels saddled with three kids and a wife who hates him) who is suddenly surrounded by smoking hot, sexually budding female volleyball players in shorts that are way too short and tight who usually cracks first. The girls giggle as girls do and suddenly, well, there’s a hand on an ass and you can figure it out from there… Those guys? Fry their asses.

However, thanks to jagoffs like that, we’re all on alert. I never really thought about it all that much until I ended up with a slightly imbalanced student in my class who kept hanging around after a night class. It dawned on me that this student was likely to fail the class. It also dawned on me that she kept sticking around, trying to talk to me about non-school stuff and we were alone. Nothing happened, but it’s like when you’re suddenly aware that you’re by yourself on a dark street in a shitty neighborhood without a cell phone. You don’t like that feeling. The next day, I laid it all out for my boss and he monitored the situation carefully. (It’s good to have a good boss.)

What makes this worse is that these things never go away. These two guys will have this tin can tied to their tail for all of eternity. And it’s like a football player with a blown ACL: Even after it’s fixed, it doesn’t take much to blow it out again. The next time there’s an accusation, they’re as good as guilty.

Certain things will fade with time. Steal? Hey, people will eventually get over that. Lie? Yeah, well, I’m sure there was a good reason. Go all Bernie Madoff or Jayson Blair? Get a book deal! Not all scumbaggery is created equal. We even kind of got our minds of the false allegations against Richard Jewell. However, the things uttered by teenagers regarding who did what to whom always remain a maddening whisper of suspicion.

Friday Cat Blogging: Aquacat Edition

Yeah, I know it's another shot of Della Street in a box but the last one was of her in a wine box. This time she's pioneering a new super hero identity: Aquacat. Anyone buying this tripe? I thought not. Anyway, here she is:

Stupak's Nunsense

I love to quote Joan Walsh so I'll do it again:

Stupak's entitled to his opinion on the issue. But he went beyond what was necessary, yesterday and today, in disrespecting the 60 Catholic nuns representing 59,000 sisters who bucked the Catholic bishops and came out for the bill Wednesday, declaring it "the real pro-life position." "When I’m drafting right-to-life language, I don’t call up the nuns," Stupak told Fox News. Instead he said he consulted "leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and the National Right to Life Committee." <SNIP>

There was a way for Stupak to say he disagreed with the nuns without condescending to them, but two days in a row, he didn't find it. In fact, his disrespect of the nuns seems of a piece with his stubborn stance not only on abortion but the healthcare reform bills. He joins the patriarchal leaders of the Catholic Church who never listen to the voices of women, either, and he's proud of that.

Why on earth would Bart listen to women when celibate, pedophile protecting men in cassocks and dog collars are speaking? They not only know their shit, they're full of it. Stupak is not only a douchebag but a dumbass: who among us is not afraid of nuns? Beyond the urban legends about ruler wielding banshees excoriating students in parochial schools, I've been pummelled by nuns along the parade route in New Orleans many times. Our local nuns are bead grubbing maniacs and only a fool isn't scared of them. Guess what that makes Bart? I know: he's the man who put (packed?) the stupid in Stupak. 

Go Look What You Helped To Do

Remember our Make Better Journalists project? More of the stories about what the schoolkids we helped are doing just got posted: 

With the video camera purchased from your financial support, our class was able to produce a bi-weekly, 18-minute broadcast, reporting on a variety of subjects from sports and a protest march to prom and profiles on individual students..

 

My personal favorite broadcast was our very first in which four students followed over 400 teachers and students from our school to the district headquarters in a protest march over the lay-off of 88 teachers. The students passed the camera back-and-forth while also taking turns interviewing the students and teachers as they were walking and protesting. The live action created a challenge for their first assignment, yet also conveyed the movement and spirit of the march.

 

Your support encouraged my class to unleash their creativity and gain knowledge and develop their multi-media skills in broadcast journalism. As a result of the experience, several of my students were selected to produce more documentary-style work through participation in a summer federal job program for disadvantaged youth and three students are now studying broadcast journalism in college.

Way to go, First Draft readers!

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Know My Name as It's Called Again

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The Goal

This morning, reading Ezra:

According to a Democratic source, CBO has finished its work and will release the official preliminary score later today. But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years -- so, 2020 to 2029 -- it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.

Emphasis mine. You get everybody health insurance, great. You still have shit like this happening:

Listen to this story from a new report on maternal mortality in the U.S.:

Trina Bachtel, a 35-year-old white woman, was insured at the time of her pregnancy, but the local clinic had reportedly told her that it required a US$100 deposit to see her, because she had incurred a medical debt some years earlier – even though the debt had since been repaid. Trina Bachtel delayed seeking care, unable to afford the fee at the local clinic. She finally received medical attention in a hospital but her son was stillborn. She was later transferred to another hospital in Ohio where she died in August 2007, two weeks after the birth.

For a country that supposedly has the most innovative health care system in the world, we seem to suck at the basics.

That's because we think of insurance as the basics. We think of the opportunity to see a doctor as the basics, not the actuality of seeing a doctor.

The same health care system that keeps people from going to the doctor when they have a cold keeps women from getting decent prenantal care. The stresses of living at the bottom of the economic ladder make it even worse.

Many women report not being able to go to the doctor because they risk being fired from their jobs for missing work. Medicaid can even be a barrier in itself – for Medicaid to cover a pregnancy, a woman first has to get a letter from her doctor confirming her pregnancy. How do you go to the doctor to get the letter if you don’t have health care?

Even if you have insurance, and even if you can keep your insurance when you need your insurance, and even if there's a hospital within driving distance and even if your car works that day and even if you can get an appointment with a gynecologist to practice their love and even if that appointment doesn't cost anything, you're still mightily screwed if you can't take the day off work or if you get paid by the hour and can't afford rent if you take off the hours.

And the reason we don't consider shit like that in the debate we're having is ain't none of our congressional betters EVER about to be in that situation. No one leading the debate in this country has a job they can't ask off from, has a car they pray will start every morning, has a thousand miles to go before the nearest emergency room. If they did, we'd start seeing things in legislative form like mandating post-7 p.m. or pre-8 a.m. doctor's office hours, billions in give-aways for increasing public transportation to and from hospitals, and stronger laws protecting even part-time workers from punishment if they get sick.

The legislation will cover 32 million Americans. I've said this before, but the goal is not to get everybody health coverage. The goal is to get everybody health care. Not even single-payer, not even the wildest, reddest fantasies of the craziest socialist in this country right now would accomplish that, not in this country today. Not when you do not have the doctors to treat the sick, nor enough hospital beds to hold them, inexpensive drugs to prescribe, pharmacies to fill those prescriptions or employer-employee relations that allow for the humanity of illness of oneself or a family member.

A.

All For It

Republican: Let's have a public option!

Congressman Shadegg believes health insurance companies should have to compete for our business as individual consumers. Forcing them to compete, even through a public option, would be better than an individual mandate which will not work.

Now that that ship's sailed, now that anything resembling public health care has been characterized as a nonstop Nazi death panel disco party, now that it's basically an individual mandate or nothing, now he's all for what six months ago he would have characterized as the anti-christ. Now he's all about it. Nice. Way to show up on time to shoot the wounded. Way to get there. Way to be.

For what it's worth, I agree with him. Doesn't mean he's not being a disingenuous nitwit. 

A.

Old Media Values

For about 30 years this has been true:

Lear Center Director Martin Kaplan, Seton Hall University researcher Matthew Hale and a passel of unusually resilient graduate students plowed through nearly 500 hours of news from eight Los Angeles television outlets, drawn from 14 random days last August and September.

They found out, in essence, that the average half-hour of local news is neither very local nor very newsy.

In each 30-minute segment, more than eight minutes go to advertising. An additional 7 1/2 minutes focus on stories outside Southern California. Sports, weather and teasers (touting the dreck scheduled later that hour, day or week) take up a total of nearly six minutes.

The eight remaining minutes might amount to something worthwhile. But they get frittered away too -- mostly with soft features and, especially, coverage of the latest murder or string of burglaries.

Try to recall an evening newscast that didn't include an animal in a predicament or at least one story gift-wrapped in yellow police tape. A regular diet of this stuff might reasonably have you cowering in your house. Never mind that statistics (so meddlesome, those numbers that provide context) show crime in fairly sharp decline in recent years.

[snip]

The stations demonstrate an utter lack of concern about challenges to their public service content. Just look at the files they're required by the FCC to maintain (also examined by the USC investigators) on their "significant treatment of issues facing the community."

One of KNBC's reports last year listed a story about "a rare humpback whale" spotted off Australia. KTLA (which, like The Times, is owned by Tribune Co.) cited its coverage of an Abercrombie & Fitch lawsuit against Beyoncé -- over the name of her perfume.

Whenever I bitch about stuff like this on Twitter I get some crabby reply from a local journo with an example of a a great story I obviously didn't notice because I'm just like all those teabaggers screaming about the librul media and not paying attention, but the exception isn't the point. The rule is.

A.

An ℞ of My Own re: The Health Care Debate

From Album3

You know, I'd prefer that the debate be on the merits of the bill; however, at this point the only people who seem to think the Republicans are demonstrating even an iota of good faith are your contemporary press corpse, who dutifully repeat every Rethug charge without ever bothering to do the sort of basic research on whether a particular procedural matter is routine or not. The sort of research someone can do while participating in an online chat.

Well, fine: if they want to act like that, and if they want to defend the old ways, then Thorazine for the lot of them...

Of course, once you start fighting fire with fire, the press immediately rises to declare, with much umbrage, that "the debate" has become negative on "both sides," thus insulating THEM from that harshest of charge, that of being "librul," which might not only serve as a career detour, but, even worse, might mean fewer invites to swank D.C. parties in happening neighborhoods like Adams-Morgan.

Wouldn't want that to happen.

Soul Deep: RIP Alex Chilton

Stunningly sad news just breaking that Alex Chilton died this afternoon of a heart attack.

Chilton was truly one of the big ones, an impossibly, ridiculously, talented writer and performer.  As Whet just noted on Twitter, of the uber-hit The Letter:

alex chilton: SIXTEEN WHEN HE RECORDED THIS

I remember in the early awful days of Katrina aftermath, Chilton was one of the NOLA musicians whose whereabouts no one was able to confirm for a few days. I remember what a gift it felt like, in the middle of that huge sad story, to hear he was okay after all. When I heard the news tonight, I immediately hoped this story would have the same ending, but his death appears to have been confirmed.

Pop hitmaker, cult hero, and Memphis rock iconoclast Alex Chilton has died.

The singer and guitarist, best known as a member of '60s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the '70s power-pop act Big Star, died today at a hospital in New Orleans. Chilton, 59, had been complaining of about his health earlier today. He was taken by paramedics to the emergency room where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack.

His Big Star bandmate Jody Stephens confirmed the news this evening. "Alex passed away a couple of hours ago," Stephens said from Austin, Texas, where the band was to play Saturday at the annual South By Southwest Festival. "I don’t have a lot of particulars, but they kind of suspect that it was a heart attack."

UPDATED: for those who may not be familiar with Chilton, who don't understand why this is such a big loss, Balk over at The Awl sums it up perfectly, without exaggerating one bit:

Alex Chilton, who pretty much influenced everything that influenced the music you listen to now, has died of a heart attack at the age of 59.

More Than This

Clearly my marriage will go straight to hell for looking at these pictures:

We have a feeling, even though we are old, that some girls are bringing girls to homecoming/prom/fancy-wear day dances these days. Amirite? Are you one of those girls/boys? Well let’s celebrate those photos everyone is so f*cking afraid of! VISIBILITY, LADIES!

I am just now combing through my own memories of high school to try to figure out if anyone I knew brought a partner of the same sex to prom. I don't think so, though my own memories of that time aren't good ones, so I doubt I was paying attention to anything but my own nonsense.

As are most people, I think: High school is fucking miserable. Even if you are popular, even if you are gorgeous, even if you are smart, even if you fit into every box there is to check on every list there is to make and do everything exactly right, it is still a point in your life when you feel like you have to figure everything out and become who you'll be for the rest of your life. And all around you are a bunch of other kids doing the same thing, and being assholes to each other because the neurons are firing a billion miles a minute, plus there's sports and cheerleading and drivers' licenses to get in the way.

Maybe this is my small-town talking, and a city school would have been different, but if what I've seen of teenagers all over is true, high school is at best an awkward experience in why you suck. Why is why this is so enraging, this girl and her girl and the inability to go to prom together just because adults are fucking stupid. There's so little joy in the world, and even less when you have acne and are worried about college admissions and whatever it is kids these days worry about, with their iPods and stuff, and then grown-ups come along with all this bullshit and make it worse. God.

If you can find even one other person who remotely gets you during this time of your life when everything sucks so much and nothing feels right, you should cling to that person who gets you like a very clingy thing, and you should do as much stupid shit together as you possibly can, up to and including going to the goddamn prom. If you're a girl and she's a girl or you're a guy and he's a guy, so fucking what? What matters is you've found somebody at the age of 16 that takes away the ever-present urge to just explode with how insane the world is. I looked at those  faces up there in those pictures at the link and just thought, how lucky they are to be that happy.

A.

The Friends of My Enemy

Have a good time campaigning on the side of these people in the fall, Republicans.

A.

Weathermen

Natch:

Rather than believing that this blind pig suddenly found an ear of corn, my guess is that the Dick Whisperer put his finger to the wind and sensed that HCR is going to pass. Since he always wants to sit at the cool kids’ table in the cafeteria, he’s started to lay the foundation for the inevitable “I saw it coming” piece that will allow him to play reindeer games with the Democrats.

Which isn't so different from anyone else, really: People like winning.

If I haven't written about the ins and outs of HCR this week, it's mainly that a) we've already established that the bill is far less than what we need but better than nothing so fucking get it done already so we can start talking about fixing it to become what we need and b) the debate has started to become a Suffering Contest in which I have no interest in participating.

So far the major point of interest for me is one of strategy: Fuck the Republicans for whining about process because their entire worldview for the past 30 years has been that no one cares about process and for what it's worth they've been right.

Political nerds, which make up exactly less than an effective percentage of the electorate, care about how something gets done. Everybody else just wants the flipping garage painted and doesn't care if you use a sprayer or a paint stick or a brush. Just paint the garage already.

A.

Back of Town blog

Treme.

It's coming.

And Maitri's fixin' to blog it.

How Nice

Some Teabagger wants Speaker Pelosi tried for treason for using House procedures to pass HCR on an up or down vote:

I didn't think it was possible for me to like Heineken any more than I already do

We're going to open an old wound here, so get ready. It will be worth it.

Remember those sexist Super Bowl ads that pissed us off? That's a rhetorical question because I know you do. 

Of the six car ads run during the Super Bowl, that chauvinistic Dodge Charger "Man's Last Stand" ad was scored as the least effective across the board.  It also, surprising no one, came in dead last in with female viewers, per the 2010 Hoffman/York PURSEuasion Report on Super Bowl advertising effectiveness to women. According to a report from Kelley Blue Book, while the ad got very high ratings on a quick poll asking Bowl viewers to name favorite ads, that didn't translate into increased traffic on kbb.com's model information pages, which is used as a measure of ad effectiveness in generating auto sales. On that scale, again the Dodge Charger came in on the bottom. 

Keep that in mind as we take a look at this.

1136 victims in total were snagged, with over 1.5 million users watching their reactions live on SKY Sport. The two weeks following the event, the Heineken subsite received over 5 million unique visitors, plenty of blog and news coverage, and some seriously heavy YouTube/socnet love.

Okay, so beer and cars is maybe an apple/oranges comparison. Generating interest in buying a car is a different proposition than making people spend money on booze, sure. And what about the question of further the "domineering women controlling their men" stereotype in advertising? Well, Heineken's approach with its American advertising has leaned toward the less offensive men and women sure are different stereotype but remember the "soccer swindle" ad was aimed at an Italian market where sexism is more entrenched. Even still, though,  the Italian ad "punchline" not only relies on a feel-good surprise, it turns the tired "us vs. them" conflict on its ear, saying, literally,  "Let's all enjoy this together!"  This, as opposed to the reinforcement of chauvinistic resentment that fueled the Dodge ad fail. 

So, hey, if you're going to spend a gabillion dollars on a single ad, why not end up with something that's not only massively effective, not only twists a stereotype, but leaves everyone involved with a smile on their face?