E-mails I Receive

My right-wing nutjob Army Ranger brother has declined to remove me from this right-wing nutjob e-mail blast list, so if there's a hot right-wing meme being flung through the interwebz, it'll land in my inbox eventually. Yesterday I got this one; have you seen it?

Picture from Wednesday's Veterans Day Ceremony... Check out this latest picture from WEDNESDAY, Veterans Day 11/11/09 at the Ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. I don't know whether the National Anthem is being played, or the Flag is going by, or WHAT, but EVERYBODY in the picture is either saluting or has his hand over the HEART. All except ONE. Guess who??? And some people actually call him our President!!!??? I do not make this stuff up! You would think he could, at least, fake it.

Really, I don't blame my brother. Why not just mindlessly click on "forward" when it would take an entire thirty seconds online and possibly THREE clicks to ascertain that the words accompanying the picture are, shall we say, flat-out wrong? The photo is actually from the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington, and was snapped not during the anthem, but immediately after Obama walked onto the dais during "Hail to the Chief." Later, when the national anthem was played, Obama indeed placed his hand over his heart, as other photos show.

Simple enough, no? I replied to his e-mail with this information, including links to Snopes.com AND a corroborating piece on Free Republic (shudder), as a public service to the peeps on his list who think Snopes is a liberal conspiracy, as well as links to both the C-SPAN video of the ceremony and a cellphone video posted on YouTube. And this is the reponse I got from one of my brother's buddies:

Just a point of military and civilian ceremonial courtesy; when Hail to the Chief is played military officers do not generally salute forward, they face the direction of advance of the Commander and Chief, and upon facial recognition or 12 paces render a hand salute. ADM Mullen and the Lieutenant Colonel pictured are both facing forward. Also as a point of civilian courtesy the gentlemen to the Presidents left would not have his hand over his heart facing away from the President, he would not have his hand over his heart at all. If he did (which is fine but not proper) he would still turn to face the President as he advances. When Hail to the Chief is played the President continues to move past all other U.S. officials (civilian and military) at least two paces. This signifies that he is the highest ranking U.S. official in attendance, he would not have halted his advance behind the official party and crossed his hands. While I dispute you rendition of the facts I do not contend the President was in anyway being disrespectful, just that the facts do not fit the picture. Even if the cermony was altered and all parties remained facing forward, the President would have continued forward past his subordinates.

Protocol is huge, at least to the military so I highly doubt the scenario you laid out is accurate. Having served in a protocol position in the military and dealt with these types of events I feel qualified to dispute your findings.

I find this response fascinating for its "protocol mandates x; therefore y is impossible" mindset. Despite the "Hail to the Chief" explanation, hell, despite the video showing--complete with sound!--Obama walking onto the stage as HttC plays and the officers salute and the civilian clamps his hand over his heart, and despite the fact the the position of the table and chairs as shown in the photo leaves no space for Obama to have continued to a spot two paces in front of his subordinates (he is standing even with them against the table, not behind them as the e-mailer alleges), the former protocol officer highly doubts the scenario and feels qualified to dispute it. Protocol is huge in the military and mandates one specific procedure for the president to walk onto a stage, so therefore that is the only way he could have walked onto the stage, and I can tell you exactly how the photo would have looked if they'd taken a photo, which they couldn't have since the photo you showed me does not match what I know the photo should look like. I am aware that the speed limit on this road is 65, officer, so it is simply impossible that I was traveling at 85, and I am qualified to dispute your findings.

So of course I wrote him back with specific links to video, telling him that regardless of protocol, the evidence shows that something slightly different happened. His response?

I would guess the report is wrong but I can confirm thru a friend who commands one of the honor guard companies at Arlington. Not to be arrogant but [your brother] will tell you I am rarely wrong.

In other words, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? I would dearly love to be so goddamn sure that everything I think--or, I suppose, everything I have been compelled to think by my institutions--is the only possible reality. Curse this career devoted to science for compelling me to draw conclusions from evidence even when they contradict expectations!

Et Cum Spiriti Tuo

I did not know that I was living in a theocracy. Oh, of course my officemates and I have joked about it from time to time, and I have made snide comments about the American Talibangelicals on this blog. But the healthcare debate has finally delivered some clarity on the matter (h/t Americablog).

We are all Vatican Citizens today.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) pledged on Tuesday morning to defeat healthcare reform legislation if his abortion amendment is taken out, saying 10 to 20 anti-abortion-rights Democrats would vote against a bill with weaker language.

"They’re not going to take it out," Stupak said on "Fox and Friends," referring to Senate Democrats. "If they do, healthcare will not move forward."

On the off chance you haven't been keeping up with your congressional baseball card collection, Stupak is the C Street tenant the US Conference of Catholic Bishops settled on to be the conduit through which the even-tangential-federal-abortion-funding-ban amendment they wrote would splurt all over the House health bill. So after all our progressive blogwringing about the Mormons and the evangelicals trying to worm their respective theologies into civil law, the Catholics dispensed with the subterfuge and just flat-out did it.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops defended its involvement in the health-care debate, saying Monday that church leaders have a duty to the nation and God to raise moral concerns on any issue, including abortion rights and coverage for the poor.

[Francis Cardinal] George [Asshat-Chicago] made the remarks at the start of the conference's fall meeting in a wide-ranging speech that re-asserted the bishops' role not only as guardians of the faith, but also as moral guides outside the church.

Really, Frank? Really? The bishops' role is to be moral guides for all of America, including non-Catholic America and, apparently, Congress? Jesus, did these guys help negotiate Charlie Weis' contract extension too? The hubris levels are certainly compatible.

This came up before, I think, in some presidential race or another, involving some Irish guy. Can Bart Stupak even recognize himself as belonging to the same institution--the Congress--this other Catholic did and comport himself in the same way?

I support the United States Constitution. I am concerned as a public official with the maintenance of that Constitution. I take the same oath of office as the President of the United States takes and have taken it for 14 years in the Senate and the House, and four years before that in the service. The Constitution provides very happily under Article 1 of the First Amendment, a provision for the separation of church and state, and I consider that to be the most admirable organization of society that we could possibly devise.

And I would feel that any group existing outside the United States, whether it is the Vatican or anyone else, respects our basic conviction that church and state must be separate and that my obligation is to the Constitution and to uphold my duty.

I also suggest that there is another part of the Constitution also relevant which is Article 6, which says there shall be no religious test for office. That protects all of us.

How to Do It

How does this happen? I have asked myself that a few times in the past ten months, with "that" referring to the repeated ability of __________ [insert the party, gang, or cabal in Congress lacking fifty percent of the votes plus one] to get what they want. This is how it happens.

10 of the 19 Democrats who signed the initial Stupak letter to Pelosi voted against health reform even after their demands on abortion were met.

Hold your breath and swear you'll keep holding it 'til you turn blue if mommy makes you wash the dishes, unless you get a piece of cake first, and then take the proffered slice of cake, exhale, eat the slice, inhale, grab the rest of the cake, and sprint out the door, leaving the dishes to continue moldering in the sink. And then try it again the next night when you're asked to clean your room, with the same results, while mommy stands there and wonders why nothing ever gets done around here and she's running to the store for more goddamn Duncan Hines every night after work.

The Sawdust Diaries

I just wrapped up 72 hours of home repair, and yes, I am counting hours spent sleeping in the total since they were also consumed by (1) thinking about sheetrock and (2) being sore. The main casualty was my beloved 20-year-old circular saw, which breathed its last in a puff of burned bearing grease smoke while hacking through the inch-thick cement stucco that was holding the windows hostage. Sniff, sniff. Amazingly, though, a shiny new Skilsaw ended the mourning pretty quickly.

Bloodletting? Not nearly as much as expected, and mostly limited to small punctures at the far extremities. Do not touch my fingers this morning. Seriously. I also managed to drop a broken window on my leg, but since it did more skidding than slicing, I ended up with what looks like a bad shaving incident rather than something requiring stitches. Oh, and a section of fence fell on me and knocked my beer over, and then the wind caught the tarp we had put up against Saturday's sprinkles and snapped the (surprise!) rotted fencepost it was tied to, which then, of course, also fell on me.

My dad, who was there to help and walk me through intricate things like sawing windows out of cement stucco, provided me with the genetic predisposition for general carpentry. Unfortunately, he apparently also included the gene that greatly increases the likelihood that things will fall on your head while you're in the middle of your projects. Thanks, dad!

All in all, a very productive weekend that got the major lifting out of the way. Coming up next on This Week in Sheetrock: taping, mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding, cursing, mudding again, throwing mud knife through new sheetrock, more mudding, sobbing, collapsing in heap.

A Stupak Amendment Reader

I find it difficult to write, speak, or even think about the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House healthcare bill without erupting into a giant ball of fire-spitting incredulous rage, and I do need to keep my surroundings fire-free today, so here is a roundup of what more rational people have loaded onto the big internet truck in the past couple days.

From Think Progress, Republicans acting like caterwauling teabaggers doing their best Joe Wilson impression to prevent members of the Democratic Women's Caucus from testifying in support of a healthcare bill that includes full reproductive health coverage, including abortion.

As the Democratic Women’s Caucus took to the microphone on the House floor to offer their arguments for how the bill would benefit women, House Republicans — led by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) — repeatedly talked over, screamed, and shouted objections. “I object, I object, I object, I object, I object,” Price interjected as Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) tried to hold the floor.

From Crooks and Liars, Dr. Nancy Snyderman (on MSNBC) fumes for all of us:

You know what I find so infuriating about this? I mean, absolutely infuriating? And this isn't about being pro-choice or pro-abortion or any of the hot button lingo. We know women pay more for insurance than men. We know women are restricted in the states. And now it's basically, if you're a 50 year old woman and you're in a monogamous relationship you suddenly find yourself pregnant, you better know that have an abortion rider in order to access health care that you thought you had? It is one more pressure on women.

From Jezebel, Latoya Peterson provides a very source-rich rundown and commentary.

So, let's recap:

1. No public option
2. We have an exchange that assumes a relative definition of "affordable"
3. Somehow, they managed to work this so that even women who were paying for their own care got conned out of abortion coverage
4. Undocumented workers can't access this plan, even without subsidies, though they - like other human beings - get sick and need treatment like everyone else.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got hosed.

Jezebel again, this time Anna North, relaying a WTF letter to Nancy Pelosi from pro-choice Democrats:

Greg Sargent reports at least 41 pro-choice Democrats have signed a letter to Nancy Pelosi stating the following:

As Members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women's access to reproductive health services.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women's ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law.

Talk to me, Rachel.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More from Latoya Peterson:

I still hate that "sneaking in funding for abortions" line: It's like the lawmakers heard the cries for affordable premiums and comprehensive coverage, and thought Yeah, but what about all those unscrupulous whores scheming to use their health care coverage to through abortion parties and make fetus-necklaces? WTF? Doesn't the Hyde Amendment go far enough?

And, finally, for the grand finale, who do we really have to thank for this clusterfuck (which is now solely for purposes of procreation, hahahaha you sluts)? Why, the Catholic Church, still inexplicably tax-exempt despite bending the third prong of the Lemon test fork so far backwards as to almost stab itself in its legislation-pushing wrist.

As rumors spread that Republicans might vote “present” in order to scuttle the entire bill, even Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called Republican leader John Boehner to make sure the GOP didn’t play any games with the Stupak amendment, sources said.[...]

The drama had built for months, pitting a group of Democrats against the Catholic Church. Priests and bishops were calling members to lobby for stricter language to limit abortion coverage, members and aides said last week.[...]

[Rep. Brad] Ellsworth [D-IN], in consultation with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was trying to amend legislation passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee to make sure insurance companies that receive federal funds under the programs created by the bill don’t use any of that money to pay for abortions.

By Thursday, Ellsworth, who was working closely with Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) realized the church wouldn’t accept anything less than a version of Hyde, so he and his staff started working on a version the bishops could accept, aides said.

Swell. First the Church throws loads of cash it could have spent on crumbling and closing parishes in Maine at, instead, ensuring committed gay couples can't marry, and now it swings its giant stick to make sure that all women who can't afford insurance on their own adhere to the Church's teachings on abortion, whether they're Catholic or not. Republican men in the House of Representatives shout down women. Teabaggers rejoice.

Good job, y'all. You've managed to push your odious legislation that's aimed at the mythical subset of unmarried women who use abortion as birth control, or as a backup mood-lifter when the nail salon is booked, through the first step of becoming law for us all. I don't know what happens next, as trying to make predictions in this arena has only led to me pulling my few remaining brown hairs out.

All Souls...

Sigh. The All Souls procession steps off in about an hour and I have failed to convince either family member currently in town to go with me, so I sit back and hope Homer's going and will post lots of pictures.

I drove past Holy Hope Cemetery this afternoon and saw many Mexican families celebrating All Souls' Day with festive tables set up at their loved ones' gravesites, pink tablecloths and ribbons and balloons and a few hibachis smoking happily away. This definitely ranks up there with the finest traditions I have encountered here and there around the world, and seems like a deeply satisfying way to deal with the reality that people eventually die while others are left behind. Get together once a year to celebrate lives and share good food and set a place for the deceased, even if they can't chew quite as well as they used to. It's the thought that counts, and the thought kicks ass. Why cry when you can have a nice picnic instead?

Next year I suspect I will be going to the procession, accompanied or unaccompanied, it won't matter. The sun is rapidly setting on my three surviving grandparents after very long and (I hope, for them) rewarding lives. There will be no picnic in the graveyard--that sort of thing is not exactly understood in small town southern Illinois--and if it is not next year it will be the next, for something bittersweet but as celebratory as it can be.

Lovely weather tonight. I hope it's magical for everyone who goes.

Sixty-Four

64. Sixty-four Democrats fell over themselves today to out-Republican the Republicans and vote for an amendment written by a fellow Democrat to the healthcare bill.

The amendment, written by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., would bar the new government insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is in danger. The Democrats' original legislation would have allowed the government plan to cover abortions.

The amendment also would prohibit people who receive new federal health subsidies from buying insurance plans that include abortion coverage.

When the Stupak amendment first surfaced, some people had hoped that it was simply a bit of belt-and-suspenders redundancy intended to curtail any attempts to circumvent the execrable 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prevents funds allocated via the annual HHS appropriations from being used to pay for abortions. But that last bit, the part about no one being able to buy coverage that includes abortion from the to-be-established government exchange if they're using federal subsidies to acquire said coverage, takes it a step further.

Who were these 64 attempting to appease with this maneuver? Republicans in their districts who won't be voting for them anyway? Some subset of women who are both cash-poor and so conflicted by the potential for having to make a reproductive decision that they'll be relieved to have that bit of agency stripped from their lives?

Thanks to the grandstanding of the Democrats who joined every goddamn Republican in the House except, Arizona's own John Shaddegg (who voted 'present' in a tiny grandstanding protest of his own), the women who can least afford unwanted pregnancies are hit the hardest; if you get a federal subsidy and want abortion coverage, you'll need to buy a separate, abortion-only, policy with your own money. The availability and cost of those policies has not been addressed yet. Additionally, people who don't qualify for subsidies but wish to buy through the exchange fully on their own dime likely will see their options curtailed, as

Abortion-rights supporters say private insurers will not likely offer policies with abortion coverage in the exchange because many potential buyers will be getting federal subsidies.

Around 21 million people are expected to get coverage through the exchange by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Amazingly, the Jehovah's Witnesses have not pressured any legislators to introduce amendments forbidding taxpayer-subsidized blood transfusions, nor have Orthodox Jews demanded that federal funds stop subsidizing neonatal care for uncircumsized male infants. Hello, House Democrats: abortion--even when rape, incest, and imminent maternal death are not conditioning factors--is. legal. in. America. End of story. Take away women's choices and you will, in some circumstances, inevitably create desperation that will result in horrible outcomes for existing women and their existing families.

Was your rep one of the 64? It's worth a look.

Friday Escapism

I couldn't lead off with the week's crap and then follow it with stuff that doesn't matter at all, so separate post time. This is probably only really funny if you've caught Glenn Beck's histrionics, tears, and chalkboards, so do yourself a favor via some preparatory video Googling, then come back to some of the best work Jon Stewart has ever done.

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Friday Summary

It was a crap week, topped off by an Army shrink losing his shit and gunning down a dozen soldiers at Hood. What a blow, what horrid implications.

People got blown up in Iraq by the dozens. Five British soldiers in Helmand were murdered by the Afghan cop who was working at their side. The Iraqi elections are pre-emptively fucked. Obama still hasn't come to a decision on Afghanistan. Can't say I envy him, but let's step it up just a touch.

Arizona is stripping tens of millions of dollars from the education budget, so Tucson--which failed to pass a school district budget override--can kiss art, music, and PE goodbye next year, as well as more teachers and classroom supplies. Possibly with an eye toward making sure education isn't lonely in its misery, equal amounts will be stripped from the Division of Economic Security, which includes the department that takes care of developmentally disabled people, thus ensuring that hundreds of folks who need just a little help will be left floundering to the point that they will end up homeless and committing crimes. Do you own stock in private prisons? The legislature is setting them up to be Arizona's only guaranteed growth industry--well, that and topical chemotherapy creams for melanoma--so buy now!

And, of course, we had the Maine vote on Tuesday re-affirming that a majority of Americans will jump at the chance to relegate me and mine to second-class citizenship whenever it's offered. But I'm supposed to take Chapel Hill's new mayor and Kalamazoo's anti-discrimination policy as a palliative (well, and Washington state's new everything-but-marriage DP legislation, although we've seen how well that worked in, say, New Jersey), so hey, meet me in Kalamazoo!

That's the news for the week. Whee.

Just in Case You Were at all Unclear on Where This is Going

This citizen's initiative is going to be on the ballot in Maine next November (via a commenter at Pam's House Blend):

An Act to Remove Protections Based on Sexual Orientation from the Maine Human Rights Act, Eliminate Funding of Civil Rights Teams in Public Schools, Prohibit Adoptions by Unmarried Couples, Add a Definition of Marriage, and Declare Civil Unions Unlawful

Michael S.Heath
70 Sewall Street
Augusta, ME 04330

To be sure, it was filed in May of 2008, so it's not exactly new news. And it was filed by Mike Heath, of the Maine Christian Civic League, so it's not exactly a surprise. But it's a pertinent reminder that no matter how they swear up and down that it's only about the super secret special word marriage, it's never just about marriage. It's about taking every opportunity to strip away hard-won protections and basic affirmations of our humanity, to legitimize those who would shove us back into the closet and possibly leave a few lumps on our heads, or worse, in the process.

No marriage for you! And no adopted children for you. And no protection from bullying in school for you. How else will you learn your place in society? Because, really, that place also involves no job or housing protections, and if you try to simulate marriage by spending thousands of dollars on lawyers and notarized documents and wills and powers of attorney the way we always tell you to do, well, that's going to be against the law too. We probably can't throw you in jail, but maybe we can fine you.

Did we say it was only about marriage? Yes? Did you not understand at the time that all this other stuff was implicit in that? No? Well, you do now.

We Take a Break from Our Maine Fuming to Ask One Soccer Question

And the question would be, "huh?"

Sky Blue seems bent on making [Carli] Lloyd their showcase player for next season, giving her the 10-shirt off Yael Averbuch’s back and her own supporter group, named Lloyd’s Loonies in an apparent homage to LA’s Marta’s Maniacs.

Lloyd? Really? After last season's disappearing act in Chicago? When they already have HAO and Tash Kai in their lineup? Hope the supporters' group is armed with coffee, or at least blankies for the inevitable stultified-into-somnolence status they're likely to be enjoying (?) next season. I could be wrong.

0-32.

The advantage to being a lifelong Cubs fan is an apparently genetic propensity for not getting overly bent out of shape over absurdly long losing streaks. Be that as it may--and despite being rich with metaphors--baseball is not life, and my reaction to Maine voters last night overturning their state's nascent marriage equality law (making such ballot measures voted on by my fellow citizens 0-for-32 now) is about as far from wait 'til next year as you can get. It is more along the lines of if you voted for this latest round of bigotry, fuck you.

That's it. It's not a constructive reaction, nor is it polite, and I am utterly unapologetic. There is so much this morning I find disingenuous about this election, this campaign, this issue every goddamn time it comes up and "the people" slap it down. We patiently point out logical inconsistencies in the usual litany of arguments the anti-equality camp trots out like clockwork, parrying every sacred rite invented by God bleating with the availability of religion-free weddings in a courtroom, every procreation yelp with newlywed senior citizens and young but sterile folks, every marriage is a holy union you faggots can't handle with the high divorce rates among evangelicals, and it doesn't matter. When the organized bigotry industry can draw on the no-limit ATM that is the Mormon-Catholic alliance (second collection, anyone? before we have to sell the church, that is? last one out, shut off the lights, 'k?) and produce TV spot after TV spot hammering the same lies over and over to a population with the collective critical thinking abilities of a turnip on a five-day bender, nothing we do matters. Nothing.

Won't someone think of the children? Seriously? This still works? How does this still work? It works when someone agrees to pimp out his five-year-old to stare into the camera with Puss-n-Boots eyes and say daddy, the teacher told me in kindergarten today I have to marry a man. The children will be taught gay marriage. Oh, the vapors. Kindergarten will turn into Kindergaytown. It will be an all gay all the time curriculum. No reading or math or naptime. Just gay. Gay, gay, gay kindergarten and first grade and third grade. Because that would totally happen.

And it works. Every. Goddamn. Time.

Yeah, I think of the little kids. I think of the fact that all those grownup gay folks who want to get married in Maine were little kids themselves once, and they all turned out gay despite not hearing one peep about gays, married or otherwise, when they were in kindergarten. I think about the gay kids who are still killing themselves at a rate that is horrifyingly higher than their straight peers and wonder if hearing gay=normal in elementary school might have created an environment for them where they wouldn't feel so hopeless. Shit, I wonder if I had learned the first thing about lesbians in school that was more extensive and accurate than the single sentence if you're infatuated with another girl it's just a phase that will pass, I might not have spent my entire middle school and high school career feeling like an outsider without knowing why, never quite fitting in, always just different enough from everyone else to not be counted as anyone's best friend. It might not have taken me 31 years to figure out what my deal was, all the while noticing other women similar to myself and thinking wow, she looks a lot like me, I wonder if she catches a lot of shit too. And the perfectly nice guy I was married to for a while as a result would have been spared a world of hurt.

So I think of the children, and I think of the adults they've grown into, and I wonder how otherwise intelligent people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can stand there with a straight face and say marriage is a question that should be left to the states. Because it is never just "left to the states" when a national organization based in another state pulls in piles of money from even other states and buys airtime and flies their mouthpieces from yet other states into the target state to spread as many lies and as much fear as necessary to change laws to their liking and leave their muddy footprints on the lives of people they have never met and will never see, in a state they will likely never set foot in again once their meddling is complete and their crowing is over.

So please, spare me this morning the too-familiar platitudes about how these votes are just getting closer and closer, as if losing by six percentage points instead of sixty makes it a lower-case loss instead of an upper-case LOSS, as if it makes a bit of difference in the real legislative world or in the lives of couples who apparently are supposed to shrug and smile and say well, honey, we're not quite as second-class citizens as we used to be! Maybe next year!

Fuck next year. Bring on the ban-divorce ballot measures, because I will totally vote for that shit to protect sacred marriage and guarantee every child a mother and father at home. Hey, I got mine, so fuck y'all. That's the American way.

Another Election Night Nail-Biter

UPDATED: just to add that if you're keeping score at home, we would really like No on 1 in Maine, Yes on 71 in Washington. The updates on the Maine numbers are showing no more than a couple hundred votes separating the yes and no sides at any given time.

Stuff is scrolling by on the Tucson TV, but I'm far more riveted by the neck-and-neck race in Maine between the leave-marriage-equality-well-enough-alone folks and the bigots. There's a liveblog on Pam's House Blend, which you can follow tonight if you're so inclined, or check in tomorrow for what I hope isn't a sad story. The numbers-in-progress are almost more of a roller coaster ride than I have the stomach for; I cannot imagine what it is like to be a gay couple in Maine tonight, waiting to find out if your fellow citizens have decided to take one of your civil rights away from you. Been there and done that, a year ago in Arizona.

Hyde Amendment Be Damned

Excuse me, Senate Finance Committee?

At issue is how far healthcare legislation should go to prevent insurance companies from offering abortion services to the millions of women who could get taxpayer subsidies to help them pay premiums.

Are abortion services legal in this country? Yes? They are? Then STFU. End of story.

No, Seriously

Really, Abdullah Abdullah. So the election in Afghanistan last month was rigged in a fairly blatant and amateurish fashion, and over the past few days we have (1) Karzai's runoff opponent Mr. Abdullah threatening to pull out if the same bunch of jokers that fixed the first election run the second, (2) Abdullah making good on his threat and quitting on Saturday, and yesterday (3) the US saying it's troublesome but we'll go ahead and fully support Karzai because polling indicates Abdullah would have lost anyway.

Meanwhile, Wali Karzai laughs all the way to the bank.

Is there a better solution here? If there is, it's escaping me at the moment. I spent part of my swine flu downtime finishing Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, a complicated, detailed, extremely bothersome account that explains why "graveyard of empires" barely scratches the surface. Pakistan's secret intelligence agency (ISI) has spent the past couple of decades propping up the Taliban, effectively making them the ISI's western franchise in Kabul, Kandahar, and Helmand, all while the military either turned a blind eye or flat-out lied about their involvement and Pervez Musharraf conducted the government's business with the sole aim of maintaining his hold on power.

Meanwhile, since the September 11 attacks the CIA has been paying off first the warlords of the now-defunct Northern Alliance and now the drug lords in the south, with the mission focus remaining always Arab-tied al Qaeda operatives rather than the guys who are poppy farmers today, Taliban fuckwits tomorrow, a-Q sympathizers the day after that, and then poppy farmers again when the local warlord makes a power grab. Oh, and we've thrown a few billion dollars at Pakistan, which has promptly turned around and handed most of that to their military, which has promptly funneled wads of it to the Taliban holding court in the Waziristans, and you can see where this is going.

Most of our UN partner nations have greatly limited their involvement in Afghanistan (Germany, for example, refused to conduct combat patrols after dark) while all of us have pretty much left infrastructure development and repair--the one thing everyone seems to agree would go the furthest toward weaning the populace away from the Taliban toward nonsectarian stability, and which represents the most efficient use of cash resources sent over there--to NGOs, most of which can no longer operate in-country because the Taliban kill them. The UN food program gave up years ago after too many food convoys were hijacked and the supplies stolen or simply burned. This in a country where only about 16 percent of the land is arable.

Tribal factionalism, ISI intervention, Indian intervention, Pakistani Taliban infiltration, an abysmal literacy rate, and seven years of US policy constructed by people with no Pushtu language skills, let alone even a rudimentary understanding of the dozens of cultural and political vectors crisscrossing the country, have fed on each other to create a damn near unwinnable situation.

Hahmid Karzai has been the target of at least three assassination attempts--the ones that have been publicized, anyway--since he's been in office, and now a good faction of his countrymen think he got his second five-year term by cheating his way there as a puppet of the Americans. And all we can do is shrug and say this is our guy? Good luck, Mr. President. I hope you've read Rashid's book. A little history might go a long way here.

Food, Football, Fighting Nausea: The New Sunday Routine is 67% Good

I learned an important lesson on Friday morning, at the horrid hour of 7 in the morning--not horrid on its face, but in the context of "at the gym," 7 sucks hard--and that would be that a month of zero physical activity means that Workout #1 is going to be near-lethal. I made it through half an hour of lunges, presses, crunches, and leg curls before collapsing onto the floor in a cold clammy puddle of defeated-person-trying-to-stay-conscious-and-not-puke.

A complicated cold clammy puddle, to be sure.

Thank god the trainer was a good sport about the whole thing, even running downstairs to fetch me a cup of Powerade on ice, and the other middle-aged old farts in the weight room wandered over to look down at me and cluck sympathetically. The rest of Friday and Saturday were devoted to trying to think about anything but the workout in order to avoid the resulting wave of nausea and cold sweat that accompanied the flashbacks. It was really a great experience.

Anyway. Today only brought a mild headache and queasy stomach--amateur shit at this point in the game--so the boy and I headed out on an expedition to find breakfast. Since our previous pacts to Do Something Together have fizzled due to uncooperative fish and inclement weather, we settled on keeping the adventure-seeking focused on new places to eat. This morning we hit on Shot in the Dark Cafe, located on Broadway just east of 6th in downtown Tucson. It's a typical downtown space, brick walls and exposed ceiling beams in a building that probably dates to the 1930s at the latest, soothingly worn down around the edges, mismatched sofas by the front window, flies circling languidly but never quite to the point of annoyance. I had something called the Cornucopia, which involves three eggs making intimate friends with several different vegetables while snuggling up against a pile of seasoned homefries and toast. Quite delightful. The boy got a bagel with smoked salmon, which is thoughtfully served with separate ramekins of cream cheese and capers, as well as thinly sliced tomatoes and onions and a lemon wedge. He inhaled it in roughly 45 seconds, so I assume it tasted good. The coffee is quality, and the Italian sodas are served in giant Imperial pint mugs. I would go back. It is homey, the people are friendly, and the menu is promising, so you should probably go too.

The rest of the day was spent watching football and listening to Fox color man Brian Billick offer new twists on the English language such as "put an explanation point on it." Tomorrow, back to the gym. What, me quit? Who do you think I am, Abdullah Abdullah or something?

Coming off the Bench

This has been the longest stint on the PUP list I've ever had, never mind the DL. 28 days of nothing requiring lung action beyond walking twenty feet at a time! Lungs are still a bit on the bubbly side, but after the month of respiratory crap following several months of limited lifting thanks to a bum shoulder and bum elbow (Aging: It Sucks), I am hobbling into the gym tomorrow afternoon and giving the trainer free rein to make me cry.

The fantasies of transforming back into the stud I was at 19 or even the approximation of an athlete I was a few years ago may remain safely in my head. Or, hell, maybe I'll get a step back or be able to return to outlifting at. I got spiffy new running shoes, anyway.

Day One. Comeback Day. Tomorrow. I'm stoked.

Commie Fascist Socialist Liberal Media Strikes Again

The AP sure has been interesting recently. The byline on this morning's above-the-fold shrieker isn't Ron Fournier's, but it might as well have been. Insurers' profits not as big as claimed, the headline intones, before tsking into this lede:

In the health-care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a percentage point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Aren't the multiple scare quotes a nice "touch?" Because the Democrats are just being hysterical about the eeeeeeeevil insurance companies. Why, health insurance companies posted an average profit margin of only 2.2 percent last year! Which is only good for 35th place on the Fortune 500 list of top industries! So why are Democrats whining about how much money Cigna rakes in when its credit rating is tanking, and health insurance in general is outperformed by Tupperware and Coors?

After mulling the question for perhaps two seconds--hey, the bright and shiny objects in my office distracted me for a while there--I came up with two reasons for not shedding tears over my insurer profiting less than Clorox. Number one, I don't really need Clorox on a regular basis, much less Tupperware and Christ on an ignored hop-plant, Coors. My bleaching and food storage and beer needs are met, wonder of wonders, by the company whose product is on sale this week, and if things are tight it's not much of a problem to do without for a while, or improvise something on my own, or borrow from a friend.

My healthcare needs, on the other hand, can't exactly be put off, and, as the past 27 goddamn days have illustrated in a big way, can't be shopped around--Boltgirl is not made of money--or nicked from my neighbor's pantry. Don't get me wrong; I'm very grateful that I have insurance and that it only sets me back about twenty bucks out of every paycheck, plus about $150 out of pocket for the flu-related doctor visits and prescriptions. But if my plan sucked? Good luck finding a similar level of coverage in an individual plan for the same costs. I wouldn't be able to; that's what pooled risk is all about.

Speaking of being made of money, number two looks something like this.

Company and CEO's 2008 Total Compensation:
Aetna $24.3M
Cigna $12.2M (a 50 % drop from 2007! oh noes)
WellPoint $9.8M
Coventry Health Care $9.0M
Centene $8.8M
AMERIGROUP $5.3M
Humana $4.8M
Health Net $4.4M
Universal American $3.5M
UnitedHealthGroup $3.2M (although "in May 2006, the amount of Hemsley's supplemental retirement benefit was frozen based on his current age and average base salary and converted into a lump sum of $10,703,229.")

Another list that breaks the numbers down into base salary, stock options, and cash bonuses is available here. So from the perspective of obscene piles of cash being thrown at executives who may or may not have "earned" it, depending on your definition of "earn," the health insurance industry isn't necessarily much more or less revolting than, say, any investment bank still in business.

But a lot of people--Democrats and their allies included--see the compensation as "obscene" when cash bonuses representing five, seven, ten times a million-dollar base salary are funded by annual rate increases on the order of 20 percent. This isn't a cable TV or high-speed internet level of luxury item we're talking about here. It's the ability to go to the doctor when you're sick, or, better yet, before you're sick, for preventative care. It's the ability to, oh, say, not die from a preventable condition or treatable-when-caught-early disease. It's an industry that we're beholden to with little choice in provider (well, those of us not, as mentioned before, made of money), so when those providers rake in the cash, yeah, "rapacious profiteer" isn't a bad term at all.

Thanks for reminding us that it's all about the bottom line, AP.

Public Service Announcement

Even if the president hadn't declared H1N1 a national emergency, it is definitely a household-level emergency, and that should be enough to get your attention. You don't want to get this friggin' virus; you probably won't die--although about a thousand people have, sorry for their families--but you will lose anywhere from a few days to a month of your life to lying on the couch in too much of a daze to read or follow TV scenarios more complicated than Dancing with the Stars.

Get the vaccination if you can, and until then wash your hands, don't touch your face, and make every day your personal Beat the Record Day when it comes to ingesting immune-boosting foods like sweet potatoes, oranges, and green tea. And drink lots of water.

Seriously, be at least somewhat vigilant for a while, even if you normally don't get the seasonal flu. I don't usually get it, or if I do it doesn't last long. But this bug knocked me on my ass for a month and I don't like that one bit. Who am I and what am I doing? And do my lungs still work? I get to figure all that out today.

A Mystery for Our Time

My fairly lofty opinion of McClatchy Newspapers may need to be dialed back a notch or two after this lede this morning:

MERCED, Calif. — Nobody can say why the Virgin of Guadalupe would appear on a hunk of rock formed millions of years before the birth of Jesus.

But David Nunez says the image is unmistakable — a bluish-black stain on the football-sized rock outlines what looks like the Holy Mother.

Friends have called it a miracle.

Really? Nobody can say? It seems like somebody could say, though, and it turns out a couple of people actually can, so thank Mary-in-a-rock the reporter decided to ask them. One is a priest, and the other is a geologist. What does the priest think?

"People see what they want to see," said [the Rev. Harvey] Fonseca, who hasn't examined the rock.

Well then. Scientist?

[Rob] Rogers, the geologist, said he couldn't see the image in the e-mailed photos of the rock. "I must lack imagination," he said.

And science lives to fight another day.

Personally, I think it looks like a giant Cretaceous almond. You know, the kind of big ol' nut T. rex was given those pointy teeth to crack open before Eve ate the apple and brought planet-wide veganism to a crashing halt. Can't you see the long gougy toothmarks? Does that make it a slightly cooler miracle? I think so.

A Marriage Parable for Our Time

Keith Bardwell is a justice of the peace in a state where, despite contentious debate and strong public sentiment opposing such pairings, a formerly banned type of marriage is now legal. He recently refused to issue a marriage license to a local couple, the law be damned, citing concerns for any children the couple might wish to raise and his certainty that their kinds of marriages don't last. In fact, he's done this four times in the past two and a half years.

Sigh. We've heard this plenty of times in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California, haven't we?

Except that we haven't. The couple in question is straight and male-female, and the state in question is Louisiana. So what about these two people triggered JP Bardwell's won't-someone-think-of-the-children lobe, with a touch of you-people-can't-stay-married palsy? Oh. The woman is white. The man is black. And no way in hell are they getting married under Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell's watch.

But don't get the wrong idea about Bardwell! He's not a racist! Look, he says so himself:

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

See? He has piles of black friends! He even lets them use his bathroom! How can you call him racist?

Bardwell clarified that conversations with both black and white people, and his own observations, have led him to conclude that mixed-race children aren't accepted by either blacks or whites. And that their parents don't stay married for long. The only thing lacking in his argument is the citation of the passages from Leviticus forbidding interracial marriage; otherwise, it's a spot-on simulation of arguments we've heard from other people--including, sadly, county clerks and other people whose job descriptions include "issue marriage licenses to qualified couples"--who rail against gay folk seeking marriage equality.

Hey, I have gay friends. I just don't want them to be allowed to get married because gays screw everything that moves so they'd probably just get divorced anyway and oh dear god people will make fun of their kids.

Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay, the most recent couple to be denied by Bardwell, plan to file a discrimination suit. I suspect the repercussions will be very, very interesting should the court find that perceptions about a certain class of people's ability to form lasting pair-bonds, and predictions about society's treatment of any children they might raise, have no bearing on those people's rights to enter into a marriage contract. I only wish Bardwell had tossed in a religious objection as well, but we can't have everything.

Do You Need Another Reason to Love Bao?

Not that you really do need another reason to love steamed buns, but if you do, here are three: (1) they dance, (2) they bust wicked nunchuk moves, and (3) they are adorable when they do it.

Dragon Fist from sun haipeng on Vimeo.

(via Serious Eats)

Love!

Boltgirl Hearts Al Franken

Al Franken had me way back in the late eighties the first time I saw him do his draw-the-US-map-freehand trick on SNL. He got me again today in a big way.

Rookie Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) passed an amendment to a defense bill this week that would withhold government contracts from organizations like KBR if they restrict employees from taking rape and sexual assault cases to court.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, 30--thirty--Republicans voted in favor of gang-raping contractors. Do I need to point out that my two illustrious senators are among them? Stay classy, Jon Kyl and John Fucking McCain. Happily, they lost. Suck it, Halliburton!

What Brings Me out of my Flu Hibernation? Ok-La-Homa!

As I tossed around in bed this morning trying to weigh the relative merits of actually getting up against the vertigo and pounding in my head as the last remaining flu viruses sprint circles around my tired and cramping white blood cells, my thoughts stumbled onto a long-slumbering memory of a musical my grandparents wrote back in the 1970s. Zuh? Yes. My grandparents were career high school music teachers and leaders in a surprisingly vibrant community arts movement in our small southern Illinois hometown, and after decades of directing teenagers in sophisticated productions of other people's music and books, they decided to give writing a shot themselves and turned out something called Mississippi!

That's all I remember about it, and I spent a good many minutes wondering why in the fuck they chose that state. Granted, Oklahoma! was already taken, but Jesus on stage left, Mississippi? Because fewer complete sentences or multisyllabic words would be required? I do not know. I recall seeing sheet music strewn across the kitchen table, and possibly some promotional posters. The community college may have staged the production. Couldn't tell you.

Anyway, Mississippi! naturally leads to Oklahoma! and, coincidentally, my friend who points out all the good stuff I miss--and I have missed everything over the past 11 days--sent me a link to this bit of comedy coming out of Oklahoma, which unfortunately I cannot chalk up to music directors with their sights set on off-off-off Broadway:

A new Oklahoma law requires physicians to disclose detailed information on women's abortions to the State's Department Of Health, which will then post the collected data on a public website. The controversial measure comes into effect on November 1 and will cost $281,285 to implement, $256,285 each subsequent year to maintain.

Well, that's interesting. And expensive. What public good, exactly, does this achieve? Oh, but of course. It serves exactly the same purpose served by my (other, non-musical) grandmother's police scanner. It gives people something to gossip about and essentially serves as state-formalized fuel for informal social sanctions that will frighten some of the remaining women unbowed by 24-hour waiting periods, long drives, and crowds of shrieking protesters calling them murdering hell demons away from seeking abortions.

Police-scanner grandmother would sometimes take me to the schoolyard on Saturday afternoons, when I would scamper around and play and she would sit in a swing facing the school cafeteria. I didn't think much about it until my grandfather asked her, so, watching to see who comes out of the AA meeting today? The Oklahoma law will let anyone with internet access sit in a swing outside all the clinics in the state at once. Sure, no names will be attached to the data, but if small-town Oklahoma is anything like small-town Illinois, the legions of biddies will have a field day matching age, marital status, education, and nature of the relationship with the father to women they just didn't see around town on a specific date.

One of the legislators sponsoring the bill calls it "common-sense legislation," apparently so common-sense that his statement doesn't require any further explanation. I remain unconvinced; fortunately, so do a lot of other people with standing to file a suit that would block its implementation. Stay tuned for the future of state-sanctioned slut-shaming in the Dust Bowl.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/oklahoma-abortion-law-det_n_313779.html

H1N1, Day Bazillion

Slightly only more disturbing than this fucking bug's ability to sap my energy is its ability to sap my cognitive processes. I have not watched Maddow for a week. A week! I tried, but anything requiring concentrated thinking for more than ten seconds or ten consecutive words is pretty much a no-go. I can skim Jezebel, but can't read Greenwald. Crosswords marginally okay, Ahmed Rashid definitely not.

It's heartbreaking. Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink. I have nothing but time and piles of books on my hands, and no faculties to do anything with either of those treasures.

The world continues spinning on out there. I hope to catch up again soon.

Swine Flu, Day Seven

Bleary eyes and a gouge on my nose between them I don't quite recall incurring. Football on TV. Food not exactly sounding good.

All in all, a Sunday pretty much like every Sunday when I was an undergrad, but for completely un-fun reasons, and no suicide wings from Buffalo Joe's to soothe my soul.

The Last Word

No, not from me, since I can barely get the first word pounded out here over the roar of clogged sinuses, plugged ears, a raggedy throat, and a chest that protests at being asked to expand any more than absolutely necessary to let in any of that... ah, yes, oxygen. Instead, the last word for today comes from Katha Pollitt, injecting all the reason you need into the insane why-are-we-even-having-this-debate debate over whether drugging and anally raping a child should matter if you're, like, a really artsy filmmaker.

It's enraging that literary superstars who go on and on about human dignity, and human rights, and even women's rights (at least when the women are Muslim) either don't see what Polanski did as rape, or don't care, because he is, after all, Polanski--an artist like themselves. That some of his defenders are women is particularly disappointing. Don't they see how they are signing on to arguments that blame the victim, minimize rape, and bend over backwards to exonerate the perpetrator? Error of youth, might have mistaken her age, teen slut, stage mother--is that what we want people to think when middle-aged men prey on ninth-graders?

'Nuff said.

Flublogging Update

Blah!

So much in the news, some of it even penetrating my foggy, foggy brain. The biggest good news out of Arizona is a judge blocking the stupidest provisions of the new abortion-restricting law passed earlier this month. More analysis tomorrow, possibly, but for now you can rest easy knowing that the mandatory double clinic visit bracketing a 24-hour waiting period has been kiboshed, along with the execrable conscience clause that not only would have allowed pharmacists to refuse emergency contraception to rape victims, but also would have exempted doctors from any participation in an abortion, even when "participation in an abortion" is construed to cover "telling women that abortion is actually still a legal option in this country."

The stupidest news out of Arizona has been that Trent Franks guy calling Obama a threat to humanity; Rep. Franks clarified yesterday that he meant Obama is a threat to "unborn humanity," so thank goodness that's all cleared up.

In Arizona flu news, my nurse parents report that Flagstaff Medical Center is completely full, and also that the waiting room is helpfully not sequestering flu patients from non-flu patients, thus ensuring both (1) that everyone will eventually be a flu patient and (2) the cash-strapped hospital's revenue stream should be perking up substantially in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, I continue to cough and whimper.

Boltblah: Adventures in Seasonal Afflictions

It's just the dust, I kept telling myself this morning, just the several cubic yards of dust I inhaled while cleaning up my grandparents' trailer in Mesa yesterday in 107-degree heat in preparation for their overwintering arrival. Uh huh. That lasted a couple of hours--I'm very stubborn these days--but I finally succumbed to the reality that not even the collective conservative jetsam of several billion dead skin cells blowing off of old Midwestern folks and several thousand young Mesa Mormons is a likely explanation for the knot in my lungs and accompanying crappy cough and body aches.

Now "collective conservative" is sending me into fits of dissonant giggles, which is another telling sign that all is not as it should be, healthwise.

So I fled the office for home with a stack of papers I really should be reading, but focusing is a little hard at the moment. Focusing is hard? A distant bell is ringing through the fog. Oh yeah. Last week we had dinner at Bangkok Cafe (sweet thoon tong Jesus, YUM) and sat next to a table whose undergraduate occupants moaned about how hard it is to focus because of (1) 8:00 classes, (2) pre-lunch classes, (3) post-lunch classes, and (4) stupid people in English 101. Yes, child, I'm feelin' ya on that one.

Jon Kyl: Meet Your GOP Representation, Arizona

How nice for you, Senator Kyl. I am elated to learn that you have never needed maternity care, since that would imply just a touch of intersexability, and lord knows that level of cognitive dissonance might make your delicate head explode. I wonder, though, how your wife managed to pay for her two bouts of prenatal care/delivery, or who paid to shepherd your four grandchildren through embryoship and fetushood and into the wide world. Then again, that's apparently not your problem; those harlots got themselves knocked up, so why should you have to worry about it? Or, even worse, pay for it? Seriously, you donated the sperm! What else do these freeloaders want?

I do wish Senator Stabenow had come back with a little more current rejoinder than "your mom probably did." Something along the lines of "I don't need ED coverage, but my premiums help pay for yours" might have been a little refreshing.

I also don't need a prostate exam and will never be at risk for testicular cancer, but--as long as my company policy also covers things like well-woman exams and contraception--I don't mind knowing I'm chipping in to help keep the guys around me healthy. Because, unlike Senator Kyl and the brain-dead Maricopa County voters who keep putting him in office, I understand that paying out a little for things that don't benefit me directly but are still necessary for the nation to keep humming along is part of the deal when you live in a society that falls anywhere on the continuum past bands of hunter-gatherers. And, frankly, those guys probably understood that a little extra effort on their parts to keep everyone in the band fed, clothed, and sheltered upped their own chances for surviving another season.

More Fun Nicked from Elsewhere

Curse these complicated reports with five zillion data tables. While I'm busy, go look at these:

The Weekend in Sports

The Cubs have suspended Milton Bradley for the rest of the season and may be looking to unload him. At this point, just eating the two years remaining on his contract would be worth it if it gets him out of Chicago. They dumped Mark DeRosa to pick up this guy, and then had the temerity to act baffled when he refused to play nicely with his teammates, the fans at Wrigley, and greater Chicagoland. Bradley's been clubhouse poison basically forever. How this knowledge escaped Jim Hendry until it was too late is a mystery to me.

In football news, the Irish escaped a fiftieth or something consecutive home loss to Michigan State on the whisker of two dropped balls by the Spartans and Kyle McCarthy hanging on to an interception at the Notre Dame 10. And top receiver Michael Floyd is lost for the year to a broken collarbone. Maybe this was the wrong year to keep Goliath-slaying Washington on the schedule?

Finally, the Washington Freedom's Jo Lohman and Becca Moros are spending part of the WPS off-season playing in Japan. They're blogging about it, and they're adorable.

The Week in Medicine

Hrrrraaaarrrgghgghghhmmmm.

That is the approximate sound going on in my head and quite possibly out loud every time I try to move my arm.

Yesterday brought another punch to my orthopedic bingo card. I already have both knees and a shoulder, so with the free spot in the middle, my new blot on "right elbow" has me thisclose to bingo and, possibly, a free arthroscopy or whatever surgeons give away when you complete a line.

Hmm, he said. If ice and a band and anti-inflammatories aren't doing anything for your tendonitis, you're going to need a shot, and it's gonna hurt. Fine, I said, it can't hurt any more than it already does. Uh huh. I should have known I was in for it when he brought in a canister I usually associate with freezing weird shit off of sun-damaged skin. I'm going to freeze your arm, he said, but it's still going to hurt. Go for it. Seriously. Bring it.

Okay, magic freeze spray applied, needle in, no problem. Now the burn, he said. No problem, I thought for the splittest of seconds, since I'd already had this done in a knee once and shoulder twice. Now the burn? Burn, my ass. More like now the 300-pound guy leaning with all his weight on a red-hot giant nail jabbing directly into your ulnar epiphysis. Hrrrraaaarrrgghgghghhmmmm, I said. Sorry, he said, you're going to be cursing me tonight.

He was off by about twelve hours. Last night it felt great. Then I woke up this morning swearing bones were grinding together every time I moved. A friend joined me at Home Depot. You're radiating pain, she said. At home she rigged a sling with an ace bandage and left me staring at football in deep amazement at the difference suddenly being able to breathe again made.

Of course, two hours later it hurt even more for not having moved in, well, two hours. Now I'm clutching frozen peas and wondering why this seemed like a good idea. He said it would take a couple of days for it to feel better and get back to the weight room. Wow. Considering I am yelping every time I move, that seems optimistic. Jesus. This is what I get for trying to keep up with my steroid-and-other-supplements-addled brother. I am too old for this shit.

Calling Cafe Press

Contemplating putting this on a t-shirt. Found on Joe.My.God, who nicked it from Dan Savage. When they get serious about protecting the sanctity of biblically defined marriage--with the prescribed stones, at the village gate--I'll get serious about thinking about not defiling it by wishing to participate in it.

If You Miss the Train I'm on, You Will Know that I am Gone

Mary Travers died yesterday, taking my earliest musical memories with her. You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles...

God Perhaps Sees Error of His Ways after that Last Fiasco, Scales Back Next Divine Executive Appointment to State Level

God's Own Archangel Jan.

Aaaaaaand here we go again with the chosen one. No, not the "Chosen One" tag derisively hung on Barack Obama by detractors who think he's the Antichrist, but Jan Brewer's actual belief that God got distracted from the pennant race long enough to reach down into Arizona to pluck her from the obscurity of the lieutenant governorship and install her as the our ruler. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Gov. Jan Brewer said Wednesday that she believes "God has placed me in this powerful position of Arizona's governor to help guide our state through the difficulty that we are currently facing."

Delightful, but harmless, no? I mean, as long it's limited to delusions of grandeur and doesn't intrude on state business, no big deal. Because it doesn't, right?

Brewer detailed to a group of pastors of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church how she relies on her faith and in prayer to deal with many of the issues she faces as the state's chief executive. Brewer also said there are times when, during a meeting with staffers, one will suggest praying about an issue.

"And we stop, and we take that time, and we pray about it," Brewer, a Missouri Synod-Lutheran herself, told the group meeting here. "And it does make a difference."

Oh. Uh.

Brewer goes on to assure us that she recognizes the dangers in tying personal religious beliefs too intimately to the business of governing, or, as she puts it, the belief that "we can convert God's truth into a political platform, a set of political issues, and that there is 'God's way' in our politics. I don't believe that for a moment." Okay, fair enough, and can I just get a whew from the non-Missouri Synod congregation on that one? Unfortunately, she follows it up with this little gem:

Brewer, in response to audience questions, said she has been "blessed because so many people of great faith" have helped her with their prayers.

"And that has caused me, of course, to be grateful that we are a country of Christianity," she said.

"I don't think under the circumstances that anybody's in the position of living at this turbulent time, these terrible, critical times of our nation, can possibly get through without asking for help and guidance from Jesus Christ and from God," the governor told the ministers.

Granted, she was speaking to a group of Lutheran ministers, not giving a State of the State address. But. Please. It wasn't exactly a whisper in the confessional, even if Lutherans had such things, which they don't. They did have reporters with microphones, and despite that, in one fell swoop Brewer simultaneously promulgated the "Christian nation" falsehood and pooh-poohed everything falling outside the box labeled "Christianity." After quite openly proclaiming that state business is regularly guided by a Christian prayer circle.

The former governor, now HHS chief Janet Napolitano, was an observant Methodist who nonetheless elevated secular notions of civil rights above theology and managed to keep the rabidly conservative state legislature at bay. Now God's Own Jan, about whom exactly zero rumors of lesbianism have swirled, has set the governor's office on a Godly and explicitly Christian path. And her greatest hits to date include signing into law a bill that severely restricts reproductive freedom (see yesterday's post) and eliminating benefits for the domestic partners of state employees, which affects a few disabled adult dependents but overwhelmingly targets fornicatin' straight couples livin' in sin and, of course, the gays. And the kids of all the people involved.

But don't worry; there's one realm Brewer not only keeps her religion's teaching firmly out of, but also claims to not even know what that teaching might be.

Brewer, facing a question about illegal immigration, said she does not know the stance of her church. But she said her views are governed by her elected position.

"As the governor of Arizona, I stand on the law that they're illegal, they ought not to be here," she said.

Seriously, what were you expecting?

Welcome to Arizona. Hope you brought your cross.

In Which the Nine-Twelvers Explain It All for You.

Whooo-eeee. Nicked from AmericaBlog.

Arizona Legislature Notices Janet Napolitano is no Longer Governor, Crams Every Previously Vetoed Abortion Restriction into Single Law

The new Arizona law that massively restricts access to abortion and emergency contraception is scheduled to kick in at the end of this month. The first lawsuits were filed yesterday. Most of the provisions were included in bills vetoed at least once by former governor Janet Napolitano, although at least one rather audacious restriction was tossed in for good measure, just because they can.

Among other things, the new law includes a provision that prohibits nurse practitioners from performing abortions, a move expected to shrink services in Southern Arizona to a level at which women will be forced to go to Phoenix for the procedure, said Patti Caldwell, the chief operating officer of Planned Parenthood Arizona. It also allows health-care and pharmacy employees to refuse to take part in any way in abortions or to fill related prescriptions if they have moral or religious objections. [...]

Other provisions of the new law require that minors provide notarized parental consent for an abortion and that a woman make a face-to-face visit with the abortion provider within 24 hours before the procedure or emergency contraception such as the "morning-after pill" can be prescribed.

That last bit is the one that made me choke on my Kashi this morning. A mandatory 24-hour waiting period before EC can be prescribed? When it's a nonprescription medication? Hmm. Nancy Barto says "expanding the law to cover the morning-after pill simply updates existing laws covering abortions," cheerfully continuing to falsely conflate emergency contraception with abortion, which it most assuredly is not. A reading of the text of the House bill suggests the Daily Star got the bit wrong about a waiting period before acquiring EC, since there is no mention of it either there or in the Senate version (although the conscience clause exemption specific to pharmacists not wanting to hand it over still stands). But hang on, there's still more than enough bullshit to go around.

Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, the legislation's sponsor, said all the provisions are good policy to protect the health of women as well as being legally sound. Barto defended the 24-hour waiting period — and specifically the requirement for face-to-face counseling — rather than allowing a woman to get the information over the phone and avoid having to make a second trip.

"This ensures that they get the information that they need and the attention that they get for their own health," she said.

Because lord knows the primary societal effect of the Information Age has been limiting the delivery and comprehension of information to face-to-face interactions. Phone? Internet? It's a wonder people can even order a pizza any more with the intervention of these confounded electrical instruments, much less raise the local constabulary! But wait! It gets even better, where "better" means "completely assfucked sideways with a chainsaw and no lube."

The requirement, however, does not stop there. The law says certain information can be given to women only by the physician who will perform the abortion and not a nurse or other staffer.

Shade your eyes. This one really requires shouting. Because LORD KNOWS THE ONLY DOCTOR CURRENTLY PROVIDING ABORTION SERVICES IN ALL OF SOUTHERN FUCKING ARIZONA FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH A 16-HOUR DAY THAN HOLD FACE-TO-FACE COUNSELING SESSIONS. Can Cathi Herrod, chief harpy of the Center for Arizona Policy, clear this up for us? Of course she can.

"Finally, Arizona is taking care of the needs of women facing the abortion decision, as well as parents and health-care professionals," said Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which lobbied for the legislation.

Finally. Up, down. Black, white. Charlie Weis, football genius. Arizona, taking care of women's needs. How nice to be taken care of like this. Throw enough roadblocks up between a woman and one of her options in "the abortion decision" and the decision pretty much makes itself for her, doesn't it? Which, unfortunately, is exactly the point.

The hearing on Planned Parenthood's requested injunction is scheduled for next week. Can you feel the optimism from BoltCorner? Me neither.

Sunday Rumbling

My girlfriend has the uncanny knack of knowing just when to offer to make me a gin and tonic, which she always makes superbly. I find this almost unbearably romantic. Maybe it's the two lime twists. Maybe it's the crisp bite of fizzy tonic and cool Bombay cutting through the last wisps of monsoon humidity. Whatever the source, I love it.

The weekend in sports turned out to be an exercise in suck--thank you, Charlie Weis, for the massive reality check you provided yesterday in the Big House, and I'm not even going to talk about USC--with the sole exception of Northwestern somehow finding a way to beat Eastern (Western? one of the directions) Michigan and, possibly, Arizona's less-than-inspiring slide past Northern Arizona.

I guess I need, at some point, to deal with the small teabagging confab in Washington (two million? sixty thousand? eleventy squillion? who knows?) and the newly established but inevitable alliance between the Nobamans and the John Galt wannabees. That is not going to happen tonight.

Actually, here. This does the job reasonably well.

Ah, romance!

In Which We Have One Question

Where were these people when the previous administration was burning through a billion bucks every few days in Iraq?

Doubtlessly, in the Halliburton parking lot protesting private contractors being paid to do jobs formerly entrusted to the military at rates of at least three times military pay with no UCMJ rules to get in the way of, oh, compromising the mission. Doubtlessly!

Sportsweek in Review

Busy week, sports fans. We started with Notre Dame walloping the mighty, mighty Wolfpack of Nevada, who managed to make Jimmy Clausen look like the second coming of, well, the Jimmy Clausen who was last seen spanking Hawaii in the Coconut Bowl last holiday season. This week sees Jimmy lead the Irish to the Big House against the guys with the six-note fight song and little wings on their helmets. ND is a 3-point favorite. I say, MICHAEL FLOYD, and that translates to a 14-point Irish win. You read it here first.

Moving from throwball to kickball, the US men's national team snoozed through an actually fairly important World Cup qualifier against Trinidad 'n' Tobago and managed to pull out a one-goal win for a crucial three points. Seriously, Clint Dempsey? I was worried about Clint the last couple games because his more-hangdog-than-usual expression, coupled with his lassitude on the field, made me fear he was suffering from clinical depression and needed some serious help. Then I realized it's just that he pouts and doesn't bother running when Bob Bradley makes him play midfield, and only puts out what qualifies as "effort" when he's up top. Wow. I thought that kind of crap was limited to recreational leagues, and lord knows I've played with enough people who pull that to wonder how his teammates manage to not kick him in the nuts. Or why Bradley wastes a spot on him at all. I want Stuart Holden, dammit! Boy's young, but he run his ass off no matter what. No matter who starts in the midfield against Honduras, the entire side needs to remember how to possess AND move off the ball, and maybe show just a glimmer of intensity, as if, oh, the World Cup were at stake or something. You! Read! It! Here!

For contrast, have a look at the Slovakia-Northern Ireland game FSC keeps replaying. There's 90 minutes of passion and creativity and full-speed running for you, plus the requisite testicular injury for comic effect. Look out for the Slovaks, especially Vladomir Weiss. Tricksy!

Finally, the England women made it to the final of the UEFA championship for the first time in forever, but got wiped by a German team that hasn't lost a game in this tournament since 1999. England did manage to fight back for two goals and probably wins whatever metallic boot is awaded the most improved team over the past few years. Think the WPS has helped that national side? I do. They'll be an interesting team to watch. Kelly Smith. Sigh.

Go Irish!

Somebody's Mama Fell Down on the Job

And I don't mean Obama's.



Stay classy, jerks.

The Personality Cult of Dear Leader

No, not him. The other guy, who came before him. Thank god Glenn Greenwald is around to do the heavy lifting on a day when I have a headache and a deadline.

I'm always amazed -- even though I know I shouldn't be -- at people's capacity simply to block out events, literally refuse to acknowledge them, when they are inconsistent with their desire to believe things.

Just click over to Salon and read, and weep, and then print it out and roll it up into a tube for whacking upside the head the next person you hear muttering about how creepy it is that President Obama would dare tell your kids to pay attention in school and do their homework.

In other news, there's a good chance Obama ate breakfast this morning, which is exactly what Kim Jong-Il does every morning himself, and which Mao and Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin and Charles Manson were rumored to do as well. Eeeeeeeevil!

But of Course

Obama school talk stirs furor
Planned TV speech next week is decried as 'creepy' attempt to brainwash students

Wait, that's not quite histrionic enough; let's do it up like the Daily Star's front page this morning:

There, that's more like it. [headdesk] [facepalm] [heavydrinking]

Wow, so somebody who knows about these things is calling Tuesday's planned stay-in-school speech brainwashing! Maybe a retired PsyOps commander or high-level CIA spook? I mean, it was in the headline, so it must at least be a psychologist or childhood development specialist, right? Oh.

Trent Humphries, a 36-year-old computer consultant who counts himself among the Tea Party members, blames the controversy on the president himself...

"If he were going to a school to speak, that would be a different issue, but to speak to all children in America without their parents present, I don't know," he said, describing it as "creepy" and saying parents should be included in conversations about staying in school.

A Teabagger dad thinks it's creepy. Well then. That settles that. And Obama thinks he can just beam into a first-grade classroom and talk about the highly controversial topic of staying in school without asking parents who send their kids to school about that? The nerve of that man. What's next? A lecture on regular flossing and eating vegetables? That's a topic for parents to present to their children only as they see fit! The unbridled hubris! Thanks for alerting us, Daily Star!

Some parents apparently see the address as a campaign speech to a captive audience. Fair enough. Others see it as an end-run around the excellent arguments the town-hallers have been hollering, like Obamacare! and HitlerHitlerNaziHitler!

[Flowing Wells Unified School District Superintendent Nicholas] Clement received another note from a pastor, saying he was recommending that members of his congregation keep their children home on Tuesday. Acknowledging other presidents have made similar speeches encouraging youths to succeed in school, the man said he finds the speech "highly suspicious given the timing and the battle for health-care reform."

Because lord knows if you give that Socialist Nazi Commie Fascist an opening, he'll totally exploit the opportunity to explain all the policy and financial nuances of insurance regulation and co-ops and public options to your sixth-grader--in 45 minutes--and your kid will totally absorb all of that information and then run out to lobby his senators and possibly bring them coffee and stuff to keep them awake for the floor vote and wham, before you know it we'll all be speaking Canadian and sieg-heiling maple trees and little Johnny will start pestering us for curling brooms.

Unless it's a ploy to turn the kids into homos, of course.

In the Amphitheater Public Schools, Superintendent Vicki Balentine said she's heard similar concerns from about two dozen people.

Much of it, she said, stemmed from misinformation. Some callers thought the purpose of the speech was to sell kids on health care, or to address students about homosexuality.

To be fair, it's not all about the speech, although the shorts-knotting springing up around it is enough material for a solid week. The curriculum supplement sent out has raised the ire of people like Michele Malkin for being "activist" and people like Arizona education head Tom Horne for, well, oh, Tom Horne.

Arizona schools chief Tom Horne put out a press release objecting to the "worshipful" tone that the White House expects students to use, drawing examples from some curriculum prompts suggested by the U.S. Department of Education to engage students in dialogue about the speech. One singled out by Horne asks students to brainstorm: "How will he inspire us?"

Because the only inspiration in Arizona comes from Jesus, thanks--well, except for that bit about compassion towards the weakest among us he was always going on about, but that's a discussion for another time--and because inspiration is always and only religious in nature, schoolkids are being directed to worship Obama. QED.

The White House hasn't had a complete tin ear on this--hey, if we've learned anything from the healthcare kerfuffle, it's that maniacs must be appeased--so they changed one really offensive activist question in the lesson plans.

The White House altered the language of one suggested activity, which initially read, "Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”

That was changed to: “"Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”

How awful that first directive was. What other president would have have the unmitigated gall to require such a thing of children? Oh.

President George H.W. Bush made televised address to students in October 1991 as campaign season was heating up... Bush asked students to “take control” of their education and to write him a letter about ways students could help him achieve his goals, strikingly similar to Obama’s messages.

Sigh. Coming soon to a breathless headline near you: Obama pulmonary action stirs furor: President's insistence on continuing to draw breath in the White House decried as 'creepy.'

More Love from Ben & Jerry

'Nuff said.

Wait, actually, not enough said, except I can't figure out how to work a girl-girl reference into my personal favorite Vermonty Python.