Blogtastic

The 2005 Koufax Awards Best Post nominees are up at Wampum. I'm delighted to see posts on the list by some of my favorite bloggers, including Echidne, The Fat Lady Sings (two posts and a two-part series nominated), 'retired' blogger Lauren of Feministe, Twisty, By Neddie Jingo (four posts from which to choose), Amanda, and me. Lots of good reading. Enjoy!

We ate dessert instead

Hombre was whipping up double-chocolate tollhouse cookies while I sat in the kitchen reading an article about sustainable development. While the subject interests me, I have my limits.


Me: "There's a word I never want to see again. Humanure."

Hombre: "Ugh."

Me (pointing at photo): "Just because they put a toilet seat on this five-gallon bucket doesn't make it a toilet."

Hombre: "Hey, we could be watching the State of the Union address right now."

Well, hell

That went over like a lead balloon. Before the vote it looked like there were 30-plus Dems who were going to vote against cloture. In the end, after all the votes were cast, eyed, and shifted about, 18 Dems caved and voted for cloture.

Some say they're cowards. Others say they take their base for granted. I see it as a loss of perspective. The Alito 18 worried that they would appear obstructionist so they allowed a vote on a man who has made it a decades-long project to obstruct women's rights. They feared for the collegiality of the Senate as if the chumminess of 100 powerful, rich people is more important than the lives and liberties of hundreds of millions of Americans. The Alito 18 seem to think their jobs are about themselves rather than the rest of us.

I can't write more on this right now without lapsing into profanity. Let Amanda bring the blame:

First off, I blame any so-called Democrat who voted for cloture. And I blame the Republicans for cynically exploiting the Christian right and selling out their party to a bunch of rabid misogynists who act like they'’re acting in Jesus'’ name. And, for good measure, I blame Diebold.

I don'’t really blame the fundies. They'’re relatively upfront about their belief that government'’s main function is to be a boot on the neck of uppity women and gays, and they voted for the man they thought would deliver. No, the people I blame are the other Republicans--–the people who waved the flag non-stop after 9/11, who got all maudlin when talking about "“supporting the troops"” and "“freedom isn'’t free," and especially the ones who dare call themselves "“libertarians"”. I blame war supporters who put on this tough posture and talked about the importance of democracy in Iraq. I blame all these people who claim to be tough, who claim to love freedom and then turned out in droves to vote for a man who they knew would roll back freedom.

Good night and good luck.

Alito Monday

Vichy Democrats has a clear plan for today. Get thee there, phone in hand. Will a filibuster work? Don't know. But not trying damn sure won't work so I don't see an alternative.

The cure for Alito: Maintain pressure on the problem area

Call as many Democratic Senators as you can, especially those on Bob Fertik's Waffler Watch, starting at 9 a.m. Eastern Monday. He's got phone and fax numbers for everyone. Print or bookmark them now so you'll be ready bright and early tomorrow. If you can't get through to the DC offices, then send a fax or call the Senators' regional offices.

I spent part of Friday calling Senators even though I live in the reddest state. I asked whether they would support the filibuster, expressed my support for it, and let them know that red-state Dems like me are happy to support Dems anywhere in the country who go to bat for us.

This will take some time and some money. But if you have even a little to spare, join us. Unless you'd rather have people like this making your reproductive decisions for you.

Read Fertik's blog tomorrow for the latest.
(Thanks, Egalia.)

Saint Jimmy speaks!

I got a comment on my poinsettia post by someone claiming to be the mastermind of the anti-Christmas-flower movement himself, James Hartline. Whoever my commenter is, I think he raises some interesting points, which are featured below in italics.

In your quick to judge motivation to attack those who believe that abortion is the extermination of life, you attempt to gloss over Mrs. Ecke's real motives.

Right-o. I am somehow aware of the "real" but unspoken motives of a woman I've never met and I am seized with a desire to ignore them in print. This is typical misogynist-think: Righteous men can somehow discern the hidden, evil motives of women who make choices with which they disagree. Women's words cannot be taken at face value, and those who agree with or support what women say are part of the conspiracy.

One, Mrs. Ecke states she was on her way to help facilitate an illegal abortion on a minor.

One, I don't conclude that the friend was a minor, and you can't either from the piece I quoted. "A high school friend" could mean a friend who was still in high school (who may or may not have been a minor) or a friend she knew from high school. At any rate, I'm taking Mrs. Ecke at her word that she was going with a friend. Two, there is no two. Distorting the available information does not strengthen an argument, unless you're addressing people who can't spot ambiguity.

This was BEFORE, as she alledges (and this is no proof at all that her story is truthful), the alledged friend "nearly bled to death."

Your abuse of the word allege embarrasses us both, sir. But it's not as offensive as your total disregard for the fact that Mrs. Ecke's friend nearly lost her life. This is boilerplate anti-choice thinking: You can't trust women. Everything they say is suspect. Their suffering doesn't count. Further, when women claim to have suffered or witnessed other women suffering, it's just a manipulative plea for sympathy. The only sympathy a woman can rightfully claim is that generated when her husband suffers. (See Mrs. Sam Alito.)

The fact that she was engaged in attempting to help a minor obtain an abortion had nothing to do with her attempt at sympathisizing this issue by the alledged bleeding incident.

This statement is unintelligible. I believe that sloppy work is the product of a sloppy thought process, q.e.d. Or perhaps this is another loony-right tactic: When your argument is adrift, speak in gibberish. Gibberish is the new "tongues."

She was, in fact, engaged in criminal behavior on a minor.

We've been over the "minor" thing. And using your "logic," we can look at history and castigate runaway slaves for engaging in criminal behavior.

That is the story.

It is a story. It is definitely not Jinx Ecke's story. The real story is that anti-choice men subscribe to the patriarchal axiom, "We get to tell the stories around here, ladies, not you."

Additionally, Mrs. Ecke is related to a multi-multi million dollar family.

I think I have found the one nugget of verifiable truth in the entire comment. Ecke Ranch grows about 80% of the world's poinsettias and has annual sales of about $11 million. I am interested in seeing where my commenter goes with this.

The rich elitists in this world, the Bill Gates, the Ted Turners, the Ecke Family, want to eliminate through abortions, poor people that use up their land resources and deprive them of money making enterprises, when these poor people do not contribute to their wealth.

So much for facts. When the chips are down, blame the "elite." Always blame the elite. It's true that the world's starving peasantry is consuming most of the resources. It takes a lot of raw material to live on a dollar a day. Some of those shack-dwellers occupy two or three hundred acres of prime farmland each. Imagine the many cable-television channels Ted Turner could grow on such fertile soil if only he could abort the teeming masses.

Now, if we look at reality-based information, Bill Gates, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has done more than perhaps any other person ever to address public health issues for the poor worldwide. Why would he spend millions of dollars on health care for people he wants dead?

It is not about women's health.

That depends on how we define "it." If by "it" you mean the subject I was originally writing about and the cause to which Mrs. Ecke sees fit to devote her time and money, then it is about women's health. If, however, "it" represents what you've been going on about in your comment, then I have no idea what the hell it is.

It is about a Nazi-like white supremacists, Margeret Sanger world ideology.

Great Godwin's Law, man. What are you saying, that birth control is a Nazi plot? You should love birth control. Every time birth control works, that's one less potential abortion.

Who's closer to Third Reich ideals? Those who believe women are full-fledged, autonomous human beings or those who think (and in this case I use the term 'think' very loosely) the state or the church should be able to control women's bodies, lives and futures?

Get your facts straight before you attack those, like me, who demand justice for the unborn, rather than the self-serving, wealthy elistists, like Jinx Ecke, of the world.

Tell you what, featured commenter. You acquaint yourself with public health, human rights and history and learn the rudiments of grammar, logic and rhetoric. Then I might take your comments seriously. But you will still be wrong. In a free society, none of us has the right to tell another human being what to do with her own body. You can talk all you want, but don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong.

Friday morning Senator blogging

I may live in the reddest state in the union, but I still think I (and you) should call these Senators and urge them to support the filibuster Monday.

Bob Fertik is doing good work here. It's not too late for the Dems to grow a spine. But they can't do it alone. We have to help.

When housepets attack

You know how some people say animals are the first to sense a big incipient change in the environment -- acting weird before tornados and earthquakes, for example?

Well, in the past 36 or so hours, I've been bitten clean through the skin by my cuddly dwarf rabbit, been kneecapped and left limping by my enormous, happy-go-lucky puppy, and John Kerry has announced that he'll lead a filibuster against Sam Alito's confirmation. Of course, that will entail you, dear readers, calling your Senators and urging them to get on board -- especially the Alito 8 and Obama.

I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps there is about to be a seismic change in the Dems' approach to BushCo. The signs are there. Or maybe my pets just don't like me.

Friday morning spleen sampler

A pu-pu platter of political fury:

dachsund peppered with sole of boot
electorate criticism with a puckish ad hominem sauce
donation-free Democrat bites
and
a little Ivins from last week (it gets even better after it sits for a few days)
all garnished with Senator Whip

Have a great weekend!

He really is a uniter!

The impeachment groundswell's growing, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian in an article laying out the case and describing a verbal spanking Nancy Pelosi got from constituents earlier this month:

Although political leaders and major media outlets have been slow to pick up on the trend, national polls now show a majority of Americans support an impeachment inquiry.

And the sentiment is growing -- and getting increasingly vocal. At one point in the meeting, Pelosi was asked whether she will support a resolution by Rep. John Conyers to create a committee with subpoena power to investigate whether members of the Bush administration may have committed impeachable offenses. "I do not intend to support Mr. Conyers's resolution," Pelosi replied.

The eight-term incumbent in one of the most Democratic districts in America was loudly booed.

"Listen to your constituents," someone yelled at Pelosi, who waxed philosophical about how she takes her oath of office seriously and how political change is best left to election time.

"We have a responsibility to try to bring this country together," Pelosi said, to which an angry member of the audience jeered, "You have a responsibility to uphold the Constitution!"

Indeed. I'm so sick of politicians holding up "unity" and "togetherness" as if they were the highest values in our society. Unity is nice, but it can't come at the expense of competent and honest leadership. Also, if we want to be picky about it, a majority of Americans are united by the desire for impeachment hearings. So there.

h/t: Rox Populi, who also links to a good list of impeachment resources

Gone in 60 seconds

A timeline of one woman's bold attempt to use the hammock she has owned for more than a year

:60 Woman sits in hammock

:55 Toddler crawls into hammock, too

:54 Toddler announces that he has poop, demands to nurse

:52 Large, goofy Lab attempts to join woman and toddler in hammock

:50 - :40: Lab licks toddler's face and woman's armpit

:39 Lab wedges self under hammock, nearly tipping occupants onto the ground

:35 Six-year old boy throws self into hammock, jamming elbow into woman's ribs

:34 - :29 Woman clutches ribs, boy apologizes for rib-bashing and complains of toddler-pant smell

:24 Lab licks hammock occupants while fifty-pound puppy settles in five feet away to move bowels

:20 Toddler again asks to nurse

:16 Woman orders everyone out of hammock

:14 - :00 Hammock empty, former occupants and attendant animals move toward house in thundering herd.

What they really need is both hands and a flashlight

These two headlines on my BBC News feed got me thinking:

Katrina warnings 'went unheeded'

The US government failed to act on advance warnings Hurricane Katrina could flood New Orleans, a senator says.

White House defends spying

The US government says its policy of bugging citizens without court approval is legal and necessary.

If Bush and his administration made good use of the information legally available to them (intelligence reports, say, or weather forecasts), would they consider domestic spying necessary?

And if Bush and his crew can't make use of such information (q.e.d.), then what do they imagine they can do with any information gleaned from their spy program?

Why not say it with flowers?

It's Christmas in January for the religious right!


The Senate Judiciary Committee spat out Alito's nomination today onto the Senate floor, and I am not optimistic, especially since the Dems' plan to address this human-rights outrage is apparently to stage a "non-filibuster filibuster." I don't know exactly what that may entail, but it sounds about as effective as pushing a car up a hill with a wet rope.

While we wait for the "official" end of women's rights in this country at the hands of our elected officials, Natalie Bennett links to a piece on Alternet saying that illegal abortions are already happening here because of the cost, legal obstacles, and stigma attached to the procedure:

"Most commonly, they ingest a whole bottle of quinine pills, with castor oil...we try to get them to the ER before their cardiac rhythm is interrupted...Sometimes they douche with very caustic products like bleach. We had a patient, a teen, who burned herself so badly with bleach that we couldn't even examine her, her vaginal tissue was so painful..."

"Our local hospital tells me they see 12-20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions. Some make it, some don't. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families..."

So we're about to have an anti-abortion judge put on the Supreme Court, and state laws have already put safe, legal abortions out of reach for some American women. You'd think the religious right would take a little break to savor their ill-conceived victories, but they still haven't vanquished the Christmas flowers.

I'm not revisiting the "War on Christmas." This war is on poinsettias, specifically those grown by the Ecke family in California. Pam at Pandagon shares this lunatic gem:

Will American Family Association start a boycott of poinsettias now? Its faux-news organ, AgapePress, is reporting that bizarre "“ex-gay"” fundie James Hartline has uncovered an unholy bankroller of Planned Parenthood --— Ecke Ranch, a poinsettia farm in California. He'’s on the case, to warn churches not to buy any of those wicked plants during the next "“Christ in Christmas"” holiday.

What must the religious right's checklist look like? Presidency? Check. Supreme Court justices? Check. Godless nursery stock? Check. What's next? I'm calling it -- red raspberry leaf tea. You may think it's just a soothing herbal decoction, but that stuff can induce uterine cramps and must be stopped.

If you're wondering, like I was, what might induce a flower nursery to support pro-choice causes, it's this:

Planned Parenthood's new Isabella Center exists in part because of a terrible experience that 74-year-old Elisabeth "Jinx" Ecke can't erase from her memory.

More than 50 years ago when Ecke was a college student at San Diego State University, she accompanied a high school friend on a trip to Escondido to obtain an abortion ---- an illegal surgical procedure in those days.

"She very nearly bled to death that night," Ecke said as she recalled the fear she felt as the blood poured from her friend's body. "I was a sophomore in college, and it was a horrible, horrible experience."

But that's not important to the religious nuts. What is important is making sure that more women suffer and die, because that is what God wants.

So here's my modest plan. I'm not a huge poinsettia fan, but I intend to shop like one next holiday season. And if/when Alito is confirmed by the full Senate, I'm thinking of sending poinsettias to my Senators -- from Ecke Ranch, of course.



photo: Agricultural Research Service

More Koufaxy goodness

The nomination list for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition is now up. Again, many blogs I read made the cut, and I hope they do get more exposure as a result. I made the list, too. Thanks to my mystery nominator!

Better Nate than lever*

The easiest thing I did yesterday was explain to an unclothed Hurricanehead that he would not be allowed to help us prepare dinner unless he put on his pants -- while Rocketboy and I searched for a way to salvage the ingredients we'd already committed to a dish we couldn't finish for lack of bread. Yes, bread.

I'd meant all last week to point you to the seventh Carnival of Feminists at Feministe. FemCarn8 will be up February 8 at Gendergeek so get your nominations in.

Also, please direct your attention to the Koufax awards' Best NewBlogs nominations list. I'm pleased to see several of my favorite blogs made the list.

*the punchline to a joke I heard as a kid, which I can't remember but I think it involved a snake, a car accident and the potential end of the world. Dinner turned out fine, by the way, and Hhead did get dressed.

Blogging for choice, Texas-style

I've said it so many times I ought to have it on a button: The party of "smaller government" wants to shrink it until it fits in your uterus. Here in Texas, we do have a nice small state government -- crappy schools, underpaid teachers, dirty air, a huge number of uninsured children and adults, overwhelmed social services, state parks in need of maintenance, and a million other "small government" delights.

You would think that a state that's content to let kids go without medical care or a decent education would also be content to let women do whatever they want with their lives and their bodies -- not because Texas cares but because Texas doesn't care.

That's where you'd be wrong. While I and my fellow Texans can whistle for decent social services, child support collection, and good schools, we also have a variety of hoops to jump through should we dare to become pregnant and not wish to, or be able to, see it through.

NARAL gives my home state a big old F on the issue of repro rights for women. The government here may not provide much else, but it does give us biased pre-procedure counseling, delays in getting treatment, restrictions on who can provide abortions, extra barriers for teens, and a slew of other Bubba-knows-best regulations.

Do I think the members of the Lege really care that much about "protecting the unborn" that they are willing to turn their backs on their small-government philosophy? Hell, no. They enact these rules because they don't cost anything and make it look like lawmakers are doing something. School finance is a radioactive issue here, as is spending money on the poor. Enacting laws that target women for having sex appeases the easily led and dodges the real issues. It whips up fundamentalists so they'll vote in droves for "pious" candidates who coincidentally cut taxes for the rich, a trick Thomas Frank describes in detail in What's the Mater Matter with Kansas.

Such a deal: The rich get richer (and can buy their reproductive freedom), lawmakers look busy, the state appears righteous, and since we don't actually support live children very well, forced pregnancy doesn't hurt the bottom line. The only cost is to women's lives and futures. If ever there were a devil's bargain, this is it.

Read other Bloggers for Choice here. Thanks to Jessica at Feministing for all her work on this. And yes, there's a decent chance that "Mater" was some crazy, Latin, Freudian slip.

Conquering hydrophobia

No, not that hydrophobia. I mean Dogzilla's odd fear of getting into bodies of water. Odd, at least, for a dog who appears to be 99.9999% Labrador Retriever. Maybe it was just something she needed to outgrow, perhaps the stinky "creek" down the street was just too appealing to pass up, but she did it. She played in the water and returned home triumphant, soggy and smelling just delightful.

And you know what's almost as much fun as getting soaked in a creek? Drying off.

















Have a good weekend.

Who loves the sun?

Who cares that it is shining?

The solar site surveyor was here yesterday, bearing a ladder, measuring instruments and the news that our house does, in fact, qualify for a three kilowatt system, the largest for which the city will grant a rebate. (And yes, we'll be applying for the federal income tax credit, too.)

In addition to the good news that I will soon be able to lay down a chunk of change pursuing my dream of energy independence, I also learned a new word -- azimuth -- and got a list of sites chock full of solar goodness.

Next step: get bids. I'll keep you posted.

Intelligent decision

How does she do it? Mother Earth may not look a day over 6,000, but don't kid yourself. I heard she had her tectonic plates done and an equator tuck.


The would-be philosophers in California -- you know, the ones whose understanding of philosophy seemed limited to presenting the Bible as literal and scientific truth -- have cancelled their creationism course and promised never to do it again, citing a lack of funds to fight a lawsuit brought by parents.

I'd like to point out that the Vatican's newspaper has weighed in on the great American creationism debate. Not that a Catholic POV will influence Protestant young-earthers much, but this quote eloquently sums up the notion I struggle to emit:

"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in this week's edition of L'Osservatore Romano.

"But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific.

"It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."

Anyone want to start a betting pool on where the next ID flare-up will happen?

Free-range grasshoppers

Behold my patron saint of free-range learning!


I’ve been slack on addressing homeschool issues lately, and a reader at the poor, neglected Radical Homeschool Blog emailed to ask if something had happened to me. When people wonder if I’m dead or injured, it’s time to get my ass in gear.

The reason I haven’t written much about it lately is because free-range learning eats my brain every single day.

Hurricanehead is learning his colors, animal, and tool names and is adding words at a rapid clip. He brings me books by the armload and bellows, “’ead!” He’s two; he must try to do everything himself – climbing stairs, dressing, sweeping. This takes time.

Rocketboy has asked that his science text for the foreseeable future be the companion volume to the BBC Weather series, which I read aloud to him and supplement with explanations of terms, geography and history as needed. Rboy also insists that I use his brother’s nap time to play chess with him. Both boys have gymnastics and social calendars, and each has very clear ideas about what to eat and how it should be prepared. These things take time, too.

In fact, for most of last week I was thinking that perhaps I should hang it up, send Rocketboy to the neighborhood elementary, file Hurricanehead away at preschool, and enjoy the sounds of silence for a few hours a day. I was very tired, and both children were in one of those whiny ruts that makes everything seem like torment.

Grasshopper snapped me out of it. Grasshopper is one of Arnold Lobel’s characters (the two most famous being Frog and Toad) and the hero of the talking-insect easy-reader, Grasshopper on the Road. Hombre and I read this book to Rocketboy about 486 times when he was three, and I quickly saw the chapter entitled “The Voyage” as a parable about bright children and institutional school. Yesterday I thought of Grasshopper and why I do what I do.

He was just about to hop over the puddle.

“Wait!” cried a tiny voice.

Grasshopper looked down. At the edge of the puddle was a mosquito. He was sitting in a little boat.

“It is a rule,” said the mosquito. “You must use this ferry boat to get across the lake.”

When Grasshopper politely points out that he can easily jump across, that the boat is too small, the he can’t fit, the mosquito replies each time with, “Rules are rules.”

It would be easy – modern, really -- to have Grasshopper jump the puddle and let mosquito see the error of his silly rules. But that’s not Lobel’s or Grasshopper’s way. Grasshopper picks up the boat and the mosquito, carries them across the little puddle, and thanks him when they reach the other side. The mosquito says he was glad to help.

"The Voyage" is a nice introduction to the concept of saving face and sparing feelings. But it’s also about navigating a system you don’t need, one that actually slows you down in order for other people to do their jobs. It’s about other people not believing that you can actually accomplish something for yourself, about misguided good intentions and wasted time. It’s about bureaucracy in general and, viewed through my lens, school in particular.

I look back on my own institutional-school career in the honors program at a series of exemplary public schools and I see mostly boredom, bureaucratic hoops that had to be jumped through, and oceans of wasted time. Rules are rules. What you as an indivudal may need or can do is neither here nor there in a system devoted to itself.

When my first-grade homeroom teacher made me use, all year, a reading workbook that I had done on my own for fun the summer before, I learned that I wasn’t going to be allowed to leap any puddles. When my reward for finishing assignments well and quickly was busywork or sitting with my head down on my desk, I realized the boat was too small. When my senior-year Spanish teacher insisted that I spend 45 minutes after school each week practicing for the AP exam, which I had taken the year before and made the highest possible score, I understood that rules are rules – and dropped the class. And all of this was years before standardized-test mania and No Doublespeak Left Unspoken.

I don’t want that for my kids, and they don’t seem to want it, either. Their education can be about them or it can be about the system. I choose them. They are perfectly happy to jump puddles for themselves. They don’t need to carry anyone else’s boat.



Cross-posted at the Radical Homeschool Blog.

Neddie on fear

When I grow up, I want to write like self-described "dumb-ass yuppie" Neddie Jingo. I've read some good summaries and analyses of Al Gore's speech, but this makes it real:

The battle-hardening of the square-mile area surrounding the White House, begun in the hysteria over Libyan terrorist cells during the Reagan Regnum, and reinforced and made permanent in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing of the middle Clinton years, has made the Ellipse a dreary maze of Jersey barriers, ugly temporary fences and chain enclosures that mark off arbitrary Sterile Zones into which the hapless tourist wanders erroneously at his peril. A non-English-speaking visitor stands an excellent chance of being shot dead for wandering into one of these ambiguously marked Zones and not understanding the police's bullhorned cease-and-desist order. A more enslaved symbol of the Land of the Free, and a more pusillanimous emblem of the Home of the Brave, is simply impossible to imagine.

Yesterday I heard a sane, measured, adult voice speaking, encouraging me to stand tall and refuse to be afraid, refuse to be cowed, refuse to be swayed by the rhetoric of fear, a voice that intoned,

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it’s up to us to do the very same thing.

I walked past that White House just a few minutes after I heard those words, saw the layers of temporary fencing and Jersey barriers and steel-chain bollards and black-clad stormtroopers wielding god-knows-what kind of weaponry around the Presidential Perimeter, and was struck as never before by one laser-sharp insight:

The Fear starts -- and ends -- here.

The whole post is here. His report on Gore's speech, here. Enjoy!

The humans are in there somewhere

Look what Zeebah found: the dreaded phone menu, hacked.

Apologies in advance

I just can't help myself. Apparently, neither could the Hoff.

Thanks,Twisty.

In which I learn how to game the system

"I don't know," the chaplain wailed softly in a quavering voice, squinting with grotesque contortions of anguish and incomprehension. "I don't think I understand all that you've been telling me. How will it make a good impression for me if you signed Washington Irving's name instead of my own?"

"Because they're convinced that you are Washington Irving. Don't you see? They'll know it was you."

"But isn't that the very belief we want to dispel? Won't this help them prove it?"

"If I thought you were going to be so stuffy about it, I wouldn't even have tried to help," Corporal Whitcomb declared indignantly, and walked out.

-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

I promise, this is the last health-insurance quagmire post. Really. I'm only writing it because I learned something I thought you all should know. Remember how I said InsCo had listed Hombre as the doctor rather than the patient's father on one of my kids' claims and then decreed there was no benefit for that provider? I never could get a straight answer about how that claim got so messed up, and of course that turned out not to be the only problem with it.

My big concern was this -- I'd paid up front for that trip to the urgent-care clinic and wanted to make sure we didn't miss the filing deadline for 2005 claims with our medical savings account.

If InsCo continued to goof around with it, that might happen, and I'd lose out on whatever reimbursement we are entitled to -- to be determined by InsCo, of course. When I presented this dilemma to the supervisor during that fateful phone call, she gave me a special, zillion-digit claim number to scrawl across the top of the form when I resubmit it (but not to the address on the form).

"So then how long will it take to get re-processed?" I asked her.

"Up to thirty days," she said.

"That's not so good," I say. "Is there any way to expedite this claim?"

"You can write 'urgent' on the top of the form," she said.

"Will that really speed things up?" I ask.

"Oh yes," she said. "See, what happens with a normal claim is it goes into the computer system and takes thirty days. But if it says 'urgent,' then it gets processed by hand and only takes about two weeks."

UNIVAC is spinning in its grave. I will let you know if the password provides speedy relief.

Possumwhat? A victory garden update

The broccoli is ripening, the collards are ready when we are, and the cabbage is ooching toward doneness. Lettuce is struggling a little in the heat, but I think it's going to win. Radishes and carrots are popping up, and we planted seeds for flat-leaf parsley, edible-pod peas and spinach last week. I was going to plant onion sets yesterday, but they hadn't arrived at the nursery yet.

Hombre was home today, off work for MLK Day. We thought it would rain this afternoon so we planted our hard-to-find, freshly purchased, discount possumhaw hollies out front, as part of our plan to turn the outer edge of the front yard into a woods. Next fall, after everything has had a chance to settle in and get established under the oaks, we'll add shrubs. No rush.

My trees from the city arrived last month and are in the ground, too. The chinquapin oak is a leafless stick right now but the live oak has plenty of leaves. Hurricanehead enjoys watering them and himself with the hose.

And the solar survey people are coming day after tomorrow to vet our homestead, weeks ahead of the promised schedule. It's almost enough to make a gal forget about insurance.

Were humans designed to fight the same court battle over and over?

Even in Kansas, they're down with the big E


Apparently some school superintendent in California thought he could stay on the ID bandwagon by re-renaming ID as philosophy, resulting in a big controversy and expensive litigation. (h/t to ed)

For those of you who, like me, are trying to raise kids who understand the world we live in, I hereby (and more than a month after it was posted) present a link to Pharyngula's updated evolution bibliography. The only one of the kids' books I own so far is Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story, which is so movingly told and illustrated that I have to fight not to get all weepy when I read it to the boys.

I'm also adding this link to the Free-Range Learning section in the sidebar. Enjoy!

Impeachy keen

There's nothing worse than feeling like a lone crackpot. I was pleased to see via C&L that I have plenty of company in my desire for impeachment hearings -- a majority of voters surveyed, in fact.

So where's all the coverage?

In August and September of 1998, 16 major polls asked about impeaching President Clinton (http://democrats.com/clinton-impeachment-polls). Only 36% supported hearings to consider impeachment, and only 26% supported actual impeachment and removal. Even so, the impeachment debate dominated the news for months, and the Republican Congress impeached Clinton despite overwhelming public opposition.

Passion for Impeachment is Major Unreported Story

The strong support for impeachment found in this poll is especially surprising because the views of impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the broadcast and print media, and can only be found on the Internet and in street protests. The lack of coverage of impeachment support is due in part to the fact that not a single Democrat in Congress has called for impeachment, despite considerable grassroots activism by groups like Democrats.com.

Ah, the media. My former taskmaster. Whatever happened to "two is a trend," fellas? I smell an electorate-gone-wild angle here, if the real issues are too boring for you.

Siete

Dru memed me. It's the weekend, and I'm not up to writing the "last" installment of the InsCo saga right now so here you go:


Seven Things To Do Before I Die:

The best response has already been made. And Hombre's grandmother always said that if she outlived her husband (she didn't) she would spend her last days evading the IRS and shooting male picketers at abortion clinics. Anything I say pales in comparison.

1. take a vacation by myself
2. get a decent strawberry harvest of out my garden
3. teach at least a dozen other people how to grow vegetables
4. restore a prairie
5. live off the grid -- at least for a little while
6. build a business empire based on my crackpot ideas
7. become the first person to die of chocolatemia


Seven Things I Can't Do:

1. sing in public
2. wear contact lenses
3. watch news on television without "talking" to the TV
4. sit still
5. fly a plane
6. maintain an erection
7. discuss the terms of the settlement


Seven Things That Attract Me To Blogging = (I like writing and reading what other people write) x 7


Seven Things I Say Most Often:

1. Where's my coffee?
2. Did you feed the fish?
3. We don't eat Legos.
4. Get down from there before you fall.
5. No, you can't -- it might start a fire.
6. Sit!
7. Did you read this?


Seven Books That I Love, in no particular order, with the caution that these are not necessarily my favorite books of all time:

1. Persepolis (both volumes), Marjane Satrapi
2. Shame, Salman Rushdie
3. Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region, Sally Wasowski
4. A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
5. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
6. Naked, David Sedaris
7. Ferdinand, Munro Leaf


Seven Movies I Watch Again and Again:

I don't watch movies repeatedly; I can barely be persuaded to sit still and watch an entire movie once. Three movies I watched more than once, years ago: Repo Man, Raising Arizona and When Harry Met Sally. I think if I ever have time to watch lots of movies again I will start a gardening podcast series instead.

You are welcome to nab this meme for your own self or to let it lie, as you wish.

Health insurance follies, a sad aside

This comes from the comments, via Kristen from MA. You can also see the article at the Memphis Commercial Appeal if you register:

Over the holidays, while we were spending billions of dollars to try to transplant our way of life to another country, 58-year-old Garmer Currie Jr. lost his life in Memphis because he didn't have enough money. Or the right insurance plan. Or enough political power. Or the right address.

While I find my insurance folderol both amusing and galling, it's really no skin off my nose. I set my own schedule and I can bide my time waiting for the checks. I have no major obligations to keep me from stalking my insurance provider and no creditors beating on my door. I'm lucky, if by lucky you mean in a position to pick through bureaucratic bullshit.

If I worked in a job that kept me away from the telephone, if I had a boss who didn't understand, if I were a single parent and didn't have time in the day to call about these mistakes, I would be losing real money, and losing that money would probably hurt a lot more than it does now.

If I had a health plan that was nickel-and-diming me about what it would cover in the first place, the consequences could be deadly, as they were for Garmer Currie, Jr. I don't need to say how wrong that is.

I have friends who can't afford to go to the dentist. I have friends whose children qualified for state health insurance aid and still couldn't see a doctor because the waiting lists were too long. I have friends who say that universal health coverage is wrong, because it forces people to pay for those who can't.

But we're paying already. We pay when we spend hours on the phone trying to Heimlich payment out of insurers who use our health and well-being as a shell game. We pay when doctor visits and ER fees go up to cover the unpaid bills of the indigent. We pay when kids whose parents can't afford a doctor catch whooping cough or measles and unwittingly spread it around. We pay when preventive care is ignored in favor of more expensive crisis treatment.

We pay when companies like Wal-Mart sell us cheap crap and then cause our taxes to go up to cover aid to employees they are too cheap to insure properly. We pay when doctors quit our plan because it's a paperwork nightmare or doesn't reimburse at a decent rate, and we have to sever yet another caregiver-patient relationship. And we pay when insurance companies let their customers suffer and die in order to please their shareholders.

Years ago, Currie developed sarcoidosis, a chronic disease that damages the body's organs. As he got older, it got worse. He spent the past five years wrangling with his insurance company about his need for a liver transplant. His health continued to deteriorate.

Finally, on the morning of Dec. 31, Currie was rushed to intensive care and his name was put on a liver transplant list. Later that same day, he died of liver and kidney failure.

There has to be a way to fix this. I like Waters' idea:

The 14th Amendment requires equal treatment under the law. That should include equal medical treatment.

Any health or law gurus want to say whether getting healthcare included under the 14th Amendment is viable?

Health insurance follies, part three: She'll go far

"Wintergreen is probably the most influential man in the whole theater of operations. He's not only a mail clerk, but he has access to a mimeograph machine. But he won't help anybody. That's one of the reasons he'll go far."

-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

[This is part three in my insurance saga. The preamble, along with parts one and two are available for your perusal.]


When we left off last time, I was still on the phone. The InsCo supervisor had kindly informed me that my healthcare provider hadn't been paid because the claim had been sent to the wrong address -- the one printed on my insurance card with the notice, "Submit claims to." Rather, my provider needed to re-send the claim to the Texas InsCo office, whose address was not available to me although I was assured that the provider had it on file, because the provider was in-network.

"So that address is only for out-of-network providers to send claims to?" I asked.

"No," she said. "They have to file them through InsCo Texas, if they file at all. The address on the card is where you should send any claims you file."

I wondered how an out-of-network provider might obtain the supersecret address for InsCo Texas -- the one the in-network providers have but which the manager herself did not have -- but had a more pressing query.

"But what about the address that's on the claim form?" I asked. "It's different from the one on my card. Should I be using the claim form address or the card address?"

"Where did you get that claim form?" she asked.

"From your website."

The manager stifled a sigh. "Did anyone walk you through this?"

I stifled a scream. "Walk me through downloading a claim form?"

"You're supposed to cross out the address on the form from our website and replace it with the address on your card," she said.

"Oh," I said, wondering why the claim form carried no such notice next to the mailing address. "So the address on my insurance card is not for the providers to use, and the one on the claim forms is not for me to use?"

"That's right."

By this time we'd been on the phone for several minutes. This is what it had come to after months of back-and-forth with InsCo. They were paying a supervisor to spend her time telling me the correct address for my claims, effectively pushing the problem back onto me. Sweet Jesus.

The conversation continued as we addressed the claim in which my husband was pronounced the doctor and the claim thus summarily denied. But as far as running down this first claim, when I talked to the provider's billing guru later that day, he said the supervisor was simply wrong. They had been paid for all the visits but one, and he said if they filed again for the unpaid visit that InsCo would most likely deny it for filing in an "untimely" manner.

Basically, he said, "once the books are closed on a year, they don't like to have to go back and pay. So they'll say they can't find it. I've called their computer with an EOB in my hand and they say the system can't find it."

Rather than tell me to pay up pronto, which I probably would do if someone had owed me money for fifteen months, he offered to re-send all the paperwork to me along with the supersecret InsCo Texas address. According to him, InsCo is more likely to pay up if I file it myself. Which I will. Along with, as some of my readers have recommended, a copy to the State Board of Insurance.

Coming next: How to marry a doctor without really trying, and the importance of being "urgent."