Melissa's Miscellani

Kimchee

2010-02-16T11:15:00.001-08:00

Inspired by the success of my sauerkraut, but wanting something a bit perkier to have on hand as an alternative to the kraut, I decided to try making kimchee. There are many, many, many recipes for kimchee out there, so I read a dozen or so, and saved four of them to ponder, then distilled them down into the following:

LACTO-FERMENTED KIMCHEE MK

Cut into 1" pieces:
1 Napa cabbage (discarding the hard joins at the base and core)
1 6-7 in. 'baby' bok choi

Place a couple of inches of the cabbage mixture into a large jar or bowl, and cover with a brine made of:
3 qts filtered (chlorine-free) water
2 cups water kefir (or whey, or you can just use 3.5 qts water)
2 T. salt

Pound/Mash the cabbage mixture using a potato masher or muddler to break up some of the cell walls, then layer on more cabbage and more brine, mashing/muddling between layers, until all the cabbage and brine have been put into the brining jar/bowl.

If the cabbage is not completely submerged (some will float), put a plastic bag into the mouth of the jar, and pour water into the bag. Seal the bag. This will keep air and dust from getting in.

Soak for 12 hours.

Once the soaking period is over, remove the cabbage from the brine, reserving the brine.

Toss the cabbage with:

2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T ginger, minced
2" ginger root, sliced and cut into sticks
1 medium daikon radish, sliced and cut into sticks
1 medium carrot, sliced and cut into sticks
4 green onions, whites sliced, greens sliced thinly on the diagonal

In a bowl, whisk together the sauce:

1/3 cup fish sauce
1-2 T. sriracha (I used 2 and skipped the flakes)
1 t. chili pepper flakes (optional)

Toss the cabbage mixture with the sauce, making sure the sauce is distributed throughout. When well mixed, stir in:

½ cup water kefir grains (optional)

Once everything is thoroughly mixed together, pack the cabbage mixture into one or more jars, allowing some room for expansion. If any sauce remains in the mixing bowl, pour it into the jar(s). If the cabbage mixture is not covered by the sauce and juices, add some of the reserved brine to the jars to cover the contents.

Screw the lid on the jar tightly.If your jar does not have a lid, push a plastic food storage bag into the mouth of the jar, and pour any remaining brine or plain water into the bag. Seal the bag, and make sure it is spread out over the contents in the jar. This will keep air and dust from getting in.

Let the kimchee ferment in a cool place, at a temperature no higher than 68° F, for 3 to 6 days, until the kimchee is as sour as you like.

I put up the kimchee last Friday. Today I tasted it - yum! The jars are now happily albeit more slowly continuing to ferment inside my fridge.

When life hands you lemons...

2010-02-07T22:56:00.000-08:00

candy their little yellow asses!

At least, that's what I'm trying to do. Still have 24+ hours to go before I find out if they candied or not.

Update Feb 11: Well more than 24 hours. I decided to bring them to a boil again on the next day, adding some more sugar, and then repeat it again on the following day (without the additional sugar). After soaking overnight, I pulled them out and set them on a tray to start drip drying. Then, last night, in a discussion about what to do with lemons (triggered by my bringing to a meeting a colander full of lemons for people to take home with them), one of the folks mentioned rolling the wet lemons in sugar, so I came home and did that, too. In checking their progress when I took the photo below, I find that they still have some drying to do. I've got them sitting in my living room, which is cold enough to hibernate tortoises, so I think tonight I will put them in the iguana room, which should speed up the drying process.

Update February 16: Well, instead of the ig room, which has no room at the table due to the 3 gallons of kefir and 1/2 gallon of lacto-fermented lemonade fermenting in there, I slid the tray into a 225F oven to dry out while I candied the sliced peels from the lemons I squeezed to make the aforementioned lemonade. Here's how they turned out:

Yum!

Fomenting Ferment

2010-01-19T11:02:00.001-08:00

Welcome to my Fermentorium. Well, to my iguana room in which the table previously designated for people (as opposed to tables for lizards and wee small turtles) has been repurposed into The Fermentorium.

In my quest for a steady supply of non-dairy probiotics, some friends turned me on to MYO (make your own) water kefir (tibicos) and lacto-fermented sauerkraut, the latter of which led to a beetroot and apple relish.

From left to right: water kefir, beet/apple relish, sauerkraut.

I happen to love sauerkraut, and apples, and beets, so these will be perfect for me, assuming I succeed at actually fermenting them properly.

I am not so much in love with kefir - wasn't when I ate dairy (and loved yogurt), and the MYO kefir water is not a happy taste for me, though my komboucha-loving friend Karen thinks it tastes great. [Note: Please read my January and February updates at the end of this post - water kefir is now a very happy taste for me.] Still, after 20 years of being sick and on various meds that tasted downright vile, I am used to ick, so it's doable. It is extremely doable when I add the instant Salabat mix to it (think instant ice tea, but made with ginger, cayenne pepper, sugar, and calamansi juice and no tea). Oh, dear, this is way too good and I don't need all that sugar, as I could easily drink through an entire 'harvest' of kefir water in a single afternoon this way. Happily, mixing a little Stevia and calamansi juice (purchased frozen from my local Asian market) into the kefir tastes just as good, so that's the way I'll drink it.

Of the jars of kefir you see fermenting in the photo above, four have a bit of unsulfured dried apricot floating in them. The yellowish-looking one is for Karen, so I put some dried blueberries in hers.

Reading the Wikipedia page on tibicos gave me an idea: for my next batch, I am going to put in slices of raw gingerroot instead of the apricots (or maybe with the apricot, as I put the fruit in to give the little beasties something else to feed on rather than as a flavoring or coloring agent).

In the mean time, I seem to be able to keep the kefir 'grains' alive (what started out as 3.5 tablespoons of grains on January 6 was, by January 18, 2.5 cups of grains), so I will have both probiotic-laced water to drink and some grains to eat. Yesterday's breakfast was about 1/4 cup of the grains tossed with a bit of stevia and cinnamon and the apricot pieces I picked out when I harvested the water and made a new batch. I'm giving away three of the kefir cultures you see above so I will be back to my original two jars, but with more grains than I started with. I'm harvesting every four days, so should have 2 cups of grains again next week.

As for the beet/apple and sauerkraut, those will be fermenting for several days, assuming they ferment as they should. The beet/apple recipe says to puree them once they are done, but I rather like the shredded texture, so may just leave them like that. As for the kraut, I used a red cabbage and a green cabbage. If the kraut turns out, I may play with some of the other non-red cabbages to see how they taste.

Digits crossed, please, in hopes that all turn out as planned!

January 25 update: Well, when I harvested and re-cultured the grains on Sunday, I had 4 cups of grains and 2 about 3 quarts of kefir water. I now have 8 jars fermenting. Some of the grains will be going to their new homes on Thursday, after I harvest once again. The ginger kefir turned out GREAT! I can now say, I love it - it's refreshing like ginger ale but without the harsh bite of the carbonated ginger ales. Now I just have to keep a steady supply of gingerroot on hand to keep making the ginger kefir water.

I put the fermenting beetroot/apple mixture into the fridge, and one of the bowls of sauerkraut. Neither are quite done yet, but they will continue to slowly ferment in the frige, and besides, I need more room on the table top for my kefir!

I wrote up the way I am culturing the water kefir grains (updated 3/31/2010), in case you'd like to take a look and maybe give it a try yourself. The instructions are based on those I received with my starter culture, but simplified and expanded in some areas. I've seen variations on this elsewhere around the web, so there are other right ways to do it; this is what is working for me.

February 3rd update: I 'harvested' almost 1.5 gallons of kefir water today, some ginger (brewed with slices of fresh ginger root), some apricot (quartered unsulfured dried apricots), and a little blueberry (dried, probably sulfured). The kefir continues to ferment in the fridge, getting a lovely 'bite' after a couple of days. I'm now looking for half-gallon and gallon sized jars because the quart jars are soon going to take up all the available space.

Plus, I now want to make kimchee. Fermentalicious!

Fermented Foods update - February 6: I have been enjoying the sauerkraut and beet/apple relish. I ended up tossing half of each of the batches, draining them of the salty brine, and replacing the brine with kefir water. I think next time I'll just do a light brine and pounding to start the juices flowing, and then replace with kefir water and let most of the batch slowly ferment/sour in my fridge.

March 1 Update: Having yesterday harvested THREE GALLONS of kefir water and a gallon of grains, I have cut myself back to only brewing two gallons of kefir and a half gallon of lacto-fermented lemonade. Some of the older kefir water fed my drains, while the grains fed me. For this latest kefir batch, instead of putting dried fruit or raw gingerroot into the canisters. I plopped in a teabag from my current favorite tea: Celestial Seasonings Tangerine Orange Zinger. See that empty gallon canister (behind which you can see the half-gallon of lemonade)? That's the future home of kombucha, once I get a SCOBY from Karen or grow one myself from a bottle of store-bought.

March 31 Update: The insanity continues. I harvested 3 gallons of kefir this morning, and ended up feeding our sewer system several quarts of grains that have been in my fridge for a couple of weeks, since I haven't been keeping up with eating them (and Mikey (Cyclura iguana) and Treppie (desert tortoise) have been turning their snouts up at them when I add kefir grains to their food; happily for Karen, however, Ginger (doberman) loves them). Despite having given away some quarts and passing my bottle around at a couple of meetings, I still have over a gallon of the last batch left, plus the 3 harvested this morning, so I only made 2 gallons today. I'm loving the cookie jar canisters I got (Walmart carries them, as does Cash & Carry), as well as the 1 gallon mayonnaise-style jars I got at The Beverage People. The latter I use for both brewing and storing the kefir.

Here's what I made today - just two gallons, and one wee quart to give away

Yes, we have some kombucha.

Well, I caved, finally, and tasted some of Karen's kombucha...and so now I have my own mother and am brewing a gallon a week. Here's what mom looks like when brewed with green tea instead of black - she's making her third batch here:

Do Re Me Pho Soooo Good!

2010-01-05T17:46:00.000-08:00

In my seventh month of being totally GFCF (gluten- and dairy-free), I am doing okay, adjusted to the 'new' way at home, though eating out safely (the very few times I do eat out) continues to be difficult.

In my search for something to replace the cheese in my cheese omelets, I have taken to adding dashes of chipotle buffalo sauce, plain ol' hot sauce (think Tabasco), and, most recently, sriracha, which I got to top off my search for something to replace mac and cheese. The winner may well be pho (pronounced fa), a Vietnamese beef and rice noodle soup.

I came across a relatively easy recipe (Lazy Man's Pho), which I made today. Oh, my. Quite lovely. I am going to add more veggies next time - more onion, cabbage, some carrot--and I think another star anise.

Other than that, life continues much as it did..health still not any better, and so I plug along, day by day. This year marks the 20th year I will have been continuously sick, and 40 years since I first got infected from a tick bite.

This past holiday season seemed to be pretty subdued overall, at least amongst the people I know, those healthy and those not. However yours was, may this year bring only good things to us all...

January 22: I just threw together another pho, this time with thinly sliced raw beef (from a ribeye steak) that I had defrosted but not broiled yet. With the weather being so frickin' cold, I decided I wanted a spicy warming soup more than a chunk o'meat. So, you needn't wait around for leftovers to make this. You can also use raw shrimp and firm-fleshed fish to make this, if you aren't particularly into beef.

Litter...

2009-10-17T13:37:00.001-07:00

Litter isn't just rude.

Litter isn't just ugly.

Litter kills.

Suckage, or, Apparently my life just isn't complicated enough

2009-08-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

My health (and life, for that matter) is like an onion: layers upon layers upon layers, with multiple hearts (personalities) deep within, each with their own succession of layers upon layers.

My waxing and waning chronic illnesses from three tickborne infections (TBI) is one layer (well, three). The organ malfunctions caused by long-term infection another. Add another couple of layers for the bizarre and generally untreatable endocrine and immune system problems. Then there's the occult lungworm layer (Cryptostrongylus, in case you want to read a bit about it), sinus Staph., and environmental mold sensitivities.

Several years ago, I was diagnosed with gluten intolerance, so had to total revamp my diet to exclude all things with gluten in them (and you would be amazed at the things food product manufacturers put wheat and gluten in). Eating the available gluten-free (GF) bakery and pasta products isn't really an option, since they are made from plants that I need to limit because of them being high on the glycemic index (rapidly raising blood sugar, which I also need to be careful of). So, I revamped my meal plans so that they do not include glutenized grains. (At least I am spared the problem faced by parents of celiac and autistic kids on GF diets who also need to be wary of gluten in school supplies.)

(Instead, I have to wear gloves to avoid direct contact with photocopy and laser toners and documents copied/printed with them, and inks used on newsprint, and newsprint paper and paper bags, since they all contain these chemicals. Hey! You knew there had to be something, right. Oh, and I can't be around scented felt-tip markers, or papers on which they were used.)

So, I adapted. Lots of leafy greens, vegetables and fruits in my entree salads, with protein from tinned fish, or chicken, or lite dry salamis, and feta or bleu cheeses. My favorite summertime salad is baby greens tossed with fresh coarsely chopped peach, torn prosciutto, and fresh mozzarella. How about a lovely heirloom tomato, fresh from the field that morning (thanks to our Saturday farmers' market), with sliced sweet onion and bleu cheese crumbles? Or my favorite omelet, stuffed with a mix of cream and goat cheese and chives. A favorite hot weather breakfast or lunch was Greek-style nonfat yogurt mixed with my own trail mix (pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, unsweetened coconut ribbons), ground flaxseeds, and fresh or frozen berries. Mmmmmm.....

Many of you have already figured out where this is going, haven't you...

Last week, I found out that a significant portion of the gut problems I've been experiencing for the year and a half is not only due to opportunistic infections caused by the long-term TBI, and the cleaning out of the beneficial flora as a result of my first (and probably my last) colonoscopy in March 2008. No, it is due to my now being casein intolerant as well as lactose intolerant.

Most people, when you say "dairy intolerant" or "dairy sensitivity" or "dairy allergy", think you're talking about lactose, which doesn't seem like such a big deal (if you are sensitive or intolerant, which is different from being allergic, as the latter can cause death, just like peanut and other true allergies), because, hey, you can just take one or two lactase pills as you take your first bite of dairy, right? Voila! No gas or bloating!

If you are just lactose intolerant, then yes. you can take the lactase (enzyme which breaks down the sugar lactose).

If, however, you are intolerant of or sensitive to the protein casein, there is no pill to take. If you eat foods containing casein, it is like eating foods containing gluten: the proteins damage the villi lining the intestinal walls and make the walls permeable. These protein chains can slip between the cells of the gut wall where they start a free-fall ballet through the body, causing a host of symptoms ranging from acute overall inflammation, joint pain and impaired range of motion, weight gain, swollen/enlarged abdomen, and fatigue, to name a few of the more common ones that significantly alter one's quality of life.

As I started researching casein intolerance and casein-free (CF) diets, I came across discussions that made it apparent that people who develop gluten sensitivities quite often go on to develop casein sensitivities.

Usually, I'm the outlier, my test results or reactions to treatment protocols, etc., generally falling well outside the standard deviation. This time, I'm finding myself closer to the center of the pack.

Crap.

Before you kindly suggest I can substitute soy cheese, soy 'margerine' (read the margerine labels next time you're at the grocery store - almost all have some type of milk-derived ingredient!), soy yogurt, soy milk, and soy ice cream, well, well, you knew there was going to be a well, didn't you?

Soy is goitrogenic - it binds iodine which makes it unavailable to the thyroid gland to use in doing its job. Consume enough goitrogenic foods, and you can cause hypothyroidism (the same goes for iguanas as it does for humans, so don't get snarky with me: deprived of cheese and my favorite chocolate, I am a dangerous woman and you do not want to piss me off right now. Maybe later, okay?).

I already have hypothyroidism, as did my parents. However, theirs was/is easily treated with appropriate medication. Since my endocrine system is also being affected by all the TBI toxins and all the other craziness going on in there, I am not so easily treated, and at this point can only keep the worst of the symptoms at bay...so I steer clear of consuming soy on a regular basis.

Since I also have to keep my consumption of root veggies down, that leaves (er, no pun intended) things like brussel sprouts (steamed and tossed with butter and Parmesan - crap! another favorite dish out of my life!), broccoli, and cauliflower - which are also goitrogenic. I'd rather have them (okay, so I'll roast halved sprouts tossed with olive oil and seasonings) than tofu, TVP, or even chilled salted edamame.

So, there you go. Just when my life starts to fall into a comfortable routine, something else comes along and smacks me upside the head.

Suckage.

I have almost 100 MB of recipes stored on my computer, many of which can be consigned to the virtual rubbish heap since so many contain the now verboten ingredients. Well, I won't actually delete them (one can hope, right?) What I have done is started a new subdirectory for GF & CF recipes, as I once again revamp my diet. I've already joined a GFCF email list with a recipe archive available to members and nonmembers. If you know of anyone starting down this same path, you might like to pass the information on to them.

Memorial Day 2009 ... with an addendum

2009-05-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day was first enacted to honor the Union soldiers of the Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include American casualties of any war or military action.

On Memorial Day, there may be parades to honor those who went before, and group observances and individual remembrances at veterans' cemeteries and the gravesides of family members.

Memorial Day is a day when we typically remember and honor the dead.

Memorial Day is not a day when we, as a nation, remember the lost who are still among us.

I am not talking about those missing in action (MIA) or prisoners of war (POW) - they should be remembered all the time by us all, not just the families who love and miss them.

I am talking about the vast number of active duty service members and veterans--and their families--who are suffering from the effects of post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.

PTSD has suffered badly at the hands of the Department of Defense and the military establishment. Throughout our history of war--Independence, Civil, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam--those who came back deeply scarred by the horrors were treated as though their suffering was caused by an inherent personal weakness, a lack of inner will or strength. After all, everyone didn't come back experiencing the flashbacks, the hypervigilence, the nightmares, the black hole that eats both the outside reality and the soul.

PTSD is a lot like rape: people who suffer it rarely report it. I heard on the news last night that 20 percent of returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from PTSD. Given the feelings of shame, and "it must be something wrong with me, because everyone else seems to be okay, so I'll just try to keep it buried", and the general "Suck it up, soldier!" attitude that is still so prevalent, both in the military and, for that matter, in law enforcement (a field where a lot of our vets end up once back in civilian life), the actual number is much, much higher.

PTSD does not go away if ignored. PTSD affects the active duty service member as well as the veteran. PTSD affects the service member's and veteran's family, affects their children, and may ultimately affect the adults those children grow into.

So, on this day when we remember those who died in war or after, of the injuries both physical and otherwise, let us also remember and honor those still among us, especially those who need ongoing support and help.

Let us not just give lip service to the fact of PTSD, but get actively involved in helping those service members, vets, and families who are experiencing the harsh reality of it now, and those who will in the not too distant future when their deployed loved ones return home to them.

Where to start? Here is a list of some of the resources for service members, vets and military families I've compiled over the last couple of years as a volunteer caseworker in the American Red Cross's Service to the Armed Forces unit at my local Red Cross Chapter.

AfterDeployment.org

American Legion's Guide to PTSD

The Coming Home Project

Military OneSource

Reintegration Action Plan (RAP) - eBook; PDF

Sesame Street: Military Families Cope with Change

V.A. Mental Health Resources

To find local health and mental health resources for service members, vets, and dispersed military families, contact your county's Veterans Service Office, which is often a department within the county's social services or health & human services agency.

Find out more about the American Red Cross's Service to the Armed Forces. To volunteer in SAF, contact your local Red Cross chapter.

Update 5 June 2009: Some articles and new resource I came across today:

VFW chief: Look out for struggling soldiers

The military's war on stigma

Real Warriors
The Real Warriors Campaign is an initiative launched by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) to promote the processes of building resilience, facilitating recovery and supporting reintegration of returning service members, veterans and their families. For Active Duty, National Guard & Reserves, Families, & Health Professionals. Call 24/7: 866-966-1020. They also have a Live Chat available with one of their health resources consultants.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
For crisis intervention, call 1-800-273-TALK (8255), Press "1"

MilitaryOneSource also has a 24/7 toll free number and online assistance for actives (including National Guard & Reserves.

And let me just say something about our National Guard and Reservists.... Some of these men and women were in the regular military, during peacetime and wartime and those in between times when we weren't technically at war but there were periods when things got hairy nonetheless. Some of these men and women were never in the regular military, but joined the Army or Air National Guard or Reserves to serve their country when called upon by their state or the feds. Spending much or all of their annual vacation leave from work in training with their unit, not to speak of a weekend a month, all unpaid, away from their families, these individuals sacrificed time and knew that at the state or federal governments could at any time pull them away from their lives and their families...and that they may lose their life when answering that call.

Despite an honorable tradition that dates back to 1636, when the first militia units were formed, and 1906 when the states' militias were organized into the National Guard system, regular military types often have a snarky attitude about the Guards and Reserves, inferring they are toy soldiers, weekend warriors who are sent out to mop up a flood or do some other non-warrior-like thing, which just ain't so.

NG units made up 40% of the fighting force in France during World War I. In WWII, there were 19 NG units activated under Title 10. Over 140,000 NG were mobilized for the Korean War. More recently, Desert Storm utilized 63,000 NG personnel. Some of the "in between" actions found the NG serving peacekeeping missions in such far-flung places as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

They may be weekend warriors, but they are weekend warriors trained by the Army and Air Force (and, for some of the ex-military members, by the Navy and Marines) and when called up under Title 10, they go to war and do all the things the regular military men and women do. And they suffer the same injuries, physical, emotional and mental, and their families suffer the stresses and strains of long deployments PLUS financial insecurity, as the feds rarely pay as much as their civilian jobs did.

Members of hte National Guard and Reserves and their families deserve no less than the full support and entitlements we give to regular military and vets.

Get(ting) Serious! about ig poo stains

2009-05-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

Mikey has been taking to pooping where he ought not, and seems to want to find the same places to poop on after I've cleaned them up. The carpet was starting to get stained and me very annoyed. I asked my friend Phyllis what she recommends for cats and dogs - she gets to test lots of pet products out as a product reviewer, so I knew she'd tested a lot with her own canine and feline critters.

She recommended Get Serious, which is available at the big box pet stores as well as from some online stores. It is a fragrance-free enzyme mixture that lifts the biological remnants from the carpet and other surfaces.

Squirt the GS on in a zig-zag pattern - don't soak the area. Rub the brush side-to-side, side-to-side, then up-and-down, up-and-down, repeating the sideways and up-and-down for 15 seconds, then blot with the towel til nothing more comes up. That's it.

I have been using it, and it really does work well. It works best on new deposits, but also on older stuff. And it's easy to use. You just need the squirt bottle of Get Serious (they make versions for dog and cat, but they really are the same and can be used interchangeably), a scrub brush, and a terry cloth towel or, if its a small area, one or two Viva Paper Towels (my preference, for their thickness and capacity to soak up stuff without ripping and shredding).

It also removes dried blood, as I found when I cleaned up the blood that dried on the carpet several weeks after my last iguana bite.

Got stains? Get Serious!

Ship Your Reptiles the Right Way

2009-05-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

Pro Exotics has been breeding reptiles and selling supplies for quite some time. As any hobbyist knows who has tried to ship reptiles, it isn't easy to find a carrier who will accept them, and there's a lot to know and do to pack them and ship them - if you care to do it responsibly, that is. It is because too many have, through the years, done so irresponsibly, most carriers won't accept them (which, alas, doesn't stop people from shipping them anyway...).

Well, that's changed, thanks to Pro Exotics. They have worked out an arrangement with United Parcel Service (UPS) to be a shipping portal for people who need to ship reptiles. The new portal, called ShipYourReptiles.com, provides an easy way to set up and pay for UPS shipping. You can request UPS to pick up from your home or business, or take the box to any UPS store, or hand it to any UPS driver you see. If you don't have the proper materials you need to ship your reptile (or any other LEGAL animal), SYRs has a selection of kits you can order that has everything you need to ship safely and humanely. There's even a how-to video on their site.

Their other portal is AllProShipping.com, through which you can order up and pay for USP to ship anything else you need to ship. I used it recently to ship my neice and grandnephew's birthday presents.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that when you use SYR and APS shipping portals, you get 30% off the regular UPS price? Sweet!

4 Days To Go...

2008-10-31T16:28:00.001-07:00

Eight years ago, even four years ago, John McCain was the Republican I would have voted for, had he been the candidate.

Now? No. What cinched it was his (approval of his advisers') choice of VP.

Of all the women governors, representatives and senators, this is what they pick? Proof positive that most men think with their little brain rather than the one in their heads.

In case you still have questions, how about these articles:

The Real Story About How McCain Chose Palin

The Triumph of Ignorance: How Morons Succeed in U.S. Politics

'Nuf said.

BFF

2008-04-04T13:25:00.001-07:00

There are friends, and then there are friends. Some friends you want to have in your life forever, and not just because you could soooo blackmail each other.

Here is an exchange of email with my BFF that says it all.

From Me:

My third eye hurts. Maybe something is trying to eat its way thru my forehead.

How are you today? Kill anybody yet?

My BFF Responds

No, but I have a list.

This exchanged followed our both figuring out we are probably Rednecks.

"Hell yeah!" - Gretchen Wilson

Stalking the Wild Tortoise

2007-05-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe not so wild, and maybe not so much of the stalking...

This is Treppie, my 13 year old desert tortoise. It is illegal to take these out of the wild, and they cannot be sold, only given by someone who has grandfathered-in wild-caughts, or descendants of captive bred tortoises. I was given Treppie when he was six months old, by the fellow who had his parents and several clutches of their offspring.

Here's Treppie (short for Intrepid, since he's pretty much a fearless explorer) shot from above, enjoying a bit of sun on a sometimes cloudy, sometimes drizzly May day. He's about 14 inches carapace length.

Yes, and not so much of the writing of rants lately. Not that they haven't been percolating through my head, but I've been busy and sick (well, busy, then sick), so I've been rather quiet overall. But, hey! Enjoy the peace while it lasts!

Get Politics and Pork Out of Government and the Military!

2007-01-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

It matters not what your feeling is about whether or not we should be in Iraq, or what is happening in Afghanistan, or what is possibly go to happen down the line in Syria and Iran (though let me say that so long as Western PTB and PTWannaB continue to treat Muslim psychopaths and other fundamentalists as if they can be reasoned with, well, we ARE going to be involved on the ground and in the air), the fact that we are sending our men and women into combat and terrorist areas without outfitting them with proven armor and weapons is insane, not to speak of costly, both in terms of lives lost and lives irrevocably altered through severe dismemberment and lifelong disability.

When I first heard about the Army blocking the Pentagon's order for several of Israel's Trophy anti-RPG systems because the Army, in cahoots with Rayethon, had an anti-RPG system in the planning and design stages, a system which won't be ready until at least 2011, while Trophy is ready to install NOW, I was mightily pissed. (Army shuns system to combat RPGs)

That was several months ago. When the Army claimed that Trophy was not yet ready, not as effective as claimed, NBC continued to investigate, and found that not only had the Army lied, but that other US military personnel were bullied and ordered to screw up the US military testing and falsify the results.

The only people benefiting from this are Rayethon, already getting billions as one of the US defense contractors, and the upper echelon military and federal government personnel who will ultimately be employed by Rayethon and other such contractors through the good ol' boy network. Such refusal to install and put into service a system that is 90+ percent effective and available NOW puts the lives of servicemembers at risk, the outcomes of which will ripple throughout their families and communities for years to come.

One of the theories floating around about why this decision was made is that why pay for and install Trophy if we are going to be exiting Iraq anytime soon. How blooding effin' short-sighted do you have to be to not see that RPGs in enemy and terrorist hands are here to stay, regardless of whether the US troops they are shooting at are in Iraq or any other place where the locals love attacking us as much as they enjoy slaughtering each other?

That's as short-sighted--and too often lethal or permanently disabling--as not providing properly cushioned and strapped helmet liners to all military personal deployed to countries where they are likely to be shot at, blown up by RPGs and IEDs, or otherwise subjected to forces that can cause severe brain damage, assuming they survive the attack?

Frankly, I think the Army brains lying about Trophy should be busted down to private and sent to Baghdad. Perhaps then they'd start to see why it is more important to get a working system in place now, while their engineers and designers back home continue to design and try to manufacturer a better system, instead of hoping like hell that they produce a system at least as good and ready to deploy in 2011 as Trophy is right now.

A Little Something Extra? A very little something.

2006-10-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

"WASHINGTON - In a yearly ritual that dates back more than three decades, nearly 49 million Americans will be getting a little something extra in their Social Security checks come January. " (from Social Security Increase is Due, L.A. Daily News, October 20, 2006).

Some of you may have read my blog entry last year when we got a whopping four percent COLA increase (Social Security's 'Generous' Cost of Living Increase for 2006), and will remember that poor Mabel, like most of us on SSA retirement or disability, can't afford to live on it without drawing from ever dwindling savings...or living in grossly substandard housing or doing without necessities.

Well, this year, despite that booming Republican economy we keep hearing about, despite the ever increasing cost of fuel, food, health care (including the all too many things that Medicare does not pay for, like vision exams and glasses, dental care, and the vast majority of my medical care), rent, taxes, and basic maintenance, let alone luxuries like occasionally going to the movies or out to dinner with friends, gift giving on birthdays and holidays, charitable donations, and other such extravagances: the "little something extra", the 2007 COL adjustment is 3.3 percent.

For the average SSA retirement and disability recipient, that will work out to $33 a month.

Wow.

Let's see how long my $33 will last.

$33.00 minus:
$ 5.00 - increase Medicare Part B premium (to $93.50/month)
$11.85 - the 106% increase in my Part D premium *
$ 6.00 - the increase in the Part B Deductible, to $131**
----------
$10.15 - net increase, which will be eaten up as soon as the insurance companies increase their per-prescription co-pays for 2007 for both generic and brand drugs.

* up from $11.25 to $23.10
** up from $125 in 2006, which was up from $100 in 2005

Gee, thanks. You'll excuse me if I'm a little ferklempt at your generosity (and a little appalled at the vast disconnect in what is happening in the real world versus the world of the bean counters who figure out what the COL is and what the COLA should thus be).

But, hey! Let's keep providing free health care and other services to the legions of illegals in this country who are expected to send $60 BILLION home to Mexico and much of the rest of Latin America in 2007, more than double the amount they sent home in 2005.

What is the same, what is not alike

2006-10-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

I just listened to a Muslim woman who was wearing a hijab without a veil, inform the interviewer that Muslim women wearing veils and burqas are no different than Jews wearing skull caps or Jewish stars, and Christians wearing crosses.

This was in response to British politician Jack Straw's stated request that veiled constituents remove their veils when in his office speaking to him so that he could read their facial expressions, an important factor in his being able to effectively communicate with them, just as he does with all of his other constituents.

If Muslim women in the West want to wear the traditional scarves to cover their hair, fine. Ditto the hijab without the veil. If they feel so religious as to have to wear the full veil or a burqa, then they ought to get back home to where they or their family came from, so they can live the restrictive reclusive lives that originally mandated such coverings, first forced on women by sexually repressed men who are so tempted by seeing any part of the female form that they must violate the female, resulting in the females' male relatives being forced to kill them. The ultimate in blaming the victim.

It's wonderful that Muslim women in the West actually (most of them, at least) have a choice as to cover up or not. Women in Afghanistan are not so lucky. Despite burqas being made optional after the Taliban was more or less kicked out, men are still forcing their daughters, sisters, fiances and wives to wear them, else they cannot leave the house. Ditto for working out of the house, or even going to school. (For sad albeit enlightening and sometimes horrifying view of the male Muslim psyche, please see the documentaries Cut From A Different Cloth: Burqas and Beliefs, and Psychology of a Suicide Bomber).

So, if you feel you must cover everything but your eyes, or cover your eyes, too, then go back to whatever repressed country you or your parents originally came from. It is clear that Western freedoms and education have done you no good if you cannot tell the difference between the amount of body surface area covered by a full hijab or burqa, and a skull cap, Star of David pendant, or cross pendant. Anytime you want to compare and contrast your hijab or burqa with my Star of David pendant, bring it on, sistah!

My Magan David

A traditional hijab with veil:

This hijab photo is from the Nomads Land Film's page on their documentary, The Price of Honor, about the culture that breeds the "honor killing" of women.

Since the vast majority of shooters are male...

2006-10-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

...and the ACLU would probably fight any effort to pass laws prohibiting the males of our species in any way, shape, or form having firearms, access to firearms, or the physical capability of using firearms, I say we should just ban men and skip right to parthenogenesis. I'm not so impressed with the latest variations made possibility by sexual reproduction anyway, so let's just skip the XY input and male reproductive participation.

Well, okay, so maybe a sport male now and then.

Reuben, Reuben, I've been thinking
What a strange world this would be
If the men were all transported
Far beyond the northern sea.

Reuben, Reuben, I've been thinking
Life would be so easy then
What a lovely world this would be
If there were no tiresome men.

I'm having a hard time seeing the downside to this...

Shut up.

2006-09-17T22:53:00.001-07:00

Back in the day (623 AD), Muslims killed Infidels (that would be pagans, polytheists, and fellow monotheists who were practicing their religions long before Mohammed had his vision - that would be Jews and Christians, for those of you who haven't been paying attention) who refused to convert to Islam. In those days they used the sword and arrow and other tactics that became popular in the Middle Ages.

Today, Muslims are killing Infidels with suicide bombs, truck bombs, car bombs, donkey bombs, IEDs, RPGs, and assorted rockets, when they're not trying to use even bigger trucks and explosives on airplanes.

Until Muslims start protesting these killings, they should shut up and take a good look in the mirror, instead of getting upset because the Pope quoted a medieval text referring to their earlier terrorist acts.

"We are destined to be a barrier against the return of ignorance and barbarism" wrote Thomas Jefferson, the first American president to stand up to Islamic terrorists, the Barbary "Pirates". (The French, of course, kept paying ‘tribute’ to them. Funny how some things never change…)

Hey! Don't take my word for it!

2006-08-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

I have been accused, by some readers of my blog, of not reading history books (mostly by people who have obviously not read any history books themselves) and of exaggerating the hate, blindness and fury that fuels both Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist groups.

I received an email the other day from a friend of mine. She was born and raised in Canada, married an Israeli, and has lived in Israel for 20-some years. She stays there, even after her divorce, because it is her home and the home of her children.

Her kids are now young adults, which means they are or soon will be, in the military as part of the mandatory 2 (women)-to-3 (men) years of military service that begins at age 18. Women who opt to serve in combat positions are required to stay in for three years.

Men, and combat-trained women, continue to serve as reservists, and are called up for a month every year until they are in their mid 40s. They can continue to be on reserve duty after that age if they so desire. Reservists are subject to being recalled to active full-time duty whenever required to do so. (Israelis joke that civilians are just soldiers on 11-month long furloughs.)

So, by virtue of many things, my friend and I don't always share the same opinion of what is going on, what is needed to resolve the greater and smaller issues. I recognize that I hold the views and opinions I do not only because I've done a hell of a lot more reading throughout the years on the history of the region and the religions involved than have most people, but I also have not lived there since 1974, and I have no children who will end up on the front line...though in Israel, everyone is on the front line all the time, given that the favorite targets of their enemies are the civilians themselves and where they live, not some distant battlefield.

So, I was surprised and interested when my friend sent me what was purported to be the written version of an address given by a former Lebanese citizen, a woman who experienced first hand what I've been saying for years: When it comes to Israel, Jews in and outside of Israel, and to Christians everywhere, Moslems preach hate, order hate, and raise generations of Moslems to hate. The attributed author of the speech I received was a Christian Lebanese woman who delivered her talk at a anti-terrorist rally at Duke University in 2004.

I get a lot of purportedly true stuff sent to me by well-meaning friends and acquaintances, like the email claiming that Oliver North specifically referred to Osama bin Laden when testifying before Congress in 1987 (see Snope's Oliver Twisted and Atta Boy).

So, when I received my friend's email and started reading it, I decided to check it out first, heading to one of the urban legend sites I used to check out the validity of the report. (I use Snopes.com and UrbanLegends.about.com.)

Snopes rated it as True, and provided a link to a 45-minute video of an interview with Brigitte Gabriel. I encourage all to read the transcript of the speech she gave, listen to the interview, and check out Gabriel's organization, American Congress for Truth.

A picture's worth 1000 words...and lies

2006-08-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

Aish.com's Photo Fraud highlights some of the altered and staged photos taken in Lebanon being published in the world press.

A rocket launcher in a terrorist training camp? Who'd'a thunk it?!

2006-08-01T03:50:00.000-07:00

And here’s another thing that's been ticking me off about the majority of Americans stranded in Lebanon.

While they are in Lebanon, they are "Americans".

Once they reach Cyprus or the other transit points, or are back in the US, or when their families here are interviewed on TV and radio, they are "Lebanese-Americans".

Either you are American, or you are not. If you are a U.S. citizen, you are an American. You might have originally been from Lebanon, or “of Lebanese descent”, but if you are a legally a citizen, then you are an American.

Theoretically, being American should make one against terrorism and the terrorists who have the stated intent of killing Americans, but, hey, obviously I’m wrong.

How else to explain why purported Americans will vacation in a country that supports terrorism by protecting and supporting the terrorists in its midst?

If the good people of Lebanon want to stop getting bombed, they have to expose those terrorists – including their family members who are lobbing Katyushas over the border.

Blaming Israel—the Jews—and the U.S. for your problems is just the same old fundamental Arab bullshit, which feeds of the habit of a people who blame others for their own failure to take personal responsibility for the situation in which they find themselves.

The Hezbollah just launched a new type of Iranian-supplied rocket, one that can travel farther than the Russian-made Katyushas. One fell yesterday in the town near where I lived.

Am I the only one who thinks that along with longer-range rockets, Iran has probably also supplied the Hezbollah with the material needed to make dirty bombs?

Oh, but there is good news: Three weeks after the Hezbollah attacked an Israeli outpost and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, and 18 days after the Hezbollah started bombing Israel, the Lebanese army found ONE rocket launcher, near a PFLP camp.

(The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded in 1967, is one of the two major terrorist organizations making up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Gee, I can see why it would have taken the Lebanese army THREE WEEKS to get around to looking in a terrorist training camp. You can probably figure out why I am finding it hard to believe that they only found ONE launcher there.

You are either part of the solution, people, or you are perpetuating the problem. It is that simple.

In other words...

2006-07-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

...or, more accurately, in the words of others, check out:

HonestReporting.com's Israel Under Fire and their other reports

Palestinian Media Watch for a look at what they are saying and promoting that for some reason rarely ever makes it into the Western news services

Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports and comments on the anti-West and anti-Israel/Jewish Arab press around the world

"Legitimate government", my ass

2006-07-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

Enough already with the phrase “legitimate government” applied to Lebanon’s farce.

Any government whose ranks include avowed terrorists whose stated goal is to annihilate the people in the country next door is anything but legitimate.

Any government whose army is not permitted entry into the terrorist group’s enclave in the southern part of the capital city is anything but a legitimate government.

Kofi Annan is calling for a cease fire, for the halt to the killing of innocents. Where the hell was his concern for innocents through all the years the Arab terrorists have been blowing up Israeli citizens?

The president of Lebanon is already whining about the destruction to buildings, roads, the airport and infrastructure, and wants to know who is going to pay for the clean up and reconstruction. Well, Mr. President, it ain’t going to be Israel, whom you so clearly imply is responsible. Your government and army permitted itself to be taken over by terrorists, funded and aided by Syria and Iran. Look to them for restitution, not Israel, not the West. You lay down with terrorists, you pay the price in concrete and blood.

Enough, newscasters, with questions about why the interior ministry’s building would be bombed, and why Israel would bomb mosques and schools. Arab terrorists in all countries have used schools, mosques and hospitals to hide themselves and their weapons. If truly innocent civilians are killed when these targets are bombed, it is not the fault of the bombers, but of the civilians and governments who permitted these sites to be used as arms stores, command centers, and bunkers.

One news report today mentioned how fleeing Lebanese are flying white cloths from their cars so that everyone will know they aren’t Hezbollah. Like, the terrorists are too moral to not fly the white flags on their own cars??? Puhleeze.

I am getting sick of the news programs playing all these interviews with Lebanese-Americans who survived the bombing and managed to flee Lebanon. If they’re stupid enough to vacation and visit family who live in terrorists strongholds, whose family members may be allied with the terrorists, they do not deserve to be assisted out at US taxpayer expense. And where are the interviews with the Israelis who are once again living in bomb shelters?

And, speaking of bomb shelters, enough with the one-sided stories coming out of Nazareth. Every village and town and city in Israel has public bomb shelters. Every school, public building, hospital, and apartment building has bomb shelters or hardened rooms. Every house built in the last 25 years is required to have a basement bomb shelter. If the Nazarene Arab Moslems refused to use them or used them for other purposes, or bypassed building codes and didn’t construct them, why is that Israel’s fault? Oh, that’s right! Everything is Israel’s--the Jews’--fault! Silly me, I forgot!

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for a cease fire. Once all the Hezbollah and their sympathizers are dead, their weapons destroyed, the governments of Syria and Iran replaced with people who aren’t psychopaths and their sycophants, and a buffer zone of 1000 miles from Israel, whose land area shall include the West Bank, Gaza, and Sinai is established, well, then we can reasonably talk cease fire. Otherwise, since there is no way to negotiate anything with terrorists, there can be no cease fire.

Declaration of War

2006-07-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

Written over the course of the last week…

What the Christians of the West do not understand is that Islam has been at war with the Jews—and, thus, Israel—ever since we (that would be the Jews and Christians) refused Mohammed’s demand that we convert to his new religion. When we and the Christians refused to do so voluntarily, Moslems used their swords to force conversion. Needless to say, they got quite pissed off when that failed to wipe the Infidels from the face of the earth, and have remained so ever since.

So long as the West stayed more or less in the West and out of the Middle East, the various tribes, emirates, caliphates and sultanates that embraced their various Islamic variants went about doing their thing, becoming increasingly insular, occasionally fighting each other to prove the supremacy of their particular flavor of Islam over the other, and maintaining a steady, and increasingly annoying, policy of kidnapping to kill, enslave or hold for ransom those Infidels whose ships came within reach of the Arab pirates. Jews and Christians who stayed living in the Arab lands in which they and the generations before them had been born and lived, were periodically and systematically persecuted for sport, and occasionally killed.

Just as tightly-ruled communist countries hate and fear the capitalist West, so too do Moslems hate and fear what they see as the Devilish temptations exemplified, in their minds, by the West: freedom of speech, tolerance of different religious beliefs and cultures, and, perhaps worst of all, women who wear pants, work and interact with men who are not close male relatives, and gasp! drive cars all by themselves. Clearly, the West is the Great Satan’s playground and everything that emanates from it is to be fought against.

But instead of blocking Western TV and radio stations in their satellite receivers, ceasing all travel to western countries, and forbidding their children and other citizens from going abroad to study at Great Satan’s universities, they logically (for Moslems, illogically to most everyone else) deduce that they will go out and kill as many of us as they can in order to remake the world in their image.

If Moslems don’t want to participate in the world, fine. They should just stay the hell home, lock their doors and borders just as they’ve locked their minds, and contemplate the heaven that awaits them.

Speaking of heaven, if the Islamic male’s heaven includes a paradise with 72 virgins, what is the heaven promised to Islamic females? A place where they no longer have to wear all-encompassing robes, where they can go wherever they want whenever they want, drive themselves wherever they want, in a splendid place without a single Moslem male anywhere to be found?

Speaking of declarations of war, let’s talk about 1948, and the U.N.’s partition of various bits of the Ottoman Empire into various entities, including Israel (which was probably the last time the UN ever did anything remotely positive for Jews and for Israel), Trans-Jordan, and Lebanon. Jordan got what is called the West Bank, while Egypt got the Sinai Peninsula and a large rectangle of land (the Gaza strip) jutting up against the tiny bit of land granted to Israel.

Because the Arabs in all of the Middle East refused to accept Jews in their midst, let alone a lot a European Jews (shhhhhhh! Listen carefully. Hear the siren song of the West faintly in the distance, flowing sweetly in counterpoint to the muezzin’s call?), they called on all the Arabs living in Israel to go on vacation for a week or so, to give the Arab armies the opportunity to go in and eliminate the Jews.

And so the Arabs did as requested, and took off for a brief stay in neighboring countries, with most ending up in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.

But the Arab armies lost. The great legions of fearless Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Persians and Iraqis, fueled and funded by Moslem religious and political leaders throughout the region (and U.S. and European oil money and arms) lost to the ragtag collection of Jews whose roots dug deep into the region. Jews whose families have lived on these lands since long before Mohammed dreamed up Islam. Jews who trickled back into the Fertile Crescent after being forcibly exiled at various times through the last 2,000 years. Then there were the Jews who survived the Nazis and the Tzar, starved and terrorized yet again as they made it past the British blockades, and those who came from Europe, Asia, and North and South America--even Africa--as soon as the Brits pulled out, which happened after the Brits allowed the Arabs to arm themselves, of course, but not the Jews who had to defend themselves against well-armed Arab terrorists and the combined Arab armies the West knew would soon flow across the U.N.-mandated borders.

And, so, there we are, in the aftermath of the 1948 War of Independence, and the Arabs who left on vacation suddenly declare themselves refugees, because they refuse to go back home and live amongst the Jews.

Unfortunately for them, the Arab governments of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt didn’t want them either. At least, didn’t want them merging in with their cousins in the lands they now found themselves, not when the leaders of these and the neighboring Moslem countries could use these voluntarily homeless people as weapons pointed at the heart of Israel.

And that is exactly what they did. “Palestinian refugees” do not exist. They started out as Arabs who voluntarily left their homes so that their cousins could kill Jews so they could return and get the land cultivated by the Jews, the homes built by the Jews, and the businesses and everything else designed, developed and built by the Jews.

These Arabs became refugees because their cousins refused to take them in. They have lived in the conditions they live in for the past 58 years because they keep waiting for the Jews to be killed or, in fear, flee for their lives.

But, in the mean time, the Arab “refugees” expect Israel and the West to provide them with the food, medical care, schooling, infrastructure, and jobs. Their Arab cousins who forced them into these enclaves did nothing for them and are doing nothing for them. Well, except for providing them with training in terrorist camps and funds and weapons to use to keep killing Jews, and planting their terrorist enclaves and rocket launchers in their neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and beaches.

For years, the Gaza Arabs demanded the Israelis leave Gaza – even though Israel obtained both Gaza and the West Bank after the Arabs lost the two wars the Arabs started in their attempt to get rid of Israelis. So, what happens when Israel pulls its citizens out of Gaza? Gaza Arabs and all the Arab countries get pissed off because there’s no more Israeli money funding their economy, no more jobs with Israeli businesses, no more food, no more money for their hospitals and clinics.

Yet again, the Arabs blame the Jews. Of course, they are also blaming West who has refused to cough up the money and food the Arabs are demanding, because the Arabs continue to harbor, fund and train terrorists, and call for the destruction of Israel and refuse to recognize its right—the Jews right—to exist. And so the Jews and the West are once again commingled and blamed for the problems that Arabs bring upon themselves.

You gotta admire a brain that can strap on a suicide vest or launch a rocket with one hand while keeping its other hand out demanding money, food and “justice” from the very people they are trying so hard to kill.

One of my favorite comments this past week was from one of the Hamas terrorists who was whining about Israel’s disproportionate response – that Israel was destroying more property and putting at risk more Arabs than Arab terrorists were destroying and killing Israelis.

Of course, the Arabs have always been really bad at math. Just look at all their whining when, after one of their homicide bombers kills 50+ Israelis and tourists at a restaurant, the Israeli army evicts the bomber’s family from their home, and destroys the home. Period. That, of course, sets off another Arab round of whining about how Israelis are killing the poor defenseless innocent refugees and so the poor defenseless innocent refugees have no recourse but to go out and try to kill dozens more Israelis.

Well, let’s look at proportionality, shall we?

18 Total number of Arab countries* supporting
and funding terrorist attacks against Israel

341,439,805 Total Population in these countries

6,352,805 Total Population of Israel (includes Jews, Moslems,
Christians,and others)

53.7 Number of Arabs that would have to be killed for each
Israeli killed to equal a proportionate response

*Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen; plus the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Population figures from the CIA World Fact Book, updated summer 2006.

According to CNN just now (Monday, July 17, 1500 hrs), there have been 170 reported dead in Lebanon, and 24 in Israel. For those wanting a proportional response, there needs to be another 11,188 Lebanese killed to equal the number of Israelis killed by this week’s Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon. This week. If you’d like me to add up what the proportional response figures should be for the past decade, please let me know.

In other words, until the numbers of Arabs killed by Israeli defense forces come proportionally even close to equaling the number of Israelis killed by Arab terrorists, the U.N. and its terrorist members should shut the fuck up.

Last night on the news, a video montage was shown of Lebanese fleeing to Syria from Lebanon. One woman turned to the camera and screamed, ‘Bush! This is what Bush is doing to us!”

So, kiddies, just in case you are thinking that this annoying Arab-Israeli thing is just a border dispute between two contentious neighbors, you simply are not getting it. Read the history books, not Islamic propaganda. Listen. Read some more. If you think that once all the Jews are gone the Moslems will settle happily down and ignore the rest of you, think again.

In the meantime, the world is watching while Israel takes on a job others have shrunk from: wiping out the terrorists from our midst.

The world did nothing when Iran built its nuclear reactor, but quietly thanked Israel for bombing it to pieces just before it went live (on a weekend when no one was supposed to be there, including the French nuclear scientists working on the facility. Perhaps I should add France to the above list of countries supporting Arab terrorists...).

Now, Israel is doing what Lebanon’s farce of an elected government should have done before it became so infiltrated by Hezbollah members that it crippled itself: get rid of Hezbollah.

As always, Arab terrorists embed themselves in neighborhoods populated with civilians. This means they get to hide and mostly survive unless and until the civilians get the hell out and let the bombing begin. After a certain point, however, the bombing has to start, regardless of who stayed behind.

At what point does a civilian become a collaborator instead of victim of collateral damage?

At what point does a country whose populace elects terrorists to government positions become recognized as a terrorist state instead of the victim of "minority" segments of its population?

Who makes these decisions? The terrorists? The people the terrorists have converted from collateral to collaborator? Countries like France, well known for their collaboration with the Nazis in WWII, and now bowing in fear of their own Moslem population? Qatar, who led the Arab countries pushing the UN to condemn Israel for its defense against attacks from Gaza?

Please don’t get me wrong. I would be much happier if there were indeed peace in the region, and nobody getting killed. But that is simply not going to happen so long as Arab terrorists are permitted to flourish, as long as mosques and midrassahs the world over are permitted to teach hate and preach a future in which the world is dominated by Islam.

This is not a new war. This is the continuation of the war started in 623 B.C.E., when Moslems first started slaughtering Jews and Christians who refused to convert.

How much longer will the world continue to allow Moslems to slaughter people for the simple reason that they are not themselves Moslems? Perhaps, once all of us Jews are gone, the rest of you will wake up.

`````````````````````````````` `````````````````````````````
Need a little history refresher? Check out some of my past blog entries:

A Letter to the President of Iran

A Tiny Voice of Reason

Why do they hate us?

Suggestions for Summer Reading

PS: For those who think it easy for me to speak from my comfy vantage point 7400 miles away, I spent the summer of 1973, and most of 1974, in Israel, living first in the seaside town of Netanya, then on a kibbutz on the Jordan border, during a year of heavy terrorist attacks throughout the country. My 19th birthday, in fact, was spent in part trying to learn to sustain a note on a flute while in the "disco" in the kibbutz bomb shelter, where kibbutz kids had been sleeping underground for many of the years since the shelters were built after the kibbutz was founded in 1937.

Suggestions for Summer Reading

2006-07-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

Note I didn't say light summer reading... ;)

Augmenting my usual fare of fictional murder and mayhem is some nonfiction murder and mayhem:

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War On Terror
Michael Scheuer Amazon.com link

The West and The Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat
Roger Scruton Amazon.com link

Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge
Alan M. Dershowitz Amazon.com link

The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes A Terrorist and Why
Rex Hudson Download PDF free from Library of Congress

Through Their Eyes: Foreign Correspondents in the United States
Stephen Hess Amazon.com link

Critical understanding on the part of the West is lacking: most people still believe it just takes logic or reason to "make them stop hating us." You can as soon convince a chair it is in its best interest to become a giraffe, or change the daytime sky to chartreuse.

If you'd like to balance the above with some actual light reading, I recommend Jimmy Buffett's wild rides, and Jo Bannister's three series of mysteries.

In closing, a message to Cindy Sheehan: I myself am not a fan of George Bush, but if you really think life would be better living in Venezuela under Chavez, well, don't let the door hit you on the way out...and, what are you waiting for?

Always out of step...

2006-06-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, when I first lived on my own, I started doing dishes by hand. My mother was horrified when she came to visit, seeing the dish drainer on the counter, with the dishwashing machine used for storing those large kitchen items that don't seem to fit comfortably into cupboards.

Fast forward several years, and I again horrified my mother by buying an MPV, what SUVs were called way back when there was only a Blazer and a Bronco, and the only Hummers were Humvees. (Well, aside from the hummers offered by the service workers patrolling certain districts where nice girls don't go.). It wasn't so much that I bought "truck", but that I a) drove it all the time, and b) no longer drove my little two-seater sports car.

She would also be horrified that I now go barefoot and braless and totally schleppy all the time while at home (sorry, but when you have fibromyalgia, clothes hurt!), and am not terribly less schleppy when I leave the house (though I do wear, uhm, upper torso restraints).

So, needless to say, she would be horrified by the most exciting piece of clothing I've gotten in well over a decade: my new hard hat! With accessory headlights!!

"Didn't I teach you better?" she groaned when I did dishes by hand and when I started driving a truck. Though she has been gone 19 years now, I can still hear her, and see her roll her eyes and shake her head.

The funny thing is, she did teach me. Quite well. Though I no longer maintain the outward trappings of "a lady" as she strove to do daily, she could also get down to the nitty gritty. As can I. Hence my excitement over my new fashion statement.

What the well-dressed matron (and, uhm, iguana) is wearing this season is the CERT hard hat, with headlamps for SAR, safety vest, safety glasses (these slip on over my prescriptions specs), leather work gloves (in my size!), and a nifty lightweight 4-in-1 tool that will turn off gas, lift the concrete cover off the water main and turn that off, and generally help lift and poke through stuff.* Okay, so what I really want for Chanukkah is a pinch bar, but until then, a broom handle and my 4-in-1 will do

What? You haven't looked into getting CERT trained, or SAR trained, or starting a COPE team in your neighborhood? What are you waiting for?! In case you've forgotten, you'll find links to Emergency Preparedness articles and resources at my site.

Go ahead. Click that link. Make your mama proud that she did raise you right.

*Not pictured above are my disposable barrier gloves and masks and a bunch of other cool stuff. Did I mention that my mother was also horrified that hardware and building supply stores are my stores?

Triage, and SAR, and Fires, Oh My!

2006-06-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today I triaged several victims with burns and embedded debris, tended to a dead child, stabilized a glass shard piercing some guy's throat then treated him for shock, and helped move him and some of the other victims out of the earthquake-damaged building.

I then did some search and rescue, though the only living victim was a young boy whose leg had been severed (which beat the poor kid whose body was cut in half). I also helped extract another child from underneath a pile of debris my teammates lifted off of him enough so I could get him out.

As the piece de resistance, I got to put out a gasoline & diesel fire using a pressurized water extinguisher, impressing the hell out of the firemen who set the fire, because I did it much faster than my teammates. (Not, y'know, that I'm competitive or anything.)

Okay, okay, so there really wasn’t an earthquake today (well, at least, there wasn’t a 6.8 one on the Rogers Creek Fault at 0900 hrs, as there was in our practice scenario), and the victims, dead and alive, were a mixture of Red Cross dummies (uhm, the plastic kind) and workers, and a couple of shanghaied daughters of said workers. Humans and dummies alike got made up by the same moulange artist who ‘shot’ me a couple of weeks ago.

These three units, along with a fourth (disaster response overview) comprised the practicum for the first Sonoma County CERT training for citizens.

While we humans are very good at making believe that “it won’t happen here”, but bottom line is that “it” will happen here. If not to your house, your block, your neighborhood, then to one nearby. While everyone living around the Pacific Rim (which is called the Ring of Fire for a very good reason) knows they live in earthquake country, other disasters that happen are floods, mudslides, tsunamis, and major fires.

We here in California joke that we do indeed have four seasons—earthquake, flood, mudslide and fire—but we really do have all these things. Where I live, we’ve had them all within the last 6 months. Okay, so the quakes were relatively small ones, not causing major structural damage, highway overpass collapse, severe damage to the bridges that connect us to the San Francisco Bay area, and our little airport’s runways are still fully functional.

But that is just this time.

At some time in the not too distant future, things are going to get real ugly. Loma Prieta ugly. Northridge ugly. 1906 ugly. 1969 ugly. Ugly ugly ugly.

While California’s emergency response system is pretty damn good, from the cities up through the state level, the bottom line is that there will not be enough fire, police, hospitals, emergency medical personnel, clear roads and functional airports to help everyone who needs it. Ditto in other states that have their own “favorite” disasters of flooding, hurricane, tornadoes, fires, and slides.

Yes, most of the newer key structures—fire departments, hospitals, law enforcement offices, emergency medical services—are hardened, built to higher structural standards, so they will be more likely to sustain less severe structural damage than the buildings around them. But that doesn’t do John Q. Public or Susie Shrieker any good when the too few fire trucks and ambulances can’t get to their neighborhoods to extract and treat them, not for days and days.

If they’re lucky.

Anyone who truly believes that they only need three days of food and water and shelter before some agency comes and makes things all better is on some really good drugs. Wanna share?

Anyone who is starting to get that we are pretty much on our own, dependent on ourselves, the people we live with, and the people who live right around us—just as they will be dependent on us—is starting to get where I’m coming from.

You think that this type of training will be too much for you? Think again. I’m sick, and I made it through. Sure, it’s pretty much all I did for the month that the classes were held, and today’s final ‘exam’, the practicum, has pretty much crippled me for several days and is going to make a serious dent in my pain meds. But other than one ‘youngster’ in his early 20s, everyone else was in their 40s-60s. Some have day jobs, many are retired.

So, don’t just sit there and wring your hands or scratch your heads. Do something! Contact the department in your county that deals with emergency preparedness and response. Find out what training is available to citizens. Check your local Red Cross chapter, too. Contact your city’s general services administrator. If they aren’t providing this type of services and can’t tell you who is, get on the phone and fire off a call or email or fax to your city councilpeople and county supervisors. Then you can have fun like I did today.

I hope I never have to use in real life any of the information and skills I learned over the past month, but if—when—the time comes and I do, I know I’ll be able to help not only myself, but many others as well.

Nobody ever made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. - Edmund Burke

The Implicit Dangers of Fundamentalist Education

2006-05-31T14:43:00.000-07:00

Without knowledge, there is no reason.

Without reason, there is no knowledge.

Ignorance, willful and learned, breeds hate.

Memorial Day 2006

2006-05-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

Remember.

2006-05-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

Find your Celestial Choir

I got shot today

2006-05-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

Well, last weekend, actually, since I'm just getting around to posting this...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today I did role play with ~20 other volunteers for a group of law enforcement officers from several different agencies who were getting their first training experienced in an active school shooting.

For those who don't know, before Columbine, law enforcement agencies' protocol was to wait until SWAT arrived on the scene and let SWAT go in, something that may take 20 minutes or 2 hours or more, depending on if there is a standing SWAT team or if the team members work for different agencies in the area, as it is in our county.

The first officers on the scene at Columbine were thus forced by protocol to stand outside waiting, while the two student shooters kept firing at and killing students and faculty. After Columbine, that has all changed, with the new protocol being that as soon as 3-4 armed officers of any type - school guards, park rangers, police or sheriff - arrive on scene, they call for SWAT and back up then go in without waiting for anyone else to arrive.

After we gathered at the Sebastopol police department, we walked to Analy High. Had I known it was a) uphill and b) along plant (and probably tick) infested sidewalks, I woulda driven.

Once there, we got shot and bloodied up by the sheriff's deputy who does moulage (technically, the making of a cast of an impression, but the term is also used for the bloody injuries needed in simulation situation such as crisis response training…and in forensics shows.)

I asked for a through-and-through to my arm so I wouldn't have to be dead all the time. The lady behind me in line pointed out that exist wounds are bigger than entry wounds. I said I knew, and was excited about that. (Really, people, I was like this beFORE the parasites ate my brain.) She got a funny look on her face (kind of like yours, I guess). It turns out she's a mortician in Santa Rosa, has to fix a lot of exit wounds, and so isn't that crazy about them. That's probably why she chose to get head-shot.

(If anyone is interested in getting realistic for Halloween, check out CERT-LA's Moulage information, which I coincidentally came across last night while I was researching out more emergency preparedness stuff.)

So, my afternoon was filled with hiding under desks, waving my bloody arm in the air so I wouldn't get shot again, hiding in an electrical closet (in the dark, with a chair in hand to 'smack' whomever opened the door, trying to make sure not to hit all the computer and telephone equipment cabinets overhead), and dodging crossfire while being held hostage. Oh, and doing a lot of yelling at the cops, calling for help and demanding they come down to MY end of the hallway where the shooters were, instead of mucking around clearing rooms and checking bodies on the floor.

For the last two scenarios, which were really more about giving all the cops experience in working stairwells in this type of situation, I took a break and played dead on the first floor.

Before the whole thing started, the cops running the exercise checked all of the other cops' weapons to make sure no one was carrying any live ammo (for the exercise, they were using a "simunnition" loaded with a paint pellet rather than an actual bullet). They then asked us to turn over any knives, guns, Tasers, throwing stars, etc. I volunteered to turn in my knitting needles but they laughed at me (until they realized I could take out someone's eye with them). Oh, did I forget to mention the volunteer who had his eyeball put out, spending the afternoon with his actual eye taped over and a fake bloody eyeball glued to his cheek? Verrrry cool.)

I only got frisked once upon exiting the school building, 'fleeing' the shooters. As the cop lifted my shirt to check my waist band, he asked if I was carrying any weapons. "Only a pair of underwires," I replied.

When we first arrived at the PD to sign in, they asked for our names and addresses, so they can later send us thank you letters. At the end of the day, when they called us together to thank us all for volunteering (normally they only get 8-9 people, so they were thrilled with the number of people and elevated decibel levels), I asked if they could maybe skip the letter and give us Tasers instead. ::sigh:: They said no.

Oh, well, it was fun even with out the party favors (they didn't even let us keep the bullet holes!), and I got an inch or so of a sock knitted during the waiting times between scenes, so I think I'll take a muscle relaxer and take the rest of the night off.

One final comment: the hardest thing for me to do was not be proactive. Passive and beseeching just felt…wrong. At the very end of the last scenario, I did butt in: three cops were dragging a mortally wounded guy out of the building. I thought I'd replace one or two of them so they could go back to cover their fellow officers - and told them so, while inserting myself into the mix and pulling on the guy's arm. It was the only time I let myself act like me.

Well, aside from the occasional smartass remarks and suggestions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, another final comment: There are many ways to get involved in your community.

A couple of years ago I attended the local police department's Citizen's Police Academy. This gives citizens an indepth look at how their police department or sheriff's office works and issues they are dealing with in the community.

Many departments have Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) programs, wherein citizen volunteers perform a wide range of duties that are the department's responsibility but that don't actually require a sworn officer to perform. Ticketing abandoned cars, speed monitoring, Neighborhood Watch training and liaison, Bike Safety fairs, and office clerical work are just some of the areas in which VIPS work.

Another use for VIPS is in role playing, like I did above. In training, it is a lot different for cops and police academy cadets to role play with each other than it is for them to train with strangers. Interacting with strangers makes it more tense, more real, since, like real incidents, they never know what will happen.

To find out if your police or sheriff's department have a Citizen Police Academy program, check your department's website or call the general administration number (not 911!). Applicants for the program are subjected to a basic wants-and-warrants check.

To find out more about VIPS, check out the Volunteers in Police Service website. Applicants have to fill out an application similar to that filled out by people applying for police officer or sheriff's deputy positions, and are subjected to background checks.

Another way to get involved helps you and your family, your neighborhood, and people in your town or elsewhere. We have had so many natural and other disasters in the past 10 years or so: Northridge and Loma Prieta earthquakes; the northern midwest floods; devastating tornados and hurricanes; fires, floods and mudslides (three of the four seasons here in California) - all events that impact the lives a few people, to entire neighborhoods of people, to entire cities.

We have also seen the failure--due to crappy logistical planning and and operative follow-through as well as to the sheer amount of damage, areas involved, and number of lives disrupted--of state and federal emergency disaster services to get on the spot quickly and service the needs of the living and the dead and get communities back into operation again.

That means that the only person you can rely on is you. Preparing yourself and your household to cope for a week or more in the immediate aftermath of a disaster is one thing--a critical thing, to be sure.

But you can go one step farther, and get trained to work with others training in emergency response so you can increase your scope of operations--of positive impact--beyond your home, beyond, even, your street.

Check out your county's Office of Emergency Services and your local chapter of the American Red Cross to see which one is offering Community Emergency Response Team training (CERT). You can also check the CitizenCorps.gov website to get information on local CERT and VIPS and other such programs.

It's easy to shrug and decide that others will be there to take care of things for you if "something" happens. If you're lucky, someone may well be. But what if you're not...?

It just keeps raining

2006-04-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining
…and raining…and raining…and raining…and raining.

Ark, anyone?

Until the rain finally stops and things dry out and my pain abates, I'm putting Mike in charge.

Creationists Prove Theory of Evolution

2006-04-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me, listening to the news just now, that creationists actually do prove that life evolved on Earth. The taxonomic record is full of evolutionary dead ends, lines that got stuck in a rut and couldn't adapt and change when the environment around them did.

Some of these dead-end species did a lot of damage before they finally gasped their last, just as creationists and the Christian right (and Islamic fundamentalists, and others who are fundamentally ignorant and willfully blind-to-the-facts) do.

The unfortunate thing, of course, is that it just takes so damn long for the gene pool to clean itself that the damage these defects can do is great, when measured against the lives they affect. Taking the geologically long view, they're just a blip.

Unfortunately, I, like most of you, are short-timers, and stuck with the fundamental mess they make.

R.I.P., Cy and Tiktaalik.

Christian Convert Said Freed From Afghani Prison

2006-03-27T21:20:00.000-08:00

ABC News: Christian Convert Said Freed From Prison - after he was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Now, I'm happy they released him, and maybe he'll even stay alive, if some Islamic fundamentalists don't decide to execute him on their own, while he is still in Afghanistan or once he returns home to Germany. I'm guessing this pretty much quashes any chance he'll be able to see his kids again, which is why he went back to Afghanistan to begin with, once the Taliban were removed from power.

Silly man. He forgot: Islamic law still runs the country.

You know, the same Islamic law that kills women who have been caught in adulterous affairs or accused of having an affair. No, the men aren't executed - after all, it was the woman's fault.

You know, the same Islamic law that throws raped women in prison and forces them to prove they weren't raped. No CSI or trained nurses to collect evidence with a rape kit, either. Oh, the women are allowed to try to find four men to vouch for her, but if she can't, bye bye! Most can't,of course, since even the suspicion of having been sexually assaulted is enough to dishonor her in the eyes of her "honorable" menfolk, so they'll kill her anyway.

But what does the declaration that the Christian Mr. Rahman is mentally unfit--that no one in their right mind would chose to follow any god but Allah--mean to the rest of us? That we're all crazy, too?

We must be, given who we proclaim to be our allies...

We must be, given that our auto companies continue to produce gas hogs at will, doing so little to produce vehicles that do not primarily rely on gasoline...

We must be, given that those empowered to push ahead research and development of alternative energy do so little, state of the union speeches and photo ops notwithstanding...

We must be crazy, given that we still are not acting like a significant number of real crazies are still out to get us...

Job Openings in South Dakota

2006-03-18T11:13:00.000-08:00

With South Dakota's insane decision to ban all abortions, even if the mother's life is at risk (a sentiment not, unfortunately, unique to SD), there is going to be an increase in certain types of jobs, assuming the brains behind the abortion ban have also voted to fund:

Child Protective Services will need more social workers and clerical staff to deal with all the kids being damaged by abusive and neglecting parents who didn't want them to begin with, and follow those removed from such homes and placed in foster care;

Foster Parents will be needed in greater numbers, as will group homes and warehouses that store unwanted and abused kids until they can be placed in foster homes;

Emergency Room physicians and staff will be needed in greater numbers to try to save those women who attempt to end their unwanted pregnancies the old fashioned way, with hangers, knitting needles, chemical substances, and back-alley abortion docs.

I am one of those odd people who believe that no one should be allowed to breed dogs or cats until every single animal shelter is empty of animals needing new homes. I also believe that no anti-abortion laws should be passed until every person who is against abortion for whatever reason is required to adopt, after passing certification examination of course, as many children as possible, with the goal of emptying the system of all children needing new homes where they will be properly cared for and raised with loving kindness. And, if they are not certifiable (well, foster parent-wise, as I can pretty much guarantee some of them are certifiable in other ways), then they have no say in the decision making about abortions, period.

Let me say this about that...

2006-03-08T19:22:00.000-08:00

I'm too headachey and tired to write at length about anything, so let me say this about a few things.

1. If men were regularly afraid to be alone with a woman on an elevator in an office building, during or after business hours, then people can talk about women like Imette and Natalie being responsible for what happened to them. If men were the ones being drugged with GHB in order to make them pliable for forced sex, then people can talk about women like Imette and Natalie being responsible for what happened to them. If men were regularly afraid to walk to their car in an office building or shopping center parking lot, during or after business hours, then people can talk about women like Imette and Natalie being responsible for what happened to them. Until such time as sexual predators, be they the boy next door or the psycho down the street, are punished in a way that is commensurate with the physical and lasting mental damage they inflicted on their victims, then we can talk about responsibility.

As it stands now, the only ones responsible are the perpetrators and the legal system that has let these scum back on the street.

1.5 I missed seeing the Dan Abrams' program on MSNBC today. One of his guests was a lawmaker in Okalahoma who is pushing for the death penalty for two-time child molesters. Frankly, I think that's great. Not as poetically just as my own idea, but a good alternative, so long as these monsters don't get to hang around on death row for the next 20+ years or so as they do here in California. But I'd like to see the death penalty extend to those who attack people who are not children, be the victims men, women, or male or female adolescents. But I still like my idea the best (Closing the Gap in the Sex Offender Registry System).

2. This is to the aunt of Darryl Littlejohn, and to the family members of all rapists and murderers, and murdering rapists: maybe if y'all were honest about your brothers and sons and husbands and cousins and nephews, fewer women and children, not to speak of a few men, would be permanently harmed and killed every year. By refusing to see the signs, by keeping yourself willfully blind to the way they are, you are accessories to their violent acts.

2.5 And for the woman who lives across the street from Littlejohn, honey, Nazi uniforms are not cool, not fashionable (unless you are a Nazi or neo-Nazi or someone of that ilk yourself, which I think you are not), and definitely not a way to show support for our troops.

3. I am still dead set against Dubai/DPW/UAE having anything to do with our ports. Surely there is a company out there that does have the capability to manage the ports that recognizes Israel, hasn't abetted anti-US terrorists (and hasn't harbored one of the most (in)famous child molesters)? I don't care if DPW has worked out a way to work with ZIM, Israel's oldest and biggest shipper of goods world-wide. Israel has learned to play the games needed so that they can trade with countries that do not officially recognize them and whose citizens officially and unofficially set about training to kill Israelis and whomever else is in range.

Frankly, it looks like Dubai and the UAE may be keeping the U.S. and Israel around because it is so small and probably hopes that if any of its Arab neighbors starts putting the squeeze on them, as Saddam did to Kuwait, for example, the US and Israel (the latter surreptitiously, of course) will come to their aid.

Friends II

2006-02-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

Helloooo!!!!

Dubai and the UAE still recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate authority in Afghanistan.

Dubai and the UAE still does NOT recognize Israel.

Why the hell are we giving them anything?

Friends

2006-02-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

The moderate break is over, the ranter is back in residence.

Dan Bartlett, White House Counselor (as credited on Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room on Feb 21, 2006), said that the reason why the countries in the Middle East won’t recognize Israel is because Israel has not come to an agreement with the Palestinians.

Dan, Dan, Dan. If the US refuses to negotiate with terrorists, why should we expect the Israelis to? Fatah and Hamas started as terrorist organizations and are still committing acts of terrorism, funding terrorists, and hosting terrorist training camps.

So, why are we giving anything to any country that is refusing to recognize Israel for ANY reason?

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) supports radical Islam, supports the radical extremists who are blowing up Americans and others in Muslim countries around the world, and refuses to recognize one of our allies, Israel. The leadership that runs the country also owns and operates Dubai Ports World (DPW). In effect, it would be the UAE who would be running six US ports, including having significant say in how the ports are run, not a company.

The British company that has been running these ports prior to their purchase by DPW, did not support Muslim fanatics going around killing people and recruiting other fanatics to kill Westerners, nor did the company refuse to recognize the State of Israel.

Anyone who compares the two is doing so by willfully ignoring the facts. Anyone who is accusing opponents of this contract of racism is someone is willfully ignoring the facts, or they’re on somebody’s payroll and stand to make a great deal if this deal goes through. Or they are an idiot.

Unless the Bush Administration’s support of DPW is a sneaky attempt to get Congress to okay Halliburton getting the contract without bidding on it (or padding their bid as they are wont to do), there is NO good reason to give any country—including UAE--six of our ports or anything else.

There is no argument to be made that they are our friends, and it is the “right” thing to do. So long as they support terrorism and terrorists, and so long as they refuse to recognize Israel, they do not deserve to be called “friends”.

Otherwise, let’s just go all the way at make UBL the head of Homeland Security, and Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Absurd? You betcha. So is giving the UAE six of our ports.

And, on a side note, am I the only one creeped out by the UAE male vs. female stats as documented in the CIA Factbook?

Part 3: Sidney & The Thing That Lives Under My Tub

2006-02-21T14:26:00.000-08:00

Catch up by reading Part 1 or Part 2

So. We spent Thursday day playing and eating and marking the front yard with pee (well, Sid did that on his own). The day, while cool, remained dry.

Friday also dawned sunny and dry, but clouded over as the day progressed. Sid's dad called and asked if I minded keeping Sidney for another night, and bring him home the next afternoon when his mom arrived back into town. Sid said he'd suck it up and tough it out. I threw in some Salmon Yummy Chummies and leftover tri-tip to sweeten the deal, and promised Mike I'd figure out someway to make it up to him for subjecting him to d-o-g for 5 days in a row.

The day grew increasingly gloomy outside and eventually it started raining. The Thing trundled its way under my house again and climbed up under the tub. Sid heard The Thing for the first time during one of his trips accompanying me to the bathroom. I have told him I manage to go all by myself when he's not here, but he insists it is his job to make sure I don't dawdle too long by tempting me with a tennis ball.

This time, however, the ball was dropped and forgotten as Sid glued himself to the bathtub, sometimes getting in the bathtub, trying to see where The Thing was. He'd look at me, as if to ask "Where the hell is it? Don't you hear it? Can YOU see it?? I WANT IT!!!"

He spent hours there, staring at the tub, feet in, feet out, snorting and sniffing and trying to find The Thing.

He barely came out to eat, which is remarkable for a Doberman outfitted with a bottomless pit instead of a stomach with finite capacity. He could barely be enticed out by some salmon treats, scarcely allowing me enough time to photograph him in a shawl for my Lizards-in-Scarves blog. (Contrast that with Halloween a couple of years ago when he stood still for almost 30 minutes, staring intently at single small salmon cookie on the kitchen table, while his mom and I worked out how to best wrap him with rolls of gauze to create a mummy costume for a Howloween dog parade.)

Throughout the rest of the day, Sid completely ignored Sluggo's area, and didn't even try to race into the kitchen to steal lizard and tortoise food when I refreshed their food in the afternoon. Sid would occasionally run into the den to make sure I hadn't disappeared, too, and then would race back into the bathroom. Finally, much later than his usual bedtime, Sid collapsed on the couch to sleep only because The Thing finally took off on its nocturnal ramblings.

At 4 AM the next morning (I know, because I checked my clock), The Thing returned from its nightly rambles. At 4:05 AM (yes, I checked again), Sid was at his post, head in the bathtub, ears cocked, listening to The Thing. What was remarkable was not that Sid heard The Thing return, or that he raced in to watch the tub. What was remarkable was that he did it in complete silence! Not bounding down the hall, tag jangling. No excited yips. No coming to wake me up to join the fun.

In fact, he left me completely alone, even when his usual wake-Melissa-up time came around. I got up all by myself, got barely a backwards glance from him, and so went the day. He barely moved for me when I needed to get into my own bathroom, apparently believing his business was far more important than mine.

Instead of this view….

I get this view:

And so the rest of the day went: Sidney at and in the tub, tracking every move The Thing made.I think at some point The Thing started playing with Sidney, because The Thing would go quiet for a while, and then start a flurry of thumping and scratching. The Thing could hear Sidney, just as it hears me. (Yes, I have fallen into the habit of talking to The Thing, and occasionally scratching the tub in greeting when it is in residence.)

Every hour or so, Sidney would run out into the den to check on me, and then run back into the bathroom. A few times, I tried closing my bedroom door, but Sid was so distracted, not even wanting to play ball, that I gave up, knowing that it was just until the end of the day, at which time he would be going home. Besides, I'd forget the bedroom door was closed and would go walking smack into it, nose first, so I figured better Sidney be entertained by The Thing (and vice versa) than me end up in the ER with a broken nose.

When the late afternoon rolled around, I loaded Sidney's saddlebags into my car, and dragged him way from The Thing. Well, by this time he was hungry, so the combination of "Cookie!" and "Go for ride?" drew him away long enough for me to get him through a couple of doors and into the garage.

We arrived at his home shortly after his mom did, so Sidney was bouncing around, greeting both of his humans, The Thing apparently forgotten. For now.

When I got home, The Thing had settled down to its usual occasional scratching and thumbing, at a frequency and power level far less than that it engaged in when it had a doggy audience to play to--and with.

Okay, okay, I hear some of you out there chastising me for anthropomorphizing the behavior of an animal I can't even see. While most people think they most animals are stupid, and opossums are especially stupid, I think they are well equipped to live in close proximity to humans, if not particularly well versed on how to stay out of the way of moving vehicles.

(Well, let's face it, opossums and cars haven't co-existed long enough for the species to selectively breed for car avoidance. However, close observation of roadkill leads me to believe that possums aren't the only one slow to selective mates based on their car avoidance ability, so let's not point our articulated digits at these marsupials, okay? Okay.)

Anyway, I worked with possums for a while back in the day (when I was still healthy and had a real life stretching out into my future), and I quite like their nearly hairless prehensile tail, coarse guard hairs, those lovely Grand Teton-like teeth, and their wonderful grasping hands. Feet. Whatever.

Here I am in the still-healthy days, with Stevie (moluccan cockatoo), Koji (our rescued akita who developed KVH which, among other things, turned his all black face and ears white), and another Mikey, an opossum born without eyes, found wandering a Los Angeles-area golf course when it was about 7 months of age, from where it ended up with me before going to an opossum rescue.

While they don't have the largest of brains in their relatively small (compared to body size) heads, individual opossums learn the two square miles or so that comprise their personal territory, developing daily and seasonal routines that include the best places to sleep and hang out during the day, the houses that have food available (intentionally or otherwise), which yards with dogs to avoid and when.

Let's take, for example the dog that lives behind me. She is generally very quiet unless she somehow gets through the fence into my yard, at which point she runs back and forth, whining, trying to get a human to rescue her and get her back on her side of the fence. So, I rarely hear her, despite her having lived there for 10 years or so.

Tonight I became aware of a pounding and scraping noise coming from my backyard, from the area of the 8 ft tall wooden fence between my backyard and my neighbor's. Alarmed at the thought that the dog has gotten trapped somehow in between the fence slats, I grab a flashlight, slip on some shoes and head outside. As I shine the light along the fence line and through my yard, I realize that the dog is on her side of the fence, jumping at it, scratching at it in an attempt to climb it, barking and yipping with increasing frustration.

Ah. The light dawns.

No, not the sun coming out at 6 PM. What dawns is the thought that the usually nice quiet doggy is frantically trying to get at something in the tree next to the fence in her yard. So I make my way to the fence and shine the light up, and there The Thing is!

Can you see me?

How about now?

Sitting calmly on top of the fence, front paws resting on the horizontal crossbeam in the neighbor's yard, the butt and tail hanging over my side of the fence. The possum is just hanging out, watching the dog go crazy.

I go back inside my house and get my camera to try to snap a few photos of The Thing before s/he/it disappears. No worries, as The Thing is still hanging out, relaxed, watching the dog bouncing and slamming into the fence and yipping.

I start shooting photos of The Thing, using my flash. Does The Thing leave? Nope. S/he/it stays there, just turning its head away from the flash while I apologize for said flash and shoot another photo. (Apparently, I'm not that sorry.) While I'm shooting and moving around trying to get a better shot, I talk to The Thing, figuring if it is indeed MY Thing, s/he/it'll recognize my voice.

The Thing could easily leave the fence and the annoying dog if it wanted to. It could walk along the fence in either direction, dismounting into any of the other five yards, including mine (after I went back into the house, of course). Instead, The Thing stayed there, watching the dog go crazy, for another 20-30 minutes. At that time, the dog-going-crazy noises stopped, so The Thing either took off, or the dog's humans finally realized something was going on and so dragged her indoors. All together, The Thing was there for almost an hour, based on the amount of time the dog was literally bouncing off the wall.

We have been having a glorious week of warm sunny days and cool nights, and so the tub has been silent as The Thing sleeps outdoors or wherever it sleeps when it isn't escaping the rain by hanging out under my tub. The weather is supposed to change later this week, at which time I expect noises in my tub will signal the return of The Thing That Lives Under The Tub.

It's Baack!

Oop! I was wrong. In the few days that lapsed between my writing of this article and the final formatting and inserting photos, The Thing returned to its hangout under my tub yesterday, despite the temperatures being sunny and mild. I talked to it, scratched the tub in welcome, and heard it quietly move around as the day moved into evening. Could it have missed the company? Was it looking for a little entertainment, checking to see if The Dog was back so it could goof on it? I don't know.

While many of you out there are yelling "of course not, you idiot!" at your computer monitors, the ethologist in me says, why not? Play behaviors have been documented in other species, and between species, so why not a playful opossum for whom the hours stretch long without a dog to safely drive crazy now and then?

Catch up by reading Part 1 or Part 2
The entire article is online as a single PDF document if you would like to save or print it

Part 2: Sidney & The Thing That Lives Under My Tub

2006-02-16T11:51:00.000-08:00

Want to read Part 1 first?

Sidney the Dog
Sidney is my goddog. Those who have read my Lizards in Scarves blog have already met this strikingly large Doberman with his beautiful natural ears and sunny disposition. Depending on how crazy busy his mom is during her work week (meaning, how many hours she doesn't spend at home playing with Sid), Sidney comes over to stay with me for an overnight stay bracketed by a couple of play days. Sidney hadn't been over for a while, not since The Thing started camping out here on a regular basis during this rainy season.

The slight bump just to the left of center is a sign that Sluggo is there.

Normally, when Sidney is here, he spends several minutes every 2-3 hours standing in my bedroom staring intently at the heating pad-and-towel covered cluster of upside down crates that forms Sluggo's quiet sleeping place. He can smell Sluggo there, and knows that sometimes Sluggo is under the blankies on top of the pad, or under the crates, wherein Sluggo will sometimes wriggle for some reason I have yet to fathom. Well, other than the more recent one which can be filed under the category of "Torturing the Dog".

Fortunately for both Sluggo and Sidney, Sluggo keeps a low profile while Sidney is here. Fortunate for Sluggo, because Sidney adores chew toys and isn't particular about what he chews on. Fortunate for Sidney, because if he chewed on Sluggo, I'd have to kill him, recycle him by feeding him to Mikey, Sluggo, the turtles and The Thing, and then lie to his parents about what happened to him. ("Gee, I guess he followed somebody else home…")

So, Sidney's time here is spent briefly trolling for Sluggo, but mostly playing with me, activities that involve well-chewed tennis balls, lots of growling with tail wagging, lots of running, and the occasional thump of a heavy body in motion meeting an object at rest. Sometimes I'm the object at rest, other times I'm the body in motion, but mostly it is Sidney and the balls in motion, with both of us contributing the growls.

(Occasionally, just to get him going a bit, or startle him into releasing his hold on a ball, I will speak Cat to him, miaowing (I apparently speak Cat with a French accent, just as I do Hebrew and what little Spanish I muddle through) and mewling with the occasional hiss thrown in for general effect. When I'm with Sidney and his mom, we can really drive the poor boy nuts when Karen adds her remarkable turkey gobbling to the mix.)

Two weeks ago, I picked Sidney up on Tuesday morning for a two-day play date. There had been a break in the rain for a couple of days, enough so that there was actually some sun when we went to the dog park that afternoon. The dog park was mostly mud, but there was very nice guy who came shortly after we arrived, who had two dogs of his own and, more importantly, a ball thrower. He threw balls for Sid and his own dogs for about an hour, after which the dogs were pretty much coated in mud (just imagine a 120 pound Doberman dipped in dark chocolate).

So, rather than transferring all that mud to our vehicles, we went to the park next door and let the dogs swim and fetch balls and sticks in the lake. The dogs had a blast, while wewatched the mud melt away.

Sidney asleep…

Sidney sacked out early that night, and slept through the night. Well, other than the two times he heard something out back that I needed protection from. But, that's normal for his spending the night here. I open the back door, he stands in the doorway until he figures out where the sound is coming from, a chase ensues, I call him back, and we go back to bed for a couple more hours.

Well, I go back to bed, while Sidney goes back to the couch, where he sleeps, since he has been so well trained by his parents not to sleep in their bed, that he won't even get up on mine.

On Wednesday, we played some more, visited the dog park again, but the day was much colder, so we didn't spend much time there, as I didn't want him all wet from the lake while we still had some errands to run. We did get some ball throwing and catching in, though it was a little different on this day.

Being enthralled at the idea of using a ball thrower to pickup slobbery, muddy, microbial-riddled tennis balls with something other than my cut-covered hands (one of the downsides to living with a large rough-scaled lizard like Mike), I stopped at the small pet store near by, and got a ball thrower of my own. While Sid quickly caught on to the fact that I could pick up and throw the balls with the thrower, he kept thinking that he could somehow cut out the middle human and throw his own balls.

Unclear on the concept: Sidney holds the ball thrower, and stares hopfully at his toy box.

As usual, his dad came and picked him up in the late afternoon, and I waved good-bye while Sid, also as usual, was so thrilled to be with his dad that he didn't notice that he was leaving me.

Not too long after they got back home, Sid's dad called me - he'd taken ill and needed to get to the hospital. Sid's mom being out of town, I headed over there, picked his dad up, and off we went. Fortunately, it turned out to be ever so much better than it could have been, and so he was released and we got back home before midnight. Because he was on medication and going back to the hospital for more tests the next day, it was decided that I would take Sidney home with me, and keep him for another night or two.

Sidney was a bit confused and clingy by the time we got back to my house, so he stayed by me, decidedly not playful, until he finally got sleepy enough that I thought he would go to sleep okay. So, I got him up on the couch, wrapped him in his blankets, and off to sleep he went, with me following shortly there after.

It was around 1:30 AM when I turned off my bedside light. Sidney usually starts trying to wake me up around 8 in the morning, but he slept in until almost 9:30, which was nice for both of us.

His usual morning routine is: Sid trots down the hallway into my bedroom, tag jangling against his collar buckle, and stands by my side of the bed, staring intently at me for a few moments.

When that doesn't get me up, he begins poking his snout under the blankets and tries to throw them off of me or, better yet, put his cold nose in direct contact with warm skin. Since I sleep under at least one down comforter, and with a flannel-covered body pillow between me and the edge of the bed (hey! It's warmer that way!), all Sid gets is a snout full of flannel and covers that flop right back down onto his face.

Sid keeps this up for several minutes, while I 'remain' asleep. He gets increasingly frustrated, and eventually starts yipping and whining a bit as he works harder to try to get me up, pausing from time to time to see if there is any sign of life from me.

Eventually I take pity on him and "wake up".

Joy! Happiness!

A chance to Out and Pee!

And Eat!

Or Eat First, then Pee!

And then there's Lizard Food Leftovers! More Joy! More Happiness! And maybe Eggs! Or a Cheese Omelet!

By Dog, Life is GOOD!

Read Part 3

Part 1: Sidney & The Thing That Lives Under My Tub

2006-02-15T18:38:00.000-08:00

Just in case you think I've lost my mind (or found it, depending on your take on the content of my Miscellog blog), fear not. This is just a break for something a little different...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Those of you who know that I have a slug living in the house will probably not be too surprised to find that I have a Thing That Lives Under My Tub, the latter being the bathtub in my bathroom, as opposed to the bathtub in the guest bathroom, which is known as Mikey's bathroom.

The Slug.

For those who don't know about the slug, I suppose I should explain.The slug and The Thing exist independently of me. They are not mine, in the sense that intentionally acquired pets belong to someone. They are not mine in the sense of unintentionally acquired pets belong to someone (as in, "Oh, look, honey, this cat has adopted us" or "Look what followed me home, mommy!").

The slug and The Thing are not pets at all. They are more like….co-inhabitants who occupy spaces I generally do not, or do so only in passing.

The slug, I suppose, spends her days (her, for I find myself calling the hermaphroditic mollusk Slugette, not to be confused with Sluggo, my blue-tongue skink) living somewhere in the wall behind the guest bathroom cabinet, or perhaps on or under the ground under the bathroom, sliming her way back and forth to her favorite indoor cruising ground, the hallway and den in my house.

Sluggo, my cuddly hypomelanistic blue-tongue skink

The slug Slugette and I encounter one another in the hallway every 3-5 evenings or so during all but the coldest times of the year. Sometimes, when I stay up later than usual, I will come across her in the den. I now make it a point to turn on lights to light up the den/hallway junction, and the hallway into my bedroom, so that I don't inadvertently terminate her nocturnal indoor ramblings.

Afraid that any future tenants here may not be so accommodating to her love of the open, uh, carpet, I suppose I shall have to take her with me when I eventually move, and trust that she will find the new place amenable to her needs and likes.

The Thing That Lives Under the Tub

Over the past 13 years, for very brief times, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night, I hear a scratching sound coming from my bathtub. Now, for most of those years, the odds were that the scratching sounds were being made by one or more green iguanas.

Iguanas get bathed daily most of the time, and are quite able to get in and out of the tubs themselves. But sometimes they get a little needy in the attention department, and will scratch feebly and pathetically on the tub, their way of saying "I'm a poor widdle igwana who can't get out of the tub please come help me before I slide down the draaaaaaaaaain."

To understand the ludicrousness of this possibility, you must understand that the worst offender in this category is Mike, all 50 inches from snout to tail-tip and 21 pounds of him. Mike is a robust 7 year old Cyclura iguana (an endangered genus whose species are barely surviving on a relative handful of Cayman islands), with an abdominal girth of 24 inches when he is sprawled out basking, sleeping or bathing. So, there is absolutely no danger of his sliding down the drain and no way he cannot get into or out of the tub on his own. There is, however, every danger of his wearing away the porcelain as he scratches pathetically, not to speak of annoyingly, to have me carry him back to the ig room, or scratching imperially to summon me to run more water for him. Now, if not sooner.

(Not, y'know, that I reinforce the efficacy of his behaviors by actually going in there and picking him up in a warm towel to carry him back to the ig room, or run more water for him. Nope, not me!)

When I had a dozen or more iguanas here, a couple of them would climb into the bathtub outside of regular bath hours, either in hopes of getting another bath (a solo soak - luxury!), or just to climb into the tub to get away from the madding crowd for a bit.

But there were times during the years when there was scratching that was not generated by iguanas, bearded dragons, blue-tongue skinks, or assorted chelonians. By nothing, in fact residing inside the house.

The air space under the house is ventilated (theoretically) by small openings cut into the building that are covered by sturdy wire mesh.

All but one of the openings is in fact so covered. The one that isn't has provided access, according to the neighborhood kids who have had the opportunity to observe such access, to the rabbit who escaped from his pen next door, a "rat that was THIS biiiiig!" the occasional skunk and, presumably, opossums, cats, and a variety of rodents.

One of the rabbit kids tried to block it by placing a piece of wood in front of it, braced by a rock, but as you can see, Things are clever in getting around obstacles.

The visitor could be heard during the days, usually, for short periods of time, from a few hours to a day or two. Then, gone, with no alien scratching noises heard for months, sometimes years. The last time there was any scratching was last winter, 2004-05.

And so silence reigned, until about a month ago, when The Thing moved in around 4 AM one morning. At first, I thought it might be a cat, because around 1 AM one night (morning) (whatever), there were two Things, either fighting or mating. The squalling and yowling made me think cat. But I've never heard the vocalizations made by mating skunks or opossums, or raccoons, for that matter, so it might have been any of those. Or, it could have been a cat encountering an opossum under the tub, with the two of them discussing matters less than civilly.

In the weeks since then, however, I have come to believe that The Thing is a nocturnal critter since the scratching and shifting-around noises happen throughout the daytime hours. During the evening hours, the tub is silent. Around 4 AM (I can pretty near set my clock by it), The Thing returns and makes him/herself comfy wherever the hell it is that s/he hangs out under there.

I have noted that when we have several warm days in a row during which it does not rain and the ground and trees have had a chance to dry out a bit and warm up, The Thing is absent, with no noises or movement heard during the days or nights. Once it starts raining again, The Thing comes back.

Given the fact that I see the usual clowder of feral cats, especially the two known as Gray Cat and Scairdy Cat moving around in my returning-to-wilderness backyard during the daylight hours while The Thing is grooming itself under The Tub, I have come to the conclusion that The Thing is most likely an opossum.

Gray Cat

Scairdy Cat

Read Part 2 and Part 3

A Tiny Voice of Reason...

2006-02-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

...Squeaks out of the Whinerverse.

What Would Mohammed Do sums up nicely my other view on the Moslem use of violence in response to just about everything (I am not blind to the fact that factionicide is a not uncommon practice) that displeases them: This is not the way to make converts to your beliefs or cause, dummy!

I must say that I have the same belief about Jesus, that nice Jewish boy who got mixed up with the wrong crowd. While he purportedly got overly testy with the currency traders at the temple (really, now, how else were foreign pilgrims going to pay the Temple staff for tributes and sacrifices if they couldn't get their money changed?), and while he may have been a bit of a goody two-shoes on the one hand, he did hang out with an interesting crowd living in interesting times. That alone indicates he had to have more of a sense of humor and diplomacy in dealing with most people than the humorless "It's my way or you're going straight to Hell" pontificating of the Christian right.

(That probably offended those Christians who did actually watch the short-lived Book Of Daniel, whose portrayal of Jesus was of a nice, supportive guy trying to guide Daniel when Daniel was having trouble doing the right thing. Kind of like a good friend would be, only without all the religious blather, laying on of guilt and threats of hellfire.)

Just so ya'll know, I do recognize that not every Moslem out there is hiding a bomb under his burnoose. And I even get their desire to keep a low profile. But as the insane and out of control fanatic side of Islam keeps making headlines with their destructive acts, at some point, the other Moslems out there have got to stand up and be counted.

"First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
-- Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984

Once all the Christians and Jews and other non-Moslems are gone, who will the Islamic fanatics go after next?

Whiners

2006-02-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

As I watch the Moslems in various countries riot because a Danish paper printed a cartoon they took offense to, the phrase that keeps running through my head is "What a bunch of fucking whiners."

As always, they are very good at dishing it out, but do the same to them, and it's riots and terrorist acts and demands for global respect of their beliefs.

Forget the fact that they have no respect for the beliefs of others. Forget the fact that, as with so many in all cultures who rant and rave and turn to violence in response to feeling disrepected, those who protest the loudest and most reactively and violently are those who have done nothing to deserve respect in the first place.

Wanna talk about insults? Wanna talk about stereotypes? Let's talk about all the anti-semitic--anti-Jewish--cartoons published in Arab and other Moslem newspapers and books, shall we?

First, a look at 'traditional' anti-Semitism, that which has been going on pretty much from the beginning, institutionalized by the Egyptians, followed by the Greeks and Romans, and cheerily taken up by the emerging Christian Church, which was far more likely to skewer the cheeks of others than turn their own.

In the late 19th century, the traditionally religious- and cultural tradition-based anti-Semitisim (anti-Judaism) evolved into a more nationalist and institutionalized hatred of Jews, period, regardless of where they live and how religious they are. Most visible in Europe and the Middle East (and from there spreading to all countries which have sizeable Moslem populations) this new anti-Semitisim is highly politicized and has in fact become doctrine in countries in the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran.

Along with being taught in the mosques and schools, and harangued from political platforms, the spread of this new anti-Semitisim has been fueled by anti-Jewish cartoons in Arab society, press, TV, radio and film (see also this example).

So, if I might be so bold, I suggest that those who are most offended by anti-Moslem cartoons take a deep breath, step back from the house or bus you just burned, and meditate on "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Put another way if you show no respect for people who hold other beliefs, why the hell should they respect you?

Oh. I forgot. Where dogma exists, rational thought ceases.

As for those papers who are pulling or considering pulling cartoons that do what cartoons do - make a humorous or political statement (by the cartoonist, if not the the paper's publishers), may I ask where you will draw the line in the future?

When you are dealing with Moslems who do not believe in free speech (well, other than speech that freely threatens the Jews and any non-Moslems who appear to in any way support Jews, which makes threatening the US and its non-Moslem citizens quite all right), or bow to any other dictatorship's demands, does that not make you no better than they are? Check out Jeff Jacoby's Today censors may be coming for some Mohammed cartoons; tomorrow it is your words and ideas they will silence.

Whiners. Of course, what makes it all so scary is that many of these whiners are psychos blinded by religion, a combination that has never turned out well. Especially when they are armed with weapons and IEDs and nuclear power.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. -- Thomas Jefferson

P.S. If we were going to react in kind to your anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian cartoons, liarmentaries and generally overblown retoric and exhortations to violence, we would simply drop a few planeloads of bombs and flatten your country and everything in it. That we don't is also a huge lesson you need to learn. But, you won't. Because you haven't yet, and probably never will. Ignorance is not bliss, it is fanatacism gone wild.

Psychos to the east of me, psychos to the west...

2006-01-26T17:01:00.000-08:00

If the U.S. won't deal with terrorists, why the hell should Israel? Wake up, people, and smell the fanatacism in the air.

"You cannot teach people hate and expect them to bring peace." - Tony Blair

"There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, and not as many separate ones." - Anwar Sadat

"People never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions." - Blaise Pascal

"A hundred sage counsels are lost upon one who cannot take advice." - Panchatantra

"The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity." - Abba Eban, later quoted by Binyamin Netanyahu

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and under a just God cannot long retain it." - Abraham Lincoln

"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe." – Elie Weisel

David Keyes' take on the Hamas victory (and the Palestinians' loss) in the Daily Bruin, Palestinians Opportunity Squandered on Senseless Terror.

To find out why we are damned if we do, damned if we don't, and why there will be no peace until all the Jews are dead and the world is all Islamic (preferably the Sunni/al Qeda type), check out Forty Shades of Green,

Like father, like son

2006-01-01T18:15:00.000-08:00

Those of us who remember the depredations of the father's presidency, including "there is no global warming," and the "education president" whose committees cheerfully slashed away at budgets that resulted in the elimination of education programs, further foundered decrepit facilities, further increasing class sizes in every more materials-challenged schools, are surprised not at all at the current Bush's effect on the sciences, health, social services (including taking more away from the elderly and disabled while benefiting the well-to-do and wealthy.

Read, for example, radio commentator Tom Scott's commentary on the Bush Administration's chilling effect on science policy. And this commentary, A Wrong-Way Agency, from the L.A. Times.

Talk to any Medicare beneficiary about the confusing, ill-conceived, and atrociously executed Part D drug "benefit" that is going to end up costing the elderly and disabled more in the long run, especially when they are forced to use the insurance companies' participating pharmacies for the drugs the insurance plans will not be paying for, keeping the beneficiary from getting prescriptions filled at pharmacies that charge less. Better yet, don't talk to a Medicare beneficiary - offer to help those who can't wade through the dozens of plans and options, especially those who don't have computers, by doing the computer work and making the phone calls to the 10 or so plans that look like they might work....but only if you can find out more information from their customer service staff, few of whom seem to have actually had any training in answering.

Be sure to also help them do the math - and find out just how much the benefit 'improvements' are going to help them.

Glad it's not just me seeing the Medicare Part D flaws: It's a benefit, but for whom? L.A. Times; New woe may hit elderly on Medicare: Independent pharmacies may drop some health plans Press Democrat.

And, so much for Medicare Part D saving states money: State to Sue U.S. Over Medicare L.A. Times

Check out Consumer Union's Prescription for Change site, and write your congressional representatives and tell them to stop dragging their feet!

A Letter to the President of Iran

2005-12-08T19:12:00.000-08:00

The president if Iran has been pushing that tired old Islamic agenda of "Let's push the Jews into the Sea" and "Kill all Jews!"

Apparently, cooler heads prevail. Today the president of Iran called on the nations of Europe to open their doors and lands to house the Occupiers (that would be us Jews), and, oh, by the way, the president of Iran went on to say, he doesn't believe the Holocaust ever happened.

Dear President of Iran,

What do Christian high school students and madrassah students have in common?

Neither can pass history or science tests.

So, here's a little history lesson for you.

2000 BCE: Abraham, a Hebrew
Canaan occupied by Phoenicians, Amorites, and Hebrews, collectively known as Canaanites. Note absence of any entity called Palestine, or Islam, or Muslim, or Allah.

1100-1200 BCE: Moses, also a Hebrew
~1446-1211 BCE: Hebrews flee the Pharaoh
Canaan occupied by Phoenicians, Amorites, and Hebrews, collectively known as Canaanites. Note absence of any entity known as Palestine, or Islam, or Muslim, or Allah.

1100-1085 BCE: Ramses XI
Tries but fails to colonize Canaan (thus starting a trend that will continue well into the future), thus leaving part of the Judean and Israeli coastal regions to the Sea Peoples, aka, the Philistines, a literate, traveled people, likely descended from Greeks who fled the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization.

In Canaan, the Philistines freely mingled and intermarried with their Canaanite neighbors, adapting their religious practices and gods' names to those of the Canaanites…except the Hebrews, who continued to live more in the hilly regions and kept their own religion. The Philistines tried to run Dan, one of the Hebrew tribes, out of their homes. Samson, one of Dan's leaders, fought back.

Note absence of any entity known as Islam, or Muslim, or Allah, although Palestine is a corruption (no pun intended) of the name Philistines, a people who worshiped a pantheon of deities, not one of which was the as yet to be 'discovered' Allah.

After a period of battles won and lost between Philistines and Hebrews, the Hebrew King David wins back lands temporarily lost to the Philistines, with the land of the Hebrews now stretching from the Red Sea to Damascus, from the Mediterranean eastward to the Euphrates. The resident and immigrant Amorites, Philistines, Cretans and neo-Hittites intermarried with the Hebrews, eventually losing discrete identity, blending into the overall dominant Hebrew and pagan cultures.

And still no Islam, no Muslims, no Allah. Just a land ruled by the Hebrews, populated mostly by Hebrews.

480 BCE
During these same centuries, the Hindus, Jains and Buddhists were all following their deities, writing great works of literature and art as their civilizations and cultures evolved.

In the Far East, as the Zhou dynasty declined, the scholar Kongfuzi (Confucius, born 551 BCE) espoused a new conservatism. Mozi, feeling that was all too pretentious, walked a different path. Laozi and Zhuangzi, founding fathers of the Taoist way, felt both Kongfuzi and Mozi were inappropriate, and counseled a withdrawal from social strife.

And still no Islam, no Muslims, no Allah. And in the Middle East, still a land ruled by the Hebrews, populated mostly by Hebrews.

The next 1000 years, to 500 BC, brings to the world stage more sociopolitical upheaval and changing borders and leaders. The Greeks infiltrate, then conquer the lands in the Middle East, including the Hebrews and other Canaanites, now more often all called, collectively Palestinian. As the Greeks wane, the Romans wax, encountering yet again Jews who, while interested in many things, are not interested in converting to anyone else's gods.

And, still no Allah. Christians, but no Muslims. Hebrews, but no Muslims. Greeks, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Persians, Zoroastrians, and Sassanids…but no Muslims.

Is the point here coming through? Or is that dense block of crap the Madrassah filled your brain with still lodged firmly in place?

By 600 CE, monotheism has taken full hold over the Middle East. People are Jewish, or they are Christian, with smaller numbers still following various pagan holdouts. Ever since the Jews came up with the wacky idea of a messiah, various false ones have proclaimed themselves (or been proclaimed as such, like Yoishke, whose followers to this day call themselves Christians), and little cults here and there have always populated the landscape, some more peaceably than others.

The remaining pantheistic groups in the Middle East and its environs are heavily influenced by all this dominant One God-ness. Just as the Philistines adapted their religion to the dominant Hebrew religion, so too are the people living on the fringes of the Hebrew and Christian empires around the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Middle East, and up through Turkey (with its Christian emperor awaiting the Second Coming of the Christian messiah).

613 CE: Finally!
A guy named Mohammed starts preaching that One God thing that his Jewish and Christian neighbors have been doing for millennia and centuries, respectively. Only instead of the Yahweh of the Hebrews, or the Trinity of the Christians, Mohammed, like so many before and so many after him, has decided that HE and HE only has the line on the only true god. Like so many before and so many after him, he is dismissed as a crackpot or ignored.

623 CE: The Mohammedian Tradition of Whining Begins
When the sizeable Jewish community in his new place of residence fail to succumb to Mohammed's blandishments, in a snit he stops praying facing Jerusalem, and starts praying while bowing towards Mecca. That'll show those damned Jews! Yeah!

When Allah fails to provide Mohammad with a sustainable living, Mohammed gathers together a group of similarly underemployed cult members, er, followers, to start attacking merchant caravans, killing the traders and taking their goods. When he attacks a large caravan of merchants from Mecca, Mecca gets a wee bit pissed off at Mohammed, and so they go to war. Note the traces of the now tiresome recurring theme of Islam: Mohammad does a bad thing, gets spanked, and then goes after the spanker, attacking Mecca. By now, you see, all his stolen wealth, including that stolen from those damned Jews who refused to willingly become his followers (oh, excuse me, worshipers of Allah), has bought him a gang who support themselves by continuing to attack others who refuse to pay tribute, literally and figuratively, to you-know-who.

631 CE: Mohammed dies.
With the Arab peninsula (Note to Muslims: NOT the Hebrew- and Christian-dominated historic lands of Israel & Judea, aka Canaan, aka Palestine) in a serious recession (Note to Republicans: there is only so much you can steal from the have-nots before the whole structure collapses), and feeling a bit cranky and in need of more bling and cult members, Mohammed's followers branch out and begin attacking peoples farther afield, combining pillaging with forced conversion.

One of countries they conquered was Persia, Mr. President, where the Muslims deemed Zoroastrianism to be evil.

So, if anyone is going to demand the occupiers leave anywhere, Mr. President, how about we start with you moving yourself and all other Muslims out of Iran and back to Mecca, where this whole mess started.

And while we are talking about occupiers getting out, that would apply to Muslims everywhere. Out of Israel. Out of Northern Africa. Out of Syria and Lebanon. Out of Jordan. Out of Indonesia. Out of Turkey. Out of the various -istans from The Country Formerly Known As Russia to China. Out of every country Muslims conquered by force, returning all properties to the peoples they subjugated and murdered.

Now, do you really want to debate the Holocaust, or do you just want to crawl back into the dark hole of willful and persistent ignorance and brutality that is the hallmark of far too many leaders, civil and religious, in times past and in the present. Unfortunately, since such ignorance and brutality is not genetically linked with infertility, people like you will make more ignorant and brutal people.

Some god, Allah, if you and your ilk are representative of the type of follower He favors.

Ignorance isn't punishable by death, but you and those like you make a good argument in favor of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those who are not aware of the systematic, institutionalized and politicized persecution of Jews in Arab lands through the centuries since the advent of Islam, nor of the Arab pogroms and flight of 1 million Jews from Arab lands to other countries, including Israel, I highly recommend a new documentary, The Forgotten Refugees.

While you read about it and watch it, ask yourself: Why, 57 years after the British Mandate ended and the U.N. recognized the new (yet again) state of Israel, and the Arabs once again failed to eradicate the Jews, are there still "Palestinian refugee camps", but no Jewish refugee camps?

The President of Iran's position on the Holocaust is actually pretty funny, since it was a Muslim attorney and religious leader, Mohammed al-Husseini, who met with Hitler with whom he planned how best to eradicate the world of Jews. While in Germany, Husseini issued a call for all Muslims to begin the eradication by slaughtering their Jewish neighbors, something which the Muslims did quite cheerfully. But, hey! Don't believe this Jew, read about it for yourselves, something the President of Iran clearly hasn't bothered to do.

From the Muslim Brotherhood to the Third Reich

Who Was the Mufti (Haj) Muhammed Amin al-Husseini?

Hitler's Mufti

Merry Happy Whatever

2005-12-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

I would like to take a moment to weigh in on the "Happy Holidays" vs. "Merry Christmas" thing going on this season. Some merchants and towns are doing away with any mention of christmas as if it--the 25th of December or the nice Jewish boy now known as Jesus Christ--had anything to do with this mid-winter celebration that originated to remind everyone during the darkest, coldest days of deep Winter that the warm days of Spring are now a little bit closer than they were.

Other than the Romans decimating what was left of the dwindling forests in Israel/Judea to build, among other things, the crosses upon which they punished various miscreants, christmas trees, wreaths, evergreen boughs, and the ribbons, ornaments, gewgaws and lights used to decorate them, have nothing--zip, nada, diddly squat, naught, zero--to do with the supposed birth of a son of a carpenter in Bethlehem or thereabouts 2000 years ago.

What we call Christmas is just a pagan holiday typically celebrated by cold climate peoples with trees and warming, spicy things to scent the air and eat. The winters forced large numbers of unwashed people to live in close proximity with each other (and their livestock) for months on end, and so a celebration including the bright colors and stench-masking fragrances associated with various cultural traditions of mid-winter solstice celebrations are no surprise.

To those who have studied the emergence of the cult of Christ followers, it becomes clear that to attract followers, the early cult leaders found it expedient to incorporate local religious practices, including Jewish ones and those of many of the pagan religions and cults that flourished at the time, into the emerging Christian ritual. Oh, sure, call it something else, like "birth of Christ" instead of "solstice celebration", Easter instead of Passover, move the Sabbath around a bit, etc. But the bottom line is, assuming Jesus really did exist, he was Jewish, not, well, anything else.

So, I don't care what someone wishes me. I don't care if there is Merry Christmas! or Happy Holidays! emblazoned in lights and gilt across the boulevard or store front or cards arriving in the mail. Either one makes a nice change from the nasty looks from people who believe you have to be missing a limb or walking with a cane or walker or riding in a wheelchair to be able to park in a handicap parking space.

As a Jew growing up in a relatively small Midwest town that was home to an even smaller Jewish community, my family celebrated Hanukkah. For eight days. The non-Jewish boy who lived across the street made his German war bride mother very unhappy when he went home and asked if they could be Jewish like me so he could get presents for eight days like I did. Needless to say, no converts were made that day on Solway Drive. Little did he or most of my non-Jewish friends know that, while we celebrated Hanukkah for eight days, we rarely got gifts on all of the days, or if we did, they weren't the great lavish gifts most of our goy friends found under their christmas trees. (Stereotype breaker alert: Not all Jews are wealthy!)

When we moved to California, where my mother was born (and stoned, 20 years earlier, when as a young girl, she was chased by classmates who were yelling "Christ killer!" at her, not that she had any idea who Christ was or why her now former friends said she killed him), my mother wanted to have a christmas tree, simply because she never had one and thought they were pretty. So, she and my dad picked out a mass of flocking shaped like a tree, and our first christmas in California was marked by a tree. A tree which made such a mess shedding and deflocking that my mother was disinclined to have any more.

Oh, sure, occasionally we'd have a "Hanukkah bush", a silly gilded branch with ribbons tied around the bare branchlets, propped up on something, under which we put our Hanukkah gifts. The holidays were usually spent with family friends, with a homey mix of Jewish chopped liver and rye bread and other snackers to keep up going through the late afternoons, preceding dinners that looked pretty much like the dinners our goy friends were having, with the possible occasional exception of the one of the nana's noodle kugel.

When I married a lapsed Catholic, I married someone who, like me, really enjoyed the color and smells of the holiday season. Finally, I could indulge in a way my mother had never envisioned. Vince and I went out tree shopping just after Thanksgiving, and I whined and wheedled to keep the tree up through the Greek Orthodox New Year (January 6). I needlepointed and cross-stitched and painted little clay ornaments for the tree, bought tons of other ornaments to mingle with the ones Vince had collected through the years. Poinsettias littered the hearth and front steps, with little ones on tables around the living room, scattered amongst the other holiday stuff I'd made or acquired through the years.

Along with the big tree, the mantel was spread with fresh pine boughs and holly berries, and the front door surrounded with more boughs. Across the wide archway between the living room and dining room I hung white and blue "boughs" and hung blue and white ornaments. The house smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg and pine. Every other year we would have an open house, and I'd spend weeks cooking and baking for the 70-80 people who would come to visit.

THAT is what the holidays are for me. What I do for Hanukkah (or not) is for me and my family, just as going to midnight mass is for those who go to midnight mass.

What the strident "How dare they take Christmas out of the holidays!' voices are ranting about isn't the religious or faith part of the holiday season. Religion and faith have nothing to do with the festive decorations that emerge the day after Thanksgiving. Just as religion and faith have no place in public schools and nonsectarian private schools, just as religion and faith have no place in a doctor's office, or pharmacy, or place of business (outside of churches, temples, or mosques), religion and faith have nothing to do with what the public expression of the holiday season is in the US, Canada, and much (if not all) of the EU (a notable exception being the Vatican).

It is this very stridency and attempt by some people to push their religion into the whole fabric of Americans and American life--which is more like a bowl of salad, than a bowl of cream soup-- that is pushing merchants and others to push right back.

So, back off. Religion belongs in the home and in your preferred place of worship. It doesn't belong in the marketplace, or the schools. If you have to force it into someone's face, you're doing something wrong.

If we're all God's children, what's so special about Jesus?
-- Jimmy Carr

When dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.
-- Robert Anton Wilson

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Merry Happy Hannukmas, everyone!
===========================

Why do they so not get it?

2005-11-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Pope Benedict,

Once again, the Vatican has demonstrated that ignorance holds the day. Doesn't anybody read a dictionary? Use their brain? Think?

Since the answer is obviously 'no', allow me first to introduce some working definitions:

celibacy: abstaining from sexual relations, as due to religious vows

homosexual: being sexually attracted to members of the same sex

heterosexual: being sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex

pedophilia: an adult who is sexually attracted to children

children: immature young; applies to both males and females

If priests are to be celibate, then they are to be celibate. That means no sexual relations with men, women or children, period, regardless of sexual orientation, preference, or predilection.

A married man who engages in normal heterosexual relations with his wife, who also molests his daughters and/or step-daughters and/or any underage female child whether or not related to him, is a pedophile.

A single heterosexual man who may or may not from time engage in normal heterosexual relations with an adult female, who has a predilection for underage female children, is a pedophile.

A married man who engages in normal heterosexual relations with his wife, who also molests his sons and/or step-sons and/or any underage male child whether or not related to him, is a pedophile.

A single heterosexual man who may or may not from time engage in normal heterosexual relations with an adult female, who has a predilection for underage male children, is a pedophile.

A homosexual man, who may or may not from time to time engage in normal heterosexual relations with an adult male, who has a predilection for underage male children, is a pedophile.

A adulterer is a married man who, while still married, has heterosexual or homosexual relations with an adult man or woman.

Adulterers may be heterosexual or homosexual.

Pedophiles may be heterosexual or homosexual.

Banning homosexuals from the priesthood strictly because they are homosexual, ignores the fact that some priests have abused female children, and some have had sexual relations with adult women. It also ignores the fact that heterosexual men sexually abuse male and female children, either preferentially or indiscriminately.

Banning homosexuals will not do a damn thing to curb the abuses of priests that are assuredly still going on, nor do anything to improve the Church's or Vatican's image or relations with the young and adult survivors of priest abuse who have already come forward.

It will, however, be yet another example of the Vatican and Church turning its back on a problem rather than taking an active role in dealing appropriately with it, dragging the Church back into the Middle Ages rather than out of it.

While I have your ear, may I ask a question that has been puzzling me for some time? I understand that nuns are considered "brides of Christ", symbolically wedding Christ when they take their vows. If nuns are brides of Christ, who are priests husbands of? Or are they stand-ins for God? And why is this whole thing so creepy and smacking of misogynism and paternalism?

And, please, before you tell me "well, the bible says homosexuality is an abomination" and not to be condoned or permitted, what about all the other things proscribed in the bible? all the things we are supposed to do? Or is it acceptable for the Catholic church and fundamental Christians, like radical and fundamental Moslems, to pick and choose what they want to observe and try to force others to abide by from their respective holy books?

For instance, how about the points covered in this?

The following is from my neice, Soma. It is nice to know that, nature or nurture, some things hold true through the family tree...

Pompous bureacracy at its best: HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt

2005-11-14T19:20:00.000-08:00

On Neil Cavuto today, Cavuto opened a segment on Medicare Part D by saying that he understood that it was very complicated, then segued into his introduction of HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, calling him the White House's point-man on Medicare Part D.

When asked if Part D was complicated, Secretary Leavitt showed that he is just as disconnected from reality as that other Federal Michael so lately in the news, FEMA's Michael Brown.

This pompous, unctuous Michael told us that "some things in life are complicated. Registering your car is complicated Signing up for cable TV is complicated." So, Medicare Part D might be a little complicated, but that's okay. All you have to do is call Medicare and let them figure it out for you, or go to the Medicare website and let the website run the numbers for you. Sure, there are a couple of choices, but it's easy and everyone will benefit!

Well, clearly here is a man who never registered a car or signed up for cable TV service, and he sure as hell never tried using the Medicare website or talked to the poor folks answering Medicare's Part D question lines. If he had registered a car or signed up for cable TV service, there is no way he could have said, with a straight face, that researching a plan approved by Medicare Part D was no more complicated.

Oh. Wait. I forgot. He was appointed by President Bush. Silly me.

Well, then, it will do no good to complain, but, what the hell!

Michael Leavitt
Secretary, Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave. S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
202-690-7000
Toll Free to DHHS: 1-877-696-6775
Please be aware that mail sent to federal offices in the Washington D.C area offices takes an additional 3-4 days to process due to changes in mail handling resulting from the Anthrax crisis of October 2001.

In California, Mr. Secretary, there are 52 plans I have to checks out to see if any cover any of the maintenance drugs I must take daily. I must also see if any of those will cover some of the drugs I am likely to be prescribed in the next 12 months, as my doctor prescribes new treatment protocols to battle my infections.

So, the computer literate semi-geek that I am, I went to the Medicare.gov website last week and started trying to find my way around the system.

What I found was that the website wasn't working - it was making my type in my 8 drugs each time I wanted to check out a specific plan. So, I called Medicare and got a nice, very harried man who apologized for not being able to help me, but they only got to see for one half hour a couple of weeks ago the online system those of us with computer access are supposed to be using to "run the numbers".

So, I tried it again today. This time, I only had to type in my drugs once. I was then presented with the list of 52 plans, with the Medicare Advantage ones mixed in with the prescription drug-only plans.

Now, I'm real happy Medicare wants to respect my privacy, so that the identifying information I had to type in at the beginning of the process was (supposedly) discarded once the system determined what plans to present to me. But that also means that if I get tired out or the pain got to be too much, I'd loose all that input and data, and would have to key in all that information again the next time I was able to get to the computer, including typing in all my drugs and their doses, in order to bring up that list again, because there is no way to save it with all the hyperlinked information still available.

What I did was to go into all 52 plans (well, that's a lie - I skipped the four with the highest monthly premiums), expanded all "Show Details" links, and PDFd them.

I now get to sit down and try to figure out what it all means, including terms I have yet to see defined (Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3). And try to figure out why most of the plans are not covering, or covering in Tier 2, inexpensive commonly and widely available generic muscle relaxers that I have to take every single day, drug that have no mood or mind altering side effects and are not horrendously expensive. Ditto thyroid hormones.

I will also have to go back online, input all the information again, so that I can get the same listing brought up again to look at all the information that was not printed out: notes linked under the plans' names and addresses; the lists of participating pharmacies, and other stuff available through drop-down menus I didn't take the time to figure out my first time around because, as it was, it had taken me nearly an hour just to do the input and PDF everything.

I have a much better idea, Mr. Leavitt. How about if I register your next car, and get your new cable service contract squared away, while you go through the 48 plans and my prescriptions and figure out which one both covers the most of my drugs at the best price for me. Sounds like a fair trade of services to me, given how complicated registering a car and ordering cable is…

Michael Leavitt
Secretary, Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave. S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
202-690-7000
Toll Free to DHHS: 1-877-696-6775
Please be aware that mail sent to federal offices in the Washington D.C area offices takes an additional 3-4 days to process due to changes in mail handling resulting from the Anthrax crisis of October 2001.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

2005-11-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, November 8, 2005 is election day here in California. I do hope all you Californians are getting out the vote today, so as not to waste the $80 million this election is costing California taxpayers.

You can drop your voted absentee ballot (in the completed and SIGNED and sealed) at any precinct tomorrow in the county in which you are registered, or at the Registrar of Voter's office (in the county in which you are registered), from 7 AM to 8 PM. It's too late to mail it in if you haven't already done so. If you live in one county and work in another, you have to deliver your absentee ballot to a precinct in the county in which you are registered.

If you have spoiled your absentee ballot, or decided that you want to vote at the polls instead, be sure to bring your absentee ballot and the envelopes with you: you need to surrender them. If you forget to bring them, you'll have to spend a little time getting set up with a Provisional/Fail Safe ballot. Be sure to bring a couple of forms of ID and a utility bill with you to present to the precinct worker who will be helping you with this.

For those not on absentee status, the Sample Ballot booklet you received several weeks ago has the name and address of your assigned polling place printed on the back cover.

If you registered too late to receive one, you should have received a postcard with that information - be sure to bring it with you, as the folks working there will need the peel-off label stuck to it.

If you've forgotten where you put the Sample Ballot, you can look up your polling place online, at the RoV site:

Sonoma County residents:
http://www.sonoma-county.org/regvoter/index.htm > Polling Place/Sample Ballot Lookup

All others can find a link to their county RoV through the Secretary of State's site:
http://ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_ppl.htm

Remember: If you are eligible to register and chose not to, or did but are choosing not to vote, you abrogate your right to complain. Yes, your right to complain is still covered by the First Amendment, but those of us who did vote ain't gonna listen to ya.

Viva la Collaborateurs!

2005-11-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

You gotta love the French.

When my parents visited France for their one and only time (well, it was my dad's second, his first being when he was in the US Army, during WWII), it was during the 1967 student riots.

While they were there, the sights they came to see, like Versailles and the Louvre, the Tour Eiffel, were all closed, closely guarded by the gendarmes and military. When my parents, who had witnessed some of the riots first-hand, asked the guards why these places were closed, they were stiffly informed that they were undergoing minor maintenance or cleaning. The cops on the street insisted everything was fine, everything is normal. So did the concierges and others who whose work involved them closely with tourists.

Things got so "normal" that my parents, in order to get out of the country (Orly being closed for cleaning, apparently), finally found a taxi who decided he might as well profit from the normal situation and agreed to drive my parents to Belgium.

When they reached the French border, the French border guards were….taking a cleaning break, and so refused to exit my parents out of the country, while berating them for wanting to leave France because France is the greatest country on hearth. The Belgian border guards finally took pity on my parents, and got them across into Belgium and on their way. This was not the first such rescue by the Belgians, who had become accustomed to their French counterparts, uhm, cleaning frenzy.

What was the trigger for the current riots? A typical "let's blame anyone but those responsible" reaction. Two Muslim teens, one of whom was wanted by the police, hid from the searching officers in a power substation. One of the teens was accidentally electrocuted. So, of course, it makes perfect sense to start destroying people's cars, stores, even schools, and attack non-Muslims, including firefighters trying to contain and put out the, with baseball bats, pick axes, stones, and pellet guns. And Molotov cocktails.

Combined with the typical French reaction (clap hands firmly over the ears, squeeze shut the eyes, and sing La Marseillaise as loud as possible), one could say that this was a conflagration that was bound to happen. The only surprise thus far is that neither size has (yet) blamed Zionists, Jews, Israel, or the US (Bush specifically or the American public in general).

A short while ago on the news, I heard an American reporter say words to the effect that, while the French ignored the riots for the first week or so, they were now acknowledging there might be a problem - now that Paris itself is burning.

In a brief statement on Sunday, Day 11 of the riots, his first public statement since the beginning of the riots, Chirac indicated, "that the government intended to address the alienation, unemployment and neglect contributing to the explosion of rage in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods." Might I suggest that the French begin by examining their own role in alienating pretty much everyone else in the world?

The Dutch are facing the same problems with Muslims who ghettoized themselves in The Netherlands, as highlighted in this L.A. Times article, Shaking the Pillars of Islam, about Dutch Parliament member Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides

L'opprobre de tous les partis

Who is running the TSA???

2005-11-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

Michael Brown? New Orleans' Mayor Nagin, perhaps? Kofi Annan?

How else to account for the TSA giving serious consideration to allowing air passengers to once again carry on board small knives, scissors, corkscrews, box cutters, and other sharp and sharpened objects whose sole purpose is to pierce or cut things?

Their reasoning? To speed up the lines because people keep forgetting and are bringing these things aboard on their person or in their hand luggage.

If people, four years after 9/11, are still forgetting that these things aren't permitted on airplanes and stupid enough to be carrying them on them or in their hand luggage, not only do they deserve to have them confiscated, but they should also be strip searched, cavity searched (on general principles) and then sent to the back of the line and get searched again. Ah, heck: send 'em home to think on the error and stupidity of their ways, before being allowed to board any public carrier.

In all the years I've flown and my family has flown, not once has any of us needed a knife, razor blade in any form, or scissors. When the men wanted to shave, they used electric shavers. Knitters have small decorative rotary cutters with no exposed sharp edges that can accidentally or on purpose cut any one (though we might be able to bore non-knitters to death talking about our projects).

The only possible excuse anyone may have for carrying any of the objects that have been confiscated by TSA since the planes started flying again after 9/11 is if they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they've been holed up in cave somewhere without any access to any type of human contact or communication. And since the world's too damn small for that now, the only reason for anyone carrying such things is that they intend harm, or they're idiots. Neither should be allowed to fly.

Well, unless they're drugged unconscious, fully restrained, locked in a explosives-prooof box, and shipped in the cargo hold.

And now, for a humor break...

2005-11-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, I admit it: I've been a bit rabid lately, but damn! How can anybody with half a functioning brain (let alone a fully functional one) not be rabid at the crap that goes on around here!

Before we get to the humor section of tonight's program, let me take a moment to just say these two things:

1. Grown men who still call themselves and are called by the name of Scooter should never be given high government or corporate positions.

2. I have one word for the Republicans: Karma, baby. Okay, that was two. But, still...

Hokay!

A few days ago, my new friend Knat posted photos of her desk area in her blog. She claims that the condition was unusual, but, well, I have my doubts. So, I took a look around, found my desk area to look pretty much the way all my desks have looked for the past 30 years or so, and thought I'd document it for posterity. Or hilarity. Or shock value. Whatever works for ya.

I used to have the typical computer work desk - as the computer and monitors got bigger, desk space got smaller and smaller. I ended up writing my Iguanas for Dummies book on my (now woefully outdated) laptop while sitting on the couch, all my books 'n things spread out around me, my feet braced against the coffee table so my back wouldn't hurt. The upshot: a completed book, severe exacerbation of carpal tunnel and ulnar impingement in both arms, bursitis in both shoulders, and a torn plantar fascia in my right foot. And the decals on the laptop keys worn off (apparently Toshiba doesn't expect people to really work on their Satellite laptops). When I got the second half of the book advance upon the publisher's receipt of an acceptable manuscript, I bought myself a new desk, a glorious U-unit with a lowered sliding keyboard tray, and a three drawer file cabinet to stash under it. Ah, bliss.

The Back

My computer on the far left, a little stack of storage drawers with my blood pressure machine and DSL modem on top, my printer/scanner, a stack of Win XP and MS Office books under the lamp, and a blanket I'm knitting for a friend, which is sitting atop my headsets and microphones that stopped working for some reason. Oh, I'm sure they are working just fine - just not in my computer. They did, then they didn't. FM. Grrrrrowl. On top of my computer is a blue iguana bobblehead statue designed by Joel Friesch for the Blue Iguana Recovery Program. The posters up on the wall (which, okay, you can't see) are by Charles "Chick" Lynn Bragg: Last Oasis, and City Limits. I have a couple prints of his: The Emperor Takes A Leak, and Cheyenne Scout. Chick creates beautiful things, with a heavy emphasis on the natural world. His father, also Charles Bragg, is also a prolific, often humorous artist.

And, to the Left...

Did I mention that the weight of less than half my books already broke one 7ft high bookcase, with my remaining one breaking as well? Most of my books are taking up a good portion of the living and dining room, but there are some that live between my desk and what used to be my old printer stand, but now hold more books and my phone. Along with being the place where my shredder lives, there also lives the cone of yarn feeding my friend's blanket-in-the-making, along with bags of yarn holding other projects-in-progress, including the acrylic I'm using to make blanket squares for the Valley of the Moon Children's Home. An ongoing project of the Sonoma County Knitting Guild and other local fiber groups is to create enough knit, crochet and quilted squares so that each child gets a blanket of their own to use there and take with them when they leave.

The Return

I take a lot of meds and supplements over the course of the day, so when I can find something I need to take that also comes in a chewable or sublingual form, I grab it. Hence a few things you see here. My hands also get really chapped, and I get fungal infections from blisters that form after contact with photocopy toner, newsprint and inks, and some other chemicals used in papers. Coconut oil has some natural antifungal properties (and for me works better than tea tree oil), and so that's one of my gotta-have-on-hand along with the hand lotions that do the best job on my hands.

Above the Return

Yes, this was taken on a different day, for those of you who noticed that the afternoon's glass mug has been replaced by the morning's thermal thingie. There's also a container of my currently favorite nut mix (pistachios, almonds, toasted coconut ribbons, dried cranberries and blueberries). Behind them are a couple of containers holding some more supplements. The white plastic basket holds a variety of note pads, knitted sock measurement cheat sheet, this 'n that. The white board above holds a variety of papers, a nice iguana postcard, a Junior Deputy Sheriff 'badge', some vinyl gloves that I try to remember to use so I don't have to use as much coconut oil, some yarn from a hat a friend knitted for me, a calendar, and a stack of prescriptions to be filled. Above that is one of my favorite posters. Every county has one, at least in California, but I like Marin County's the best: You BOOZE, You CRUISE, You LOSE! Avoid the Marin 13.

To the left there is my goddog's butt, from the photo I shot February 2005 at a sliver of beach on the outer spit of Bodega Bay (on the first day of crab season...mmmmm!):

Moving Right Along...

Oh! Look! A photo of my desk top on...my Desktop. Anyway, if it does nothing, it shows that I do actually work with all this stuff so it does migrate from place to place. Here, too, you can see that my knitting stuff has insinuated itself into my computer stuff. That's because I knit at my desk. Keep moving towards the left, and you will see my knitting needles, the resistance bands in the background (used to work out some of the typing and knitting kinks), more meds ::sigh::, and the nut container, clearly more ham than nut. Well, maybe both. Oh! And there's the yarn leftover from my Halloween Worm scarf.

I cropped off the left part of this photo, because it had a big bright blur that was some guy on Fox News (hey! I also watch MSNBC and CNN, so keep your comments civil, okay?). So you're missing the stack of magazines, books awaiting BookCrossing registration before I set them free, and the pillow that apparently has taken up residence on my desk. Upon it go my feet when I lean back in my chair for my nightly knitting therapy. Or when I'm talking on the phone.

Now, I don't want to hear about "messy desks, messy minds" because my desks have always looked like this and I used to be able to think in decision trees and flowcharts. I also have a long standing interest in archaeology. Now that I can no longer go work on digs, my desk has become my surrogate excavation.

Well, now, wasn't that fun? Enjoy it while it lasts: I'm feeling the need to chew nails coming on...and I don't mean the ones on my fingers.

PROPOSITIONS 78 AND 79

2005-10-31T13:02:00.000-08:00

PROPOSITIONS 78 AND 79

Oh, boy! Just what so many of us need: across-the-board assistance in obtaining the drugs prescribed by our physicians that those of us without prescription drug coverage otherwise cannot afford. On the face of it, either of these two propositions sound good - so why not vote Yes on both of them?

Well, I'll tell you why I'm voting no on both of them. But first, a bit about the propositions.

PROP. 78 (CAL RX)
Sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Researchers & Manufacturers Association (PhRMA ). PhRMA would create the California State Pharmacy Assistance Program (Cal Rx), a discount card program. Discounts will be given voluntarily by pharmacies and those drug companies that chose to participate.

ELIGIBLE:

Low- and middle-income people who do not have any drug coverage, whose income does not exceed 300% of the federal poverty level (~$29,000 for individual, $58,000 for family of four), who have had no such coverage in the past three months. Low income people currently receiving drugs through Medi-Cal are excluded from participating in Cal Rx so long as they are covered by Medi-Cal and for three months after they cease being eligible for Medi-Cal.

Medicare beneficiaries: only for those drugs not covered by the soon-to-be-implemented Medicare Part D.

Oh, yes - didn't you realize that? Medicare Part D, Medicare's new "drug coverage", does not cover drugs nor pay for drugs. Medicare has just 'certified' existing free-standing drug assistance plans already out there, along with those HMOs and Medicare Advantage plans currently providing health care and prescription drugs to Medicare beneficiaries. Medicare beneficiaries, which include the frail elderly and the disabled, will have to find out on their own which programs are approved by Medicare in their state, and then query each program to try to find out which one program will cover most of the drugs they are currently taking.

Note I said most, not all. If their doctors prescribe other drugs down the line that are also not covered by the plan the Medicare beneficiary chose, tough. They are stuck with the plan for a year. If they want to switch to another plan mid-year, or join a second plan, they will not be allowed to do so.

Once the Cal Rx application for participation is approved by the Cal Rx administrator, those deemed eligible will pay an annual application fee, currently estimated at $15. This will get them a discount card that they will show to pharmacies when they order their prescriptions. Re-application will be required every year, along with another application fee.

THE HITCH
The success of this program depends on pharmacies discounting their prices to this population of eligibles, AND on the drug companies discounting their prices to the pharmacies. Participation is strictly voluntary. Drug companies do not have to participate. If they do choose to participate, they do not have to discount every drug they currently make and sell.

If the state decides that the discounts obtained from drug companies and pharmacies weren't enough, the state can terminate the Cal Rx program.

Another possible side-effect of Cal-Rx: Employers who currently provide prescription drug coverage to their employees may reduce the scope of coverage to employee classes who would qualify for Cal Rx under the 300% FPL, or eliminate it all together. This would throw more people into the pool of those eligible for Cal Rx, thereby increasing administrative costs without necessarily increasing drug company and pharmacy participation. And, since Cal Rx will not be covering all drugs, these employees, people already at risk financially, may find themselves paying more out-of-pocket for their prescription drug needs than they did before Cal Rx.

A Note About The Cal Rx Administrator
There isn't one yet. Nor has a third party company (i.e., an existing for-profit corporation) been lined up to administer the program. So, unknown is the actual cost of administering the program ( though it is currently estimated in the millions of dollars), as is whether any third party company will find it profitable enough to keep doing administering it once all the bugs are worked out. Thus Cal Rx may collapse if the state isn't able to take it over. Which is currently isn't.

Cal Rx program also depends on the competency of the plan administrator and state in cajoling the drug companies and pharmacies into giving as deep a discount on as many drugs as possible, and to keep the plan itself going, getting new eligibles to sign up, and managing the year-to-year renewals of those who can prove they remain eligible for the Cal Rx program.

Key points for me: Not all drugs will be discounted, but I won't know until I get a prescription filled; discounts may not result in much of a savings, though they might be enough to cover the cost of the annual fee; if the state doesn't feel there has been as much drug company participation and discounting as they anticipated, or to justify the cost of administering the program, the program will be cancelled. This has happened before in California, when the drug companies didn't participate in a previous voluntary program as much as the state had hoped.

PROP 79 (CAL RX PLUS)
Sponsored by a number of consumer advocacy groups, unions, and nonprofit organizations, this would also create a state-operated discount card program. Acceptable discounts must by given by any drug company that wants to continue to sell drugs to California's Medi-Cal program via Medi-Cal's pre-approved list. Drug companies who fail to participate, or participate as much as the newly appointed (if this proposition passes) nine-member panel whose job it is to review the drug companies participation in, and eligibles access to, and pricing of, drugs.

ELIGIBLE

Low- and middle-income people whose income does not exceed 400% of the federal poverty level (~$38,000 for individual, $77,000 for family of four), or who have unreimbursed medical expenses exceeding 5 percent of their income.

Low income people currently receiving drugs through Medi-Cal are excluded from participating in Cal Rx Plus, but people who have third-party drug coverage who otherwise meeting the income and out-of-pocket criteria above would be eligible for Cal Rx Plus, including Medicare beneficiaries who have enrolled in a free-standing discount drug card program when that program doesn't cover the all of the drugs they need.

THE HITCH
Because it will potentially cover more people, Cal Rx Plus (Prop 79) this looks like a better option than Cal Rx (Prop 78), but it will increase the interference of bureaucrats into the lives and health of the program eligibles. As it is now, doctors and pharmacists spend too much time filling out Treatment Authorization Request (TAR) paperwork on drugs that should already be on the pre-approved list.

In fact, as a way to cut the amounts paid out, Medi-Cal has already started cutting the amounts pharmacists are allowed to dispense and demanding TARs on pre-approved drugs if the beneficiary's total number of monthly prescriptions exceed a certain amount.

I've written before about my very ill friend Julia, who subsists on Medi-Cal and SSI. She is dealing with numerous health problems, and presently requires 6 different maintenance drugs a month, plus additional drugs as prescribed by her physicians to treat systemic infections, eye disease, severe body and limb pain, crippling headaches and sleep problems.

One of her maintenance drugs is thyroid medication, essential to her basic functioning. Medi-Cal bureaucrats, in their infinite wisdom, have decreed that her pharmacist can only dispense 10 pills at a time. Thus, Julia has to call the pharmacy every 8-9 days (she is not allowed to call any earlier) to request a refill. The pharmacy can then dispense the refill on day 10 for the next 10 days. Julia then has to repeat this again in 9-10 more days. Medi-Cal counts that as THREE of her allowed SIX prescriptions a month! She can only fill another three of her prescriptions before the pharmacy is required to fill out a TAR for any other maintenance or new prescriptions.

So, even those these drugs are critical to Julia's survival and basic functioning, and even though they are on Medi-Cal's pre-approved list of drugs that can be dispensed without the time consuming hassle of TARs, the pharmacy is forced to waste more time filling each of her prescriptions because Medi-Cal won't let the pharmacy dispense covered drugs as ordered by the physician.

For sake of comparison, I, too, have to take daily thyroid medication. I pay $17.87 out of pocket every three months for 90 tablets. I order online from a brick-and-mortar pharmacy chain that offers discount drug pricing, with steeper discounts for orders placed via their website. They ship the prescriptions for free, and even include a regular pull-off (non-childproof) cap in the shipping bag for me because I can't get the childproof ones off.

Anyone who has researched pharmacy economics already knows that discount pharmacies are already running close to the bone. One of the key ways they are able to obtain discounts from drug companies and wholesalers and pass those savings on to their customers is to buy in quantity and dispense in quantity - and fill lots of prescriptions with lots of pills or ounces in each bottle.

The local discount pharmacy I use for some other drugs (having been cognitively and physically able to comparison shop, something too many elderly and disabled are not able to do) does a brisk business servicing the local ambulatory elderly and disabled population, as well as nursing homes, hospices, and Medi-Cal beneficiaries. This pharmacy isn't going to be able to discount its prices to consumers much more than it does, not unless it gets a bigger discount from the drug companies.

Now, the Medi-Cal drug business is big business in California: of the 2003-4 $4.2 billion state agencies' drug budget, over $3 billion went to pay for Medi-Cal drugs. The thinking behind Prop 79 is that the state can force the drug companies to give the California Cal Rx Plus eligibles the same discounts they give to pharmacies filling Medi-Cal prescriptions by threatening the companies with putting their drugs on the "requires pre-authorization" list - meaning that the pharmacy will have to spend more time writing TARs and the sick people will have to wait longer to get the drugs - and may never get them, if the bureaucrats decide they don't want the program to pay for the drugs, or pay for as much as the prescribing physician has written.

So, I'm having a hard time seeing how this punishes the drug companies. The only entities being penalized under with this proposed carrot-and-stick system is the pharmacists, patients and physicians. The drug companies, whose profits are comparable to those of oil companies, can just say "screw you". They know that if the people really need the drugs, they will pay for them out of pocket, or get sicker and get on some other type of assistance program (with less of a discount), or die. (Those of you existing on social security disability will have no problem recognizing the "make it so difficult that 50% or more of the people give up and go away or die" paradigm.)

Some people may become eligible for the individual company's patient assistance program for a particular drug, and may get it at low cost or no cost from the company directly. Since fewer people will be able to find their way through the Patient Assistance Program (PAP) thicket, even though the drug companies may be providing these particular drugs for free or minimal co-payment, they come out ahead because their pricing structure remains intact, and they get to write off the PAP expenses as good will and take tax deductions if the drugs are provided through various nonprofit programs or foundations.

Another big problem is that, while there is some provision for going after drug companies making unreasonable profits ("excess profiteering" is the language used in the Prop), who is it who defines what is excessive? Just look at the gas prices we here in the Bay Area pay: despite having our having refineries right in our backyards, the oil companies keep telling us they have to charge us more because of [pick your favorite bullshit reason], pleading poverty while their CEOs are making millions and corporate quarterly profits are in the billions. Yet they do it, quarter after quarter, year after year. A few politicians make some noise now and then, but the profits keep rolling in as the prices keep going up. (Don't tell me they go up and down - I have yet to see them drop down to the $0.32 a gallon they were when I first started driving at age 16.)

Take a look at Big Pharma. These big boys have been around for decades, some having started in the 1800s. Through the years they have bought smaller companies, merged with each other, bought some more, divested some, and along the way become multinational corporations with factories and research facilities and packing plants and distribution networks around the globe.

If the drug companies really wanted to help us poor folk, they would be doing it already. Instead, people without drug coverage or Medicaid are paying 15% or more than those with third-party drug coverage. Why not just lower the amount they charge to pharmacies across the board? The less pharmacies are charged for the drugs, the less they have to charge us (theoretically speaking of course, since there's no oversight into any excess profiteering in this sector either, but there is market competition).

But the drug companies don't, and while the research they do is unquestionably expensive, they are still reaping huge profits. But who is going to determine how much is too much? Well, the state's attorney general can do so. If he or she does, then we can assume that the cost for the suit will be borne by the taxpayers, with any awards will ultimately going to the taxpayers, presumably in the form of helping reduce the deficits in the General Fund. (The penalty per violation, as spelled out in Prop 79, is up to $100,000 or three times damages, whichever is greater, plus legal expenses.) And bigger discounts, assuming the spanked drug company doesn't just take their pharmacopoeia and go home.

Key points for me: California is a big market, but that doesn't mean we are significant enough in the overall global market to get the drug companies to play ball on our field. Bureaucrats are already mucking up patient access to drugs prescribed by their physicians and making life miserable for the pharmacies that service this population.

Bottom Line For Me:
The idea is good. The intent is good. There are too may ifs, too many holes, in these propositions. We need lower prices across the board for those least able to pay for it. Voluntary programs have failed before. The carrot-and-stick may well backfire, with few participating drug companies creating more of a club to wield over the head of the California plan negotiators, rather than increased compliance and steeper discounts.

That's why I'm voting no on both.

First Amendment

2005-10-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or isn't giving Nazis a permit to demonstrate or march just like giving people permission to yell FIRE in a crowded theater?

How can anyone believe that giving Nazis such permits will be anything but an incitement to riot?

Social Security's 'Generous' Cost of Living Increase for 2006

2005-10-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

The talking heads on the news have been prattling about the fact that the country's elderly and disableds are getting the largest annual cost-of-living increase ever in January 2006.

Well, they never mention the disableds who get social security disability, just the elderly. In fact, SSD is no different that what those getting social security retirement get, adjusted for age and number of quarters paid into the system before becoming too ill to work. Well, that and the fact that disableds have to be reviewed every couple of years to make sure they are still too ill to work. Which is okay, just horrendously stressful as the whole Social Security disability system is hugely adversarial and apparently whimsical, with the unwritten goal being to cause so much stress and difficulty for the people applying that as many as possible just go crawl into hole and die before their application is finally approved after several denials.

But, I digress.

Back to the whopping 4.1 percent COL increase.

Woohoo! We'll be rolling in the money now, Mabel!

Or will we?

Let's take our hypothetical elderly or disabled Mabel. Let's say that Mabel worked long and hard before she became too ill to work and so either fought for and got approved for disability, or she 'retired' earlier than she had planned on, because she was too sick to keep pushing herself any more. If she's lucky, and had been able to work her way up the corporate ladder or otherwise earn a nice salary, she might be lucky to have her SSD or SSR benefit be a whole 1/6th of her monthly paycheck. Since that amount can't buy into COBRA or most any other health plan, she's been seeing one or two of the dwindling number of doctors in her area who still take Medicare.

She hasn't been to the dentist in years to have her teeth cleaned and problems checked out, because she can't afford the $100 cleanings and heaven knows what for things like x-rays, fillings, root canals or extractions, let along bridges or crowns. So, why go at all? As long as the services aren't covered by Medicare (and they aren't), it's all out of pocket.

As for her vision, well, since she still has to drive her self to her doctors, grocery store and the few other places she goes to during the days (evenings only very rarely), she does have to keep getting her eyes checked periodically - but only when her vision has changed so much that she has no choice but to get new glasses. (Medicare may pay for the eye exam, if there are actual problems other than visual acuity changes, but Medicare does not pay for eyeglasses.)

So, here's Mabel, maybe lucky enough to be getting $1000 a month in 2005. That puts her $2,430 over the 2005 federal poverty limit for a single person, no dependents. Of course, with her gas and electric bills having climbed to $150 a month, even with her medical allowances and rate averaging, that has been leaving her only $850 a month for rent, food, medications, Medicare co-pays and non-Medicare-covered services.

Oops! She actually is starting out with $1000 minus the $78.20 a month Medicare Part B premium that is deducted from her SSR/SSD amount before the check is even cut or deposited automatically into her bank account. So, she really has only $921.80 for the month, minus the $150 gas/electric bill, leaving her only $771 for rent, food, medications, Medicare co-pays and non-Medicare-covered services.

If she lives someplace like where I live, there is a dearth of affordable and low income housing, and a waiting list 5 years long for state and federal housing assistance. So she is living in a decent place paying more than she can afford, or, like my friend Julia, whom I've talked about in previous posts, in a hovel that never met building code to begin with, and isn't being safely maintained by the alcoholic, abusive landlord.

Julia can't afford to move anywhere else (due to the aforementioned affordable/low income housing shortage), nor is she willing to complain to the building or health department, because she will end up on the street with no place to live but her car (which she shouldn't be driving, since she is now legally blind but, since the few in-home support hours she did have was rescinded by the case manager working for IHSS, she has no choice but to drive herself, since she cannot afford to go by cab or pay someone to drive her.

But, I digress.

So. That $1000 a month (which is really only $921.80 a month) is going to be increased by 4.1%. That's what the newspeople tell us, so it must be true!

And it is. Technically.

What the news people aren't telling those of you who are not eking out an existence on SSR or SSD, is that the Medicare Part B premium has gone up, as has the Part B annual deductible.

So, we have Mabel, whose $1000 a month is going to be increased in 2006 to $1041 a month. Let's do the math, shall we?

$1041.00 Monthly SSR/SSD benefit
- 88.50 Monthly Medicare Part B premium
=======
$ 925.50
- 200.00 Gas/electric/water/garbage
=======
$ 725.00
- 47.00 Auto insurance for her 20 year old clunker
======
$ 678.00
- 23.50 New Part D drug plan monthly premium
======
$ 654.50
- 65.00 Deducible & co-pay for her maintenance meds
======
$ 589.50
- 50.00 Gas to get to doctors, grocery store, post office
======
$ 539.50
- 200.00 Food
======
$ 339.50
- 40.00 Over-the-counter meds she needs to take regularly
======
$ 229.50
- 124.00 M'care Part B deductible for a couple of MD visits month
======
$ 175.50

Well, there, I guess it IS a generous COL!

Oh. Wait.

I forgot something.

Rent.

Since she isn't eligible for housing assistance, and there is no place, not a studio, not a tiny room in someone's house or garage, going for $175.50 a month, that means she's paying somewhere between $500-800 a month for rent.

That rather changes things, doesn't it?

Why don't you play around with the numbers, this time making sure you pay the rent first, and see how much this enormous 4.1% COL increase is going to change our lives.

The Best Way To Eliminate Sexual Promiscuity in Teens

2005-10-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

As the world hails Merck's announcement about the 100% effectiveness of Gardasil, the first vaccine against many types of cervical cancers, the idiots are already clamoring that giving teenage girls (and teen boys, who carry the viruses that cause these cancers and spread it to their partners) will promote promiscuity by "giving permission" to teens to increase their sexual activities.

Teens stupid enough to be having unprotected sex (which is still most of them, just as it was in ahem my day) are still going to have unprotected sex, which means that viral warts and cervical cancer is just one of the things they are blithely ignoring while their hormones are raging. The vaccine doesn't protect against other sexually transmitted diseases (STD), or against pregnancy.

Of course, these same people believe that educating teens about safe sex, including the use of condoms to prevent the spread of infection and the creation of unwanted-at-the-moment offspring, is just as wrong as protecting women against cervical cancer.

Abstinence, they cry, is the only thing that should be taught, preached, and promoted.

Like, abstinence has been real successful so far, hasn't it? Just ask all the parentless kids in institutions, foster homes, and being raised by grandparents.

Using their logic, we should also ban the sale of condoms, all other forms of birth control, and antibiotics. Yes, antibiotics: since they are used to treat STDs, they give permission to teens to be sexually active knowing that if they do get an STD, all they have to do is take a week or so of antibiotics and they'll be back in the game.

So: herewith is my 100 percent effective way to promote--nay, guarantee--abstinence:

Castrate all male children at birth.

Sperm can be collected from presently intact males and stored. Since sperm stand up to freezing far better than eggs do, there will be plenty of sperm for years to come while human females evolve a reproductive strategy that so many animals across the vertebrate and invertebrate spectrum have found so successful over the millennia: parthenogenesis.

For those of you a little weak in the area of biology (like, everyone who thinks cervical cancer and condoms promote sexual activity amongst teens), parthenogenesis is where females reproduce without any sperm--any males at all, for that matter. The eggs develop and produce offspring just like they usually do, producing daughters, mostly. A few species, like aphids, occasionally produce a sport, a male. An interesting artifact, but clearly not essential to long-term reproductive success.

Just think of all the ills producing only daughters would cure! Our prisons would be nearly empty, sidewalks would be free of spit, and beer bellies and butt cracks would be of antiquarian interest only. Rape, incest, and pedophilia would not destroy the lives of children and the adults they become. Violence of many sorts would be wiped out or occur so rarely as to be all but.

A lot more would get done, since women are far better at multitasking then men are. And did I mention no buttcracks?

So, let's hear it for postnatal castration! Abstinence for all!

Where were you 10 years ago today?

2005-10-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

Not guilty does not mean the same thing as innocent.

Not guilty does not mean justice.

Not guilty serves as a reminder that some jury consultants are better than others.

Not guilty was the exception that proves the rule that, while a few juries ignore the evidence and fail to follow their instructions, most do.

Alternate Realities

2005-09-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

Alternate Realities

My father and I, residing 429 miles apart, live in different universes. Everything looks the same on the surface, but critical differences appear when it comes to health care.

My dad is in his early 80s. I rolled over the half century mark earlier this year.

My dad is the very definition and illustration of what healthy ageing looks like. Despite a bout of colon cancer and accellerated radition and chemotherapy in his mid 70s, and a knee replacement a couple of years ago, he power walks several miles a day before returning home and doing a couple of miles on his stationary bicycle, followed by 30 minutes or so with the weights.

He has an active social life, spending time with friends, taking in concerts, theater and movies. He is still serving on a variety of boards, and blue-skying a new business venture.

I have days where changing from my sleepshirt into a tee and sloppy pants and walking out to my curbside mail box is a workout for me. Some days, I can even make it grocery shopping after a stop at the library and bank. Now that I can do most of my post office purchases and library renewals online, the number of physical trips to those venues is greatly reduced.

Some days I can actually stay awake from the time I get up until the time I go to bed. The only problem is that I may not be able to fully get up until 10:30 AM, and may give up, wracked with pain and crushing fatigue, by 9:30 PM. Other days, I get up at my 'normal time' of somewhere between 6-8 AM, and stay up till 11 PM. Sometimes I don't even have take a 2-3 hour nap!

If something comes up--a doctor's appointment, the occasional election day volunteer work, helping out a friend in need--I can muster the adrenaline push to get through it, though payback really is a bitch.

There are periods of time where I can happily hang out with friends, sitting and knitting while they sit and chat or they do stuff and chat while I sit, just companionably hanging out together. Sorta.

As dreadful as this may sound to relatively healthy folks, it is actually an improvement for me. Woohoo! Life is gooood!

Thankfully, as much as my health problems are a result of bad luck and crappy genes (thanks, Mom, you always said I'd be able to blame you for the bad things in my life), it's the shtarker genes from my dad that has kept me going as long and as well as I have. Yes, well, compared to so many people I know who have been sick with the same tickborne diseases as I have, for as long as I have.

But all of that isn't where our realities separate.

Where he lives, in a major city in Southern California, he has no trouble finding good doctors who will take Medicare. And those doctors rarely have any problem with Medicare paying 80% of Medicare's allowable amount for their billed services.

Where I live, in a major city in Northern California, good doctors can't flee Medicare--or Medicare patients--fast enough. Since there are only 50 or so doctors in all of California who have a clue about tickborne diseases and how to properly diagnose and treat them, our choices are already greatly reduced that we will find such a doctor, period, let alone one that takes Medicare, within a 2-3 hour drive.

Yes, there are still some docs who continue to tolerate Medicare's denial of tests and downgrading of service levels billed. Example: the doctor honestly bills for an intermediate office visit which some Medicare claims reviewer, in his or her infinite wisdom, cuts it down to a brief visit, which pays far less.

Now, one of the differences between my reality and my dad's is that his doctors are reimbursed at an urban rate -- health care providers where he lives get paid more for the same services that providers where I live do, but Medicare considers where I live to be rural, despite the fact that all factors of cost of living and maintaining a practice (rent, salaries, benefits, housing, goods and services, etc.) are about equal.

Most people don't realize that Medicare only pays ~80% of what it considers to be a reasonable and customary amount for the services it covers, not 80% of what the health care practitioner charges for those services. For example: My osteopath charges a total of $198 for a 30-40 minute office visit and osteopathic manipulation. Medicare allows only $117.42, and pays only $93.93. Sure, I pay my copay of $23.49, but that still shorts the doctor $80.58.

Say he sees 8 patients a day, over the course of a week, that's $3223.20 a month that he's not getting. Since his costs to rent the office, pay salary and benefits for himself and his full-time staff of two, plus whatever he pays for bookkeeping and billing, plus malpractice insurance, having too many Medicare patients in any given week/month/year becomes a costly business practice.

With my other doctors, MDs rather than DOs, they have it even worse. Not only does Medicare frequently downgrade their billed service level, but Medicare also denies testing patients need.

For example, I have thyroid disease that really requires several different tests several times a year. Ditto liver function panel tests because so my liver is already not functioning properly and many of the drugs I take (prescription as well as OTC) can cause liver problems on their own. Ditto hearing problems and vision problems. But does Medicare 'get' that? No!

They deny the tests, which means the laboratory that performed them has to go back to my doctors, who then have to sit down and write out justifications for each tests and send the papers back to Medicare to have some thimble-brained reviewer decide whether he or she is feeling generous that day or not.

My dad's reality: Medicare pays for everything, every time, except his 20% copay.

My reality: Medicare denies the annual $3 thyroid test, despite my diagnoses which show extremely abnormal thyroid function which requires thyroid hormones daily to enable me to just get by, as being unnecessary and unsubstantiated by patient history.

But, hey! I have Medicare! It's worse for people who weren't able to work long enough or otherwise earn enough to pay enough in Social Security taxes and so, instead of getting SSD (Social Security Disability) and Medicare when they become too sick to work, they get SSI (supplemental social insurance) and Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California). These folks are forced to rely on federally funded health clinics, most of which are staffed by a revolving cast of charac- er, doctors. Oh, sure, there are a few good--even great--ones working in these clinics, but they tend to move on within a year or so to private practice. Every new doctor pretty much decides to throw out their new patients' charts and previous doctors' notes and start each case over over again, something with usually involves refusing to renew any prescriptions.

Which Medicaid loves, especially in California, because that means Medicaid pays out less. Medicaid has devised other ways to reduce their drug benenfit payouts, too. Like, only permitting a Medicaid recipient 6 prescriptions a month, and then refusing the pharmacist permission to fill the entire prescription.

Example: my friend Julia is a cancer survivor who has been sick with Lyme disease for 20+ years. She is legally blind, but still drives, because the federally & state funded In-Home Support Services (IHSS) agency took away all of her support hours, so she has no one to drive her and can't afford to pay anyone to drive her, or to use cabs to go to her doctors, labs, and grocery store, each of which are 30 min or so away from the crappy, in-violation-of-most-city-and-county-building-codes hovel she rents.

She takes several prescription drugs daily, one of which is her thyroid medicine which she must take every day for the rest of her life. Medicaid, to drive down costs, only permits her pharmacist to dispense 10 days of thyroid medication at a time. Since a month has an average of 30 days, that means she has to use three of her SIX monthly allowed prescriptions to get one month's worth of thyroid.

For every prescription over the six prescriptions (which includes those 2 thyroid "refills"), and for a long list of drugs, period, she, like other Medicaid recipients, have to go through the Treatment Authorization Request (TAR) process. Even though

"Medi-Cal is a state and federally funded program which pays for medically necessary treatment services, medicines, durable medical equipment, and medical supplies needed by people with disabilities who satisfy income and resource guidelines"

it is apparently the clerks processing Medi-Cal (Medicaid) claims, people who do not hold medical or pharmacy degrees, who decide what is medically necessary or not. Yes, yes, I realize that this is happening all through the insurance industry (and HMOs, for that matter) since insurance companies figured out how to pervert the whole concept of model treatment plans and managed care from being a novel way to care for covered insureds and their dependents, to annually pocketing record profits while reducing and denying coverage and payment.

Which is why Julia's pharmacist has to jump through hoops three times a month just to fill her damn 30 days for $20 thryoid prescriptions, while any man who wants can get his hardon paid for courtesy of the Viagra Medicaid pays for without a TAR. Assuming he doesn't want to get it up more than a couple of times a week.

Of course, my dad's reality differs from mine. He's on only two drugs: Synthroid and Lipitor. His Synthroid costs him less than $15 a month, while the Lipitor he gets free from his doctor who hands him a shopping bag of samples every month.

Unfortunately, my docs don't get that kind of service from the drug company representatives who visit them, and I haven't been able to get any of the drugs I need on an ongoing basis that way. I did qualify for one patient assistance program, for a drug that costs $800-1000 a month here in the US (less than that from Canada, but still too much for me to afford).

Unfortunately, that was only one drug that I will hopefully never have to take again. I did have to buy the second drug in the two-drug protocol, costing me nearly $800 for the 6 months I was on. It would have been over $1000, but when I needed the second 90 days, I went for a less expensive drug, not certain that it would work as well as the one prescribed as part of the protocol.

(For inquiring minds, the drugs were Mepron BID, Zithromax, and then Biaxin, SID. As it was, I should have been taking the Zith/Biax BID, but simply could not afford to. This two-drug combo is the current protocol for treating babesiosis, a disease caused by a tickborne organism that is like a highly complex and evolved distant relative of malaria.)

So, back to reality. My dad pays ~$15 a month, while I go around taking less than I need because I'm averaging $395 a month in prescription drugs and prescribed OTC stuff. I am putting off for the time being starting the next drug protocol my doc wants me on. Well, I have my choice of two. One involves a $250 injection twice a week (making it $500/week for several months). The other is another two-drug combo, one costing about $15/month, the other $503 a month, the latter being Costco's price, arguably one of the cheapest quotes I've obtained for this antibiotic (Ketek).

So, in my dad's reality, Medicare is wonderful, great, all-encompassing, because it pays for everything he needs, no matter which Medicare-participating doctor he sees. He hasn't even bothered to research the various drug plans because he simply doesn't need one.

In my reality, things just went from bad to worse: the doctors who were treating my tickborne illnesses, thyroid and other hormone problems have opted out of Medicare. That means, if I continue to see them, I have to sign an agreement stating that I understand that any services from here on out are out of my own pocket. I can't pay them and seek reimbursement from Medicare.

Which brings up a common misconception: Many people believe that you can go to any doctor or other health care provider your doctor refers you to, such as a physical therapist, and Medicare will pay for the services.

Wrong.

Medicare will only consider payment for services rendered by physicians and other health care providers who have signed agreements with Medicare. So, when my doctor refers me to what he believes to be the best physical therapist for my particular physical situation, if the PT does not have an agreement with Medicare--which many do not--I have to pay out of pocket. Further, I can't submit my itemized receipts to Medicare for reimbursement directly to me, because they won't consider them for payment.

So, my reality: Medicare already wasn't paying for everything I need, and wasn't reimbursing my main doctors (other than the dermatologist, who is taking care of various pre-cancerous things that are partly genetic, partly the result of liberally frying myself in my younger and oh so foolish days) anywhere near 80% of the amounts they charge for their services, despite the fact that their services and charges are comparable to those charged in Sacramento and San Francisco. Our region is now poorer by two excellent physicians who will no longer accept Medicare's efforts to mange their patients' care.

And, as for my prescription drugs, well, I asked my dad to review the various plans to see what he thinks would be the best for me. It's too much of a confusing mess for me, trying to muddle through them all with the limited information the plans provide ("Plan X covers 89% of the most commonly prescribed drugs" helps me not at all determine if the plan will cover 100% of MY drugs). Turns out its too complicated and unspecific enough for my sharp-minded dad to figure out, too. If neither of us can made a reasonable decision based on the information provided by these plans (and the AARP and Medicare), what hope do other impaired seniors and disableds have?

The answer, of course, is: who cares! As long as the system continues to make arbitrary decisions about who gets paid for what and how much, and is funded by a government who sends billions--trillions--overseas to countries that make it clear how much they hate us, then our own seniors and disableds will fall through the cracks, the message being clear: shut up and die, already, and stop making us waste the time and resources denying your damn claims for services, no matter how much you need them.

And that's why there are millions of us out here who haven't been able to contribute to the local, state and federal tax bases (other than sales tax), and who aren't buying the consumer goods and autos and other things that helps keep our economy going.

How classically hypocritical that they are forcing us to die slowly and painfully, refusing those who wish the option to opt out quickly, by legalizing assisted suicide.

I dare anyone who claims that social security disability and Medicare is a free ride to Easy Street try living on it for a while. Like, the senators and congressmen and federal employees who don't pay into the social security system. Morgan Spurlock and his fiance tried living on minimum wage jobs for 30 days, documented in his 30 Days series episode, Minimum Wage. Both of them ended up needing medical care during that month, with ER and pharmacy bills totaling about $1000 between the two of them. They were lucky: at the end of 30 days, they got to go home and the production company paid all the expenses they weren't able to cover out of their wages.

It doesn't work like that for those of us on SSD. For those of us permanently disabled who can't afford private insurance, it is a life of marginalization, of inadequate medical treatment, inadequate or no assistance in getting through the basics of daily living.

This isn't an issue of race, or ethnicity, or of Red vs. Blue. It is political, however, and the American public is the loser.

Pets AND People

2005-09-14T15:22:00.001-07:00

To those of us involved in animal rescue--individuals working single-handedly, those working together with other volunteers in small organizations or networks, and those working for large national organizations such as the SPCA and Humane Society--looked on aghast not only at the destruction wrought by Katrina, and the criminal and often fatal disorganization displayed day after day by state and federal officials, but also at the animals--most of them beloved family pets--people were forced to abandon in order to be rescued themselves or be allowed into organized shelters.

This is not the first major natural or man-made disaster in which this forced abandonment of animals has occurred. It is, however, probably the most televised one. Even before Katrina had blown through, animal rescue organizations from around the country were on the ground in nearby areas, ready to go in--on foot or by boat--to begin collecting the pets that survived.

Those of us doing rescue--and those who don't but have given a lot of thought to the situation--understand why all people shelters cannot add pets to the burden of rescued and rescuers.

But why aren't two types of shelters set up, one for humans only, and one for humans who refuse to abandon their pets. The former would shelter only people, the latter people and their animals.

The beneficial effects on stress reduction provided by pets, and by keeping humans and their pets together, is well documented. The same is true for animals kept by their humans, rather than left to fend for themselves, dying in the calamity, killed by other abandoned pets, or by nervous people with guns, or injuring or getting injured when animal rescuers are able to come into an area and try to collect the living and dying.

Yes, shelters housing humans and pets may face challenges that human-only shelters will avoid. But to pet owners who have made the commitment to keep their pets, they will deal with the situation, usually appropriately, especially when assisted with basics they were unable to bring with them (food, bowls, leads, lots of pooper scoopers or plastic baggies, litter and bins, enclosures and substrates for creatures great and small, etc.) as well as veterinary triage and care.

If you would like to see the current forced abandonment of pets policy changed in future emergencies, write a letter to your local chapter of the Red Cross; you will find the contact information for your local chapter at www.redcross.org/where/chapts.asp

Not sure how to say what you want to say about shelters for pets and their humans? My friend Phyllis DeGioia wrote an article that includes a sample letter you can use: The Snowball Effect: Ask the Red Cross to Allow Pets in Some Shelters, over at VeterinaryPartner.com, the good folks who bring your vets continuing education and more at Veterinary Information Network (who also provide a home for my Anapsid.org website).

As pet owners, we need to share the burden with relief agencies when it comes to being prepared to evacuate our pets in case of emergency. But the best preparation in the world won't make a difference if we aren't allowed into a shelter or rescue vehicle with our pets.

Please, write. Now, before you forget, and before another disaster occurs.

If you'd like to skip Phyllis's article and go right to the Red Cross Chapters site, here's the link again: www.redcross.org/where/chapts.asp

More on the subject:
And your little dog, too
Shameful Policy Caused Many Pets' Death
Emergency Preparedness Links

Reality check

2005-09-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

If you are a news junkie like me, your perception can be easily skewed watching the 24 hour news channels' unrelenting images and stories of the aftermath of Katrina.

While there is no question that heads must roll in terms of the lack of foresight, failure to follow established emergency plans, and sheer stupidity, that's not what I'm talking about.

A friend of mine, a cop, said it best: In times of crisis, bad people become worse, but good people become better.

For ever looter stealing TVs, for every well-armed gang pinning down firefighters and hospitals, there are far more citizens, people who have lost everything themselves, out there helping others, in addition to the thousands of volunteers who have flocked to the states devastated by Katrina, working in the shelters, working in search-and-rescue, working to get food and water and clothing distributed, doctors and nurses treating thousands, and rescuers and foster homes taking in and caring for the thousands of displaced pets.

We are resilient in all ways that are good.

That is what we need to remember right now.

That, and helping in any way we can. For me, along with a donation of money, I will also be sending off boxes of books I've collected, science and nature books for early and middle school-aged children. I've been meaning to re-home them, but never got around to it. Now seems the perfect time to get them moving.

Picking up the pieces...again

2005-08-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Why don't the governors of states whose regions are subject to flooding where insurance companies have refused to write flood insurance coverage do what Hawaii has done in the case of fire coverage: Pull the plug on insurers who refuse to cover flood damage, just as Hawaii did to insurers refusing to cover fire.

City and county planners can also step up to the plate and stop allowing concentrated residential and business development in areas that are regularly slammed with mudslides, floods and hurricanes. [Please see National Geographic's October 2004 article, Louisiana Wetlands.]

In the meantime, we Americans will do what Americans keep doing: pay their taxes so state and federal agencies can pay for damages, and donate money to organizations such as the following that provide goods and services to those in need:

American Red Cross
1-800-HELP NOW (1-800-435-7669) English
1-800-257-7575 Spanish

Second Harvest
The nation's largest foodbank

Noah's Wish - Rescuing and Sheltering Animals in Disasters

LSU Vet Medical School of Vet Medicine Shelter for Katrina Pets

American Veterinary Medical Foundation

Animal Photos of Pets Lost/Missing/Found due to Katrina

Message Postings of Pets Lost/Missing/Found due to Katrina

A Pet for Paris

2005-08-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

Given that "teacup" (puppy) chihuahua was too big for Paris, and any other chihuahua is also going to outgrow La Hilton's preference, I've come up with the ideal pet for Paris.

Meet Rocquie!

This little girl is already fully grown, so there is no chance she will ever weigh as much as poor dumped Tinkerbell.

As you can see, Rocquie is the pick of the litter, and keeps herself better groomed than her littermates.

The best thing is that, should Rocquie ever get "kidnapped" like poor Tink, Rocq won't die of starvation, dehydration, hypothermia or cardiac arrest before she is "rescued".

Update: Check out Phyllis DeGioia's take on dogs as fashion accessories at the The Bark.

Gene pool cleanup on Aisle 5, please.

2005-08-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

Paris Hilton: An excellent example of indivduals who should not be allowed to have pets or children.

Chihuahua too big a bitch for Paris

Heads up for you smokers out there

2005-08-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie heads up for you smokers out there:

You stink.

Your hair stinks.

Your clothing stinks.

Your returned library books stink.

Your papers and magazines and bills stink.

Your car stinks.

Your house stinks.

You cannot hide the smell with air fresheners (which, in addition to your smoke, are poisoning your lungs and those around you), or fragrances, or mouthwash.

I was raised to be a courteous smoker. My mother was just short of a chain-smoker. My dad had been a smoker in his younger days, but quit on a bet in his early 20s. So, we always had windows and doors open to air out the house and car, and so I did the same in my own home.

When I got married to a smoker, the door and window thing wasn't a problem for him, since we also had big dogs who were too large to have a dog door, so we just left a door open for them when we were home.

In the office, when I had a private office, I had an air cleaner running all the time, figuring that would keep my smoke from flowing out of my office and into the offices on either side of me which housed nonsmokers.

One of my swing shift supervisors was a complainer, always waving her hand in front of her face when she came to meetings in my office or department meeting it the conference room. When she told me she was allergic to tobacco smoke, I tried not smoking around her, while inwardly muttering "Allergic! She's just annoyed with it - no one's allergic to it!" or "It's just a control thing."

Ercille, if you're by some chance reading this: I am truly sorry for being such an ass. I really had no idea just how horrendous even a "courteous" smoker can be to those who really do get sick from exposure to tobacco smoke.

PS to those recreating with marijuana: you stink, too.

"Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of smokers are not concerned about developing Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), America’s fourth ranking cause of death even though more than half of them (55 percent) experience at least one of the symptoms of COPD a minimum of once a week." COPD: Hungry For Air. American Lung Association.

"Smoking marijuana is associated with increased risk of many of the same symptoms as smoking cigarettes -- chronic bronchitis, coughing on most days, phlegm production, shortness of breath, and wheezing, according to a Yale study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

"In addition, marijuana smoking may increase risk of respiratory exposure by infectious organisms, such as fungi and molds, since cannabis plants are contaminated with a range of fungal spores, said Brent Moore, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study." Marijuana Associated With Same Respiratory Symptoms as Tobacco

If can I quit smoking, so can you.

2005-08-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

I did. Almost 18 years ago, after smoking nearly that long. At the time I quit, my ashtrays and I were putting away 2.5.-3 packs a day. This, mind you, after I got As in grammar and middle school on all my stop smoking projects, aimed at my mother, who had been smoking 1-2 packs a day since she was 16.

When my mother developed lung cancer at age 54, I switched from my Sherman's and Saratoga 120s to the low nicotine Carlton (the ones in the boxes have less than the soft packs), alternating my regular cigarette with a Carlton, gradually increasing the ratio of Carlton's to everything else until I was smoking them exclusively. That got me down to 2 mg of nicotine.

My mother smoked until the day before they wheeled her off to chop out half of her left lung. The docs thought they got it all, and she had a box of 4 mg Nicorette gum (then available by prescription only) waiting for her when she came out. She immediately began chewing a whole piece of the 4 mg pieces - thereby habituating her to a higher dose of nicotine again. When her docs suspected cervical cancer six months after the lung surgery, she kept chewing. She was still chewing 5 months after that, when she went to sleep one night and never woke up.

Not a complete idiot, I did stop smoking several months after my mother's lung surgery. I started with only 1/2 of a piece of the 4 mg gum. My mom and I both knew not to keep chewing it like regular gum, so we converted some of our pretty small, "for company" ashtrays to gum parks. Instead of being defiled by ashes and butts, there rested our chewed gum waiting the next chew time. My employees got used to it, shrugging my chewtray off as another one of my eccentricities.

Eventually, I began alternating the Nicorette with regular gum or hard candy. I decided that whatever weight I put on would be taken off later. It came on, it came off, and I haven't smoked since. My husband continued to smoke, however, joining a neighbor from up the street who also was not allowed to smoke inside the house; the two of them would take stroll every evening, puffing away.

One of the big things that helped me was not just replacing one source of nicotine with another, but working on the chemical addiction while also addressing the bigger behavioral issues. I had already done some "firsts" since I never again smoked when with my mother in the months between her lung surgery and death. So, I got through my first client dinner, cocktail party, restaurant meals, and car rides without a cigarette in hand. Instead of a cigarette, I clutched a glass of club soda or light wine spritzer, acknowledging a tendency to want to replace my cigarette crutch with an alcohol crutch during stressful times.

Speaking of stress, I, like lots of others I know, always muttered, "I'll stop when my life gets less crazy." Funny how our lives never became less crazy.

At the time I stopped in November 1987, here is what was going on in my life: My mother got hit by a car the first Wednesday of August 1987; her cancer was discovered on the 2nd Wednesday; my house was gutted by fire on the 3rd Wednesday, my mom's first day out of the intensive care unit; on the 4th Wednesday my husband's son called to say that he suspected his father in-law of molesting his son.

At work, after going through one sale of the large family business and all that entails, we were going through due diligence again. Since I was part of the package and had day-to-day responsibilities, I juggled work, hospital visits, and digging through the wreckage of my home, looking to find what could be salvaged and fighting with the insurance companies. My husband and I were living in a hotel, and were soon joined by our two dogs because of re-emerging health problems of one of them. (Our fish died in the fire, our cat died a couple of weeks after the fire, and we had had to euthanize our oldest dog shortly before the fire.)

For 11 months, my husband and I lived in the hotel and rebuilt the house. My mother died while we were still in the hotel.

I realized in the middle of that, about the time I quit, that I might be dead if I waited for a "good time" to quit smoking. Good times are never guaranteed. They cannot be predicted. I realized that if I could stop during one of the worst periods of my life, not smoking when times were good would be a nonissue.

When I was in the quitting stage, the first couple of months on Nicorette, I started paying attention to how often my hand darted out and started groping for my pack of cigarette. I realized how much of my smoking had been mindless, by force of behavioral habit, rather than of physical addiction. So the journey from smoker to nonsmoker is one of changing mindless habitual behaviors, adopting new benign ones if necessary. My first cigarette of the morning, normally smoked after I got out of the shower, became a time greeting the dogs and watering the plants before returning to the bathroom to do my hair and makeup.

And so, my biggest piece of advice for those trying to quit: Break your behavioral habits! Pick another chair to sit in. Find something else to do with your hands - doodle, knit, pick your teeth (politely, please), get up and walk around, do anything but just sit there and think about how much you'd like a cigarette, or how you always have a cigarette when the phone rings, you drink your first cup of coffee, when you sit down at the computer, open your newspaper or book, close the car door, and all the many times of day and night we smokers light up without thinking about it.

Does my husband still smoke? No. Terminal lung cancer took care of that; diagnosed the day after Christmas in 1990, he died three weeks later, a few months shy of his 58th birthday.

Cigarette, n.: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in between.

2005-08-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

Good night, Peter.

"Why do they hate us?"

2005-07-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Oh, I am so tired of hearing people on the street and the talking heads on all the news programs whining, asking "Why do they hate us?"

Anyone who has bothered to read a history book or two instead of news stories for the most part written by people who apparently only read other news stories, instead of doing their own historical research, will find the answer to be simple indeed:

They want to kill us because we are not Moslems.

It used to be okay when terrorists were called Palestinians and they only blew up or gunned down Jews. I mean, who gives a fuck about Jews, other than other Jews. So, big deal. Blow 'em up. Obviously, it's the Jews fault, right? I mean, they must have done something to garner such focused and violent hatred, right?

They did.

They refused to convert when asked nicely by Mohammed and his early followers.

They refused to convert when later given the option of converting or dying by the sword (just as they refused to convert to Christianity when given that option or being burned at the stake…which to be fair was just the Christian world getting back at the Moslems for the 700 years of murder and fear known as the Moorish occupation. Of course, since everyone hates the Jews, why not force them to convert or die along with anyone else swept up in the Inquisitor's net).

Then the Jews had the audacity to refuse to lay down and die or all jump into the Mediterranean when the British, who took over a nice chunk of the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire, left the tiny fragment known historically and currently as Israel so sink or swim. Er, die or swim. Not like they had any doubts who would win, since the Brits had caved into Arab demands to only let the Arabs have arms, not the Jews.

The people who claim to be Palestinians are the individuals and descendents of the individuals who listened to the leaders of Egypt and Syria and the other Arab nations to leave Israel for a few days (or a couple of weeks, at most) until the combined Arab armies could drive the Jews into the sea. Then, the Arabs who left could come back and take over the property and businesses scraped from nothing by the refugees of Hitler's hell, people who joined those Jews who had been living in that area for a couple thousand years.

And while we're talking Palestinian refugee, how many refugee populations around the world still call themselves refugees nearly 60 years after they became refugees (legitimate refugees: after all, if the Arab residents had just stayed where they were instead of heading to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, there would be no refugees or "refugee camps" issue at all, then or 60 years later. Of course, that means they would have had to figure out another reason to kill the Jews. Oh. Wait. it is because they are Jews! Silly me.

I am reminded of a joke:

The Israeli Prime Minister is sitting down with Arafat to try to work out an agreement. The Prime Minister asks if he might first tell a story. Yasser Arafat tells him to go ahead.
"When Moses was in the desert for forty years the Jews got very thirsty and Moses asked God for water and there appeared a beautiful lake.

The Jews first drank and then bathed themselves. Moses did the same but when he came out of the water his clothes were gone.

"Moses shouted, 'Where are my clothes? Who took them?' The Jews answered 'The Palestinians took them.'

Arafat quickly objected, "There were no Palestinians at that time!"

The Prime Minister looked at Arafat and said, "Now we can begin to negotiate."

So, getting back to the original question, why do they hate us? Well, hate you, because I'm Jewish and it's been a foregone conclusion in my mind since I was born, practically, since relatives of mine in Israel were getting blown up and shot at by Syria and Lebanon, not to speak of the assorted terrorists who used to fire rockets and things but now just suicide themselves.

Anyway, where was I.

Oh, yes. They hate YOU because you aren't Moslem.

They claim to hate us (hell, I am an American, too) because of our values and customs.

You know, like women wearing clothes instead of being completely covered when out in public.

You know, like 'letting' women drive cars all by themselves, as well as appearing in public without being accompanied by a male relative AND covered up from head to toe.

And let's talk about some other cultural differences. When a woman commits adultery in the West, the worst that happens is she is shunned by some of her friends (especially if it was with one of their husbands), or legally divorced by her husband, or has her picture smeared across the tabloids, before or after montaging in PhotoShop. That's what we do.

Now, shall we talk about what our esteemed friends and allies (and major oil producers) do? Can you say, stoned, boys and girls? And I'm not talking about ingestion of recreational substances here. How about beheaded?

We Jews and Christians have learned other ways of living by the Word of God without taking Leviticus literally any more.

The Moslems? If thine eye offends thee, strap on a bomb vest.

Jack Paar once said, "I have never seen a bad television program, because I refuse to. God gave me a mind, and a wrist that turns things off."

Apparently, Moslems are not able to turn the TV off when programming offends them. I really don't understand why, with all the oil and aid dollars and pounds and whatall funds they've received through the years from the West to build their universities and research centers and health clinics and businesses why no Moslem has invented a G.S. chip.

Similar to the V(iolence) chip responsible parents can use to filter the programs their kids can access through cable or satellite, the G(reat) S(atan) chip could filter out everything remotely Western in nature. That way, they wouldn't even have to consciously make the decision to choose not to possibly learn something constructive and useful. After all, dehumanizing ones victims is the employed by serial killers and mass murderers of all persuasions, including Moslems.

Please don't tell me that not all Moslems are this way. If the terrorists were just Jihadists or whatever today's term is, then there would be massive uproar heard from Moslem countries around the world as well as the not insignificant Moslem residents in the West. If they were truly against what has been happening, then there would be a concerted effort to rout out those who are promulgating hate and violence against the Infidels (excuse me, non-Moslems).

But they aren't. Oh, yes, every once in a while, like after 7/7 and 7/21, when it suddenly got more difficult to get through a security checks at airports and, increasingly elsewhere, and it became clear that people of Middle Eastern and Indonesian aspect were again being given suspicious looks, THEN and only then did a couple of people speak out about how that is not the way of Islam. Whiners.

All one has to do is to read history. Nothing much happened to the largely feudal Islamic society until Western oil dollars started pouring in.

Okay, there was a brief time in the 1700-1800s when the pirates off the north coast of Africa were busy stealing ships and cargos and killing or enslaving the survivors. The U.S. refused to pay tribute to the Barbary pirates when one of our ships was captured; Tom Jefferson put our collective foot down and said no.

Oh! I guess that's another reason why they hate us Americans, along with being Infidels of loose morals who let our women go free and spew human images across our virtual and analog landscapes and media.

Anyway, the only thing that's changed is that our oil dollars have been pouring into a few of those Islamic nations, and some of those dollars were actually used for things of benefit to the citizens of those nations, and not just for private jumbo jets, shopping trips to Gucci and Bulgari in Rome, the casinos in Monte Carlo, and gambling clubs, the Rolls and Bentleys and Saville Road suits in London.

(Not to speak of mansions in Beverly Hills, including the abortion with anatomically painted nude statues that disgraced Sunset Blvd for a number of years.)

So, back to my point, some of the oil dollars went to build schools and universities, which trained students in the sciences. But this veneer of civilization and civil behavior was only thinly overlayed, and instead of just turning off the TV or electing to live in communities such as the Amish and Mennonites do to this country, keeping their old traditions in the midst of the 21st century, the Moslems decided it was our fault. What was our fault? Everything they don't like. Period.

After all, hating others and deciding that killing them is holy means you don't actually have to sit down and work out what exactly the problems are and how to fix them. Well, the Saudi government did: they paid off Osama bin Laden and kicked him out of Dodge. But that wasn't exactly the type of solution I was talking about.

What would happen, I wonder, if the Islamic countries were suddenly and immediately plopped back into the late Middle Ages, just after, say, the gutting of the Moorish Empire. Or back to the days of the Ottoman Empire (Israel excluded, of course).

What I find soooo amusing is that if we really were guilty of all they claim, if we really did have colonization of the oil-producing Arab countries in mind, we could easily accomplish that with a variety of well-placed bombs.

In this era of political correctness, we go too far when we forbid racial profiling to identify terrorists. Yes, behavioral profiling is critical, too, and by combining both together, screeners will have a better chance of stopping the bad guys.

As the world gets smaller as people travel all over, and as our own population of citizens and aliens continues to grow and public transportation moves millions of people a day, we must learn from the past to build the tools--and mindset--to keep as many of us as safe as possible in the future.

The past is past. The age of innocence and terrorist-free America died on September 11, 2001.

If you think what is happening here is a civil libertarian hell, then move to Iraq and offer your services to the people there who were trying to rebuild their country. And if you get blown up, or kidnapped and beheaded? ::shrug:: Oh well. You must have deserved it.

For those who think this nice Jewish girl is whacked out from spending too much time with her lizards and yarn, check out the Middle East Media Research Institute.

For those not familiar with Jewish history, especially American Jewry, these sites provide interesting reads:

Pharmacists Refusing To Fill Birth Control & Morning After Prescriptions

2005-05-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

I cannot begin to tell you how this pisses me off. These pharmacists claim to refuse, on personal moral or religious grounds, to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception ("morning after") pills.

These same pharmacists, however, fill prescriptions for Viagra and other drugs whose sole purpose is to give an impotent man an erection. Now, let's face it: the primary reason most of the men are asking their doctors for Viagra is for the sole purpose of having sex. These pharmacists do not require a sworn statement from the erection-seeking man stating that the erection if for the sole purpose of procreation.

On one of the news programs talking about this issue, one pharmacist (a man, what a surprise) said that Viagra was fine, since it was "all about loooooove". Gag. What about girls and women who need the morning after pill because of rape or incest? Is that looooooove? Or girls and women who need to combination of hormones to regulate their monthly cycles so that they don't end up missing several days of school or work each month? Or end up butchering the idiot males in their lives who make PMS and on-the-rag jokes?

What about married women who, for a variety of reasons, do not want or cannot safely bear children? Yes, they could have their tubes tied, but so could their husbands have a vasectomy. Is any woman out there surprised that, despite the fact that vasectomies are less complicated to do, have fewer risks associated with the sugery and post-op recovery, and fewer long-term health consequences than tubal ligations, that more women get "fixed" than do their male partners? Using a less drastic form but highly effective of birth control, such as birth control pills, leaves the couple's future options open. About the only time a man undergoes a reverse vasectomy is when he dumps Wife #1 for a younger one.

Speaking of alternative forms of birth control, do this paragons of moral and religious rectitude work in pharmacies where ::gasp:: condoms are sold? What about spermicidal products? If so, why aren't they refusing to sell those?

Many of these pharmacists aren't just quietly telling the woman "no, go somewhere else to get this filled." Even when there are other pharmacists or pharmacy techs working in the same pharmacy who have no objection to filling contraceptive prescriptions, these paragons aren't passing the scripts along to their willing co-workers. Some are lecturing, even hectoring, the women.

Well, I say --well, no, I'm not going to write what I'd say or do were some hypocrite of a pharmacist do that in my presence.

What I think is that if these pharmacists want to, on moral or religious grounds, refuse to fill birth control and emergency contraception ("morning after") pills, fine. Then they should also be refusing to fill Viagra and Levitra and related erectile dysfunction prescriptions, and pull from their shelves all the condoms and spermicides.

I'd say they should also march down to their local Children and Family Services department and sign on to be foster parents, since there are few enough foster homes for all the kids out in the system right now…a system that is going to become even more heavily populated as these moral and religious pharmacists contribute to yet more pregnancies that are unwanted or where the parent(s)-to-be cannot, for a variety of reasons, properly raise the results. But I wouldn't want these paragons raising any more paragons.

People never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions. - Blaise Pascal

Melissa

Closing the Gap in the Sex Offender Registry System

2005-04-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

I really do not see what the problem is here. There is one sure way to make sure all sex offenders who are released from prison are findable by their parole officers, locatable by law enforcement agencies, and are never again located anywhere in the vicinity of their preferred prey.

Dump them on an isolated, deserted island for the rest of their lives. The ultimate Survivor challenge: let them outwit and outplay one another, with the only reward being that they get to live another day longer.

Survivors of sexual abuse carry the scars for the rest of their lives. Survivors of abuse get no time off for good behavior. While their scars may be buried deep, while they may go through years of therapy to try to learn how to construct a life around those scars, what has happened to them is a filter through which the rest of their lives are irrevocably altered.

That word itself—offend—does not begin to describe what those offenses to do the individuals the offenses are inflicted upon. Perhaps there is no word in human language that accurately conveys just what these offenses do to the victims. And so society—those who decide that offenders should be allowed to go free--put others at risk.

We see far too many cases of sex offenders who have "paid their debt to society", who are released upon the general public, and who continue to offend, whether or not they have been good little boys and kept their sex offender registration up to date.

The only difference is, when they next offend, they may decide to hide the evidence. And so we pile up the bodies of offended children and women and not a few men, and wring our hands and bemoan the fact that it has happened once again, and wonder why wasn't this animal behind bars to begin with.

So, I say, let's make it easy. Once they are convicted, dump them on the designated deserted island. Literally. If they don't break anything on the way down from the chopper, then they can jump right into the game. Why a drop zone? Why, to avoid the ring of defenses around the island to prevent escape, of course.

They are welcome to catch any fish that makes it through the barrier. But if they starve, who cares? Their victims? The people who try to help survivors pick up the pieces of their lives each time something happens to explode the fragile façade they've managed to construct around the ruin within?

Another benefit of offender desertification is that we won't have to waste any more taxpayer money on housing and feeding them once they are convicted. No more money wasted on useless counseling programs and drugs protocols to control their urges. I mean, really, we have so many good and deserving people who need the aid and assistance that money can buy – why are we wasting it on people who offend and will re-offend if they think they can get away with it?

A further benefit is that abusers tend to beget abusers. If we desertify them before they produce any offspring of their own, well, that’s a few less future offenders we will have to deal with.

Yes, yes, I can hear the outraged cries of the ACLU and other bleeding hearts who protest that everyone deserves a second chance. Well, that strikes me the same way as the right-to-lifers who rail against abortion but do nothing to take on the burden of the tens of thousands of unwanted children who end up abused and neglected at home, languish and too often abused by the foster care system, with too many ending up kicked out at age 18 with too few skills to help them cope and grow as healthy functioning adults.

I see those demanding we not abrogate the civil rights of offenders to be no different: by failing to speak for the survivors, the victims, they fail to grasp the enormity of the problem, and thus they perpetuate it.

As far as I'm concerned, those who aid and abet offenders—found all too frequently in our legal system, law enforcement agencies, military, medical associations, and churches—should be dumped on the island, too.

Yes, it will be overcrowded, and yes, island carrying capacities are limited, but there will be a virtually endless supply of recyclable protein there for a long time to come. I mean, really: taboos against cannibalism are just artificial constructs, just like not eating shellfish or pork or cow, or a system predicated on the belief that people who prey on others for their own gratification can be permanently fixed.

Taking The Moral Low Ground

2005-03-31T21:13:00.000-08:00

Terri died today, bringing to final closure a hopeless situation that, had it not happened under the glare of the TV cameras, to people whose tragic need was shamelessly fed by those who prostituted themselves by saying anything and everything to support the Schindlers in front of the cameras and in court, would have ended long ago.

After Terri's death, President Bush said, "The case of Terri Schiavo raises complex issues. Yet in instances like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life. Those who live at the mercy of others deserve our special care and concern. It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued, welcomed, and protected - and that culture of life must extend to individuals with disabilities."

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said, "the men responsible for this" will be called to account." He went on to say that lawmakers "will look at an arrogant and out of control judiciary that thumbs its nose at Congress and the President."

Good!

It is long past time for this country to stop sending trillions of dollars in aid to other countries when our own citizens are being denied adequate food, clean water, access to necessary health care, treatment and medications, and decent housing affordable to those who rely on social security disability and Medicaid.

Good!

It is long past time for this country to stop sending trillions of dollars in aid to other countries when our own children are going to schools in substandard facilities, overcrowded classrooms, without the necessary text books, equipment and supplies.

(And let's talk about teachers salaries, shall we? Unless and until we start paying teachers enough to entice the good ones to stay in the school system as teachers, and supply them with the materials they need for their classroom and students so that they are not paying for classroom supplies out of their own meager paychecks, we deprive our children—our future—of the skills and tools they need to move us forward into that future.)

Mr. Delay, why not instead look at the arrogant and out of control Congress and others who arrogantly thumb their nose at the people they are supposed to be representing in this country.

Yes, Mr. President, it should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued and protected, including those with disabilities.

So, why does your Administration keep cutting benefits? Why has no Administration doing nothing to ensure increased funding for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, instead of less? Why do we keep giving trillions of dollars to those outside of the U.S. when our own people are imperiled, becoming permanently disabled, with too many dying, for lack of necessary health care?

As tragic as Terri Schiavo's story is, hers is just one amongst many tragedies playing out in homes, hospitals, hospices, and on the streets each and every day.

Either you are serious about correcting the problems in the system created by politicians which affect the least empowered amongst us, or you are simply out to shamelessly use an individual to further your personal and party agenda.

In the beginning...

2005-03-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

...there was writer's block.

I've been thinking about blogging for some time now, but life and health and distractions and problems arise, and so I end up writing about and doing other things, quashing down the rants and smartass remarks.

In the past week, as Terri Schiavo's existence winds down and the airwaves ring with the bullshit from people who apparently have no problem displaying their incredible ignorance and total aversion to the facts, I have been moved to write.

My heart goes out to the Schiavo and Schindler families. Having lost a sister and a husband to cancers, I do have some idea of what they are individually going through. I also watched my mother try to cope with the devastation she felt after my sister died, at age 33, at the end of an increasingly desperate three year battle against leukemia.

I understand Terri's parents' deep hope that by some miracle their daughter's brain will somehow reconstitute itself and do more than provide basic brainstem function. But, as Dan Abrams says, barring Divine intervention, it won't. And, frankly, it seems to me that if God was so inclined to change things, He'd have done it by now.

[Why this hasn't occurred to all the good Christians out there demonstrating in front of the hospice and threatening Michael Schiavo's life, I can't say, other than it is hardly surprising, given the fact that thinking is barely even a recessive trait among the vast majority of fundamentalists whatever their fundament.]

[And don't even get me started on the impact these good Christians are having on the other patients in the hospice, nor on the family members of those patients whose ability to get in and see their loved ones is severely hampered by what can only be called a mob.]

I understand the need to find some meaning in the random eye movements, the apparent response to a hovering face, a change in the room light, a sound. I understand the need to believe that it is the Terri-that-was behind the facial muscle movements. But it is not the Terri-that-was that causes her eyes to sightlessly move around, nor her lips to move occasionally into a grimace that is construed by desperate hearts to be a smile of recognition.

There is a poem I came across shortly before my sister died that I read at her funeral. The last two lines are:

Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there. I did not die.

Terri is not there. The essence of Terri was destroyed years ago, as documented by numerous scans and tests and in-person evaluations through the past decade that led the judges in 20 hearings to find that she did not want her body to be kept alive.

I am appalled at the cost of this fruitless, needless, harmful battle...a cost being borne by the public. I am infuriated at the thought of all the people who would benefit from having that money and advocacy focused on them instead of the Terri-that-is, whose brain scan shows all too clearly--for those who would actually look--that there is nothing there.

I think of people like Julia C. In her sixties, she has been battling several degenerative illnesses and cancer. She lives, as many do, in a county with too little affordable housing, too little subsidized housing, and 3+ year waiting lists for what little exists. She lives in a tiny, decrepit, moldy rental unit, with Medi-Cal [Medicaid] not covering a fraction of the health care services and medications she needs.

She used to have a few in-home support hours each week, for someone to come in and do light cleaning, food preparation, and take her to the market, doctors appointments, and other essential errands. But the increasingly strapped in-home support services agency decided that she didn't need any help at all.

Oh. Wait. Did I forget to mention that she is legally blind? That SSI doesn't provide enough to pay her basic needs, let alone cab fare? Yes, there are "volunteer wheels" in the county, but with too little funding, too few vehicles and volunteers to provide services to all the disabled and elderly here who need them. Of course, IHSS doesn't really care: knowing that she should not be driving, they nonetheless withdrew late last year what few hours they had previously left her.

And then there is Sophia. Not every person living in their car wants to be there. Not everyone living in ratty transient motels wants to be there. Sophia, after being bounced from co-housing to co-housing because of her chemical sensitivities and insensitive co-residents, ended up spending over a month in the hospital. After another round of chemical assaults, she now draws advances on her social security disability check to pay the week-to-week at Motel 6.

There was a woman on the Today show last week who claims that her dog says, "I love you." To demonstrate, she gave the vocal and facial cues her dog responds to. While the woman was hearing "I love you", it clearly looked like everyone else within ear- and camera-shot had the same reaction I did: All I heard was the dog saying "Rrrroooooo awooooooo wooo wooo awooooooooooooo" as the woman kept repeating, over and over, "I love you. Say, I love you!"

Wishing things were so don't make them so. Hoping for the impossible is fine if you don't stop living your life waiting for the impossible to happen.

Terri's life was over long ago. Let her go. It's time for the Schindlers to start living again, and for everyone else to go help those in their communities who truly need it.

#####

For those who are not familiar with the work of hospices and end-of-life care, please learn about them. You will find links to several excellent organizations in the End of Life section of my CND Resources site.

February 1, 2006 Update: Michael Schiavo has formed TerriPAC.org, a political action committee whose goal is to make sure the politicians who voted to interfer in his wife's dying know that that is not a decision the American people want them making, and to continue to hammer home the need for people to make their wishes clear by signing and distributing a Living Will that specifically states what they do and do not want done.