PunkAssBlog.com

Earlier this month, I finally got an entry-level position at a local non-profit. (Translation: I’m a cashier for Goodwill). Our store is not open yet, so we’re busy stocking. It is interesting to me, because I’m coming face-to-face with my own classism- the people I work with are not college educated (some aren’t even high school educated) and even the few that have aspirations of college consider it an impossible (or extremely difficult) dream. The urge to correct everyone’s grammar is occasionally overwhelming.

Today, we were talking while stocking books, and I got to listen to what everyone’s views on marriage and religion were. It was interesting, and then I ran across The Bell Curve. Submitted for your approval:

Conversation at work today-

Me: Can we not sell “The Bell Curve”? It’s racist, classist, and just flat bad science.

Manager: Yes, we have to sell it. This isn’t about personal preference, remember- it’s like the god-awful ugly sweater; someone might buy it.

Me: But this isn’t personal opinion- this book really is, objectively, racist, classist, and bad science.

Manager: That’s just your opinion.

Me: No, it’s reality. It IS, objectively, legitimately, bad science.

Manager: Fine, but we have to stock it anyway.

Me: Okay, but I’m putting it in fiction.

Manger: *smiles, rolls eyes*

I sure hope no one actually buys this book, and we can just chuck it in the garbage.

Here she goes!

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

I agree, Thomas Sowell has sort of said that, along with a lot of other crap that clearly lodged itself in Sarah’s one brain cell and is responsible for the above stoned-sounding babble. To quote his crap more precisely:

The government does not have some magic wand that can “bring down the cost of health care.” It can buy a smaller quantity or lower quality of medical care, as other countries with government-run medical care do.

It can decide not to spend as much money on the elderly as is being spent now. That can save a lot of money — if you think having a parent die earlier is a bargain.

The idea of a “duty to die” has been making some headway in recent years around the fringes of the left. It is perfectly consistent with the fundamental notion of the left, that decisions should be transferred from ordinary citizens to government elites.

To briefly address his rather astonishing claim that all other countries with government-run medical care offer either less medical care or lower quality medical care–and what metrics are we using to make this sweeping statement, one can’t help but wonder? According to the WHO, in 2000, although the U.S. spent a higher portion of its gross domestic product on its health care system than any other member country, it ranked 37 out of the 191 countries in terms of actual performance. The WHO used not just one but five performance metrics to determine its rankings:

1. overall level of population health;
2. health inequalities (or disparities) within the population;
3. overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts);
4. distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system);
5. and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).

One could hardly accuse the WHO of underanalyzing the situation–frankly, I suspect Sowell and Palin and the other loud objectors would consider this list far too comprehensive–after all, what do they care about no. 4? And the selfish hysteria they display in regards to no. 5 is pretty pathetic–

But aside from that, it’s the euthanasia contention that really interests me here. Specifically, what really interests me is the lovely portrait both the Palinator and Thomas Sowell appear to be painting of our current private health insurance system, where apparently everyone who has private health insurance finds that all their health care decisions, including end-of-life care, are made by the individual in concert with his loving doctor, with no other outside cost-based interference at all.

For a quick anecdotal reminder that, erm, this isn’t QUITE EXACTLY the case–I can’t be the only woman who gave birth in the early to mid-1990’s, right? And I know I’m not the only woman who got kicked out of the hospital less than 24 hours after giving birth, because the majority (if not all) of health insurance plans instituted a policy of flatly refusing to pay for longer than that, regardless of the fact that the standard postpartum stay recommended by physicians was 48-72 hours. In 1996, the federal government ended up passing legislation requiring health insurance companies to pay for a minimum of 48 hours, after the postpartum complication rate for both women and newborns abruptly began to soar. Oops!

For a less anecdotal statement of fact as to why that contention is total bullshit, save me some time. For those of you who have health insurance from a non-government source, please go look at your policy. I mean really look at it, not just skim over the co-pay and how much you have to fork out a month for you, you + 1 or you + 2 or more–read the whole damn policy. And tell me what care your health insurance company–not you or your doctor–what medical decisions about your care that your health insurance company does not now control already that the government suddenly would.

I think you’ll find that there aren’t any. All you’re doing by switching from private to public, folks, is changing masters–and it’s worth a think or two that you’re changing to a master that you do at least have some elective control over, eh?

(Note to Sarah: To the best of my knowledge, dear, nobody in either the private or the public sector is recommending the euthanization of babies with Down Syndrome. So really, you can relax!)

(via)

UPDATED: More from Salon: “The ‘death panels’ are already here”

UPDATED: Even her fellow Republicans are scrambling to distance themselves from this one.

Every once in awhile, I post that I don’t understand our conservative brethren- the people on the other end of the political divide one way or another. Sometime they scare me, but a lot of the time, they just cause massive amounts of cognitive dissonance. These are my friends, my family. They are generally good people, generally intelligent; but yet they seem to be so indifferent to actively hateful towards people who they don’t personally know.
Continue reading ‘Two Family Stories, and a Health Care Question’

Inspired by Dear Leader, who’s been sharing favorite old Twilight Zone episodes, I’m going to share one of my own. I first saw “The Lonely” when I was, I think, about twelve. I was in a phase of my adolescence where I would stay up all night long just to see what it felt like being awake the next day. Around midnight, I’d sneak downstairs and spend the hours until dawn watching old TV shows which originally aired in the 50s and 60s. To me, The Twilight Zone was by far the best of the lot, and an episode called “The Lonely” left one of the strongest marks on me of all of them.

Continue reading ‘The Lonely’

Here’s a curious thing I’ve experienced a few times:

1. People start talking about healthcare reform.
2. Someone points out that a single payer could negotiate better rates for services and medications, and thus would probably be rather cheaper than the market.
3. Someone replies: But you can’t do that! The high prices paid in the U.S. subsidize R&D! That’ll mean no more new drugs, or vastly fewer of them, at any rate.
4. The topic shifts to who is or is not a Cylon.
5. (Starbuck definitely is or is not a Cylon, probably.)

You don’t get to hear this argument much on the news. The current talking point seems to be that national universal healthcare through a single-payer model—or for that matter something that bears no resemblance to such a thing unless you drop lemon juice in your eyes, squint, and chant socialismsocialismsocialism—will mean the government will be interfering in the relationship between you and your doctor!!!oneone! This is worse than when insurance companies get between you and your doctor because insurance companies are part of the capitalist market and that means they’re regulated by the invisible hand of the market and the thing about the invisible hand is that it is, after all, invisible, and so you can’t possibly notice when it tells you that you can only have Abraxane shots on the sixth Tuesday of every month, and you should be glad you get that much.

But let’s go back to (3) for a moment.

Let’s assume that we want new drugs. Let’s also assume—though there’s reason to be a bit skeptical of this—that drug companies absolutely cannot absorb any drop in income, and that all such drops will invariably and negatively affect R&D.

Well, how much money are we talking, exactly?

PhRMA says that the private pharmaceutical industry spent $60 billion on research and development in 2007. Taking them at their word, that’s a lot of money! I mean, that’s nearly 6% of the Fabulous Cash Giveaway urgently necessary federal bailout of upstanding (if currently slightly tilted) financial institutions. That’s a bit more than the government gave to AIG, or a bit less than what we gave to Bank of America, Citigroup, Freddie Mac, and General Motors. Each. That’s about the cost of the F-22 Raptor, which is as we know vitally necessary for ensuring air superiority over Afghan farmers as we bomb the fuck out of them.

So I guess I can see why increasing NIH grant appropriations and overall public funding of medical research is out of the question. It’s not like there’s an existing structure for this sort of thing—drug research at universities and public clinics is practically unheard of in this or any other country. And it’s certainly not like strengthening open, publically-funded research would reduce the incidence of, say, morally-deficient fuckers patenting genes for cancer.

Thank goodness single-payer healthcare will never become a reality in the U.S.

…well, I couldn’t help myself. I heard about this on the radio today:

George Sodini finally got the attention he wanted. After years of hoping women would take notice of him, Sodini allegedly entered a Pennsylvania health club Tuesday night and murdered three women in cold blood before turning a gun on himself.

Investigators need not puzzle over the motives for Sodini’s rampage; the 48-year-old suspected killer spelled them out in blood-chilling detail in an online diary.

“These are the rambling messages of a likely psychotic” and display characteristics of a man who has been “severely depressed for a long time,” forensic psychologist Naftali Berrill said of Sodini’s writing.

The image that emerges from his blog is that of a loner — a psychopath, routinely rejected by women who spent a year casing the gym and plotting his revenge on the “the young girls here [that] look so beautiful as to not be human, very edible.”

–and I really couldn’t help it–I thought to myself, I wonder what the good old Men’s Rights Activists think about that, hmm? I bet I can guess! But No, surely not!–not even those guys would excuse someone like this. So, after some internal squabbling, I gritted my teeth and nipped over to the foremost of MRAs, whose site I have not visited in a good seven months at least–Mr. Sacks.

Happily, neither Glenn nor the other dude who has apparently taken over much of his blogging activities seems to want to touch this one with a ten-foot pole. That was a genuine relief, and inclined me to think I was perhaps being overly hasty and judgmental in my assumptions regarding any general MRA opinion on the matter. With a somewhat lighter heart I typed in “George Sodini MRA” into Google and hit Search!–

Yeah, that wide-eyed optimism didn’t last too long. Very first hit?

George Sodini is an MRA hero!

Amanda already talked about the blog this was culled from, so I won’t reinvent her wheel. I did scroll down the comments, though, and plucked out the following gems for your indigestion:

George Sodini is an MRA hero as much a reason to learn game. Finally a mass murderer writes a relatively coherent manifesto. Could be better, but at least it is implied that feminism is to blame and he is taking a last stand. I had been waiting for this (almost thinking I had to do it myself) and I am impressed. Kudos.

–Arpagus, whose own blog links to the Men’s Activism News Network, among other things

One thing that might help prevent future incidents of this sort is repealing IMBRA, the federal law that essentially put the mail order bride industry out of business.

–Peter, who is probably too stupid to have a blog

I think every man DOES deserve to get laid.

For every nerdy, smelly, fat, or otherwise socially undesirable man out there, there is an equally unattractive woman walking around. (more than one actually because there are more women than men on the planet)

The problem is, our feminized society has given every woman the power to hold out for higher quality men than they deserve.

This creates an imbalance that leads to tragedies like the one in PA.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton’s 3rd Law)

If empowered women keep applying pressure, they will create an explosion.

–A.J. Travis, whose entire blog consists of (a) how to finely tune a woman’s 1-10 hotness rating to suit your personal life goals before you decide which one to like, devour or whatever and (b) a detailed dwelling on the flaws of the “9″ woman versus the flaws of the “6″ woman

Every man knows they have to EARN respect.

They DESERVE to get laid.

A decent looking man who earns a good living and does not abuse women DESERVES to get laid. Period.

The fact that so many do not, is a crime.

And in a just society, all crimes are eventually punished.

–More A.J. Travis, who I’m starting to really hope lives nowhere near me, especially since there is one non-woman post on his blog and it’s about guns

Have you guys noticed a trend in fat women? Some of the ones I have spoken to actually believe they can get alpha cock. They don’t want to hook up with beta men either. This is a troubling development.

–Game in BK, and nope, no clue what this has to remotely do with the thread, but I just had to reproduce his comment here ’cause can you believe that someone’s really that moronic..? LOL!

…and it goes on, and on, and on…there are a few dissenting voices in there, but mostly they’re drowned out by the angry horde.

Note to anyone who feels e-n-t-i-t-l-e-d to any type of use of my body for any reason whatsoever: No, You Aren’t. Get Over It. And if violence committed against my person of any description based upon this feeling of entitlement seems even remotely justifiable to you, you had probably better commit it like George Sodini did, with a distance weapon and without warning and resulting in me getting killed dead. ‘Cause otherwise, you’ll find out that I have an equally enthusiastic belief in and comfort level with extreme violence in cases of self-defense, and I do tend to hold a grudge.

‘Nuff said.

Last week, I finally managed to clear things with my health insurance, and went to get a primary physician and check-up*. As in all check ups, the very first thing they do is check my weight and height.

I’m 5′5″, and weight 211 pounds. Antigone is a giant fatty. When the nurse was recording this, she had a little look on her face like “Yeah, that’s about right”.

Then the nurse went to check my blood pressure. Her look became a little surprised then- my blood pressure is an excellent 102/62. My pulse is strong. Because I’m fat, and I haven’t had it done before, they asked for a cholesterol test and the nurse said I had the lowest cholesterol for anyone in my age group**. My lungs are in good working order (non-smoker) and my reflexes are good. My eyesight is terrific (20-10), and my hearing is MUCH better than my age group.

Why am I sharing all of this extremely personal information online that is none of anyone’s business? Because of stuff like this. For whatever reason, it seems to be just assumed that fat people aren’t healthy (and conversely, that skinny people mostly are). Also in this thought process, it seems to go that fat people could be skinny if they just “worked at it”. But it isn’t true, and it shouldn’t be thought of as so. I don’t eat any more than my skinny friends do, nor do I exercise any less. I could exercise more (and intend to now that I’ve got a job again and can afford to), but odds are, I’m always going to be a giant fatty. So far, diet plans have a terrible success rate in people keeping the weight off for more than five years.

But, a lot of fat people are healthy. That’s the thing- you can’t look at someone and go “healthy” or “in better shape” unless those people are, at that second, running a marathon. And I’m sick of people conflating their own disgust with fat as concern for health. They aren’t the same thing at all.

*And burn a wart off that’s been bugging me.
** I don’t remember the exact number, mea culpa. I think it was like 160, but I’m not sure. I know it was under 200.

I’m a big fan of reading Cracked.com (the articles, not the comments…dear sweet Jebus, the comments). Normally, it’s pretty funny, and a little off the wall, and very occasionally, I get the idea that the writers might have a progressive bent to them (the article about racist Disney cartoons definitely suggested it). Sometimes, they totally miss the boat entirely, and then I do like I do with most of my media- complain to Hubby, and shrug it off as “that’s the world”. Cracked does a photo-shop contest once a week, the grand prize being 50 dollars normally, and most of the time the pictures can be quite clever. This week, the thread was “If Everyone Had An Unlimited Advertising Budget“.

And this is the point that I felt like I had to say something to the interwebs.

My reactions looking this over were thus:
Continue reading ‘Sometimes, I Thinks Guys Really Hate Us’

Lady Lydia has sent me a “Friends!” request on Facebook.

You know, Lady Lydia…yep, it’s THAT Lady Lydia…

I really can’t decide what to do with it. Anybody else got any opinions?

“Wow,” said the doctor.

That’s not what I expect a doctor to say while peering into my ear, of all places. “What?” I asked.

“You have really heavy scarring in there,” she said cheerily. “You must have had a ton of untreated ear infections as a child!”

Had I? I remembered being sick a lot, and there had been times of excruciating ear pain—“Oh?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I’m surprised you don’t have any hearing loss, or balance or vertigo issues. The scarring’s so bad, the cilia in your inner ear, you know—probably not too many of those left.”

Goodness, that explained a lot…I left the doctor’s office feeling kind of dazed. All my life I’ve suffered awful, debilitating motion sickness—even as an adult, after most other people I knew outgrew getting carsick in the back seat on the way to Grandma’s house, I never did. Over the years I’d become the master of what little I could do to mitigate it and also of hiding it from others (to a point—my face turning greenish-white wasn’t something I could ever manage to hide, but luckily that degree of nausea takes hours of continuous motion to achieve and I avoid hours of it whenever possible). My first husband was remarkably unkind about it, insisting it was all in my head and cutting me no slack whatsoever over it in the apparent belief that if it wasn’t coddled, I’d snap out of it.

(Needless to say, that never did work…all it did was make me feel unloved and violently nauseated, as opposed to just violently nauseated. Oh, well.)

When I started junior high, we had a gymnastics section in PE class. How it worked out for the boys I don’t know, but it was a real class divider for the girls. See, girls from nice families got gymnastics classes and gymnastics camps as a matter of course, usually for several years in earlier childhood—us poor girls? Not so much. And there it was, laid out for all to see. And for me, it’d always been even worse—your average poor girl had usually figured out on her own how to do a simple cartwheel as part of the normal childhood process. Sadly, not I—I could never manage one; not because I lacked athleticism, I was always a fast runner and a good catcher, for instance—but because I lacked balance. The very worst, most humiliating part of the gymnastics section, of course, was the balance beam. I couldn’t even get up on the goddamn thing. I mean it—as part of even the simplest routine, we had to do a running mount of some description. I could jump up to it, but I couldn’t catch my balance once up there. I fell off. Immediately and inevitably, every single time. I wasn’t normally a laughingstock—at that time I was generally considered a nice, quiet, smart girl in the semi-official peer rankings—but even the kindest of the other girls couldn’t help letting a few giggles escape whenever it was my turn to give it a try.

Years later, during my first Army physical, the medic informed me that I had significant high-frequency hearing loss. I remember staring at him in surprise and saying, Huh? I hadn’t noticed—“Well, you’re probably used to it,” he said. “You’ve probably had it for years. But it does prevent you from being qualified for some military jobs, so I gotta make a note of it in your records—sorry!”

Well, at least I finally knew why…

…and, about four years ago, one of my best friend’s sisters died from a brain tumor. She died because, among other things, she couldn’t afford chemotherapy to the tune of $5000 a month, and neither could the rest of her extended family, though everyone chipped in for as long as they could. She died because the tumor made it impossible for her to work (it first made itself known by giving her a seizure in her boss’s office), so she lost her job and the health insurance that came with it, and was unable to get any other health insurance because her tumor was a “pre-existing condition.” She wasn’t able to get Medicaid because her husband was employed. But if he quit his job so she could get it, then he and she and their three children wouldn’t have been able to live at all—no money, no home, no food, no clothing—

So she died, literally in my friend’s arms, weighing about 70 pounds, suffering from senile dementia at the age of 39, incontinent and in agony. She left two daughters and a son, ages 18, 16 and 13, behind, and a husband who became a widower at 45.

So these reasons, among others, are why I think it’s really hysterical when people start shrieking about how the government is trying to take away your health care choices! and shouldn’t it be between your doctor and you..!? This is not to pooh-pooh all their concerns; some of them are legitimate—it’s impossible not to be continually horrified at the ever-increasing monster that is the federal budget deficit, for instance. But there seems to be an amazing ignorance of the fact that many of their fellow Americans currently have only the choice of permanent physical disability or death, and the only decision their doctor is willing to make is to refuse them treatment of any description. Or perhaps it’s only indifference—which doesn’t incline me towards extending any sympathy in return, eh? I do wonder which one it is, at times. I hope it’s not the latter.

I’m Agnostic, and have been for quite some time. I don’t think that God exists, but I’d be willing to look at any new evidence.

Right now I’m reading “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement” by Katherine Joyce, and I keep running into a problem- I cannot understand these people at all. I can understand them as well as I understand gyroscopes: I can describe to you what they are going to do, but for the life of you I can’t wrap my mind why.

For those of you who don’t know “Quiverfull” is a blanket term regarding people who are believers in a Biblical Patriarchy (women submit to their husbands or fathers- and I do mean “submit”), and more importantly, who are staunchly anti-birth control; no condoms, no pills, no sterilization, no rhythm method, nothing but “God’s Will”. The phrase comes from Psalm 127:5 “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them(children). They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.” Quiverfull people believe that they are in a cultural war with liberal secularists, and they intended to win through demographics alone. They believe that these roles and behaviors are “god’s will” and that they are on the side of righteousness. Frequently, they are into seriously modest dress and homeschooling.

I keep running into the same problem with these beliefs- I don’t understand why they would want to worship this god. I’m fairly anti-authoritarian: I want to choose which authority I follow, and at the end of the day I think I am ultimately responsible for any action I take, whether or not someone in power over me told me to do it or not. I don’t want to risk my health and my life. I am drawn towards debate, and I am occasionally smarter than my husband. These proscribed roles, in other words, would make me MISERABLE (and my husband miserable too). So, if the Quiverfull people are correct, and there is a god, and he made me the exact opposite of what I’m supposed to be (indeed, a lot of Quiverfull talk about how women have an inherently rebellious nature because of Eve), which sounds like a recipe for misery, then god’s a dick. Why should I worship a dick? The general answer of “because of heaven and hell” is 100% unsatisfying to me- I’m supposed to toady up to a bully just to avoid getting beat up? That’s not moral- that’s cowardly.

So, this post is for any lurking Quiverfulls. Heck, if you’re just a person who thinks god cares more about what we do with our genitals than whether or not we hurt people, you can post too. I’ll leave off the “prove that god even exists part”- for this exercise I’ll just go with it for now. I need support for “if god exists, why should we worship him?” Make your case.

EDIT: Like all things I want to know, I had to search google to see if it had any knowledge. The first website had a post that made exactly zero sense to me, but the answer was

We worship Him because He commands it. We worship Him because He alone deserves it, knowing what He is and what He does. We worship Him because without so doing we cannot rise to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So…yeah, worship a bully because a bully says so? Even though he’s a bully? And I don’t want to be a bully?

I really wish I knew someone in real life who held these views and would talk to me. I’m missing something important here- something that’d snap it into place.

A condom angel.

From Feministing:

Abstinence-only education advocates are not too pleased that their federal funding is pretty much kaput…

Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse…had this to say about losing federal funding:

“We’ve got news for the condom worshipers, abstinence education is not going away any time soon. Taxpayers will not tolerate their money being used for ideological latex-only programs and the molestation of their children’s minds and future.”

Yeah, hear that, condom worshipers?! oh, my…