Livingston, I Presume

How now, low bow?

Apparently while I was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, our president was busily signing over our country to the Japanese emperor. Because that's what it means when one world leader shows another world figure the appropriate cultural respect, right?

I cannot honestly believe that people are trying to make this into some gesture of submission or using it as a dogwhistle for a bunch of unrepentant racists. Exhibit A, taken from a column in the conservative Washington Times:

...He established a new precedent for how American presidents should pay obeisance to kings, emperors, monarchs, sovereigns and assorted other authentic man-made masters of the universe. He stopped just this side of the full grovel to the emperor of Japan, risking a painful genuflection if his forehead had hit the floor with a nasty bump, which it almost did. No president before him so abused custom, traditions, protocol (and the country he represents).

[...]

It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.

(Excuse me, but did he just say "sired"? Like a racehorse or something? And "Born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World?" I'm pretty sure that's code for her being fond of something that I can't say on this family blog, and it's not nice to talk about people's mothers, in any case.)

He was bowing. In Japan. Which is a country where people bow to greet one another and show respect. I guess President Obama was supposed to clap him on the shoulder and say, "Howdy!" instead?

Of all the disgraceful presidential acts that have taken place of late, I'm thinking this one doesn't even hit the radar. Let us remember George W. Bush surprising German Chancelor Angela Merkel with a clearly unwanted and thoroughly creepy backrub:

 

Oh, and here's a quotation I hadn't heard before, also from young Bush: "At the White House on April 15, 2008, President Bush remarked to Pope Benedict after his sermon: "Thank you, your Holiness. Awesome speech."

Awesome.

Of course, none of this comes close to George Bush, senior, who famously vomited into the lap of the Japanese prime minister:

Between bowing and vomiting, I think I know what most people would prefer.

Roll over! Fetch! Play dead!

I was, as Dieter used to say, as happy as a little girl yesterday when I discovered that a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago had been named the BlogHer of the Week. The post was on healthcare and our elected representatives and how the two don't work well together unless you're actually an elected representative yourself. I even got to use the word vagina (twice!).

I stand by what I wrote and in my focus on primarily Republican opponents of the public option, even as I am sick with shame about how my party--the only party I've ever called home in my entire political life--has rolled over at every step of the healthcare reform process. The Stupak amendment was really just the last, worst step. Kate Harding on Salon:

"...This is not our party. We've known that for too long, and yet the Democrats have known too well that they could bank on our money and our votes as long as the GOP remained even more not our party. But something's changed. 64 Democrats voted to block women's access to legal medical services. That may not be quite as repulsive as some Republican shenanigans, but the difference is only one of degree. If the point of women voting for "moderate" Democrats is to avoid a majority that's actively hostile to women, then those who voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment just proved that there's no point at all. And progressive women have finally had enough. We are ready to go there. Are Democrats ready to try getting elected without us?"

Yup.

I don't know where that leaves me. I've been holding my nose throughout this entire healthcare reform process--the process largely put together by the senior senator from MY OWN STATE--and I'm starting to think that the other side has won. Because what's emerged improves things, marginally and perhaps, but when I think about what needs to be in the bills under consideration and isn't, well, I just lose hope. 

People are dying. Not because of imaginary government death panels but because of real-life insurance company profit-mongering. People are suffering. People are going bankrupt. And an appalling percentage of our elected officials think that's just fine, so long as we don't in any possible way allow anything even vaguely resembling socialism--or compassion--to creep into our system. Oh, and so long as they get to say that they TOTALLY PWNED our president. Too bad we can't pay for a new healthcare system with a tax on hot air and broken promises.

Not my words

I'm stunned that Maine has turned out to be not a place where people live and let live but somewhere that people sit in judgment on others' relationships. For all my sadness about this outcome, however, I am still just a straight person stewing in my own privilege to love and marry the person I wanted to, to have children with him without fear of having them taken from one of us, to be at his side in a time of need (or have him at mine) with no questions asked. The best I can ever hope is to be a good ally, and I can't speak for anyone other than myself.

For some thoughts from someone personally affected by the small-mindedness of others, I want to offer the "blessing" that Jack, a longtime friend of Chip's who has also become my friend, posted on Facebook. I have reposted it here with his permission.

A Word to Opponents of Gay Marriage

May you all be blessed to know and love a gay person, perhaps a sibling, a cousin, or child of yours.
May you all be blessed to have the strength of character to admit that your votes have harmed a person you love, and beg that person's forgiveness.
May you be blessed to receive that forgiveness.
May you be blessed to work to change your world for the better when your eyes have finally opened.

Jack did a reading at our wedding 11 years ago, and he and his husband, Johnathan, both sang at that celebration. They were married last year just before California voters approved Proposition 8, leaving them in a bizarre legal limbo. They have been together as a couple for almost the exact same amount of time that Chip and I have. It is unbelievable to me that "majority rules" can be applied to the civil rights of the two of them and of other couples like them.

Shame on Maine. I can only hope that in the not-so-distant future, people will look back at this chapter of our history as we do at the anti-miscegenation laws of the past--with contempt and disbelief.

Edited to add, quoting Melissa McEwan at Comment is Free:

John Rogers once noted that "when the Supreme Court struck down the bans against interracial marriage in [1967] through [Loving v. Virginia], 72% of Americans were against interracial marriage. As a matter of fact, approval of interracial marriage in the US didn't cross the positive threshold until – sweet God – 1991".

That's exactly 30 years after our current president was born to an interracial couple.

Election day

It just doesn't match last year's epic battle, but today's elections are still important in some places. Here in Livingston, a triumvirate of astroturf-y right-wing candidates are seeking city commission seats, making a trip to the polls a necessity. In Washington and Maine, voters have the privilege of voting on other people's civil rights, which really defies belief. I can only hope that our friends on the extremes of each coast vote the right way. I can only imagine what it would be like to be waiting for a vote to decide if the primary relationship in my life was worthy of societal recognition.

In Maine, one of the best examples of actual changing mores came from World War II veteran Phillip Spooner who spoke movingly of his gay son and the importance of equality:

If you haven't watched this yet, I defy you to do so and not tear up. Let's face it, folks, if an 86-year-old man is defending gay marriage, we are not exactly talking about a cutting-edge issue anymore. It's not radical, the idea of people being able to love and form lifelong bonds with whomever they choose. It's simple fairness and equality. Let's hope the voters of Maine and Washington stand up for that.

In other election news, the whole day is being billed as a giant referendum on the Obama presidency, as if we will be able to tell definitively after today whether he's totally failed or maybe has a chance to not fail until a couple of years from now. When this line from an NPR report woke me up this morning, it was all I could do not to scream: "Congressional Republicans voted almost unanimously against the stimulus package, and they're quick to pounce each time new job losses are reported."

Quick to pounce? Quick to pounce? Boy, I'm glad somebody is enjoying the American workers' darkest hour. You know, I hated the Bush presidency with a fiery passion, but I never let that spill over into wishing for people to lose their jobs or get killed in wars just to prove a political point. And they say the "liberal elites" are anti-American? Please. All of the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs out there are making no secret of wanting Obama to fail, and how exactly does that benefit the country?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an election to vote in. I'm going to take my son to the polls so that he can see some small-town democracy in action.

One invisible hand clapping

There's just nothing like coming home to a letter from a collection agency to get that blood pressure gunning and the baby kicking. Uh, Mom? (Thunk.) Time to calm down. Mommy? Mother! (KER-thunk!)

The local hospital turned us in for the bill for Connery's emergency room visit in October, even though I've been disputing this bill with them since I first received it. Let's go back in time for a moment, so that we can recall the circumstances of said emergency room visit:

The ER doctor was the same one who had seen him back in April when we figured out that maybe this wasn't so much "mild" asthma. She was very reassuring as she ran through the various tests, and she ultimately decided to put him on a course of steroids, which she handed to us to take home and give him. At the time I thought to myself, why shouldn't we just give him the drugs now, at the hospital? All that became clear just minutes later in the kitchen of our house. PediaPred--the Only Children's Steroid Guaranteed To Taste Like 100% Ass!--was not too popular. He spit the first dose out (onto the leather daybed--note to self: medicine should not be given in formal living room. and also: duh.) and when I tried to re-administer it, he took three very brave gulps and proceeded to throw up the steroids and the entire contents of his stomach.

Those fun times were followed by this revelation:

In the morning, we called our regular doctor's office, and the nurse there said that the barf-o-rama was why they never prescribed Pedia-Pred.

Now, I was going to just let it go, the getting of the medicine that should not have been given to him and the subsequent buying of the medicine that we should have gotten in the first place, but when I got the bill for the visit, we had been charged $90 for the Pedia-Retch. That I couldn't just let go.

It took me a few days, but I eventually got to talk to a human at the hospital, and she agreed that we should not be charged for the medicine and pointed out that, in addition, we had been charged for the medicine twice, and would I like her to take care of that too? I would, and I thought she had, and all was fine. Until we started getting more bills for the visit that included the $90 prescription.

Because I am a slow learner and because I had been transferred about from department to department in the hospital like some kind of radioactive device, I did not have the name or department of the woman who was supposed to be taking care of this. And try as I might, I could not get anyone to return my calls to help me sort this out. I did keep trying. I'm sure I left at least a dozen messages in various departments, but no one ever called me back. Yesterday I got the letter informing me of the turnover to collections, so I called (again) hoping to find someone who could help me. I was again transferred around, put on hold and eventually told that someone would call me back. Imagine my amazement when someone actually did and was even helpful. We got it straightened out and I even remembered to get her name.

Today I got the letter from the collection agency and realized I was going to need to know the last name of the woman I talked to. So I called back to the original number I had called yesterday and asked to speak with the same person and was told there was no one by that name in the office. When I tried to explain that someone from their office would have had to have talked to the other person in order to get her to call me back, I was informed very snippily that there were a lot of people by that name and that I couldn't expect to find her with so little information.

So which is it? Are there no people by that name or lots of people? Was I to go about town screaming the name and hoping to run into the right person? She eventually transferred me to someone who wasn't at her desk (a huge shock) but whose department seemed to make sense on the voice mail. That's good enough for me. I sent off a letter of dispute today and will be interested to see what comes back.

This is one of the major hidden costs of our royally screwed healthcare system, by the way. I don't like to overvalue myself, but the fact that I have spent hours trying to fix this problem, this $90 problem, indicates just how super-efficient that great invisible hand really is. If I could reincarnate and then enslave Adam Smith right now I can tell you what his job would be: He'd be my go-to bitch for fighting with health insurance companies and sitting on hold with billing departments and leaving endless unreturned messages and filling out forms in triplicate, and I'd lend him out to my friends and family. He'd be like Prometheus with a headset, trying to maintain an unflappable calm while the vultures of bureaucracy* eat his liver and then charge him double for its regeneration every day, plus a $360 daily surcharge for tiny packets of Advil and single-size servings of JELL-O.

Not that I've thought about this at length or anything.

*When metaphors attack!

Now I actually *am* scared

But not of manufactured teacher sex abuse epidemics, as the AP tells me I should be.

No, what I'm scared of is the story contained in this post by La Lubu at Feministe. (H/T Melissa.) In "What Color Are the Holes in Your Parachute," the author describes the premature birth of her daughter, the baby's struggle for life, and her subsequent firing from her job, despite being--she thought--covered by the Family Medical Leave Act. And of course, in the United States, what does unemployment mean? That's right, no health insurance.

About six weeks after the birth, she received the first of the many medical bills to come. The total? $750,000.

And I laughed. Yes, I laughed. What the hell else could I do? Who the hell did they think was going to be pulling $750,000 out of her ass? Because it sure wasn’t me. At the Ronald McDonald House, I traded war stories with the other parents. Most of the parents there were long-termers—waiting for the call for new organs for their sick children. Everyone had lost their jobs because of their children’s medical crises. At least once. I met folks whose employers couldn’t be bothered to give them a week of time off. I met a family where both parents had hepatitis C (and that ain’t cheap, people); they were waiting for their toddler son to get a lung transplant. People from all over the nation. A nation of isolated medical crises.

Even if that's where she had stopped, this post would be worth reading in its entirety. But she manages to see the macro view of our country in a way that very few people do:

There are many myths in These United States (why do I keep wanting to type “Untied” States?). The myth of Individuality reigns above all. The idea that one stands, or falls, all on his or her own. It is at the root of the notorious historical amnesia this country suffers from. It informs racist and sexist beliefs. It distorts the ability of various progressive groups to organize around issues central to the fabric of our lives, let alone form coalitions with other progressive groups to aim towards and achieve justice for All. It is the poison in our well. This ridiculous notion that we can manage without the assistance of others.

Her conclusion:

...We are told that those who stumble are careless. That they should have planned better. Should have had more savings. Should have foreseen the deluge. Didn’t they know that it was inevitable? That they aren’t among the saved?

That is what is behind the opposition to S-CHIP. That those currently without a safety net, save that of their own wages and savings, should necessarily suffer. Should declare bankruptcy. It is their destiny. After all, if they were Worthy People, they would be able to come up with the money on their own. They would be able to find a sponsor. Hence, the number of benefit parties, barbecues, chili cook-offs, mostaccioli dinners, and poker runs held at taverns, union halls, churches (temples, masjids), and social clubs throughout the midwest and elsewhere; a desparate attempt to come up with some kind of money, and prove some kind of personal worth in the face of cancer, accidents, heart attacks, strokes, premature birth, job loss and any number of cascading personal crises that don’t tend to arrive alone. Half of all bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical bills.

What color are the holes in your parachute? The ones that you’ll see when, in a moment of need, you look up?

That's what's fucking scary in this country. Not teachers.

Not from Montana? Grab a phone.

I got this alert from Montana Women Vote and wanted to pass it along to any readers I might have in the states listed below. Please call. All kids deserve health care.

You heard in our last update that President Bush has vetoed the bi-partisan SCHIP expansion bill. The veto override vote is planned for this Thurday Oct. 18th. The votes will be there in the Senate, but more votes are needed in the House. All three Montana Congressmen have demonstrated support of the bill - so what can you do to help? We suggest you contact you contact passionate friends and family in the states below (you could forward or cut and paste this info) and ask them to:

1. Call 1-800-965-4701* and ask the Reps office
2. Deliver this simple message when connected: "I'm a constituent of Rep. _____ (or a resident of the state of XX) and I'm calling to urge him/her to vote to provide health coverage to millions of uninsured children by overriding the veto of the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (H.R. 976)."

States with Representatives to target:
Arkansas: Rep. John Boozman (R) Colorado: Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R) Florida: Rep. Tom Feeney (R) Georgia: Rep. James Marshall (D) Illinois: Rep. Tim Johnson (R) Indiana: Rep. Joe Donnelly Sr. (D) and Rep. Baron Hill (D) Ohio: Rep. Steve Chabot (R) Louisiana: Rep. Rodney Alexander (R); Michigan: Rep Timothy Walberg (R) and Joe Knollenberg (R) Mississippi: Rep. Gene Taylor (D) Missouri: Rep. Sam Greaves (R) New York: Rep. John "Randy" Kuhl (R) and Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R) North Carolina: Rep: Robin Hayes (R), Rep. Mike McIntyre (D), Rep. Heath Shuler (D), and Rep. Bob Etheridge (D) Oklahoma: Rep. David Daniel Boren (D) Texas: Rep. Kay Granger (R) Virginia: Rep. Thelma Drake (R) Wyoming: Rep. Barbara Cubin (R)

From the department of DUH

Via Salon's Machinist blog comes the not-so-startling news that "educational" DVDs for kids may not result in actual Baby Einsteins. Scientists at the University of Washington found, in the words of Farhad Manjoo, that:

Babies who watch the videos are less verbally proficient than those who do not; researchers found that for every hour that an infant between 8 to 16 months old spends watching a brain DVD, he understands, on average, 6 to 8 fewer words than a kid who didn't do Einstein.

As far as I'm concerned, you don't have to be any kind of scientist--rocket or otherwise--to figure out that these income-sucking DVDs are providing valuable time for parents to make dinner or...you know...blog. That's it. Dancing chickens do not a genius make, people. Of the available, expensive raft of "edutainment" offerings out there, we have found utility in only one: A Baby Einstein CD set of lullabies and other relaxing music. That set put Connery to sleep for at least the first two years of his life, while--undoubtedly--sowing the seeds for raw intellectual firepower due to the subliminal hypnotic suggestion of the magical Mozart.

Mozart is magical--music is magical--but not for any debunked effect on babies' brains. It's such a typically American thing, actually, to take something that the rest of the world enjoys on its merits--music, art, architecture--and try to turn it into a tool. We can't just have kids listening to and enjoying music, we have to use it to help them get into Harvard someday.

And now that parents have been told again and again that TV is verboten for young kids, it's easy to see why it would be comforting to think that your kids were actually learning something rather than having their brains rotted. It's all or nothing, baby. The American Way. If you let your kid watch television, you're a bad parent--or so we've been told. So instead of trying to come up with a common-sense approach--Gosh, maybe an hour of Sesame Street a couple of days a week isn't going to relegate her to a life of Gentlewoman's Cs--we try to circumvent the restrictions by creating "educational" children's programming. Now it's not just OK to let Baby tune in, it's actually neglectful not to, so you'd better get yourself to Costco to by that $179.99 Baby Einstein box set.

Maybe this study--common-sensical as it may seem--could be a start to breaking that cycle. But I wouldn't count on it. If there's one thing we Americans don't know how to do (besides take enough vacations) it's exhibit anything approaching moderation.

Yeah, what she said

Normally, I probably wouldn't link to a post entitled "I Hate George Bush." I mean, it's not exactly something most progressives haven't thought in their heart of hearts. But in her post about Bush's imminent veto of the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program, Melissa McEwan manages to get beyond the obvious to explain why she has her hate on:

Quite simply, I hate this president, I hate his administration, I hate his entire fucking political party and all their asshole supporters, and this story is perfectly exemplary of why.

His rationale for veto, see, is that if the program is expanded, greedy parents everywhere will throw off the shackles of private insurance and seek relief in the government-run program. Because heaven knows most people don't have enough bureaucracy in their lives and would gladly sign on for something that would, in effect, double the amount of crap they have to go through to help their family get medical care.

As McEwan says,

That’s the kind of thinking right there that makes me hate them. What person in his or her right fucking mind honestly believes that there are people just waiting for a government program to take advantage of so they can move their already insured kids onto a government-run program? And not just a few people here and there, but hordes of them—so many just waiting to bilk the government that we can’t afford to risk insuring kids who aren’t insured, because of all the horrible adults laying in wait to screw the taxpayers, including, presumably, themselves, since they obviously work (and pay taxes) if their kids are already insured.

Jebus. I hate these people. I hate them. They’re the reason sayings like “A thief always thinks someone is stealing from him” exist. They have such poor characters—so deeply devoid of the tiniest wee modicum of integrity, conscience, or honesty—that they can’t begin to imagine there are people who don’t grab whatever they can get their dirty little paws on, irrespective of whether they need it or whether it’s ethical to take.

I'd not heard that saying about the thief before, but if that doesn't perfectly sum up the ethics of this administration, I don't know what does. They are minutely concerned with "Welfare Queens" and potentially avaricious parents, and yet fraud and deception on a massive scale is completely ignored.

McEwan:

I hate that they call us the America-haters, as they wrap themselves in the flag and declare themselves the True Patriots while turning America into a nation where the natural and philosophical resources are raped and destroyed in the acquisition of more wealth, where philanthropy and empathy are relegated to little more than cute, clichéd memories, and where the barrel-chested barons of a new Gilded Age stand astride the bodies of those who have been condemned to less fortunate fates, singing the praises of social Darwinism and bellowing about the superfluity of a social safety net. “The government never gave me anything!” they declare, as they deposit their million-dollar checks from their latest no-bid Defense Department contract then head off to Tiffany’s to get the Little Woman a bauble with their fat tax return.

Yeah, what she said.

Guess what I've been doing today

Hint: It's not working.

I've been pawing through Connery's Thomas the Tank Engine paraphernalia, trying to figure out if I've been slowly poisoning his brain by buying him train sets. Like most little kids, Connery loves Thomas, and while we've avoided the madness temptation of getting him the crazy table with the gazillion-dollar setup, piece by piece, he does own several sets of the "Take-Along Thomas" toys. None of them seems to be among the items recalled, but when has that ever stopped a worry-crazed mother?

Besides, I'm sure that the set at Barnes & Noble is the wooden, expensive, recalled kind, and we've wiled away plenty of shopping hours there. Hell, B&N is a bona fide destination, the kind of thing I can use to bribe Connery with if we've got a bunch of not-so-fun errands to do. I have no idea what we'll find the next time we visit there.

The whole thing really pisses me off. The vast majority of toy manufacturers sent their factories off to China years ago. Have you tried to find something Made in the USA in Toys 'R' Us lately? It's much like searching for some mythical creature that you've heard about but never seen. (Santa Claus? I last saw him on Aisle 26, but don't expect him to be there when you get there.) Toys are Made in China, even the expensive ones like the wooden Thomas sets. Made in China means that many of the laws we like to adhere to in the United States--crazy, far-out things like "no lead in paint for kids" and "no deadly chemicals in toothpaste"--are not enforced in any way. I wish I were exaggerating. Here's what the New York Times reported this morning:

China manufactured every one of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the United States so far this year, including the enormously popular Thomas & Friends wooden train sets, a record that is causing alarm among consumer advocates, parents and regulators...

...Over all, the number of products made in China that are being recalled in the United States by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in the last five years, driving the total number of recalls in the country to 467 last year, an annual record.

It also means that China today is responsible for about 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000.

Add that, if you will, to the pet food recall and poison toothpaste and I would hope that you'd get some consumers wondering what the hell is going on. Of course, it's partially our own fault. We didn't choose to have our manufacturing sector move everything offshore, but we didn't exactly stage boycotts of the products or rush out from the local WalMart and Target to look for artisinal U.S.-made toys. How many of us even bothered to look where a toy came from the last time we shopped? If you're like me, you probably knew it was made overseas but felt like there weren't many other options.

And it's not just the toys. Other items made for kids--like furniture--are also being manufactured without many safety standards in factories far from us. There was a woman in Bozeman who tried to make a go of selling only non-toxic, high-quality furniture for kids. It was beautiful stuff, but not enough people were willing or able to pay the price for the better stuff. She closed after less than a year. Still, the cheaper stuff ought to be safe as well. Just because you can't afford a thousand-dollar crib doesn't mean you love your baby any less.

I don't know what the answer is. I do hope that this will open some eyes as to the trade-off we've all made for cheaper goods. We all love a bargain, but not at the cost of our health.