Dancing with Myself

Celebrity as Royalty

I was having mixed feelings about the relevancy of Caroline Kennedy and her uncle Ted endorsing Barack Obama.  Who cares?  I even wrote about it, but before I could publish it, someone else wrote about it much better than had I.

Bravo, Dr. Swift, bravo!  Well said, sir.  Well said.  Go read this incredible post.  You owe it to yourself.  Now when's the last time you heard me say that?

Obama Wins in South Carolina!

Whoo, Whoo! 

I was on the computer reading blogs while listening to MSNBC dissect the South Carolina Democratic Presidential Primary.   While most would see it as an Obama victory, Tim Russert and others of his ilk are practically triumphant in their characterizing it as a Clinton loss.

I like Barack.  He's not my favorite, but he'll do.  Same goes for Hillary.  She'll do.  I'm a marginalized voter.  I have only one issue:  the Supreme Court.  Because of that, I have to vote for whomever the Democratic Party's nominee for President is.  I am willing to compromise all of my other issues to this one.  The Republicans all are idiots when it comes to the Supreme Court.  Dangerous idiots.

This will be the first time in all of my voting life when my vote in the California primary actually has a value.  In the past, by the time we got to choose, the race was over.  The time previous to this when it mattered was 1968 when Bobby Kennedy won the primary, only to lose it to an assassin.

I've already voted, by the way.  I'm just happy that it might mean something.  Go John Edwards.

UPDATE:

This morning on Meet the Press, Maureen Dowd referred to Sen. Obama's victory speech in South Carolina as being "angry in tone."  I just watched it.  Didn't sound angry to me.  Except maybe ...  hey, maybe it's just me, but  some of the anger tone of Obama's Big Speech is deliberate.  A prophet heralding a new age has to have a touch of anger at the old age.  Otherwise, why is there a need for a new age?  Oh, and Maureen Dowd is a bloviating idiot blinded by her hatred of the Clintons.  She farts constantly and believes that she's singing.

I'm slowly being convinced that Sen. Obama will make a good candidate.  I mean no disrespect to Sen. Obama with this analogized question, but "what does the dog do when he catches the car it's been chasing?"  Seems to me that we need something more than just the dog pissing on the wheel.  I'm just saying, that's all.

Blogoversary

I've been having a good time with blogging since 2002.  It gave me a much healthier social outlet than what I was getting hanging out at my local bar.  It didn't replace my regular friends, it just supplemented them with virtual ones.  Also, being the first of my set to start blogging, it also made me more interesting.  I was suddenly getting input from an incredible variety of sources.  I work the blogosphere the same way I work cocktail parties:  I mingle widely and freely.  I follow links freely and love to read heart felt rants by articulate people of every stripe, color, persuasion that you can imagine.  It's fun.

I also get to hang out with some very interesting people.  Remember when we first started blogging how important blogrolls were?  I was ecstatic the first time someone added my blog to their blogroll.  I immediately reciprocated.  We were all giddy with the unmitigated joy that comes from people who have just learned to astrally project.  It was like we were in this huge virtual cocktail party where your character was the side of you that is most charming, most intellectual, never has a bad hair day, and is always impeccably dressed even if at home you're still in your boxers.  How cool is that?

I still maintain my blogroll with deliberation.  I add and drop blogs.  I add quickly and freely to remember that there was something I liked about the particular writer and to make it easy to go back.  If after a dozen or so return visits I don't get anything from the visited blog, I drop it from my list, because if the blogroll is too long, it takes me too long to visit all of the writers whom I find interesting.  Some blogs are very personal journals, and if after half a dozen or so visits without some sort of personal exchange, I remove them from my blogroll.  It's too creepy.  I feel like I'm stalking.  Likewise, some blogs function like high school cliques.  If you're not part of their imagined "A list" no one will interact with you.  Okay, bye bye.

Most of the commenters to my posts are writers whose blogs are listed in my blogroll, which I call Interesting People.  I think each of us has the potential to be the most interesting person at any particular cocktail party at which we might find ourselves.  What makes conversation interesting, however, is the give and take of divergent opinion.  Be too pedantic and no one wants to linger and listen.  Pedantic diatribes tire the eyes faster than missing a night's sleep.  Of course, each of us has the potential to be the most pedantic asshole at the cocktail party.  I hate when it's me.

Sometimes the most intelligent thing one can say is to say nothing.  I pass by some very interesting conversations about subjects about which I know nothing.  I used to get nervous when that happened until I realized I was getting a negative feeling based on an old paranoia.  I can remember finding myself in classes at college where I knew I was out of my league.  None of us like to think there are leagues we can't play in, but by the age of 30, hopefully we begin to accept the fact gracefully.  Anyone who hasn't learned that by age 60 is probably a self-absorbed, narcissistic asshole.  I'm just saying, that's all.

It's very flattering when you get attention from guys in the Bigger Leagues.  It's humbling when you see your readership numbers spike because some A-list blogger says something nice about you on the record, so to speak, by linking to you.  It leaves me feeling self-conscious for a short while.  I write best when I'm not paying attention to whom else in the room.

I've really grown in my ability to write in these past six years.  Nothing improves your writing skills like actually doing it a lot.  I don't know if I have any more to say today than I had six years ago, but I'm willing to bet that even if I'm saying nothing, I'm writing it better.  Maybe that's enough. 

Happy blogoversary to me.  Six years, 150,000 hits later, I'm still going at it, but then, who's counting?

Discussing Health Care

Kathy (http://stevenbell.blogspot.com/) poses a serious question and it deserves a serious answer.  Frist the question:

You seem like a smart person. I don't understand why you and others, who clearly see how our government screws up so many things so badly, can possibly support government health care.

I don't want the Republicans to fix health care, because they can't. The Democrats sure as hell can't do it either and Hilary's health plan is one of the scariest things I imagine when I think of hte possibility of her getting into office.

If you haven't faced a serious health condition first hand, I think it's difficult to see how completely people have been screwed over by government health plans.

This subject comes up frequently on one of the pediatric brain tumor groups I help moderate. Hundreds of members, from all over the world, including from some of the countries we hold up as examples of what a good government-run plan should look like.

So this topic came around recently again, we need a good health plan to take care of us.

Government-sponsored plans are like HMO's, they work great when you don't have a medical condition that's expensive to treat.

But you got to read about Ellen's experience in Canada firsthand. Ellen had metastatic renal cell cancer, even though she lived with it for years, she was considered terminal.

So, when she got a little bump on her face, a metastasis, that could have been removed by a simple outpatient surgery, the government said that terminal patients can't have surgery for metastases, only radiation.

So poor woman ended up puking her guts out for over a month because radiation is cheaper than surgery.

Then there's the matter of antinausea drugs for treatment-related nausea. The good drugs are Zofran (ondansetron), Kytril, Anzamet. Miracle drugs, the nausea is gone with no side effects.

There are also cheap drugs available, benadryl and phenergan for example. Both will knock you flat AND they don't work.

But Canada wouldn't pay for good drugs for Ellen, and when they did, they'd give her something like 3 pills for a month.

Zofran is designed to be given 3 times a day, not 3 times a month.

I know personally over half a dozen families who have crossed the border to the U.S. because MRI's are a scarce resource in Canada, they come over here and pay $2000 so they can get an MRI today instead of in 6 weeks.

One boy I know died waiting for his MRI while the parents fretted over whether or not to pay for an MRI here that they could little afford.

Obviously this is a sore topic with me, but it's the truth. I may have to pay more than I otherwise would, but I could take either one of my boys down to the ER today and if I screamed long and hard enough, they'd get their MRI before 24 hours had passed.

In Canada, that's not necessarily possible. In my online group, this experience has been echoed over and over, in the U.K., in Australia.

I don't want Hilary or any other government idiot telling me what medical care I can or can't have. The lives of my kids is way too precious to place in her hands.

Besides, where will we go for MRI's when she gets her hands on our health plan?

So very many things about our nation's health are screwed up right now, but placing our lives in the hands of a screwed-up government and taking away our free choice about medical decisions is not the way to go.

And that's what I think about that.

To begin with, Kathy, I don’t believe Sen. Clinton’s universal healthcare coverage is based on the Canadian model.  And because it isn’t, I’m not sure what the relevance of paragraphs 7 through 17 is, and not being a Clinton fan, I’m not interested in defending it to you or anyone else.  Of all of the Democrats in the race, only Dennis Kucinich has proposed a single-payer system similar to the other western democracies.  (Note:  of all of the western democracies, the U.S. is the only one that doesn’t have some system of guaranteed healthcare for its citizenry.)

Let’s talk about the “superior” American system.  Don’t have any serious, long-term problems in the U.S. without insurance.  We may have the best cancer care industry in the world, but there is a buy-in price that eliminates a huge number of people who will die sooner rather than later because of the inequality of care.  Sure, we have a few general hospitals that offer service to the poor on a first come, first served basis.  As a Christian, do you feel that your responsibility to the poor is satisfied with King-Drew in L.A.?

I agree that we have been poorly served in this country by our government.  In 1993, the Republican Party and its allies among the Democrats, completely shot down any attempt at healthcare reform.  They did not offer an alternative to Mrs. Clinton’s plans.  They just shot her plan down.  In the past dozen years, they have offered nothing, save one boondoggle of a pharmaceutical plan which helps seniors pay for overly expensive medicines, but which benefits the pharmaceutical industry much more than it benefits individuals.  I give the Republicans complete credit on that one.  They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency.  It is their plan, and it’s a very expensive plan.

You seem to imply that not having any sort of government guarantee of healthcare is by far more beneficial to having any sort of government plan.  That’s always easier for someone who has health insurance to say.  But let’s look at what we do have for a moment.  Do you think having private insurance guarantees you treatment?  Ever have to wait in line for a kidney?  I believe a young woman in Southern California died recently because her private carrier considered the recommended treatment to be experimental. 

If it weren’t for government intercession, no one sick in this country would be able to get insurance.  It would fall into the same category as car and homeowners insurance:  you can’t use it but once, because after you’ve used it once, your rates go up disproportionately to the cost to the insurance company.  That’s the free market system without government regulation.

What you seem to fail to grasp is how truly awful the system is in this country.  You’d rather take potshots at Hillary Clinton than to hold your own political party to any sort of standard for anything.  Your political party has not participated in the debate over healthcare.  Your party instead has given us a war in Iraq which has cost us close to half a TRILLION dollars thus far.  If that money were spent here, Kathy, we could guarantee everyone in this country exemplary healthcare.

The overwhelming majority of people in this country have indicated their desire for the government to make healthcare more accessible to everyone.  It is the function of government to respond to the voiced demands of its population. 

I’m personally very tired of hearing Republicans scream “socialized medicine” each time an attempt is made to make healthcare universally accessible.  There are much scarier things about which we should worry.  It’s too bad Republicans weren’t screaming and demanding “decent, honest government” as their President and Congress screwed this country these past seven years. 

If you don’t like what the Democrats are proposing, propose something better.  Work with them rather than just simply attacking various plans because you have a visceral dislike for one of the Democratic candidates for President.  Universal health care is going to happen in this country in some form or another whether you like it or not, whether you approve of it or not.  If you participate in the discussion perhaps your experience and insight will help to guide the planning of the system we will eventually have.

Meanwhile, I found a site where Americans are begging for help.  It sure makes me feel like our system is superior to the Canadians, the English, Australians, New Zealanders, the French, Germans, all of the Scandinavian countries.  Yep, it sure does make me feel superior:  http://www.google.com/Top/Society/People/Requesting_Help/Medical_Needs/

Personally, I’ve been dealing with HIV for over 20 years now.  I, too, have some experience with healthcare delivery in this country, and like you, I too have strong opinions.  Unlike you, however, I don’t blame those who would seek to reform our system for our bad system.  I do blame those who only know how to oppose change for the inability of our system to improve.

Stop it! Everyone, just stop it!

I've been trying to keep an open mind through this election cycle.  That means I have to actually listen to the candidates when they're asked stupid questions by even stupider questioners.  I have now reached a saturation point with the candidates speaking in the royal "We." 

Barack Obama was being interviewed by one of the faces on early morning TV the other day.  He did not once use the words "I" or "my" or "me."  It was "we" and "our."  You'd have thought he was fucking pregnant, and I don't even like it when expectant mothers say "we."  By no means is he alone, but so far he has been the worst offender. 

We know it's unbridled egomania that drives most of the people who are running for President.  Jeez, how many times has McCain run?  This is off point, but don't you think if McCain were motivated by love of country he might have had a few more things to say about how badly Bush & Co. fucked us over?  I'm just saying, that's all.  What a disaster that creep would be as President.  Four more years of increased belligerancy in the world, yeah, that's what we need.  For sure!

This past week as I watched the slugfest between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, I voted for someone else.  I voted for John Edwards.  He has consistently given voice to more liberal and more Democratic ideas.  He'd be a real president, not someone who is a Democratic version of Reagan, only lite.  My second choice at this point in time is Hillary Clinton.  Let's get something straight.  If Obama were to be nominated and subsequently elected, what's he going to do, ask the Republicans to make nice in the Rodney King manner "Can't we all get along?"

No, it's going to be some bruising battles.  Assholes don't give up their power quickly.  It's going to take both Clintons to fight the Repugs if we hope to see any of the changes the American people are demanding.  Anyone who thinks that Republicans are going to do anything about delivering health care are delusional.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues

Sally Jo Bridge died today.  She was one of the most interesting and dynamic women I have ever known.  She was funny, and she could sing the blues.  She also lived the blues. 

I'm not sure what happened, or when, but Sally Jo crashed much too early in life, and alcohol robbed her of happiness and health until she died today from lung cancer most likely brought on by smoking cigarettes for forty or more years. 

I may come back and add to this, but for right now, I'm going to have a drink, listen to some Bonnie Raitt, and remember me and Sally Jo going crazy in Colorado in the late 70s.

Left to right, Georgia Berry, Jim Kaiser and Sally Jo at the hospice in Anchorage last month. I was able to visit with Sally Jo a couple of times when I was there at Christmas.  Georgia, Sally Jo and I went to Boulder, Colorado in late 1976 and met Jim, but that's another story left for another time.

Sally Jo was born and raised in rural Alaska.  Her father was a state trooper back in the days when they were a lot more like our popular idea of Canadian Mounties.  Kids growing up in rural Alaska are tough and know how to take care of themselves.

After listening to a few songs, I knew the song that brought it all home.  Guilty by Randy Newman.

Yes, baby, I been drinkin'
And I shouldn't come by I know
But I found myself in trouble, darlin'
And I had nowhere else to go

Got some whisky from the barman
Got some cocaine from a friend
I just had to keep on movin'
Til I was back in your arms again

I'm guilty, baby I'm guilty
And I'll be guilty all the rest of my life
How come I never do what I'm supposed to do
How come nothin' that I try to do ever turns out right?

You know, you know how it is with me baby
You know, you know I just can't stand myself
And it takes a whole lot of medicine
For me to pretend that I'm somebody else

Sally Jo always said "Wild women don't get the blues, they sing just sing 'em." 

Best Reason Yet to Vote for Hillary Clinton

If Hillary gets elected President of the United States, there will be a mass, simultaneous explosion of the heads of Andrew Sullivan, Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly, unless they explode when she gets the nomination itself.  I seriously thought Chris Matthews might be close to having a stroke Tuesday night, but it was just a conniption fit.  Same goes for Dowd and Sullivan.  Most ridiculous thing Sullivan has said to date: 

I've tried to be gracious when appropriate. I have aired defenses of them. But I have to say this email has brought me up short in ways others have not. It isn't so much the content of my criticisms but the tone. I will probably fail to get the better of my emotions when it comes to the good Senator and ex-president. I'm a human being writing in real time with no filters. That's blogging. But, while not stinting on legitimate criticism, I'm going to try a little harder to be a little more temperate.  [Emphasis mine.]

Anyone want to add some additional names to this Rogues Gallery of Clinton haters?

So Many Good Choices

I'm glad Hillary won in New Hampshire, just as I was glad she lost in Iowa.  I just watched Obama's speech in New Hampshire.  I really like listening to that man preach.  The following song came to mind.  This is for you, Barack.

I'm not Hillary Clinton's biggest fan.  In fact, she is my fourth favorite of the candidates still in the race.  However, if she's the nominee of the Democratic Party, I will be her most enthusiastic supporter.  She's a good and honorable woman.  I do not understand the hostility many people have towards her.  I say to them, tell me why you like the person you're voting for.  I'm not interested in how much you hate the person you're voting against.  I would challenge you to honestly examine why you have such a visceral reaction to Hillary Clinton, who is, as I said already, a good and honorable woman.

Meanwhile, I'm hot for Barack.  Yes we can, Barack, yes we can.