Old Broad's Hood

Why I'm not the one to fix health care

2009-09-21T16:47:00.002-05:00

Yeppo, health care needs to be fixed.

Somewhere along the line, I'm convinced we're going to have to take a leap of faith. And hope those dealing the cards are smarter than the average bear. My dilemma is when and where to jump.

I need more when told a public option will force competition among health care providers. Perhaps that would be enough if we were talking simple one-on-one competition. But I know enough (some say to be dangerous) to know it's not that simple.

The corporation my husband lately retired from provides some health care (I won't say all, we pay our part, a part that is dramatically rising BTW) for more than 30,000 employees and I don't know how many retirees.

The corporation offers a handful of health care plans, each by a different insurance company. However, the corporation is actually self insured, meaning, simplistically, that the health care providers really only administrate. The company pays the bills.

That's the extent of my understanding. I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than that. But even knowing that much tells me that simple competition between insurance companies is not, well, simple. At least in this case, the insurance company is only the middle man. Here, apparently, the public option is competing with the profits of not only the insurance company, but the underlying corporation's pockets.

Here's hoping all I've been hearing about solutions is purposefully being dumbed down for my benefit.

I apologize for all the cliches. They're the haven of a struggling mind, doncha know.

Pop Goes the (tort reform) Weasel?

2009-09-20T12:31:00.008-05:00

Tort reform has been flicked around frequently as one part of the solution(s) to rising health care costs.

I’m not sure many are thinking past knee jerk reactions. Again.

As a former reporter with many of those years covering primarily state and federal civil courts, there are some givens when it comes to medical malpractice suits.

A percentage of medmal suits are iffy at best, purely frivolous at worst. Filed by those looking for a fast buck.
Medical malpractice insurance companies, in a vast majority of those cases, settle both good and bad suits mostly on a cost to defend vs. cost of possible large damage awards, rather than merits of cases. Defense lawyers and trial costs are astronomical. Even more so than those of plaintiffs’ attorneys, if you discount the percentage of awards the latter take. And the defense costs sometimes outclass in fee structure even with plaintiffs’ attorney percentages counted. Those above, especially share holders, looking for a large, fast buck. Get the picture?

If tort reform becomes more prevalent than it already is, say tort damages limited by federal laws rather than a handful of states, there could be a yet-to-be voiced cause and effect.

Fit the above points with a cap on damages. The logical next step in this bottom-line-is-all scenario is:

Medical malpractce insurance companies, faced with known caps on damage awards will settle even more cases without looking at merits.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys (especially the infomercial buying, unscrupulous kind) will quickly read the writing on the wall. Leading to:
Even more iffy and frivolous medmal suits will clog insurance defense attorneys’ case loads and, in many cases, court filing desks.
Those cases will then be settled by bottom line insurance companies on their defense costs vs. settlement calculations.

“Round and round the cobbler’s bench, the monkey chased the weasel…”

Bet your bottom dollar medical malpractice insurance costs will not go down. And neither will medical care (read: healthcare) costs.

Simple, knee jerk reactions seldom solve long term problems, do they?

Second chorus:

We haven't even begun to discuss those truly wronged by the medical community, who deserve and need large awards, wrongs and injuries caused by medical professionals, some of whom make mistakes because they are overworked and underpaid by insurance companies and share holders looking for the large, fast buck....

Transitions

2009-09-13T16:31:00.003-05:00

Yeppo, more than a year between entries. Not too bad. You can see where I left off, mid campaign. All the spin made my normal state, psychotropic drug dizzy, so much more so to be intolerable. And blogging became too much like work, my past work, my abandoned occupation or forced retirement depending on which side of the horseshoe desk you're on.

I've preferred Twitter. More like hit and run opining. See it, vent it, go back to ironing linens like it never smashed through my life. Past editors who pulled their hair out and turned the air blue over my need to push deadlines and story length would find it laughable that I can fit a thought into 140 characters. Even with my tendency toward triple tweeting.

To the point, I felt the need for a transition. Between then and now. Today it occurred to me that those points and problems of last June seem small compared to the present. I've heard it said clinical depression is less among the poverty stricken. Not strictly because they can't afford a clinic to be diagnosed in, but because in their survival mode of trying to buy food, pay bills, clothe children, they just don't have time.

Well, it seems there is less time in a lot of our lives lately. I can't decide whether real angst, over how to get through next month, heightens or trumps the virtual panic caused by brain chemicals that don't pay attention to rising unemployment and an IRA that doesn't appear will provide enough to live long term. I figure that one will sort itself out when we finally do crash and I can't afford those numbing drugs anymore. Or things pick up and the environmentally caused anxiety lessens.

Either way, this ain't Kansas, Dorothy.

Act in haste, regret...

2008-06-01T15:26:00.005-05:00

Excuse me if I'm dense, but isn't counting super delegates before the convention on-point to polling a jury mid deliberation?

I know the media wants it over, I know Obama wants it over. However, in 12 years of covering trials, both criminal and civil, I've known lots of prosecutors, and sometimes defendants, who wanted cases decided prematurely. And some of them would have been a lot better off if they had.

Wasn't the super delegate system set up to act only if there was a change of direction between the last primary and the convention? Or to act as a jury in a deadlocked tie after each candidate presented his or her entire case?

Are Democrats forgetting a rush to judgment that cost Al Gore that big desk in the oval office? Maybe then he could have prevented "decider" from entering our vocabularies.

The media wants us to think the super delegates are just another voting block. They also want us to think those who say they have committed to either candidate (Obama) not long ago said the same about Clinton. Many super delegates want us to believe they are the "deciders." Gives them more cache. And higher profiles.

I seem to be beating on "the media" incessantly. But they seem to have forgotten their mission is to report the news. Yes, that most times involves interpreting. But not to the point of distortion.

My tolerance level for bullshit and being patronized gets lower everyday.

Hubris and Manipulations

2008-06-01T12:00:00.002-05:00

Sunday morning talking heads. To a person, host and guest, all are too enamored of the process, not the meat. Hubris abounds. Obvious questions go unasked and unanswered. No news there.

I'm sickened and glad I deal antique linens now instead of running with the media pack dogs.
In the mode of pointing out the obvious:

All morning, Obama's team has been dismissing popular vote counts. It's about the delegates, they profess. So why does Obama's team and media like CNN and NewYork Times, put my home state, Missouri in the Obama win column?
Obama won the popular vote here 49 percent to 48 percent. But in delegates, it's a tie ~ 41 Clinton, 41 Obama.

Perhaps it's a small thing. But it's the small things that have twisted this Democratic primary season into a knot.

And it looks like all those poor voters in Michigan and Florida who dragged themselves to the polls at daylight before work, or stood in lines after, or dragged kids with them in the afternoon, or aided by walkers painfully made their way to the booths and had no say about nonsensical "rules" that they had no place in making...well, half of them could have stayed home.

It's clearer everyday that, just as the large corporations are running the country, a handful of power-hungry politicos, not voters, are deciding this election.

Seems like Nixon's silent majority has turned into the ignored majority.

Second OOT award this week

2008-04-27T10:42:00.011-05:00

Rep. Davis: A spade is not just a spade

I'm so enraged, my 55-year-old butt spent time in my chair blogging instead of still curled on the couch drinking coffee and smoking my fifth morning cigarette.

This morning, on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Barack Obama chief supporters Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala) and Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) were facing off against Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind) and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, (D-TX), Hillary Clinton chief supporters.

Davis, allegedly and by all indications black, said we should all "call a spade a spade."

Yes, he most likely meant we should accept the obvious. It's what the phrase means. At least to dyed in the wool racists.

Ironically, Davis was discussing racism in the party. He touted the Clintons as "pioneers in the American South" on civil rights but said with their [in my mind misconstrued] racial attacks were "eroding their own legacy. " And his legacy and understanding of his racial history? It's where?

Hmm. Does Davis refer to his constituents by the N word? Or spooks? Do those words and their hateful implications register? Yeah, I know those words like I know bitch and cunt. And wish I didn't.

It's not an obscure phrase, as many racist idioms go. If nothing else, said dear husband, doesn't he remember the scene in 1968s Bye, Bye Blackbird , a George Segal-starring spoof of The Maltese Falcon? Segal sitting in a room of men, his name [Spade] called and all the black guys stand up.

Guess the Obama campaign is as out of touch with the black community as it is with working class whites. As an aside, that's from our OOT media hype. There are truly anti-racist whites and working class blacks.

If the words had come from Hillary or Bill's mouth -- don't think so-- or one of her chief supporters, she'd be vilified, possibly stoned. And, even an ardent Hillary supporter as I am, I'd have thrown like Bob Gibson on a streak.

The present out-of-touch award goes to Davis. Sorry Williams. Infamy is fleeting.

Shame, shame, shame Davis.

For those of you who want to get into the etymological argument of the meaning of the phrase back 700 years, the contemporary usage of it at least for most of the last century has been as an ethnic slur. You might want to pick up a copy of Wolfgang Mieder's Call a Spade a Spade: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur : A Case Study.

This week's out-of-touch award

2008-04-25T19:06:00.004-05:00

Brian Williams on NBC evening news tonight, did his "our favorite story" on a new AT&T policy.
With evident mirth, he reported that the cell phone giant will be levying a $2 fee for payments in person ~ charging for a customer service agent to take the payment.

Evidently no one of the high paid news crew or anchors gave a thought to who pays in person, and usually with cash.

Duh, poor people. People without a checking account (or one that is so low that checks clearing can be a crap shoot), and/or with no credit card.

Guess it never crossed his mind poor people need to reach out an touch someone. Cell phones can be cheaper than land lines and there is the added benefit that collection agencies that already plague a lot of these people's lives can't easily get the numbers. Yet anyway.

Adding another $2 charge to these people's swiftly depleting resources is criminal, not comedy relief for an evening newscast.

Shame, shame Williams.

More shameful is we rely on the fourth estate to be credible, rely on Williams and the rest of NBCs news staff to tell us whether Obama is really out of touch. And their basis for judging that is what?

He double dog dared me

2008-04-06T15:43:00.003-05:00

So I haven't blogged in well over a year.

Molly Ivins died.

Dick Gephardt hasn't publicly uttered a "Nah, nah, I told you so" over NAFTA.

Too many are drinking the Obama Kool-aid. Oh, don't waste your breath. You all still think ambition and assertiveness in a woman is mean, unnatural and somehow corrupt. I'm weary of being a member of the largest "minority" in this country ~ the only one that it is still permissible to publicly degrade.

Not? Oh, yeah? How about Susan Pinker pimping her book all over NBC. You know, The Sexual Paradox in which she says our "cuddle" hormones keep women from WANTING the male dominated jobs. The world according to Phyllis Schlafly redux. And, no, I'm not giving you a link. If you want to read it, find it yourself. And while you do, think how that kind of reasoning would go over if theorized about any other minority's performance.

I need to point out you are reading narrative from a woman who made three full-grown male lawyers sob real tears in a two-week time period (an Atlanta journalism record) and who also has in her file a recommendation letter from an editor that says I work motherhood and good reporting into a nice performance. That from a job that netted me a national and several state news writing awards.

So, for awhile, I quit banging my head against brick walls.
I wanted my "Buy American" bumper sticker back (then courtesy of the now nearly nonexistent UAW).
Angsting over nonsensical governmental moves hurt my head.
I was beginning to believe I was on acid again, only without the pretty trailers.

Then my son the Twitterer put together Twubble in two days. After reminding him he has yet to post the Christmas pictures of my granddaughter, I started to question him about his Twitters.

"It's not for old people, Mom," he said.

Sounded like a double dog dare to me. Guess I just don't have those cuddle hormones.

And the fairies came

2006-12-19T17:51:00.000-06:00

Funniest aside on a home decorating show: HGTV's Design on a Dime designers Spencer Anderson and Brice Cooper (I believe), were adding the finishing touches to a tablescape for an Old World Christmas decorating show. To Brice’s question about the significance of the holly Spencer was tucking under a yule log candleholder, Spencer replied, “It was revered because it stayed green during the really cold months when everything else died and they [the Celts] thought if they placed it in their homes it would invite fairies to come in…” Both designers and the segment dissolved into laughter.

It is us

2006-12-17T00:06:00.000-06:00

Yes, peons, Time magazine's pick of this year is us. Well, they dubbed it You. Does that mean they are them? If so, who are us?

I might be tempted to voice an opinion on the subject, but I'm too busy checking Ihateameren.com to see if our state government is finally going to do something to make sure Ameren doesn't leave more than a half million St. Louisans without power for a week for a third time this year. And checking eBay to see if in this federal government declared "good economy" I've sold that $4k worth of items for a couple hundred dollars. And perusing blogs and news sites to find out what other hidden agendas will pop up around the Baker-Hamilton committee report that may mean one or both of my sons will end up ankle deep in Middle East sand. And finding out if the new medication my third-in-one-year primary physician prescribed will coexist with my other medications prescribed by other past and present physicians according to people who have really taken the drug, not just drug company literature. And posting questions on chatboards to see if there is a way to keep my husband from creating a wind tunnel through his nose and mouth (thus passing his lungs) when he falls asleep with his CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine on and his jaw drops or whether the CPAP is just another way for health insurers to bypass more expensive procedures. And then there's the search to try to find out where the hell the USDA was when all that E. coli infested greens made it to the end-users...

Time says all this is "a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail." Far as I can see, it can't get any worse. And we may end up with fewer of them. Whoever them may be...

Power shopping

2006-11-18T23:42:00.000-06:00

I spent an hour and a half in Marshall's tonight. Waded through racks of misplaced items. Got dirty, sweaty and frustrated. Got sniped at by a scruffy teen aged stock boy. Waited 10 minutes at the register (after waiting 15 to get there) for a price check on a $16 tee shirt. Spent some money. Got one thing I went in for.
Walked in Dillard's 15 minutes before closing. Threw the right pair of shoes, in the right size, on sale, to DH to pay for. Rode the escalator upstairs. Two women asked me specific questions; the three of us found everything I needed, all but one item on sale (I swear, at I wasn't looking at the tags). Spent $250 for seven items. Saleswomen were pleasant, carefully covered my clothes on the hangers, smiled as we left and said, "have a nice evening."
Tell me why again that I shop at discount stores?

We Should'a Read the Book

2006-11-13T13:12:00.000-06:00

For my money, Bob Schieffer of CBS is the embodiment of what a television journalist should be; even handed and headed, intuitive without being arrogant, scrupulous. In the few times he expresses his opinions they are easily distinguishable from news, the way it should be and often isn't, and you find credibility in his commentary even if you don't agree with it.

But Sunday, on Face the Nation, he ran sideways of the past.

He opined that in the changed clime -- the result of the infamous midterm Dem power grab -- Bush “must return to his roots.” His governmental roots. The ones that served him so well in Texas, Schieffer said.

Pointing out that when switching from state government to a national campaign, Bush left his moderate roots on the advise of GOP handlers to cater to the party’s right end base and stayed there. Schieffer used Bush’s bi-partisan success in Texas as a starting point if not a blueprint for the next two years, saying GW could “accomplish more by bringing people together than driving wedges between them.”

‘Course, this is working on the assumption Bush did a fine job in Texas.

I sincerely hope there are not a lot of people who believe there was success in Texas, but I fear they are.

As promised in an earlier post, here is an excerpt from Molly Ivins’ and Lou Dubose’s 2005 book, Bushwhacked, Life in George W. Bush’s America. On the subject of Texas immediately post-GW:

"After Bush left, we had us a little spate of what we call ree-form. The 2001 session of the Texas Legislature had to clean up some of the mess Governor Bush left behind. A conservative Republican senator from Dallas introduced a bill to rescind the $2.9 billion tax cut Bush passed. The voluntary-emissions law written by an industry lobbyist was replaced by a law that compels polluting industries to clean up. A hate-crimes bill that includes protections for gays and lesbians (that was the deal-buster for Bush) passed both houses and was signed by the Republican who took over as governor here after the Supreme Court appointed Bush president. Roadblocks to Medicaid, in a state with the nation’s highest percentage of poverty, were eliminated…"

That's just a small sampling. And remember, in Texas he hadn't gone to war with anyone, at least not for the record. There's lots more we should be aware of. Ivins' works are a start.
There is no better, or longer, observer of Texas politics and the effects on Texans than Ivins. And Ivins would certainly take issue with Schieffer.

In the introduction to Bushwhacked, Ivins invokes her and Dubose’s 1999 book, Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush that covered GW’s six-year stint as Texas governor. She says they were tempted to begin Bushwhacked by observing, “If y’all had’ve read the first book, we wouldn’t’ve had to write this one.”

That didn’t make the title, or the first line. However, it is in the introduction.

The trouble’s not over yet, folks.

Achhhhh

2006-11-12T00:42:00.000-06:00

If I hear one more person use the idiom "back in the day," I will literally implode.
It's the 90s and "sea change" all over again, but worse. Only journalists were demented enough to over use that.

You think I'm nuts, Gregory?

2006-11-08T14:45:00.000-06:00

Like a fox, Mr. President.

The sun shone brightly this morning on Missouri, both literally and figuratively. The first warmth in more than a week. Democrats ruling the House. And the Senate. When have you seen a recount change anything?

Hope lives. I smiled. I drank my coffee. I kissed my husband. I smoked a cigarette, that, after last night is still only taxed here at 17 percent. It wasn’t about sin tax, after all; it was about Missouri's state pols squandering targeted tax dollars.

Ahh, the world is good.

Then I woke up. It takes me awhile to really wake up. This is still the same government. We just switched a very few characters around. The same tactics still rule. Campaign rhetoric is hard truth, perhaps manipulated truth, but not aberration. Just like alcohol doesn’t make anyone say or do anything they don’t think or feel when sober, just express it harder and louder. Mel Gibson, stand up.

I took a good, pragmatic look at GW’s press conference.

Rumsfeld fired.

This is a blog, not a White House press conference. The truth, Mr. President, is in the impression you leave, not just the words.

Gonna work together to solve common problems, like in Texas. Sure, that worked well. I’ll post that in a few days. Or you can just read Molly Ivin’s Bushwhacked.

Despite, or precipitating, his jab at Karl Rove, who is winning in his reading contest with GW because, “I obviously was working harder at the campaign than he was,” GW spun a good story.

Go back a few posts here. Consider the Reps, as a party, worked harder at losing.

Consider how the election may have gone if GW had ousted Rumsfeld after the Sunday meeting with Robert Gates. On that alone, the Dems still most likely would have taken the House. But the Senate, well, most likely another story.

And what was that with the neocons, who engineered this whole mess, turning like rabid dogs on GW a couple days before the election? If you thought them sincere when they said they bought an alleged promise from Vanity Fair not to leak the article contents before the election, then I have some ocean front property in St. Louis for you, cheap.

The pundits opine Bush seemed subdued, almost chastened. Okay, so he went farther in that press conference without the goofy grin than I’d seen him go. But what was with the self-satisfied grin and wink to someone (Perhaps David Gregory? A staffer?) at stage right just after the speech and GW’s passable answer to the first press question. No matter what that meant, it’s a secretive communication, a private joke. A grin and a wink are not the actions of someone subdued and chastened.

By the time Dems take their lead (or leads), less than two years will remain until the presidential election. Plenty of time to screw things up further, a nanosecond to make things right in this mess. The Dems will start out in armpit deep floodwater.

It’s fine to be hopeful, joyous. Hell, go get drunk. No matter how you voted, we sent a message that we’re not catatonic sheep anymore. And it was the best chance we had to stop the blood leaking.

However, we need look below surface level for the next two years. With a very wary eye. The Reps may not be the best at looking at the big picture when they govern, but they’re very good at it when it’s their own interests at stake. And their face, GW, outdid himself as an aw-shucks, self-deprecating cowboy this morning. What's more endearing than admitting getting "a thumpin'. " He even makes me like him, and I’m the cranky old cynic, yellow dog Democrat without a real job anymore.

I’m betting, just as the neocons started planning this war the minute Bush Senior’s war was over, they have had a plan for holding on to the next presidency long before these midterms. I have a feeling it included blaming the next two years on parties not themselves.

Right now, I'm going to revel awhile in the fact that I'm not living in a red state anymore. Can you say McCaskill? Stem-cell referendum? Minimum wage hike?

I want my exit polls…

2006-11-07T20:36:00.000-06:00

The media needs to grow some. Do they realize it’s the Bush Republican pillagers who demonized exit polls? The only near misses have been over GW’s skin of the teeth runs. You know, the ones he saw as mandates?

Remember the last time before that that journalists jumped the gun. Can you say Thomas E. Dewey and Harry S Truman?

At the very least, exit polls have a much better track record than our intelligence community. And incorrect exit polls right themselves by morning. Not years and entire wars later.

It is the economy, at least here

2006-11-07T17:57:00.000-06:00

First polls show the issue in Missouri is the economy.

Well, duh.

Last week GW, in Montana, said he was glad to be somewhere where the cowboy hats outnumbered the ties. Then, took off for St. Louis, a once muscular industrial city turned infirm village at best.

What would he say here? First thing that popped into my mind was, “glad to be somewhere where the blue collars outnumber the white collars.” Wait, all those jobs went south…

One day to go…and no voters came...

2006-11-06T14:34:00.000-06:00

I really didn’t plan on following the What if they gave an election and no party came with this post. Then, at 3 a.m., after wrestling all day with putting auctions on eBay, I was sitting in bed, eating on a pint of Cherry Garcia, watching CNN and saw her.

There a blond suburban Virginia woman attempted to cut her lawn while a George Allen supporter bobbled around trying to get a pledge, in blood no doubt, for a vote..

“There’s one way you could convince me [to vote for Allen],” she said. “Start my mower.” He did; pulled the vexing little rope and shazam, mower putting noise.

Clearly the woman had intended a light jab, but it, as they say about some smiles, never reached her eyes. She was weary.

The polls show the gap between Dems and Reps narrowing.

I feel like that woman looked. Or I perceived she looked. It was 3 a.m.

That same weariness has dominated the last few days. I’m tired. We’re all tired. The Reps (except for GW and Cheney, et al) are going left. Dems are going right. And they’re all a world away from us. Yeppo, there is more clearly than ever an us-and-them.

For nearly 30 years, my husband anchored our family with a white collar, large corporation salary that tipped us into upper middle class territory. His running joke, albeit tongue in cheek, went along the lines of hoping my salary covered my American Express bill.

Gradually, insidiously, that state of life has eroded into where did all the money go?

I’ve stopped thinking an election will change that. For the first time, I may not stay up until the wee hours watching tote boards tomorrow. And know I’m one step beyond the average voter when it comes to election watching. I spent a lot of years in courthouses and campaign headquarters, watching tallies come in, jazzed, then later, bone tired and sometimes alcohol soothed, leaned over front page paste-ups on an extended deadline for the morning paper. Most times, I even stuck around in the pressroom watching that miraculous sight of news spinning off rolls and landing in a heap of warm newspapers. Yeah, I worked in one of those great anachronisms for a while. For me, that was almost as good as sex. As were the memories.

But even for me, that election night energy has waned. For a good number of us, I can understand where the goal changed from looking for a better life to just keeping this one from getting worse.

I’m in Jim Talent country. Now in a dead heat with Claire McCaskill for US Senator from Missouri. I fielded my 13th come-to-Jesus (both literally and figuratively) call at 9 p.m. last night. All recordings, no live people. Oh, that’s a voter connector for sure.

I’ve watched Talent and his no gay marriage, no abortion message ad infinitum. No matter what your leanings or religion, those messages won't wind many people up when their own committed relationships and those of their friends, gay or straight, stress under increasing financial woes. As for abortion, even for zealots, that has to come second to the basic needs of their already living children, like education, health care, jobs.

Don’t give me the economy is good. The pols need to step outside the beltway and their multimillion-dollar war chests. There are not many people out here who aren’t seeing differently, drowning in debt, arguing with contrary health insurance providers, just plain working poor or lacking jobs altogether. Or at least don’t have someone within two degrees of separation who is.

All the while, that big, showy balloon with the two billion a week war tally on the side hovers. The comparisons scream. Here in St. Louis, with a World Series win in a brand new stadium, pols tout the projected tax revenues for the soon to be built Ball Park Village. Over a 40-year span, BPV proponents project $291 million in tax revenues to the city, $142 million for our city’s near third world school district. We can’t help but look at the balloon and think of the schools one week of war revenue could build. Yeah, yeah, no one would ever spend on schools what we spend on war. Given.

For my money, McCaskill’s counter just doesn’t give me what I need. Or maybe there just isn’t a counter for that.

With all the attack campaignings -- Super Bowl parties with Playmates (ever heard of internet porn, candidates?), secret actual sexist agendas supported by an author/candidate's fictional characters (novels without evil for good to overcome, or fall prey to, really sell well, right?), well, you know the rest of the steps in that dance.

The races read more like science fiction than a plan for a better future on this planet. That does not entice people to wrestle with voter lines, ID checks and touch screens.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope there is a lot more, well, hope, out there than I’m seeing.

Getting me there would be simple. Just one candidate looking at me, even through a television screen or over a phone, saying I know it’s tough. I want to help. I can start my own lawnmower, thank you.

God, I miss Dick Gephardt.

Doogie and Still Looking for the ERA

2006-11-06T11:47:00.000-06:00

Doogie Howser, Neil Patrick Harris, is gay. From the crawl on CNN. Big whoop. I’m still convinced that a lot of the movement is just a way for white Anglo Saxon males to gain minority status.

Before you comment, two things.

One, I have never factored anyone’s sex life – except my husband’s – in friendships. I take love where I find it, as should everyone else. The best friend I ever had, Atlanta Municipal (Traffic Court) and TICA international cat show judge Larry Paul, broke my heart when he died way too young a few years ago.

Two, as a female, I belong to the minority group with the majority number that has been fighting and yearning for equal status since the Romans kicked the Druids' asses a very long time ago.

When it comes to the power elite, still overwhelmingly male, my experience has been men choose gay men for power a lot easier than any type woman.

So, get over yourselves. Fight for your legal rights. I'll help. But don’t forget mine in the process. I 'm still smarting over the ERA.

Okay, comment away. I’m not countering any of them.

BTW, this in no way changes the fact that The Christmas Wish is still one of my all-time favorite movies this time of the year. But they may want to remake it with an eye to changing that Naomi Watts romantic lead.

Six days...What if they gave an election and no party came

2006-11-01T22:08:00.000-06:00

Each night, and all day on CNN, the political pundits grow increasingly frenzied. They fidget and knit their brows. Across their faces swims a strange mix of confusion and self-satisfaction. Satisfaction at their apparent ease catching national politicians and planners with their heads up their asses. Confusion at the ease of it.

I’m not sure if it’s too much for them to wrap their collective heads around or if they can’t bring themselves to say what is a more logical conclusion – no party wants to win this election.

Despite frantic fumbling by individual candidates to win their own seats, for the political parties as wholes, winning this midterm is the ultimate nightmare. And some very savvy upper echelon pols are skating deftly to make sure they are not left last on the ice.

Actually, for all the bemoaning of voters who choose Dancing With the Stars over debates, this election foreplay entertains more and seems tailor-made for Jerry Springer – now that DWS has kicked him off – to referee.

Yesterday, the Dems pulled out their big gun. Swiftboat John Kerry trashed the troops.

If the Dems were planning the fastest, bestest way to stop their forward momentum, a better ploy or a better messenger doesn’t exist.
SKIDDD...

Kerry never steps on his tongue, or on a joke, or tells a joke for that matter. And if the ultimate breakdown of his considerable communication skills did accidentally happen, he would have apologized. Skillfully. Immediately.

Then GW gets on the horn with Rush Limbaugh and steps on his tongue. Well, no great surprise that, GW stepping on his tongue. But his handlers are more than deft at keeping him on message. Still GW declares Cheney and Rumsfeld to be doing a bang-up job and, if Reps retain power, the two will stay until the bitter end.

First, if there is a way to scare the bejeezus out of centrist Republicans, it is to invoke Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh made even Fascist Reps uncomfortable with his mean parody of Michael J. Fox. He’s Alex P. Keaton for Chrissakes.

Second, there's content of GW's re-animated, if unsaid, stay-the-course message.

Then, as if the pitiful job Rumsfeld has been doing hasn’t been underscored enough, Rumsfeld’s Central Command “leaked” a brightly colored bar chart showing violence in Iraq spread right past the midpoint between peace (green) and chaos (red). That, on the front page of the New York Times and flashed several hundred times today, was to drive home the point of how bad the war is for those who can’t read or comprehend without colors. Think threat level orange.
DOUBLE SKIDDD...

A couple of high points from last week. With all the doom mongering of how screwed up Operation Enduring Freedom is and with individual Republican candidates building border-sized walls between themselves and GW, Bush decides to skyrocket his visibility, taking Rumsfeld (hasn’t he been looking a bit subdued? Notice how despite his calm face in a press conference last week, he continuously banged the lectern with his fisted hands) along for the public ride.
SKIDDD...

Other, Late Indiscretions

Less than two weeks before the midterms, Sen. Barack Obama unnecessarily announced he will run for president in 2008. Pundits opined it was to give the Dems a face to rally around.

From my grandfather’s knee, I’m a yellow-dog Democrat. And I cringed.

Obama’s a beautiful, honorable, faithful, intelligent, caring man. Most of us YDD’s remember electing, once upon a time, an honorable, caring, faithful, intelligent, charismatic man, whose only drawback was his lack of experience inside the beltway. And our hearts broke watching Jimmy Carter eaten alive. That Carter grew into one of this country’s greatest statesmen and our superhero for good versus evil doesn’t help lessen the sting that he could not ever get a good grasp of that power while in office.

Personally, I didn’t need the angst over a decision to try that again. Not before this impending election. And I'm not alone.

And for those all-important Rep centrists who may swing the vote to the Dems, you know, the ones who are undecided and ones who are past dead broke, jobless, with none or third world health plans, it won’t escape their notice that he is black, married to a white woman and Ivy League educated. Jeez. Could anything be better to bring out the Klan vote?

Correction Nov. 3. Obama's mother is white, not his wife. I refuse to just edit out my careless mistakes. I was a Steve Brill journalist. We don't hide anything. It's my blog. Get over it.

With those vote-leaking drawbacks, Obama looks like he’s worth it and could possibly bring it home. But facing that decision before the midterms doesn’t help rally a Democratic vote, nor any other kind.
SKIDDD...

Then there’s Foley.
SKIDDD...

The only reason the Republicans didn’t take care of him sooner and quieter is that they weren’t afraid enough of what would happen if the word got out. After all, no matter how sleazy, since 16-year-old pages in DC are not legally minors, the political fallout is not apparently a legal one.

Admittedly a stretch, but in light of all the rest, bet there was at least one Republican who wanted word out. So, lose a few seats and a majority. Democrats won’t be able to fix it in two years. Blame them. Get the seats back.

Remember the rumors of the Clintons, et al, not giving it their all to defeat Bush in 2004, with an eye to taking it all in 2008? That seemed pretty far-fetched as anything more than, perhaps, late-night alcohol driven speculation.

Compared to the machinations of this election season, that was nothing.

This is the election no party wants to win. Party leaders on both sides know the penalty for the party in power not pulling miracles out of their butts is forfeiture of the ultimate prize, the 2008 presidency.

It will be interesting to see who skids into the soft, safe snow and who is left negotiating slick ice for the next two years.

What’s a real shame is that no one really cares what happens to the country in the mean time. That’s a given.

Nine days and counting...

2006-10-29T22:18:00.000-06:00

"[Donald Rumsfeld is] the only man in America who knows where the bodies are buried in the Pentagon," House Majority Leader John Boehner said Sunday morning during an interview by George Stephanopolis on ABC's This Week. Boehner (R-Ohio) was touting the current secretary of defense as the only man experienced enough to get this country through the Iraq crisis.
As the number of the Pentagon's foot soldiers' bodies in Iraq tips the 100 mark this month, Boehner's words were hard to hear. I can't imagine how callous I'd have to be to have them trip over my tongue so glibly. Nor how arrogant I'd have to be to say them nine days before this midterm election.
For the life of me (wincing even there) I can't think of anything to say to that.

French Lick

2006-10-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

Startled. It’s becoming a recurring condition. Not physically, though that happens, too.

This is more like, well, duh, when did I start to think like that?

My life, so far, has gone from Gunsmoke to Dexter, party lines to chat rooms, old style paternal Democrats to big government Republicans.

I’ve always thought myself a forward thinking woman. Embrace the new. Build on the past, don’t live in it.

Then the startling started. Kind of backward epiphanies. Shameful anger at the disruption of my world for the good of the masses.

Take French Lick Resort.

A few months ago, we were getting ready to mark our thirty-third anniversary. A no-brainer. Hit the French Lick website, reserve a weekend, hope they upgrade us to a suite. The Indiana dowager has been a favorite for a decade or more. Once a hip hangout for pre modern celebs and Chicago mobsters, in its old age we found Nirvana with burned out light bulbs. Victorian bones with 70s sculpted carpet band-aids. For us, a never fail romance rekindler with lithium mineral baths.

This time, the website pronounced it closed.

To reopen in November as a magnificently refurbished historic hotel and spa. With casino.

I was devastated. My lovely, shabby hotel with its legitimately-distressed marble Pluto water spa and 1920s golf course, where we could sit on the unevenly settled stone veranda and chat with the few people there or sneak to wobbly tables in private nooks to drink and giggle, is gone. My deep breath sanctuary with the dark Derby Bar and the tee-shirted croquet players on the front lawn, lost. My wondrous, imperfect refuge that demanded no perfection from me, no more.

Now it's going to be all clean and neat and reguilded and crowded with loud, nickel slot-loving Hoosiers who couldn’t care less for quiet and retreat, or aging boomers who want joys and stolen kisses without need for botox, apple martinis and surround sound.

It’s not like I hadn’t been warned. Two years ago, we walked right by casino plans posted in the dim lobby on our way to play grab-ass in the dark gardens. They had the name Trump attached to them. Somewhere, I heard some of his new casino ventures had gone bankrupt. My relief was unfounded.

I am my grandma and single dollar tips all over again.

Yeah, yeah, good for the local economy, all that crap. Clean and hygienic. Tons of service sector jobs for locals. Investors' dreams of high rollers, weddings, conventions, buses of guests being dazzled and entertained fulfilled. Better that than gone forever. I suppose.

November is only two weeks away. My priority should be to angst over the election, the war, the economy; to pester my Silcon Valley son to post more digital photos of my granddaughter.

Besides, this one isn’t as easy to fix as it was to slip a few dollars more on restaurant tables after my grandma got up.

I’ll live. I may even add something to this world yet. It takes a lot to kill all the forward momentum in a 1960s woman.

But as for progress at French Lick, I refuse to like it.

No matter how startled I get.

One toke over the line...

2006-09-08T01:17:00.000-05:00

Back in the 60s, we had three mottos. Make love, not war. Never trust anyone over 30. And, though we accepted the possibility that we would have to abandon getting high for awhile, drugs will be the antidote for our old age. You know, when the aches and pains might start interfering with the making love part.

The peace, love and youth stuff may have gone the way of bead curtains and head shops (except in San Francisco). But the recreational drugs part seems to have stuck.

According to Reuters, a U.S. substance abuse report published today says boomer drug use nearly doubled in the years 2002 to 2005 from 2.7 percent to 4.4. That's for people aged 50 to 59. It'll be interesting to see if it skyrockets as we retire from all those random-drug-testing corporations.

It's debatable if we actually made the world a better place. Even if you make GW’s elections an anomaly.

But looks like we really are going to go out happy.

For sure.

Wonder if I can find my old "love me and I'll ball you forever" windshield sticker.

Google News Archives

2006-09-07T15:27:00.000-05:00

Shiny new tool for credibly raising hell or just raising ancestors

That precocious Silicon Valley child Google did it again. Tuesday, they debuted their News Archives search. Seems those guys keep opening doors faster than I can keep butting against them.

In the early 90s, when I first worked for a media company wealthy enough to afford LexisNexis, it took months for me to stop gushing (inwardly, be cool) at how completely it changed my world. No more covering local stories without context as opposed to spending weeks on the phone, in a brick and mortar library or traveling. Covering a civil trial on a cutting edge subject? No prob. Need sources? There. At my fingertips a world of stories, cases, decisions. Contacts, contacts, contacts. Understanding.

Yesterday, I took Google News Archives for a spin.

Oh, I wasn't sold at first. My primary use of online facts lately is for genealogy. I'm pretty cynical about the main culprits of genealogy specific websites. Pay for the index, then, when you find something that looks likely, pay for entry into the data. Weed through their pocked search engines and, maybe, when you get there, you'll find the information. But you'll surely be quite a few dollars poorer.

GNA worked somewhat the same way. Granted, the search is free, like all Google's toys (sorry, tools). That was a definite plus as was the Google search engine. But, mostly, the full info requires a fee. Smacked of those Utah based sites.

Then, I got cooking. Although most of the historic newspaper sites I found through GNA gave only half-assed OCR read, it's enough to know if you're on the mark before you pay, taking the gambling aspect out of a search for specifics. That was very good.

Right away, I found Google underestimated its timeframe of 200 years of archives. A name search came up with a 227-year-old article by "Archibald Campbell, Esg. Commanding his Majesty's forces in Georgia" from the Edinburgh Advertiser, Feb. 26, 1779. A little too early for the person I was looking for, but a quick click, and I had a timeline to narrow it down.

Newspaper articles were not the only search results. I found entries for public records, for censuses, draft registrations and numerous results leading to the databases of the pay genealogy sites.

From there I got real. Seems I've needed genealogical information from a court fight over an estate that spanned 50 years, from the late 1920s to the 70s. Not even on the Gen sites. Thus far, my only alternative had been traveling to Omaha. On GNA, in .02 seconds, I had abstracts of the cases from two legal research sites (full files for less than two gallons of gasoline) and two corresponding newspaper articles. All the info included that I needed for my purposes.

All that made me wonder how my real-time life would have worked with GNA. One of my knottiest Georgia trials involved covering the first US personal liability trial attempting to link cancer and overhead power lines. LexisNexis had been invaluable then. Now, a quick GNA search and there it all was, articles from newspapers, magazines and technical journals. Case law. Everything.

Only now I'm sitting in front of my home PC, in my jammies, blogging. I can adapt.

BTW, before anyone comments on my use of "child," remember, I'm over 50. The bulk of those guys are under 30. They are children. In fact, one of them is mine.

The Void...

2006-09-03T16:19:00.000-05:00

There’s a space on my corkboard, between the “Jimmy Carter for President” button and the Godiva Chocolate ribbon coups, above the dozen or so snapshots of dead friends, kids now grown and libérer des femmes posed in cocktail party toasts. In the void there used to be a slogan button. “You can change the world.”

Don’t remember why I took it down. I can’t put my finger on where or when it went or just why I don’t believe so hard anymore.

Maybe reality hit me in the head one too many times. (Yes, I take medication for that).

Maybe the world really changed that much.

Maybe it’s just because, as a working journalist, I never took time to see if my efforts took roots. It was all effort in those days. Do what you can, then jump to the next push and hope something worked.

Or maybe it’s because I’m just aging and tired, a true old broad.

No matter why, for a time now, I’ve tried just flowing in the lull in my life. But old demons haunt.

That, and a better mind than mine, led me here. So, for what it's worth, and without looking back, I'm sharing.