OT: Relax

And now for something completely different...



When I was running a theater, I used to put "Relax" on the sound system and play it full blast while I was doing my day work. When I took phone calls, the people on the other end thought I must be going deaf or needed to adjust my meds.

I now know that there are lots of different video versions of "Relax", but at the time, I'd only seen one, the one that's posted here (supposedly the banned version, but I don't know who "banned" it.) I thought it was a pretty accurate representation of what our theater was like, day and night. Our S&M Salome was one of the high (or was it low?) points, but there were many others. We did hundreds of productions and staged readings. Not all of which involved leather and the fat man, but some did.

We were infested with "Dogs," as in "Rebellion Dogs," a recovery group whose facilitator was a friend of a friend, a Vietnam Vet and a real character. His charges were characters, too. They took the sobriquet "Dogs" quite literally, forming themselves into packs and running completely wild when they weren't doing their recovery business. ("Rebellion dogs" is from a phrase in Bill W's AA book, something about "rebellion dogs your every effort to end addiction" -- it's a VERB!)

But they did a lot of the backstage work and of course they were very friendly, so I let them have their way most of the time.

Artists of all stripes and kinds became part of our community, some tried to become part of the family. Everything you see in the video is pretty much what was going on pretty much all the time.

Don't ask if I miss it. All I can say is politics is tame by comparison.

(NB: And while I have been around tigers, it was a lion that eventually ran a claw through my thumb while I was trying to extricate a young lady's hand from the lion's mouth. So there we were, the two of us, held fast by the lion wondering what the hell do we do now? Along comes someone with a stick and whacks the lion's cage with it. The lion lets go. Whew!)

(NBB: Holly Johnson was a friend of mine and a friend of the theater. But she wasn't THIS Holly Johnson, with whom it was easy to identify...)

Here We Go Again

As everybody knows, the Teabaggers had -- and for the most part still have -- free rein in this country to upset and disrupt whatever and whomever they want, when and where they want. The police look the other way. They will not and have no intention of interfering, even when the Baggers are overt and threatening.

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, the authorities are getting ready to protect and defend the G20 reps from any and all discommoding by the DFHs, to crush dissent, to gas, to bludgeon, to mass arrest with abandon.

Read this story:

Massive police buildup for Pittsburgh G20 summit
By Samuel Davidson
24 September 2009

A massive police buildup is well underway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as thousands of police, National Guard, FBI, secret service and other law enforcement officials flood into the city in preparation for the G20 summit Thursday and Friday.



Sixty police departments from across Pennsylvania and the region have sent officers to the city. Pittsburgh officials have not revealed how many have actually come, but the city said it needed 4,000 police to provide security for the two-day event. Pittsburgh’s 900 police officers have been put on 12-hour shifts, and all vacation and leave have been canceled.

In addition to local police, 1,200 Pennsylvania state police and 2,500 National Guard troops have been mobilized and brought into the city.

The White House has declared the summit a National Special Security Event (NSSE), placing security under the control of the US Secret Service. For months, Secret Service agents have been in Pittsburgh planning for the event. Closed circuit television cameras have been placed throughout the city.

A bunker-command center has been set up at an undisclosed location, manned 24 hours a day; agents from the various departments monitor the television screens and coordinate the activities of the law enforcement agencies.

In addition to police, several thousand private security guards have come to the city. Some are providing security for the numerous delegations, while others have been hired by hotels and businesses to provide security.

Pittsburgh has taken on something of the appearance of a city in a war zone. Four-foot-high concrete barriers have been placed in front of most office buildings and on street corners to block off traffic.

And so on and so on and so on.

Let us ask why Americans permit this disparity of the imposition of authority.

How is it that armed and dangerous Teabaggers can do anything they want, anywhere, at any time, and there is no preventative police action at all, but the mere thought of the assembly of a few unarmed DFHs to protest anything, anywhere leads to massive police presence, lockdown, tear gas and batons?

Screwed up much?

"Starting"

One of the favorite figures of speech among bloggers and commenters is that of "starting," as in: "I'm starting to think that Glenn Beck is Crazeee."

It's very widely used, has been for many years, and is typically unconsciously applied as an extraneous qualifier. By the time one states one's opinion of, say, Glenn Beck's sanity, one is not "starting" anything; one is well down the road, as it were. As a generalized qualifier, however, "starting" allows the writer to avoid making a firm commitment to his or her statement, to back away if circumstances warrant, or to express a change of mind or heart.

By "starting to think" something or other, one does not commit to actually thinking thus and so. Ergo, someone who is "starting to think" that Glenn Beck is Crazee isn't quite sure he is, and so, for the time being, is reserving judgement.

On something that's obvious.

Because "starting" is used so widely and so often on the Left blogosphere, one might think that leftish bloggers are always "starting" to do or believe or think or whatever, and never-ever actually commit to doing, believing or thinking anything.

Everything is always at the "start" point. Never midway. And certainly never concluded.

This implies a constant blogospheric "now", much like the news media's fiction of "new", but it also implies that there is never anything but the "now" in the sense of the very beginning of something, and everything is sui generis. There is no history, there is no learning curve, there is no evolution, there is no future, either. Because everything is always just "starting."

Typically when I run into the "starting" locution, I let it go, but sometimes it is so egregious ("Neo-cons are starting to piss me off.") I will comment on/lambaste whoever is making such a silly statement. The time to "start" is long past. We should be at the end game now, not "starting" anything.

It's tied, I think, to the mythology of how very New and very Now the blogosphere is. The blogosphere itself is just "starting", you see, so the idea of actions and beliefs just "starting" as well is natural. The problem is that the blogosphere and its progenators have been around for quite a while now. It isn't brand new. It's got some wear and tear on it and the chrome is a little pitted and dingy. But if everything continues to be just "starting", bloggers don't have to worry about history or necessarily about the future, especially if you can "start" something but then back away or back out or return to the starting point.

It's a minor bête noire of mine, like Digby's "Village" locution that's really referring to a Palace and she knows it, but when it comes to the so-called Progressive blogosphere, the notion that it will take a long time -- decades, generations, centuries -- to "turn this country around," and we're just "starting" is very strong, and in my view, self-defeating.

At some point, there's got to be actual progress... ya know?

OT: Blarney

I've posted a few things about my (supposed) ancestry here in the past, not that anyone is particularly interested, and during the last few days while I have had some time and have been completely bored with the so-called Health Care Reform "debate" and most of the rest of politics as well, I decided to look into some of the documentation of my father's side of the family.

Quite a tale was told when I was young about castles in Ireland seized by the perfidious English, most of the clan then decamping for America, first to settle in Maryland starting in the late 1600's, more ancestors coming over soon after 1714, the final wave about 1740.

Some of them became very, VERY prominent in Colonial affairs, filthy Papists though they might be, and a few were deeply involved in the Revolution and the subsequent creation of the country, its Constitution and all the rest.

My own branch, supposedly, was collateral to the Founder-branch but important enough in its own right that, for example, the Capitol of the United States of America stands on land that was donated to the government by a direct ancestor. I had tried in the past to make the connection from him to my own great grandfather whose father I had been told had come over the Alleghenies and eventually into the Ohio Valley where the family stayed until moving on into Iowa in the mid-1850's. But try as I might, I couldn't quite make a connection I was certain of. I could find and trace names that were connected, but either dates or locations were off sufficiently for there to remain some doubt in my mind that what I'd been told was the truth.

So while I had some time, I signed up to Ancestry.com and looked through some of their records, specifically Census records for 1850-1910 to see what I could find.

Hm. Well. It wasn't hard at all. I was searching on my grandfather's name. He was born in 1869, and there he was in the 1870 Census, complete with location (which is not where I had been told the family farm was, but at least it was in the same county). My great grandfather and his wife and their two other children were also listed in the household, names and ages matched the names and ages I knew and expected, so this was I was sure, the actual record of my great-grandfather's household in 1870. Only... it said my great-grandfather James was born in Ireland, as was his wife Alice. No. This couldn't be right, I thought. Alice O'Brien, my great-grandmother, I had been told was born in Ireland and emigrated with her parents in 1848 or 1850, and the Census record said she had emigrated in 1850, and so had her husband James.

I looked back into the 1860 Census, and there was James and Alice again, only one child, but living and working at the same farm in Iowa. Both were listed as having been born in Ireland, emigrating in 1850.

I checked the 1850 Census and there was nothing in Iowa or Ohio for either of them. So. I'd been lied to. Or rather, I'd been told a tall tale, one that apparently was universally told (but perhaps not believed) among my relations as a form of one upping the neighbors. Or something.

But then, when I looked at the 1880 Census, I found James, but he'd moved to a different farm, in the same county but several miles away from his previous farm, and he was now married to Margaret. My grandfather and his younger brother were listed part of the household, but the older children were now gone. I had never been told of Margaret at all.

In the 1890 Census, James and Margaret had moved to town, and were now living on the same street as my grandfather, who now had a household of his own several doors down. James was now listed as retired. In the 1900 Census, my grandfather was still at the same house -- married to my grandmother Elizabeth, with one son, my uncle Vincent; James was still down the street but he was now alone, no Margaret. I could not find James in the 1910 Census, though I had been told he died in 1916, and I've seen pictures of him looking pretty hale and hearty around that time. So I don't know what happened to him.

He was declared dead by the Census in 1880, but the enumerator appended a note stating that his "widow" Margaret had misinformed her and that he was found alive on some other page of the Census, so the enumerator had added him back into the household. Must be some story there.

If I get some more time for this sort of thing, I'd like to research James and Alice back to Ireland, though now I have no idea where they came from. What I had been told about the Irish origin of the clan puts them in Co. Tipperary and Co. Offaly, but I have no idea where James and Alice might have originated. James would have been 19 years old when he emigrated from Ireland, Alice would have been 16. She came with her parents, I was told, but I don't know their names (O'Brien is pretty a pretty common Irish name!). James's father, supposedly, was named Alexander, the same as his oldest son. I wonder what happened to him.

What a time sink!

Old Man Gloom

Last night they burned Zozobra -- Old Man Gloom -- in Santa Fe as they've done every year since 1924 (or '25) when Santa Fe artist and bon vivant Will Shuster came up with the notion of buring a giant papier-mâché boogy-man to chase the cares away. It's impossible to separate Santa Fe's artistic history from that of Will Shuster and Los Cinco Pintores.

But despite the many tens of thousands who attend this long-time "burning man" event each year, the Burning of Zozobra is far less well known than the much newer eponymous Nevada Playa make-fest.

Of course this year, Old Man Gloom was carrying an enormous burden of economic woe in the smoke of his demise. Even in New Mexico the economy has turned to shit, and I say that knowing full well that the economic catastrophe has been devastating to much of the state, particularly in rural areas. But compared to many other places, New Mexico is sitting pretty and its people are living high on the hog. Bad as things are. The unemployment rate is "manageable" and stimulus projects are are actually having a measurable effect.

Part of it is the smaller population of New Mexico -- there's only one city of any size, Albuquerque, and the rest of the state is so sparsely settled that people flying over have a hard time spotting any signs of Civilization. Row-mates on airliners have become alarmed at the apparent lack of people!

Part of it is the fact that New Mexicans are not only used to boom and bust economies, their history has many periods of lean times, going back well before the arrival of Coronado, Oñate, de Vargas and the rest. People make do and make the best of things.

And they sometimes break out of the dull routine by burning papier-mâché monsters.

It's the culture.

I intended to offer up a Labor Day piece glooming about the hideous unemployment figures, but I saw that many others had that base covered, finally, and I thought I would have very little new to add. Besides, I've covered the issue repeatedly, from way back. It's nice to know that some folks are playing catch-up.

But one thing I have noticed is that in all the now-fashionable sturm und drang over the increasing "problem" of lack of jobs, few have connected the situation with deliberate policy decisions, such as the absence of any significant jobs programs, and even fewer seem to recognize the policy upshot of driving down wages and benefits for those who manage to remain employed.

Back in the days when unions were strong, these connections would be almost axiomatic, and the Obama administration wouldn't be compared to FDR's, it would be compared to Hoover's, because the Obama administration is basically repeating Hoover's mistakes by applying nearly all the government "relief" to the top of the economic pyramid. That's what Hoover did. How did that work out?

Of course the case can be made that all kinds of social and economic programs to relieve the situations of the lower orders were put in place during the Depression and afterwards, and many of them are still functioning, so it is not entirely true that the government is doing nothing for the poor and middle class and for the unemployed.

Are there not prisons? Are there not workhouses?

And the Big Health Care Overhaul we keep hearing about is supposed to be an add-on to the FDR and LBJ social/domestic programs that will make everyone better off and more secure.

So why the Gloom?

Actually, I'm trying to get out of my Gloom Period. Not necessarily successfully, but still...

The economic catastrophe that none dare call a Depression is forcing massive economic restructuring, top to bottom and world wide, and some of it is potentially very good.

We need to ask questions about why every household has to have at least two gainfully employed members in order to afford relative comfort. Why are personal automobiles still necessary? How come alternative energy and fuels and modes of transportation are still so expensive and/or inconvenient?

Why does health care reform still raise so many hackles?

Economic restructuring doesn't have to be bad for the working and middle classes, but that's the only way restructuring has been played for decades. And most Americans have been passive observers, unwilling to risk any of their declining security and comfort to change the direction of restructuring.

But perhaps the summer-long howling by those who say they are "scared" has had a subliminal effect on the passive majority and those who are convinced that ritualized "action" such as phoning your congressmember or sending out a furious email make a difference.

We can change the direction of the restructuring that's going on, we can force attention to be paid to the needs of the working and middle classes but only if we demand it and refuse to budge when the Ruling Class says "No!"

We're not there yet.

But no need for Gloom.

Danger Zone

He's let it get out of control. Now what?

Oh. I see. On Wednesday next week, according to all the media, he'll convene a joint session of congress and speechify to them on what he wants his Health Care Reform to be. And he'll "scale it back." In order to "defuse Republican criticism."

Risky, they say, because it will piss off his Liberal Base. Spitfires, they are.

The problem is that it is probably too late to seriously affect much of what's going to happen from here on out. Not just about the health care "debate." About everything.

Obama has demonstrated how easy it is to roll him, cut him off, illegitimize him, mock, deride, and damage him. Barring a miracle, he's not going to recover. The fact that he made this demonstration while cutting off his liberal base is either breathtakingly naive or breathtakingly corrupt and cynical, take your pick.

For all intents and purposes, his administration is dead in the water. This ship is sinking.

And no, there isn't much chance it can be righted.

The opportunities were there during the summer, but the White House took a pass, and now... well, politicians sometimes get a second chance, and of course I could be wrong, but from every indication I can see, the era of Barack Hussein Obama was brief and flashy and now it is over.

Something like Akenaton's up above, although I believe he actually reigned 14 or 15 years before his demise and his memory was erased from Egyptian history... or at least the attempt was made to do so.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Still relevant after all these years.

Unfortunately.

What Should Be Done (Broken Record Edition)

More and more questions are being raised about the efficacy of the various economic stimulus efforts attempted since last year. From my perspective, nearly everything that's been done so far follows the Hooverite model of propping up the top of the economic pyramid while leaving the masses to fend for themselves. "Tough luck, suckers!" and all that.

Unemployment continues to rise, and nothing at all is being done about it. In fact, the high unemployment rates we're seeing today are expected to get worse, and are expected to stay high indefinitely. Those who still have jobs are seeing their wages and benefits cut while their workload in many cases is increasing. Ah! Productivity gains! But all the economic benefit from those gains is going to the top 1%; working people get higher debt, bankruptcy, foreclosure, homelessness and despair. Just like under Hoover. (Who, by the way, tried lots of programs to stave off the worst of the Depression, but who could not bring himself to actually institute programs to help people in desperate need.)

The Health Care Mess is looking grimmer every day. The Republicans are doing their usual Swift Boat routine and getting away with it; the Dems are -- as always -- gobsmacked and lost in Wonkery, unable to explain just what is being proposed and how it will affect ordinary people. From appearances, all that will be accomplished, if there is a bill, is to give a huge bonus to the Insurance Cartel. More Hooverism in other words.

The Cash for Clunkers program seems to have been a big hit -- except of course with the dealers who have to whine and complain about all the bureaucracy it entails (it is their duty to complain after all!) -- but I question the notion of so many people taking on so much more debt in the middle of a recession/depression. Things are still predicted to get worse before they get better.

Some predictions suggest they aren't going to get better. Ever. At least not for most people. We are in a permanent economic decline.

So what should be done about it? I argued last year that the recovery and stimulus effort was exactly backwards. It was providing huge amounts of money to the banking industry and Wall Street, and it would eventually provide a far more modest amount of money to various heavy industry contractors, but it was providing almost nothing to households (well, there was lower withholding, by about $15 a week). There was no debt relief for households (but there was essentially complete debt relief for bankers and Wall Street); there were no significant foreclosure prevention mechanisms to keep people in their homes; the extensions of unemployment insurance and food stamps didn't account for the millions of unemployed and now destitute Americans who don't qualify for the programs, nor were there any job creation or job maintenance programs.

Turn each of these factors around, in other words debt relief for households, not bankers and Wall Street. Income support, jobs programs, foreclosure moritoria for the duration, etc, etc. All of this and more should have been done from the outset. It hasn't been done yet.

Because the economy is being restructured, with a vastly reduced workforce in mind, it makes sense to let people retire early and collect Social Security -- at 50 or 55 if they want -- in order to relieve the downward pressure on wages and benefits from the astronomical unemployment rates (in some parts of California, unemployment is 30% and more) and to provide more employment opportunities for younger people. If retirement comes early, SS payments will have to increase significantly -- double or triple at the lower end. Medicare should be available retirees regardless of age. And the Medicare for All proposal suggests that anyone who wants to should be able to buy in to Medicare at any time.

These are all very straightforward and relatively simple economic programs to move the stagnation we're facing now out of the doldrums and to really give people dignity and hope again.

Of course Libertarians and Propertarians will howl -- it is their way. And a lot of those types like to masquerade as "Progressives" so that when proposals like these are made, the progressive end of the discussion tends to devolve into libertarian and propertarian cant. And "can't". See Crooks and Liars regarding Thom Hartmann's SS proposal.

Hooverism is winning the day, but Hooverism doesn't work in the context of economic catastrophe. Something bolder and simpler is required, starting at the bottom of the economic ladder and working up. Economic recovery can't happen from the top down.

We learned this many years ago, but everything we learned was forgotten when Ronald Reagan went on his crusade against progressive governance.

Now we have to relearn it. But at the rate things are going, it'll take either several more generations to break free of the Reaganite/Cheneyite hangover or it'll take a revolution.

Relentless

One thing that's very obvious about Republican and right-wing behavior in general since the election and inauguration of Barack Obama to the Imperial Presidency is their utter relentlessness in pursuit of their political objectives, objectives which were made very clear almost immediately: resisting everything the Administration tries to do, and preventing as much of it as they possibly can, with the goal of undermining and eventually destroying the Obama reign.

Not only are they relentless, they are ruthless as hell. Their lies come in barrages. Doesn't matter how often they are debunked and refuted, the old lies are repeated, new ones crop up. On and on, no matter what.

The right wing ruthlessness and relentlessness are redoubled when the ease of rolling Team Obama is revealed, as it has been with the Health Care "Debate."

The Administration has backed off nearly every promise they ever made to attract Progressive support and has generally backed the Senate Finance Committee's efforts to reduce and restructure Health Care "Reform" legislation so that it is essentially little more than a give away to the Insurance Cartel, paid for on the backs of the groaning middle class. Republicans continue to say NO!, loudly. Their propagandists in the media make the case endlessly that Health Care Reform will lead inevitably to Pulling the Plug on Granny, guaran-damn-teed, while they whip up as much fear as can be mustered among a generally ill-informed and typically apathetic audience. The propagandists love it, the Republicans love it. And, from what they can tell, it works.

We can go on at endless length describing what the Rs are doing, and part of the blogospheric process is to do just that -- describe and discuss the perfidy of the opposition -- but my point today is that what the Rs are doing is what the Dems and their progressive/liberal allies should have done in the early stages of the Bushevik takeover of the Government. But they didn't do it. In fact, those who were capable of doing it, and who wanted to do it, were deliberately and forcefully silenced and/or marginalized by both the establishment liberals and by much of the "serious" lefty blogosphere.

The Rightists are giving us all an object lesson in how to cripple a regime right out of the gate, and yet I don't think the idea is penetrating the shields put up by the Dems and their progressive/liberal allies. The idea that you can actually do this in a political context is alien to both the Democrats and the primarily blogospheric progressives. It's just too... rude, and nothing is worse than being rude when you're trying to make a Logical Argument to win the day.

Now they are calling for Eric Holder's head on a platter because he has opened an investigation into the "possible" abuse of prisoners by the CIA in 2003 and 2004 based on the CIA's Inspector General Report. They are calling for his firing and for the end of any and all "investigations" into what was or was not done during the early years of the GWOT, by civil or military authorities. And they are going full tilt in their insistence and outrage. Well, that's how you conduct a political campaign if you intend to win.

I expect the Cheneys -- père et fille -- to emerge from their bunkers any minute now to condemn and otherwise denounce the Obama administration for entering into areas they are not authorized to go and stirring shit they know not of. Muttering darkly all along about the New Horror that will be unleashed upon America because of it.

It's how it's done.

If you want to win. But because this lesson is never learned by Democrats and their allies, it is reasonable to suspect they don't want to "win" -- except to hold on to their position at Court.

Still in Summer

The Health Care Debate continues apace, fury and ignorance abounding.

It's been very easy to convince a horde of Americans, not all of them right wing reactionaries, that the changes in health care insurance in the works will result in bureaucratic interference, rationing, euthanasia, deteriorating quality of care, treatment of illegal aliens, higher costs, and so on.

In other words, things that are already happening thanks to the kindly ministrations of the for-profit health-care insurance industry, things that the "reform" is supposed to address.

Whether the "reform" will do it very well, I can't say. We still have only the outlines of a Reform Plan, and all we can take from the outline is that everyone will be required to have coverage, and some of the more egregious practices of the Insurance Cartel will be curbed. Apart from that, nothing is certain. Even those things are not all that certain, but they seem to be consistent through all the permutations of the bills working their way through congress

Bureaucratic interference, of course, is a constant of the for-profit health insurance industry. Second only to the collection of premiums, this industry exists to scrutinize and too often deny payment for treatment for injuries and illnesses, to interfere with preventative treatment and to stand on the alert between doctors and their patients to ensure that nothing is ordered or treated that conflicts with ever-changing, arcane, and indecipherable insurance company rules. Everybody knows that is how the Insurance Cartel operates, and yet for some reason, the howlers insist that the only "bureaucratic interference" that matters is the interference of a government drone approving this or that payment for services rendered. Hunh? And when it is pointed out that in government programs under way, the government drones have a very light hand indeed, hardly even noticeable, whereas the insurance company bean counters are always on the tail of physicians and patients looking for ways and means to deny payment and treatment, the rejoinder is that one can always choose another insurance company, but you can't choose another government!!! That's not the point, you patiently offer. The point is that it is the insurance companies that throw up all these bureaucratic roadblocks you fear and deplore, not the government. Nazi/Socalist!!!! Stalin!!!

Huh.

As for rationing, goddamned right there's rationing by the insurance companies, and by the fact that so many millions of Americans go without health care insurance and so must -- how you say -- "self ration" health care until there is an emergency. And in the ER there's ongoing rationing starting with the triage of your case. You may be left to die in the ER if the triage nurse doesn't believe your condition is serious enough for immediate or urgent treatment, as we have seen happen over and over again. If the ER is the only place you can get treatment for whatever serious matter ails you -- the Bush Regime was famous for insisting that everyone in America had access to Health Care at the ER, it was the law!!! -- then you're in deep trouble. The ER is the least efficient and the most expensive form of medical treatment possible. Insurance companies put strict limits on the amount and kinds of treatment they will pay for, regardless of the patient's condition, and that's about as strict a rationing plan as you could ask for. Government programs in existence have their own rationing standards, but for the most part, they take into consideration the condition of the patient such that there is no cut off of treatment for individuals in need of care. Strange, that. But the foamers insist that the only rationing that matters is the rationing that government does. OK, sure. Whatever.

Euthanasia does go on. Insurance company denial of treatment, or insurance company cut off in mid-treatment, is often a death sentence, and surprisingly enough, that is a form of euthanasia. But you can always get a different company!!!! No, you can't. If you have a "previous condition" in most cases you can't get insurance. Ahem. And so... if you don't have insurance, you can't get insurance, or you're cut off from treatment, be prepared to get your affairs in order because you're on the Euthanasia Train. Between 18,000 and 22,000 die every year for just this reason. That doesn't even get into what medical "procedures" can be utilized when nobody's watching. The government programs that exist, however, seem to organize their approach to care and treatment so as to prevent any attempt at euthanizing patients -- or to prolong their suffering. It's really a remarkable difference. One that people would do well to appreciate. But no. The howlers and foamers have to go crazy over (sometimes justifiable) fears that someone wants to kill them or their granny, and that someone is in the government!@!!!!1. Well, no. No it's not. It's probably someone in the private sector, though.

Deteriorating care under "government" programs? Or under private sector programs? You decide. In fact, "government health care" has a solid reputation, though not perfect. The actual "government" programs that exist: Military and its offshoots, VA, Indian Health Service, etc. provide generally excellent care at reasonable costs for the government, and as a rule, inadequate or inefficient care issues are addressed with speed. IHS has had a lot of problems, to be sure, and those problems are being rectified. Meanwhile, access to private sector care is becoming less and less available to more and more people, as they lose -- or can't get -- private insurance, and so their care is self-evidently deteriorating. But the government!!!! It's just idiotic.

Treatment of illegal aliens is a bête noire for many of the howlers, regardless of the "debate" under way. The existence of "illegals" drives them nuts. They're all criminals!!!!! Yes, well. Like everyone else, illegals have to be seen (but not necessarily treated) in the ER, but beyond that, they have no special rights or privileges with regard to health care coverage, and almost all can get into dire straits if they become sick or injured. Their situation is very much like that of the typical uninsured American. Except for the fact that there are no programs at all to assist them -- no Medicaid, no Medicare, no "charity care." Nothing. Nothing that has been proposed so far will alleviate that situation in the slightest. But the howlers need something to howl about, so why not "illegals!!!!!?"

Cost control is a real issue. I don't know why medical costs are so prone to gross inflation, though I suspect the current rattle-trap "system" is a big part of it. But many costs seem to be wildly out of proporation to the services provided (the famous $12 Tylenol comes to mind as an example), so bringing some rationality to the fee and payment structure of the medical industry would be a relief for everyone. Of course, that's socialism!!!!!! Hitler!!!!!! Stalin!!!!!!!!!!!!! which makes no sense, but there you are.

The lies keep coming. "Mandatory Death Panels" is one that was spread with lightning speed. There are so many more. But then, there are so few real details about what will be in the health care reform legislation, so much political posturing, so little effort toward a comprehensive system overhaul.

There isn't even any clarity about what the supposed "public option" we're expected to be enthusiastic about is supposed to be. Are we talking "Medicare-like" as Gov. Dean keeps saying, in that a public entity of some sort would be responsible for paying medical bills submitted by private sector providers (a la Medicare), or are we talking about a new-model health care provider system (a la VA, etc?) At times, it is impossible to tell. It's also very difficult to suss out what the "vision" for the future of health care in America is. Maybe there isn't one.

At any rate, this endless summer drags on...

Terminal

The Health Care "Debate" seems to have devolved into a question of euthanasia thanks to the media's obsession with anything that comes out of Sarah Palin's prolific tongue/pen/keyboard.

OK. Let's talk.

Digby has a good post up about the origin and development of Advance Directives, DNRs and Durable Powers of Attorney in California, and I've had considerable recent experience with the whole panoply of those things (as have many others, it appears, on the blogosphere.) I'm not at all sure where we'd be without them.

Well, no. I can figure how Betty's care and passing might have been different without her advanced directives and my power of attorney over health care issues.

Her last episode began last October when I took her to the clinic where her primary care physician was medical director. She'd been complaining of shortness of breath, chest pains, and she had developed wounds on her lower legs that were not healing. Her doctor was off that day, but Betty was seen by a nurse practitioner and one of the other staff doctors who diagnosed a heart attack in progress, ordered up an ambulance, and took her to the hospital.

She already had an advance directive stating that that no extraordinary efforts should be made to keep her alive if her condition was terminal. She was not considered to be in that state, although her heart was giving out, it was still functioning in afibrillation, and she was able to consent to treatment at the hospital. They determined that the primary cause of difficulty was edema, fluid build up, and they drained her of the excess fluid promptly. She felt much better almost immediately. A heart specialist was consulted, and she was taken for angioplasty and stent insertion. Her decline in the hospital commenced thereupon, not so much because of the angioplasty and stents themselves but due to some botched after-treatment including misplaced injection shunts (that missed the vein causing immense pain and suffering whenever fluids were administered through those shunts) and a very strange (and still inexplicable) determination that Betty could not eat or drink and so was being fed and hydrated through an NG tube.

Then her wounds became infected.

She became depressed and despondent. Her physical condition was not improving, and her psychological condition was deteriorating alarmingly. She wanted to go home, that was really all she thought about or cared about. She wanted out of the hospital, the sooner the better.

Her attending physician, however, wanted her to stay another week, and then go to a skilled nursing facility for three to five more weeks. Then she wanted to put a PEG in her stomach to feed her. Then, maybe, she would be allowed to go home.

Betty verbally agreed to this regimen but she was disconsolate with us about it, and we determined she was going home no matter what, and it practically took an act of congress to get her out of there, but out she came, and home she went.

Ten months later, she died, but she died at home.

She outlived every prediction of her impending doom, and her passing was as close to what she wanted as it was possible for us to provide.

Had she stayed in the hospital and/or gone to skilled nursing for "recovery" I sincerely believe it would have been a death sentence. She would have been dead within a week or even less.

I would call her continued treatment in the hospital or nursing facility a form of euthanasia, in that it was not what she wanted, and her will to live was being sapped there every day.

And if she had not had advance directives, DNRs and durable powers of attorney, quite likely she would have stayed in the hospital and would have died there. I will not, for the moment, go into the ways and means that medical professionals can and do prolong and/or retard patients' survival.

So there's your goddamned Death Panels, and I don't want to hear another stupid word about it.

Eleventy Dimensional Chess

Do they... want Something to happen?

The freaks and weirdos are out in force showing up at the various district events and townhalls that the congressmembers are throwing, and they're headed out to the various presidential appearances as well.

Shouting, howling mobs, not a lot different from the shouting, howling mobs who tried so very hard to thwart school and housing desegregation back in the day. Of couse they lost... eventually... but getting to that point didn't happen without a good bit of bloodshed and much social and political upheaval.

Some thinkers posit the necessity of sacrifice, blood sacrifice, to obtain desired goals, and I'm wondering...

When Gun-boy showed up at the New Hampshire presidential town-hall and was instantly lionized by the media, it was clear Something Big was -- potentially -- in the offing.



Imagine, just imagine what would have happened to Gun-boy if he'd shown up at a Bushevik event last summer. The gurney would have hauled his smoking corpse away, especially if he'd shown any sort of Leftist tendencies. But just being there with his gun and his sign would have been enough for the snipers to take him out, or maybe they'd have sent a Predator drone armed with a Hellfire missile. And the media would have done everything in their power to justify his summary execution. Everything.

So I'm pondering this. I'm pondering the contrast between what would have occurred under the Busheviks and what is occurring under the Obamanauts. The White House and the congressional Dems are seemingly encouraging this summer's townhall anarchy. Certainly the media is playing along. Entertainment, not danger as far as they're concerned, and it is the August Recess, after all.

Guns seem to be proliferating at these events, being shown or dropped or threatened. The howling and shrieking becomes louder... pushing, shoving. Police stand by, ordinary police, not Robocops, and the Secret Service and all the apparati of the National Security State are all but invisible.

The anti-desegregation mobs ultimately had to be fended off with the National Guard as there was no reasoning together with them. They had to be stopped. But even the presence of the Guard only partially defused their fury, and many people would die trying to defend civil rights for all even after the Guard made clear whose side the Government was on.

The current mobs are ostensibly assembling to oppose ObamaCare, whatever that may mean, but "issues" proliferate endlessly, swirling around the tradional antipathy to "socialism" and "communism" and "Government Control of Our Lives," and all of that -- right out of the Segregation Forever playbook, chapter and verse. It's the same thing based on the same fear of Teh Negroes, and the loss of what tattered remnants of White Privilege remain.

So let's consider what is really going on. Segregation was... eventually... ended, at least as a matter of law. Defacto segregation, of course, is still typical of much of America, but there is no legal support for it any more, and many Americans have become comfortable among members of other races and ethnic groups. Progress. Yay.

But a way of life was ended along with segregation, and it was a way of life that centered around notions of racial superiority and inferiority that were comfortable and comforting for some -- regardless of race -- and intolerable for others.

Is a way of life in jeopardy now? I would say certainly, it is the middle class as we have known it, and the assault on that way of life is reaching its climax. I've written before about the forced impoverishment that is underway what with the continuing unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure statistics that have not improved a bit -- and in fact have worsened -- under the current administration. There is immense downward pressure on wages, and the government is doing nothing at all to counter or ameliorate that situation. The number of foreclosures is skyrocketing, and the government is still unable to -- or is it unwilling to? -- intervene in any significant way. Households' debt burdens continues to extinguish any sign of consumer spending, and thus retard any sign of economic recovery among the masses, and the government will not do anything whatsoever to ameliorate the household debt problem. Only the Universal Masters get bailed out. Households? No way. In fact, actions taken so far have mostly served to increase the burden on households.

And now comes Health Care Reform which will place another burden on households and individuals. That burden is the Mandate.

Everyone has to be covered. What that means is that everyone has to be in a Program -- like Medicare and Medicaid or Veterans Health Care or Indian Health Care or what have you -- or they have to have health insurance coverage through private insurance that they have to purchase on their own or through their employer -- if they have one.

For many of the currently uninsured, this will be a significant new financial burden; for most of those currently insured it will be a burden over time. It will accelerate the forced impoverishment under way. But look. A Benefit goes along with it. You won't be forced into bankruptcy to pay for your appendectomy. At least not immediately.

If the chess player's goal is the remaking of society with the masses much poorer than before -- but let's say, "cared for" -- and the well off fabulously better off than ever before, it may take some interesting ploys and feints to get where the player is going. And it may take some sacrifice as well. Based on what we've seen so far, it's pretty clear where things are headed, and it is not toward a Progressive Paradise.

So are we seeing more eleventy dimensional chess? Maybe. By and large, Americans were not sympathetic to the howling mobs opposing desegregation, in fact, many were horrified. The bloodshed that accompanied desegregation efforts brought constant shame to the perpetrators and their supporters. Eventually, the disgust with those who insisted on preserving the status quo overwhelmed their ability to hold on, and even George Wallace admitted the error of his ways.

We're seeing similar mobs now. They're trying to hold on to their sense of privilege and right, something they believe is under assault through the advent of universal health care. The chess player who wants to win is going to want these mobs out front, in the hope that they will inspire the same sort of revulsion the segregationist mobs did fifty years ago.

It may work.

So... Where are the Robocops?

The other day, I posted about the Teabaggers going all loop-de-loo at various congressional townhalls, and I said I had some admiration for them getting off their duffs and actually making their voices heard. As misguided as they were and are.

But it occurred to me that there was and is something distinctly odd about the fact that these Teabaggers are going around shitting on these Congressmembers and shutting down their townhalls, and it's not the fact that they are being incited by the likes of Beck and Limbaugh and Hannity or that they are being used as tools by the same insurance cartel that's screwing them and everyone else.

It is odd that there is only a minimal police presence at these events, and there have been almost no arrests (for the all purpose "disorderly conduct," let alone the direct threats and incitement and violence), nobody's been tasered, gassed or bludgeoned, and there are no Robocops whatsoever.

Compare and contrast with last year's overwhelming police presence at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Denver and St. Paul last summer.

The video above is of one incident in St. Paul, in which peaceful street dancers were confronted with a phalanx of police who gassed and clubbed and arrested them.

Dozens of people were preventatively detained, people who had done nothing illegal, and some of them were charged with "terrorism."

Homeland Security, the FBI, and god only knows what other agencies of the National security state were deployed en masse to shut down legitimate, protected protest, through interaction with local and regional police forces acting in concert.

Nothing like that is happening now.

I admired the protesters in Denver and St. Paul because they were getting off their own duffs and putting themselves at substantial physical and other risk. Hundreds were arrested, thousands gassed, and all of them had their civil liberties massively impaired by an overweaning and frequently brutal police presence. So far as I know, nothing more radical than breaking a window and overturning a newsrack or garbage can (all of which could well have been done by provocateurs) was attempted by the crowds protesting at the conventions.

Yet here we have dozens of congressional townhalls throughout the country being beset by howling mobs, mobs whipped to a frenzy by right wing talk radio and television hotheads (who call themselves "entertainers"), who threaten and intimidate, and otherwise disturb the peace, proudly. What they were intending, and who their organizers were were all known well in advance, and what they have done has followed the plan laid out long ago. Yet so far as we know, there is no National Security State investigation and surveillance, there is no preventive detention, no mass arrests, no Robocop presence, hardly any police presence at all.

Clearly an order has gone out for the authorities to stand down. The Teabaggers apparently know they are at no risk whatsoever. They can do as they will. And they are doing it. While the police just watch.

If they are there at all.

What a wonderful example of Authoritarian America's disparate enforcement of "rules", "law" as it is known.

And even stranger than the absence of police and authority at these townhalls is that Americans just accept that DFHs will be subject to the full power of the authorities whenever they gather to protest, whereas the salt of the earth, good American right wing wackos can do what they want whenever they want and nothing at all will happen to them -- except cheers from their sponsors.

Interesting.

Summer Obsession

The Teabaggers are having a grand old time venting their collective spleen at every congressional townhall they can hie themselves to before the end of summer. The spectacle has captured the attention and the imaginations of newscasters everywhere -- including throughout the lefty blogosphere -- to the point where even President Clinton going to Pyongyang to rescue those journalists was drowned out.

The Teabaggers are the New Summer of the Shark. Or maybe it's Chandra Redux.

I actually harbor a bit of admiration for the Teabaggers, because they have at least got themselves off their ample duffs, got away from the computer and the teevee and got out of the house and got themselves down to the local food bank or community center or parish hall or wherever their rep (or somebody's rep) is holding forth and they are discommoding the powerful, disrupting business as usual, and OUTRAGING!!!™ calm and rational wonk types who delight in navigating the intricacies of Health Care Reform Legislation. It's all good.

Participatory Democracy, eh?

Now, of course the Teabaggers have been sold a bill of goods, and they are obviously and sadly being manipulated for the benefit of the Insurance Cartel, but despite that, they have shown themselves quite capable of making a stink and shutting down the kind of crap that Our Congress is trying to peddle regarding the so-called "reform" of health care coverage now wending its way through the hallowed halls.

And despite the fact that the Teabaggers are essentially deep in error about the details of what they are railing over, at least they have the moxie to rail.

Because light entertainment is a staple of the summer rerun season on the teevee, these loudmouths are dominating everything -- much as the Sharks did, much as Chandra did (not to speak ill of either, you understand.)



What fun, eh?

The fact that millions of people could peacefully assemble all over the world, could march and carry signs opposing the invasion of Iraq and be ignored by the major mass media, or that tens of thousands of people who turned out in a rainy-freezing Washington DC in January, 2001, to protest the inauguration of W were made to disappear, or that the continuing struggle of single payer advocates to even be heard in the "Health Care Debate" is consistently overlooked is beside the point.

The point, this summer, is the Teabagger rage, its astroturf character, and how deeply passionate all these ill-informed but very dedicated lunatics are. Entertainment!

The mind would reel if these... characters... will really have any effect on what emerges from the Congressional sausage maker. And I don't think they really will. Assuming that Congress is actually able to agree sufficiently to pass something -- and it looks like they will be -- my sense is that it will be basically a "universal" health care coverage mandate, requiring individuals to purchase private health care coverage with the premiums taken as a payroll deduction from every worker's salary. There will be no "public option" -- whatever that means -- in any rational sense, everything will be handled through the Insurance Cartel.

This will be very expensive and very inefficient, but it will accomplish two primary goals of the makers of this reform: "universal" coverage and restrictions on denial of coverage and payment for treatment.

The deal was essentially agreed to between the major stakeholders months ago. The outlines were set then. The Cartel will receive a huge revenue injection (almost all of which will be paid by policy-holders, not "taxpayers") through the individual mandate to have coverage, and in exchange, the Cartel will agree to stop their more egregious practices of denial of coverage and rescission. There. Done. That's it. Have a nice day.

Like Medicare Part D, this will actually be "something better than nothing." It will help many who now fret that they will go bankrupt if they get sick, or who can't get health insurance at all. Premiums will still be outrageous, but some sort of arrangements will be made for a "subsidy" based on income. In other words, no one will be expected to pay more than a set percentage of their income for health care coverage, and the lower your income the lower the percentage, until at some point your coverage is essentially free (as in Medicaid now).

This is not the dreaded "socialism" or "government takeover" of healthcare the Teabaggers are frothing over, it's not even a step in that direction, but it does modify the current balky and over-administrated system to -- finally -- cover almost everyone, for the first time in our history.

So what if it costs 30% more than it needs to and will still bankrupt the already bankrupted nation? That's a feature, not a bug.

On the other hand, all of it may fall apart after Labor Day, it's just all too difficult, or the Summer Shark may be followed by something too awful to contemplate (like the summer of 2001 was, we may recall.) You never know.

But for now...

Rage on, Teabaggers! Rage on!

"Gone from our sight"

Betty passed away peacefully yesterday afternoon. She lived a long and rewarding life, a life of adventure for her, and one of kindness and generosity toward everyone she met.

She had a profound influence on a rippling circle of individuals, most lately of course, the professionals who cared for her as her life waned away, but more inclusively, her family, and the friends who came to visit her in the last few weeks.

As we make "the arrangements", we come to realize that many of those she touched, perhaps all of them who are still alive themselves, have come to visit her and pay their respects for her life and her inspiration. Oh, there have been many tears, to be sure, but there has been far more joy and sense of honor just to know her.

She literally saved my life -- more than once -- and I am eternally grateful to her.

As far as we could tell, she went gently into that "other place" which she had visited before but where she had never been able to stay. We believe that her spirit left her body some time before her body shut down completely, but just when she completed her journey we can't know. She was at peace, though, when the end finally came. The serenity on her face and the easy appearance of her body as she lay in bed while we put up with all the bustling to and fro of the various people who came to certify and to pronounce and to call various others and to pray and to take her body away to the mortuary was a blessing; she was so beautiful through it all.

The friend who called yesterday called again about ten minutes after Betty died. His name appeared on the screen as the phone rang. I answered the phone, "So you know do you?" He said, "I knew yesterday." I told him that Betty had breathed her last just a few minutes before, and here he was calling... He said, "I drove by your house a few minutes ago, but something told me not to stop. I sensed I should go home and call instead." Yes, it was the right thing to do, and we talked for a while, remembering a mutual friend who had been through somewhat the same process of dying several years ago. I said, "You're still welcome to come over. Would it help you to see her one last time?" He said, "I'll be over, but first I'm going to get you all some burgers at the [Burger joint name redacted] and make sure you get some food in you." I thought OMG.

So we went through a whole raft of processes and procedures ending with our waiting with the priest for the nurse who would "pronounce" the death, when my friend arrived knocking on the door, and sure enough he'd brought big sacks of fresh-cooked hamburgers -- which smell wonderful -- and he and the priest, and we and Betty's granddaughter chat about what a wonderful person Betty had been, how much she'd touched our lives, etc, etc, and my friend went over to Betty, who was still very serene on her bed, and he gently took her hand, kissed it and stroked her head and turned away, tears streaming down his cheeks, and just whispered "Thank you." He left not long afterwards, reminding us that we'd better have those hamburgers, and we said we would.

And about an hour later, when all the hub bub was done, we did; we had a wonderful little wake, Betty's granddaughter and us, as we talked about Betty's life, listening to music she liked to hear, and making preps for the next step.

At this point, I don't think there's going to be a funeral as such. Betty's body will be cremated, and her ashes will be split. Her spirit will be honored, and her memory will be secured. I suspect a number of people will write about her -- I couldn't possibly be the only one who does so! Those words will be assembled and distributed to those whose lives she touched so profoundly.

Rest in peace, Betty. You may be gone from our sight, but you will always be in our hearts. It was a privilege just to know you.

"She looks like she's sleeping normally..."

A friend just called and apologized for not coming over to see Betty today -- she only had one visitor today, and that was probably enough in any case. My friend was pretty broken up about not coming over, though. He was remembering the loss of his parents, first his father and then his mother, and how much it took out of him and yet how much he gained from being there for them when he could be, staying with his father for his final days. He said he couldn't handle his emotions if he'd seen Betty again; it would have been too much. "Is she hanging on?" Yes, I said. Barely. "She looks like she's sleeping normally..."

But she is definitely on a journey.

As we talked on the phone, I could tell my friend was bawling his eyes out. Sometimes it's best just to let loose like that. I know when the priest came yesterday it was pretty constant tears around here, but Betty could hear us testifying about so many of the wonderful things she'd done for us and the special spiritual gifts she'd given us. And she smiled that astonishing smile of hers, and she let us know she liked hearing us say how good she was!

Well, she was and is. So there.

Betty's been on that journey several times before, but she's never quite reached her goal. She said she saw her son on that journey once, a son who'd been killed by a drunk driver while he was helping a motorist change a tire beside the road almost 40 years ago, and she said he told her, "Momma, it's not time yet, you have to go back, but I'll be here to meet you when it is the right time." She's seen her mother and her father, and she says she thinks she's seen her little brother who died when he was three years old. She's described her experiences there, "in that place", in great detail, and she's had no fear of going there again. No fear at all.

And we're very grateful for that.

When "T" was here this morning, Betty was still able to communicate, to share a few words, to smile, to listen to stories. And that was good. It was a fine morning.

Tomorrow? We can't know. But Betty has been letting us know that she's OK and she's going to be OK.

Bless her heart.

OT: Vigil

Last October, we started Hospice Care At Home for an elderly relative who suffered from congestive heart failure and desperately wanted out of the hospital where she'd been subjected to all manner of indignities and tortures in a successful effort to save her life. We had to take a really strong stand with her doctors, but after considerable.... persuasion.... she was released and brought to our home. She refused some of the home treatment her doctor recommended, including feeding through nasal tube to be followed with the insertion of a PEG in her stomach. So the doctor pulled the tube out of her and sent her on her way with a "No Code" notice to post on the refrigerator in case we needed to call Emergency Services. This was actually a kindness.

She was in Hospice Care for nine months, quite a bit longer than the professionals expected her to live. In fact, her doctor didn't expect her to live more than a few weeks after she got home if that long. She was expected to starve to death because she refused the NG tube and the PEG.

Oh, but she thrived instead. She gained strength and gained weight, she ate and drank normally, she was eager to get better. I was her primary care giver, but there was a nurse once or twice a week, and a home health aide came periodically to wash her and chat with her and cheer her up.

After nine months, the Hospice service decided she was doing well enough to discharge her, but because she had a persistent venous ulcer on one leg, they transfered her to Home Health to see if more aggressive treatment would help clear it up.

Well, it didn't. In fact, the wound got larger. Betty's spirits never lagged, but she was obviously going into decline, becoming weaker, less able to do for herself. But still not in a critical state.

I went to New Mexico for a week for my own R and R and I was informed while I was there that Betty had had a setback, a severe low blood pressure incident which alarmed the Home Health nurse no end. She and the doctor decided to cease certain medications immediately in the hope that her blood pressure would return to normal (well, normal for her).

It didn't. When I got back from New Mexico, I saw an alarming deterioration in Betty's condition. She was still in excellent spirits, but she was becoming weaker and weaker, and she was eating and drinking less and less. She had had bouts of severe nausea and diarrhea during the previous few months which were partially controlled but she was developing a real fear of eating and/or drinking too much.

Finally, a few days after I got back, she stopped eating altogether. She said she "couldn't". Food wouldn't go down. There was a blockage of some sort in her throat, she said, and it hurt to swallow. Shortly, she stopped drinking fluids except for a few sips of water now and then, sips that would frequently just come right back up.

The Home Health nurse was informed, and of course this caused even more alarm. Betty's blood pressure and pulse stayed low. The doctor was informed, and the recommendation was to put Betty back in Hospice pronto, or take her back to the hospital. I asked Betty if she wanted to go back to the hospital, and she said "Nooooo!" Well, that was that.

It actually took about a week to get her back into Hospice care, during which time she became weaker and weaker, but still her spirits remained strong and positive. The doctor came to visit a few days before Hospice was officially set up again, and she (the doctor) and Betty had a wonderful chat and time together (they go back a long way, decades.) As the doctor was leaving, she discussed with us what she felt was going on. She did not think Betty would live through the night, and she said she would be on call if we needed her help in any way.

Well, Betty did live through the night. She is quite a survivor. She has beat every expectation of her imminent demise for a very long time, confounding medical professionals right and left.

But we have few illusions at this point. We are on Vigil. The doctor has come to see her again, bringing her 10 year old son this time. Betty and doctor's son go back a long way too, and they spent some quality time reminiscing. Friends and relatives have come to sit and chat with Betty to cheer her and wish her godspeed.

Betty herself knows that these are most likely her final days or weeks. We of course can't know how long she has left to live, but she can't eat or drink, and she is showing more and more signs of cardiac failure. We make sure she's comfortable, pain free, and at ease, that she knows she is not alone, that she's with people who love her and that we'll stay with her.

In January December, I posted about our much beloved cat Mao who died on New Year's Eve. His illness and passing were almost identical to what Betty is experiencing now. He could not eat and at the end he could not drink, and he basically starved to death -- which is how the doctor expects Betty's life to end if her heart doesn't give out first. The parallels are eerie. And since Betty was discharged from Hospice, another cat -- who looks very much like Mao and has many of his behaviors and sensibilities but who is a girl cat -- has come to live with us and to sit with Betty and help keep watch over her, just as Mao did. It is the most amazing thing.

And I can almost not stop the tears....

Issues and Answers

So.

The Health Care Reform effort was derailed by some chatter about the arrest of Harvard Prof Skip Gates at his home in Cambridge for "disorderly conduct." The arresting officer had been dressed down by Gates, and at his Health Care news conference, the President himself dressed down the cop by calling the arrest "stupid" and reminding Americans that Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately detained by the police as they have been historically.

Consequently, nobody's talking about healthcare, everybody's talking about Gates and the police.

Yes. Well. Why not? The Health Care Reform issue has essentially been taken out of the hands -- and interest -- of the People by those who are so busy crafting a "reform" measure that, at least to this observer, is primarily intended as a giant wealth transfer from the bottom and middle to the top, yet another one. The People may get a few benefits from this "reform" -- and they may not. In fact, so far as anyone can tell at this point, the centerpiece of "reform" is a mandate that everyone purchase healthcare coverage, coverage that initially will only come from private extortionists, also known as insurance companies. There may -- or may not -- be a so-called "public option" at some point (say four years down the road, or maybe never) by which people can be covered by a government sponsored plan, but by that time, most everyone will be compelled to be covered by private insurance. So, it's hard to see how the public can get very enthused about simply handing more money over to the insurance companies, a lot of it no doubt being tax money and extortion.

I've always seen the course of Health Care Reform in this country as following the pattern set by Medicare Part D, which -- yes -- has provided prescription drug coverage to many elderly and disabled Americans at little or no cost to them (if they're lucky) through miriad private insurance companies, in an extraordinarily complicated format that confuses the heck out of a lot of recipients, and that pays drug companies fortunes, hundreds of billions of dollars, in what amount to windfall profits.

Likely, that's what's going to happen with Health Care Reform, something immensely complex and costly to the government and to individuals -- who aren't lucky enough to qualify for subsidized care -- all to the benefit of insurance companies and the Medical Industrial Complex.

So let's talk about Gates instead.

At least with that incident, you can get a handle on what's going on, and you can opine to your heart's content, no harm no foul, no matter what your Position on it is.

But I'd rather deal with one of the burgeoning economic issues that seems not to penetrate the Versailles Bubble of Washington, nor does it seem to be of more than passing interest to the various progressive powers that be.

It's unemployment, and the continuing skyrocketing unemployment statistics, and the utter absence of any jobs programs to get people back to work. I've been harping on this since last year, to no apparent effect. Indifference is the standard operating status of nearly everyone in the field of economics, no matter what their political persuasion. Just like the crippling household debt loads that keep dragging down the economy, the vast ranks of the unemployed do not rise to the level of attention that requires action by the High and the Mighty. No crisis. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

There has, after all, been "action." Unemployment benefit extentions, for example. Never mind that at least half the unemployed don't qualify for benefits at all. And the other half are lucky if the benefit they receive amounts to half their employed salary (usually it's much less). Each extension has new qualification rules, more stringent every time, so that ultimately, the rolls are further reduced, and unemployed people are required to take any job offered, no matter what the pay/benefit scale.

As for those who don't get benefits at all, "tough luck, suckers!"

The absence of any jobs program, and the utter indifference of most "progressives" to this absence is striking. The point of putting people back to work, after all, is to provide them with income so they can spend money on necessities and luxuries and contribute to economic recovery. But for whatever reason, the groaning load of unemployed, now around 7 million "officially" -- and 14 million + in actuality -- and their heavily reduced household incomes are just fine for most economists and seemingly for most "progressives", too.

The expectation is that unemployment will continue to rise through the end of the year, maybe into next year, and there will be no substantial reduction in unemployment for years to come. A 10% or 11% unemployment rate by the end of the year, which means an acutal unemployment rate of as much as 20%, may continue indefinitely, and economists and "progressives" seem to be fine with it.

The effect, of course, of such a high level of unemployment sustained over such a long time is to put immense and relentless pressure on wages, driving them down, down, down for ordinary people -- at least for those who manage to find or keep jobs. We're already seeing significant wage cuts for workers in many fields. Cuts of 5%, 10%, 15% are common; if trends continue -- which there is every expectation they will -- wage cuts of 30% to 50% will not be unusual. And yet, even with such heavy wage cuts for workers already drowning in debt for which they receive no relief (unlike the banks and Wall Street speculators), those on top of the pyramid are strutting and boasting about their spectacular profits and bonuses. In other words, certain people and certain sectors of the economy are not suffering at all; they have their debts covered by the groaning workers, they keep their yachts and their mansions on various continents, and they see their incomes increase exponentially.

Something is desperately wrong with this picture, yet for whatever reason, most economists -- and most "progressives" -- are oblivious. Victory in the Class War has been won by the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe, oh yes, and now it is being consolidated with enormous brio and vengeance.

Workers will be lucky to wind up at the end of this recession -- assuming there is an end -- drudging at minimum wage or less, with no job security, few benefits, and little future, still drowning in debt. Assuming, that is, they can find work at all.

Why do the Masters of the Universe hate America and hate Americans?

Because as their loot-fest shows, they clearly do.

But perhaps more to the point, why do Americans take it? At what point do Americans say "Enough!" and act on it? From appearances, at any rate, we're nowhere near that point. Workers, desperate to stay employed, essentially agree to anything their employers propose, and popular media essentially advise workers to be as creative as they can be in their submission, for it is only the cleverest submitters who will survive this bleak period. But submit employees must, or they will be out the door.

The anomaly is a workers' strike of any kind or (heavens!) a plant take over, so anomalous is it that it's regarded as bizarre, incomprehensible. When a strike is won, as still sometimes happens, you might not hear about it at all. Don't want to give workers ideas, after all. Unions are cutting deals -- and cutting members' salaries -- right and left, foregoing benefits, raises, job security, retirement, anything, just to keep the membership employed at all.

Workers' retirement funds have been looted and stolen by employers for years, and now those at the top of the pyramid are getting ready to raid Social Security, unwilling as they are to pay the taxes necessary to replenish the Trust Fund. They have been using that money to fund their wars and their tax cuts for generations, and now that the bill is coming due for their raids on the Trust Fund, they're making lots and lots of noises about being unwilling to pay. You mean the Treasury bonds that they insisted were good as gold are no good at all? Could be.

And still the People are passive.

Is it a lack of interest, a lack of knowledge, a lack of leadership? Or is it a lack of will?

I have no answer to that one but it is very clear where this period of economic restructuring is headed for most of us: down.

Stimulus

Well. I did have a dialup internet connection while I was in New Mexico, but there were so many problems with my laptop that it was hardly worth the bother. The battery won't charge, browsers crash, and something from AOL (which came with the machine) won't stop notifying me that an AOL connection is Available! I don't care.

So, except for some emails, IMs with the household in California, and a few scattered comments on other people's blogs, I didn't participate much in the wonderful world of the Internets while I was there. For one thing, I was very busy with the house and all of its many requirements, and for another I was informed that a household member in California was a big prize winner: VIP tickets to seven country music concerts -- and back stage passes for meet 'n' greets -- (Kenny, Keith, Tim, Alan, Brad, B&D, and Rascal Flatts) and would have to start going to shows pronto. Which meant, I thought, I would have to return early. Or something. Actually, I didn't, though. All sorts of upheaval, in our own lives and those of others -- recruiting people to go to the concerts with was quite a job, besides all the travel arrangements to be made, and on and on, made this into a "stimulus" issue, despite the free tickets. There were so many other things to consider, buy, arrange, take care of just to take advantage of the grand prize. You couldn't sit home bemoaning your fate as it were. By some happenstance, things worked out pretty well all in all at least for the Kenny concert in San Francisco. But that's another story.

One of the things I wanted to make note of was what additional effect the recession was having on my corner of rural New Mexico. What I found was that the Stimulus was in nearly full gear. The town has a whole host of infrastructure issues they've been preparing to deal with for over a year, and so they had plenty of shovel ready projects on tap. One of the coordinators of New Mexico Stimulus funds (or maybe even two of them) is from the town, so it was relatively easy to approval and funds in the pipeline to go ahead, so the water and sewer systems are being upgraded (yes, an area has actual "city" water and sewers!), roads are being repaired, fancy new signs are being put up welcoming travelers, and on and on. There's a corporation yard full of materials and equipment ready to go on other projects. It's really something. While things had looked pretty bleak indeed in March, they're looking up now. Quite a few people had left the area -- no work after the biggest employer in the area shut down -- houses were abandoned, the one on the property behind us had burned (arson), and things were grim.

One of the houses nearby had been vacant since April, the family that had lived there moving closer to the husband's work. When I was there last week, though, a new family was moving in as I was packing to drive back to California. The property behind ours sported a new mobile home as of May, and someone was living there until just before I left, when they moved out. No more businesses had closed in town, and one that was teetering on the brink of closure was doing fine now, so the owners said. People's moods were much better than before.

And I expected things to be worse, perhaps because they are getting grimmer in California by the day. Oh, a budget deal is rumored to be likely within the next few days, but it will be a monstrosity, like the last one -- only worse. People are not happy here in the Golden State, and they are not likely to be any happier after the slashing and burning of the State Budget.

They still know how to laugh in New Mexico.

On Books

By now, everyone's heard of the Kindle Kontroversy, in which the Amazon folks up and abruptly deleted Kindle copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from users' Kindles because the Orwell copyright holders objected. Poof! Gone. Anyone who remembers Fahrenheit 451 from back in the old days can understand my rationale for collecting and preserving as many books as I have from eras gone by, particularly the period from 1920 - 1960.

Above is a picture of part of our library in New Mexico. Every time I go I try to find more room for more books in our house that is already jammed with them. There are books in every room -- except the bathroom, where there are plenty of magazines instead. And we still have several thousand more books to take to New Mexico over the next few years.

I've stopped buying them in quantity any more; once the count reached well over 10,000, I figured it was time to take a rest from purchases for a while, organize what we have (somewhat) and cull duplicates. While I will cull the duplicates and consider using the books in the worst condition in artistic projects rather than trying to preserve them whole, this is nothing like "deleting" them the way Amazon has done with the Orwell classics.

I've long been dubious of digitizing the printed word and making access to it dependent on the devices that can read the format. Then to take it a step further to Amazon's Kindle, wherein the device is linked to a service, a service which can, quite arbitrarily and without warning remove digital works from the device remotely and at will.

Digitizing has a benefit in the short term in that more people are theoretically able to access works easily. The thousands of books I have collected are not at all easy to access: you have to physically present yourself at my house in rural New Mexico, or you have to contact me somehow and ask me to physically send you a volume, or you're shit out of luck. You can find the volume somewhere else. Buh-bye.

But then over time, you get into the problem of books disappearing. Most of those I have collected in the last few years, for example, have been discards from households, libraries, and so forth. Books that people and institions no longer want for whatever reason: they're obsolete, not in the best condition, they contain erroneous information, they're duplicates of other volumes, or nobody ever read them in the first place, why would anyone want to read them now? I have a lot of text books, for example, from the '30's and '40's -- some with all sorts of interesting theories on psychology and eugenics. Hmm. None of this information is currently in vogue (thank goodness) but to see how pervasive it once was is bracing to say the least.

The instinct is just to discard them all, but I look at them as historical artifacts and a means of understanding some of the reasons why earlier generations believed what they did and did what they did.

These are books that are unlikely to be digitized, but they may be preserved in the flesh as it were by people like me in various places around the country, and in time may become useful historical documents.

I also have numerous volumes preserved on my various computers, and every now and then I wonder idly what will happen to them when the machines in question crash, as they are wont to do, and access to their contents is difficult, costly to restore, or impossible? While I can understand and anticipate that my current PCs and notebooks won't work properly forever, and I'm more or less prepared to lose the contents of the machines if I don't get on the stick and back up everything pronto, that's quite a different thing from Amazon (or some other company) literally deleting digitized volumes from devices without warning and without recourse.

In fact, making it possible for companies to do this -- not just in the literary field, either -- has been a corporate goal for a long time. How to perfectly control individuals' access to and use of all kinds of entertainment, educational, and financial resources and information is the Gordian Knot of our age. Governments try to do it -- our own included -- as do corporations.

The point of having so many literal books on hand is to make that control slightly less possible on a micro scale. If enough people do that -- hold on to their books among other resources from the past -- they preserve part of history, and from that history, learning can continue, whatever happens to the electronic works and world we are so reliant on.

Books largely vanished from the Western World during the aftermath of the Fall of Rome. But many books had been preserved outside the confines of Dark Ages Europe, and it was their rediscovery by Europeans that spurred the Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was a return to learning, and it was made possible because Arabs and Byzantines (among others) had preserved or recopied ancient books and made them available.

No matter how successful digitization is in the short run, we'd do well to maintain libraries of actual books as well...

OT: Off to the Hi Lo Country again

I'll be out of town for the next week, chilling as it were in the Hi Lo country of New Mexico. Oh that drive, down California's Central Valley on Hwy 99, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens country, large parts of it sucked up for suburbs during the Bubble and now forlorn and half-empty seeming and among the poorest regions in the country; then over the Tehachapis into the Mojave and through the scrub and the Joshua trees, the Panamints, and on to the Colorado River, a silver thread in the hazy distance. It's a desert, yes, but I've been chased by thunderstorms and torrential rains while driving through the Mojave. It's a trip.

It takes forever just to get out of California. It is as far from my starting point to the border with Arizona out of Needles as it is to my desitination in New Mexico from the Welcome to Arizona sign on the highway. A highway now called Interstate 40 but which parallels Route 66 most of its way, little remnants and reminders of the Mother Road all along the drive through Arizona and into New Mexico where the spirit of the Road lives as strongly now as ever.

There I'll plop myself down in our turn of the 20th century adobe, listen to the birds, do some fixing and cleaning, maybe write some things, go off to visit the ruins, maybe even go to Santa Fe -- haven't done that for a while, and every now and then venturing among the touristas to listen to their complaints about finding "nothing but art galleries" in Santa Fe can be bracing. Where else do tourists complain of too much art? I ask you.

As a friend refers to my expeditions to New Mexico, "Release and Relief."

Nothing much has changed with regard to the collapse of California's government; there is still no budget agreement; our hot-tubbin, stogie smokin gubna is still issuing his fruitless commands and demands, protestors still assemble at the Capitol -- sometimes even blockading parts of it, discommoding (at least for a little while) the routines of posturing and statement making of the higer mucky-mucks, and Dems still mewl and wring their hankies about how hard they're working to reach a compromise that Stogie-man with the Wrinkled Ass will accept.

It's nuts-making.

We're no longer doing Hospice Care at Home; glory be, the patient was discharged a couple of weeks ago, because she's made such an amazing recovery. They really didn't expect her to live more than a few weeks, and after 9 months, the hospice service said, "Well, she's not gonna die, is she? So let's put her in Home Care for a while, and take it from there."

The shift from Hospice to Home Care was smooth enough; it's basically the same, but for the fact that the visiting professionals are not on Vigil any more, and they really do have an interest now in getting her up and around, but I don't really think that's going to happen. She's still blind and very frail, becomes exhausted easily, and she continues to suffer from various ailments, some the consequences of old age, some due to her vulnerabilities from all the surgery and other procedures over the years. She's not returning to hearty hale health, but she is doing remarkably better than when she first came from the hospital last October. There are such things as miracles.

Meanwhile, since we're OT, a note about cats. Those who follow the blog know that our cat Mao died on New Year's Eve after an illness. He was deeply, profoundly missed as he still is. No other cat pal we've had over the years has formed the kind of bond we had with him.

So, a couple of months ago, we noted that a very beautiful and well-groomed tabby had seemingly moved into the garage (where we assumed she was going to have kittens, but she never did.) Then a fluffy black cat showed up. He had a red heart on his collar and after a while, I got him tame enough to pick him up and read what was on his collar; it was his name: Louie. How cute. Then a big black and white, huge, showed up. And a little black and white. The little black and white strongly resembled Mao, and she (not a he; she) marched right into the house and moved in. As if she'd always lived here and we were her guests.

And she's been here pretty much ever since. She's taken on many of Mao's characteristics, many of his places, many of his attitudes. It's quite an amazing transformation. We look on in awe.

All right, gotta finish packing, then it's back to the road. If there is an internet connection at my destination, I may be able to post about what the recession is continuing to do to that rural and thinly populated, somewhat isolated region of the old west. Last time I was there in March, it was obvious what kind of effects the economic collapse was having and it wasn't pretty.