Hmm, someone’s been busy putting good stuff on YouTube, old and new.
Ruby Red
It was the wickedest gift I could give to you.
What Makes a Man a Man
Then answers come from those who make the rules that some of us must break…
The Way You Walk
If I stay now, you don’t own me.
I’m worthless for writing today, but one of the joys of a group blog is that you can let your co-bloggers take some of the pressure off. Mine have been picking up my slack for a while, but this week, they’ve outdone themselves.
Mike described the pandering to teabaggers that went on at a health care reform town hall–run by a Democrat.
Betty McCollum did a lot of assuring and comforting of conservatives in the crowd–that the bill would not damage them in any way, that there would be no “death panels,” that the special needs patients wouldn’t have to beg a panel for care, that they would be able to stay with their current plan, that Medicare would be fixed so that Minnesota hospitals are no longer punished for being efficient. She didn’t say anything to show those of us who had campaigned and doorknocked and phone-banked to help Democrats get elected in November that we were going to be heard this September. She didn’t say anything about fighting for a public option, let alone the one fix that would actually take care of the problems, single-payer health care, such as the type that our top competitors on the world market offer.
This post is a follow-up to his report on attending Michele Bachmann’s town hall meeting.
Greg has a post up that I wish I’d written. No way I could have, of course, but there it is.
I love this video. I love the kids who made it. I love the message it gives and the way it is given.
But the Saint Paul Police Department saw it differently.
We now know, because of the release of previously secreted information and some excellent reporting at MinnPost, that this video was the primary piece of evidence used by the police to argue before judges, city officials, state officials, and federal authorities that they needed funding, warrants, and overall administrative support as well as coordination at the federal and state level to spend $300,000 invading several homes, harassing several people, confiscating truckloads of stuff that police claimed was either evidence or dangerous materials, and ultimately arresting over 800 people.
OK, have you stopped laughing? Have you stopped screaming? Have you cleared the tears from your eyes? Yes, it is true. This video scared the authorities into spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to carry out dozens of blatantly unconstitutional acts and hundreds of inappropriate activities. Thousands of law enforcement officials were involved. It was almost like a municipally organized pogrom pitting the police against the populous. The mayor of Saint Paul and the chief of police saw this video, shat in their pants, and the smell is still ripe.
Go see what he has to say.
Thanks to Ronald for the link.
Alma Alexander has written about happy endings over at SF Novelists.
I don’t really believe in the happy ending. In my early reading, few of the old myths had them; when I graduated to fairy tales I tended to prefer Hans Christian Andersen’s dystopias than ache to be in Cinderella’s wedding party – I might have cried bitter tears at the fate of the Little Mermaid (the ORIGINAL Little Mermaid, not Disney’s red-haired sea princess with a chorus of singing sea slugs) but somehow I had more in common with her than I ever had with Sleeping Beauty. I mean, I might not have grown up with a spindle in my hand either, but I think I could be kind of trusted to see a damned sharp point if one came under my hand, and I would like to think (faery curses aside) that I would have the motherwit not to impale myself on one.
I don’t particularly agree with her about…well, about anything except that happy endings can be done badly. Happy endings do happen in real life. Happily ever after doesn’t mean no work, just not working alone or without hope or reward. Sometimes the cost of happiness really is paid up front.
What really caught my attention, though, were her feelings about Sleeping Beauty.
Both kind of fairy tale endings hinge on a sort of fate or destiny – Maleficent’s curse or the Little Mermaid’s desire to walk on dry land no matter what the cost – but the difference in my head between the Sleeping Beauty tale and that of the Little Mermaid is that Sleeping Beauty almost literally sleepwalks her way through her life (the curse is something that WILL HAPPEN, no matter what she does or thinks about it) and the Little Mermaid makes her own choices, lives with her own pain, and finally turns her back on the dearly-bought salvation that her sisters have paid for because it is not her OWN choice, her OWN destiny. One of these protagonists is in control of her own life. The other is not. I saw the difference.
This bothered me quite a lot, this preference for willful self-destruction over a free release being offered to a young woman who is suffering for her parents’ actions. Some of my reaction is a particular hatred for blaming the victim, this time for being passive in a situation in which she truly has no control. Some of it is that this fetishization of control has nasty consequences.
The most sure way to ensure control over what happens to you is to arrange a nice, quiet suicide where no one can find you until you’re dead. Failing that, the next most certain is to make lousy choices with known consequences. Good things will happen to you by accident occasionally, but there’s no surer way to get kicked out of wherever you live than to stop paying your rent or mortgage, no surer way to see your marriage destroyed than to walk away from it, no surer way to avoid getting an education than to refuse to study, no surer way to keep from being published than to refuse to write.
These things happen to some percentage of us anyway, because when it comes down to it, they are not under our control. Not completely. But they are much more under the control of those who engage in self-sabotage.
Not surprisingly, we see this in politics too. There is no issue so important that someone won’t come along to say they’re sitting on their hands because we’ll never get the outcome we really want. We saw it last year before the election. We see it right now in the people who want a public health insurance option but act as though the decision is up to Rahm Emanuel.
The fact is, defeatism (anticipation of the unhappy ending) just isn’t that reasonable. Bad things happen, but good things happen too. One hundred years ago, women couldn’t vote. Poll taxes were allowed. Interracial and same-sex marriages weren’t allowed in many places. We had a weak antitrust system, no formal national park system, no Interstate system, no Social Security, no Medicaid, no free school lunches, no Title IX, no Pell Grants, no VA, no education subsidies for the people who serve in the Armed Services.
Focusing on that unhappy ending means we are ignoring what we have accomplished–and losing sight of the power we have to accomplish more. We can’t control all of our environment, but every decision we make, every action we take has an effect on it. We can choose the more certain path of failure, or we can the risk to try to improve our lot. We can reach for that happy ending. Sometimes, we even get it.
And that is every bit as much a Truth as any presented in the most dismal literature.
I was thirteen, which means I was in eighth grade. I hated school for numerous reasons mostly having to do with being a poor geek in a rich suburb in the status-obsessed eighties. I hated gym class for the very similar reason that almost everything was turned into a competition. After all, what better idea is there than making blood-thirsty teenagers play dodge ball (except maybe stranding them on a desert island)?
I liked swimming, both because water was home and because I’d been doing it competitively for a few years in a state where summer wasn’t strictly bounded by holidays. All that practice meant that when one of the snobby kids wanted to put me in my place with a swimming competition, they got their asses kicked. Okay, beating one of them while doing the backstroke instead of freestyle was just showing off, but it was fun.
I liked running, too. Like swimming, it was an opportunity to be by myself, even in a class full of other people. I was a decent sprinter and an okay distance runner until I ran out of breath. I never did manage to condition that up properly, despite walking a mile to school every day with a nice uphill section in the middle.
Then I started liking running less. One day, my foot hurt. I didn’t remember injuring it, but I figured I must have. I wasn’t screaming with pain, but I limped. The gym teacher looked at me funny but let me sit out a day. Then a second day. Then the look was less funny, and I was told to get out there and try.
It hurt, of course, every time I flexed my foot. But I could do it. The pain, just as it had started, never got so acute that I was afraid I was hurting myself more. Sometimes it even waned. Then it waxed again. But I’d already learned I could run through the pain. It was better than that look and all it implied. I even taught myself to walk without the limp.
I think it was the next year that my knees started to hurt. Same gym teacher, though, so I knew better than to sit anything out. As long as I could do it through the pain, the pain couldn’t really be that bad, and I shouldn’t use it as an excuse. For not doing something I’d like to do until it hurt.
It wasn’t until I was sixteen, riding the bus to a more-distant school and no longer required to take gym, that I saw the doctor about my foot and my knees. That may have been the first time I saw a doctor in that period. It may just have been the first time I said anything about this pain that I’d gotten used to living with. I don’t remember. Things were complicated then.
It was arthritis. The toe got a whopping huge shot of cortisone, which burns like you can’t imagine if you’ve never had it. A couple hours later, it was fine, a condition that persisted for more than a decade. The knees were more difficult, since my kneecaps are slightly malformed, but I was given exercises to strengthen the appropriate muscles to keep my kneecap from grinding into the rest of my knee.
That’s what I’d been living with for three years. That and exercise-induced asthma, but it was even more years later before I figured out that being out of breath after a run doesn’t make most people really struggle for air and cough to clear obstructions that can’t be cleared. Well, the arthritis, the asthma–and that look on my gym teacher’s face that said I was faking it, relying on a tiny boo boo to get me out of work.
I wanted to take the diagnosis back to my teacher and rub her face in it. I still don’t know whether I should have. There are so many forces in our society telling us that as long as we can limp along, the only thing that’s really wrong with us it that we’re not doing it with smiles on our faces.
So I’ve learned how to smile, just as I learned how to run and how to walk without a limp. Real smiles, too, the kind that will fool experts. I’ve learned how to push enough air over the reddest vocal cords to defeat laryngitis long enough to allow the smallest of small talk. I’ve learned to look attentive when I’m falling-down tired. I’ve trained, “I’m doing well, and you?” as the automatic response to the polite question that isn’t really interested.
Of course, I haven’t learned how to feel any better. I haven’t learned how to keep from resenting the world zipping past me when I have to stop or the people who can’t see through the facade.
Most of all, I haven’t learned how to stop feeling like a malingerer when I stop short of running. I know that the best thing I can do when I’m sick is sleep. I know that sitting up will just make my joints hurt more and that my temperature will fluctuate broadly, requiring that I have quite a bit of control over my coverings. I know that migraine-induced vertigo is much less likely to make me nauseated if I don’t move around a lot. I know that in the past year, I’ve used five days of PTO for vacation, and all the rest has gone to sick time.
None of that makes me feel any less like I’m slacking off. None of it makes me feel any less useless when I’m not getting something done. None of it makes me feel that it is any less shameful to limp. And none of it makes me feel any less like someone is going to come along and look at me as though I’m making it all up.
The MinnPost recently interviewed both of Minnesota’s senators about health care reform. Franken took the opportunity to, once again, rub his competence into the faces of those who want to think of him as “just” a comedian. Klobuchar didn’t do as well. Here are a few of her answers about the public option:
MinnPost: Are you in favor of the inclusion of the “public option”?
Klobuchar: I am open to a public option, but I am waiting to see what it looks like in the Senate bill.
MinnPost: Why?
Klobuchar: I believe we can incentivize more affordable health care in general by better regulating insurance and creating meaningful competition for health care services. However, some of the options before Congress are tied to Medicare reimbursement rates. Before we even consider expanding Medicare, or another program based on its rates, we must reform our Medicare payment system so that it rewards value, not volume, and doesn’t disadvantage states like Minnesota that provide high-quality care in an efficient way.
I would prefer a public option that would be a competitive option that would allow people to buy into a Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which is a series of private plans…
I have long advocated for opening up the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program that uses the purchasing power of 8 million federal employees to lower premiums, while still providing access to quality care and preventative services. I am especially focused on making sure that any reforms make it easier for small businesses and the self-employed to afford health care.
MinnPost: You have faced some criticism about not coming down clearly for, or against, the public option. What is your rationale behind the position that you have taken?
Klobuchar: We have a lot to lose if it isn’t done right… I think I am doing the right thing for the state by stepping back. The problem is if you say “yes” and don’t see the changes you want, that doesn’t get you very far. You would give up any power to change it.
In other words, Klobuchar is taking a wait-and-see attitude on the public option. It would be nice, doncha know, but somebody might, maybe, screw it up. She can’t really commit until she sees what is delivered to her desk.
Health care was one of the largest issues of the last election. It affects every one of her constituents. 79% of people polled (including 61% of Republicans) want an option that doesn’t involve trusting their health to the insurance companies. What about this issue calls for such a passive approach?
When we elect a senator, we expect her to lead. We expect her to use the power we’ve given her instead of waffling about giving it up down the road. We expect her to get out and tell the rest of the Senate what is important to her state, to lay out our broad concerns as well as the details that worry her. We expect her to stay involved in the process long enough to make sure decent legislation is written.
We don’t expect her to sit back and hope someone delivers legislation to her liking. That isn’t being a legislator. That’s being a voter, and any of us can do it. We don’t need her for that.
This isn’t what I voted for. I did not vote for a man who allows his administration to solicit opportunities to water down the initiatives he promised. I did not vote for a man who reaches across the aisle to find a place to sit. I did not vote for a few more years. I did not vote for “Well, we could.”
And I’m not alone. Read the rest at Quiche Moraine.
How often do you hear people say, “Psychology isn’t science”? Truth is, like any other field of knowledge, it can be approached scientifically or…well…not. The geocentrists weren’t scientists, but that doesn’t mean modern astronomers aren’t. Same goes for psychology.
Aaron Beck is one of my heroes in this regard, although I never actually remember his name, just his work. He developed cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and The American Scholar has a great article on how his insistence on evidence of efficacy reshaped psychotherapy.
To understand why the introduction of scientific standards into the field of psychotherapy was groundbreaking, it is necessary to know what the scene looked like prior to Beck’s arrival. “From the early 1900s through the 1950s, people didn’t know what worked in psychotherapy and what didn’t,” says Donald Freedheim, professor emeritus of psychology at Case Western Reserve University and editor of A History of Psychotherapy. “There was a rule of thumb: about a third of patients got better, about a third got worse, and about a third stayed the same.” Without a reliable gauge of efficacy, therapeutic notoriety was conferred on those clinicians who, by sheer force of personality and persuasiveness of rhetoric, were able to attract the most acolytes, adherents, and patients. This “guru model” was precisely what Beck found unacceptable, and what he has dedicated himself to dismantling. He hasn’t been the only person to insist that psychotherapy rest on a foundation of replicable data—he wasn’t even the first—but he has been the position’s most dogged, visible, sophisticated, and influential proponent.
As a consequence, psychotherapy has been moving steadily from a model that is “eminence-based,” as a rueful saying has it, to one that is “evidence-based”—a powerful watchword in the field. Over the past several years, federal and state agencies in the United States and government-based health-care systems abroad have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to disseminate psychotherapies for which there is a solid core of scientific evidence, while insurance companies have been encouraging the clinicians within their systems to practice “empirically supported therapies” (EST) above others. In short, more and more, Freud’s world of subterranean drives is becoming Beck’s world of scientific accountability.
Highly recommended reading. Thanks to Josh for the link.
From my friend, Bethany, Beatrix’s mom:
My mom would have turned 71 today. But she died in 2006 of colon cancer, cancer that might have been prevented if she had been able to get permission from her insurance to have a colonoscopy. But there was no history of cancer in our family, and no indication of any issues, so she had to wait until she was on Medicare. A colonoscopy was on her calendar — but she didn’t end up going, because her Stage IV cancer was diagnosed in the ER a few weeks before.
My father-in-law is a freelance radio engineer who often housesits in the DC area. A few months ago he was walking the two dogs — who saw a squirrel — and in a freak accident he was pulled into traffic and both of his arms were broken. I don’t want to even hazard a guess as to how much all of the MRIs, x-rays, other tests, and doctor visits cost. And he too is un-insured.
Yesterday my friend M found out she and her family were losing their insurance, as of today. And this morning her little boy woke up with croup.
And a few months ago, when we were testifying at the legislature for statewide coverage for Minnesota kids, a representative from Medica sat boldly in front of us and told our state representatives that insurance rates would skyrocket if children were taken out of the coverage equation, because “we make most of our cost/benefit ratios from covering children.” Apparently not from MY child, as Medica was one of the insurance companies that denied her.
And there is more.
This isn’t the world’s best-quality video. That would be because I’ve never made one before. This kid, and this issue, are worth it though.
For more on pre-existing conditions, read Dan’s post over at Migrations.
Update: It would make me very happy if people were to repost this video, email it, etc. If we generate enough outrage, we have a chance at fixing this.
