Peg Kerr's Journal

cakmpls pointed this one out: here's a sickening story of the real world consequences when misogyny like Rush Limbaugh's permeates the culture. I've been watching the Rush Limbaugh story with a great deal of interest, and I'm pleased that his advertisors are dropping him. I hope that's a permanent change.

This essay also has a link to sign a petition to have Limbaugh taken off Armed Forces Radio. You do have to create an account at whitehouse.gov to sign, but all you have to give is your name, an email, and your zip (you can always make it up if you want).

I've spent the last two days trying to convince my 16 year old that she is not a "slut."

A comment was left by SilentBobSC on ( this photo, originally posted at Flickr )

"This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock, powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watch this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress, and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA bar back home on DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post of FreeRepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right."

Hat tip to The Best Article Every Day.

sleigh points to this:

"Former Republican Russell King has put together an exhaustive and hyperlinked screed of conservative hypocrisy. I just boggle at both the amount of work he had to do to put this together, as well as the amount of examples he had with which to work."

Finally, take a look at this over the top the sky is falling screed that james_nicoll pointed out (comments, too).

Wow. I hope he doesn't have an aneurisym or something. And primroseburrows points to another one here.

My hands are extremely painful, with cracked dry skin.

I hurt all over today. I went back to karate class yesterday (I'd intended to be going to two classes a week by now, but I've missed two weeks of classes due to all sorts of conflicts, plus depression). I'm using this knee brace, which works pretty well, and gives me good support, and keeps it warm, but of course, it prevents me from chambering my kicks very tightly.






It's so hard not to get discouraged. This knee problem, I've decided, seems to be a permanant injury. It still hurts, hurts, hurts when I do a full squat, even fourteen months later. I still can't do slow kicks on the injured side without holding the bar--my balance on that side is entirely shot. I have no more balance on that side than a green belt. I'm in the class below my belt level, and it still just seems so hard. And I'm not even going back to sparring class yet. After sparring class on Monday night (I was waiting because Fiona was attending), I joined the class to do the killer abs workout (the dreaded Ab Ripper DVD) and that's making me even more sore today. Alarmed by my physical deterioration, I've re-started the leg exercises I'd been doing when I was going to rehab, and so my hips and butt are sore, too. Gah. I WANT the black belt, but I just have a hard time believing I'll be able to accomplish it. Fiona is trying to buck me up, and I try to cheer myself by reminding myself that even if my side kicks seem lousy to me, there are very few women I know my age who can do a side kick at all.

Fiona is testing for a section star this Saturday (her second of three she needs to begin the screening process for black belt second degree.) She's doing the bo form, Soishi No Kang. She looks absolutely great doing it, except for one fault that just drives me crazy: her back heel pops up off the ground in almost every single one of her front stances. It's a bad habit she's had since she was a purple belt. I'll try to get a video of her doing it when she does the test this Saturday.

The girls are very difficult to rouse in the morning. Delia, poor thing, has to be out at the bus stop at 6:50 a.m., and she is downright snarly when I go in to wake her up (the alarm clock doesn't work for her. I have to rub her arms and legs for five to ten minutes every morning before she reluctantly surfaces). And Fiona has been incredibly groggy lately, too. We usually can't get her out of bed for as long as forty minutes after her alarm goes off, and then she attempts to dress, eat, and get out the door in ten minutes. The results are not happy.

The garage door is cracked, making it extremely difficult to close.

Cooking has been...interesting lately, mainly because I've been depending more on whatever we get from the food shelf. (Thank heavens for the food shelf. It's been just a God send for us.) It's different than shopping for yourself; instead of going to the store for what you intend to buy, you take whatever they happen to have on hand and then try to figure out how to use it. Often, stuff at the food shelf is distributed right before the expiration date, so sometimes its a challenge to use it in time. Rob's been volunteering there on Tuesdays, so we're entitled to two visits a month. At church this week (our church is one of the ones supporting this week) they said that food shelf visits are way up. They distributed 5,000 pounds of food last week.

We've been working on cleaning the house, in preparation for starting to cull stuff so that we can rearrange two and possibly three rooms. As I mentioned, I am giving up my office to give Fiona a bedroom. I'm viewing this as a temporary solution, until she goes away to college, but it's very difficult emotionally. We are trying to work out a way to carve out at least a small space for me, either in my bedroom, or in a room downstairs. The process of all this rearrangement will take us quite a while.

Rob has started another short term job with the Census. He's pleased because they went to more than the usual amount of trouble to call him back and promote him to a higher position. He's also gotten a call back for a legal editorial position. This means he's cleared the first hurdle, but he has to pass a test and, of course, battle with a bunch of other candidates for a limited number of slots, so it's useless to get hopes up yet. Still, it's more movement on the job front than we've had for months.

I'm really really really angry at Congress over the loss of a chance to pass health care reform, and I'm pretty ticked at Obama, too.

There is stuff that Elinor Dashwood isn't talking about (isn't there always). It's been preoccupying me a lot lately, which is why this journal has been quiet lately. I'm still here, though, still battling to keep my family together, moving forward through this tough time.

I've been listening the the NPR podcast "Planet Money," which I highly recommend. In the episode I just listened to, "Shopping for an MRI," Planet Money explained that ordinarily, most merchants compete on price: Store A will sell a can of Spaghetti-Os at a price pretty close to the price that Store B sells it. The one market where this doesn't work is health care costs. It is extremely difficult to find out what a facility will charge for a medical procedure, and since insurers generally provide a buffer, people are insulated from price information. As a result, hospitals and clinics can charge prices that are wildly different for the same procedure: an MRI might differ in cost by as much as $500 at two different locations less than a mile apart.

But they mentioned a really cool website that helps you uncover these price differentials. If you are facing an expensive medical procedure, go to www.newchoicehealth.com, plug in your location and the name of the procedure (gall bladder removal, say, or cataract surgery) and it will give you a handy cost comparison chart. In my city of Minneapolis, the cost of cataract surgery ranges from $3100 to $1150, and the website will give you the list of facilities, with their breakdowns on price.

Bookmark this site and use it!

Rep. Grayson (D-Florida) has this to say:



( Transcript )

Minnesota's governor Tim Pawlenty: It's "A Viable Option" To Invoke State Sovereignty, Keep Minnesota Out of Health Care Reform.

Dear Governor Pawlenty: Why, oh why couldn't you be the governor of Texas instead?

Edited to add: (No offense to Texas, peeps.)

Here.

I was bellowing at the radio this morning (never a good start to any day), in reaction to a story about how Democrats and Republicans are each struggling to frame the story about health care. The Democrats are choosing to use the term "public option," whereas the Republicans prefer to talk about "Washington takeover":

Republicans, however, refuse to use the word "public" when they talk about what Democrats are proposing. Senator John Cornyn of Texas says jokingly that Republicans who slip up face consequences: "You get a fine that you have to put in a jar on the table if you say 'public plan' instead of 'government plan.'" But for many Republicans, its more than just a government plan, it's a Washington takeover for Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker: "A Washington takeover of healthcare would result in a stifling of innovation." The same goes for Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, who's in charge of crafting the Senate GOP's message: "I think the one thing we don't want most is a Washington takeover." And neither do most Americans, according to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell: "What they don't want is a Washington takeover of health care along the line of what we've already seen with banks, insurance companies, and the auto industry."

Two months ago, GOP lawmakers got a 28-page memo from pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz titled "The Language of Health Care 2009." It lays out ten rules for what Luntz calls "Stopping the Washington takeover of health care." Dick Durbin, the Senate's number two Democrat says it's clear where Republicans got their talking points: "And as we listen to the speeches of Senator McConnell, day in and day out, they're right out of the play book."

Hear the three minute story in its entirety here.

At the point that Senators McConnell and Alexander were smugly explaining that Americans don't want a "Washington takeover," I just lost it and started screaming at the radio like a fishwife. Oh, please, I feel so much better knowing that you can tell me what I don't want. Don't give me a health plan that I get as a right of citizenship, rather than one I fear I'll lose if I lose my job. Please don't give me a plan that I know will cover my children, even if they get a job without benefits. Please don't give us a health plan that will allow all Americans to be covered. Of course we don't want that.

My god, what alternate reality do these people live in???

( What I did today to make the world a better place )