Good news from all over

Or rather, not too much.


On Tuesday I took Cat to the hospital, to (as it turns out) get a biopsy of her cervix - she's been having abnormal pap smears for a couple of years, and the viral infection (some version of HPV) has apparently taken a serious turn. From what the doctor said, they're expecting to find a 'pre-cancerous' lesion, which should be removable via a LEEP operation - a fairly minor outpatient procedure, we're told. Well, far better to have it treated and removed before it turns into a cancer, I guess.

Which, parenthetically, just made me goggle in abhorred wonder at all the nutcase parents in the US who are vowing and declaring never to let their teenage daughters be innoculated against HPV, despite its effect at reducing cervical cancer. The basis for this seems to officially be that being innoculated against a sex-born virus will just encourage them to have sex, and if they only have sex with the one man they ever marry, they will be in no danger of contracting HPV.

Which may be true, IF their husband has never had sex with anyone at all ever, either. And assuming they never divorce and remarry, or - heaven forbid - have an affair while married.

In fact, as far as I can detect, the real reason for this refusal is a far more visceral patriarchal reaction of 'Eewww, lady-parts, yukky!'  .... which actually pretty much describes the reaction of these nuts to most female-related issues.

Enough hypocrisy and rank deception to choke a hippo, really.

Oh, and speaking of hypocrisy, we have this little fiasco in Louisiana at the moment too: Experts now estimate that five times more oil has been spilling into the water from that oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana than they thought before:

Okay. Here's how much they estimated was leaking before this evening: 42,000 gallons a day.
Five times that amount means approximately 210,000 gallons a day have been leaking into the Gulf.
If this spill continues unabated for two months — and that seems to be the most likely time frame at this point — we're talking about 12.6 million gallons.
Exxon Valdez? That was 10.8 million.
Enjoy your evening.

Really not funny

One of the things that makes me most nervous about this country is the truly catastrophic consequences of serious illness here - getting cancer, or anything that requires serious expensive treatment, is often a quick route to bankruptcy, and frequently a guarantee of an unnecessary death once your resources do run out.

The idea of relying on private enterprise to 'insure' your health care always struck me as pretty dubious, and after encountering it at close range, and hearing a few of the many many many horror stories about how this has resulted in its victims being purged from the books once they start costing money, rather than just coughing up their cash, this has just been reinforced for me, over and over and over.

I mean, the NHS in England was pretty shoddy and embarassing at times, by NZ public health standards, but that was more or less in keeping with the English attitude to service, labour, and ... well everything to be honest. At least it was cheap, tho - something like 5% of GDP, compared to the 14% of GDP that the American system swallows (although to be fair I think that should be noted as 10% of GDP spent of health care and another 4% spent on health care insurance companies).

However, the occasional callousness and dirtyness of the NHS is as nothing compared to the utter barbarity of things like this:

One after another, shortly after a diagnosis of breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. First there was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Later, Robin Beaton, a registered nurse from Texas. And then, most recently, there was Patricia Relling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.
None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders -- more than any other health insurance company in the United States.
The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.
They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.
Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women's specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.
That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as "rescission," for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.
But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters. The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.

Free markets are, by definition, more efficient than government programs which leads to better outcomes for everybody, across the board as incentives always line up in a seamless conjunction:

The cancellation of her health insurance in June 2008 forced Robin Beaton to delay cancer surgery by five months. In that time, the tumor in her breast grew from 2 centimeters to 7 centimeters.
Two months before Beaton's policy was dropped, Patricia Relling also was diagnosed with breast cancer. Anthem Blue Cross of Kentucky, a WellPoint subsidiary, paid the bills for a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.
But the following January, after Relling suffered a life-threatening staph infection requiring two emergency surgeries in three days, Anthem balked and refused to pay more. They soon canceled her insurance entirely.
Unable to afford additional necessary surgeries for nearly 16 months, Relling ended up severely disabled and largely confined to her home. As a result of her crushing medical bills, the once well-to-do businesswoman is now dependent on food stamps.

I suppose one could blame these women for not realizing that all they needed to do was bring a few chickens to their respective oncologists/surgeons in order to get the care they needed, but that wouldn't be nice.

Snark aside, kudos to Murray Waas for covering these stories (see, also, Waas' coverage of a similar scandal involving Assurant and its systematic rescission of HIV-positive customers).

The reference to bringing chickens needs a little explaining - one of the Republican candidates for the US Senate seat in Nevada has publicly recommended reverting to barter (specifically, bringing a chicken in payment) with doctors in order to reduce medical costs. Seriously. When twice offered an opportunity to modify or retract this, she has reiterated and reinforced it. And yes, this happened in 2010, not 1810 (even the Victorians would be ashamed of such naked nuttiness).

Let's see, it cost about $1k for my cardio scan last year: frozen chickens sell for about $5 each, so that would be about 200 chickens - I hope they have some fairly substantial freezers at the hospital. Or I suppose I could bring live ones, which would be less valuable (all that effort slaughtering and plucking), so say 240-300 live chooks? Well I suppose they could use the carparks to pen them up, after all noone will be able to afford an automobile with this system.

Not Funny?

From the Washington Monthly:

Last week, the Georgia House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to consider a Republican proposal to "prohibit the involuntary implantation of microchips in human beings." I'm not entirely sure what the point is -- it's not as if there's been an outbreak of involuntary microchip implantation -- but GOP officials nationwide have a tendency to worry about imaginary threats, so I suppose this shouldn't be too surprising.
The legislative hearing led to remarks from a local woman, who claimed to have personal experience on the matter.

"I'm also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip," the woman said. Slowly, she began to lead the assembled lawmakers down a path they didn't want to take. [...]
She spoke of the "right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic devices."
She continued. "Microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission," she said.
It was not funny, and no one laughed.

I'm sorry, I may be calloused and cynical, but I found it laugh-out-loud hilarious, not least that the elected politicians took this seriously.

What century is it, again?

I read this Washington Post article a couple of days ago, and I still haven't managed to really grasp that this is an article from 2010, not 1970:

Tuesday, April 13, 2010; 2:58 PM

A federal judge Tuesday ordered a rural county in southwestern Mississippi to stop segregating its schools by grouping African American students into all-black classrooms and allowing white students to transfer to the county's only majority-white school, the U.S. Justice Department announced.

And just to add to it, there have been letters to the editor and a spattering of web posts and comments defending this as 'part of our local culture', and 'making more sense for the local residents' ... the white ones of course, because they are the ones that matter, I assume.

I mean, seriously, these people still don't get how wrong this is? I should go and see how far away this county is, from the Mississippi county that cancelled their prom/dance rather than letting a lesbian couple attend it (and then snuck around the federal judge's order and their own promises on the dance), as the attitudes obviously dovetail comfortably. (See this article for details)

Edit: the answer would seem to be, the other end of the state, so I guess it's a statewide thing. Ha! if only that were all).

I suppose on the bright side, just when I think Arkansas is irremediable, Mississippi again overtakes it in the race for the bottom.

Patriotism

Is this not awesome?   Harry Potter billionaire J.K. Rowling on why she chooses to continue living in Britain even though she could reduce her tax bill considerably by residing elsewhere:

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s.
....A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

From conservative columnist Ross Douthat's book (Tropic of Privilege):

One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend's parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point -- "Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?" she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn't sure what to say, but then I wasn't sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business ... and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered -- "You know, I'm on the pill. ..."

I'm sitll kind of slack-jawed in astonishment at the repellent persona on display, not to mention the apparent total lack of self-awareness. I still haven't decided whether this is a deep-seated misogyny (of the madonna/whore bent), or deep-dyed repression latent homophilia ... but probably both.The end result is an attitude in which Buck/Douthat detests any woman so dirty and vile as to express sexual attraction toward a guy like him

What astonishes me even more is that the New York Times trusts this guy with a regular column? I mean, really? do they all loathe and despise women or is it OK to just have a bitter misogynist on the team to give true depth and breadth of coverage? I look forward to them hiring a quota of open fascists and antisemites as well (except, oops they probably have).

.

Kyrgyz conniptions

Hardly anyone in the West is celebrating Bakiyev’s overthrow (he has now offered to resign), singing the praises of Kyrgyz “people power” or writing lengthy, glowing profiles of acting PM Roza Otunbayeva. Having foolishly cheered the imposition of a far worse dictatorship on Kyrgyzstan than the authoritarian president the country had before, Western enthusiasts for popular revolution have become remarkably quiet as a real bloody tyrant has been deposed by a popular uprising.


Looked at one way, this muted reaction is a very good thing. It might suggest that Western observers are beginning to appreciate that violent political clashes on the other side of the planet are usually not what we believe them to be, and we might acknowledge that the reasons for the clashes have little or nothing to do with us in most cases. Our need to take sides or invest with one side with moral and political superiority almost always gets in the way of understanding what is happening, and it always gets in the way of correctly assessing what the American interest is. The fewer Western personality cults built around little-known foreign leaders, the better it will is abe for the quality of our foreign policy discussions and our political discourse generally. Of course, the muted reaction is also a reminder that democracy promoters and enthusiasts tend not to be interested in celebrating the downfall of despots aligned with Washington.
Nonetheless, it is striking how ready some are to complain that Russia contributed to the uprising. Bakiyev was a terrible ruler, the leadership of the new government appears at least marginally better, so far there is little reason to believe that the new Kyrgyz government will cut off U.S. access to Manas, and we now have the rather odd spectacle of Moscow aiding popular uprisings to remove governments that it believes are working against its interests. These all appear to be reasonably good developments by the very standards democracy enthusiasts usually apply.

Russian support for a popular uprising against an authoritarian regime reinforces my view that the Russian government is a pragmatic authoritarian populist government that will act to establish and maintain itself as a major world power, and it will not have ideological objections to aiding opposition movements against authoritarian rulers. Russia’s role in Bakiyev’s overthrow is one more reason to doubt Robert Kagan’s theory of a clear-cut ideological rivalry between democracy and authoritarianism (or what he insists on calling autocracy) defining great power politics in this century. It seems just as likely that continued democratization will lead to the alignment of new democracies and rising democratic powers with the authoritarian defenders of state sovereignty and the status quo. On many contentious international issues, we are already seeing cooperation among the BRIC states against the U.S. and Europe, and other large democracies are following suit. The major authoritarian powers are beginning to take advantage of the reality that democratization has tended to undermine rather than enhance U.S. hegemony, and they are exploiting the opportunities provided by the stronger expression of divergent interests resulting from democratization around the world.

The new situation in Kyrgyzstan leaves open the possibility that the U.S. and Russia might come to an understanding that Russia has far greater interests and influence in post-Soviet space, in part because this is apparently how many people in former Soviet republics want it, but that this does not have to preclude constructive relations between former Soviet republics and the United States. As the Gallup poll Greg cites also tells us, there are substantial constituencies in almost all former Soviet states that support maintaining good relations with America and Russia.
As long as our government does not insist that these states define their relationship with Washington with hostility to Russia and Russian influence, and as long as Washington understands the limited and temporary nature of security cooperation with many of these states, there does not need to be contest for influence that ultimately harms these states and poisons our bilateral relations. Before 2005, Akayev had maintained the balance between Washington and Moscow fairly well. The previous administration’s inexplicable anti-Russian obsession helped to wreck this. Perhaps now there is an opportunity to repair that damage.

Obviously, Kyrgyzstan is geographically very close to Russia, around one million Kyrgyz work in Russia, and as a result economic and political ties between the two are very strong. Russia will naturally exercise influence over a small, impoverished neighbor such as Kyrgyzstan, just as it exercises influence in all of the former Soviet republics. Was it a planned uprising? There is reason to think so, but it is improbable that the uprising would have succeeded as quickly as it did had there not been a significant groundswell of popular discontent with Bakiyev’s rule.

Following the war in Georgia in 2008, Yanukovych’s election in Ukraine earlier this year, and now Bakiyev’s overthrow, supporters of the “freedom agenda” as a vehicle for advancing U.S. hegemony in post-Soviet space have to acknowledge that their concerted anti-Russian campaign has failed completely. In the process, U.S.-Russian relations were badly damaged and are only now beginning to be repaired, and in the meantime the United States gained nothing we did not already have and contributed to the rise of three failed governments, at least two of which were more brutal and authoritarian than the ones that preceded them, and all of which have presided over terrible periods of misrule. It is now time to try to retrieve something from the wreckage, and that begins by establishing full relations with the new Kyrgyz government and making clear to Moscow that we are not going to try to prise former Soviet republics from its orbit.

Spring is Sprung!

On a happier note, the days are warmer and everything is blooming:

and to brighten our outlook, here is the tree in the front yard (called a Redbud I believe):

I should have taken this picture on Monday, when the weather was brilliant blue and gold, and the flowers seemed much brighter than they are now, but it's still very lovely

Spring is icumen in

Llude sing cucu

as our Middle English forbears would say it :)

And Cat has decided she needs some outlet for her gardening spirit: first, she has made a large wooden box and filled it with compost and other bits, to make a raised vegetable garden in our back yard:

and this is progressing fairly fast:

She has also made some compost bins behind the garage:

and is now working on a flower bed in the shady side yard:

Finally, Brandy pointed out that there had been a vast deficiency in cat pictures recently, and kindly posed on the sewing table:

Although of course she is bored by the constant barrage of papparazi:

Its Not OK To Kill Civilians

Like Slacktivist says (please read the link)



The Video is of a small and very ugly massacre in Iraq a couple of years ago, by a pair of US attack helicopters on a small group (including 2 Reuters journalists) wandering through a neighbourhood. During the approach and attack, the soldiers several times claim (to their superiors) to see people with weapons, and to be shot at, in order to receive permission to shoot these people, but after going over it several times, I can't see -any- sign of any of the victims shooting, and the only weapon I can see is actually a camera being hoisted by one of the journalists.

I really hope this will prove to be a fake, a mock-up photoshopped into something it isn't, but that seems unlikely (edit: apparently a senior US military official has confirmed that the video is genuine, so much for that hope).

This just makes me sick. This is just pure murder. It's almost unbearable to watch the thing, especially when they circle around again in order to kill the wounded man trying to find succor, and to massacre the van-full of people who drove up to help him and look after the dead.

I appreciate that civilians often get killed by accident in warfare.

This isn't accidental.

This isn't a WAR!

The Americans are a hostile occupying force seven years after a war was concluded.

Morality aside (and that's a mighty big aside), this is just indelibly stupid. The briefest look at any classic suppressive effort against partisans, (guerillas, what have you) will amply demonstrate that massacres and brutality breed resistance and aid enemy recruiting.

I should fulminate further, but what's the point? Those who know it is wrong will be horrified, and those who don't are out of reach of logic, reason, or any trace of common humanity it would seem.

Welcome Back!

Supreme Court finds American Revolution illegal

The US Supreme Court today, in a revolutionary ruling, has examined the status of the American Revolution in light of current International law, and voted 7-2 to deem it illegal and unsupportable. Accordingly, the US Constitution has been overturned, and all property in the continental USA has reverted to the ownership of the Crown, Her Majesty Elizabeth II.

In an interalia ruling, Alaska has been handed back to Russia, and the islands of Hawai'i have reverted to the descendants of the Polynesian crown (currently running a drycleaning shop in Fresno).

Queen Elizabeth is expected to announce the appointment of Prince Andrew as Governor-Regent for the Americas, and is expected to make a Royal Tour of her new provinces as early as next year.