The Story That Wouldn’t Die

It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

When Mike Huckabee had his opportunistic grifting photo op rally with Kim Davis, she came out onto the stage arm-in-arm with the Huckster and her minister. Since you’ve gotta whip up the crowd a little bit, someone had the bright idea to blare “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. Remember that one? From one of the gazillion Rocky movies.

Well, Survivor was none too pleased that their song was used in this way, without their permission, and for someone with whose politics and attitudes they totally disagree. They made it very clear that they were unhappy with the usage. Thus continues a fine tradition of politicians using songs without permission, usually resulting in a cease-and-desist order, or one of my favorite rebukes of all time: the Dropkick Murphys telling Scott Walker to just stop it already.

This ended up not being just a cease-and-desist order or a cut-it-out tweet. Survivor is suing Huckabee and Kim Davis for $1.2 million.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw that.

The Huckster, in a hyperbolic spasm, said that he was willing to go to jail in Kim Davis’s stead. It looks like Survivor might have a pretty good case here, so I wonder if he’s willing to pay the settlement for ol’ Kim?

When will politicians learn that musicians DO NOT LIKE IT when people they completely disagree with on almost everything use their songs without permission? I realize that copyrights are a weird and thorny area, and sometimes the musicians can’t stop these people from using their song. But it seems to me that common decency would dictate that you respect the artist and get permission first. Using it without the artist’s permission is a dick move.

I suppose that’s why the vast majority of complaints against politicians doing exactly that is on the Republican side. It strikes me as a sense of entitlement, an attitude of “I can do whatever I want to,” thinking that there will be no consequences or objection.

The political season is just revving up, so I’m sure we’ll see more unfair use and more objections from musicians. This topic comes up every presidential election. My personal favorite suggestion for a politician’s theme song that my friends and I came up with was this one by Nine Inch Nails. The politician? The Half-Gov herself, the Quittah from Wasilla, Sarah Palin!

Head like a hole

Black as your soul

I’d rather die

Than give you control

PERFECT!

**UPDATE** It seems that the story of Survivor suing Huckabee and Davis is not true! The band definitely is not happy about it and is considering the possibility, but no lawsuit has been filed.

Beth’s Books: The Return of the Grifter

No, that’s not the title of the book. It’s actually Sarah Palin’s latest “book,” Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. I had to put the word ‘book’ in quotation marks, because I’m not sure this crapfest qualifies as a bona fide book.

Full disclosure: I read this book for the sole purpose of trashing it on here. I generally try to ignore the Half-Gov, because she really is irrelevant, but when she told President Obama on her Facebook page to “stop playing the race card,” I thought, “It’s payback time. You called down the thunder...well, you now you got it! I’m comin’, Half-Gov. And Hell’s comin’ with me, you hear? Hell’s comin’ with me!!”

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yes. Payback. Payback for telling our first African-American President to stop playing the race card. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, no less. If that doesn’t deserve a little bit of righteous smackdown, I don’t know what does. And I’m just the gal to do it. So let’s get started, shall we? Kick back, because this is going to be a long one.

First of all, I refused to give this grifter one penny. I was trying to find a free download, and finally saw that it was available as an e-book from my wonderful local library. You know, the socialist one where all the liberal elites hang out. I’m sure she got a few gullible people to fork over some dough for this, but I wasn’t one of them.

It’s difficult to convey just how horrid this thing is, but I’ll try.

Drop the adjectives and walk away. Nothing is simple in the Half-Gov’s world (except for the Half-Gov herself). There can’t just be a Christmas tree...it has to be a fragrant Charlie Brown tree with twinkling lights. There isn’t just snow...there is crisp and crunchy snow. People don’t just sing carols, their pure voices soar to the starry heavens with humble joy, their eyes alight with Christmas cheer. These are not actual examples from the book (I’ll get to that later), but this is the kind of “writing” you’ll find there. Adjectives are helpful in small doses, but not every noun has to be accompanied by one. There are several grammatical errors, too, including apostrophe abuse. It makes me laugh that she was a journalism major. Oh, wait...it makes me utter a jolly laugh, my rosy cheeks flushed with good humor, my twinkling eyes flashing in the mellow glow of my trusty laptop. ::eye roll::

Ditch the delusion of the idyllic family and household. There is plenty of stuff about the Half-Gov gathering her brood around and reading the story of Baby Jeebus to them and getting all choked up over it. There’s also plenty of family and friends gathering in the kitchen to bake Christmas treats. I cracked up over this: “Nothing says Christmas like strapping on an apron, heading to the kitchen with friends and family, and cooking and baking yourself into the Christmas spirit.” This “book” would have been more tolerable if I’d baked myself! There are stories of her wonderful childhood and the special Christmases she had. She tells a story about wanting a Walkman one year and getting a dictionary instead. “...my good parents were teaching me a lesson I would remember forever. Words matter.” I about fell over laughing. Should have spent a little more time with that dictionary, Half-Gov! Although I’m sure you would refudiate that.

Get off the cross, Mary, we need the wood. There is a pervasive tone of personal persecution in her writing. She would be riffing on the joys of Christmas at one moment and toss in a snarky comment about Nancy Pelosi or liberals in general in the next. She often mentions her and McCain’s loss in 2008, and it’s obvious that she is still very bitter about it. She bitches about her treatment by the “lamestream media” (which she later abbreviates as LSM), she mentions the “angry, outraged, and just plain silly and rude responses” that she gets when she posts something on Facebook, and she says she gets “vile tweets.” She chalks this up to “the fringe” commenters. Sorry, Half-Gov, but not liking you doesn’t make people “the fringe.” She says, “The media speaks for itself and not the masses. Ignore it.” I think a more truthful statement would have been, “If the media calls me on my lies, ignore them.” She even mentions the ridiculous “free Obamaphone vouchers” story. When writing about her and some family members volunteering at a Wasilla soup kitchen on Christmas, she can’t stop herself from going on about losing the election and how she was maligned, her family mocked, their privacy lost. She then bitches about the ethics charges with which she was hit in Alaska: “My approval ratings—which had been the highest in the nation—plummeted.” Merry Christmas, poor people! News flash, Half-Gov: your approval ratings didn’t plummet because you had ethics charges brought against you. They plummeted because people saw for themselves that you abused the power of your office and they realized that you weren’t quite the person you had portrayed yourself to be. She equates the Affordable Care Act with “secular leftists” who view “babies as expendable and older Americans as crippling cost centers.” It’s the death panels again! She just can’t stop herself from regurgitating the same old lies.

Scenariopalooza. We are treated to the inner musings of the Half-Gov’s odd little mind as she regales us with constant fictional scenarios. We start with “Joe McScrooge,” an “angry atheist with a lawyer.” Joe listens to NPR (elitist!), and when he goes to the small town where his ex-wife lives with their son, he is disgusted with the public religious displays. When Joe McScrooge gets to the school, he parks “between two pickup trucks, one sporting a red-and-gold Semper Fi window decal, the other a faded, peeling McCain-Palin ‘08 bumper sticker. Joe audibly gagged.” Audibly! I wonder if he sounded like Sheeba coughing up a hairball? I’d like to think so. We get another pair of scenarios set in 2028, with the Half-Gov visiting her grandson Tripp at the University of Alaska. In the first, atheistic version, the communications director she speaks with wears Birkenstocks, there are gender-neutral bathrooms with foot-washing stations for Muslims, and Pagan and Muslim holiday celebrations occur, but Christian ones do not. In the non-atheistic version, all religions are celebrated—except the Christian celebrations are the best because DUH—and to top it all off, we get to hear about President-Elect Romney and his great hair! The Half-Gov Grammy thinks, “I guess sixth time’s the charm.” By the time I got to the “Joe the Student” scenario, I laughed out loud and thought, “Oh boy, another scenario!” Poor Joe the Student feels persecuted by the anti-Christian policies of his public school, and his parents are too busy with work to push back against the persecution. She didn’t specify if Joe’s dad was also a Joe, but it sure seems like there are a lot of Joes in the Half-Gov’s imaginary world! Personally, I was hoping for a story about Joe the Proctologist or Joe the Male Prostitute, but I was disappointed.

Atheists hate Christmas, the Baby Jeebus, America, and they have no morals. Here we get to the crux of this “book,” which is that “...the ‘war on Christmas’ is the tip of the spear in the larger battle to secularize our culture and make true religious freedom a thing of America’s past.” I call bullshit, Half-Gov. She seems unable to grasp the difference between religious displays on private property and those on public property, as well as the difference between atheists taking offense at the latter as opposed to the former. The vast majority of atheists I know are of the “live and let live” variety. If you want to put up a nativity on your front lawn, knock yourself out. But keep it out of our government offices, okay? She writes, “The atheists are trying to make Nativity scenes such a pain for cities to maintain that the public officials will simply remove all religious displays entirely.” Bingo! Give that Half-Gov a kewpie doll! Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and she got this one right. Until we stop seeing all religious displays in government facilities, I say keep pushing for those Festivus poles. For the record, I don’t know of anyone who sees a Christmas tree (or holiday tree...I don’t care what you want to call it) as a strictly Christian display. The Christians stole it from the Druids, after all. A nativity scene is obviously Christian, however, and if you allow that to be displayed in your county courthouse, you’d better be prepared to allow a Menorah, a Festivus pole, or a pagan display, or any other display that any religious group wants to put up.

As for the “amoral atheists” stuff, I’m going to go into depth here and provide several quotes.

Without God as an objective standard, who’s to say what’s wrong and what’s right? Morality becomes a matter of the human will, as each person decides what’s right and what’s wrong for himself. 

Without faith, I doubt we’d have the love in our hearts that compels one to give, to volunteer, to be kind and loving to our neighbors, and to aspire to live the Golden Rule.

Without faith, we’d be, well, the secular Left—a group that data shows to be notoriously stingy with their time, money, and pleasant attitudes, and that believes ‘compassion’ is best represented by a failed welfare state that traps millions in lifelong poverty and despair.

Left to our own devices, without God in our lives, we drift toward evil.

I call bullshit—again. You DO know that the Golden Rule appears nowhere in the bible, right, Half-Gov? I also find it interesting that you provided no footnote as to your “data” that shows that atheists don’t give their time or money, or that they don’t have pleasant attitudes, or that they have no compassion. You know why? Because that data doesn’t exist. Liar. It strikes me as almost sad that so many people feel that without religion telling them what NOT to do, they would become “evil.” That doesn’t speak very well for you and your pals, does it? So you need to be told not to get all rapey and murdery and junk? Personally, I find that I’m not that way because it’s the right thing to do, both because I value my fellow human beings and because I value a civil society, and want to always try to do what is best for both. I may not always succeed, but I do try, and I somehow manage to keep my vile and amoral impulses in check.
Here are a few more fun quotes and my commentary:

...if you can’t handle protests, then it’s hard to handle other challenges of the job.

Oh, that’s rich! This would be the job that you QUIT halfway through, right? That job? I thought so.

...my friends bobbed their feather-banged heads to “Jessie’s Girl” and “9 to 5” on their headphones (I was more of a Van Halen and Joan Jett-type girl, and to get into a game-day mindset I’d listen to “Back In Black”).

If she listened to Van Halen, Joan Jett, and AC/DC in high school, I’ll eat my hat. I bet she was listening to Debby Boone wailing her way through “You Light Up My Life.”

She mentions her publisher, HarperCollins,

...the same publisher smart enough to publish this book.

That made me laugh.

She writes about the French Revolution and the Jacobins (“radical atheists”) changing street names to remove references to the saints:

We wouldn’t want any Frenchman to be offended and have a totally rotten, ruined day after glancing up at road signs to find his favorite baguette shop.

She really seems to dislike the French. Who can forget the fruit fly research in Paris, France??

I decided to run against good ol’ boy incumbents for mayor, then governor, because I knew the public deserved new energy to get the job done. [Emphasis mine]

Get the job done! That’s a hoot! But you DIDN’T get the job done, did you, HALF-Gov?

To sum up, this was yet another rendering of how the Half-Gov was persecuted and maligned and just plain bullied, gosh darn it. Not only in her brief political life, but those mean ol’ atheists are picking on her and her religion, too. She cherry-picks the words of the founders concerning a religious society, because taking the time to read more about how they felt is just too hard. Check out what Thomas Jefferson had to say about it sometime, Half-Gov, if you can tear yourself away from eating moose chili. Oh, and she includes a few recipes at the end of the book, including one for moose chili, and another recipe for something that I found rather exotic and experimental. Has anyone ever heard of these things called “Rice Krispie Treats”? Sounds really strange to me, but the Half-Gov swears by ‘em. Thank science she included the recipe, because I’m sure I never would have heard about this treat otherwise.

I’m not sure when I’ve read such a steaming pile of literary malfeasance. The Half-Gov is self-serving, self-centered, and completely narcissistic. Her portrayal of her magical, idyllic life (except for that bad spell where her teenage daughter somehow found herself preggers and her and Todd had a fight about it, and then all that losing and quitting and ethics charges junk) reminded me very much of someone we dealt with for quite a while, but no longer have to, thank science. When I was describing some of this to Ken and asked him who it made him think of, he knew exactly who I was talking about, and some of you will, too. There was definitely a feel of the “cozy country cottage” and “little cottage kitchen” (which was actually a small house in a suburb of a small city) in this “book.”

I’ll leave you with one final quote from the “book”:

And yet I’m pegged the idiot by the LSM?

Out of the woodwork

I mentioned recently that I had started being more active on Twitter. I’ve been having fun with it, and I’m glad I decided to use it more. I haven’t gotten as political on there as I have been on Facebook, mostly because I’m not currently obsessing about politics as much as I have in the past. That will change eventually, but I’m enjoying the break from it at the moment. I’m enjoying the weather and I’m listening to a lot of music.

But the other day, some journalists were live-tweeting the NRA convention, and mentioned that Sarah Palin was taking the stage for her speech. I rarely write anything about ol’ Sarah anymore, because she really doesn’t have anything of value to say, and her influence on the country is pretty minute. I briefly—for all of a couple of seconds—thought about turning the TV on and watching her speech, but decided the peace and quiet was a better alternative. I did decide to mention that I’d seen that she was giving a speech and the amount of fucks I give is zero. I tagged it with “loser” and “irrelevant.” (I didn’t want to post a picture of Palin, so here’s a cat working at NASA instead.)

Well, somehow the Palinbots found that and started going after me. There were several replies like well, she’s apparently relevant enough for you to tweet about her, and did I always tweet about irrelevant people? And I must give at least one fuck if I took the time to tweet about her. That was a fair enough criticism, so I kind of laughed about that and said, okay, I guess I give a little bit of a fuck. Like maybe 0.15% of a fuck.

One mentioned my “five” followers and said that there are more of “us” (meaning Palin supporters) and my followers are no match for “them.” That was weird and incorrect, because I have 130 followers. That’s not a lot, but it’s considerably more than five. I engaged briefly with some of them. One wanted to talk about something of substance and told me to pick. I was pretty pissed off by this time, and said I don’t know you people, I’m not getting in a discussion with you, and YOU came to MY page and started going after me for voicing my own opinion. I said, “First Amendment. Read it.” They didn’t stop. One said they weren’t infringing upon my First Amendment rights, they were exercising theirs. One said, “Second Amendment. Read it.” (I’m still not sure if that was a threat or just a dumb comment. I had said nothing about guns.) I had finally had it and told them to just fuck off. I stopped all interaction then, but they kept after me. One called me a “low information voter.” One told me that if I can’t handle the heat, “don’t talk shit about Palin.” One of my favorites was that I was missing a 6 in my Twitter name. As in instead of @Luvrte66, I should be @Luvrte666. Get it? SATAN! Someone reposted a picture of me to Palin’s page and told Palin to “check out ugly.” (At least whoever is running Palin’s page had enough smarts to remove that post.) One person was slightly kinder and said that I had a pretty face, but ugly words. One person said that I was the irrelevant one, and then called me “bitch.” A couple of my Facebook friends came over to go after these people a little bit, and one of the Palinbots told one of my friends that he didn’t need to defend me...that I wasn’t going to suck my friend’s dick because I don’t like fags.

But this is my absolute favorite.

That’s right. I’m a dope-smoking whore libtard who never worked a day in her life, and Sarah Palin is a hardworking...what? What is she doing these days? She lost the only national election she ever ran in, she quit halfway through her term as Governor, her reality show got canceled, and she lost her gig at Fox. But SOMEONE has to have a job. Hahaha...whut?

They kept this up for TWO DAYS.

I learned a couple of things from this.

First, Palin’s supporters are every bit as thin-skinned as she is. She is notorious for not being able to handle her critics, and for going after people for minor jokes that most people in the public eye learn to shrug off. I did not even tag Palin herself in this. This was posted only on my own page, and I didn’t even criticize her in my tweet. I just said that I didn’t give a fuck about her speech. Again, my opinion, and my page. These rabid Palin people somehow found my tweet and came after me like a swarm of cockroaches in an infested kitchen when you turn out the lights. It was a tiny bit scary, it was funny as hell, and it infuriated me. They also showed that they have about as much class as the Half-Gov does. I guess trash attracts trash, doesn’t it? Now see, THAT is an insult and attack upon Palin: I called her and her supporters—at least the ones who came after me—trashy. My initial tweet was not an insult and not an attack. It was my opinion. For all their supposed love of the Constitution, they seemed awfully eager to silence someone offering up an opinion and posting about their own feelings. To paraphrase the Eurythmics, if I had a dollar bill for every time I saw President Obama attacked online, there’d be a mountain of money piled up to my chin. Get a life, people, and grasp the concept that there are opinions other than yours out there, and people have every right to voice them without being subjected to a bunch of window lickers like y’all.

Second, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a bunch of inbred ignoramuses intimidate me into shutting up. I’ll say whatever I please on my page, I will voice the hell out of my opinion, and if you come after me again like that, I will once again tell you to FUCK OFF. These people are as big a joke as the half-wit they so blindly adore. You messed with the wrong gal when you messed with me. I cannot abide bullies, never could, and that is exactly how these hilljacks were behaving. You try to bully me, or people that I love, and the Inner Lizard will be unleashed. Count on it, crackuhs.

The Return of the Grifter

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ve been watching a little coverage of CPAC, the conservative conference going on right now in Maryland. I can’t watch much of it—one can only handle so much negativity and lunacy—but I watched Sarah Palin’s speech earlier today.

You haven’t seen me write much about ol’ Scarah lately, and that has been for a couple of reasons. First of all, I don’t like wasting blog space on her or giving her any attention whatsoever. (That is why I’m not including a picture of her here, even a funny one. So here’s a moose instead.) Secondly, there really hasn’t been much to write about. She has pretty much faded from the scene, even losing her job on ClusterFox. The biggest news about her lately is that “she” is “writing” another book, this one about the nonexistent “war on Christmas.”

But she got invited to CPAC, so I watched and took notes.

The specifics really don’t matter, because there were none. There was the usual stuff about Obama taking our guns away, the cornpone delivery with lots of “ain’ts” thrown in, the hockey mom jokes (is Piper playing hockey now?), gimmicks like pulling a Big Gulp out from under the podium, taking a swig, and making fun of Mayor Bloomberg, a stale TelePrompTer joke, a delivery that almost sounded like baby talk, and of course, plenty of Obama-bashing. She told a joke about Todd getting her a gun rack and him getting a gun: “He got the rifle, I got the rack!” Gross! What woman who wants to be taken seriously tells a joke like that? “Washington has become a reality show,” said the woman who had her own reality show and a daughter who appeared on a reality show and then had HER own reality show. She ridiculed green energy and mentioned the bogus “Obamaphone” claim. At one point, she channeled Joe Wilson and said, “Barack Obama, you lie!” At another point, she compared President Obama to Bernie Madoff.

In other words, she was tossing out chunks of bloody meat to the crowd, and the poor saps were just eating it up. It was pretty disgusting, and I was reminded all over again why I despise Palin. However, I take consolation in knowing that she really is essentially irrelevant now. Idiots will keep contributing to her PAC, and she’ll spend a fraction of it on actual candidates and the rest on “expenditures.” But her time as a political contender has passed. As Ken said, she’ll never run for national office again, because she’s just not smart enough. I’ll add that she also doesn’t want to work that hard. I’ll give credit where credit is due: she knows how to work a crowd. But so do pro wrestlers, and she has about as much legitimacy.

I’m sure that plenty of her supporters will continue to clamor for her to “Run, Sarah, run!” Personally, I would love it if she did. Not only would it be an endless source of amusement, but if by some bizarre chance she ever got the nomination, it would guarantee a Democrat victory. (I actually had someone ask me, “Why do so many liberals want her to run? She’s obviously a conservative.” Yeah...not the sharpest tool in the shed there, are ya, Skippy?) I find it a little sad, though, that so many people continue to love and support her and want her to run...and she just sits back and rakes in their money. She’s never going to run, you sad, sad people. But she’ll be happy to continue taking your cash.

So that was the brief return of the Governor. I suspect we won’t hear much from her going forward, other than a book tour for “her” book. You won’t read anything about her here again, either, unless she generates some genuine news.

Senator McCain, this is your legacy. You will be remembered for several things, some good, some bad, but one of the main things will be that you were the one who foisted this vapid, vindictive, greedy grifter upon the country, and put her within a stone’s throw of the Presidency. It is to our great fortune that you did not succeed, and it will be to your lasting shame that you even tried.

A tough but good read

Since I’m between books for a moment, I decided to try to get caught up on back issues of Time magazine. I read Joe Klein’s cover story from the June 11 issue (wow, I am really behind!), “The Long Goodbye.” (I’m not sure if that link will provide the entire story to you...it might be available only to subscribers to the magazine. But if it gives you the whole thing, it is well worth the read.)

In his article, KIein writes honestly about the difficulties of losing both of his parents to dementia and other physical ailments last year. It was the often usual progression of a slow decline, with failure to take medications correctly, followed by a rapid descent into frequent medical problems, confusion, and in the case of his father, anger, belligerence, and stubbornness about how much help he needed. It was heartbreaking, and it must have been incredibly hard on Joe and his family.

He also wrote about the care they were able to get, through the Geisinger Medical Center in Pennsylvania. Geisinger uses the method that other progressive clinics (like Mayo and the Cleveland Clinic) are beginning to use: exploring and researching patient outcomes, with the ultimate goal of quality of life—and of death.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own father’s death two and a half years ago. Klein and his family were faced with the decision of whether or not to insert a feeding tube for his mother, and whether or not to rehydrate his father when his kidneys began to fail. The staff at Geisinger took a realistic approach to such end of life decisions, and gave Klein honest assessments of what was happening. When Klein debated whether or not to add a “do not resuscitate” order to his father’s file, a doctor pointed out that in a recent fall, his father had broken two ribs; if they were to try to resuscitate him, they would probably break all of his ribs. Klein added the DNR order.

A few points here. First, this is a good reminder that our medical technology has sometimes exceeded our realities. In other words, just because we CAN do something, doesn’t mean that we SHOULD. Are we taking whatever means necessary to keep a loved one alive simply because we don’t want to let them go, or are we making the best decision for them? As I said, it made me think about what happened with my Dad. When the doctors were honest with us—like Klein, I really appreciated their honesty—and told us that there was no chance of Dad recovering, I think we all knew that we had to let him go. Trying to keep him hanging on would only be selfish and thinking of our reluctance to say goodbye to him...it wouldn’t be giving him any quality of life.

Second, this is yet another reason why I loathe Sarah Palin (there are so many!). She tried to portray end-of-life counseling as “death panels,” and that couldn’t be further from the truth. It is a way for doctors, patients, and families to talk honestly about their wishes, and how they want decisions to be handled if they are incapable of making them on their own. I urge everyone to have this conversation with their loved ones. I will be forever grateful to my Dad that he had the courage to talk to me about such things, and I’m glad I had the courage to listen. I’d say something like, “Well, we don’t need to worry about that for a long time, because we want you to stick around for a while!” But I was listening, and because he told me that he didn’t want to be hooked up on life support if something were to happen to him, it made it easier to sign the papers with my Mom and my sisters to remove him from life support and let him go. Such decisions are painful enough as it is, and the fact that I had talked about it with both my Dad and Mom made it a tiny bit easier to take. Ken and I have also expressed our wishes to each other, and we have living wills.

So here is a big hearty FUCK YOU to Sarah Palin for perpetuating this horrible lie, and for discouraging people from having these discussions.

Finally, this is one of the reasons I am a firm supporter of the Affordable Care Act. Although they bowed to pressure and unfortunately removed the end-of-life counseling provision, the ACA attempts to move caregivers towards a more outcome-based model rather than a fee-for-service model. Expanded electronic medical records capability—records that travel with a patient—is part of that. I saw duplication of services all the time in the lab. More often than not, it was because the doctors didn’t have easy access to full records, so we’d see multiple computer encounters with cultures duplicated in the same day. If they can’t get their hands on them easily, they’re going to cover all the bases and order another test or culture. The model used by Geisinger and Mayo and others includes case workers who manage the care of patients. They don’t make life or death decisions for them, but they counsel the patient as much as possible and maintain frequent contact with the patient’s family to keep them informed. Knowledge is power, and honesty is a necessity for such decisions.

This sort of outcome-based care saves money, but more importantly, it usually provides a more peaceful end to the life of those we care most about. Shouldn’t that be our ultimate goal?

Literary Ipecac

I believe I’ve mentioned that my goal is to read 52 books this year. I’m up to 48, after finishing this one, Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years, by Frank Bailey. Bailey jumped on the Palin train early on, working as her go-to guy for scheduling and other daily duties. Some of those duties included pressuring various people to fire Mike Wooten (infamously known as Troopergate), taking the fall for it, and covering up what Palin knew about it. Of course, he’s deeply regretful for the part he played in such underhandedness. He is now, anyway. But hey, I’m sure his god forgave him for it.

Bailey invokes his godliness early and often, and he was one of those who believed that God had chosen Palin to run. He writes plenty about the unethical practices and questionable statements that occurred often in Palin’s Alaska governorship, and how he knew it was wrong at the time, but went along with it all because he believed in Palin and thought she was exactly what Alaska needed.

He also writes often about how beautiful Palin is (I believe he even once used the word ‘sexy’), including this when he first started working for her campaign:

“A radiant smile, framed by chocolate colored eyes that would later charm hardened members of the media like Bill Kristol and Sean Hannity, lit up the room.”

[gag] He mentions the fawning adoration of Hannity, as well as the team that interviewed Palin when McCain was considering her for his running mate, not realizing that he comes across every bit as pussywhipped. It’s a wonder his marriage survived his working for Palin, because it seemed obvious to me that he had a major boner for her. (As a man devoted to his family and God, I’m sure he’d deny that. Comes across loud and clear in his writing, though, in my opinion.) Bailey was also Todd Palin’s sycophantic sidekick, doing his bidding concerning the Wooten matter to curry favor with the Palins. He was immediately convinced that Wooten was a “loose cannon” and should be fired, just because the Palins said so. He reminded me of the fat kid who lets the popular kids pick on him and pretends to be in on the joke, and loses every shred of self-respect in the process.

In fact, by the time I finished this book, I wasn’t sure who I disliked more—Palin or Bailey. I already knew that Palin is a moody, conniving, vindictive, bullying, power-hungry, unstable grifter, so Bailey didn’t tell me anything new there. However, he did tell me that he’s a pathetic, easily manipulated loser whose adulation of such a woman deluded him into believing that she was capable of being Governor, and that it was okay to bend the ethics rules if it helped her. I wanted to grab him by his pudgy shoulders and shake the stuffing out of him and say, “Wake up, you idiot!” (A smack across the face would probably have been in order, too.) He did start figuring things out—finally!—and wrote this about her vindictiveness and ability to hold a grudge, as he was watching the election returns:

“Experiencing emotional difficulty managing a state with fewer than a million people, what would President Palin do if a rogue nation like North Korea went nuclear? Would she be preoccupied with typing messages on the Anchorage Daily News blog? Would she use the FBI to monitor Dan Fagan’s radio show or dig up dirt on Katie Couric? The IRS, would it suddenly run audits of former political opponents, bloggers, or editorial critics? Would she fire dissenting voices and find out too late they were right and she was wrong—as she’d done with the entire Board of Agriculture and Conservation over the Matanuska Maid Dairy debacle in 2007? Did we want Sarah and her thin skin anywhere near that red button after that 3:00 a.m. phone call, as Hillary Clinton had warned of Barack Obama during their hotly contested primary races?”

No shit, Sherlock! I guess I can give him a little credit for finally wising up, but it should never have taken that long. I was left with a thorough feeling of disgust at the end of this book. To borrow a couple of Palinisms, what a “flippin crap cluster.”

You Eedeeyote!

I’ve really been on a reading tear lately, and finished a couple of books this week (as well as reading Stephen King’s short story “Mile 81” today—fun, quick read!). I thought I’d post a couple of quick reviews, because both of these books are significant.

First up is Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce. I’ve written before about this, and many have discussed the current atmosphere of anti-intellectualism in the country. Ignorance is seen as a desirable trait, because to be educated is seen by some to be elitist behavior. An expert opinion is “balanced out” by the opinions of utterly unqualified people. The fact that this makes no sense doesn’t seem to matter to a large portion of the populace.

Pierce talks about the importance of “American cranks.” You know, those people who have seemingly outrageous ideas, but can bring up legitimate questions and steer the discussion in a new direction. For example (this is my example, not the author’s), think of some of the more bizarre ideas of Ron Paul and his loony son, like allowing business owners to make their own policies when it comes to who the will allow into their place of business. The Civil Rights Act and the strides we’ve made in that area are kind of important. Not an expert opinion, by any means, but it seems self-evident to me. However, Paul has been adamantly opposed to both wars we’re in, and I believe that he has steered that discussion in the right direction.

Pierce says that the problem with cranks is when they become part of the mainstream, rather than anti-establishment. The inmates taking over the asylum, if you will. (See Baggers, Tea.) Pierce’s Great Premises of Idiot America are that anything can be seen as true if you say it loudly enough, you appear to believe it, and enough people believe it fervently enough. (See Panels, Death.) He writes about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case (I highly recommend the Nova documentary in that link) concerning the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, and spent a good amount of time with Federal Judge John E. Jones III, who ruled on the case. Judge Jones said:

If you poll the United States today, you find that over 40 percent, sometimes over fifty percent, of the people in the United States believe in creationism and not evolution. And they think that creationism should be taught alongside, or even supplant, evolution in the public schools. So they don’t understand why this federal judge in Pennsylvania, in my case, won’t get with the program and bend to the popular will. Well, that’s not the way the Framers designed the judiciary. We are supposed to be a bulwark against the popular will at a given time and responsible to the Constitution and to the law. But, boy, that’s lost. People should get that.

My hero! Pierce also tackles the current assertion by some that America was meant to be a Christian nation, and the Founding Fathers laid it out that way. He examines the thoughts and writings of James Madison, especially. In his “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessment” of 1785, Madison writes:

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties...Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of only one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

In other words, if the government allows Christian prayer to be conducted at public functions, or the expression of Christian faith to the exclusion of other religions in the public square, you may be sittin’ pretty for now, Sunny Jim, because you like that old-time Christian religion, but if the government does that, they can just as easily establish a religion you might not dig so much. Now do you get why the separation of church and state is a good thing, and is exactly what the Founders intended? It wasn’t just to protect your religion from our government; it was also to protect our government from your—or any—religion. The Founders wrote extensively and often about how a nation with a self-government needs an educated and informed populace. I think they would be very disappointed in Idiot America.

Pierce veers off into snarky derision once in a while, which can be a little jarring, but it’s also usually warranted. A good read, and I recommend it.

Speaking of idiots in America, the second book is The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinniss. You might remember the brouhaha generated last summer when McGinniss rented the house right next to the Palins’. He and his family received death threats for that little bit of effrontery, but he managed to survive the summer. Palin’s reaction was immediate and swift, accusing him on her Facebook page of spying on them and peeping into the girls’ bedrooms. Typical Palin, playing the victim. McGinniss was merely staying in Wasilla in order to talk to numerous townspeople about Palin past and present. Was there a little bit of poking the bear with a sharp stick involved? I don’t doubt it. I understand the easy allure and sheer pleasure of knowing how easy it is to get to someone you don’t much care for. But to accuse him of peering in her daughters’ windows is absurd.

Anyway, McGinniss bounces back and forth between Palin’s childhood, political rise, and current goings-on. These time shifts are easy to follow, though. Palin is threatening to sue both McGinniss and Random House for publishing the book, citing defamation for lies and rumors presented as fact and based on anonymous sources. (Random House is standing by the book and McGinniss.) I was paying close attention to that as I read the book. Much of the political incidents mentioned were things that I’d read before, and most of those mentioned the source. When it came to the personal items like drug use and Todd’s supposed promiscuity, sources usually weren’t mentioned as anything other than “a friend” or “a former coworker.” I took such stories with a large grain of salt. The one personal item that was getting all the press was Palin’s one night stand with NBA star Glen Rice. The source cited for that story? Glen Rice himself. I haven’t seen Rice coming out with any sort of statement about the story being a falsehood.

What was more important to me was to read about her political dealings and her religious fanaticism. Much of this was nothing new to me, but there were several whoppers that had me constantly thinking, “Man, what a bitch!” This book corroborated many things I’d read before, but the depth of her religiosity was very disturbing. She can believe whatever she wants to, but she sincerely wants to impose that religion on everyone else, and that I have a problem with. (Read up on dominionism, if you haven’t heard of it.)

I think McGinniss goes off the reservation at the end of the book with his speculation that Trig might not be Sarah’s kid. I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories in any form, and I don’t care much about this one. There’s enough about her “policies” and lack of intelligence to bother me; the personal nitpicking doesn’t do much for me. I bet it all bugged the hell out of Sarah, though!

I won’t recommend this one way or the other. McGinniss is a very good writer, and it flows well. If Palin is going to stay on the public stage (and no, I don’t think she’s running for President), it’s important to be armed with just how horrid she is. Those who need to find it out the most will, of course, never read this book. For most of my readers (who tend to be liberal, as far as I can tell), this is a quick read if you want to be reminded of why you can’t stand this woman and want her as far away from Washington, D.C. as possible. If she does, by some bizarre chance, decide to run, I’ll start posting excerpts from the book!

Hey, how about a little Green Day?! Don’t mind if I do!

I guess I’ll write about this

I don’t know if I’m just tired from the heat and humidity, all laughed out about this, or just so mind-numbingly bored by this tiresome, ignorant, small-minded woman that I want to plunge rusty ice picks into both my eyeballs AND my eardrums, but I really wasn’t in the mood to write about this incident.

However, because the media (mainstream, lamestream, or Dream Team...whatever) continues to fuel speculation that she will run for President, I feel that it is my duty as an American citizen to point out just how moronic this slack-jawed window licker really is.

So Sarah Palin is on some sort of weird family vacation bus tour thing, despite not really spending any amount of time at any of the sites they’re visiting. A half an hour at the National Archives? Three hours at Gettysburg? Really? No wonder she’s stupid. How sad that she’s passing her lack of desire to learn on to her kids. You can’t learn much about our nation’s historic sites if you breeze through for a photo op without bothering to read about it, absorb it, and freakin’ LEARN.

The Quittah from Wasilla really took the cake on Thursday, though, when she stopped at the Old North Church in Boston. When asked about Paul Revere, she went into one of her weird word salad diatribes that has to be seen and heard to be believed.

He who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.

That’s right. In Palin’s Bizarro World, Paul Revere was defending the Second Amendment, although the Constitution hadn’t been drafted yet, and the Revolutionary War had not even begun. As Bill Maher said, she shouldn’t be on a bus tour. She should be in summer school.

I understand that the media needs and wants to cover this. She is definitely news right now, showing that while she might not have even a tenuous grasp on American history, she certainly knows how to manipulate the media...and of course, here I am writing about her. She truly is a consummate media whore, unwilling and unable to have the narrative shift off of her. When the media spotlight moved off of her and onto other Republican candidates, she made damn sure that the focus returned to her by cooking up this bizarre bus tour. As someone who has been accused of being a narcissist, I think that accuser needs to study a little harder (maybe they can have lunch with Palin at summer school) and understand the true meaning of narcissism. (Of course, it has been proposed that narcissistic personality disorder be removed from the DSM. I eagerly await their revised diagnosis of me.) I think Palin is the walking embodiment of a narcissist, and she shows it in her usurping of the attention placed on actual candidates like Romney, whose official announcement of his run was completely overshadowed by Palin’s “family vacation.” I’m sure that she was quite pleased by that.

Is she going to run? Hell if I know. I’m not sure I even care anymore. My instincts say no. ClusterFox still has her on their roster, I don’t see her wanting to give up her lucrative speaking career, and I certainly don’t see her wanting to bring down the intense media scrutiny of her personal life and business. Nah, she’s just going to milk this for all she can, get all the attention she can, and she’ll just keep raking in the dough from the gullible and misguided. On the other hand, she just might be arrogant enough to think that she has a chance, despite her high negative numbers among everyone other than conservative Christians. In that case, she’s not just ignorant. She’s delusional.

The Dimmer Twins

As originally published on BlogCritics

Palin and Bachmann running for President? How interesting.

The speculation has been endless, especially when it comes to whether or not Sarah Palin will enter the race. Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann has also shown signs of throwing her toque in the ring.

Bachmann has said that her phone has been “ringing off the hook” with those wanting her to enter the race, and CNN reports that it is looking increasingly likely that she will enter the race.

Palin was thought by most to have taken herself out of the running, but her recent purchase of a home in Arizona (it would be easier to run a campaign from the mainland than from Alaska), news of a movie about her governorship (Shortened though it might be, through no fault of her own. Oh, wait.) in Alaska premiering in Iowa, and the announcement of a bus tour have fanned the flames of speculation once again.

In some ways, I welcome this news (more about that in a moment), but overall, I am both appalled and amused. Let me count the ways:

1) As a woman, I applaud those of my gender being involved in politics. It was a man’s world for decades, if not centuries, and the more women that get involved, the better. However, I would prefer that such candidates have a lot more substance. Love her or hate her, Hillary Clinton had a boatload of gravitas; Palin and Bachmann seem to be more about sound bites and appearance than policy. They are very good at firing up their base. They are sorely lacking in the ability to reach beyond that base and deliver their message to others who need to be convinced. Frankly, I find their demeanor and lack of knowledge concerning the Constitution, policy, and various other tough questions thrown their way (things like “Which newspapers do you read?”) an embarrassment to women everywhere.

I have no problem with attractive women in the workplace or in politics. Indeed, it can sometimes be an asset, and I would be lying if I said that I felt that it hadn’t helped me in my career at some point. However, you’d better have the knowledge to back it up. I worked with some attractive women during my laboratory career, but if you didn’t have the knowledge about what you were doing or the processes that took place in the lab, you didn’t get ahead. I expect the same from any politician, whether male or female. When women have often had to work harder and be smarter in order to be taken seriously in many endeavors, I find it a setback to hear some men say, “That Palin is sure a looker, ain’t she?” You don’t get to run the country because you look good in a designer suit and high heels.

I don’t doubt Palin’s or Bachmann’s toughness (although Palin has a disturbing tendency towards vindictiveness, and she seems to have a hard time shaking off the inevitable criticism that comes with being on the national stage), because you can’t be a politician in this country without having a good measure of toughness. However, I also want a good measure of intelligence, and a willingness to work across the aisle rather than simply hammering home every agenda at the expense of the well-being of our country and our citizens.

2) As a progressive, I simply do not care for their agenda. I fundamentally disagree with most of, if not all, their nebulous policies, and their basic philosophy of less government, more local control. Such a doctrine was rejected by our founding fathers (the same founding fathers that Palin and Bachmann seem to love so well, but understand so little about) when they rejected the Federalist papers in favor of the Constitution. The Constitution states clearly in what is known as the Supremacy Clause that federal law is the supreme law of the land. The concept of states’ rights was fought over in the Civil War, and it was rejected. I honestly do not understand this effort to let states reign supreme; if that were the case, there would still be segregation in many southern states.

Palin, Bachmann, and the teabaggers call for a return to the way things used to be, a return to American exceptionalism. They seem to be enamored of post-WWII America. To be sure, it was a time of booming prosperity, but it was also a time of discrimination against blacks and other minorities, women (unless they stayed at home; that was okay), and homosexuals. As for American exceptionalism, they seem to have missed the news that we are falling behind other developed countries when it comes to health care, infant mortality, and education. Part of the latter has much to do with the endless attack upon science education, an atmosphere where teachers are sometimes afraid to teach the scientific facts of evolution because of the blowback they get from highly religious communities. Which brings me to this.

3) Palin, Bachmann, and their acolytes seem to want nothing more than to make our country a theocracy. As someone who firmly believes in the separation of church and state (again, those pesky founding fathers and their assertions that we are not to promote ANY religion; another part of the Constitution that is conveniently ignored by many), I find this the most disturbing of all. One would think that the readily accessible example of various theocracies throughout the world (let’s use Iran as an example) would lead anyone to understand that basing our government upon any sort of religion is exactly what we should not and must not do. It was definitely not the intent of the writers of our Constitution. We do not base our laws upon any religious text. Both Palin and Bachmann seem to be taking their cues on whether to run or not from God, and when Palin met with Billy Graham, she asked him about what the Bible says concerning Israel, Iraq, and Iran. If you want to base your foreign policy on what the Bible says about the End Times, the Rapture, and Armageddon, kindly step slowly away from my government.

4) Finally, as someone who is highly interested in politics and also loves to laugh, I think it would be very entertaining to have these two enter the race. The debates will be hilarious, and will provide plenty of comedy fodder. I suspect, however, that it will not be any sort of a boon to a Republican party that wishes to be taken seriously. For all the talk of Paul Ryan’s “serious and daring budget” (ignore that Medicare part, okay?), I find it a downright knee slapper that the possibility exists that we will see the Dimmer Twins soon engaged in battle. I await such a development eagerly, and I’m sure my fellow progressives do, as well.

Beth’s Books

I don’t intend to turn this into a book blog—you all know I’ve got more interests than just that—but I’ve read a couple of good ones recently and wanted to write about them. They both have to do with politics, so that’s in keeping with one of my favorite subjects!

First is The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi. I first became familiar with Taibbi as a columnist for Rolling Stone, when my friend Darren recommended his writing to me; one of Taibbi’s most memorable articles there dealt with the tea partiers. Taibbi’s style is irreverent and, to borrow a word most often used with another RS writer, gonzo. The subject of this book is twofold. He writes about our broken political system, in which our politicians follow the money and influence. Public airing of legislative procedures on C-SPAN is usually limited to important things like renaming post office branches; the big-ticket stuff goes on behind the scenes, in late-night meetings, with little public discussion. Taibbi is obviously left-leaning, but he shares equal contempt for the politicians of both sides.

I try to stay engaged and informed when it comes to politics, but it’s disturbing to think that my participation matters very little in the process. I’m not going to relinquish my right to vote, and I’m not going to become overly cynical about politics in general. It’s easy to do that, and the truth of the matter would probably lead any halfway intelligent person to that conclusion. But simply opting out is not a viable alternative to me. It’s still discouraging to think about just how much corruption is taking place, though.

The other subject matter I found even more fascinating. The heathen Taibbi decided to check out the fundamentalist evangelical faction by going undercover and joining Pastor John Hagee’s church in San Antonio. You might remember Hagee as the guy who said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on a New Orleans that embraces and celebrates homosexuality. Yeah, that guy. I found Taibbi’s experience to be fascinating. I wasn’t really surprised at any of the dogma expressed by those in the church; I’ve heard plenty of similar things throughout my life. I suppose I found it fascinating because I’ve heard it all before. It’s the party line.

Taibbi participates in a weekend getaway with the church. He progresses far enough up the ladder to be invited to a workshop about how to witness to people, and joins two other church members in a rather embarrassing visit to a mall to evangelize. One exchange that I found particularly amusing is when Matt role-plays with the group leader in learning about how to talk to people about the good word. When the group leader asks him if he feels that God would judge him according to the ten commandments, Matt says it’s an irrelevant question because he doesn’t believe in God. When the group leader protests that it’s written in the Bible, Matt says he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t believe in the Bible. This throws the group leader for quite a loop. Matt says, “I’m just repeating what non-believers might say. That’s all.”

In a previous life, I recall having discussions with someone who just kept quoting scripture. I said something to the effect of, “Can you please just talk to me and tell me what YOU think, rather than quoting scripture at me?” He couldn’t do it. He was so far up the ass of the church he’d joined that he just couldn’t stop the conditioned response and rote regurgitation of what what being fed to him. I found Taibbi’s conversation so fascinating because it’s interesting to see how people respond to someone telling them that not only do they not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, they don’t even believe in God. It seems to really perplex them...like it is just so far outside their realm of possibility that they just can’t wrap their minds around it.

The book ended on a rather sad note. After heading back to New York, he eventually came back to San Antonio to have lunch with one of the women that he’d become friends with in the church. She was having a hard time, because she was wasn’t fitting in at the church...she didn’t know how to play the political games there (and just like any place that involves a large number of people, there ARE political games), and she wasn’t feeling accepted. (I’ll have more to write on this topic soon.) Anyway, Taibbi is an excellent writer, and this is an excellent book. Highly recommended!

Next was Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. This was an account of the presidential primaries for the 2008 election, and the election itself. Like many of you, I followed that election very closely, and I remember so much of what is discussed in this book. Sometimes verbatim. The title of the book comes from how seemingly small things loomed large in this particular race, and ended up being game changers. A phrase, a look, an indiscretion, a misspoken word, a wrong note struck. A vice-presidential pick that came as a complete surprise, and after initially firing up the base, went horribly awry.

This book is worth a read just for the chapter that deals with McCain’s choice of Palin as his running mate, and his campaign’s attempts to...dare I say it? Yes, I dare. His campaign’s attempts to put lipstick on a pig. Inadequate vetting and a candidate unwilling and perhaps unable to learn the basics of what she needed to know were a recipe for disaster. I don’t take this book as the full truth, but based on everything I’ve read and what I’ve seen of Palin, I know that this woman doesn’t belong anywhere near the White House. When McCain chose her, I felt that he was pandering to the conservative base and attempting to garner female voters, and I condemned him for making a purely cynical choice; I still feel that way, and I still feel that he traded what little honor he had left in order to make a last-ditch attempt to get votes. If he truly thought that she was capable of being the leader of the free world if something happened to him, it shows what a doddering old fool he is, and that he put his victory in November above his country. I’ll just say it outright: if you think Sarah Palin is capable of running this country, you don’t have its best interests at heart. Neither did McCain.

Halperin and Heilemann aren’t lapdogs for the Democrats. They speak of Obama’s sometimes overwhelming arrogance; they speak of Clinton’s poorly managed campaign and the harm that President Clinton inflicted upon it; John Edwards’ all-too-human failings are examined, and Elizabeth Edwards’ irrational behavior is addressed.

I suppose that much of the book was political gossip, but I read enough during that campaign to know that it wasn’t far off the mark. It was a fun and interesting read, and an enjoyable reminder of what was truly a historic and game-changing election. I think it had a happy ending, too!