Kos Gets It, McCain Not So Much

It seems just yesterday I called myself a “the-center-is-progressive lady”. Oh wait, that was yesterday! Today the Daily Kos has an item called The “Far Left” is the Mainstream. They give us the figures that show “Most” Americans oppose the Iraq war, support stem cell research, and think we should raise the minimum wage. Most Americans even support abortion rights, at least in part. That is what makes it so puzzling when politicians pander to the rather conservative point on the spectrum that they mistakenly think is the moderate center. Of course, if anyone was paying attention, the late Molly Ivins said the same thing back in 2006.

Welcome to reality, Kos-ites and Kos-acks. Enjoy the view.

Meanwhile, many thanks to Norman Goldman, filling in on the Ed Schultz Show for breaking a story on McCain’s really awful sense of “humor”. Apparently the man, who has been on the record calling his wife a certain impolite sexist term, really did tell this joke:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’

Yeah, cause being beaten, raped, and left to die is so effing funny.

In closing: more reasons Mandatory Health Insurance won’t work, as “Individual health policies leave many in the lurch” and “Deep flaws found in U.S. Health Care” (yet one more place that politicians are pandering to a far right “center”); and welcoming Michelle Obama to BlogHer.

Global War on Women

If you have been reading my work for very long, you know I am not what anybody would consider a rabid feminist. Yet, I do most vehemently believe that women have the same inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as men.

We live in sad and pathetic times for women in this world.

The Taliban are still executing women in Afghanistan. At this rate, they will have committed self-genocide within a generation and a half. In fact, I am utterly amazed they still have women to murder. (Warning! That link does include pictures and video!)

Darfur is still a terrifying mess of rape and murder, and there is little hope the man in charge will be brought to justice.

France has decided you can’t be both French and a devout Muslim woman.

Honor killings are news in the United States, but pathetically common in some areas of the world.

The Republican candidate for President voted against a bill that would allow women to actually sue when they find they aren’t getting paid as well for the same work a man does.

And now, the federal Department of Health and Human Services has decided that they know better than actual doctors, and is attempting to redefine pregnancy in such a way as to magically turn the use of hormonal birth control into an “abortion.” This would of course free up pharmacists and doctors to refuse allow women to get it on “moral” grounds. It would also effectively prevent any public health system from dispensing birth control. This, ironically, will raise the number of unwanted pregnancies, which will in turn raise the numbers of abortions out there. Bizarro Government.

There’s just no using logic with some people.

In closing: couldn’t everyone use a patient advocate; I need a Hello Kitty Disaster Kit; Look who got mentioned in The Week Daily; 5 reasons $4 gas might not be all bad; inflation at its worst level since the Original Bush Adminstration; Jill could use a job; and finally, another stupid approach to “universal” health care. The first nail in the coffin is that it still involves primary care being paid for by for-profit insurance companies. Second, it involves a VAT. Third, it assumes — and concedes it might not work out that way — that employers will pass on the savings of not buying insurance policies by giving everybody a huge raise. Can I have a ticket to his fantasy-land? It sounds like a better place than here for a the-center-is-progressive lady like myself.

Other People’s Commentary

The most accurate thing you are likely to read about education this week, courtesy of D-Ed Reckoning.

“Sorry your parents were screw-ups, kid. The penalty is death.” Seriously, a Florida teenager has been removed from an organ transplant list because he’s in the foster system.

I could go on about FISA, but Jill and Yeti did such a nice job.

Fafblog is updated irregularly, but they only post quality stuff, like this run-down of potential Veep candidates.

A couple questions about Senator McCain: is he in fact a natural born United States citizen? And did he bother to divorce wife #1 (you remember, the one who had the temerity to be injured and disfigured while Johnny was being tortured) before marrying wife #2 (the beer baroness)?

It turns out there is a magic pill to improve your health. And the good news is it’s cheap! The bad news is it’s called “exercise”.

A pilot points out to the TSA that in fact, the knife in his carry-on bag was given to him on the airplane. TSA supervisor is unamused.

Phuck Phil. Gramm that is. And his little Wendy too. Remember, this is the guy that McCain looks to for economic advice. Well, I guess he’s an expert — he broke it!

mmCoffee. You know, you can cook with it too?

And ModDoctor nailed this weeks ago! The doctor in Vegas who apparently infected an unknown number of patients with hepatitis has been inadequately cleaning the scopes he puts up people’s bums since at least 1989. This case just got a lot messier.

Have a great weekend.

The Jobs Report has Nothing to do with Apple

Today we learned that in June, our economy lost roughly 62,000 jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Along with this, we learned that even more jobs were lost in May than initially thought. The unemployment rate is remaining stable at 5.5% — this has to do with the very narrow BLS definition of “unemployed” (you had a full time job, you lost it, you aren’t working at all, and you are actively looking for work). Keep in mind, May and June are a time when our new high school and college grads are looking for their first “real” job.

CNN furthermore points out that June was the 6th straight month of job losses, initial jobless claims are up, total unemployment claims are at the highest level since Katrina, and wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation — that’s inflation as [under]measured by the government.

Robert Reich did a very nice wrap-up of the problem, pointing out “Total job losses since the first of the year are now 438,000. That’s a loss of 73,000 a month. The economy needs to CREATE 125,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.” That’s about all that needs to be said.

Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

In closing: Edward Kennedy — who you will recall is recovering from a brain tumor — is laying the groundwork for a true universal health care plan (not one of those mandatory plans that most politicians keep trying to sell us); How to Leave Iraq; and a follow-up, this guy managed to get 110 mpg and 400 horsepower out of an ’87 Mustang. Hey Detroit, we don’t believe you can’t give us both efficient and powerful any more! Maybe that’s why Toyota is kicking your butt!

Shorties Vs. Predator

Lessons Learned in Ireland: Unfortunately the folks who really learned anything from the British troubles with the IRA were the Iraqi resistance!

The Economy is Great: No it isn’t, in fact some people will die. Job losses will continue through 2009, and all the problems caused by people not having enough money will likewise continue. Oh, and it turns out that the “official statistics” — which my readers know undercount both inflation and unemployment — also undercount poverty. So sure, the economy isn’t that bad, as long as you look at it with government approved rose-colored glasses.

We don’t need no steenking NDA: Diary of a Government Whore. Oh, he means “software designer”.

I Wonder If They Keep Kosher: Some people think Mr. Bush needs a third term as President. From their FAQ: “Presidential term limits are not in the Bible. And they were not in our Constitution until added by an activist congress in 1951.” The very idea of a “President” isn’t in the Bible either.

Speaking of the President: Just this morning, Mr. Bush reiterated some of his comments on oil and energy prices. One of the things he specifically said was that prices will drop when supply increases, and that is why we need more drilling. The problem is that the drilling he discusses — if it does come to pass — will not increase supply until 5 to 10 years from now. We can’t control supply in the short term. And frankly, as long as “developing nations” such as China and India continue to increase their demand for petroleum products, we can’t control supply in the long term either. What we can control is demand. And that is just what any consumer that has a choice is doing. That’s why auto sales are at their worst level in 15 years “as [auto manufacturers] try to meet call for small cars.” Meanwhile, even as consumers are saying “give us efficient cars!”, those same car makers are saying “fuel-efficiency targets, timing are too tough”! Funny, the Asians and Europeans are able to deliver.

It feels like something is wrong here: This commemorative silver dollar — it is not intended for circulation — has a picture of Louis Braille on it. “On the back of the coin, the Braille code for the word Braille — or ‘Brl’ — is inscribed, above a depiction of a school-age boy reading a Braille book with a cane resting on his arm.” If we are going to the trouble of putting Braille characters on the coin, don’t you suppose it would be more useful to have the denomination of the coin? That way people who actually use Braille could read… oh never mind.

They get you going and not going: Upgrade: Travel Better points out that Spirit Airlines‘ fare schedule is completely misleading. Not only do they charge extra for an aisle seat or a window seat, they even charge extra for a middle seat! If you refuse to pay for a seat, do they cram you in the overhead compartment? Do you get a complementary beverage? Meanwhile, airports have figured out that when you are stuck waiting for a flight, you have little choice but to wander around the airport, hopefully eating, drinking, and buying stuff. And since you weren’t allowed to bring your own water bottle behind the security checkpoint, they’ve got you cornered.

Since we’re on the topic of “security”: Don’t do anything remotely suspicious — such as drawing pictures or buying pool chemicals — in Denver. Oh, and the “Justice” Department is considering letting the FBI investigate people as potential terrorists not because of anything suspicious they may have done, but because they may fit a “terrorist profile”: “The new policy… would let agents open preliminary terror investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, could be deemed suspicious.” Just tell me one thing — would this “profile” have located William Krar, or Tim McVeigh, or Ted Kaczyncki? Or is the real purpose to create an excuse to spy on people who are Brown or don’t agree with the Majority party?

Gosatsu Hon: Or, 5 Books.

And finally: It turns out the Long Tail is a nice theory, but nothing more.

Have a great Independence Day, and remember what the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) were really fighting for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for themselves and their posterity.

Society for the Prevention of BBW

For those of you not in the know, “BBW” stands for “Big Beautiful Woman“.

I’m really not sure what to make of this item from Reuters via Yahoo:

A new program developed by the U.S. government is tackling the obesity epidemic by helping “tween” girls and their parents make small but important changes to build a healthier lifestyle.

[snip]

Girls 9 to 13 years old who are overweight or obese are referred to BodyWorks through their pediatrician, or by word of mouth. Parents and caregivers attend 10 weekly 90-minute sessions, and girls are expected to show up for at least three. The goal is to give parents and caregivers “hands-on tools to make small behavior changes to prevent obesity and help maintain a healthier weight,” according to the BodyWorks Web site (http://www.womenshealth.gov/bodyworks/).

“The very attractive aspect of it is that it addresses the whole family, and the whole environment in the household, which I think is the best approach to childhood obesity,” said [Pediatrician Dr. Monica] Richter. “Diet implies a short-term deprivation, which doesn’t work.”

[snip]

The goal is not for girls to lose weight…, but for families as a whole to begin making healthier choices at the grocery store, to become more active and to spend less time in sedentary activities like watching TV or playing computer games.

Ok, so let me give points for recognizing that diet alone is not the answer. More points for involving the whole family in the plan. Being overweight or obese puts people at risk for a number of life-shortening problems and some other problems that reduce quality of life as well, so helping them lose weight is a pretty good goal. But I have to take points away for targeting just girls in just this specific age range.

What? Boys don’t get fat? Girls aged 9-13 don’t have enough body image issues? They weren’t fat when they were younger? These young ladies don’t have chubby siblings and parents who could stand to lose a few pounds?

In closing: tips for better blogging; careful about shifting to the “center” Senator, because it’s further to the left than most people think; it turns out treating pregant women for their addiction problems is better for everybody in the long run; nice to see that at least some laws apply to Blackwater; and last, there will probably not be a lot more entries in the “Picture This” category. Those strange things I run across will be submitted to the new and improved Groundmeat.

Was it something I said? June Retrospective

It may be hard to believe, but I have been writing here at ShortWoman for 5 years now.  June 25 is my blogiversary!  Each month I hope to bring you some of my favorite items.  Today, we have 5 years of June.

Back in 2003 I defined “investing” as spending money with the reasonable expectation of getting more money in return, and dismantled the argument that school vouchers do anything positive for the middle class.

In 2004 I outlined what real liberals stand for.

For the first time, I said that “any pharmacist who is against dispensing legal, medically indicated prescriptions [such as birth control] should resign. To do less is to follow their morals only when they inconvenience others” in 2005.

In 2006 I discussed a common sense approach to reducing identity theft.

For 2007, we have a lengthy piece on health care, and as a bonus I have some follow-up stuff (ladies! this link is must read!! it could save your life!).

In closing: excerpts from the real live Texas GOP platform; a few things on the FISA cramdown, and no it’s not a done deal so for pity sake contact your Senators!; Real ID master verification hub being built under a no-bid contract; never use credit cards at “tire and retreading shops, massage parlors, bars, billiard halls, and marriage counseling offices”; an economist on home ownership; a different economist on gas prices; Countdown to Crawford; global warming could cause terrorism, now can we fight it?; and finally — because surely it’s the most important question we could ask — What’s On Senator Obama’s iPod?  Nope, we don’t need to know where he stands on issues! It’s much more important to get his opinion on popular music!

Yet Another Health Care Post

Over the weekend, Fed Head Ben Bernanke went on the record as saying we had a health care problem in this country. Here’s Reuter’s and BBC coverage, but if you would rather read the actual statement, it’s here, with footnotes.

It is worth pointing out that the three factors Bernanke singles out are — in this order — access, quality, and cost. Since by “access” he means “insurance coverage,” in many ways it boils down to “how are we going to pay for it” and “are we getting what we need at a reasonable price”. Some will correctly point out that just because you have insurance doesn’t mean you are getting the right health care, or that the bills are paid.

Because he is an economist, it should be no surprise that his focus is heavily tilted towards the money involved. And in the end, another notable economist by the name of Greg Mankiw summarized it: “Ben’s talk is, however, very sensible–a good overview of the issues without saying anything sufficiently interesting that it might prove controversial.”

Elsewhere, the American Medical Association is meeting this week. They issued their first “report card” on insurers Monday. It rates insurers on accuracy and timeliness. You can read it for yourself using the links here.  If you think people should be promptly paid fair earnings for the work they actually do, this is an issue of critical importance.

Although this article is about doctor dissatisfaction in general, it brings several interesting facts to our discussion:  lots of paperwork that has little to do with providing medical care (driving costs up); “perceived…  loss of professional autonomy” as they are second-guessed by insurance company clerks miles away, who never even went to medical school; denied payments with short appeal windows (in an environment where the insurance company has months to decide if they are paying anything at all); concerns about malpractice suits that may or may not have merit; concerns over the rising cost of insurance to cover said malpractice suits; declining revenues, even before taking into account that Medicare reimbursement will drop by 10.6% on the first of the month; and a “looming shortage of doctors, especially in primary care, which has the lowest reimbursement of all the medical specialties and probably has the most dissatisfied practitioners….”

These problems must be addressed as part of any serious “reforms”, because the one thing we have really learned from the Massachusetts plan is that when people have the means to pay for a doctor, they see one.  Or at least they try.   Mr. Bernanke tells us 16% of our population is uninsured currently.  Insure them and they will want medical care.  When demand rises sharply with no parallel rise in supply, any economist can tell you what will happen next.

Perhaps if we can do something about all the non-medical stuff a typical doctor has to deal with, they can increase capacity?

In closing:  what idiot thought this was appropriate?; Dyre said what needs saying about the Associated Press; if you need a chart to figure out how to nap, you are probably in desperate need of one; congrats to George and Brad; I didn’t even know Tom Colicchio had a blog, let alone that he had thought seriously about the issues of working mothers; I predict that this will cost so much money that it will be used as an excuse to dismantle the Americans with Disabilities Act; time to cave in on spying on innocent Americans without any freakin warrants again; and about the President’s plan for offshore drilling?  There’s not enough boats to do the job! But I’ll let Dave Johnson dismantle the rest of the rhetoric.

Saying Goodbye

One of my favorite blogs has been Maya’s Granny. I was introduced to her work early in the game, introduced by PureLand Mountain. She posted pretty much every day for most of 2 years, rain or shine, even if it was just a neat picture or an interesting quote. She wrote eloquently on her political opinions, told family stories, and even wrote about the silly things her cats — a pair of brothers known as “the Hooligans” — had done. It was a neat stop on my daily reading, one that I preferred to visit directly rather than let my RSS feeder collect it automatically.

Unfortunately, Granny had a heart attack in February, and her health had never really returned. Like many people, I sent notes. I had been searching for a nice postcard of Red Rocks Conservation Area to send her, knowing how she missed the beautiful landscape of Alaska, but I had no luck. Sadly, she passed away over the weekend. Here is what her daughter has to say on the matter, and this is from her son-in-law. She was a neat lady, and even though I never met her I will miss her.

Not so smart after all

I believe I have mentioned at some point that I learned to to research by studying musicology — that’s the fancy name for “music history”.  Yesterday, Wired gave us “3 Smart Things About Music.”  Unfortunately, at least one of them is wrong.  They said:

1 The pitches in musical scales are likely derived from language. Turns out, aspects of spoken English and Mandarin correlate to the intervals between notes in a chromatic scale (the black and white piano keys in an octave). Is it music we love or the sound of our own voices?

On one hand, this is so simplistic as to be obvious:  the earliest “instruments” were the human voice, and the sound of banging on things (percussion at its most basic).

However, back to the specific scales and languages involved.

Traditional Chinese music does not use the modern chromatic scale, although much of it can be notated using it. Instead, they use a 5 note or pentatonic scale.  The modern chromatic scales has 12 tones.  Furthermore, they have been using that scale since before English was a language. Update:  It is worth noting that although Mandarin is a language where the pitch you use to say something changes the meaning, English is not.  You can speak English sentences in a complete monotone, and English speakers will understand what you are saying.

You may have noticed that I carefully refer to the “modern chromatic scale.”  That scale — based on a system called “Equal Temperament” — did not evolve until after Europe began trying to explore China.  Full use of all 12 tones took several additional centuries beyond that, and many people feel it has “ruined” music.  If you really want to get deep into the issues involved from a modern standpoint, check out the work of Harry Partch, a 20th Century American composer who decided that he would not be limited by a mere 12 pitches.

Twelve tones were an improvement at one point, however.  Back in the 9th century, there were only 7.  Those would be roughly the white keys on a piano or other keyboard.  Do, Re, Mi, and the other solfeggio syllables you may know from ear training or watching The Sound of Music come from a specific Gregorian chant. As the modal harmony of Middle Ages and Renaissance church music evolved into the tonal harmonies of Baroque composers like Bach and Vivaldi, the scales were transposed to other starting pitches, and an interesting problem of physics became apparent.

What we hear as pitch is related to the frequency of the vibrating part(s) of the instrument we are hearing. There is a note we call “A” at 440 hertz, or vibrations per second.  If we double or halve that number, there is another “A” at 220 and 880 hertz. If instead we multiply by 3/2, we find there is a note called “E”, a “perfect fifth” away, at 660.  If we continue multiplying all the way around the circle of fifths, we will end up with a problem at the end:  when we get back to A, it won’t be a multiple of 440, which means it will sound “out of tune”.  A number of  compromise tunings were tried to get around this problem:  Just Temperament;  Mean Temperament;  Well Temperament.  Each had its advantages and drawbacks.

The “modern chromatic scale” is based on Equal Temperament.  Each pitch is exactly the same number of hertz apart. It’s not based on language;  it’s a compromise to get around the laws of physics. Which, Wired should recall, ye canna change.

In closing: somebody noticed that women are using smartphones too; more on John Williams and manipulated economic data; under-insured is just as bad as uninsured; just one reason I don’t support the death penalty; for a moderate, he sure votes like a man who hates women; math and the real world; doesn’t everyone need a planetarium in the bathtub?; and last, Goodbye to Mr. Russert.