Happy “Obamacare” birthday

March 23, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Carolyn Comeau with her husband, Craig and their children, Louise and Colin.

As we celebrate the second anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, we can’t become complacent. Its opponents, funded by the massive Health Industrial Complex, are stepping up their attacks and lies.

Just the other day I saw the tired old “death panels” online again, and the lie that anyone older than 75 won’t get treatment if they get cancer. I answered with a paragraph from the law that forbids age discrimination.

So, what’s the truth? Well, my friend Carolyn Comeau can tell you that she doesn’t have to worry about her family going bankrupt if her breast cancer should come back. She was diagnosed five years ago with breast cancer. Soon afterward, her husband, Craig, lost his job, but they were able to maintain coverage through COBRA. It nearly broke the bank to pay the premiums, but they got her through treatment.

Just as COBRA was ending and they discovered that Carolyn was uninsurable, the state’s high-risk pool came online, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The coverage isn’t cheap, but it’s not unaffordable for the family, either.

Older Americans are getting more help paying for their prescriptions; 2.5 million young adults are able to stay on their parents’ policies until they reach age 25. People who have insurance no longer have to pay anything out-of-pocket for screening tests like colonoscopies and mammography. Insurance companies can’t dump you if you get sick, and a birth defect is no longer grounds for an insurance company to refuse coverage to a child. That last one alone might have saved my son.

For all the bad press the Affordable Care Act is getting, for all the deliberate lies about what’s in the law, it still has the approval of about half of Americans, and many who don’t approve say it’s because the law doesn’t go far enough.

I’d still like to see a public option. Give me the opportunity to buy into Medicare so I don’t have to send money to insurance companies that spend billions on lobbyists and mega-bonuses for their executives.

For all its flaws — the biggest of which is that more than 20 million Americans will remain uninsured — the Affordable Care Act has improved our health care system and is poised to do a lot more.

So, I’m celebrating today that we finally got that first step to a better system for all Americans.

 

Don’t assume …

March 15, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

This image reminds me of my friend, Jerry Donnellan, who left his war medals at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. I asked whether, in his experience, liberals hate soldiers. As a rule, he said, they do not.

Yesterday, as I was doing my regular Wednesday co-host gig with Blake Butler on Local Edge Radio (880 The Revolution), we had a caller who identified himself as conservative. That doesn’t bother me — I’m happy to talk to people who disagree with me as long as we keep the conversation civil.

“I was born in 1969, so I remember the tail end of the Vietnam thing,” he said. “All you liberals spat on the soldiers when they came home.”

I had news for him: We did not. I was born in 1952 and I had a lot of friends who went to that war. Some didn’t come home; most came home much different people than the ones who left.

I mentioned I’m a Christian and he broke in. “A Christian and  a Democrat? Ain’t no such thing!”

Blake cut him off, but I was deeply offended.

I spent the Vietnam war writing to men I didn’t know and sending care packages so they would know someone back home was thinking about them and praying for their safe return.

When I lived in Rockland County, NY, one of my good friends was Jerry Donnellan, who now heads the Veterans’ Services Agency in the county.

“I ‘m good,” he said when I called him today. “I got me a government job. Of course, it was my first government job that led to the need for this government job.”

Jerry came home with three Purple Hearts and minus a leg. He is one of the funniest people I know, and to hear him tell the story of his second Purple Heart made me laugh till I cried. He was shot by a sniper, but a ration can of pineapple chunks saved his life.

“I thought I was gone,” he says. “I felt my chest and there was a warm, sticky liquid. I couldn’t look. But then I looked at my hand and there wasn’t any blood. That sonofabitch  had ruined my pineapple chunks!”

In the end, Jerry took out the sniper. A few months later, he stepped on a land mine and blew off half his leg.

My friend, Jerry Donnellan, a Vietnam Vet, wasn't spat on when he returned home; in fact, a he counts a whole lot of liberals as his friends. He is receiving an honorary doctorate from Dominican College in Rockland County, NY

So, as the liberal old friend of an old Vietnam soldier, I figured I could ask Jerry whether he knew any liberal people who care about veterans.

“There are plenty of conservatives who wave the flag and don’t do anything more,” Jerry said. “My father used to say you have to watch out for someone waving a flag because he had a stick and could be dangerous.”

Jerry and other vets came back from Vietnam and they founded Vietnam Vets against the War.

“We didn’t join the traditional peace groups because there were people among them who thought we all were war criminals,” he said. “But most of us were drafted.”

Jerry once told me he “still had pieces of my mama’s porch under my fingernails when I got there.”

During the Vietnam War, those with connections (George W. Bush and Dan Quayle among them) got into the National Guard and didn’t have to risk their lives on the front lines; they stayed stateside. Today, however, National Guard men and women serve two, three — up to six — deployments. The soldier who opened fire on Afghan civilians last week was in his fourth deployment. After all that, he likely will face the death penalty.

“Can you imagine how much sooner this thing would have ended if there had been a draft?” Jerry asked. “But you don’t see college campuses erupting because their lives aren’t at risk. Back during Vietnam if you were warm and not pregnant, you got drafted.

“But we came back and we formed Vietnam Veterans against the war. … We were saying, ‘We went, we fought your stupid war and now we’re back to tell you it’s wrong. Stop it.'”

People who go to war come back changed, Jerry said.

“Imagine being taken away from your family and sent anywhere for a year, let alone being sent to war,” he said. “Then imagine it happening four or five times. You come home changed each time. It’s a lot to ask.”

My heart is, and always has been, with the men and women who risk their lives to fight the stupid wars our politicians get us into. They are heroes, and I am deeply offended when someone says I don’t support them.

Don’t assume that because I’m liberal that I hate soldiers and don’t believe in the redemptive power of Jesus.  Don’t make assumptions about me, don’t call me names and I’ll show the same respect toward you.

 

 

It is an issue

March 8, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Recently, several people have told me that women’s rights aren’t really being attacked and that the whole birth control thing is a diversion, not a real issue.

Actually, it is an issue, and a very real one at that.

A lot of people have misrepresented Sandra Fluke’s testimony. She was not asking for taxpayers to pay for her contraception; she was only saying it needs to be covered by insurance so low-income women like students can have access. She did not testify before Darryl Issa’s committee; she spoke before an informal committee of Democrats after she was refused permission to testify before Issa’s committee.

In Texas, women’s clinics are closing because funding has been cut. This means fewer women will have access to care and to contraception. They will have more babies and become even more mired in poverty.

Across the country, Planned Parenthood and other organizations that offer affordable health care to women are being attacked under the guise of being “abortion clinics.”  Just because I sit in my office and occasionally print something out doesn’t make me a printer. Women’s health clinics offer contraception, breast cancer screening and sometimes well-baby clinics. They address issues such as domestic violence. They often are a woman’s only access to care, and they save lives.

Yes, this is an attack on women.

I’ll turn 60 this year, and as a child I had a direct connection to women’s suffrage: my grandmother couldn’t vote as a young woman. She was born in 1888 and was married with a child before women had the vote. Her father controlled her every move until she was married. When skirts went above the ankle and she cut all hers off and hemmed them, her father made her sew ruffles onto the bottom of every skirt because he thought men were staring at her ankles.

I came of age in the 1960s and my grandmother and I talked a lot about how far women had come — and how far we still needed to go to gain equality.

My mother’s generation could vote, but women still could be fired when they got married or got pregnant. My mother actually advised me to take typing in 1966 because I should have something to fall back on if my husband should die. I refused. I wasn’t going to make my living fetching coffee, taking notes and typing someone else’s crap.

My mother was a brilliant woman, but she couldn’t share that brilliance beyond her home because women’s place was in the home. She was depressed and frustrated, but she stayed home until I was in high school. She became a self-taught marine biologist who lectured PhDs on the effects of PCBs on fish eggs in the Chesapeake Bay.

My generation was the one that was able to make headway because we didn’t have to become pregnant unless we planned it — as long as we were married. Even into the 1970s in Massachusetts, women weren’t allowed to make their own decisions about their bodies. Doctors weren’t allowed to offer contraception — or even information about it — to unmarried women. They, not we, could be arrested because we weren’t trusted with our own bodies.

We fought those laws and we fought for equality in the workplace. We had to work twice as hard as men to get half the recognition. I was paid less than a man who did my same job at my first newspaper. I complained to the publisher and got a raise, but then the man who was doing the job comparable to mine got a raise, too. I was, after all, only a woman. I was just working for spending money in their eyes. It didn’t matter that I was supporting two children and this man lived with his mother; he was a man and I was a woman. This was in the 1980s.

The attacks on our access to contraceptives are very real. Women are losing the gains we made in the 20th century because too few of us remember what it was like to not have options. If a husband was abusive, we could leave because we could get work. If a husband lost his job, the woman’s income still was there in most families.

If women hadn’t entered the workplace beginning in the 1960s, our national economy would be about one-third of what it is now.

This is not a distraction; this is a real issue. Those five aging white men on Darryl Issa’s birth control panel want us back in the early 1900s, make no mistake about it. Rick Santorum’s supporter who joked that women could use an aspirin held firmly between the knees is among those who want to set back the clock.

I won’t even go into what Rush Limbaugh said because too much has been said already. But he is dangerous because some people do take him seriously.

We need to recognize all this for what it is:  a coordinated attack from the right on all the gains women have made.

 

You call that an apology?

March 5, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Really, Rush? You call that an apology? “A poor choice of words?”

You went after this young woman Sandra Fluke, an articulate, accomplished young woman who only wanted to talk about the importance of contraception at Rep. Darryl Issa’s hearings. She was turned away because the panel was already full with five white men, at least one of whom was a priest who supposedly never has had a need for contraception.

When she was allowed to testify before an informal committee of Democrats, she talked about a friend who needed the Pill to control an ovarian cyst. When she couldn’t get the Pill, the young woman’s condition worsened and she finally had to have surgery to remove her ovary. That surgery was plenty more expensive than giving the young woman the Pill would have been.

But Rush apparently decided to comment on her testimony without even listening. He called her a prostitute and a slut because he mistakenly thought she was asking the government to pay for contraceptives. The fact is, she wanted to say the government’s compromise that would allow churches to opt out of covering contraception but make insurance companies pay for it, is a good thing.

He spoke as though a woman only takes birth control pills when she’s having sex, which shows how ignorant he is. Maybe he’s confusing it with erectile dysfunction drugs.

He attacked her again the next day and the day after that, inviting her to make sex videos to post online. Maybe this is how Rush tells a woman he thinks she’s attractive, I don’t know.

But waging personal attacks three days in a row against someone who only wanted to testify before a House committee is far from choosing your words badly. It is a deliberate, malicious action, and the man should be taken off the air, at least for a week.

That’s the punishment liberal talker Ed Schultz took after calling Laura Ingram a “media whore.” Schultz issued a genuine apology and took a week off the air.

Rush’s “apology” reminds me of the one my older sister made after my mother caught her pushing me. It was totally insincere and there was no doubt she couldn’t wait for my mother to leave the room so she could push me again.

This isn’t journalism; it isn’t even entertainment. This is a misogynistic rant from a very mean-spirited man.

In very poor taste

February 20, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Last week, Rick Santorum’s sugar daddy, Foster Friess, said,  “Back in in my day, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

Newswoman Andrea Mitchell was floored, and as progressive radio host Stephanie Miller said, this is a woman who has seen Alan Greenspan in the bathtub; it can’t be easy to shock her.

That joke was funny when we didn’t have to worry that we might actually have to resort to that. Now, it seems, it’s a sexist vision of America.

Women won’t have a right to any form of family planning if these people have their way.

What bothers me most is the same thing that bothered me two generations ago: All the decisions are being made by men. Women weren’t allowed to testify before Darryl Issa’a panel, only men. Old, wealthy white men. People who can’t get pregnant.

In my day, to paraphrase Friesse, women in Massachusetts, where I grew up, were forbidden by law from getting birth control. Any doctor who prescribed birth control to an unmarried woman could go to jail.That’s right, the penalty was on the doctor, who was almost always a man, as though women were too stupid to make up their own minds.

This isn’t about health care, it’s about control of women. It’s about taking us back to the 1950s, when women had few economic options aside from marriage and repeated childbearing. It was legal to deny a woman a job because she was a woman. She could be fired for getting married, and almost always had to leave her job if she got pregnant.

Contraception gave us the chance to have only as many children as we wanted or could care for. It also gave us the option to stay in our jobs until we chose parenthood, and even afterward. It gave us the chance to escape bad marriages. We no longer were prisoners — or property — of men. It was an important step for the women’s movement, and some want to go back to when women had to do as they were told.

Attacks on a woman’s right to an abortion were just the beginning, as it turns out. Now they want to de-fund Planned Parenthood, which is where millions of women go for annual checkups and birth control, and then they plan to go after contraception.

This is one wacko war we’re being called to fight.

Just because I’m too old to get pregnant doesn’t mean I won’t fight for the rights of my granddaughters to control their own bodies.

If your religion is against contraception, don’t use it. But don’t deny it to others. Your freedom of religion doesn’t mean I have to adhere to your convictions.

A party in disarray

January 20, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Newtie's angels -- his three wives

If it wasn’t so funny, it would be tragic.

Romney was the loser in Iowa; Santorum won.

Gingrich is ahead in South Carolina at the moment, but he and Romney are eating each other alive. Plus, Newtie has that troublesome habit of leaving his wives when they get sick. He did have the decency to ask the second wife if he could keep his mistress, though, as if she were a puppy.

So, when a debate moderator asked him about the whole mess, he blew up, insisting that was an inappropriate question. This from one of the leaders of the fight against Clinton’s infamous blow job. Meanwhile, Newt was carrying on an extramarital affair with his current wife, Callista. Gingrich, who holds himself up as a “family values” candidate, divorces, not one, but two women when they get sick — after starting affairs with other women — and then blows up when someone asks him about it. Sorry, Newtie, if it’s relevant with one politician, it’s relevant with you.

Then, “devout” Christian Rick Perry said in his speech Thursday that God forgives everyone and he endorses Gingrich. Here’s another “man of God,” who needs some forgiveness, I think. He has presided over the executions of more people than any other governor, and he has no regrets, even though there is ample evidence at least one of them was innocent of the crime for which he was executed.

The monied interests want Romney to get the nomination, but all the sniping and attack ads have shown Romney for the 1-percenter he is. He hasn’t a clue how the rest of us live, and he doesn’t care to learn. So, although he won New Hampshire, he’s in trouble in South Carolina.

Ron Paul is still in the mix, mainly because people want us out of Afghanistan. Plus, Paul has said on many occassions he would legalize pot. Unfortunately, a lot of young voters are looking at just that and not at the rest of his Libertarian policies.

So all the shark attacks have has their desired effect and we’re left with a feeding frenzy that no one may come out of unscathed. It’s somewhat entertaining, but I’m tired of watching it; I have a hard time taking any of it seriously, even though the outcome could be serious as hell.

While this may be good for Democrats — who also answer to the powerful monied interests — it is very, very bad for Democracy.

We need a two-party system, and if the Republicans choose to drown themselves in their own blood, we’re in trouble as a nation. Parties are supposed to balance each other out; they’re supposed to debate and compromise over policies while keeping an eye on what’s best for the people they represent. If one of those parties fails, the oligarcs take over.

 

 

God talks to Pat Robertson and other Evangelical Christians

January 6, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Why does God only talk to really scary right-wing Christians?

And when God does talk to them, why doesn’t she tell them to can the crap and behave like followers of Christ?

Now Pat Robertson says he and God had a nice chat the other day and God told him who the next president will be, but he’s not revealing that yet. If you watch the whole clip, you’ll hear Pat say that God even references Pat’s Christian Broadcasting Network. I find that a little hard to believe, but if that’s where Pat wants to go, OK for him.

God used to talk to George W. Bush all the time. I think God might have been speaking through Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld and that’s why we started two wars against Muslim countries, one of which also happened to have oil.

God talks to Michelle Bachmann. In fact, it weas God who told her to run for president. I wonder if it was God who told her to pack it in when she came in sixth in Iowa.

Apparently, God also talks to the Ricks too (Perry and Santorum), telling them gays are bad and so is compassion for people who don’t have as much as you do. Hence Santorum’s idea that people who are poor and can’t get health care must have made bad choices in their lives, and that it’s OK to break up families if the heads of the households are gay because gay people don’t matter anyway, so their children can’t matter either.

It seems God wants us to protect the rich and discriminate against the poor, against women and against anyone who doesn’t subscribe to Evangelical Christian beliefs. Forget about compassion; everyone who’s poor is that way because they’re not good people because God blesses good people with lots of cash and power.

Now, I’m a Christian. I follow the teachings of Christ and I take it seriously when he says we should help the poor, the sick, the hungry, the people in prison. The first time I heard the words, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to me,” it changed my life. I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6, but I took those words to heart.

I am called to love everyone — even the Ricks and Pat Robertson. That’s not easy when they spew hatred for anyone who’s poor or gay or liberal, but then, Jesus never said it would be easy; he just said to do it.

So, does God talk to me? Not literally. I feel led by my faith to do the work I do. I feel led to love the homeless and to spend time with people society wants nothing to do with. All of them are God’s children as far as I am concerned. All are deserving of love and dignity. Try smiling and saying hello to a homeless person sometime and see the reaction. OK, a few will ask for money, but a larger number will smile back and tell you you’re a blessing to them.

I wonder why God never tells Pat about that.

 

My New Year’s Resolution: Kick some 1 percent butt!

January 2, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

OK, so my New Year’s resolution isn’t ladylike. But then there’s the old saying that well behaved women rarely make history. I’ve never been content to be a well behaved woman.

I grew up in a church that never respected a woman’s right. They fought every advance with all their strength. They didn’t think a woman even had a right to use birth control.

“You should take all the children God wants to give you,” we were told.

They were the religious right, and I recognize what they’re trying to do with “personhood” amendments and allowing those in the pharmacy who don’t believe women should be on birth control to not dispense it, even if they’re the only pharmacist on duty. My right to be able to fill that prescription is moot.

These beliefs, pandered to by the corporate-friendly candidates, have led the religious right to vote for the 1 percent for decades. Abortion is still legal, though, gay marriage is making headway and evolution and prayer are still not a part of the school day.

Some of the religious conservatives have woken up to what’s happened and have either turned to the candidate more likely to try to save the planet or stayed home on Election Day. I have friends who voted for George Bush because he was anti-abortion, only to see him engage in two wars that killed tens of thousands of people and enriched the no-bid contractors beyond the wildest dreams of the rest of us.

Across America, Occupy camps are being broken up in the hope that we will go home and behave like good little sheep. There has been illegal collusion between city governments and the Homeland Security Department. There has been police brutality. There have been lies in the media to try and convince us the unrest is over.

I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I think We the People have had enough of corporate rule and government corruption. We have had enough of the attacks on the working class, and the class warfare from above.

I had a dream last night of standing alone hollering, “Mic check!” For awhile, everyone ignored it, but slowly, people began coming forward. Before long, we had a crowd of hundreds, then thousands.

We have to be the ones to get the truth out there because the media are as corrupt as the war contractors and the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

They will continue to attack us, but we can fight back. We have to win this soon or our Democracy will be gone for good.

This is the year. Let’s kick some 1 percent butt!

 

 

Unhappy holidays to the millions who are being screwed by Boehner, et al

December 21, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

The Republican Caucus in the US House of Representatives has left the nation’s capitol without allowing an up-or-down vote on the deal brokered in the Senate that would extend the payroll tax cut — and extended Unemployment benefits — for two months.

Speaker John Boehner says he wants the extension to be for a year, even though he originally thought the deal was good for Americans.

So, what’s the deal? I would guess he’s afraid of a challenge to his leadership from the Tea Party Caucus. Lord knows Eric Cantor would love more power.

Meanwhile, though, this unhappy holiday gift from the Tea Party will piss off a lot of Americans who can’t afford to take another hit. We don’t see the logic in letting the wealth trickle up when so many Americans are desperately trying to stay in their homes.

This is good news for Preident Obama, who has tried his best to work with the GOP and has been thwarted at every turn. He gave up the public option in health care. He gave up on raising taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. He gave up on closing corporate tax loopholes. He gave up on preserving Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Now he has stopped caving in. Or at least I hope he has stopped.

His reaction to the latest Boehner tactic is to walk away. Fine, John, have it your way. Be an obstructionist. The American people know who stopped this deal. Let’s see how it pays off come Election Day. I’m sure those 3 million people who are counting on their unemployment benefits to pay their bills and buy groceries will admire your tenacity as they face foreclosure on their homes.

As Boehner walked out of the House chamber, Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Democrat, shouted at him to return and do what’s right for the American people. Boehner ignored him.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, the average length of unemployment is 41 weerks — the longest average in 60 years. Taking benefits away from people isn’t the way to “offer incentive to return to work,” as conservatives like to say. I’ve seen people looking for work — people who were laid off from $40,000-a-year jobs and been forced to take part-time work at $8 an hour and hope it becomes full-time.

I know people who are living on half the income they had a year or two ago, or less, because so many of the decent jobs have been shipped overseas and they can’t find anything better than an $8-an-hour part-time job.

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor is salivating in the wings. He has backed Boehner into as corner and now he can challenge him for the leadership. The only problem is that I don’t think Cantor has the votes. Actually, that’s not a problem for me.

 

Bring on the clowns

December 7, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

 

From my friend and former colleague, Matt Davies.

Right now I’m thinking Rick Santorum is the clowniest clown of all the candidates.

The other day he said people don’t die from a lack of health insurance; they die from bad choices.

Yeah, my son made some bad choices when he was 16 to 22 — most of us do. It’s called adolescence. But his death didn’t come from any of those choices. His death came from the fact that he couldn’t get insurance because a birth defect is a pre-existing condition. Without insurance he couldn’t get care and so he died.

There was one choice involved; one that I made when I was eight weeks pregnant and the doctor told me I should have an abortion because I had a virus that could cause birth defects. My choice was to have my son.

But Santorum thinks the emergency room is access to care. Perhaps his access to care should be limited to the ER and we’ll see if he doesn’t change his view the next time he needs care.

He also believes gay sex isn’t equal to heterosexual sex, although I couldn’t figure out his logic there except that he’s homophobic. That’s why he believes gay people shouldn’t be able to get married or to have children.

He also believes President Obama shouldn’t have told the world Osama bin Laden was dead for at least 24 hours because spilling the beans at the end of the successful mission shows he can’t keep a secret.

Huh?

Meanwhile, Rick Perry’s wife has admitted it was “very painful” to watch her husband forget the third government agency he intended to close during a debate a few weeks ago. He jokes about it in a recent ad, closing with, “I’m Rick Perry and ,uh, what was that line? I’m Rick Perry and I approved this ad.”

Perry also says he’ll end President Omaba’s “war on religion,” which I didn’t even know was being waged.

Michelle Bachmann was taken aback this week when an 8-year-old approached her and after a little coaxing, he said, “My mommy — Miss Bachmann, my mommy’s gay but she doesn’t need fixing.” Bachmann shot the mother an icy look as she and her son walked away.

Newt Gingrich, a serial philanderer (although he has married two of the women he’s had affairs with), talks about “morality” with a straight face.  He served divorce papers to his first wife while she was in the hospital getting treatment for uterine cancer; his second wife learned of his affair with his current wife and his desire for a divorce just after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I guess the take-away from this is that you should never get sick if you want to stay married to Newt Gingrich. A yearlong investigation by a Congressional ethics committee found him to be ethically challenged at best. He wasn’t charged with any crimes, I’ll give him that.

And Mitt Romney doesn’t even know how to be a regular guy, although he’d like us to believe he does by telling us he’s unemployed, too. That’s great, Mitt. I wish I had your millions to fall back on when my job went away. This week, Mitt had a “grass roots” event with valet parking.

And yesterday, that bloviating, pompous ass Donald Trump said he still might get into the race as an Independent.

Clown music just keeps playing on and on in my head.

 

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