Warning: The following post contains some adult language.

I’ve been in a bit of an ill-tempered mood this week, so I decided to put this post on the back burner overnight and come back to it to make sure it wasn’t too ranty. But no, after reading it this morning, I think it entails the proper amount of rant for the situation. I’m pissed off. Thoroughly, and with full justification.

Here’s the situation. I have health insurance. I only went without for a couple of years while I was unemployed.  I started out with really good health insurance, actually, but the company (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia) raised my monthly premiums by an average of $50 on an annual basis. I tolerated it for the first few years, but over the last few the increases have been beyond what my budget can handle, and I’ve had to downgrade to a higher deductible, lower benefit plan. Even so, I stayed under the same carrier and even the same member group.

This year they increased my premiums by $60 in March. Today I got a notice that they will be increasing my monthly premium again by $60 in July.

That’s a healthcare premium increase of $120.00/month over the course of less than six months, bringing my premium up to what amounts to a week and a half’s pay.

Now . . . keep in mind that I am in what is probably the best health of my life, where I am neither starving myself as I did in high school or eating mounds and mounds of junk food as I did in college.  I eat healthy. I do an hour of high intensity exercise every day.  I haven’t been to the doctor in years except for my annual physical, which I get at a sliding fee clinic and pay for out of pocket, because over the last couple of years I’ve been forced to raise my deductible to the point where that is the only way I can afford to go.

The only thing that I have ever used my health insurance to pay for since I have had it was an eye exam and a pair of glasses.

I just did the calculations , and this means that I have paid approximately (and this is on the low end) $12,000.00 in premiums for . . . a pair of glasses.

But BCBS feels justified in raising my premium by almost $120/month over the course of less than six months.

Yeeeeah. I’m tempted to drop my insurance entirely and wait out the five years until the new healthcare regulations go into effect, but at the same time I’m terrified that in the backlash will result in a Republican Congress that will repeal and destroy the one hope I’ve had in years for decent healthcare. The free market system for healthcare doesn’t work.  I have health insurance, yes . . . but I still can’t afford to go to the doctor. True, I need it little now, but if I did need it, or goddess forbid, I had an accident of some sort and had to go to the hospital, I would be bankrupt.

Right now I’m looking into the healthcare savings plans offered through my bank, as that may be the best option for me right now.  I’ve tried free market health insurance, and all it ever did was screw me up the ass.  It’s little more than protection money.  I pay through the nose for no benefit whatsoever. It’s time to look into other options.  And I think I’ll be writing to the state insurance commissioner. A $120 increase in monthly premiums in such a short time has to raise some red flags somewhere.

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When I was growing up, it was a fairly common thing to see girls going to the prom together when they didn’t have a date – or when all of the prospective dates simply didn’t measure up.  They’d go as couples, they’d go as groups, they’d dance together rather than sit on the sidelines.  I know of at least one straight girl who came to the prom in a tux.

But if that girl is a lesbian, and the girl she’s going with is her girlfriend, and the school would rather cancel the prom entirely than allow lesbians to take part in a time-honored right of passage like the prom.

In the case of young Constance McMillan, it is perhaps fortunate that she is fairly well-versed as an activist, and knew just what to do and which channels to pursue to get the ACLU involved. Now, she’s fighting not just for the opportunity to go to the prom with her date of choice, but for the entire student body to have a prom at all.

Meanwhile, the school officials are trying to put together a “private” prom where they can exclude whomever they might wish without getting sued.  This reminds me all too much of a tradition that is, unfortunately, still common where I live where there’s a school prom that everyone gets to go to, and a private prom that only the white kids get to go to.  It’s not right. It’s sanctioned segregation, regardless of the minority being left out.

I’m proud of Constance McMillen for standing up for her rights like she’s done. She’s bound to be getting a lot of abuse from the student body for being the reason their prom was canceled, but she’s become a hero to so many more in the last few weeks.  We need more activists like her.

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• Gay Navy Wife Finds Hope in Constance McMillen (lezgetreal.com)
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I had a couple of things I want to address today, so I’m going to be jumping around in topic just a bit.

First of all, I’d like to thank Admiral Mike Mullen and Secretary Robert Gates for their recommendations regarding the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It is a heartening sign of progress when it comes to the acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality. Unfortunately, I don’t think the repeal process will be easy, and will likely take longer than the gay rights community would like, even with the support of high-ranking officers.  Even so, hope given is a wonderful thing.

On the new budget, I keep hearing all over the mainstream media about how NASA’s budget was cut. What they don’t say is that the NASA programs that were cut (specifically NASA’s Constellation program) were backwards-looking cost-hogs. Instead, that money has been put toward more innovative R&D, education, and the privatizing of space exploration. Already, we have seen private corporations doing much more effective work with much less money.  Rather than the new budget striking against science and research, it shifts the focus toward the sort of innovation and creativity in which good science can thrive.

Also, there’s been a great victory for fact over celebrity-fads this week, as the medical journal Lancet has retracted the faulty research  linking autism with the MMR vaccine, apparently finally realizing the fact that scientists and logically thinking people the world over have always known: Correlation Does Not Equal Causation.  At the same time, Meryl Dorey has stepped down as leader of the Australian ["anti"] Vaccination Network in the wake of the blame placed on her shoulders for the death of a 4 week old child infected with pertussis because there was no blanket immunity in her community thanks to the anti-vax movement. It looks like she may even be prosecuted for dispensing medical advice without any medical training. (Because, apparently, a lot of people don’t realize that taking medical advice from celebrities who have no medical training is a bad idea.)

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Fantaticism is dangerous. It doesn’t matter whether you’re thumping the Bible, the Qur’an, or the Holy Pasta Bowl. At its best, religion can be a wonderful thing, a support system, an impetus to inspire the best in people. Unfortunately, it can also inspire the worst things. Of those bad things, the worst, and most common, is hate, and the people who use their religion to excuse their hate and their lack of good will and their bigotry.

Already the vultures and hate-mongers are starting the same thing with the natural disaster in Haiti that they yelled from the rooftops about Katrina (when they claimed the hurricane came because New Orleans was a sinful city). Pat Robertson says that Haiti deserved what they got and brought the earthquake down upon themselves because they made a deal with the devil to defeat the French.

Now . . . that’s a merciful and very Christian thing to say, isn’t it? Oh, that’s really following the example of Jesus, who taught forgiveness and serving and your fellow man. Yes, that’s a wonderful example of good Christianity . . . preaching hate and blame instead of love and peace. Way to go, Pat.

You know, Jesus really was a great guy. It’s the people who use religion to pull things like this that I can’t stand.

What the good Christians (and Muslims, and Jews, and Pagans, and Athiests, and Pastafarians, and whatever else) will be doing is actually going down there to help instead of trying to place blame where it is not due.

I’d like to encourage everyone to try to give some real and tangible help if you’re able. If you’ve got the means and know-how to go down there and do something to help, by whatever diety you choose, go down there and do it. If all you have is a bit of spare change to donate to one of the many charities down there, you can do that. Just saying “Oh, those poor people” and then going on with your day doesn’t help them one little bit.

If you want to send some help, here are some wonderful charities that could use your assistance.

• Text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts. Learn more: http://bit.ly/6KiRtE
• UNICEF’s Earthquake Relief Fund information can be found here: https://secure.unicefusa.org/site/Donation2?df_id=6680&6680.donation=form1
• Partners In Health was already down there and were immediately hard at work. Donate to them here: http://www.pih.org/home.html
• The Doctors Without Borders Haiti donation link is here: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/

These people are innocents killed in a natural disaster that they had no control over, and they need mercy and help, not blame for something that is not their fault.

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I’m a very private, introverted person. I love living alone, in my little house in the middle of the woods.

At the same time, I can’t quite understand what all the fuss is about with regards to the full-body-imaging scans being considered as security measures at airports these days.  Granted, TSA has a horrible reputation for doing all sorts of nonsensical and basic-civil-rights-violating sorts of things, but when it comes to this, well . . . it seems like folks are raising a ruckus over something that really isn’t all that invasive at all.

The example scans I’ve seen don’t seem like anything anyone could find any prurient interest in. They might show a few folds of fat that might be a bit embarrassing, but really, we all give up a certain amount of privacy every day of our lives to ensure our own safety.  A large number of jobs in government and education require fingerprinting – those fingerprints going into an identification database. All of us deal with cameras recording us pretty much everywhere we might decide to go in public, often catching (and occasionally publicizing) rather embarrassing moments. An entire generation thinks nothing of exposing their innermost secrets on Facebook.

So what’s the fuss over some not-really-all-that-naked pictures? The images that I’ve seen from these machines don’t really seem to be all that violating. We saw more detailed nakedness on Rebecca Romijin Stamos as Mystique, in a PG-13 movie.  It’s certainly less invasive than having some random stranger cupping your privates in a pat-down — or worse, the dreaded strip-exam.

I guess it’s just something folks would have to decide – if they really would rather choose to not having these rather ken-and-barbie-ish images seen, instead of  another good safety check to make sure that they don’t get blown up.

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In further proof that republicans will vote for anything, as long as they’re making the opposite vote as the democrats, 30 Republican senators  voted in favor of gang-rape recently.

Their reasoning?  The democrats were for protecting rape victims, so therefore, they must be against it.  They’re calling it many, many other things, trying to word it in so many other ways, but that’s what it all translates to, in the end. They voted for rape; they voted against rape victims.

The issue is an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill which would stop any and all federal funding going to contractors and companies that force victims of violent attacks and rape to settle their claims against the companies through arbitration rather than seeking criminal convictions.

The inspiration for this amendment to the bill is Jamie Lee Jones who, while working in Iraq for KBR/Haliburton, was gang-raped by a group of her co-workers, and then, when she tried to go get help and report the crime, was locked in a cage.  Upon her return to the US, she tried to press charges, but wasn’t allowed to do so. She was forced to accept a settlement instead.

And you know what seems to be the entire and only reason that these Republicans voted against this clause? It was proposed by Democrats. Actually thinking about what the clause meant didn’t seem to even enter into it.  Common sense and forethought, like the fact that they were voting in favor of letting people get away with rape, didn’t seem to occur to them.

Their votes  meant that they think it’s quite alright if women employees at companies accepting government contacts get raped by their co-workers under the banner of that company, as long as the companies pay them off later.

There is no possible way to justify this, no matter how much spin they might want to try to put on the matter. All of the female Republican senators, though? They voted in favor of the amendment, and the victims’ rights.

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In one of those mind-boggling episodes of backwards and bigoted thinking that tends to run rampant here in the South, a teen attending school at North Cobb County High School was told that he either needed to dress more manly, or consider being home-schooled.

Now, there’s a little secret of the educational system down here: Frequently, drop-outs are instead classified as being “home-schooled” so that the school they dropped out from doesn’t have to count them as dropouts for AYP standards, and risk losing funding.  This child would have no educational resources at home, so for him, being “home schooled” would mean “dropping out.”

So, what the administrators were telling  Jonathan Escobar was that he either had to stop wearing feminine clothes - clothes which, on a girl, would not have been against dress code, and which were in fact a good deal more tasteful and modest than what many teenage girls in attendance wear – or he would have to give up his constitutionally guaranteed right to an education.

The school administrators are blustering and making excuses about being worried about the boy’s safety, but rather than punishing the boy in question for being different, they could have turned this situation into a learning experience for the other children.  Rather than making bigotry into school policy and enforcing that bigotry, any students who were threatening or bullying this student for his difference should have been punished and taught that such behavior is not acceptable.

Instead, those students are getting taught the exact opposite: That bigotry is okay, that it’s perfectly alright to beat up, threaten, and bully children who are different because it’s those children who are going to get punished, rather than the bullies.

For those of you who would like to help Jonathan, give him your support and express your opinions on the matter to the North Cobb High School, your letters can be sent to the following addresses:

Principal Philip D. Page
North Cobb High School
3400 Highway 293 North
Kennesaw, Georgia 30144

Principal’s Email: Phillip.Page@cobbk12.org

Cobb County Board of Education: http://www.cobbk12.org/board/

Other Email Addresses: http://www.cobbk12.org/NorthCobb/admin.htm

There’s also a Facebook Group.  If you make a blog post or send a letter, please copy the address, comment, etc. to that group to show your support of Jonathan, and email your post to the school administrators.

This is something that cannot stand.

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I am an over-weight, fairly low-income person, and I am in favor of the fat tax being debated for empty-calorie, high-sugar and high-fat items such as sodas and junk food.

Before the modern era of quick and cheep fast food and junk food, obesity was a problem of the rich and wealthy, who never wanted for food and could eat to excess, whereas the poor were generally the underfed and malnourished.

That has changed, in America, at least.  The cheapest calories today are the least nutritious and most fattening and dangerous. Healthy food, particularly fresh produce, has a tendency to be both hard to obtain in some areas, and ridiculously expensive when it is available.  (For instance, I have switched to using extra lean ground turkey instead of beef in some recipes, but the turkey tends to run almost $2-3/pound more than the higher-fat ground beef.)

With everyone, including the poor, moving away from high-activity manual labor jobs, people are exercising less, or not at all. While things like walking and running remain free, access to weight-loss support systems and guided and supported exercise programs are increasingly expensive.  Good health is for the wealthy.

While any type of luxury tax (such as the taxes on alcohol and tobacco now) has a tendency to prey heavily on the poor, it would at least act as a discouraging factor by raising the prices on these items.  The money raised can then be put into nutrition education and establishing those support programs that, right now, the poor have little to no access to.

With support and assistance, and a little hand-holding, lack of motivation can be conquered. Making it more attractive and less expensive to buy healthy food items rather than junk food can only help.  The fat tax itself would only be one thing out of the many that would need to be implemented for it to succeed, but together they would lower the number of people with those diseases that are brought on due to unhealthy behaviors.

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I didn’t post yesterday because Senator Baucus released his proposal for healthcare reform, and I wanted to have a good chance to look it over before posting any remarks, since I’d prefer my opinions to be formed based on the actual document rather than what people tell me it contains.

The Chairman’s Mark  (a vernacular version of the bill) is available for download as a PDF file here: Baucus Proposal PDF

It’s a 223 page document comparing the provisions of the law as it stands now with the reforms proposed by Senator Baucus. It’s intended to be a starting point, a first draft, of sorts, for the new healthcare legislation.

It does not include a public option.  After reading through it I decided the best way to form a good opinion on the matter was to classify what it said in terms of pros and cons, the things I liked vs. the things I didn’t, so I made some lists.

Here’s a quick summary of the main points after the more tag. (This is going to be long!):

(more…)

Writing my post on the inflammatory lies being spread in attempts to kill healthcare reform and reading an interesting article at Slate on the best way to kill those lies got me to thinking about the nature of truth.

Truth tends to be relative. I’m not talking about cold, hard, indisputable fact, but truth.  That is, what people believe to be the truth, which quite often, these days, has only the broadest and most unsubstantial link to actual fact.

People will believe the truth is what they want the truth to be. Period. Whether that truth has a basis in fact has little to no effect on if it will be believed.  This is why we can end up with people who believe, absolutely, in things like the death panels.  People believe that it is true because people they trust said it is true, and everywhere that they choose to go (on the internet, on the news channels they choose to watch on television) also say that it is true.  Therefore, it becomes a truth, though a truth not at all centered in factual information.

They do not bother to look to a source that might dispute the validity of such a statement, and if anyone does dispute the validity of such statements, well, the disputer’s facts must be faulty in some manner, because we all know that the truth is the truth, right?

Like seeks like, so we as human beings tend to seek out those who share our opinions.  And by seeking out only those sources and communities that share our opinions, the only truths we come across are those which we most want to be true, and so when confronted with facts that run in opposition to that which we’ve heard within those communities and sources is true, those facts must be either wrong or outright lies.

This is why some otherwise intelligent people can believe, in no uncertain terms, that all Muslims are terrorists, Obama wasn’t born an American, and the Democrats are conspiring to kill our grandmas.  Every news source they choose to use to find out these things is telling them this, every community they partake in agrees with them on this, and so opinions and lies somehow gain an aura of truth, because dissenting opinions are never sought.

It’s an interesting paradox.  Today, thanks to the internet, we have access to as many points of view as there are people, and yet, we only seek out those points of view which agree with our own.  Shouldn’t we be using this resource as a way to broaden our minds?  Shouldn’t we learn how to filter through the spin and the politics to find the actual facts regardless of how different those facts might be from what we believe?