I rank plane chat down there with American sitcoms, and this one sided conversation qualified for an even lower authority, right down there with my recent discovery that an admired colleague (a doctor of all things shiny, and intellectual) is syntactically and lexiconically challenged. Something exhibited by his incessant use of the word “douche” or “douchey” to describe everybody/everything to which he is disinclined.

Good fortune was at my side in the case of the bureaucrat babble however, as my swami taught me well and I was able to induce a trance like state in which I traveled to another place while pretending to listen. I was able to contemplate songs about domestic violence (it being domestic violence month) for my, what now appears to be, monthly blog post.

Alas, the playlist on domestic violence, child abuse, incest or a combination, was way to long. Too many unbelievably sad and telling songs. How could this be? From The Crystal’s He Hit Me(and it felt like a kiss), Alice Cooper’s Only Women Bleed, and Sublime’s Date Rape, to Janis Ian’s His Hands and Tracy Chapman’s Behind the Wall, the list is lengthy, spanning decades. It was exhausting contemplating such a list, never-mind the reasons such a list exists. Such sadness summoned, such despair. A lengthy government career saga started to resemble a delightful fairytale.

NCADV
Violence Against Women Organizations
The Domestic Violence Awareness Project
Women’s Law
1 800 799 (SAFE) 7233 National Domestic Abuse Hotline

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Find out how you can help in your community.

Peace

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Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?

That is the theme question for this year’s Blog For Choice.

The answer is, of course I’m concerned.

My biggest concern about choice or the lack of it however, as it has been every year since I started participating in Blog For Choice Day, is that legislation that prevents choice usually only harms those on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, and that is where they are going by trying to write into permanent law high priority legislation called the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” sponsored by chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ).

Should this legislation pass what could follow on a state level could be a nightmare for women who are not upper middle calss with funds in the bank to travel to another state or even country to access abortions.

It is always those without who are given no choice, keeping them with no choice perpetually and that has to stop.

See what you state legislation has in store here and read
Who Decides? The Status of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States.

State report cards here.

comments off

peace

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“After months of collaboration on President Obama’s attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort on Monday with a report warning that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more than projected.”

Well what a big surprise that is ..not.

This report has been dubbed at least partially questionable by Johnathan Gruber. Read ( New Paper Predicts Lower Premiums, At Least for Some). He finds some of the claims implausible.

There is enough truth in it to see that those in the middle are screwed. Damned if we do and double damned if we don’t. Enough in this report to make me, should be all of us, want to bite the very industry who commissioned the report.

We need to Nationalize this system of health care, remove the insurance industry from it altogether, and have them redirect their greed toward those who actually have the extra thousands of dollars a year to spend on exorbitant life insurance policies, private room, and spa coverage. like they did in Switzerland. Whatever the various public options out there now, they stink. “The Public Option”, or the alternatives out there currently, are messy jokes being played on us.

The economists, bless their little eggheads, all having insurance, tend to look at things from aloft, as if they are studying it under a microscope. The economy, and by that health care, merely a specimen they have no real vested interest in. Most of the economist we read rarely apply their theories in real life, and remember how badly they failed us over the last ten years.

Go with your Gut.

I hate not being able to do my banking on a day off.

Columbus Day pfffft. He did unleash a future of brutal Spanish conquistadors on the Caribbean though.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

a comments off, rest in peace production

peace

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