¡El Gato Negro! asks you to please pass around this video.

I’m a single-payer supporter, but you public option people gotta get and keep that groove on.

This fresh hell is the oldest trick in the book.

North Carolina is poised to become only the second state to impose a fat fee on its state employees by placing them in a more expensive health insurance plan if they’re obese. Smokers will feel the drag of higher costs, too, as North Carolina state employees who use tobacco are slated to pay more for health insurance next year.

North Carolina officials, coping with a steady uptick in health care costs for state employees each year, are aiming to improve state workers’ health, which saves money in future medical expenses.

“Tobacco use and poor nutrition and inactivity are the leading causes of preventable deaths in our state,” said Anne Rogers, director of integrated health management with the N.C. State Employees Health Plan. “We need a healthy work force in this state. We’re trying to encourage individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles.”

No, you’re punishing fatty fat fatties and bad kids. In point of fact, 100% of state employees will suffer death. If Ms. Rogers were a little smarter, she’d realize these demographic groups are – nyuk! nyuk! nyuk! – cash cows as far as the pension system is concerned. No retirees? Ka-ching!

State workers who don’t cut out the Marlboros and Big Macs will end up paying more for health insurance. Tobacco users get placed in a more expensive insurance plan starting next July and, for those who qualify as obese, in July 2011.

Nope, nope. Still going to die. The insurance company is probably a wholly owned subsidiary of Phillip Morris and McDonald’s. Sure, there’ll be a few surgeries to underwrite, some chemo and prolonged hospital stays, but since insurance companies have an almost magical ability to profit if customers live or die, why not hand out cartons of unfiltered cigs and coupons for Quarter Pounders and stack the deck? Come on, Big Insurance! Let’s get it the fuck ON.

Some state employees, though, are criticizing the planned changes. The State Employees Association of North Carolina opposes the tobacco and obesity differentials as invasive steps that could have been avoided if the legislature had fixed the plan.

“It’s my understanding they’re talking about testing (for tobacco use) in the workplace which, to me, would create a hostile environment,” said Kim Martin, a sergeant at Piedmont Correctional Institution in Salisbury. “And it’s an invasion of privacy. This is America, the land of the free. I don’t think (body mass index is) a very good measure. I know some folks who would have a high body mass index because they’re muscular.”

Body Mass Index is actually a very crappy measure because it assumes everyone has the same bone structure, same muscle density, same genetics, same diet, same habits. None of that is true. It’s even a lie that drugs treat everyone. Hey, I liked Seldane but it apparently killed people who weren’t me. Woohoo! Lucky me! Well, except that I can’t have the only allergy medicine that ever worked for me because a few lightweights clutched their chests and keeled the hell over. Weaklings. Anyway, about the BMI: here’s your calculator. Hold onto that thought, we’re going to come back to it.

The idea of penalizing unhealthy lifestyles and rewarding healthy conduct is hardly new among insurance plans. Public health insurance plans in other states already penalize smokers or reward nonsmokers in insurance costs. South Carolina’s state employees health plan is scheduled to add a $25-per-month surcharge on smokers in January. Elsewhere in the southeast, Kentucky and Georgia impose surcharges, and Alabama gives non-smokers a discount.

Alabama was out front on weight testing. Starting in January, state workers will have their blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose and body mass index checked by a nurse. If they’re in a risk category, such as a body mass index of 35 or greater or a blood pressure of 160/100 or greater, they are charged an extra $25 per month on their insurance premium. If they go to a health screening, either offered by the state or by their personal physician, then the $25 is subtracted, according to Gary Matthews, chief operating officer for the Alabama State Employees Insurance Board.

North Carolina will allow state workers with a BMI of up to 40 to keep the discount, although a BMI of 30 is considered obese by some experts.

Fat people know they’re fat. There’s absolutely no need to consult an expert. Further: that health screening thing. What is that? You go sit in a trailer parked outside your facility. Someone takes your blood pressure, tells you you’re fat and takes $25 off your insurance premium? What does that even mean?

Only a fraction of employers, though, offer financial incentives for healthy behavior or wellness programs, such as gym memberships or smoking cessation, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study last year. Differences in employees’ education, health literacy and access to basic health care could affect the usefulness of financial incentives in reducing health care costs over time, the study said.

The results are not yet in. The higher costs for smokers and the obese don’t appear to have been in place long enough for any state to boast of a healthier work force yet, according to officials in several states.

“I don’t know that any states have a lot of hard data on this,” Rogers said.

And none will because punishing fat people and smokers is not intended to improve anyone’s health. It is intended to divide clients into groups that will resent one another and to divert attention from the deeper truth: if we had a national health system, none of this would be necessary. If health care were the point, we would not be seeing divide and conquer. The point is that profit is most easily made when our common interests are obscured.

So let’s go back to the BMI, which is as bogus a metric as it gets. We’ll use me as a handy example of how this thing fails. Okay? Okay. My weight fluctuates within a ten pound range, but at the moment, my BMI is 28.9. By this standard, I am overweight. Sure, I’d like to lose a few pounds but they won’t stay off because I’m a 46 year old woman. I exercise every day. In the last year, I’ve skipped a total of eight days. I eat two meals a day, drink lots of water, bicycle to work in good weather, eat a diet that would make nutritionists turn cartwheels, and take very good care of myself. I drink wine. So sue me. Anyway, none of that is important because 28.9, bitchez!

At the time this picture of me was taken, I was probably 16. I did 250 pushups a day and just about the same number of situps. I had and used my own chinning bar. In fact, I had and used one until I was just about 40. In this picture, you can clearly see that I was well-toned and in good shape, but not thin. Insurance charts said that someone of my diminutive stature should weigh 105-108 pounds. Even anorexic, I could never get below 119, and it was a struggle to stay close to 125. As Siobhan says when I mention my weight, “What, are you made of mercury?”

So here I am: a prime example of the BMI’s shortcomings. So how do we measure health? How about we stop doing that to punish each other? How about we offer everyone health care, offer people dental care? Stop whining that someone undeserving might get something they don’t desertivity deserve and concentrate on how it would change our own lives if we didn’t have to worry anymore, and if the people around us didn’t have to worry anymore, and if everyone had the resources to take care of him/herself? EVERYONE would be sick less often. EVERYONE could care for children and aging parents properly. EVERYONE would not have to face bankruptcy over medical bills. EVERYONE would have a better life. Even you. Especially you.

Crossposted at Brilliant@Breakfast.

I’ve let twenty years of Limbaugh’s bullshit go by without comment because ignoring that noise is better for one’s sanity than engaging, but after yesterday, he should be hounded to the edge of society and shunned by outcasts. Media Matters For America:

…Rush took a caller who said the local police investigating the bus assault said today the attack was not racially motivated. Rush responded to these developments put out by the local law enforcement:

LIMBAUGH: I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses – it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.

I don’t even know what to say. That’s so offensive it’s hard to form a sentence in response. And yet, it is impossible to let that go by, because – finally, I see this now – ignoring Limbaugh is the same as silence, and silence equals consent.

Last night, Pete and I were talking this over when one of the tenants came home. I was blathering on a bit and the tenant interrupted.

Tenant: I just wonder why Rush would say that.
Tata: It doesn’t matter why. It’s so offensive there can be no reason for saying it.
Tenant: But I just wonder why he would say that.
Tata: No, there is no why that justifies saying this about those kids on that bus.
Tenant: This is like that thing in – what was it? – Paterson? where the town tried to impose a curfew and the ACLU filed suit but kind of shot themselves in the foot by admitting it was the black people selling all the drugs –
Tata: No, that’s not what happened. That’s backwards.
Tenant: Yeah, the ACLU got it backwards.
Tata: No, I’m not agreeing with you. I’m disagreeing with you. That is not what happened.

The American Civil Liberties Union has already successfully defeated several juvenile curfews in New Jersey courts, said Ed Barocas, legal director of the state ACLU. Adult curfews are usually associated with the imposition of martial law, which typically is restricted to emergencies, wartime or military occupation, according to the ACLU.

“An adult curfew is unprecedented in our state,” Barocas said.

“It’s just completely unheard of,” said Jon Shane, a professor of policing administration at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “Not to mention being generally unconstitutional.”

I’m speechless, but not silent. I can’t ignore this anymore. Let’s start with the truth.

[Mayor Mark]Eckert said the city, police department and school officials will soon hold assemblies and communicate with parents and students in many ways about “character, good behavior and not tolerating bullies.”

Plans for these events grew out of the attack itself and Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax’s initial comment that the attack was racially motivated. By Tuesday, the department reversed itse;f and said the attack was a case of bullying.

Eckert said students aboard the bus told police that two students were involved in the attack.

“I can tell you preliminarily that the kids interviewed are not calling this a racial incident,” Eckert said. “They are calling it an attack by two boys who have been picking on kids, regardless of color, for a long time. They’ve been bullies.”

Eckert said Sax had “made a mistake. He let the media squeeze out an opinion (about the incident) instead of saying we don’t have all the facts. He made a mistake, but he’s normally a really good guy.”

And Sax should be fired. Kids on buses get into fights. Since we put cameras on buses we’ve taken all the suspense out of figuring out who threw the first punch. Yet, we still haven’t learned how to see for ourselves what happened or school authorities would have seen bullies pounding on a smaller kid and Sax would’ve known what to do. If they had, this would have been all over but the suspensions. But some fool shot off his mouth and released video. It’s all bullshit.

But then there’s Limbaugh. What can done about him now?

The other day, I had to explain to an adult why we wash the bottoms of plates. I am so happy when smart people are talking.

I’ve been thinking all day about why I stopped doing clinic defense almost twenty years ago. The clinic I’d devoted two years to defending was firebombed and I gave a speech standing next to the charred ruins. For me, something had changed. Domestic terrorists, well-known to the government, were allowed to carry out their threats. It didn’t have to happen, but it did. This wasn’t in Kansas or Texas, where you might expect women’s medical care to be imperiled. No. This was New Jersey. Everyone knew Operation Rescue had it in for us, and in George H. W. Bush’s America, everyone left us twisting in the wind.

Shortly thereafter, my grandmother died, I left the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) and launched my illustrious and all-consuming art career. The lessons I had learned were that my vigilance accomplished nothing; that we were each on our own and that law enforcement didn’t give a shit about women. On that last point, I have never been disappointed. Instead of clinic defense, I drove women for abortions because I am not afraid to punch rabid PTA moms in the face while cooing gently to a distressed patient. That is not actually good escort behavior, by the way. Eventually, I couldn’t stand even talking to pro-choice relatives who insisted Roe would never be overturned while they voted Republican. I went home. I admit this: I do not have the strength to argue anymore, and for myself, I don’t have to because after the hysterectomy, I do not have to worry about getting pregnant. Believe it or not, this is not all about me.

I’m long done with candlelight vigils and patience. My standing ankle-deep in slushy mud holding a sign so I can be counted for women’s organizations that care more about donations than resisting Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination is not gonna happen because fuck that noise. I’m done listening to men talk about icky abortion because do I fucking talk about my feelings about prostate treatments? I do not because there’s no reason for me to have feelings about fucking prostates. I DON’T FUCKING HAVE ONE. My opinion is not needed. Perhaps 95% of men have no standing to discuss abortion, and this –

Tiller’s Killer
Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?

– is so far beyond the pale that saying Fuck this fucking guy isn’t fucking enough. But singling out Saletan for a verbal beating accomplishes nothing. I’m done with that, I’m done with all that. I’m done with one more thing: shame, because we can no longer afford it. I have had an abortion. The circumstances are not important. Your sympathy doesn’t interest me. What is important is that I chose to have that kind of medical care, and I do not regret it. In theory, it shouldn’t be any more important than if I’d had wisdom teeth removed. Further, people who think they don’t know anyone who’s had an abortion are fucking kidding themselves.

It’s time for old ladies to stand up. No one is going to come to my house and put a bullet in me for exercising my right to chose, thus it is my obligation to defend that right I no longer need for young women who do. What I’m done with, that’s behind me. I do not know what I will do, but I’m starting here.

Library of Halexandria:

The earliest representations of Lilith seem to be as a great winged Bird Goddess, a wind spirit, or one associated with the Sumerian, Ninlil, Goddess of the Grain, and wife to Enlil. As the “hand of Inanna”, Lilith was notorious for bringing men from the street and fields of war to Inanna’s temple for holy sexual rites, in which the intention was to civilize the people. The sacred sexual customs were, in fact, considered the greatest gift of Inanna.

As Adam’s first wife, however, Lilith really got into trouble with the patriarchy. She had the audacity to want to be treated as Adam’s equal. According to Hebrew mythology, the Babylonian Talmud, the Zohar, and the Alphabet of Ben Sira, Lilith refused to lie below Adam, and thus set the archetypal example for later feminists. God allegedly threatened her by decreeing if she did not submit to Adam, that “one hundred of her children would die every day.” Lilith chose exile.

Which really got Adam’s goat! Despite being ostensibly happy about having Lilith out of his life (and later blessed with a subservient, if not occasionally misguided Eve), Adam apparently never gave up resenting Lilith for having chosen exile to being with him. Not a lot has changed in thousands upon thousands of years: A woman deciding her life is better alone than with a particular man is still the height of insult to that male.

The male patriarchal traditions, therefore portrayed the situation as one in which the first woman on Earth, who was created equal to man and a free spirit to boot, would be condemned to survive for eternity as a she-devil, mating with demons and devils and bearing monsters instead of human children. “This image was to serve as a threat and warning to any woman who might consider leaving her husband or defying male authority.” [1]

But it was all to no avail.

Lilith by John Collier.

Women put up with a lot of shit every day, a goodly amount of which is so normalized few bother to mention it. Two days ago, men in my department, whom I would describe as reasonably harmless, were talking and I made a suggestion. Another woman drew near and made a suggestion. The men talked over us. I walked away. She followed me and asked if I felt brushed off. I said I would refuse to discuss the project further. Later, one of the men came to my desk and asked a rhetorical question. I said that because he didn’t actually listen to me I wouldn’t discuss this project anymore – and he kept talking. I said no, I wouldn’t discuss this further and again he kept talking. The third time he finally got the message that we shouldn’t converse. Perhaps it was the gesture I used. The reason I mention this is because it’s so ordinary for men or a man to talk over women that it’s barely worth a mention, like this conversation.

Tata: I want to be the little old lady on a shiny Vespa.
Guy: No, what you want to be is…

Apparently I’m so impressionable that men who are not me know what I want better than I do. Don’t be surprised. It is a common conversational event, barely worth a mention. It will happen wherever men and women gather, and only women will notice.

Daily Contributor:

WFSB-TV in Hartford reported [Johanna] Justin-Jinich’s boyfriend entered about 1 p.m. local time carrying a gun and wearing a wig that also was left behind, the station said.

Yesterday, a man walked into a bookstore and shot a woman point-blank. His intention was to kill her and he succeeded. The Daily Contributor, as tepid a name as any, reported online and still reports as of this writing, that the murderer was her boyfriend. We expect that. It’s so common we barely notice. These two people were not engaged in a relationship, however. He stalked her. According to NBC News while I was bicycling this morning, she’d filed at least one complaint. Yesterday, he killed her. The Hartford Courant article chooses neutral words very carefully.

“She’s a really loyal friend; a really loving, passionate person about life and about her friends and family,” [Leah] Lucid said of her friend, whom she affectionately called Yo-Yo.

Her passions included writing and her work in public health and women’s issues, Lucid said. Justin-Jinich volunteered at various Planned Parenthood offices in her home state and in the area.

“She was the most giving and loving person I have ever known,” Lucid said. “I’ll remember her loyalty and her warm smile whenever I saw her and her very funny voices she would make with me.”

From miles away, you can see it coming, can’t you?

Ryan La Rochelle, 23, of Boston, said he was shocked. He knew Justin-Jinich from Westtown School, a small boarding institution in southeastern Pennsylvania they attended as high schoolers. La Rochelle learned about her death from the media.

“She was a very beautiful and kind girl,” La Rochelle said. “I have no idea how something like this could have happened.”

After [Jen] Bromley, the owner of Silk Waxing Spa, learned that Justin-Jinich had been shot, she closed the shop and drove to Middlesex Hospital with her cousin, another friend of Justin-Jinich’s who attends Wesleyan. They thought she was still alive. But as they pulled into the hospital parking lot, the cousin’s boyfriend called with the news.

“I’ve been crying and distraught all day,” Bromley said Wednesday evening. “She’s a really happy, really smart girl. Really intellectual…I can’t imagine why any one person would dislike her and want her dead.”

Beneath the simple laments, you can feel issues of class, feminism, the meaning of beauty and the same old male entitlement crap simmering until it boiled over. Nobody understands. Nobody thought anything of it. Of course, no one understands. Until our hearts break, this stuff is barely worth a mention.

[1]Demetra George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon, The Healing Power of the Dark Goddess, Harper San Francisco, 1992.

My brother Todd, who was smart enough to tell Mom after he went skydiving, sends this along. After a bit of searching, I see it’s from Seven Sunny Days.

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

I’m speechless. That’s absolutely amazing.

Dick Cheney is truly the Source of All Evil. By now, everyone’s read about this:

If you don’t get punished, you didn’t go anything wrong, right?

That’s the message Vice President Dick Cheney gave in an interview with CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday, suggesting that a president’s actions are legal if those actions didn’t result in his impeachment.

Asked by Schieffer if he believed that anything the president does in time of war is legal, Cheney said there is “historic precedent of taking action that you wouldn’t take in peacetime.”

Cheney referenced Abraham Lincoln as an example of another president who “suspended the writ of habeus corpus” during a war, prompting this exchange:

SCHIEFFER: But nobody thinks that was legal.

CHENEY: Well, no. It certainly was in the sense he wasn’t impeached. And it was a wartime measure that he took that I think history says today, yeah, that was probably a good thing to do.

Right now everyone who’s ever spent time with a four-year-old is seeing stars, because this sounds like nothing so much as –

Mommy: Who broke this lamp?
Finster: Not me.
Mommy: There’s no one else here and the dog has gone to Heaven.
Finster: Why?
Mommy: What?
Finster: Why?
Mommy: The dog has gone to Heaven because his little heart gave out. And you need a spanking.
Finster: Why?
Mommy: Because otherwise you won’t learn to tell the truth.
Finster: Why?
Mommy: So I can spank you sooner, obviously.
Finster: Can I have a cookie?
Mommy: After my nervous breakdown, sure.

Mr. Lincoln may or may not have done the right thing when he did what he did but he didn’t “[suspend] the writ of habeas corpus” he suspended the writ of habeas corpus. There’s no equivocating about it. We can’t spin it. It happened. And to play semantic games about the violence Cheney and his ilk have done to the Constitution, this country and the world is to make ourselves complicit. Mr. Schieffer’s relatively passive acceptance of these vile assertions makes him part of the problem, whether he believes it or not.

Day after day, week after week, for the last eight years, I have heard story after story of monstrous, unimaginable atrocity from this administration. Every single day I heard a story I would not have believed even the day before. While the incoming administration gives me every reason to think the outrageous bullshit will be curtailed, House and Senate Republicans show no sign of stopping theirs. In addition, we have every reason to believe that as time passes, we are going to hear the backstories of the crimes these soulless fucks perpetrated and for which they will probably never be prosecuted. I try not to wish ill on anyone, but in Cheney’s case, nothing would give me greater joy than to see him in chains at the International Court in the Hague.

The Rude Pundit makes an important point.

Let’s face it: back in 2000, most of us were pussies. We knew, fucking knew, that the presidential election was being stolen as we watched. And we didn’t riot – we didn’t explode into the streets in a flare of anger and righteousness and shut shit down, demanding that the Supreme Court and the Republican Party back the fuck off. We didn’t head to Miami to block the right wing thugs who were stopping the recount at the canvassing board. We didn’t go on a general strike to say, “Count the votes.”

And Al Gore fucked it up, too. He didn’t tell us to do it. He didn’t lead a movement. He could have said that, at the end of the day, democracy fails when you say that voting is just an exercise, not a right that people were killed for. Instead, we behaved like end of the millenium Americans, going about our business, thinking, in the long run, it wouldn’t matter, anyways. (And to any conservative wad of fuck that thinks we need to get over 2000, look at your granny’s retirement account.)

Jump to 2004, and second verse, mostly the same with slight variations: the Johns, Kerry and Edwards, promise to count all the votes, yet, when Ohio is a clusterfuck of irregularities that’d make Boss Tweed go, “What the fuck?” and walk away, they throw in the towel for the good of the nation or some such shit, when, all they did was consign us to our own degradation for the next four plus years (’cause Obama’s inauguration ain’t gonna make it all shiny and good for a long time).

Yep, I hate thinking about how powerless I have felt every day for the last eight years. It’s all bad. I remember sitting in someone’s kitchen after the invasions, feeling like shit about bombs falling on the heads of human beings, and having someone at the table ask, “Are we safe to talk here?” Because it was dangerous in the fucking United States of America to say, “Bombs shouldn’t fall on the heads of human beings, no matter who they are – or in this case, were.” While we can attribute the bullshit hysteria to bedwetters who felt violated by 9/11, the public discourse was poisoned, and it wasn’t until Olbermann started shooting off his mouth on television that people felt they could fight back and not get a visit from the FBI. He may be an atrocious sexist ass, but he behaved creditably.

But what about me? Did I do enough? Did I say enough? Did I write enough letters and blog posts? Did I call my Congresspersons often enough? I doubt it. I doubt many of us will think so in the days to come. Bombs are falling on the heads of human beings again. Still.

How about a cookie?

I’ve been thinking a lot about compost. Though the Solstice is behind us the dead of winter lies ahead. Our composter feels very full and I wonder how much decomposition takes place inside the barrel on these cold days. Even so: it’s easy to find other places to put coffee grounds and asparagus stems, so I don’t really worry. Thus, I am thinking now about paper, especially paper that comes through the mail, now that seed catalogs have begun to arrive. I heard a rumor weeks ago that recycling was unprofitable in the current economy but today we see proof.

People are still putting their bins of recyclables out on curbs. But the recyclable materials market, which was booming only a few months ago, has dropped sharply, along with the worldwide economy, creating a backlog of materials at processing plants.

Reduced demand for used paper, plastic bottles, glass, and metal cans has caused prices to plummet, surprising even those who have followed the ups and downs of the recycling market.

“We have seen drastic changes in market values, faster than I’ve seen since I’ve been in industry back to the 1980s,” said Foster, who said the value of recyclables was about 70 percent less on average than two months ago. “A lot of it, you can’t move right now.”

Foster said the recycling plant is still sorting and bundling about 400 tons of paper per day, but it’s more difficult to sell.

Now is the time then to insist on products from recycled materials. I have a game I play now: How Can I Reuse This? Sometimes I win, like when I buy eggs in recycled cardboard containers, then pulverize eggshells and cardboard for compost. Sometimes I lose, like when I buy something in that plastic packaging that might actually prevent me from using what I purchased. You know what I’m talking about. On late night commercials, hucksters hawk gadgets to get you into that plastic packaging, creating an odd circle-of-life that ends with you doubling the stuff in your whatsit drawer. Anyway, if I wash and reuse Ziploc bags once each, I cut my use of bags in half. I’m still adding stuff to the landfill at an impressive rate. So what about all this paper that comes to the house, if recycling is going nowhere? Can I compost it? Some of it, yes.

Shredding and composting documents is a great way to ensure they don’t fall into the wrong hands and it can help soak up excess water if the compost heap is too wet.

Shredding paper that has been used for bedding for small pets such as hamsters is ok to compost too.

Avoid shiny paper or shiny coloured prints though.

It had never occurred to me until today to buy a shredder, mostly because I don’t own much of anything and thought municipal recycling would take care of paper. Now I see that envelopes and notices could be useful in our attempts to fertilize the soil in which we’re growing our vegetables and herbs. Hmm.