A Year Later

A year ago I started this blog as a way of venting my anxiety and frustration at the discourse of American politics. Frankly I was a mess. I didn't believe enough in the electoral process, in the intelligence of the American people, or in the integrity of the media, to believe that a smart bi-racial, youthful, energetic man with an extraordinary wife and a vision for our country and the world could ever be elected president. Thankfully I was wrong.

Although I am still anxious about the content and intensity of our public debate, especially around health care, race, and the role of government, see a gaping hole in our democracy as to who runs, who votes, and whose votes get counted, and watch with trepidation the disintegration of the media, I've decided to stop blogging.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a bird singing. There are many voices out there, and mine hopefully didn't just add to the noise, but helped find a path through it for those who found Ascension at the Stove. Words come easily to me, and perhaps there will be a time when I blog again, but today seemed like the perfect occasion to say "goodbye."

Michael Steele, Can You Believe Him?

The Republicans might have gotten to the point where even my dad's old friend Nat, the most right-wing crazy, gun-toting, racist asshole I've ever met, would say: Huh? He was interviewed this morning on NPR, and he made no sense. While screaming that government shouldn't be in the business of health care, he was trying to protect Medicare. Medicare is government-run health care. Listen or read and tell me, does this make sense to you?

With Ted Kennedy dead, perhaps the Democrats might get their act together and pass health care reform just as the Civil Rights Act was passed in the wake of his brother JFK's death. Read Josh Marshall's post on talkingpointsmemo.com.

George Lakoff, the linguist who has been trying to get the Democrats to counter the language of the right, has an interesting article on how to frame health care on truthout.org.

On Ted Kennedy and the Pursuit of Character

For someone of my generation, there were always lingering doubts about the character of Ted Kennedy, because like other younger men from families of privilege, when confronted with his own stupidity, yes, another member of the Brotherhood of the Wandering Dick, he bolted. I'm talking about that incident back in 1969 in Chappaquiddick, when Mary Jo Kopechne, a young woman staffer for his brother, Bobby Kennedy, died. Here is the text of Kennedy's speech to the people of Massachusetts trying to explain his cowardice by leaving her to die in a car that had been drunkenly driven off of a bridge.

Leaving the scene of the car accident where Ms. Kopechne died, destroyed Ted Kennedy's presidential aspirations, although he did run for the Democratic nomination in its wake. How he repented was becoming one of the most effective legislators in recent American history. His lion voice, his determination to seek justice, his opposition to the Bush administration after being cajoled into co-sponsoring the No Child Left Behind debacle, his courageous votes all pointed to his maturation as a man, as a public figure, and as a scion worthy of our trust.

There are many beautiful obituaries, including this pictorial one in the Times and there will be many others because Ted Kennedy grew into his role as the liberal senator from Massachusetts after a disaster that blew holes in his arrogance. That he didn't make it to president is a good thing, because America should not be a place of dynasties, as we have witnessed most recently with the Bush family. We should be a meritocracy, which we aren't, and probably never will aspire to becoming, not with billionaire politicians, I don't care how smart they are, Mr. Bloomberg.

So let's take a moment to understand Ted Kennedy, the most flawed of the Kennedy brothers, but the only survivor, and the only one who has left his mark on the remarkable institution of the Senate. Thank you for your service to our country, and I am sorry for your suffering.

Asperger's Syndrome and the Nazis

OK, those two things don't seem to connect, but they did yesterday, because in the afternoon when the clouds were merely threatening, my daughter and I went to see Adam. This isn't a film for everyone. It's an indy film with such fine acting by Hugh Dancy that the flaws in the script might be worth it. Dancy plays Adam, a young man suddenly alone when his father dies and his Asperger's Syndrome keeps him thoroughly isolated. Hugh Dancy was the Earl of Essex in the HBO Elizabeth I, and we saw him on Broadway in Journey's End, which didn't quite capture his charisma that the big screen manages.

The trailers to Adam pretty much tell the story: a young man with Asperger's Syndrome befriends Beth, a beautiful young teacher who moves in next door in Manhattan. Beth has a much-too-close relationship with her father and is licking her wounds from a failed romance with an investment banker that her father wants her to marry. OK, why would she fall for Adam? That is a big flaw in the film unless the phrase "co-dependent" comes up. And this is another film with the "all knowing" Black man who is the only human being who understands Adam. However, for a Saturday afternoon with my twenty-year old daughter, it was perfect. And we didn't get any popcorn.

Later last evening we went to see Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino's new film. Now I admit to being obsessed with the Holocaust. It began when I sneaked reading Meyer Levin's Eva and then Leon Uris' Exodus and Mila 18 when I was still a kid. My grandmother used to go through her family album, pointing out with tears in her eyes, who didn't make it through the war in Roumania. I couldn't have enough of Anne Frank, the abridged and unabridged versions as well as the play (and one of my favorite David Sedaris essays is about his coveting Anne Frank's hideout as the perfect apartment for him and Hugh). There are those who believe I should be hosting a site of Holocaust-based films, because I've seen them all, except I couldn't bring myself to see Woman in Berlin.

Inglourious Basterds is perhaps Tarantino's best film since Pulp Fiction, which had been my personal favorite despite its self-indulgence and sheer insanity. (Part one with Uma Thurman and John Travolta, well I have no idea how many times I've seen it!) There is less violence, minutes go by without any murder, which seems incongruous for a film about Nazi-occupied France, especially as portrayed by Tarantino. And there are great moments of subtle directing, something I've never seen before in his oeuvre. Watch for the "milk" and "strudel" scenes, where great acting, timing, and cinematography all combine into perfect moments.

Christoph Waltz is the star of the film, not Brad Pitt. He plays the most adept Nazi Gestapo officer ever. And remember, I know the films of this genre. He is likable almost, because he is so good at what he does, and so seamless in his manipulations. Extraordinary. Then there is Melanie Laurent who plays the runaway Jewess, Shosanna. Her beauty, courage, her determined intentionality make her into the unexpected hero of this film.

And then there is Brad Pitt. Our friend Ginger thought he was utterly miscast, but I didn't. I believe the film needs a character who is thoroughly American with that exuberance and optimism, and that is what Pitt delivered. He is funny; his portrayal is up there with his character in Snatch. He is over the top in his Americanism, and that is what the film needs, because much of it is in French, German, and Italian. And afterall, it is Tarantino.

The High Line

Rarely does New York get it right. There is something too traditional about this great city, so that when "new" happens, it's usually in the form of capitalism--restaurants, boutiques, and clubs--not public spaces.

So last night, after a fabulous meal at the Spice Market with Jim and Kathy, and our children who are about to set off back to college, we walked The High Line, the urban park that was built on the former railroad line that ran down the western spine of lower Manhattan.

And they got it right.

It took ten years to conceive and to construct, which in New York time, isn't so bad. Remember there is still a pit at the site of the Twin Towers.

The High Line is located on Manhattan's West Side. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 34th Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues. Section 1 of the High Line, which opened to the public on June 9, 2009, runs from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street. Section One is owned and operated by the NYC Parks Department. There are young people in uniform throughout the park, politely giving out information, and as it neared 10:00, closing time, nudged us out of this environment.

It's beauty is that the plantings are all indigenous, grasses and thistle, and there are seats along the route, some made from railroad ties, others benches, and Section One ends in a theater that overlooks the street so that you can just sit and watch traffic.

Here is a link to the design. Here is another link to the image gallery.

Much of the financing came from Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, and as one walks uptown, towards Hell's Kitchen, there it is: the Diller Building, the first Frank Gehry structure to be completed in Manhattan.

This is a gem, a real gift to the people of New York City. Walk it, bring a book, sit, and enjoy the last days of summer.

A Debate About Accountability

John Yoo, a tenured faculty member at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, took leave from his teaching to join the Bush administration, working at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. While there he authored some of the most heinous rationalizations for the use of torture on detainees in the "war on terror" in the wake of 911. Many have called for his firing, claiming that he was intellectually dishonest in his legal analysis that for the first time attempted to justify torture despite America's public commitment to the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties as well as domestic law that prohibits such behaviors.

Does tenure protect John Yoo's job?

There is an interesting debate going on at Room for Debate blog in the New York Times on-line. Check it out.

And Just What Planet Do You Come From?

Watch Barney Frank address a "constituent" at a town hall meeting on health care.

Nothing else need be said. Just how do people end up equating Obama with Hitler?

What's Wrong with Self Policing?

What we know for sure is that we are incapable of self-policing, despite everything that the free market advocates say. Whether it's doctors, lawyers, bankers, pharmaceutical companies, or the other giants of industry, there is the tendency to hide our mistakes so that no one sues. It's called cowardice and greed. So rather than blame the trial attorneys, and the "lottery" sense of some victims of corporate neglect that they are entitled to collect damages that will launch them into another class, let's reexamine the concept of self-policing and come up with some less costly alternatives.

And remember, I'm a former trial lawyer who often refused to take cases for one reason: there were no real damages.

We need layers of regulation and enforcement, but the regulation and enforcement should be to make change systematically so that these kinds of mistakes won't happen again, not to enrich the victims or their attorneys.

I read with some trepidation this morning in the New York Times, a piece about the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil.

Believing the literature when the vaccine came out, and understanding that the way I raised my daughter, to love her body, that she would be sexually active, I wanted her protected. Now I see that the testing of the vaccine was incomplete, because like most FDA testing, it was unsupervised corporate-backed research. It's trustworthiness is highly suspect.

So back to health care reform, we need a way to police the medical profession to lower the cost of malpractice insurance, remove incompetent doctors from practice, and encourage improvement in how medical services are delivered.

How Much Are You Worth?

The list of the highest paid CEOs was released last week, and guess what: your name isn't on it! Frankly, I don't believe anyone is worth $100 million a year, especially when the economy is tanking and stock values are falling. Something is wrong here, very wrong, because this obscene acquisition and concentration of wealth is robbing companies of the capital they need to reinvest in America.

Stephen Schwartzman, CEO of Blackstone Group, whose stock is down over 2%, made over $700 million last year. That's right. Who deserves that kind of money? What does that kind of money do to the psyche of an individual?

Larry Ellison from Oracle was bumped from his top position despite the fact that his salary and benefits rose to over $550 million, up from $192 million the year before. I got a $5,000 raise last year, not a $250 million raise!

The rest of the white men on the list of the highest paid come from the oil and gas industry, no surprise, in light of the price of oil and its fluctuations.

Intelligent Discussion

Finally it's hot. Finally it's summer here in the Northeast. While sitting around the pool with friends, their daughter, son-in-law (who is a doctor), and grandson (who is four and thinks he's Spiderman), we began to discuss the issue of health care reform. We all admitted that with another 50 million people to cover, there would be some additional delays, but let's face it, we are accustomed to delays already. Just this summer, it took three weeks for my mammogram to be read and reported on, a process that used to occur right there in the office with the radiologist on the day of the procedure, along with a manual breast examination. Remember when?

Not anymore and more people are without access to mammograms.

We also agreed that health care reform would not work without a real education program to get Americans to live more healthfully: obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and asthma are the worst of the chronic diseases, and to some extent, these are controllable with educational campaigns, and perhaps a jab at the fast food industry, although there was disagreement on that.

A Big Mac without cheese is 572 calories, 50% of which come from fat, 60% of which is saturated, that's the bad kind.

A Big Mac with cheese is 704 calories, almost 70% of which comes from fat.

The cost of a Big Mac is $3.57, which makes it financially affordable to too many people, while making the consequences of eating a diet of Big Macs unsustainable for the planet and for the rest of us.

So how do we get people to eat nutritionally well and affordably? Admittedly the poorest people in the country are often not compliant, having fewer resources with which to make decisions. But can any system of health care reform work without getting Americans to eat properly?

That's where the CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey comes into the argument. According to the leader of the "whole and fresh foods" movement, we don't need health care reform, we need tort reform, and need to change our way of eating.

As an attorney, I agree that we need tort reform on medical malpractice suits, too. However, in order to make it work, we need a policing system that will remove incompetent doctors, streamline medical records and track those better, and turn individual cases into opportunities to review and reform the mistakes that have caused harm.

So this afternoon we chose to disagree about the level of calamity that might be upon us, its timing, and whether we can do anything to stop it, but no one raised a voice, everyone listened, and frankly, we would be better to defy history and act like grownups about this issue.

Rick Perlstein of the Washington Post wrote a great article about just how much crazies have been a part of American political discourse.

Somehow I wish we could be ahistorical just this once before it's too late.

Who's Buttering Your Bread?

So Sarah Palin, the mistress of the Hillbilly Right, moves back and forth between promoting end-of-life counseling and then calling the same provision in the proposed health care reform package "death panels."

She's not the only right wing fanatic to change her mind.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has some great footage from January 2008 when Glenn Beck, then on CNN, was complaining about how horrible the health care system was after his own bout with surgery. Of course, sixteen months later, now that he is on Fox News, we purportedly have the best health care system around. Watch the clip and wonder how these people have such chutzpah.

Come on, folks, get involved. At least write some letters to members of Congress and let's get this reform package together and started before it's too late.

Sarah Palin Just Loves Being in the Public Eye

So in April 2008, when Sarah was still governor of Alaska, she signed a law urging attorneys and doctors to engage with residents in "end of life" counseling, what she now calls "death panels." See ThinkProgress, August 13, 2009. Then she called it "Health Care Decisions" Day.

These end of life statements are so important. With my mother, she made it very clear to her family that she didn't want anything other than palliative care when she was diagnosed with stage-four cancer that had begun in her lung and eventually broke two vertebrae, and moved into her brain and pelvis. With my father, eight years later, I was his health care proxy and had to negotiate with the hospital to remove him from life support after he had a 105 degree fever, two cardiac episodes, and was clearly filled with infection from a botched operation. These should be private decisions, not made by insurance companies or doctors, but by families in consultation with their physicians.

So for Sarah Palin to "Facebook" her supporters and claim that there is nothing inconsistent in her stance, is redundant of why she resigned as governor and everything else she has said once the greedy light of celebrity stunned her into being an idiot.

Chick Flicking With My Daughter

To escape the "non-summer" of horrible weather, hysterical news, and economic woes, my twenty-year old daughter and I have made the rounds of this season's chick flicks. First it was (500) Days of Summer, which we found quirky, delightful, interesting because the guy wasn't a moron and could articulate his feelings with his friends while getting drunk and still making fools of themselves nevertheless.

And last night it was The Proposal. It was preposterous! But with a large popcorn in lieu of dinner, we had a blast. Sandra Bullock who better swear off further face lifts because according to my daughter, she is beginning to look a little like Michael Jackson, plays the worst boss, the editor-in-chief of a book publisher. Her name is Margaret, not Maggie. Ryan Reynolds plays her all-suffering assistant, whose name is Andrew Paxton. Margaret is about to be deported back to Toronto because she has allowed her visa to expire. So she proposes marriage to Andrew to save her job.

The comedy proceeds from there with a visit to the Paxton family in Alaska, and this is where I got a little annoyed, because in order for Margaret to really fall in love with Andrew, she has to find out that his family is totally and absolutely loaded with money and power that he is trying to avoid so that he can prove himself worthy on his own turf.

That was annoying, although after a few minutes of Margaret, one understood that she was indeed that shallow.

The film is about how they eventually fall in love, which isn't a spoiler, because that is the theme of all chick flicks: how to fall in love.

We laughed out loud at some of their antics. Bullock is a wonderful comedic actor, and Ryan Reynolds, whom I had never seen, held up his side of the duo.

It was a perfect way to spend a rainy summer night avoiding the teabaggers! And for the second time, I got the senior discount of $1 off the ticket price.

Goons in the Room

Whether the health care reform debate is framed by the Republicans who appear to be sending hysterical, angry people to disrupt town hall meetings being held by representatives and senators around the country, watch The Daily Show for a dose of what is happening there, or framed by the President at his civilized meeting in New Hampshire, know that the debate needs to be conducted by adults, because the issue we are facing is complex and has the potential to further erode our nation's ability to climb out of a recession.

When I cared for my ill mother, who had Medicare and supplemental insurance, my biggest complaint then was that Medicare didn't send us notification of medical bills submitted by doctors until after they were paid. Consequently, we could have prevented clear fraud. For example, my mother had stage four cancer when she was diagnosed once two vertebrae in her back broke from a tumor. She immediately made the decision that she would only submit to palliative care: radiation at the site of the tumor. She refused to see the oncologist who came to her room, not once, but twice. However, for the weeks that she was hospitalized, that oncologist was charging Medicare for services he never rendered. We didn't know for months, not until after the fraudulent bill had been paid. So one way to streamline Medicare is to allow patients to review the billing before it is paid. Patients could, as we did, find the fraud and reduce the costs.

"I'm afraid of Obama," was the call at some of the disrupted town hall meetings. I'm afraid of the steroid-injected hysteria pumped up by Fox Cable, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh. While we self-destruct, India and China are moving ahead, folks. That's where the future is, whether you like it or not.

Learning to Eat

My mother was a terrible cook, so we ate dinner out at least three times a week. The fare was pedestrian: hamburgers and shakes at Shore's; Chinese food at Aloha Towers; lasagna at Garbarino's; and for a special treat, lobster tails at King's Castle. When I was in college, in 1969, I fell in love with Christopher, an actor in the National Shakespeare Festival where I was a dancer, and he was a vegetarian, so I became one, too. Although Christopher drifted out of my life, I still abstained from eating meat for many years.

At one point I even became macrobiotic until I became deathly anemic.

Law school was where I finally began to learn how to eat. David Liederman was testing the recipes for Cooking the Nouvelle Cuisines in America, the latest version of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and since we went to graduate school together, I ended up at his apartment tutoring him in what he was missing in class while he was picking the best onions at Balducci's and refining pecan breaded chicken cutlets in a dijon mustard sauce to die for.

Cooking for me was a feminist issue. I didn't like to cook for men, although I must admit that I make excellent breakfasts, and always have. You can figure out why.

After my thirtieth birthday, I decided to really teach myself to cook, and it was through cooking that I met my husband of twenty-one years. We both love to cook, we love to eat, and we love to entertain.

So seeing Julie & Julia tonight with our twenty year old daughter, who adores cooking and eating, too, was a joy, a treasured moment of laughing heartily together. Nora Ephron's script gave Meryl Streep a lot to work with, and her timing as an actress is impeccable. Stanley Tucci plays the most perfect husband, except for my own, and together I recalled every moment of laughing hysterically while Julia Child, the real one, tried to teach American women who didn't have servants how to cook like the French. That they included a Dan Aykroyd Julia impersonation skit from SNL was even more perfect.

Some critics were disappointed with the Julie segments of the film, with Amy Adams, but I wasn't. Spanning generations, these two women tried to find themselves and give meaning to their existence through cooking, and that is what held the film together. Treat yourselves, and afterwards, we treated ourselves to homemade Herrell's ice cream, which was delicious!!!

Obama After Six Months

Somehow folks seem to forget, especially those nuts shouting down Democratic representatives at health care reform town meetings, that this entire mess--deficits, banking collapse, unemployment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recession--are the aftermath of the Bush administration. Not that greed is partisan. The greed that withdrew funding from the manufacturing segment of the economy was both Democratic and Republican. When a 5% profit margin isn't enough, and most investment bankers want a higher return on their money, we know we are screwed. So, yes we are screwed.

Rolling Stone has an interesting piece on just how Obama has worked out during the first six months of his presidency. The three commentators are Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist and columnist for the New York Times, David Gergen, former aide to both Republican and Democratic presidents, and Michael Moore, the rebel filmmaker. It's an interesting read, so take a moment to check it out.

Republicans and Sotomayor

Yesterday's historic swearing-in of Judge Sonya Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court was marred by the politics of the Republican party. I only hope that it comes back to haunt them at the polls. With Hispanics as the largest growing segment of the voting population, Republicans beware: it isn't just ethnic and racial politics either. It's also the disruptive nature of their opposition to health care reform, economic policies, and the reality of climate change.

According to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, hosted by CQ Politics, those Republican senators who voted for Sotomayor's confirmation were not themselves up for reelection. All twelve of the Republican senators who are up for reelection next year voted against Sotomayor. That could easily go either way: will Hispanic voters in their states have longer memories?

However, according to Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, the nea votes by Republicans were really about fear of getting a negative score from the National Rifle Association. Of the seven Senators likely to retire between now and 2010, four voted for Sotomayor, including Mel Martinez, Senator from Florida, who then quickly annouced his early retirement. Supposedly they didn't need to care about Hispanic voters (except for Florida, the other nine Senators who voted for Sotomayor come from states with tiny Latino voters), and defied the NRA.

With the GOP overtaken by nuts and extremists, will the Democrats be able to get anything done, or will they, too, sabotage an energetic president who wants to change the culture of Washington?

Forty Years Ago

On the one hand this is the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, the largest "free" concert, an icon of what went right and wrong in the 1960s, with a soundtrack to boot. The summer of 1969, I was a dancer at the National Shakespearean Theater, the outdoor Silvan nestled in the capital mall, where we put on 39 dreadful performances of a hippie version of "As You Like It."

I had been recruited by the director who watched me playing leap frog in a park, my hair flying, my state of mind very altered and uninhibited, my laugh infectious. He asked me to audition, and I arrived with a copy of the entire works of William Shakespeare to read the part of Rosalind, the woman turned man, to protect her identity. I got my period in the middle of the audition, and still got the role of a hippie, dancing and singing in the chorus. Like most young to the theater, I fell in love with an older man named Christopher, who played the evil villain, who was unfortunately married at the time, and a terrible alcoholic. That is the summer I went vegetarian and have stayed there mostly ever since.

When Woodstock began looming in front of us, the producer of the show dangled Actors' Equity cards in front of us: if we made it to the performances during the Woodstock festival, we would get the legitimacy of being Actors' Equity. She lied; we never got them. My friends who drove up never got there anyway. However my friend Arlene and I made a pact: if we ever heard the other tell our children that we were there, we would never contradict her. It would be our lie, but as it turned out, we never pretended that we were actually there. My friend Georgette whose father worked for Glamour magazine, was featured in the documentary film, and her parents did have a fit when the news hit their small town in eastern Long Island. Georgette was often photographed by her father for the "Don'ts" section of Glamour.

My friend Franklin just sent me Pete Fornatale's book Back to the Garden, so I will relax this weekend and dip back into time to recall what I missed.

1969 had it's darker side, too. It was the year of the Charles Manson murders. Read the post on TheDailyBeast.com by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi.

On the night of August 9, 1969, three women and one man entered the Bel Air, California, house rented by film director Roman Polanski and savagely murdered his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and four other people. One night later, in nearby Los Feliz, a small group invaded another luxury home and killed businessman Leno LaBianca and his wife. In both crimes, as well in as the earlier murder of a local music teacher named Gary Hinman, the killers used their victims’ blood to mark the crime scene with slogans such as PIG, DEATH TO PIGS, and HELTER SKELTER.

In 1971, Cece and I drove cross country in a leisurely trip from DC to Berkeley with many stops in between, because it was our road trip, six weeks long. Cece with her Valium and me with my bottle of tequila read out loud while the other drove, the book The Family, the story of Manson, written by former Fug Ed Sanders. When we arrived at Cielo Drive, the site of the murders, late one night, we drove until we found the house itself, by then, its number was changed to prevent disaster tourists like ourselves. We were totally freaked out.

It doesn't seem like forty years ago when five hundred thousand white kids arrived to dance in the mud, and a troupe of deranged went on a murder spree, but it is. The anniversary of Woodstock will not pass unnoticed, but the anniversary of Charles Manson's killing spree might.

Blackwater

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the private military force, has been implicated in a scheme involving murder, prostitution, and the ultimate goal of destruction of the Islamic world. These are allegations included in a post by Jeremy Scahill, on thenation.com. Scahill has made his journalistic career documenting the bizarre paramilitary world of Blackwater, which you might recall, changed its name to Xe after the shootout in Baghdad that left seventeen Iraqis dead.

The allegations are contained in affidavits filed in a courtcase filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights claiming that Blackwater engaged in war crimes.

It's a horrifying glimpse into the world of privitization. It's why the trend towards taking essential roles from government and making them into profit centers is dangerous and wrong. Take the time to read Scahill's piece. He knows Blackwater and knows Prince.

What's Truth Got To Do With It?

Now the Republicans are sending in irate voters who are disrupting town hall health care reform meetings held by Democratic representatives. At one meeting, someone shouted: What's wrong with profits? That's what a moron asked in the Napa Valley. Too much wine perhaps?

What's wrong with profits? This is what: some things shouldn't be a profit center, because too much is at stake. Competition among insurance companies hasn't produced a lean, mean health machine. Instead it has produced a system of squeezing out the sick and making sure that only the healthy have health insurance. And the salaries. David Klein, the CEO of Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield makes $2.73 million. It's his profit that's at stake!

Ummmm.

Remember those phony demonstrations outside of the ballot recounts in Florida after the 2000 election debacle? It sounds like these phony demonstrations at town hall meetings come from the same Republican playbook.

Now it has been revealed that insurance companies are urging their employees to write to Congress telling them not to reform health care. See the piece in talkingpointsmemo.com.

Read the email sent to employees of Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, explaining to them how to fill in the postcards to their Senators, also posted on talkingpointsmemo.com.

Now take out a pen and piece of paper and send your own letters to Schumer, Gillibrand, and your representative saying that the future of this country is tied to health care reform that streamlines the system, encourages healthier habits, and takes the decisionmaking away from the insurance companies and back in the hands of doctors. I sent mine last week to Peter King, who has never responded to any letter I've sent. Such a dear!

(un)Democracy

The spectacle of the Sotomayor confirmation process in the United States Senate makes me ashamed. This is no beacon of democracy. This is an example of politics gone wild, desperation, and pandering. It makes me wonder, having once taught Constitutional Law, how much we forget about the real history of the country. And how far we might have come, if we didn't have 24/7 cable news.

This is the place where the indigenous people were slaughtered with survivors rounded up, pushed off of their own land to make way for the settlers. This is the place where slavery made our economic system feasible. This is the place where public schools closed down rather than admit African American students. This is the place where in waves new immigrants came and helped moved America to its next phase of prosperity.

This is also the place where the rule of law forced institutions to open their doors to qualified people of color, where the president of the United States, yes, a citizen, is a man of color who can slip his voice into preacher patter and always make sense. Yet we don't seem to realize that some aspects of the American experiment in self-rule should be above politics. One is health care reform, the other is appointment of qualified judicial nominees. That only six Republican senators are willing to vote for Sonia Sotomayor speaks volumes about the desperation of the party, and the hypocrisy of the ultra-right. Sotomayor was appointed to the bench by George Bush, Senior, and elevated to the Court of Appeals by Bill Clinton. But what has history got to do with it, when Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Michael Savage are the idiots spouting the "values" of the Republican Party.

(500) Days of Summer

My twenty year old daughter and I had a date to see (500) Days of Summer last night: popcorn and everything, well, no butter, of course. It's a delight. Quirky, playful, serious, a film that lets the audience into the mind of a young man in love who can actually express his feelings and have real conversations with his other friends. The young man Tom is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who was on television in Third Rock from the Sun, a show I never watched. He is adorable, he is charming, he is sensitive, and he works as the underachieving author of mundane greeting cards. She, Summer, is played by Zooey Deschanel whose eyes take you far away, she is intricate, interesting, and her own person. Weeds fans will recognize her.

This is a love story where Summer is Sid and Tom is Nancy, from the Sex Pistols. No spoilers here, just go, enjoy, laugh, remember what it was like to be young and so wanting to be in love.

It's a summer film that will leave you feeling younger.

Flying for Swine Flu

The New York Times Week in Review yesterday dedicated its back page to preparations for a swine flu or H1N1 epidemic. And as one might expect, the airlines are not doing what they need to do to make sure that cabins, the air in the cabins, and the habits of crew and passengers will not be a major conduit, anymore than airplanes currently are, for the spread of the illness.

This past spring every time I flew, I got bronchitis, because someone near me was coughing or sneezing, and the air quality in planes now is treacherously bad. And I am a handwashing maniac, too.

Mark Gendreau, the vice chairman of emergency medicine at the Lahey Clinic and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Tufts University, wrote a scathing critique of just how badly the airlines are doing when it comes to avoiding the spread of swine flu, and for that matter, all contagious diseases. Read Fly the Germ-Free Skies.

According to Dr. Gendreau, the airlines should be training its cabin attendants to help passengers maintain a level of hygiene, like distributing hand sanitizers, and the airlines themselves should be upgrading the quality of air filtration in their planes. But with the economy in the pits, and airlines worried about the bottom line, it's unlikely that they will respond to this call for action. And since passengers have to avoid carrying liquids on board, we should at least be carrying wipes to make sure that we keep ourselves as germ-free as possible especially before we eat our peanuts and drink our coffee.

In a related article, Arthur Allen, author of “Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver,” speaks about the government's responsibility to alert us about the dangers of any new flu vaccine, and distinguishes between correlation and cause, especially when people get sick from taking a vaccine. Read "Prepare for a Vaccine Controversy."

Crazy White Folks

With the state of white America in a frenzy still over the Obama--Gates--Crowley beer summit, which is merely symptomatic of the real issue: "the inexorable transformation of America into a white-minority country in some 30 years — by 2042 in the latest Census Bureau estimate." This transformation is causing serious jitters, if not panic, in some white people's bodie, according to Frank Rich in this morning's New York Times. These notions that the Republicans have to defeat Obama rather than save the nation's economy, I believe, are linked to this premise that white men have to make sure that a man of color does not succeed as president, especially where they have botched everything up.

However, as Linda, as irate partygoer at a 60th birthday celebration quipped last night: Obama's half white. Don't we get some credit for his genius and extraordinary talent? Afterall, he was raised by his white mother and white grandparents!

Frank Rich continues: The birth-certificate canard is just the latest version of those campaign-year attempts to strip Obama of his American identity with faux controversies over flag pins, the Pledge of Allegiance and his middle name. Last summer, Cokie Roberts of ABC News even faulted him for taking a vacation in his home state of Hawaii, which she described as a “foreign, exotic place,” in contrast to her proposed choice of Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the real America of Dixie.

Perhaps this will placate nervous white people: the entire cast from the Seinfeld series will be reuniting this season on Curb Your Enthusiasm, according to creator and world's number one cranky Jewish guy, Larry David. This year's script "theme" is the reunion, and members of the cast will appear in five episodes. Will that make it better?

Remembering Rove

Let's not forget the role that Karl Rove played in the evil doing of the Bush administration. The former political brain behind the rise of George Jr. from an underachieving scion to president of the United States just finished two days of testimony before Congress about his role in the firings of the US attorneys who were judged to be "disloyal" or just not controllable by the White House.

The headline in the Washington Post says that these latest emails "show larger White House role in prosecutor firings." These hearings were held behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee. What's clear is that Harriet Miers and Karl Rove were executing the firings, although it's unclear whether the president was directly involved.

According to the New York Times: Mr. Rove portrayed himself as having “a lot on my plate” at the White House and therefore too busy to play a significant role in the firings. Some of his e-mail, however, showed Mr. Rove’s keen interest in the selection of federal prosecutors, who are appointed by the president.

Although everything still remains confidential, there is a special prosecutor, Nora Dannehy, appointed in September 2008 by then Attorney General Michael Mukasey, looking into whether laws were broken when the White House turned the US attorneys, all nine of them, into political captives for not using voting laws to suppress Democratic votes. Read Talkingpointsmemo.com for more insight into this story that shouldn't go away.

Home Sales

Our daughter graduated from high school three years ago, and we should have sold our suburban home then. But my parents sold our home two days after I graduated. I never really had a home again, so I wanted to spare our daughter that experience. And frankly, I was just too busy getting ready to change jobs, and to continue to work in the suburbs, so we missed that opportunity. Now only a single home has sold this entire year--2009--in our village. And the average home price is down by about a third.

Yes, I dream about an apartment in Manhattan, although frankly, I would love to be able to afford a little get-away place, too, where I could escape from the heat of the summer and plant things. My garden is important to me, and the thought of not having one is daunting. I kill most indoor plants, but my gardens thrive.

So, when I learned that Timothy Geitner, Secretary of the Treasury, couldn't sell his home in suburban Westchester, I was heartened, and had a great laugh. Watch John Oliver's segment on Wednesday night's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

There was a time when there was less shame about being an immigrant in America, when the entire city of New York, south of midtown, spoke with an accent, and not just one. There were gang fights among the ruffians, there were hazings, there were clan feuds over romances and marriages. It wasn't some golden era, but it was part of our history, just as the new waves of immigrants are part of our history now.

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, is a delightful yet provocative film about the enormously ambitious and talented Gertrude Berg, the writer, director and actor of the long-running radio then television (there's a film in there, too) series starring the fictious character of Molly Goldberg, an Eastern European Jewish immigrant and her family living in New York City.

Arlene and I shared the empty theater with an older Jewish couple. We gave each other permission to laugh and be raucous, and we were.

However, the story includes the Black list period, when progressive actors were banned from the screen and radio by gossip and hysteria over "Red" infilitration. And the film deals with the pressures placed on Gertrude Berg to fire her stage husband Jake played by Philip Loeb, an activist who fought for pay and benefits through the nascent Actors Equity Union.

Gertrude Berg was a feminist before it had a name, and the interviews with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginzburg, Susan Stanberg, and various relatives of Ms. Berg add much to an understanding of just how a woman insisted that she have a career, that she control her artistic dream, and that her dream became a part of America at a time when Nazis were rising to power in Europe and anti-semitism was rising here, too.

It's a taste of how situation comedies began, it's a glimpse into what made Lucille Ball so famous, it's a repose to a time when we thought we were less xenophobic, but maybe we weren't. We just don't want to admit that we were. The film is by Aviva Kempner and it's a gem.

Sarah Palin Says Goodbye, But Unfortunately, Not for Long

The Doublespeak of Sarah Palin is humorous, well, it would be if she wasn't still taken seriously by mobs of people. Even William Kristol of the Weekly Standard and one of her first aupporters, appeared to still believe she had a shot, although he did admit that she wasn't his first choice for the Republican candidacy in 2012, on The Daily Show Monday night.

Definitely take a moment to chuckle and brew together with Andrew Sullivan over Sarah Palin's meteoric rise in the media, in our consciousness, and hopefully she will burn out in just a few more months. This post is from last September and it contains all of the lies she was spouting during the campaign. Now that she is free from the restraints of the campaign, she is free to say anything she wants to. Check out how Jon Stewart portrays her resignation speech.

Lag Time For Confirmations

With Sonia Sotomayor's nomination up for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee today, and only Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (you will get confirmed unless you have a melt-down) agreeing to vote in favor of her moving onto the Senate for a full vote, Congressional Quarterly has a fun chart: it shows the length of time required to confirm the most recent Supreme Court nominees.

Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan nominee and the current swing vote, won for the longest confirmation bout, and John Paul Stevens, a Ford nominee and currently the eldest member of the court, for the shortest.

Republicans should watch out for the back lash from Hispanic voters, since one rarely sees such a qualified candidate so articulately respond to so many pointed questions about her writings.

Don't Ask Don't Tell

As my generation dies off, discrimination against gays and lesbians will disappear, hopefully. And there is some hope that we might not have to die before we see some more progress.

According to TheDailyBeast.com, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, of all people, is calling for hearings into possible repeal of this heinous failed experiment.

In an exclusive to the blog's Jason Bellini: After determining she didn’t have enough votes in support of a temporary suspension of the ban on gays in the military, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tells The Daily Beast she has secured the commitment of Senate Armed Services Committee to hold hearings on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” this fall. It would be the first formal re-assessment of the policy since Congress passed it into law in 1993.

A statement from the Gillibrand’s office, shared exclusively with The Daily Beast, notes that “265 men and women have been unfairly dismissed from the Armed Forces since President Barack Obama took office.”

Today marks the 400th entry on my blog: ascension at the stove. I began just under a year ago when the tension from the presidential election forced me into writing. I've enjoyed the experience and hope you have, too.

Profiteering on War and Health Care

Not everything is a market possibility, not everything should be a profit, especially war, prisons, and health care. (I would add public education to the list.) If you are a Bill Maher fan, and I am, his show Friday night was totally on point, on everything he said. Here is his column from the huffingtonpost.com, based upon the closing segment, "New Rules," where he sets out how we should be acting as a society or as individuals.

"In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O."

With a profit incentive, Republicans don't want to lose the opportunity to make a buck, even though those bucks are breaking Americans, our businesses, and our future. As Senator DeMint said, it is about making health care reform Obama's Waterloo. and as President Obama said in response, it shouldn't be political.

It is also about keeping health care as a profiteering center. Read about who is behind the racist Obama cartoon and the "patients' rights" movement, really teaparty nuts and health industry lobbyists.

Bill Moyers' Journal did a segment on decoding the talking heads on health care reform. Take a look.

The Age of Apology

For eight years no one, except for the weatherman when he missed the scattered storms and you forgot your umbrella, took the time to admit to any mistakes.

Times have changed.

Yesterday Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, the originator of the mighty Kindle (which I love) posted this after deleting from people's Kindles and from their Amazon.com computer-libraries, copies of the George Orwell classic 1984, among others, without warning:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers, Jeff Bezos Founder & CEO Amazon.com

Ironically, it was the novel 1984 that was deleted. The entire episode revealed the vulnerability of using a Kindle in terms of the ability of Amazon to continue to fiddle with readers' downloads. In this instance, Amazon removed entire books, could it also just remove portions of books, articles from newspapers? Being wired means being connected, with many privacy implications, some quite scary.

The President of the United States also engaged in some apologizing yesterday, after his improvised remarks at his press conference about the Henry Louis Gates' arrest in Cambridge, riled police across the country.

So we got an apology from President Obama, too: “I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up,” the president said in an appearance in the White House briefing room. “I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically, and I could have calibrated those words differently.”

Suddenly I feel like we are a nation of grownups again. Now that might be overly optimistic, after listening to the Republican defense of the health care status quo, but adult behavior is being modeled for us once again. It takes courage to apologize, it takes character.

And Who Says We Live in a Colorblind Society?

Whether it was the arrest of Henry Louis Gates in his own home or the circulation by an anti-health care reform doctor Dr. David McKalip who serves as a delegate to the AMA of a racist doctored photograph of President Obama as a "witch doctor," this is all proof that race is very much a factor in American life.

I'd be indignant, too, if a police officer asked me to identify myself in my own home. I'd be indignant, too, if someone felt comfortable sending out a doctored photograph of me as an indigenous "witch doctor" when the debate about the reform of health care isn't being advanced by that email, but inflamed instead.

Which all goes to show us, right in our faces, that we are far from living in a post-racial society. Are you paying attention, Chief Justice John Roberts, from your cozy life? Are you paying attention, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who believe that Sonia Sotomayor doesn't have another perspective that might be an asset to the Supreme Court?

Health Care Debate--Listen, Learn, and Then Press For Action

As I watched the press conference last night with my twenty-year old daughter, we marveled at how articulate and smart President Obama is, especially when we compare the spectacle of his press conference to what we suffered through rarely, albeit, with Bush, Jr. No one ever pressed Bush like Obama was pressed by reporters last night. Why is it that Bush silenced the press so and now suddenly we are asking for Obama accountability? There is an element of "truthiness" in Obama that somehow makes us feel smarter ourselves.

Being in the midst of a health care dilemma myself, I support a single-payer system with private options for those rich folks who want another level of health care. My husband and I were solicited last year, before the sky fell in, with a boutique medical plan: no insurance would be allowed, we would pay a premium to have access to a cadre of doctors immediately without waiting. We turned it down then, and I would turn it down now, too.

On one level we need to continue to fund research in medicine. The advances in cancer and heart disease are spectacular. The understanding of human fertility, genetic conditions, immune-deficient disease, well, it's inconceivable how much information has been amassed. The technology is also pretty phenomenal, too. The issue raised by this technology was well stated by Mike Dowling, the President and CEO of North Shore LIJ Health Systems, the largest health care provider on Long Island. At a luncheon several years ago for the Health and Welfare Council, Dowling described the new body scan machine that the hospital had purchased. This procedure could "see" inside the body, find blocked arteries, almost any abnormality, way beyond the PetScan, which only finds cluster of cancer cells once they reach about 1 cm. in size. The question raised by this advanced technology is: do we have the resources to treat all of the conditions such a body scan might reveal? Do we need to?

Where we haven't advanced is matching the diagnosis and treatment with the best practices. And let's not fool ourselves: most people have to wait uncomfortably long periods of time to see doctors, get a diagnosis, and begin treatment. So all of this crap about health care reform meaning rationed health care is bull. Here on Long Island, many board certified doctors don't take any insurance. You pay the doctor directly and then fight with the insurance company. If you are in an HMO, forget it. You have to go to less qualified physicians, when a more experienced doctor might provide a better outcome.

Here is a transcript of the press conference last night.

iLife, iLove

I am a Mac person and have been since 1987 when my husband bought me a Mac II as a wedding present. Since then, I have had several generations of Macintosh computers and laptops, although I haven't gotten an iPhone, just don't need one, and now own my first Nano iPod.

My Macbook died just before I had to leave on a week-long business trip, OK, I panicked, and arrived at the mall with my comatose machine and a problem: I needed contact with my office email while I was gone, and understood they didn't have enough time to fix the ailing beauty, just eighteen months old.

The mall is a Simon Mall, upscale, with Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Lord & Taylor as the anchor shops, along with that maze of stores that appear in every Simon Mall across the country: Coach, Bebe, all of the Gaps, Banana Republics, Abercrombie, etc.

The mall was empty except for one store: The Apple Shop. I had to make an appointment to purchase a new computer, that's how crowded. And lucky for me, I happened to have gotten there on the release date of the new MacBook Pro, the upscaled Macbook with the seven hour battery and the amazing screen, which allowed me to save a lot of money if I had wanted to buy a MacBook Pro although I ended up spending more money than I would have if I had just bought another now-obsolete Macbook.

Genuis Bar, those are the men and women, who answer all of our dumb questions. They are the best, funniest, smartest, quirky customer service people in industry.

So it doesn't surprise me to learn that despite everything, Apple profits continue to rise. What about Steve Jobs?

The Brotherhood of the Wandering Dick

With Jeff Sharlet's book, The Family, published in paperback, we now know that there is a hypocritical theocratic Christian cult in Washington where fallen wandering dicks who like to judge the moral incapacity of other wandering dicks, from the other party, of course, like to pray and sleep.

The latest round of scandal in the wandering dick segment of the Republican Party, John Ensign and Mark Sanford, are both members.

According to talkingpointsmemo.com: C Street, in which a bevvy of current and former lawmakers portray the house -- as well as The Fellowship, the shadowy religious movement, also known as The Family, with which C Street is affiliated -- as a benevolent prayer group that offers "crucial counseling" to its powerful members, helping keep them on the straight and narrow.

In trying to turn the powerful theocratic center into a counseling center for wayward right-wingers, this new publicity about The Family leaves Zachary Roth at talkingpointsmemo.com flat:

More broadly, here's the major problem that's elided by the image of the benevolent prayer group: it's one thing for lawmakers to have a group of trusted friends and peers with whom they can talk about their personal lives. But, for a range of pretty obvious reasons, when prominent elected officials cheat on their spouses (OK, wives), they often commit other, non-sexual transgressions -- which go to their official responsibilities -- in trying to cover it up. That puts their religious confidants in the compromising position of knowing about non-personal wrongdoing that the public has a right to be aware of, but being obligated by the bonds of the group to keep it secret. Indeed, that seems to have been exactly what happened in the Ensign case, in particular with Sen. Tom Coburn, who has refused to speak publicly about what he told Ensign, citing his role as a "physician and as an ordained deacon."

Politico.com also has a C Street story. As does RollCall.com.

Dead in the Water--Not Quite

This afternoon President Obama engaged in "truthiness." He quoted a Republican Senator who said that if they could defeat his health care plan, Obama will be dead in the water.

Listen to Obama's comments, his first real push back on the Republican messaging that any health care reform is too expensive.

According to the President, this shouldn't be about him or about politics. But it is, because this fight is about power and money, about privatizing medical care rather than opening it up to everyone, and about the future of the Republican Party. Actually, according to me and a lot of other people, it's about the future of our economy, too.

Here is a wonderful resource--FactCheck.org-- to help wade through the propaganda that is being put out there by the lobbyists who don't want to do anything that will change the status quo. Remember these lobbyists are being paid by folks like insurance companies, for profit health care systems, and pharmaceutical companies. Notice that I didn't include the doctors, because many of them, especially the younger ones, acknowledge that the current system is unworkable and as my generation ages, will bankrupt the nation. This FactCheck.org article deconstructs two "independent" ads that make claims about the Canadian single-payer system. Beware!

It's time for Obama to do more than just set out guiding principles. It's time for a health care reform summit and for all of us to demand an end to the politics of destruction.

Post Script: Watch Lewis Black from The Daily Show on July 21 make fun of the Republicans tirades against health care reform.

Braking Government

After eight years of secrecy, incompetence, indecency, and a belief that government is inherently bad and the free market is inherently good, America elected Barack Obama whose philosophy begins with a different assumption: that government should serve the interests of the people. As a brilliant politician with an ambitious agenda to set the country right again, Obama has attracted to government some especially bright, and qualified, personnel.

According to CQ Politics, President Obama has been making these essential appointments at record speed. However, confirmation by the Senate is necessary to place these top officials in the bureaucracies that need to be functioning in order to move the ship of state. And the Senate is dragging its feet. Even though the Senate is now controlled by Democrats.

Obama is filling these vacancies faster than any recent president, but the pace isn't fast enough, especially after the debacle of the Bush administration.

A tally by the White House Transition Project, a group of academics funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that after 160 days in office, a mark that came during the July Fourth congressional recess, less than 40 percent of the most plum political jobs had been filled and that Obama had sent nomination papers to the Senate for slightly more than half of the jobs.

Finally Harold Koh, former dean of Yale Law School, was confirmed by the Senate to become Legal Counsel to the State Department. A more worthy choice would be hard to find, but the Republicans managed to question this amazing scholar's credentials because he is also an activist.

And also troubling is the delay of the confirmation of Dawn E. Johnsen to be the Director of the Office of Legal Counsel, the same office that under Bush-Cheney authored the infamous torture memos that might, hopefully, send some people to prison for violating domestic and international law. Those memos are a perversion of legal analysis and should be used in every legal ethics class to illustrate how professionalism means standing up to power and saying no when asked to rationize illegality. Because Professor Johnsen testified before the Senate about just how much the Office of Legal Counsel had been derailed, Republicans have branded her a radical.

With Obama's popularity slipping, in the wake of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase's announcement of record quarter profits after taxpayers bailed them out (under the Bush administration, remember, not by Obama) while unemployment continues to rise and foreclosures do, too, we need to get government seats filled with the best and the brightest. Now. There is so much to do and not a lot of time to do it.