Just in case you thought the Bush cared about civil liberties

Just in case we had any misconception about how much of a dictator President Bush wants to be, read the quotations about Hepting vs AT&T case. Perhaps the following is the most telling:

“"Did you go to the FISA court on this case?" Pregerson asked. "Again, your honor, that gets into state secrets," Garre replied.”

Not only are they unwilling to discuss the basics of the case, the administration is unwilling even to tell one court if they got permission from another court. That is how dictators operate – they are unwilling to let anyone know what they are doing in case they try to stop them.

Enough is enough. It is time for everyone to start bombarding their congressional representatives about maintaining American freedoms in America. Otherwise, we are just letting al-Qaeda win. They want us to loose our freedoms; that was one of the goals of 9-11. Now Bush is handing it to them on a platter. God help us all.

Another secret policy change

The Washington Post has article that reads, in part, “A decision by the Bush administration to rewrite in secret the nation's emergency response blueprint has angered state and local emergency officials, who worry that Washington is repeating a series of mistakes that contributed to its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina nearly two years ago.”

I really hope that they don’t expect me to be too shocked. Bush long ago convinced me that he wants to be a dictator. He doesn’t want to hear bad news or any opinion that doesn’t match his. He doesn’t believe in democratic processes. He doesn’t believe in individual rights. So why should his administration believe that any individual, regardless of their expertise or responsibilities, would have anything to offer on public policy?

The sad part is that we have over another year of his administration. It may take decades for us to realize the amount of damage he has wreaked, let alone reverse it.

What we need is for the states to write an emergency response blueprint that would work and provide it to Congress. Only if the record shows that there is an alternative, will we have any hope of coping when the next big disaster strikes.

Sprint just doesn't get it.

So I am reading the Washington Post today and there is an article about Sprint investing in new technology in order to improve their market share. What a joke! I am in the process of dumping every sprint product I have. Earthlink went first, then Sprint PCS. Home long distance is next. Why am I dropping Sprint? It sure isn’t because they lack web browser capacity.

Nope, I dropped Sprint because their customer service sucks. They treat existing customers like an asset that cannot go anywhere. I did not have many problems but the ones I had were huge. Like I had to sign a new contract to get the promotion they sent me an offer for but then they did not give me the promotion (they gave me a different one). Called and they promised to correct it. Didn’t happen. Called again, oh yeah, we can fix that. But instead they added the feature and changed me for it. Called back: “Too bad. You can cancel the contract if you like but it will cost you $200.” Needless to say, I was in the market for a new service.

Did offer them the chance to keep me. I wanted more minutes. But they would not give me any better offer than their new customers. Switched to Alltell and got a much better deal for the same price. Now if I could just get Sprint to give me my refund...

Sorry Sprint, too bad your customers are leaving. If you want them to come back, better improve your customer service. Oh, and offer competitive pricing.

Some things just make you feel good

The Washington Post has a story about the injured daughter of an Iraqi interpreter being brought to the US military hospital after a car bomb. It is the sort of thing that makes you feel really good. But it also makes me wonder, if we spent more time saving the lives of Iraqi citizens, the everyday people caught up in a fight with the extremists, would we win the war for their hearts?

I cannot help thinking that in our past actions we have unsettled the region and harmed many people by destroying the social stability. We should be giving them a social structure that helps them - reliable electricity, water, and sewage; an education system; and decent health care.

When it rains

I am beginning to have some real sympathy for Job. Every time I think that the bad news must be done, I get another item to deal with. First my Dad gets cancer…

Then it was my job;, improve my performance in the only area not outstanding or get another job. That was a blow to the ego. Never mind that I have been working hard and I am doing lots of things very well, the one item I am not so hot at is what they need for the foreseeable future…

Then I lose an employee slot so I have to re-juggle everything around. That would not be so bad except that I hired the current staff with specific roles in mind and the person who will have to do the work for the lost person is NOT a good hire for the job. And since it is contract position, I cannot simply find someone else… Urgh!

Then another employee makes a mistake with the possibility of a significant financial loss (33% of the contract funds). And of course, I had specifically told her not to do what she did because I did not want it to be an issue. This is still up in the air while we wait to find out the consequences. She, of course, is claiming that I never told her not to do what she did.

Then my niece could not come to visit after all. I have been looking forward to it for months. It was going to be my big treat for the summer. But increased gas prices and airline prices combined with limited time meant that we cannot get her the 1200 miles between her place and mine.

Now, as if that is not enough for 6 weeks, I find out that the lay leader of my small group at church has been arrested for "illegal pornography." He admits it is there but says he was just doing research so he could help someone he counsels. Say what? how in the world does he think that would justify child pornography? Why would you need to see it in order to understand the person you are counseling? Personally, I feel betrayed and appalled and sickened.

Guess I should just hope that this doesn't last 7 years...

New Chapter - Dad gets Cancer

My Dad has cancer. There I have said it. But it really is a very inaccurate statement. Yes, my dad has just been diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, but that really does not convey the full impact. You see, he was diagnosed with the disease, but in many ways the whole family got diagnosed with cancer.

My dad is the stable post around which my family revolves. Okay, so we have one of those picture book ideal patriarchal families. Two happily married parents, 2 children ( a boy and a girl); all, for the most part, happy and loving. Add one living grandparent, a spouse, and 2 grandkids, plus assorted pets, and you have my basic family.

The thing is, we always talk about cancer as if only the individual is affected. The reality is that all of us are affected. We worry about him but we also worry about what it will be like when he dies. Suddenly we just cannot ignore the fact that he has a vastly shortened life expectancy.

It is hard to live in the present. It is hard to remember that he is neither helpless or an invalid. It is hard not to be able to do something, anything, to change the realities or the uncertainties.

Three Cups of Tea

I have just read the most amazing story about a man who is conducting a mission towards peace in Central Asia. Finally, proof that I am not the only one who believes that Bush's policies are only leading to more terror, not less. And a way to do something about it. But that is for later, after you have read this book.

It takes place at the base of K2, when a man promises a school to the porter who saves his life. The man, an American, begins an odyssey that will lead to a career building schools and other small public health projects. In an area where the US is synonymous with horror, pain, and the disruption of life accompanied by lies about helping to build infrastructure, the small NGO created out of his promise to build a school, now proves that not all Americans are bad.

The book is a must read!

Do Not Call number for Avenue

What is it with companies deciding that you want to receive an automated phone call from them at any time of the day or night? Make the mistake of buying something from one and you then are deluged with spam phone calls. Bad enough that their spam fills your post box and your email inbox, now they have to clog up your phone line as well. And they pay no attention to your indication that you do not want to be contacted.

So today I called Avenue and asked them to take me off all their spam lists. First, I had to spend about 15 minutes on hold. Then a nice woman named Adrian listened to my complaint, requested my information, and put me on hold while she did some research. She came back on line about 4 minutes later to tell me that she gave the information to her supervisor but that I should call their do-not-call list number (800.695.3198). Of course it will take about 30 days to take effect…

Maybe I won’t buy from them again… Still I need to get clothes some time.

Sympathy for Cho Seung Hui's Parents

The events of Monday at Virginia Tech were a horror that many of us will not recover from for many years. The media has painted a singular picture of the gunman, a young man with psychological problems. They have also painted a singular picture of the victims – the individuals who faced gunfire and their parents, families, and friends.

But the media has forgotten one set of victims – Cho’s family. His parents must be grief stricken by the loss of the son, just like any other parent. But they also have to bear the burden that their son was responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in the USA. I don’t know them, but all the parents I know spend a lot of time second guessing themselves when their children make bad choices. How much worse it must be when their child’s bad choice results in the death of others.

And so, I extend my sympathy to Cho’s family for the loss of their son.

Time for some rational choice making about health care

Today I read this article in the Washing Post on the Texas Futile-Treatment Law and how there is a fight to prevent hospitals from withdrawing “care when a patient's ongoing treatment is declared "medically futile." The patient in the case is described as “A 17-month-old deaf, blind and terminally ill child” who, as I calculate it, has been on life support in a pediatric ICU for about 100 days. An ethics review board decided that the case is hopeless and that it would be best to terminate life support if the mother could not find an alternative hospital to provide care for the child. The right-to-life people are all up in arms about turning off the ventilators and letting the child die the natural death that technology is preventing. They seem to believe that we need to keep everyone alive as long as technologically possible regardless of the costs. But it is about time that we thought about the very real costs of keeping infants alive at any expense:

1. This child is taking up valuable resources without any hope that he can be helped: bed space, doctors and nursing staff time and energy. What if there is another child who is denied a bed in the Pediatric ICU because there is not enough space, a child without a terminal condition?
2. What is the emotional cost to the staff? How debilitating it must be not to be able to relieve the child’s pain and suffering and even worse if they think the technology is only allowing them to make the child suffer more. According to the Post report, “doctors have declared that continuing treatment is potentially painful and is prolonging the child's suffering.”
3. Who is paying for this prolonged ICU stay? Extrapolating from Ampofo, et al (PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 6 December 2006, pp. 2409-2417 (doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1475) (who estimated the cost for a child’s influenza hospitalization - only 29 of the 325 of whom were on respirators), the average hospital cost for a 6mo- 23mo childs stay, per day, was $1,397 and the average hospital charges were $2,006. That would result in a charge for this child’s care somewhere between $139,000 and $201,000 assuming that the charges are not any more than they were for the Ampofo et al study. More realistically, the costs are higher AND that does not include the physician charges and the costs of medicines. So let’s just guess that the daily cost for this child’s care is about $3,250 per day, before attorney fees. That means the outstanding hospital bill is $325,000 and climbing.
   Who is paying that bill? If you and I are really lucky, Mom and Dad are paying it out of their pocket. Second best, Mom and Dad have good health insurance and can pay their share. Worst case, Medicaid pays part and the hospital charges off the rest of it as charity care. Why is that the worst case for you and I? Because we pay for Medicaid with our tax money, the hospitals charge us more to cover that loss, and too many losses drive our hospitals out of business.

Every dollar we spend on this child cannot help another. For example, we could be ensuring that more children are vaccinated, including the vaccinations for influenza. By one estimate, “For every dollar spent on immunizations, as many as $29 can be saved in direct and indirect costs.” So, if you use the CDC’s cost estimator for vaccines, the daily $3,250 cost of keeping this terminal child alive would buy us:

• 2,387 pediatric vaccines for influenza (which, extrapolating again from Ampofo would prevent 239 cases of influenza, 48 hospitalizations (with an estimated average cost of $292, 411) and 14 deaths. Or we could have gotten
• 1,475 doses of DTAP vaccines or
• 269 doses Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus Types 6, 11, 16 and 18 Recombinant Vaccines (which prevents cervical cancer)

If we spend our money on this terminally ill little boy, we cannot spend it to save the lives of other children who have a chance of surviving!

Yes, I feel sorry for his mother. But keeping a terminally ill child on a respirator indefinitely because his mother is not ready to lose her child is insane. We could be saving lives with that money. Instead the courts will hold a hearing on the injunction in another 7 days (That is another $22750 or 1671 cases of influenza we won’t prevent, 334 hospitalizations with a cost of $2 million we won’t prevent and 100 pediatric deaths from influenza we won’t prevent).

Today I read an article in the Washington Post about a man injured at Guantanamo. One quote really struck me. His mother asked, "What did the Americans do to him?" It struck me as a huge part of the problem. She sees Americans as this undifferentiated group who are complicit in maiming her son. Americans see all Arabic people as Muslims who want to destroy the USA.

I did not do anything to her son. I deplore what I know about Guantanamo. Its very existance and police state/secret police identity are not endorsed like Americans like me. Yet how can the people of each nation know about the people of another nation? How could she know about people like me - who abhor what our government is doing, who keep telling their political leaders that the current policy is unacceptable, who want a different way of dealing with issues. How can I know about the Muslims who practice the Quran in unmilitaristic ways?

Right now, the media are busy capitalizing on the differences, the sensational. They don't focus on every day people who disagree with the policy makers. They don't make waves by letting us understand the people of another nation, particularly ones in a nation where we are at "war". The media has no reason to work toward an understanding of the people of Iraq in terms other than terrorists and victims. We hear about Sunnis and Shites, but only when one group visits atrocities on the other.

Principle 2: Justice

I am a Unitarian Universalist. I find that it generally fits my philosophy/religious views, in part because it allows for a wide range of beliefs. Lately I have spent some time considering what the principles to which I am covenanted mean. The principles are:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Today’s topic is principle 2: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.

I find "Justice" to be a kind of muddy concept. It has no clear bright lines of it is and is not. So what is justice? Okay, I am going to take a first stab at this. I reserve the right to retract any and all of it on further reflection.

Justice is state of being for groups and communities achieved by balancing personal freedoms with freedom from harm caused by others. It embodies both the legal and the emotional by recognizing that the situation defines the balance point. Example, if one stole an ice cream cone from me, it would be a minor harm and there would be little cry for justice. If one stole a ice cream cone from a child, there is a greater cry for justice because children have less power (and presumably less ability to replace the ice cream). If that child was starving, justice demands even more of a response, because we are getting into the ability to stay alive.

Not sure I have a better explanation for what I know when I see.
For more on the Unitarian Universalists, you can go to the church's national website:
http://www.uua.org/

Personal DNA

A friend introduced me to this fun site on personality style. It goes beyond the 4 quadrant system and has multiple dimensions. I decided to add it to my blog because I thought it was so interesting. ‘Course I am interested in personality and communication styles any way so it was sure to interest me. Hope you find it fun.