Fearless Caregiver Conference, Orlando

On June 29 I attended the Fearless Caregiver Conference in Orlando, the first such conference held in that city and the 109th Fearless Caregiver Conference. These events, now in their fourteenth year, are held across the country; here's the 2011 schedule. Tickets are available for free to family caregivers. Credit hours are available for professional caregivers.

Said keynote speaker Scott Latimer, MD, MPH, MBA (Market President for Senior Products, Central/North Florida for Humana), "You are a caregiver if you help keep someone independent and improve their quality of life." (Latimer also spoke in his address about the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act.)

Some of what I learned (there was much more, but this is what I caught) included, in no particular order:

National/International in Scope

Social Service Checkup connects people with discounts and community assistance programs.

Benefits Checkup (a service of the National Council on Aging) allows people to find and enroll in federal, state, local and private programs that help pay for prescription drugs, utility bills, meals, health care, and other needs.

My Med Schedule, a secure website, allows people to organize and keep track of medications.

eCare Diary is a set of online tools designed to make coordination of care and sharing of information easy amongst family members and other caregivers.

VA Caregiver Support, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, provides support services to caregivers of veterans.

Healthcare.gov, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides information about available private insurance plans, public programs, and community services.

Medicare.gov is the official U.S. Government site for Medicare.

For evaluating doctors: Vitals and Healthgrades, which I've used; and Rate MDs, which was new to me.

Caregivers in Recovery Network is an online support forum for family and professional caregivers in 12-step recovery.

Alzheimer's Disease International helps caregivers of people with Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias.

National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health is an advocacy organization that works with family-run and other child-serving organizations.

SAGE (Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Elders) provides support to GLBT caregivers if one or both of the people involved is over 60. (I'd already known about this organization.)

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Inc., Family and Informal Caregiver Support Program supports innovative and evidence-based community projects that help family and friends care for chronically ill or disabled low and moderate income older adults.

As part of my own caregiving, I have already been involved with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and have for several months been attending meetings of my local chapter. I connected on Wednesday with representatives of the Orlando chapter.

Florida

Florida Agency for Health Care Administration administers the Medicaid program, oversees the licensure and regulation of health facilities, and provides information to Floridians about the quality of the health care they receive.

Caregiver Central is part of Share the Care, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to provide community-based support for family caregivers in Orange and Seminole Counties.

I was told that Meals on Wheels (Florida), in addition to its senior meals program, is a source of information on what local services are available for people and their caregivers.

There were at least 60 of us attending, probably more. Attendees took care of people ranging in age from their 20s (maybe their teens) to age 98. The morning consisted of parallel tracks, one for family caregivers and one for professional caregivers. The family caregiver track had a morning Q&A Panel with Denise Clark (DO, Associate Medical Director, VITAS Innovative Hospice Care); Mearlene Filkins (LCSW, Caregiver Support Coordinator, VA Caregiver Support Program); Randy Hunt (MBA, Executive Director, Senior Resource Alliance); and Lori McKewen (RN, Complex Case Manager, WellMed Medical Management).

In addition to asking questions of the panelists, we shared info and answered each other's questions as well. On the feedback survey, I indicated that I thought the conference could use more of this peer sharing, since we have our own lessons learned and war stories. Among the information I provided was some of what I've learned from reading Dr. Xavier Amador's book I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help! and viewing his LEAP Institute website (which I had learned about on the NAMI forums).

Gary Barg, editor-in-chief of Today's Caregiver and founder of Caregiver.com, emceed. He joined Dr. James Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, CAP, in professional and family caregiver conversations. (Huysman had given "Caregiver Standards and Practice Interventions" during the morning's Professional Track.) For a taste of what these conferences are like, here's a portion of Gary's speech from an event in Nashville last year. More videos are on the Fearless Caregiver Channel.

Lunch -- a very nice salad, sandwich, and dessert -- was included, and coffee was free-flowing throughout. Otherwise, I scoured a room filled with tables staffed by the Alzheimer's & Dementia Resource Center; BioDerm, Inc.; Caregiver.com; Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling; Florida Medicaid Specialists & Paralegal Services, Inc.; Horizon Bay; Humana MarketPOINT; Jewish Family Services of Greater Orlando; Mental Health Association of Central Florida; Molift, Inc.; NAMI Greater Orlando; National Association of Social Workers; The Scooter Store; Senior Resource Alliance; Share the Care, Inc.; Spring Hills Home Care Services; Spring Hills Lake Mary; VA Caregiver Support Program; VITAS Innovative Hospice Care; WellMed Network of Florida, Inc.; and the Well Spouse Association support for spousal caregivers (including same-sex partners; I found that out because I asked).

During the break, I picked up two copies of Barg's book The Fearless Caregiver: How to Get the Best Care for Your Loved One and Still Have a Life of Your Own, one to give as a gift.

Tidbits that I remember:

"The two most important three-word sentences: (a) 'I love you,' and (b) 'Who's your supervisor?'"

"You can fire your doctor."

(I've put those into operation.)

Journaling for caregivers is something I've also put into practice, especially since journaling comes naturally to me. In addition to being a tool for self-reflection, it's a way for me to document what I observe.

I live 90-odd miles from Orlando, but someone mentioned that one could have dental work done at a dental school there, to save costs. A $6,000 procedure had been performed at a cost of $150.

More tidbits:

--> The importance of registering with county emergency services and special needs shelters.

--> The importance of maintaining a personal/professional relationship with one's pharmacist.

--> Finding out care management, case management, and outreach programs provided by one's insurance carrier.

Now to process and use this wealth of information.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

The Hayride Went Down to Georgia

Georgians are experiencing a trust problem that starts in the governor's office. Sound like any governments we know?

It says a lot that folks in Georgia are asking Deal to listen to Bobby Jindal's advice.

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Since we like credibility gaps here...

Keller, TX recently tried to pass a tax referendum to raise property taxes to cover the impending budget shortfall in their school district. The news was flush with horror stories of how there would be massive layoffs if the referendum didn't pass. It just so happens that Keller's school tax rate is the highest in Tarrant County and one of the highest in the state. Voters said, "Oh hell no." to the referendum. Turns out things aren't as bad as Keller made them look. They managed to save slightly less than half of the positions they said they'd have to cut. Now I'm not saying 122 employees from a district of about 1,000 employees isn't a massive layoff but if you're going to put your nuts up on the table and say "Do this or else..." you lose a ton of credibility if the "or else..." doesn't happen.

While this is good news for the employees who will not be cut, this whole referendum stinks of fear-mongering. The only explanation of additional funding Keller received was "$4.8 million in federal money." Yeah, because districts don't know what federal dollars they'll get beforehand. Look, things are bad for Keller. They are facing layoffs. They are facing a budget crunch. Making things look as bad as possible to get more tax money was entirely unnecessary and will just make it that much harder for school districts to pass similar referendums throughout the state.

Black Jersey

In 2007, the University of Georgia Bulldawgs football squad beat the Florida Gators in Jacksonville. The next week at home against Auburn, The 'Dawgs took the field in traditional helmets, but wearing black jerseys. The fans in Sanford Stadium "blacked out" the game. It was one of the more stunning visuals ever associated with Georgia football. Once the Dawgs beat Auburn badly in that game, Georgia fans thought the black jerseys were one of Coach Mark Richt's best ideas ever.

I got to see them in person when Georgia destroyed Hawai'i in the Sugar Bowl. It looked great. At the time, I thought a new tradition was brewing.

Then came the 2008 Alabama blackout. Dawgs got destroyed by the Nick Saban coached Tide. In 2009, Georgia donned Grambling State-like black helmets against the Florida game and also lost badly. Fans wanted any uniform changes banned, never again to haunt the team.

I can't agree. The Black just looked too good. On the other hand, Georgia's worn red and white and silver britches through plenty of football losses and wins. What should be done with the Black Jerseys?

Mr. Sanchez solves this problem forever.

Beat Florida, you can wear the black jerseys. Win the SEC East, you can wear the black jerseys. Make a BCS bowl, and you can wear the black jerseys.

That's the answer. That should be the tradition.

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Peach Fail

I have never understood Georgia's inability to come up with an aesthetically pleasing license plate design. They were fine back when I started driving, but change after change has led to this ridiculousness.

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Ruffled Feathers in Savannah

Looks like the Wilmington Island henhouse needs to call up the 7th Ward Rooster and his crew to find out how they handle up on this business downtown.

(HT: Peach Pundit)

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Real Crime-Fighting

NOPD finally comes up with an effective crime-fighting initiative. Bait bikes for opportunistic thieves to steal.

Every district should dedicate at least one team to do something like this every day for the next year, at least. While some folks will poo-poo the idea that going after bike thieves will cut down on other crimes, you have to remember that bike theft is a huge problem in this city in its own right. High profile initiatives to leave bikes unlocked and then arrest the thieves may make a few scoundrels think twice about a crime of opportunity, and that's a good thing.

Just wait until they figure out they could follow the thief for less than an hour and probably come across additional criminal activity.

And hopefully, this will work so well that NOPD will figure out how to use undercover officers as "mugger bait" in areas experiencing upticks in robberies. It is easier to catch a thief when you've got them on camera in front of officers specifically on the lookout.

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Preservation Starts at Home

Owen Courreges at Uptown Messenger points out the good one individual can do to make a place better.

I absolutely respect the impact that just one citizen can have on a place. But let us never forget how well a place can be preserved when a city's preservation initiatives are citizen oriented, progress-prone, and helpful.

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Rogue Secrets

Cliff reviews C. Ray Nagin's opus without even reading it.

I'm thinking about buying it just to play the "Rogue Secrets" game: where you put up a quote from C. Ray's or Sarah Palin's books and ask readers to guess which author it came from.

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Criminal Justice 101

Essential reading from Radley Balko at Huffington Post:

Criminal Justice Myths 1
Criminal Justice Myths 2
Criminal Justice Myths 3

I would say that these items need to be read by every individual in the American criminal justice system, but I know they won't be. Further, I understand that many individuals in the criminal justice system will find ways to rationalize each and every one of these examples.

So, instead of that, these items need to be read by every American likely voter. And every American likely to spend any time on a jury, anywhere.

Though the traditional criminal justice system response to juries behaving such ways would likely lead to the end of the American trial-by-jury system, and authoritarian advocates would define such behavior as "turning criminals loose" as opposed to seeing the widespread lack of confidence in the system we have.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," - Thomas Jefferson, and he was talking about more than just paying attention to possible terrorists and criminals in the area around you. It is time civil libertarians started going to Police Academy en masse instead of law school.

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Gifts of Various Sorts

Written in response to Sunday Scribblings prompt 273: "Give."

1. The book that keeps on giving



I've just received the paperback version of 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake, also known as "quakebook." This project began with a tweet from @ourmaninabiko shortly after the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. In a little more than a week (March 18 to March 25), over 100 people made this book of raw, first-hand experiences in Japan a reality.

I'd been following the tweets (on this list) and had watched this project, which appeared first as an e-book, unfolding. Every penny from revenues goes directly to the Japanese Red Cross.

Don't let its slim 95 pages fool you. This is powerful stuff, best read in small doses. A copy will also go to a dear friend of mine, who has made 20 trips to Japan over the course of 40 years.

2. Giving care



"Convention preparations" for me normally means a science fiction convention, but this one is different. I now have my ticket to attend a Fearless Caregiver Conference, one of several given throughout the country.

3. Gifted with a contributor's copy and a review



My poem "The Last Dragon Slayer" appears in Mythic Delirium #24.

Alexandra Seidel reviews the issue in Fantastique Unfettered:

-----excerpt start-----

"[A] venture into lightheartedness" is what editor Mike Allen calls this latest issue of Mythic Delirium. The poetry assembled here certainly makes for an excellent adventure, and lightheartedness often plays a part, but even so, all these lyrical quests have a weighty center.

The best example for this is probably 'The Last Dragon Slayer' by Elissa Malcohn, a poem in eight parts, eight parts of tale that is nothing if not epic. Each part is in itself a poem and comes to you each in a different form. This poem of a dragon and questing dragon slayers --while it does many other things--clearly acknowledges the longing for myth, the longing for adventure in all of us.

-----excerpt end-----

I only recently discovered this comment, left back in March by alana (#17) on The Book Smugglers: "I’m all about the strong female protagonist. Right now I'm in the middle of Elissa Malcohn's Deviations (#1) and I’m loving it."

She was responding to author Neesha Meminger's terrific guest blog on her inspirations and influences.

4. Gifts in the making

Inspired by comments from crich70 and astra over at the MobileRead Forums, I've assembled an Omnibus CD of my Deviations series:



The books remain in separate files. E-book file formats are the same as those available for free download on my website (which should be accessible again on July 1; meanwhile, click here for a list of free download sites): EPUB (For EPUB-compatible software, including iPad, Kobo, Nook, updated Sony Reader, and Stanza); HTML (to be read in your browser); LIT (for Microsoft Reader); LRF (Sony Reader compatible); MOBI (For Mobipocket Reader devices, including Kindle); PDB (For eReader, Palm, Phone, PDA, etc.); PDF (Adobe Acrobat file, tagged to reflow on different-sized screens); and PRC (also for Mobipocket Reader devices, including Kindle). The autographed CD also contains brochures with book summaries and excerpts.

5. Gifts of nature



This ibis joined three others for a swoop past the house, and rested in a tree across the street as its buddies moved on. It caught up with them several minutes later.

Eudocimus albus, Family Threskiornithidae. Says eNature, "Around their colonies, ibises eat crabs and crayfish, which in turn devour quantities of fish eggs. By keeping down the numbers of crayfish, the birds help increase fish populations. In addition, their droppings fertilize the water, greatly increasing the growth of plankton, the basic food of all marsh life. White Ibises gather at dusk in spectacular roosts, long lines of birds streaming in from all directions."



I watched this sunset from my local community park, shortly before a storm blew in.

6. Gift of music

As soon as I saw the Sunday Scribblings prompt, "Give" by Missing Persons began playing in my head and formed the "theme music" for this entry. I'd bought their 1984 cassette "Rhyme & Reason" based solely on that song.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

It Is Your Destiny

Is there anyone better suited to be Sarah Palin's running mate than former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin?

Even the quotes from their books sound alike.

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Jeff Skinner in Vegas: The Inside Story

Quick question to all those reading this: what had you accomplished by the time you were 19? No, figuring out the best beer pong strategy for next Friday night does not count.  Keep thinking.  Do you have something? Is it really good? Well how's this for perspective: by the time Jeff Skinner turned 19, he'd been drafted into the NHL, played in the All-Star Game, played an entire NHL season as the youngest player in the league, scored 63 points and won the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year.  Yeah.  So about your accomplishment...well we'll just move on.

Caniacs were already beyond thrilled to have Skinner as part of the organization and moments like Wednesday night only heightened SkinnerMania in the Triangle.  Hockey fans are crazy for all things Skinner and if there's one thing we value here at the Siren, it's giving the people what they want....even if they are completely made up.  So it gives me great pleasure to announce that the Siren has obtained an exclusive, detailed and completely made up report of Jeff's time in Las Vegas.  Excited? Yeah me too! And wait, the best part is yet to come. This exclusive, detailed and completely made up report of Jeff's time in Las Vegas is written by none other than Jeff Skinner himself! *insert girlish squealing here*  Alright settle down now. Without further ado, here is Jeff's essay about his time in Vegas.  

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That's me!

How I Spent My Time in Vegas

By: Jeff Jeffrey Jeff Skinner

Hi! It's Jeff. I'm in Las Vegas and it's so cool here!!  There are all these lights and realy big hotels and I have the biggest bathroom ever! It's even bigger than the suana sauna (that's a tricky word!) that we went...oh. Mom says I'm not allowed to talk about that.  Yeah I brought my whole family with me because Mom said I couldn't come to "Sin City" (she always says it like it did something naughty) without them here and I really wanted to come and so I had to let them and they're staying at the palms too. They aren't all staying in my room though because I'm a big kid now and I'm not scared without them.  But we have one of those doors in the middle of the room just in case they need me for sumthin. I also brought Jamie with me since mom and dad both said I could bring a freind. I like Bainer. He's fun.

The Playboy Pool at the Palms

The hotel is really neat. You can order roomservice whenever you want! I had chicken nuggets last night real late. They were tasty and shaped like the little bunnies I sometimes see on my brother's maguhzines.  Me and Bainer also had Fruit Loops for brekfast on Wedesday.  Shhh...don't tell coach mo-we're not supposed to eat that stuff at home. There's also a pool here. I wanted to go but Mom said I couldn't becuz it was full of bunnies. I don't get it. I like bunnies-they're fluffy. But I didn't think they liked to swim.  

We got here on Tuesday and then I went to talk to some reporters. It was ok.  Most of them are nice. They kept asking me about this kid named Justin. I looked but I didn't see his name on the list of people nomininimated.  Grown-ups are wierd weird wierd After I finished talking to the reporters I really wanted to ride these curvy boats in the river inside one of the hotels (how did they get a river INSIDE the hotel?) but no one wanted to come with me.  Not even Bainer and he promised to hang out with me and not go to the casino becuze I cant. Instead he wanted to go to see the X-Men. I realy like the X-Men Wolverine is my favorite when I was a little kid I had a backpack with his picture on it but I dont use it any more.  Mom and dad agreed to let us go by our selves as long as we were carefull when we crossed the street.

But when we got there there weren't any people our age. It was all these grown-up girls like my mom's age. I asked Bainer if the X-men were coming later and then this lady asked us if we were lost and then Jamie realized our tickets were for something called Men of X which I guess isnt the same thing as the X-Men so we had to leave. I was real sad but Bainer promised the next day would be more fun. I wasnt sure becuz I had to wear a suit and I dont like suits.

"The forward goes around the back of the
net and shoots the puck through the
five hole."

On Wednsday I woke up real tired I didnt sleep good becuz I was nervous about the wards cerimony. But mom made me get up way to early so bainer and me got to go to the acwarium where Dori and Nemo live! It was fun. They let me touch a starfish and I saw some dolfins. Then I went back to the hotel to get dressed in my grown-up suit.  I had trouble tieing my tie, but I got it. Im glad the 17 people picked the regular suit the other ones were kind of weird looking and one of them was itchy.



Hi Gammie!

 All of my brothers and sisters were sitting with my mom and dad and Bainer and me. We were all really nervus. But when they said I won we were all real excited. Mom hugged me so tight I couldnt breathe anymore! The trofy they gave me was really heavy and when I took out the paper with everyones name on it, I couldn't read it because Bainer had colored on it! Then I had to talk to the reporters again no one talked about that Justin guy so I guess he didn't win.  Mom took a picture of me with the big trophy for my Gammie.

I couldnt go to the grown-up party since they only had grown up fruit punch and games I cant play.  But we still had fun we went and saw the Blue Men. They played these giant drums and got covered in paint. Do they know the green men in Vancouver? I bet they're cousins. Bainer and me got to stay up real late and watch movies (but mom made dad take the remote away when we found a channel called "payperview") and I had extra dessert at dinner. But I couldn't eat out of the trophy since mom said it would be to messy.

We had to go home the next day but I got to have smiley face pancakes for breakfast so it was ok. They were real tasty and I got to have chocolate milk with them to. Yum!  I had a lot of fun in Vegas and it was real special to win the Calder Trophy. My face hurts from smiling for so many pictures. I kinda wish I coulda played with those big gumball machines in the cahseno but dad said maybe next time. Does that mean I get to do this every year?!

The Intervention

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone is absolutely right to bring up the flip-flop of pro-war right wingers, as they're now turning on international interventions they couldn't get enough of when a Republican was in the White House. Though be assured, now that President Obama has declared that Americans will be drawing down troops in Afganistan, even the newly reenergized isolationist wing of the right will hammer him on tactics as if the tactics of the last 10 years didn't exist.

But this is nothing new. The GOP is able to flip-flop at will over American wars without any reasonable accountability because they are so good at marketing their changing position. Either way they go, they are "on the side of Americans," at least on TV or radio.

They loved Iraq War I, but were split on Somalia before they were against it. The GOP almost completely bailed on the incredibly successful US military involvement in the Balkans, which American political culture rarely references. With that one, they questioned every item of American priority from why we were getting involved to the open ended mission to how much it would cost the US taxpayer. At one point, there was even legislation: the House passed a bill not to fund the Balkans operation, while in the Senate

Another resolution sponsored by a group of Republicans led by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas would support the troops but not the President's decision to send them.

Does that sound like GOP behavior from the last decade? What would have been said about actions like that if Democrats had been the ones taking them? Luckily, we have that answer, and it is maddening to critics and opponents of the Iraq war, the Afganistan engagement, and the whole partisan tone of war politics during the Bush II years. It didn't matter if a position was right or wrong, supportive or non-supportive, or based on tactics alone: if it wasn't part of the GOP talking points, it was WRONG, not only WRONG but AMERICAN-SOLDIER-HATING, FLAG BURNING, TRAITORS SHOULD BE BURNED AT THE STAKE wrong, and that's how every public debate was framed. Taibbi sums up these feelings well:

Six or seven or eight years ago, I seem to remember, anyone who even hinted that not using military force to resolve any foreign policy dispute, no matter how trivial or how imaginary the justification, was to be considered a traitor.

Bill O'Reilly drew a direct line in response to Dick Durbin's equally ridiculous hyperbole (the Democrats and the left, never able to miss an opportunity to make a right-winger's point for them, only encouraged the bad behavior). Or we were led to believe that actually examining the war was akin to surrender. And all this went on for years, every day, every hour on Fox News and Talk Radio.

It even continued into the Obama Presidency, with right-wingers, hawks, and Republicans breathlessly anticipating American military surrender or defeat, now that a Democratic President was in the White House.

Then a funny thing happened. Obama called the right-wing bluff and went all in with the Cheney/McChrystal strategy. Y'all want to keep going in Afganistan? Let's really spool things up there and see what you do.

From a purely tactical standpoint, it still wasn't enough. Not nearly. We simply don't have the manpower or materiel or international support or national popular committment to "win" in Afganistan the way many Americans envision "winning" a war. And that cultural tactical confusion is what's been used by partisan politicians since the first troops showed up there.

But if you're trying to find a political solution to end the war - and I'm talking about here in the United States, not in Afganistan - you have to do some things that change the national conversation on a fundamental level. The President did the only thing he could plausably do considering the political climate: bulk up the forces with as few troops as possible to end this thing as close to our terms and cultural needs as possible. Work away from a goal to acheive a goal. Which is what is happening.

Though, thanks to Bush's strategic blunders of not sending adequate manpower or materiel at the onset, and the recent success against Osama Bin Laden personally, popular opinion has turned to ending the wars sooner rather than later. A financial crisis at home is driving home the point. And now GOP Presidential candidates are starting to use the machinery of right-wing marketing to advocate ending the war and bringing the troops home.

It is hard to call a political opponent out for "surrendering" when your stated positions advocate an even quicker exit - an exit that for a decade has been demonized by the right - when said political opponent is delivering not only on his campaign promises but yours. This gives Obama tremendous political capital in the face of defense contractor interests and neoconservatives that the left was simply unable or unwilling to manufacture on their own accord for the past decade. The national narrative has turned from "when will the Democrats make our brave troops surrender" to "how fast can we bring our brave troops home?"

In 2 years, President Obama has reconfigured the terms of the entire national-security discussion. That's something the liberals and progressives and true believers were wholly unable and unprepared to do for the last decade. Working away from a goal to acheive a goal.

Which brings me to the Libya intervention. US involvement is a huge gamble here. The Administration's going at it without Congressional authorization, and our Consitutional law professor President basically throwing that authorization need back into the faces of Republicans in Congress, is confusing. Why would such a deliberate administration act in such ways? Especially when Obama's stated position on Executive authority is so well known.

The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Of course, there are bipartisan internationalist members of the US Senate working to acquire Congressional authorization for the Libya action, even as isolationist Republican and anti-war Democratic members of the US House work to defund it (the old Balkan War trick).

This seems to be the par-for-the-course behavior. Isolationists and anti-war folks will get their voices heard, but the majority will back the Administration and the Libya operation will continue. But this President is despised among the Tea Party wing, who appear unafraid to salt the earth to keep the President in check. Add to that the rage of the anti-warrriors of the Democratic left, and you've got a good sized chunk of the Congress. Even if they aren't successful at defunding the Libya operation, they're going to want revenge for Obama's marginalization of Congress.

This became clear to me when I read the quote from Senator John McCain regarding how such behavior affected the Bush administration, and how it could affect future GOP Presidents.

"We were right to condemn this behavior then, and we would be wrong to practice it now ourselves, simply because a leader of the opposite party occupies the White House," he said. "Someday, a Republican will again occupy the White House, and the President may need to commit U.S. armed forces to hostilities.

"So if my Republican colleagues are indifferent to how their actions would affect this President, I would urge them to think seriously about how a vote to cut off funding for this military operation could come back to haunt a future President when the shoe is on the other foot," he continued.

Think about this politically: Obama has stated a desire for war powers to require more robust Presidential approval. Many Republicans oppose him to the point of distraction. The President could have gone to Congress for the Libya operation (especially when all the GOP folks currently complaining were calling on him to intervene) and recieved Congressional authorization in a heartbeat.

He chose to pick a fight with this Congress over the Executive powers to use the military, in the most in-your-face way possible. If nothing legislatively happens, the status quo remains.

But what if the anti-Obama GOP team up with the anti-war Democrats to propose legislation specifically limiting a President's authority to engage in military adventures? What if they amend the War Powers Act to be more specific, and more in tune with Obama's stated Constitutional beliefs?

That means this President could topple Quadaffi WHILE creating political conditions necessary to legislatively restrain a President's future ability to get the nation into wars BY engaging in a conflict with minimal exposure and cost to American troops by emboldening our NATO allies. This could be some Michael Corleone level plans.

Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. But this President has already demonstrated a willingness to work away from a goal to acheive a goal, and an ability to allow American popular opinion to shift of its own accord. We'll see if anything really comes from this, but it sure does make for interesting viewing.

Update: The votes are in, and an big majority of Congress is standing up to the President on Libya. They're even entertaining a notion later that will "defund" American operations, except for search and rescue, intelligence gathering, refueling, and logistical operations. You know, the kind of operations that pretty much define the current US involvement in Libya.

So the mission continues as planned. Anti-Obama Republicans and anti-war Democrats are now working together against American adventurism abroad. Wonder what comes next?

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2011-06-23 Shuffle (by hurricane_mario)

About: Let's play a game.
1. Turn shuffle (of your entire music library) on
2. Start by playing a song of your choice
3. Save every song that plays onto a playlist, until you reach sub-74 minutes (If the next song puts it over 74 it's not part of the playlist)
4. Upload (link in comments or on your own blog)

That's what I did here. It was my old library on my desktop which has not been touched since March 30th. It has 94,510 songs totalling nearly 600GB and 287 days of playtime. It worked out pretty well. For some reason all of the songs seemed to have a dark and mysterious feeling. I guess I just like that kind of music.

Track List:
1. Yngwie Malmsteen - As Above, So Below
Well this was vocalist Jeff Scott Soto's debut, who has since gone on to sing in bands such as Talisman, W.E.T., and the most well-known being Trans-siberian orchestra. He started when Malmsteen was equally unknown (And arguably still is... he was not even on Rolling Stone's top 100 guitarists... I hate that magazine). It's the only song with vocals on this album, Rising Force. The vocals are just so amazing as well as the guitar solos.

2. Nocternity - Onyx
Never really listened to this band. It's some brutal, raw black metal but theres some nice melodies to be found.

3. The Meads of Asphodel - Weeping Tears of Angel Light
It starts with an 8-bit sounding melody and goes into some decidedly solid melodic black metal.

4. Finch - Mad World (Acoustic Cover)
An emo band with a really nice acoustic cover of this song.

5. Paolo Nutini - Million Faces
Some indie artist I had no idea I had, but I like it alot.

6. Beatallica - Ce So Precisa Sangue (Portuguese)
So this a band I've followed from near their beginnings. They gained popularity due to the fact they do Beatles covers in the style of metallica. They are so good, even Lars Ulrich of metallica encouraged them to continue. This is the song "All You Need is Love" and as you know, Beatles had all kinds of different languages in their song. So Beatallica released a mega-single with the song in about 15 different languages. :) I don't know which metallica song they are spoofing off-hand, though...

7. Ian Stuart And Rough Justice - Having A Good Time
This shuffle continued to get more obscure. Here's an unknown white power rock band. Not sure what more to say.

8. Ring of Fire - You were there
I'm glad itunes picked another one of my favorite vocalists. Unfortunately I had this album in really low quality, but whatever. This is a nice ballad. Mark Boals was ironically also in Yngwie Malmsteen, for three albums I believe. As well as Avantasia, Revolution Renaissance, way too many others to list.

9. Devin Townsend - Life
So itunes crashed here. I hate this program but it remains the best music organizer. I love how it automatically organizes it into subfolders when I add it. Anyway, this is the album it had picked, I'm not sure about the song. But I skimmed through the whole album and I loved this song instantly. Devin Townsend made way better albums when he was on drugs...

10. The Beloved - The Sun Rising
I got this from some compilation. Techincally called "Synthpop" it's just really chill and relaxed.

11. Blutengel - Schmerz 1 - Liebe
German darkwave band, but this song serves more as an interlude than a song. But I like it.

12. Senmuth - Indriyas
Unknown solo artist who primarily makes egyptian and ambient music. Well, that's what this is. Yet another dark, ambient, chillout type song.

13. Johansson - Fading away
I swear the itunes shuffle algorithm is alot smarter than you'd think. This is the solo project of a keyboardist who is best known for Stratovarius, but was in Yngwie Malmsteen's band from 1983 to 1989 and was in fact on track 1 of this playlist. And it's yet another ballad.

14. Vader - Nomad
Here's a well known death metal band. From a live album. I never really got into them but I should.

15. Joe Jackson - Fools in Love
He's best known for songs like "Stepping Out" and "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" but this song more resembles Ska. But again I like it.

16. Talisman - System Of Power
Hey guess who sings here. JEFF SCOTT SOTO. Out of nearly 100,000 songs here's the third song (out of 15, not counting track 1) in this playlist with a member of Malmsteen's band in it. Coincidence? I think not. I think Apple programmed iTunes with a human brain and are preparing to take over the world. >:D

Mediafire Download

Please support the musicians that spent so much time, effort, and money to make this great music for you - Buy their albums and go to their concerts (if possible)!
("Donate" button in the top right if you want more playlists!)

$64,000 Question

So you're telling me a couple that makes $64,000 a year, including Social Security benefits, might qualify for Medicare and that's a bad thing?

I'll admit that might be a little bit high. Median household income in the United States is around $45K a year, so I guess folks who earn around that number might consider themselves "middle class." But with the price of food and gasoline going up, the value of homes decreasing, and the astronomical costs of medicine in this country, maintaining a household of two + individuals at $64,000 a year isn't a walk in the park.

Hit with almost any major medical emergency, that $64,000 can vanish quickly.

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Excellent Police Work

At least this Police Officer was polite when he arrested a woman in her own front yard for videotaping a traffic stop.

I do not believe that this is what we maintain a police force for in this country.

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Bipartisan Government Spending

I guess it is OK to make a case for government investment in infrastructure if the cities you help are in Georgia.

Those of us who have lived in New Orleans for the past many years know how easily that line of thinking gets turned on its head.

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Culture as a Weapon

Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland just a week after sports violence in Vancouver is making me wonder what progress resistant traits exist in culturally Christian nations that encourage this type of behavior.

Because, if our overblown national narrative of the last decade is to be believed, the only reason individuals in Muslim countries participate in violence is because of their religion. If that is true, we should employ the same lens to examine this widespread violent behavior in Christian and culturally Christian populations. If we did, I'm sure the Congressional hearings on Irish radicalization will be very uncomfortable for some.

Or maybe, propensity to violence is a human trait we see in some measure in all cultures. The only antidote isn't to change religion or national boundary or whatever issue is on the demagogue's list of rationalizations, but to seek justice as an antidote to reprisal.

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Moar Thuggery Please!

Those union thugs in Wisconsin are now accused of attacking Tea Party fists with their faces.

Really, though, I'm sure this episode will show up all over right-wingistan as TP types getting "attacked" by union folks. But as a flag owner myself, stringing a flag between two people to cover up someone already standing there is picking a fight behavior. You do not behave that way.

I'm sure we'll hear more. It will be amazing to see what Andrew Breitbart does with any video.

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Glow, Baby, Glow!

I guess the right-wing energy "experts" were right - nuclear power is just as safe as oil production in this country!

When are we going to have a serious national conversation about the dangers of our high energy consumption? It would be one thing if policy could be discussed with a deep national understanding that fossil fuel and nuclear energy production came with serious human and environmental costs, and the subsidies we make available to providers of cheap energy.

It is another thing entirely to have that conversation with blinders on, which is our current state of affairs.

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Misinformation

On Sunday, John Stewart went on Fox News and claimed that Fox viewers are the "most consistently misinformed media viewers."

Politifact looks at some polling data and calls this claim false. (HT: Andrew Sullivan.)

I read the Politifact article and I have only one word: bullshit.

The devil is in the details, folks. While Fox viewers have demonstrated a high capacity for answering questions like "who is the Vice President," "who is the British Prime Minister," and "which political party controls the US House of Representatives" that wasn't the kind of thing Stewart was talking about.

These are all current events questions, and those only tell part of the story of viewers being misinformed. To gauge the true level of mininformed viewer, you have to go into the narratives.

Questions that may prove Stewart correct, on the other hand:

1. Barack Obama was born in what country?
2. What religion does Barack Obama follow?
3. Has Barack Obama increased federal income taxes?
4. Did Barack Obama sign into law the bank bailout, known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program?
5. Is the Dow Jones Industrial Average higher or lower than when Barack Obama took office?
6. How many women is New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner accused of having sex with?
7. Radical Islamic fundamentalists are planning to build a victory mosque at what location in the United States of America?
8. How many state governments operate under Sharia law?
9. How many United States Supreme Court Justices are Muslims?
10. True or False: The majority of United States Democratic office holders are members of the Communist Party.
11. In what Midwestern state did public sector union members riot when their Republican governor eliminated their right to collectively bargain in early 2011?
12. How many states have outlawed Christmas-themed displays on private property?
13. Which United States President famously included Death Panels in their proposed health care overhaul?
14. What foreign nation did Sarah Palin claim to see from her house?
15. Would a Federal income tax rate of 37% be an increase or a decrease for most Americans?
16. What year did the United States Supreme Court overturn Barack Obama's ban on gun ownership?
17. Earlier this year, Barack Obama sided with violent Muslim Brotherhood protesters to overthrow the pro-American leader of what Middle Eastern nation?
18. Operatives of ACORN were convicted of voter fraud in how many states?
19. Which former United States President signed a law granting amnesty to illegal immigrants if they entered the country before 1982?
20. In what year did Barack Obama sign a Presidential Order creating the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)?

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Professionalism

Or not. I'll leave this here without further comment.

Because, really, what can I say?

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Heckuva Job Moment

This massive Federal blunder belongs to the higher-ups at the ATF and the Department of Justice. Folks have stuck the Obama administration with a lot of BS over the years, but they're going to have to own this one, hard.

I know they were trying to do something bigger, but you have to pull the plug before it gets out of control on this level. This is stunning in scope and breadth of failure, on a scale with Michael Brown's leadership of FEMA in August and September of 2005.

And now that Weiner is out of the news, I expect we'll hear about this in a big way.

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Planes of the South

OH NOES! Those Dirty Southerners are TAKIN' URR JOBS!

That explains, in one absurd op-ed, why so many people in this country have such a low opinion of unions. Here's a hint: if you are a pro-organized labor writer, and your purpose is to encourage sympathy for American workers, you don't do that by demonizing other American workers to make your case. And if you intend to make the company look like they're engaged in nefarious dealings, you don't make their free-market case for them in the most free-market major American news daily.

I know it might not seem this way to a big Chicago union lawyer, but we do a few things down South more complex than picking cotton. For example, Kyle Wingfield at the AJC picked apart this ridiculous screed of rhetorical sleight-of-hand, false choices, bald sectionalism, and inaccurate equivalencies. I don't always agree with real conservatives like Wingfield, but he makes some pretty good points in his takedown.

But let's be honest, he could go much, much further. And if he was so inclined, he could go at this from the left or the middle. Here's how:

Boeing is one of the most heavily subsidized corporations in the United States of America. They get billions in tax dollars and tax breaks. Hell, our government sends money overseas in loans so other countries and foreign companies will use those dollars to buy our Boeing products. Then there are the subsidies for the airlines they build these planes for.

I know it isn't helpful to the unions to say this, but the only reason these American workers have jobs at this particular plant doing this particular thing is because the industry they work in is heavily subsidized by tax dollars paid by other American workers - including workers from the South. It damn sure doesn't have anything to do with the skill, work ethic, pay grade, or experience of some American workers at the expense of others.

And that's before you start to consider the state and local subsidies that keep a manufacturing center running. There's a lot of local political connections involved in protecting the facility that currently exists, and there's a lot of local and political connections in developing the facility on the drawing board. The states and cities will be throwing taxpayer dollars at Boeing to keep them around.

Of course, that means every single one of these jobs is vulnerable to political conditions instead of market conditions. If we didn't have so much subsidy, we wouldn't need so many planes. If we don't need so many planes...

So right off the bat, we can see why this is such an important fight to special interests, and why that requires involvement of narratives from the right and the left. Some of the most vicious fights are the ones where localities are feuding over billions in government subsidies. And to protect those subsidies, they'll pull out all manner of completely empty partisan rhetoric. This ain't about "The American Worker" or "The Free Market" at all - and anyone who says so is just whistlin' Dixie.

Yes, I know that stings. Especially to those of you who may have bought in to one narrative or another. But government subsidy dollars find their way into high-priced union lawyers' bank accounts just as easily as they find their way into corporate profits. That's why that whole WSJ op-ed, or any of the pro-orgainzed-labor press on this issue never talked about just how heavily South Carolina will be subsidizing the Boeing plant in Charleston.

That really sticks in my craw, too. Do you know how useful that news would be in exposing a whole lot of Southern Republicans as fiscally fraudulent in their "conservative" rhetoric? But the organized labor interests demand we leave that arrow in the quiver, because bringing it to light may invite comparisons to how heavily Washington State subsidizes their Boeing plants. And Lord help us if anyone asks about national tax subsidies supporting airplane manufacturing and the airline industry! That just might start a conversation about why us taxpayers are subsidizing businesses in the billions while they keep declaring and delivering profits to their shareholders.

As for workers who can manufacture airplanes (no matter what state they call home), they'd be better off, with more secure jobs, working in an industry that is more sustainable economically and doesn't exist solely off the largesse of government subsidies.

I've never done anything as complicated as manufacturing an airplane, but I'm guessing that's a fairly specialized trade that requires some high level of skill. And while they've worked really hard and have earned their money and benefits within the system they had access to - I hate to be the one to bring up reality here - we won't be able to sustain the airplane manufacturing industry at current levels for much longer.

Petroleum costs are only going up. That means costs of jet fuel are only going up, which will make air travel much more expensive. You already see where this is going, but let's finish the trip. While the government will continue to subsidize the airline and airplane manufacturing industry robustly for a while, at some point that will become unsustainable economically and politically. Especially with one group of folks scaring the crap out of citizens about what a bad idea it is for the government to spend money.

Eventually, American culture, transportation, and tax priorities will shift, and it doesn't matter if you live in Washington State or South Carolina, there are going to be a whole lot less airplanes that need to be made, and a whole lot less subsidies to support their manufacture.

Alternately, what will need to be made, by highly skilled workers trained in manufacturing durable items with extremely high standards, are items to support alternative energy, green technology, high-speed rail, and mass transit. Who knows, there are some really nerdy types that want to get us back to dirigibles (and yes, I'm a nerdy type and I think that would be awesome). But all of those things are going to need to be built. The next generation of aircraft utilizing lighter but stronger materials to become as efficient as possible are going to need to be built. And whatever new technologies come along and require fabrication are going to need to be built.

That's a lot of stuff to be built. And the folks who are going to be needed to build it are the folks who are currently building high tech products like the Dreamliners. That's good news for the workers, but bad news for the status quo that unions want to protect. Maybe we could get to building that stuff sooner if we started turning off the subsidy tap that's keeping our economy from innovating.

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Everybody's Doing It

Gerrymandering, I mean redistricting, is going on across the country. You'll notice how little the actual opinions of the voters comes into play in this analysis. The only time that matters is if the voters get angry at blatant redistricting overreach. Everything else makes it sound like a bunch of horse tradin'.

And, no, I still don't think Democrats will win control of Congress for the next decade, precisely for this reason.

(HT: Peach Pundit.)

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Play On

I guess we can't even watch a 22 year old from Northern Ireland turn in one of a sport's performances of a lifetime without a bunch of Americans acting like spoiled children having a temper tantrum.

First of all, I hope the broadcaster learns that this is what happens when you try to please that loud but small population of thin-skinned, overreactive, and hyperdefensive grown up American babies who mask their lack of faith in God and Country by wrapping themselves in a flag. They'd rather spend their time yelling at others for some imagined slight against God and Patriotism than realize they're watching something special happen on live television. You will not be able to please these people until the only golfers invited to participate in the US Open renounce their home nations and recite odes to American exceptionalism before teeing off. You should not apologize to these people, you should tell them to STFU because that's what needs to happen to folks who get offended over some B__. S__.

Second, WTF are you doing with that kind of intro anyway? You know how you lead into a sporting event like the US Open? With pictures of the golf course, highlight reels from the week, and maybe some shots of kids having a great time in the summer. It ain't like Congressional isn't scenic.

Maybe some production assistant got confused. The US Open Championship is not like a World Series, or Super Bowl, or BCS National Championship. It is an open golf tournament. I've always found the US Open so rightly culturally named because, you know, the United States is in the "Free World," we're the "melting pot," and we have a Statue of Liberty to welcome the huddled masses of the world. That the United States should host an Open as one of the sport's 4 major events, where anyone who qualifies in the sport can be eligible to participate, with winners determined by the skill of their game, is incredibly appropriate.

The event itself is exceptional. The players are exceptional. The course is exceptional and, on Sunday the storyline was exceptional. The background for the course is the Capitol Dome in Washington. People who watch golf on television were tuning in because of those things.

Where, exactly, was the need to add any rah-rah to the stupid TV intro? Hell, that's when the majority of Americans watching the event were making themselves a sandwich. How did you screw this up? It isn't like more people were going to tune in due to your "savvy" marketing, or somebody would be flipping channels and think "Oh, the Pledge of Allegiance, I should watch golf on TV for my country."

Third, the superstar under the microscope Sunday, like last year's US Open champion, was not from the United States. Just a quick look at the final leaderboard should tell you all you need to know about how much worldwide talent was in play Sunday: there were two Americans in the top 10 finishers - the same number of South Africans.

So of course, let's pick the broadcast of this event to fight our culture war battles over. Folks, not every televised sporting event needs to begin with a tear-jerking tribute to HOW AWESOMLY ASS KICKINGLY BADASS AMERICA (F__ YEAH!) HAS ALWAYS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE ZOMG!!! Sometimes, especially on championship days that could end up very special, you can let it be about the beauty and skill at which the game is being played, and the joy those things bring to players and fans of all nations.

But that might just be too simple.

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Remember, Folks

< sarcasm >

The economy was sunk by things like this. Pay New York Times editorial level attention to this house of cards built by scant government oversight and supported by Democratic insiders, because this is indicative of the kind of politics Democrats, liberals, and progressives are likely to continue.

On the other hand, pay no attention to the house of cards built by highly financed real estate developers and supported by GOP insiders. This is not indicative of the kind of politics Republicans, conservatives and God-fearing Americans are likely to continue. You can trust them not to do this again, they wear American flag pins on their lapels.

Now, repeat after me, "Fannie Mae was the problem." There is no need to look anywhere else or entertain the idea that dipping your hands in the real estate bubble is historically the most bipartisan American political activity.

Hat tip to Kyle Wingfield at the AJC who reminds us that:

Fannie Mae did all those things that Democrats accuse Big Oil, Big Finance, the military-industrial complex, et al. of doing.

Emphasis mine.

< / sarcasm >

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Unique Homeownership Opportunity

Located near the interection of Real Estate Oversupply Avenue and Spend At Least an Hour on Your Commute to Atlanta Highway, this incredible deal puts you in a mass produced cookie-cutter home just minutes away from not one, but TWO scenic Exurban Traffic-Choked Strip Malls. Fall asleep at night to the constant noise of jumbo jets approaching one of the world's busiest airports as you contemplate the multiple car notes you have to pay just so you and your spouse can get the kids to soccer practice on any number of winding non-grid surface streets. The area is zoned specifically to discourage foot and bicycle traffic, so you won't even be tempted to use alternative modes of transportation or interact with your pesky neighbors to form "community."

And with such a desireable place at such a reasonable price, you can afford the gasoline you'll need to use in order to live in a place like this!

What isn't to like?


View Larger Map

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Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Mayor Landrieu makes the case for building the University Medical Center in New Olreans. This is a response to those who would seek to take the knees out from under the project and benefit their special interests under the cloak of "fiscal conservatism." All at the last minute, once an entire neighborhood has been destroyed and families have been uprooted.

In the larger context, Landrieu's rebuttal exposes the way individuals who play "conservative" on television willingly misrepresent tax figures as a means of providing for their own pork projects and protecting their own clients' subsidies.

For those of you who live in more progress-prone parts of the nation, you may be scratching your head wondering why this has been so difficult for New Orleans. Jeffery puts it in local context:

Ever content to remain the richest club in a poor and shrinking city, New Orleans' socialites resist any and every effort to grow the economy. They dress this conservative agenda up as "preservation" but it's better described as ossification. What gets "preserved" are old buildings, staid pageantry, anything that might make easy packaging for a hotelier or a filmmaker to sell.

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Utopian Drift

Andrew Sullivan on the state of "conservatism" in America.

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Disaster Funding

Attempting to solidify his "fiscal conservative" credentials, Mitt Romney wants to send responsibility for disaster relief back to the states, if not private industry. Continuing to handle disaster relief at a Federal level "jeopardizes the future for our kids" and is "immoral."

Which makes me wonder just how bad disasters have to get in this country to remind someone so out-of-touch why the Federal government started getting involved in this in the first place.

And maybe I've got the wrong definition of "fiscal conservative" in my mind, but I thought one of the bottom lines of that belief system was to make sure any tax dollars spent were done so in the most efficient and effective way possible, with a subtext of keeping the overall national economy sound. Removing disaster relief as a responsibility of the Federal government only makes sense if your definition of "fiscal conservatism" is don't spend any money, ever and you don't give a shit about localized or regional problems dragging down the whole national economy.

Here's something Romney needs to be reminded of: the states already pay for disaster relief. Private organizations already pay for disaster relief. Do you know why the Federal government also needs to be involved, Mitt? Because even with their efforts combined, the states and private organizations cannot touch the level of funding required to relieve even moderately sized disasters in terms of economic and material damage, let alone the big ones.

So let's look at the numbers from the big leagues of disasters. One low estimate places the damage figures of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood at $81 Billion*, not including overall economic impact to the states and regions most affected or the nation at large. Keep in mind that, at the time, gasoline got up to $4 a gallon many places far, far away from the Gulf Coast.

Let's do a little common sense math. Compare that figure to the state budget of Louisiana for FY 2005 ($17.5 Billion), the state budget of Mississippi for 2005 (just under $13 Billion), and the state budget of Alabama for 2005 ($33.2 Billion).

All three of those total state budgets combined ($63.7 Billion) only make up 78% of the total low damage estimate. That means three states of the union most affected by Katrina and the levee failures would have had to spend every single tax dollar they recieved that year and it still wouldn't have covered the recovery. And that's a total figure, which means the states wouldn't be able to pay for anything else without massive deficit spending.

While private organizations contributed a tremendous effort and generous sums of money and materiel to the recovery, do you think they'd be able to come up with $17.3 BILLION?

Of course, the states could have rebuilt without Federal help, given a generation or three. But who can estimate the economic fallout to these most affected states, the larger regional impact, and to the Union at large if these areas were forced into a local or regionalized recovery that the most affected states couldn't pay for before the disaster destroyed huge swaths of their state economies?

I can only imagine that Louisiana would have had to levy higher duties on shipping interests bringing products through what was left of New Orleans to even begin making a dent in their recovery needs. The economic ripples would have affected every suburban commutuer in America who drives a car and every American whose diet depends on the Midwestern corn crop. Things that happen one place tend to affect the lives of others someplace else. A butterfly flaps its wings and all that.

Now run that same scenario against these figures. Or just look at the map (PDF).

Sure looks like a national problem needing national solutions to me. And if "conservatism" means we throw responsibility for all that back on the states, private organizations, and - make no mistake - the individual familes who fall victim to such disasters, maybe it is time to start thinking of "conservatism" as its own dirty word.

(* - NOAA estimates the damage at $133 Billion)

The Show Horse

Finally, some intelligent and thought-provoking analysis regarding the Only News Story of the Year.

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An Interesting Concept

Georgia governor Nathan Deal is trying to address two problems facing his state.

Georgia's new illegal immigration law goes after employers who hire illegally. While this is one of the only steps available to curb the number of illegals in the state, this means there are employers who previously leaned heavily on the illegal labor pool who are now searching for laborers.

And while you'd think in this economy, people would be willing to find a paycheck wherever they could, agriculture is apparently facing a labor shortage.

So the governor wants to hook employers up with Georgia's significant number of probationers. While this appears a "back to the fields" solution at first glance, there are some things that need to be considered:

Once you have a conviction on your record, it is more difficult to get a job. If you already come from an at-risk population (undereducated, rural, born in poverty, minority), the level of difficulty increases exceptionally. And without some form of gainful employment, the liklihood of recidivism increases.

Then there is the fear that employers will have incredible power over probationer employees in a right to work state. This is definitely a valid criticism of the idea. However, laborers who are on probation would have a more equitable relationship than either incarcerated laborers or illegal immigrants (relationships with such power inequalities that encourage the historical abuse we have witnessed, especially in the South).

Finally, look at the demographics and socio-economic status of Georgia's probation population. What percentage of that population directly overlaps the population most likely to participate in agricultural fields previously staffed by illegal labor? That's a Freakonomics style question, to be sure.

While this won't be a magic solution to all of Georgia's problems, it might actually turn out to have some positive, reality-accepting results in regards to at least two big issues - illegal immigration and criminal justice costs.

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Garnet & Black Colored Lenses

The Senator points out this college football preview for the South Carolina Gamecocks.

Not to be confused with the "poetry of pre-mature trash talk", a different category of fan pathology in the best of cases, the tradition of Carolina fans to offer boastful hyperbole during the pre-season is legendary within the SEC. It really is something to look forward to by many other SEC fanbases.

Though as a Georgia fan, I've enjoyed it much less since I took my own bit of undergraduate fan swagger into Williams-Brice Stadium one fall afternoon in 2000, when the Gamecocks officially served notice that they would no longer put up with being an assumed Bulldawg win.

Georgia has still taken the supermajority of wins in the series since that afternoon when Quincy Carter interceptions fell like pinata candies into the unbelieving arms of the Garnet-clad secondary, but Carolina has done a tremendous job in closing the gap in the rivalry in terms of games won outright and close losses. Without Branden Smith's 61 yard TD run in 2009 and the mind-boggling David Pollack Interception/TD in 2002, the UGA - USCe rivalry could easily stand at 5 and 6 since 2000.

Of course, there are those who will correctly note that's why we play the games, or moral victories don't count, or the final score is all that matters; Carolina will always be Carolina, they will say.

Maybe. But membership in the SEC has its privileges. That TV money makes a difference in athletic facilities, coaching hires, and desirablility due to national exposure. South Carolina may not be the most fertile recruiting ground, but the state produces a crop of elite players every year. Sharing borders with Georgia and North Carolina give them an in, and close proximity to Florida (not to mention a coach with a pedigree from that state) put the program in better shape than most others in the country.

This is allowing them to close the talent gap, if not yet the depth gap. In the past, those gaps would combine to destroy Carolina's momentum later in the season as attrition and the talent plateau would take its toll against Florida, Tennessee and Clemson.

But the 2011 Gamecocks are not going to have the same talent plateau - they proved last year that they can play with elite teams for 4 quarters, if they maintain their concentration (another maddening achilles heel for Carolina fans over the years). For almost a decade, this team has deployed a scrappy defense playing above their level, and that D has often kept them in games against incredibly good teams. If they remain healthy, both Ashlon Jeffrey and Marcus Lattimore have the talent to play on Sundays*. If Stephen Garcia figures out how not to lose games, they may finally have an offense that can give the defense leads to protect.

And they'll all be playing with a dangerous psychological combination not often seen in Columbia: while the Carolina chip on the shoulder will be there still, you now inject into the mix the knowledge that this team was able to play and win against the elite. They've beat Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee in recent years, and those SEC opponents may not be able to count on their own programs' winning tradition to get in Gamecock players' heads.

This year, the preseason talk may not be the traditional hyperbole for Carolina. The game in Athens this year is going to be the biggest and most important this rivalry has seen in a while.

(*- Spencer Hall at EDSBS once referred to Georgia players and NFL 1st round draft picks Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno as "uncontainability twinned," and the same could be said for Jeffrey and Lattimore.)

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Losing the Drug War

I don't agree with a lot of what Bob Barr says, but the man is an honest civil libertarian and has not wavered much from that stance. I'm glad one of the things he talks about negative impact of the Drug War on America, and America's need to lead the world out of this mess.

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Mastectomy? Know Your Options

A woman came to me for help last week; a small breasted woman with early stage breast cancer. She wanted to discuss her options with me. Her preference would be to have a mastectomy, but she was afraid of the cosmetic outcome. She was embarrassed to admit this concern as her doctor had commented that her cancer should be her first priority. I assured her that cancer treatment with a good cosmetic result is possible. I asked her if a nipple-sparing mastectomy (NSM) with the incision through an inframammary fold (IMF) was offered. She just stared at me.

I explained that in some circumstances NSM was possible and that although there are no long-term studies, the five year studies show no increased risk for NSM over skin-sparing mastectomies. It was possible that she would not have to endure additional surgery to reconstruct her nipples and that the outcome would be more natural looking. I also explained that with an IMF (under the bra-line) incision, the scar can be hidden in a natural crease. The relief on her face was amazing.

Why, I ask myself, do more doctors not offer these procedures. Are these procedures more time consuming, more difficult or are some doctors simply not current on new developments in breast cancer treatments and surgical options? Have they lost sight that there is life after cancer? After all, isn’t life-after cancer the main reason for treating cancer? Perhaps the surgery takes longer or is more difficult? I consulted an expert on NSM, IMF MX, Dr Alex Swistel, of the Weill Cornell Breast Center, and his response was that this approach is more difficult and it requires specialized training as it requires instruments that can reach as far as that in a conventional mastectomy. Many experts that have tried it abandoned it for that reason; however, this procedure is best for keeping blood supply to the nipple without cutting around it and really hides the scar very well. This procedure certainly is not for everyone, but reports are now showing virtually no recurrence in the nipple even after 10 years. (Studies done in Italy seem to have the longest follow-up.)

I recently attended a conference on new developments in the treatment of breast cancer: “2011 Meet the Experts: Breast Cancer Education.” I had the opportunity to hear what is new, and also to ask questions of the panelists. Dr Eleni Tousimis, of the Weill Cornell Breast Center, spoke at length on the latest technological advances in the treatment of breast disease and on minimally invasive techniques, including the latest on NSM. Dr Joshua Levine, of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, spoke about the benefits of using one’s own tissue for reconstruction (autologous breast augmentation). Microsurgery has come a long way since its invention by vascular surgeons in the 1960s. The term refers to any surgery involving a surgical microscope. And it has found one of its best applications in breast reconstruction. Through microsurgery, surgeons are able to harvest healthy tissue from one part of a woman’s body and reattach it to the breast area. Through the careful process of attaching blood vessels, microsurgery allows patients to have natural looking breasts made from their own, living tissue. Another benefit is the minimized impact and injury to muscles, allowing patients to enjoy a faster, fuller recovery than with earlier flap reconstruction. For more information, please view the following link.
http://www.naturalbreastreconstruction.com/procedures.aspx

Many women choose implants over flap reconstruction methods. While breast reconstruction with implants may not always yield as realistic-looking results as tissue-based reconstruction methods, the procedure is less risky and requires less surgery. Generally, implant-based reconstruction results in less scarring and poses fewer risks to the patient than tissue-based reconstruction, making it an attractive option for women who prefer less invasive procedures. I am grateful for my wonderful team, Drs Alex Swistel and Mia Talmor. I chose silicone implants, have my very own nipples and I must say I don’t look as if I have had a mastectomy.

Exciting times in the world of breast cancer surgery. However, one thing I heard at the aforementioned conference was quite disturbing: 30% of all women treated for breast cancer do not choose reconstruction. It is one thing to choose not to have reconstruction; it is quite another to decline it because no one has either offered it or explained that insurance companies are required to cover the costs. Are doctors not discussing this with their patients? Are patients not aware this is an option? Clearly not all options are for everyone, but an informed patient is an empowered one.

I had the opportunity to discuss NSM and other reconstruction issues with Dr Paul Baron, co-founder of the Charleston Breast Center and expert on NSM. He was incredibly informative and I asked him if I could borrow both his knowledge as well as a blog he wrote for The Reconstruction Network: “Who Can Have a Skin-Sparing and Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy and Why”. I have attached the link below as I think you will find it most informative.
http://breastreconstructionnetwork.com/who-can-have-a-skin-sparing-and-nipple-sparing-mastectomy-and-why/

While we are still waiting for the cure, much progress has been made in surgical and reconstructive procedures for breast cancer. Oncoplastic surgical techniques can be used to remove the cancer while achieving excellent cosmetic outcomes. NSM and IMF are not an option for all women, and certainly women will have preferences on reconstruction options. However, women need to know that they have options. Information is power and it has never been more important to be informed and knowledgeable about your medical care. My goal is to get this information to women and to empower them to make choices that fit their own individual needs.

For more information on NSM and reconstructive options, please visit:
http://diepflap.com/nipple_sparing_mastectomy.html
http://diepflap.com/br_treatmentoptions.html
http://aes.sagepub.com/content/31/3/310.abstract


To locate doctors who perform NAM, IMF, and DIEP reconstruction, email me and I will assist you.

Elyn Jacobs
elyn@elynjacobs.com
http://elynjacobs.blogspot.com



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Elyn Jacobs is President of Elyn Jacobs Consulting, Inc. and a breast cancer survivor. She empowers women diagnosed with cancer to navigate the process of treatment and care, and she educates about how to prevent recurrence and new cancers. She is passionate about helping others get past their cancer and into a cancer-free life.