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Feb. 9th, 2012 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* The government mortar attacks on private homes in Homs continues with civilians bearing the brunt of the violence. The dead must be buried in secret at night under strafing by soldiers. I've long run out of words to describe the man made tragedy.
* Watching a man duck walk with his dead seven year old daughter in his arms as his surviving family desperately digs under constant fire, makes my ashamed of how detached and academic I was reading Antigone as a teen. All these brave real life people risking lives and sometimes dieing to bury children, grand parents, family, and friends out in the real world under barbaric fire from their own government. I guess it never occurred to me how real, and modern, and large scale tragic this sort of thing is. I thought it was long ago and far away and not evening news, people risking lives to take and smuggle out footage sort of stuff. I didn't think of grieving families digging mass graves under threat of the gun for whole neighborhoods as if violence was an inexorable plague eating someone's whole world.
* So what is the deal with right wing claims that requiring insurance to cover birth control is a violation of religious freedom? They claim is that an atheist woman mopping floors for minimum wage in catholic hospital should have to pay an extra $600.-700.00 a year for both control than a woman of any faith mopping floors in a public hospital. After all the employers religious right to deny health care trumps the atheist's desire to be treated like everyone else under the law. You know what would have made this a non-issue? Medical for all like I have been saying for, like decades. Anyway. In states that have laws requiring insurance to cover birth control, this has already been litigated and the Church lost. Why? Because insurance companies are not religious institutions. The catholic hospitals are contributing to paying insurance companies to provide insurance. The actual woman using the insurance decide whether to take birth control or not. No one is actually forced to use birth control here, and the insurance is part of compensation to employees. Just like an employer can't forbid an employee to use wages to buy birth control, they can't forbid people to use their insurance for specific purposes. By the way, a number of Catholic Employers, like DePaul University already include birth control in the health plan.
For the record approximately 80% of Catholic women in the United states use birth control of some type in the course of their reproductive life. American Catholics as a whole are slightly less likely to vote for things like birth control banning laws like "Personhood" Amendments than the general populace. Similarly, in a recent poll, 40% of voters are less likely to vote for Mitt Romney now that he's planning to repeal health insurance covering contraception. 46% of Catholics in the same poll are now less likely to vote for Mitt Romney because he wants insurance not to cover birth control. American Catholics are, as group, famously a lot more left on social issues than the Pope, which has led to clashes with the Vatican for longer than I've been alive. The stereotypes of Catholic voters are a couple generations out of date at least. The media and pundit focus tends to be on the vocal reactionaries screaming in front of clinics and not the large body of folks advocating birth control and female clergy. Real life is messier the picture in most media.
Anecdotally, as someone who fucked a lot of catholic boys in High School, there was invariably the annoying "I'll pull out before I cum" argument, followed by me keeping my legs closed until they put the damned condom on, followed by plenty of condom + pill fucking. The topic would be considered settled until I picked up the next catholic boy who I'd deny until he agreed we wouldn't be bare backing. There is a reason this shit is a cliche, folks. It was then and is still my belief that the condom prohibition was more an excuse to not use a condom than a serious religious conviction. Otherwise, I'd have to spend more than a boring 30-45 minutes talking them out of it. Just saying. (The Jewish boys I picked up were as pretty as the Italians, Puerto ricans, and Irish, but I got to skip the boring pro forma argument. They would just put the damned condom on and get on with it. Hence my lingering fondness for pretty Jewish guys).
* For the record, as far as I am concerned, the FLDS is not a legitimate religion, but a combination cult and criminal enterprise organized for pedophilia. I feel sorry for the folks caught up in it who are not pedophiles, and most especially for the children, much in need of rescue.
* The trip downtown was even more painful than I expected, and I nearly got stranded at the bottom of my hill when my legs gave out. On the upside, I'm likely getting a new ancient car next week to putter about in. There isn't enough to pay all my debt and get a car both, but there's enough for a clunker and to pay my half of what we owe folks and end up a little less in debt than I am now, so that's what I'm doing as all this gimping about is literally killing me. To give you an idea, my regular Monday Doctor's appointment should take 30-45 minutes including round trip travel. It's now a nightmarish three hour epic that lays me up for a few days. You really don't want to know how much pain getting groceries home involves. I simply can't keep doing this, so I called my mechanic, who, if the car isn't working properly, will keep fixing it free until it is. I have an appointment for Wednesday, and they will bring the thing to me to test. The money itself won't hit my account until Friday or Monday. At which point, I'm sending it to my credit card company. Once it hits there, I'll pay pal the folks on my pay back list, cover insurance, a slew of other bills, and reup my anti-virus. Squirrel's pay back list is waiting on the insurance check and him getting his car. That's still in train, but ought to be soon. (There was a paperwork hitch that slowed things down, but we've sent the extra paperwork on).
I've had very little sleep, failed to get fish food, and feel like I'm been run over by a truck, but things look to be working out. I haven't energy for the next stack of taxes, bills, and bureaucracy, so I'm putting that off a little. I'm still clearly sick, but I don't smell as sick, so I have some hopes my immune system's finally caught a clue.
* I'm worried about Mache. She used to have this amazing musk. Seriously, if you could bottle that, it'd sell for sure. Since her infection last year, she's less active. This winter's been rough on her. I can see her hind end arthritis when she walks. Since the paw injury, she's increasingly reclusive, spending most of her time in my bed. She comes out periodically to patrol and visibly claim mests, but mostly, she sleeps. That glorious dominant musk is gone. When I sniff her head, she just smells ordinary. It's not that she's specifically ill with something. It just feels like she's winding down. I am thinking maybe the infection pus the move plus the injury was simply too much for her. I love her so much it hurts. I go in there and give her the pettins at regular intervals, and I cuddle her before bed and when I first wake up. She purrs louder than she used to. Each time, it feels a little like saying goodbye.
* I hate the phrase "Trust the Moff." It's so smugly dismissive of the perfectly legitimate criticisms folks like me have of his plotting skills and the erasure of POC and LGBTQ folk we were used to seeing included under Ruseel Davies. It's an asshole maneuver disigned to shut down discussion and shut up people like me. My instictive response to "Trust the Moff," is to yell back, "Fuck you too!"
* I dreamed that BPAL was a zombie repellent. Wish I could remember what blend.
* That McDonald's "the egg mcmuffin of X" commercial is clearly not meant for me. For example, my visceral response to "He's the egg Mcmuffin of boyfriends" would be, "He makes you spend all day in the bathroom throwing up, and then you are queasy for a couple of days after until you finally recover?" I'm guessing that's not the image they are looking for. Seriously eggs+sausage could only make me sicker if you added fig newtons and apple pie.
* I'm still inching through season 4 The Wire a disk at a time. I do not think I will ever forgive Herc for all the damage he's doing to people who didn't deserve it, but that's not why I'm writing. No, it occurred to me that some of you might me interested in the real life version of the things going on in the Ed policy plot. As I said before, you can really tell the guy writing that plot thread used to teach because that looks very true to life to me, from the bullshit in service to the mistakes, to the ways Mr. Prezbo starts getting it write, to the behavior of the kids and the issues they have.
You know that pilot program for the kids with the biggest problems that the writers thought never would fly? We call that the Behavioral Disordered program here in Washington State and as they started doing it before I moved up here, I don't know how long it's been going on. I can tell you that I've spent time with those kids. (Not as much with special ed, but I'm fearless and have a knack for getting along with kids from fucked up backgrounds.) Trust me, you don't end up in the BD program lightly. The kids in there have serious diagnoses, fucked up histories, and are violent on a more than daily basis to get into the program. The goal is, of course to transition them back into the classroom eventually. BD slots are expensive, because you have an adult to child ratio of two to three kids for every adult in the room. (Normal ratio is 30-38 per adult). This is expensive and labor intensive in the way that a life skills room is, only with more risk of serious injury and an even higher burn out rate for TAs. The program mixes socialization, behavioral modification, academic support, and extra attention from specialists. This is because there are invariably learning delays and serious psych issues going on and they are either in fucked up home situations, foster care, or used to be in one or both of the above and to make progress, there has to be a lot of liaising with social services and whatever adults there are a home.
These programs can't and don't save everybody, and it generally takes years to make measurable progress. Progress happens though. I've seen the end product in the high schools, kids in the process of transitioning back in clumps of two or three with a pareducator shadowing them for academic and behavioral support, kids that still have out bursts, but have enough anger management skills to leave before they hurt someone or break anything and go to the quiet room until they can calm down. Trust me this is progress. The violent second grader who throws punches or desks is a whole lot easier to contain and prevent from breaking someone's bones than the 200 pound sixteen year old trying to beat one someone. It is safer for everyone, including the student, to have that intervention early, and the money spent on a BD slot might someday keep that kid grown up out of prison.
At the same time, a lot of schools lock those kids in the basement or a portable and so isolate them from the rest of the student body that the kids themselves feel stigmatized and imprisoned. When Naymond in the Wire said something about the program being solitary and the goal being getting them ready for Gen Pop? Yeah. My little guys phrased it differently, but the sentiment was the same. My heart broke a little when I heard kids say things like, "They don't want us around normal kids." So yes, I'm conflicted about these programs. Sometimes it really did feel like all we were doing was getting them ready for prison. At the same time, I remember that pod of late teens at Squalicum who were functioning almost at grade level and clearly getting their shit together, who had decent odds of holding down skilled labor jobs and staying out of serious trouble, the guys for whom all that therapy was mostly working.
Y'all know me. You know that I always rooted for my kids to make it. Especially the ones who were having the hardest time holding it together in class, because those were the ones most needing some adult to root for them, to a shit that they made it through the whole day without getting in trouble.
* The whole history of Doctor Who in 9 1/2 minutes. Pictorial spoilers for past episodes back to the early '60's: http://youtu.be/iN5jPQdJXYE
* Watching a man duck walk with his dead seven year old daughter in his arms as his surviving family desperately digs under constant fire, makes my ashamed of how detached and academic I was reading Antigone as a teen. All these brave real life people risking lives and sometimes dieing to bury children, grand parents, family, and friends out in the real world under barbaric fire from their own government. I guess it never occurred to me how real, and modern, and large scale tragic this sort of thing is. I thought it was long ago and far away and not evening news, people risking lives to take and smuggle out footage sort of stuff. I didn't think of grieving families digging mass graves under threat of the gun for whole neighborhoods as if violence was an inexorable plague eating someone's whole world.
* So what is the deal with right wing claims that requiring insurance to cover birth control is a violation of religious freedom? They claim is that an atheist woman mopping floors for minimum wage in catholic hospital should have to pay an extra $600.-700.00 a year for both control than a woman of any faith mopping floors in a public hospital. After all the employers religious right to deny health care trumps the atheist's desire to be treated like everyone else under the law. You know what would have made this a non-issue? Medical for all like I have been saying for, like decades. Anyway. In states that have laws requiring insurance to cover birth control, this has already been litigated and the Church lost. Why? Because insurance companies are not religious institutions. The catholic hospitals are contributing to paying insurance companies to provide insurance. The actual woman using the insurance decide whether to take birth control or not. No one is actually forced to use birth control here, and the insurance is part of compensation to employees. Just like an employer can't forbid an employee to use wages to buy birth control, they can't forbid people to use their insurance for specific purposes. By the way, a number of Catholic Employers, like DePaul University already include birth control in the health plan.
For the record approximately 80% of Catholic women in the United states use birth control of some type in the course of their reproductive life. American Catholics as a whole are slightly less likely to vote for things like birth control banning laws like "Personhood" Amendments than the general populace. Similarly, in a recent poll, 40% of voters are less likely to vote for Mitt Romney now that he's planning to repeal health insurance covering contraception. 46% of Catholics in the same poll are now less likely to vote for Mitt Romney because he wants insurance not to cover birth control. American Catholics are, as group, famously a lot more left on social issues than the Pope, which has led to clashes with the Vatican for longer than I've been alive. The stereotypes of Catholic voters are a couple generations out of date at least. The media and pundit focus tends to be on the vocal reactionaries screaming in front of clinics and not the large body of folks advocating birth control and female clergy. Real life is messier the picture in most media.
Anecdotally, as someone who fucked a lot of catholic boys in High School, there was invariably the annoying "I'll pull out before I cum" argument, followed by me keeping my legs closed until they put the damned condom on, followed by plenty of condom + pill fucking. The topic would be considered settled until I picked up the next catholic boy who I'd deny until he agreed we wouldn't be bare backing. There is a reason this shit is a cliche, folks. It was then and is still my belief that the condom prohibition was more an excuse to not use a condom than a serious religious conviction. Otherwise, I'd have to spend more than a boring 30-45 minutes talking them out of it. Just saying. (The Jewish boys I picked up were as pretty as the Italians, Puerto ricans, and Irish, but I got to skip the boring pro forma argument. They would just put the damned condom on and get on with it. Hence my lingering fondness for pretty Jewish guys).
* For the record, as far as I am concerned, the FLDS is not a legitimate religion, but a combination cult and criminal enterprise organized for pedophilia. I feel sorry for the folks caught up in it who are not pedophiles, and most especially for the children, much in need of rescue.
* The trip downtown was even more painful than I expected, and I nearly got stranded at the bottom of my hill when my legs gave out. On the upside, I'm likely getting a new ancient car next week to putter about in. There isn't enough to pay all my debt and get a car both, but there's enough for a clunker and to pay my half of what we owe folks and end up a little less in debt than I am now, so that's what I'm doing as all this gimping about is literally killing me. To give you an idea, my regular Monday Doctor's appointment should take 30-45 minutes including round trip travel. It's now a nightmarish three hour epic that lays me up for a few days. You really don't want to know how much pain getting groceries home involves. I simply can't keep doing this, so I called my mechanic, who, if the car isn't working properly, will keep fixing it free until it is. I have an appointment for Wednesday, and they will bring the thing to me to test. The money itself won't hit my account until Friday or Monday. At which point, I'm sending it to my credit card company. Once it hits there, I'll pay pal the folks on my pay back list, cover insurance, a slew of other bills, and reup my anti-virus. Squirrel's pay back list is waiting on the insurance check and him getting his car. That's still in train, but ought to be soon. (There was a paperwork hitch that slowed things down, but we've sent the extra paperwork on).
I've had very little sleep, failed to get fish food, and feel like I'm been run over by a truck, but things look to be working out. I haven't energy for the next stack of taxes, bills, and bureaucracy, so I'm putting that off a little. I'm still clearly sick, but I don't smell as sick, so I have some hopes my immune system's finally caught a clue.
* I'm worried about Mache. She used to have this amazing musk. Seriously, if you could bottle that, it'd sell for sure. Since her infection last year, she's less active. This winter's been rough on her. I can see her hind end arthritis when she walks. Since the paw injury, she's increasingly reclusive, spending most of her time in my bed. She comes out periodically to patrol and visibly claim mests, but mostly, she sleeps. That glorious dominant musk is gone. When I sniff her head, she just smells ordinary. It's not that she's specifically ill with something. It just feels like she's winding down. I am thinking maybe the infection pus the move plus the injury was simply too much for her. I love her so much it hurts. I go in there and give her the pettins at regular intervals, and I cuddle her before bed and when I first wake up. She purrs louder than she used to. Each time, it feels a little like saying goodbye.
* I hate the phrase "Trust the Moff." It's so smugly dismissive of the perfectly legitimate criticisms folks like me have of his plotting skills and the erasure of POC and LGBTQ folk we were used to seeing included under Ruseel Davies. It's an asshole maneuver disigned to shut down discussion and shut up people like me. My instictive response to "Trust the Moff," is to yell back, "Fuck you too!"
* I dreamed that BPAL was a zombie repellent. Wish I could remember what blend.
* That McDonald's "the egg mcmuffin of X" commercial is clearly not meant for me. For example, my visceral response to "He's the egg Mcmuffin of boyfriends" would be, "He makes you spend all day in the bathroom throwing up, and then you are queasy for a couple of days after until you finally recover?" I'm guessing that's not the image they are looking for. Seriously eggs+sausage could only make me sicker if you added fig newtons and apple pie.
* I'm still inching through season 4 The Wire a disk at a time. I do not think I will ever forgive Herc for all the damage he's doing to people who didn't deserve it, but that's not why I'm writing. No, it occurred to me that some of you might me interested in the real life version of the things going on in the Ed policy plot. As I said before, you can really tell the guy writing that plot thread used to teach because that looks very true to life to me, from the bullshit in service to the mistakes, to the ways Mr. Prezbo starts getting it write, to the behavior of the kids and the issues they have.
You know that pilot program for the kids with the biggest problems that the writers thought never would fly? We call that the Behavioral Disordered program here in Washington State and as they started doing it before I moved up here, I don't know how long it's been going on. I can tell you that I've spent time with those kids. (Not as much with special ed, but I'm fearless and have a knack for getting along with kids from fucked up backgrounds.) Trust me, you don't end up in the BD program lightly. The kids in there have serious diagnoses, fucked up histories, and are violent on a more than daily basis to get into the program. The goal is, of course to transition them back into the classroom eventually. BD slots are expensive, because you have an adult to child ratio of two to three kids for every adult in the room. (Normal ratio is 30-38 per adult). This is expensive and labor intensive in the way that a life skills room is, only with more risk of serious injury and an even higher burn out rate for TAs. The program mixes socialization, behavioral modification, academic support, and extra attention from specialists. This is because there are invariably learning delays and serious psych issues going on and they are either in fucked up home situations, foster care, or used to be in one or both of the above and to make progress, there has to be a lot of liaising with social services and whatever adults there are a home.
These programs can't and don't save everybody, and it generally takes years to make measurable progress. Progress happens though. I've seen the end product in the high schools, kids in the process of transitioning back in clumps of two or three with a pareducator shadowing them for academic and behavioral support, kids that still have out bursts, but have enough anger management skills to leave before they hurt someone or break anything and go to the quiet room until they can calm down. Trust me this is progress. The violent second grader who throws punches or desks is a whole lot easier to contain and prevent from breaking someone's bones than the 200 pound sixteen year old trying to beat one someone. It is safer for everyone, including the student, to have that intervention early, and the money spent on a BD slot might someday keep that kid grown up out of prison.
At the same time, a lot of schools lock those kids in the basement or a portable and so isolate them from the rest of the student body that the kids themselves feel stigmatized and imprisoned. When Naymond in the Wire said something about the program being solitary and the goal being getting them ready for Gen Pop? Yeah. My little guys phrased it differently, but the sentiment was the same. My heart broke a little when I heard kids say things like, "They don't want us around normal kids." So yes, I'm conflicted about these programs. Sometimes it really did feel like all we were doing was getting them ready for prison. At the same time, I remember that pod of late teens at Squalicum who were functioning almost at grade level and clearly getting their shit together, who had decent odds of holding down skilled labor jobs and staying out of serious trouble, the guys for whom all that therapy was mostly working.
Y'all know me. You know that I always rooted for my kids to make it. Especially the ones who were having the hardest time holding it together in class, because those were the ones most needing some adult to root for them, to a shit that they made it through the whole day without getting in trouble.
* The whole history of Doctor Who in 9 1/2 minutes. Pictorial spoilers for past episodes back to the early '60's: http://youtu.be/iN5jPQdJXYE