Why The Devil Will Need Mittens Long Before I Vote for Edwards

Note: I am so angry about this that I deliberately did not cuss in the whole post so that even conservatives could read the whole thing.

I was highly displeased with the way the Edwards campaign handled the Marcotte incident (though I was tickled to think that a woman could almost derail a whole presidential campaign merely for being uppity), and his stance on gay marriage irritates me, but I saw him here at the Ryman and I felt like he was a plausible candidate.

But, after reading this over at Little Pasture’s, I have to say that it will be a cold day in Hell before I vote for Edwards. I won’t vote for someone who so clearly hates me and my people (that being working poor people who’ve had to go without insurance at one point or another).

Here is the one good thing about Edwards’ plan: apparently there will be some insurer, somewhere, who cannot deny you coverage.

Here’s everything that stinks* about it:

1. It treats all of us as if we can’t be trusted. Seriously, I have to give the government a note from my insurance company saying I’ve been a good girl? I am not the property of my insurance company. I am their customer. My individual relationship with my insurance company is no business of the government and I don’t need the insurance industry to vouch for my character with the feds. I mean, seriously. Let’s talk some more about how screwed up the relationship between the government, private individuals, and corporations are. I, as an individual, petition the government to monitor corporations because corporations are large, governments are large, and I am, in comparison, tiny. The government does not ask corporations to monitor me in order to make sure I’m behaving. Do presidential candidates not understand basic personal liberties?

2. It treats people who don’t have insurance as if they are deliberately defrauding taxpayers, even though people who don’t have insurance are also taxpayers. Yes, there will always be some small group of people who are working the system. And yes, that very small sliver of people probably can afford insurance but don’t get it because they find it easier to just use the emergency room when they have a problem. But that number is vanishingly small. Most people who don’t have insurance don’t have insurance for two reasons: they can’t get it because no insurance company will take them or because they can’t afford it.

3. My money does not belong to the insurance company. I am not cheating the insurance company out of money if I don’t have insurance. When I pay taxes, those monies go to government programs. If you garnish my wages, it is because I am cheating someone out of money the courts have decided I owe them. The idea that the government could, without court intervention, take my money and give it to a for-profit corporation is enough to turn me into an anarchist. Again, does Edwards not understand that the healthcare crisis in this country is not that insurance companies aren’t getting enough money?

4. The problem with healthcare in this country is not that people refuse to get insurance but that they can’t get insurance. In other words, the problem is not with individual Americans, but with insurance companies. What about Edwards’ plan addresses the egregious behavior of insurance companies?

5. Many of the people who are bankrupted by medical care have health insurance. How does Edwards’ plan address that? It doesn’t seem to be a concern of his at all. In fact, his plan does nothing to encourage health insurance companies to change their ways; instead, it gives them more income and the weight of the government behind their collection efforts.

Here’s what I want. Either

1. Single-payer insurance run by the government. A portion of everyone’s taxes go towards paying for everyone’s healthcare.

or

2. We make for-profit health insurance illegal and make denying coverage to people also illegal, with government programs that help people who can’t afford insurance to afford it. Everyone pays in, everyone gets what they’re promised out, no caps on coverage.

But this? Yet another rich person proposing a program that seems designed specifically to demonize and punish the poor for being poor?

Absolutely not.

*And note, conservatives, it’s all I can do to not make this post as full of cusswords as a bar frequented by sailors on shore leave.

To the Manchild in the Tight White T-Shirt

If you shower every day, you probably have a smell that most potential partners would describe as “neutral” or “good.”  If you wanted to smell irresistible, you might consider dousing yourself in water that’s been steeped in rosemary, but that’s neither here nor there.

If you insist on wearing whatever stinky crap you’re wearing, the kind that causes a girl’s eyes to water just standing next to you, here is how to apply it.

Spray it out in front of you and then step through.  This will leave a nice light scent on you and encourage folks who might enjoy that scent to come closer to you.

As it is, you have effectively made a little impenetrable barrier around you.

Which, if you’re straight, means you don’t have to worry about women getting make-up on your t-shirt, so there’s that.

For what it’s worth,

b.

Archaeological Fun For the Whole Family!

I’ll be honest with you.  I know a lot of folks who are just one more Chinese toy scare away from living off the grid and handmaking everything they need to survive, coming into town only to buy ammunition.

And I laugh at them (though not too hard, because I want a place to stay if stuff really does go to pot).

But then I saw this post all about how folks figured out that ancient Irish people were brewing beer and how they were doing it, and I’m about ready to start digging holes and throwing around hot rocks.  I bet that will be useful nowledge after we run out of oil.

How cool is that?

I told y’all that one of the German strands of my family were distillers, didn’t I? 

It’s like this: My great grandma, who I was named after (let’s call her Teckla, because that was her name) had two parents–as people tend to have–Hulda, who had come over from Sweden after her father (the beloved tax collector for the king–yes, I swear to god, in the family stories, he’s always the “beloved tax collector.”  Make of that what you will, conservatives.) lost the family farm in a drunken poker game and my Great-great grandfather who came over from Germany, whose name escapes me, so let’s just call him “Pops.”

So, Pops is sent to Chicago to make business connections for the family business and instead is all “Woo hoo.  I’m in America.  Fuck this distillery crap, I’m going to be a meat delivery boy.”  (And then I’m sure he and his friends were all ‘Meat delivery! Ha, ha, ha.’)  Meanwhile, Hulda was working as a maid/cook for a family and… well, I think you see where this is going.

Anyway, the unanswered question out of all of this, aside from whehter I should gamble that the economy is getting worse, that we are becoming more like Soviet Russia, and that I should take up the family distilling trade is whether the family story about Pops being “German” is correct or if he was Belgian and, if so, is this my ancestral distillery?  Or is that just a liquor store and I can’t tell because, like most Americans, I only know one language (though I’m pretty sure I could get a beer in any Slavic country)?

Can Exercise Piss You Off?

Okay, this may be a little too “woo-woo” for my scientifically inclined readers, but I’m going to ask it anyway.

So, I used to walk Mrs. Wigglebottom every week day and take her to the park for a big long walk on one day on the weekend.  Basically, for the last four or five weeks, forget about it.  I’ve been sleeping like shit and stressed out and then I had my surgery and so that was a week out of commission and blah blah blah.

So, this has been the first week we’ve been back to anything approaching a normal schedule–to the park on Sunday and then walks in the morning.

And here’s what I’m noticing.  I’m finding it really, really unpleasant.  Like, when I set out for the walk, I feel great and the wind is in my hair and the cool air feels nice on my face and the dog looks cute and off we go.  But as I start to warm up, I start to feel like shit.

Not physically.  But emotionally.

This is what it seems like.  It seems like all this stuff that I’ve had to either push aside or only let out in small bits has just soaked into me and as I move around, it’s like as the muscles move around, that shit works its way back up and, I hope, out.

It really sucks.  Now, this morning, at the end of our walk, I was feeling that familiar upbeat feeling I normally feel for the last part of our walk, but I came home feeling like I’d been through the emotional ringer.

So, tell me, exercise-y types, have you had similar experiences?  To what do you attribute it?  And will it eventually go away?