27 posts from April 2009

I'm sick.  Brian had a bit of a sore throat awhile back and has been coughing for weeks.  Welp now I got it.  But I'm mostly just tired,  achy muscles, had chills yesterday but those seem to be gone.  Guess we shouldn't have joked that he probably had swine flu.  He's been "diagnosed" by about 15 people at work ;)  I missed most of Monday and Wednesday sleeping it off.

Apparently while I was sleeping a congresswoman Foxx (R. -  N. Carolina) called the fact that Matthew Shepard was targeted for being gay a "hoax".  Umm.  It was proven in court he was targeted and killed for being gay.  To call it a "hoax" and nothing more than a robbery gone wrong, with his mom there watching you spew that crap, when the facts prove otherwise?  Dumb heartless bitch.  Stop getting your "facts"  from anti-gay hate websites or whatever and try looking at the actual facts. 

Arlen Specter is switching to the Democratic party. Welcome aboard sir.  Seems Republicans treated you like crap since you voted for the stimulus package, eh?  I know after that vote happened it seemed like some Republicans were acting like Specter was Satan.   

Now can we just settle that Coleman / Franken race already.  Franken won, everyone knows it but Coleman.  Votes have been counted and counted and counted.  Specter, by the way, is old school politics, he knows switching parties helps Dems get a reach filibuster proof status.  He must have really been been pissed off at how he got treated after that stimulus vote.

Specter's statement:
I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.

I deeply regret that I will be disappointing many friends and supporters. I can understand their disappointment. I am also disappointed that so many in the Party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate. It is very painful on both sides. I thank specially Senators McConnell and Cornyn for their forbearance.

I am not making this decision because there are no important and interesting opportunities outside the Senate. I take on this complicated run for re-election because I am deeply concerned about the future of our country and I believe I have a significant contribution to make on many of the key issues of the day, especially medical research. NIH funding has saved or lengthened thousands of lives, including mine, and much more needs to be done. And my seniority is very important to continue to bring important projects vital to Pennsylvania's economy.

I am taking this action now because there are fewer than thirteen months to the 2010 Pennsylvania Primary and there is much to be done in preparation for that election. Upon request, I will return campaign contributions contributed during this cycle.

While each member of the Senate caucuses with his Party, what each of us hopes to accomplish is distinct from his party affiliation. The American people do not care which Party solves the problems confronting our nation. And no Senator, no matter how loyal he is to his Party, should or would put party loyalty above his duty to the state and nation.

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords' switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy's statement that sometimes Party asks too much. When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.

Sprint's now network campaign strikes me as a failure.  If you haven't seen them, err I'm sure they're out there.  I'm too lazy to look for them.  They sound catchy, they look catchy, but they creep me out.  Why creepy?  Well they make it sound as though they listen to every call and read every text message, etc.  They're basically telling you right now this many million people are doing this on our network.  This many are being broken up with and if it's via phone calls or text messages, this many are Twittering, this many are sending text messages about picking up diapers, whatever.  So, the message comes off as switch to Sprint, we spy on you.  Basically?  Great ad.  I'm sure the point is supposed to be hey we're great you can do all of this and more on our network, but no, it's just odd that you can tell us the content of everyone's phone calls. 

http://www.xtranormal.com/ I do believe that is my link of the day.  Easy way to make cheesy movies.  Templates, basically.  You just pick the characters you want to use, the backgrounds, the facial expressions, music, camera angles, etc, type the script and it turns that into speech.  

Enhanced interrogation.... such a pretty term.  It's torture.  You can call it whatever you'd like.  When you have to have doctors involved, it's torture.

Liz Cheney was just on MSNBC, she made me ill.  She basically said Obama ruined America by releasing the torture memos.   Why?  Because terrorists chop people's heads off so hey we don't have to play by rules if we want to question ohh anyone.  So if we want to torture we can.  But now they'll know we *gasp* waterboarded people.  Ok, everyone knew that already.  And now they'll run out and add that to their training so they can be prepared to withstand it so we can't torture them that way anymore, darnnit.  But wait wait, no it's NOT torture, it's practically fun and games I mean we train Americans by doing it to them ourselves so it's NOT torture.  I'm sure she was just about to go try it out herself.  Really.  It's nothing.  Americans, we do it to Americans, so it's fine!  It's NOT torture.  But umm don't tell anyone we do it or we can't do it anymore, shhh it's our little secret.  They sound like pedophiles telling their victims not to tell any other adults that they just molested them. 

Lawrence O'Donnell was on right after her, seems he wanted to be involved -- he was ticked too.  He had to wait and be interviewed after her.  Seems she doesn't want counter opinions when she's on air.

Ok for those who don't understand the problem with the US medical system -

Yup I get my shots basically free.  Only because they cost about as much as our 2 bedroom waterfront LA apartment costs so I qualify for a drug program, even with Brian's income.  But I went to put my anti-seizure meds in my pill thing.  I've found I forget if I've taken them and have to literally dump the whole damn bottle out and count them so I started putting them in those daily M-Su daily pill containers.  Well I noticed they looked slightly different than last month.  Then I look at the label.  Not Topamax.  A name similar though.  Look it up, it's a generic.  What?  Since when does Topamax have a generic and why didn't anyone tell me before now?  I don't have insurance, just a discount card.  It costs a small fortune for this stuff.

The generic?  For one month?  $401.95 USD  with my discount card.  The brand name is about $100 more. 

Granted it's not a life or death drug for me.  But without it I have pain alien headache almost literally every day so bad I can't function.  I get tingle attacks almost every day, sometimes so bad I can't hold things or walk beyond a grandma shuffle.  So not life or death but without it I can't function.  With it, I still have those days but a lot less often.   There are places in this country where that's rent.  And that's the GENERIC price with discount card applied?  For one month.  That's still an average dose, we'll probably go higher still.  Or not, can't afford to go higher.  It's also supposed to make me sleep, it fails there but everything fails there.

I'm about ready to give up on doctors and medicine again.  But last time I did I ended up with pain alien trying to kill me.

Freddie Mac's CFO is dead, apparent suicide.

I'm sure there's some people who wished these guys dead (well let's face it, some of them flat out got death threats).  But frankly I think most people actually wanted accountability for businesses like banks and other financial institutions (Wall Street) to have to play by rules that make sense.   I doubt many really wanted these guys to actually die.

I'm watching the Christopher Reeve Foundation press conference... Woah.

So the announcement?  Basically it's that there's 1 degree of separation in America when it comes to paralysis.  Obviously I'm not paralyzed but I do have spinal cord damage via illness, I suffer from on again off again problems with my limbs because of it.  So this is a cause I care very much about.

They'd gotten together with other medical groups to try to really get together a decent idea of what the paralysis community looks like.  What they found was that no one was really keeping real numbers.  Some places were keeping lists based on their mailing lists.  Yeah great way to determine how many people are paralyzed.  Others were including people who were seeing them for other things.  Given that you'd think ok so the numbers were skewed and actually there are less people that are paralyzed than we thought. 

Wrong, seems when they got really into truly tracking down who suffers from paralysis, it's much higher than they thought.

"Approximately 1.9 percent of the U.S. population, or 5,596,000 people reported they were living with some form of paralysis, defined by the study as a central nervous system disorder resulting in difficulty or inability to move the upper or lower extremities. This is about one-third more Americans living with paralysis than previously estimated (4 million).1 The leading cause of paralysis was stroke (29 percent), followed by spinal cord injury (23 percent) and multiple sclerosis (17 percent)."

"Spinal cord injury is also more prevalent than previously estimated. Data indicate that 1,275,000 people in the United States are living with spinal cord injury—more than five times the number of Americans previously estimated in 2007 (255,702).2"

They're also poor and according to the live press conference many have no insurance:

"People living with paralysis have households with lower incomes. Household income for those with paralysis is heavily skewed towards lower-income brackets and is significantly lower than household income for the country as a whole. Roughly 25% of households with a person who is paralyzed make less than 10k per year, compared with only 7% of households in the general population."

"Specifically, this study based the definition of disabilities used by the World Health Organization (WHO), which uses function, rather than impairment (the medical model), as its frame: A central nervous system disorder that results in difficulty or inability to move the upper or lower extremities. Individuals, therefore, who were included in this survey as respondents were those who said “yes” to two questions: 1) “Do you or does anyone in this household have any difficulty moving their arms or legs?” and 2) “Can you give the specific cause of that difficulty?”"

By that definition, there have been / are days when I fit into that definition, that's what got me into the medical system and got me me my first MRI.  I'm lucky (not being sarcastic).  The times my arms or legs failed me totally luckily were rare, I've adapted to the worst of the worst attacks now and have learned to move through them slowly and not to try to do something dumb that would frustrate me like say hold things etc during them.  Instead of canes etc I decided eh pass.  Mom's recommended renting wheel chairs during anything where I may be on my feet too long, I refuse.   It has been that bad at times but something about sitting my butt in a wheelchair when I feel "normal" when we do something like walk through the gates of Disneyland seems stupid.  By the time we leave I can't really walk and am about in tears.  My body can't handle being pushed.  Especially in heat, it tires easily. 

So yes, this cause means a lot to me.  I hope that having reputable medical centers saying it's a bigger problem than previously believed will make people may attention.   Apparently the numbers of paralyzed or spinal cord injured people weren't really ever going up.  Sure some die, or improve, etc.  But to never change?  A new study is nice.  To be more prevalent than thought isn't surprising I guess given which of the two definitions they used.  But as someone who, one a few days can fall into that one definition, those days suck enough they can stop you from doing anything.  Limbs not working correctly is a horrible thing.

The rest of their findings HERE.  

I like Webby time because in the middle of the "yeah we all know this site" kind of sites and the "um what the hell why are they nominated instead of this other site" kind of sites  there's usually a few that I didn't know of that make me laugh, waste too much time playing cheesy games, or just announce "wow".  Here's two of those this year  -- .

http://www.livehopelove.com/  - Listed in the Art category, it's a collection of poems, photos, etc about living in Jamaica with HIV/AIDS.

It's also in the Best use of Photography category, as is this site: http://www.protect77.com/
A site that was awesome, but I'd not wanna show Keegan as he'd probably get ideas -- ideas that would likely involve him drawing on his laptop screen or a camera lens.