Gift Idea! Not A Joke!

For that hard-to-buy-for person on your Christmas list, this is bound to be a hit:

Pittsburgh-based insurer Highmark says it has made giving the gift of good health possible with the introduction of its Healthcare Gift Card. While hospitals and some practices already are in the gift-card market, analysts consider Highmark's entry a watershed moment for the health care and gift card industries. Highmark is believed to be the first to issue a gift card that can be used nationally while also intended mostly for everyday health expenses.

How about that! An insurance company profiting off the 48 million uninsured in this country! Who’da thunk it?

Yowzaaa. I do believe we just got bitch-slapped by the free hand of the market.

Analysts agree this trend is reflective of patients shouldering more financial responsibility for their health care. Where they disagree is whether health gift cards are a positive or negative development.

"It speaks to the fact that the current reimbursement system and insurance system is inadequate, that there's a market for these cards," said Mark Rukavina, executive director of the Access Project, a Boston-based group that promotes access to health care. "If we have insurance that was more comprehensive and paid more of the bills, then the need for a card like this wouldn't be as great."

Uh, yeah.

The sad thing is, I’m sitting here thinking of all the folks in my life who would actually really appreciate this gift card--family members, friends. And then I thought, “wow, what a perfect gift for our Room In The Inn guests, too.” The possibilities are endless. I was actually getting a little excited about it.

It’s a really sad state of affairs when the worst possible solution to a national crisis is the best option going. As President Bush would say, "it’s uniquely American.”

(h/t, res ipsa loquitur)

Stupid Book Idea Of The Year

[UPDATE 2]:

With all due respect to Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt, I'm calling bullshit on his assertion here that the Lynn Spears book was not and never has been "a book on parenting." Yeah, maybe not now, but that's not what Thomas Nelson reps were saying back when the deal was announced:

“We’ve signed her to a deal,” a spokesman for Thomas Nelson tells Us. The book, which will be coming out next Mother’s Day is titled Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World.

“It’s a parenting book that’s going to have faith elements to it. I don’t think it’s totally been written yet,” says the publisher’s rep, who expects the manuscript by December.

Someone over there thought it was a parenting book. And I stand by my original opinion that this was the dumbest book signing ever, right up there with Judith Regan's O.J. Simpson deal.

--------------------------
[UPDATE]:

In comments, Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, writes:

Contrary to what the media has reported, it's not a book on parenting. It never has been. It's a memoir.

Okie dokie.

--------------------------
Amid the news that Britney Spears’ 16-year-old little sister is pregnant comes this bizarre sidebar:

Lynne Spears's book about raising her famous daughters Britney and Jamie Lynn has been put on hold, the publisher confirms to PEOPLE.

"The book is delayed indefinitely. It's delayed, not cancelled," says a spokeswoman for Thomas Nelson, which publishes inspirational books and Bibles.

It had been scheduled for a spring 2008 release and was put on hold last week, says the rep. On Tuesday, news hit that 16-year-old Jamie Lynn is pregnant with her boyfriend's child.

Lynn Spears was writing a book on Christian parenting? Are you kidding? Someone thought this was a good idea?

Thomas Nelson is a Nashville-based Christian publishing house, the largest Christian publisher in the industry with nearly one-third of the marketshare (according to the CEO ‘s blog).

This is a big, big business. I just can’t believe someone thought Lynn Spears had anything valuable to say about Christian parenting, unless it’s that she sucks at it. Of course, in this modern era of church-as-capitalism, no doubt the potential profits and crossover appeal were too tempting for Thomas Nelson turn down.

I also really like the “it's delayed, not cancelled” bit. I hate to sound cynical but let’s be real here: the only reason to delay a book like this is to wait for the dust to settle and Mama Spears to come up with her “it was a really tough time but prayer got me through it” spiel.

Sorry, but I’ve seen this movie too many times already.

Hag-tastic

How did I miss this one?

Via Digby, apparently Rush Limbaugh said that Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president because women get all wrinkly and icky as they age:

We know that the presidency ages the occupants of that office rapidly... But men aging makes them look more authoritative, accomplished, distinguished.

Sadly, it's not that way for women, and they will tell you... Look at all of the evidence. I mean, I've just barely scratched the surface with some of the evidence, and so: Will Americans want to watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?

To which I submit as evidence the following:Yeah, you’re right Rush. I definitely don’t want to see that on my TV every day.

{/sarcasm}

America First, God Second

Jim Wallis, the evangelical author/activist, has something important to say to American Christians. I urge everyone to read the whole thing, but in summary, he takes American Christians to task for their blind support of U.S. wars and a foreign policy that oppresses our neighbors. He calls this our “Achilles’ heel, our biggest blind spot, our least questioned allegiance, the worst compromise of our Christian identity, and the greatest failing of our Christian obedience.”

Even in the subset of born-again, Bible-believing evangelical Christians around the world, an overwhelming majority are against American policy in Iraq. Many Christians I’ve spoken to go further and say that America’s aggressive role in the world today has hurt the cause of Christ globally, especially when an American president dangerously conflates America’s role with God’s purposes.

Some on the American Christian Right are now calling for all-out war against “Islamofacism,” and recent presidential endorsements from the Religious Right even suggest that winning the “clash of civilizations” with Islamic fundamentalism is really another “life” issue, perhaps even a higher priority than their traditional concerns such as abortion. Shouldn’t it give us pause that virtually no other Christians or churches around the world take this position, finding it utterly appalling and contrary to the gospel of Christ? Do these militant Christian nationalists, who would again call us to war, know something that the rest of world Christianity does not? Even many Christians who live in or near Muslim countries, and sometimes suffer for their Christian identity, find the warlike theology of their aggressive American brothers and sisters very frightening.

Could it be that far too many American Christians are simply Americans first and Christians second? To say, “We are to be Christians first and members of a particular nation second” is more about our understanding of church than it is about our politics. That simple affirmation, if ever applied, would utterly transform the relationship of American Christians to the policies of their own government.

This message resonated with me today, because I had to drive past Two Rivers Baptist Church this morning. Every time I see that massive building on Briley Parkway all I can think of his how this congregation opened its doors for the Justice Sunday II event, a partisan piece of political theater staged as much (if not more) for the national media than any issues of faith.

Yes, faith informs political views, but when your faith tells you to support procedural maneuvers in the U.S. Senate while ignoring much larger moral issues like war and poverty, something is very wrong.

Much is being said about faith in this presidential campaign. Every endorsement from a faith leader such as James Dobson or Pat Robertson is dutifully reported in the press. But few have stopped to examine these leaders' motives and intentions. Our media is quick to present someone like CBN's David Brody as a legitimate pundit, but no one has ever bothered to ask how well CBN or Focus On The Family (his previous employer) represent Christian values. The media assumes these people represent "the voice of Christianity" but they don't even represent all of American Christians, let alone the global faith community--what Wallis calls "the body of Christ."

I have to wonder why these faith leaders and their misguided flocks still have so much influence in our political debate.

Eric Volz Is Free

[UPDATE 3, 12/21/07]:

Finally Free!

Nashville media is reporting Eric Volz was released this afternoon and is on his way home:

Reports out of Managua, Nicaragua, indicate that Nashvillian Eric Volz was released from a prison hospital today and was, along with his mother, on a plane headed to the United States.

A family spokesperson confirmed that Volz’ was released following the overturning of his murder conviction earlier this week, but would not have any further comment until the family was confident that the 28-year-old Volz was safely out of Nicaragua.

A Christmas miracle.

-----------------------------

[UPDATE 2]:

STILL not free!

Volz family spokeswoman Melissa Campbell this morning said the director of the penitentiary where Volz was being held was dispatched to retrieve Volz from a hospital and return him to the prison ward.

That move forced Volz’s mother, Maggie Anthony, to cut short her visit with her son.

Anthony flew from Nashville to Granada, Nicaragua on Wednesday morning. She went straight to the Supreme Court, but told reporters following her that the Court refused to see her.

It was unclear what action, if any, the Supreme Court would take regarding the prosecutor’s challenge to Monday’s appeals court decision.

But if Ibarra’s appeal to the Supreme Court is filed properly and accepted by the court, it could be years until the case is even considered, Campbell said.

What will it take to get this guy home for Christmas? A miracle, that’s what.
-----------------------------
[UPDATE]:

Not yet free:

The U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua today publicly called for the release of Nashville native Eric Volz, who on Monday was ordered released from Nicaraguan prison following the overturning of his murder conviction.

Volz’s release has been held up, though, because the same judge who convicted him and who has been ordered to sign his release papers has apparently refused to do so, Volz’s Nicaraguan attorney told a spokesman for the family.

The latest update from officials on the ground in Nicaragua came this morning, when reports came in that Volz had been transferred to the prison hospital.

U.S. Embassy officials appear to have been denied access to Volz.

Again, this isn’t a case I know much about but I’ve seen this entry getting a lot of hits, so that’s the latest.

-----------------

I just heard this bit of news on the TV:

Nicaraguan Court Overturns Nashville Man's Conviction

Man Previously Sentenced In Death Of Girlfriend

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- A Nicaraguan appeals court on Monday overturned the conviction of a U.S. man sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing his Nicaraguan girlfriend.

Eric Volz, of Nashville, Tenn., was immediately freed from a prison in the town of Granada, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of the capital, Managua. His whereabouts were not immediately known.

Nicaraguan Attorney General Julio Centeno Gomez told Channel 12 television he would appeal the decision to the nation's highest court.

I know very little about the Volz case except what I’ve read on blogs; Volz has said he was in Managua, two hours away, when the murder occurred, and a dozen people have corroborated his alibi. There is a lot of information on the web about the case; Friends Of Eric is a good place to start.

All I can say right now is: this is a welcome Christmas present to his friends and family.

Of course the Attorney General is going to appeal; he has to. He has his career at stake. The Eric Volz case became a cause celebre both in the U.S. and Nicaragua. Sadly, it is inevitable that high profile court cases, no matter where they are tried, have as much to do with the egos of prosecutors as with any facts in evidence.

Loserman

[UPDATE]:
This explains a lot:

NOVOTNY: Well, it is unusual, as you know, for a Democrat or an independent Democrat, as you call yourself, to endorse a Republican. Did you consider any of your Democratic colleagues?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I did. I mean, to have full disclosure, not one of the Democrats asked for my support, which may be a story in itself. John McCain and I are friends. He did ask for my support.

No, and we don’t want Zell Miller’s endorsement either.Suck on your irrelevance to the Democratic Party, Joe.

I can’t believe I voted for this guy:

Democratic and Republican sources say that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut and fierce supporter of the war in Iraq, will formally endorse Sen. John McCain tomorrow in New Hampshire.

A McCain spokesperson declined to comment.

A source familiar with the endorsement said that the two will appear of NBC's Today Show tomorrow morning and at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire.

OK, I really voted for Al Gore, and that I’ll never regret -- Hey, I’d do it again in a heartbeat (hint hint). It just so happens Joe Lieberman was on the ticket.

And I can’t for the life of me understand why he still insists on calling himself a Democrat when he clearly left the party somewhere around February 2005.

(h/t, Atrios.)

The Horror of "Cooked Chicken"

Queasy stomach alert: if you don’t want to be thoroughly revolted by what our government has done in our name, stop reading now.

I really mean it.

For those of you still reading, we’re going to talk about rendition. You know, where the American government works with the governments of foreign countries whose human rights standards aren’t quite the same as ours. Our government gets these foreign agents to perform outrageous acts of torture on our behalf--things that would spark outrage in Americans if it were discovered U.S. agents were doing this. So we get someone else to do it for us.

See the difference?

Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review contained a story on "Dirty Diplomacy” by Craig Murray. Murray was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004. Despite (or perhaps because of) its “despotic leader” and the brutal torture of prisoners, since 2001 Uzbekistan has been an important ally to the U.S. and Britain in the “war on terror.” They are one of the chief countries in the CIA’s rendition program.

I think when we’re talking about torture, we should be absolutely clear what we’re talking about here. Torture isn’t just a word or a fuzzy concept, it’s actual suffering perpetrated by one human being on another. Murray’s book provides a shocking example of the kind of torture that happens in Uzbekistan, and I thought I’d share it with you here.

Last chance to navigate away. Anyone still here? OK, read this:

... a University of Glasgow pathology report shows one man “died of immersion in boiling liquid” after being seized by the authorities. Post-mortem photos of an 18-year-old Samarkand resident reveal similar marks: “The right hand looked like cooked chicken.” In addition, Murray writes, “one technique was widespread throughout the country — they would strap on a gas mask and then block the filters. I presume that the advantage of this was that it would suffocate without bruising.”

Let’s repeat: an 18 year old whose right hand looked like cooked chicken.

What have American and British officials done with this knowledge of what goes on? Endorsed it:

Uzbek officials seemed to use coercive techniques routinely during investigations, he says, yet there was little outcry from the Americans or the British. The executive director of Freedom House, a Washington-based organization that monitors political rights and civil liberties, tells him in 2003 that the group has decided to back off from its efforts to spotlight human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. The shift in policy occurred, she explains, because some Republican board members (in Murray’s words) “expressed concern that Freedom House was failing to keep in sight the need to promote freedom in the widest sense, by giving full support to U.S. and coalition forces.” Meanwhile, British officials insisted that information from coercive interrogations was valuable and that relying on it did not violate the United Nations Convention Against Torture. “That is my view of the legal position,” a Foreign Office legal adviser tells Murray in London. “I make no comment on the morality of the case.”

It has been documented repeatedly that torture does not reveal reliable information. If someone were holding my hand over a boiling hot Fry Daddy, I’d say anything to get them to stop. Anything. I’m sure some 18 year old kid would feel the same. Regardless, there’s simply no way to know whether the information received is true or not. This is the worst way to get information about terrorists.

America and Great Britain have turned a blind eye to these atrocities, even taken part in them by allowing Uzbek agents to perform them on our prisoners. We won’t do it ourselves, but we have no problem getting someone else to do it for us.

Remember this:

Uzbekistan's role as a surrogate jailer for the United States has been confirmed by a half-dozen current and former intelligence officials working in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The CIA declined to comment on the prisoner transfer program, but an intelligence official estimated that the number of terrorism suspects sent by the United States to Tashkent is in the dozens.

There is other evidence of the United States' reliance on Uzbekistan in the program. On Sept. 21, 2003, two American-registered airplanes -- a Gulfstream jet and a Boeing 737 -- landed at the international airport in Tashkent, according to flight logs obtained by the New York Times.

[...]

The logs show that at least seven flights were made to Uzbekistan by those planes from early 2002 to late 2003, but the records are incomplete.

That’s the same time period that Murray was operating in Uzbekistan.

So, did American prisoners get boiled alive in Uzbekistan at the behest of the U.S. government? We can’t know exactly what happened, but it's likely. We would't have sent prisoners to Uzbekistan if we didn't want some acts of horrible torture performed on them; otherwise, we'd have kept them in Gitmo. The mere fact that this activity goes on while we continue to consider Uzbekistan a “great ally” is incomprehensible.

America, I fear, has lost its mind and its soul.

Friday Fraud

Can we just fire them all and be done with it? This shit makes me angry:

Justice's voting chief steps down amid controversy

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's voting rights chief stepped down Friday amid allegations that he'd used the position to aid a Republican strategy to suppress African-American votes.

John Tanner became the latest of about a dozen senior department officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who've resigned in recent months in a scandal over the politicization of the Justice Department in the Bush administration.

[...]

Tanner has been enmeshed for months in congressional investigations over his stewardship of the unit that was established to protect minority-voting rights. He drew increased focus this fall after he told a Latino group: "African-Americans don't become elderly the way white people do. They die."

The Bush Administration has turned every department of the government into a GOP power-hoarding tool. We’ve seen how they care about minority voting rights in Florida, Ohio and New Mexico. So this Tanner news comes as no surprise.

In fact, news of problems at Justice’s Civil Rights division have percolated on liberal blogs for months; in November USA Today finally took notice with this piece about how Justice prosecuted the fewest number of hate crimes in 10 years. That news sparked a massive protest in November.

But back to Mr. Tanner. He’s apparently left his gig to

”...pursue (an) opportunity" to work in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices.

Oh, great. I can’t foresee any problems with that, nosirree.

Help, I’m Drowning

We’re drowning in catalogs at the Beale household. There’s a whiff of panic in this daily retail blitzkrieg: where in the past I may have received two or three catalogs from a particular retailer, now we’re getting dozens from each one.

This aggressive sales pitch can only mean one thing: sales are down and they’re getting really, really desperate.

Note to L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer, Sierra Trading Post, J. Crew, Sahalie, etc. etc.: you do not need to send me 10 catalogs all with the same crap in them. And no, putting a new cover on it doesn’t convince me that what’s inside is any different than it was the last nine times you sent it to me. If I browsed through your catalog and didn’t feel inspired to buy anything the first time, I’m not going to change my mind now.

This is such a terrible waste of paper, time, money, and space in my mailbox. These days I go straight from the mailbox to the recycling bin and dump everything I don’t want so it doesn’t further clutter my already filled countertops.

The folks at Environmental Defense have some useful tips on decreasing catalog clutter. One of them is to “register with the Direct Marketing Association”--for a $1 fee. Now, why would I want to do that? Why would I want to pay to not receive something I never asked for? (I know, they say the nominal fee is to “cut down on fraud.” Bullshit.) And why do I get the feeling that giving these Direct Marketing people my name and address will only increase the likelihood of getting more crap I don’t want?

A better idea from Environmental Defense is Catalog Choice, a free service. After registering, you list the catalogs you no longer wish to receive, and they contact the company on your behalf. This may not stop you from getting anything new but it will cut down on what you’re currently getting.

I’ve written before about how offensive I find the daily assault of advertising on my life. The constant drum-beat of “buy buy buy buy BUY!” is destroying the fabric of our society. It trivializes what’s important, and has turned everything from religion to politics into a commodity that can be bought and sold.

I’m as much of a consumer as the next person. I like having nice things and I like having the latest gadget. I like to shop--who doesn’t? But these things need to be kept in proper perspective. It should not rule our lives.

Every journey begins with a single step. I’m going to start by eliminating these freaking catalogs from my life.

Two Days Ago

I took advantage of the 78 degree weather (!!!) on Tuesday to catch up on the yard work. Boy, was I surprised to find this.

Yes, the camellias are in bloom again. In mid-December.

Also in bloom in my garden: a magenta azalea (I tried to get a picture but it didn't come out), all of my rosemary, the eleagnus (Russian Olive) bushes, the glossy obelia, hydrangeas, and some reddish shrub I can't identify. This is the second time around for the eleagnus, which normally blooms in October and has the most delightful fragrance of any shrub I know.

Did I mention it's mid-December?

I know there's a difference between climate and weather, but when even the plants are messed up about what season it is, something's not right.

I also saw a mosquito. In mid-December.

I would appreciate it if we could get back to regular seasons, please. December should be cold, maybe even with snow. You should see your breath in the air, and not because you haven't brushed your teeth in a while. And I just refuse to live in a place with California weather without any of the actual benefits of living in California: namely, the ability to buy wine and alcohol in the grocery store, two Democratic senators, a Trader Joe's within driving distance, and a hockey team that can actually win a game every once in a while.

Just sayin' .