For the Other

Please stop telling me how to feel.

Stop telling me to calm down. Stop telling me to get over it. Don’t tell me to relax or to stop being offended.

If you know me, and you care about me, I would be grateful if you would give me a minute; if you would really pay attention.

I am grieving the outcome of this election. I am disheartened, discouraged, and disappointed. I have just recently attained a small degree of emotional health and stability after a crushing personal loss—and this feels like a set-back to me.

You may not understand this. You probably don’t understand it. That’s OK. You don’t have to understand it in order to be empathetic. All you have to do is believe me that this is really how I feel.

I am trying my best to not say unkind things about people who supported Trump. I think I’ve succeeded for the most part—but if I’ve said or written something that feels like a personal attack or insult, please bring it to my attention. I do not want to hurt or offend you. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I would like you to do the same for me.

You say how upset you are by the negativity—as though “negativity” on its own is a bad thing. “Negativity” is the only appropriate response to racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, and violence. No matter who we voted for, we should ALL be negative when we read a story about a young Saudi college student in Wisconsin beaten to death, or middle-school students in Michigan chanting “build the wall” at Latino classmates.

This is why I grieve. This is why I am discouraged, and even afraid for my friends who are Latino, black, gay, Jewish, or Muslim.

White Trump supporters do not, as a group, I presume, feel threatened and afraid when they leave their homes. They don’t wonder if they will be insulted or demeaned or threatened just because of who they are or what they look like.

But the groups that are targeted by Trump and some of his supporters do feel these kinds of threats and fear. The president-elect of the United States has said rude, scary, demeaning, threatening things about them—and some of his supporters take this as license to bring their formerly hidden racism, ethocentrism, misogyny out into the light.

Trump’s America is frightening for some people—entire groups of people. If you could acknowledge this without minimizing it, or contradicting it, or blaming it on the media, it would go a long way to helping those of us who are grieving and/or afraid to believe that this is not the America that you want to see.

Please don’t minimize it by saying it goes both ways.

I know of a few incidents that went the other way—Trump protesters that went too far, a white man who was beaten possibly because he voted for Trump. But these, I believe, are rare events in a backdrop of rising intolerance for the Other.

Pointing out that some Trump supporters have been insulted and even harmed by Trump-opposers does not mitigate the fact that Trump’s presidency, aligned with the KKK and other hate groups, represents an increase in fear and actual danger to at-risk groups. This comparison is another false equivalence in a sea of false equivalencies. It doesn’t even come close to being the same because Trump supporters are the ones who have the power and influence of the President on their side.

I’m not in any way saying that all Trump supporters are racist or sexist or any other “-ist.” I’m not saying you are. I’m saying it’s out there, and it appears to be getting worse.

I started out by telling you about my own grief and discouragement—but none of this is really about me and my feelings. I acknowledge my own white, cis-gender privilege. My sorrow is not for me.

I grieve for the Other. For the immigrant. For the mother of young black men. For a Muslim woman afraid to wear a scarf. For a brown-skinned store owner, for a young woman getting her first job, for a queer student in a classroom.

I am grieving for America.

Cite Your Source

My kids learned at an early age that they couldn't convince me of anything just by saying it.

"Cite your source," I'd say.

One time, when Aidan was about ten or eleven, he told me I should stop buying gas at certain gas stations because the company owners hated America. At the time, he attended a tiny conservative Christian school where the popular consensus was that Obama was a socialist fascist dictator, born in Kenya and bent upon destroying the American Way of Life. Some folks were quick to jump on any McCarthy-esque rumor that popped up on the internet.

The inherent socio-political contradictions of that assertion aside, I wanted to teach my kids to respect other people's views, but also to think for themselves by looking at them with a critical eye. 

"Don't believe it just because someone says it's true," I would say.

So, when he told me about the gas station, I asked him to cite his source.

"Ringo's mom," he said confidently.

"She's a secondary source," I said, and then I explained to him the difference between primary and secondary sources. This explanation involved me defending myself against the charge that I thought Ringo's mom was a liar. 

Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt in
Mad about You; photo from TV.msn.com

"What source was Ringo's mom citing?"

"She read an article," he said.

Ah-hah. The definitive, indestructible "she read an article" defense.

(Mr. Peevie and I watched a show in the 90s called Mad About You with Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser. We still quote one of those episodes, in which Helen Hunt's character Jamie argues with her husband Paul, and he asks her how she knows what she's claiming. "I read an article!" she says--and it becomes a recurring theme. I squandered an hour watching Mad About You clips to try to find this scene, to no avail. This is how seriously I take my Green Room duty. You're welcome.)

As it turns out, the politics of gasoline are far more complicated than a simplistic anti-America rumor would have it. Snopes breaks it down. Notice the list of sources at the bottom of the article.

Sometimes, even sources that appear on the surface to be legitimate lack scientific rigor and should be source-checked.. See, for example, this article on the dangers of vaccinations from a secondary source called The Free Thinker (which looks like the Libertarian version of Huffington Post),written by a dude named Dave Mihalovic.

It all comes down to science and math: does the article cite (and more importantly, link to) legitimate scientific sources? The vaccine article referenced above makes many claims, none of which are sourced. The author cites "secret" CDC documents--but doesn't link to them or provide screen shots. There's no way for a thinking person to double check his claims--we're just supposed to believe him.

Um, no.

The first link in the article is to an article in another secondary source with equally shady credentials--not to an FDA document or a CDC memo or a news story, but to another article by the same guy. "Here," Dave Mihalovic is essentially saying, "you can trust me, because I said it again over here in this other article." Please.

In the third paragraph, the article quotes Brian Hooker, "a PhD scientist" about a CDC cover-up of the alleged risks of vaccinations. Who is Brian Hooker? What are his credentials in medicine, and medical research? What replicated studies has he conducted, and with what legitimate scientific controls?

The answers are, in order: He is a biochemical engineer who works as a consultant in the biotech industry.  He has no medical credentials, and has done no studies, that I can find. He's just a guy who is motivated, sadly, by the alleged vaccine-caused autism of his own child.

Regarding the claims in this article that the CDC has covered up data from their own Vaccine Safety Datalink database showing a "very high link between Thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism rates in children": Show me the proof, dude.

The article claims that there are "a number" of public records that back up this claim--but only links to a 20-page Congressional Record from ten years ago. This document actually contradicts the authors claims: "...exposure to less than the minimal risk level is believed to be safe" and "the minimal risk level would need to be multiplied by ten to reach a level at which harm would be expected through exposure." You can find this out for yourself by clicking the link, and then control-F searching for the word "risk" and looking at the 18th occurrence of the word. See? I have done all the work for you.

You're welcome.

Whatever. This is just one example of millions, and just one topic of dozens that we encounter every day in the news, on Facebook, or in casual conversation, which requests our uncritical acceptance of a questionable assertion. 

Don't do it. Be a critical, questioning listener--not just about gas stations and vaccinations, but about everything--things that cause cancer, things that prevent heart attacks, things that pastors say, things that politicians say--and not just the ones you disagree with. You get the picture.

Or, alternately, you could just trust the opinions here at The Green Room, and I promise, we will always provide primary sources.

Reading Les Miserables in Chicago

I finally finished reading Les Miserables (an English translation, obvs) this month--more than three years after I started it.

I had such high hopes when I first ordered the free Kindle version. It's only 959 pages, I thought to myself. I can handle that. After all, I'd already plodded through Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame--all 550 pages--including an entire novel's worth of narrative about the history and architecture of the cathedral; and 750 pages of Herman Melville's Moby Dick--including 30,000 words about whale blubber. That is not a lie.

The difference between the reading of those two novels and the latest novel is that I read with others in a reading group, with a deadline. I read Les Mis on my own, with no time constraints; and during the duration of my reading of I Am Miserables, I read 49 other books (according to my LibraryThing book tags), one of which, Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, was almost as unreadable as I'm Still Miserables. 

OK, that's a bit harsh. It's just that I'm a simple person, with lofty intentions but with the attention span of a toddler hopped up on Twix at Halloween. So when I encountered the 19-page table of contents (again, not a lie), I thought to myself, "Oh, crap." 

You know you're in trouble when some of the chapter titles are longer than entire chapters of some books. For example: Volume II, Book Second, Chapter II: In Which the Reader Will Peruse Two Verses, Which Are of the Devil's Composition, Possibly, and also Chapter III: The Ankle-Chain Must Have Undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to be Thus Broken With a Blow from a Hammer.

You also know you're in trouble when you don't understand a single word in some of the lengthy chapter titles, as in Volume III, Book Eighth, Chapter XIII: Solus Cum Solo, In Loco Remoto, Non Cogitabuntur Orare. Apparently, they only had a budget for for French-to-English, not Latin-to-English.

Barnes and Noble claims that Les Miserables is the home of the longest sentence ever written, clocking in at 823 words. But the Victor Hugo Internet Hub debunks this risible impertinence, citing five novels with longer sentences. I remember that sentence, however; it caused my undiagnosed aneurysm to throb.

The beautiful thing about reading on the Kindle is that you can look up words you don't know as you go along, without having to stop and pick up your unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. This is fortunate, because Victor Hugo is a vocabulary beast -- I encountered unknown lexical combinations on virtually every page. I am determined to find many opportunities to use recrudescence and fulgurating and matutinal in everyday conversation.

It was disconcerting, however, that many of the words I highlighted did not have definitions in the Kindle dictionary--such as pterigybranche, poignarded, emphyteuses, and arondissement. As it turns out, Hugo's narrator does not hide his linguistic snobbery, and his disdain for anything but the most precise and standard vocabulary and usage. He refers to 

...that abject dialect which is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light, that  

pustulous vocabulary each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the shadows. Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation thus in its nudity, in the broad light of thought, of the horrible swarming of slang. It seems, in fact, to be a sort of horrible beast made for the the night which has just been torn from its cesspool...what is slang, properly speaking? It is the language of wretchedness. 

Awesome.

Victor Hugo's middle name is digression. He admits this in the third sentence, after introducing the character Myriel, Bishop of D--: "Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous...to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him..." Hugo then spends the next 63 pages introducing the Bishop, who plays a key role in Jean Valjean's life even though he only appears briefly in the book. The Bishop gives Jean Valjean valuable silver, and urges him to use it to become an honest man; and after this encounter, the Bishop never returns to the story. 

The trick with reading Hugo or any prolix classic author is to figure out which digressions you can skim over without losing track of the main characters and plot lines, and which digressions contain indispensable facts and connections. I failed miserably at this task, which is why it took me three years to finish the book. I probably could have flipped past the entire Volume I, Book Third, or at the very least the first chapter of said Book entitled The Year 1817, which is a single seven-page paragraph name-drop. I could have spurned the entire Book First, Volume II, which comprises 19 chapters (47 pages) about the Battle of Waterloo--which the title of Chapter V refers to as The Quid Obscurum of Battles. (I googled quid obscurum. It means something like what darkness. It's also the name of a famous thoroughbred horse.)

Hugo wrote six chapters about the sewers of Paris in Volume V, Book Second. The Intestine of the Leviathan describes in torturous detail the history, construction, geography, and putrescent contents of the French sewer system. There's some interesting, even quotable, material in there--such as the passage that describes the sewer as "the conscience of the city:"

All the uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this trench of truth, where the immense social sliding ends. They are there engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is possible, filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to the rout all illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really exists, presenting the sinister form of that which is coming to an end...All which was formerly rouged, is washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells everything.

But if I had neglected this section, it would not have diminished my understanding of the story.

Some of the excursus distracted from the heroic storyline but proved germane to contemporary social and political discussions--such as the analysis of the political stage in France in the early 1830s, described in Volume IV, Book First, Chapters I - IV. These are the kinds of passages that get books banned in the red states:

Solve the two problems, encourage the wealthy,and protect the poor, suppress misery, put an end to the unjust farming out of the feeble by the strong, put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man who is making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust, mathematically and fraternally, salary to labor, mingle gratuitous and compulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of science the base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at one and the same time a powerful people and a family of happy men, render property democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier matter than is generally supposed; in two words, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral and material greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France.

So. I finished reading Les Miserables. I'm glad I read it, in the same way I'm glad I ran a marathon back in the '80s when I was young, energetic, child-free, and motivated by sibling competition. I have earned my bragging rights, but thankthelittlebabyjesus, I will never have to do it again.

What ridiculous book are you laboring to finish?

M. Peevie: Reflections on Social and Economic Policy

The conversation started with a discussion of Mitt Romney and his piles and piles of money. 
"Mitt Romney claims he's not even part of the one percent," C. Peevie said.

"What?! No way," I said. "Cite your source." That's a favorite riposte in our household.

"Rolling Stone," he said. 

I raised one eyebrow and looked over to Mr. Peevie for a ruling. "I'd need to see the article for myself," he said.

"What's the one percent?" M. Peevie asked.

"It's the people who have buckets of money, M. Peevie," C. Peevie explained. "The rest of us are the 99 percent." 

"M. Peevie," I added, "There are many people who don't have enough money to even buy what they need. Some people have to choose between paying their rent and buying food, or between paying the bill to heat their house and buying the medicine they need."

"But why do some people have so much money, and other people don't?" asked the budding socialist.

"Some people are really good at making money," I said. "But how do they do it?" she asked. She was like a machine gun, spitting out questions without taking the time to reload.

"Well, maybe they start a business..."

"But how do they start a business if they don't have any money?" she interrupted.

"The bank will lend them money if they don't have enough to start their business, and if they have a good business plan," we told her, all of chiming in with totally theoretically observations about the process of starting a business. And then we got back to the solutions for helping the poor.

"Some people believe that the best way to help people who are poor is to ask businesses and people with more money to pay a little more in taxes so we can use that money to set up programs to help them, and to create jobs," I told her. "And other people think that the best way to help poor people is to help the people who run businesses, because businesses make jobs. The more jobs there are, the fewer poor people." Or so they say, I didn't add.

"That's called 'trickle down,' C. Peevie interjected. "And it doesn't work."

"I think they both sound like good ideas," said the 11-year-old sage. "Why can't we do both?"

I looked at Mr. Peevie and he looked at me. "She'd make a good president," I said.

"I do not want to be president," she said. "Too much responsibility, and too much sitting behind a big desk and signing papers all day long."

These kinds of conversations make me anticipate with wonder how this girl will one day change the world.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Sometimes I tweet (follow me @EPeevie) political links or comments, and then my conservative friends and family reply, and then we get into these long debates in which we talk past each other without making any progress toward mutual understanding or consensus.  Take this dialogue, for example:

EPeevie:  Why are so many middle-income folks so intent upon preserving the inordinately low tax rates of the super-rich?

(This was in reference to a prior tweet posting a link of a Fortune Magazine interview with Warren Buffett in which he proposes tax cuts for all but the super-rich.)

TeaPartyPolly:  Because I think we should all pay less taxes as it is.  Again, I'll cite the IRS statistic: The top 1% of tax earners already pay 39% of the taxes; the top 25% of earners pay 86% of all taxes; the top 50% pay 97% of the taxes.  When will enough be enough?

EPeevie:  So what if 1% pay 39% of the taxes? That figure is meaningless out of context. Maybe they pay 39% of the taxes, but they make 90% of the income.  I'm not saying this is true--just that context makes a difference.

I still don't get why middle incomers oppose Buffett's proposal that taxes should be reduced for most people but increased for the super-rich.  Buffett himself says it would have no impact on entrepreneurism--and I guess he should know.

TPPolly: My reference is the Constitution and the writings of the founders of our country who envisioned a place where people are free to work as hard as they are motivated and the government gets out of the way as much as possible.  The things that people want to increase taxes on the wealthy for are not things that the Constitution/founders envisioned government taking a role in.

ReverendP: Hitting those with inomes over $250K is hitting small business, as I noted in my previous post.  Small business persons invest in widgets, widget machines, and hire widget makers and widget sellers.  It is called employment. Why do you suppose K. Marx was committed to a graduated income tax?

OfficerFriendly: Those are the people who create the jobs.  The government takes money, and while government helps a small percentage of people, it wastes far more money than it puts to use.

BTW, I'm middle income, and my taxes went up this year, and if the Bush tax cuts don't get renewed, my taxes will go up this year by $4,000.  Also, they've delayed our property tax bills until after the election because they raised the multiplier.  That means that even though my house gets water every time it rains, and is worth half as much as it was five years ago, my taxes continue to rise every year.

And we'll have to pay the taxes at Christmas.  The only reasons politicians talk about "the rich" is to get you to look up so you don't see the uppercut to the chin coming.  We should stop worrying about how to hurt other, rich evil people and start worrying about what they are doing to us.

TPPolly:  The class envy card that liberals play is so subtle that it's powerful.

EPeevie:  Somehow I don't think Warren Buffett is motivated by class envy.

Warren Buffett was talking about increasing the tax rate for the super-rich, not small business owners.  100K, as you mentioned earlier, and even 250K, do not qualify.  Think hedge fund managers, with multi-million dollar bonuses.  The lowest earning hedge fund manager in 2004 made $65 MILLION DOLLARS.

And finally, I believe that the Constitution did not envision many things that we are dealing with today.  It is a great document, but "Constitutional idolatry" takes us down the wrong road.

I totally agree that the federal government is bloated and often wasteful and ineffective.  But I don't agree that the first place we should look to de-bloat is social programs that help the poor because the Constitution, written by aristocrats, didn't address the problem.

OfficerFriendly:  You are falling into the trap laid for you, namely that the only choices are to raise taxes or hurt poor people.

TPPolly:  Warren Buffett is not motivated by class envy because he's not a politician seeking re-election on the basis of "vote for me and I'll soak those rich people and give you their money."

I would also say where the Constitution is wrong then let's change that...otherwise we must play by the game rules we've been given and not cheat against our agreed-upon rules by running around the end and undermining the Constitution.

RevP: I think Warren Buffett, Obama, O'Biden, Kerry and George Soros should volunteer to make larger contributions (taxes).  But why should the government put a gun to our heads (the tax system) in order for them to determine who gets their handouts of my money?

OfficerFriendly: How come everybody quotes Warren Buffett when he says that the government should raise taxes on the super-rich, but then conveniently forgets to quote him on the second half of his comment.  Context works both ways.

EPeevie:  Which part, OF, the part where he says raising taxes on the super-rich won't inhibit entrepreneurs, or the part where he says that taxes should be reduced for people at lower incomes?

OfficerFriendly: Taxes should be reduced on middle and upper middle income.  That part is never talked about by politicians.  The debate now is whether to raise our taxes or leave them the same--not reduce them.

TPPolly: It is simply not the government's place to decide an arbitrary number at which anyone has "made enough."  We don't know what they do with that money--they may want to give large amounts to charity.  Frankly, it isn't anybody's business what people do with what they make.

How frequently must we say it...ours is not a nation founded upon socialistic redistribution of wealth.  If that's what we want, then let's change the Constitution to look like North Korea's.

OfficerFriendly:  Plus, if there is a ceiling above which you cannot rise, no matter how hard you work or how lucky you get, then people would stop trying hard or taking chances.

EPeevie:  Yes, I'm going to stop trying hard or taking chances if the government taxes me at above 17 percent once my income reaches ONE MILLION BAJILLION DOLLARS per year.

...

At this point, I interrupted the debate to ask permission to use the conversation in a blog post because "I think it is a brilliant example of how "liberals" (I know that's how you think of me, even though I don't think of myself that way) and conservatives talk past each other."  Everybody agreed, and TPPolly added a bit of what I saw as irony:

TPPolly:  I don't think I'm talking past anyone...I'm making points, but they are not being responded to.  Specifically, you seem unable to get past the issue of our Constitution.

RevP had the last somewhat off-point, unsourced last word in the FB discussion:  Well, you have to love ObamaCare, presided over by a President who smokes, supervised by an obese surgeon general and financed by a treasury secretary who cheated on his taxes.  Billionaires will not risk their big money if they only get to take home 15% of it or less.  Right now most billionaires are keeping 75% of their wealth out of taxable areas...like hiring and investing business.

What do you think?  Were we talking past each other?  That's how I see it:  I raised a question about taxing the super-rich, and the conversation turned to the straw-man arguments of income ceilings and local property taxes and whether or not the Constitution allows for graduated income tax.

Clearly, my friend TPPolly did not see it that way.  For him, the Constitution question was integral to the discussion of tax rates; and whereas I felt like I had addressed the issue, he believed I avoided it. 


Is this little FB debate a microcosm of the national political debate?  Is there any hope for political consensus, or even compromise?

Sticks and Stones

Recently Stephen Colbert (I think, or maybe it was Jon Stewart) made the politically incorrect statement that we need the word "retarded." We can't let stupid, self-serving politicians and linguistically hyper-sensitive word-nazis take our most useful adjectives away from us. It just wouldn't be right.

Across the spectrum, actor John C. McGinley, spokesperson for the National Down Syndrome Society said on Huffington Post that using the words "retard" and "retarded" is offensive, hurtful and demeaning to members of the special needs community. It "belittles people with special needs," he believes.

McGinley suggests that the way we know that "retard" is an "instrument of hurt" is that it is never used as a compliment. He neglected to point out that this is also true of the colorful epithets "stupid," "dickwad," "ass-hat," or "crusty batch of nature"--but that doesn't mean there isn't a time and a place to use those words.

He compares the R-word, as he calls it, to nigger, kike and faggot. He says that the second way we know that we shouldn't use it is by asking

would the circumstances allow for substituting the N-word instead? Could the R-word just as easily be replaced by any number of pejorative slurs that would serve the same purpose? The answer to both these hypotheticals is; not in a million years!

This argument contains a logical fallacy: it presumes the conclusion, that "retard" is a pejorative slur in the same way that "nigger" is a pejorative slur. It's not, in the same way that the word "cripple" is not necessarily a pejorative slur. It can be used that way; but its use does not automatically presume aspersion against paraplegics. The word "nigger" is always, by definition and common usage, a slur against black people. The word "retard," on the other hand, has been in common use to mean a person, thing, or behavior that is backward, laughable, stupid, nonsensical or indefensible.

I submit that using the word "retard" about someone who is not mentally challenged but who is merely speaking or behaving in a stupid way, who is willfully ignorant, only disparages the insultee. The meaning and scope of the word should be judged by its context and intent.

About a year ago Jon Stewart used the word "retard" on his show, and a parent of a mentally disabled child wrote in to complain about it. She was articulate and civil; and her comment sparked a discussion that went on for 71 pages, over the course of a month. Another correspondent on the message board, also parenting a mentally disabled child, wrote, "Words are just words: you can choose to be offended, and you can choose to not be offended."

Who's right?

No one except school-age bullies uses the word "retarded" to disparage people with mental disabilities--not even Rush Limbaugh. It's unnecessary and a little bit retarded for Mr. McGinley and others to campaign to have the word excised from our collective vocabulary. It's ridiculous and exploitative for Sarah Palin to call for Rahm Emmanuel's resignation because he used the word--especially when she defends Limbaugh using it in exactly the same way.

The Green Room Bottom Line: some words offend some people; and we should choose our words, and especially our insults, carefully.

Discuss.

Conversations About Health Care

Jacob Weisberg recently compared the Republican response to the current pending bill to the 2003 Medicare Part D bill in Slate magazine. It's very illuminating, and here's the most telling line:

"Medicare recipients are much more likely to vote Republican than the uninsured who would benefit most from the Democratic bills," which is why the Republicans overwhelmingly passed Medicare Part D at an estimated 10-year cost as high as $1.2 trillion, but won't support the current bill.

"That figure," Weisberg continued,

—just for prescription-drug coverage that people over 65 still have to pay a lot of money for—dwarfs the $848 billion cost of the Senate bill. The Medicare D price tag continues to escalate because the bill explicitly bars the government from using its market power to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers or establishing a formulary with approved medications.

I had a conversation recently with a guy who opposes the health care reform bill because, he said, it would cause his health insurance premiums to increase by $700 per year. First of all, I doubt that he--or anyone--knows enough about the impact of the bill to be able to calculate a specific individual cost.

But aren't there more important considerations at stake here than the anecdotal alleged impact on one wealthy family? Such as health care bankruptcy for tens of thousands of Americans? Such as millions involuntarily uninsured or under-insured?

He would say no. He would say, "That's socialism. That's redistribution of wealth, and I'm against it." But as we have pointed out before,this is not socialism, it's progressive taxation. It's what we do here in this country to help take care of people who are poor, of children, of families who are struggling to keep a 10-year-old car running, not driving late model Beemers; who sometimes have to choose between buying medicine and buying food; who get non-emergency health care at the emergency room because they can't afford the cost of an office visit.

Health care reform is imperative because health care in this country works great for some, but there are too many left out in the cold. Health care reform is an issue of social justice.

Premature Adjudication

I'm a big fan of the guy--that's no secret.

But to give Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize because they want to "promote what he stands for" seems premature, with the unfortunate effect of minimizing the global importance of the award.

This article in Huffington Post said the committee "praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease American conflicts with Muslim nations, and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change." I'm sorry to sound like a nabob of negativity here, but come on. Anyone can make pledges--but shouldn't the Prize be given to someone who has actually done more than make pretty promises?

Previous winners include former president Jimmy Carter, Doctors Without Borders, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, and Mother Teresa--all of whom worked for years on issues of peace and social justice, with measurable, admirable results.

Obama took office less than two weeks before the nomination deadline, which casts a further shadow on the politics of the Prize. Predictably, Repubs have come down hard on the decision, some hilariously.

Those who are scornful, angry and/or cynical about Obama getting the top peace prize include Rush Limbaugh, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, former Polish President Lech Walesa, Hamas, the Taliban, William Kristol, pretty much everyone else at the Washington Post as well, and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson.

Those happy and supportive about Obama receiving the award include John McCain, Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Al Gore, and Afghani President Hamid Karzai.

I do like Obama's acceptance speech, which is appropriately humble and gracious. He said,

Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who have inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

OK, I can live with affirmation and momentum. I wish they would have waited a year or two or three, to see what the outcomes will be; but in the meantime, I am proud and relieved that we have a leader who inspires hope and respect, and is reshaping the image of the United States around the world.

It's a good feeling, for once.

I Feel Safe Here

Last week, as we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital where A. Peevie sees many of his "-ologists," I was surprised to hear him say fondly, "I like this place."

"Really, A.?" I asked. "That's great. How come?"

"Because all the people here are really nice," he said. Well, that's an advertisement waiting to happen for Lutheran General Children's Hospital.

"Also," he continued, "I feel safe here."

OK, first of all, how great is it that this child understands his own feelings and articulates them so...well, so articulately?

And secondly, isn't the irony almost too much? That he feels safe at the hospital?

This is a boy who thinks about health and safety concerns more than the average 11-year-old. He went through a phase a few years ago when he talked about death and dying constantly. "Will you still think about me when I'm dead?" he'd ask. Or I'd put him back to bed for the eleventy-seventh time, and tell him to go to sleep, and he'd say, "I don't want to go to sleep, Mom. I'm afraid I won't wake up in the morning."

Like that didn't break my achy heart.

He made me a mother's day card this year that referenced health issues 6 times in 19 sentences. He said things like

"You love me...you get me food. You give me medicine and make sure I take my meds...When I am sick you get me Motrin or Tylenol. When my forehead is warm you take my temperature. When I have trouble breathing you take me to the hospital...When C. Peevie or M. Peevie are being mean, you yell at them and help me get away from them. (Yaaay!!!)"

Maybe when you've been through what he's been through, you pay more attention to feelings of safety, and you don't take it for granted that someone will take your temperature when your forehead is warm. His medical chart is about 19 inches thick with the details of two open-heart surgeries, one closed-heart surgery, two cardiac ablation procedures, half a dozen additional cardiac catheterizations, and multiple hospitalizations for pneumonia, RSV, influenza A, and once for an infected gland.

(I posted the story of A. Peevie's rough start here, in case you missed it the first time around.)

Anyway, we saw Dr. O, an electro-physiologist who specifically handles the rhythm issues of A. Peevie's heart. We got a good report, and A. Peevie had a fun tickle-fest with the playful million-dollar specialist. I was glad to walk away with no changes other than an additional prescription.

I want this boy to feel safe all the time. I think a child should feel safe, and one of the most important jobs of a parent is to help her child be and feel safe. I'm happy that he feels safe at the hospital; but I'm sad that he's had the kind of life experience that has put him in a place where the hospital is the place where he feels safe enough to actually notice and comment on feeling safe.

The boy also makes me think hard about health care in the United States. Without changes in our system, he will be out of luck when it comes to health care. He has so many pre-existing conditions, long-term medications, and high-risk medical concerns that the only way he'll get health care coverage is if he marries a cardiologist or ends up working for a large company that's required to provide health insurance to all of its employees.

It's not right that someone like him, through no fault of his own, will be at high risk for bankruptcy-by-healthcare-bills if somebody doesn't do something.

I saw a bumper sticker today on a big, gas-sucking SUV that read, "Defeat ObamaCare." What I want to know is, what do they have to say to A. Peevie about his healthcare options once he is no longer a dependent of Mr. Peevie and his excellent healthcare benefits?