maven&meddler

It took nearly 18 hours to get home to Reno, Nevada from Ft. Meyers, Florida yesterday … yes, that’s the way it is when you ride on a pass. We finally made it into Reno at 9 p.m. and were completely exhausted.

I’m moderating comments this evening on my blog post about this absurd idea that women under 50 don’t need those silly old mammograms. Too many false positives! Too expensive. Too many unnecessary biopsies!

Here’s a suggestion: quit killing the mammogram messenger, and start talking about new national best practices and a single standard of care that must be adhered to nationwide.

Read the mammogram post just prior to this one for more.

The Denver airport is the lamest modern air terminal I’ve ever been to. Unless you really need to route through there, I would recommend against it.

Florida is still the credit card fraud capital of the world. My step daughter and her fiance couldn’t use their debit cards half the time, for the credit card company putting a block on it because it was being used in Florida. When Mr. Maven and I got home, there were two messages on the phone from Visa wanting to make sure that we were actually using our card down there.

But gee, “the weather is so good”. Sigh. It seems to me that there’s a lot of great weather in a lot of better places.

You must read the November issue of Harpers. It’s quite simply the best magazine out there right now. I read it front to back. The best articles: “The War We Can’t Win” by Andrew Bacevitch and “Wrinkle in Time” by Steve Mills. Bacevitch nails the problem with Afghanistan so elegantly, you’ll ‘get it’ unless you’re unconcious. Mills tells the decline and death of the American newspaper through the lens of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Well, it sounds like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, (D-NV) is really kicking butt and taking names, and becoming the leader that I’d hoped he would. They’re damn close to a cloture motion which would allow for a vote on Saturday (gasp!).

Senate Majority Whip, Dick Durbin chided Repubs to offer up their own bill, since they don’t seem to like this one - a hybrid of the Senate Finance and Health Committee efforts. LOL. You go, Dick.

The Senate bill will stay under the nonsensical and artificial $900 billion mark, and offer a public option that could be opted out of by states. The opt out will be used by those states who, of course, need the damn thing the most … those usual suspects of knotheadedness in the deep, dark South. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas — have yet to commit to vote for the motion to proceed, since they haven’t yet located their spines.

I hear that the bill poses less of a problem for the pro-choice constituency but I think that is a fight that is sure to continue. I think it’s absolutely obscene to use a woman’s right to choice as a political football in a cynical attempt to derail health care insurance reform. For all those who want to use abortion in this way, I suggest you check into who’s contributing to their campaigns. My guess is that it will be the big insurance companies.

If all women had the money to buy the abortion inclusive public plan option then, duh, they could simply afford to go have an abortion. This type of restrictive language, although not as rough as the House version, is still a cheesy attempt to restrict choice and ration healthcare to women who have less.

I call that ‘chicken shit’. Either abortion is legal and therefore a service that can and should be provided by the government, or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways.

Here’s where you can look at the entire compromise Senate Bill, and the abortion language begins on page 116, with section 1303.

Hey, here’s a question: are you as tired as I am of Sarah Palin … the woman who is famous for simply being famous. I watched the nightly sortof news and there were the usual repub women standing in line for ‘the book’. They weren’t sure why the book was great, but they knew it had no flouride in it, wasn’t paid for by any government funding that would also fund abortions, and could be used to beat up the McCain campaign staffers who laughed at Sarah’s suggestions.

Here are some other uses for ‘Going Rogue’:

It could be used to build a wall along the Canadian border to keep those socialists up there where they belong.

The NRA could use it to test the body armor piercing bullets they would sell to minors on street corners if they could.

It could provide an inexpensive and conservatively correct form of birth control … holding it between your knees.

Chew toys for teabaggers.

Copies of ‘Going Rogue’ can be hollowed out to hide your key to the bomb shelter and the armageddon plan.

They can be translated to Arabic and sent to ‘alternative detention’ sites to torture those suspected of terrorism or simply being disagreeable.

It can be sent to Ann Coulter as an object lesson of how to be an even bigger lying whore.

‘Going Rogue’ can save on ammo, being dropped out of helicopters on unsuspecting endangered animals.

Dan Brown could find a huge ridiculous conspiracy theory in it.

Sarah Palin has proven that you can pimp a book and still act like a lady.

Send ‘Going Rogue’ to early childhood reading programs. If the kid gets it, you know early that you have a serious problem and should start looking for counseling.