Accomplishments of the Current Administration

Blogger Jon Smith makes a gratuitously snarky summary of the achievements of the Bush years:

In the three years and a half years since Hurricane Katrina not a single American city has been destroyed or partially destroyed....

Although the excesses of the Clinton administration's failed economic policies finally caught up with us in October 2008, in the seven years before this economic downturn the economy was doing really well. Not every President can boast of seven years of prosperity. What's more, even since October there have been no Great Depressions, which means President Bush has given us eight completely depressionless years....

Meanwhile, because of easy credit during the Bush years, more people had the opportunity to buy the homes of their dreams and live in them for a few years before they had to give them back....

Although some presidents can claim that they did not lose a war during their administrations, not many presidents can claim that they did not lose two wars.... Quibblers might say that he didn't actually win either conflict outright or that Afghanistan would be in better shape if we had kept more troops there and not invaded Iraq or offer all sorts of other coulda shoulda woulda arguments but the fact is that we didn't lose any wars and Bush deserves credit for that.

And more. Of all the "Bush Legacy" columns out there this last little while, I think this is the best.

The Problem of Sex in Marriage

There's a great post and discussion in comments over on feminist Mormon housewives about how wives and husbands handle differing expectations/needs for sex. In my therapy practice I have gotten to the point of wondering if every couple faces this issue. And it can go either way, I must say, although it seems like approximately eight husbands want more sex (at least after the first year or two of marriage) to every one wife who wants more sex. I've seen couples in both predicaments.

I really like the comment thread because I think every possible view and experience is represented. As a therapist, it is a hugely intractible problem with a lot of heat and very little light shed on it. So many people suffering, and all thinking there's something uniquely wrong with them (or their partner).

By the way, I wonder why it is that so many marriages start off full speed ahead on sex, or even with the wife saying she'd like more, but then ten or twenty years down the road he's feeling deprived and she's avoiding it whenever possible?

Why I Love My Job v.2

I just posted to my psych blog on something that happened yesterday at the ethics workshop I went to with Tammy, my office partner. In the post I wasn't able to get across the power of the experience, as this gentle, elderly lady, in her quiet voice, talked about what must have been an existentially challenging experience. As the Israel/Palestine conflict erupts into massacre, I can only remember that [some] individuals can come to solutions that states seem unable to. Hope comes in small packages. Sometimes my liberal nanny-state inclinations lead me to hope and push for big solutions, but they won't happen without many small changes of hearts.

Hooray for Dave and what he's trying to do. And hooray for my psychotherapist colleages, who are courageous and smart and a continual inspiration to me.

Single Payer, Universal Health Care

In today's Trib, from Clark Newhall, a local MD and attorney, a succinct and angry account of what is going on in American health care:

The price of our privately run, profit-driven medical-industrial complex has caused this famine. About one-third of every dollar going to health care pays for administrative costs -- for utilization reviewers, for computer programmers, for advertising, for sales managers, for executives of all kinds, for billing clerks, for coding clerks, for CEO bonuses in the millions and hundreds of million -- and for profits.

We are not talking about government waste. We are not talking about the cost of actually treating the sick and nurturing the healthy. We are talking only about the cost of running our profit-making health insurance industry.

One third of the health-care dollar -- that amount is far more than enough to give excellent medical care to everyone in the nation. It is far more than enough to fund the (privately-owned) surgical centers and imaging centers and Lasik centers that sprout up on every corner. It is even more than the amount we have given to Wall Street to bail out financiers and bankers from their hubristic near-demise.

The famine has grown while insurance companies charge higher premiums and reduce coverage, while employers cut their contributions and increase deductibles, while legislators reduce Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program budgets, and on and on.

I agree. We are not just at the brink, we are over the edge and falling fast. The current system is unsustainable, and little tweaky fixes that keep the current players rich is not going to stop the whole thing from crashing.

It is time for national single-payer health insurance. It is time to remove
the profit-making middleman from medical care. It is time to see health care for
the public good that it is and not for the profitable business it has become.
Support Medicare for all.

Winter Garden

Pretty morning after snow yesterday. By today, of course, the inversion haze begins.

Scandinavian Vampires

This afternoon we went back up to SLC to watch "Let the Right One In" (I posted the trailer on my vampire blog). I liked a lot of things about the movie--the sweet awkwardness of the two protagonists, the lovely, heartbreaking forshadowing of Oskar's doom--but mostly, the details about the vampires. I love the bone-deep cold of the movie, that the vampire is cold as stone. I gave a little jump of surprise and delight when Eli scrambles up the wall like a spider or a bat. I love that they sleep all day in the dark, that they change when the bloodlust is on them (but not too much or grotesquely, like the Buffy vamps), that some new vamps are suicidal, that they burst into flames in the sunlight. I quibble with the fact that a once and non-fatally bitten human awakens next as a vamp--nobody has improved on Bram Stoker's seductive ritual of three bites and an exchange of blood for creating a vampire. Guess I'm just a conservative traditionalist that way. No sparkling, sunwalking, self-disciplined bloodsuckers for me. But Eli is the perfect 12 year old Swedish vampire, if you find such a creature intriguing.

2009! In Not With a Bang But With a Progressive Policy Discussion

We had a New Year's celebration of Scrabble and dissipation with Sergene and the babies, while Rob and Nicolle were at Rob's gig. We ate fudge, watched all the Wallace and Gromit movies twice, and went out on the deck to hear the fireworks at midnight. New Year's Day John finished building the kitties' Christmas present. Hero likes to sit on top.

Rob and Nicolle came over and were here for our (very low key) Progressive Party, winter version. Maybe we would've had a more lively party if we'd waited to the 20th of January. (Not that it wasn't fun, if anyone who was there reads this).