The latest Disability Blog Carnival is now live and its theme is “A Few of Our Favorite Things”. Go check it out while I finish my gift shopping.

As the Christmas recess approaches, Congressional Democrats are folding like cheap furniture. They’ve backed down on pledges to expand children’s health care, to require utilities to meet renewable energy milestones, and to attach withdrawal deadlines to continued funding for war in Iraq. It absolutely kills me when I read news stories referring to Democratic “negotiators” trying to work out a deal with Republicans. If this is how Democrats negotiate, I’m terrified to see what surrender looks like.

I put a lot of blame for this embarrassment on old-guard Democrats like Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer. They’re committed to keeping themselves in power, keeping their hands in the till, and not much else. I don’t think either one of them has one shred of a vision for this country, much less a progressive vision. They–and the rest of the Democratic leadership–need to start leading as if they only have another year in power. Because if this kind of political cowardice keeps up, I’m not sure they deserve another chance.

Well, fuck. Terry Pratchett, the author of the renowned Discworld series and whose books I discovered not too long ago, has been diagnosed with an early form of Alzheimer’s. His open letter to his fans is a more whimsical take on the typical British stiff-upper-lip regard for bad news and I truly hope his cautious optimism is justified. Everything I’ve heard about him indicates that he’s as brilliant and humane in real life as he is on paper. There’s an alarming shortage of decent, brilliant people in the world, so I’m going wish him the best and add more of his books to my reading list.

The NYT reports that the the Social Security Administration’s overwhelming backlog of disability appeals is forcing people to wait years before they can get their appeals heard. The delays can be so severe that some people lose their homes or even die before they can get a hearing. The article points out that approximately two-thirds of appeals result in the awarding of disability benefits, which makes the initial review stage seem more like a bureaucratic hoop rather than a meaningful assessment process. A substantial number of those waiting for a hearing date are individuals with mental illness, which raises questions about how disability examiners treat such claims on first blush. These examiners do play a crucial gatekeeping role, but the extraordinarily high rate of successful appeals indicates that the system seems to err on the side of denying benefits and hoping they’ll go away. We should be able to do better than that.

Today’s posting was delayed because of an uncommonly packed social calendar. And it continues tomorrow. By then, I might even be thawed out from tonight’s polar expedition (actually, just a walk to the cinema, but I still a want a medal for valor).