Two women with mental disabilities were sent into Baghdad markets today with explosives strapped to their bodies, which were then detonated remotely (although the last fact seems to be disputed by American authorities). We’ll probably never get the complete story, but I’m sure people with disabilities have been used like this in other conflicts. My friend Rose best summed the appropriate reaction to this event in one word: ick.
California’s effort to extend universal health care coverage to its residents stalled in committee and appears to be dead. As the Wall Street Journal rightly points out, individual states don’t have the political authority to keep health care costs under control. These attempts by states to develop their own patchwork solutions are interesting, but I don’t see them as viable solutions. The deteriorating economic outlook isn’t going to do much to encourage other states to experiment with expanding health care coverage. All this is to say that the only viable solution is a national solution. But for any national solution to be really effective, it must address the market forces that drive costs higher. I’m still not convinced that either Clinton’s or Obama’s plan does this.
The Gimp Parade links to a news story describing how the power outages in Gaza brought on by the Israeli blockade are affecting people like Maher Al-Assali, a Palestinian boy who is ventilator-dependent. During the frequent blackouts, the boy’s family must manually ventilate him with an Ambu bag.
This post isn’t intended as a criticism of Israeli policy. But having been in situations where my ventilator quit working, I can tell you that manually bagging someone is exhausting work for the bagger and rather uncomfortable for the bagee. A human being can’t possibly mimic the regular, measured breaths of a mechanical ventilator.
The Republicans look poised to nominate an old white man for president. Quel surprise. McCain would be a tough opponent, especially considering his appeal to independents as a self-styled “maverick”. Then again, plenty of conservatives absolutely revile the man. McCain seems to inspire a lot of anxiety in the progressive blogosphere, but it’s a waste of time to fret about who will emerge as the opponent. If Democrats can’t capitalize on the current political climate, they don’t deserve to win.
Deaf employees at Pepsi produced this clever ad that will appear during the Super Bowl pre-game show. The lack of sound is going to have a lot of people fumbling for their remotes, but it makes the ad that much more effective. Other major corporations might want to take notice and consider doing some advertising targeted at the disability community. Our collective discretionary income is only going to increase as more employers open their doors to us.
Thanks to my colleague Sonny for the tip.
Fellow Gen-Xers: I present you with three hours of MTV from 1983, complete with commercials. Lose yourselves in the mulleted awesomeness of Night Ranger. Get funky with the so-white-they’ll-make-you-go-blind Huey Lewis & the News. Sigh with nostalgia at the ads for cassette tapes.
And if you’re late for work tomorrow because you stayed up late reliving your youth, don’t come crying to me.
“This country is hard on people.”
That line, spoken by an ailing ex-sheriff, captures the relentless grimness of No Country for Old Men. A stoic Texan stumbles across the carnage from a drug deal gone bad and makes off with a satchel full of cash. A crisis of conscience causes him to return to the scene and he soon finds himself being tracked by a psychopathic killer charged with finding the money.
The movie was adapted from the book by Cormac McCarthy. I was critical of his spare, stilted writing style in The Road (his most recent book), but it translates well to the screen here. Perhaps that’s because this is a movie about hard men who don’t have a lot to say. All of the performances are good, but Tommy Lee Jones is especially good as the small-town sheriff who is baffled by the brutality that has come to visit his little corner of the world. The Coen brothers have always done noir with flair and this is probably their best film in a decade.
CNN was running promos this morning for a story about “the amazing wheelchair that climbs stairs” or something to that effect, but I turned it off before the story aired. I’m beginning to suspect that the news outlets possess several variations of the wheelchair-that-climbs-stairs piece that they pull off the shelves whenever they need to fill time. The technology itself certainly isn’t new; I saw these chairs being demoed four or five years ago. But able-bodied folks seem to get a kick out of watching us gimps go up stairs all by ourselves. I’m going to record a video of myself typing a blog post, stick it up on YouTube, and see if that gets a similar reaction.
In a speech to a local chamber of commerce today, Governor Pawlenty remarked that Minnesota “is overemphasizing social services and welfare at the expense of some
other key priorities, like K-12 education, like higher education, and
like transportation.” While I don’t agree with his characterization that we are “overemphasizing” spending on health care and social services, those costs are beginning to crowd out our ability to increase spending in other key areas. In fact, we just discussed this in today’s session of the emerging leaders program in which I’m participating. The state demographer gave an excellent lecture on the dramatic shifts that are changing the face of Minnesota, including a rapidly aging population. By 2020, the number of Minnesotans age 65 and older will increase 53%. And a substantial number of aging boomers will need expensive medical care, pushing up our public health care costs.
The governor was addressing a business crowd, an audience that is concerned with public investments that will boost worker productivity (like transportation and education spending). But I don’t think that’s an excuse to toss out a not-so-subtle dig at the people served by programs like MinnesotaCare. Besides, the lion’s share of rising health care costs can be attributed to the unprecedented aging of our population. What the governor should be advocating is a national solution that makes health care affordable for everyone.
I keep thinking that the entire country of Japan inhabits a space-time distortion that puts it 5-10 years ahead of the rest of the planet. It’s a place where novels written on and for the mobile phone make it onto the bestseller lists. Here’s how one successful author of mobile phone fiction explains the popularity of the genre:
They [Japanese twentysomethings] don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences
are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally
wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them.
I don’t see this taking off in the States, mostly because Americans aren’t accustomed to reading anything on their phones longer than “whr u at?”. Maybe the notion of a literary form specifically tailored to electronic devices is an intriguing one.