katie allison granju

so i went and saw “sicko” June 30, 2007

Last night , Jon and I joined some friends and a bunch of fellow Knoxville bloggers to go see Michaell Moore’s new movie, “Sicko.”

It is my hope that this movie, which is as Cathy says MORE A FORM OF POLITICAL PROTEST than a documentary, will one day be seen as the watershed moment that finally galvanized Americans to action on this critical issue..

Moore posits that our medical care system is completely broken. He focuses on three major points in exploring his thesis:

-Millions of Americans have zero health insurance, meaning they are living without any access to even the simplest health care.

-Even for Americans who have “good” health care, it’s a big, confusing ripoff. You pay your big premiums each month (and your employer is also paying out the nose), and while you may be “covered” if you get sick — and be able to get the treatment you need — you will then be bombarded by huge bills for uncovered services, copays and deductibles. Many, many insured Americans end up losing everything when the bills start rolling in after major medical care is needed.

-The fact that medical insurance companies are for-profit means that they will always seek to avoid paying for as many services as possible, meaning that many insured Americans needing medical care are denied treatments. Some of them die. Many of them suffer. And health insurance execs are among the most highly compensated Americans, making salaries in the 6 and 7 figures off the backs of a syetem where millions are struggling to pay their premiums and get the care they need.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was Moore’s conversation with the wildly entertaining elderly British Labour leader TONY BENN, who explained how the British ended up with nationalized health service (NHS). Benn, and the other British citizens (and some Americans living in London) Moore spoke with, obviously hold the NHS up as a point of patriotic pride. Started in 1948, as the British were reeling in the aftermath of what they had lived through in WWII, the NHS marked a sense of national hope and identity - a way for the Brits to say “we take care of our own — all of our own.”

That idea of “taking care of our own” was echoed by the every day Canadians with whom Moore spoke. They simply believe that it’s the upstanding thing to do to make sure that all of their neighbors have access to health care, and they are willing to pay part of their own incomes to provide it. It’s a low drama approach. It’s not about politics or fear of the socialist bogeyman or Hillary Clinton…they see it as simply The Right Thing To Do.

One of the most disturbing parts of the movie, and a sidenote of American history of which I hadn’t been aware, is how Edgar Kaiser (the guy behind the first and largest American HMO) convinced the Nixon administration to get behind HMOs by explaining that he had created profit incentives in his health insurance business to pay as little as possible in health care claims.

I support universal health care for all Americans. I supported it before I saw this movie and I support it more strongly now. There are various ways we could create such a system, but as the only western industrialized nation without universal health care, it’s absurd to suggest that it cannot be done.

I will likely write more about the movie and my thoughts on this issue later, but for now I am going to walk down the street to my neighborhood market and get a Coke. My favorite cashier there, Britney, is due back from her two week maternity leave today, and I think I’ll drop a few more dollars in the several jars and cans set up on the counter begging for help for various children in our community who are in need of operations and chemo that their parents cannot afford.

no wonder it’s getting REALLY hard to turn over in bed… June 29, 2007

From one of those fetal development countdown calendars:

Your baby is likely to gain more than half his birthweight during the seven weeks before delivery.”

Yikes!

who owns patriotism? you do.

Jack Neely’s piece in Metro Pulse this week on the meaning of patriotism is PURE GENIUS and should be required reading for every high school civics class in this country. He writes:

It’s useful to think that maybe there are also peaceful and maybe useful ways to be patriotic. And it’s a good thing there are some, because most of us aren’t even eligible to serve in the military. Maybe there are more accessible ways to be patriotic. If you believe in the words of “America the Beautiful,” for example, maybe it’s patriotic to pick up other Americans’ litter. Maybe it’s patriotic to find a way to get along without purchasing products that are likely to get our nation in even more trouble. Like, say, petroleum products produced in nations hostile to America or American values. Maybe it’s patriotic to be honest with paying our taxes, so much of which goes to our soldiers and veterans’ benefits.

If we don’t take care of what the troops are thinking about while they’re away, we’re letting them down, maybe even more than we would if we let a flag drag in the dirt, or sneezed through a Lee Greenwood song.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Then have your kids and your boss and your neighbor read it.

the rapture

Via MY PAL, ATOMIC TUMOR:

Best video I’ve seen in ages ( I must have his cape!) and a record I will buy today:

another blogger June 28, 2007

Sometimes I stumble across someone else’s blog and read it and think, that’s someone I’d like to know.

This is ONE OF THOSE BLOGS.

a whole new meaning to “involved mothering”

I wonder if this level of EXTREME MOTHER-ADULT DAUGHTER INTERDEPENDENCE would make it hard for the adult daughters to maintain healthy relationships with their spouse/partner? It seems like that kind of primary adult familial relationship would be better directed at a husband/partner than one’s mother.

I don’t know. I just can’t imagine having that kind of relationship with my mother. I think it would creep both of us out pretty thoroughly.

(I do have an exceptionally close, connected relationship with my adult siblings, which I think might have sort of bugged my ex…)

“feminist” guys who like their porn

A Vol Abroad makes A VERY PERSUASIVE ARGUMENT against legalizing the sex trade/prostitution.

She writes:

In countries where prostitution is legal and regulated (e.g. the Netherlands) the sex work force isn’t overwhelmingly happy hookers. No, it’s the foreign sex workers who may or may not be there willingly, the drug addicted and the grossly misfortunate. Regular blood tests don’t change this and the people who manage these workers (pimps, if you will) don’t care about the personal development of their employees. This is a dead end job which usually results in that dead end quite early. And these are workers in a highly regulated, partly socialised economy where there are well-established mechanisms for investigating work place safety. The sex trades in London and Amsterdam and other big cities in Europe are well stocked with sex slaves from Eastern Europe and South East Asia and Africa. Do you really think that people who would enslave young women and boys are into complying with red tape and regulation? These folks are criminal scum and they’ll find ways to get around regulation just as they find ways to get around the existing legislation against prostitution, pimping and slavery.

I always wonder about the nominally “progressive,” feminist fellas out there who consume porn or hire hookers. Do they worry about the labor issues involved in these economic transactions in the same way they refuse to, say, shop at Wal-Mart?

the belly at 31 weeks

A crazed looking J. with belly full o’ baby sistah:

mr. bean sworn in as new British Prime Minister June 27, 2007

Wow, GORDON BROWN seems to bear a strog resemblance to ROWAN ATKINSON.

peel me a grape

Being forced to stay in bed all day is a lot more pleasant when you have a good looking guy waiting on you hand and foot, as well as looking after your children and the extra child who is on hand.

Jon took the day off to look after me. Right now I hear him in the kitchen fixing lunch for the kids. ALready today, he’s also taken J. to the barn for a lesson that ended up being canceled, and taken E. to the pet shop to buy a dead mouse to feed to E.’s pet snake, Bob. He also keeps popping in here to ask me if I need anything. I think I may tell him I am craving a Harby’s pizza & some watermelon …

Now I should probably get some actual work done.

gathering ’round

Last night one of the girls from our barn took a pretty nasty fall during the little practice horse show we had. Afterwards, I took this picture of a bunch of the other little girls gathered around her to offer encouragement and share their own war stories of being thrown off their ponies. Horsey girls are a tough bunch, and while they are very competitive, they are also very sweet to one another. I think this photo is pretty cute.

staying apolitical

Let me say again that while I love my job, love being a journalist, I really hate the fact that my job prevents me from publicly expressing opinions on various issues of the day. (That’s why, once I took the job I have now, about three years ago, with a mainstream TV news station, my blog became more focused on the mundane, day to day personal/parenting stuff, and far less explicitly political.)

In some ways, it would be more honest for journalists to express their political views openly, with the understanding that they work hard to keep those views from influencing their reporting. Because let’s face it, just because a reporter or editor or producer is barred by workplace ethics policies from expressing her views about a particular candidate or issue outside her workplace, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t hold any opinions. Of course she does. And good journalists, whether you know their views or they keep them under wraps, strive to remain fair and impartial in their reporting.

sideways

It feels like I smacked the baby into the transverse position when I fell last night.

Seriously.

She now feels sideways.

even less sleep

Yesterday, I had a very pleasant evening of horsey activities at the barn with J. We came home and I went to bed, hopeful that I would be able to get a real night’s sleep. But I tossed and turned until 2:30 am, when E. woke up, wanting a drink and to relocate upstairs (sometimes he likes to sleep upstairs). I walked him upstairs and was headed back down when I slipped and fell pretty much all the way down our steep, large staircase, landing with a nasty thud on the tile floor below.

I knew immediately it was a bad fall. My ankle was twisted underneath me, and my belly hit hard.

I began having mild contractions within ten minutes, and they’ve kept up all night. I haven’t slept since. My ankle is sprained and I can’t walk comfortably on it.

I am staying in bed today, with my foot up, and may soon take some of the terbutaline to see if I can get the contracting to stop. It’s mild, but hasn’t stopped.

I hate missing work. Luckily, I can do a portion of my work from home.

sleep..or lack thereof June 26, 2007

I have slept like a log thru my pregnancy. Great, deep, restful sleep.

Now that I am in my last trimester, I wake up many times a night, needing to head to the bathroom, to get a drink of water, or to finish the carton of ice cream that is calling out to me from the freezer.

When these night wakings happen, I must drag my huge and heavy bod across that of my sleeping husband to get myself out of the bed.

I suspect he’s going to get really sick of this pretty soon.