Peony Moss: August 2009 Archives

This is too cute: Little Irish children telling Bible Stories. HT Mary's Aggies via Mark Shea

I may actually go a whole day without being reminded that I am a mean mommy:
Buckeye Peanut Butter Cake

MIchael Pollan on Julie, Julia, and the Food Network:

How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence — along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali and Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star — has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking.

That decline has several causes: women working outside the home; food companies persuading Americans to let them do the cooking; and advances in technology that made it easier for them to do so. Cooking is no longer obligatory, and for many people, women especially, that has been a blessing. But perhaps a mixed blessing, to judge by the culture’s continuing, if not deepening, fascination with the subject. It has been easier for us to give up cooking than it has been to give up talking about it — and watching it.

Morning Routines: The Rule of 5

Seen at Inside Catholic: Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. I don't know why it never occurred to me that there would be footage of them out there somewhere.

My dear little son,

No. We are not going to switch to homeschooling just so you can watch your two favorite cartoons in the morning.

1. "First, do no harm." Legislators should keep this in mind (about a lot of stuff.)

2. If the choice to kill my child in the womb is a matter between me and my doctor, why isn't the choice to undergo a tonsillectomy a matter between me and my doctor?

3. Subsidiarity!

The social teaching of the Church is based on the human person as the principle, subject and object of every social organization. Subsidiarity is one of the core principles of this teaching. This principle holds that human affairs are best handled at the lowest possible level, closest to the affected pesons. (Catholicculture.org; emphasis mine)

Right now, insurance companies and Medicare are driving the health-care marketplace because they cut the checks. If we want real (and cost-effective) reform, then we need to give the buying power back to the individual.

For example, I'm sure that there are patients out there (especially frail elders) who would deeply appreciate being able to get a house call. If those patients had the financial freedom to pay for one, surely someone would find a way to provide this service?

4. I'm glad that John Mackey's op-ed is getting so much attention. I love the idea of the benefit combo of company contributions to a Health Savings Account and catastrophic insurance.

I also would love to see more HSAs offering rollovers. I've never started an HSA precisely because of the lack of rollover -- it just doesn't work well for us, because our out-of-pocket expenses vary wildly from year to year. I can roll over my cell phone minutes; why can't I roll over HSA savings?

5. Speaking of articles getting attention: David Goldhill's "How American Health Care Killed My Father" (HT ad multis) Worth it for this line alone:

How often have you heard a politician say that millions of Americans “have no health care,” when he or she meant they have no health insurance? How has a method of financing health care become synonymous with care itself?

"Not having access to health care" is living in a remote rural area where you have to drive 50 miles to get a throat culture.

And again, subsidiarity:

As a result [of insurance and Medicare policy] strange distortions crop up constantly in health care. For example, although the population is rapidly aging, we have few geriatricians—physicians who address the cluster of common patient issues related to aging, often crossing traditional specialty lines. Why? Because under Medicare’s current reimbursement system (which generally pays more to physicians who do lots of tests and procedures), geriatricians typically don’t make much money. If seniors were the true customers, they would likely flock to geriatricians, bidding up their rates—and sending a useful signal to medical-school students. But Medicare is the real customer, and it pays more to specialists in established fields. And so, seniors often end up overusing specialists who are not focused on their specific health needs.

6. Yet another reason the President and the Congress ought to stop meddling with health care: they haven't made the correct diagnosis. They don't understand why the system we've got isn't working. How in the world could they possibly fix it?

7. And as long as they are beholden to the trial lawyers, the President and the Congress will never fix the system. Because there will be no fixing without tort reform.

So I finally finished our 2008 family album last week and started on 2009, only to find that we hadn't done very much momentous. Since I haven't been blogging here much, I turned to Facebook to try to glean some clues... only to find that I can't pull up any status updates older than a month. All those little "Peony is..." moments -- gone! Facebook, you have eaten my year and that just will not do. Back to the Moss Place, where I know where my archives are (or know whom to ask.......)

A few snapshots:

• It was around this day, forty years ago, that forty-six chromosomes and a human soul came together to become... me.
• Forty years! When did that happen?!
• Hambet is crazy about airplanes and toy soldiers, received his First Holy Communion in May, and is starting the third grade in two weeks. Truly, life comes at you fast.
• When I sit down to organize my life, I think of it in four categories: Wife/Mom/Household COO; church lady/ volunteer; part-time job #1; part-time job #2.
• Might as well add a new category: "appalled citizen." How did that annoying bumper sticker go -- "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention"?
• Hmmm. Perhaps I would do well to dedicate a sixth life category for prayer life.
• Current focus of civic horror: the train wreck health-care "reform."

From The American Spectator (emphasis mine):

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who is health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research as well as being White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's brother, propounds discrimination against the elderly and other less-than-robust patients.

In the medical journal Lancet he wrote in January, "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious [an irrelevancy] discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years."

As for the less-than-robust, in a Hastings Center Report he has written that medical care be withheld from those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. ... An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." Thus the state should decide when and if you get treatment. Does that not have a grisly ring to it?

Dr. Emanuel veers from the grisly to the delightfully frivolous in his pontifications on cost cuts. Savor this one from the Journal of the American Medical Associationin May of 2007: "Too much money spent on health care reduced [sic] the ability to obtain other essentials of human life as well as some goods and services not essential to life but still of great value, such as education, vacations, and the arts." Yes, he said "vacations and the arts."

Now, what kind of health care should be withheld from "participating citizens"? Pacemakers? Hip replacements? Tonsillectomies?

Penicillin?

And what's the threshold for "participating"? Maybe we should have a way to see if people are really participating. Like a test!

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. -- Saul Alinsky

Which is why when the Washington Post can't make any reasonable fact-based criticism, they turn to Robin Givhan, the "fashion writer". What a sweet gig that must be -- to get a paycheck and a byline in a major newspaper for writing slam book entries and calling them "columns." This Sunday, Ms Givhan turned her attention to the citizens who are attending town hall meetings and presenting their grievances to their elected officials:

What does one wear to a town hall meeting on health care when the sole reason for attending is to shout down one's congressman like a peevish teenager in the midst of a hormonal rage?

Goodness, what does "one" wear? Perhaps one could do some reporting and go to a town hall meeting? But of course, one might find out that some of the attendees have other reasons for attending than "shouting down their congressman."

And to her credit, Givhan actually concedes that point. I was pleasantly surprised to read on and find (emphasis mine)...

As congressional representatives have gone home to their constituents this summer to sell health care reform, they have occasionally been met by concerned voters with pointed questions, reasonable doubts and fear-of-the-unknown frustrations about what lies ahead. Citizens want to make sure that their representatives have thought through this whole health care reconfiguration....
By and large, the shouters are dressed in a way that underscores their Average Guy -- or Gal -- bona fides. They are wearing T-shirts, baseball caps, promotional polo shirts and sundresses with bra straps sliding down their arm.....
At the town halls hosted by Sens. Arlen Specter and Claire McCaskill, both legislators dressed for business. Specter was in a dark suit and tie. McCaskill wore a chocolate brown jacket with a narrow standing collar. Sen. Ben Cardin wore a dark suit with a navy striped tie to his meeting with his health care mob. They all peered at the irate speakers in some combination of stoic disbelief, subdued annoyance and preternatural calm.

For anyone who has ever been in relationships with shouters, they will know that few things irritate venters more than having their high-decibel rants met with the exaggerated serenity of Nurse Ratched. It's the ultimate kind of power play -- a political rope-a-dope -- and the non-responders know it.

The agitated souls regularly bring up the fact that members of Congress have platinum-level health care plans. They demand to know whether congressmen will sign on to the much-maligned and still undefined public option that is part of the reform discussion. The underlying focus of this grudge match is, of course, about power -- as concentrated in Congress, the presidency, the special interests, the wealthy. The rage emerges from a feeling of helplessness that some version of reform is going to occur whether these citizens like it or not.

That sentiment is underscored in photo after photo. The common man, in his T-shirt and jeans, is shouting passionately at "the suit." In the videos from these meetings, audio is unnecessary. It's clear who's in charge and who is shouting into the wind.

Givhan goes on to ask what would happen if the protestors were to arrive better dressed:

Would they garner more respect? Would they compel more lawmakers to rethink their positions rather than merely repeat, again and again -- in a voice that has the tone of an impatient kindergarten teacher -- the same core points? Would legislators stop telling that condescending anecdote about how people profess their love for government-run Medicare even as they, in the same breath, express their distrust and disdain for government-run medical care? (Maybe snot-nosed mockery is an instinctive response to illogic, but it's not the most productive way to assuage those who fear the unknown.)

But then, we already know what would happen: The protestors would be put down as "not real protestors" by the likes of Madam Speaker Pelosi, or dismissed as Astroturfers.

The assemblies have the look of a lone bean-counter and a throng of unhappy workers. Visually, there's nothing to indicate we-are-all-in-this-together. .... (President Obama has been photographed dressed more casually in the Oval Office than he was for his recent question-and-answer session with the regular Joes of New Hampshire.)

Washington's power brokers have suited up to underscore their authority and the seriousness of the subject matter. And bully for them. But their attire also says: I am the boss of you. All those howling citizens -- in their T-shirts and ball caps and baggy shorts -- are saying: No, you're not.

Well, color me pleasantly surprised.

Wish I'd understood this in my twenties.

Faith is not some state of feeling we get ourselves into. It is much simpler than that. It is simply believing in God and therefore believing everything he has revealed – no matter how we feel. “God said it, so I believe it, and that settles it.”

Feelings are influenced by external things, like fashions and fads, wind and weather, diet and digestion. But when God gives us the gift of faith, he gives it from within, from within our own free will.

The devil can influence our feelings, but he has no control over our faith.

We are not responsible for our (unfree) feelings, but we are responsible for our (free) faith.

Yet, though faith is not a feeling, it often produces feelings: of trust, peace, gratitude, and confidence, for instance. And faith can also be aided by feelings: for instance, when we feel trustful or grateful to someone, God or man, it is much easier for us to believe him than when we feel mistrustful or ungrateful.;

But even when we do not feel trustful or peaceful, we can still believe. Faith is not dependent on feelings. It is dependent on facts: divinely revealed facts.

- Peter Kreeft, Catholic Christianity

HT: Zach at The American Catholic

moar funny pictures