Planet Amnesty Day

It occurs to me that when the IAU thoughtlessly booted Pluto from the "Big Planets Club", that was a little bit like "Blogroll Amnesty Day". Hey, the planetroll is gone. Happy "Planet Amnesty Day"! We've decided to rebuild our list of planets, which, after all, was really old and outdated. The universe has changed a lot since we first compiled that list. And we're only going to be adding those planets that we think about on a daily basis. The ones we think are pretty. Sorry, Pluto. Yeah, it sucks, and it feels bad, but we're just looking to the future here! I can imagine the IAU's version of Atrios then went on to pen an essay entitled, "Why your planet sucks." Sure, Pluto's just a cold rock really really far away. But even so, I can't help rooting for the underdog. Er, underplanet? Anyway, I enjoyed seeing this: Seven months after a conclave of scientists downgraded the distant heavenly body to a "dwarf planet," a state representative in New Mexico aims to give the snubbed world back some of its respect. State lawmakers will vote Tuesday on a bill that proposes "as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet." The resolution, House Joint Memorial 54, was introduced by Rep. Joni Marie Gutierrez (D-Dona Ana County). It reiterates the importance of astronomy to the state of New Mexico and calls for March 13 to be "Pluto Planet Day." The date is the birthday of Percival Lowell, the astronomer that posited the existence of a "Planet X" beyond the orbit of Neptune. The resolution also highlights that Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, comes from the county Gutierrez represents. Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930. "We always took a lot of pride in the fact that he discovered Pluto," Gutierrez said in a phone interview with Wired News. "When they declared it a dwarf planet, we took it as a personal affront, so I envisioned that when then legislative session started, I would propose that at least in New Mexico, Pluto still be considered a planet." Gutierrez believes the resolution will pass easily. Read the rest here.

When labels fail us

Originally posted March 6 The other day I was talking to a coworker about plans for the weekend. I mentioned that I might be asking my atheist husband to take Daughter in Ohio to church (where she sings with the choir) so that I could attend my own church. She asked, "You have an atheist husband? So do I!" I then decided that I should clarify a bit. After all, I had just used the word atheist as a sort of shorthand, to indicate that I was asking a Rather Big Favor of him, since he normally doesn't go to church. I don't think he calls himself an atheist, or even an agnostic. Come to think of it, I don't really know what he would put on a form that asked for religion as part of the demographic information. But the fact that I am not sure what he would call himself, if asked, does not mean we don't have conversations about matters of faith and belief. We actually have such discussions on a fairly regular basis. It's just that labels don't tend to come up much when we do. Labels often have the effect of magnifying differences rather than helping us find our common ground. In our almost 20 years of marriage, I have come to learn that Demetrius is someone who thinks pretty seriously about the big questions, even though he doesn't identify with any "name brand" religion. Here's something he wrote earlier today, in a discussion on another blog. Well... An Infinite Being (I can't believe in a finite God) would perceive cause and effect, action and reaction simultaneously. So, for God to create all there is (exactly as it is) by setting up a few simple rule before the Big Bang isn't such a crap shoot. Why build the Universe atom by atom when I can just tell the atoms how to behave and send the Universe out to build itself? Wouldn't every part of that construction have some key into the whole? Our pursuit of knowledge of the Infinite is only natural. "...we are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out." - Ambassador Delenn, Babylon 5 That's not religious thinking in the traditional sense, but it certainly is a thoughtful approach to examining life's mysteries. Over the years I've seen the way Demetrius thinks through these things, and have also seen how his understanding of the Big Picture guides his understanding of moral behavior. If you understand yourself as interconnected with All That Is, hopefully your behavior toward others will reflect that. And in his case, I believe it does. And that impresses me more than someone who identifies as Christian but whose behavior is the opposite of what Jesus taught. Yet, I know there are people who explictly state that they prefer to do business with a Christian-owned company, thinking that will assure them a certain ethical standard. But on the other hand, I have seen plenty of evidence in my years of blogging that some people make automatic negative assumptions about people who identify as Christian, or Evangelical Christian, or Roman Catholic. That's not fair either. Nor is it reasonable to demand that, if one is the member of a particular religious group, one must spend all sorts of time "denouncing" every wrong that has ever been perpetrated by a member of that religion. My conclusion? One that I think should be self-evident: any one piece of information about an individual, whether it be religious affiliation, race, where they went to school, etc., tells us very little about who they are. You can fill in a bubble on a form, or answer a question on a survey and say that you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Humanist, or what have you. But I really don't know what that means to you unless I ask you, with a genuine curiosity, and with the willingness to check my assumptions at the door.

Stop the Criminalization of Mental Illness

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal. Several days ago, I wrote about the prison industrial complex in America that is driven largely by profit motive rather than improving society through rehabilitation or crime reduction. One component of America’s incarceration industry is the criminalization of the mentally ill. An example of this callous ineptitude is former Massachusetts Governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The November 27th, 2006 edition of the Worcester Business Journal, reported that the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health refused to admit any more patients to its hospitals or units. The drastic action was the direct result of cuts Romney imposed on the agency. Perhaps he did so to burnish his credentials as a fiscal conservate prior to announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. As Pam Belluck reported in the New York Times on March 8th (subscription required), 13 prison inmates have committed suicide in Massachusetts since November 2004. Yet even with troubling figures like these, Romney still forced this agency to stop admitting additional mentally ill patients. Those are people who can wind up in prison. Society pays a high price when aspiring presidents such as Mitt Romney care so little for the citizens they're suppossed to serve. Universal health care has gained considerable traction as a political issue. Polls even show Americans are ready to pay higher taxes to end the crisis of affordable healthcare in America. It is imperative that any universal healthcare plan also expands treatment for the mentally ill. Perhaps I’m naïve but I believe Americans may be agreeable to accepting a substantial investment in coverage for the mentally ill as part of any package. Celebrities have helped legitimized advocacy on behalf of mental health. Television’s Rosie O’Donnell has candidly acknowledged her personal struggles. Tipper Gore, the wife of former Vice President Al Gore was honest about suffering from depression and the importance of treatment. So has legendary journalist Mike Wallace. Credit should also be given to former First Lady, Betty Ford who shared her addiction problems with America and opened her own treatment clinic. One Republican I’ve always had a soft spot for is New Mexico’s Republican Senator Pete Domenici. Domenici has a schizophrenic daughter and his perspective as a father helped him become a powerful advocate for the mentally ill. Yes, Domenici is a conservative and I oppose virtually everything his career stands for. True, Domenici was also recently exposed in the metastasizing scandal regarding the partisan dismissal of U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department and should be held accountable for any laws it’s determined he violated. Nonetheless, my soft spot for the man remains. Mental illness is an issue my family has coped with. I also have friends with mental illness in their families and appreciate anyone who has used their influence on behalf of the mentally ill. Domenici’s personal stake in the issue facilitated an unlikely friendship with the late liberal icon, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. Both collaborated on the Mental Health and Treatment Act of 2001. Sadly, while mental illness has gained acceptance as a legitimate health concern rather than a stigma to be ridiculed, our society hasn’t progressed far enough in providing treatment to those who need it most. Remarkable, because mental illness is something that cuts across all demographics of race and class in society. Pete Domenici is a powerful conservative member of the Senate Finance Committee. I am a liberal blogger. Yet we both have this in common. Many of you reading this have mental illness in your families or perhaps suffer from it yourselves. So many of us have loved ones with the inability to function without proper treatment or medication. We care about them and yet the effort can erode one’s spirit and will. For too many families, finding appropriate treatment, obtaining and paying for medication and fighting to prevent our loved ones from slipping through society’s cracks is a losing battle. As a result, the mentally ill often become a danger to themselves and society. The criminalization of the mentally ill has certainly contributed to the swelled populations of prisons. Mentally ill people don’t belong in prison but when not properly treated that’s where they often wind up. An otherwise gentle soul with schizophrenia or depression that is not properly medicated may commit a violent crime. There is also the tragic case of Timothy Souders. As reported several weeks ago by Sixty Minutes, Mr. Souders suffered from manic depression and committed the crime of shop lifting. It's not uncommon for people who suffer from manic depression to get into this kind of trouble. Sadly, the Michigan Department of Corrections was ill equipped to manage Mr. Souders special needs and he was put in solitary confinement. As the prison video featured in the Sixty Minutes broadcast showed, Mr. Sounders died from mistreatment. What happened to Mr. Souders is not an aberration. We citizens must ask ourselves, was prison really the best solution for a mentally ill person guilty of shop lifting? How many more Timothy Souders are waiting to happen? One year ago the New York Times (subscription required) reported how the prescription drug law pushed by the Bush Administration and Republican controlled congress, contributed to a crisis in many states. Beneficiaries of Medicare who are mentally ill experienced massive delays in obtaining the medication they needed to function. Ironically, one of those supporters of this legislation was Senator Domenici. How many of these people I wonder hurt themselves, or others and wound up in prison? Once incarcerated, as the Timothy Souders tragedy exposed, a prison is typically unable to treat mentally ill inmates effectively and many die in solitary. Some by mistreatment like Timothy Souders. Others kill themselves. This is not a popular poll tested issue. But it’s a damn important one. Addressing it properly is not only the compassionate thing to do but pragmatic as well. As I see it, the only way is through single payer healthcare that incorporates comprehensive coverage for the mentally ill, renewed investment of mental health clinics as well as research and development into treatments and medication. Otherwise the criminalization of the mentally ill will continue unabated. When writing about the prison industrial complex I asked if anyone cared. Today I’ll simply ask, what can we do to mobilize action against the criminalization of mental illness? Because the next person imprisoned with mental illness could be your brother.

beating the dead horse

we just had to share with you all something the sailor of vidiot speak said about blogroll amnesty on our comment section: this isn't a zero sum game. we don't subtract from one site when we add another, we expand the chorus calling for change. hear that, markos, and to a lesser extent, duncan?

Partial Transcript of MSOC on Gibson's Show

Here's as much of it as I can stand to listen to a second time and transcribe. I really think Gibson is not a nice man. And since I'm trying to give up hating people for Lent (okay, maybe just "cut back"), I probably shouldn't listen to him too much. If I had to spend much more time enduring his snide stereotyping of "the left", I might start swearing like a--like a Maryscott. ;) John "War on Christmas" Gibson: Maryscott, the reason you're on today, is that nefarious character you were once hooked up with-- Maryscott O'Connor: "Friendly with"-- let's put it that way Gibson: This is Mar-kos Moulit-sas, also known at Kos, who runs the big far left blog-- MSOC: Oh my god, I knew you were going to say it! Please don't call that blog far left! Gibson: Why not? MSOC: Because, listen, until a few years ago, that guy was a registered Republican. If you're going to call that blog anything, call it a centrist blog! He's not liberal! ... Gibson: You have ended up in a disagreement with him-- MSOC: I was bound to end up in a disagreement with him. Left-wingers do not like centrists. I have more in common with the right wing than I do with the centrists. Gibson: That's why call here all the time. MSOC: Right wingers are ideologues. Gibson: Centrists are compromisers and appeasers and sellouts. ... (About being cut off the DKos blogroll) Gibson: And he did that because he was mad at you over something. MSOC: No, he wasn't mad at me. He did that because he wants a seat at the table. You know the name of his book? Gibson: Yeah, yeah, "Crashing the Gate". MSOC: He crashed the gate, he got a seat at the table, and then he locked the gate back up! He doesn't want anything to do with people who actually have principles! ...He wants to be in with the big boys. He wants to be the establishment. Gibson: In terms of getting the troops excited, the blogging world is a "left of center" operation. MSOC: Oh, right--'cause Little Green Footballs isn't-- Gibson: It's not as big as Daily Kos. You don't see major conservative Republican politicians posting on Little Green Footballs. MSOC: You couldn't. Little Green Footballs is full of vile people. Gibson: My point is, you have Ted Kennedy on the Daily Kos and John Kerry on the Daily Kos, and that nebbish Harry Reid, and all these people on the Daily Kos, which is sort of bowing down to-- MSOC: --the netroots-- Gibson: --the nutroots, right. (OMG, you are *so* freaking clever, aren't you? I bet all the other boys at your middle school are in stitches when you tell those jokes. Even more than when you make the milk come out of your nose at lunchtime.) But I want to know something. Now that you're mad at him, tell me some good dirt! MSOC: I don't think there's any "good" dirt. I don't think he's doing anything illegal or immoral or unethical--I think he's a putz! Yup, I think so too. But I'm not mad at him. I'm just tired of him being in the way of people who want to talk about issues like election irregularities, impeachment, or whatever else might scare off deep pockets advertisers. And I'm tired of the farce that posting on his blog can be considered "netroots outreach" by politicians. It isn't. It's a gated community. And since Markos has indeed secured himself, but *not* the rest of us, a "seat at the table", I'm just not all that impressed. It's not *real* outreach, it's just for show. Our elected and hoping-to-be elected officials are only willing to connect with the netroots by posting on a blog that is one man's privately owned business? One where the the top ad spot goes for $9000 a week? That's not outreach--it's theater. Pathetic, crappy theater. And it makes a mockery of the true democratic potential so many of us see in the internet. I became active politically because I cared enough about reversing the damage caused by the Bush administration that I was willing to give up some of my precious, limited free time to do whatever I could that might help make a real difference. I *don't* think it's worth spending precious time and energy in order to play some 21st century version of Dungeons and Dragons where can pretend I'm a bit player in this "gate crashing" fantasy.