Entry 547: At Least I Have My Health... Mostly

I haven’t gotten Covid yet, at least I can say that.  But my medical woes (and bills) are piling up.  My arthritic shoulder is still arthritic and likely will be for the rest of my life.  It’s all about managing the discomfort now.  I take an anti-inflammatory when it real starts to flare up, but I quit doing physical therapy because it’s $70 a session and that adds up very quickly.  Plus, I feel as if I can get, like, 75% of the benefit doing the exercises on my own at home.  That’s good enough for me.  It’s not like I’m an NFL quarterback leading his team to the Super Bowl for the 10th time.*  If I have to scale back my activities or skip workouts every now and then, so be it.  My life isn’t really going to change if I do a few less burpees than I would with a totally healthy shoulder.

*Hat tip to Tom Brady who is playing in his 10th Super Bowl in a few weeks and is actually a bit older than me.  I’ve never been a big Brady fan, and I'll be rooting against him, but it is completely bonkers that he is 43 and still one of the best players in the league.  It’s totally unprecedented and legit impressive.  

And right now my shoulder is only a secondary medical issue.  My primary concern is my mouth.  My weird, expensive mouth.  I went to the dentist on Monday, because one of my teeth is hurting, and that’s pretty much the only reason I ever go to the dentist, because I have good oral hygiene (floss, brush, Listerine at least twice, usually thrice, a day) and never really need a cleaning or anything like that.  That’s the good part of my mouth.  The bad part – or, rather, one of the bad parts – is that I cracked a tooth some years ago, causing a lot of discomfort, and I had to get a root canal to fix it, and apparently root canals usually don’t solve the problem forever.  The pulp of my tooth is irritated again, so the endodontist has to open it back up, go back in, and clean up/remove the problematic area.  I have it scheduled for a few weeks from now.  Sounds like fun.

And that’s not the worst of it.  While I was at the dentist, she noticed I had some pretty severe lower mandibular absorption (the gums of my lower front teeth are eroding) and referred me to a specialist.  So, I saw the periodontist today, and she told me I was in danger of losing my lower front two teeth if we don’t do something to stop the bone loss.  (I’ll probably lose them anyway at some point, but there is a big difference, in terms of quality of life, between losing them at 44 and 84.)  So, I scheduled a restorative surgery that I know is going to be very painful, because I had the same basic procedure done when I got dental implants 25 years ago.  They are going to graft bone from the top of my mouth and sew it on to the area in need.  The part that receives the new bone doesn’t actually hurt that much, and if it does, you don’t even notice it, because the “donation” site absolutely kills.  Of the massive amount of painful work I’ve had done to my mouth over the years, the thing that sticks out as being the most miserable is getting bone grafted from my palette.  It feels like somebody is constantly pouring boil water on that spot.

It’s going to be painful on the wallet too.  Insurance is only going to cover so much; I’m going to be paying thousands of dollars out of pocket.  I’m sure it’s way overpriced too.  I bet I could get the same procedure done in a different country for a tiny sliver of what it will cost here -- but what can I do?*  I’m not going to single-handedly change our fucked up, price-gouging system in time for my appointment next month, and as it so happens, keeping my teeth in my head is a high priority for me at the moment.  I’ll just bite the bullet and pay it.

*Also, I’m reminded of S’s cousin who flew to India to get a dental implant, because it’s so much cheaper there, and then the implant fell out after she returned.

The truth is, S and I have been very fortunate to keep our jobs throughout this pandemic, and I feel lucky we can afford this at all.  If we were living paycheck to paycheck, I likely would not even do it and just take my chances.  Instead, I’ll dip into some money we set aside to get solar panels to pay for it.  Sorry environment.  This is a good example of why affordable healthcare is such an important issue.  It has massive knock-on effects in other areas.

So, that’s that.  There is a question of why – why is my bone eroding?  But I’ll probably never get a satisfactory answer to that.  I asked the periodontist, and she offered some reasons, but it was pretty clear she didn’t really know.  Like I said, I just have a weird mouth.  I have two dental implants because a baby tooth never came out, and the adult tooth, with no place to go, impacted sidewise, knocking out the roots of two neighboring teeth, effectively killing them.  Why didn’t my baby tooth come out?  Don’t know.  Why didn’t my adult tooth harmlessly protrude above my baby tooth, like it usually does when a baby tooth doesn’t come out?  Again, don’t know.  Shit happens, I guess.

I suppose it could be worse.  George Washington had hippopotamus teeth.  (Or is that a myth?  Nope, it’s true, and it sounds pretty awful.)  And outwardly, my teeth still look fine -- straight and clean.  I mean, they had better look fine, if you add up all the work I’ve had done on them over the years, I probably have a $50,000 smile.

By the way, one thing I noticed is that the dentist, the endodontist, and the periodontist are all women.  I’m all for equal representation, but I’d just as soon it be some other dude who has to visit all of them the same week.

Until next time…

Entry 546: The Pall Is Lifted

First post of the Biden Era.  It feels good -- or rather I should say it feels not completely and totally depressing.  "Good" is too good a word.  All my problems -- all our problems as a nation -- are still there -- they didn't evaporate at noon last Wednesday -- but at least the pall as been lifted.  The blanket of embarrassment, incompetence, and vileness that has shrouded us the last four years is no longer there.  Sometimes I think of something distressful, and then I lose it in a different train of thought, but I remember it was bad, and then I come back to it, and if it's something minor, like I lost in fantasy football or something like that, then I'm relieved.  Ever since Election Day 2016 whenever I would do that, no matter what it was, I would then think, "... and Donald Trump is president," and so my mind would not be at ease.  Now, I don't think that anymore.

And that's a good thing because the coronavirus is more than enough on its own for us to worry about.  And my number probably won't come up for the vaccine for, like, six months.  But at least people I know -- healthcare workers, teachers, old people -- are getting it.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

In other bad news, Lil' S1 did the worst thing he's ever done yesterday.  Well, he did it about a month ago, but we just found out about it yesterday.  He was in a pod with his brother and his friend/classmate E who lives down the street.  And yesterday he was acting shady when I asked him for some coins from this little safe he has, so I drilled down a bit, and he confessed that he stole E's money, and he was acting suspicious because he didn't want me to see it.

I was very upset and disappointed, thinking he took a few dollars from her, but it got worse.  He stole her entire wallet, took out all the money, of which there was a lot (holiday/birthday gifts apparently), and then tossed the wallet to "destroy the evidence."  That takes it from a normal-kids-being-kids indiscretion to something damn near juvenile delinquency.

I called S, who was out on a walk, and we tried to come up with the best punishment.  He had to write an apology note to E, and he doesn't get any non-school screen time for a week.  I don't think that's enough though.  We have to come up with something that will stick with him.  He's a tough kid to discipline because he doesn't acknowledge that he got in trouble.  He'll accept his punishment, but then he'll just act like everything is normal.  I want to see some moping and some tears.  There was a little bit of that at first, but only a little bit.  I want him to have to dwell on this for a long time.  I want him to feel bad about it.

And maybe he does.  It could be pretending everything is okay is his way of coping with it.  He did fess up pretty readily, which means he probably felt guilty about it.  But then again, he didn't say anything about it for a month, and he only admitted it when I asked him to open his safe.  It could be he only copped to it once he thought he was caught -- I'm not sure.  It would have been so easy to play it off, by the way.  If he told me S's parents gave him the money, I totally would have believed it.  So maybe he wanted to admit it; maybe he wasn't savvy enough to cover it up.

I texted E's mom to tell her what happened, and to make things worse, they thought she lost the wallet and were annoyed with her because of it.  E actually suggested Lil' S took it -- apparently, she saw him alone in the room where her wallet was -- and her parents told her it wasn't nice to accuse a friend of such a thing.  So, it's just a bad, embarrassing situation all around.  

Thankfully, E's parents are very chill and understanding, but E legit doesn't want to be Lil' S1's friend anymore.  She refused to see him, so I delivered the apology note by myself (and ordered E a new wallet).  Lil' S1 included a Diglett card with his note, and so E at least wrote back saying that she liked the card. I joked with E's mom that it was atonement by Pokémon.

Anyway...

In non-child-rearing news, S and I started watching this show Derry Girls, which is pretty funny.  It's one of those British shows I have to watch with the subtitles on or else I miss every third line.  It's about these four high school lasses (and one lad) in Northern Ireland in the mid-'90s.  I love the setting since I was a high school student in the mid-'90s, not in Northern Ireland, of course, but a lot of the cultural references are the same.  In the very first episode there was a Pulp Fiction reference and the soundtrack is like a trip down memory lane -- Ace of Base, Snow, Cranberries, Cypress Hill, etc.  The show also prompted me down a Northern Ireland Wikipedia rabbit hole last night.  I think I have the basics of The Troubles down now, and I understand that U2 song "Sunday, Bloody, Sunday" a bit better.  (The show is a comedy, however, and only tangentially touches on politics.)  Also, while I was in the rabbit hole, I learned the difference between Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (aka Ireland), and I learned the difference between the Commonwealth, the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England.  I've always wanted to get all that straight in my head.

Alright, that's all for today.  Until next time...

Entry 545: Impeach Me Two Times

Impeach me two times Nancy

Impeach me twice I say

Impeach me two times Nancy

I'm goin' away

Impeach me two times Nancy

One for my past crimes, one for those today

Impeach me two times

I'm goin' away

As I write this, the U.S. House of Representatives is in session, poised to impeach Donald Trump a second time.  This time, unlike last time, it will be a bipartisan effort, as at least six Republicans have joined the effort including Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney (what a weird sentence to write).  Furthermore, according to congressman Jason Crown (D-CO), backed up by credible reporter Tim Alberta of Politico, more republicans wanted to come out in favor of impeachment, but they were literally scared for their lives and those of their family to do so.  That's quite unsettling, if true, but no excuse, in my opinion.  Resign if that's your attitude.  Go live a fear-free life.  You don’t belong in Congress if you aren’t willing to stand up to terrorists.  It’s your job and your duty as an American leader.  People like AOC (D-NY) have undoubtedly faced these types of threats everyday since their election, and they still come out breathing fire and fighting back.  And part of me wonders how sincere these fraidy-cat Republicans actually are.  Is it possible they’re actually scared of the political/social backlash and are using physical safety as a cover?  I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case.

After the House votes to impeach, it will go to the Senate, where it will not be addressed until January 19, one day before Trump will leave office anyway.  Mitch McConnell, although he apparently believes the president committed impeachable offenses, will not allow the Senate to convene before then.  I almost - repeat, almost -- admire McConnell’s Machiavellian maneuvering (and I definitely like a good alliteration).  This way he gets to see a Senate trial against Trump, which he clearly wants, and possibly a conviction*, but it won’t be on his watch.  It won’t actually remove the president from power, and it will take away time and resources from other Democratic initiatives.  It’s win-win for him. 

*It’s a huge longshot that 16 Republican senators would vote “yea,” but there are rumors in the ether that the institutionalist like McConnell want to take back the party from the Trumpists, which, if true, would drastically increase the odds of conviction.  This would only vindicate McConnell’s bad behavior in placating Trump and laundering his misdeeds almost his entire term to get tax cuts and judges, but I’d rather have McConnel's team win this fight a thousand times over.  When one side would rather assassinate fellow Americans than accept the loss of a fair election (that wasn’t even that close), then I’m probably backing the other side by default.

I think impeachment is the correct decision, even if a Senate trial comes after Biden’s inauguration.  There must be consequences for Trump's Big Lie and his seditious demagoguery.  A bipartisan conviction would be a massive embarrassment for him, and I think it would prevent him from collecting a presidential pension and from ever holding office again – a non-trivial punishment given he could otherwise run for president again in 2024. (I’ve read conflicting opinions on whether or not conviction actually would carry such penalties, and I’m not sure what the truth is.)

With that said, I’m very sympathetic to Biden’s worry that a drawn-out impeachment trial will hamper his agenda.  Democrats won themselves a tremendous opportunity when they swept the Senate runoffs in Georgia.**  They will soon hold all three legislative houses, but possibly for only two years, and there is a lot to get done in that time, and it’s not going to be easy, as not only do they not hold a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a single Democratic defector can sink a bill.

**Despite the polls, which were almost spot on, showing both Dems with narrow leads, I considered them significant underdogs a month ago.  Then I went to Georgia for Christmas and felt the energy first-hand and talked to my sister-in-law who was "cautiously optimistic," and thought "maybe they can actually pull this off..."

In rough order of priority, here are the top ten things I think Biden and congress should try to do (not including impeachment):

1. Confirm Biden's cabinet picks

2. Get Covid stimulus checks out the door -- as much money as possible, in as many people's pockets as possible, as quickly as possible

3. Persuade Stephen Breyer to retire; replace him with a young liberal justice like Ketanji Brown Jackson

4. Massive infrastructure/jobs bill

5. Close the loopholes in Obamacare; move toward universal coverage

6. New voting rights act; end gerrymandering

7. Court reform

8. Green energy initiative (would be higher, but Biden can do a lot unilaterally on this front, I think)

9. Immigration reform

10. Police/crime justice reform

Trying to come up with the correct order of this list was very difficult, and I'm still not sure I got it right (and I'm probably missing something really important).  I feel pretty strongly that 1, 2, and 3 are correct, but after that you could almost put them into a hat and pull them out.  They all seem equally important.  And some of them might require changing the filibuster rules, which is a monumental task in and of itself.  So, you can see why I'm understanding of Biden not wanting an impeachment trial to be the central focus of the beginning of his presidency.

But it still has to happen.

Until next time...

Entry 544: Seditious Conspirators

Quick confession: I didn't even really know what sedition was until yesterday.  I had heard it before, and if I had had some multiple-choice options, like on a standardized test, I probably could have picked the correct one, but I'm not sure I could have given you a definition cold.  But I think it's the perfect word to describe what happened at the Capitol yesterday.

    Sedition: incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.

That what's we saw.  Many people have used other terms -- act of terrorism, coup attempt, riot -- and those are all fine, but I like sedition best.

I have a ton of thoughts going through my head right now, so let's just plow through them in bullet-point form, because I don't think I can craft a nice through line for them right now.

-Trump, his enablers, and the extremist right-wing media are largely responsible for this.  Of course, people have individual agency, and have to be held accountable for their own actions, but the disinformation machine is very real and still going strong.  (See Ezra Klein tweet thread for more on this.)

-As an example of the above point, consider the latest lie that the rioters were actually Antifa is disguise.  Pure delusion, pure denial.

-As another example, consider that senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, were still objecting to the certification of electoral votes from certain states, because they wanted a congressional commission on voter fraud or some bullshit like that.  What they really wanted was to show their fealty to Trump's base.  The voter fraud commission makes no sense, because that's all already been adjudicated, many, many times, and the only reason a substantial portion of the population doesn't believe it is because of Trump's lies and the refusal of people who know better, like Cruz and Hawley, to repudiate them.

-Speaking of which, Twitter and Facebook completely (and unsurprisingly) dropped the ball on this. They waited until actual violence occurred before they (temporarily) blocked Trump's account.  What they should have done is -- well, what they should've done is shut him down for various reasons a long time ago -- but absent that they should have warned him the first time he said the election was stolen, and then suspended his account the next time he tweeted it.  The little red exclamation point wasn't sufficient at all.  "You can't spread lies about an election to millions of followers" is a clear, easy-to-follow, easy-to-enforce rule.

-Of course I give absolutely zero credence to Trump's teleprompter-measured speech today, but I'm glad he gave it.  We just need to hang on for 13 more days, and the fact he felt compelled to say something like that, for whatever reason, makes it slightly less likely he'll do something else totally insane in the meantime.  Also, it means he probably won't pardon his people who sieged the Capitol.  He called on them to do it (he even said he would be right there with them), and then totally threw them under the bus once they did and the consequences came to bear.  He does everybody like that.  And there is no greater schadenfreude than watching his minions reap what they sow.

-The epitome of the point above is Mike Pence.  I cosign this Jonathan Chait article 100%.  Trump almost got Pence killed, literally.  The mob was looking for him.  If they actually found him, what would they have done to him?  Maybe nothing.  But people don't bring bombs and guns and zip-tie handcuffs to do nothing.

-The Capitol Police utterly, amazingly, epically failed.  How do you let the Capitol Building be breached like that?  At this point, we can only speculate.  Which I shall do.  The first thing is that they obviously weren't prepared.  They should have been.  Everybody knew this could get violent and something like this could happen.  They were so outmanned, and I couldn't believe how little fencing they had erected around the Capitol.  I understand the optics of not wanting to appear like a opposition force to the peaceful protesters (of which there were many, misguided as they might be), but my goodness... the area around the White House has been totally barricaded multiple times over since summer.  Why they didn't do this for the Capitol Building in preparation for these protests, I have no idea.

-One contributing factor: There seems to have been a higher level of complacency on the part of the police than the situation warranted.  This is likely because a) many police officers are aligned with the rioters politically, b) white people don't scare police the way black people do.  The contrast of how the police responded to a siege of the Capitol -- a siege of the mutherfuckin' United States Capitol -- and violating curfew at a BLM march is blatant obvious to everybody.  (And backed up by data.)  Armed, violent, predominantly white protesters are often treated better by the police than unarmed, peaceful, predominantly black protesters.  And a big reason for this, I believe, is because police better identify with the white people.  A lot of the pro-Trump protestors were flying Thin Blue Line flags, and some police officers were downright chummy with the rioters.

-With that said, I'm not going to universally condemn the police on duty.  They were in an impossible situation.  Many were behaving appropriately and bravely.  They were trying to stop the onrush at first, but they were way overmatched, and once they realized that they didn't escalate things.  De-escalation.  That's what I want from police all the time.  As somebody on Twitter said (I can't find it, paraphrasing): "We don't want you to shoot them like you do us; we want you to not shoot us like you do them."  If police started trying to make arrests while outnumber 20-to-1 or worse started shooting people, that number would have been worse, way worse.  One police officer and one rioter were killed, and as terrible as that is, it would have been much, much higher if officers didn't stand down.  Get everybody to a secure position; wait it out.  That was the smart thing to do.

-Oh, and the second part of that plan: Find every last fucker who had any part in this, arrest them, and prosecute them as harshly as legally possible.  I'm talking prison sentences measured in years, not months.  The rioters shouldn't be difficult to track down -- many have already been credibly identified on Twitter.  The beauty of these people is that they specifically don't cover their faces, and they post everything they do online.

-Funniest tweet I've seen in a long time.  

Until next time...