On holiday, apparently

This bureau seems to have taken an unscheduled holiday break. Apologies for the unplanned absence; I’ve just been doing the home thing, the spend time with the wife thing, the forget all about the computer thing.

We’re coming back, slowly but surely. The first step was to delete the annoying comment spam that showed up in recent posts. (And here I thought thast comment spammers mostly targeted older posts. Well, don’t believe everything you read.) I’ve installed MT-Blacklist and can only assume that I’ve done so correctly. I suppose we’ll see soon enough, eh?

More to come.

Hope you folks have enjoyed your own holidays so far.

Lauren Rainey and Alabama Medicaid: A registered nurse responds

Lauren Rainey wins!

This 13-year-old middle-school student had been in danger of having her nursing care terminated. Now Medicaid has changed its policies for the better. Read details here.

As mentioned here earlier, AL Medicaid Commissioner Carol A. Herrmann replied to concern over young Lauren Rainey’s threatened nursing care with an incomplete and misleading response. Some of the correspondents thus contacted have responded to the Herrmann missive; this letter from Jennifer, a registered nurse, struck me as especially thoughtful and informed. It is posted here with permission.

Dear Ms. Hermann,

Thank you very much for your reply to my concerns about Lauren Rainey. I admire Medicaid programs and believe they often provide children with higher quality care than is available with private insurance. It is good to know that there are many services available in Alabama. However, I believe this doesn’t address the specific concerns that I have about Lauren Rainey. The news reports I saw didn’t state that she was being dropped from Medicaid, but rather, that Medicaid was no longer going to provide her with many hours per day of home nursing care. The story reported that her doctor felt this decision endangers her life, because she needs frequent suctioning or else faces the likelihood of pneumonia. Although her mother was offered a few hours per week of respite care, this does not replace the value of home nursing and would not affect the degree of danger her doctor indicated that Lauren would be in without such care.

Often today’s extremely high cost of health care and the lack of money available for social programs put such a strain on the system that it cannot provide for what people may need, and decisions have to made to prioritize some needs above others. If this is the case in Alabama, perhaps you could say so publicly. I believe that if you did say publicly that resources were immensely strained, forcing difficult and painful choices and compromises that are not always best for patients, that the public might surprise you with an outpouring of support. Perhaps you could accept charitable donations from individuals and churches to increase Medicaid funds available to help patients including Lauren.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

As a professional, Jennifer spoke directly to the need to make hard choices about the allocation of limited health care resources. If the various representatives of AL Medicaid had spoken as forthrightly, they would certainly find themselves in a more sympathetic position. They might also have invited an open discussion - inviting other interested parties as Jennifer suggested - that might work together to find a solution for Lauren and others like her.

It’s hard to imagine the Medicaid establishment being quite so flexible, and not much evidence for it.

But there’s always hope.

In case anyone forgot how we got here

The post of the day. From Kos, in its entirety:

Bush claims Saddam is a threat. Bush claims Saddam has WMDs. Bush claims Saddam has ties to Al Qaida. Bush and his administration promote questionable intelligence that supports their preconceptions and prejudices, and reject that which counters it.

Bush puts Rummy in charge of the war. Rummy fires general who says “we need more troops”. Rummy says we can do more with less. Rummy says “lighter is better than armored”. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld say we’ll be met with flower petals. They say the war will be entirely paid for by oil revenues. They say the reconstruction will be paid for entirely by oil revenues.

Bush says he’s giving diplomacy a chance, but he’s giving the world a middle finger. Powell says he’s showing the Security Council evidence of Saddam’s duplicity, but he shows them pictures of warehouses. Bush claims a coalition of the willing, that’s really a coalition of the billing — a mish-mash of third-world nations with token contributions. Only England offers tangible support.

Bush sends the troops into battle, claiming he had no choice. But Saddam had caved on every Bush demand (inspectors were allowed back in, his long-range missiles were being destroyed).

No WMDs are found. No ties with Al Qaida are found. No military capable of threatening Iraq’s neighbors is found. Saddam’s army collapses quickly and the country’s defenders retreat into “insurgency” mode.

Bush declares mission accomplished. Bush taunts the insurgency. The insurgency kills our men and women. The commanders on the ground scream for more troops. They scream for armor. They scream for protected mess halls. Those screams fall on deaf ears.

More soldiers are killed. 1,320 Americans, 74 Britons, seven Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 16 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and nine Ukrainians. The wounded number in the five figures.

Nevermind the innocent Iraqis who have been “liberated” to death. And while we scream about Saddam’s torture chambers, we create new ones of our own.

So thousands die, for a war built on false justifications, managed poorly, with underequipped, undermanned, and under-armored forces. And to add insult to injury, we’ve had to pay for this mess, to the tune of $200 billion.

So who sent our troops into Iraq on false pretenses? Who sent them in unarmored? Who refused to provide enough troops to stabilize the country effectively? Who taunted the Iraqi opposition with “bring ‘em on”? Who approved the American-branded torture chambers? Who has rewarded the secretary of defense who has negligently ignored the armor shortage in Iraq?

And who keeps them there as they continue to die?

One man.

Iraq is The War That George Built™.

Worthy of comment

While driving about town yesterday, finishing up my holiday shopping (a Ryobi reciprocating saw for my beloved wife, who is the handy one in the family; I also got her an Ian McKellen “Gandalf” t-shirt, which she has greatly desired for some time), I realized that I was in fact fairly pleased with the design of this blog you are reading. Pleased enough to hold onto it for a while. In truth, I also became somewhat bored with thinking about alternate designs for the site. Therefore, Waveflux will remain much as you see it now, layout-wise, for some time to come. I hope this is not a tremendous disappointment to those of you were were expecting a thermonuclear Flash-powered revision to appear in this space.

But because not all change is an evil, I did take the time to reinstate comments and Trackback to the blog, though. Amusingly enough, it took only fifteen minutes for comment spammers to take advantage of the update and post a couple of bizarre comments about online gaming. Looks like Six Apart made the new anti-spam-server-load update to Movable Type available just in time. I’ll install it in a day or two, and probably hook up with MT-Blacklist as well.

P.S. - Comments auto-close after 14 days, just so you know. Many thanks to David Raynes and his MT-Close script.

Does anyone really want to know the answer to this question?

Bob Harris asks:

So if Rumsfeld is doing such a great job, what the hell would not-so-great look like?

The possibilities just make you shudder.

Busy, busy, busy

So busy, in fact, that the blog has suffered over the past few days. Expect delays, as the highway signs say, until after Christmas Day. We’ll pick up the pace after that. I’ll try to post an entry or two before then, but, well, it’s this damned season, you know?

Donald Rumsfeld: The indictment

Juan Cole for the prosecution:

I would argue that Rumsfeld has so consistently made the worst possible decision in Iraq that getting him out of the Department of Defense may well be a prerequisite for beginning to fix the problems. Rumsfeld appointed Douglas Feith his undersecretary for policy, and allowed Feith to set up the Office of Special Plans, which cherry-picked intelligence and forged a false case for war in Iraq. Rumsfeld over-ruled his officer corps by sending a tiny force of only 100,000 troops to Iraq, ensuring that they could not keep order in the aftermath. Rumsfeld was the one who tried to hand Iraq over to corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi. Rumsfeld allowed the looting that began the deterioration of security after the war. Rumsfeld dissolved the Iraqi army, putting US troops on the front lines of the guerrilla war. Rumsfeld didn’t order as much armor for US troop vehicles as he could have, exposing thousands to serious injury from roadside bombs. Rumsfeld didn’t even bother to personally sign the letters of condolence to the families of deceased troops killed in Iraq, in some large part as a result of his own flawed policies. The majority of the American people is right that Rumsfeld must go (and his deputies with him).

PhotoDude underscores Rumsfeld’s culpability:

In April 2003, who’d have thought that 20 months later we’d still need a thousand troops to secure the main road we use in the country … and wouldn’t have them? Who would have thought they’d be executing elections officials in broad daylight on the streets of downtown Baghdad?

And no, the answer to the problem today is not a massive increase in the number of US troops. It’s too late for that. Yes, we need to bump up the number of troops to do everything we can to secure the over 7,000 polling places where Iraqi’s will be voting next month. But that’s security for a specific event. More troops won’t fix Iraq now, that train left the station a long time ago.

The time for more troops, the time for the tens of thousands of reserves and National Guard we have since called up, was in April, 2003. Rumsfeld’s theories of transformation had already been proven, as they applied to the battlefield. They were indeed a massive success. But improved weaponry, advanced technology, and communication networks do not stop looting, or secure neighborhoods, or provide stability. People in uniform with M-16’s do. Lots of them. But they never came, not in the numbers required in those very early days. And those very early days set the tone for everything that followed, and now, it is way way too late to change that with more troops.

Almost all of the difficulties we face today in Iraq can be traced back to that choice. And that particular buck stops on Rumsfeld’s desk.

To be continued…

Tarting up the old blog

I posted earlier about revamping the design here at Waveflux, and now plan to get on it sooner rather than later. The idea appeals to me more and more; I’ve scouted about for design ideas (for inspiration, not for theft) and am fairly excited about the prospects for change. As I possess no discernable design skills, however, I must ask that you moderate your expectations. If the blog looks more or less the same in all modern browsers, we’ll say huzzah and move on.

Incidentally, part of the change will involve bringing comment-ability back to the site. Jill Cozzi wants it here, and what Jill wants, Jill gets.

Hoping to get the bulk of the work done by the end of the month, and to have the site actually look different by the time your New Year’s Eve hangover wears off.

Design suggestions welcomed.

Addendum: Chris from the bone warned me that reestablishing comments here will open Waveflux up to the comment spam epidemic that’s rocking the MT world. Jay Allen and the rest of the Six Apart folks are on the case…though I imagine that it’ll take a combination of fairly inelegant tactics to reduce the spam flood (that’s reduce, not eliminate - it’s not a perfect world). At any rate, I’ll wade that stream when I come to it.

Bread and circuses in January

I said earlier that all that was missing from the Bush administration’s stubborn, Kremlin-like celebration in the face of Iraq failure was a parade in Red Square. Well, the parade’s coming in January. Via Brilliant at Breakfast and Daily Kos:

Bush inauguration to honor military

With the theme “Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service,” President Bush’s second inauguration will heavily emphasize a nation at war, but festivities will rival those held during peacetime.

Planned are nine official balls, a youth concert, a parade, a fireworks display and, of course, Bush’s second swearing-in ceremony at noon on January 20. The cost will be between $30 million and $40 million, an amount that does not include expenses for security.

More.

It’s Inauguration Time Again, and Access Still Has Its Price

Tickets to all official inaugural events, including an “elegant” candlelight dinner with a special appearance by President Bush: $100,000.

Tickets to all official inaugural events, two additional tickets to an “exclusive” lunch with Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney, plus an all-access pass to any inaugural ball: $250,000.

Telling your friends, “As I explained to the president just the other day… .”: priceless.

Mr. Bush’s inaugural committee, seeking to raise more than $40 million, a record, sent out hundreds of solicitations to the president’s biggest campaign contributors this week offering packages of party benefits and access to the president in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Even at a time of war when more than 138,000 American troops are serving in Iraq, the organizers say that the inaugural celebration at the end of the January will not be marked by any noticeable restraint and will cost more than any other in history.

But organizers also say that the prodigious Republican fund-raising will pay for a celebration that is to have a “solemnity” missing from other inaugurals.

I really don’t have anything to add to this.

Moscow on the Potomac

Via Today in Iraq, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post pretty well sums up the detached-from-reality nature of Bush’s recent medal handout:

First came George Tenet, the former CIA director and the man who had assured President Bush that it was a “slam-dunk” that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Then came L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy of Iraq, who disbanded the Iraqi army and ousted Baathists from government jobs, therefore contributing mightily to the current chaos in that country. Finally came retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the architect of the plan whereby the United States sent too few troops to Iraq.

One by one these images flicked by me, each man wearing the royal-blue velvet ribbon with the ornate medal — one failure after another, each now on the lecture circuit, telling insurance agents and other good people what really happened when they were in office, but withholding such wisdom from the American people until, for even more money, their book deals are negotiated. (Franks has already completed this stage of his life. His book, “American Soldier,” was a bestseller.) [...]

The White House medal ceremony was really about George W. Bush. It had a slight touch of the absurd to it, as if facts do not matter and failure does not count. The War to Rid Iraq of WMD has now become The War to Bring Democracy to the Middle East. No one is ever held accountable, because the president will not do as much for himself. He admits no mistakes because he is convinced that he has made none. The terrorist attacks themselves, for which Tenet should have been sacked, are no one’s fault because they cannot be the president’s fault. He was warned. Condi Rice was put on notice. But, still, who could have known? To make these awards in the face of failure — the mounting American death toll, the awful suffering of the Iraqis, the looming possibility of civil war, the nose-thumbing of the still-at-large Osama bin Laden and the madness of making war for a nonexistent reason — has the creepy feel of the old communist states, where incompetents wore medals and harsh facts were denied.

Really, all that’s missing is the parade through Red Square.

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