SkyFey | The Blog

I recently had to undergo major surgery at a Harvard teaching hospital in the Boston area. During the pre-op preparations, I was given a link to an online medical database (one not affiliated directly, as far as I could discern, with the hospital or with Harvard University) and told to enter my entire medical history there. Like a good little doobie, I visited the site — but after reading the organization’s terms of service and privacy policy, I left without leaving so much as a comma.

Medical organizations are, in my opinion, a long way from readiness to handle information as private, and as deeply personal, as our own medical data. If retailers whose online revenues depend upon the trust of the their customers can’t always manage to keep the credit-card information of those customers perfectly secure, how can we expect better management of even more-personal information by organizations for whom online “privacy” and “security” are only theoretical constructs?

Me, I’m keeping my medical data to myself. At least, I will do that to whatever extent is not pre-empted by the growing state and federal rush to mandate electronic record-keeping of individuals’ medical information.

(Noted privacy advocate Lauren Weinstein addresses this very issue in a newsletter sent today, archived at http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000497.html.)

Can’t make any headway with that neighbor who can’t make up his mind, or that co-worker who still has questions, or the friend who just sent you yet another email in the smear campaign? Here are just a few facts about Barack Obama, taken from a 3 Nov 2008 email from his team:

• Barack Obama is working for middle class Americans. The Obama-Biden tax plan includes a tax cut of $1,000 for more than 150 million working Americans. The plan will also eliminate income taxes altogether for more than 7 million senior citizens who make less than $50,000 per year. Finally, Obama’s plan will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year. http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#tax-relief; http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=411693.
• Barack Obama will make health care affordable for your family. If you like your employer-offered health care, you can keep it — at a reduced cost. If you don’t, or you don’t have health care, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options. You will not be turned away — regardless of preexisting conditions. Obama will help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees with a Small Business Health Tax Credit. Read more about the Obama-Biden health care plan here: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/.
• Barack Obama knows that the problems we’re facing in this election are too serious to let the politics of manufactured controversy and fake outrage dominate. He wants to bring our troops home from Iraq, so we can focus on Afghanistan and track down the terrorists who attacked us. And he’s proposed a detailed plan for using alternative energy sources to relieve America’s dependence on foreign oil within 10 years and put millions of Americans to work. See more about Obama’s plan for change here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/planforchange_ad/.
• Despite many email smears claiming something else, Barack Obama is a committed Christian and an American citizen. After being raised by a single mother and by his grandparents in a modest household in Hawaii, Barack studied hard and won scholarships and loans to attend Columbia University and later Harvard Law School, where he became president of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he returned to Chicago to give back to society as a community organizer and later as a civil rights lawyer and law professor. Meet Barack Obama: http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_barack.php.
  

Go ahead — pass it on!

I vote: It is my privilege AND my obligation. But I have never contributed financially to a political campaign. However, this election is different: It is both more personal and more crucial than any previous election in my lifetime (I’m 64). In addition, this candidate is different: Barack Obama makes me believe that he will work for meaningful change, and he gives me hope — hope that this country can extract itself from its present economic morass; that we will end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and avoid a new one in Iran); that the U.S. can lead other nations in preventing the continuing destruction of this beleaguered planet; and that we can restore our reputation in the eyes of the world as a leader for democracy.

Thus, this time, for this candidate, I have contributed funds — more than once. I have also frequently promoted/defended Senator Obama in this blog; I have talked and telephoned and emailed relentlessly on his behalf; and I signed up for a “Bus for Obama” to New Hampshire. I would do more — much more — if multiple sclerosis didn’t hamper my efforts and activities.

Our entire future depends upon this election. So tomorrow I will cast my ballot for this good man, Barack Obama, with a prayer for his success. If he is not elected — this year — then God help us all.

I recently received the national anthem / lapel pin / flag smear from a conservative friend. (At least she asked me whether or not this one is true, unlike those who mindlessly repeat this and every other smear that comes down the pike.) Fortunately, Snopes.com made it easy for me to respond, with a detailed (and annotated) excerpt from http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/stance.asp :

My friend, this is false.

Snopes.com has this to say about its origins: Back in October 2007, one of the hottest email forwards was a picture that captured Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama standing in front of a U.S. flag at a political event, with his hands clasped in front of him during the playing of the U.S. national anthem while other persons on the platform with him stood with their hands placed over their hearts. This photographic brouhaha soon mutated into a claim that Barack Obama “refused to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance,” and then into the claim that he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at all — rumors which the Obama campaign soon provided evidence to negate.

While this controversy was all the rage on the Internet, political columnist John Semmens included a bit at the end of one of his satirical “Semi-News” columns on the Web site of The Arizona Conservative, offering a mock explanation from the Senator about his non-hand-over-heart stance. He poked fun at Obama by having him voice the opinion that “the American flag is a symbol of oppression” and that the U.S. national anthem is “too bellicose” and should be replaced by something gentler like “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”

This bit of satire evidently came off as too believable to some readers, as it has since been clipped from Semmens’s column and forwarded via email — without attribution — as a genuine statement from Senator Obama. However topical it may be, though, it is just “humorous” political commentary, not the Senator’s own words.

In September 2008, this same email began circulating, headed by the claim that it was derived from the September 7 airing of “Meet the Press” and naming the interviewer as “General Bill Ginn, USAF (ret.).” It should go without saying that Senator Obama wasn’t even among the guests on that day’s show.

Appended to later versions of the email was a statement, purportedly made by Senator Obama, about flag burning. That, too, was fabricated.

I ignore many of the urban legends that recirculate endlessly around the Internet, but I feel so strongly about the need to elect Barack Obama to the presidency that when I see a smear like this one, I feel that I must do what I can to counter it. The next time someone passes this one to you, just let Snopes.com — the Internet authority in all things legendary — counter it for you!

I am in possession of a truly remarkable little book. Timeshare the Cat: Queen of the World is a  collection of colorful, hilarious cartoons about the eponymous cat, all drawn by a very special friend of mine. Once a lonely stray, this fortunate little cat somehow found her way to the quiet rural home of author Patricia Greaves and her husband; “Timeshare” got her unusual name when…well, Buy This Book and you’ll find out!

Timeshare the Cat: Queen of the World  is available at Blurb.com ( http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/357379 ). Like all the best small books, it carries a hefty price tag ($23.95) — but I promise you, it’s worth it! You will learn about Timeshare’s famous ancestors — revolutionaries, inventors, scientists, and more — and enjoy Timeshare’s encounters with Zork and Clyde, tiny aliens from a far-away galaxy (do they taste like chicken — or mouse?). The imaginative adventures and philosophy of this delightful feline will provide hours of pleasure for you and yours — and once you own a copy of this book, you’ll want to send it to everyone you know who loves cats.

Disclosure: I have no financial interest in promoting this book. I just like to share good things!

After the second 2008 presidential election debate, in a HuffPost column titled “Life in the Shallow End,” Nora Ephron — film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and blogger — wrote “out loud” what I almost didn’t dare to think:

It’s not that I don’t hear what the candidates are saying, but I always begin by noticing what they’re wearing, and whose shirt looks better, and of course, whose tie.”

I found myself thinking much the same thing as I watched the same debate. Setting aside for the moment the real issues of this election, I believe that in a simple comparison of the two candidates’ attire, Obama carried the day. His personal and professional style — invariably well-organized, sophisticated, smart, savvy, and solid — was reflected in his mode of dress: a perfectly cut, conservatively stylish suit with a neatly starched dress shirt and a subtle, steady, solid-blue necktie. McCain’s poorly fitted suit, ordinary shirt, and loud red-and-yellow striped tie, on the other hand, denoted a man whose thinking is as disheveled as his presence.

Have you seen the detergent commercial where an unfortunate job applicant’s words are drowned out by a talking stain on his shirt? That was McCain’s tie: Each time the man spoke, marching stiffly around the platform, that tie was shouting at me. Too wide and too long in addition to being too loud, it spoke volumes about McCain’s equally over-the-top politics (not to mention his insecurities).

However, after I had first noticed the contrast between the two neckties, Obama’s far classier appearance faded into the background. That, too, spoke volumes: He has no need to shout his politics, and it is instead the clear, thoughtful, articulate, and solid substance of his position that captures our attention.

Will the way a candidate dresses direct our votes? I certainly hope not. But if it does, at least I feel sure of one thing: Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has been accused by mud-slinging Republicans of nurturing a close association with a 1960s anti-war radical named Bill Ayers. But here’s the skinny, from an Oct. 8 ABC article:

Why don’t we just clear it up right now,” Obama told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson in an exclusive interview for World News. “I’ll repeat again what I’ve said many times. [Ayers] is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois…And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that…I’ve ‘palled around with a terrorist,’ all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.”

Obama said that the McCain campaign is making personal attacks “the centerpiece of the discussion in the closing weeks of a campaign where we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and we’re in the middle of two wars.”

Thank you, Senator Obama. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I’m tired of reading about Senator Barack Obama’s purported “inexperience,” so let’s just clear up a few things. Among his other accomplishments, Sen. Obama has already:

• Been the first black President of the Harvard Law Review;
• Spent three years as a brilliant community organizer;
• Created a voter-registration drive that registered 150,000 new voters;
• Spent 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor;
• Spent eight years as a State Senator, representing a district with over 750,000 people;
• Become chairman of his state Senate’s Health and  Human Services committee;
• Spent four years in the United States Senate,  representing a state of 13 million people;
• Sponsored 131 bills; and
• Served on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veteran’s Affairs committees.

In addition, this man has been married for 19 years to the same woman — a woman who is a Harvard-graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner-city community, then gave that up in order to devote herself full-time to caring for her children.

We should all be so “inexperienced”!

Sarah Palin, the airhead from Alaska — representative of hockey moms everywhere? Only if you consider someone with the IQ of a hockey puck as “representative.”

And another thing: Why is the Katie Couric interview getting so much press? IMO, the Charles Gibson interview on Sept. 11 was far more revealing. I mean, how can anyone think for even a moment about electing as Vice President of the United States a woman so clueless that she could make no response to a simple question about the Bush doctrine?! And she’s a Republican!

I’m not given to writing “fan” letters, but today I was impelled to send this email to Charles Pierce, the Boston Globe staff writer whose one-paragraph satirical column, “Pierced,” appears every week in The Boston Globe Magazine:

Dear Mr. Pierce:
Your writing is always incisive, but today it was downright surgical - and when I read “…watching [Boston Mayor Tom Menino] deliver a speech is the closest thing we’ll ever get to a one-man pie fight,” I almost fell off my chair. (Granted, I have MS, so staying on a chair is often harder than falling off one, but still…)

“Pierced” is frequently my favorite piece in The Boston Globe Magazine, but this one was surpassingly good. And memorable: “One-man pie fight” is a descriptor that will assuredly accompany Menino’s name in story after story, right up to (and probably including) the poor mayor’s eventual obit.

Thank you!

(See “One-Man Show” for the rest of Pierce’s great column.)